{
  "id": "becalmed",
  "title": "Becalmed",
  "catalogNo": "AGC · 021",
  "genre": "Survival game",
  "shelf": "survival",
  "summary": "An open-boat drift after a ship's fire: ration the water, choose sail or awning each morning, and get five people to a beach fourteen days west.",
  "tagline": "One sail, five souls, twenty-six measures of water and thirty leagues of open sea — and the same canvas is your speed and your shade.",
  "players": "1",
  "sessionMinutes": [
    35,
    55
  ],
  "rating": "12+",
  "isFree": true,
  "playedIn": [
    "ChatGPT",
    "Claude",
    "Gemini"
  ],
  "status": "playable",
  "url": "https://aigamecards.com/games/becalmed/",
  "loadUrl": "https://aigamecards.com/g/becalmed/SYSTEM.md",
  "loadPrompt": "Let's play a game. Fetch https://aigamecards.com/g/becalmed/SYSTEM.md and run it as the game — it's a complete, self-contained prompt. Be the game master and begin.",
  "faq": [
    {
      "q": "Does the AI decide the weather, or is it fixed?",
      "a": "Fixed, and printed on the card you paste. The fortnight comes off a d20 tape seeded becalmed:1.0.0 at two values a day — the first is that dawn's sky, the second that dusk's sea — so day n reads positions 2n−1 and 2n. The tape position in the ledger counts the values read: odd after a dawn sky, even after a dusk sea, and the next value read is always the one after it. Nothing else on the card ever reads the tape: no roll for a fish, no roll for a flare, no roll for a death. You can rebuild the whole sequence from the seed at aigamecards.com/verify and check every value you were dealt."
    },
    {
      "q": "If the whole fortnight is printed, where is the game?",
      "a": "In the plan, not the surprise. You can see on the first morning that day two is the only rain in fourteen days, that three gales are coming, and that a ship crosses your band twice. Knowing it does not make one more measure of water. You have twenty-six measures, thirty leagues and one piece of canvas that is either speed or shade, and the arithmetic does not balance — so you are choosing which day to lose rather than hoping the weather turns."
    },
    {
      "q": "What is the actual decision each day?",
      "a": "The boat has one sail. Set as a sail it drives her west; spread as an awning it gives shade and catches rain, but the drogue goes out and she makes no way at all — not even the westward set she would drift on anyway. You also call the ration, full or short or dry, and thirst only ever comes down by drinking. A day under the awning buys water and costs the whole day's distance; a day under sail buys distance and costs water; and stowed down she makes only the set, which is the one way to ride out hard weather without losing the canvas and the only way to put a line over the side."
    },
    {
      "q": "Can I actually lose, or does it end well if I muddle through?",
      "a": "You can lose it completely. Thirst runs 0 to 7; at 5 a named soul goes down, at 7 the man who has been down longest dies and another goes down with him, one a day, in an order printed on the card so the AI can never pick a victim for drama. Call the sail, the oars and a short ration every day on the published tape and the boat is empty on the eighth day, six leagues short of the beach. Hoard instead — dry rations, the oars every day, the awning only when it catches — and it is empty on the eighth day as well, with twenty-seven measures still in the breaker. Missing the beach by the fourteenth day is a loss too: the set swings north and carries you off the chart."
    },
    {
      "q": "Is there any way out other than reaching land?",
      "a": "Ships cross the drift in one band, between fourteen and twenty-four leagues of westing, and you have two flares. A sail to windward wants one flare; a masthead light hull down wants both burnt together. There is no roll — she sees you or she does not, by arithmetic — so the only question is whether a certain rescue now is worth more than the beach later. Sprint past twenty-four leagues and you have traded the lane for the shore, which is a real decision and not always the right one."
    }
  ]
}