diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md index cf82335..f16d88b 100644 --- a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md +++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md @@ -9,10 +9,10 @@ | | | |---|---| -| **Version** | **v0.20.1**, 13 September 2026 | +| **Version** | **v0.21**, 13 September 2026 | | **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone.** A GM with this file and the compendium can run it end to end. | | **Is it convention-ready?** | **Nearly.** The print pack is built (`CLEAN_GROUND_HANDOUTS.html`, held by `check-handouts`). What is missing is a run with human beings, and a slot. | -| **Playtesting** | **Seven desk passes, no human runs.** `_1.md` GM chair (seed 4271) · `_2.md` Act Four stress (9314) · `_3.md` player chair, contrarian (5580) · `_4.md` **the clock, against v0.13's recut timings** (6142) · `_5.md` **the four-player cut, played** (8815) · `_6.md` **the four untested branches, forced** (3319) · `_7.md` **an honest session, nothing forced** (7742) · `_8.md` **the cold read, plus an honest session** (5108). Fifty-two fixes plus three post-passes, and pass 7's finding is now a guard: **`check-outcomes` reads every bracketed mechanic tag in the acts and holds what its beat states.** Pass 7 ran ~3:35 against 3:40 at six players with no cuts taken — the first honest pass inside the clock unaided. | +| **Playtesting** | **Seven desk passes, no human runs.** `_1.md` GM chair (seed 4271) · `_2.md` Act Four stress (9314) · `_3.md` player chair, contrarian (5580) · `_4.md` **the clock, against v0.13's recut timings** (6142) · `_5.md` **the four-player cut, played** (8815) · `_6.md` **the four untested branches, forced** (3319) · `_7.md` **an honest session, nothing forced** (7742) · `_8.md` **the cold read, plus an honest session** (5108) · `_9.md` **the regression pass, every fix from 4–8 re-checked** · `_10.md` **the Close, and a twelve-seed census** (4417). Fifty-two fixes plus three post-passes, and pass 7's finding is now a guard: **`check-outcomes` reads every bracketed mechanic tag in the acts and holds what its beat states.** Pass 7 ran ~3:35 against 3:40 at six players with no cuts taken — the first honest pass inside the clock unaided. | | **What it is** | A **convention one-shot**, decided 13 September 2026. It ends in the slot; there is no second session and the text must not promise one. | | **Where it runs** | **Contingency 2027 — Sunday 31 January 2027, afternoon** (slot 9), Searles Leisure Resort, Hunstanton. | | **Runtime** | **3h30 of play plus a 10-minute break — 3h40 wall clock**, which is the house budget. Act Two was cut from 65 minutes to 45 in v0.13 to get there. The **Pacing Note** carries a further 65 minutes of cuts; take them as the default. | @@ -848,6 +848,11 @@ carelessness — this column has done this before, and it has lost people doing place the truth is written down. `[CUS: Research — RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN), authorised, pegged, never cancelled]` *Missed:* Ivy hands them a 1962 ration tin with a requisition number on it, and that number is enough to work the rest out from the Bureau. + - **On a special or better (01–13 at Research 63):** filed with the entry, blank, is + **the cancellation form itself** — drawn up in 1962 by somebody who expected this to end + and never signed. It is the paper they will sign in the Close, and it has been waiting + sixty-four years. **Hand it over as an object.** Nothing needs to be said about it; a + table that is carrying the form all through Act Four arrives at the decision differently. - `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — what a peg is, and what losing one does]` **On a success — and they will ask, because re-pegging is the obvious idea and desk pass 3 proposed it unprompted:** the answer is that it cannot be done, and why. The entry is @@ -862,7 +867,20 @@ carelessness — this column has done this before, and it has lost people doing spend twenty minutes on it. **Let them try it exactly once.** Cutting the notch does nothing whatsoever, and the silence of that failure teaches more about what the record cares about than a correct roll would have. -- Telling Ivy. Or not telling her. This is the act's real scene and it has no roll. +- **Telling Ivy. Or not telling her. This is the act's real scene and it has no roll** — and + it changes the Close, so decide it deliberately rather than letting it drift. + - **What they are telling her:** that the north she has walked toward for sixty-four years + is a filed duplicate of a valley, that the walk does not arrive, and that forty-one + people have been kept going by a clerical arrangement nobody renewed. + - **She does not break, and she does not thank them.** She asks one question — *how long + have you known* — and the honest answer is *since this morning*, which is worse for the + agents than a lie would have been. + - **Then she goes and sits down with the line, and does not tell them.** Play the rest of + the act with her carrying it. She will not raise it again tonight; the next time she + speaks of it is at the stump, and by then she has had a night to decide what to ask for. + - ***Not* telling her is a real choice and not a failure.** She finds out at the Close + instead, in front of everybody, from people who had all night to say it. The scenario + does not punish either — but **it is not the same Close**, and the Close says how. - **A hollow man tries the swap** — opposed POW×5 (GM ESSENTIALS has the ruling), 2 Coherence. Survivable, and it is the table's first sight of the mechanism the understudy will use properly. @@ -987,6 +1005,27 @@ whoever it is copying, always. same name; the run at the cordon on all fours. - **If a PC is taken:** hand that player the understudy sheet and a private note. They keep playing. Do not sideline them, and do not let it run past twenty minutes. +- ⚠ **IF THE PC IS ASHCROFT — and in the accepted branch it is him 48.7% of the time — THE + THING IS NOW WEARING THE WAY HOME.** Read this before running Act Four, not when it + happens. **Desk pass 10 was the first of ten to reach this and the document had no answer.