Shipwreck Reef
The Halcyon, bound for Booty Cove, struck the reef sometime after midnight. You don't remember the sound. You remember the longboat, hands pulling you into it, and the sand under your knees when you stumbled onto shore.
By first light you can see her: a dark shape on the reef, keeled over, her hold still dry above the water. The tide is out. It will be out for an hour.
Against the strong waves, the longboat that saved you can probably make it out to her once, come back, and then carry everyone to safe harbor. It can hold only the people who row it and two small chests. You need most of what remains on the ship, but you have space for only four things.
You need to act while the tide is out. You call the roll. Two voyagers are awake.
This first crossing is practice. We have a small, simple boat we can spare if it fails. We need to learn where the boat is strong, and where it's weak, before we set sail over serious depth and distance. A few brave souls will take the journey and bring you a report.
You'll take what you learn, then send those voyagers out on a more important test run over deeper waters.
Play alone or as a table. Using a keyboard? Tab to move, Enter to choose.
Night, then first light
Call the roll
Two voyagers are awake. They answer.
Here. I'll go. I just want to know what we're doing before we do it. That's all I ask.
How far is it to the harbor? It doesn't need to be close. I just need to know how far.
Here. Tide's out. Tell me what to carry and I'll carry it.
I want to go now.
What do you tell them before you go?
Low tide
Load the hold
Here's what's in the hold. You can only take four. Choose well.
Card #308 What meaningful decision should learners make? This is one.
Eight things are still dry in the Halcyon's hold. The longboat holds four. Choose four, in any order. You can change your mind until you push off. After that, no guarantees.
Hold: 0 of 4.
Before you sail
Sound the reef
Sailors sound a reef by dropping a weighted line and calling out the depth. You are about to do the same thing with people.
You're about to ask the passenger. Not the AI. The passenger. The AI is just the voice she uses.
Copy her, paste her anywhere, read what she says about what you loaded, and come back and tell the boat what she said. Then you'll do exactly this with your own design, and the answers won't be ones anyone already knows.
This works because the role is built from a real persona: who she is, what she needs, and what makes her stop trusting a crew, written in before she boards. That is not a chatbot wearing Irene's clothes. It is Irene. The thinner the persona, the more the costume shows.
- Copy Irene's prompt below. It already knows what you loaded.
- Paste it into any AI tool you use. Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, whichever you are allowed.
- Irene answers as herself: what each thing in the hold does for her, one thing she would send back, and one thing she would go back for.
- Come back here and mark what she said. Then do Brad, if you want both.
If you loaded the lead line, this is what it is for. If you didn't, this is how you find the depth anyway.
Card #317 What Context, Role, Example, and Work Product will you provide AI? The prompt below is a Crew on Deck prompt, Journal page 31. Context is the crossing as you loaded it. Role is Irene. Example is the shape of the answer. Work Product is her sounding.
Irene's sounding
Brad's sounding
Bring the sounding back
Read what each voyager said. Then answer for them here. If you only asked one, that is fine.
The tide line
The tide is turning
The tide is turning. There is time for one more trip to the wreck. You can swap one thing in the hold for one thing left behind, or push off now, as you are.
If you go back, the boat pushes off after dark.
Nobody was hurt. The tide will be out again tomorrow.
What the eight things were
The things that served everyone in the boat are the accessible ones. The things that served one voyager at the other's cost are the ones designers reach for first.
What you load for Irene, Brad uses too. The lantern, the trumpet, the lead line, the list. Nobody was ever slowed by a light or a clear word. That is the whole of universal design: trim the boat for the passenger with the least margin, and everyone sits easier.
That was the practice crossing. Yours is next, and this time the voyagers are aboard something you built.
Make It Better
Sound your own ship
Let someone tell you your baby is ugly. Then decide what to salvage.
The thing you built on day one is a ship. The learners it is for are its passengers, and they are not in the room. So before it sails, put three voyagers aboard and let them make the crossing. Each one is listening for something different.
- Irene listens for access and safety. Can she make the crossing at all, and does it ever make her feel foolish?
- Brad listens for pace and fun. Does the voyage earn his time, and where would he get off?
