STANDING ORDER v0.2: desk playtest 1, and its fix list applied

GM chair, all six cast pregens played as archetypes, every beat rolled on a
seeded roller (mulberry32, seed 5291, rolls consumed in printed order) so the
run is re-checkable rather than remembered. Fourteen plates and portraits too.

The pass found three things worth the afternoon.

REVELATION 3 WAS NEVER DELIVERED, AND ITS FALLBACK WAS CIRCULAR. The Psychology
roll with Marlow failed, the Larkhall fallback failed, and the only route left
was a file in Marlow's private quarters that nothing in the scenario told the
players existed — findable only by knowing the thing it reveals. A fallback that
requires the revelation it is a fallback for is not a fallback. The file now
lives in the sick-bay day room where they already have reason to be, there is a
second independent route through Pennyfeather and the 1974 return's CASUALTIES
NIL, and the Vigil is an automatic backstop under all three.

Psychology was the wrong skill anyway: the audit put the best in the cast at 40,
a coin flip on the moral centre of the case, while the Casting table credited
Renshaw with it as a strength. It is Insight now — 63, genuinely hers, and a
better fit for a woman who is ashamed rather than confused.

THE MOST OBVIOUS PLAYER MOVE HAD NO PRINTED ANSWER. The talker told the
Controller there had been no war, four minutes in, and the document said
nothing. Now printed in three mouths, plus what happens when they take a
resident up to see the sky — which works, harms nobody, and solves nothing.

ACT THREE RESOLVED IN EIGHT MINUTES OF A FIFTY-MINUTE ACT. The amendment failed
and the party cancelled inside ninety seconds, because falling through to the
end of the world is so much worse than the alternative that nobody deliberated
— and they cancelled without knowing it kills the sixty-one children, because
Pennyfeather was two corridors away. She now stands at the Controller's elbow
and says the number out loud before the pen moves, and a failed amendment holds
Sowerby's pen above the paper for one full round.

Also: Act Two ran 75 against 55 and now has a real Pacing Note; the Act One
Stealth roll bought nothing and now buys when Teague finds them; time inside
versus outside is ruled in the text; the census is marked optional because
missing it cost nothing; and Containment gets the one beat the heavy's 3/10
verdict asked for.

All twenty-one guards still pass, and check-figures still records this document
at zero bare figures.

Untested: ending 2, a successful amendment, the quarantine unit, four players.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md

@@ -8,12 +8,12 @@
 
 | | |
 |---|---|
-| **Version** | **v0.1**, 15 September 2026 — first draft, written in one pass |
+| **Version** | **v0.2**, 15 September 2026 — absorbs desk playtest 1's fix list |
 | **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone,** with the compendium for sheets and the three bestiary creatures. |
-| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No.** No playtest of any kind, desk or human. The clock in Session Timing is an estimate and nothing has tested it. Treat every timing as a guess until somebody runs it. |
+| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No.** One desk pass, no human runs. `STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_1.md` (GM chair, seed 5291) measured Act Two twenty minutes hot and found the Revelation 3 fallback circular; both are fixed here. Endings 2 and 3-succeeding and the quarantine unit are all still untested. |
 | **What it is** | A **three-act one-shot**. It ends in the session; there is no second part and the text must not promise one. |
 | **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in Casting and the build enforces it. |
-| **Runtime** | Budgeted **3h00 of play** in three acts of 45 / 55 / 50 minutes plus a ten-minute break. Untested. |
+| **Runtime** | Budgeted **3h00 of play** in three acts of 45 / 55 / 50 minutes plus a ten-minute break. Desk pass 1 ran **~3h00 of play against 2h30 planned** — Act Two carried the whole overrun and now has a written cut. |
 
 ### The three things that are not obvious
 
@@ -28,6 +28,11 @@
 3. **Act Three is a decision, not a fight.** All three endings are real and all three
    cost something. If the table reaches for violence the scenario still works, but see
    EXPOSURE — the quarantine unit will kill them and is meant to be argued with.
+4. **Nothing in Act One is hidden, and that is load-bearing.** Joan Wetherlaw points at
+   every clue the party misses, because she has been trying to show somebody for four
+   years. Desk pass 1 failed six of ten rolls in Act One and lost nothing. **A GM who does
+   not notice this will start gating clues behind the dice and the act will die.** The
+   rolls buy speed and detail. They never buy access.
 
