ground-game/INTENT.md

INTENT

ground-game is the product repository for GROUND — A Game of Bonds and Rivalry: the rules, edition datasets, print-oriented content, scenarios, and design memory for a semi-cooperative conflict card game. The first edition is the DARVO Edition, which teaches players to hold the frame while confronting problems, managing stress, and protecting relationships.

This file is stable and aspirational. SCOPE.md describes what is actually in design or delivery now. A gap between INTENT and SCOPE is expected while the product matures.

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Purpose

This repository exists to design, refine, and publish the GROUND game family as a playable, printable, and later digitally executable product.

GROUND is a scenario-driven, semi-cooperative card game (2–6 players, with solo learning modes) about confronting problems while protecting reality, agency, dignity, and relationships. Players may pursue accountability and repair—or gain short-term advantage by redirecting blame, attacking credibility, and capturing the narrative. Every interaction changes not only the immediate outcome, but the conditions under which the next conflict will occur.

The first edition centers DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) as a binding sequential antagonist mechanism, answered by GROUND as the sole constructive self-regulation and frame-restoration practice in the core set:

Letter	Practice	Role
G	Ground yourself	Reduce overload before choosing
R	Restate the issue	Keep the original concern visible
O	Observe and separate	Distinguish facts, claims, and attacks
U	Uphold a boundary	Set conditions for continued engagement
N	Name the next step	Convert conflict into concrete repair
D	Decide engagement level	Continue, pause, escalate, or leave

The game must do more than teach players to label three tactics. It should train them to maintain orientation while the interaction tries to move them away from the original problem.

Primary utility

This repository is the authoritative home for:

• edition datasets (cards, tokens, player mats, scenarios, rules text, BOM, print manifests) suitable for layout, print merges, localization, and digital import;
• rules, glossary, modes, and design tokens for production and playtest;
• design history and rationale that keep future editions coherent;
• product-facing identity for GROUND editions (titles, versioning, status).

Sister repository clay-borg owns the assimilating simulation/games engine that can run GROUND headlessly and later project it onto 2D/3D tabletops. This repository owns the game product content and rules truth, not the runtime substrate.

Four-layer conflict model

The durable design identity separates four layers of play:

Layer	Central question
Problem	What is actually happening? (hidden cards, evidence, solutions)
Interaction	What are people doing now? (actions, DARVO, GROUND, repair)
Relationship	What do we now expect from one another? (bonds, rivalries, memory)
Individual	What can this person currently perceive, tolerate, and choose? (stress, agency, reflexes)

History across a session is the persistence mechanism: unresolved problems, precedents, breaches, wounds, and alliances carry into later conflicts.

Design principles

1. Hold the frame, do not merely name the tactic. Success is preserving facts, agency, boundaries, and meaningful choice—not winning a vocabulary quiz.
2. DARVO must sometimes work locally. Short-term advantage with delayed relational cost; the game must not only moralise.
3. Three (then four) layers stay mechanically separate. Rhetorical moves must not automatically rewrite what happened.
4. Recognising a pattern is not proof of the underlying facts. Labelling DARVO is evidence about accountability handling, not fact-finding.
5. Self-security is adaptive. GROUND cards work independently; no full acronym combo is required.
6. Saving every relationship is not the win condition. Boundary, process, distance, and exit can be successful outcomes.
7. Safety and consent are product requirements. Safeguards, skip rights, and expert review before publication are part of the product, not optional polish.
8. Edition data is machine-reusable. Stable IDs support layout templates, print pipelines, JSON export, and later digital runtimes (including clay-borg).
9. Target Revenue phases may attach to versioned product milestones once monetization is declared; this repo follows org TRSL policy without inventing a separate licensing model.

Intended users

• Game designers and playtesters refining rules and balance
• Print and layout operators consuming CSV/edition bundles
• Educators and facilitators exploring conflict capability (not clinical therapy)
• clay-borg and other digital runtimes importing edition packages
• Future commercial and noncommercial licensees under the org license policy

Strategic boundaries

This repository owns

• GROUND game concepts, terminology, and edition identity
• Card/token/mat/scenario/rules content and their stable identifiers
• Print BOM, design tokens, symbols, and production-oriented manifests
• Playtest datasets and design history for the product line
• Product-level safeguards language and scenario review criteria

This repository does not own

• The clay-borg engine, physics, networking, or rendering stack
• Clinical diagnosis, therapy protocols, or adjudication of real abuse cases
• Final graphic art production pipelines (beyond dataset + design tokens)
• General Coulomb infrastructure (state-hub, ops-bridge, etc.)
• Guarantees that every playtest scenario is trauma-reviewed until that gate is met

Maturity target

A mature ground-game repository provides:

1. One or more playtested, balance-stable edition packages with clear version tags
2. Rules text and glossary sufficient to play without the designer present
3. Print-ready manifests and BOMs for a first physical production run
4. Machine-readable edition export consumed by clay-borg (or equivalent) for headless and tabletop digital play
5. Documented learning modes (recognition → language → relationship)
6. Expert-reviewed scenarios and published safeguards
7. Optional Target Revenue Phase packaging for commercial development milestones

Stability note

Changes to this file should represent a deliberate shift in what the GROUND product line is meant to become—not ordinary balance tweaks, edition packing, or implementation learning. Update SCOPE.md when delivery boundaries change.