The world did not survive the catastrophe. You have found shelter — but there
are fewer places in it than there are of you. Someone has to decide who stays inside and who walks
out the door.
Who you are
Everyone gets nine traits: profession, health, a skill, a phobia, baggage, a secret, biodata, build
and orientation. Only you can see your own file. Everything the others learn, you tell them
yourself — or don't.
Revealing
In turn, each player opens one trait of their choosing. What to show first and what to hold back is
half the game. A weak card played at the right moment saves you; a strong one wasted makes you
expendable.
The vote
Argue it out loud or in the chat over who the shelter needs more, then vote. Whoever collects the
most votes leaves — and their whole file is opened for everyone to see. On a tie nobody is thrown
out and another round of reveals follows. You can propose voting early or giving everyone one more
round instead, but that takes the agreement of every living player.
Special powers
Everyone holds two abilities: peek at someone's file, swap out one of your own traits, shield
yourself from the vote, cancel someone else's. Now and then a rare card turns up, marked in red —
those change the whole picture.
Something will go wrong
Partway through, a detail about the shelter or the catastrophe surfaces that nobody knew. Sometimes
it overturns every deal made so far.
Duties
Once the extra people are gone, those left divide the work between them: food, repairs, medicine,
defence, the future of the community. Each job goes better in the hands of someone suited to it — a
surgeon in the infirmary is worth more than an actor.
Three nights
Then come three nights, and something happens in each: an attack, a breakdown, a find. Inside the
shelter turns go in order, and everyone can see what each person picked:
Act — repair and
fix,
Scavenge — go outside for supplies,
Fight back — meet the threat and cover the
others. Whether it works depends on who you are and whether your choice matched what the night
demanded. People really do die.
The common job
Every night makes a demand of the group as a whole: two people out scavenging, say. It
deliberately does not match what the incident itself calls for, which means somebody has to take
on what is not best for them personally. Everyone sees who has stepped up, so the arrangement has
to be talked through out loud. Whoever takes the job is not working against the night: there is
no penalty for «the wrong task» for them. Get enough people and the stores gain whatever they
went out for; fall short and the night costs more.
The council
If someone outside worked for the shelter and pulled it off, a council is called after the night:
the survivors decide how to pay for it. Let them inside — if a seat is free; hand out supplies
from the stores; or give them nothing. Only those outcasts whose night's work succeeded make the
list: intentions do not count, results do.
One person, once per game. Supplies cost the shelter a level in its stores, but out there they
markedly raise the odds of finding a second refuge and living to daybreak in it — and they can be
given more than once. A tie and a general refusal come to the same thing: nothing is given.
The finds
Details about the shelter and the catastrophe surface during the selection: a locked door,
unlisted ampoules, a stranger's voice on the air. Every such find demands an answer, and the
council gives that one too: two options, and both cost something — supplies, security or morale
in the shelter. Fail to agree and the find comes back the following night. The morning reckoning
is done on the shelter as your decisions have made it.
The outcasts
Those thrown out are not eliminated. Outside they choose a stance: help the shelter, harm it, or
look for a second refuge of their own. The stance is chosen once and for good, and after that they
decide each night what exactly to do. There is no queue outside: the outcasts decide in parallel
with those inside and wait for nobody. They do get one decision of their own — the plan for the
night: throw everything into the search for a refuge, or work on the shelter. The votes are open,
and the two options pull in different directions. Someone who helps can come back inside — not by
luck, but if the survivors vote for it at the council. A saboteur never can.
The vote from outside
At the final vote the outcasts together add one vote against any of those still inside — the only
one in the whole game. It's their chance to drag out whoever would be useful to them.
Daybreak
In the morning the reckoning comes: how the duties were handled, what happened in the nights, who
is still alive. If the outcasts managed to find their refuge, their story gets an ending of its
own — and surviving there is markedly harder.