CLEAN GROUND: one status block, and the end of the build archaeology

A stand-in GM opening this had no single place to start: the state of the document
lived across three playtest logs, twenty commit messages, a status paragraph and a
checklist at the foot. Worse, the two written accounts had drifted apart — the
status paragraph still said the scenario "wants a stress re-run of Act Four, a
player-chair pass", both of which were done and committed, and the foot checklist
still said v0.8 in a v0.9 document with a sentence broken in half.

STATUS now sits at the top and answers the questions a GM actually arrives with:
what version, can I run it (yes, from this file alone), is it convention-ready (no —
never played by human beings, no print pack), what playtesting exists and at which
seeds, how long it runs and where the cuts are, how many players.

Then the three things that are not obvious, as pointers rather than restatements,
because GM ESSENTIALS is where rules live: opposed rolls use a scenario-local ruling
since rules.mjs has none; Ashcroft cannot fight and his player must be told before
the game; and the lethal encounter is the column in Act Two, not the monster in Act
Four, which cannot hurt anybody.

The foot checklist is deleted rather than corrected. Every item on it was either
struck through or now in STATUS, its history is in the logs and the commits, and
keeping a second account of what is outstanding is what let the first one drift.
Open Questions stays as the single home for decisions and STATUS says so in a line
instead of holding a copy — the same rule this repository applies to rule formulas,
applied to prose about state.

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

docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md

@@ -5,12 +5,44 @@
 > and clean soil, and there is no north. Two weeks ago a contractor felled the tree the
 > whole arrangement was pegged to.*
 
-**Status:** v0.9 — **absorbs all fixes from desk passes 1, 2 and 3** (eight, seven, eight), plus the post-pass finding that the four-player cut fields three attackers, not four
-(`CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_1.md`, GM chair, seed 4271). No clue is now behind a single roll,
-every roll in the document has a written miss, Act Four has a spine and its tell is
-ungated, and about 25 minutes of pre-written cuts are in the Pacing Note. **Still not
-convention-ready:** it wants a stress re-run of Act Four, a player-chair pass, and a
-print-ready handout pack.
+## STATUS — read this before anything else
+
+| | |
+|---|---|
+| **Version** | **v0.9**, 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?** | **No.** It has never been played by human beings, and there is no print pack. |
+| **Playtesting** | Three desk passes, all fixes applied: `CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_1.md` (GM chair, seed 4271), `_2.md` (Act Four stress, seed 9314), `_3.md` (player chair, contrarian, seed 5580). Twenty-three fixes plus one post-pass. |
+| **Runtime** | 4h00 including a break. Desk pass 1 ran 4:25; the **Pacing Note** carries ~25 minutes of pre-written cuts. Take them as the default. |
+| **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in the Casting section and the build enforces it. |
+
+### The three things that are not obvious
+
+Read GM ESSENTIALS in full — this is only what a GM most often discovers too late.
+
+1. **Opposed rolls use a scenario-local ruling**, because `rules.mjs` has none. GM
+   ESSENTIALS has it. Two beats depend on it.
+2. **Ashcroft cannot fight** — no weapon, no unarmed skill, a 1% attack. That is deliberate
+   and his player must be told before the game. See his entry in Casting.
+3. **The lethal encounter is the column, in Act Two** — not the monster in Act Four, which
+   cannot hurt anybody. EXPOSURE has the measured figures and the reason.
+
+### Still to do
+
+- **A print-ready A4 handout pack**, 11pt minimum. **CG-H03a and CG-H03b must print
+  identically** or the almanac trick dies.
+- **A run with human beings.** No desk pass can settle whether Act Four's spine holds
+  45 minutes with no mechanical threat, or whether THE OFFER plays as a decision.
+
+### Two decisions that are not a scenario's to make
+
+- **Does `rules.mjs` gain a real opposed roll?** If it does, delete the local ruling.
+- **Convention one-shot, or campaign opener?** The cancellation ending is a one-shot; the
+  "leave it filed" branch is a spine. This decides what finished means.
+
+Those are the two that change the document. **Open Questions at the foot carries the full
+list**, including the ones already settled, and is the only place decisions are recorded —
+this block does not keep a second copy.
 
 **Source:** freely adapted from *A Hollow Tree* (Cathal Fitzpatrick, 2023, 23 min) —
 post-nuclear survivors walking north for clean ground, and a fast thing that wears
@@ -984,23 +1016,6 @@ twice.*
 
 ---
 
-## What this outline does not yet have
-
-1. ~~Pregens.~~ **Done** — see Casting, above. Six from the duty roster, no new sheets.
-2. ~~The read-aloud text.~~ **Done** — three blocks, in place in Act Two and the Close.
-3. ~~Handouts.~~ **Done** — four sheets, CG-H01 to CG-H03b. Still need a print-ready HTML
-   pack (A4, 11pt minimum) before a convention; the text is final.
-4. ~~A written exposure model for Act Four.~~ **Done** — measured, 2000 runs a row at seed
-   11 against the named cast, reproducible from the command in the section.
-5. **Desk playtest.** Pass 1 failed and its eight fixes are absorbed in v0.6
-   (`CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_1.md`). Pass 2, the Act Four stress re-run
-   (`CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_2.md`), and pass 3, the player-chair contrarian run
-   (`CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_3.md`), are both done and **all three passes' fixes are absorbed
-   in v0.8**. **The three-pass cadence is complete.** What remains before convention-ready is
-   the print pack, and the two decisions in Open Questions that are not a scenario's to
-   make. A
-   human-table run remains a separate instrument from all of them.
-
 ## Open questions for Tim
 
 - Is this a **convention 4-hour** or a **campaign opener**? The cancellation ending is a