Dune/docs/INTERACTIVE_INTRODUCTION.md

Interactive introduction

21 September 2026. Prototyped; partial teaching coverage. /learn is linked from the lobby and rules reference. It adds the previously missing guided introduction alongside the reference's existing standalone practice wheel.

Thirteen navigable lessons cover public/private table information and the phase sequence, Storm, Spice Blow, ordinary Nexus alliances, charity, bidding, revival, shipment budgets, movement, sealed battle plans, Traitor calls, spice collection and joining or recovering a saved table. Eleven independent Basic practice positions let a player change inputs, commit, inspect results and retry. These positions are deliberately separate examples rather than a complete game or an authoritative live room.

Storm and Spice Blow practice

The Storm exercise separates draft, sealed, publicly revealed and moved stages. The first-turn example uses the printed Storm Start, 0–20 dials and sheltered Atreides starting forces. The later Basic position starts at sector 16, combines the learner's 1–3 with a fixed opposing three, and compares exposed forces in Cielago South/North with rock and stronghold shelter across the sector-18 wrap. Shared sector/exposure calculations supply the result; changing options resets only this example. The Battle Wheel now accepts an optional minimum and slider label; existing combat defaults remain zero and “Forces dialed slider”.

Spice Blow offers four deterministic sequences: add eight Broken Land spice to three already there; lose the card's spice to its storm sector; resolve one later Shai-Hulud at the previous Great Flat territory then draw Broken Land; or ignore and set aside a first-turn worm until the completed blow shuffles it back. The normal examples have three Emperor forces in The Great Flat. A later worm destroys those forces and all six spice there, then the replacement blow opens. Finishing that window opens Nexus negotiations. There are no Fremen forces or reacting cards in these examples; interactive riding, consecutive worms and Advanced/expansion teaching remain separate unfinished curriculum work.

game/disaster-rules.ts extracts the unchanged live storm-sector, territory exposure, worm-protection and spice-placement expressions for shared teaching. The engine and disaster preflight reuse them. No state schema or timing changes. The lessons compute results from validated choices; they never load live rooms. Tests compare every offered storm dial and spice scenario against real actions, check exact first-turn worm return, preserve all eleven v5 lesson identities and validate every saved stage. The existing v1–v4 migrations remain covered.

Authority remains the classic GF9 base rulebook, printed pp.4 and 6–7, and November 2020 FAQ p.1 as recorded in tests/first-storm.test.ts and the current engine contracts. This checkpoint changes teaching and factors calculations; it does not claim a new rules interpretation or complete rules certification.

The examples call reserveShipmentCost, quoteBattleResolution, quoteSpiceCollection and the shared board distance/occupancy helpers. Battle uses six ordinary forces, real Atreides/Guild leaders and canonical base-deck cards. The fixed opponent's dial, leader and projectile weapon appear only after the player's seal action. The resulting weapon survival, scores, ordinary aggressor tie, force losses and bounty come from the production combat quote. There are no Traitor calls or faction powers in the original sealed-plan position. A separate Traitor lesson offers call or decline after revealing both plans, with an explicitly selected opposing-call scenario. Ordinary, sole-call and mutual-call casualties, leader survival, cards and bounty use the same production combat quote. The private Traitor has the existing full inspector. These fixed teaching scenarios are not AI policy or hidden-information tests of the four live difficulty levels.

The bidding example gives Fremen six spice and a three-card hand, with a full-hand variant and two deterministic opponent scripts. Players raise, pass, re-enter on a later turn or end an unbid auction. The winner pays once; losing bids spend nothing, and only the player's own purchase exposes a card face/inspector. Ordinary bid validation and next-seat/all-pass decisions use quoteNormalAuctionBid and quoteNormalAuctionNext, extracted from the existing live engine. The engine retains ally funding, Karama, payment, card custody and reaction handling. No strategic bot policy changes. Scripted lessons omit those special interactions and are checked against actual applyAction outcomes.

Source authority is the GF9 base rulebook, Bidding and November 2020 FAQ, p.2. The publisher-indexed FAQ text was freshly retrieved on 20 September; it confirms that a prior passer can bid again. Direct PDF retrieval returned 403, so no new binary/visual source inspection is claimed. Links remain developer provenance; the player lesson links only to internal rules.

The Nexus position uses four base factions and two or one Emperor strongholds. Players accept an incoming offer, make an offer to a fixed accepting/waiting partner, stay unallied, withdraw an unanswered offer or break a formed alliance. Closing the Nexus locks these decisions. A separate explicit teaching step checks the unchanged board at a later Mentat Pause; it does not simulate the intervening phases or award a victory at the moment of alliance formation. Three shared strongholds fall short; four qualify for both allies.

quoteNexusAlliance extracts existing ordinary offer/pairing behavior into a shared pure quote. The live engine retains phase authorization, Homeworld restrictions, alliance dates, Nexus Card forfeiture, readiness and history. strongholdProgress and quoteVictory supply the teaching result. Physical forces stay with their original owner. The response scripts are local teaching scenarios, not changes to live AI. Funding, alliance powers, movement restrictions, special victory and expansion exceptions are not simulated in this example. The base rulebook's Alliances (Nexus) and Mentat Pause sections remain the rule authority; fresh publisher-indexed rulebook/quick-start results confirm the ordinary two-member/four-stronghold contract. No new ambiguous ruling is inferred.

