CLEAN GROUND v0.17 — the good rolls now buy something

Applies desk pass 7's five fixes. The pass found the document covering two
bands out of five: seventeen failure cases written, four fumbles, three
specials — against 90.8% of sessions containing a special or critical on a
beat that says nothing, and 36.0% containing an unwritten fumble.

1. Specials written where they matter, starting with the two pass 7 rolled.
   A critical Persuade on Swinburne now buys her coming to the stump AND
   talking on the way — the dog went for something on the seam side in June
   and came back wrong, four months earlier than the case otherwise offers
   it. Previously a 1 bought what a plain success buys, which is worse than
   the fumble, and the fumble buys a dog. A special Xenology, a special
   Medicine (how long ago it stopped — the almanac's gap before the almanac)
   and a special Spot (the third set circles and goes back toward the seam)
   likewise. GM ESSENTIALS now states the shape the existing three share:
   portable, private or early, never more conversation.
2. The Act Three swap beat points at EXPOSURE. v0.16 named that beat as the
   trigger for the fight it measured and left the beat silent, with
   "survivable" as the last word before the decision — which is about the
   swap, not about what follows.
3. Every fumble branch prints its band. Three of four did not, and the one
   that did was the one written in v0.16.
4. The fumbled Medicine and fumbled Spot are written. Pass 7 hit both cold
   and lost ten minutes, because four beautifully specific fumble branches
   make their absence elsewhere read as an oversight rather than a licence.
5. Act Four says which branch its headline figures are for. Ashcroft refuses
   about five times in eight — passes 6 and 7 both did — and the 48.7%/14.5%
   pair is printed far more prominently than the 21.9%/3.8% one most tables
   will be in.

Every band printed was re-derived from resolveBands/gradeRoll by enumeration
rather than arithmetic, which is where the off-by-one lives.

Pass 7's finding 3 overstated itself and is corrected in the same commit: the
Close's fumble branch does name a skill, inheriting the Anomaly Lore tag from
the bullet above it. Post-pass appended.

npm run check: 18 guards pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md

@@ -9,10 +9,10 @@
 
 | | |
 |---|---|
-| **Version** | **v0.16**, 13 September 2026 |
+| **Version** | **v0.17**, 13 September 2026 |
 | **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone.** A GM with this file and the compendium can run it end to end. |
 | **Is it convention-ready?** | **Nearly.** The print pack is built (`CLEAN_GROUND_HANDOUTS.html`, held by `check-handouts`). What is missing is a run with human beings, and a slot. |
-| **Playtesting** | **Six desk passes, no human runs.** `_1.md` GM chair (seed 4271) · `_2.md` Act Four stress (9314) · `_3.md` player chair, contrarian (5580) · `_4.md` **the clock, against v0.13's recut timings** (6142) · `_5.md` **the four-player cut, played** (8815) · `_6.md` **the four untested branches, forced** (3319). Forty fixes plus two post-passes. Passes 4–6 describe the current timings; 1–3 ran against a 65-minute Act Two. |
+| **Playtesting** | **Seven desk passes, no human runs.** `_1.md` GM chair (seed 4271) · `_2.md` Act Four stress (9314) · `_3.md` player chair, contrarian (5580) · `_4.md` **the clock, against v0.13's recut timings** (6142) · `_5.md` **the four-player cut, played** (8815) · `_6.md` **the four untested branches, forced** (3319) · `_7.md` **an honest session, nothing forced** (7742). Forty-five fixes plus three post-passes. Pass 7 ran ~3:35 against 3:40 at six players with no cuts taken — the first honest pass inside the clock unaided. |
 | **What it is** | A **convention one-shot**, decided 13 September 2026. It ends in the slot; there is no second session and the text must not promise one. |
 | **Where it runs** | **Contingency 2027 — Sunday 31 January 2027, afternoon** (slot 9), Searles Leisure Resort, Hunstanton. |
 | **Runtime** | **3h30 of play plus a 10-minute break — 3h40 wall clock**, which is the house budget. Act Two was cut from 65 minutes to 45 in v0.13 to get there. The **Pacing Note** carries a further 65 minutes of cuts; take them as the default. |
@@ -81,6 +81,11 @@ premise (a walk north that never arrives) and the predator's method (imitation).
 
