diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_11.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_11.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e5b312 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_11.md @@ -0,0 +1,242 @@ +# CLEAN GROUND — desk playtest 11 (the table that shoots) + +**Scenario version:** v0.21, at commit 4b491b1 +**Date:** 13 September 2026 +**Method:** the last of the original four untested branches, played. A party that opens fire +at the Act Three swap, resolved honestly through `runFight` at a 400-round cap — **seed +7311** for the played fight, 2000 runs at seed 11 for the distribution around it. Six +players, the declared cast. + +**Why this pass.** Ten passes closed with *a fight the players choose* still unplayed, and it +is the one branch dice alone cannot reach: it needs a table that decides to shoot. So this +pass supplies the decision and rolls everything after it. It is also the first pass to run +the fight since v0.16 measured what one costs and v0.21 rewrote the Close's failure case. + +**Verdict: the party survives the fight and the document does not survive the aftermath. Two +blocks two hundred lines apart tell a GM to run two different fights for the same trigger, +and nothing anywhere covers what the valley looks like at dawn once they have.** + +--- + +## The fight, played + +Act Three, the swap fails in front of everybody, and the party fires into the column the +hollow man was standing in. + +``` + six agents vs six hollow men + two of the column seed 7311, cap 400 + 16 rounds · 5 of 6 hurt · 3 down · 2 DEAD · 3 standing · party won +``` + +And the distribution it came from, 2000 runs at seed 11: + +| | | +|---|---| +| Mean agents dead | **0.97** | +| Mean rounds | **23.2** | +| Party wiped | 8.3% | + +**The party usually wins and usually buries somebody.** At three to four minutes a round — +still an estimate, still unmeasured at a real table — 23 rounds is **70 to 93 minutes**, +against an Act Three budgeted at fifty that already carries a twenty-minute peg bomb. + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 1 — two blocks, two hundred lines apart, specify two different fights + +**"What to do instead of a fight", at the foot of EXPOSURE:** + +> **If they fire on the column, do not soften it. Use three, resolve it honestly**, and let +> the survivors keep walking north past them. + +**"The fight above is not the fight the table will have", added in v0.16:** + +> The trigger is the ordinary one — a hollow man tries the swap in Act Three, fails in front +> of everybody, and the party fires into the column it is standing in… **Two is the honest +> default.** + +Those are not the same fight, and the difference is the whole finding: + +| What the GM is told to run | Hurt | Down | Wiped | Deaths/run | Median rounds | +|---|---|---|---|---|---| +| **"Use three"** — three of the column, alone | 1.88 of 6 | 0.40 | **0.1%** | 0.16 | 5 | +| **Six hollow men + two of the column** | 5.01 of 6 | 2.79 | **8.3%** | 0.97 | 21 | + +**One is a skirmish that ends in five rounds and kills nobody. The other takes an act and +buries an agent.** A GM who reads the instruction at the foot of EXPOSURE runs the first; a +GM who reads the block at the top runs the second; and the trigger is the same beat. + +- **The mild one omits the six at the back**, who are the reason the party is shooting. The + hollow man that just tried to climb into a colleague is one of them, and it does not stop + being in the scene because the instruction only counts refugees. +- ⚠ **This is mine, and it is the v0.16 pattern again.** I added the mixed-fight block and + never reconciled it with the instruction two hundred lines below that already answered the + same question. Desk pass 7 found the same shape — v0.16 wrote the trigger into EXPOSURE + and never wrote EXPOSURE into the trigger — and this is the other half of it: the new block + never looked at what the old one said. +- **Fix direction:** one of them is wrong and it is the old one. *"Use three"* predates the + measurement. Delete the number, point at the mixed rows, and keep the good half of that + sentence — *let the survivors keep walking north past them* is the best line in the + aftermath and it is the only one. + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 2 — forty-one is load-bearing arithmetic and the fight changes it + +**"Forty-one" appears sixteen times.** It is the almanac handout's printed count — +*Counted this morning: forty-one* — it is the distance in miles on every line of both pages, +it is the moral weight of cancelling (*forty-one living people*), and it is the number the +Close's decision is taken over. + +**A party that fires on the column kills some of them.** The played fight ran two of the +column into the ground; the mild version kills up to three. **Nothing in the document says +the count has moved**, and the count is in the players' hands on a printed sheet. + +- **The handout does not update.** H03a is given in Act Two. If the fight happens in Act + Three, the table is holding a piece of paper that says forty-one while they can see it is + not. That is either the best accident in the scenario or an unhandled error, and the + document should decide which. +- **It is the best accident in the scenario, and it should be written as one.** The almanac + is a record kept by somebody who counts every morning. **Ivy will count again tomorrow and + write a different number** — and the handout in the players' hands becomes a document about + what they did, without anybody saying so. +- **The Close's arithmetic moves too.** Cancelling kills thirty-nine, not forty-one, and + *they already killed two*. A table that has shot people arrives at "the forty-one are not + killed, exactly" having already killed two of them, and the scene is different. + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 3 — Ivy is unplaced in the one scene that decides whether the Close happens + +EXPOSURE says what she does *before* the shooting: + +> Ivy holds the line by consent and will spend it to stop a firefight; **she is one woman +> against a column that has met armed men before.** + +**And then nothing.** She is not placed in the fight, not named as a target or a non-target, +and not accounted for afterwards. Every one of those matters, because **the Close is her +scene** — she walks south, she asks the question, and v0.21 gave the whole act a failure +case built around her being dead. + +- **A GM running this honestly has to decide, mid-firefight, whether the woman standing + between two armed groups is in the target pool.