STANDING ORDER v0.3: desk playtest 2, Act Three stress
The house cadence's second pass is a stress re-run of the weakest act. Pass 1 resolved Act Three in eight minutes of fifty and left three of its four branches untested, so this forces each in turn on seed 8143 — and runs the three creature encounters through tools/playthrough.mjs, the same runFight the lethality and focus baselines come from, against this scenario's own declared six rather than the frozen four. THE THREE DOSSIER SCENES CHANGED NOTHING. The party assembled one item of three and rolled 62 against 63 — exactly the roll they would have made with all three, because Borrowed Authority says items improve the credential and never the roll. Correct as a rule, catastrophic as staging: the act's best three scenes had no effect any player could see, and pass 1 could not find it because there the amendment failed and the question never arose. The items now buy scope instead. Same roll, three different worlds: a narrow amendment that stops the ash and leaves the site sealed, a lifted seal, or records above ground for the sixty-one so Kit Marlow can leave. ALL THREE CREATURES ARE INVISIBLE TO THE DICE. STERILISATION ORDER, THE CORRECTION and ENUMERATED are all classified outOfCombat in powers.mjs, so every measured number is a measurement of the creature's arms and legs and of nothing that makes it frightening. That is correct bookkeeping, not a defect in the guard, and it means the GM's text carries the whole threat at the climax. It did not. The overwriter now comes with four printed corrections specific to this case, and with the fact that force does not work: measured, one of them cannot meaningfully hurt anybody and five grind for forty rounds finishing nothing, so the end of the world was landing as an inconclusive scuffle. EXPOSURE wiped all six in fifteen rounds with five dead, without the sterilisation blast firing at all. The warning was right and understated. It now prints the six-round countdown that lived only in the bestiary entry, the argue-down as a named Borrowed Authority stretch, and what a failure costs — five rounds reaches the adit and does not reach the crèche. The best ending was three sentences, less than the failure branch beneath it, and now plays out properly: the tannoy, nobody cheering, Pennyfeather filing it, and Joan sweeping a yard that stays swept. The four-player cut was one sentence from disaster. Science (Biology) and Medicine are the only skills that vanish with Okonkwo and Nkemdirim, the cut note happened to reassign exactly those two clues, and check-rollable never saw any of it because the cast declaration names six and the cut is prose. Both clues are now written on Knowledge and Insight for every table size, so nothing load-bearing depends on an unguarded sentence. All twenty-one guards pass, and the document has entered check-figures' strict regime now that it carries citations. Still untested: ending 1, and with it Pennyfeather speaking the cost and the pen held above the paper — pass 1's two headline fixes. Pass 3 is the player chair, contrarian, and should cancel. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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@@ -8,9 +8,9 @@
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| **Version** | **v0.2**, 15 September 2026 — absorbs desk playtest 1's fix list |
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| **Version** | **v0.3**, 15 September 2026 — absorbs desk playtests 1 and 2 |
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| **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone,** with the compendium for sheets and the three bestiary creatures. |
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| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No.** One desk pass, no human runs. `STANDING_ORDER_PLAYTEST_1.md` (GM chair, seed 5291) measured Act Two twenty minutes hot and found the Revelation 3 fallback circular; both are fixed here. Endings 2 and 3-succeeding and the quarantine unit are all still untested. |
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| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No.** Two desk passes, no human runs. `_1.md` (GM chair, seed 5291) found Act Two twenty minutes hot and the Revelation 3 fallback circular. `_2.md` (Act Three stress, seed 8143) forced endings 2 and 3 and EXPOSURE through the real fight harness, and found the three dossier scenes had no visible effect, the best ending was three sentences, and all three creatures' powers are invisible to the dice. All fixed here. **Ending 1 is still untested**, and with it both of pass 1's headline fixes. |
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| **What it is** | A **three-act one-shot**. It ends in the session; there is no second part and the text must not promise one. |
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| **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in Casting and the build enforces it. |
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| **Runtime** | Budgeted **3h00 of play** in three acts of 45 / 55 / 50 minutes plus a ten-minute break. Desk pass 1 ran **~3h00 of play against 2h30 planned** — Act Two carried the whole overrun and now has a written cut. |
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@@ -295,9 +295,9 @@ Use whichever fits the group; all three are live and the department used all thr
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| # | Clue | Where | How found | What it gives | Type |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 1 | The ash is not ash | The verges, the yard | `[CUS: Science (Biology) — it is not combustion product and it is not mineral; it has a grain structure, like something milled]` | The boundary is a *place*, not a contamination | Essential |
