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Desk playtest 4: the clock, against v0.13's recut timings

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Seed 6142, banding from rules.mjs rather than estimated, every roll logged.
Run because desk pass 1's 4:25 describes a scenario that no longer exists --
Act Two was 65 minutes when that pass ran and is now 45.

VERDICT: the clock holds, and for the reason it was built to. Every beat in
Act Two ended on something written into the text rather than on GM judgement,
which is what the recut was for and what the 65-minute version never had. The
run landed at ~3:46 against 3:40, with two of three Pacing Note cuts taken and
the third still in hand -- the first time this scenario has finished a pass
with a cut unspent.

A hostile seed, deliberately not re-rolled: two fumbles, eight failures, and
the party's one reliable Act Four test missing. A clock only tested under lucky
rolls is not tested, because failure is what generates table time.

THREE THINGS THE DICE FOUND, none of them about minutes:

- A SPECIAL FIGHTS THE REST CLOCK. Renshaw rolled 7 against 63 and the column
  opened up at exactly the moment the scene wanted to end. A GM who has just
  rewarded a good roll will not then stand the line up. The roleplay-first
  archetype's verdict was "I rolled a 7 and got less time", which is the only
  sour note in the session and a real design fault.

- THE RE-CUT-THE-PEG FUMBLE HAS NO DURATION. The clause is one of the best
  things in the document and the text itself says a table will chase it. It
  added ten minutes with no guidance about what ends it.

- A FUMBLED PERSUADE ON SWINBURNE HAS NO ANSWER. H01's failure case is written
  for a party who did not ask, not one that asked badly. Predates v0.13, and
  the third pass running to find the failure cases written for absence rather
  than for bad rolls.

WHAT WORKED, WRITTEN BLIND: the unsettled countdown outcome added in v0.12 was
asked for on its first ever roll -- the understudy fumbled 100 against
Ashcroft's failure on the Difficult branch, so the contest came back unsettled.
That is the 14.5% case, it is the aggressor-fumble the rule's author left for
this document to price, and the price is right. No fix needed.

Also confirmed: THE OFFER running inside the column scene costs zero wall
clock, and has a side-effect worth keeping on purpose -- the aside has no
audience, so Ashcroft returns to a conversation that moved on without him.

