Changelog

The post was carrying two arguments and opening on neither. Reframed around the origin it had been missing: the Protospiel publisher’s advice to hand-write about ten tiles, one per room type, prove the core loop, then make the rest. New spine — ten tiles don’t reduce eighty-five tiles’ worth of decisions to ten, because the median room touches five systems and you have to settle those five for every room that shares them. The sample doesn’t isolate; it surfaces what was being postponed. Closes on the reframe: the ten aren’t a smaller version of eighty-five, they’re the proof that the system holds before it scales, which is why they can’t skip the system. Dek now carries the day-job parallel — going back to wireframes from a high-fidelity prototype is never a good sign; it means something underneath was never settled and the fidelity was hiding it. Section order changed to Ten tiles → Eighteen systems → A mirror → Labels → Two models → Four corrections → Numbers → Still open. The four standalone correction sections (Bedroom, icons, Security, Freezer/Furnace) were interrupting the systems argument and are now one section with bolded lead-ins; no text cut. Fact corrected: the day was eight hours, not nine. The old dek’s “for about an hour it felt like the system was nearly done” read as a claim that the work took an hour — moved into the body where it plainly describes the feeling. Retitle propagated to blog.html, the nav.js footer, and the next-link on Post 33. New image images/posts/hippo-lipstick.jpeg placed under the adage line and promoted to the blog.html thumbnail; post_34_vulture.jpg stays at the close of the post. Backup of the previous version at posts/post-34.html.bak.

Split out of Post 34, where it had been the closing section and roughly forty per cent of the text on a subject of its own. Dated Sept 18 with Post 34, since both cover the same day. The assistant-behaviour piece, standing alone: twice in twenty-four hours it recommended a decision that fundamentally changes the game, which on a fan adaptation is a proposal to build a different project — the second time being a proposal to cut the video game’s five floorplan icons to three because Betrayal at House on the Hill uses three, hours after it had spent the afternoon arguing those icons back in. Argument in five beats: it goes after the constraint rather than the wall; a cut is an output and “not yet, keep going” isn’t; the reversals are the same behaviour from the other end; it can’t tell a hard problem from a broken one. Carries a compressed restatement of the eighteen-system constraint in a rule block so it reads without Post 34, with links back in both directions. Images moved from Post 34: post_34_hippos.jpg (also the blog thumbnail) and post_34_betrayal.jpg. post_34_vulture.jpg stays on Post 34. Filenames unchanged — the paths simply point across. Wired: blog.html top entry, nav.js footer (Post 30 dropped), next-link from Post 34.

The labelled-line system decided earlier in the day turned out to be only half applied — 28 of 85 backs carried rules with no label at all, because the seven labels all answer when does this fire and a fifth of the rules are not a firing time (bag notes, standing facts, conditions on board state). QQ’s own front/back wireframe was the fix: a fixed four-slot data strip (Trunk · Dig · Roll · Placement) across the top of the back, rule prose underneath. With the strip absorbing the structural lines, 54 of 85 backs have no prose left at all. Two models then drawn for all eleven mini-loop rooms, front and back, at 10× and at actual size: Model A puts ENTRY effects on the front, Model B puts PLACED effects on the front. Both written from scratch for the face they sit on after a first attempt loaded the comparison against B by moving back-length sentences onto its front. Result: blank fronts tie at six each; four tiles come out identical under both models (Parlor, Hallway, Kitchen, Greenhouse) because their rules are FIRST EVER, ONCE A DAY and FROM HERE, which neither model reaches; Model A’s backs carry 647 characters against Model B’s 465. Model A is the front runner. Character budget set by legibility first — 6.5pt, not the 4.8pt of the earlier Greenhouse drawing — giving about 18 characters a line and a five-line, ninety-character budget, measured off the rendered page rather than estimated. workbench/tile_wireframes_model_comparison.html. Not yet printed; every budget in it is arithmetic until it is.

QQ raised a system that had quietly left the game: the video game marks floorplans with subtype icons on top of the colour border. Six categories, each with its own wiki page and member list — Drafting (compass), Mechanical (gear), Tomorrow (clock), Puzzle (puzzle piece), Spread, and Entry (an open door). Mapped against all 85 rooms: drafting 8 · tomorrow 7 · entry 5 · spread 5 · puzzle 4 · mechanical 0 after the Security cut below, and 56 rooms with no icon at all. No room carries two. Twenty-two rooms in the wiki lists have no equivalent here — upgrade variants and expansion rooms — and every one was left unmatched rather than guessed at. The icons also close a gap the day had been circling: a tile that keeps working after it is placed can only ever show its front, and the icon says which kind of room it is without spending a rule line. Collision logged, not resolved: the video game’s Entry means the effect fires every time you step inside, while this file’s trigger:'entry' means the first time this run — the same word, opposite meanings, 34 rooms using ours.

The doors column was hidden earlier in the day and every room flagged unverified, on the strength of the Bedroom being recorded as two doors when it is a dead end. QQ found the cause: he was thinking of the Guest Bedroom. The Bedroom is an L-shape room, two doors on adjacent sides, exactly as the data said. Rebuilt from the wiki’s room-shape classification, which agreed with 75 of the 78 counts already in the file. Three changed: Courtyard 4→3, Secret Passage 1→2, Great Hall 7→4 — and the last two need a ruling rather than a correction, because the Great Hall’s seven doors are inside the room and were never tile geometry, and the Secret Passage is a dead end whose hidden passage opens when a book is pulled. A new shape field carries dead end / straight / L / T / 4-way, and it is the field to use for artwork: a count cannot tell a straight room from an L, and that is precisely what the September 18 photo-read got wrong on the Bedroom — right count, wrong geometry. doorsVerified stays false on all 85; a wiki agreeing with the data is corroboration, not a physical check.

Briefly rewritten as an entry effect, then reverted after checking the wiki: accounts freeze on drafting — “shortly after drafting the Freezer, the player’s accounts become frozen for the rest of the day” — and it only reads as an entry effect because you usually draft the tile and walk straight in. Thawing is standing in the Furnace. The proximity rule is gone, and following the video game is what removed it: distance and ambient heat never touch accounts there, they melt the physical ice inside the Freezer room, which this game does not model. The real-time distance formula that made proximity a trade-off belonged to the half we were never modelling, so nothing needed inventing to replace it. Frozen tokens still carry to the next run. Three rows added to design_deviations.html (Frozen Accounts, Furnace Thawing, Frozen Items in the Room — the last Removed, revisit only if a Key-scarcity challenge needs a gated Key source), and the existing Freezer — Frozen Box row marked Overturned where it still said a Furnace on the board thaws them. The assistant twice reported no Freezer or Furnace rows existed; there were two, missed by searching the rendered table of a page whose table is built by JavaScript.

