A player briefing, and the historical range

The generator was already writing the timeline, the cast and the texture and
filing all of it behind the GM screen. New PLAYERS page: a read-aloud opening,
what it is like there, what is known so far, who is there and what they want —
but never what they lie about. Page ownership is now declared by the page rather
than guessed from its index, which would have hidden any second player page.

Historical range: 38 weapons (from 6) and 14 armours (from 2), each with its
period stated, from arming swords and longbows through matchlocks and Brown Bess
to the Lee-Enfield and a trench club. Five new skills to hang them on, including
Firearm (Muzzle-loader), because a muzzle-loader is not a rifle.

275 icons; every weapon maps to a real skill and every item has art. Catalogue is
206 items across four eras.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-08-10 23:02:20 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 22a5067153
commit e2d0ed5bb2
90 changed files with 685 additions and 83 deletions
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@@ -3973,3 +3973,50 @@ Verified in play on PLAIN HARBOUR: extraction failed at 47%, the card read *"You
out, but not cleanly. The window has narrowed... The way home: −10% on every
Transposition roll"*, the clock went to 1, and all four crossings took −10%. Nobody
lost a hit point.
## A briefing, and a millennium of ironmongery
**The players now get a briefing, not a memo.** The generator was already writing the
timeline, the cast and two lines of texture that are the best prose in the whole
document — and filing every word of it behind the GM screen. A new PLAYERS page:
- a read-aloud opening built from the classification, the place and the window;
- **what it is like there** — the texture, with the note that none of it is in the
file, because the file was written by somebody who was not there;
- **what is known so far** — the timeline as a table;
- **who is there** — the cast by name, role, and what they want from you, but never
what they lie about, which stays on the GM page where it belongs;
- and a short "before you go" that tells a new player the three things this game
expects of them: sign for your kit, bring somebody who can make an arrangement,
keep your anchor on you.
Ownership is now **declared by the page** rather than guessed from its index — the
old `i === 0 ? 2 : 0` would have silently hidden any second player page. Two player
pages, four GM pages, 300 seeds checked clean.
Two bugs in my own prose, caught by reading the output: `classification.texture` is a
LIST and was being printed comma-joined into a sentence, and the "since then..."
line was reaching for the last timeline entry, which is *the team crosses* — so every
briefing ended "since then it has not stopped, and the team crosses."
**The historical range.** The department has been running since before it had a name
and has never thrown anything away.
- **38 historical weapons** (from 6): arming sword, longsword, falchion, war hammer,
mace, military flail, poleaxe, halberd, billhook, pike, quarterstaff, dirk, longbow,
arbalest, sling, javelin, rapier, main gauche, matchlock, wheellock, blunderbuss,
boarding pike, cavalry sabre, smallsword, cutlass, Brown Bess, Baker rifle, socket
bayonet, Martini-Henry, Webley, Lee-Enfield, trench club — each with its period
stated, because a GM handing out a matchlock should know it is a matchlock.
- **14 historical armours** (from 2): gambeson, maille shirt, coat of plates, cuirass,
full harness, buff coat, sallet and bevor, lobster-tail helmet, jack of plate,
cuirassier armour, Brodie helmet, flak jacket. Weight is the point — full harness is
9 AP and 25 kg, and the free-carry rule does the rest.
- **Five new skills** to hang it on: Melee Weapon (Polearm), Melee Weapon (Flail),
Missile Weapon (Sling), Missile Weapon (Thrown), and **Firearm (Muzzle-loader)** —
because a muzzle-loader is not a rifle and loading it is the skill.
- **275 icons**, all generated; every weapon maps to a real skill and every item has
art, both checked.
Catalogue is now **206 items**: 118 gear, 62 weapons, 25 armour, 14 vehicles — 145
modern, 77 antique, 34 future, 19 anomalous.