Dead Reckoning — Maritime Port Edition

Digital Download

Game Creator: Philippe Borremans / RiskComms FZCO

Estimated Time to Play: 90–120 minutes

Number of Players: 5–8 players plus a facilitator

Roles (8):

Director of Communications, Executive Director, Coast Guard Liaison, CBP Liaison, Governor's Office Representative, Shipping Industry Liaison (optional), Legal Counsel (optional), Operations Director (optional)

Game Description:

Dead Reckoning is a tabletop crisis simulation built around a drone incursion that shuts down one of the ten busiest container ports in the United States — and the five federal, state, and local agencies that respond to it without talking to each other first. The port authority didn't cause the fragmentation and can't fix it by asking nicely. The Coast Guard, CBP, the Sheriff's Office, the Governor's office, and the shipping lines are all narrating the same incident independently, on their own timelines, to their own audiences. Players don't manage a single crisis narrative. They manage their position inside a growing number of competing ones — and the only way to matter is to become the version everyone else has to respond to.

Features:

•      Fragmentation as a count, not a score — the Fragmentation Index literally counts how many independent public narratives are active at once, starting at 1 and rising every time an uncoordinated agency voice enters the information space, regardless of fault.

•      Five independent, non-adversarial communicators — the Coast Guard, CBP, and Governor's Office liaisons aren't opponents; they're separate entities issuing their own uncoordinated statements every round, whether the table likes it or not.

•      Hard triggers built into the clock — the Governor's Representative arrives Round 3, shipping lines go public with damage figures at Round 4, and cargo rerouting begins at Round 7 without a credible reopening timeline.

•      Facilitator withholds ground truth — whether the drone threat was ever real isn't confirmed until late in the session, so players are managing a live security posture and a live information environment on two different timelines.

•      Facilitator-driven escalation — a 10-round, 40-hour clock moving from the race to become source of record, through mounting economic and worker pressure, to a reopening announcement that requires five independently-narrating agencies to suddenly agree.

•      Four distinct endgame states — Operational but Diminished, Narrative Collapse, Narrative Lock-In, or Source of Record — with no outcome in which every objective is achieved.

•      Scalable — runs with 5 players doubling up on roles or a full 8-person table; the Director of Communications role should never be cut.

Game requires 1d6 and 1d10 (not included with digital download; free online dice rollers work).