Commit Graph
179 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 1d015681d3 SVG tokens render as vectors, not bitmaps of vectors
An svg referenced through an <image> element is rasterized once at
its layout size in user units — about 29 pixels for a wizard — and
scales as a blurry bitmap thereafter, defeating the entire point of
vector art. TokenArt.svelte now fetches each file once, namespaces
its ids (45 tokens' worth of filter and pattern defs share one
document), and inlines it as a nested <svg>: live vector at any
zoom, verified crisp at 3x device scale. PNG art keeps the <image>
path untouched, and the token style family goes :global to reach the
component's elements.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 11:36:49 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 c62c3b4f05 The SVG tokens join the source proper
The symlink into research/ becomes real files: public/tokens-svg now
owns the hand-drawn set, edited in place and served as-is by the dev
server. The research folder is scaffolding with a demolition date,
not a place for shipped assets to live.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 11:29:42 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 e0e96ca5ca The art workshop's side door
The hand-drawn SVG token set wires in behind deliberately
undocumented query params — svgPlayers, svgCreatures, svgTerrain,
svgObjects, each =true — swapping that category's art everywhere it
draws: board tokens, lobby standees, roster. public/tokens-svg
symlinks research/tokens-svg, so under the dev server an edit to the
source art shows on the next refresh, and the production build copies
real files through the link. Nobody finds the door unless handed the
key; the photographed set remains the face of the game.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 11:27:28 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 93bdbb403a Travelling effects fly token to token
Projectiles flew cell-center to cell-center, launching from the
caster's feet and landing under the target's chin — tokens sit high
in their squares and fan sideways when crowded. Every travelling
effect (fireball, waterbolt, bolt, streak, and the reflection's
return flight) now resolves token anchors that mirror the board's
exact positioning, fan-out included: caster's center to target's
center, wizard or creature. Spots with no token to aim at fall back
to sensible cell points, and wash/knockback streaks end on the
carried wizard wherever they fanned to.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 11:00:09 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 126f003156 Wizards walk; portals stay instantaneous
Tokens jumped square to square, which made the portal shimmer look
late — the wizard had already re-appeared before the threshold lit.
Wizards and creatures are now identity-keyed movers positioned by a
transform, so the DOM node survives a move and a single step glides
(260ms). Anything farther than a step — teleports, warps, drags,
sector moves — snaps as before, because sliding a wizard across the
whole maze would tell a false story; the warp's instant jump beside
its threshold shimmer is now the point, not the bug. Replays glide
the same way, and reduced motion stills it all.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:56:41 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 64709f6c9c Stone to water splashes like it means it
The transmutation fired no flourish: its event carried no coordinates
for the wall case and the mapper knew neither it nor the wave it
raises. The event now carries its edge; the burst splashes both sides
of the vanished wall (or the freed square, for a block), and every
wizard the collapsing wave carries leaves a wash streak — which also
gives the plain WATERWALL's wave its motion for free.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:47:42 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 ca55f7d00b The fireworks get the stage before the victory modal takes it
Winning raised the modal on the same frame the fireworks lit,
covering them. The modal now waits behind the curtain for 2.4
seconds — three volleys over the winner's home, seen — then takes
the stage.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:40:11 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 c6d73550df The optional final polish: five refinements
The bolt deepens to saturated gold over a dark amber glow; the splash
throws a wider crown of five droplets over a broader pool; the
fireworks lose their protractor — uneven angles, lengths, sizes, and
staggered timing, as a real burst has; the portal-cell's void gains
turning swirl arms so the dark center reads as motion, not blur; the
streak narrows and softens so its peak frame no longer resembles a
drawn white line.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:37:57 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 e713d69582 Round two of the outside eye: contrast, scale, and travel
The whiff darkens to slate and sweeps longer; the portal-cell opens
a dark void behind its collapsing rings — an opening in space, not a
selected square; the tacks grow half again and recoil harder; the
streak's reveal slows so the travel reads even in a sampled frame;
dust lifts its contrast a step without turning heavy. The sector
ghosts stay board-machinery on purpose — the reviewer allowed it,
and the maze grinding IS an operation, not a spell.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:34:02 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 bcaa06251a The review lands: twelve sprites get their motion stories
The outside review's diagnosis was right — the weak sprites had one
element doing one motion. Now each tells its story: the whiff is
three air streaks sweeping past a dodger with a wobble; the hit is a
contact flash, a compressed ring punched outward, and flying debris;
the streak's head visibly travels, drawing a tapered trail that
collapses into the destination; the sparkle snaps white-hot between
counter-rotating glints and sheds motes; the tacks are drawn
silhouettes now, points up as a tack on the floor menaces, hopping in
sequence; the claw slashes reveal one by one along their length with
a bright leading edge while the whole strike rakes sideways.

