From 4148d13768c465814c46eef6f27e7327e6549042 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: slaguru666 <111923774+slaguru666@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2026 23:10:50 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] STANDING ORDER v0.5: desk playtest 4, the clock with the cuts taken MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The pass three passes had not run: an honest session at six players, no contrarian choices and no forced branches, with the Pacing Note's cuts taken exactly as written. Seed 6620. Nineteen minutes cut — pipe room folded, Kit Marlow to the corridor, census dropped. THE CUTS DID NOT CLOSE THE GAP, AND ONE RETRY UNDID MOST OF THEM. Act Two asks for six rolls whose failure case was "ten minutes and a second attempt", roughly two fail in an average session, and a single failed Research handed back ten of the nineteen minutes that had just been cut. The Pacing Note's arithmetic was sized against the act's length and never against its variance, so it could not hold. A failed roll on a filed clue now costs a SCENE instead — Pennyfeather fetches it while the party do something else — which keeps the roll meaningful and costs nothing on the clock. THE CHEAPEST CUT GUTS THE LIKELIEST ENDING. The Pacing Note priced moving Kit Marlow to a corridor at "the drawings". This pass took that cut and then reached the narrow row of ending 3 — the likeliest one, since it needs a single dossier item — whose entire price is that the sixty-one stay unrecorded. Kit is the sixty-one made into a person and her own entry says she must be a person before she is a price. The cut is re-costed honestly, and the corridor version now has to do her one job: she shows them a drawing and asks whether she got the blue right. The blanket Act One failure case named Joan for all seven clues, and Joan does not go down the adit. Clues 6 and 7 now have their own: time, never access, because the door has never been locked. Joan herself is at the farm AND walks up with them, so the moor walk has somebody in it. And 13b came off the dice after a 98 lost the reason the proper channel failed — the thematic centre of the case — which is now written at the bottom of Pennyfeather's own sheet. Act Two's floor is about 66 minutes against a budget of 55, measured across three passes at 75 uncut, 70 uncut and 66 fully cut. The retry fix should recover most of that and nothing has measured it. THE REMAINING QUESTION IS A BUDGET DECISION AND IT IS TIM'S: move the slot to 3h15, or take twelve minutes out of the sick bay and lose Revelation 3's best route. Written up in Open questions and deliberately not decided here. All twenty-one guards pass. Four passes, every content defect they found fixed. What is left is human beings. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md | 100 +++++++--- docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_4.md | 196 ++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 269 insertions(+), 27 deletions(-) create mode 100644 docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_4.md 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.