RingBRP/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND_PLAYTEST_5.md

CLEAN GROUND — desk playtest 5 (the four-player cut, played)

Scenario version: v0.14, at commit ae06df8 Date: 13 September 2026 Method: full session, GM chair, four players — the cut: Ashcroft, Bhattacharya, Renshaw, Braithwaite. Seeded roller, seed 8815, banding from rules.mjs. Earlier passes were 4271, 9314, 5580/7731, 6142.

Every skill rating in this pass was pulled from roster.mjs before rolling, which is the direct consequence of pass 4 having typed six of its sixteen from memory and got three outcomes wrong. See that document's second post-pass.

Why this pass. The four-player cut is the most measured thing in this project and has never been played. EXPOSURE prices its fights, check-firstblood holds its swing, check-attackers holds what each of the four contributes, and the scaling notes tell a GM how to build it — and no pass in four had ever run a session with Pollard and Okonkwo off the table.

Verdict: the cut runs, and the fights were never the problem. What breaks is quieter — the party's eyes. Dropping Pollard takes the best Spot in the declared cast off the table and nothing in the document says so, because the guard that watches this only asks whether a roll is possible, not whether it is any good.

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The rolls, in order

seed 8815
  Bhattacharya  Research — Corrigan's paperwork          15 vs  63   success
  Braithwaite   Medicine — the body                      60 vs  53   fail
  Renshaw       Persuade — Swinburne                     60 vs  63   success
  Ashcroft      Spot — the stump, no Pollard             79 vs  40   fail
  Ashcroft      Listen — the valley, crossing            35 vs  63   success
  Renshaw       Persuade — the column                    17 vs  63   success
  Braithwaite   Spot — the six at the back               67 vs  35   fail
  Ashcroft      Insight — it is offered, not remembered  98 vs  63   fail
  Bhattacharya  Anomaly Lore — the depot entry           16 vs  63   success
  Renshaw       Insight — Ivy on the almanac             14 vs  63   success
  Ashcroft      Listen — the lorry, Pollard's lane       15 vs  63   success
  Braithwaite   Xenology (Baseline) — the understudy     38 vs  53   success
  Renshaw       Insight — a colleague who is not         47 vs  63   success
  Ashcroft      First Aid — whoever went down            40 vs  40   success

  COUNTDOWN STEP 5 — opposedContestFor
  understudy 75           rolled 91  failure
  Ashcroft 85 -> 42 Diff  rolled 84  failure
  → winner none · settled FALSE

A friendly seed, deliberately not re-rolled after pass 4's hostile one. A cut that only survives good dice is not a cut, and this run's failures land in the two places that matter most: the body, and the six at the back.

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⚠ FINDING 1 — the cut cannot see

This is the pass's real result and it has nothing to do with combat.

	Spot	Listen
Ashcroft	40	63
Bhattacharya	40	—
Renshaw	40	63
Braithwaite	35	—
Pollard (dropped at five)	53	53
Okonkwo (dropped at four)	35	—

Pollard's Spot 53 is the highest in the declared cast, and he is the first person the scaling notes drop. At five players the party's eyes go from 53 to 40. At four they stay at 40 with a 35 alongside. Every Spot clue in the scenario becomes materially harder in the configuration the document recommends for a smaller table.

• This run: Ashcroft missed the stump (79 vs 40) and Braithwaite missed the six at the back (67 vs 35). Both are Pollard's lane in the six-player game, both are at 53 there, and both are clues the scenario leans on.
• ⚠ The guards cannot see this and it is worth understanding why. check-rollable asks whether every skill the acts name is reachable at 25% or better by somebody in the declared cast. Spot 40 clears 25 comfortably, so the build is green and stays green. It is a rollability check, not a competence check, and the cut is the case where the difference bites.
• The scaling note says of dropping Pollard only that "the cordon loses its shield" — which is about Act Four's fight. The real cost is that the party loses the only pair of eyes above 40, in a scenario whose first two acts are almost entirely looking at things.

Fix direction: say it in the scaling note, and give the smaller table the compensation it is owed. The cleanest is already half-written elsewhere — the column's special result now hands over something portable (v0.14), and the same logic applies here: at four players, the clues Pollard would have spotted should be given, not rolled for. The lorry, the six at the back, the stump. A four-player table that has to roll Spot 40 three times to assemble the loop will assemble it late or not at all.

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⚠ FINDING 2 — four of the five split rows name people who are not there

The party-seams table is written for six and is unusable at four:

Act	Split as written	At four players
One	Braithwaite + Pollard · Renshaw + Bhattacharya	✗
Two	Renshaw + Ashcroft · Okonkwo + Pollard	✗ — the whole second half is gone
Three	Bhattacharya + Braithwaite · Pollard + Ashcroft	✗
Four	Do not split	✓
Close	All six, at the stump	✗ — wording only, but it is wrong

The table is introduced as "let the table choose; this is the fallback" — and the fallback is the thing a GM reaches for when the table will not choose. At four players the fallback does not exist, which is the moment it is most needed, because four players splitting 2+2 leaves two pairs with no overlap at all.

This is not a hard problem. It needs one extra column or four extra words per row.

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Act-by-act

Act One — ran ~40. Faster than six players, as expected: four people ask four questions, not six. Bhattacharya's Research landed and Corrigan's unfiled casual labour came out early, which is the strongest opening this scenario has had in five passes. Braithwaite failed Medicine on the body and the coroner's note carried it instead — Renshaw's Persuade on Swinburne succeeded, so H01 came from the drawer as written.