The sector ghosts keep their dashed frames but earn motion arcs,
directional chevrons, corner dust, and a grinding shudder as they
settle. The portal opens wide, ripples along its length, and pinches
shut; cell mouths collapse rings of energy inward. The thornbush
springs actual branches with thorn spurs. The slime is an asymmetric
blob that grips, with elastic strands snapping toward the caught.
Dust gains contrast, varied grain, and blows perpendicular to the
wall that shed it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:30:48 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 a88cae3a0e The pit reads as depth, not a dot
Its hole was a near-black disc that sat on the parchment like spilled
ink. Now an earthen gradient ellipse, offset toward the far wall,
with the far lip catching the light — a hole you look INTO.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:19:28 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 308f1b6ff9 The fireball sets the bar, and the rest of the catalog rises to it
Eric's fireball lands as the house style — layered construction,
gradient core, glow halo, a directional tail riding rotate="auto" —
with its defs scoped per instance via $props.id(), so simultaneous
fireballs cannot steal each other's gradients. The rest of the
catalog is rebuilt in its image: the waterbolt becomes its cold
sibling (spray tail, no turbulence — one heavy filter stack is
enough); lightning grows a glowing core and branching forks; the
burst blooms through a fire gradient with a shockwave and flying
embers; the splash throws a crown of droplets; the shield raises a
gradient dome with a rim strike; the pow star flashes white and
radiates speed dashes; claws leave tapered gashes; the absorbed card
spirals in along a pull ring; the soul is a proper little ghost with
eyes, swaying as it rises; fireworks ride colored trails; Chaos
catches card slips in its vortex; the pit opens a gradient hole that
swallows a faller; ooze splats and flings blobs; the thornbush sheds
leaves; slime closes over and pops bubbles; masonry dust goes soft
with falling grit. Whiff, tacks, portal, and the sector ghosts keep
their simpler forms on purpose — restraint is part of the style.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 10:16:01 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 a59ecfa615 Every flourish gets its own file, and a workshop to watch them in
The effects move out of Board.svelte into src/fx-sprites/ — one
component per flourish, markup and animation CSS together, so editing
the fireball means opening Fireball.svelte and nothing else. A
registry (index.ts) maps kind to sprite; Board renders through it.
The event mapping stays in fx.ts.

And a viewer: /?fx opens the Flourish Workshop — every sprite on a
labeled parchment tile, replaying on a 2.2-second beat. Under the dev
server, editing any sprite file hot-reloads the gallery mid-loop.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 09:27:32 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 a82b25b0e8 Warp travel shimmers at the threshold, not around the traveler
Green rings at the traveler's squares become a portal curtain: the
opening LINE itself shimmers on both boards — resolved from the warp
table via the step's direction — in iridescent cyan over a soft
violet breath, dashes drifting like light through a veil. Dimensional
warp tokens, whose mouths are whole squares, wrap in the same veil
around the square instead.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 09:11:29 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 68b0da6301 Flourishes third wave: the grind, the grave, and the pratfalls
The showstopper: sectors visibly move — a dashed parchment ghost
rotates through its quarter-turn or slides the whole way to its new
ground (corrected for rev-11 renormalization, since the event records
pre-shift origins and the view holds the truth). Death sends a small
soul drifting up from the token; victory bursts fireworks over the
winner's home, three volleys; CHAOS spins a triple spiral over the
whole maze and stands alone in its batch.