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| 1 | The ash is not ash | The verges, the yard | `[CUS: Knowledge — it is not combustion product and it is not mineral; it has a grain structure, like something milled]` | The boundary is a *place*, not a contamination | Essential |
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| 2 | The ash has an edge | Walking the field boundary | `[CUS: Navigate — the line is straight for 400 m and then turns exactly 90°, which weather does not do]` | It is surveyed. Somebody drew it | Supporting |
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| 3 | The dog's records | Joan's kitchen, the vet's note | `[CUS: Medicine — nine days of healing in an animal that was gone overnight]` | Time runs differently **in the ash**, not in the site | Supporting |
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| 3 | The dog's records | Joan's kitchen, the vet's note | `[CUS: Insight — the vet's note is hedged in a way a vet's note never is; nine days of healing in an animal that was gone overnight]` | Time runs differently **in the ash**, not in the site | Supporting |
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| 4 | Joan's fifty-two years | Joan herself | `[CUS: Persuade — she has a box of her father's papers she has never shown anyone]` | Her father was a Sheldon works foreman in 1974 and was told to stop digging | Supporting |
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| 5 | The vent head | Sheldon Moor, 3/4 mile up | `[CUS: Spot — a mushroom vent in the heather, painted to lose itself, warm to the hand]` | The site is **live** — something down there is breathing | Essential |
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| 6 | The postal pipe | Beside the vent head | `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a sealed 4-inch pneumatic line, pressurised, and the seal is 1974 and unbroken]` | The route in, and where SO-H01 came from | Essential |
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@@ -529,8 +529,30 @@ always worked, and it is what a warrant card is *for*.
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**2. LET IT RENEW.**
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Sowerby signs. Nothing visibly happens. Then the correction begins, and the **overwriter**
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arrives to perform it — five bodies, correcting one fact the party relies on every round,
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retroactively and truly. See the bestiary; it cannot be dropped and it is not *trying* to
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fight anybody. It is doing the filing.
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retroactively and truly. It is not *trying* to fight anybody. It is doing the filing.
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⚠ **This is not a fight and the party cannot stop it by force. Say so.** Desk pass 2 ran it
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through the real harness: one of them cannot meaningfully hurt anybody, five of them ground
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for forty rounds and finished nothing, and the party experienced the end of the world as an
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inconclusive scuffle. Each body destroyed slows the corrections by 10% and that is the
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entire return on shooting it. **The threat is THE CORRECTION and the dice will not deliver
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one word of it — the GM has to.**
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**The four corrections, in order. Read them; do not improvise at the climax.**
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1. **The adit is not where they left it.** It never was. The way they came in comes out
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four hundred metres further down the moor, and always has.
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2. **The warrant card names somebody else.** Hand the card back to its player and tell
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them the name on it. It has always been that name. *(Use the agent who has spent the
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least Coherence — they have the furthest to fall.)*
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3. **There was never a dog.** Joan Wetherlaw has always lived alone, and the tissue on
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Nkemdirim's bench is a sheep's, and the vet's note is in a hand nobody recognises.
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4. **Bellhouse has always had two hundred and thirty-two people in it.** Let the table do
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the arithmetic themselves. Then tell whichever agent is standing nearest the wall that
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one of them is wearing their coat.
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**After the fourth, stop.** The case is over and the region is being corrected; anything
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further is the GM enjoying it, and this ending is not for enjoying.
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- **What happens:** Region 12 is corrected to match the record. This is the end of the
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world and the scenario does not flinch from letting the table choose it.
