This constructed dialogue is representative of many questions we’ve had about our work on Narrative Games and, more specifically, on Intelligence Rising 2024 (IR24).
It loosely follows the structure and principles of the literary debating technique known as ‘Socratic Dialogue’.
Participants in the dialogue to follow:
The Curious – A thoughtful senior leader, intelligent and open-minded, but wanting to understand properly. Someone, perhaps like you?
i3 Gen – The designers of Narrative Wargames, such as Intelligence Rising 2024.
The Dialogue
The Curious:
All right. Tell me about Intelligence Rising, properly. What is it, in plain terms?
i3 Gen:
In plain terms, it’s a way of allowing senior decision-makers to rehearse strategy before they have to live with the consequences.
In complex domains, the impact of AI is a good example; the difficulty isn’t simply that the future is uncertain. It’s that multiple actors are moving at once. Governments, competitors, regulators, markets, and publics are all reacting to each other. Decisions interact. Small moves compound. Effects appear two or three steps later, often in unexpected places.
Most strategic planning flattens that complexity. Intelligence Rising is designed to put it back in, safely, so that strategies can be tested under pressure rather than admired in isolation.
The Curious:
So is it essentially scenario planning, just a bit more immersive?
i3 Gen:
It’s related, but it does something slightly different.
Scenario planning describes possible futures. It helps people think about what might happen. What we do is place participants inside a plausible future and then require them to act within it.
They make decisions. Other actors respond. The environment shifts. Then they must decide again, taking into account what their earlier actions have set in motion.
It’s less reflective and more iterative. Closer to rehearsal than contemplation.
The Curious:
And you’re not quietly steering people towards a particular view of the world?
i3 Gen:
No! That would rather defeat the purpose.
The game isn’t scripted, and there isn’t a predetermined outcome we’re guiding people towards. All core narrative events are inherently neutral; their effects, positive or negative, are shaped by player actions.
In short: the dice aren’t loaded… in fact, there are no dice at all!
The trajectory emerges from what participants choose to do and how those decisions interact with others’ choices.
It’s educational, certainly, but not didactic. In fact, one of the most valuable aspects is when outcomes surprise us. If the designers could reliably predict where things would end up, it wouldn’t be much of a stress-test.
The Curious:
But surely your own assumptions influence what’s possible in the game?
i3 Gen:
They do, as with everyone’s, which is why we’re careful about how those assumptions are formed.
We work with a diverse group of subject matter experts when designing the scenario. They bring different institutional backgrounds, different political instincts, and different professional experiences. Assumptions are challenged. We red team our own logic. We ask where we might be oversimplifying.
Our role isn’t to direct the story. It’s to create a credible environment in which the competitive story develops and genuine dilemmas arise. If experts judge that a particular technological inflection point is plausible, we introduce it. But what participants do in response, whether they cooperate, regulate, compete, or escalate, is entirely theirs.
The Curious:
The future is messy, though. There are infinite ways it could unfold.
How do you stop it from becoming arbitrary?
i3 Gen:
By being disciplined about cause and effect.
We don’t try to model everything. That would be artificial. Instead, we use structured decision-tree thinking, essentially asking, “If this occurs, what plausibly follows? Who reacts? What constraints apply? What enablers are needed? What secondary effects might emerge?”
That gives us a framework of credible pathways rather than a single line of travel, and as the game progresses, that framework adapts to participants’ decisions.
It remains player-directed, but not unbounded.
The Curious:
So you’re not claiming to predict the future?
i3 Gen:
No. We’re quite explicit about that.
We begin with trends already in motion: technological, political, and economic. From there, what unfolds is shaped by participant choices.
It’s not a prediction; it’s a projection. A way of exploring how the world could evolve if certain strategies were pursued. The value lies in revealing consequences, especially unintended ones.
