Commit Graph
9 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 26ad00174f Add the same ten before the department found them
Ten civilian counterparts, one per roster agent: same person, same
characteristics, same face, no induction and nothing ever issued to them. A
player can hold the two sheets side by side and read exactly what the job did.

Keyed off ROSTER rather than written out again, so the pair cannot drift apart.
The five who joined straight into a posting get the trade they came out of, and
between them the ten now cover all ten trades exactly once — which makes this
set a demonstration of the whole trade half of character creation as well as a
set of characters.

expandFromRegister grows a `civilian` mode: no induction skills, no standing
issue, no tier issue, no trade cant, and nothing anomalous or Coherence-costing.

Three things the build guard caught, each of which would have shipped:

  - Holloway was "carrying issued kit: notebook". Wrong: an interpreter owned a
    notebook long before anyone issued her one. The rule is now kit that could
    ONLY have come from the department.
  - Same again for skills — the linguist's core list contains trade cant,
    because it is a language and she is a linguist.
  - Wren Finch was carrying the black mirror, which is era "anomalous", from a
    transposed tradition, and costs Coherence to look into twice. That is
    something you acquire after the night the department notices you, not
    before. It is the only anomalous item in any trade kit.

The guard runs over the built objects rather than trusting the flag that made
them, because the flag is three call-frames away from the result.

Verified in Foundry: 24 pregens, the before sheets show the civilian job in
place of rank, no armour, nothing readied but fists, and the right face.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 16:19:50 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 c15b13c3b9 Add the duty roster: ten ready-to-play agents with generated portraits
Five postings and five trades, so a group choosing from this sheet meets both
halves of character creation without anyone having to explain them.

Skills and kit are not written out per agent. They are expanded from the
register at build time by the same helper the starter scenario uses, which is
hoisted out of the BLACK PLATFORM block for the purpose — two copies of that
expansion is two places for the induction rule to drift. Ratings sit at the
middle of each band rather than being rolled, because a pregen that varies
between installs is not a pregen.

Portraits are generated art, resized to 512 and stored as webp (12MB of PNG
became 210KB). buildActor now takes a portrait and gives the same face to the
prototype token: a pregen you can recognise on the map is worth more at a
convention table than a correct one you cannot tell apart. It throws on a
portrait that is not on disk, because a broken image on a pregen sheet is the
sort of thing that is first noticed on a projector.

Guard: check-behaviour gains a test that every roster agent names a real
posting or trade and has its portrait on disk, verified to bite. It caught
"archive", which is not a posting — Bhattacharya is Registry.

Verified in a running Foundry: 14 pregens in the pack, sheets render with the
portraits, coherence and hit points fill from the template, no system errors.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 11:06:04 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 7f8355f0d0 Add the player primer and cheat sheet, and brand every journal
Ten pages a player reads before session one, in their own compendium at OBSERVER
ownership: nine of setting, one cheat sheet.

The draft called the organisation "the Bureau"; everything else in the game calls it
the department or the agency, so that is what it is called. Thin areas filled rather
than padded: the seven character principles as a list, the real Coherence band table
instead of a paragraph describing one, and "what continuity is not" pulled out of the
middle of a page because it is the most important sentence for a new player.

The cheat sheet's numbers are computed from rules.mjs and lang/en.json at build time.
A hand-typed one would have been the sixth time this project shipped a number that
disagreed with the code, and the one the players were holding.

R-250: the design tokens were never on :root. Journals rendered as default parchment,
and four things were wrong in sequence — v14's hook is renderJournalEntrySheet; its
`element` is the node, so `[0]` returns the first CHILD and put the class on a header
button; there is no .journal-page-content in v14; and then the real one: with the
selector matching, font-size, line-height and padding all applied while every colour
did not, because the palette is declared on .ringbrp-sheet/.ringbrp-chat/.ringbrp-window
and never on :root. A journal inherited no tokens, so every var() silently became
nothing. A rule that HALF applies is not a specificity problem — I spent three attempts
treating it as one, including a version bump on a cache theory that was wrong.

Branded: primer, rulebook, starter GM text and handouts. Scoped by flag, so other
modules' journals are untouched. Version 0.9.0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 10:19:41 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 d9bce12c27 Replace the starter with BLACK PLATFORM, and make the dialogs ask questions
The starter is now an action case: a train running through a station whose rails were
lifted in 1976, two engineers aboard, eleven minutes until it returns. Descend, take the
platform, board, rescue, fight forward along a moving train, stop it.

