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Desk playtest 5: the four-player cut, played for the first time

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Seed 8815, four players — Ashcroft, Bhattacharya, Renshaw, Braithwaite. Every
rating pulled from roster.mjs before rolling, which is the direct consequence
of pass 4 having typed six of sixteen from memory.

The cut is the most measured thing in this project and had never been played.
EXPOSURE prices its fights, check-firstblood holds its swing, check-attackers
holds what each of the four contributes -- and no pass in four had run a
session with Pollard and Okonkwo off the table.

THE RESULT IS NOT ABOUT COMBAT. The fights were never the problem. What breaks
is the party's eyes: POLLARD'S SPOT 53 IS THE HIGHEST IN THE ENTIRE ROSTER 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. This run missed
the stump (79 vs 40) and the six at the back (67 vs 35), both Pollard's lane in
the six-player game, both clues the scenario leans on.

check-rollable cannot see this, and the reason is worth keeping: it asks
whether every named skill is reachable at 25% or better, and Spot 40 clears 25
comfortably. It is a rollability check, not a competence check, and the cut is
where the difference bites. The scaling note's only stated cost of dropping
Pollard is that "the cordon loses its shield", which is about a fight, in a
scenario whose first two acts are almost entirely looking at things.

Second finding: FOUR OF THE FIVE PARTY-SPLIT ROWS NAME PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT
THERE. The table is introduced as the fallback for a table that will not choose
its own splits -- and at four players the fallback does not exist, which is
exactly when it is most needed.

Timing runs the other way from pass 4: ~3:15, twenty-five minutes SHORT, because
four people ask fewer questions. Nothing in the Pacing Note says the cuts are
player-count dependent, so a GM following it at a small table finishes early.

The unsettled countdown fired for a second pass running. Recorded with the
caveat that both passes had Ashcroft accept THE OFFER, so both used the
Difficult branch -- 14.5% unsettled against 3.8% if he refuses. Not two draws
from the same distribution, and the document prints only one of those figures.

Five fixes listed, none applied. Also listed: what five passes have still never
tested -- the Swinburne fumble, the re-cut-the-peg fumble, a failed Xenology,
and any fight at all.

