Job stories

TL;DR

Before this track a shift was a transaction: pick the job, pay the energy, take the money, read one line from a rotation. The venues had regulars but nobody at them had a memory.

Job stories hang a written chain off each of the three venue jobs. The beats arrive on shifts you were going to work anyway, in order, spaced by how many shifts you have put in. Nobody new is introduced at the door: Nadia and Yusuf were already behind the bar, Mimi was already in the café. The chain is what they say once they have watched you for a few nights.

Each venue’s chain ends in a promotion you can refuse, and refusing is a real answer that the venue keeps open rather than a soft no that loops. After the last written beat the venue moves to a repeat rotation, so it keeps talking without pretending there is more story.

What is free and what is not

Two different gates, and they do not move together.

• The three chains and the office ladder are Patreon for the 0.3.5 window. Bar, Café, Velvet and the suit-route pressure beats sit behind job_stories_unlocked().
• The promotion pass ships free. Getting promoted at the Club, the Cabaret and the Construction Site becomes a scene rather than a number going up, and streaming gets three milestone scenes at its follower counts. These ride the 0.3.5 switch alone.

If you are on the free build, the Café and the Velvet Lounge tell you so rather than leaving you to wonder: once you have worked a few shifts at stage 3 the venue fires the end-of-content notice, the same one the rest of the game uses when a storyline has run out of written material.

One beat per shift

Every venue already had a shuffle-bag of small shift events. The chain does not compete with it. Each shift asks a single question first, and only one of the two can happen on a given shift, so you never get a story beat and a random event stacked on the same night. Work another shift and the rotation carries on.

That is also why the chains are paced in shifts worked, not in days. Nothing expires, nothing is missed by sleeping, and taking a week off does not cost you a beat.

The Bar

Beats arrive at 2, 4, 6 and 9 shifts.

1. The hazing. The staff test the new hire. You can take it straight, or call it out.
2. The tips. Something is wrong with the jar. Taking a cut and brushing it off are both available and both remembered.
3. The storage room. The one beat with a report option, and reporting is not the coward’s branch.
4. Closing. The bar after the doors shut, which is the first time anyone talks to you as staff rather than at you.
5. The alley. Where the chain has its explicit ending, with Nadia or on your own.

Then the floor lead offer. Accepting sets bar_floor_lead and changes how the room treats you; declining leaves the job as it was and the offer comes back.

On the Independent route, where there is no Owner, Marcus the bar manager runs a three-beat sub-chain of his own instead, so the venue has someone leaning on you either way.

Masculine route: the closing and alley beats have their own masc-presenting versions rather than being skipped, so a committed masc PC gets the same chain from his own side.

The Café

Beats arrive at 2, 4, 6 and 9 shifts, with the last one also wanting Hana to actually like you.

1. Mimi picks you as the one she talks to.
2. The owner. Ren watches a shift. Perform for it or ignore it.
3. Senior maid, the first promotion, which moves cafe_rank from 1 to 2 and with it the pay.
4. Hana, past the point where she is only a coworker. Stay or walk.
5. The stage. Sing or refuse.
6. Stage lead, cafe_rank 3.

Both promotions can be declined and both come back later through a re-ask beat, so a no at rank 2 does not close rank 3.

The Velvet Lounge

The Velvet is not paced in shifts but in reputation, because it already had one. Rank scenes fire at reputation 3, 6 and 9 and are tracked as a bitmask, so each plays once and in any order you reach them.

Alongside that, a chain: Odette takes you on, a regular attaches himself to you, a client is shared between the two of you, Vivienne appears once you are past rank 5, the regular asks for something outside the club, and finally Odette leaves and you decide whether to take her number.

The regular’s ask has three answers, not two: yes, no while keeping him, and no that ends him.

The office, if you took the suit

The suit route had a problem: nothing in the game ever pushed back on it. office_route only ever reset by quitting the job.

The pressure ladder fixes that, and it is the one chain that is not about a coworker liking you. It needs the suit route, at least four office shifts, and it will not fire on the masculine path. It reaches you through whichever of five sources your run actually has:

• an order from your Owner
• Derek and what he knows
• Rachel at the front desk, if you angered her
• the firm’s own dress code
• hypnosis, if you are carrying it

Four beats: the spark, a nudge, a trial day, and then the flip, which is the only thing in the game that moves office_route from the suit back to the other track. Declining is real, and there is a resign option for a PC who wants neither.

Trackers

See also

• Earning money for what each venue pays and how the ranks change it
• Orders and Tasks, the other 0.3.5 track, and the app that lists what you owe
• Masculine route for how these chains behave when you present masc
• Patreon vs Free for the current state of the 0.3.5 window