slaguru666andClaude Opus 5
4e28de2a64
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>
189 lines
8.1 KiB
Markdown
189 lines
8.1 KiB
Markdown
# THE CUSTODIANS
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*A Basic Roleplaying game of crossings, as a Foundry VTT system.*
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A drab British government agency deals with **crossings**. Reality keeps a record of
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what belongs where, and it can be made to get it wrong. Agents are civil servants:
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they carry warrant cards and cordon tape, they file in triplicate, and the thing that
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makes them dangerous is that they know how the record works.
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The tone is bureaucratic horror. Most cases close with an arrangement rather than a
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fight, and the supernatural is a filing error somebody committed on purpose.
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---
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## Installing
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**In Foundry:** *Game Systems → Install System → Manifest URL*
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```
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https://gitea.timevans.uk/slaguru666/RingBRP/raw/branch/main/system.json
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```
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**Or by hand:** clone this repository into your Foundry data directory as
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`Data/systems/ringbrp`, then restart Foundry.
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```bash
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git clone https://gitea.timevans.uk/slaguru666/RingBRP.git ringbrp
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```
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Requires **Foundry v13+** (verified against v14.364). No modules are required. Dice So
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Nice is supported but optional — the system registers four of its own dice textures.
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### Deploying to a remote Foundry server
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The built compendia in `packs/` **are committed on purpose**, so a remote server needs
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nothing but the files:
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```bash
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cd /path/to/foundrydata/Data/systems
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git clone https://gitea.timevans.uk/slaguru666/RingBRP.git ringbrp
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# restart Foundry
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```
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`node_modules/` is *not* committed. You only need it if you intend to rebuild the
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packs or regenerate art on that machine:
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```bash
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npm install # pulls classic-level, used to write the LevelDB packs
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npm run build # rebuilds packs/ from tools/content.mjs
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npm run check # the three guards; the build refuses to run if they fail
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```
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To update a deployed server: `git pull` and restart Foundry. If the pull touches
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`packs/`, Foundry must be **stopped** first — LevelDB will not tolerate its files
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changing underneath a running server.
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---
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## What is in the box
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<!-- box:start -->
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|---|---|
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| **Postings** | 25, each with a key characteristic, trained skills, talents and its own kit |
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| **Trades** | 10 ordinary jobs the department recruits from, plus induction |
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| **Catalogue** | 236 items — 123 gear, 62 weapons, 32 armour, 19 vehicles |
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| **Skills / talents** | 59 skills, 19 talents |
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| **Bestiary** | 21 statblocks across folklore, horror and the far side |
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| **Eras** | modern, antique, future, anomalous — the agency is old and never abolishes anything |
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| **Icons** | 292, all generated from `tools/icons.mjs`; no external art |
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| **Starter scenario** | **PAPER WINDOW**, a six-player introductory case, importable as a single Adventure |
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| **Compendia** | pregens, NPCs, skills, weapons, armour, gear, vehicles, powers, tables, rules, the starter |
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| **Rules journal** | 12 pages, generated from `rules.mjs` so the book cannot drift from the code |
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<!-- box:end -->
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---
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## The rules, in brief
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**d100 roll-under**, banding into critical / special / success / failure / fumble.
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96–99 always fail, 00 always fumbles, and every skill has a 1% floor.
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**Reaction Lanes** replace Strike Rank. Initiative is
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`3 × max(⌈DEX/3⌉, ⌈readiness/10⌉)` less carried load, plus a d6, **re-rolled every
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round** — including the first, so the opening round is ordered like every other.
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**Coherence** runs 10 → 0 and measures how well-filed an agent is in reality. It bands
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into Anchored / Loose / Adrift / Unmoored / Displaced, and spending it is how the
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supernatural works.
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**The Quiet Arts** are deliberate misfilings, not spells. They cost Coherence, and
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they **only ever arrive from a crossing that goes wrong**.
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**Defences are graded.** A defence stops a blow of its own quality or worse outright;
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against something better it only reduces it by as many steps as it was outclassed by.
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Only a critical stops a critical.