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@@ -556,7 +578,20 @@ This is a **Borrowed Authority** problem and is run by those rules:
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- **The roll:** `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — the amendment has to be filed as a correction of a
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1974 clerical error, which is what it is]`, at −20 per red flag broken. Each dossier
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item makes the credential better, never the roll easier.
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- **Success:** the order stands, amended. Nobody dies. The ash stops by the weekend.
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- **Success — and what the dossier bought.** ⚠ **The number of dossier items does not
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change this roll and never did.** Borrowed Authority is explicit: items make the
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*credential* better, not the roll easier. Desk pass 2 assembled one item of three and
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rolled exactly the same 62 against 63 it would have rolled with all three, which made
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the act's best three scenes mechanically invisible. **So the items buy scope. Same roll,
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three different worlds:**
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| Items | What the amendment grants |
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|---|---|
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| **One** | **Narrow.** Bellhouse keeps running and the ash stops by the weekend — but the scope covers the *ground*, not the people. The site stays sealed. Nobody ever comes up, and the sixty-one stay unrecorded |
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| **Two** | **The seal lifts.** The order no longer requires the Seat to stay under it. They can come up, and some of them do, and Sowerby is not among the first |
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| **Three** | **The sixty-one get records.** Kit Marlow can leave, and there is a birth certificate with her name on it dated 2009, and reality has always had one |
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Read the row they earned. **Do not read the better one because it is kinder.**
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- **Failure:** the amendment does not take. **Do not fall straight through.** Sowerby's
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pen stops *above the paper* and stays there for one full round of table talk — he has
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been handed a reason to hesitate and he is a man who has never been allowed one. Play
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@@ -568,7 +603,31 @@ This is a **Borrowed Authority** problem and is run by those rules:
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makes it a decision rather than a reflex — it is not optional staging.**
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- **Coherence:** widening a scope with Coherence is legal here and it always works. It
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costs 1 per widening and the agent's file and Bellhouse's converge one step. Nothing in
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this game converges them back.
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this game converges them back. **A table one item short can buy the next row up this
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way**, and should be told the price before they spend it, not after.
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**What the good ending actually looks like, to read at the table.** Desk pass 2 earned this
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ending and found it was three sentences long — less scenario than the failure branch got.
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It is what the whole case is for, so play it out:
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> *Sowerby reads the amendment twice. He asks one question — "and the region?" — and
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> Pennyfeather says "not ours any more, Controller," and he puts the pen down without
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> signing the renewal, which is the first time in fifty-two years anybody has done that.*
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Then, in this order, because the order is the point:
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1. **The tannoy.** He broadcasts it himself, because he broadcasts everything. Two hundred
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and thirty-one people hear that the war is over in the only sense that was ever going
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to be available to them.
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2. **Nobody cheers.** Give the table the silence. These people have been *right* for
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fifty-two years and have just been told they were right about the wrong thing.
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3. **Pennyfeather files it**, because it is not real until it is filed, and she is the one
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who has always known that.
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4. **Then the row they earned, above.** If the seal lifted, somebody goes up. Let it be
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Larkhall, and let her not say anything at all.
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5. **The ash.** By the weekend Joan Wetherlaw sweeps her yard and it stays swept. **She is
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the last image of the case** — she does not know what happened and nobody will ever
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tell her, and she goes inside.
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### Teague
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@@ -609,10 +668,28 @@ said "I carried a chair"; this is the fix, and it costs the act nothing.
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If the agents call the incident in as a containment failure rather than an arrangement, the
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department sends a **quarantine unit**, and it gets there first.
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**Read the bestiary entry before you put it on the table.** It is recorded there as
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lethal to a four-player party on its own, and its STERILISATION ORDER renders the site
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with everyone still in it. It *can* be argued down with a higher authorisation — which is
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another Borrowed Authority problem, and the same credential from ending 3 answers it.