 ### Still to do
 
@@ -110,10 +115,23 @@ population on paper.** A record cannot hold both. It resolves by correction.
 | 2 | **Bellhouse** — the population, the Registry, the sum | 55 min | Pennyfeather has shown them the sum by 1:45 |
 | 3 | **Renewal** — Thursday, the signing, the decision | 50 min | The signing starts no later than 2:35 |
 
-**If you are running late,** cut in this order: the vent-head climb in Act One (put them
-at the postal pipe instead), then the crèche visit in Act Two (move Kit Marlow into the
-corridor outside the Registry), then Teague's confrontation in Act Three (he stands down
-when Sowerby tells him to, off-screen). **Do not cut Pennyfeather's sum or the signing.**
+### Pacing Note — the cuts, written in advance
+
+Desk pass 1 ran **~170 minutes of play against 150 planned, and Act Two carried all of it**
+at 75 against 55: seven locations and six speaking parts, every one good enough that the
+table would not leave. These cuts are sized at that overrun, and **the first two should be
+the default rather than the emergency.**
+
+| Cut | Saves | What it costs |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Fold the pipe room into Registry** — Pennyfeather's office backs onto it and she walks them through on the way to the stacks | ~8 min | Nothing. Revelation 4 still arrives from the relay or from her |
+| **Kit Marlow in the corridor, not the crèche** — she is carrying the atlas somewhere and stops to talk | ~7 min | The drawings. Have her carrying one; it does most of the work |
+| **The census** (see Act Two) | ~4 min | Atmosphere only |
+| **Skip the Vigil** (Countdown step 4) | ~5 min | The Revelation 3 emergency backstop. Only take this cut if they already have it |
+| **Teague off-screen in Act Three** — he stands down when Sowerby tells him to | ~6 min | The script break, which is the best beat in the act. **Last resort** |
+
+**Do not cut Pennyfeather's sum, the arrival, or the signing.** They are the act, the tone
+and the decision.
 
