Here is the thread about it.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=413I consider it a 'limited purpose' engine. Basically, every single person has attributes that lead to the resolution of a decision being made. Each attribute is modified by the attributes of others ariound them. IE, say a Samurai is ordering around a peasant, the peasant will defer to the Samurai lest he die right then and there, regardless of preference. If there are two samurai, one will defer to the other based on order of rank. If they cannot defer, they may duel. But the idea is to toggle preferences on various conundra. Ultimately each number you assign is static. THere is no randomness in the system. Higher number wins always. So lets say you have 5 farmers who want to defend their farm.
Farmer 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
1) Bravery 2 Cowardice 5
2) Bravery 3 Cowardice 3
3) Bravery 3 Cowardice 4
4) Bravery 4 Cowardice 2
5) Bravery 6 Cowardice 1
Now we add up each column. 2+3+3+4+6 = 18 so they have a cumulative bravery of 18. Cowardice 5+3+4+2+1 = 15. In this simple scenario, the group is collectively braver than they are cowards, they stand and fight.
Now this is an incredibly simple metric. But imagine if this is modified by such things as 1 is hostile to 5, therefore since 5 being the most brave is the loudest voice for fighting, this hostility might give us a -1 on the collective bravery score. Or say the PC is known to be a fucking badass and has an intimidation score of 4, that increases the cowardice score by 4. Now, their Daimyo will straight up murder them for not fighting. So they must weigh fear of the PC who is immediately present versus the Daimyo who is remote. The Daimyo's intimidation of 6 is cut in half because he is not there, so it's a 3, versus the PC's intimidation of 4 which is unmodified because he is present. Or you can have personal modifiers. Like a peasant will abandon a cart full of wool because it will hurt him, but the loss of the farm means the loss of his livelihood, which will kill him. Or you can add relationship modifiers. They are all related, so standing and fighting means that they are standing to defend their brothers/cousins so that brings up the bravery score.
In short, every single person has scores related to emotional states and daily objectives. They are ALWAYS doing something. No Assassin's Creed/GTA standing around or milling about. Everyone has a purpose, everyone is doing something. So if you kill the blacksmith, then the quality of weapons available drops. There are no stores that just happen to have awesome weapons unrelated to the relationship hierarchy of the society. If you kill off all the Samurai in a particular district, taht district becomes lawless. Other districts send Samurai to restore order. That means that the districts who sent samurai to restore order are now weaker by however many samurai they sent. There are no endlessly respawning police or military. Reinforcements can be programmed in but under particular intervals so that it's not like GTA where if you steal a tank or a helicopter suddenly the army appears. In my estimation it would work best if the game is a closed sandbox. IE, the city is all that there is in the game world. It's remote, and there are no reinforcements that can appear within the time frame of the game.
The canary didn't die because this mine is dangerous, it died because it's lazy and wasn't raised with a proper work ethic.