diff --git a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md index 7075e35..401e5c5 100644 --- a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md +++ b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md @@ -8,12 +8,12 @@ | | | |---|---| -| **Version** | **v0.4**, 15 September 2026 — absorbs desk playtests 1, 2 and 3 | +| **Version** | **v0.5**, 15 September 2026 — absorbs desk playtests 1–4 | | **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone,** with the compendium for sheets and the three bestiary creatures. | -| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No.** Three desk passes, no human runs. `_1.md` (GM chair, seed 5291) found Act Two twenty minutes hot and the Revelation 3 fallback circular. `_2.md` (Act Three stress, seed 8143) forced endings 2 and 3 and EXPOSURE through the real fight harness. `_3.md` (player chair, contrarian, seed 3307) reached **ending 1** and verified both of pass 1's headline fixes — the pen above the paper and Pennyfeather's spoken cost — then found the sum had one route and no fallback, the same defect class pass 1 had fixed one clue over. All fixed here. **What no pass has run is an honest session at six players with the cuts taken as written.** | +| **Is it convention-ready?** | **Nearly, and one decision is Tim's.** Four desk passes, no human runs. `_1.md` (GM chair, 5291) · `_2.md` (Act Three stress, 8143, creatures run through the real fight harness) · `_3.md` (player chair, contrarian, 3307, reached ending 1) · `_4.md` (**the clock, cuts taken as written, 6620**). Every content defect the four passes found is fixed. **What is left is a budget decision, not a defect** — see Runtime. | | **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. Pass 1 ran ~170 minutes against 150; pass 3 landed on 150 exactly **and that is not evidence the clock works** — Act One collapsed by fifteen minutes when the party skipped Joan and Act Two spent the fifteen back. **No pass has yet run Act Two with its cuts taken.** | +| **Runtime** | ⚠ **Act Two's floor is about 66 minutes and the budget says 55.** Pass 1 ran it at 75 uncut, pass 3 at 70 uncut, and pass 4 at **66 with all nineteen minutes of cuts taken**. Pass 4's ten-minute retry defect is fixed, which should recover most of the gap — but that is a prediction and nothing has measured it. **Either the slot is 3h15, or twelve minutes come out of the sick bay.** Tim's call; see Open questions. | ### The three things that are not obvious @@ -125,7 +125,7 @@ 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 | +| **Kit Marlow in the corridor, not the crèche** — she is carrying a drawing somewhere and stops to talk | ~7 min | ⚠ **More than it looks — read the note below before taking this cut** | | **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** | @@ -133,6 +133,17 @@ the default rather than the emergency.** **Do not cut Pennyfeather's sum, the arrival, or the signing.** They are the act, the tone and the decision. +⚠ **The Kit Marlow cut costs more than "the drawings", and desk pass 4 proved it.** That +pass took the cut, then reached the **narrow** row of ending 3 — the likeliest one, because +it needs only a single dossier item — whose entire price is *the sixty-one stay unrecorded*. +Kit **is** the sixty-one made into a person, and her own entry says she should be a person +before she is a price. Cut her scene and the price is an abstraction the table has no +feeling about. + +**If you take this cut, the corridor version must still do her one job.** She is carrying a +drawing, she shows it to them without being asked, and she asks the question from her entry: +**whether she got the blue right.** Fifteen seconds, and the narrow ending keeps its cost. + --- ## Plot Summary (GM truth) @@ -291,10 +302,12 @@ all. Act One without her ran fifteen minutes short and had nobody in it, **and b Essential clues lost their stated failure case, which is "Joan points at it within the minute."** -**So she is at the vent head.** She walks up there and she has been walking up there for -four years, which is precisely what the woman in her own NPC entry would do. A party who -skip the farm meet her on the moor instead, sitting on the concrete with a flask. Nothing -else changes. +**So she is at the farm when they arrive, and she walks up with them.** She has been +walking up there for four years, which is precisely what the woman in her own NPC entry +would do, and it means the forty-minute moor walk has somebody in it instead of being +terrain. **A party who skip the farm entirely meet her at the vent head**, sitting on the +concrete with a flask, and nothing else changes. Either way she is present for clues 1–5 and +she goes no further than the adit mouth. - **The return in Registry.