Clayton Oliver
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coliver-em.bsky.social
Clayton Oliver
@coliver-em.bsky.social
Emergency manager at a university at the pointy end of a triangular state. CEM. NEMAA 19-2. Opinions and sarcasm mine, employer has its own. Not monitored 24/7, not a 911 center. Mostly-abandoned blog at emergencypants.wordpress.com.
... but its economic, public trust, and political "attack" moves would be more dangerous within the game's (very loose) model.
May 3, 2024 at 2:04 AM
Possibly each incident type has a different set of moves (much as in a D&D bestiary, each monster has a different set of attacks), which represents the incident's effects on the affected community. So a ransomware incident wouldn't have a strong life safety impact (usually)...
May 3, 2024 at 2:04 AM
But after those, possibly add short-term recovery, public opinion/public trust, and political and economic factors in some manner.
May 3, 2024 at 2:02 AM
For somewhat-accurate representation of incident management in the game's narrative, I think I'd want each incident to have multiple progress tracks or sources of conflict. I'm thinking... start with life safety, incident stabilization, and property protection.
May 3, 2024 at 2:01 AM
Certainly, for something I ran myself as an outreach event, I could make it mostly arbitrary. But for a commercial product, or even for something distributed to colleagues for broader outreach use, I think I'd want something more consistent and deterministic than "GM/exercise controller fiat."
May 3, 2024 at 1:59 AM
This does raise the question of how to model progress against the incident itself, if not with a combat-derived game mechanic that models back-and-forth struggles and cumulative success or failure. I'm uncertain how mechanical I'd want it to be.
May 3, 2024 at 1:58 AM
This would also be one of the very rare TTRPGs in which there is almost no provision for combat, because very few hazard types can be sworded into submission. Even for the stuff on the human-caused hazard list that does require LE UOF response, I'm not sure I'd want to make "combat" a feature.
May 3, 2024 at 1:55 AM
This started as a joke to myself but I'm now wondering if there'd actually be an audience for it.
May 3, 2024 at 1:50 AM
Operations is the strength/dexterity stat. Logistics is the stamina attribute. Planning is the intelligence or perception trait. Finance/Administration is the social attribute.

I don't think that's *quite* right, but it's a starting point for further brain cycles in my copious free time.
May 3, 2024 at 1:48 AM
I'd need to think carefully about the attribute set, because every PbtA game has PC attributes that are thematic to the setting, genre, and intended stories to be told with that game. To represent agencies, I'm tempted to start with the ICS sections.
May 3, 2024 at 1:47 AM
I wouldn't use it for *serious* exercise delivery, but I'm wondering if adding a bit of gamification to a TTX structure would make it a better teaching tool for introducing uninitiated audiences to complex incident management.
May 3, 2024 at 1:45 AM
Agree. I believe it's from a Tumblr account that collects interesting warning signs without much in the way of context, so I suspect the creator was not in our line of work. But I appreciate the effort that went into it.

(I also might violate NFPA 704 and use Roman numerals in the diamonds.)
May 3, 2024 at 1:41 AM
Some would call that a feature, not a bug.
May 2, 2024 at 11:25 PM
Imagine how much more improvement you'd see if they promoted you from Safety Officer to DANGER OFFICER.
March 22, 2024 at 10:40 AM
(I may be overusing "practical" here a bit, but that's because I'm looking at this from a realistic perspective... not corporate pep rallies when a pack of C-suite sociopaths stands on a stage and tries to convince everyone that the latest quarterly layoffs are good.)
March 2, 2024 at 11:29 AM
At what size does it become impractical for an organization to meaningfully instill mission, vision, and values? When do they stop being things upon which everyone focuses and start being empty plaques on a conference room wall?
March 2, 2024 at 11:27 AM
We talk about span of control a lot because of ICS, but what is the maximum practical number of subordinates and peers that a leader can hope to directly influence when attempting to establish organizational culture?
March 2, 2024 at 11:26 AM
Nothing to see here. I am three AARs in a trench coat.
February 20, 2024 at 11:48 PM