Three-route playtest against build 72d3a12, covering the full Act One social arc through Marcus recruitment.
Report: wiki/playtests/2026-07-16-playtest-beacon.md
Key findings:
- Comms channel wall — trust stays at 0 across 2,400 ticks despite meeting day-job bands. Blocks the entire messaging/deceive path. Players are forced into the plot path instead.
- Plot IDs not surfaced — the plot command needs TOML file IDs (e.g. "looming-bill-absorbed") but the actions list only shows titles and row numbers. plot marcus 3 returns "No authored plot named 3." The social engineering layer is unusable from the game surface.
- Intel buffer overflow has no warning — recordings drop silently starting around tick 1600 with no visible capacity meter.
- Full Marcus arc completed: Ears → Eyes → intel → persona → egress → plot ("The Statement That Never Comes") → recruit unwitting (70%). Marcus can now plug, package, look away, and clone badge.
One prioritized recommendation: surface plot-ids in the actions list alongside titles. One-line display change that unblocks the entire social engineering layer.
Build: 72d3a12. Seeds: 1 (naive), 2 (informed + deep). Duration: ~2,400 ticks, 7 in-game days.