diff --git a/skills/rpg/references/lessons.md b/skills/rpg/references/lessons.md index a61ef08..efab0d3 100644 --- a/skills/rpg/references/lessons.md +++ b/skills/rpg/references/lessons.md @@ -162,3 +162,30 @@ pass. - **Scale the set-piece with the roster on the card.** The deal-order note (6th/7th/8th) plus boss Grit per extra hero and mook multiplier lives ON the GM cut-out corner of the last hero card page, not buried in the doc. + +## 2026-07 — RUNDOWN cardless chase system (Blade Runner, house subsystem) + +- **Do the expected-value arithmetic before committing to a subsystem.** A + spec self-review pass that actually computed the dice maths caught two dead + mechanics that read fine in prose: a role structure where the pursuers' net + was ~0.00 per round (the chase could literally never end), and a support role + worth +0.24 successes when simply doubling up on the main role was worth + +0.57 — nobody would ever have picked it. Prose hides both. One script found + both in a minute. +- **A role that spends a resource needs a role that refunds it.** Four roles + only became an economy once the support role was recast from "adds successes" + to "buys off the cost the aggressive role generates". Test any new role menu + by asking what each option *trades*, not what it *does* — if two options + trade the same thing, one of them is decoration. +- **Check whether the rules you're replacing already contain the escape + hatch.** The published Blade Runner chase ships a die table as an alternative + to its own obstacle deck, so "make it cardless" was already solved in the + book. The real brief was the other four problems (idle players, no + accumulating state, generic obstacles, lookup load). Always ask what the + request is *actually* for before designing to its literal wording. +- **When a house subsystem gets a digital aid, test the aid headlessly.** A + ~60-line stub-DOM harness in Node drove the real console module through every + state transition (clamping, round cap, overtime drift, undo) with no browser + and no dependencies. Worth it: two of the "failures" it surfaced were the + harness lying, which is itself the thing you want to find before a + convention floor.