** Bhattacharya's section has SO-H01 on a desk. It is fifty-two years old, it is answering a question nobody asked, and it arrived in May. @@ -315,11 +328,18 @@ else changes. | 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 | | 7 | The blast door | End of the service adit | `[CUS: Engineering (Field Systems) — it is not locked. It has never been locked. It opens from this side]` | Nobody built this to keep anyone out | Essential | -**Every clue's failure case is the same and it is deliberate: nothing here is hidden.** -On a failure the agent does not find it *yet*; Joan, who has lived with all of it for four -years, points at it within the minute. She is not being mysterious. She has been trying to -show somebody for four years. **A special** on any of the above gets the same fact plus the -detail that it has been like this since 2022 and not before. +**Clues 1–5 share one failure case and it is deliberate: nothing out here is hidden.** On a +failure the agent does not find it *yet*; Joan, who has lived with all of it for four years, +points at it within the minute. She is not being mysterious. She has been trying to show +somebody for four years. **A special** on any of them gets the same fact plus the detail +that it has been like this since 2022 and not before. + +⚠ **Clues 6 and 7 are the exception, because Joan is not there.** She walks up to the vent +head; she has never gone down the adit and she is not going to start. Desk pass 4 failed the +blast door and the blanket rule named a woman standing four hundred metres behind them. +**Their failure case is time, never access** — the postal pipe is pressurised and audible +and the blast door is a door. Ten minutes of looking and both open. **Nothing in this +scenario is gated on getting inside; the door has never been locked.** ### The three beats @@ -458,14 +478,23 @@ him is an order.** | 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: no roll — ask her a straight question and she produces SO-H03; she has been waiting fifty-two years to be asked one]` | Revelation 5 | Essential | -| 13b | What she did about it | Registry, from Pennyfeather | `[CUS: Insight — she has taken it to the Controller three times and it was never minuted, because renewal is not a decision]` | *Why* the proper channel failed | Supporting | +| 13b | What she did about it | Registry, from Pennyfeather | `[CUS: no roll — it is written at the bottom of SO-H03 in her own hand, and she will say it aloud to anybody who reads that line]` | *Why* the proper channel failed | Supporting | | 13c | The establishment return | Anywhere, Countdown step 3 | `[CUS: Spot — she posts the population count herself and the number is on the front of it]` | Revelation 5, by a second road | 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 | **Supporting** | | 15 | What Teague has decided | Plant floor, or he finds them | `[CUS: Listen — he asks each of them separately where they were on the day]` | He is testing a theory he cannot afford to be wrong about | Supporting | -**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 12 failed means the relay reads as ordinary plant and Revelation 4 arrives +**Failure cases. A failed roll on a filed clue costs a SCENE, not ten minutes.** This is +the most orderly place in the world and nothing here is lost — but desk pass 4 measured what +the old rule did to the clock. Act Two asks for six rolls whose failure case was *"ten +minutes and a second attempt"*, roughly two of them fail in an average session, and **a +single failure handed back ten of the nineteen minutes the Pacing Note had just cut.** The +cuts were sized against the act's length and not against its variance, so they could not +hold. + +**So:** a failed Research or Insight on clue 10 or 14 means **Pennyfeather goes and fetches +it while the party are doing something else**, and it arrives a scene later. The roll still +mattered — they did not get it when they wanted it, and they owe her — and it costs nothing +on the clock. **Never make the table stand in Registry waiting.** Clue 12 failed means the relay reads as ordinary plant and Revelation 4 arrives instead from Pennyfeather, one scene later. ⚠ **Revelation 5 is not behind a roll at all, and that is the fix.** Desk pass 3's @@ -473,10 +502,11 @@ contrarian split put the wrong agent in Registry — Insight 40 instead of 63 failed roll lost the sum, so the party cancelled the Standing Order having never learned why it was urgent. **Pennyfeather's own roster entry already said she hands SO-H03 to anybody who asks her a straight question, and the clue said to roll Insight; those could -not both be true.