 ---
 
@@ -278,8 +296,8 @@ Use whichever fits the group; all three are live and the department used all thr
 | # | Clue | Where | How found | What it gives | Type |
 |---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 1 | The ash is not ash | The verges, the yard | `[CUS: Science (Biology) — it is not combustion product and it is not mineral; it has a grain structure, like something milled]` | The boundary is a *place*, not a contamination | Essential |
-| 2 | The ash has an edge | Walking the field boundary | `[CUS: Navigate — the line is straight for 400 m and then turns exactly 90°, which weather does not do]` | It is surveyed. Somebody drew it | Essential |
-| 3 | The dog's records | Joan's kitchen, the vet's note | `[CUS: Medicine — nine days of healing in an animal that was gone overnight]` | Time runs differently inside | Supporting |
+| 2 | The ash has an edge | Walking the field boundary | `[CUS: Navigate — the line is straight for 400 m and then turns exactly 90°, which weather does not do]` | It is surveyed. Somebody drew it | Supporting |
+| 3 | The dog's records | Joan's kitchen, the vet's note | `[CUS: Medicine — nine days of healing in an animal that was gone overnight]` | Time runs differently **in the ash**, not in the site | Supporting |
 | 4 | Joan's fifty-two years | Joan herself | `[CUS: Persuade — she has a box of her father's papers she has never shown anyone]` | Her father was a Sheldon works foreman in 1974 and was told to stop digging | Supporting |
 | 5 | The vent head | Sheldon Moor, 3/4 mile up | `[CUS: Spot — a mushroom vent in the heather, painted to lose itself, warm to the hand]` | The site is **live** — something down there is breathing | Essential |
 | 6 | The postal pipe | Beside the vent head | `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a sealed 4-inch pneumatic line, pressurised, and the seal is 1974 and unbroken]` | The route in, and where SO-H01 came from | Essential |
@@ -303,10 +321,25 @@ detail that it has been like this since 2022 and not before.
    for whatever the table wants to talk about. `[CUS: Athletics — average; only a fumble
    is a fall, and a fall here is a twisted ankle and nothing worse]`.
 3. **The vent head and the adit.** The way in. `[CUS: Stealth — they can be inside without
-   being seen, which matters at Countdown step 2]`. *Success:* Teague is told about them
-   later rather than sooner — push step 2 back twenty minutes. *Failure:* somebody below
-   logs an unscheduled opening, which is exactly what step 2 is. **There is no penalty
-   beyond that and the door still opens.**
+   being seen, which matters at Countdown step 2]`. **This roll buys *when* Teague finds
+   them, and nothing else.** *Success:* Countdown step 2 moves to **+75 min** — they get
+   most of Act Two before he appears. *Failure:* step 2 moves to **+30 min** and he is
+   looking for them while they are still in the lobby. *Special:* he is not told at all
+   until they introduce themselves. The door opens either way; it has never been locked.
+
+### Time, ruled — because the table will ask in Act One
+
+Joan's dog healed nine days overnight. The lore-digger will immediately ask what an
+afternoon below costs them up here. **The answer is nothing.**
+
+**The ratio is in the ash, not in the site.** The boundary band is where the "after" is
+being written, and time inside *it* is thick — the dog lay in it for a night. The party
+crosses that band in thirty seconds, twice, and the site beyond it runs at 1:1 with the
+surface, because the site is a place with clocks in it that people have been winding for
+fifty-two years. Thursday is Thursday in both directions.
+
+**Say this when it is asked and do not leave it vague** — Act Three is on a deadline and a
+table that thinks time is elastic will not believe the deadline.
 
 > ⚠ **Do not put a fight in Act One.** The scenario has one creature above ground and it
 > is not here. If the table needs something to do with their hands, give them the adit:
@@ -339,6 +372,43 @@ threat. Introduce a *person* — the man who has run the site's library for fort
 wants to know whether the National Theatre reopened; the woman who is teaching children
 the geography of a county she has never stood in. The act's engine is grief, not danger.
 
+### When the players tell them the truth — and they will, in the first five minutes
+
+Desk pass 1's talker said *"Controller, there was no war"* four minutes into the act. This
+is the likeliest opening move at every table and it needs a printed answer, not a GM's
+improvisation.
+
+**Told to Sowerby.** He is courteous, he does not believe it, and — this is the important
+part — **he files it.** A written statement from a Centre officer goes in the record, which
+means it is still there in Act Three when it matters. He says: *"I'd very much like that to
+be true. We had it put to us in 'seventy-nine by a man who'd got in through the
+ventilation. He believed it as well."* **He is not lying and there was such a man.** Do not
+resolve who.
+
+**Told to Pennyfeather.** She goes quiet, then asks one question: *"Then what has the
+region been doing?"* She already suspects — this is what tips her from arithmetic into
+action, and it is the cheapest way to get SO-H03 into their hands if the Insight route was
+missed.
+
+**Told to Teague.** **This is what makes him dangerous**, and the GM should know it before
+it happens. Everything in his Act Three paragraph arrives early, without the signing to
+contain it. If they tell him in Act Two, move Countdown step 2 to *now* and play the rest
+of the act with him following them.
+
+**Taking a resident to the surface.** They will ask. **The answer is yes, it works, and it
+is the worst thing they can do before Act Three.** A resident who crosses the ash sees a
+moor with no craters on it, and one of three things happens — GM's choice by who it is:
+
+- **Sowerby** looks for a long time and says *"I'll need to see the region."* He is asking
+  for proof of a million people, and nobody can give it to him inside the session.
+- **Larkhall** believes it instantly, because she is a scientist and a sky is evidence, and
+  is then **no use to anybody for the rest of the case.**
+- **Teague** decides it is an anomaly and not a sky, and goes back down certain. **Do not
+  use him for this unless the table insists** — it removes the script break.
+
+⚠ **Nobody is harmed by crossing.** There is no trap here. The scenario is not punishing
+the humane move; it is showing that proof does not solve an administrative problem.
+
 ### Locations below
 
