# Battle the Beast: choose-your-path legal learning

## Purpose

This guide restores the intended bridge between the branching narrative system in [*Battle the Beast*](https://github.com/ibloud/battle-the-beast) and the rights-aware producer education in *50 Ways to Leave Another*.

The learner makes a creative-production choice, sees the consequence categories that choice activates, identifies missing evidence, and stops at the appropriate professional-review gate. The exercise teaches legal issue spotting and documentation discipline. It does not provide legal advice, decide ownership, grant permission, or clear a project.

## Why Battle the Beast belongs here

*Battle the Beast* is written in Ink: choices change what the player carries into the next scene. Creative production behaves similarly. Choosing a sample, collaborator, platform, adaptation, public release, or commercial pitch changes the rights, consent, credit, compensation, evidence, and clearance work that follows.

The educational transfer is the **choice-and-consequence method**. Third-party characters, settings, dialogue, music, trademarks, and other protected expression do not transfer into this project or into *Veiled Dominion*.

## Run the pathway

For each scenario:

1. Write the intended action and actual use.
2. Identify every person, work, recording, platform, and agreement involved.
3. Separate verified evidence from recollection, assumption, inference, and proposal.
4. Choose the applicable route below.
5. Complete the linked records.
6. Mark unresolved facts visibly.
7. Stop before publication, payment, signing, pitching, or other rights-dependent action when professional review is required.

| Choice | Consequences to inspect | Required working record | Stop gate |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Use an existing beat, sample, recording, image, or story element | Composition, master, performance, source, license scope, warranties, attribution, territory, duration | [Rights envelope](../templates/rights-envelope.md), source record, license copy | Source or permission is missing, disputed, or narrower than the intended use |
| Invite or continue with a collaborator | Scope, contribution, authorship, ownership, credit, payment, approvals, timing, confidentiality, exit | [Contribution record](../templates/contribution-record.md), [split sheet](../templates/split-sheet.md), written scope | A participant cannot agree, authority is unclear, or prior contributions are disputed |
| Publish, screen, stream, advertise, pitch, sync, or commercialize | Actual use, audience, platform terms, publicity, trademarks, privacy, delivery obligations | [Delivery checklist](../templates/delivery-checklist.md), [rights and clearance review](../RIGHTS-AND-CLEARANCE.md) | Evidence does not cover the actual use or a transaction depends on unresolved rights |
| Adapt an influence or historical fan work | Idea/expression boundary, provenance, fair-use questions, excluded third-party material, new-project authority | Transfer decision and provenance record | Protected expression may be moving into a commercial or franchise-neutral project |
| Use AI in development | Inputs, authorization, private material, authorship claims, disclosure, output review | [AI disclosure](../AI-DISCLOSURE.md), source log, human approval record | Inputs or intended output use exceed consent, rights, privacy, or policy boundaries |

## Consequence preview

Before choosing **continue**, answer:

- What changes outside the project if this action happens?
- Which files, people, rights, money, platforms, or public claims are affected?
- What evidence supports the authority to act?
- Can the action be reversed?
- What credit, payment, notice, or receipt must remain afterward?
- Which question requires a lawyer, accountant, tax adviser, safeguarding professional, union, platform, or rights holder?

If the answer is unknown, the pathway outcome is **pause and document**, not “probably allowed.”

## Connected examples

- The Ren + KujoBeats counterpoint shows why a downstream license may carry an upstream provenance problem.
- The Peloton example shows why permission depends on the actual use.
- The collaboration question shows why contribution, ownership, approval, reputation, timing, and exit should not collapse into one indefinite yes/no decision.
- The *Battle the Beast* IP boundary shows how research provenance can be preserved while third-party expression remains excluded from a new commercial system.

## Privacy and safety boundary

Use fictional or public-safe scenarios. Do not place private contracts, messages, health information, benefit records, housing records, credentials, unreleased source files, or disputed personal material in the public repository or exercise response.

## Completion record

A completed learner record contains:

- intended action;
- chosen pathway;
- evidence reviewed;
- rights and people affected;
- missing facts;
- reversible and irreversible consequences;
- required records;
- professional-review gate;
- decision: continue, revise, pause, decline, or seek permission;
- date and decision-maker.

## Status

This guide is part of the public educational package. It is not legal advice, an attorney-client relationship, clearance, or permission to use *Battle the Beast*, *The Magicians*, or any other underlying work.