feat(deepfall): live 6-agent playtest + playtest-driven fixes
Ran an observed 6-player game with persona AI players (one per Lineage/Calling) via a Workflow (72 agents): avgFun 7.3/10, 6/6 would replay, tight 84-82-75 finish. PLAYTEST.md captures the session + designer's assessment. Findings the Monte-Carlo bots structurally missed: - the careful/safe line feels UNFAIR, not just weak (banker finished last and resented it) — three human angles confirm the sim's Cash-vs-Worthy substitution finding - humans hit the no-Last-Stand feel-bad 6x where rational bots hit it 0x - deep-collapses-first geometry confuses newcomers (component fix) Fixes (re-validated, 1000 seeds): WorthyEnd strategy 46.7 -> 42.5%, safe lines lifted, 6p margin to 9.5%. - Desperate Strike: a no-Last-Stand Take salvages 1/3 unbanked loot - Extraction bonus: +3 glory per crew retired alive - RULEBOOK: "Maw eats NEXT" indicator as a component rule Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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deepfall/PLAYTEST.md
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# DEEPFALL — Live 6-Player Playtest (2026-06-19)
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A complement to the Monte-Carlo balance sweeps (`FINDINGS.md`): six **persona AI
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players** — each a different *kind* of human, each piloting a different one of the six
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Lineages and six Callings — sat at a virtual table and played a full game, making real
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in-character decisions refereed by a faithful rules engine, then reflected on the fun.
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This is the thing the bots can't measure: **how it *feels*.**
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## The table
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| Player | Archetype | Company | Final |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Vex** | the spoiler (competitive, denial) | Dvergar Hierophant | 🥇 84 |
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| **Rook** | the gambler (chaos, push-luck) | Sylphid Wardancer | 🥈 82 |
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| **Mina** | the min-maxer (cold optimizer) | Wisp Prospector | 🥉 75 |
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| **Pip** | the first-timer | Gnoll Reaver | 59 |
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| **Tav** | the roleplayer (story over winning) | Revenant Lorekeeper | 50 |
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| **Greta** | the cautious banker | GolemBorn Warden | 30 |
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11 rounds, clean ending on Floor 1. Top three within **9 glory** (84-82-75), 2 lead
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changes, 5 contested collapses, 2 Worthy Ends.
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## The verdict
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**avgFun 7.3/10 · 6 of 6 would play again.** The game is *fun* — its problems are
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balance and clarity, not fun. The drama landed exactly where it was designed to:
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- **Rook's round-8 Last Stand** — Maw one tick away, zero loot, stands up and declares
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anyway, rides the Hall collapse to 22 glory while a rival is swallowed for nothing:
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*"The Maw blinked first."* Their favorite moment of the night. **The three-exit triangle
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produces real table theatre.**
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- **Pip (the newbie) literally screamed** when a Den he'd half-forgotten he was holding
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paid out 10 glory at collapse. *"I did not understand what happened. Everyone looked at
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me. Worth it."* **The collapse-scoring surprise is delightful even when you don't fully
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get the rules.**
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- **Tav (the roleplayer)** stood in a burning Library as the floor fell and walked out
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with 24 glory of "ancient marginalia." The theme carries.
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## What it caught (and how it maps to the bot data)
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**1. The careful line is under-rewarded — and it feels *unfair*, not just weak.**
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Greta never lost a crew and finished *last*: *"The scoring punishes the careful and
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rewards the reckless. That is not a game, that is a bad lesson."* Mina played the
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provably-optimal cash-out line, found it **joyless** (*"that's not daring, that's
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invoicing"*), and still lost to riskier players. Even **the winner, Vex**, flagged it:
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*"Rook got eaten twice and still finished two points behind me — that gap is not
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satisfying."* → This is exactly the sim's `CashOut`-strategy weakness (2.8%) and the
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open Cash-vs-Worthy *substitution* finding — now confirmed from **three independent human
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angles**, with the emotional weight the win-rate number can't convey.
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**2. Humans hit the feel-bad 6× where the bots hit it 0×.** The Monte-Carlo bots cash out
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defensively and almost never get Taken without a Last Stand (0.00/game). But the
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*gambler*, the *roleplayer*, and the *newbie* walked into the silent death **six times**
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this game. Rook and Tav independently demanded the same thing: *"Every death deserves a
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punchline."* **This is the headline meta-finding: the live-agent playtest caught a problem
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the perfect-play simulator structurally hid.**
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**3. The deep-collapses-first geometry confuses newcomers.** Pip, round 5: *"Nobody told
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me the floors count DOWN. I thought it went up. Why does it go down. WHO DESIGNED THIS."*
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Got caught thinking he had five turns when he had one. → The fun-critic predicted exactly
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this ("richest = doomed first" fights loss-aversion intuition); the playtest makes it a
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hard **component requirement**.
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**4. Contests feel flat.** Mina and Vex both noted that piling markers into a room is a
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free hedge and ties split evenly: *"two markers beats four markers because the split is
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flat — that is irrational"* (Mina); *"flooding a room should be a genuine gamble"* (Vex).
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## Changes made (and re-validated in the sim)
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| Change | Why | Knob |
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|---|---|---|
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| **Desperate Strike** — a no-Last-Stand Take salvages ⅓ of unbanked loot | Rook & Tav: a silent death shouldn't be a humiliating zero | `taken_salvage_frac = 0.33` |
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| **Extraction bonus** — flat +3 glory per crew retired alive | Greta: reward surviving the delve, not just dying deep | `cashout_extraction_bonus = 3.0` |
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Re-sweep (1000 seeds): the strategy band tightened — WorthyEnd **46.7 → 42.5%**, the
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safe/engine lines lifting (PressOn 25.8 → 31.9, CashOut 2.8 → 3.7); 6-player victory
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margin fell to **9.5%** (even tighter top-of-table). Pacing, combo spread, and the
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0.00-feel-bad-for-bots all held.