And the slapstick tier: knockbacks, shoves, drags, and pit-jumps
leave a motion streak; falling in a pit swallows dark with dust;
ooze gets a wobbling pratfall ellipse; tacks sting in three hopping
asterisks; thornbush snaps green; slime sinks its ring; a successful
pit climb puffs dust.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 01:12:22 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 6da350fd46 Flourishes second wave: reflections, warps, claws, and ongoing looks
The reflected spell turns in the air and flies home wearing its own
colors, striking its caster with the hit it meant for someone else.
Warp travel glows green at both mouths. Punches land as a proper
burst star; creature blows rake three red gashes; an absorbed spell
is a little card swallowed into the absorber, spinning as it shrinks.

And ongoing spells now wear their look between events: firewalls lick
and glow, the invisible and misted breathe at a fraction of opacity,
Medusa's victims gray to stone, and the webbed wear their webs. The
pulses stop under reduced motion; the informative looks stay.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-17 01:02:37 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 70d7b4babb Flourishes play on the reel too
Replay steps carry the same events the live table saw, so the spells
flare on catch-up reels and whole-game replays alike — retroactively:
stored games re-derive their events on replay, so every fireball ever
thrown bursts again. Step changes clear pending effects so scrubbing
backward does not smear.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 23:55:01 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 bca34ae9e4 Flourishes: the spells become visible (branch only — not for the droplet yet)
A cosmetic effects layer on the board svg, fed by the same event
stream that writes the log. Fireballs streak and burst; waterbolts
arc and splash; lightning jags and flickers; teleports shimmer at
both ends; walls rise and fall in dust; stopped attacks flash a
golden shield; hits ring red; misses whiff; other attack spells
sparkle at the caster. Successive visuals from one command stagger by
a beat, everything self-expires, reduced-motion hides the layer
whole, and nothing here touches game state — the effects are mapped
from events in fx.ts and drawn in Board.svelte, online and hotseat
alike.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 23:43:16 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 d4565006bc Rev 14: elimination sweeps the board by either door
Two ways out of the game, one cleanup. A wizard killed by damage took
their monsters, sustained spells, and armed ambushes with them; a
wizard eliminated by treasure loss left everything standing — a fire
imp scorching for a dead master, a Medusa still gazing at a corpse.
Both paths now share one sweep, gated at rev 14 so stored games keep
their orphans acting as recorded.

Also: Lifesaver lasts until used, carried as a near-billion-turn
sentinel — which the scoresheet printed. Durations that mean forever
no longer show a number.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 22:27:14 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 a60467c6fc The missed-moves banner stops counting games watched live
Once a gap opened — a backgrounded tab during the bots' turns was
enough — the mark-seen condition (exactly one move behind) could
never hold again, so the banner grew with every move a player watched
happen in front of them. Now only the first state after arriving (or
reconnecting) announces a gap; while present and visible, play marks
itself seen, an announced gap stays frozen until watched or skipped,
and a hidden tab still accumulates its gap honestly.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 22:23:25 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 4a4e164e88 The dice roll once
Rejoining a room replays the whole chronicle through the same events
channel that carries live play, so the opening roll-off modal fired
on every return. The replayed chronicle is now flagged, and one-time
fanfare stays quiet on it — the log still rebuilds in full.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 22:15:12 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 9493873b64 Dispel Creation reaches every creation, and edge hints tell the truth
An opponent's wraith refused to be dispelled — the engine was willing
all along (any controller's creature, sight required), but creature
clicks never routed cell-target spells, so the cast never left the
client. Clicking a creature with a cell spell selected now lands on
its square. The dimming aid told the same lie twice over: it lit
every created square including ones out of sight (a caster's own
thornbush beyond the walls) and never lit creatures at all. It now
mirrors the engine — anything created, whoever made it, in sight.