 | Location | What is there | Why the players come here |
@@ -358,7 +428,9 @@ the geography of a county she has never stood in. The act's engine is grief, not
 | 8 | They think it happened | Anywhere, first ten minutes | `[CUS: no roll — the tannoy bulletin does it for you]` | Revelation 2 | Essential |
 | 9 | The visitor book | The lobby | `[CUS: Spot — three signatures in one week in 1974 and nothing after]` | Nobody has ever come back | Supporting |
 | 10 | The order itself | Registry, on request | `[CUS: Research — SO-H02, filed where it should be, because everything here is]` | Clause 4's second door | Essential |
-| 11 | The drill | The sick bay, from Marlow | `[CUS: Psychology — she is not confused, she is ashamed, and those present differently]` | Revelation 3 | Essential |
+| 11 | The drill | The sick bay, from Marlow | `[CUS: Insight — she is not confused, she is ashamed, and those present differently]` | Revelation 3 | Essential |
+| 11b | CASUALTIES NIL | Registry, from Pennyfeather | `[CUS: Insight — ask her what week one looked like and she fetches the 1974 return]` | Revelation 3, by a second road | Essential |
+| 11c | Marlow's file | The sick-bay day room | `[CUS: Research — a box of her papers on the shelf where the ward keeps its old files]` | Revelation 3, in her own hand | Essential |
 | 12 | The relay | Plant floor | `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — the renewal is wired to a relay that also drives the perimeter survey]` | Revelation 4: renewal *is* the expansion | Essential |
 | 13 | The sum | Registry, from Pennyfeather | `[CUS: Insight — she has been waiting to be asked; ask her anything straight and she produces SO-H03]` | Revelation 5 | Essential |
 | 14 | Sixty-one | Registry, the birth register | `[CUS: Research — sixty-one born below, no NHS number, no birth certificate above ground]` | The cost of cancellation | Essential |
@@ -366,10 +438,26 @@ the geography of a county she has never stood in. The act's engine is grief, not
 
 **Failure cases.** Clues 10, 13 and 14 are *filed*, and this is the most orderly place in
 the world: a failed Research or Insight costs ten minutes and a second attempt, never the
-clue. Clue 11 is the exception — **fail the Psychology with Marlow and she does not say
-it today**, and the route reopens only through Larkhall (who half-knows) or the file
-Marlow kept in her own quarters. Clue 12 failed means the relay reads as ordinary plant
-and Revelation 4 arrives instead from Pennyfeather, one scene later.
+clue. Clue 12 failed means the relay reads as ordinary plant and Revelation 4 arrives
+instead from Pennyfeather, one scene later.
+
+⚠ **Revelation 3 has three independent routes, and this is deliberate.** Desk pass 1 failed
+the roll with Marlow *and* the fallback with Larkhall, and the party finished the case
+never learning it was a drill — because the only route left was a file in Marlow's private
+quarters that nothing had told them existed. **A fallback that requires the revelation it
+is a fallback for is not a fallback.** So:
+
+- **11 · Marlow herself.** Fail and she does not say it today; she is old and ashamed and
+  there is no second attempt. **This route is allowed to close.**
+- **11b · Pennyfeather.** She has the 1974 return in a drawer and *casualties this period:
+  nil* is on it. She fetches it for anybody who asks what week one was like. **This route
+  cannot close** — she is helpful, and she is already the act's destination.
+- **11c · The file, in the sick-bay day room** rather than in private quarters. They have a
+  reason to be there (it is where Larkhall talks to them) and a reason to look at a shelf
+  of old ward files.
+
+**If all three somehow fail, give it to them at the Vigil (Countdown step 4):** somebody
+reads the 1974 roll of honour aloud, and there are no names on it.
 