Security is a terminal room that upgrades floorplans, and it belongs with the expansion that brings the other mechanical rooms and their rules. It was kept in the base game because it would feel noticeably missing — but the version in the box does nothing at all: front line “No effect”, no back rule, and a gem to draft it. The Lavatory and the Spare Room are also empty and stay, because they are free; an empty room you walk into for nothing is character, an empty room you pay a gem for is a tax. It was also the only mechanical-icon room, so the gear icon now has no members in the base game and the set is five icons, not six. Still in rooms-data.js labelled Expansion, still listed in the glossary, which gains an Expansion filter. Bag is now 64; quick_reference.html updated. Consequence recorded: the cut removes the Babbage staff notice, which is the pointer in the Shelter time-lock chain — it reads “Entrance Hall clock stopped at half past one” and sends the player to that tile. The assistant first called the notice a duplicate of the Entrance Hall’s clock line; it is not, it is what makes that line mean anything. Neither half is built — the notice was designed and never made, and QQ confirms the clock line is an experiment he has not killed — so nothing working broke, but the 1:30 clue now has no delivery at all. Both open notes written onto the Entrance Hall and Security rows.

In one sitting, room by room and question by question, all recorded with sources in the review table: dig costs no steps (the Cloister “spend 1 step” was invented) · Greenhouse draws until a green room, no cap · Boudoir rolls for a Resource card · frozen coins and gems go in a Frozen box on the Campaign Sheet · Foyer lasts today only · clue-piece assignment confirmed (Parlor West, Billiard East, Gallery South, Room 8 North) · bells retired everywhere (Dining Room keeps the video game condition — first Rank 8 room entered — without the word; shops lose the +2 coins, nothing replaces it) · meal cards are consumables in the Dining Room envelope, and every shop keeps its cards in a labelled envelope · Bedroom +2 on every entry as in the video game · Furnace thaws the Freezer whichever came first · Passageway and Secret Passage give no Key · Archives: player picks the hidden tile · the “always red die” rule deleted · Coat Check item written on the Campaign Sheet · Master Bedroom’s +10 kept (it is a video game rule) · Her Ladyship’s Telescope guaranteed · Nook as written · Freezer Letter in an envelope · tiles come out of the bag face up with the gem cost on the front · Foundation has no trunk · Courtyard “never locked” dropped (it was the video game’s Corriyard upgrade, not the base room) · all ten unknown door counts read off the tiles · every video game placement rule printed on its tile back, facing rules dropped under the Post 25 orientation rule · Maid’s Chamber: a bedroom (the staff’s), 0 gems, no trunk, rooms placed after it need 5+ on the item roll, Shelter makes it a normal bedroom · Great Hall: Model 1 — all seven doors locked at 1 Key each, the Silver Key opens them all, the lever is in the room (deviation, severity high) · Silver Key has two jobs: removes every padlock on the board and opens every Great Hall door, now or later today. Outside the bag (photo): Tunnel (no Key, 2 dig spots, stack of 8 beside the board: draw 2 + 1), Planetarium (Post 15 stands), Sauna, Locker Room (Keys to placed hallways only, no locker rule), Morning Room (1 dig), Secret Garden (4), Kennel (3), Solarium (1), Dovecote (blue, 2), Dormitory (0 gems), Clock Tower (counts itself), Casino (15 coins + the d6 bet), Root Cellar (rule kept), Shelter, Hovel (purple, no trunk, 1 Special card, must pay steps), Toolshed. Vestibule, Lost & Found and Trading Post are expansion for now. All six Tomorrow rooms confirmed.

85 rooms with the decided tile front and back, doors, dig, trunk, item roll, trigger, set, and the why / sources / open columns carried over. room_glossary.html no longer holds its own copy of the rooms: it loads rooms-data.js like nav.js and shows the new columns (doors, dig, trunk, item roll, tile front, tile back, open) with a Default-bag filter and an open-questions filter. No build step. To change a room: edit the table, regenerate the file.

quick_reference.html: five-step turn (Drawing Board gone), lock table names the never-locked hallways and the Great Hall, reminders for Dinner, Hallways, Dig spots, Red rooms, Silver Key; 65 tiles. item_spawn_reference.html: rebuilt — Trunks / Dig spots / Item roll callouts, 21 take-on-entry rooms, 8 roll-first rooms, the four physical decks as counted (35 / 22 / 16 / 17). room_setup_reference.html: Gallery and Room 8 in the bag, the three expansion rooms marked, red-die and bell notes gone. campaign_sheet.html: Frozen box, Coat Check line, Clock Tower Keys blank, West Gate tick, four clue-piece ticks, Vestibule dropped. first_run_tutorial.html: face-up tiles, Lock Pick and Silver Key, d6 4+ rolls, category descriptions, deck names. how_to_win.html: east path is Model 1, key sources are the Archived Keychain sources, each path names its clue piece. inventory.html, production_guide.html, tomorrow_room_cards.html: bell removed; once-today marker listed as not yet designed; Campaign Sheet replaces the Carry-Forward card.

Each new row carries the video game rule beside the board-game rule and the date QQ decided it. High severity: Tile Is the Rule, Great Hall Model 1, Silver Key Two Jobs. Overturned (new status, filterable): Library Key, Bunk Room fruit+Key, Bunk Room +4. Trunk System rewritten; Hallway Keys widened; Puzzle Rooms, Tunnel and Courtyard notes updated. 81 rows.

Nearly every rules paragraph describes the pre-Protospiel game (Sharpie tile backs, Lockpick charges, Silver Key redraws, Prism Key colour effects, Security levels, meal-card cycle, bell, dig-count table, 63 tiles, decks of 30/24/21/12) and §16 is a second copy of the room rules that disagrees with rooms-data.js. Two options on the table: patch ~70 passages in place, or rebuild the rules sections and make §16 read rooms-data.js. QQ to choose.

Low-fidelity wireframe of one room tile under the Sept 17 rule that the tile is the rule (front = what matters on the board; back = what you need before you place it). Drawn at 10× with BGM’s 3mm bleed and 3mm safe zone to scale, plus a 40mm actual-size pair for a table-distance check. Every element carries its source from workbench/room_rules_first_pass.html and a Decided / Proposed / Open tag; front line and back text are the review table’s untested proposals. Decided by QQ today: the back is anonymous. No room name, no colour, nothing the front already says. First step against information overload is removing duplicates. The Greenhouse back carries four things — placement, dig count, the full rule, the lever line — and fits the safe zone at a rule-text size of 2.0mm (≈5.7pt as drawn); the print test decides legibility. Open questions the drawing surfaced: rotation (a dead-end tile placed in any of four orientations puts the name upside down from the seat), which side is up out of the bag (decides where gem cost lives), and the undesigned table-distance icon. The Sept 17 decisions themselves are in the Sept 17 entries below.

Five files described the green colour category as “Outdoor rooms.” Wrong on two counts: green is a colour category on the grid (the VG and CLAUDE.md say “Green rooms” and nothing more — the Greenhouse is a glass building inside the house), and “outside” already means the Outer Rooms and grounds reached via the West Path (Section 19). The word collided with a real mechanic. Changed to “Green rooms” everywhere it stood for the colour; the design-doc expansion heading “Outdoor Rooms & Grounds” corrected to “Outer Rooms & Grounds,” since that section is about the five Outer Rooms. Ten wording changes, no rule text touched. Both teach scripts and the design doc still say green rooms always have a trunk — overturned Sept 17 (green = dig, purple = trunk), not yet corrected here; see the doc pass.