And "click a wall line" stops standing in for every edge card: each
now says what the click actually is — a locked door for the keys, a
corridor line for the fire, the creation itself for the dispel — and
attacks no longer show two hints for one wall.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:59:18 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 ee6a08f25c Boobytrap tokens land where you can see them
The four placements accumulated invisibly until the last click cast
the spell. Each token now marks its square as it is placed, numbered
in click order — the 1 is the real trap — and tapping a placed token
lifts it again, since the four must be distinct squares.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:56:29 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 04dc9bc750 Teleport waits for a second tap
One tap cast the jump, and a player reaching for click-per-square
movement spent their teleport on the adjacent floor. Now the first
tap only marks the destination (the familiar pulsing square), and the
jump commits on a second tap of the same square or the hint-bar
button — with the hint spelling out the four-square, walls-ignored
range. The escape teleport gets the same two-tap arming; a counter
wasted on a misclick is a counter wasted.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:49:27 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 22153b1e1b The opening roll-off steps into the light
First wizard was never random: createGame has always rolled a die
per player from the seed, re-rolling ties, and the gameStarted event
carried every pip — straight into a log line that said only "X goes
first." Now the table sees the ceremony: a dice modal as the boards
flip, one row per wizard, the trophy on the high roll, a note when
tied wizards rolled again — in online games and hotseat alike. The
chronicle line keeps the full roll-off too. Pure presentation; the
dice were always honest.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:47:31 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 8a460a0eed Doors show the state of their locks
A lock removed, a lock jammed, and a door picked open for the turn
all looked exactly like a locked door. Now the door itself tells:
pale wood for a lock gone for good, near-black for one jammed shut,
pale with a dashed jamb for a door standing open until end of turn —
each with a hover title saying so in words.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:34:46 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 e0da97627b Rev 13: monsters roll to hit the hidden — the invented exception dies
"The creature shares your square — there is nowhere to hide" appeared
on no card and in no rulebook. Neither did the convention beneath it:
the engine skipped INVISIBLE and SHRINK miss rolls for creature blows
on the theory that a monster in your square has nothing to aim. The
cards say otherwise — SHRINK reduces the chance to hit "in any
attack", and INVISIBLE's D4 carves out no exception for monsters.

From rev 13, creature blows roll the same dice as every other attack
(1 finds the unseen; 1-2 find the tiny), INVISIBLE may be counter-
cast against a creature's blow, and the automatons will do so. The
rolls consume RNG, so earlier games keep their certainty and replay
without them — the refusal survives only there, reworded to blame the
revision instead of inventing a rule.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:11:30 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 4d8584ae44 Rev 12: vanishing and water answer the call to arms
INVISIBLE's corner reads NEUTRAL/COUNTERACTION, and ANTI-ANTI's own
face names it an escape — yet the engine refused it at the door. Now
it counters: the vanishing goes up mid-stack (duration from a NUMBER
card riding the counteract command), the attacker's 1-in-4 hit roll
happens at resolution, the spell lingers after the exchange, and
ANTI-ANTI cannot pin it. WATERWALL — "Acts as counteraction to
FIREBALL" — now mirrors WALL OF FIRE's waterbolt-stopping role and
counts as a total stop. WALL OF FIRE itself joins the total-stop set
at rev 12 only: stored rev-10/11 games bounced after it and replay so.

While responding, tapping a number card holds it to ride the next
counter (unless a displayed Shieldstone makes the number itself the
counteraction, as before). The automatons learn the trick too: vanish
when the blow is heavy and the shields are spent, and never waste
ANTI-ANTI against an escape.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 21:07:47 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 fb2266b401 Mega-Monster offers its choice
"Doubles the existing life-points OR movement rate" — the engine
always took the OR's left side because the client never asked. With
Mega-Monster selected, the hint bar now offers the choice (hit points
lit by default), and the pick rides the cast as params.boost — its
own field, freeing params.cardId for the name-a-card spells it
belongs to. Both halves of the OR are pinned in the creature suite.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 20:56:49 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 4e365c168f The workshop row learns to wrap
The lobby's automaton row was a no-wrap inline-flex: at card width the
"seat a" label collapsed to a vertical sliver and the MYSTERY button
ran clean off the paper. The row now wraps centered within the card
and the label holds one line.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 20:49:52 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 3308850bb6 Credibility pass: sweep the workshop floor
Scoped to everything since the last pass (695307d). The residue of
fast iteration, removed: a reduced-motion media query that had
swallowed a full copy of the .faq-seal rules; doc comments orphaned
from their functions by inserted methods; the FAQ scrape's seams
(section headings run into ruling bodies under the wrong topics, a
next-page heading shipped as a ruling, an amputated "h", and rulings
filed under alphabetically-nearest strangers — Large Rock/Dagger now
lives on those cards; Book of Spells and Torquemada describe no card
in this set and are gone); the write-only aisle flag left behind by
the reverted rev 7; a linter-silenced dead destructure; a duplicated
median lookup; dead casts; and the fallback path that ignored the
apprentice's one-card draw.

