Chairs and Roles

The two chairs of Comrades & Chollimas, the eight roles with three verbs each, free actions, the two play modes and what to do with fewer players than roles.

A session has two chairs. You sit in one, or in both at two tables. Each chair has four roles, and each role has three verbs. This chapter tells you what to expect from each, and what to do when you have fewer players than roles.

The two chairs

The Comrades’ chair: the operator cell RULED

Revolutionary duty: get hired, stay hired, reach what you came for.

Persona, Ground Crew, Tooling, Money. You are the operator cell. The cell’s mission is one of the case’s three: wages, data or IP, or keys the hire can reach. You play a hiring process from the other side, with the file as your script. The cell has no real tradecraft to learn from this page. Everything you do is fiction at the table.

The Company’s chair RULED

HR, Engineering, SecOps, Finance & Legal. You are the company that made the offer. You find out who you hired, and you do it by checking the ID, the device and the payee, not by hunch.

The two modes RULED

One chair at a time. Your group takes one chair. The IM plays the other side with a case card script (see the IM’s guide to playing the other side if you are curious how). This is the default for a first session.

Both chairs at once. Two tables, one IM, one debrief. Both tables act at the same time. See Both-Chairs Mode. What you see at your table:

The clue tier is shown to every table, and the IM keeps Payoff and Exposure on one board both tables can see.
Each table has its own sealed bench card, handed over at the first stage transition. The cell’s card is a tradecraft analysis card.
The IM visits each table every round. The table visited first alternates each round, and effects resolve at the end of the round.
The idle table keeps playing free actions and writes its next action on a slip. It makes no rolls and moves no track while the IM is away.
When the Company calls stop-the-line, the cell’s fingers join the same tally. See Stop the Line.

No hidden player at the table

Nobody at the table sits out of the information. Every player sees the tracks and the clue tier. In both-chairs mode the cell’s choices (which hire card, which two tells) stay secret from the Company table until the debrief. If you sit in the Company chair, do not ask the cell what they chose. If you sit in the Comrades’ chair, do not peek at the Company’s bench card.

The eight roles

Each role has three verbs DEFAULT. Every role verb costs one action and rolls when the IM calls a roll. The exceptions are Approve-cut, which never rolls, and Pull-log and Question a hire, which never roll and always spend the action and the lookup. Ask, Look and Hold are free actions for anyone, and they never roll.

Chair	Role	Verbs
Comrades	Persona	Perform, Deflect, Stall
Comrades	Ground Crew	Hop, Relay, Forge-doc
Comrades	Tooling	Use-key, Mask, Probe
Comrades	Money	Route-wage, Swap-payee, Cash-out
Company	HR	Verify, Probe-interview, Reference-check
Company	Engineering	Scope, Review, Sandbox
Company	SecOps	Pull-log, Isolate, Watch
Company	Finance & Legal	Check-payee, Hold-payment, Approve-cut

What each role does at a glance

Persona faces the other side. In a Comrades session you are the voice of the hire the cell chose, and you answer in character when the IM or another player questions it.

Ground Crew handles the physical and local side: a ship-to address, a device that sits somewhere, a document that needs to exist. Hop moves a device or an address, never an identity. (The role name is the owner’s choice. If it does not read well to a cold audience, the fallback is Local Hand.)

Tooling handles keys and tools: what the hire can reach, what is hidden from monitoring, what is worth probing.

Money handles the payee: where the wage goes, who it is paid to, how it leaves.

HR checks the person: ID, interview answers, references.

Engineering limits and reviews what the hire can reach and change.

SecOps reads the logs and watches accounts and devices. Pulling a log costs one action and one lookup.

Finance & Legal checks and holds payments, and is the only role that can approve a cut, and Approve-cut never rolls (see Stop the Line).

Roles are lenses, not job descriptions

These roles are ways of looking at the case, not a ruling on your real job. A finance lead may enjoy Tooling. An engineer may be a better Money player than the accountant. Choose what teaches you something.

Free actions

Ask, Look and Hold are free actions for anyone, and none of them rolls.

Ask: put a question to the IM about the rules or about what the cards already show, or put a question to a teammate.
Look: read what is already on the cards or the file.
Hold: keep an action unspent.

Only two things cost a lookup as well as an action: Pull-log and Question a hire. Neither ever rolls: each always spends the action and the lookup, and Pull-log reveals one fact. Probe-interview costs one action and no lookup, and it rolls. An inconsistency it finds is a revealed fact. Every other role verb costs one action and no lookup. See Tracks, Evidence and the Bench.

Fewer players than roles DEFAULT

You may have fewer than four players in a chair. That is fine. Any player may borrow another role’s verb for one action. Say aloud which verb and whose it is, then take the action. Some roles pair naturally: SecOps with Engineering, HR with Finance & Legal, Ground Crew with Tooling, Persona with Money.

With 6 or more players, the sixth player is the Scribe. In a one-table session the Scribe keeps the tracks, the lookup ticks and the finger counts in a vote, so the others can concentrate on their actions. In both-chairs mode the IM keeps the shared tracks, and a Scribe keeps only the lookup ticks and finger counts for that table. The IM, not the Scribe, writes the hop log and the tier log on the run sheet. The Scribe still joins every discussion, the vote and the debrief. At 6 players the table nominates up to 3 rolled actions together before the IM calls, with one swap if the IM’s event changes the situation.

Choosing a role

Read the one-liners on the role cards index.
Say what you would like to try, not just what you already know.
Let the IM balance the chair if two people want the same role.
Know you can swap in a replay: New persona, new puzzle, new role.

What to do when your role is not the best fit

In every round the best-fitting role acts, not the loudest. If the move is a payee change and you are HR, say so and pass to Finance & Legal. You still have your 2 actions to spend on something that does fit.

Role-playing: what it asks of you

You are your real self plus a lens:

Keep your real first name.
Use your role’s verbs to say what you do. “I Check-payee on the new bank account” is better than a speech.
Add one small touch that makes your role memorable: a habit, a worry, a phrase.
Skip accents, costumes and impressions of a real group. The satire belongs to the state-media voice on the cards. It never belongs to a person.

Quick reference

Chairs and roles

Comrades: Persona, Ground Crew, Tooling, Money.
Company: HR, Engineering, SecOps, Finance & Legal.
Each role has three verbs. Every role verb costs one action and rolls when the IM calls it (Approve-cut, Pull-log and Question a hire never roll). Ask, Look and Hold are free.
Only Pull-log and Question a hire also cost a lookup, and neither rolls.
Short on players: borrow a verb for one action.
6 or more players: the extra player is the Scribe.