The FIRM
A strategy game about consulting, office politics, impossible deadlines and billable hours.
Build your team. Win the client. Crush the competition. Survive the backlog.
- Firms
- 2–4
- Rounds
- 15
- Classes
- 10
- Projects
- 31
- Action cards
- 53
Welcome to consulting
Build your team. Win the client. Crush the competition.
Terms. Every employee sitting on your bench is billed at $1,000 per turn whether or not there is work for them; employees seated on a client project are billed at nothing, which is why the person you hired last turn is already a liability, and $2,000 once they make senior. Income is $2,500 to $3,000 a week depending whose name is over the door. Retention is a bonus you promise the whole firm and pay every turn, worth up to 15 victory points at the end and nothing whatsoever if you miss it once. Delivery is not immediate: work committed at the end of your turn delivers at the start of your next one. Staff may be poached, swapped, struck, blocked, sent on mandatory training or reorganised out of your firm by a rival playing a card, and your only recourse is a reaction card you may not be holding. Overflow from a full backlog costs a victory point every time, and eventually the contract itself for −3, once you have spent the sends that would have stopped it. Cash converts at 1 victory point per $3,000, which is rarely the reason anybody wins. Offer void where the client changes the requirements, which is everywhere.
The objective
Finish fifteen rounds with the most victory points. Complete contracts, hold cash, avoid backlog, and try not to fail a client in front of three witnesses.
Another productive
week at The FIRM.
- 01
Income
The client pays, $2,500 to $3,000 depending on your firm. Holding backlog costs you none of it.
- 02
Payroll
$1,000 a head on the bench, $2,000 once they are senior, plus the retention bonus you promised everybody.
- 03
Delivery
Last turn's committed work ships. This is the part you actually get paid for.
- 04
Intake
Two new projects arrive. Nobody asked for them. They are yours now.
- 05
Actions
Draw one card, play one. A few of them help you. Most help you hurt somebody else.
- 06
Hire
One person from the shared market. So can everyone else, and half of them go first.
- 07
Assign
Fill the chairs. Anything fully staffed commits, and delivers next turn.
- 08
Trade
Offer a rival one of yours for one of theirs. Cash optional. Sincerity optional.
Eight stages. Fifteen times. The client considers this a partnership.
The market / 01
Everyone wants
the same people.
One market. Five people. Developers, architects, analysts, project managers and testers, every one of them filling a chair somebody at this table needs filled.
You may take exactly one per turn. So can the firm opposite you, and half the time they go first.
See somebody a competitor is desperate for? Hire them first. Hiring is free. The $1,000 a turn they cost you afterwards is the part nobody mentions at the fair.
Ten roles. Turn one over.
The queue is the constraint
The market refills to five after every hire, so what you leave behind is what your rival picks up. Taking the person you need is often worth less than taking the person they need.
Roles are not interchangeable
A project that asks for two business analysts will not accept two developers. Most work names the roles it wants; only a handful will take anyone at all.
You can be fired by arithmetic
Payroll settles before you act. A firm that cannot cover it drops staff from the end of the list until it can. No decision, no warning, just fewer people than you had.
The people / 02
Get to know
your staff.
Ten roles. Ten personalities. Ten different ways to make a simple project complicated.
The DEV has the answer somewhere in notes.txt. QA has proof. The Architect has a diagram. The BA has the contract. The PM has a green status report. UX is still waiting on feedback. Data Science is still cleaning the data.
Everyone has a specialty. Everyone has a story.
Then AI arrives. No sleep. No coffee. No “quick call?” And somehow, it has already sent the follow-up.
Select anyone to read their poster at full size.
The team / 03
Every project has some
chairs to keep warm.
Projects need people. Sometimes the right people. Sometimes, apparently, just people.
Fill every chair and the project commits at the end of your turn, then delivers at the start of your next one for as many points of progress as it seated chairs. Leave one chair empty and it sits on the shelf doing nothing.
Because nothing says consulting like putting five people on something one person could probably have done.
Available staff
Click a chair to seat someone. Highlighted staff fit a chair that is still open.
Every role in the game is on this bench. Seat them, ship the work, take the contract, and go again with a bigger one.
Shelf space is finite
Your contract sets a limit on uncommitted projects, staffed or not; sitting people on one does not protect it. At the start of your turn the oldest work above that line falls into backlog and its people walk back to the bench, and then two new projects arrive anyway.
Eight projects take anyone
Of the thirty-one projects in the deck, twenty-three name their roles and eight will seat whoever you have. Those eight are the only forgiving thing in the box.
Delivery is always late
Nothing you commit pays out on the turn you commit it. Every plan you make is a plan about the board as it will be after three rivals have had their say.
The people you keep / 04
A promise you
cannot afford
to break.
Nobody here stays for the culture. The first of your people to make senior, on their sixth turn with you, hands you a permanent extra $1,000 a turn and one permanent decision: what to promise everybody else. Nothing, five, ten or fifteen per cent of the wage bill, paid every turn, on every employee you have, whether they are on a project or sitting on the bench.
Pay it and they stay. At fifteen per cent nobody resigns at all. At nothing they leave at about one in sixteen a round, and once the agents arrive your juniors go at one in five. Underpay a bonus you have already promised and the risk climbs another five points every turn until you make good on it.