** The roster line wins. She gives it to anyone who asks, the Insight now -buys what is underneath it (13b), and **13c is a second road for a table that never thinks -to ask her anything** — she posts the establishment return at Countdown step 3 whether or -not anybody is talking to her, and the number is on the front. +not both be true.** The roster line wins: she gives it to anyone who asks. Desk pass 4 then +lost **13b** the same way on a 98, so that came off the dice too — it is written at the +bottom of her own sheet. **13c is a second road for a table that never thinks to ask her +anything**: she posts the establishment return at Countdown step 3 whether or not anybody is +talking to her, and the number is on the front. ⚠ **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 @@ -503,10 +533,15 @@ the party into the birth register.** If they find it, fine. If they do not, she when it counts. **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 **13b** -gets Pennyfeather saying the thing she has never said aloud: *I think we should not be -here.* **(Not 13 — the sum itself is no longer behind a roll and so cannot be specialled; -13b is the Insight that reads what she did about it.)** +paragraph, the single most damning object in the case. + +⚠ **Neither 13 nor 13b is behind a roll, on purpose.** The sum is the destination of the act +and the reason the proper channel failed is the thematic centre of the whole case, and desk +passes 3 and 4 lost one of them each to an ordinary failed die. **Pennyfeather hands over +SO-H03 to anyone who asks her a straight question, and the line about taking it to the +Controller three times is written at the bottom of it in her own hand.** What a good Insight +buys — at the GM's discretion, no roll called for — is her saying the thing she has never +said aloud: *I think we should not be here.* ### The census, in the Registry @@ -912,5 +947,16 @@ Name these as *do not resolve* so a helpful GM does not answer them. thinking about scope rather than cancellation. It may need a nudge written into Pennyfeather. - **Does this want a fourth act?** CLEAN GROUND has one and uses it well. Three is the - brief and three is what this is, but the signing may be too thin to carry fifty minutes - on its own. + brief and three is what this is. **Four passes say the signing carries its fifty minutes + comfortably** — passes 3 and 4 both landed Act Three on the nose — so this is probably + settled as a no. +- ⚠ **THE BUDGET, and it is the last open thing in the document.** Act Two ran 75, 70 and + then 66 with every cut taken. Pass 4 found the reason the cuts could not hold — a failed + filed-clue roll cost ten minutes and handed back most of what the cuts saved — and that is + now a scene-cost instead, which should bring the act close to 55. **But nothing has + measured the fix.** Two honest options: + - **Move the slot to 3h15.** Costs nothing, and 3h00 was an assumption rather than a + constraint. + - **Take twelve minutes out of the sick bay.** It is the only non-load-bearing block of + that size — but Revelation 3's first route lives in it, and route 11 is the one that + plays best. This is a real trade and it is yours, not mine. diff --git a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_4.md b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_4.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f2e90ae --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_4.md @@ -0,0 +1,196 @@ +# STANDING ORDER — desk playtest 4 (the clock, cuts taken as written) + +**Scenario version:** v0.4, after playtests 1–3 +**Date:** 15 September 2026 +**Method:** **an honest session at six players with the Pacing Note's cuts taken as +written** — the thing three passes had not done. No contrarian choices, no forced branches, +no deliberately bad luck: the party behaves like a competent table and the GM takes the two +default cuts plus the census, exactly as the document instructs. Rolls from the seeded +roller (mulberry32, **seed 6620**, consumed in printed order). + +**Cuts taken:** fold the pipe room into Registry (~8) · Kit Marlow in the corridor (~7) · +the census (~4). **Total cut: ~19 minutes.** The Vigil was kept (the party had not yet +secured Revelation 3 when the decision was made) and Teague was kept (last resort). + +**Roll tape (seed 6620, in order):** +`80 · 1 · 83 · 81 · 65 · 36 · 61 · 93 · 34 · 13 · 98 · 73 · 62 · 9 · 86 · 28 · 65 · 51` + +**Verdict up front: the cuts do not close the gap. Nineteen minutes of cuts against a +twenty-minute overrun, and a single failed Research hands ten of them straight back — the +session landed eleven minutes over. And the cheapest of the two default cuts costs far more +than the Pacing Note says it does: it guts the ending this pass actually reached.