 **Specials.** A special on clue 11 gets Marlow's own memo in her hand — the fortnight
 paragraph — which is the single most damning object in the case. A special on clue 13
@@ -395,6 +483,11 @@ them learn that by doing it.
 > ⚠ **Do not let the census kill the act's tone.** It is two minutes of cold in a warm
 > place. Get back to the tea.
 
+⚠ **The census is optional and missing it costs nothing.** Desk pass 1 failed the Spot and
+never found it, and no later beat noticed. It is atmosphere and a cheap lesson, not a clue
+— do not give it a second route and do not steer the party into the stacks. **If the act is
+running hot, it is the first thing to lose.**
+
 ---
 
 ## Act Three — Renewal *(~50 min)*
@@ -407,6 +500,13 @@ price.
 > the one his predecessor used, and there are eleven people standing along the back wall
 > because they always come. He looks up and says: "You'll want to watch. It's quite short."*
 
+⚠ **Pennyfeather is in this room and she stays in it.** She is the Registrar, she files the
+renewal, and she is the only person present who knows what cancellation costs. Desk pass 1
+put the decision in the Control Room while she was two corridors away in Registry, and the
+party cancelled the order without ever being told about the sixty-one — which left the GM
+choosing between teleporting her in and letting them choose blind. **Neither is acceptable.
+Put her at the Controller's elbow from the first line of the act.**
+
 ### The three endings, all real
 
 **1. CANCEL — clause 4, the warrant in the room.**
@@ -417,8 +517,12 @@ always worked, and it is what a warrant card is *for*.
   never executed. The 206 who went down in 1974 become people who went down for a drill
   and came up on the Friday.
 - **The cost, and do not soften it:** the sixty-one born below have no record above
-  ground and never had one. **They stop.** Kit Marlow stops. The GM should state this
-  plainly before the agent decides, through Pennyfeather, who has worked it out.
+  ground and never had one. **They stop.** Kit Marlow stops.
+- ⚠ **This must be said out loud, by Pennyfeather, before the pen moves.** Not in a GM
+  aside and not after the fact. She says: *"Sixty-one of us were born here. I have their
+  entries in front of me and there is no other copy. I want you to say the number back to
+  me before you do it."* **If the agent cancels anyway, that is the scenario working.**
+  What it must never be is a surprise afterwards.
 - **Coherence:** the cancelling agent spends **2 Coherence**, permanently, because they
   are the authority that makes it true and reality now records them that way.
 
@@ -444,7 +548,7 @@ This is a **Borrowed Authority** problem and is run by those rules:
   than routine — one tier beyond scope.
 - **It is assembled from up to three dossier items, each a separate scene, using a
   different skill, at most one of them at a keyboard.** The three that exist here:
-  - Marlow's own memo `[CUS: Research — her hand, her reasoning, in her quarters]`
+  - Marlow's own memo `[CUS: Research — her hand, her reasoning, in the sick-bay day room]`
   - The 1962 commissioning survey naming an unpopulated alternate seat area
     `[CUS: Knowledge — Sheldon was the second choice; the first had nobody on it]`
   - Pennyfeather's counter-signature as Registrar `[CUS: Persuade — she has been waiting
@@ -453,9 +557,15 @@ This is a **Borrowed Authority** problem and is run by those rules:
   1974 clerical error, which is what it is]`, at −20 per red flag broken. Each dossier
   item makes the credential better, never the roll easier.
 - **Success:** the order stands, amended. Nobody dies. The ash stops by the weekend.
-- **Failure:** the amendment does not take and the renewal proceeds on schedule —
-  fall through to ending 2 unless somebody cancels under clause 4 in the next few minutes.
-  **Say the clock out loud when this happens.**
+- **Failure:** the amendment does not take. **Do not fall straight through.** Sowerby's
+  pen stops *above the paper* and stays there for one full round of table talk — he has
+  been handed a reason to hesitate and he is a man who has never been allowed one. Play
+  that silence. Pennyfeather says *"Controller."* Teague, if he stood down, says nothing
+  and does not leave.
+  **Then** the renewal proceeds unless somebody cancels under clause 4. Desk pass 1 fell
+  through in ninety seconds and resolved a fifty-minute act in eight, because the failure
+  state is so much worse than the alternative that nobody deliberated. **The pause is what
+  makes it a decision rather than a reflex — it is not optional staging.**
 - **Coherence:** widening a scope with Coherence is legal here and it always works. It
   costs 1 per widening and the agent's file and Bellhouse's converge one step. Nothing in
   this game converges them back.
@@ -487,6 +597,13 @@ and he will lose, quickly, in front of his colleagues and his daughter's teacher
 scenario does not stop the table doing this. It does not reward it either. **Everyone in
 Bellhouse who was going to help them stops helping them.**
 