The Sept 18 tile-rules overhaul in plain words, dated Sept 18. Follows Post 33 (“All Dressed Up and a Place to Go”). Carries the eighteen-system table (median room touches five, worst three touch nine), the 28 unlabelled backs and the four-slot strip that empties 54 of 85, the two tile models and why Model A won, the Bedroom / Guest Bedroom mix-up, the icons returning as a column, the Security cut, Freezer and Furnace back to canon, and the day’s computed numbers. Includes “Betrayal at Mt. Holly,” the section on the assistant’s day — rewritten from a list of mistakes into the pattern underneath them: twice in twenty-four hours it recommended a decision that fundamentally changes the game, which on a fan adaptation is a proposal to build a different project. States plainly that the tile system is about a third of the way through the refactor — not solved, not broken — and lists the open items (tile size 38.1 / 40 / 45mm unmeasured, no once-a-day marker, the 1:30 clue undelivered, the ENTER / Entry collision, Her Ladyship’s Chamber over budget). Three images in images/posts/: post_34_betrayal.jpg (both editions of Betrayal on the shelf, in place) — post_34_hippos.jpg and post_34_vulture.jpg (both since added to the repo). Wired: blog.html top entry, nav.js footer (Post 28 dropped), next-link from Post 33.

Every session stalled on the text printed on the tiles. A player drafts the Closet, reads “2 items,” and waits — two of what, from where? The intended flow (pick the room, look it up in the room grid) never happened; the tile was in the player’s hand, so the tile was the rule. One player, Pete, reached for the table card instead. Worse with the Pool: its caption says “Adds Locker Room, Sauna and Pump Room to today’s Draft Pool,” so the player tried to add three tiles to the dealer towers, which can’t take them. The teach script and table card said “bag” while two towers sat on the mat. A game publisher who knew the video game (cut the pitch off with “familiar with the video game,” knew the designer’s name) sat down and stalled before the second draft. Publisher’s comments: “not necessarily,” when QQ said (without showing anything) that tile backs were being designed to do more work; counting steps every turn may get tedious — consider another way to put time pressure on a run (never came up in three sessions with Mike and Chris; noted); get blank tiles, write on them with a marker, pick about ten rooms, test just those; and, as a hunch: “there is something here” — the gameplay. Other players: “table distance” — the small text on a tile can’t be read from where a player sits; “make a room do one thing only” — not one effect per room, but a system a player can learn (the colour tells you the rule) instead of reading every tile, which leans harder on a rulebook. QQ’s ideas page (“IDEAS, mostly to simplify”): Silver Key opens every locked door on the board; Event and Addition rooms become rooms found inside other rooms (Tunnel in the Secret Passage, Planetarium in the Observatory, Sauna and Locker Room in the Pool, Morning Room in the Kitchen); Lock Pick rolls to see if it works instead of counting uses; Secret Passage: name a colour, draft until it appears, no gem cost; puzzle rooms hand out a clue card; a clue for every rank completed. Two of these already existed in the files: the Lock Pick card already rolls a d6 (1–2 picks it), and rooms-found-inside-rooms is logged for five rooms (DEV 42–46). QQ’s tile-back sketches: two layouts carrying placement restriction, gem cost, chess piece, room type and rarity — no rule text. That is the version “not necessarily” was answering; the publisher never saw them.

Every word on every tile front except one (Entrance Hall’s “the clock has stopped at 1:30,” QQ’s) is the video game’s own caption. In the video game the caption is enough because the software does the rest. On the table the player does the rest, and the caption is the first and most trusted thing read — in the hand at the moment of decision, and the teach materials said to trust it. A player who knew the video game stalling is the strongest evidence, not the weakest: the captions matched what he knew, and what he knew didn’t match this game. The written materials contradicted each other. Trust the tile: definition_of_done.html (“All tiles are self-explanatory”), teach script beat 3 (“Whatever the room says happens the moment you enter”), table card step 5 (“Do what the room says now”). Don’t trust the tile: design_documentation.html Section 7, twice (“do not rely on the tile art … refer to this table”), teach script beat 5 (“the reference sheet has every room. Look there first”), table card sidebar, Item Reference §6. first_run_tutorial.html says both. The fix had been designed twice and never built: design_deviations.html row 1, “Room Tile Visual Redesign” (May 28, High), and workbench/tile_text_suggestions.html (June 3, all 88 rooms rewritten at twenty characters). The 110-tile print order shipped three weeks later with the video game’s captions. Counting the glossary and the September room grid, the room text has been written three separate times — never on the tile. Caption count (from the June sheet against the room grid; QQ still to check it himself): of 80 default-bag captions that can be sorted, 31 state the whole rule and are correct; 20 are correct but incomplete (the “2 items” kind); 16 describe a mechanic this game cut or changed; 13 have no text. 49 of 80 can’t be acted on from the front. An earlier “about a third” figure was wrong. The paperwork drifted the same way. Four lookup sheets disagree with each other and with the September rules: item_spawn_reference.html, design doc Sections 7 and 16, quick_reference.html, the Protospiel room grid. rooms-data.js is loaded by no page; room_glossary.html carries its own inline copy of 86 records; item_spawn_reference.html, design_documentation.html, room_setup_reference.html, the Item Reference, difficulty_curve_comparison.html and the June sheet each hold a hand-typed room table. Nothing flows from anything, which is why the Sept 10 always-locked-trunk decision reached the workbench sheets and nothing else. The printed card decks don’t match their files (counted from photos): Resource Items printed 35 (file 30; Post 30 says 29); Special Items 22 (Post 30: 21); Trunk Contents 16 (file 12–15); Dig Results 17, with junk cards and turnips the file doesn’t have. The physical decks are the truth; the files get regenerated from them.

What’s printed on the tile is the rule. The front carries what matters while the tile is on the board. The back carries what you need before you place it: where it may go, how many dig spots, whether it has a trunk, anything that happens the moment it’s placed. No separate chart to look things up in during play. The video game captions go; QQ writes the text. Deviation to log: supersedes DEV 1. The one-line rule. Each front gets at most one line under the room name. Either it states the whole effect, so a player can act from it alone, or it names the kind of effect and ends with a small flip symbol meaning “the full rule is on the back of this tile.” A half-line with no symbol (“2 items”) is not allowed. Some rooms need no line: the colour rule plus a number is the whole rule. Table distance is a design rule: once a tile is placed, the things readable from across the mat are its colour, its name, its door positions, its gem cost, and at most one icon. The one line is read once, up close, at the draft. Rooms whose effect keeps going after placement need an icon that reads across the table (estimate: about 21 rooms); rooms that do something “once today” need a marker to show it’s been used. Neither the icon nor the marker is designed. Learn the colour, not the tile. Purple: bedrooms, always a trunk. Green: dig spots, count on the back. Orange: hallways, 1 Key on entry, Foyer and Great Hall excepted. Yellow: shops, ring the bell for 2 coins on first entry, then buy from the shop’s card. Red: 0 gems to draft, the tile says what it costs you, a Shelter token cancels it. Blue: read the tile. Each colour’s card uses the same eight lines in the same order (Gem cost / When placed / On entry / Trunk / Dig spots / Locks / Other / Exceptions). The exception count per colour is the honest measure of whether the rule is real; purple has seven. QQ’s caution, kept: colour rules must not flatten the house. Where it landed: the colour rule says what’s always true (there is a trunk); what’s inside stays random (the deck); every room’s own numbers stay on its tile; learning the house by heart is what the video game’s campaign is too. The whole house stays. Shrinking the bag would be “becoming a completely different game.” The publisher’s ten rooms is a way to test, not a game to build. Rule: nothing is reprinted before the new text has been tested on marker tiles. Deck-language rule (QQ): tiles say “draw 1 card,” never “1 item”; Keys never stack on a card (gems, dice and fruit may).

