Version 0.4 learning release

Instructor Guide

This guide is for a first classroom pilot, discussion section, office-hour exercise, or formative review. The goal is to make student choices visible and debatable, then use the round evidence to tune the game and the lesson.

Doctrine boundary: Trial Ready is a simplified learning game, not a legal expert system. It emphasizes issue recognition, procedural sequencing, factual application, and record building. Confirm course-specific nuance outside the game, especially in the Erie and class-action preview track.

Before class

Open the game in the classroom browser and choose a curriculum track and class length.
Keep the recommended replay seed unless you intentionally want a different deal. Record any custom seed in your lesson notes.
Select Apply pack and start. Confirm that the active pack title, schedule, objectives, budgets, and planned round count appear.
Choose whether to use timed play, Study mode, Exam mode, or hidden explanations. For a first pilot, Study mode is safest during the briefing and normal timed mode is useful for the second round.
Select Print cards if teams will use physical cards. Printing uses only the active pack's case, attack, motion, and discovery subsets and includes the lesson seed and objectives.
Print or share the student quickstart.
Divide students into plaintiff and defense teams. Assign one student as docket reader and one as rule explainer if groups are larger than four.

Recommended room setup

Group size	Suggested roles	Display
2 students	One plaintiff, one defense	Shared laptop
3 to 4 students	Plaintiff pair and defense pair	Shared laptop or projected table
5 to 8 students	Lead advocate, rule explainer, fact checker, and docket reader on each side	Projected game with one operator
Whole class	Room votes on moves; instructor or student volunteer operates the game	Projector

How to facilitate a round

Claim and defendant: Ask the plaintiff to identify the forum, citizenship facts, and why the selected defendant belongs in the case.
Threshold window: Before the defense clicks, require a rule, supporting fact, and predicted procedural effect.
Response: Ask whether the plaintiff's card defeats the attack, cures a defect, or merely redirects the case.
Discovery: Require students to identify the proof item before selecting a tool. When an objection appears, separate compulsion, narrowing, and privilege-log choices.
Rule 56: In at least one pilot round, close discovery before the checklist is complete. This makes the record consequence visible.
Assessment: Stop after the outcome. Read doctrines triggered, wrong motions, missing proof, and governing authority IDs before rotating roles.

Classroom controls

Control	Use	Important behavior
Scenario pack	Constrains cases, cards, budgets, timers, and rounds to a validated lesson.	Applying a pack starts a fresh session.
Replay seed	Determines deck order.	The same pack and seed reproduce the same deals and instance sequence.
Study mode	Pauses timers for discussion.	Does not change doctrine or card outcomes.
Exam mode	Hides analysis until revealed.	Useful for retrieval practice or cold calls.
Save / Load	Stores one exact session in the current browser.	Loading pauses any pending timer.
Export / Import replay	Creates or restores a portable JSON replay.	The file contains the exact state, seed, docket event log, and completed assessments.
Print cards	Prints a physical deck subset.	The active scenario pack controls every included card.

Assessment evidence

The post-round panel is formative evidence, not a grade by itself. It reports:

Doctrines triggered: Procedural issues actually activated by cards and outcomes.
Wrong motions or tools: Nonresponsive threshold motions and mismatched discovery choices.
Outcome: Dismissed or trial ready, with the controlling reason.
Missing proof: Checklist items absent when the round ended.
Source hooks: Rule or statute references tied to the played sequence.
Budget failures: Attempts that could not proceed because the role lacked game budget.

A useful debrief asks students to correct one wrong move, defend one correct move with a fact, and identify one result that reflects game abstraction rather than full doctrine.

Replay a confusing round

At the confusing point or immediately after the outcome, select Export replay.
Keep the JSON file with your pilot notes. The filename identifies the pack, seed, and round.
Use Import replay to restore the exact phase, hands, budgets, case mutations, docket, and assessment.
Read the structured event log in the replay file if you need the order of actions. Re-run the pack with the same seed to repeat the deal from the beginning.
If the result remains surprising, record whether the problem is doctrine logic, unclear card language, balance, or facilitation.

Local-only playtest data

Completed-round statistics are stored only in the current browser. They are not submitted to a server, included in source imports, or published with the site. The panel keeps at most 200 rounds and can be cleared at any time.

Signal	Definition	Possible tuning question
Average round length	Wall-clock play time from the deal to the recorded outcome, excluding time after a save is loaded.	Does the pack fit its scheduled play block?
Attack success rate	Meritorious defense attacks that produce a defense-favorable ruling divided by attacks played.	Are threshold attacks too strong or too weak?
Budget failures	Card attempts blocked by insufficient plaintiff or defense budget.	Is a role routinely unable to make a pedagogically useful move?
Cases never trial ready	Played cases with no trial-ready outcome in stored rounds.	Is a case unfair, unclear, or intentionally difficult?
Drawn but never played	Cards drawn at least once but never played across stored rounds.	Is the card dead weight, too expensive, or poorly signposted?

Suggested pilot feedback

After class, record these five items alongside any exported replay:

Pack, duration, seed, section size, and actual minutes used.
One procedural choice students explained well.
One card, instruction, or ruling students misunderstood.
Whether the post-round assessment matched the discussion you wanted.
One concrete change for the next pilot: wording, budget, timer, case, card subset, or facilitation prompt.

Contingencies

If the network is unavailable after the page loads, the game, save/load, stats, and printing continue locally. External source links will not open.
If time is short, close discovery early and use Rule 56 as the final decision point.
If students are stuck, enable explanations or Study mode rather than supplying the correct card immediately.
If a timer expires during discussion, load the saved state or import a replay and continue with timers paused.
If a replay import is rejected, confirm it is an unmodified Version 0.4 replay under 2 MB with the current content version.

Use your browser's Print command for a paper or PDF copy.