The Rulebook

The Basics

You lead a real country for 8 half-year turns. Each turn you enact or repeal policies, then dice rolls determine what happens. An AI Dungeon Master narrates the results as a newspaper. On Turn 8, your hold on power faces its final test.

If you’ve played D&D or other tabletop RPGs, this will feel familiar: you declare actions, the DM sets a difficulty, dice decide the outcome, and the story evolves from there. If you haven’t — all you need to know is that every action has a random element. You can make smart choices, but you can’t control the dice.

Difficulty

Choose one of three difficulty levels when creating a game:

The Dice

Every action rolls a die against a Difficulty Class (DC). Roll equal to or above the DC to succeed. The AI chooses the die size — from a D4 for trivial matters up to a D20 for major legislation — based on how politically significant the action is. It also sets the DC based on your approval, how radical the action is, and how well it fits your nation’s politics. Your national stats act as modifiers — high stats give bonuses, low stats impose penalties.

Your Toolkit

Policies are permanent laws that shape your national stats and influence world pressure outcomes. Your nation starts with 40–50 across seven categories, about half already active. Each has three implementation options from cautious to radical — bolder choices face higher DCs. You can also draft custom bills.

Directives are one-time executive actions — crisis responses, emergency measures, diplomatic moves. They roll dice but don’t persist.

Repeals also roll dice. Established policies are harder to overturn.

The Article

The lead article is written by the AI Dungeon Master each turn. It weaves together everything that happened — your policy outcomes, world events, character moves — into a narrative. Read it carefully; it often hints at emerging crises and shifting alliances.

Developing Stories

Ongoing national and global situations that affect your country — economic downturns, geopolitical tensions, public health crises. Each has a severity (minor, moderate, major, or crisis) and momentum (escalating, stable, or easing).

Every turn, each pressure rolls dice. Your active policies modify these rolls — helpful policies lower the difficulty, while policies that caused the problem make it harder. Successes ease pressures; failures escalate them and hit your stats. New pressures can emerge from world events or as unintended consequences of your policies. Click any story to see its dice details.

Your Actions

Dice results for every policy you enacted, repealed, or directive you issued this turn. Click any result for the full breakdown — roll, stat modifier, DC, margin, and mechanical impacts.

By the Numbers

Your nation tracks 8–15 statistics (Economy, Healthcare, Crime, etc.) on a 0–100 scale. Each turn, events produce numerical impacts on these stats. A successful trade reform might give Economy +5, while a failed infrastructure roll might hit it for −3.

Stats update deterministically from impacts — no hidden AI magic. Click any stat to see its history and why it changed. Some stats are inverted (Crime, Poverty, Corruption) where lower is better.

Public Sentiment

Your nation has 4–10 political factions (e.g. Business Owners, Working Class, Environmentalists), each weighted by political influence. Like stats, approval changes through numerical impacts each turn. Click any group to see why they shifted.

Your overall approval is the weighted average of all factions. This is your health bar for the final reckoning.

Who’s Who

Persistent characters — your opposition leader, chief of staff, lead journalist, and others — who act independently each turn. They may trigger events you didn’t choose, with their own dice rolls. Click any character to see their disposition (ally, neutral, rival) and full event history.

The Reckoning

Turn 8 is your final reckoning. In democracies, this is election day. In other systems, it’s a party congress vote, power struggle, or popular uprising — whatever fits your nation. Your overall approval — the weighted average of your factions — determines whether you hold power. Above ~45% generally keeps you in charge. Below ~40% or with crises dominating, you’re removed. In extreme cases you can be ousted early.

Tips