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**Read the bestiary entry before you put it on the table.** Desk pass 2 ran it against
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this scenario's own declared six — not the four-player baseline — and it **wiped all six in
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fifteen rounds, five of them dead**, *without the sterilisation blast firing at all*,
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because that power is out of the fight harness. The recorded figure against the frozen four
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is a wipe rate of **87.4%**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.quarantine_unit.wipe -->. **The
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real encounter is worse than the number, and the number is already a party-killer.**
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**Run it as a clock, not as a fight. All three of these go on the table, out loud:**
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- **The countdown is six rounds and the GM tracks it openly.** It is in the bestiary entry
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and nowhere else, and a GM who has not read that entry will not run it — which removes
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the only thing that makes this survivable. **Count down out loud from six.**
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- **The argue-down is a Borrowed Authority stretch**, one tier beyond scope, using the same
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Ellerby-Stannard credential as ending 3: `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — a standing authorisation
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outranks a containment order, and the unit knows it]`, at −20 per red flag broken. **Each
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dossier item they assembled for ending 3 counts here too.** *Success:* the unit stands
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down where it is and waits for Centre, which takes days. *Special:* it stands down and
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its officer gives them a name to call.
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- **Failure is not the end of the attempt.** The countdown continues and they may try once
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more before it expires, at −20. If it runs out they are in a BLAST of 6d6 with a radius
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of the whole location, and so is everybody in Bellhouse. **Five rounds is enough to reach
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the adit and it is not enough to reach the crèche, and the players should be told that.**
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**This is the scenario telling the truth about its own setting:** the fight is the failure
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state, and the paperwork is the way out. Do not spring the unit as a twist. If a player
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@@ -714,7 +791,7 @@ Deliberately **not** CLEAN GROUND's six, so the two cases exercise different she
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| 2 | **Arun Bhattacharya** — Registry Officer | The return landed on his section's desk | Research (SO-H02, the birth register), Knowledge (the 1962 survey), Anomaly Lore (**the ending-3 roll**) |
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| 3 | **Kate Renshaw** — Interview Officer | Because everyone down there wants to talk | Insight 63 (**Marlow**, Teague, Pennyfeather — all three), Persuade (Joan, and Pennyfeather's counter-signature), Listen |
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| 4 | **Marek Kowalczyk** — Probationary, engineering | Somebody has to read the plant | Repair (Electronics) (**the relay**), Repair (Mechanical) (the pipe), Engineering (Field Systems) (the blast door) |
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| 5 | **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim** — Probationary, medicine | The dog tissue is on his bench | Medicine (the dog), Science (Biology) (the ash), Insight |
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| 5 | **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim** — Probationary, medicine | The dog tissue is on his bench | Insight 58 and Knowledge 58 — **he reads the dog and the ash with those**, so the clues survive the four-player cut; Listen, Persuade |
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| 6 | **Ben Okonkwo** — Field Officer, containment | In case it is the other kind of case. It is not | Athletics, Brawl, Firearm (Rifle) — **and the scenario is built so he never needs them.** His beat is Teague in Act Three: stand still and let him come |
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**Casting note for Okonkwo's player, given before the game:** this case has no fight the
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@@ -722,8 +799,17 @@ party has to win. He is not wasted — he is the one who carries Marlow's chair,
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adit, and stands beside Teague without raising anything. Tell his player that up front, the
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way CLEAN GROUND tells Ashcroft's.
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**At four players,** cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim; move the ash to Bhattacharya's Knowledge
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and the dog to Renshaw's Insight, both of which are rated well enough to carry it.
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**At four players,** cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim. **No clue needs reassigning** — desk pass 2
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audited the four remaining sheets and found that Science (Biology) and Medicine were the
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only two skills that vanished with them, so clues 1 and 3 were rewritten onto Knowledge
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and Insight for every table size and the scenario no longer calls for either.
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⚠ **Why that matters more than it looks.** `check-rollable` holds this document to its
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`<!-- cast: -->` declaration, which names six. **A four-player cut written as prose is
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checked by nothing.** The old version worked only because one sentence reassigned two
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clues correctly; edit that sentence, or add a Medicine call to Act One, and four-player
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tables silently lose two clues with every guard still green. Nkemdirim still reads the dog
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tissue — he just reads it with Insight.