Tests now typecheck (tsconfig includes test/), which surfaced the
missing type imports and a drifted creature literal hiding under an
as-cast. Also: a no-op self-assignment, mid-file imports hoisted, a
dynamic-import habit made static, a hedge comment replaced with a
loud setup failure, the fallback-retries-itself dead rung removed
from both bot drivers, and the twin peek scrims merged.

Deliberately kept: the TIERS lookup guard (ledger JSON is untrusted),
the wand-cost stanzas (they differ on the power-attack trade — a
rules question, not a dedup), and rollDie's coexistence with rollD4
(migrating changes visible logs; future work).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 20:20:37 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 73150a89b5 Rev 11: the maze has no wall at zero, and moving sectors carry everything
Relocate Sector could never land a sector west or north of the origin
— placements the physical game allows by simply sliding the whole map
across the table. The coordinate grid still cannot go negative, but
now it does not need to: a sector may land at negative coordinates
and the whole maze renormalizes, zero-anchoring on both axes (which
also pulls the maze snug when the origin corner is vacated, instead
of leaving a blank band). The client offers the new landings as ghost
slots on every side, verified slot-for-slot against engine truth.

The move also closes a real gap: remapState never carried creatures,
boobytrap tokens, glue, open safes, or dimensional warp tokens when a
sector relocated or rotated — they were left hovering at their old
coordinates. Sectors now carry everything standing on them. Both
changes ride rules rev 11; older ledgers replay their flaws intact,
as replay determinism demands.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 20:07:01 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 53c84ec6cb Relocate Sector gets ground to land on
The card asked for a destination click that did not exist: a sector
relocates onto an EMPTY 5x5 slot, and empty slots have no floor to
click — the board only rendered cells that are part of the maze. Now
lifting a sector outlines the whole 5x5 (not one square) and dashed
green landings appear beyond the maze edge, one per legal slot; the
svg canvas grows to hold them. Clicking a landing completes the cast.

The landings mirror the engine's own relocateSector law — on the
5-grid, non-negative, vacant, every sector still adjacent to at least
one other — verified slot-for-slot against engine ground truth across
2p and 4p boards. Clicking the maze again re-picks the sector, and a
sector with nowhere legal to go says so in the hint bar.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 20:00:43 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 18d3142f95 Rev 10: a total stop ends the exchange, and the modal stops goading
Slow Death, countered with Force Field — and the battle modal popped
right back up as if nothing had happened, goading a second counter
out of a hand that had already won the exchange. The engine was
bouncing every attacker's pass back to the defender so counters could
stack; correct for partial stops (Blunt, Absorb, Reflection numbers),
senseless past a total one. Under rules rev 10, when a Full Shield,
Force Field, Teleport escape, Full Reflection, or Reverse stands
unnullified, the attacker's declined answer resolves the stack on the
spot. Older ledgers keep the bounce and replay unchanged.