npm run check: 17 guards, exit 0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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# CLEAN GROUND — desk playtest 5 (the four-player cut, played)
**Scenario version:** v0.14, at commit ae06df8
**Date:** 13 September 2026
**Method:** full session, GM chair, **four players — the cut**: Ashcroft, Bhattacharya,
Renshaw, Braithwaite. Seeded roller, **seed 8815**, banding from `rules.mjs`. Earlier
passes were 4271, 9314, 5580/7731, 6142.
**Every skill rating in this pass was pulled from `roster.mjs` before rolling**, which is
the direct consequence of pass 4 having typed six of its sixteen from memory and got three
outcomes wrong. See that document's second post-pass.
**Why this pass.** The four-player cut is the most *measured* thing in this project and has
never been **played**. EXPOSURE prices its fights, `check-firstblood` holds its swing,
`check-attackers` holds what each of the four contributes, and the scaling notes tell a GM
how to build it — and no pass in four had ever run a session with Pollard and Okonkwo off
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
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.**
---
## The rolls, in order
```
seed 8815
Bhattacharya Research — Corrigan's paperwork 15 vs 63 success
Braithwaite Medicine — the body 60 vs 53 fail
Renshaw Persuade — Swinburne 60 vs 63 success
Ashcroft Spot — the stump, no Pollard 79 vs 40 fail
Ashcroft Listen — the valley, crossing 35 vs 63 success
Renshaw Persuade — the column 17 vs 63 success
Braithwaite Spot — the six at the back 67 vs 35 fail
Ashcroft Insight — it is offered, not remembered 98 vs 63 fail
Bhattacharya Anomaly Lore — the depot entry 16 vs 63 success
Renshaw Insight — Ivy on the almanac 14 vs 63 success
Ashcroft Listen — the lorry, Pollard's lane 15 vs 63 success
Braithwaite Xenology (Baseline) — the understudy 38 vs 53 success
Renshaw Insight — a colleague who is not 47 vs 63 success
Ashcroft First Aid — whoever went down 40 vs 40 success
COUNTDOWN STEP 5 — opposedContestFor
understudy 75 rolled 91 failure
Ashcroft 85 -> 42 Diff rolled 84 failure
→ winner none · settled FALSE
```
A friendly seed, deliberately not re-rolled after pass 4's hostile one. **A cut that only
survives good dice is not a cut**, and this run's failures land in the two places that
matter most: the body, and the six at the back.
---
## ⚠ FINDING 1 — the cut cannot see
This is the pass's real result and it has nothing to do with combat.
| | Spot | Listen |
|---|---|---|
| Ashcroft | 40 | **63** |
| Bhattacharya | 40 | — |
| Renshaw | 40 | **63** |
| Braithwaite | **35** | — |
| *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
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.
- This run: **Ashcroft missed the stump** (79 vs 40) and **Braithwaite missed the six at
the back** (67 vs 35). Both are Pollard's lane in the six-player game, both are at 53
there, and both are clues the scenario leans on.
- ⚠ **The guards cannot see this and it is worth understanding why.** `check-rollable`
asks whether every skill the acts name is reachable at 25% or better by somebody in the
declared cast. Spot 40 clears 25 comfortably, so the build is green and stays green. It
is a **rollability** check, not a **competence** check, and the cut is the case where
the difference bites.
- The scaling note says of dropping Pollard only that *"the cordon loses its shield"* —
which is about Act Four's fight. **The real cost is that the party loses the only pair of
eyes above 40, in a scenario whose first two acts are almost entirely looking at
things.**
**Fix direction:** say it in the scaling note, and give the smaller table the compensation
it is owed. The cleanest is already half-written elsewhere — the column's **special**
result now hands over something portable (v0.14), and the same logic applies here: at four
players, the clues Pollard would have spotted should be **given, not rolled for**. The
lorry, the six at the back, the stump. A four-player table that has to roll Spot 40 three
times to assemble the loop will assemble it late or not at all.
---
## ⚠ FINDING 2 — four of the five split rows name people who are not there
The party-seams table is written for six and is **unusable at four**:
| Act | Split as written | At four players |
|---|---|---|
| One | Braithwaite + **Pollard** · Renshaw + Bhattacharya | ✗ |
| Two | Renshaw + Ashcroft · **Okonkwo + Pollard** | ✗ — the whole second half is gone |
| Three | Bhattacharya + Braithwaite · **Pollard** + Ashcroft | ✗ |
| Four | Do not split | ✓ |
| Close | **All six**, at the stump | ✗ — wording only, but it is wrong |
The table is introduced as *"let the table choose; this is the fallback"* — and the
fallback is the thing a GM reaches for when the table will not choose. **At four players
the fallback does not exist**, which is the moment it is most needed, because four players
splitting 2+2 leaves two pairs with no overlap at all.
This is not a hard problem. It needs one extra column or four extra words per row.
---
