The greatest brainstorming document of all time.

[misha]

Game wise its so loose to not have any super clear or coherent systems.

I know this is a place I disagreed with my cohosts, but I actually don't think it's lacking in these ways. The game has a core loop of play that's extremely self-complete (to the point that I've seen some storygame types describe it as basically a board game), but that feel to me like a great starting point to build rulings on top of.

It doesn't have a lot of simulation rules baked in, but I generally don't like crunchy simulation rules; common sense, table discussion, GM rulings, and simple die rolls can handle more diverse situations with more nuance and less slowdown than any crunchy sim RPG ruleset. The page 16 Action Procedure honestly is all I need for that side of things.

Probably the place this gets most fraught is in the places where some small sim rules exist, like the Crisis Roll (pg 20). I can see why they bugged Sam in the episode, but I think even those work okay if you just lean them significantly into the existing fiction; rolling a crisis is almost like a test on how play has progressed so far. If you roll a Doubt crisis and you were already in tension with your council, they betray you. If you were actively in their good graces, there's mild grumbling and a cooling off. If your relationship had simply never come up with them before, you introduce a thread of danger that needs to be resolved but is more mild than active betrayal. I dislike these types of mechanics when they ignore the fiction, but they're honestly so vague that you're going to be pulling from the fiction to interpret them anyway.