 - **System:** d100 roll-under. Special under a fifth, critical under a twentieth.
   96–99 never succeed; 00 always fumbles.
+- ⚠ **A SPECIAL IS COMMONER THAN A FUMBLE AND THE TEXT WRITES FEWER OF THEM.** At a rating
+  of 63 a special or better is **13%** and a fumble **2%**; at 53, **11%** against 3%. Desk
+  pass 7 enumerated it: **90.8% of sessions contain a special or critical on a beat with no
+  written case.** Where one is written the shape is always the same — the good roll buys
+  something **portable, private or early**, never more conversation. Improvise to that shape.
 - ⚠ **A fumble is the top twentieth of the FAILURE range, not just 00** — and that band
   widens as the skill falls. **00 at 85, 99–00 at 63, 98–00 at 53, and 97–00 at 40 or
   below.** Desk pass 6 found this document implying 1% throughout; at Spot 40 it is **4%**,
@@ -395,9 +400,20 @@ ever able to tell me.
   the players understand that an ordinary professional has been left holding this.
 - **Failure case:** if nobody asks for the note, Swinburne has a photocopy of it in a
   drawer because she was not satisfied with what she was told, and she will produce it.
-- **On a FUMBLED Persuade with Swinburne** — she has buried a dog and been fobbed off once
-  already, and the above is written for a party who never asked, not for one that asked
-  badly. **She does not produce the photocopy. She produces the dog.**
+- **On a SPECIAL or better with Swinburne (01–13 at Renshaw's 63; critical 01–04)**
+  — she produces the note *and* she comes with them. This is the mirror of the fumble below
+  and it exists because desk pass 7 rolled a **1** here and the best reading available was
+  "she is helpful", which is what a plain success already buys.
+  - She walks them to the stump herself, and **on the way she talks**: the dog went for
+    something on the seam side in June, came back wrong, and she had it put down by a vet
+    who wrote *"suspected poisoning"* because neither of them had a better word.
+  - **She is the only person in Act One who has seen this twice.** A critical buys her
+    saying so unprompted, four months earlier than the case otherwise offers it.
+  - **Do not let a good roll buy only more conversation.** She goes with them; the walk is
+    the reward and it costs the act nothing, because they were going to the stump anyway.
+- **On a FUMBLED Persuade with Swinburne (99–00 at Renshaw's 63)** — she has buried a dog
+  and been fobbed off once already, and the above is written for a party who never asked,
+  not for one that asked badly. **She does not produce the photocopy. She produces the dog.**
   - She walks them out to the stump and shows them where it died, and she does not speak on
     the way. Handing a rude stranger a document is a favour; showing them the thing that
     actually happened to her is not, and she is owed neither.
@@ -544,6 +560,13 @@ Same hand, same ruled paper, eleven years apart.*
   - `[CUS: Spot — three sets of tracks leaving the stump, and one set is not walking
     upright]` *Missed:* Swinburne says it for them. She has twice seen "something going
     away on its hands" and has told nobody, because of how it sounds.
+    - **On a fumble (97–00 at Spot 40, 98–00 at Pollard's 53):** the agent reads the felling
+      as storm damage and says so with confidence. **The party leaves the oak alone for the
+      rest of the act** and comes back to it in Act Three knowing what it is, which is a
+      worse order to learn it in and entirely playable. Swinburne's line still arrives.
+    - **On a special:** the third set does not leave. It circles, twice, and goes back
+      toward the seam — which is the first evidence in the case that something is *waiting*
+      rather than passing through.
 - **Ray Teasdale, the foreman** — the man who watched Corrigan come apart on 6 September,
   and the best eyewitness in the case. Desk pass 3 reached him from the employer's paperwork
   without going near the farm, so he must exist on the page.
@@ -558,6 +581,13 @@ Same hand, same ruled paper, eleven years apart.*
 - **The first body**, still in the pen. Thin in a way that is not starvation.
   `[CUS: Medicine — bone density of a man of forty; everything else of a man of ninety]`
   *Missed:* CG-H01 carries the same finding in Corbridge's own words.
+  - **On a fumble (98–00 at Braithwaite's 53):** he gives a confident age of death — mid
+    sixties, unremarkable — and the party has a number that is wrong in the direction that
+    makes everything else make sense. **Let it stand until CG-H01 contradicts it in
+    Corbridge's own words**, and let Braithwaite be the one to read the contradiction out.
+    Desk pass 7 hit this fumble with nothing written for it and lost ten minutes.
