Fifteen minutes before bookworms arrive. The DM should have these in hand, on a table, in a folder, or open on a tab. If any are missing, do not start. Reschedule and finish the substrate first.
/bookwormcard/print/.From the moment the last bookworm sits down. Do not skip. Do not improvise the timing. The exact sequence below has been compressed so the bookworms do not have time to fall into pre-session chatter that will then need to be cleared.
Per bb* dm-002, the second movement of session zero is the dimension introduction. Two axes are named explicitly so bookworms know what kind of dimension they are entering. The third movement (canon-absorption versus frame-break) is declared so bookworms know what the dimension will hold against them and what it will release.
| Axis | Position for cmp-001 | What this means at the table |
|---|---|---|
| Playstyle | story-privileged | Resolution by quality of narration, per dm-003. A bookworm who writes a strong paragraph about lifting Mrs Jones's purse succeeds in lifting it. A bookworm who writes a weak paragraph fails. dm-009 four axes (VOICE / TRUTH / RESTRAINT / FORM) score the writing. No dice. |
| Lore | canon-heavy at the encounter spine, flexible in the surround | The Hughes encounter (purse-grab, kitchenette, $10 and lima beans, departure) is fixed. The 47-and-some-hours of Harlem around it are open. The MLK stabbing at Blumstein's two days into the window happened. Everything else in the streets is fair game. |
"This dimension absorbs you. If you stand in it and you are not respectful of the people who actually lived there, the dimension does not break to teach you a lesson. The Hughes encounter happens whether you are watching or not. Mrs Jones does not need you to make her real. She was already real. Your bookworms are visitors, not the lesson's audience."
"This dimension does not let you step outside its own time. You cannot pull out a phone. You cannot quote Twitter at the people who lived in 1958. If you try to, your bookworm just looks at their hands and finds the phone gone. The dimension keeps the artifacts of its own time."
This is the most important thirty seconds of the session. The frame-break prohibition is what distinguishes this dimension from a costumed sketch. The bookworms have to operate inside the period or the dimension stops being available.
Per cc-cmp001-emergence-point, the burrow opens into Mrs Jones's kitchenette. Not Hughes's writing room. Not the Theresa lobby. The kitchenette is the cave because it is the architecture-of-transformation in the canonical text. Roger enters as a thief and leaves with $10 and lima beans in his stomach. The room is the lesson's home address.
The burrow opens at a specific moment, not a generic location. The moment is roughly 11:35 PM Saturday September 20 1958. Mrs Jones has Roger in the kitchenette. The lima beans are on the stove. The half-pint of milk is on the table. The pocketbook is on the day-bed. Mrs Jones's back is mostly to Roger but not fully. The window over the air-shaft is open. The bookworms arrive in the room without entrance, the way bookworms always do, and Mrs Jones does not notice them because they do not exist in the canon-layer of the room.
Per dm-002 step three, the first burrowing is a light scene without plot stakes. The bookworms practice being in the dimension. They can look. They can move within the room. They cannot interact with Mrs Jones or Roger in this first attempt. The canon encounter runs to its end (Roger leaving with $10, Mrs Jones closing the door, "Goodnight! Behave yourself, boy!") and the bookworms watch.
Light scene. No stakes. The bookworms are in the kitchenette while the Hughes encounter completes itself. Their job is to notice what they notice and write it down for homework. The DM's job is to keep the canon running and not get sucked into bookworm chatter.
The full dossier is at cc-cmp001-npc-mrs-jones in cc*. This card is the runtime extract. Use the verbatim lines when she is speaking. Do not paraphrase her into smoother English. Hughes wrote her voice precisely.
"Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here."
"I am Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones."
"Then it will get washed this evening."
"Eat some more, son."
"I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son. Not even God, if he didn't already know. So you set down while I fix us something to eat. You might run that comb through your hair so you will look presentable."
"Shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to get my rest now. But from here on in, son, I hope you will behave yourself."
"Behave yourself, boy."
The bookworms cannot interact with the canon-layer in the first burrow (see III above). The DM still needs adjudication rulings for the four most-likely off-canon-layer moves the bookworms will try anyway. These are written so the DM does not have to invent in the moment.
The Hughes canon ends with Mrs Jones closing the door. The first burrow ends the same way. After the closing line, the DM closes the story-book, holds the silence for five seconds, and brings the bookworms back.
Beyond the project matrices, 42 discovered-quest offers now ride the world's surfaces per cc-cmp001-atlas-quests and cc-cmp001-pregame-master-plan. Load rule: no more than six or seven live offers per window. Sunday morning rides the three hooks (stoop census, meal dare, hallway soundscape, the whole day, Sunday best, sermon-poem). Sunday afternoon is the street cluster (games, the steps plea, the ladder, the bus flyer). Sunday evening is a menu by room (the bar's Simple set, the hallway echo, the Theresa, the late train, the rent party). Monday is the payoff window where everything closed opens (the dime list proven, the two chairs, the ledger, the wall label, the dressed window, the long table). Plant the details, never hand out the quest: the chalked skully board, the spaldeen at the grate, the taped price cards, the bright party card in the grille, the velvet rope and the dropped book at Blumstein's, the empty stepladder at 135th and Lenox, the fifth door's newer paint.
Write one page (handwritten, please) on this question:
"You were in the kitchenette while Mrs Jones fed Roger. Mrs Jones did not see you. Roger did not see you. The room saw you. Describe what the room would say about you if the room could talk."
Constraints. Stay in 1958. Use period-faithful language. Use your own bookworm's voice (not Mrs Jones, not Roger, not a narrator). One page is enough. The DM is grading on dm-009 four axes (VOICE / TRUTH / RESTRAINT / FORM) and on whether you noticed the room.
The campaign now carries forty-three branching project options across the three scenes. Session 001 surfaces thirteen options. Session 002 surfaces fifteen. SS-0 parametric template surfaces fifteen. Each project keys to a party choice or NPC encounter at session-runtime. AI engine filters by age band per cc-cmp001-age-band-restriction-matrix before surfacing to the DM. DM assigns one or two projects per party per session by default.
Session 001 is Saturday September 20 1958 at approximately 11 PM TM2. Mrs Jones is walking home from her late beauty-shop shift, hours after the King stabbing at Blumstein earlier that afternoon. The Hughes canonical "about eleven o'clock at night" timestamp anchors here. Prior Friday-night framing was an error.
The SS-0 template generates further runcards by selecting one of eight narrative threads, one of seven crossing-points, one of four window-legs. Project-opportunity matrix carries fifteen options. New P-SS0-15 Roger-walking-to-school Monday morning peer encounter closes the Roger-peer thread density gap. Crossing-point selection drives the project routing. JUNIOR cohorts must not select Blumstein Saturday 3:20 PM or Harlem Hospital Saturday 4-5 PM crossing-points for direct event participation.