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---
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@@ -0,0 +1,224 @@
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# STANDING ORDER — desk playtest 2 (Act Three stress, forced branches)
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**Scenario version:** v0.2, after playtest 1's fix list
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**Date:** 15 September 2026
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**Method:** the house cadence's second pass — **a stress re-run of the weakest act**.
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Playtest 1 resolved Act Three in eight minutes of fifty and left three of its four
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branches untested, so this pass forces each one in turn rather than playing a session.
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Rolls from the seeded roller (mulberry32, **seed 8143**, consumed in printed order).
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**The three creature encounters are not narrated from imagination** — they are run through
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`tools/playthrough.mjs`, the same `runFight` the lethality and focus baselines are
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recorded from, against this scenario's own declared six.
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**Roll tape (seed 8143, in order):**
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`14 · 94 · 88 · 62 · 87 · 97 · 1 · 67 · 64 · 72 · 60 · 17 · 33 · 42 · 27 · 93 · 81 · 14 · 21 · 10 · 88 · 96 · 37 · 56 · 12 · 69`
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**Verdict up front: the v0.2 fixes hold, and the act has a worse problem underneath them.
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The three dossier scenes have no mechanical effect on anything, the best ending is three
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sentences long, and every one of the three creatures' powers is invisible to the dice —
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so at the climax the scenario's whole threat rests on text that is not yet written.**
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---
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## The thing this pass exists to say
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All three creatures carry their entire threat in a power classified **`outOfCombat`** in
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`tools/powers.mjs`:
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| Creature | Power | Classified | In the fight harness? |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Quarantine unit | STERILISATION ORDER | `outOfCombat` | **No** |
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| The overwriter | THE CORRECTION | `outOfCombat` | **No** |
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| The census | ENUMERATED | `outOfCombat` | **No** |
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**So every measured number below is a measurement of the creature's arms and legs, and of
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nothing that makes it frightening.** `check-powers` records fourteen powers as beyond the
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harness with a reason and these are three of them; that is correct bookkeeping and it is
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not a defect in the guard. It is a fact about what the numbers mean, and this document is
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the first place in the scenario's life where it matters.
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⚠ **Consequence: the GM's text has to carry the whole threat at the climax, and right now
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it does not.** Act Three tells the GM what the overwriter *is* and never once tells them
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what it should actually correct.
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---
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## Branch A — ending 3 succeeds *(the ending the document calls the best one)*
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Forced by having the party attempt all three dossier scenes.
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| # | Beat | Roll | vs | Result |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 1 | Bhattacharya, Research, Marlow's memo | 14 | 63 | success *(special by one)* |
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| 2 | Bhattacharya, Knowledge, the 1962 survey | 94 | 63 | fail |
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| 3 | Renshaw, Persuade, Pennyfeather's signature | 88 | 63 | fail |
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| 4 | **Bhattacharya, Anomaly Lore, the amendment** | **62** | 63 | **SUCCESS, by one** |
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⚠⚠ **A1. THE THREE DOSSIER SCENES CHANGED NOTHING.** The party assembled **one** item of
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three and the amendment roll was 62 against 63 — **exactly the roll they would have made
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with all three, or with none.** Borrowed Authority says items make the credential better
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and never make the roll easier, which is correct as a rule and catastrophic as staging:
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the scenario spends its best three scenes on something that, as written, has no readable
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effect on any outcome the players can see.
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**This is the act's real defect and playtest 1 could not see it**, because there the
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amendment failed and the question never arose.
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*Fix direction:* Act Three must say what a better credential **buys in this case**. The
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honest answer is in the rules already — scope and Trust, not the roll. Concretely: with
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one item the amendment is granted but **narrow** (Bellhouse keeps running and the ash
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stops, but the site stays sealed and nobody ever comes up); with two, the seal lifts;
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with three, the sixty-one get records above ground and Kit Marlow can leave. **Same roll,
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three different worlds.** That makes the dossier scenes matter without touching the rule.
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⚠ **A2. The best ending is three sentences long.** *"The order stands, amended. Nobody
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dies. The ash stops by the weekend."* The failure branch beneath it has four paragraphs
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and a creature. The table that earns the good ending gets less scenario than the table
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that does not, and I had nothing to read them.
