An option used to do exactly what it said. Now it may carry a check: one of
four attributes (Nerve, Wits, Charm, Resolve) against a set difficulty or
against a named person's own attribute, leaning on how they regard you, with a
success and a failure. The player sees only the odds in words ("a long shot",
"likely"), never a number. The roll is one draw from the run's generator, so a
run still replays exactly from its seed and choices.
A character may be a role with several authored candidates, one drawn per run,
or a group of two to four drawn into numbered slots. Everyone carries a name, a
description and the same four attributes as the player, so a replayed pack
meets a different office. Text names people as {partner} or {clerk}, and an
event about "a clerk" binds one present clerk for the turn. The draw and the
binding are saved with the run, and a save from before a pack drew a cast gets
the same one every time it is loaded.
All of it is generic and optional: Corporate Ladder and the Frontier use none
of it and play as before. The Counting House, a one-stage office about 1910
built from the story-to-pack catalogue, exercises it, and was tuned against the
conformance suite by measurement. DECISIONS #41. Version 0.4.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018MhABSrqkwTdcybXmheDPr
Both settings now carry a charge levied by standing itself, which no purchase
ends. Corporate Ladder's steps on money (1200/-60, 2400/-120, 3600/-240): a flat
charge cannot flatten a slope, since late income scales with how well the player
plays, and the flat charge needed to stop an optimiser accumulating put ordinary
archetypes below zero for 44% of a run. Stepped, the balance settles around
$4,250 and ordinary play comes out better than before it existed. The Frontier's
is flat at -4 a run, because its late game never accumulated in the first place.
Found in the first two human sessions of this work:
- A career saved before a pack gained a stat had no path for it, and conditions
compare numbers only, so every event, option and upkeep entry gated on a new
stat silently did not exist for that run. Loading now fills those in.
- 'Wrap up my career' sat immediately after the last option in tab order, so one
Tab too many and Enter read as the game ending at day 31. It goes last, and
the retrospective says plainly that it is a summary.
- A 181-turn session ran against a stale bundle and the change under test never
fired. Every logged turn now records app_version and build.
- src/version.js had reported 0.3.0 since 0.3.0, while playtesters were told to
check the status bar. A test now holds it to package.json.
- 'Put money against the book' was shown locked to a player who owed nothing,
six times. Options gated on a state the player cannot choose to enter are now
hidden rather than greyed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01RxdJFbLq1rBKsUeticGV1g
Cold Fork is a freight yard: 29 events across two stages, a four-day cycle, and
its own relationship and skill vocabulary. src/engine/ was not touched. Adding it
needed three changes outside the engine: one save slot per pack, app.js holding
the current pack, and turn.js no longer naming the mailroom (DECISIONS #34).
build.js now handles imports wrapped across lines. A conformance suite runs over
every registered pack. DECISIONS #35 records three calls on open questions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01RxdJFbLq1rBKsUeticGV1g
Five things from the second playtest.
A status line at the top of every screen: the game, the pack, your current
title, and the version plus the commit it came from. `tools/stamp.js` writes the
commit into src/build-info.js before serving and before building, so a
distributed dist/theladder.html states exactly which commit produced it. An
uncommitted working tree gets a `+` suffix — "4cab9fc+" is honest in a way a
bare SHA would not be.
The whole game is now playable on Enter. Every screen marks one control and the
app focuses it after each render: the first *available* option while choosing,
the next-turn button once the result is in, "keep going" on the retrospective.
Tab and Shift+Tab reach the other options. Locked options needed no special
handling — the browser's tab order already skips disabled controls, so they stay
visible without being in the way.
"What is notable? under What changed?" — two fixes. `notable` is the
retrospective's own list of moments; a display rule can now say
`inLedger: false` and it is left out, because "Notable — changed" tells nobody
anything. Flags are the opposite and stay, but as sentences the pack supplies
rather than as booleans: "The envelope is in your locker." instead of "the
envelope: now true".
Exported logs live in logs/, gitignored, and `npm run analyze` reads the newest
one there when given no argument. A log records what a real person did turn by
turn, including whatever they typed into the feedback box — committing one once
would put it in the history for good.
Version set to 0.3.0 on the reasoning that the engine was 0.1 and the interface
0.2; say if you want a different scheme and I will renumber.
119 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §25-28.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
The MVP is playable: a turn screen, a career retrospective, an optional
feedback widget, local-storage autosave with file export/import, and a build
that flattens everything into one self-contained HTML file.
A turn has two phases — the scenario and its options, then what the choice did
and, separately, what the day cost regardless. Numbers that move without the
player seeing why are most of what makes them meaningless. Locked options are
shown greyed with the requirement spelled out rather than hidden, so a player
can see the door they cannot open yet.
The interface is named entirely by the pack. `pack.display` maps a state path to
a label, a format and an order, which is why the header reads "Standing" for a
path called `reputation` and why debt disappears while it is zero.
The first playtest then found three things, all of them fair.
*"Wasn't clear what daily drain was for."* The ledger was labelling changes by
the path that moved — "Money −$18" — when the upkeep entry that caused them had
a perfectly good name. It now says "Coffee, transit, lunch". The labels were in
the data the whole time and never reached the screen.
*"Should probably pay rent weekly / get paid every other week… would be good to
have day of week and week # shown."* Packs can now declare a calendar, and the
engine derives the day name, cycle and index from the turn number before the
event is drawn — so content can require a Friday and the header can say
"Thursday · Week 2 · Day 12". Upkeep entries take `every` and `offset`, making
wages fall on alternate Fridays and rent every Monday. The turn screen carries
a diary line — "Wages tomorrow · Rent in 4 days" — computed generically from
whatever a pack schedules.
*"Always in debt — could never get ahead."* The old economy bled $25 a day
regardless of play. It is now roughly break-even at baseline, with a
`spare_shift` event that appears *because* you are broke: the way out of a hole
should be visible from inside it. Across archetypes a careful player ends around
$1,400, an unplanned one treads water, and a careless one sinks into real debt.
That retune broke the coverage test, usefully. Random play stopped reaching hard
times at all, which made the entire debt branch look dead — it was not, since
random play is not a plausible player. Coverage is now the union across five
archetypes, including one that is broke *and* well-liked, because the "ask a
friend for money" options sit in a state no single-axis strategy reaches.
Not covered by any of this: styling and dark mode, which only a human with a
browser can check. This machine has none that can render a page.
109 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §14-21.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
