Debate is the one place in Suasoria where somebody argues back. This is a walk through a round from the outside in: what you choose before it starts, what a turn actually asks of you, and what the judge tells you when it is over.
Nothing here talks to a language model. The opponents are authored characters running on published rules, the motions are authored argument maps, and the judge is arithmetic you could check by hand. That is why the mode works with no account and no network, and it is also why the same round played twice, the same way, ends the same way.
Choosing an opponent
Open Debate and you land on the roster. Every debater has a seal, a rating, and a sheet that opens beside the roster when you pick one.
The sheet is the whole of what you are up against, stated in advance. Temperament is a mixture of the five classical dispositions — sophist, skeptic, eristic, stoic, rhetor — shown as shares rather than as a single label, because a real opponent is rarely only one thing. In a round puts numbers on the traits that decide how they play: how hard they clash, how readily they concede, how willing they are to leave your question standing and argue somewhere else instead. A high evasiveness is not a bug in the character. It is the thing you are being trained to notice.
Ratings are visible for the same reason. A debater rated 1450 is harder than one rated 1100, you can see that before you sit down, and nothing about the number is hidden from you.
Choosing a motion
The motions live behind the second tab, and they are chosen separately from the debater on purpose: any opponent will argue any motion, from either side. The character decides how a topic is argued, never which topics exist.
Pick one and its background appears — what the resolution means and what is genuinely at stake in it. Then take the floor.
Choosing your chair
Before the first word you choose which side you are arguing: for the motion, or against it. Both are offered every time, whatever you picked last, because arguing the side you did not choose is most of the point.
The round itself
A round is a conversation. You and your opponent speak in turn, and the transcript builds down the page with the phase — Constructive, Cross-examination, Rebuttal, Closing — marked across it like a date in a message thread.
On your turn you are given up to four things you could say, and a prompt telling you what the phase is asking for. One or two of the options are strong. Usually more than one of those is strong, and they pull in different directions — build your own case, or go and attack theirs — so the choice is a choice of route rather than a hunt for the single right answer. There is very often a fallacious option too, written to be tempting, because recognizing the argument that glitters is half of what this trains.
Select one and press Speak. Your opponent answers, and the round moves on.
Nothing is graded in front of you. There is no verdict on a move, no green and no red, and this is deliberate: mid-round commentary would turn a debate into a quiz you happen to be having with somebody. Your moves are being recorded as you make them — they feed the same skill mastery that lessons do — but what they were worth is held back until the end, where it can be explained properly.
Clash is legal everywhere from the second move. You never have to wait for a rebuttal phase to answer something; if your opponent has said something wrong, you may say so now.
The judgment
When the last turn is spoken the judge reads the round as a flow sheet and finds for one side.
You get the reason for decision first: each line of argument in the order it mattered, whether it ended standing, pressed, dropped, or turned, and the actual moves it turned on, quoted back. Then the review — every move you made, what it was worth, and, where a better one was on offer, what it was. A move that went wrong is named with the convention it broke rather than marked down.
Beneath that are the ratings. One overall number and five axes — logic, evidence, rebuttal, structure, rhetoric — each shown before and after, so you can see what the round did to them. Early ratings are marked provisional, because the first few matches are still working out roughly where you stand.
The judge finds for a side. Nobody is told they lost.
Where to begin
Take an opponent rated near your own number, or below it for a first round, and pick the motion you find most interesting rather than the one you think you can win. Read the review at the end even when the judgment went your way — especially then. The stronger move that was on offer is the part worth having.