“Towers have a usability problem.” Draw 3 from the bag, place 1, the other 2 go straight back in the bag. The same for the Library’s three leftovers, the Greenhouse’s extra draws, Study redraws and Ivory Dice redraws. The Drawing Board / Holding Cell (two unchosen tiles cool off one turn) is retired — it worked on its first try in Session 3 and goes anyway. It is still referenced in the table card, teach script, quick_reference.html, design_documentation.html, CLAUDE.md and DEV 15; remove in the doc pass. DEV 3 and DEV 15 contradicted each other; this resolves to row 3. The dealer towers stay as objects (Post 32) but are not the draft mechanism.

Always locked; 1 Key or the Sledge Hammer (unchanged from Sept 10). Where: every bedroom, plus the Attic and the Den, plus the Garage’s car trunk (Car Keys only, 2 Trunk Contents cards). No green room has a trunk — “green = dig, purple = trunk.” No blue room rolls for one (Closet, Darkroom, Mail Room, Walk-in Closet, Wine Cellar: none). Replaces the Sept 10 “bedrooms and green rooms” rule and closes the punch-list question about which blue rooms roll: none do. Reasoning, all estimates: 11 trunks at a full board against roughly 15–19 Keys of income and about 10 locked doors keeps Keys scarce, so the video game’s lesson survives — “you quickly learn NOT to spend your keys stupidly on trunks and wait till you have the sledgehammer. It’s a resource management learning for the player, not a flaw.” A version with 17 trunks put too many gems on the table (about 4.3 gems a run from trunks alone) and too many tokens on the tiles. The hammer does show up: the Sledge Hammer is 3 of the 22 Special Items cards, not one. Deviation to log: the video game guarantees no trunk anywhere in the default bag. Open: the Nook was defaulted to no trunk by the assistant (QQ didn’t name it); the Foundation’s trunk is undecided.

The Foundation 3 · Cloister 3 (no unlock condition; the walled garden goes to the lore list) · Greenhouse 3 · Wine Cellar 2 · Veranda 2 · Terrace 1 · Patio 1 · Storeroom 1 · Furnace 1 · Courtyard 0 (the Shovel is there) · Garage 0 · Closet 0 (wiki confirms the video game Closet has none). Supersedes the Sept 10 dig strip for these rooms. Estimate: about 20 dirt tokens on a full board; 50 owned. Rooms not in the bag by default (Secret Garden, Dovecote, Kennel, Morning Room, Solarium, Tunnel, Root Cellar) get their own session. Deviation to log: fixed counts where the video game has a chance.

Garage: 3 Keys on entry (the room grid had dropped them; the caption “+3 Keys” was right). Car trunk opens only with the Car Keys, 2 Trunk Contents cards. When placed, the door opens and the West Gate opens permanently (Campaign Sheet); the Garage tile itself resets each run; Garage ↔ Entrance Hall costs 2 steps while the Garage is on the board. Deviation to log: door opens on placement (video game: wall button or steam). Music Room: first entry, draw 1 Resource Items card and draw one Archived Keychain box. Once. Deviation to log: the video game’s guaranteed basic Key becomes a Resource card. Locksmith: the video game shop as printed, on a new shop card — Key 5 · Set of 3 Keys 12 · Special Key 8, once per day (draw one Keychain box) · Lock Pick 10, not sold if already in play. The grid’s free Key on first entry is dropped (video game: the Locksmith never contains items). First concrete answer to Session 3’s question about what coins are for. Library: no Key (video game: none). Draw 4, keep 1, three back in the bag. RECONFIRM — this overturned DEV 17 (Locked, “key to a locked cabinet”) on the assistant’s false statement that no row existed. Boudoir: no steps of its own; +10 if Her Ladyship’s Chamber is on the board; safe-room gem. The assistant proposed its item roll draw a Special Items card instead of a Resource card — unconfirmed. Bunk Room: no steps; draw 1 Resource Items card and take it twice (the video game’s pair of identical items); counts as 2 bedrooms; the only place a Key card doubles. RECONFIRM — overturned DEV 19 and DEV 37 (Locked) on the same false premise. Freezer: the freeze is back, as in the video game — coins and gems can’t be spent for the rest of the day and carry over to the next run. Furnace thaws them (“the synergy with furnace is that it can melt frozen assets”); otherwise the Furnace does nothing except its 1 dig spot and, with the Freezer, triggering the Freezer Letter. Storeroom: 1 Key, 1 gem, 1 coin on first entry, once (grid said every time). Safe rooms — Study, Office, Boudoir, Drawing Room: 1 gem on entry, once per run, every run, as a stand-in while the safe and red-letter system is worked out. Drafting Studio: no gem (the video game’s model safe has none). Deviation to log: the video game gives the gem only after the safe is cracked. Rotunda: the 1-step-per-turn cost to rotate was “completely invented” — turning is free; placed in the centre of the house (the wiki says “center” with no number; “centre three columns” is the assistant’s reading). Hallways: all give 1 Key on entry except Foyer and Great Hall (DEV 16 covers the Hallway; Passageway and Secret Passage are unconfirmed — the grid said the Passageway does nothing else). Gallery and Room 8 join the default bag as plain blue rooms (see clue cards). Deviations to log: Gallery is post-win in the video game; Room 8 is reached only via Key 8; their puzzles are removed for now. Bedroom: the video game gives +2 on every entry (the wiki notes the step-farming exploit); the table has it once. Open — decide.

The eight printed “A Clue” cards are fragments of the video game’s Antechamber Entry Controls blueprint (north lever: underground; east: Great Hall; south: Greenhouse; west: Secret Garden). They become four pieces, one per lever, held by the video game’s four puzzle rooms: Parlor, Billiard Room, Gallery, Room 8. First entry ever: take the piece and keep it; tick the Campaign Sheet. The printed “Return to bottom of pile” is wrong — reprint as “Keep this clue.” No puzzle inside any of the four for now (Room 8 needs a Key 8 that iam8bit doesn’t make). Which piece lives in which room (the table has Parlor West, Billiard East, Gallery South, Room 8 North) is the assistant’s assignment — not settled. The north piece points at expansion content on purpose, the same logic as the Shelter’s blank fragment. The video game’s four backup levers and the journal page are expansion; the Weight Room wall needs the video game’s Power Hammer (expansion), so the Sledge Hammer card’s “and certain walls” is a tease or a reprint fix. “A clue every rank you complete” is dead. QQ’s cut-up wordplay (“TRY CONTROLS” from “ENTRY CONTROLS”) survives a four-quadrant cut if the title is split “ANTECHAMBER EN | TRY CONTROLS.” Three lever paths checked against the wiki: west — Secret Garden (weather vane, permanent; lever resets daily); south — Greenhouse (broken base + Broken Lever, rest of day); east — Great Hall (prize chamber); north — moon symbol, no base-game path. The Greenhouse row had no lever text at all — added. Not yet logged: the video game’s Antechamber gives the Basement Key; this game gives the Room 46 Key and the win. Proposed, unconfirmed: the tile back says what the room does (“pull the lever; one Antechamber door opens”) and the clue piece says which door.