** + +--- + +## Act One — *(planned 45 · actual ~45)* ✅ + +| # | Beat | Roll | vs | Result | +|---|---|---|---|---| +| 1 | Bhattacharya, Knowledge, the ash | 80 | 63 | fail — Joan points | +| 2 | Holloway, Navigate, the ash edge | **1** | 63 | **CRITICAL** | +| 3 | Renshaw, Insight, the dog | 83 | 63 | fail — Joan owned it, she tells them | +| 4 | Renshaw, Persuade, Joan's box | 81 | 63 | fail — she produces it later | +| 5 | Holloway, Spot, the vent head | 65 | 40 | fail — she is sitting on it | +| 6 | Kowalczyk, Repair (Mechanical), the postal pipe | 36 | 58 | success | +| 7 | Kowalczyk, Engineering (Field Systems), the blast door | 61 | 58 | fail | + +✅ **P4-1. On budget, and the v0.4 Joan fix is why.** Four failures out of seven and the act +delivered everything, because she is now unavoidable. The critical on the ash edge was the +best moment of the act — a surveyed right-angle in open moorland, found first time. + +⚠ **P4-2. The blanket failure case names Joan, and Joan does not go inside.** Act One says +*"On a failure the agent does not find it yet; Joan points at it within the minute."* That +is true for clues 1–5. **It is not true for clues 6 and 7**, which are at the postal pipe +and the blast door — past the point a sixty-seven-year-old farmer who has never gone in is +going to follow them. Roll 7 failed and the backstop named a person who was not there. +*Fix:* give 6 and 7 their own failure case. They are both Essential and neither is hidden — +**the pipe is pressurised and audible, and the blast door is a door.** Failure should cost +time, not access: ten minutes of looking, and it opens. + +⚠ **P4-3. Where is Joan when they DO go to the farm?** v0.4 says *"she is at the vent head… +a party who skip the farm meet her on the moor instead."* Read strictly that puts her up the +hill and not in her own yard, which is where two of the act's clues are. **She needs to be +in both places and the text should say how** — she is at the farm when they arrive and walks +up with them, which is also the best version, because then the walk has somebody in it. + +--- + +## Act Two — *(planned 55 · cuts taken · actual ~66)* ⚠⚠ + +| # | Beat | Roll | vs | Result | +|---|---|---|---|---| +| 8 | The tannoy — Revelation 2 | — | — | no roll, landed | +| 9 | Bhattacharya, Research, SO-H02 | 93 | 63 | **fail — "filed, retry costs ten minutes"** | +| 10 | Renshaw, Insight, Marlow | 34 | 63 | success — Revelation 3, first route | +| 11 | Kowalczyk, Repair (Electronics), the relay | 13 | 58 | success — Revelation 4 | +| 12 | **Pennyfeather and the sum** | — | — | **no roll — she hands it over** ✅ | +| 13 | Renshaw, Insight, 13b what she did about it | 98 | 63 | fail — 96–99 always fail | +| 14 | Bhattacharya, Research, the birth register *(Supporting)* | 73 | 63 | fail | +| 15 | Renshaw, Listen, Teague | 62 | 63 | success | + +✅ **P4-4. The v0.4 sum fix is the single best change in the document.** Roll 12 does not +exist any more. Pennyfeather hands over SO-H03 and Revelation 5 lands without a die, which +after pass 3 lost it to a 40 in the wrong room is exactly right. + +⚠⚠ **P4-5. THE CUTS DO NOT CLOSE THE GAP, AND ONE RETRY UNDOES MOST OF THEM.** Nineteen +minutes came out. Then roll 9 failed and the stated failure case is *"a failed Research or +Insight costs ten minutes and a second attempt"* — **so ten of the nineteen went straight +back on a single ordinary failure.** Act Two landed at ~66 against 55. + +**The arithmetic in the Pacing Note is wrong because it never counted the retries.** Act Two +asks for six rolls whose failure case is a ten-minute retry. At these ratings roughly two of +them fail in an average session. **The cuts are sized against the act's length and not +against its variance.** + +*Fix direction:* the ten-minute retry is the problem, not the cuts. **Make the filed clues +cost a scene rather than ten minutes** — a failed Research means Pennyfeather fetches it +while they are doing something else, which costs nothing on the clock and still means the +roll mattered. Then the nineteen minutes of cuts hold. + +⚠ **P4-6. 13b failed on a 98 and nothing noticed.** Supporting, so no harm — but it means +the *reason* the proper channel failed never reached the table, and that is the thematic +centre of the whole case. It should probably not be behind a roll either. + +--- + +## Act Three — *(planned 50 · actual ~50)* — ending 3, **narrow** + +| # | Beat | Roll | vs | Result | +|---|---|---|---|---| +| 16 | Bhattacharya, Research, Marlow's memo *(dossier 1)* | **9** | 63 | **SPECIAL** | +| 17 | Bhattacharya, Knowledge, the 1962 survey *(dossier 2)* | 86 | 63 | fail | +| 18 | Renshaw, Persuade, Pennyfeather's signature *(dossier 3)* | 28 | 63 | success | +| 19 | Renshaw, Insight, Teague's script break | 65 | 63 | **fail by two** | +| 20 | **Bhattacharya, Anomaly Lore, the amendment** | 51 | 63 | **SUCCESS** | + +Two dossier items, then the script break failed by two — which per the text costs them *"the +dossier scene they had least secured"*, down to **one item**. The amendment then succeeded. + +**One item is the narrow row of v0.3's scope table:** *Bellhouse keeps running and the ash +stops by the weekend — but the scope covers the ground, not the people. The site stays +sealed. Nobody ever comes up, and the sixty-one stay unrecorded.