Play PAPER WINDOW with the shipped pregens; fix four silent defects
Ran the starter end to end. It closed, and it found four defects in what I shipped an hour earlier — all in the scenario data, all silent. R-247: the Borrowed Authority did not work. I wrote scope "operate", which is not one of the five scope tiers; an unrecognised scope ranks 0 and every action came back "impossible" with no error. The first scene of the starter is the Borrowed Authority tutorial. Fixed, guarded in check-kits, and covered by a test that documents the failure mode. R-248: the contact subsystem was unreachable in the scenario built around it. The case file carried a standing for the Returned Clerks and no GROUP ITEM; resolveContact returns null without one, so READ, SIGNAL and OFFER did nothing. Groups are data now, and a test asserts every standing on a shipped case file has a group behind it. R-249: legs wrote `kindId` where resolveLegDialog reads `leg.kind`. It worked only because the terrain text happens to begin with "Extraction". Not a defect: phase four went Difficult because Resources hit 0 and destitution makes every remaining phase Difficult. Best beat in the session. All four phases failed and the case still closed — Containment 8 to 2, Resources 8 to 0 — which is what the scenario is built to survive. Two of six closing requirements succeeded and the settlement still completed. The Cancellation Man opened with a critical against a raised riot shield and went through 10 points of armour, teaching the shield and graded-defence lessons in one roll. Also documented: nobody on the starter team can aim the return, because only the Anchor Officer trains Transposition. The extraction page now says to narrate it rather than roll six dice that will all fail. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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@@ -4941,3 +4941,73 @@ stable keys after import (raw ids do not survive one), the handouts come in
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player-visible and the GM text does not, and **phase one runs straight out of the box** —
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Nia leading the cordon on Tradecraft 53. Then everything imported was deleted again,
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which the pack does not notice.
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## PAPER WINDOW — played with the shipped pregens
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Ran the starter end to end with the six pregens exactly as they import. It closed, and
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it found four defects in what I had shipped an hour earlier — all four in the scenario
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data rather than the engine, and every one of them silent.
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**R-247. The Borrowed Authority did not work, and said nothing.** I wrote the
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credential's scope as `"operate"`, which is not one of the five scope tiers. An
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unrecognised scope ranks 0 — *nothing* — so `scopeStanceFor` returned "impossible" for
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a routine site inspection by a surveyor at a demolition site. No error, no warning: the
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credential was simply inert, and the first scene of the starter is the Borrowed
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Authority tutorial. Fixed to `"routine"`, guarded in check-kits, and covered by a test
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that asserts an unrecognised scope makes everything impossible so the failure mode is
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documented rather than rediscovered.
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**R-248. The contact subsystem was unreachable — in the scenario built around it.** I
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gave the case file a standing record for the Returned Clerks and no group *item*.
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`resolveContact` looks up the group and returns null without one, so READ, SIGNAL and
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OFFER did nothing at all. PAPER WINDOW's central scene is a three-stage negotiation with
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those clerks. The group is now data in `scenario-starter.mjs`, consumed by the builder,
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and a test asserts every standing on a shipped case file has a group behind it.
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**R-249. A phase kind written to the wrong field.** I wrote `kindId` on the legs;
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`resolveLegDialog` reads `leg.kind` and falls back to a regular expression on the terrain
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prose. It worked only because "Extraction — closing the register" happens to begin with
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the word. Rename a phase and the return clock stops moving.
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**And one that was not a defect.** Phase four resolved as Difficult when the scenario
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table says Average — because Resources had reached 0 and destitution makes every
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remaining phase Difficult. That is the rule working, and it was the best beat in the
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session: they ran out of supplies and the way home doubled in difficulty.
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### How it actually played
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The credential carried them in and then the stretch for an asbestos exclusion spent it
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to **Trust 0** — two hours bought, and nothing left for later. Phases one, two, three and
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four **all failed**, which the scenario is explicitly built to survive: Containment 8 → 2,
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Resources 8 → 0, Clearance 6 → 5, and the case still closed.
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The investigation split cleanly across four players and three of the four discoveries
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landed. Amira's READ turned up **both** taboos on one roll — Read the Room granting the
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extra fact — and Elin **criticalled on 01** for the desire. SIGNAL and OFFER at
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favourable took the clerks to **Standing 2**, which fired Evelyn's rewards automatically
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and put the clean settlement on the table.
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The Cancellation Man opened with a **critical on 01** against Callum, whose riot shield
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was raised and whose arm therefore had 10 points of armour. A critical ignores armour
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entirely: 10 through, Major Wound, 15 → 5. That is the shield lesson and the graded
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defence lesson in a single roll, in round one, without any prompting from me.
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Then the closing scene did the thing the scenario promises: **two of six requirements
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succeeded and the settlement still completed.** Nia's authority failed and spent the
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Clearance anyway; Callum's containment failed for a point; Elin certified them and is
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now personally responsible for reviewing all 317 cases; Owen's repair worked and took
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the last of the spare cells. Sennen's **special on 07** recovered the crown stamp with
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the procedure intact, using the +20% Evelyn had given him at Standing 2 — a reward
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granted by the contact engine, spent in the final scene. That chain is the whole design
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working unassisted.
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### One thing the starter needs saying out loud
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**Nobody on this team can aim the return.** Transposition is trained by exactly one
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posting in the register — the Anchor Officer — and none of the six has it, so all six
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roll the printed 1%. The rule that failure gets an agent home *near* the target and
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never strands them is what makes that survivable, but asking a GM to roll six dice that
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are all going to fail teaches nothing. The extraction page now says so: narrate it, roll
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only if somebody wants a clean arrival, and note at debrief that the department sent six
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people to a crossing and no anchor. That is the campaign rather than an oversight — but
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it is a deliberate choice a GM should be able to see, not a hole they fall into.
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