Desk playtest 6: the four branches five passes never reached
A branch pass, not a session pass. Seed 3319. For each untested branch the roller draws from the stream until the roll lands in the target band; every roll downstream of it is taken as it falls, and the draw counts are printed. All four branches work as written. The Swinburne fumble is better than the drawer, the re-cut peg costs the twenty minutes the text promises, and a failed Xenology no longer strands Act Four — the v0.14 un-gated tell carried the act with BOTH gated lines failed, which is the strongest result here. What the pass actually found is outside the branches: 1. The fight the table produces is not the fight the document measures. The six at the back stand inside forty-one refugees. Six hollow men alone wipe 0.0%; with two of the column joining, 7.8%; with three, 28.7%. Stable across four seeds. EXPOSURE measures the two forces separately and never says what the column does when somebody fires into it. 2. At four players six hollow men wipe 58.7%, and the only hollow-man figure in the document is the six-player 0.0%. EXPOSURE's four-player block — which exists to say the cut is a different game — has no hollow-man row. The curve from three to six is 0.3% to 58.7%. 3. The Act Three warning names the wrong roll. Its twenty-minute bomb hangs off "Anomaly Lore — what a peg is"; the depot entry is a Research roll. Pass 4 inherited the same confusion and nobody noticed, because the text it was checked against carried the error. 4. GM ESSENTIALS understates every fumble band. "00 always fumbles" reads as 1%; fumbleStart is 101 - ceil((101-band)/20), tested first, so Spot 40 fumbles on 97-00. Four times what the summary implies, in a scenario that rolls Spot 40 through two acts. 5. EXPOSURE prices fights in bodies and never in minutes. Median 13 rounds printed, 24 mixed, 30 at four players. Also: simulate.mjs labels a mixed force with the first spec's name and the total count, so 6 hollow men + 6 column prints as "12 x Hollow man". The composition is right and the header is not; every figure above came out of a run whose header lied about what was fought. First run in six passes where Ashcroft refused THE OFFER, and the first where a player character was taken. Seven fixes listed, unapplied. npm run check: 18 guards pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
co-authored by
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5
parent
1a80d3637c
commit
e70d25271f
@@ -0,0 +1,330 @@
|
||||
# CLEAN GROUND — desk playtest 6 (the four untested branches)
|
||||
|
||||
**Scenario version:** v0.15, at commit 8705b00
|
||||
**Date:** 13 September 2026
|
||||
**Method:** **branch pass, not a session pass.** Seeded roller, **seed 3319**, banding from
|
||||
`rules.mjs`. Earlier passes were 4271, 9314, 5580/7731, 6142, 8815.
|
||||
|
||||
**Why this pass.** Five passes closed with the same four lines, unchanged each time:
|
||||
|
||||
> *Still untested after five passes: the Swinburne fumble branch, the re-cut-the-peg
|
||||
> fumble, a failed Xenology in Act Four, and any fight at all.*
|
||||
|
||||
Three of those are rare — a 2% band, a 2% band, a 47% miss nobody happened to roll — and
|
||||
waiting for a sixth honest session to walk into them is waiting for something that may never
|
||||
arrive. So this pass **forces the trigger and then plays honestly from there**: for each
|
||||
branch the roller draws from the seed's stream until the roll lands in the target band, and
|
||||
every roll downstream of it is taken as it falls. The draw counts are printed so the forcing
|
||||
is visible. **Nothing after a forced trigger was chosen.**
|
||||
|
||||
**Every rating was read out of `roster.mjs` through `expandFromRegister`, not recalled** —
|
||||
the standing consequence of pass 4 typing six of sixteen from memory and pass 5 overstating
|
||||
one of its own. The sheet is printed below so the next pass can check it rather than trust it.