Simpler than PAPER WINDOW on purpose — one clue scene, no social subsystem — which also
means it cannot reproduce R-248, because there are no groups or standings to leave
unwired.

Every agent can fight, deliberately: floors of firearm 42%, melee 40%, Brawl 40%,
Dodge 40% so nobody is a spectator on their first evening. Floors only RAISE, so a
posting already better stays better — Callum's shield lands at 53, not the floor's 45.

The builder now handles combat floors, extra weapons issued for a case, and a scenario
with NO Borrowed Authority at all; the last was assumed to exist and would have thrown.
Two new tests: every floor names a real skill, and every agent clears the fighting
floors the handout promises.

Sixty-two dialog strings reworded. They were naming mechanics at people: "Situational
modifier %" is now "Anything else helping or hurting? (%)", "Target cover" is "Is the
target behind anything?", "Difficult (÷2)" is "Difficult — half your skill". Labels ask
the question; hints say what it does to the number; notifications say what to do next
rather than what went wrong.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:08:07 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 4e28de2a64 Play PAPER WINDOW with the shipped pregens; fix four silent defects
Ran the starter end to end. It closed, and it found four defects in what I shipped an
hour earlier — all in the scenario data, all silent.

R-247: the Borrowed Authority did not work. I wrote scope "operate", which is not one
of the five scope tiers; an unrecognised scope ranks 0 and every action came back
"impossible" with no error. The first scene of the starter is the Borrowed Authority
tutorial. Fixed, guarded in check-kits, and covered by a test that documents the
failure mode.

R-248: the contact subsystem was unreachable in the scenario built around it. The case
file carried a standing for the Returned Clerks and no GROUP ITEM; resolveContact
returns null without one, so READ, SIGNAL and OFFER did nothing. Groups are data now,
and a test asserts every standing on a shipped case file has a group behind it.

R-249: legs wrote `kindId` where resolveLegDialog reads `leg.kind`. It worked only
because the terrain text happens to begin with "Extraction".

Not a defect: phase four went Difficult because Resources hit 0 and destitution makes
every remaining phase Difficult. Best beat in the session.

All four phases failed and the case still closed — Containment 8 to 2, Resources 8 to
0 — which is what the scenario is built to survive. Two of six closing requirements
succeeded and the settlement still completed. The Cancellation Man opened with a
critical against a raised riot shield and went through 10 points of armour, teaching
the shield and graded-defence lessons in one roll.

Also documented: nobody on the starter team can aim the return, because only the Anchor
Officer trains Transposition. The extraction page now says to narrate it rather than
roll six dice that will all fail.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:39:43 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 49c2e9fc7b Add PAPER WINDOW as the starter scenario Adventure
The six-player introductory case ships as a Foundry Adventure in a new `starter` pack,
because a scenario that arrives as nine loose documents a GM has to assemble is a
scenario that gets read rather than run.

One import brings in: the GM scenario in twelve pages; the seven player handouts as
their own journal at OBSERVER ownership so they can be revealed one at a time without
the GM editing permissions first, while the GM text stays hidden; the six pregens built
through the same buildActor path the shipped pregens use, so they arrive with full skill
lists, kit, hit points and linked tokens; the cast, including the Cancellation Man; the
Borrowed Authority as a real credential with scope, Trust 2 and its three red flags; and
the case file already at Containment 8 / Resources 8 / Clearance 6 with its four phases
loaded at the stated difficulties and modifiers.

Pregen ratings are fixed at mid-band rather than rolled — a pregen that varies between
installs is not a pregen. The expansion from posting or trade into a sheet reuses the
register and the induction rule rather than restating them, so the starter cannot drift
from the generator.

Verified by importing it: no errors, the roster resolves through stable keys, handouts
arrive player-visible, Nia has the team's highest Tradecraft as the text requires,
Callum's shield is slung so raising it is still a decision, the three probationers show
the trade/induction split, and phase one runs out of the box.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:25:10 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 43508259ac Consolidation pass after a Codex review
Four real defects, each verified against the source before acting on it.

Trade expertise was coupled to agency rank. A probationary burglar came out at 35-50%
and a veteran at 65-80%, as though fifteen years of picking locks were something the
department conferred. TRADE_BANDS is now fixed at 50-65/30-50 at every rank, and
INDUCTION scales with service instead (20-32 probationary to 45-60 veteran) because
that half genuinely is the department's. The two axes were the wrong way round. This
is the thing I flagged myself after PAPER HARBOUR and then left alone — flagging a
defect is not the same as fixing it.

