From df38be794ba3ee67d25685607350a6d5dc6ff047 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: slaguru666 <111923774+slaguru666@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2026 15:58:32 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Desk playtest 8: the cold read, and the outcome nobody wrote MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Two halves: the document taken as a GM meeting it thirty minutes before a slot, measured rather than impressioned; and an honest session, six players, seed 5108, nothing forced. Three versions of fixes had landed since anything was played, every one written by somebody who already knew the document. 1. The climactic roll has three outcomes and the document describes two. opposedContestFor returns taken, resisted outright, and unsettled. The taken and unsettled figures are printed and both reproduce exactly, so the source has always been right. Resisted outright appears nowhere — 48.1% against the default target, 74.3% against an Ashcroft who refused, which v0.17 established is what most tables have. It is the single most likely result of the scenario's climax. Worse than an omission: the paragraph below is headed WHEN STEP 5 COMES TO NOTHING, is entirely about unsettled, and carries the beat's only read-aloud — so a GM whose agent simply won finds text written for a different outcome. Enumerated over all 10,000 roll pairs; no seed. 2. EXPOSURE's "five things" are six and run 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5. Introduced in my own v0.16 (aa3ae24) and survived two versions, five guard additions and a peer's sweep. The insertion anchored on the end of item 4's block, which sits before item 5 in the file; asserting 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 — seven passes of dice found nothing here because dice never read a heading. 3. EXPOSURE is 3,176 words, 18% of the document, 2.5x the act it sits inside, in a scenario whose thesis is that the fight is not the point. Recorded as a judgement, not a defect: nothing in it is padding and I wrote the largest block of it. But it is sixteen minutes about the encounter the document exists to prevent. 4. An open question the fixes already answered — Xenology has not been on the critical path since v0.14 un-gated the tell, and pass 6 ran the act with it and the Psychology both failed. 5. check-outcomes measured 85% of sessions hitting an unwritten special; the next honest session hit one, on Act Four's Psychology. One session is not a rate, but the number describes something real. Working: v0.17's Swinburne special fired and is right. No broken cross- references; every counted claim but EXPOSURE's checks out. Swap failed a third time running and Ashcroft refused a third time — both what the numbers predict, recorded so the next pass reads no streak into them. Five fixes listed, unapplied. npm run check: 19 guards pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_8.md | 238 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 238 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_8.md 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.