And when the exchange legitimately returns — a partial counter
standing, or a shield broken by Anti-Anti — the modal now says so:
"Your Blunt stands — only what slips past it will land," or "Your
Full Shield was nullified — the attack comes on unchecked," instead
of replaying the fanfare of a fresh, unanswered attack.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 19:53:38 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 1275ac9287 Three table manners: Safari replays, docked creature cards, a quiet hand
Safari collapsed the replay board to nothing: an svg with only a
viewBox has no intrinsic size there, and inside the replay's
max-height flex column WebKit sized it 0x0 while Chrome inferred the
ratio and filled the frame. Explicit width/height attributes (doubled,
so the CSS max-* caps still govern the display size) give every engine
the same answer — verified 560x560 in both WebKit and Chromium, with
the main board-zone rendering unchanged.

Commanding your own creature no longer opens the centered card peek —
a modal squarely blocks the squares you are about to march it across.
The card now docks in the paper rail with its live stats, the one
place a card enlarges outside the center of the table. Enemy creatures
and idle peeks keep the modal; they ask nothing of the board.

And once an object is pocketed, the hand goes visibly quiet: cards dim
and refuse selection instead of walking you through target-picking
toward an engine refusal, with a rail slip saying what remains (draw
and end the turn). Counters, chaos shields, and discards still play —
an ambush sprung by the very pickup must be answerable.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 18:59:16 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 b9c784a10c Difficulty without stupidity: apprentice, adept, archmage
Tiers degrade resources and repertoire, never judgment — the design
constraint was that no tier may ever look dumb. The APPRENTICE draws
one card a turn instead of two (a poorer wizard, not a worse one),
spends counters only on heavy hits (thrift, not blindness), and
carries a modest spellbook: damage, summons, stones, keys, and
treasure play, with no afflictions, amplifies, ambushes, guarding
tricks, or deja-vu. The ADEPT draws fully and knows everything except
ambushes and amplify. The ARCHMAGE is the full curriculum. Every card
any tier plays, it plays correctly.

The lobby workshop gains a tier picker beside the temperaments
(default adept); the tier persists with the seat, shows in roster and
scoresheet ("⚙ apprentice mystery"), and rides the drive loop.
Measured where it should matter: in berserker combat mirrors the
archmage beats the apprentice two to one, while pure treasure races
stay honest — the handicap lives in the card exchanges a human
actually feels, pinned deterministically in the tournament suite.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 17:59:11 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 3eda686e29 The full clockwork curriculum: keys, vengeance, spellcraft, and voice
Every play-strength item, in one education. DOORS: the pathfinder
walks through doors it can open — already-opened ones freely, locked
ones when holding Master Key or Pick Lock, casting the key at the
door on the path before stepping through (and a loop where the
clockwork re-keyed an already-open door forever is fixed: opened
doors read as open). TREASURE DEFENSE: a wizard carrying the
automaton's gold becomes the priority — chased over all objectives,
shaken down with DROP OBJECT when held, and attacked first. WIDER
SPELLCRAFT: blaster wands charged by number and fired; teleport as
escape when wounded and hunted, and as a counteraction clear of big
incoming spells; SPEED cast on sight; WARD armed to guard the gold;
shieldstone displayed so spare numbers soak small hits; ANTI-ANTI
pressed against counters (never against escapes); the berserker grows
BIG with an enemy near, the worrier fades invisible or slams a
CREATE WALL in its pursuer's face; ambushes armed from held
interrupts — the worrier trapping its doorstep, the others trapping
the treasure. Tournament suite green across all temperaments.