+  - **On a special:** he can say *how long ago it stopped* — about eleven years of wear on
+    a man dead a fortnight. That is the almanac's gap before the almanac arrives.
 - The seam at dusk. It does not look like anything. It smells like a fire that has been out
   for a long time. **No roll.**
 - **IF THEY WILL NOT GO THROUGH** — and a careful party should at least propose it, because
@@ -758,8 +788,9 @@ carelessness — this column has done this before, and it has lost people doing
   1861, and there is no older tree. A fresh notch in a fresh tree is a note in the margin of
   a document that was closed in 1962. **That is information, not a refusal**, and it is the
   moment the table understands that cancellation is the only lever there has ever been.
-  **On a fumble:** the agent concludes, with complete confidence, that the peg can simply
-  be **re-cut** — a fresh notch in a fresh tree will hold the entry and nobody need be
+  **On a fumble (99–00 at Anomaly Lore 63, and 97–00 for Pollard, Braithwaite or Okonkwo,
+  who are all in the thirties here):** the agent concludes, with complete confidence, that
+  the peg can simply be **re-cut** — a fresh notch in a fresh tree will hold the entry and nobody need be
   cancelled. It is wrong, it is the most attractive wrong idea available, and a table will
   spend twenty minutes on it. **Let them try it exactly once.** Cutting the notch does
   nothing whatsoever, and the silence of that failure teaches more about what the record
@@ -768,6 +799,13 @@ carelessness — this column has done this before, and it has lost people doing
 - **A hollow man tries the swap** — opposed POW×5 (GM ESSENTIALS has the ruling), 2
   Coherence. Survivable, and it is the table's first sight of the mechanism the understudy
   will use properly.
+  - ⚠ **THIS IS THE BEAT THAT STARTS THE FIGHT, AND "SURVIVABLE" IS ABOUT THE SWAP, NOT
+    ABOUT WHAT FOLLOWS.** A party that has just watched something try to climb into a
+    colleague shoots, and what they shoot into is the column it was standing in. **Read
+    EXPOSURE's "The fight above is not the fight the table will have" before running this
+    beat** — six at the back alone wipe nobody, with two of the column joining in they wipe
+    one party in thirteen, and at four players the six alone wipe better than half. The
+    Pacing Note says what to cut if it starts.
   - **It cannot touch an agent carrying an anchor that is genuinely their own** — that is
     its own statblock's clause, and it rules **Ashcroft out of this beat entirely**. Aim it
     at somebody else and let Ashcroft notice that he was skipped. He will draw the wrong
@@ -844,6 +882,11 @@ them. **Anyone who examines him properly finds this, with no roll.**
   - **Exception — if Ashcroft accepted THE OFFER in Act Two, it reaches for him instead**,
     because his file is already loose, and he resists **at Difficult** (85 → 42). That is
     what accepting cost him, and he was never told it.
+  - ⚠ **MOST TABLES ARE IN THE OTHER BRANCH, and the figures below are printed the wrong
+    way round for them.** Refusing needs a plain Insight success at 63, so **Ashcroft
+    refuses about five times in eight** — desk passes 6 and 7 both did, on honest rolls.
+    The accepting figures are the dramatic ones and they are the minority case. **Read the
+    refusing numbers first and treat the accepting ones as the branch you may not get.**
   - **What it cost, exactly.** Refusing, Ashcroft is taken **21.9%** of the time — the
     safest person in the room. Accepting, **48.7%**. Accepting does not make him *a bit*
     more vulnerable; **it moves him from the hardest file at the table to the easiest, past
@@ -1170,8 +1213,9 @@ side of it because she has walked south for the first time in sixty-four years.
   - **Anybody still in the duplicate when the entry is cancelled goes with it.** They were
     never filed as being there. Say this plainly the first time it is asked — a table that
     merely suspects it will not choose it, and the choice is the scenario.
-  - **On a fumble asking the question:** the agent is certain it can be done from here, and
-    that certainty is worth a Coherence to correct once somebody proves otherwise.
+  - **On a fumble asking the question** — that is the Anomaly Lore roll above, **99–00 at
+    63 and 97–00 for anybody in the thirties** — the agent is certain it can be done from
+    here, and that certainty is worth a Coherence to correct once somebody proves otherwise.
 - **Bring them through** — the thing the table will try. It costs Coherence per person
   at a rate no party can pay, and the record will not carry forty-one unfiled people.
   Let them get four across and understand what that means about the other thirty-seven.

docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_7.md

@@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ to line 80.
 | Persuade — Swinburne (63) | no — should read **99–00** |
 | Anomaly Lore — the peg (63) | no — the Act Three warning has it, the branch does not |
 | Xenology — the understudy (53) | **yes, 98–00 at his 53** |
-| The Close (line 1173) | no — and it names **no skill at all**, so there is no band to look up |
+| The Close (line 1173) | no — see the post-pass; it inherits Anomaly Lore from the bullet above it |
 
 The one that prints it is the one written in v0.16, which is the tell: the fix was applied
 where it was being thought about and not where the same need already existed. **Four words
@@ -240,9 +240,10 @@ thing this pass has to say about v0.13's recut.
    uses. v0.16 named that beat as the trigger for the fight it measured and then left the beat
    silent, with "survivable" as the last word before the decision.
 3. **⚠ Print the fumble band at each fumble branch.** Three of four do not. `99–00` at
-   Swinburne and at the peg. **The Close's is worse than missing a band — it names no skill**:
-   *"on a fumble asking the question"* has no `[CUS: …]` tag on it, so there is nothing to
-   roll and nothing to grade. Either tag it or make it a GM call in terms.
+   Swinburne, at the peg and at the Close — and the Close should say out loud which roll it
+   is hanging off, because the tag is on the bullet above it and the sub-bullet reads as
+   free-standing. *(This item originally claimed the Close names no skill at all. It does —
+   see the post-pass.)*
 4. **Write the fumbled Medicine and the fumbled Spot**, or say in one line that unwritten
    fumbles are the GM's to invent and stop implying otherwise. **36% of sessions hit one.**
    The document's four written fumbles are so good that their absence elsewhere reads as an
@@ -255,3 +256,17 @@ thing this pass has to say about v0.13's recut.
 having accepted *and* being taken (~18% a session — it may take several more passes and that
 is not a defect); a hollow man that succeeds at the swap in Act Three, which has now failed
 twice running; and the human run.
+
+---
+
+## POST-PASS — finding 3 overstated the Close
+
+Finding 3 said the Close's fumble branch *"names no skill at all"*. It does. The branch is a
+sub-bullet of `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — the record is not over there; it never was]`, so the roll
+and therefore the band were always determined; what is missing is only that the sub-bullet
+does not repeat either, which is the same defect as the other two and not a worse one.
+
+Caught while applying the fix, by reading the surrounding bullet instead of the line the
+finding named. **The error is this project's most familiar one in a new place** — a claim
+about a document checked against the quoted fragment rather than against the document. The
+finding survives at its proper size and is fixed in v0.17 along with the other two.