Five fixes listed, none applied. npm run check: 17 guards, exit 0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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# CLEAN GROUND — desk playtest 4 (the clock)
**Scenario version:** v0.13, at commit 00e5a99
**Date:** 13 September 2026
**Method:** full session, GM chair, playing the proven quartet of player archetypes.
Seeded roller, **seed 6142**, banding taken from `rules.mjs` rather than estimated, every
roll logged below. Earlier passes were 4271, 9314, 5580/7731. **This pass exists for one
reason: v0.13 cut Act Two from 65 minutes to 45 and no pass had ever run against those
timings.** Desk pass 1's 4:25 describes a scenario that no longer exists.
**What a desk pass can and cannot settle, stated first because it governs everything
below.** It cannot produce a wall clock. Six strangers talk at a speed no simulation
predicts, and any minute figure here is an estimate with reasoning attached, not a
measurement. What it *can* test is whether every scene has a **mechanism that ends it** —
something in the text that stops the scene other than a GM deciding to move on. That is
what v0.13 changed and that is what this pass is for.
**Verdict: the clock holds, and it holds for the reason it was built to. Every scene in
Act Two now ends on something written down. But the run landed at ~3:46 against a 3:40
budget, and it found three places where a roll the dice actually produced has no answer
in the text — one of them in Act One, which has nothing to do with the recut.**
---
## The rolls, in order
```
seed 6142
Bhattacharya Research — the Sike Head file 94 vs 63 fail
Braithwaite Medicine — the body 81 vs 53 fail
Renshaw Persuade — Swinburne 100 vs 63 FUMBLE
Pollard Spot — the stump 57 vs 58 success
Okonkwo Spot — the treeline, crossing 54 vs 52 fail
Ashcroft Insight — that memory is new 32 vs 63 success
Renshaw Persuade — the column will believe 7 vs 63 special
Braithwaite Spot — the same six at the back 32 vs 48 success
Ashcroft Insight — it is offered, not remembered 94 vs 63 fail
Pollard Listen — something on the flank 84 vs 55 fail
Bhattacharya Anomaly Lore — the depot entry 98 vs 58 FUMBLE
Renshaw Insight — Ivy on the almanac 35 vs 63 success
Pollard Spot — the lorry, twice a week 50 vs 58 success
Braithwaite Xenology (Baseline) — the six 47 vs 45 fail
Okonkwo Spot — the understudy is wrong 26 vs 52 success
Ashcroft Insight — a colleague who is not 75 vs 63 fail
COUNTDOWN STEP 5 — opposedContestFor, the real rule
understudy POWx5 75 rolled 100 fumble
Ashcroft 85 -> 42 (Diff) rolled 49 failure
→ winner none · settled FALSE · margin 0
```
**This is a hostile seed and that is useful.** Two fumbles, eight failures, and the party's
one reliable Act Four test misses. A pass that only tests a clock under lucky rolls tests
nothing: failure is what generates table time.
---
## Act One — Registry and the Sike Head
**Planned 45 · ran ~50 · over by 5**
Briefing capped at ten and the cap held without effort — Registry's other appointment is a
clean exit and the lore-digger stopped mid-question, which is exactly what it is for.
Then the seed took the act apart. Research fails, so the Sike Head file gives nothing.
Medicine fails, so Braithwaite's own read of the body gives nothing. And Renshaw
**fumbles** Persuade on Swinburne.
- ⚠ **THE SWINBURNE FUMBLE HAS NO WRITTEN ANSWER, and H01 depends on her.** The handout's
failure case reads: *"if nobody asks for the note, Swinburne has a photocopy of it in a
drawer because she was not satisfied with what she was told, and she will produce it."*
That is written for a party who **did not ask**. It is not written for a party who asked
and was actively offensive about it. A fumbled Persuade on a grieving farmer who *"will
not be fobbed off"* should not be answered by her helpfully producing the document
anyway — but the text gives the GM nothing else, so the improvised ruling was to have
her produce it and say nothing. That works and it is flat.
- This is not a timing defect and it predates v0.13. It is the third pass in a row to
find that the failure cases are written for *absence* rather than for *bad rolls*.
- Timing cost: about five minutes of the table circling for another route into the body,
which is honest play and not waste. It simply was not budgeted.
**On the clock, Act One remains the act with no ending mechanism of its own.** It ends when
the GM says they are at the stump. That has never caused a problem in four passes and is
noted only for completeness.
---
## Act Two — Over · **the act this pass exists for**
**Planned 45 · ran ~48 · over by 3**
| Beat | Budget | Ran | Did it end on something written? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The crossing | 5 | **5** | **Yes** — the minute-five Geiger cue |
| The column arrives | 5 | **5** | Yes — Ivy walks forward |
| The line rests | 25 | **~28** | **Yes, and it was needed** — see below |
| The line moves on | 10 | **10** | Yes — H03a handed over |