From the wiki: seven locked doors including the exit (always locked); the six side doors hide two prize chambers, two passages to always-unlocked side exits, and two dead ends; prize chambers only behind edge doors; the east lever is in one prize chamber; plain Keys work; the Foyer opens all; the Secret Garden Key can’t be used inside; the layout randomizes daily. Model 1: the Silver Key opens every locked door on the board, the Great Hall’s six included (QQ’s Protospiel note; QQ called it “OP” but was open to it). Model 2: the Silver Key opens one locked door free, then you draw until a 3- or 4-door room appears; the Great Hall’s side doors cost 1 Key each with a d6 for what’s behind them (1–2 dead end, 3–4 passage, 5–6 prize: 1 gem; first prize found holds the lever); the Foyer opens all six. The assistant recommends Model 2. QQ on the video game’s Silver Key: “used in a very specific moment and you don’t even really FEEL the effects. It’s very lackluster.” A special die for the room was proposed by QQ and rejected on his own Post 20 rule (three dice, three jobs) and because a die can’t do “no repeats.” The grid’s “spend 3 Keys” stays as the placeholder. A “lever pulled” marker is needed either way; none exists.

One row per default-bag room (65 draftable + 3 fixed; Gallery and Room 8 added). Fields: colour, doors, gem cost, dig, trunk, item roll, trigger, proposed front line and its type, character count, whether it needs a table-distance icon, back text, and a Why column naming the source of every field — “mine” marks the assistant’s proposals. Six colour cards with the same eight lines. A wiki cross-check section. Filters for open rows. The 88 front lines are proposals, untested; the character limit comes from a print test, not this table. QQ ran two audit passes on the assistant’s work; findings, all corrected in the table: numbers stated as facts that had never been counted (“a third of captions,” “≤22 characters,” “7pt readable,” label dimensions, “most runs complete one or two ranks,” summary totals typed in rather than computed); gaps filled “for completeness” (a timing for the Courtyard’s Shovel, a Campaign Sheet note for the Master Bedroom, a Security staff-notice card that was designed and never built, “dead end” on the Closet, a line claiming the tile rewrite “isn’t a departure from the video game” — it is); jargon sent back (“stub,” “pointer,” rooms as “streets”); the Garage assumed to persist across runs (only the West Gate does); the Protospiel table assumed to be strangers. The worst: a heading over 23 items claiming “no deviation row for it,” written without opening design_deviations.html (51 rows). Six were logged, several Locked. The Library Key and Bunk Room decisions were made on that false premise and are flagged RECONFIRM above. Special Items deck facts (from the photos): Sledge Hammer 3 of 22, Shovel 3 of 22; duplicate cards for single tokens (3 Shovels, 3 Sledge Hammers, 2 Salt Shakers, 2 Metal Detectors, 2 Magnifying Glasses, 2 Broken Levers) have no “already holding it” rule — needs one line like the Keychain’s “box empty → take 3 Keys”; the Metal Detector card (draw one Resource card each time a new room is drafted) is the strongest card on the table and isn’t logged; three Banana cards say +2 steps where the rule is +3 — misprint, reprint later.

The Protospiel debrief and the Sept 17 decisions in plain words, dated Sept 17. Follows Post 32 (“Tell Me This Thing Is Not Fun”); Post 29 remains a held draft outside the sequence. Five images in images/posts/ (packed box, banner, table with the “Players Wanted” balloon, the tile-back sketch, the “Claude lied” illustration). Wired: blog.html top entry, nav.js footer, next-link from Post 32. The post states the caption count as unverified and the Great Hall as undecided.

Confirmed by QQ (Sept 10): every trunk is locked and opens with 1 Key or the Sledgehammer. No blue-die roll for lock state. Matches the VG, where trunks always take a key. Trunk presence unchanged: Bedrooms and Green Rooms always have one (place on draft); the specific Blue rooms listed in rooms-data.js roll d6 on draft, 4–6 = trunk. This was decided in conversation months ago but never reached the files — quick_reference.html, item_spawn_reference.html, design_documentation.html, room_glossary.html and every roll: field in rooms-data.js still describe the old blue-die lock roll. Those files are not yet updated — see punch list. The Protospiel table sheets (workbench) carry the new rule.

QQ set the counts on Sept 10 for the Protospiel dig strip: Secret Garden 4 · Kennel, The Foundation, Wine Cellar, Cloister 3 · Courtyard, Patio, Greenhouse, Veranda, Dovecote, Tunnel 2 · Terrace, Closet 1 · Root Cellar: +1 to every room placed afterward. These differ from the design_documentation.html Section 8 table on six rooms (Courtyard, Wine Cellar, Cloister, Dovecote, Secret Garden, Foundation), from room_setup_reference.html (Courtyard 3), and from rooms-data.js (Terrace 2, Cloister 2, Wine Cellar d6). Wiki check (blueprince.wiki.gg) found the VG has no fixed counts — rooms have “a random or definite chance” — so the table is a BPBG abstraction, not transcription. Three findings need design_deviations.html entries: (1) VG Cloister dig spots are sealed and inaccessible; the Solarium–Cloister unlock is a BPBG invention, not canon; (2) VG Closet has no dig spots; (3) VG base Courtyard has no dig spots (only the upgraded variant). The dig strip is the source of truth until the docs are reconciled.

Four printable sheets built for the Sept 11–13 event, all in workbench/, all plain-language, all reflecting the always-locked trunk rule and the new dig counts: 5-Minute Teach (one page, six timed beats, do/don’t strip); Table Card (landscape: five-step turn loop + answers to the core questions); Dig Spots on Draft strip (two per sheet); Room Grid (four landscape sheets, 84 rooms, one square each: color, gem cost, dig, trunk, items, action). Built from rooms-data.js, item_spawn_reference.html and quick_reference.html. Not linked from the site; not production rules.

Every file in posts/ checked for title, date, placeholders, missing images, broken links, name leaks, and prev/next. Findings: post 29 was listed on blog.html only inside an HTML comment (never live); post 30 (July 16) finished but never listed; four -DRAFT files with [QQ: …] prompts; prev/next links dead after post 7; footer “Dev Log” frozen on posts 23–27; homepage “Building in Public” frozen on posts 3–8 since April; post 12 dated Apr 18 on the index vs Apr 17 in the post; a stale duplicate post-29.html at repo root. No real-name or initial leaks in any post.

QQ’s call: post 29 (“I’ve Been Lying To You For Weeks” / “On Claude and Continuity”) stays unpublished. Renamed posts/post-29.html → posts/post-29-DRAFT.html to match the other drafts; commented-out blog.html entry removed; stale root-level copy moved to _to_delete/post-29-old-root-copy.html. The numbered sequence now goes 28 → 30.

Typography section removed and folded into posts/story1-fonts-DRAFT.html (new “The card type system” section; QQ’s angle for that post is respecting the source material — Mt. Holly’s own type). Five catalogue deck sections (Resource Items, Trunk Contents, Lever Clues, Treasure Maps, Kitchen/Meal) compressed into one section, “The other six,” keeping their card images. Dig Results caption “That’s the joke” removed. Typo confession trimmed. Meal Cards back path fixed (back-dinner.png → dinner-back.png). Header is the deck-back grid, post_30_backs_web.jpg (2400×657, 173 KB, resized from the 3.2 MB original which is kept alongside). Added to blog.html as the top entry.