And the clockwork speaks: sparing, temperament-voiced table talk on
its own deeds — "ACQUISITION COMPLETE.", "SCHEDULED DEMISE:
DELIVERED.", "good wall. safe wall." — through the same chat ledger
as everyone else. The tally gains "games fought against the
clockwork", and automatons no longer pollute the count of wizards
seated.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 17:10:47 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 ca16faac73 Rev 9: REDIRECTION connects the exits you choose
Playtesting read the card right and the engine had it wrong. "Placing
the A tokens on one set of exits & the B tokens on the other" means
the two exits you mark BECOME a pair — and their former partners pair
with each other — not that the two exits trade destinations. Under
rev 9, click the exit and then the exit you want it to connect TO
(the hint now says so); already-connected exits are refused. Earlier
games keep the swap their logs were validated against. Test pins the
full four-way rewiring.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:40:22 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 1aafb9e837 The mystery machine keeps its mood to itself
"Random" read as random ACTIONS, and a revealed random pick is barely
a mystery anyway. The fourth workshop button is now "mystery": the
server rolls the temperament and keeps it — the join line records it
for replay, the drive loop plays it, but the room tells the table
only "mystery". Roster and scoresheet show ⚙ mystery; the machine's
behavior is the only tell.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:36:21 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 af75a024ff A random pull from the workshop, and temperaments on the scoresheet
The lobby's automaton row gains "random" (the server already rolled
when no style was named — now the choice is offered). And each
automaton's temperament shows beside its name on the in-game
scoresheet in the handwritten face, so you always know whether the
machine across the maze wants your gold or your blood.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:32:06 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 5a407a1e4c The clockwork learns numbers, summons, creatures — and temperament
The automaton now plays number cards where they matter: attached to
value-scaled attacks (waterbolt, powerthrust) choosing the biggest
for damage, and played for movement when the goal is just out of
stride. It raises its monsters when no wizard is in spell range and
commands them every turn — creatures march at enemies by the same
hazard-shy BFS and maul whoever shares their square. Targets are
picked by lowest life.

And it has moods. The HUNTER plays the classic game: gold first,
violence when convenient. The BERSERKER hunts wizards over treasure
and finishes games by last-wizard-standing. The WORRIER paths around
enemies, counters at a lower threshold, shields against chaos, and
never brawls. Hosts pick the temperament when seating one (or the
workshop assigns at random); it persists with the seat, shows in the
roster, and the tournament harness proves every pairing finishes.
Across ten seeds of berserker versus hunter: six treasure wins to
four kills — the moods play genuinely different games.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:29:36 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 75313154ad Number cards ride along on edge and cell casts
The edge-click dispatch attached the tapped number card only for
wall attacks, so the warp wand's first use could never receive its
charges ("a wand's first use needs a number card" no matter what),
and wall of fire silently burned one turn instead of its NUMBER.
Cell-target casts had the same gap for duration terrain. The attached
number now rides every edge and cell cast.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:21:12 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 ab52628d2f The automatons awaken (branch only — not for the public droplet yet)
Phase 4 begins. The automaton is a pure function in the engine —
automatonCommand(view) — playing from its own redacted GameView, the
same information a human seat receives: hidden hands stay hidden from
the clockwork. It ranks simple damage spells, counters what hurts
(full shield at 3+, reflection at 4+, blunt at 2+), discards its
worst cards by a value order, BFS-pathfinds to enemy treasures and
home again, refuses to path through hazards, brawls when there is
nothing to steal, and always has a safe fallback; the server's drive
loop steps any bot-held seat through the same runCommand path as
humans, so bot commands log, persist, replay, and broadcast like
anyone's.

Hosts seat them pre-start with "⚙ seat an automaton" (Automaton,
Automaton II, ... V); bot seats persist as tokenless join lines and
restore on boot. Proven three ways: bot-vs-bot engine games conclude
across seeds in 8-14 rounds (~100 commands — human-scale), a full
four-automaton table finishes, and a live websocket game of human
vs. automaton ended with the clockwork carrying two treasures home
through a do-nothing opponent.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:11:54 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 5802e1df05 Table talk keeps its place in the chronicle
Live chat interleaved correctly, but a reload sank every past message
to the bottom: the rejoin sent the whole game history first and the
chat history after. Talk is now a tableTalk event in the room's event
stream at the moment it was said — the room file already preserved
the interleaving, since chat lines append between command lines — so
rejoining players read the banter between the battle lines where it
happened. The separate chatHistory message retires; unread counting
rides the event stream instead.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 16:00:51 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 ef661c79ad The die rolls in the open
Every player-facing D4 roll now lands in the chronicle as pips with
its purpose: "🎲 alice rolls a 3 — aiming at the unseen — only a 1
finds them." A shared rollD4 helper threads the generic dieRolled
event through blind staggers and swings, pit leaps, ooze and pit
struggles, and the invisible/shrink miss rolls — the table sees the
die land, exactly as it would in person. Rolls whose numbers already
showed (the troll's swing, the misdirection direction, the opening
roll-off) keep their lines.

