Action points
Here's a brief description of the way that carrying out tasks works in Mammon
Inc.
Each turn you have 6 Action Points to spend. You can allocate them between up
to 6 actions, integer values to each. In general the more Action Points you
assign to an action, the more likely it is to work, particularly if it's difficult.
So you could carry out 6 1-point actions; but unless they were all pretty routine
things, then some are likely to fail. We imagine that the most common pattern
will be to have 1 3-point action - the main thing that you're trying to do that
turn - and 3 1-point actions - minor or subsidiary items. But if you preferred,
3 2-point actions would be possible instead, etc etc.
Each action should consist of a one-line summary - 'investigate Liberian algae
crisis' - followed by a description of the resources you plan to use to carry
it out - 'using my local team of officials and also visiting personally' - and
then a longer summary of the detail of the plan - 'my officials are to make
inquiries among the algae farmers, visiting their dom-cubes to speak with them
personally while away from their bosses, and collate their different stories
together into a report for me. I will visit the site of the spill and see what
I think of the safety procedures in operation - could it have been sabotage?'
Depending on your character, this might be a 1-point action or a 3-point one.
For a safety inspector with a background in algae farming this would be very
routine. For someone who didn't know much about the industry, or who didn't
have officials of their own to carry out the inquiries and so had to requisition
appropriate staff from Mammon Inc, it would be more difficult. And, most importantly,
if whoever / whatever was behind the algae crisis was investing their own resources
in covering it up, then a low-Action-Point investigation would be unlikely to
be able to see below the surface.
Note that getting your staff and your assistants to do things will also cost
you Action Points. These people are not sources of free extra stuff, they are
assumed to require supervision. In Inferno we allowed people who had well-set-up
organizations beneath them to use those organizations for free, but that was
because they'd had to invest character creation points into setting them up.
In this game everyone has a well-set-up organization beneath them.
This means that the zero-point actions beloved of some Inferno players are a
lot more restricted in Mammon Inc. Things which can be assumed to be automatically
successful you can do as zero-point actions - 'I call my parents and wish them
a happy anniversary' - 'I write the next chapter of my memoirs' - 'I pass on
what I have learnt to my trusted ally' - as in Inferno. But things like 'I instruct
my researchers to find out what they can about the El Khazal development, in
particular who's behind it, and make a report to me' will cost you Action Points
in this game.
Mammon Inc Says: We know what we face on our planet now, we just have to work on weather control and finish cleaning up. |