CLEAN GROUND v0.15 — the four-player cut, fixed

Applies desk pass 5's five fixes and corrects a claim the pass itself
overstated.

1. The cut cannot see. Pollard's Spot 53 is the best in the declared cast
   (others 40/40/40/35/35) and he is the first agent the scaling notes
   drop. At five players and fewer his clues — the stump, the six at the
   back, the lorry — are given, not rolled for. check-rollable cannot warn
   about this: it tests the 25% floor, not competence.
2. The split table now has a four-player column. Four of its five rows
   named Pollard or Okonkwo, or said "all six".
3. The Pacing Note says the cuts are sized for six. At four, keep the
   northern seam; pass 5 ran 3:15 with every cut taken.
4. The line rests twenty minutes at four players — Ashcroft is aside for
   THE OFFER, so three agents are talking, not five.
5. Act Four records that THE OFFER nearly quadruples the unsettled rate:
   14.5% if Ashcroft accepted against 3.8% if he refused. Accepting makes
   him both the likeliest person to be taken and the likeliest reason the
   beat resolves into nothing.

Verified against roster.mjs rather than recalled, which caught pass 5's own
error: Spot 53 is the best in the CAST, not the roster — four agents carry
58. Post-pass appended. The check also found that Agyeman's 58 makes the
substitution the scaling notes already name the single best answer to the
cut, which is now written in.

npm run check: 18 guards pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md

@@ -9,10 +9,10 @@
 
 | | |
 |---|---|
-| **Version** | **v0.14**, 13 September 2026 |
+| **Version** | **v0.15**, 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** | **Four 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). Twenty-eight fixes plus one post-pass. Pass 4 is the only one that describes the current timings; 1–3 ran against a 65-minute Act Two. |
+| **Playtesting** | **Five 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). Thirty-three fixes plus two post-passes. Passes 4–5 are the only ones that describe the current timings; 1–3 ran against a 65-minute Act Two. |
 | **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. |
@@ -31,8 +31,10 @@ ends it on the GM's schedule. Nothing was deleted.
 
 **The Pacing Note now carries 65 minutes of further cuts against a 55-minute problem**, so
 for the first time there is about ten minutes of real slack. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25 uncut;
-that figure predates this restructure and a fourth desk pass has not been run against the
-new timings. **The first human run is also the first test of this clock.**
+that figure predates this restructure. Two passes have now run against the new timings:
+pass 4 landed on budget at six players, pass 5 came in **twenty-five minutes short at
+four** — which is why the cuts are now sized to the table. **The first human run is still
+the first test of this clock.**
 
 ### The three things that are not obvious
 
@@ -189,6 +191,16 @@ honest thing to tell a GM about a desk estimate of how long people will talk.
 What the passes do establish is the shape: **every scene now has something written into it
 that ends it**, the cuts are real, and the act most likely to overrun is Three, not Two.
 
+**⚠ THESE CUTS ARE SIZED FOR SIX PLAYERS. At four, do not take them.** Desk pass 5 ran the
+cut and finished around **3:15** — twenty-five minutes short — because four people ask
+fewer questions than six. A four-player table that takes every cut will be done
+three-quarters of an hour early in a four-hour slot.
+
+- **At four: keep the northern seam.** It is the biggest cut and the one the smaller table
+  can afford. Take the others only if the table is slow.
+- **At five: take the briefing cap, hold the rest.**
+- **At six: as written above — all of them, as the default.**
+
 **Do not cut:** telling Ivy, the almanac pair, or the Close. They are the scenario.
 
 **If you are still over at the break**, the thing to shorten is Act Three's depot search,
@@ -272,11 +284,16 @@ Advance one step per act, plus one whenever the agents spend Coherence on the fa
 | **3** | It takes an NPC. The NPC's file is still good, so the copy holds |
 | **4** | The copy is fluent. It is inside the cordon and helping |
 | **5** | It reaches for **the lowest POW in the room** — opposed POW×5 (it is **75**, not 100), permanent. **Unless Ashcroft accepted THE OFFER in Act Two, in which case it takes him instead and he resists at Difficult.** GM ESSENTIALS has the resolution; Act Four beat 3 has the reasoning |
-| **5 — unsettled** | **If neither side succeeds, the reach fails and the row is spent.** This is common enough to plan for: **10%** against Braithwaite, **14.5%** against Ashcroft if he accepted. It does not retry. See below — it is an outcome, not a gap |
+| **5 — unsettled** | **If neither side succeeds, the reach fails and the row is spent.** Common enough to plan for, and **THE OFFER nearly quadruples it**: **3.8%** against an Ashcroft who refused, **10%** against Braithwaite, **14.5%** against an Ashcroft who accepted. It does not retry. See below — it is an outcome, not a gap |
 | **6** | It goes south at dusk wearing whatever face it has. **Read the Close's "leave it filed" note: in a one-shot this lands tonight, not as a sequel** |
 