### The crossing cap works, and the seed proved it the hard way
Okonkwo's Spot on the treeline **failed**, so there was nothing to find and nothing to
describe. Under v0.12's *"let the silence sit until a player breaks it"* that is a scene
with no floor: nothing to see, nobody rolling, and a table that has not yet worked out it
is allowed to speak. The minute-five Geiger cue fired and moved it. **A cap is worth most
precisely when the dice give the GM nothing**, which is the case the old text handled
worst.
### THE OFFER inside the column scene costs nothing — confirmed
Run during the rest while the other three talked to Ivy. Ashcroft's Insight to notice it is
being offered rather than remembered **failed**, so he took it for a real memory, which the
text says is *"worse, and is the point"* — and it was. The aside cost zero wall clock
because the table was occupied, which is the whole of the twenty-minute saving.
- One thing better than expected: because the rest of the table was mid-conversation, the
aside had **no audience**, and Ashcroft's player came back into a scene that had moved on
without him. That is thematically exact and it is an accident of the scheduling change.
Worth keeping deliberately.
### ⚠ The rest clock held, but a SPECIAL fights it
Renshaw rolled a **special** on Persuade — 7 against 63 — and the column opened up
generously. The table had more material than it could use at exactly the moment the clock
wanted to end the scene, and the honest simulation is that they pushed: 28 minutes, not 25.
- The text handles the *ordinary* case well. *"The old ones stand up, because they always
do"* ends a conversation that is winding down. It does not obviously cover a conversation
that has just become **more** productive because somebody rolled well.
- ⚠ **A GM who has just rewarded a special by opening the column up will feel that standing
the line up is punishing the good roll.** They will let it run, and the three minutes
become ten.
- The fix is not to shorten the rest. It is to say what a special *buys* — and it should
buy something portable rather than more conversation. Ivy giving up the almanac early, or
a name, travels into Act Three; another ten minutes of talking does not.
### The rest of the act
Braithwaite spotted the same six at the back. Pollard's Listen on the flank **failed**, so
the thing keeping pace stayed unnoticed — no cost, the scenario is explicit that this is
atmosphere and not a clue.
**Act Two's recut is sound.** Every beat ended on something written into the text rather
than on GM judgement, which is what it was built to do and what the 65-minute version never
had. Three minutes over on a hostile seed with a special in the worst possible place is a
good result.
---
## Act Three — There is no north
**Planned 50 · ran ~45 · under by 5** *(with the northern-seam cut taken, −15)*
Renshaw's Insight on Ivy and Pollard's Spot on the lorry both landed, so the loop proved
itself cleanly and the almanac pair did its work with no help from the GM. H03b beside H03a
remains the best thing in the scenario and needed nothing said.
Then Bhattacharya **fumbled** Anomaly Lore on the depot entry, and the text has a clause
for it — the agent concludes with complete confidence that the peg can simply be **re-cut**.
- ⚠ **The fumble clause is excellent and it is a time bomb with no timing guidance.** The
document itself says it is *"the most attractive wrong idea available, and a table will
chase it"*. This table chased it for about ten minutes, which is the clause working as
designed. But it sits in a 50-minute act that the Pacing Note has already cut by 15, and
nothing tells the GM what to do when a fumble adds ten minutes back.
- It came out even here only because the seam cut was taken. **On a table that fumbles
this roll and has not taken the cut, Act Three runs 60.**
- What it needs is one line saying how long to let the wrong idea live, and what ends it.
The natural ender already exists in the text — the depot's paperwork is what proves
cancellation is the only lever — so it is a matter of saying *let them reach the depot
with the wrong idea, and let the document be what corrects it.*
---
## Act Four — One of us
**Planned 45 · ran ~45 · on budget**
Braithwaite's Xenology (Baseline) **failed** — the party's one reliable test, missed. This
is the single-point-of-failure the open questions have flagged twice and it finally came up
in play.
- **It played better than it reads.** A party with a test that fails is not a party with no
scene; they are a party that has to decide without one, which is the act's actual
subject. Okonkwo's Spot landed and gave them a wrongness they could not justify, and
Ashcroft's Insight failed, so the one person who might have named it did not.
- No timing cost. A failed test is faster than a successful one.
### The unsettled countdown fired on its first ever test
Step 5, with Ashcroft on the Difficult branch because he accepted THE OFFER in Act Two:
**the understudy rolled 100 — a fumble — against Ashcroft's failure. Neither side
succeeded. Unsettled.**