** That decision changes the last + twenty-five minutes of the session and the document leaves it to the moment. +- **She should not be a target, and the reason is not mercy.** She walked *toward* the guns + to stop this, which puts her in front of the column rather than in it — and the scenario + needs her alive far more than it needs the honesty of a random roll. Say so, once, + explicitly, and let the GM stop worrying about it. +- v0.21's dead-Ivy failure case should stay regardless — she can die elsewhere, and a party + that shoots *her* deliberately has made a choice the document should still cover. + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 4 — a taken PC gets six lines and a dead one gets nothing + +Act Four, for a PC the understudy takes: + +> **If a PC is taken:** hand that player the understudy sheet and a private note. **They keep +> playing. Do not sideline them**, and do not let it run past twenty minutes. + +That is exactly right, and v0.21 added six more lines about what it means when the PC is +Ashcroft. **There is nothing anywhere for a PC who simply dies** — and dying is far commoner: +a mean of **0.97 agents per fight**, against a taken PC's 40.7% of one beat in one branch. + +- **This is a convention one-shot.** The played fight killed two agents in Act Three, which + leaves two players with **ninety minutes and no character**, in a slot they paid for. +- The scenario already has the machinery: **the duty roster has sixteen agents** and the + cordon is on the real side. A replacement can walk through the seam in the time it takes + to hand over a sheet. +- **Fix direction:** one paragraph. Registry sends the next name on the roster, they arrive + at the seam within the hour, and they arrive *knowing nothing* — which gives the table + somebody to explain the case to out loud, and the GM a free recap at exactly the point a + four-hour session needs one. + +--- + +## FINDING 5 — the fight's real cost is the act, and the Pacing Note is now nearly right + +v0.16 added the instruction to take every cut the moment dice come out. Measured against +this pass: **23.2 rounds, 70–93 minutes, in a fifty-minute act.** Taking every remaining cut +saves about twenty. **The act still cannot hold it**, and the Pacing Note's own words — +*"if a fight starts, none of this is enough"* — turn out to be exactly accurate. + +- That is not a defect; it is a correct warning that could be one sentence more useful. + **The honest instruction is that a fight in Act Three ends Act Three**, and the northern + seam, the depot and the telling-Ivy scene are all gone. The GM should be told which three + things they are losing rather than left to discover it at 2:30. + +--- + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 6 — the cooperation block has no answer for the party shooting the door + +*Found by the concurrent session (b5) while playing the anchor branch, and verified here +against `roster.mjs` and `content.mjs` before it was written down.* + +v0.21's new block at 1008–1027 handles the thing taking Ashcroft, and it handles it well — +**it holds the door, correctly and patiently, because that is what the file says an anchor +does.** But every line of it **assumes the party lets it**: *do not have it sabotage the +crossing*, *play the gratitude*. + +**The obvious player move is not there.** A party that has just watched this thing take a +colleague, that knows REHEARSED means it acts before whoever it copies, and that does **not** +know it needs them alive, shoots it. Line 1301 covers killing it in the first ten minutes +wearing Prichard's face — pre-crossing, and Act Two carries on. **Between that precedent and +the cooperation block there is nothing.** + +**And the cost is exact arithmetic, which is why it wants a paragraph rather than a shrug.** +Transposition is Ashcroft's alone: + +| | Transposition | +|---|---| +| Ashcroft | **63** | +| Bhattacharya, Renshaw, Braithwaite, Pollard, Okonkwo | *untrained — the 1% floor* | + +**Five agents, one attempt each, is a 4.90% chance that anybody gets a door open.** Shooting +it strands the party on the far side with the seam closing, and **the Close cannot happen, +because cancellation is a Registry act and nobody is back through to perform it.** + +- The block already reasons in exactly this register two lines further down — *"Not Scent. + Scent's base chance is 0 and the 1% floor is all anybody has, so it is not a route — it is + a joke at the table's expense."* **The shape of the answer is already on the page.** It + simply never considers the party removing Ashcroft themselves. +- ⚠ **Same defect as FINDING 1, and as pass 7's, and as pass 10's.** Facts correct in three + separate places that have never been stood next to each other — here the new block, the + statblock line at 1479, and the Act Two kill-it precedent at 1301. +- **Fix direction:** one bullet inside the block. If they shoot it, they have shot the way + home; play the five 1% rolls honestly and let the table watch what 4.90% looks like; and + the GM should know **before** Act Four that this is where that branch ends, rather than + finding out with ninety minutes left. + +## Timing + +| Act | Budget | This pass | +|---|---|---| +| Three, with the fight | 50 | **~115** | +| Three, with the fight and every cut taken | 50 | ~95 | + +--- + +## Fix list + +1. **⚠ Delete "use three" and point at the mixed rows.** *(EXPOSURE, "What to do instead of a + fight")* It predates the measurement and it contradicts the block two hundred lines above + it. Keep *let the survivors keep walking north past them*. +2. **⚠ Say that the count moves, and make the handout do the work.** Ivy counts every + morning; tomorrow she writes a smaller number, and the sheet in the players' hands becomes + a record of what they did. +3. **⚠ Place Ivy in the firefight — out of it, and say so once.** She walked toward the guns, + which puts her in front of the column rather than in it. The Close needs her. +4. **⚠ Write the dead PC.** A mean of one agent per fight, ninety minutes left, and nothing + on the page. Registry sends the next name on the roster; they arrive knowing nothing, + which buys the table a recap. +5. **Name what a fight in Act Three costs**, rather than only that it costs: the northern + seam, the depot, and telling Ivy. +6. **⚠ Answer the party that shoots the thing wearing the anchor.** *(Act Four, inside the + 1008–1027 block)* The whole block assumes cooperation. Killing it is the obvious move and + it leaves five untrained agents on a 4.90% chance of opening a door, with no Close. + *(Found by session b5; verified here.)* + +**Still untested after eleven passes:** the run with human beings. **That is the whole list +now** — every branch the desk can reach has been reached.