- Your own passenger listens for fit. Is this the crossing you built for them?
Every report is a passenger's account of the crossing, never a judgment of the builder. It says the crossing they made, where they were given the helm, which is every decision they had to make and whether it changed anything, where they lost their footing, where they had their bearings, where they went below, where they stayed on deck, the two things they would salvage first, and the water they could not sound, the things they could not test. That is how you learn from it and still want to sail again.
Before you paste anything into an AI tool: no learner names, no customer data, nothing your organization would not put on a slide. Describe the crossing, not the cargo. The passengers need to know what happens, not who it happened to.
No project yet?
What the learner meets first, what they choose, what happens when they choose, how it ends. Add the link if there is one. The voyager reads this before anything you attach.
Only for a persona you made on day one. Paste it here: name, who they are, what they need, what makes them stop trusting. No persona? Leave this empty. Irene and Brad are ready.
Put a voyager aboard
Copy one, paste it into your AI tool, and read the account there. Nothing comes back into this page. What you learned goes in the Blueprint boxes below.
See the prompt before you copy it
Journal page 49
Through their eyes
Do this on paper first, from memory, before you put anyone aboard. Then read the account and answer again, here, with what the passenger saw that you did not. The gap between the two is the lesson.
Journal page 31 · Blueprint Side 1, Quest 3
Crew on Deck
Card #317 What Context, Role, Example, and Work Product will you provide AI?
The sounding you copied is a CREW prompt. Write its four parts into the AI Prompt box on Side 1, and paste the account into AI Output. This button gives you the four parts in four lines.
Blueprint Side 2 · Make It Better
The back of the Blueprint
Fill whichever boxes the crossing gave you something for. You decide. The two that usually fill first from a passenger's account are Box 1, Improvements, and Box 4, Reality Check, so they are open. The rest are here if the account reached them.
Box 1 · Improvements. What did you strengthen today?
Box 4 · Reality Check. Will this work in the real world?
Start from "Water I couldn't sound" and "what might unintentionally leave someone out." The real world includes the passengers who were not in the room.
Box 2 · Playtest. What happened when others experienced your project?
Box 3 · Refine. What will you change next?
Box 5 · Next Move. How will you keep building after GamiCon?
Journal page 50 · What if I changed one assumption?
Refit one line
Card #314 How will you guide learners without giving them the answers?
Take the one thing the passenger would salvage first. Find the line your ship says at that moment. Change that line.
An instruction, a feedback message, a character's reply, the words on a button. Paste it as it reads now. The passenger reacts to it, then three human versions are drafted in the same speaker's voice, and you choose. That is the first documented improvement, and it goes in Box 1.
See the refit prompt
Bring the refit back
Read the three versions in your AI tool. Choose one, or write your own from them. Paste it here. Then say what changed, in your words, for Box 1.
Take it home
The sounding kit
Everything on this page works in any AI tool you are allowed to use at work. Nothing here needs a particular one. The persona does the work, not the model.
Two voyagers, ready to paste
Each one ends with a line that says where to paste your project.
Passengers the Halcyon did not carry
Irene and Brad are two. Real crossings carry more, and the ones designers forget are the ones the logbook below is for. Build one from someone you know.
- A learner who is Deaf or hard of hearing, in a course where the line that matters is only spoken.
- A learner who uses one hand, or a switch, in an activity built on drag and drop.
- A learner reading in a second language, where the jokes carry the instructions.
- A learner with ADHD, in a module that hides the point until page nine.
- A learner on a phone with a cracked screen, in a break room, with four minutes.
- A learner the last course humiliated, watching for the moment this one does it too.
The persona logbook
Fill this from your own learner persona. It becomes a voyager who can sound your ship. Ten minutes, and it is not anyone else's voice in your persona's clothes.
High, average, and low, in the words you used in Frame It. For example: high Acceptance, high Curiosity, low Status.
Keyboard, screen reader, phone only, large print, captions, a quiet room, English as a second language. Say what is true.
No trust-breakers yet. Without them, this passenger will forgive everything and the report will be soft. Add at least three things that make them stop trusting an experience, then build again.
Journal page 33