- **This is the 14.5% outcome, hit on the first roll it was ever asked for**, and it is the
case that did not exist before v0.12. The read-aloud is written and it landed: the wrong
face for a moment, then a colleague again, apologising for the interruption.
- It is also precisely the aggressor-fumble case the rule's author raised and left to this
document to price. **The document prices it and the price is right.** The reach fails,
the row is spent, the clock still turns to step 6, and the party has seen the mechanism
fail without being able to prove anything to anybody.
- ✔ **No fix needed.** This is the one thing in this pass that was written blind and worked
first time.
---
## Close — Cancellation
**Planned 25 · ran ~28 · over by 3**
Ivy at the stump, the question, the silence. The decision took longer than budgeted because
Ashcroft had accepted THE OFFER and his player had to decide what to say about it, which is
the private box doing its job at the exact moment it was built for.
No roll resolves this and none was made. The 2 Coherence for accepting landed at the Close
as written.
---
## Player-hat verdicts
| Archetype | Verdict | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Methodical veteran note-taker | Act Two's rest clock read as fair because it was announced. Act One's collapse under two failures and a fumble was frustrating in the way the scenario intends | 8/10 |
| Roleplay-first talker | Had the special, had the column open up, and then the line stood up. **"I rolled a 7 and got less time."** The one sour note in the session | 6/10 |
| Quiet rules-literate tactician | The opposed roll coming back unsettled was the best mechanical moment of the night — a rule that admits nothing happened | 9/10 |
| Lore-digger | The re-cut-the-peg fumble gave them a theory to chase for ten minutes and the depot took it away with a document. Ideal | 9/10 |
---
## Timing summary
| Act | Planned | Ran | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | 45 | ~50 | **+5** |
| Two | 45 | ~48 | **+3** |
| Three | 50 | ~45 | −5 *(seam cut taken)* |
| Four | 45 | ~45 | — |
| Close | 25 | ~28 | +3 |
| **Play** | **210** | **~216** | **+6** |
| Break | 10 | 10 | — |
| **Wall clock** | **3:40** | **~3:46** | **+6** |
**Six minutes over, on a seed with two fumbles and a special in the worst place, with two
of the three Pacing Note cuts taken.** The third cut — the column's hospitality once rather
than twice — was held in reserve and would have covered it.
That is the first time this scenario has finished a pass with a cut still in hand. The
v0.13 recut did what it was for.
**But the margin is six minutes, not twenty.** Anyone reading the Pacing Note's *"about ten
minutes of genuine slack"* should read this table first: on a hostile seed the slack is
four minutes and one unused cut.
---
## Fix list
Numbered, prioritised, nothing rewritten here.
1. **⚠ Say what a special on the column Persuade buys, and make it portable.** *(Act Two,
the rest)* A special currently buys more conversation, which fights the rest clock and
makes a good roll feel like a penalty — the one sour note in the whole pass. Write it to
buy something that travels: Ivy gives up the almanac early, or a name from the 1962
arrival, or the fact that six at the back do not eat. Then the line can stand up on
schedule and the roll still paid.
2. **⚠ Give the re-cut-the-peg fumble a duration and an ender.** *(Act Three)* The clause is
one of the best things in the document and it adds ~10 minutes with no guidance. One
line: let the wrong idea live until they reach the depot, and let the paperwork correct
it. Without that, a table that fumbles here and has not taken the seam cut runs Act Three
at 60.
3. **⚠ Write an answer for a fumbled Persuade on Swinburne.** *(Act One)* H01's failure case
is written for a party who did not ask, not for one that asked badly. Predates v0.13.
Suggested shape: she does not produce the photocopy, she produces the *dog*. She takes
them to where it died, which is better staging than the drawer and puts them at the
stump without the note — and the note then reaches them through the coroner, late, when
it confirms rather than reveals.
4. **Correct the Pacing Note's slack claim.** It says about ten minutes of genuine slack.
This pass says four minutes and one unused cut on a hostile seed. State the hostile-seed
figure, not the friendly one — the friendly one is the number a GM will plan against and
then miss.
5. **Keep, deliberately, the accident in THE OFFER's new placement.** Running it inside the
column scene means the aside has no audience and Ashcroft returns to a conversation that
moved on without him. That was a side-effect of a timing change and it is thematically
exact. Write it down before someone "fixes" it back.
**Not a fix, recorded as a result:** the unsettled countdown outcome, written blind in
v0.12, fired on its first test via an aggressor fumble and needed nothing. Leave it alone.