The promise covers everybody
It is charged on every salary you carry, seated or benched, on top of the bench wages, and the client does not pay a penny of it. Strata settles three quarters of the bill and is credited for the whole thing.
Happy Staff pays at the end
A steadily funded five, ten or fifteen per cent is worth exactly that many points. Lower your promise part way through and the credit you built clears, while the turns you have already spent do not come back.
And the award is gone
Underpay a bonus you promised, once, and it is forfeit for the rest of the match. Paying generously afterwards does not buy it back. The indicator turns red and stays red.
The politics / 05
Your rivals have problems.
You can help them
have more.
Steal their staff. Block a role they need. Swap your worst employee for their best. Hand them a project nobody wanted. Or simply announce that their developers contribute nothing until the end of their turn.
Some of it can be answered. Six reaction cards exist, they do not cost a rival their play for the turn, and the only way to learn who is holding one is to find out.
53 action cards. One per turn. Zero professional courtesy.
Card text above is the game's own, unedited. Drag it, or use the arrows.
The backlog / 06
Where good
intentions go to die.
Cannot staff it? Backlog. Cannot afford it? Backlog. Six projects behind and congratulations, you have lost the client.
You cannot put anybody on a backlog project. It has to be pulled back onto the board first, and the routes back are narrow: a business analyst firm recovers its oldest item by itself, grooming re-packs the queue when there is room, and three action cards touch it. Most of those discard the work rather than return it.
Every time a full backlog pushes the oldest project out of it. Charged once, kept for the rest of the match, never forgiven.
How many projects your backlog holds, which is the same number as your contract's limit on live work. A bigger queue is not a kinder one.
Overflow once more after your external QM sends are gone, and the contract goes with it. New class, new contract, board cleared. Your people, at least, stay.
The contract / 07
Your contract
is your class.
Every client changes how you play. Quality assurance ships short-handed. Business analysis claws work back out of the backlog. Growth analysis earns on delivery. Project management sees what is coming before anybody else does.
Complete it and you take the victory points, then lose almost everything else: new class, new contract, every project and backlog item cleared. The people you hired stay, which is the one mercy in it.
Fail it and exactly the same thing happens, for −3. Congratulations on your exciting new opportunity.
Weekly income comes from your firm rather than your contract, $2,500 to $3,000, and it survives every contract change along with your firm’s one permanent ability. The growth analyst takes $500 on every delivery on top of it.
An AI era is born.
Not one firm quietly trying something. The whole table, in the same round, because the firm that holds out is the firm explaining why its margins are worse.
The juniors work it out first. The tasks they were hired to cut their teeth on are the tasks that just got automated, and the rung they were standing on is the rung that went. They do not wait to be told twice. They retrain into work with a licence and a physical world attached: nursing, plumbing, electrical, surveying, the trades their careers advisor was sniffy about. A generation told to learn to code is quietly learning to wire a house.
The seniors stay, and not out of loyalty. Twenty years in, this is the only thing they know how to do. The client relationship, the steering committee, the knack of being the person in the room who has seen this before: none of it transfers, and none of it is worth much anywhere else. They are not holding on because they believe in it. They are holding on because there is nowhere to put twenty years of this.
Adopt it, or compete against somebody who did.
- Arrives
- Round 9
- Your juniors
- Leaving
- Assisted work
- ½ VP
The change / 08
Same game,
with AGENT staff.
Three agents will fill almost any chair you point them at. Your backlog becomes something you can feed to them. Your juniors start handing in notice. Every candidate on the market arrives senior, at twice the wage.
And an AI-assisted contract pays half its victory points. Twelve becomes six. The thing that saves your firm is the thing that costs you the game.
This is an optional experimental mode. Classic is the default, it is not going anywhere, and declining the whole business is still a way to win.
Per turn, renewing
Bought during Hire, charged again at each following Hire until you cancel. Coverage runs through your rivals' turns and your next settlement. If the cash is not there the service simply stops. No debt, no surprise.
Not employees
You place them yourself, one chair at a time, on any role including an any-chair. No payroll, no seniority, and nobody can poach them. Commit the work and that capacity is spent for the turn.
Classic is the default
AI adoption is an experimental mode you switch on in match setup, not something that happens to every game. Declining it is meant to stay competitive, and a firm that never subscribes still plays for full victory points.
Internal communications / 09
Morale has never
been higher.
The firm has always communicated well. Twenty-seven posters, in five acts and in the order they were issued, from the morning somebody arrived to the quarter somebody did not.
None of it is false. The bench really does cost $1,000 a turn, seniority really does double that, and the transformation really was a success. For the firm.
Select any poster to read it at full size and share it. Arrow keys move through the campaign.
Fifteen rounds
Outthink them.
Outstaff them.
Outbill them.
Welcome to The FIRM.
Fifteen rounds, four firms and one pool of people. Build the team nobody else can put together, keep it busy, and finish ahead of the three firms trying to stop you.
- 2–4 players
- 15 rounds
- 10 consulting classes
- 31 projects
- 53 action cards
- 1 completely healthy corporate culture™
Coming soon
Know the day
it comes out.
The FIRM is still in development. Leave an address and you will get exactly one email, on the day it is released. No newsletter, no progress updates, no news about our journey.