Schedule a consequence for later and cancel it if things changed

Spare the thief now and he robs the shop three days later, unless you already had him arrested. Here is a queue for delayed effects that fires in a fixed order, survives saving, and drops items whose reason has gone away.

Why this works

Cause and effect feel real when the effect waits and the world has a say in between. Checking the conditions at the moment it is due, not when it was planned, lets events that happened in the meantime stop it or change it.

When not to use it

Wrong for effects the player must feel at once, because waiting only blurs the link between choice and result. Show those straight away, and keep the delayed kind for bigger turns where surprise is wanted.

In the full entry

• What to build, step by step
• Starting values and the reason for each
• 3 common mistakes and the fix
• A diagram of every state
• 31 lines of example code with 4 checks that pass
• How your AI shows you that it works

Say this to your AI

Use the Spielerando entry "Schedule a consequence for later and cancel it if things changed" (read_entry consequence-that-arrives-later) in my game. Build it step by step, and show me how you checked that it works.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP