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CLEAN GROUND v0.13: Act Two cut from 65 minutes to 45, and the clock now fits

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The scenario ran 20 minutes over the house budget (3h30 play plus a ten-minute
break, 3h40 wall clock) and Act Two carried all of it at 65 minutes. It is now
45, and the session lands at 3:40 exactly: 45 + 45 + 50 + 45 + 25 = 210 minutes
of play.

NOTHING WAS DELETED. The twenty minutes came out of structure, which is the
only kind of cut that survives contact with a table:

- THE CROSSING IS CAPPED AT FIVE. It was "let the silence sit until a player
  breaks it", which is open-ended by construction. If the table is still quiet
  at minute five the Geiger finds its own voice. A silence that has stopped
  being tense is just a pause.

- THE OFFER RUNS INSIDE THE COLUMN SCENE, not beside it. It was "somewhere in
  this act, take Ashcroft's player aside for one minute" -- a separate slot.
  Run during the line's rest, while the other players are talking to Ivy, it
  costs nothing, because the table is already occupied.

- THE LINE'S REST IS THE ACT'S CLOCK, and this is the cut that does the work.
  The column walks every day and stops to rest, not to meet people. Ivy talks
  for as long as the line is sitting down, and the line sits for twenty-five
  minutes; then the old ones stand up, because they always do. The scene ends
  on the GM's schedule through the scenario's own premise rather than through
  a GM deciding to move things along -- and it is the loop showing itself for
  the first time, which makes the timer do dramatic work as well as temporal.

The Pacing Note now carries 65 minutes of further cuts against what was a
55-minute problem, so there is about ten minutes of genuine slack for a table
that talks. That is the first slack this scenario has ever had. It also now
says where to cut if the break arrives late: Act Three's depot search, never
Act Four, which is the shortest act with the most to do.

Also fixed a stale duplicate: the Overview said "Runtime: 4h00" while STATUS
and the timing table said otherwise. Every runtime figure in the document now
agrees, and the remaining mentions of 4h00 are explicitly historical.

CAVEAT, STATED IN THE DOCUMENT: desk pass 1's 4:25 predates this restructure
and no fourth desk pass has been run against the new timings. The first human
run is also the first test of this clock.

npm run check: 17 guards, exit 0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-09-13 14:17:34 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 38012d56ff
commit 00e5a993cc
1 changed files with 82 additions and 32 deletions
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docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md
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| | |
|---|---|
| **Version** | **v0.12**, 13 September 2026 |
| **Version** | **v0.13**, 13 September 2026 |
| **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone.** A GM with this file and the compendium can run it end to end. |
| **Is it convention-ready?** | **Nearly.** The print pack is built (`CLEAN_GROUND_HANDOUTS.html`, held by `check-handouts`). What is missing is a run with human beings, and a slot. |
| **Playtesting** | Three desk passes, all fixes applied: `CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_1.md` (GM chair, seed 4271), `_2.md` (Act Four stress, seed 9314), `_3.md` (player chair, contrarian, seed 5580). Twenty-three fixes plus one post-pass. |
| **What it is** | A **convention one-shot**, decided 13 September 2026. It ends in the slot; there is no second session and the text must not promise one. |
| **Where it runs** | **Contingency 2027 — Sunday 31 January 2027, afternoon** (slot 9), Searles Leisure Resort, Hunstanton. |
| **Runtime** | 4h00 including a break. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25; the **Pacing Note** carries ~25 minutes of pre-written cuts. Take them as the default. **⚠ That is 20 minutes over the house budget** — see below. |
| **Runtime** | **3h30 of play plus a 10-minute break — 3h40 wall clock**, which is the house budget. Act Two was cut from 65 minutes to 45 in v0.13 to get there. The **Pacing Note** carries a further 65 minutes of cuts; take them as the default. |
| **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in the Casting section and the build enforces it. |
### ⚠ It runs 20 minutes long against the house budget
### It fits the house budget, as of v0.13
The house standard is **3h30 of play** inside the four-hour slot plus a ten-minute
break — about **3h40 wall clock**, against roughly 3h15 of actual content. This
document budgets **4h00**, which is the whole slot with nothing either side.
**3h30 of play plus a ten-minute break — 3h40 wall clock.** For most of this document's
life it budgeted 4h00, which is the whole slot with nothing either side, and did not say
that was over. It was: the house standard is 3h30 of play against roughly 3h15 of content.
**Taking every pre-written cut in the Pacing Note lands it at 4:00, not 3:40.** So the
cuts are not optional slack, they are the baseline, and there is still no margin for a
table that talks. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25 uncut.
**Act Two carried the entire overrun** at 65 minutes and is now 45. The twenty came out
of structure, not content — the crossing is capped at five minutes, THE OFFER runs inside
the column scene instead of beside it, and the line's rest gives that scene a clock that
ends it on the GM's schedule. Nothing was deleted.
Two honest ways out, and it has not been decided which:
- **Find another 20 minutes.** Act Two is 65 minutes and is the likeliest source; the
Pacing Note already knows where its own fat is.
- **Declare it a deliberate exception** and run it in a slot with nothing after it —
which, at Contingency 2027, it has: Sunday afternoon, with only a reserve behind it.
Until that is settled, **a GM running this to time should assume they will overrun**
and should take the cuts from the start rather than deciding at the break.
**The Pacing Note now carries 65 minutes of further cuts against a 55-minute problem**, so
for the first time there is about ten minutes of real slack. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25 uncut;
that figure predates this restructure and a fourth desk pass has not been run against the
new timings. **The first human run is also the first test of this clock.**
### The three things that are not obvious
@@ -116,7 +112,7 @@ premise (a walk north that never arrives) and the predator's method (imitation).
country north of Hadrian's Wall, and its 1962 duplicate.
- **Tone:** procedural, then cold, then unbearable. A filing contingency with forty-one
people inside it.
- **Runtime:** 4h00 including a 10 minute break.
- **Runtime:** 3h30 of play plus a 10-minute break — 3h40 wall clock, inside a four-hour slot.
- **The crossing:** the stump of a boundary oak on the Sike Head march. Open since the
felling, widest at dusk, and it will not close on its own.
@@ -145,30 +141,51 @@ premise (a walk north that never arrives) and the predator's method (imitation).
## Session Timing
**3h30 of play plus a ten-minute break — 3h40 wall clock**, which is the house budget.
An earlier version of this table ran 3h50 and called it 4h00; Act Two carried the whole
overrun and has been cut to fit.
| | Act | Clock | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | **One — Registry and the Sike Head** | 0:45 | Briefing, the felled tree, the first body |
| 0:45 | **Two — Over** | 1:05 | The crossing, the burnt valley, the column |
| 1:50 | *break* | 0:10 | |
| 2:00 | **Three — There is no north** | 0:50 | The loop, the 1962 file, what the walkers are |
| 2:50 | **Four — One of us** | 0:45 | The swap, and the test that does not work |
| 3:35 | **Close — Cancellation** | 0:25 | The decision, in front of somebody who will be cancelled |
| 0:45 | **Two — Over** | 0:45 | The crossing, the burnt valley, the column |
| 1:30 | *break* | 0:10 | |
| 1:40 | **Three — There is no north** | 0:50 | The loop, the 1962 file, what the walkers are |
| 2:30 | **Four — One of us** | 0:45 | The swap, and the test that does not work |
| 3:15 | **Close — Cancellation** | 0:25 | The decision, in front of somebody who will be cancelled |
