# Referee

> Entry point and router for B/X (Basic/Expert) tabletop play on the osrlib-referee engine. Routes to character creation, a new or resumed adventure, and the play loop. Use when starting or continuing a B/X session, or when the user mentions B/X, OSE, old-school D&D, a referee, a game master, or an adventure.

- Skill: `mmacy/referee` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add mmacy/referee`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/mmacy/referee/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: mmacy (https://skillmd.com/u/mmacy)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/mmacy/referee

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# Referee

The front door. This skill decides *what the player wants to do* and routes to the skill that does it — it does not run play, creation, compilation, or persistence itself. Keep it thin.

**Read [references/constitution.md](references/constitution.md) before anything else.** It governs every skill in this plugin — play, creation, town, and audit alike.

## Routing

Open with an `AskUserQuestion`: **create characters**, **start a new adventure**, or **continue a saved game**? Then route:

- **Create characters** → the **`character`** skill. It rolls a party through the deterministic `chargen` CLI and reports a `party_id`. When it returns, offer to start a new adventure on that party.
- **Continue a saved game** → the **`session`** skill to pick a save and resume with a recap, then the **`play`** skill for the turn loop.
- **Start a new adventure** → resolve the choice (below), then the **`play`** skill, which calls `session_new` and runs the loop. If the player built a party, pass its `party_id` through as `session_new(party_ref=<party_id>)`; otherwise the frozen pregen roster starts a zero-setup game.

## Resolving a new adventure

Call `list_adventures` for the startable ids: native builders and already-compiled bundles. Then:

- **A known `adventure_id`** (native or a compiled bundle) → hand off to `play` to start it directly.
- **A path to an uncompiled module** (a PDF or Markdown the player points at, not in `list_adventures`) → hand off to the **`compile-adventure`** skill first. It compiles the module into a bundle *and passes both review gates — the `validate_bundle` check and the visual map-diff — before the bundle is accepted*; only then hand off to `play` to start the resulting bundle. **Never start a session on a half-reviewed bundle.**

A module is read **once, at compile time**, into a deterministic bundle that plays identically every session. The player still brings their own module; the cost is an explicit compile step and SRD-only fidelity. A module whose central creature has no SRD near-likeness is the one class of content this substrate cannot reproduce faithfully, and the compile skill's approximation log names every such case.

## What this skill does not do

It routes; it does not do the work. It issues no `execute`, `session_new`, `session_save`, or compile call itself — those belong to `play`, `session`, `character`, and `compile-adventure`. Its only tools are `list_adventures` (to decide the route) and `AskUserQuestion` (to learn the intent).