Bonus points were sprayed across every skill in the game. grantFullSkillList runs
immediately before the loop and puts all fifty-nine skills on the sheet, and the loop
picked from actor.items, so a veteran's ninety points landed anywhere. The comment two
hundred lines above has always said "over the core skills"; the code never did.

"Random species" passed "baseline" into generators that support random perfectly well.

No behavioural tests. The strongest point in the review: the three guards are static
and none of them can tell whether a rule is READ, which is the only kind of defect this
project has ever shipped. tools/check-behaviour.mjs now runs 28 deterministic tests,
gated into the build, covering R-231/232/243/245/246, graded defences and the lamp
rule. Proved it bites by re-breaking R-246.

The register moved to postings.mjs, a Foundry-neutral module the engine, rulebook,
guards and tests all import normally — they were previously pulled out of the engine
with a regex and eval, which worked and was a trap. My first version of that used
`export … from`, which re-exports without local bindings, so ROLES was undefined and
the system threw on init: node --check passes that, loading it in Foundry does not.

Also: the contact doc comment still said "only OFFER moves standing"; check-kits
accepted mas/app, which are the DISPLAY names of siz/cha, so a posting declaring one
would have passed and produced an undefined characteristic; package.json disagreed with
the manifest; README counts were three revisions stale and are now generated at build.

Deferred with reasons: splitting the 6,700-line engine into modules. Right, and a
multi-session refactor whose risk is exactly the silent breakage demonstrated above.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:57:20 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 2e10ecced9 Fire modes, fitted sights and lamps, and a tab rail
Selectable fire, with the modifiers on the choice
  Every weapon has carried a fireMode since the packs were first built and nothing
  read it: a musket could rip a ten-round burst and "rapid" bought a weapon nothing.
  FIRE_MODE now gates the burst rules and carries its own attack modifier — slow +10%
  and then you work for the next one, fast a second shot at -20% to both, rapid
  bursts, beam +5% and it can be held on the target for damage instead of hits. The
  gate lives in burstAttack too, so no macro can route round it. `fast` was on five
  catalogue weapons and was not in the system's list of modes at all, so re-saving one
  of them silently blanked it; the list is derived from the rule now.

  burstAttack shipped complete and was reachable from nothing. It is the resolution
  path the selector chooses, and takes the dialog's whole stack rather than charging
  the player twice for the same burst.

Sights and lamps that apply themselves
  A sight is graded by range band, so a telescopic sight is a -10% liability inside
  ten metres and worth +20% at extreme, and it only counts if it fits. The band is
  already known when the modifier is wanted, so nothing is selected and nothing is
  forgotten. The dark costs something now; a carried lamp buys it back to dim, never
  to daylight, and the card says it shows them exactly where you are. A migration
  fits gear that predates the fields, matched on the stamped key rather than by name.

The damage card
  The last card still wearing Foundry's stock dice styling — it posted a bare Roll and
  let the core template dress it. It renders through the module's own card now, with
  the Roll still on the message so dice stay inspectable.

A rail instead of a strip
  Eight tabs across an 820px sheet compressed to 11px type. They run down the side
  now, one line each, with counts as badges; the sheet is 152px wider to pay for it.

Also fixed: any weapon with a Coherence cost could not be attacked with AT ALL — the
handler re-read the weapon after an await, when currentTarget is already null, and the
attack died on a TypeError with nothing shown. And the duplicate-rule guard failed an
honest table because FIRE_MODE and speedBands share two key names; it wants a majority
now, and prints partial overlaps rather than swallowing them.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 08:56:04 +01:00
slaguru666andClaude Opus 5 d0144f744e The Custodians v0.6.1 — full system
A Foundry VTT game system: Basic Roleplaying d100 in a drab British agency that
deals with crossings, where reality keeps a record of what belongs where and can be
made to get it wrong.

Contents:
- rules.mjs as the single authority for every rule formula, with 40 rules and 132
  spot-checked values. Nothing may restate a formula it defines.
- 25 postings, each with a key characteristic, trained skills, talents and its own
  kit; a 175-item catalogue across four eras; 231 generated icons.
- Reaction Lanes initiative, re-rolled every round including the first.
- Coherence, and the Quiet Arts, which only ever arrive from a crossing gone wrong.
- Graded defences: only a critical stops a critical.
- Borrowed Authority — access as a record rather than a hacking roll.
- A case generator, and a rules journal generated from rules.mjs so the book cannot
  drift from the code.

Built compendia are committed so a remote Foundry needs only the files.
node_modules is not; `npm install` restores it for rebuilding content.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 18:09:07 +01:00