diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_4.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_4.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f40a21 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_4.md @@ -0,0 +1,291 @@ +# 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.