 **WHEN STEP 5 COMES TO NOTHING — and it will, about one time in seven against an Ashcroft
-who accepted.** The rule returns *unsettled*, which is not the agent winning. Do not
+who accepted.** **That is nearly four times the 3.8% it would be if he had refused**, and
+the reason is the same Difficult that makes him easy to take: a resisting side at 42
+succeeds far less often, so *both* sides missing becomes much likelier. Accepting THE OFFER
+makes Dominic both the likeliest person to be taken **and** the likeliest reason the whole
+beat resolves into nothing. A GM whose Ashcroft accepted should expect this outcome, not be
+surprised by it. The rule returns *unsettled*, which is not the agent winning. Do not
 re-roll it and do not quietly hand the understudy the win. **Play the failure, because it
 is the most frightening thing the creature does all night:**
 
@@ -573,7 +590,7 @@ side of the county. Two routes, both of which reach a party anywhere:
 |---|---|---|
 | **The crossing** | **5** | A player breaks the silence. If nobody does by minute five, a Geiger tick does it for them |
 | **The column arrives** | **5** | Ivy has walked forward and somebody has spoken to her |
-| **The line rests, and they talk** | **25** | The rest ends — see the clock below. THE OFFER happens inside this |
+| **The line rests, and they talk** | **25** *(20 at four players)* | The rest ends — see the clock below. THE OFFER happens inside this |
 | **The line moves on** | **10** | H03a is handed over and the agents decide whether to follow |
 
 **THE LINE'S REST IS THE ACT'S CLOCK, and it is the cut that does the work.** This column
@@ -582,6 +599,11 @@ as long as the line is sitting down, and the line sits for twenty-five minutes.*
 old ones stand up, because they always do, and the conversation is over whether or not the
 agents got what they wanted.
 
+- **At four players, the line sits for twenty.** Ashcroft is aside for THE OFFER, so the
+  conversation is three agents rather than five, and desk pass 5 found it ran out at about
+  twenty on its own. Sitting the line down for twenty-five and watching it go quiet is
+  worse than standing it up on time.
+
 - **Say it at the start of the scene, once:** the line has sat down in the heather, and
   they do that for a while and then they walk. Players who know a scene has a clock use it;
   players who do not will still be carried by it.
@@ -1245,24 +1267,46 @@ twice.*
 
 **Party seams — recommended 2+2 splits** (let the table choose; this is the fallback):
 
-| Act | Split |
-|---|---|
-| One | Braithwaite + Pollard at the pen and the stump · Renshaw + Bhattacharya with the farmer |
-| Two | Renshaw + Ashcroft to the column · Okonkwo + Pollard on the flank, where the thing is |
-| Three | Bhattacharya + Braithwaite at the depot · Pollard + Ashcroft walking the north seam |
-| Four | **Do not split.** The whole point is that they are all in one room and one of them is wrong |
-| Close | All six, at the stump, with Ivy on the far side |
+| Act | At six | **At four — the cut** |
+|---|---|---|
+| One | Braithwaite + Pollard at the pen and the stump · Renshaw + Bhattacharya with the farmer | Braithwaite + Bhattacharya at the pen · Renshaw + Ashcroft with the farmer |
+| Two | Renshaw + Ashcroft to the column · Okonkwo + Pollard on the flank, where the thing is | **Do not split.** Four people meeting forty is already the smaller half, and the flank is atmosphere |
+| Three | Bhattacharya + Braithwaite at the depot · Pollard + Ashcroft walking the north seam | Bhattacharya + Braithwaite at the depot · Renshaw + Ashcroft with Ivy |
+| Four | **Do not split.** The whole point is that they are all in one room and one of them is wrong | As at six |
+| Close | Everyone, at the stump, with Ivy on the far side | As at six |
+
+*The six-player column named Pollard or Okonkwo in three of its five rows and said "all
+six" in a fourth, so at four players the fallback did not exist — which is the table size
+at which a GM most needs one. Desk pass 5.*
 
