diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_8.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_8.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f9e8af --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_8.md @@ -0,0 +1,238 @@ +# CLEAN GROUND — desk playtest 8 (the cold read, and the outcome nobody wrote) + +**Scenario version:** v0.18, at commit 8a051f7 +**Date:** 13 September 2026 +**Method:** two halves. **A cold read** — the document taken as a GM meeting it thirty +minutes before a slot, measured rather than impressioned: section sizes, counted claims, +cross-references, and whether the STATUS block still tells the truth. **And an honest +session**, six players, seeded roller, **seed 5108**, nothing forced. Earlier passes: 4271, +9314, 5580/7731, 6142, 8815, 3319, 7742. + +**Why this pass.** Three versions of fixes (v0.16, v0.17, v0.18) have landed since anything +was played, and every one of them was written by somebody who already knew the document. +The only thing left before a human run is whether a GM who does *not* know it can run it +from the page — which no dice pass can reach and which a human run will punish first. + +**Verdict: the most likely outcome of the scenario's climactic roll is not written down. +It is not the one that is taken and it is not the one that is unsettled; it is the agent +simply winning, which happens 48.1% of the time against the default target, and the +document describes the other two and not that one.** + +--- + +## The rolls, in order + +``` +seed 5108 — no forcing + +ACT ONE + Bhattacharya Research — Corrigan's paperwork 92 vs 63 FAILURE + Braithwaite Medicine — the body 87 vs 53 FAILURE + Renshaw Persuade — Swinburne 8 vs 63 SPECIAL + Pollard Spot — the stump 39 vs 53 success + Bhattacharya Knowledge — the squared notch 53 vs 63 success + +ACT TWO + Renshaw Persuade — the column 52 vs 63 success + Pollard Spot — the same six at the back 86 vs 53 FAILURE + Ashcroft Insight — it is offered, not remembered 19 vs 63 success + → ASHCROFT REFUSES THE OFFER (third pass running) + +ACT THREE + Bhattacharya Anomaly Lore — the sky has not moved 20 vs 63 success + Bhattacharya Research — RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN) 49 vs 63 success + Ashcroft Anomaly Lore — what a peg is 30 vs 63 success + hollow man swap 75 rolled 56 success vs Okonkwo 55 rolled 17 success + → resisting. OKONKWO HOLDS. Third pass running. + +ACT FOUR + Braithwaite Xenology (Baseline) — the understudy 28 vs 53 success + Renshaw Insight — it is word-perfect 38 vs 63 success + Renshaw Psychology — it thinks it is the file 5 vs 40 SPECIAL + COUNTDOWN STEP 5 + understudy 75 rolled 23 success vs Okonkwo 55 rolled 19 success + → RESISTING WINS OUTRIGHT. Nobody is taken. +``` + +**The luckiest seed in eight passes, and it walked straight into the gap.** Nobody is taken, +which is neither of the two outcomes Act Four writes. + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 1 — the climactic roll has three outcomes and the document describes two + +Step 5 of the countdown is the moment the case has been building to. `opposedContestFor` +returns three things, and only two of them are on the page. + +Enumerated over all 10,000 roll pairs — no seed, reproducible from the rule: + +| Step 5 against | Taken | **Resisted outright** | Unsettled | +|---|---|---|---| +| **Okonkwo, POW×5 55 — the default target** | 40.7% | **48.1%** | 11.3% | +| Braithwaite, 60 | 37.6% | **52.4%** | 10.0% | +| Ashcroft, 85, refused | 21.9% | **74.3%** | 3.8% | +| Ashcroft, 85 → 42, accepted | 48.7% | **36.8%** | 14.5% | + +**The taken column and the unsettled column are both printed in the document and both +reproduce exactly**, so the source is right and has always been right. The middle column +appears nowhere. Against the default target it is **the single most likely result of the +scenario's climax**, and against an Ashcroft who refused — which is what most tables will +have, as v0.17 now says — it is **three outcomes in four**. + +- ⚠ **And the framing makes it worse than an omission.** The paragraph under the table is + headed *"WHEN STEP 5 COMES TO NOTHING"* and is entirely about **unsettled**: *"the rule + returns unsettled, which is not the agent winning"*. It then gives the one piece of + read-aloud the beat has — *for a moment it is wearing the wrong face*. A GM whose agent + simply **won** has come to nothing too, finds the only nearby text, and reads a + passage written for a different outcome. The document warns against confusing the two and + then supplies nothing for the commoner one. +- **This is not a rules problem.** The rule is right, the tie goes to the resisting side, + and GM ESSENTIALS says so. It is that the scenario priced the reach in *how often it + succeeds* and never wrote the far likelier case where a person holds. +- **Fix direction, and it wants to be good rather than merely present.** A clean resist is + the only moment in the case where somebody beats the thing on their own, and it should not + be a shrug. The material is already there: the understudy has practised for thirty years + and it is **not stupid** — it takes the easiest file. Being the file it could not open is + the one win the party gets all night. + +--- + +## ⚠ FINDING 2 — EXPOSURE's five things are six, and they run 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5 + +Introduced in **v0.16 (aa3ae24)** — my own commit — and survived two versions, five guard +additions and a peer's sweep without anybody noticing. + +``` + 999 #### The five things a GM needs from that table + 1001 1. Do not fix the understudy + 1006 2. Adding hollow men buys rounds, not danger + 1013 3. The column is the lethal encounter + 1020 4. The four-player cut is a different game + 1070 6. A fight costs the session <- inserted here + 1096 5. Their sheets read twice as effective as they are +``` + +The insertion anchored on the end of item 4's block, which in the file sits **before** item +5 rather than after it. The edit asserted a unique match and got one; a unique match +protects against editing the wrong text and not at all against inserting in the wrong place. + +- **No guard can see this and none should be built for it.