PROTOTYPE - NOT FOR PRODUCTION

Question: Does the displaced-cost muster (pay at the forge, not at the horn) feel weighty?

Date: 2026-09-12

Play Log — Session 1

Played as a first-time player would: no knowledge of the secret raid turn or strength ahead of time. The facilitator rolls (recorded below) were generated before the session and hidden from the "player" reasoning below until the raid actually triggers, to keep the simulated decisions honest.

Hidden facilitator rolls (not known to the player until revealed in-session): Raid turn = 7. Raid strength = 7.

Turn 1

Iron: 3. No spears, no ploughs, no sense of urgency yet — the horn is a distant rumor. Player reasoning: *"Nothing's coming yet as far as I know. I'll start building up the settlement."* Allocates 3 → ploughs.

State: Ploughs 3, Spears 0, Iron banked 0, Settlers 15.

Turn 2

Iron: 3. Player reasoning: *"Still no sign of trouble. One more turn of ploughs feels right — I want the Harvest Score to matter too, not just panic into spears."* Allocates 3 → ploughs.

State: Ploughs 6, Spears 0, Iron banked 0, Settlers 15.

Turn 3

Iron: 3. Player reasoning: *"The rules said 'the horn will sound before winter' — that phrase is starting to feel less abstract now that a third of the season is gone. I don't know when, but it's coming. Let me hedge."* Allocates 2 → spears, 1 → ploughs.

State: Ploughs 7, Spears 2, Iron banked 0, Settlers 15.

Turn 4

Iron: 3. Player reasoning: *"2 spears is nothing — that's 2 defenders out of

• If the raid rolls even average strength I'm in trouble. But I also don't

want zero ploughs — 7 feels like a real number now, I don't want to abandon it."* Allocates 2 → spears, 1 → ploughs.

State: Ploughs 8, Spears 4, Iron banked 0, Settlers 15.

Turn 5

Iron: 3. Player reasoning: *"I'm at turn 5 of a 7-10 window. It genuinely could arrive next turn. This is the first turn where I feel real tension — every iron I put into a plough right now feels like it might be the iron that was supposed to be a spear."* Allocates 3 → spears.

State: Ploughs 8, Spears 7, Iron banked 0, Settlers 15.

Turn 6

Iron: 3. Player reasoning: *"No horn yet. I keep expecting it. This is exactly the anxious-waiting feeling the concept doc describes — I have 7 spears, which covers less than half the settlement. I don't know if that's enough. I don't know if I'll get another turn to fix it."* Allocates 3 → spears.

State: Ploughs 8, Spears 10, Iron banked 0, Settlers 15.

Turn 7 — THE HORN SOUNDS

Before allocating this turn's iron, the raid arrives (facilitator reveals the hidden roll: turn 7). This turn's 3 iron is NOT allocated — the raid happens first, before production. Player reaction, recorded verbatim in spirit: *"Wait, it's now? I only just decided to commit hard to spears last turn. If I'd known it was turn 7 I would have gone all-in two turns ago. This actually stings — I can see exactly where I under-invested."*

Muster called. Free, as the rules state. Defenders = 10 (spears owned).

Raid Strength revealed: 7 (facilitator's hidden 2d6 roll).

Resolution: Defenders (10) ≥ Raid Strength (7). The settlement holds. No losses.

Player reaction: *"I won — but I won because I got lucky that the roll was 7 and not 11. If it had been 11 I'd have lost 1 settler even after everything I put into spears from turn 3 onward. The 8 ploughs I built in turns 1-2 feel like they were a real bet against a raid that could have punished me for them."*

Turns 8–10 (post-raid, remaining season)

With the raid resolved, the player reverts to ploughs — there's no more threat this season and Harvest Score is now the only thing left to optimize.

• Turn 8: 3 → ploughs. Ploughs 11, Spears 10.
• Turn 9: 3 → ploughs. Ploughs 14, Spears 10.
• Turn 10: 3 → ploughs. Ploughs 17, Spears 10.

Final State

• Final Harvest Score: 17
• Settlers Surviving: 15 / 15
• Raid outcome: Held, no losses (Defenders 10 vs. Raid Strength 7)
• Unspent iron: 0 — every turn's iron was committed to something

Observations During Play

• The tension was real but arrived later than expected — turns 1-2 felt almost entirely consequence-free, because "the horn will sound before winter" is vague enough to not feel urgent yet. The felt pressure only kicked in around turn 5, roughly halfway through the raid's actual possible window (7-10).
• The moment of genuine regret was turn 7 itself, not turns 1-6. Seeing the raid land right after committing to spears (turns 5-6) rather than earlier made the earlier plough turns feel like a real, now-visible cost — "I can see exactly where I under-invested" is the reaction the hypothesis predicted.
• The win felt lucky, not earned — a 7 vs. 7 defenders is uncomfortably close to a coin flip outcome given a 10-defender roll would have needed an 11+ to fail. The player's own reaction ("I won because the roll was 7 and not 11") suggests the randomness of raid strength may be doing as much emotional work as the allocation decision itself. This muddies the read on whether the allocation choice alone is what created the feeling, or whether dice variance did.
• Ploughs were never regretted outright — even after a near-miss, the player didn't say "I wish I'd never built any ploughs," they said the ploughs "felt like a real bet." This is a positive signal for the plough side of the hypothesis: the option did not feel like an obvious trap.
• The secret raid timing (not a fixed turn) is doing real work. The player's own commentary shows escalating uncertainty from turn 3 onward, which is the emotional texture the concept doc's "I know my armory is thin and autumn is coming" line is describing. A fixed, known raid turn would likely have produced a much flatter experience (calculate the exact optimal turn to pivot, then execute it mechanically).