 **Player-count scaling.**
 
 - **Six:** as written.
 - **Five:** drop **Pollard**. His loop evidence moves to Ashcroft, who has Listen 63 and
   a professional reason to notice the record correcting him. The cordon loses its shield.
+  - ⚠ **And the party loses its eyes, which costs more.** Pollard's **Spot 53 is the best
+    in this cast** — the other five are 40, 40, 40, 35, 35. Dropping him takes every Spot
+    roll in the scenario from 53 to 40, and the first two acts are almost entirely looking
+    at things. The shield is an Act Four loss; this one is felt all night.
+  - **So at five players and fewer, GIVE Pollard's clues rather than rolling for them** —
+    the stump, the six at the back, the lorry. A small table that has to make Spot 40 three
+    times to assemble the loop will assemble it late or not at all.
+    - *Desk pass 5 ran the cut and missed the stump at 79 vs 40 and the six at the back at
+      67 vs 35 — both Pollard's lane at six players, both clues the scenario leans on.*
+  - **`check-rollable` will never warn you about this.** It asks whether every skill the
+    acts name is reachable at 25% or better by somebody present, and Spot 40 clears that
+    easily. It is a rollability check, not a competence check. The build stays green while
+    the party goes blind.
 - **Four:** drop **Okonkwo** as well, and Act Four becomes a pursuit rather than a stand —
   which the scenario already permits, since killing the understudy cleanly changes
   nothing. If the table wants a shooter, substitute **Joseph Agyeman** `pc_agyeman`
   (Firearm (Pistol) 58, Spot 58, Insight 58, Tradecraft 58) for Okonkwo rather than
   adding a seventh lane.
+  - **Agyeman is the single best answer to the four-player cut and it is not only the
+    gun.** His **Spot 58** is better than Pollard's 53 and half again the cut's 40, so
+    substituting him repairs the eyes the previous bullet is about *and* the attacker
+    arithmetic below. **If a four-player table will accept one substitution, make it this
+    one.**
   - ⚠ **The four-player cut is three effective attackers, not four.** Ashcroft is not one
     (see his entry), so the cut fights with Renshaw and Bhattacharya on compact pistols and
     Braithwaite on a knife. **That is a quarter of the party out of any fight**, and it is a

docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_5.md

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ how to build it — and no pass in four had ever run a session with Pollard and
 the table.
 
 **Verdict: the cut runs, and the fights were never the problem. What breaks is quieter —
-the party's eyes. Dropping Pollard takes the best Spot in the entire roster off the table
+the party's eyes. Dropping Pollard takes the best Spot in the declared cast off the table
 and nothing in the document says so, because the guard that watches this only asks whether
 a roll is possible, not whether it is any good.**
 
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ This is the pass's real result and it has nothing to do with combat.
 | *Pollard (dropped at five)* | ***53*** | *53* |
 | *Okonkwo (dropped at four)* | *35* | — |
 
-**Pollard's Spot 53 is the highest in the entire roster, and he is the first person the
+**Pollard's Spot 53 is the highest in the declared cast, and he is the first person the
 scaling notes drop.** At five players the party's eyes go from 53 to 40. At four they stay
 at 40 with a 35 alongside. Every Spot clue in the scenario becomes materially harder in the
 configuration the document recommends for a smaller table.
@@ -202,7 +202,7 @@ northern seam** — the cut that pass 4 made compulsory is not needed here at al
 ## Fix list
 
 1. **⚠ Say that the cut cannot see, and compensate it.** *(Roster-level notes)* Pollard's
-   Spot 53 is the roster's best and he is dropped first. State the cost plainly, and
+   Spot 53 is the cast's best and he is dropped first. State the cost plainly, and
    instruct that at four players the clues in his lane — the stump, the six at the back,
    the lorry — are **given rather than rolled for**. `check-rollable` will not catch this
    because it tests the 25% floor, not competence.
@@ -226,3 +226,23 @@ northern seam** — the cut that pass 4 made compulsory is not needed here at al
 **Still untested after five passes**, and worth stating so it is not mistaken for tested:
 the Swinburne fumble branch, the re-cut-the-peg fumble, a failed Xenology in Act Four, and
 any fight at all — no pass has yet had the party shoot anybody.
+
+---
+
+## POST-PASS — a claim in this document was overstated
+
+This pass wrote that **Pollard's Spot 53 is "the highest in the entire roster"**. It is not.
+Checked against `roster.mjs` while applying the fixes: **Wren Finch, Joseph Agyeman, Danny
+Sharrock and Colin Ferriby all carry Spot 58**, and Pollard shares 53 with Rey Sandoval.
+53 is the best **in the declared cast** — the six pregens the scenario ships — which is what
+the finding actually needed, and the finding stands unchanged: dropping Pollard takes the
+cast's only pair of eyes above 40 off the table.
+
+Corrected in three places above. The habit that produced it is the same one pass 4's
+post-pass records: a number recalled rather than read. It was only caught because the fix
+this pass demanded — naming the substitute agent — required opening the roster anyway.
+
+**And the check paid for itself.** Agyeman's Spot 58 is *better* than the Pollard it
+replaces, which makes the substitution already named in the scaling notes the single best
+answer to the four-player cut. That is now written into the scenario, and it would not have
+been if the claim had been trusted.