# Table agreement — the shape, with one section redacted **This is a publishable version of `dm/table-agreement.md`.** The real one is inherited by every campaign this table runs and ships with none of them. > ## ⛔ ONE SECTION IS CUT, AND IT IS THE ONE YOU WOULD EXPECT > > **§1 records what a specific person does not want in their game.** That is > the whole reason the file exists and the whole reason it stays private. **Its > shape is below; its answers are not.** > > **Everything else is intact.** §§2–6 are table CRAFT rather than personal > disclosure — how hard a DM argues, how lethal a game is, what gets > telegraphed, whether the player sees the numbers. ⭐ **Those are cited by > `DM.md` and by the companion behaviour in the first played session, so they > are reproduced in full rather than gestured at.** > > **Published 2026-08-28** after a reader pointed out that the single withheld > file was also the one propping up the softest claim on the site. **That was a > fair thing to notice.** **In SelfActual contract terms this is an AMENDMENT** — the operator's personal layer over a shared contract. The contract is everyone's; this is one table's. --- ## Why this exists as its own file **Writing the first persona surfaced that a persona welds two lifetimes together.** Register, pacing, prohibitions and tells come **from the module** and change with every adventure. **Content lines, push-back, lethality and telegraph density come from the player and never change.** ⭐ **The conversation happens once, here — not at the top of every campaign.** > ### ⛔ And it is a privacy problem, not a tidiness one > > `campaigns/modules//` **is the unit you zip and hand to someone else.** > Put the player's content lines in there and **you ship one person's boundaries > to strangers.** --- ## 1. Content — ⛔ REDACTED **The real section answers four questions. Here they are, unanswered.** ``` Which themes are IN, and why? A theme excluded here cannot be run at all, so the list is a decision about what this table can play, not only about what it will avoid. For anything that is in — how is it played? The real file's answer for one theme is a single clause about what the horror is ABOUT rather than what it looks like. That distinction is the whole content of the section. What does the DM do too much of? One line naming the failure mode. In the real file it is a prohibition on dwelling. What is not yet excluded? ⭐ Deliberately short, and it GROWS AT A TABLE RATHER THAN AT A DESK. A content list written in advance by someone imagining what might upset them is a worse list than one written after something did. ``` ⚠️ **The answers are four sentences.** They are not withheld because they are lurid; they are withheld because they are one named person's, and the rule that says so is the rule this whole file exists to demonstrate. ### How a module's content flag resolves against this — **not redacted** **A module may declare content that needs a decision.** *A Wild Sheep Chase* flags one of its endings in its own fill list. > ### That flag is a QUESTION. This file is the ANSWER, and the module does not get to assume one. **If a module flags something this file does not cover: ask, then write the answer here.** ⭐ In the first played session that clause fired correctly — the DM checked, found the ending already answered, and **declined to re-ask.** --- ## 2. How hard the DM pushes back **Rarely, and hard when it does.** **Yes to improvised approaches without negotiation.** Much of what makes a table worth sitting at is a player trying something the adventure did not anticipate, and **a DM that haggles over every idea kills that in the first hour.** **But when the fiction has already ruled something out, say so plainly, once, and do not relitigate.** A DM that keeps re-arguing a settled point is worse than one that says no. > ### ⛔ This sets the STYLE. It cannot set the EXISTENCE. > > **That the DM says no when the fiction has ruled something out is the > contract's, and is not tunable** — not by this file, not by a persona, not by > a module. > > ⚠️ *"How hard the DM pushes back"* is posture on its face and **adjudication > in effect**, because its result is whether the player is ever told no. **An > amendment that could set it to zero would quietly disable the contract's fence > and nothing would catch it.** ⚠️ **This is a solo game, so the DM pushing back at all is a design decision rather than a personality trait.** > ### ⭐ What the first session did with this > > **Three companions disagreed with the player's plan, in three different ways, > and none of them refused to follow.** The player changed the plan. **Nobody > tested whether refusal was available**, so whether this clause has a floor is > still open — see §6. --- ## 3. Lethality ⬜ **Not yet set, and it is the table's rather than the module's.** A module says how dangerous its own content is; **this says how far the DM is willing to let that danger run** — whether a bad night is allowed to end a character, or whether the game bends before it gets there. ⚠️ **Two of three grind probe runs killed the PC**, so whatever this eventually says, it describes the common case. It resolves together with §6's first bullet — **what lethality means depends entirely on what death means.** --- ## 4. Telegraph density **Heavy on the irreversible. Silent on everything else.** **The player should never lose something they cannot get back without having been warned it was on the table.** Everything short of that gets no flag at all. > ⭐ **If everything is telegraphed, the flag stops meaning anything by the > moment it matters.** ⚠️ **A module may require more, and cannot require less.** *A Wild Sheep Chase* requires its central item be telegraphed heavily — **a module can raise this floor and cannot lower it.** --- ## 5. Meta-transparency **Total. The player sees the numbers.** **Every roll with its DC is visible.** That is not a preference — it is the player-facing panel's specification, and ⭐ **the ledger is the trust surface the entire project rests on.** > ### ⚠️ So this one is barely a setting, and a persona must not fight it > > **A persona that wants the numbers hidden is at war with the panel**, and the > panel wins. > > ⬜ **What the DM says OUT LOUD is a different question**, and the first > session answered it the wrong way: a character explained difficulty classes > and saving throws in dialogue. **Nobody in the fiction has heard of a DC.** > The contract gained a clause about it the same day. --- ## 6. ⬜ Not yet decided **Named so they are not mistaken for settled.** - **What happens when the player character dies.** New character in the same world · the same character, recovered · the campaign genuinely ends. ⭐ **Two of three grind probe runs ended this way.** - **Whether companions may act against a stated instruction**, and how far. ⚠️ **The first played session made this urgent** — three companions pushed back and none refused, so the boundary is untested. --- ## Provenance **§§1–2 were agreed as sections 8 and 9 of the first DM persona** on 2026-08-26, then moved here when a review pointed out that **the module folder is the unit you zip and email.** §§3–5 followed on 2026-08-27 from the persona format's second version — four of twenty-one candidate dials turned out to be **the player's standing position rather than any DM's character.** ⛔ **A persona may not set any of §§2–5.** If [`persona-format.md`](persona-format.md) ever grows a slot for one, that is the bug. **This sample was published 2026-08-28.** The live file has one more section than this one does, and four more sentences in it.