Split from the materials draft. Dated Sept 10 (both of today's posts carry the 10th; the 11th is reserved for event posts). Hero: drafting-both-web.mp4, VG draft screen above the tower below, autoplay muted loop, caption “Same snappy feel.” Dealer-demo clip removed; VG draft clip kept. New paragraph makes the feel claim explicit: the tower's slide-out is the closest physical match to the VG draft screen in the prototype. Maker credited: Inspired Tabletop (Etsy, Chicago). Rarity-towers idea kept to one paragraph linking Post 26 and the new Model D entry, with an inline SVG of a by-rank button recipe (placeholder ratios, labelled as such). Closing pull is the dare plus the “property of a good mechanism” line. Also cut today: a 14.6 s silent montage of the dealer footage, dealer_montage_15s.mp4 / _web.mp4, not used in the post. Wired: blog.html top entry (thumb = hero poster), footer, homepage, chain 31 → 32.

story2-materials-DRAFT.html became two posts. Post 31 (dated Sept 10): the materials tour — chests, telescope, dig tokens, coins, deck backs, meal cards, Entrance Hall clue, green-room family, tile generations, the two key props. All twelve [QQ] prompts resolved in conversation: chests are two different minis (large detailed one vs small paintable one), neither used — the solid gold cube won; Telescope was the first mini painted (purple spray); Secret Garden Key is the iam8bit replica; Archives keychain is expansion material; the 1:30 clock line is the only tile text QQ wrote himself; Tunnel block and Alzara sections cut; Closet-pair figure cut (it was old-vs-new, duplicating the three-room generations photo). New images: post_31_tile_generations.jpg (from IMG_6452) and a three-up row of the produced tiles (post_31_tiles_antechamber/grid/spread.jpg) above the closing pull. Opening rewritten to carry the summer-quiet frame and point at post 30. Post 32 took the dealer-tower section (hero video drafting-both-web.mp4, 1280px, 2.2 MB, silent, from the 41 MB original, with poster) — see its own entry above. post-31-DRAFT.html (the abandoned fork) retired to _to_delete/. 46 HEIC photos in images/posts converted to JPG (2000px); originals moved to _to_delete/heic/.

Every published post (01–28, 30) now has one post-nav block in the same position: ← previous title / next title →, first post has only next, last has only previous, chain skips the 29 draft. Titles pulled from each post’s own h1. Verified programmatically: 56 links, all resolve, div counts balance. nav.js footer Dev Log column now 30, 28, 27, 26, 25. index.html “Building in Public” now 30, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24. Post 12 date on blog.html corrected to April 17.

The old index.html had not changed shape since spring: a still hero, stat strip, a “Building in Public” row that sat on posts 3–8 for five months, and a long About. Rebuilt on the same site.css tokens. Hero is the 15-second dealer-tower montage (dealer_montage_15s_web.mp4, autoplay muted loop, poster fallback), same three CTAs. Stats corrected: 110 room tiles, 131 cards in 10 decks. New “What’s on the table right now” section: a nine-photo gallery grid, every photo a link into the post where it happened, with a one-line caption and month — dealer tower (32), produced tiles (31), the two chests (31), 131 Faces (30), the green rooms (31), Secret Garden Key (31), Session 3 (21), the spinner (23), Room 46 (31). Dev Log now shows the three most recent posts with thumbnails instead of six text cards. Play it: four cards (First Run, Quick Reference, Print & Play, Room Glossary) plus “All documents” to rules.html. About shortened to one paragraph and a fact grid (40 mm tiles, drawstring-bag draft, solo/2-player, ~45 min) linking to about.html. Ten new 1200×675 crops in images/home/. “Dev Log” label kept — the Blog-vs-Dev-Log naming question is parked. Rendered at 1400 and 400 px; no horizontal scroll, all image and link targets exist on disk. Follow-ups same night: hero now plays the montage once per tab and rests on the all-tiles still (a refresh shows the still; a new tab replays), reduced-motion users get the still only; the four Play it cards got hand-drawn inline SVG icons — sneaker (Steps), magnifying glass, print-and-cut card, manor grid with the Antechamber lit.

QQ pushed most of the September work (f248029). Still local at time of writing: the rebuilt index.html, the images/home/ crops, and small edits to posts/post-24.html, posts/post-32.html and this changelog. One more commit and push puts the homepage live.

The homepage section grid (2 columns) had a lopsided Print & Play block of 10 decks sitting next to a one-item Tracking Sheets block (which also mislabeled itself “2 docs”). Removed the Tracking Sheets block and split Print & Play across two side-by-side section-blocks (5 decks each) to fill the vacated row and balance the grid. All ten *-print.html links preserved; the second column uses a dimmed “cont.” continuation header. Campaign Sheet (the only Tracking Sheets item) remains linked from the nav.js footer and tracking.html, so it is not orphaned.

Thorough audit of print-page links across all file types (per the July 15 postmortem — check shared components, not just pages). The nav.js footer “Print & Play” column linked the retired alzara_cards.html and treasure_map_cards.html sheets; repointed to resource-items-print.html and special-items-print.html (Campaign Sheet kept). The nav-highlight isActive([…]) array still listed stale deck stems (alzara, tomorrow, commissary, special_items, dig_results, trunk_results, meal_cards, treasure_map), a duplicate campaign_sheet, and the never-existed player_sheet; simplified to ['print','tracking','campaign_sheet','constellations'] — the 'print' stem matches all ten *-print.html pages with no false positives. Verified: zero stale old-deck links site-wide, all ten current print links resolve. Left untouched (verified legit, not stale): kitchen_menu_card.html (the in-game Kitchen Menu Card in the Reference section — distinct from the Kitchen Menu print deck) and the meal_cards.html mention in posts/post-07.html (editorial prose).

The homepage carries its own Print & Play list (a section-block) separate from print.html; the July 10 rebuild updated print.html but missed this one. It still showed the pre-rebuild decks: old links (common_items_cards.html, trunk_results_cards.html, etc.), old names (“Common Items Deck”, “Trunk Result Cards”, “Dig Result Cards”), old counts (30/24/21/12…), the retired “Tomorrow Room Cards” deck, and a “9 decks” header. Rewritten to mirror print.html exactly: the ten current decks with new *-print.html links, new names (Resource Items, Trunk Contents, Dig Results, …), corrected counts, Lever Clues + Kitchen Menu in place of Tomorrow Room, and a “10 decks” header. Verified all ten links resolve and no old *_cards.html links remain on the page. (The only surviving old-page reference site-wide is editorial prose in posts/post-07.html auditing the old meal_cards.html — left as historical record.)

The footer & mobile-nav injected by nav.js each carried a padlock icon on their design_documentation.html link. Because nav.js renders on every page, these two icons appeared site-wide (including the footer on index.html) — and were missed by every prior pass because those passes grepped page HTML only, never the shared injected component. Both icons commented out of nav.js. Also deleted nav_fix.js, an unreferenced git-tracked duplicate of nav.js that still held two lock icons (dead file, not loaded by any page). This is the same postmortem failure repeating: check the thing that renders on every page, not just the pages. Verified: the padlock SVG path now appears in zero live files (HTML/JS/CSS).

