Add the Corporate Ladder pack, and two engine features it needed
Seventeen events across the mailroom: ordinary days, Marlene Hobb and Trevor Pike, a misrouted envelope that can be delivered or kept, and a hard-times branch that fires on negative money and always leaves an ungated way out. Writing real content turned up two things the engine could not express. Per-turn upkeep (`pack.upkeep`): the MVP spec wants recurring income and costs, but effects only run when a player chooses something, and baking wages into every option would be tedious and easy to get wrong. Upkeep entries carry their own conditions, which turned out to be enough for the loan service charge to be a three-step function that escalates with the size of the debt — no multiply operation, no engine change. Upkeep changes are recorded separately from choice changes so the UI can distinguish them. Per-character starting relationships: Trevor starts below the pack default on `likes_you` because he arrived two weeks earlier and has priced that in. Characterisation as data rather than as an opening cutscene. Nobody starts feared, either — `fears_you` defaults to 10, since a midpoint default would mean every new hire arrives already intimidating. The content suite plays 60 seeded runs and asserts every event fires and every option is taken at least once. That caught real dead content: Trevor's favour chain sat behind a gate no plausible player could reach, taking two events and a hard-times escape route with it, and debt could pass 5,500 while the service charge stayed flat, so the failure spiral flattened out instead of tightening. Both fixed in the data — the gate softened and given another route up, the loan capped and its charge tiered. The validator also gained a real fix: it counted an event with a cooldown as a stage's fallback, but a cooldown can exclude it, so a stage could still run dry. 86 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §11-13, including the seeding trap that makes a correlated chooser look exactly like a content bug. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
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JesseMarkowitz
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Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5
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// Running out of money.
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//
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// There is no game over here and no separate failure mode in the engine — this
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// is an ordinary event whose conditions happen to be "your money is negative",
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// carrying enough weight to crowd out an ordinary day. Every route out costs
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// something other than money, and every one of them leaves you still playing.
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//
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// Both events always offer at least one ungated option, so a player with no
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// skills and no friends is never stuck.
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export const hardTimes = [
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{
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id: 'rent_bounced',
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stage: 'mailroom',
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weight: 5000,
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requires: [{ path: 'money', op: '<', value: 0 }],
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description:
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'Rent came out and did not clear. The letter uses the word ' +
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'"unfortunately" four times and encloses a form.',
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options: [
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{
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id: 'take_loan',
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label: 'Take the loan the letter suggests.',
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// They stop lending eventually, which is when the spiral gets real:
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// past this, the only ways out cost standing rather than interest.
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requires: [{ path: 'debt', op: '<', value: 2000 }],
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result:
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'The money arrives the same afternoon, which tells you something about ' +
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'the rate.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 500 },
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{ path: 'debt', op: 'add', value: 500 },
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{ path: 'flags.took_loan', op: 'set', value: true },
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{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -2 },
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{ path: 'notable', op: 'push', value: 'Took the loan.' },
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],
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},
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{
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id: 'ask_trevor',
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label: 'Ask Trevor for a float.',
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requires: [{ path: 'relationships.trevor.likes_you', op: '>=', value: 40 }],
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result:
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'He lends it without making a thing of it, and from then on he is a ' +
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'man who lent you money.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 150 },
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{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -3 },
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{ path: 'relationships.trevor.fears_you', op: 'add', value: -8 },
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{ path: 'relationships.trevor.wants_to_help_you', op: 'add', value: -5 },
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{ path: 'notable', op: 'push', value: 'Borrowed money from Trevor.' },
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],
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},
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{
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id: 'ask_marlene',
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label: 'Ask Marlene for an advance.',
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requires: [{ path: 'relationships.marlene.wants_to_help_you', op: '>=', value: 55 }],
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result:
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'She processes it herself and does not put it through the system. ' +
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'Neither of you mentions it again.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 200 },
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{ path: 'relationships.marlene.wants_to_help_you', op: 'add', value: -10 },
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{ path: 'relationships.marlene.likes_you', op: 'add', value: -3 },
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],
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},
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{
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id: 'extra_shifts',
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label: 'Take every shift going.',
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result:
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'You do eleven days without one off. The bins stop being individual ' +
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'bins after a while.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 120 },
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{ path: 'skills.logistics', op: 'add', value: 2 },
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{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -1 },
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],
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},
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],
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},
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{
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id: 'debt_collector',
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stage: 'mailroom',
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weight: 25,
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cooldown: 4,
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requires: [{ path: 'debt', op: '>', value: 0 }],
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description:
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'A man from the lender calls the mailroom phone. Marlene answers it. She ' +
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'hands it to you without expression and then, notably, without leaving.',
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options: [
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{
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id: 'pay_chunk',
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label: 'Pay a real chunk of it down.',
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requires: [{ path: 'money', op: '>=', value: 200 }],
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result: 'He is audibly disappointed.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -200 },
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{ path: 'debt', op: 'add', value: -200 },
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{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: 1 },
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],
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},
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{
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id: 'pay_minimum',
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label: 'Pay what you can.',
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requires: [{ path: 'money', op: '>=', value: 60 }],
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result: 'Sixty dollars, fifty of which is the loan.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -60 },
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{ path: 'debt', op: 'add', value: -50 },
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],
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},
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{
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id: 'stall',
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label: 'Tell him next month.',
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result: 'He says next month. Marlene goes back to her desk.',
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effects: [
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{ path: 'debt', op: 'add', value: 25 },
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{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -3 },
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{ path: 'relationships.marlene.likes_you', op: 'add', value: -4 },
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],
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},
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],
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},
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];
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export default hardTimes;
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