Get the project through all ten stages, together. Then find out why it went the way it did.
Two card games, one set of scenarios
Competitive and quick: 30–40 minutes, a rotating Sponsor judges the funniest answer, and the Audit checks whose answers held up. Sold as standalone boxes for game nights and team socials.
Co-operative and deliberate: a table runs one project through the ten stages of a change, every decision tied to a practice in the Database, and a structured debrief afterwards. Sold as discipline bundles for organizations, and run in workshops with Third Person Consulting.
Both games draw on the same fictional companies, crises and Best Practices and Standards Database as the digital Project: Countdown! Only the rules, the length and the purpose change.
Win together: finish all ten stages with the meters where the scenario needs them. Win alone: meet your hidden objective too.
Three to eight players, plus a facilitator who runs the table and the debrief. A meter board with sliders, no pencils. Groups without a facilitator can play; one player then reads the facilitator's cards.
What's in a bundle
Card counts are playtest drafts. Each scenario pack is adapted from a scenario in the digital game, with the same company, cast and Database links.
Eight seats and a facilitator
Each role has Energy (refreshes every stage), Influence (one pool for the whole game) and Authority (who acts first, and who holds the decision rights). The scenario sheet renames each seat for its industry, so the CIO might be a Systems Owner on a construction job or a Plant Manager in manufacturing.
Holds the decision rights on technology choices.
Sees the security and integration risks on Event cards before they're read aloud.
Holds the budget and the schedule.
Sees the real deadline on the scenario sheet, which may not match the announced one.
Runs the stage: reads the Decision card and calls the vote.
Sees one Evidence card each stage that nobody else drew.
Owns readiness: who can do the new work, and how anyone knows.
Sees MORALE and ADOPT effects before an option is chosen.
Knows how the work is actually done.
May flip this stage's hidden risk tile before choosing actions.
Asks the obvious question.
Once per game, may make the table read the back of a Tip card aloud. Gains XP and is promoted at 4.
Seat 7. Sells the solution, and knows its real limits.
Sees the "Ready if" line on Event cards about the product before they're read. Has a hidden objective that may pull against the team's.
Seat 8. The outside view, with no authority.
May draw one extra Evidence card each stage, and must share it. Can't make a decision, only recommend one; the debrief asks whether anyone listened.
Runs the table: the clock, the Event cards, Take Five and the debrief.
Plays the client and the people the scenario calls for, answers "ask a coworker" in character from the Tip cards, and keeps the Dissent record. Never steers the decision.
With three players, the Director of Operations, Project Manager and CIO play; the other roles' decks contribute one card each stage, in rotation, so no meter goes uncovered. Seats 7 and 8, the Vendor and the Consultant, join at seven and eight players. Above eight, run a second table with its own facilitator, or seat players in pairs sharing a role.
The meter board
The scenario sheet can rename a meter (ADOPT becomes "Crew buy-in" on a job site) and sets the success line. The default: at the end, TIME and BUDGET at least 1, RISK at most 6, QUALITY and ADOPT at least 6.
Setup · about 10 minutes
Read the scenario sheet aloud: the company, what's at stake, what broke this morning, and the deadline.
Each player takes a role board, its action deck and a hidden objective, dealt face down. Draw five action cards. The facilitator takes the Event cards, the Tip cards and the Take Five cards.
Meters to the scenario's starting values, the stage marker on Diagnose, the scenario's Decision cards in stage order, the Event cards shuffled into the slots the sheet marks.
The facilitator reads the scenario's three learning outcomes. They're the same ones the debrief comes back to.
Short on time? Play Express: five stages (Diagnose, Prepare, Apply, Adopt, Adapt), about 60 minutes plus the debrief.
One stage · about 10 minutes
The Project Manager reads the stage line on the scenario sheet. Flip this stage's hidden risk tile face down.
Anyone may spend 1 Energy to ask a coworker (draw a Tip card) or investigate (draw an Evidence card). Tips are people's opinions; some are wrong, and the back says so only at the debrief. Some tips and evidence grant a Ready token.
Reveal the stage's Decision card. Shuffle its three option slips face down and lay them out as A, B and C, so position never gives the answer away. The table discusses. The role with decision rights for this stage (shown on the card) makes the final call. Anyone who disagrees may place a Dissent token: it's recorded, and the debrief returns to it.