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
Ashcroft anomaly_lore 63 · insight 63 · listen 63 · dodge 63 · spot 40 · research 40 POWx5 85 NO WEAPON
|
||||
Bhattacharya research 63 · anomaly_lore 63 · insight 40 · spot 40 · dodge 43 POWx5 75 pistol_light
|
||||
Renshaw insight 63 · persuade 63 · listen 63 · psychology 40 · spot 40 · dodge 43 POWx5 70 pistol_light
|
||||
Braithwaite medicine 53 · xenology(baseline) 53 · insight 53 · research 53 · spot 35 POWx5 60 dagger
|
||||
Pollard listen 53 · spot 53 · dodge 53 · brawl 53 · anomaly_lore 35 POWx5 65 cudgel
|
||||
Okonkwo firearm(rifle) 53 · brawl 53 · dodge 53 · spot 35 · anomaly_lore 33 POWx5 55 rifle_med, prybar
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
**Verdict: all four branches work as written. What this pass found is not in the branches —
|
||||
it is that the scenario measures a fight nobody will have, and prices no fight in minutes.**
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## The rolls, in order
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
seed 3319
|
||||
|
||||
ACT ONE — the Swinburne fumble, FORCED
|
||||
Renshaw Persuade — Swinburne 100 vs 63 FUMBLE [27 draws, band 99-100]
|
||||
Braithwaite Medicine — the body 63 vs 53 failure
|
||||
Bhattacharya Research — Corrigan's paperwork 85 vs 63 failure
|
||||
Ashcroft Spot — the stump, walked to in silence 85 vs 40 failure
|
||||
|
||||
ACT TWO — the column
|
||||
Renshaw Persuade — the column 78 vs 63 failure
|
||||
Pollard Spot — the same six, and the same six yesterday 93 vs 53 failure
|
||||
Ashcroft Insight — it is offered, not remembered 27 vs 63 SUCCESS
|
||||
|
||||
ACT THREE — the re-cut peg, FORCED
|
||||
Bhattacharya Research — RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN) 27 vs 63 success
|
||||
Ashcroft Anomaly Lore — what a peg is 100 vs 63 FUMBLE [103 draws, band 99-100]
|
||||
hollow man swap 75 rolled 58 success vs Okonkwo 55 rolled 31 success
|
||||
→ equal band, goes to the resisting side. OKONKWO HOLDS.
|
||||
|
||||
ACT FOUR — the Xenology that fails, FORCED
|
||||
Braithwaite Xenology (Baseline) — the understudy 91 vs 53 FAILURE [2 draws]
|
||||
Renshaw Insight — it is word-perfect 39 vs 63 success
|
||||
Renshaw Psychology — it thinks it is the file 42 vs 40 failure
|
||||
|
||||
COUNTDOWN STEP 5 — Ashcroft REFUSED, so it takes the lowest POW
|
||||
understudy 75 rolled 34 success
|
||||
Okonkwo 55 rolled 59 failure
|
||||
→ winner ACTIVE · settled TRUE · OKONKWO IS TAKEN
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
**A hostile seed, and deliberately not re-rolled.** Act One returned nothing at all: the
|
||||
body, the paperwork and the stump all missed, on top of a fumbled Swinburne. That is the
|
||||
worst opening any pass has produced and it is the right conditions for a branch test.
|
||||
|
||||
**Two things happened here for the first time in six passes.** Ashcroft **refused** THE
|
||||
OFFER — passes 4 and 5 both had him accept, and every published figure about him assumed
|
||||
that. And **a player character was taken**, which is the one Act Four outcome the text
|
||||
writes instructions for and no pass had reached.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## The four branches, one at a time
|
||||
|
||||
### 1. The Swinburne fumble — WORKS, and the text is right to like it
|
||||
|
||||
She produced the dog. The walk to the stump in silence is a better Act One than the drawer
|
||||
and the document's claim that *"the GM should not regret the fumble"* survives contact.
|
||||
|
||||
- ⚠ **But this seed found the compounding case the branch does not consider.** Medicine
|
||||
failed, Research failed, the Spot at the stump failed. **The party leaves Act One with a
|
||||
hostile witness, no coroner's note, no Corrigan, and nothing from the stump** — and the
|
||||
fumble branch's compensation, *"H01 still reaches them, later and from the coroner"*, is
|
||||
then the **only** thread out of the act. The branch is written as though it is the one
|
||||
thing that went wrong. It is the branch most likely to be surrounded by other failures,
|
||||
because a table that rolls badly rolls badly all evening.
|
||||
- Not a defect in the branch. A missing sentence: **when the fumble lands, the GM should
|
||||
pull H01's arrival forward to the break rather than leaving it floating in Act Two.**
|
||||
|
||||
### 2. The re-cut peg — WORKS, and it costs exactly what the text says
|
||||
|
||||
Fumbled Anomaly Lore, the agent concluded with complete confidence the peg could be re-cut,
|
||||
and the table spent twenty minutes on it. The instruction *"let them try it exactly once"*
|
||||
is the right instruction and the silence at the end of it does teach what the text claims.
|
||||
|
||||
- ⚠ **The warning at the top of Act Three names the wrong roll.** It says the bomb fires *"if
|
||||
anybody fumbles **Anomaly Lore on the depot entry**"*. The depot entry is a **Research**
|
||||
roll — `[CUS: Research — RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN)]`. The twenty-minute branch hangs off a
|
||||
different beat entirely: `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — what a peg is, and what losing one does]`.
