Counterparty Drift — Named Complicity Playtest Kit v0

Print & play. No moderator. All numbers are first-pass — calibrating them is what the playtest is for.

© George Wiles 2026. Playtest copy — not for distribution or commercial use. Feedback may be incorporated into the design.

The idea in four lines

• You publicly uphold a system you privately bleed — and tell yourself it isn't your problem.
• Each round you play one named action, revealed anonymously: the table sees what happened, never who did it.
• Your take is paper — it grows while the system is healthy and evaporates if a pillar collapses. Bank it to make it safe (public & final).
• One player may be the Whistleblower — the conscience, who reads the trail and exposes a hoarder.

You need

• The four pillar tracks (page 4), a marker on each.
• The action cards and role cards (pages 2–3). All cards share one plain back.
• A supply of paper tokens (beads/coins of one colour). One screen per player (a folded card). A note-pad per player.

Setup

• Players 3–5. Each pillar track at 7 (of 10). Collapse if any pillar hits 0.
• Deal each player one public institution (face-up) and one secret predator (face-down). One seat may instead be the Whistleblower (start without it for your first games).
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• Each player takes their predator's three action cards (two distinct setup Drips + one Strike) and one each of Support & Bank. 0 paper, 0 banked, chain 0. Round counter at 1.

The trick — the anonymous reveal

1. Commit. Behind your screen, choose one action card; place it face-down in the centre.
2. Shuffle. Gather the face-down cards and shuffle (anyone — it's mechanical, not a judgement).
3. Reveal. Flip them face-up together — the round's named events, in random order, actor unknown.
4. Resolve. Apply each card to its named pillar; move the tracks by the net.
5. Log. Leave the cards face-up in a shared event log, grouped by round. This is the public trail the conscience reads. Privately note what you played.

The rest of the round

1. Decay. The lowest pillar drops −1 (the clock).
2. Yield. Grow your held paper by the band of the lowest pillar: 6–10 Buoyant = +1 per 3 held · 3–5 Stable = +1 per 6 · 1–2 Fragile = +1 per 2.
3. Bank window. In turn order, anyone may play Bank (public, final).
4. End check. Any pillar 0 → collapse. Round 12 → survival. Else advance.

Ending & scoring

• Collapse: all held paper = 0. Rank by banked.
• Survival (round 12): held paper is realised. Rank by banked + held.
• Declared signature (perfect-crime variant): the player who lands it wins outright.

The signature — build up, then the big hit

Your Strike is your signature, and it needs a chain: two of your own Drips landed on your pillar first — two distinct named setup moves, not the same one twice (e.g. the Bank Robber's Data Heist → Inside Job → Vault Job build-up). So the earliest big hit is round 3 — no pillar can be cratered before then. Track your chain privately (2 Drips = armed); a Strike spends it (rebuild for the next — the sequence starts over from Drip 1).

Play the Strike anonymously (it lands in the shuffled trail), or declare it: flip your secret predator face-up. Declaring pays a premium (+9 vs +6) but you unmask, and it's the one named entry in the trail. Custody, not a referee — you prove it by flipping your own card. (Knob: a declared strike simply wins.)

Deals & the conscience

• Deal: before commit, two players may privately agree to both drain the same pillar and split the combined paper by a ratio. Bigger hit — but your partner's bank-first timing is your risk, and a fatter pile is more for the conscience to catch.
• Whistleblower: once per game, accuse — "you hold ≥ N." The accused flips their paper. Right (held ≥ N): clawed back to 0, the conscience scores (≥ 8 wins). Wrong: the conscience is spent. Their presence pushes everyone to bank earlier.

Action cards — cut out; all share one plain back

Each predator has two distinct Drips (the setup, played in order) and a Strike (the signature) — three named cards, not one card played twice. Draining your own pillar includes a +1 bonus. Photocopy the universal cards for extra players.

Hacker — Cyber

Online Scammer — Cyber

Insider Trader — Market

Short Seller — Market

Ponzi Operator — Market

Action cards — continued

Bank Robber — Operational

Money Launderer — Operational

Disinformation Agent — Narrative

Corrupt Politician — Narrative

Snake-Oil Influencer — Narrative

Universal — everyone holds these

Role cards — deal one institution (face-up) + one predator (face-down)

Public institutions — face-up

Secret predators — face-down

Pillar tracks — marker on each; start at 7, collapse at 0

Solo dry-run (do this first)

Play 3–4 hands yourself, openly, no Whistleblower — you're testing whether a round resolves cleanly and whether the numbers make tension, not whether it's fun yet:

• Deal yourself two or three predators; play all hands face-up.
• Run the loop. Does lowest-pillar decay + yield make a real "hold or bank?" agony?
• Does a collapse ever threaten, or does it always survive — or crater by round 2?
• Then add the anonymous reveal with a friend and ask the real question: from the public event log alone, can you start to tell who drains what?

What to watch

• Reveal legibility — too clean and the conscience can't read; too loud and predators are exposed round one. The right amount of leak is the whole experiment.
• Conscience substrate — is the catch a skill read off the trail, or a coin-flip?
• Deals — struck once priced by the conscience? Does early-bank betrayal sting?
• Stability dilemma — genuine agony in support / bank / take-more as pillars wobble?
• The signature build-up — does drip → drip → declare feel earned, and does the self-reveal stay clean?

The master dials are the yield curve and the reveal anonymity. A good setting produces both endings (survival and collapse) across repeated play, and a conscience who can read the trail without it being handed to them. Full design rationale: design-note-best-of-both-synthesis.md; rules in full: named-complicity-playtest-kit-v0.md.