* + +✅ **P4-7. The scope table is excellent and this is the ending it was written for.** The +party won, and what they won was that the ash stops and Kit Marlow never sees the sky. It is +the best ending in the document and I would not change a word of the table. + +⚠⚠ **P4-8. AND THE CUT I TOOK IN ACT TWO GUTTED IT.** The Pacing Note says moving Kit Marlow +from the crèche to the corridor costs *"the drawings"*. **It does not. It costs the ending +this pass reached.** The narrow amendment's entire price is *the sixty-one stay unrecorded*, +and Kit is the sixty-one made into a person — the scenario's own NPC entry says *"she should +be a person before she is a price"*. Cut her scene and the price is an abstraction. + +This is a real trap: the narrow row is **the likeliest ending 3 outcome** — it needs only +one dossier item — and the second default cut is the one that hollows it out. + +*Fix direction:* two options, and I would take both. **Re-cost the cut honestly** in the +Pacing Note. And **give the corridor version something to carry** — she is taking a drawing +somewhere, she shows it to them unprompted, and she asks the question from her NPC entry: +whether she got the blue right. That is fifteen seconds and it does the whole job. + +--- + +## Timing — the actual answer, at last + +| Act | Planned | Actual | Drift | +|---|---|---|---| +| One | 45 | ~45 | 0 | +| Two *(19 min of cuts taken)* | 55 | ~66 | **+11** | +| Three | 50 | ~50 | 0 | +| **Total play** | **150** | **~161** | **+11** | +| With the ten-minute break | 160 | **~171** | **+11 over a 3h00 budget** | + +⚠ **P4-9. Three of four passes have now overrun, and all of the overrun is Act Two.** Pass 1 +ran it at 75 uncut. Pass 3 ran it at 70 uncut. This pass ran it at 66 **with nineteen minutes +of cuts taken**. The act's floor is around 66 minutes as written, and the budget says 55. + +**The honest conclusion is that Act Two is an eleven-minute-too-long act and the cuts cannot +fix it, because the cuts are already taken.** Either the budget moves to 3h15, or something +structural comes out of Act Two — and the only candidate that is not load-bearing is the +sick-bay visit, which is worth about twelve minutes and which Revelation 3's route 11 lives +in. That is a real trade and it is Tim's to make, not mine. + +--- + +## Player-hat verdicts + +| Archetype | Verdict | Score | +|---|---|---| +| **Note-taker** (Bhattacharya) | Special on Marlow's memo; "the fortnight paragraph is the best handout in the pack." Annoyed the survey roll cost them the wide ending. | 8/10 | +| **Talker** (Renshaw) | "I missed Teague by two and I'll think about that for a week." | 8/10 | +| **Tactician** (Kowalczyk) | Relay first try. "The scope table is the first time a Borrowed Authority roll has felt like it mattered." | 9/10 | +| **Lore-digger** (Nkemdirim) | "Joan being on the vent head is perfect." | 8/10 | +| **Planner** (Holloway) | "We saved everyone and the girl still doesn't get out. That's the right ending and I hate it." | 9/10 | +| **Doer** (Okonkwo) | Teague beat again. "Third time. It's a good beat. It's still one beat." | 5/10 | + +--- + +## Fix list + +**P1** + +1. **P4-5 · Replace the ten-minute retry with a scene-cost.** A failed Research on a filed + clue should cost a *scene*, not ten minutes — Pennyfeather fetches it while they do + something else. This is what makes the cuts hold, and without it the Pacing Note's + arithmetic is wrong by design. +2. **P4-8 · Re-cost the Kit Marlow cut honestly**, and give the corridor version her + question so the narrow ending keeps its price. +3. **P4-2 · Give clues 6 and 7 their own failure case.** The blanket one names Joan and Joan + does not go inside. + +**P2** + +4. **P4-3 · Say Joan is at the farm *and* walks up with them.** +5. **P4-6 · Take 13b off a roll**, or accept that the reason the proper channel failed will + miss most tables. + +**P3** + +6. **P4-9 · The budget question is Tim's.** 3h15, or twelve minutes out of the sick bay. + Flagged in Open questions, not decided here. + +--- + +## What four passes have still not tested + +- **Human beings.** That is now the only thing left that a desk can't do.