Everyone secretly chooses up to two action cards they can pay for, then reveals. Resolve in Authority order.
If an Event card sits on this stage, read it. Its "Ready if" line names the tokens or decisions that would have prepared you. If the table holds one, use the prepared outcome; if not, the unprepared one.
Flip the hidden risk tile and add it to RISK, unless someone revealed it. TIME −1. ADOPT −1 (adoption fades without reinforcement). Check MORALE. Draw one action card. Move the stage marker.
Take Five
After Diagnose, Verify and Measure, the facilitator reads a Take Five card: a one-minute prediction ("what do you expect the field test to show?") that everyone answers before play continues. The debrief puts the predictions beside what happened.
The case board
Each scenario asks three questions, such as "What's causing the callbacks?" or "Was the storm beyond the design?". The Evidence and Tip cards the table collected are its clues: some point the right way, some are red herrings, and some leads are missed entirely if nobody investigated. Answers include not established when the evidence can't decide it, and that can be the right answer.
Each correct finding: QUALITY +1 and RISK −1. The best Ending card needs all three right.
How it ends
The game ends at once if RISK reaches 10, or TIME or BUDGET reaches 0. Otherwise, after Adapt, check the scenario's five Ending cards in order: the first whose conditions are met is read aloud. Endings depend on the meters, the case findings and, for some, a specific choice made at Adapt.
The team wins on a success ending. Players who met their hidden objective also win individually. On a challenged ending, only they win. On a failure, nobody does, and the debrief is usually the best part.
Thresholds are first drafts, tuned in a simulator so success is achievable but not the default. They'll change in playtesting.
The debrief · 30–45 minutes, run by the facilitator
Each player says, in one line, what they'd remember. Read the predictions from the Take Five cards beside what happened.
Lay the Decision cards in stage order on the replay mat and trace which choices set up which events. Consequences in this game are often delayed, so the chain has to be rebuilt.
Turn over the Practice cards: for each decision, the practice behind the careful option, whether you applied it, skipped it or half-applied it, its evidence tier and what's not known.
Turn over the Tip cards and read which were wrong. Return to every Dissent token: was the dissenter right?
Each person picks one practice to use in the next month, and says where.
After the game
Spaced retrieval. Follow-up cards (or the companion app, by QR code) ask three short questions at one, three and eight weeks.
Early signals. At 30, 60 and 90 days, check whether the practices each person chose are showing up in the work: one example each, from records or a colleague, not a self-rating.
Results. Outcomes such as rework, incidents or adoption take six to twelve months. Workshops with Third Person Consulting can include a comparison team.
Bundles
AI going live, system replacements, cyber incidents and software releases.
Capital projects, construction management, quality and handover.
New lines, control changes, maintenance and turnarounds.
Site safety training, rail, wildfire and hospital emergencies.
Onboarding, training design and proving people can do the work.
Planned: board and C-suite decisions, from the Executive Chair campaigns.
Bundle contents are proposals. Scenario packs are adapted from the digital game's trilogies and short cases.
Why it's built this way
Games teach more with a debrief than without one, and a script lets any facilitator run it. GL-01 · GL-09
The game sits inside a workshop or a programme, with follow-up. GL-03
Each scenario names three before play, and the debrief returns to them. GL-06
Evidence cards carry what matters; the art doesn't hide it. GL-05
Real decisions pay off stages later, so the debrief rebuilds the chain. GL-07
Take Five predictions during play. GL-08
No points table: the Ending card is the result. GL-12
Players tend to overestimate it, so the follow-up checks the work, not confidence. GL-13 · GL-10
Every meter and kind is labelled in words. GL-18
Codes are entries in the Best Practices and Standards Database (Appendix P, game-based learning), with their sources and limits.
Status
This edition starts from the original Project: Countdown! card rules (roles with Energy, Influence and Authority, six meters, events, hidden risk and action decks) and adds the evidence layer the digital game was built with: shuffled decisions, "Ready if" events, evidence and red-herring tips, a case board, Practice cards and a scripted debrief.
Numbers, card counts and thresholds are drafts. The first playtests will check length, whether three-player tables cover the meters, and whether the debrief fits in 45 minutes.
For learning and team development, not certified training, and not legal, safety or engineering advice. Every company and person on the cards is fictional.