And the physical die's other job — "any 50-50 call" — gets its
button: 🎲 beside the say-box in online games (server-rolled,
published through the chat ledger so it persists, replays, and counts
toward unread badges) and under the chronicle in hotseat, rolled on
the device. Chronicle only; no game state touched.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 15:57:28 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 d6d34887e3 The whole punch list: rev 8, general FAQ, and four promoted UX items
Rules rev 8 closes the last two fidelity threads. A SPEED bonus turn
burns a turn of duration spells on the hastened wizard — recipient-
counted, per the FAQ's most obscure ruling — with self-cast durations
already burning through the normal turn-start sweep (expiry extracted
into expireEffect so both paths share the cleanup). And nothing can
be created on a DIMENSIONAL WARP token, as the card face always said.

The general-topic FAQ sections (Combat, Line of Sight, Monsters,
Treasures, and five more) join the rules tab verbatim under a double-
ruled divider, completing the FAQ's absorption: card rulings on the
cards, general rulings in the rules.

The four promoted UX items: cell-target spells now dim ineligible
squares (creations mirror emptySquareTarget from the viewer's
knowledge, summons want clear sighted squares, teleport BFSes its
four spaces exactly as the engine does, stone-to-water lights only
stone, dispel lights only creations); hotseat games get the full
replay reel, each step seen from its actor's own seat; a "stop
announcing attacks on this device" link in the fanfare modal (undo
lives beside the notification toggle in the lobby); the corner
inspector now serves only the selected casting card, with every
examine-a-card peek unified on the centered treatment; and the dev
socket URL keys on vite's port instead of hijacking every localhost.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 15:45:59 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 f657144127 Discard-pile cards enlarge above the pile, like the library's
Tapping a discarded card summoned the corner inspector beneath the
pile's own overlay — same layering trap the card library had. The
pile now enlarges its card centered above itself, FAQ seal included,
dismissed with a tap anywhere.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 15:37:18 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 5375941ed3 Every card wears its FAQ seal; library cards enlarge above the booklet
The FAQ affordance moves onto the card itself: a small dark seal in
the corner of any card with official rulings, everywhere cards render
— hand, inspector, peek, final reveal, discard pile, card library —
opening the rulings modal on tap (the link, never the text: card
faces stay verbatim card text). The separate inspector buttons and
library chips retire in its favor.

And clicking a library card mid-game no longer summons the App-level
inspector beneath the help modal, greyed out and useless — the
library enlarges its card in its own overlay, centered above the
booklet, seal included.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 15:34:43 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 493f3bc567 Rev 7: sight passes only through the aisle warps
The cards settle what the morning's feature got wrong. DIMENSIONAL
WARP: "There is no L.O.S. through the warp." The AUTO WARP: "for all
purposes, treat the connected board edges as though they are
adjacent" — an explicit grant, for edges that physically meet at a
corner. The lettered wraparounds get no grant at all: their rule is
about walking. So the pattern is that warps carry movement, not
sight, unless the text says otherwise — and only the aisle corners
say otherwise.

Warps now carry an aisle flag (the 3-player AUTO WARP and the
5-player corner arcs); hasWarpLineOfSight honors only those, with
the adjacency geometry — diagonals through the corner mouth —
unchanged from this morning where it rightfully applies. Games begun
before rev 7 keep the wider sight their logged commands were
validated against, via a legacy flag boardView stamps from the
game's rules revision. Tests pin all three states: lettered mouths
see nothing, aisle mouths see the corner fan, legacy games see
everything they used to.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 15:25:00 -04:00
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5 53edf9734e Uncharged wands say what they need
"Opportunity Fire isn't letting me use a wand" — the window and the
wand both worked (verified headless); what refused him was the wand's
own first-use rule, which players from wandless editions have never
met: charges are set by a NUMBER card on first use. Selecting an
uncharged wand now says exactly that in the hint strip, before the
engine has to say no.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-16 15:14:15 -04:00