|
||||
**A GM who reads the warning and watches the depot-entry roll is watching the wrong die.**
|
||||
- This is not new. **Pass 4 inherited the same confusion** — its post-pass says it re-checked
|
||||
"98 against Anomaly Lore 63" *on the depot entry*, which is a roll that does not exist. The
|
||||
correction was right about the band and wrong about the beat, and nobody noticed because
|
||||
the warning it was checking against had the same error in it.
|
||||
|
||||
### 3. A failed Xenology in Act Four — WORKS, and the v0.14 fix is CONFIRMED
|
||||
|
||||
Braithwaite rolled 91 against 53. The tell arrived at beat 3 as written, un-gated, in front
|
||||
of the whole cordon, and **the act had a route**. This is the exact failure that killed desk
|
||||
pass 1, and the fix that was written for it has now been tested rather than reasoned about.
|
||||
|
||||
- Renshaw's Insight succeeded and the GM said the sentence out loud — *you read him
|
||||
carefully, and there is nothing wrong with him*. From the chair it lands as the thesis and
|
||||
not as a bug, which is what desk pass 1 doubted.
|
||||
- Psychology failed, so *"it thinks it is the file"* surfaced in beat 3 unprompted, per the
|
||||
missed-case. **Both of Act Four's gated lines failed in the same run and the act still
|
||||
worked.** That is the strongest thing this pass has to say.
|
||||
- ⚠ **Xenology has no fumble case and its fumble band is wider than the GM thinks** — see
|
||||
finding 4 below. At 53 it fumbles on 98–00, and the document says nothing about what a
|
||||
fumbled Xenology on the understudy produces. It should: the obvious wrong answer —
|
||||
*"this is a baseline human, I am certain"* — is available, useful and unwritten.
|
||||
|
||||
### 4. A fight — PLAYED, and it is the wrong fight
|
||||
|
||||
See the two findings below. This is where the pass earned its seed.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## ⚠ FINDING 1 — the fight the table produces is not the fight the document measures
|
||||
|
||||
The honest trigger arrived on its own: **a hollow man tried the swap on Okonkwo in Act Three
|
||||
and failed in front of everybody.** The column is present in that act. The six at the back
|
||||
walk with it. A party that has just watched something try to climb into a colleague is a
|
||||
party that shoots, and what they shoot into is forty-one refugees.
|
||||
|
||||
**EXPOSURE measures "six hollow men" and "six of the column" as separate encounters.
|
||||
The table produces them added together, and the document never says what the column does
|
||||
when somebody fires into it.**
|
||||
|
||||
`tools/simulate.mjs`, 2000 runs, seed 11, the cast of six:
|
||||
|
||||
| What they actually fight | Hurt | Down | Wiped | Deaths/run | Median rounds |
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
| Six hollow men, column stands off | 3.48 of 6 | 0.42 | **0.0%** | 0.04 | 13 |
|
||||
| **+ two of the column** | 5.02 of 6 | 2.78 | **7.8%** | 0.98 | 21 |
|
||||
| **+ three of the column** | 5.55 of 6 | 4.07 | **28.7%** | 1.56 | 24 |
|
||||
| + six of the column | 5.99 of 6 | 5.88 | **92.0%** | 2.33 | 16 |
|
||||
|
||||
**Two of forty-one taking a swing moves the encounter from "nobody dies" to one wipe in
|
||||
thirteen. Three moves it to better than one in four.** The printed row is 0.0%, and the
|
||||
printed row assumes a crowd that stands still while its neighbours are shot.
|
||||
|
||||
- **Stable across seeds**, so this is not one cold stream: wiped at 11 / 4242 / 90210 / 8815
|
||||
is 7.8 / 7.5 / 7.3 / 7.5% at two, and 28.7 / 29.1 / 27.8 / 28.5% at three.
|
||||
- The document already knows the shape of this — *"the curve between six and ten is almost
|
||||
vertical and a GM improvising bodies will cross it without noticing"* — and then prints a
|
||||
hollow-man row that invites exactly that improvisation from the other direction.
|
||||
- **Fix direction:** one row and one sentence in EXPOSURE. The six at the back are never
|
||||
fought alone, and the GM's real question is not *how dangerous are they* but *how many of
|
||||
the column join in*. Two is the number that matters.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## ⚠ FINDING 2 — at four players, six hollow men wipe 58.7%, and the only figure printed is 0.0%
|
||||
|
||||
This one is worse, because it is a number the document prints for a table it explicitly
|
||||
supports.