+**Containment's beat, and it is the only one they get.** Teague has to get past somebody to
+reach the folder, and the somebody is the party's heavy. **Give that player the choice out
+loud:** put him down, or stand still and let him come. Standing still is the stronger play
+and the scenario should say so — a warden who walks into a man who will not hit him has
+nowhere to put what he is carrying. Desk pass 1's heavy scored his own session 3/10 and
+said "I carried a chair"; this is the fix, and it costs the act nothing.
+
 ### EXPOSURE — the one thing that will kill the party
 
 If the agents call the incident in as a containment failure rather than an arrangement, the
@@ -535,8 +652,10 @@ years. Will not break a confidence, but will say *ask her, and ask her kindly*.
 **Deputy Controller Edith Marlow, 101** — *the woman who filed a war because she thought
 it would save a fortnight.*
 In the end bed in the sick bay. Has not spoken plainly since 2019 and is not confused —
-she is ashamed, and Psychology tells those apart (clue 11). Her own memo, in her quarters,
-carries the fortnight paragraph and is the most damning object in the scenario. **She will
+she is ashamed, and Insight tells those apart (clue 11). Her own memo — in the sick-bay
+day room, on the shelf with the old ward files, where the party can find it without being
+told it exists — carries the fortnight paragraph and is the most damning object in the
+scenario. **She will
 confirm it was a drill if she is asked kindly and will deny it if she is pressed.**
 
 **Warden Michael Teague, 38** — *the only man down here who has decided the surface is a
@@ -593,10 +712,10 @@ Deliberately **not** CLEAN GROUND's six, so the two cases exercise different she
 |---|---|---|---|
 | 1 | **Marta Holloway** — Senior Field Officer, lead | Signs for it and reads it first | Navigate (the ash edge), Stealth (the way in), Tradecraft |
 | 2 | **Arun Bhattacharya** — Registry Officer | The return landed on his section's desk | Research (SO-H02, the birth register), Knowledge (the 1962 survey), Anomaly Lore (**the ending-3 roll**) |
-| 3 | **Kate Renshaw** — Interview Officer | Because everyone down there wants to talk | Psychology (**Marlow**), Insight (Teague, Pennyfeather), Persuade (Joan, and Pennyfeather's counter-signature) |
+| 3 | **Kate Renshaw** — Interview Officer | Because everyone down there wants to talk | Insight 63 (**Marlow**, Teague, Pennyfeather — all three), Persuade (Joan, and Pennyfeather's counter-signature), Listen |
 | 4 | **Marek Kowalczyk** — Probationary, engineering | Somebody has to read the plant | Repair (Electronics) (**the relay**), Repair (Mechanical) (the pipe), Engineering (Field Systems) (the blast door) |
 | 5 | **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim** — Probationary, medicine | The dog tissue is on his bench | Medicine (the dog), Science (Biology) (the ash), Insight |
-| 6 | **Ben Okonkwo** — Field Officer, containment | In case it is the other kind of case. It is not | Athletics, Brawl, Firearm (Rifle) — **and the scenario is built so he never needs them** |
+| 6 | **Ben Okonkwo** — Field Officer, containment | In case it is the other kind of case. It is not | Athletics, Brawl, Firearm (Rifle) — **and the scenario is built so he never needs them.** His beat is Teague in Act Three: stand still and let him come |
 
 **Casting note for Okonkwo's player, given before the game:** this case has no fight the
 party has to win. He is not wasted — he is the one who carries Marlow's chair, holds the