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**Access is a record.** There is no hacking skill and nothing to break into — see
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below.
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**A weapon's fire mode is a decision.** Slow weapons shoot better and then make you
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work; fast ones offer a second shot at the cost of both; rapid ones fire bursts; beams
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can be held on the target for damage instead of hits. A weapon that cannot fire a
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burst cannot be made to.
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**Sights and lamps apply themselves.** A sight is graded by range band — a telescopic
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sight is a penalty inside ten metres — and a carried lamp buys the dark back to dim,
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never to daylight, and tells everyone where you are. Neither is a thing the player
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selects: both are facts about what is in the pack.
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---
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## Borrowed Authority — the access subsystem
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Deliberately not cyberpunk. Nobody jacks into anything.
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What an agent has is a **named credential** belonging to somebody real, with a
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**scope** of things that person could plausibly do, a **Trust** that erodes as it is
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used, and **red flags** describing how the real owner behaves.
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- **Inside its scope there is no roll.** A facilities contractor opening a plant room
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is not intrusion, it is Tuesday. It costs 1 Trust and it works.
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- **One tier beyond is a stretch** — roll, at −20 for each red flag you break. The
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system is not testing whether you are clever. It is testing whether you are
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behaving like the person whose name is on the record.
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- **Two tiers beyond is impossible at any skill.** No percentage on any sheet gets a
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contractor issuing accounts.
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- A **fumble burns** the credential, and somebody real is going to be asked about it.
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A credential is assembled, not found: up to **three dossier items, each a separate
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scene using a different skill, at most one of them at a keyboard**. Items make the
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credential better, never the roll easier.
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**AI** is a posture on the target rather than an opponent — a *gatekeeper* raises what
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counts as routine, an *analyst* writes a new red flag every time you stretch, an
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*asset* stands in for a dossier item.
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And you may spend **Coherence** to widen a scope, because reality can be made to
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remember that the person always held that duty. It works. It always works. Push a
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credential past what its Trust will carry and your file and theirs converge one step,
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and nothing in this game spends anything to converge them back.
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---
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## Repository layout
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```
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ringbrp.mjs the system: sheets, engine, hooks (~5,500 lines)
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rules.mjs THE SINGLE AUTHORITY for every rule formula
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system.json Foundry manifest
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template.json data model for every Actor and Item type
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templates/ Handlebars sheets
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styles/ one stylesheet
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lang/en.json all user-facing text
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icons/ dice/ fonts/ generated art
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packs/ built LevelDB compendia (committed — see Deploying)
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tools/
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content.mjs the catalogue: skills, weapons, armour, gear, vehicles, NPCs
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build-packs.mjs builds packs/ — runs the three guards first and refuses on failure
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make-icons.mjs draws all 231 icons
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make-dice-textures.mjs
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rules-text.mjs generates the rules journal FROM rules.mjs
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mission.mjs the case generator
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mission-tables.mjs its content tables
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check-rules.mjs guard: no rule may be defined twice
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check-kits.mjs guard: every posting's kit must exist and be usable
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check-lang.mjs guard: no localisation key may be both a value and a branch
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docs/REVIEW_LOG.md the design and defect log, R-1 onward
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```
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### The one rule this codebase enforces on itself
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**No rule formula may exist in more than one place.** Everything lives in `rules.mjs`,
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and `tools/check-rules.mjs` fails the build if a formula is restated, if an alias
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stops being identity-equal to what it aliases, if a constant is re-declared as a
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literal, or if an exported rule has no spot-check. The packs used to be built under
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one set of numbers and played under another; this makes that impossible to ship.
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The build runs all three guards before it writes anything:
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<!-- guards:start -->
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```
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check-rules: OK — 87 rules, 16 files scanned, 3 aliases + 41 constant sets checked, 275 formulas verified
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check-kits: OK — 25 roles, 10 trades, 218 catalogue items, every kit key resolves, every posting can use what it carries, every loadout distinct
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check-lang: OK — en.json, 926 keys, no leaf/branch collisions
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check-behaviour: OK — 36 behavioural tests
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```
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<!-- guards:end -->
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