**Hard rule:** at 2:50 on the clock, somebody at the table is not who they were.
**Hard rule:** at 2:30 on the clock, somebody at the table is not who they were.
### Pacing Note — the cuts, written in advance
Desk pass 1 ran 4:25 against this table, with three lucky rolls. **Take these cuts as the
default, not the emergency.**
Desk pass 1 ran **4:25** against an earlier table that budgeted 3h50 of play. The house
budget is **3h30 plus a ten-minute break**. That is a 55-minute problem, and it is now
solved in two halves rather than left to the GM at the table.
**Half one — twenty minutes are already gone from the printed timings.** Act Two was 65
minutes and is now 45. Nothing was deleted: the crossing is capped at five, THE OFFER runs
inside the column scene rather than beside it, and the line's rest gives that scene an
in-fiction clock. **You do not have to do anything to take this cut — it is the act as
written.** See Act Two's budget table.
**Half two — these, and take them as the default, not the emergency.**
| Cut | Saves | Costs |
|---|---|---|
| **Registry briefing capped at 10 minutes** — when the tenth minute arrives, Registry has another appointment | ~5 | Nothing. Every answer is in Act One anyway |
| **Act Three: drop the walk to the northern seam** | ~15 | Nothing. The lorry and the almanac already prove the loop |
| **Act Two: the column's hospitality, once rather than twice** | ~5 | A little warmth. Take this one last |
| **Act Two: the column's hospitality, once rather than twice** | ~5 | A little warmth. Take this one last, and only if the line's rest has already overrun |
**Running total: 65 minutes of cuts available against a 55-minute problem**, so there is
ten minutes of genuine slack for a table that talks — which is the first time this
scenario has had any.
**Do not cut:** telling Ivy, the almanac pair, or the Close. They are the scenario.
**If you are still over at the break**, the thing to shorten is Act Three's depot search,
not Act Four. Act Four is already the shortest act with the most to do, and the Close is
the only part of the night the table will remember in a year.
---
## Plot Summary (GM truth)
@@ -521,7 +538,35 @@ side of the county. Two routes, both of which reach a party anywhere:
---
## Act Two — Over *(~65 min)*
## Act Two — Over *(~45 min)*
> **This act was 65 minutes and carried the scenario's entire overrun.** It is now 45, and
> the twenty came out of structure rather than content: nothing below was deleted. The
> crossing is capped, THE OFFER runs *inside* another scene instead of beside it, and the
> column scene has an in-fiction clock that ends it on your schedule. **Run the budget
> below and the act lands.** Ignore it and this is the act that eats the Close.
| Beat | Minutes | Ends when |
|---|---|---|
| **The crossing** | **5** | A player breaks the silence. If nobody does by minute five, a Geiger tick does it for them |
| **The column arrives** | **5** | Ivy has walked forward and somebody has spoken to her |
| **The line rests, and they talk** | **25** | The rest ends — see the clock below. THE OFFER happens inside this |
| **The line moves on** | **10** | H03a is handed over and the agents decide whether to follow |
**THE LINE'S REST IS THE ACT'S CLOCK, and it is the cut that does the work.** This column
walks every day of its life and it stops to rest, not to meet people. **Ivy will talk for
as long as the line is sitting down, and the line sits for twenty-five minutes.** Then the
old ones stand up, because they always do, and the conversation is over whether or not the
agents got what they wanted.
- **Say it at the start of the scene, once:** the line has sat down in the heather, and
they do that for a while and then they walk. Players who know a scene has a clock use it;
players who do not will still be carried by it.
- **Ivy does not stay behind to finish a conversation.** She has never once let the line
walk without her and she is not going to start tonight. Anything unasked is unasked.
- **This is not a punishment and must not read as one.** It is the loop showing itself for
the first time: these people are on rails and the agents have just watched it happen
without being told.
**Beats**
- **The crossing** — *read aloud or paraphrase:*
@@ -534,13 +579,18 @@ side of the county. Two routes, both of which reach a party anywhere:
- **Do not say "nuclear", "1962", or "ash".** The Geiger says the first, Bhattacharya
says the second, and *ash* is a word a player should be the one to use.
- If anyone asks what the grey is, the honest answer is that it is on their hands now.
- Nobody rolls anything here. Let the silence sit until a player breaks it.
- Nobody rolls anything here. Let the silence sit until a player breaks it — **but this
is five minutes, not ten.** If the table is still quiet at minute five, the Geiger
finds its own voice and that is your cue to move. A silence that has stopped being
tense is just a pause, and this act cannot afford one.
- **Coherence starts draining** — one per hour, and the record offers each agent a small,
correct-feeling detail about why they belong here. `[CUS: Insight — that memory is new]`
*Missed:* nothing yet, and quietly better — the record should be winning early without
being noticed.
- **THE OFFER — the anchor's beat, and it is not optional.** Somewhere in this act, take
Ashcroft's player aside for one minute. The record offers him the cleanest version of the
- **THE OFFER — the anchor's beat, and it is not optional.** **Run it DURING the line's
rest, while the other players are talking to Ivy** — that is where the twenty minutes
came from, and it costs nothing because the table is occupied. Take Ashcroft's player
aside for one minute. The record offers him the cleanest version of the
lie: that he has always been the anchor for *this* valley, that the three years his body
is older than his birthday were spent here, and that he may put the weight down now.
**Accepting costs nothing in the moment, 2 Coherence at the Close, and one more thing he