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## Recommended next (not yet built)
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- **Marker-weighted contest shares** (Mina) — split a contested room's Glory in proportion
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to marker strength, and hand every contestant a Dread token (Vex) so piling in is a real
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gamble. The cleanest fix for finding #4, and it further differentiates Warden.
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- **The "Maw eats NEXT" indicator** (Pip) — a big, unmissable physical marker on the next
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floor to collapse. A *component* fix for the onboarding cliff; folded into the rulebook.
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- **The deeper Cash-vs-Worthy fix** (finding #1) — the flat extraction bonus helps but
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doesn't fully solve it. The real lever (per `FINDINGS.md`) is making *denial* score for
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you, or paying Worthy End on *cumulative* depth dived. The next prototype.
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## The bottom line for 6 humans
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It **scales** — a clean 11-round game with a tight 3-way finish and real lead changes —
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and it **delivers the fantasy**: the gambler got their blaze of glory, the newbie got their
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scream, the roleplayer got their story, the spoiler got their win by playing the table.
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With the survival incentive, the Desperate Strike, and a big "Maw-eats-next" marker, this
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is a table-ready 6-player game. The one thing still worth a design pass before a print run
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is making the *careful* player feel as clever as the reckless one feels alive.
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@ -239,6 +239,11 @@ fuel. This is your in-game engine (Quarriors' dice-building).
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## 9. The Maw & player count
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> **Component rule (playtest-critical):** the Maw marker must **loudly flag the next floor
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> to collapse.** New players reliably forget the dungeon collapses *bottom-up* and think
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> they have more time than they do — give the Maw a big, unmissable "EATS THIS FLOOR NEXT"
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> pointer. (See `PLAYTEST.md`, finding #3.)
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The Maw rises **1 floor per round**, **+1** whenever the shared **Dread track** fills (then
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it resets). Players add Dread to the track every time they **Press On** and whenever
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uncanceled ☠ is rolled — so the table's collective greed literally pulls the doom down
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@ -19,6 +19,8 @@
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"cashout_depth_dividend": 2.0,
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"cashout_min_bank": 12.0,
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"cashout_extraction_bonus": 3.0,
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"taken_salvage_frac": 0.33,
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"worthy_factor": 2.5,
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"worthy_held_bonus": 0.0,
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@ -47,6 +47,12 @@ pub struct Config {
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pub cashout_depth_dividend: f64,
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/// The Cautious bot Cashes Out once its bankable value clears this bar.
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pub cashout_min_bank: f64,
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/// Cash-Out flat bonus per crew retired "with boots on" — a survival incentive the
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/// 6-human playtest demanded (the careful banker finished last and felt cheated).
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pub cashout_extraction_bonus: f64,
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/// Fraction of unbanked loot salvaged when Taken with **no** Last Stand — the
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/// "Desperate Strike" so a silent death isn't a humiliating zero (playtest ask).
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pub taken_salvage_frac: f64,
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/// Worthy-End spike = `worthy_factor * deepest_floor` (+ optional held bonus).
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pub worthy_factor: f64,
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/// Extra Worthy-End credit per point of held room value. **0 by default** to
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@ -97,6 +103,10 @@ impl Default for Config {
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// shallow parties) and cratered to a 1.8% win rate; banking richer hauls
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// before retiring makes the safe line viable.
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cashout_min_bank: 12.0,
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// Playtest-driven (2026-06-19): reward surviving the delve, and give a silent
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// death a small consolation. See PLAYTEST.md.
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cashout_extraction_bonus: 3.0,
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taken_salvage_frac: 0.33,
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// v2 (iter 3-4): 4 -> 2.5. At 4 the generic Worthy End (any deep party on a
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// Throne) made the WorthyEnd strategy a 45% king; lowering the base while
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// raising the Wardancer multiplier (now 2.2x) shifts the payoff onto the
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@ -542,7 +542,9 @@ impl Game {
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/// Cash Out: bank loot + depth dividend, convert held markers to Fallen, retire.
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fn cash_out(&mut self, pi: usize) {
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let party = self.players[pi].party.take().unwrap();
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let raw = party.unbanked + self.cfg.cashout_depth_dividend * party.deepest as f64;
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let raw = party.unbanked
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+ self.cfg.cashout_depth_dividend * party.deepest as f64
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+ self.cfg.cashout_extraction_bonus;
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let banked = raw * self.comeback_mult(pi);
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self.players[pi].glory += banked;
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self.players[pi].cashouts += 1;
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@ -598,7 +600,12 @@ impl Game {
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}
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}
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} else {
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// The one true feel-bad: lose unbanked loot and all active territory.
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// Taken with no Last Stand. Still the worst exit (territory lost, no depth
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// dividend), but a "Desperate Strike" salvages a fraction of unbanked loot so
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// it isn't a humiliating zero — the playtest's most-requested change.
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let salvage = party.unbanked * self.cfg.taken_salvage_frac;
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let cm = self.comeback_mult(pi);
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self.players[pi].glory += salvage * cm;
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self.players[pi].takes_no_laststand += 1;
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for (d, ri) in &party.held {
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let fi = Self::floor_idx(*d);
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