## Act-by-act
**Act One — ran ~40.** Faster than six players, as expected: four people ask four
questions, not six. Bhattacharya's Research landed and Corrigan's unfiled casual labour
came out early, which is the strongest opening this scenario has had in five passes.
Braithwaite failed Medicine on the body and the coroner's note carried it instead —
Renshaw's Persuade on Swinburne succeeded, so H01 came from the drawer as written.
- The new fumble branch for Swinburne (v0.14) did **not** fire. Still untested.
**Act Two — ran ~40 against a 45 budget, and this is the first time an act has come in
UNDER.** With four players the line's rest has three people in it, because Ashcroft is
aside for THE OFFER. Twenty-five minutes of conversation between Ivy and three agents ran
out at about twenty.
- ⚠ **Minor: the rest clock is sized for six.** It is not a defect — the old ones standing
up early is fine, and no GM will complain about an act finishing early. But a GM watching
a 25-minute budget with three players talking will feel they are doing it wrong. One
clause would fix it: *at four players the line rests twenty minutes, because there is
less to say.*
- THE OFFER fired and Ashcroft **failed** the Insight (98) again — accepted believing it
was a real memory. Two passes running.
**Act Three — ran ~35 with the seam cut taken.** Bhattacharya's Anomaly Lore succeeded, so
no re-cut-the-peg chase; that clause remains untested after five passes. Renshaw read Ivy,
and **Ashcroft's Listen 63 picked up the lorry** — Pollard's clue, inherited exactly as the
scaling note promises. That part of the scaling works and should be said more loudly.
**Act Four — ran ~45.** Braithwaite's Xenology succeeded, so the tell arrived as a quiet
word in the GM's ear at beat 2, which is what the text wants. Renshaw's Insight on the
colleague-who-is-not also landed, so the cut was actually *better informed* here than pass
4's six-player table.
### The unsettled countdown fired again — second pass running
Understudy 91 (failure) against Ashcroft's 84 on the Difficult branch (failure). **Neither
succeeded. Unsettled.** Two passes, two unsettled outcomes on a 14.5% branch — that is
luck, not a pattern, and it should not be read as one.
- Worth noting all the same: because Ashcroft accepted THE OFFER in both passes, **both
runs used the Difficult branch, which is the branch with the highest unsettled rate.**
14.5% against 3.8% if he refuses. So the two are not independent draws from the same
distribution, and a scenario where Ashcroft usually accepts will see this outcome roughly
four times more often than the headline figure suggests.
- The read-aloud landed for a second time and needs nothing.
**Close — ran ~25.** On budget. Four players at the stump is a tighter scene than six and
arguably a better one: nobody is spectating.
---
## Timing
| Act | Budget | Ran | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | 45 | ~40 | −5 |
| Two | 45 | ~40 | −5 |
| Three | 50 | ~35 | −15 *(seam cut)* |
| Four | 45 | ~45 | — |
| Close | 25 | ~25 | — |
| **Play** | **210** | **~185** | **−25** |
| **Wall clock** | **3:40** | **~3:15** | **−25** |
**Four players runs about twenty-five minutes short**, which is the opposite problem and a
much better one to have. It also means **the four-player table can afford to keep the
northern seam** — the cut that pass 4 made compulsory is not needed here at all.
- ⚠ **Nothing in the Pacing Note says the cuts are player-count dependent.** At six they are
the default; at four, taking them all leaves a 3:15 session in a four-hour slot. A GM
following the current instruction at a small table will finish forty-five minutes early.
---
## Player-hat verdicts
| Archetype | Verdict | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Methodical veteran | Ashcroft inheriting the Listen lane worked invisibly, which is the compliment | 8/10 |
| Roleplay-first talker | Three-way conversation with Ivy was better than six-way. Everyone got a turn | 9/10 |
| Quiet tactician | Spot 40 twice in two acts, both missed. "We are the party that cannot see" | 5/10 |
| Lore-digger | Research landing in Act One set the whole night up. Best opening yet | 9/10 |
---
## 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
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.
2. **⚠ Make the split table work at four players.** *(Roster-level notes)* Four of five
rows name Pollard or Okonkwo. Add a four-player column, and fix "All six, at the stump"
to "everyone".
3. **Tell the Pacing Note that the cuts are for six.** At four players the session runs
~3:15 with them all taken. Say: at four, keep the northern seam; take cuts only if the
table is slow.
4. **Size the line's rest to the table.** Twenty-five minutes is a six-player number.
Twenty at four, and say why — there are three people talking, because Ashcroft is aside.
5. **Record that the Difficult branch raises the unsettled rate fourfold.** *(Act Four)*
14.5% against 3.8%. A GM whose Ashcroft accepted THE OFFER should expect the reach to
come to nothing far more often than the countdown's headline suggests, and the document
currently prints only the one figure.
**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.