|
||||
|
||||
| Four-player cut | Hurt | Down | Wiped | Deaths/run | Median rounds |
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
| Three hollow men | 2.80 of 4 | 0.33 | **0.3%** | 0.03 | 13 |
|
||||
| **Six hollow men, column stands off** | 3.94 of 4 | 3.40 | **58.7%** | 0.42 | 30 |
|
||||
| + two of the column | 4.00 of 4 | 4.00 | **99.9%** | 1.11 | 9 |
|
||||
|
||||
**EXPOSURE's four-player block contains no hollow-man row at all.** It lists three of the
|
||||
column and six of the column, and its whole purpose is to say *the cut is a different game*.
|
||||
A GM running four players looks up the hollow men, finds **0.0% wiped**, and is reading the
|
||||
six-player table.
|
||||
|
||||
- Stable: 58.7 / 60.5 / 60.3 / 59.8% across the four seeds.
|
||||
- **The curve from three to six is near-vertical at four players — 0.3% to 58.7%** — which is
|
||||
the same cliff the document warns about for the column between six and ten, in a place it
|
||||
does not warn about.
|
||||
- **And the hollow men are the ones the party is most likely to shoot**, because they are the
|
||||
only figures in the valley the scenario tells the players are not people. The encounter
|
||||
with the lowest moral cost is the one that wipes the smaller table.
|
||||
- The four-player block's own explanation applies unchanged and should be borrowed: Ashcroft
|
||||
carries no weapon, so the cut is three effective attackers against six.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## ⚠ FINDING 3 — GM ESSENTIALS understates every fumble band in the scenario
|
||||
|
||||
GM ESSENTIALS says: *"96–99 never succeed; 00 always fumbles."*
|
||||
|
||||
Both halves are true and together they read as *a fumble is a roll of 00*. The rule in
|
||||
`rules.mjs` is `fumbleStart = 101 - ceil((101 - band) / 20)`, tested **before** the 96–99
|
||||
clause, so the fumble band widens as the skill falls:
|
||||
|
||||
| Rating | Fumbles on | Chance |
|
||||
|---|---|---|
|
||||
| 85 | 00 | 1% |
|
||||
| 63 | 99–00 | 2% |
|
||||
| 60, 53 | 98–00 | 3% |
|
||||
| 40, 35, 25 | 97–00 | **4%** |
|
||||
|
||||
**At Spot 40 a fumble is four times as likely as the essentials line implies**, and the cast
|
||||
rolls Spot 40 repeatedly through two acts. Every fumble branch this pass was written to test
|
||||
is commoner than the document's own rules summary suggests — which is an argument for the
|
||||
branches, not against them.
|
||||
|
||||
- Verified with `gradeRoll`: 98 against 63 is a **failure**; 98 against 53 is a **fumble**;
|
||||
97 against 40 is a **fumble**; 96 against 40 is a failure.
|
||||
- Pass 4's post-pass got its own case right — 98 against Anomaly Lore 63 is a plain failure —
|
||||
but got it right from the 96–99 clause rather than from `fumbleStart`, which is the same
|
||||
answer by luck. Had the rating been 53 the correction would have been wrong.
|
||||
- **Fix direction:** one clause in GM ESSENTIALS. *A fumble is the top 1/20th of the failure
|
||||
range — 00 at high skill, 97–00 at 40 or below.*
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## ⚠ FINDING 4 — EXPOSURE prices fights in bodies and never in minutes
|
||||
|
||||
The whole section is built around *what a fight costs*, and the cost it never states is the
|
||||
one that ends conventions.
|
||||
|
||||
| | Median rounds |
|
||||
|---|---|
|
||||
| Six hollow men, six players *(printed row)* | **13** |
|
||||
| Six hollow men + three of the column | **24** |
|
||||
| Six hollow men, four players | **30** |
|
||||
| Six of the column, six players *(printed row)* | 14 |
|
||||
|
||||
A d100 round with six agents and nine opponents is not a fast round. At three to four minutes
|
||||
each — an estimate, not a measurement, and it should be measured — **the encounter this
|
||||
scenario warns about is a sixty-to-ninety minute encounter.** Act Three is budgeted at fifty
|
||||
minutes and already carries a twenty-minute bomb.
|
||||
|
||||
- This pass hit both in the same act: fumbled peg **plus** the fight it triggered. With the
|
||||
northern seam cut taken the act still cannot absorb them together, and nothing in the
|
||||
Pacing Note contemplates a fight at all.
