How to play

Deployments and Disasters game is designed to be as approachable as possible. In fact, scaling the game to accommodate all kinds of players is one of its core objectives. However, there are still a few rules you’ll need to go over before diving into your first session.

In this section you’ll find game rules themselves, as well as some situational examples that illustrate them. Reading all of these materials is not a prerequisite for attending a session. Disaster master will go over the basic game rules at the event. However, all curious players are encouraged to read on. That goes for novice disaster masters who are prepping for hosting their first session as well.

Roles

In a session of Deployments and Disasters there are 2 kinds of participants:

  • Disaster master
  • Players

Session

Each session of Deployments and Disasters is about resolving a single incident. A game session has 3 stages:

  1. Briefing stage, where DM explains the scenario they’ve prepared and players pick their roles.
  2. Incident stage, where DM introduces the incident and players take actions to resolve it.
  3. Review stage, where players discuss future proofing the system.

Turn

The incident stage of the Deployments and Disasters session is made up of individual turns. Each turn represents a 5 minutes increment on the incident clock. A turn begins with disaster master revealing any new information that become available. Players then discuss their options and agree on actions they intend to take. After that the dice are rolled to determine if actions succeed. A turn ends with DM narrating consequences of taken actions.

Actions

There are 2 types of actions in a game of Deployments and Disasters:

  1. Passive actions in which players collect information from the software system without changing it.
  2. Active actions in which players make changes to the system or interact with it in an active capacity.