** + - **The anchor holds the door everyone else goes through**, Transposition 63 is his, and + **the Close cannot happen until somebody is back through** — cancellation is a Registry + act on our side. Those three facts are printed in three different places and this is + where they meet. + - **The way home works. It works beautifully.** The thing does not need to escape the + party; **it needs them to walk it home**, and it is carrying the skill that gets everyone + there. So it holds the door, correctly and patiently, for as long as that takes — + **because that is what the file says an anchor does.** Do not have it sabotage the + crossing. A creature whose entire method is being useful and correct has just been handed + the most useful and correct job in the case. + - **Play the gratitude.** The party gets out because the anchor held the door. Somebody at + the table will say thank you. **That is the scene** — the horror this case is built on is + that it passed every test because it is doing the job properly, and here it arrives at the + moment they are most grateful to it. + - **The price is paid in the Close, and it is the same question with a second edge.** The + thing crosses with them and is standing in Registry when the paper is signed. *Who is + standing where when it takes effect* now includes the possibility that the answer is + holding the pen. See the Close. - **Not Scent.** Scent's base chance is 0 and the 1% floor is all anybody has, so it is not a route — it is a joke at the table's expense. @@ -1290,9 +1329,23 @@ side of it because she has walked south for the first time in sixty-four years. > its life. She does not ask who you are, or what you are holding, or what the paper says > — she asks whether there is a north. -- **This works in both branches.** Whether Bhattacharya told them at the briefing or they - found it in the depot, she arrives at the same question, and it is the one question the - agents cannot answer kindly and truthfully at the same time. +- **This works in both branches of how the PARTY learned** — whether Bhattacharya told them + at the briefing or they found it in the depot, she arrives at the same question, and it is + the one question the agents cannot answer kindly and truthfully at the same time. +- ⚠ **BUT IT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON WHETHER SHE WAS TOLD IN ACT THREE**, which is a different + fork and the one that matters here. Desk pass 10 found the Close written for only one side + of it. + - **If she was NOT told:** exactly as above. *Is there a north?* Then stop talking. + - **If she WAS told in Act Three, she does not come south to ask.** She already knows, she + has had a night with it, and she comes to find out **whether they are going to do + anything about it** — which is a harder scene and a better one, because she is no longer + asking them for the truth, she is asking them what they are for. + - Her line is **"Well?"**, and nothing after it. Same instruction: then stop talking. + - **She has decided what to ask for overnight**, and it is not what the agents expect: + *do not let them walk it again tomorrow morning*. Whatever the party chooses, she + wants it to be a decision rather than another day of the arrangement. + - This makes Act Three's real scene load-bearing instead of decorative, which is what it + was always claimed to be. - If the GM wants the line spoken rather than reported, it is **"Is there a north?"** and nothing after it. Then stop talking. The silence is the scenario. - **She does not argue, plead, or bargain.** She has walked three thousand times and she @@ -1327,6 +1380,33 @@ side of it because she has walked south for the first time in sixty-four years. - **Bring them through** — the thing the table will try. It costs Coherence per person at a rate no party can pay, and the record will not carry forty-one unfiled people. Let them get four across and understand what that means about the other thirty-seven. + - ⚠ **FOUR ACROSS AND THEN CANCEL ANYWAY IS A THIRD ENDING, NOT A FAILED SECOND ONE**, and + it is the one a table that has spent four hours with these people will reach for. Price + it as an ending: four saved, thirty-seven cancelled, and the seam closed for good. + - **The agents do not choose the four. Ivy does.** They will try to — it is the humane + instinct and it is the wrong one, because choosing is the last authority she has and she + is not handing it to the department. **She picks the youngest**, without discussion, + and she is not among them. + - **That is the most brutal thing this scenario asks anybody**, and it is asked of her + rather than of them, which is why it lands. Do not soften it, do not let the agents + negotiate it, and do not have her explain herself. She has been deciding who eats first + for sixty-four years. + +- **Failure case — and this act needs one, because it is last and it is what the clock + eats.** **If nobody writes anything, the entry stays filed by default.** That is not the + scenario breaking; it is the second ending arrived at by omission, and it should be played + as one — Registry closes the file as *unresolved, no action*, and thanks them. + - **The clock ran out.** Give it two minutes, not twenty: Registry wants the form tonight, + somebody signs or nobody does, and the read-aloud for "leave it filed" still lands. + - **The table will not decide, or splits three–three.** There is no roll and no tiebreak by + design. **Do not invent one.** Ask who is going to sign, out loud, and let the silence do + it — a party that cannot answer that has answered it. + - **Ivy is dead** — entirely possible if the table fired into the column. Then nobody asks + the question, and the agents make the decision with no one watching, which is worse and + is the ending they earned. The line still sits down in the heather to wait. + - **The party is down.** Three of the column wipe **45.3%** of + four-player parties. Whoever is standing signs; if nobody is, Registry sends the next + agent on the roster and the file stays open. Name them. No roll resolves this. No NPC advises. Registry signs whatever they write.