How Does the Game Work

Main Game

This current plan, as of 19th March 2026, is as follows:

Each team is given the following:

• A description of who and what they are.
• Details of their organisation’s general aims, these can change during the game of course.
• A general abstract assessment of how much resource they have.
• Any specific resources they have, such as a set of vehicles.

Then for each turn each team will submit the following, either by email, or on a specific section of whatever technology ends up being used for the game server:

• A list of “projects” or “missions” for this turn, and how much of their overall resource they’re devoting to it, along with any dedicated specific resources.
• Projects/Missions might require an amount from a pool of “cognitive load” from each organisation, or each organisation will be limited to how many projects/missions it can execute per turn.
• Any other “free” orders, any relatively simple tasks that any members of the organisation are carrying out if they’re not assigned to a specific project.

As Game Control I will do the following:

• Take in all the actions by all the teams, any that are unable to submit by the deadline will default to some kind of standing orders.
• All of the actions will be resolved, and reports of success or failure written up and posted to each team.
• The adjudication process will be opaque, players will not know whether they were “lucky” or “unlucky”; also only those actions taken by other players, that they could have seen in the game’s context, will be revealed to them.
• The game will feature trackers, giving teams an approximate idea of factors such as public opinion, or their organisation’s morale. Of course different teams will have a different view of where these are, rather than all players having access to a single authoritative value.

Any required sub-games

If a smaller scale event deserves to be played through in detail, a specific game will be carried out.

If a sub-game is especially important the main game will be delayed until the right players can be gathered and can play this sub-game, Alternatively - players’ roles are secondary to the aims of the overall game, and it will be run as a “serious game”. So maybe any available players can take on the specific roles for any sub-game? I suspect I’m abstracting out the capabilities of players too much, or expecting them to swap between characters too easily. Maybe there will be a pool of “pinch hitters” to take on the roles for this kind of sub-game?

For example, an event that has come up during playtests is what happens when a graveyard is flooded. This would be useful to play over an evening or similarly short time period, due to the media impact such an event would cause, and the responses of various organisations to it.