Systems Design Phase Brief — Driftlands

Source: Director Panel at the Concept → Systems Design gate (2026-08-25, verdict CONCERNS — accepted with fixes).
This brief is binding guidance for /map-systems and every /design-system session this phase.

GDD Scope Discipline (Producer)

Full 8-section GDDs for exactly 5 MVP systems, in this dependency order:

• Tide Scheduler (Foundation) — contract already validated: see prototypes/tide-scheduler-spike-2026-08-25/SPIKE-NOTE.md
• Combat — prototype tuning values + the reconciliation edge case go in here while fresh
• Harvesting & Resources — defines the harvest-diff contract usage
• Crafting (cloth-only MVP scope) — Pillar 3 rules must be unambiguous
• Base Building — placement/storage rules; co-op UI friction lives here

Lightweight /quick-design one-pagers (rules + tuning + acceptance only): enemy AI/separation steering, player movement, inventory/hauling, save & persistence, camera, land templates, UI/HUD.

No documentation this phase: skill-drift, base-defense events, save-anyone-can-host (pre-blessed first-to-slip items — documenting them now is speculative work on planned cuts).

Tripwire: if full-GDD count exceeds 7, run /scope-check. Target: 5 GDDs + 7 quick-specs in 4–5 weeks.

GDD Line Items (Creative Director)

• Tide GDD must define recurrence as a rule, not a tuning value: cadence, guaranteed vs. probabilistic, and whether a returning land is changed. Recurrence is Pillar 1's only legal mitigation — it cannot stay vague.
• State explicitly in the Crafting GDD: the cloth-only MVP cannot validate Pillar 3 (nothing exists to violate it). MVP success must not be read as pillar confirmation; ruins/blueprints validation comes later.
• Skill-drift framing decision: RESOLVED 2026-08-25 — cut in favor of flat stats + gear-carried identity. Pillar 5's floor (anyone can do anything) is preserved; power divergence between friends with uneven playtime is eliminated; Pillar 3 (Made by Our Hands) carries character identity through crafted equipment. No progression GDD needed this phase; the Crafting GDD owns gear-as-identity.

• Tone rule (project-wide, propagated from the Tide Scheduler GDD's CD-GDD-ALIGN review 2026-08-26): all player-facing text and UI in every GDD must use non-punitive language — departures and losses are stated as world facts, never player failures (no "YOU MISSED IT" banners) — and no mechanic may reward synchronous presence (presence bonuses are soft gatekeeping against uneven schedules; violates Pillars 1 & 5). Binding on Harvesting, Land Dock/Undock, UI/HUD, and Audio in particular.

• No-contribution-comparison rule (project-wide, propagated from the Base Building GDD's CD-GDD-ALIGN review 2026-08-26, CD A4 — generalizing Crafting's CD C2 aggregation ban and Base Building's no-ledger test): no system may surface per-player contribution comparison, in schema OR presentation — no craft counts, build logs, harvest tallies, contribution stats, or any field/affordance that would let a leaderboard be assembled at any layer. Reputation and authorship stay social facts read from the world itself. Binding on UI/HUD, any future stats surface, Tier 1 base-defense event scoring, and Tier 2 animal husbandry in particular.

Technical Constraints (Technical Director)

All GDD authors must read Forbidden Patterns in .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md before writing — the confirmed netcode model (no rollback, no servers, no host migration, no offline simulation, no tide compensation) is binding on every system design.

Visual Constraints (Art Director)

The Tideline anchor in design/gdd/game-concept.md governs all visual language in GDDs. UI-heavy GDDs (base building, crafting) inherit "restrained core palette" by default until /art-bible formalizes UI language. Enemy/combat designs must pass the silhouette-first design test.

Scheduled External Task

• [ ] Friend-group playtest (2–3 people, real internet, Steam transport) — put it on the calendar NOW; lead time is the constraint. Gates the netcode ADR at the end of this phase.