PEP Playbook™
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Vol. I · No. 1Free · Always
Reinvested · Always

The PEP Post

Forecast: BrightScattered fog before noon

The Mailbag

Questions about the game · answered in the open

Anyone can write to the Mailbag, and that will never cost anything. Members get the guaranteed read and a vote on what ships next — what is sold is a say in the order of play, not a voice.

We print the declines too, with a reason. A paper that only prints its wins is an advertisement.

Write to the Mailbag →
The Mailbag Asked before kickoff · answered in the open
The question that comes up most

Could you add a streak counter? I like seeing the days add up.

Coach PEP™ replies

No, and it deserves a real answer rather than silence. A streak counts days, and this game does not score days; it scores whether you called the right play. A streak also does its worst work on exactly the week you need it least: you crash on a Tuesday, the number resets to zero, and a system built for recovery has just told you that nine good days were worth nothing. What you're actually after — seeing the work add up — is the season record, and that only ever goes up.

The one the founder asked himself

What happens to my rating if I disappear for a month?

Coach PEP replies

Honestly: it falls, and you should hear that from us rather than discover it. The PEP-100 reads a rolling fortnight, so a month away leaves it nothing to measure and it shows the 50 everybody starts at. Nothing is deleted — not a trophy, not a PEP-3, not a day you played. And because your whole history still counts, you climb back far faster than a newcomer does: five days back puts a seasoned player near where they left, where somebody new would be barely off the floor. A streak makes you start over. This makes you resume. Whether the number should simply pause while you are away is an open question and we are arguing about it in public.

On the wire

Won't a public feed of other people's wins make me feel behind?

Coach PEP replies

It would, if we let it only print wins — wins are the easy thing to write. When the wire carries people rather than the game, it will carry rest days logged and players returning after time out with the same weight, because those are the same achievement and ranking them lower would be the whole mistake. It is also off by default for everyone, and nobody appears on it without opting in.

On the pace setting

Why is Survival the default? It sounds like the app expects me to be struggling.

Coach PEP replies

Because the setting that assumes the least is the honest one, and because the app must never require you to notice a setting in order to be treated correctly. Pace changes the size of what Coach asks for. It never changes what anything pays — telling the truth about a hard day has to be free, or nobody tells the truth. Nobody who has been here would call that a lesser day.