The July 12/14 approach hid the remaining lock indicators with display:none!important CSS rules. In practice the icons were still visible to the user on index.html. Switched to commenting the SVG/badge markup out of the DOM entirely (<!-- lock icon removed --> / <!-- lock badge removed -->), which does not depend on the cascade, cache, or selector matching. Removed this way: index.html — 4 doc-linked padlock SVGs (hero & featured "rules" buttons, Design Documentation carousel card, doc-list link); design.html — 10 padlock SVGs on doc-entry-title plus the 🔒 PASSWORD text badge. Verified: 0 <svg> and 0 rendered 🔒 in both files; site-wide the padlock SVG path no longer appears in any file. The old display:none rules on design.html are left as harmless dead code with an updated comment. To restore: un-comment the <!-- lock icon/badge removed --> markup (and the gate <script> blocks); delete the dead CSS rules.

This task took four passes (July 12 → 15) to actually clear, which is embarrassing given “remove the locks” is a simple ask. Root causes, recorded so it isn't repeated: (1) Confirmed the selector, not the outcome. Each pass I verified that a CSS display:none rule matched the icons and declared victory — but never confirmed they were actually invisible in a rendered browser. The rule looked correct on paper (stylesheet !important should beat inline non-!important), so I trusted the theory over the user's direct observation that the icons were still there. Analysis is not verification. (2) Grepped for one signature, not the concept. Early passes searched only for the padlock <svg> path, so the 🔒 PASSWORD text badge and the 🔒 emoji suffixes in posts/post-26.html were invisible to the search and surfaced only on later, broader sweeps. A “lock indicator” is a concept with several representations (SVG icon, emoji badge, emoji suffix, gate text), and each pass widened the net only after the previous one missed something. (3) String-matching fragility. One index.html icon survived a bulk find/replace because its SVG abutted </span> with no leading space while my search string assumed a leading space — the count said 1 remained, catching it, but it should have been anticipated. Lesson: for “make X not appear,” verify the rendered result (0 elements in the DOM), enumerate every representation of X before searching, and prefer removing markup over relying on CSS to suppress it.

A site-wide audit of the padlock SVG found it on pages where the lock-indicator policy forbids it (“Do not add lock icons to… blog post titles”). Removed permanently: two icons on blog post titles in index.html (“The Audit” and “The House That Already Exists”) and four in prev/next post-navigation links (posts/post-04.html, posts/post-06.html ×2, posts/post-10.html). These pointed at other blog posts, not locked docs, so the padlock was meaningless. Nav links now read cleanly (e.g. ← The Gem Desert, The Audit →). This is a permanent fix, independent of the temporary gate-off state — no restore step. A broader indicator audit also found two 🔒 emoji suffixes on sidebar links in posts/post-26.html (“Difficulty Curve Models 🔒”, “Design Ideas 🔒”); the emoji were removed outright (also permanent). After cleanup the padlock SVG survives only where policy allows: design.html (10, on doc-entry-title) and index.html (4, all pointing to the locked design_documentation.html); both sets — plus the 🔒 PASSWORD badge on design.html — are currently temp-hidden while the gate is off. All blog posts are now indicator-free.

The password gate (room46 / bp_doc_auth) was temporarily switched off on all eleven protected pages so they render without a prompt: design_documentation, definition_of_done, production_guide, shopping_list, design_deviations, room_setup_reference, difficulty_curve_comparison, changelog, design_ideas, blue_prince_expansion_list, and the-case. On each page the gate <script> block was wrapped in an HTML comment marked PASSWORD GATE TEMPORARILY DISABLED — remove this comment wrapper to restore; the code is intact and reversible. The lock icons were hidden via temporary CSS rules (same restore marker): on design.html (.doc-entry-title svg) and on index.html, where four lock icons point at locked docs (hero/featured "rules" buttons, the Design Documentation carousel card, and the doc-list link — .btn-outline svg,.carousel-card-title svg,.section-block-list a svg). The index.html rule deliberately does NOT touch the two lock icons on blog post titles (lines ~226/238) — those are a pre-existing policy violation, tracked separately. A follow-up audit (July 14) also found a 🔒 PASSWORD text badge on the Design Documentation entry in design.html that the SVG rule missed; it is now hidden by the same temporary rule (.doc-entry-tag span). No file content or gate logic was deleted. To restore: remove the comment wrappers on the eleven pages and delete the three temporary CSS rules (.doc-entry-title svg and .doc-entry-tag span in design.html; the button/carousel/list rule in index.html).

Home-print card art re-exported as 131 individual PNGs (poker faces + backs), normalized to 750 × 1021px @ 300 DPI and organized into ten decks: Resource Items (29, formerly "Common Items"), Special Items (21), Dig Results (17), Trunk Contents (15, formerly "Trunk Result Cards"), Treasure Maps (8), Lever Clues (8, new deck), Commissary Stock (7), Alzara Prophecy (6), Kitchen Menu (5), Meal Cards (5). Fixed a filename typo on disk (coomissary-stock-back → commissary-stock-back).

Ten fresh print-sheet pages generated (<deck>-print.html), each tiling the deck's PNG faces nine-up on US Letter with a matching card-back sheet for duplex printing, a Print button, and a ZIP download link. Each deck also packaged as a ZIP of its individual PNGs in images/cards-for-print/zips/. print.html rewritten to list exactly these ten decks with both "Print sheet" and "Download ZIP" actions. Retired the old hand-built card sheet-pages and the Tracking/Reference/Tomorrow Room entries from the Print & Play index (these ten decks are now the full home-print set). nav.js wired into every new page.

Entire project folder zipped and saved to Google Drive before beginning any repo reorganization work.

All images moved from flat images/ root into subfolders: posts/, playtests/, tokens/, lore/, metaclues/, win/, room-cards/, art-assets/, promo/, misc/, icons/, fonts/. All HTML file image paths updated across the full site. Verified clean via deadlinkchecker.com — 232 OK. Five remaining flagged items are intentional placeholder slots in interview2.html with onerror fallback handlers. Global broken image handler added to nav.js — any failed img tag now shows a navy "Image Unavailable" placeholder automatically.

All 28 post-XX.html files moved from repo root into posts/ subfolder. Internal paths updated with ../ prefix (site.css, nav.js, images/, blog.html back link, root page links). Root-level files updated: blog.html, index.html, design.html, and nav.js footer links all point to posts/post-XX.html. nav.js converted from relative to root-relative hrefs (href="index.html" → href="/index.html") so nav renders correctly from any subfolder depth.

player_sheet.html was referenced in index.html and tracking.html but the file never existed. Both links removed. Pre-existing dead link, not a regression.

_meta/ folder gitignored — session handoff files, private notes, and design docs never push to Netlify. production/ gitignored. Font subfolders gitignored. *.zip, *.eml, .DS_Store gitignored.

Three SVG favicons created: 64px and 32px show a room tile (dashed border, four door notches, centered lock icon); 16px shows the tile with notches only — no lock, for legibility at small size. Navy #0D253D background, white lines. Injected globally via nav.js — no changes needed to individual HTML pages.