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✅ **A3. The v0.2 "pen above the paper" pause was not reached** — it only fires on a failed
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amendment. Still untested. Playtest 3 should force it.
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---
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## Branch B — ending 2, let it renew
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Forced by having nobody intervene. Sowerby signs; the overwriter arrives.
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**Run through `playthrough.mjs`** — `--creature the_overwriter --count 5 --party
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holloway,kowalczyk,renshaw,bhattacharya,nkemdirim,okonkwo --seed 8143`:
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> **40 rounds · neither side finished it · 5 of 6 down · 2 dead**
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And solo against the frozen four, the recorded baseline is a wipe rate of
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**0%**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.the_overwriter.wipe --> over
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**6**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.the_overwriter.rounds --> rounds, with
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**0.25**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.the_overwriter.down --> of four down.
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⚠⚠ **B1. The end of the world is a forty-round stalemate.** One overwriter cannot
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meaningfully hurt anybody; five of them grind for forty rounds and finish nothing. Either
|
||||
way the table experiences the apocalypse as an inconclusive scuffle with a thing that
|
||||
will not die — and because THE CORRECTION is out of the harness, **none of what makes it
|
||||
terrible happened at all.**
|
||||
|
||||
⚠⚠ **B2. Act Three never tells the GM what to correct.** The power is "once a round it
|
||||
corrects one FACT the party is relying on… retroactive and true". That is a magnificent
|
||||
mechanic and the scenario hands the GM an empty box at the exact moment they are busiest.
|
||||
*Fix:* print **four corrections, in order, specific to this case** — the adit is not where
|
||||
they left it; the warrant card names somebody else; Joan Wetherlaw has always lived alone
|
||||
and there was never a dog; *Bellhouse has always had two hundred and thirty-two people in
|
||||
it, and one of them is wearing your coat.*
|
||||
|
||||
⚠ **B3. Ending 2 should probably not be a fight at all.** The text already says it "is not
|
||||
trying to fight anybody. It is doing the filing." The measured numbers say the fight is
|
||||
unwinnable *and* unlosable, which is the worst of both. **Say plainly that the party
|
||||
cannot stop this by force, and that shooting it only slows the corrections by 10% a body.**
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Branch C — EXPOSURE, the quarantine unit
|
||||
|
||||
Forced by having an agent call the incident in as a containment failure.
|
||||
|
||||
**Run through `playthrough.mjs`** — same party, `--creature quarantine_unit --seed 8143`:
|
||||
|
||||
> **PARTY WIPED in 15 rounds · 6 of 6 down · 5 dead**
|
||||
|
||||
The recorded baseline against the frozen four is a wipe rate of
|
||||
**87.4%**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.quarantine_unit.wipe -->, with
|
||||
**3.69**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.quarantine_unit.down --> of four down in
|
||||
**7**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.quarantine_unit.rounds --> rounds.
|
||||
|
||||
✅ **C1. EXPOSURE's warning is correct and if anything understated.** Six agents, not four,
|
||||
and it still wiped them — **and the sterilisation blast never fired**, because it is out
|
||||
of the harness. The real encounter is worse than the number.
|
||||
|
||||
⚠ **C2. The argue-down has no printed target.** The text says it "can be argued down with
|
||||
a higher authorisation — which is another Borrowed Authority problem, and the same
|
||||
credential from ending 3 answers it." It does not say which skill, against what, or what
|
||||
happens on a failure. I rolled Bhattacharya's Anomaly Lore 63 for it: **87, fail** — and
|
||||
then had nothing. *Fix:* print it as a stretch with the credential, and print the failure:
|
||||
the countdown continues and they have five rounds to leave.