|
||||
- EXPOSURE's five numbered lessons are all about lethality. **There should be a sixth: a
|
||||
fight in this scenario costs the rest of the session, and that is a better reason not to
|
||||
have one than the wipe rate.** A GM who is told the party probably survives has been told
|
||||
the less important half.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Minor — `simulate.mjs` mislabels a mixed fight
|
||||
|
||||
`--creature a,a,a,b,b` builds the right force and prints the wrong name for it. Six hollow
|
||||
men and six of the column print as **"12 x Hollow man"**, taking the first spec's name and
|
||||
the total count. The composition is correct — 12 hollow men wipe 3.5% of parties and the
|
||||
mixed twelve wipe 92.0%, so the two are not being confused internally — but **anything
|
||||
pasted out of that header into a document is false**, and every figure in findings 1 and 2
|
||||
came out of a run whose header lied about what was fought.
|
||||
|
||||
Caught only because the header was read. It is the same shape as R-278's unread parameter
|
||||
and R-264's summed armour: the tool was right and its report was not.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Timing
|
||||
|
||||
**This is not a session timing pass** — passes 4 and 5 measured the clock and nothing here
|
||||
supersedes them. These are branch costs, measured against v0.15's budgets:
|
||||
|
||||
| | Budget | This pass | Note |
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
| Act One, everything failed + the dog | 45 | ~40 | Fewer clues means fewer conversations, not more |
|
||||
| Act Three, fumbled peg, seam cut taken | 50 | ~55 | Exactly as the warning predicts |
|
||||
| Act Three **with the fight** | 50 | **~115** | The act cannot hold it. Nothing says so |
|
||||
| Act Four, both gated lines failed | 45 | ~45 | On budget, un-gated tell carried it |
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Player-hat verdicts
|
||||
|
||||
| Archetype | Verdict | Score |
|
||||
|---|---|---|
|
||||
| Methodical veteran | Act One returned nothing and the dog was still the best scene of the night | 8/10 |
|
||||
| Roleplay-first talker | Walking to the stump behind a woman who will not speak to you — best silence in the case | 9/10 |
|
||||
| Quiet tactician | Shot the six at the back, and would do it again. Nobody at the table knew what that cost | 4/10 |
|
||||
| Lore-digger | Spent twenty minutes re-cutting a peg and learned more from it failing than from the depot | 8/10 |
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## Fix list
|
||||
|
||||
1. **⚠ Measure the fight the table will actually have.** *(EXPOSURE)* Add the mixed rows —
|
||||
six hollow men with two and three of the column joining, **0.0% → 7.8% → 28.7%** — and
|
||||
say plainly that the six at the back are never fought alone and the GM's live question is
|
||||
how many of the column join in.
|
||||
|
||||
2. **⚠ Give the four-player block a hollow-man row.** *(EXPOSURE)* **58.7% wiped** against
|
||||
the 0.0% currently printed, with the 0.3%-at-three row beside it so the cliff is visible.
|
||||
The encounter with the lowest moral cost is the one that wipes the cut.
|
||||
|
||||
3. **⚠ Fix the Act Three warning's roll name.** The twenty-minute bomb is on **Anomaly Lore —
|
||||
what a peg is**, not on the depot entry, which is a **Research** roll. Correct pass 4's
|
||||
post-pass in the same breath; it inherited the error.
|
||||
|
||||
4. **⚠ State the real fumble band in GM ESSENTIALS.** "00 always fumbles" reads as 1% and is
|
||||
4% at Spot 40. One clause: *the top twentieth of the failure range, so 97–00 at 40 or
|
||||
below.*
|
||||
|
||||
5. **Add the sixth EXPOSURE lesson: a fight costs the session.** Median 13 rounds on the
|
||||
printed row, 24 mixed, 30 at four players. Price it in minutes beside the wipe rate, and
|
||||
put a line in the Pacing Note about what to cut when one starts.
|
||||
|
||||
6. **Write the fumbled Xenology.** At 53 it fumbles on 98–00 and the document is silent.
|
||||
*"This is a baseline human, and I am certain"* is the obvious wrong answer and it is worth
|
||||
more than a shrug.
|
||||
|
||||
7. **Minor: label mixed fights in `simulate.mjs`.** A run of `a,a,b` prints as "3 x A".
|
||||
|
||||
**Still untested after six passes** — the list is finally shorter, and honest about why:
|
||||
a fight that the *players choose* rather than one this pass reasoned them into; Act Four with
|
||||
a PC taken **and** Ashcroft having accepted, which is the pairing the countdown was written
|
||||
for; and the first human run, which remains the only thing that can settle whether any of
|
||||
this survives a table.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user