** It is a numbered list in prose. + What it argues for is the cold read itself: seven passes of dice found nothing here, + because dice never read a heading. +- The heading also still says **five**. + +--- + +## FINDING 3 — EXPOSURE is 18% of the document and larger than any act + +Measured, not felt: + +| Section | Words | | +|---|---|---| +| **EXPOSURE** | **3,176** | 18% of the document | +| Act Two | 1,635 | the longest act | +| Act Four | 1,267 | **the act EXPOSURE sits inside** | +| Act One | 1,127 | | +| Act Three | 1,050 | | +| GM ESSENTIALS | 605 | | +| **Whole document** | **17,776** | ~90 minutes to read once, carefully | + +EXPOSURE is **two and a half times the act it is filed in**, in a scenario whose stated +thesis is that the fight is not the point. Its own heading concedes the filing is wrong — +*"Read before Act Two, not before Act Four."* + +- **This is a judgement, not a defect, and it is recorded as one.** Every figure in there was + added because a pass found a GM would get something wrong without it, and I added the + largest single block of it in v0.16. Nothing in it is padding. +- **But 3,176 words is sixteen minutes**, and it is sixteen minutes about an encounter the + document spends its whole length telling the GM not to have. A convention GM with thirty + minutes of prep who reads EXPOSURE has read half their prep budget on the fight they are + being told to avoid. +- **Fix direction:** not deletion. A **hundred-word summary at the top of EXPOSURE that a GM + can read instead**, with the body left as reference for the GM who has time or whose table + has already reached for a gun. The five — six — numbered lessons are nearly that already; + they are just at the bottom, after the tables. + +--- + +## FINDING 4 — an open question the document has already answered + +*"Scent is unusable... I moved Act Four's working test to Xenology (Baseline), which puts +Braithwaite on the critical path. Worth deciding whether you want the whole scenario's one +reliable test sitting on a single sheet."* + +**It no longer is.** v0.14 made the tell un-gated — *"Anyone who examines him properly finds +this, with no roll"* — and desk pass 6 ran the act with **both** Xenology and Psychology +failed and it held. The question was answered by the fixes and never closed, so it is still +sitting in Open Questions asking the author to decide something that has been decided. + +- Small, but it is the section where a reader is told what still needs their attention, and + a stale item there costs more than its word count. +- The other open item — *how hard do you want the PC-replacement, default NPC-first* — is + genuinely open and should stay. + +--- + +## FINDING 5 — the guard's 85% landed on the first honest pass after it was built + +Renshaw rolled **5 against Psychology 40 — a special** — on a beat that states a failure case +and nothing above it. `check-outcomes` measures the chance of a session hitting a special on +a beat with nothing written at **85%**, and the very next session hit one. + +- **Not evidence of a rate**; one session is one session, and the 85% is enumerated from the + rule rather than counted from play. It is a demonstration that the number describes + something real. +- The obvious special here is worth writing: *it is not pretending to be human, it thinks it + is the file* is already the best line in Act Four, and a special should buy **which file it + thinks it is** — that it corrects the agents on Prichard's service history, in the tone of + a man who has read his own record more recently than they have. + +--- + +## What worked + +**v0.17's Swinburne special fired, and it is right.** Renshaw rolled an 8. She produced the +note, walked them to the stump, and talked on the way — the dog in June, the vet who wrote +*suspected poisoning*. That is four months of the case's history arriving in Act One because +somebody rolled well, and it is exactly the shape GM ESSENTIALS now prescribes: portable, +private or early. **The fix pass 7 asked for works and needs nothing.** + +**The cold read found no broken cross-references.** All six pointers (*GM ESSENTIALS has*, +*EXPOSURE has*, *See Act Two*) resolve to sections that exist. Every counted claim except +EXPOSURE's checks out: three things, three clues, four beats, six revelations, five acts — +all correct. + +**Third pass running the swap has failed** (75 against POW×5 55, and the tie goes to the +resister), and **third running Ashcroft has refused.** Both are what the numbers predict — +refusing needs a 63% Insight — and neither is a defect. Recorded so the next pass does not +read a streak into them. + +--- + +## Timing + +Not re-measured. Passes 4, 5 and 7 own the clock, and this pass forced nothing and cut +nothing that would move it. Act One ran long on improvisation again — two failures and an +unwritten special — but within the ±5 the last three passes have shown. + +--- + +## Fix list + +1. **⚠ Write the outcome where the agent wins.** *(Countdown, Act Four)* **48.1%** against the + default target, **74.3%** against an Ashcroft who refused — the likeliest result of the + scenario's climax, and the only moment all night somebody beats the thing on their own. + Give it read-aloud of its own, and stop the *"COMES TO NOTHING"* paragraph from being the + nearest text to an outcome it is not about. +2. **⚠ Fix EXPOSURE's list: six items, in order, under a heading that says six.** +3. **Put a hundred-word summary at the top of EXPOSURE.** 3,176 words is sixteen minutes about + the encounter the document exists to prevent. Do not cut the body; give the GM in a hurry + somewhere to stop. +4. **Close the stale open question about Xenology.** v0.14 un-gated the tell and pass 6 proved + it; Braithwaite has not been on the critical path for four versions. +5. **Write the special on Act Four's Psychology** — which file it thinks it is. + +**Still untested after eight passes:** a fight the players choose; Ashcroft accepted *and* +taken; a hollow man that succeeds at the swap, now failed three times running; and the human +run, which is still the only thing that can settle whether a GM who did not write this can +run it.