|
||||
|
||||
⚠ **C3. The six-round countdown is not in the scenario text.** It is in the bestiary entry
|
||||
and a GM who has not read that entry will not run the clock, which is the only thing that
|
||||
makes the encounter survivable. **Print it in EXPOSURE.**
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Branch D — the four-player cut
|
||||
|
||||
The scenario says: *"At four players, cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim; move the ash to
|
||||
Bhattacharya's Knowledge and the dog to Renshaw's Insight."*
|
||||
|
||||
Audited against the four sheets that remain:
|
||||
|
||||
| Skill | Best at four |
|
||||
|---|---|
|
||||
| **Science (Biology)** | **nobody at all** |
|
||||
| **Medicine** | **nobody at all** |
|
||||
| Insight | Renshaw 63 |
|
||||
| Research / Knowledge / Anomaly Lore | Bhattacharya 63 |
|
||||
| Repair (Electronics / Mechanical), Engineering | Kowalczyk 58 |
|
||||
| Navigate / Stealth / Athletics | Holloway 63 |
|
||||
| Spot | Holloway 40 |
|
||||
|
||||
✅ **D1. The reassignment is correct and it is load-bearing.** Science (Biology) and
|
||||
Medicine are the *only* two skills that vanish at four, and they are exactly the two the
|
||||
cut note reassigns — clue 1 to Knowledge 63 and clue 3 to Insight 63. Both land.
|
||||
|
||||
⚠⚠ **D2. No guard checks the four-player cut, and it is one sentence from disaster.**
|
||||
`check-rollable` holds the document to its `<!-- cast: -->` declaration, which names six.
|
||||
The cut is prose. **If anybody ever edits that sentence, or adds a Medicine call to Act
|
||||
One, four-player tables lose two Act One clues and every guard stays green.** This is the
|
||||
same defect class as playtest 1's circular fallback: a real dependency that nothing
|
||||
mechanical is watching.
|
||||
|
||||
*Fix direction:* either declare the cut as a second cast marker if the guard supports more
|
||||
than one, or — cheaper and certain — **stop calling for Science (Biology) and Medicine at
|
||||
all** and write clues 1 and 3 on Knowledge and Insight for every table size. The flavour
|
||||
does not change; Nkemdirim still reads the tissue, he just reads it with Insight.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Fix list
|
||||
|
||||
**P1 — must fix before pass 3**
|
||||
|
||||
1. **A1 · Make the dossier items buy something visible.** Same roll, three different
|
||||
worlds: narrow amendment at one item, the seal lifts at two, the sixty-one get records
|
||||
above ground at three. Goes in Act Three, ending 3.
|
||||
2. **B2 · Print four specific corrections for the overwriter.** The GM cannot improvise a
|
||||
retroactive fact-edit at the climax. Goes in Act Three, ending 2.
|
||||
3. **C2/C3 · Finish EXPOSURE.** Print the six-round countdown, the argue-down as a named
|
||||
Borrowed Authority stretch, and what a failed argue-down costs.
|
||||
|
||||
**P2**
|
||||
|
||||
4. **A2 · Write the good ending properly.** It is currently three sentences and it is what
|
||||
the scenario is for.
|
||||
5. **D2 · Take Science (Biology) and Medicine out of the scenario entirely** and write
|
||||
clues 1 and 3 on Knowledge and Insight, so the four-player cut stops depending on one
|
||||
unguarded sentence.
|
||||
6. **B3 · Say the overwriter cannot be stopped by force**, and that each body destroyed
|
||||
slows the corrections by 10%.
|
||||
|
||||
**P3**
|
||||
|
||||
7. **A3 · The pen-above-the-paper pause is still untested.** Force a failed amendment in
|
||||
pass 3.
|
||||
8. Pennyfeather's spoken cost in ending 1 is **also still untested** — this pass reached
|
||||
ending 3 and ending 2, never ending 1. Pass 3 should be the player chair, contrarian,
|
||||
and should cancel.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## What this pass did not test
|
||||
|
||||
- **Ending 1**, and therefore both of playtest 1's headline fixes: Pennyfeather saying the
|
||||
number out loud, and the pen held above the paper.
|
||||
- **A full session end to end.** This was a branch stress, not a run; it says nothing new
|
||||
about the clock.
|
||||
- **The census in play** — measured harmless in a fight
|
||||
(**0.1%**<!-- cite: lethality creatures.the_census.wipe --> wipe) and its real power is
|
||||
out of the harness like the other two.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user