• The new fumble branch for Swinburne (v0.14) did not fire. Still untested.

Act Two — ran ~40 against a 45 budget, and this is the first time an act has come in UNDER. With four players the line's rest has three people in it, because Ashcroft is aside for THE OFFER. Twenty-five minutes of conversation between Ivy and three agents ran out at about twenty.

• ⚠ Minor: the rest clock is sized for six. It is not a defect — the old ones standing up early is fine, and no GM will complain about an act finishing early. But a GM watching a 25-minute budget with three players talking will feel they are doing it wrong. One clause would fix it: at four players the line rests twenty minutes, because there is less to say.
• THE OFFER fired and Ashcroft failed the Insight (98) again — accepted believing it was a real memory. Two passes running.

Act Three — ran ~35 with the seam cut taken. Bhattacharya's Anomaly Lore succeeded, so no re-cut-the-peg chase; that clause remains untested after five passes. Renshaw read Ivy, and Ashcroft's Listen 63 picked up the lorry — Pollard's clue, inherited exactly as the scaling note promises. That part of the scaling works and should be said more loudly.

Act Four — ran ~45. Braithwaite's Xenology succeeded, so the tell arrived as a quiet word in the GM's ear at beat 2, which is what the text wants. Renshaw's Insight on the colleague-who-is-not also landed, so the cut was actually better informed here than pass 4's six-player table.

The unsettled countdown fired again — second pass running

Understudy 91 (failure) against Ashcroft's 84 on the Difficult branch (failure). Neither succeeded. Unsettled. Two passes, two unsettled outcomes on a 14.5% branch — that is luck, not a pattern, and it should not be read as one.

• Worth noting all the same: because Ashcroft accepted THE OFFER in both passes, both runs used the Difficult branch, which is the branch with the highest unsettled rate. 14.5% against 3.8% if he refuses. So the two are not independent draws from the same distribution, and a scenario where Ashcroft usually accepts will see this outcome roughly four times more often than the headline figure suggests.
• The read-aloud landed for a second time and needs nothing.

Close — ran ~25. On budget. Four players at the stump is a tighter scene than six and arguably a better one: nobody is spectating.

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Timing

Act	Budget	Ran	Δ
One	45	~40	−5
Two	45	~40	−5
Three	50	~35	−15 (seam cut)
Four	45	~45	—
Close	25	~25	—
Play	210	~185	−25
Wall clock	3:40	~3:15	−25

Four players runs about twenty-five minutes short, which is the opposite problem and a much better one to have. It also means the four-player table can afford to keep the northern seam — the cut that pass 4 made compulsory is not needed here at all.

• ⚠ Nothing in the Pacing Note says the cuts are player-count dependent. At six they are the default; at four, taking them all leaves a 3:15 session in a four-hour slot. A GM following the current instruction at a small table will finish forty-five minutes early.

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Player-hat verdicts

Archetype	Verdict	Score
Methodical veteran	Ashcroft inheriting the Listen lane worked invisibly, which is the compliment	8/10
Roleplay-first talker	Three-way conversation with Ivy was better than six-way. Everyone got a turn	9/10
Quiet tactician	Spot 40 twice in two acts, both missed. "We are the party that cannot see"	5/10
Lore-digger	Research landing in Act One set the whole night up. Best opening yet	9/10

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Fix list

1. ⚠ Say that the cut cannot see, and compensate it. (Roster-level notes) Pollard's Spot 53 is the cast's best and he is dropped first. State the cost plainly, and instruct that at four players the clues in his lane — the stump, the six at the back, the lorry — are given rather than rolled for. check-rollable will not catch this because it tests the 25% floor, not competence.

2. ⚠ Make the split table work at four players. (Roster-level notes) Four of five rows name Pollard or Okonkwo. Add a four-player column, and fix "All six, at the stump" to "everyone".

3. Tell the Pacing Note that the cuts are for six. At four players the session runs ~3:15 with them all taken. Say: at four, keep the northern seam; take cuts only if the table is slow.

4. Size the line's rest to the table. Twenty-five minutes is a six-player number. Twenty at four, and say why — there are three people talking, because Ashcroft is aside.

5. Record that the Difficult branch raises the unsettled rate fourfold. (Act Four) 14.5% against 3.8%. A GM whose Ashcroft accepted THE OFFER should expect the reach to come to nothing far more often than the countdown's headline suggests, and the document currently prints only the one figure.

Still untested after five passes, and worth stating so it is not mistaken for tested: the Swinburne fumble branch, the re-cut-the-peg fumble, a failed Xenology in Act Four, and any fight at all — no pass has yet had the party shoot anybody.

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POST-PASS — a claim in this document was overstated

This pass wrote that Pollard's Spot 53 is "the highest in the entire roster". It is not. Checked against roster.mjs while applying the fixes: Wren Finch, Joseph Agyeman, Danny Sharrock and Colin Ferriby all carry Spot 58, and Pollard shares 53 with Rey Sandoval. 53 is the best in the declared cast — the six pregens the scenario ships — which is what the finding actually needed, and the finding stands unchanged: dropping Pollard takes the cast's only pair of eyes above 40 off the table.

Corrected in three places above. The habit that produced it is the same one pass 4's post-pass records: a number recalled rather than read. It was only caught because the fix this pass demanded — naming the substitute agent — required opening the roster anyway.

And the check paid for itself. Agyeman's Spot 58 is better than the Pollard it replaces, which makes the substitution already named in the scaling notes the single best answer to the four-player cut. That is now written into the scenario, and it would not have been if the claim had been trusted.