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An editing pass over the words around the game, and three corrections in the guide

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The guide, the hall, the room page and the explanations after a turn
lose their closing aphorisms, most of their semicolons, the
statement-colon-example lines and the page narrating itself. The
tagline is one sentence, and 'a labor of love' is gone from the about
link. The chronicle's imagery and the in-world names stay.

Corrected along the way: a counter-spell does stop wound spells and
lightning (the guide said it did not); a shield is not the only defence
against a newly summoned creature; on the first turn a knife can hurt
you; a palm is no defence against a fireball; a goblin needs five turns
to match one; and only the offline duel lives in the browser.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0141G6xqLeNRYEtviLWSB5Up
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Eric WagonerandClaude Opus 5.5 committed 2026-10-10 18:51:59 -04:00
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src/lib/components/Hall.svelte
+9 -9
View File
@@ -211,9 +211,9 @@
<section class="lid">
<div class="lid-head">
<h1>Waving Hands</h1>
<p class="pitch">Duelling wizards. Two hands each. The right run of gestures is a spell.</p>
<p class="tag">Richard Bartle's 1977 pencil-and-paper duel, free in your browser. Each turn every wizard chooses a gesture per hand and all reveal together; a Fireball is F-S-S-D-D on one hand, a Shield is a single palm. Play the bot, or open a table for up to a dozen wizards and play by turns.</p>
<p class="links"><a href="/guide">how to play</a> · <a href="/rules">the rules</a> · <a class="about-link" href="#about" onclick={() => (aboutOpen = true)}>about this game — a labor of love</a></p>
<p class="pitch">Wizards duel with their hands, and the right run of gestures is a spell.</p>
<p class="tag">Richard Bartle's 1977 pencil-and-paper duel, free in your browser. Each turn every wizard chooses a gesture for each hand, and all are shown together. A Fireball is F-S-S-D-D on one hand, and a Shield is a single palm. Play the bot, or open a table for up to a dozen wizards and play by turns.</p>
<p class="links"><a href="/guide">how to play</a> · <a href="/rules">the rules</a> · <a class="about-link" href="#about" onclick={() => (aboutOpen = true)}>about this game</a></p>
</div>
<div class="lid-play">
@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@
<button type="submit" class="quiet" disabled={!ready || code.trim().length < 4}>Join</button>
</form>
</div>
<p class="muted small">A code opens the door either way: take a seat if one is free, or watch from the Peanut Gallery.</p>
<p class="muted small">With a code you can take a seat if one is free, or watch from the Peanut Gallery.</p>
<form class="joinform claimform" onsubmit={claim}>
<span class="or">or bring a seat from another device</span>
<input type="text" bind:value={phrase} placeholder="the four-word phrase" autocomplete="off" aria-label="transfer phrase" />
@@ -325,8 +325,8 @@
{#snippet aboutGame()}
<div class="about-body">
<p>Waving Hands is Richard Bartle's game from 1977, played with pencil, paper and two hands. It was later known as Spellbinder and Spellcaster, and Andrew Plotkin's <em>Spellcast</em> brought it to university X terminals in 1993, which is where the maker of this page first met it.</p>
<p>This version keeps the game as written: all forty spells, the same simultaneous resolution, the same ledger of letters. The rules text it follows is the fanzine transcription, kept in full on the <a href="/rules">rules page</a>. The bot reads your gestures as you would read its; the hand silhouettes on the buttons are adapted from Plotkin's bitmaps, with his notice retained.</p>
<p>It is free and keeps no accounts. A duel against the bot lives in your own browser. A duel between people lives on a small server as an append-only ledger of moves, so it can be replayed from its first gesture, and each wizard is shown only what the rules let them see.</p>
<p>This version keeps the game as written, with all forty spells, the same simultaneous turns and the same ledger of letters. The rules text it follows is the fanzine transcription, kept in full on the <a href="/rules">rules page</a>. The bot reads your gestures as you would read its. The hand silhouettes on the buttons are adapted from Plotkin's bitmaps, with his notice retained.</p>
<p>It is free and keeps no accounts. An offline duel stays in your own browser. Every other duel, against the bot or between people, lives on a small server as an append-only ledger of moves, so it can be replayed from its first gesture, and each wizard is shown only what the rules let them see.</p>
</div>
{/snippet}
{#snippet aboutTally()}
@@ -346,15 +346,15 @@
</ul>
{/if}
<p class="hosting">
The games of Kestrel's Hall are free and will stay free. They run on small servers that cost a few dollars a month; anyone who wants to chip in toward the hosting can at
<a href="https://ko-fi.com/kestrelsnest" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ko-fi.com/kestrelsnest</a>. Nothing is unlocked by it and nothing is withheld without it.
The games of Kestrel's Hall are free and will stay free. They run on small servers that cost a few dollars a month, and anyone who wants to chip in toward the hosting can do so at
<a href="https://ko-fi.com/kestrelsnest" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ko-fi.com/kestrelsnest</a>. Every game stays whole either way.
</p>
<p class="made">Waving Hands is Richard Bartle's, 1977.</p>
</div>
{/snippet}
{#snippet aboutWord()}
<div class="about-body">
<p>A rule read wrong, a bug, a duel you would like to tell of: write to <a href="mailto:eric@ericwagoner.com">eric@ericwagoner.com</a>, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kestrelsnest.social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">@kestrelsnest.social</a> on Bluesky, or <a href="https://toots.kestrelsnest.social/@eric" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">@eric@toots.kestrelsnest.social</a> on Mastodon. The keeper of this hall roosts at <a href="https://kestrelsnest.social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">kestrelsnest.social</a>.</p>
<p>If a rule reads wrong, something breaks, or you have a duel to tell of, write to <a href="mailto:eric@ericwagoner.com">eric@ericwagoner.com</a>, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kestrelsnest.social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">@kestrelsnest.social</a> on Bluesky, or <a href="https://toots.kestrelsnest.social/@eric" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">@eric@toots.kestrelsnest.social</a> on Mastodon. The keeper of this hall roosts at <a href="https://kestrelsnest.social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">kestrelsnest.social</a>.</p>
</div>
{/snippet}
<About bind:open={aboutOpen} title="About Waving Hands" tabs={[{ id: 'game', label: 'Origins', body: aboutGame }, { id: 'tally', label: 'Duels so far', body: aboutTally }, { id: 'family', label: 'More games', body: aboutFamily }, { id: 'word', label: 'Send word', body: aboutWord }]} />