The saved state whitelists alliance choices and validates the bounded opening/offer/withdraw/break sequence and phase order. Prior lesson identities, auction history and every other accepted practice choice remain intact. tests/introduction-alliance.test.ts compares all 24 offered scenario/holding/ action combinations with actual engine alliance transitions, checks later victory, JSON continuation, closed-Nexus rejection and every version 3 lesson migration. tests/nexus-alliance.test.ts checks pure immutability and live-engine integration; existing Nexus Card forfeiture tests cover the retained expansion side effects. Final independent review, browser, source-bound checks and saved-game preservation are recorded in the private checkpoint and Git message.

The Charity and Revival lessons connect two further missing Basic phase exercises. Charity compares starting balances zero through three, pays the ordinary bank amount once and distinguishes a top-up to two from a flat two-spice payment. Revival uses Atreides, Emperor or Fremen, with five ordinary forces in the Tanks and fifteen in reserves. Separate batches share the per-turn free allowance and three-force cap. Eligible leader returns use the same spice balance but a separate one-leader allowance. Full first-death, one-survivor and repeat-death rosters show why a selected leader may be unavailable; the existing portrait and inspector remain readable without exposing any live private information.

The exercises reuse charityQuote, the force revival rate/remaining/price helpers and leaderRevivalOptions. Only the latter's TypeScript input types are narrowed; its live rule behavior is unchanged. A bounded legal action history recomputes balances, Tanks, reserves, leader custody and usage counters after refresh rather than trusting saved totals. Changing starting conditions resets this independent position. No Tleilaxu, elites, cards, allies, capture or expansion interactions are simulated, and no AI strategy changes. Source authority is the same classic GF9 base rulebook, Charity and Revival (printed pp.7 and 9). The official indexed Revival text and GF9 Quick Start Guide, Charity, p.6 were freshly retrieved on 21 September. The similarly named 2021 movie game returned by search is a different ruleset and was not used.

Resource regressions compare ordinary claims/returns against actual engine actions, preserve inputs, check cumulative spending and allowances, reject impossible saves and retain all nine v4 lesson identities and prior commitments. Final source-bound browser/check/build/preservation and review evidence belongs to this checkpoint's private report and Git delivery. Broader storm/spice-blow exceptions, full faction/Advanced/expansion teaching and the complete curriculum remain open.

The movement position starts with five ordinary forces in Red Chasm. It compares range one with range three from a separate Arrakeen occupant, exact sectors, storm exclusion and a stronghold already occupied by two other factions. Accepted moves preserve the source remainder and city force and spend no spice. Choices reset that practice position, rather than granting multiple moves in a turn. All 96 offered destination/range/storm/force combinations are cross-checked against actual authoritative applyAction transitions; no live movement rule changed.

The existing wheel, keyboard controls and card inspectors remain available. Lesson changes focus the heading; responsive columns stack on small screens. Browser storage contains only a versioned, validated set of lesson choices under dune-introduction-v1. Version 6 payloads explicitly migrate all five version 1, seven version 2, eight version 3, nine version 4 and eleven version 5 lesson positions to the same lesson after insertion, preserving prior choices and committed outcomes. All older versions receive fresh opening-phase defaults. Resource fields start at defaults for versions 1–4; version 5 keeps its resource history. Versions 1–3 receive alliance defaults. Versions 1 and 2 receive bidding defaults; version 1 also receives movement/Traitor defaults. Hot updates remount the lesson state to apply this migration. Only the player's bid/pass history is saved; deterministic replay validates the complete auction and rejects underbids, overspending, full-hand actions and actions after the auction ends. Future lesson insertions must update the schema and mapping again. The save includes movement commitments and the before-reveal, revealed and resolved Traitor stages. Unknown versions, out-of-range values and impossible saved shipments fall back to the first lesson. Unknown fields are dropped. Storage failure leaves the exercise usable in memory and displays that refresh may reset it. Separate tabs may save different progress; the last write is restored on the next visit. No multiplayer API or seat token is used, and no server restart or database migration is required.

tests/introduction.test.ts checks unaffordable shipping, protected ties, wrong defense and leader death, every offered dial/defense pair, collection capacity, save round trips and malformed state. tests/introduction-practice.test.ts adds authoritative movement comparisons, single/mutual/declined Traitor outcomes, all five legacy lesson migrations and impossible-new-save rejection. Browser interaction checks for the initial prototype confirmed the unaffordable-shipment explanation, a legal shipment, card inspection, a protected 8–8 tie, the wrong defense causing leader death, saved reveal after refresh, city collection and lobby return/re-entry. At a 390px viewport the battle controls and new lobby link stayed within the page bounds. Screenshot capture timed out, so visual screenshot acceptance remains open; DOM bounds are narrower evidence. Final source-bound reports and Git delivery record required check/build results.

tests/introduction-bidding.test.ts compares offered openings and re-entry with actual engine payment and physical card custody, checks all-pass/full-hand paths, all seven version 2 lesson migrations and exact saved bidding continuation. tests/normal-auction.test.ts exercises shared turn order, eligibility, pass re-entry, finite termination and integer/funding limits. Final source-bound browser/check/build and preservation evidence for bidding belongs to its private checkpoint and Git message.

This does not replace a full interactive curriculum. Alliance powers, broader movement/arrival powers, faction lessons, Advanced support and expansion lessons remain future work. The expanded lessons retain Partial/Prototyped coverage. Final browser/check/build, preservation and Git evidence for this follow-up belong to its source-bound private checkpoint. No rules mode, expansion or publication gate is opened.