New navy full-width band added above Featured Documents section. Four stats displayed with large Cinzel numerals: Sessions Complete (3), Days Played (6), Net Promoter Score (7), Players Would Play Again (✓). "Read the report →" link in new light blue link treatment. Old single-line playtest strip removed — was redundant with the new band.

New global utility class .link-light for inline links on navy backgrounds. Cinzel serif, light blue #7EB8D4, subtle underline, hover state. Documented with inline comment. Use on any <a> sitting on a navy surface sitewide.

Both pages now use a consistent two-column layout (1fr 340px) with the Calling All Playtesters form tile in the right rail. Form cleaned up: rotated "Calling All Play Testers" text removed, crown image repositioned as a CSS-placed absolute element on tile corner, heading simplified to 18px bold Cinzel. Placeholder text updated to Simon / Simon@mt.holly.com. Form tile is now a reusable pattern for future pages.

The ⬡ hex emoji on the form confirmation page replaced with an inline SVG matching the 32px favicon — room tile with dashed border, notches, and lock — rendered at 64px display size.

Dev Log footer column updated to show Post 23 (May 28 — Looks Only Get You So Far) and Post 22 (May 27 — Zooming Out) at the top. Posts 17 and 16 rolled off the bottom.

New Proposed/High deviation entry. Session 3 revealed that baked-in VG subtitle text on room tiles caused players to treat tile notes as complete instructions, skipping the glossary entirely. Proposed resolution: source clean art via inpainting tools (cleanup.pictures confirmed viable on Foundation tile) and author custom instructional text with controlled hierarchy. Gem cost on tile front. 110 rooms — needs strategic rollout. Tonda Ros credited and acknowledged in notes.

Magnet-Backed Realm Core Tokens: 3D-printed Realm Core shapes (Printables model by Aramendry) include a magnet cavity version — tokens snap to metal play surface. Magnetic Play Surface: room tiles with embedded magnets on a steel sheet mat — eliminates tile drift. Both Proposed/Component, both dated May 28. Entries cross-reference each other.

Front/back takeaway card. Front: QR code linking to blueprinceboardgame.com. Back: Blue Prince Board Game title in game-accurate bold condensed font treatment, navy background, blueprint grid. Printed at 3.5×3.5 inches. QR generated as PNG at 444×444px with navy fill.

Memorial Day weekend post. Captures the design tension of deciding what to cut from the adaptation — Tomorrow Room cards, Alzara, Kitchen/Dinner cards, Metal Detector, small-effect items, Treasure Maps. Written before the May 26 playtest that will resolve the list. Handwritten notes photo included. Post ends unresolved deliberately — a "before" to the playtest "after."

Previous rule: first-ever campaign entry into each of the four safe rooms (Drawing Room, Boudoir, Study, Office) yielded 1 red gem, tracked via Carry-Forward card. All subsequent entries in that campaign also yielded a gem. New rule: all six safe rooms (Drawing Room, Boudoir, Study, Office, Drafting Studio, Shelter) yield 1 pink gem on first entry each run. No tracking. No red gem distinction — all gems are pink. Carry-Forward card rows for safe rooms removed. Additionally: Wine Cellar incorrectly had a safe note in the glossary — removed (no safe exists in the VG).

The physical Tomorrow Room card deck is removed from the base game. All "take the card on draft" language replaced with "check the Campaign Sheet box." The Campaign Sheet already had checkboxes for all Tomorrow Room bonuses (Sauna, Morning Room, Freezer, Coat Check, Clock Tower, Planetarium, Her Ladyship's Chamber, Master Bedroom) — this change makes those checkboxes the official tracking method. The card deck is moved to expansion consideration. Design Deviations entry updated: status Locked → Removed.

New section added after Special Placement Rules in Turn Structure. Explains that tile orientation is determined by board position, not player choice. Three cases: central tile (L and T-shape may connect from any door), edge tile from center (L-shape either orientation, T-shape fixed to middle door), edge or corner tile (all orientations fixed). Dovecote interaction noted as the one override. Added as a mid-game reference — the rule exists in the VG but was absent from the rules doc.

New table added before the Production Checklist. 20 line items: padlock tokens (20), metal trunks (10), coins (100), Apple tokens (8), Banana tokens (6), Orange tokens (4), gems/pink acrylic (30), Ivory Dice (8), dirt pile tokens (50), regular keys (24), Shovel (1), Sledge Hammer (1), Telescope (1), Salt Shaker (1, flagged under review), player token (1), Shelter tokens (3), Silver Key (1), Prism Key (1), Secret Garden Key (1), Car Keys (1). Archived Keychain boxes (4) added separately. Fruit broken out by type per the distinct miniature decision.

All four Special Keys (Secret Garden Key, Car Keys, Silver Key, Prism Key) are housed in identical iam8bit Archived Keychain boxes. Whenever a Special Key is awarded — Music Room (roll 4–5), Billiard Room (roll 5), Locksmith (8 coins), Dig Result, Trunk Result — the player picks one box blind instead of rolling to determine which key. The two-roll Music Room system is retired. Car Keys added to the blind draw pool as a base game item (previously expansion-only). Edge case: Car Keys are never consumed — if the Car Keys box is drawn while the player already holds them, the box is empty; take 3 regular keys instead. Boxes repositioned after each draw to maintain mystery. Design Deviations entry added: Locked. Design Ideas entry updated: Proposed → Adopted.

Five thematic fixed spawns added to bring item distribution closer to VG spread and give each room a stronger identity. Courtyard: Shovel always placed on tile at draft (first to enter picks it up — mirrors Her Ladyship's Chamber/Telescope pattern; no second copy if already held). Hallway: 1 Key on entry. Library: 1 Key on entry. Nursery: 1 gem on entry. Bunk Room: 1 random fruit token + 1 Key on entry. All five logged as Deviations (Low severity) in Design Deviations. Item Spawn Reference updated with new rows for all five rooms.

Alzara removed from all base game documentation. Rationale: lore content carries no meaning for players unfamiliar with the VG; neither playtest group responded to Alzara as intended. The physical card deck (alzara_cards.html) is preserved for future expansion use. Rumpus Room is now coins-only on entry. Design Deviations entry updated. SVG setup diagram cleaned up — Alzara prophecy box removed, Tomorrow Room cards also removed from diagram (cards already retired this session).

Punch list flag ("Kennel is Blue, Blue rooms don't have dig spots") resolved. The 2 dig spot tokens on the Kennel tile are intentional — the Kennel's core mechanic is dig + door unlock, and the dig spots are how you trigger that in place. Blue rooms can and do have dig spots; the original flag was inaccurate. Kennel mechanic unchanged. A deeper audit of the dirt/dig spot system across room types is flagged for a future session.

New mechanic adopted from playtesting. The 2 unchosen tiles after each draft no longer return immediately to the Active Bag — they are placed face-down on the Drawing Board (a designated spot beside the board) for one turn, then returned to the bag at the start of the next draft. This prevents drawing back the same rejected tiles on the subsequent turn, a frequently occurring frustration documented in both playtests. The Drawing Board is the physical translation of the VG's large pool-size buffer. Library draws 3 tiles to the Drawing Board (instead of 2). Ivory Die redraws follow the same rule. Logged as Low severity Addition in Design Deviations.