ground-game/history/260808-h2-scoped-problem-stress.md

H2 — scoped problem stress (personal / bond / global)

Date: 2026-08-08
Status: experiment open — packaged as selectable variant
Parent: H1 design + measurement, RPT-0004
Variant: editions/experiments/h2-scoped-problem-stress/
Workplan: GROUND-WP-0007

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0. Why H2 (after H1)

H1 applied +1 Stress to every seat whenever any Problem remained unclaimed. Competent play regulated (GROUND); Stress plateaus ~3; SOLVE bandwidth died; group wins collapsed at 3p+. Direction (Problem → Stress) was right; equal global tax was wrong.

H2 keeps inbound problem pressure but routes it:

scope	who pays	design role
personal	one owner	asymmetric load; someone can approach DARVO while others SOLVE
bond	Bond network of owner	shared load → shared incentive to SOLVE that card
global	all seats	rare systemic pressure (Surface only in this package)

Difficulty dial (later / WP-0005): vary how many of each scope are in the deal. This package’s first recipe uses priority mapping so seat band already changes mix (no bond card at 2p).

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1. Bond scope — the interesting bit

Bond today is almost pure upside (stress down, cancel DARVO). Bond-scope problems add a joint liability:

• While the card stays unclaimed, every bonded partner takes the End tick.
• Any seat may SOLVE it (matching suit) — including a non-owner altruist.
• So the network is incentivised to clear the shared load, not only to Support through the crisis.

That is the hypothesis to protect in measurement:

Do Bond networks clear bond-scoped Problems faster / more often than equivalent personal cards, and does that keep group success above H1’s floor?

Risk to watch: players avoid Bonding to shed liability. If Bond rate collapses and DARVO rises, magnitude is still wrong (or bond tick needs to be softer than personal).

Network definition: seats reachable from the owner by Bond edges only. Rivalries do not connect. Degree 0 → personal behaviour.

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2. Package rules (summary)

See rules_delta.yaml for machine form.

1. H2-SCOPE — Problems.csv column stress_scope; mapping by hidden_priority 0→global, 1–2 personal, 3 bond, 4 personal.
2. H2-OWN — owners for personal/bond: ascending priority among in-play non-global, round-robin from Lead.
3. H2-A — Round End: each unclaimed Problem → +1 Stress to each seat in its scope; then clamp; then DARVO arm as r0.
4. H2-SOLVE — claim rights unchanged by scope (anyone with suit).

Not included: H1-A, H1-B, owner-only solve, shadow goals.

Thresholds / deal depth / start Stress 2: unchanged from r0.

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3. Hypothesis and success criteria

Scoped pressure creates stress variance and occasional DARVO under mixed policies without driving greedy SHARED group wins to ~0 at 3–4p; bond cards create joint SOLVE incentive inside Bond networks.

#	criterion	target (directional)
1	Group success (greedy SHARED, 3–4p)	Well above H1’s 0; not required to match baseline
2	Stress variance	max−min Stress across seats higher than baseline and H1-greedy
3	DARVO	non-zero for some policy that still sometimes wins; not only pure reactive-never-wins
4	Bond cards	among bond-scoped unclaimed time, networks show elevated SOLVE rate on those cards vs personal (or qualitative report)
5	Control	if all scopes forced global, H1-like collapse returns (optional A/B)

Instrument caveats from CB-EV-0030/0031 still apply: plural panel; report sample-specific vs invariant; no felt-play substitute.

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4. Safety / scope of fiction

Cards keep existing scenario language (deadline, ownership, overload). No new trauma-personal content. Full EXT_PERSONAL (shadow goals, expose, win rewrite) stays out.

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5. Decision log

Date	Decision
2026-08-08	H1 reject-as-baseline; spawn H2 scoped stress
2026-08-08	Bond = full Bond network of owner; SOLVE unrestricted by owner
2026-08-08	Surface global; one bond card (priority 3) enters at 3p+
2026-08-08	Do not stack H1-B in H2 until scoped pressure is measured alone