Be a CEO · decision cards

24 business dilemmas from a strategy game

The short version. Be a CEO is a business strategy game in closed alpha. Its dilemma cards have no right answer: your advisers and the crowd lean one way, a bold option is decided by a d20 roll, and the safer options have certain outcomes. These are all 24 hand-written ones, with the game’s own text, in three ages: a medieval kingdom, the railway mania of 1846 and the present day.

Open any card to read it, pick an option and roll the dice. Every page lists all the options and what happens, so you can compare them before you choose.

I. Valmora · Year 412, Lantern Calendar

• A Caravan from the Fever CountryA steppe caravan has arrived at Aldheim's east gate from lands where the sweating fever is spreading.
• Bandits Who Want to Be GuardsSix men who robbed the Stonebreak road for years have walked into your yard, laid down their knives and asked for work as caravan guards.
• Every House Is Selling Bread at Famine PricesKordag Hold is hungry and every merchant house in Valmora is selling grain there at four times the usual price.
• Nobody Uses Swallow PassAn old shepherd swears that Swallow Pass, abandoned since a rockfall in his grandfather's day, is open again.
• A Partnership with the Horse ClansThe Tal clan of the steppe offers to share its grazing grounds and remounts with your caravans, in exchange for iron at a fair price.
• The Crown Asks for a War LoanThe Crown wants every great house to lend money for a border war against the Marrow Lords, at no interest and with no date of return.
• A Bale of Silk with a Hidden FlawYour Silverport weavers have found that a whole bale of your silk was dyed with a bad mordant.
• The Warden of Weights CheatsYour clerks have proof that Warden Gaspar Lune, who blesses every scale in Aldheim, takes bribes to pass false weights.

II. Ferrovia · 1846

• Every master in Wexmill says lock them outThe Wexmill hands have struck for a ten-hour day.
• Everyone says go round Cinder GapYour new line must pass Cinder Gap.
• Every broker says buy more railway sharesRailway shares are the only talk in every club.
• A clerk brings you Great Western's real accident bookA frightened clerk has brought you the Great Western's true accident book.
• Third class in open trucksEvery line carries third-class passengers in open trucks, in rain and smoke and sparks.
• Grain merchants say hold the famine grainThe potato blight has struck and Wexmill is hungry.
• Crane's furnaces have gone coldA furnace collapse has stopped every blast at Crane Iron & Steel.
• The King of Railways wants your lineMr Hector Grail, whom the papers call the King of Railways, offers to fold your house into his great amalgamation.

III. Meridyen · The present day

• Your best dispatcher talked to the pressImani, your best dispatcher, gave Signal News your real idling-emissions figures, which are worse than your brochure says.
• The hospital needs supplies in a stormA storm warning has shut the Port Kestrel road and every haulier has parked up.
• Everyone is raising prices but youDiesel has jumped again and every haulier in Meridyen has raised rates by fifteen percent.
• A union seat on your boardJo Okafor asks for a drivers' seat on your board.
• The bridge everyone has given up onEngineers have rated the old Varn Bridge on the Coldridge road 'unsafe for heavy loads'.
• Your fiercest critic is going brokeThe Lamp, a small investigative site that has exposed your company twice, is going bankrupt.
• NorthStar is going underNorthStar Freight is a week from bankruptcy, and three hundred drivers will lose their jobs.
• Publish every margin you makeCustomers suspect hauliers of gouging.

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