Counterparty Drift — How to Play

The rules for the game you're about to play online. For a scripted playthrough, see the worked example; for a printable version to run at a table, see the print-and-play kit.

v0 — the numbers below are first-pass and still being tuned between playtests.

1. The idea

Every player publicly upholds an institution they privately bleed — and tells themselves the collapse is somebody else's problem: the depositors, the savers, the workers left holding the wreckage. Each round you play one move in secret; the table only ever sees a shuffled, anonymous trail of 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, and final. One seat may instead be the Whistleblower — the conscience, who reads the trail and gets one shot at exposing a hoarder.

2. Your two faces: public role & shadow role

There are four pillars — Cyber, Market, Operational, Narrative — each starting at the same health and collapsing if it ever hits zero. Every player is dealt two roles:

A public institution (face-up, everyone sees it) — it guards one pillar. When you stabilise the pillar you publicly guard, the repair is stronger — your institutional speciality.
A secret archetype (face-down, yours alone) — it drains one pillar. This can be the same pillar your institution guards — the guard who is secretly the thief is the sharpest hand in the game, and it's allowed.

Pillar	Public institutions (examples)	Secret archetype(s)
Cyber	Cybersecurity Firm, Social Media Platform, Crypto Exchange	Hacker, Online Scammer
Market	Investment Bank, Retail Bank, Central Bank, Stock Exchange	Insider Trader, Short Seller, Ponzi Operator
Operational	Energy Grid Operator, Regulator, Government Treasury	Bank Robber, Money Launderer
Narrative	News Outlet, Electoral Commission, AI Lab	Disinformation Agent, Corrupt Politician, Snake-Oil Influencer

At 3–4 players each pillar has exactly one archetype in play; a 5th player adds a second archetype to any one pillar (each now carries 2-3 options, not just Market/Narrative). One seat can be the Whistleblower instead of an archetype — see §5.

3. A round, step by step

Deals (optional). Before committing, you may propose or accept a deal with another player — see §4.
Commit. Privately choose one move: Drip (quietly drain your pillar for paper — the setup), Strike (your signature — a big hit for big paper, needs two prior Drips to arm), Stabilise (repair a pillar), Bank some (launder part of your paper, stay in the game) or Cash out (bank all your paper — safe and final, you now want the system to collapse).
Reveal. Drips, Strikes and Stabilises land in the round's shuffled trail as named events — "a Vault Job hit Operational," "someone shored up Cyber" — with the actor hidden. Bank some and Cash out are always public and attributed to you by name — everyone sees who banked. Deals show as "X + Y struck a deal" (partners named, pillar and split stay hidden).
Resolve. Every move is applied to its pillar.
Decay. The weakest pillar(s) slip a little each round — the clock that keeps the game moving — accelerating to the two weakest pillars in the late game.
Yield. Your held (un-banked) paper grows a little each round, faster the healthier the system is overall — so holding is tempting right up until it isn't.
End check. Any pillar hitting zero ends the game in collapse: every un-banked paper pile evaporates, and only banked paper counts. Reach the round limit (or everyone's cashed out) and it's survival: held paper is realised and counted alongside banked.

The signature

Your Strike is your signature move, and it needs a chain: two of your own Drips landed first. Try to Strike before it's armed and it just plays as a Drip instead — no waste, no jump. You can play the Strike anonymously (it lands in the trail like anything else), or declare it: flip your secret archetype face-up and claim it. Declaring pays a premium, but it's the one named entry in an otherwise-anonymous trail — you're a marked target the moment you're holding big.

4. Deals

Two players may agree, before committing, to strike the same pillar together and split the combined paper by an agreed share. A joint strike costs the pillar less than a solo Strike but pays out more total paper — the cooperation premium. The catch: if your partner banks or cashes out before the deal executes, it falls through and you get nothing that round. The table sees that the two of you struck a deal, just not what or how it split — everyone else is left to infer the partnership from the pattern of pillar damage.

5. The tensions

Bank vs. hold. Held paper keeps growing the longer the system stays healthy — but a single pillar hitting zero wipes every un-banked pile at once, including yours. Banking (in full, or partially to launder some out of reach) is the only way to make a gain permanent, and the only players who survive a collapse with anything are the ones who already cashed out.

The build-up. You can't swing for the big score immediately — the signature chain forces two quiet Drips before a Strike lands, so the earliest big hit is round three. Declaring it for the premium means unmasking yourself at the exact moment you're holding big.

The Whistleblower. If a seat is playing the conscience, they don't extract — they read the anonymous trail against the public institutions and get one shot: name a player and an amount, "you hold at least N." Right, and that player's paper is clawed back and the Whistleblower wins; wrong, and the shot is spent for good. Just their presence at the table pushes everyone to bank earlier than they'd like.

New to this? Try the worked example for a full scripted game, or head back to the lobby to play.