The Curious:
And what keeps it grounded? Senior people can sometimes get rather creative.
i3 Gen:
Quite! That’s the point: when faced with peer-level competition, that’s where innovation and insight flourish. So, reasoned, plausible creativity is not only welcome but encouraged. We rely on our SMEs to adjudicate and enforce plausibility.
Participants are typically experienced professionals, effectively playing versions of themselves. They understand the political, legal, financial and operational constraints within which they actually operate. Ideas that ignore those constraints tend not to survive scrutiny.
Where specific technical knowledge is required, embedded SMEs provide impartial advice. That ensures decisions remain within the bounds of what is credible.
The Curious:
How does the day actually unfold?
i3 Gen:
Each turn begins with an updated global picture via news reports, confidential updates, and briefings on emerging tensions. All plausible. Nothing speculative for the sake of drama.
Teams assess their position internally. They debate. They align or disagree. Then they engage across teams. They negotiate, posture, cooperate, compete, take covert actions and sometimes all in the same hour.
At the end of each cycle, each team submits three strategic plans called Courses of Action using a necessarily concise turn sheet. Those are adjudicated through a structured net assessment. We consider how all actions interact, not in isolation, but cumulatively.
The next iteration of the world reflects that interaction. We then provide updates on the new world state through event reports, news updates, confidential briefings, and, for our higher-production games, video updates.
The Curious:
So nobody wins?
i3 Gen:
Not in the conventional sense.
Teams either advance their objectives or they don’t. What becomes visible is whether a strategy remains viable once others respond, events unfold, and how much friction it generates.
Often, the most valuable insight is discovering that something which looked perfectly sensible on paper becomes challenging and uncertain once other actors start moving.
The Curious:
You mentioned immersion earlier. Why is that important?
i3 Gen:
Because strategy isn’t purely analytical.
Decisions are shaped by perception, ambiguity, interpretation, political pressure, public reaction, institutional inertia, and timing. People make sense of complex environments through context, through narrative!
By placing participants within a developing story, with consequences replayed to them, assumptions are tested not only logically but also experientially. It sharpens judgment. It exposes instinctive biases. It generates not only insights but, importantly, motivation to act.
It’s one thing to say “that policy carries risk.” It’s another to see how that risk unfolds two turns later.
The Curious:
But I’m already immersed in my own ‘real-world’ work. What benefit would this bring me?
i3 Gen:
A common challenge. Yet complex issues rarely sit neatly within a single role or field.
AI, for example, spans defence, economics, labour markets, ethics, public opinion, and international relations. No one individual can fully inhabit all those perspectives simultaneously.
The game creates a shared environment where those domains intersect. Participants begin to see how their own decisions ripple across other systems, and how those systems push back.
The Curious:
And what do people actually leave with?
i3 Gen:
Insight and Motivation.
A powerful sense of urgency and realisation of agency.
A clearer understanding of where their strategy is robust, and where it quietly depends on optimistic assumptions, perhaps even shared ignorance? A sharper appreciation of competitor behaviour. A more realistic sense of trade-offs, timing and scale.
In practical terms, afterwards, we provide a structured analysis of the pathways that emerged, not simply what happened, but why it happened and what it implies.
Yet, the majority of the value comes from the intense, focused experience for the participants among peers.
An almost damascene moment of increased awareness and urgency.
The Curious:
A full day is a long time; I’m busy, so are all the senior people I know!
Could you run something shorter? Just to get a feel for it?
i3 Gen:
The difficulty is that insight and competition depend on progression.
Participants need time to absorb the scenario, debate properly, and experience multiple decision cycles. Compress it too much, and it becomes superficial, interesting perhaps, but not impactful.
Our shortest format is a full day. Longer retreats allow deeper reflection and more spread-out timings: 3 mornings on the game, with afternoons filled with a programme of relevant supporting activities and content.
From a design/cost perspective, we can rerun previously created games and, in some cases, adapt previously developed scenarios, but the integrity of the method relies on allowing strategy to unfold over time. Everyone who has played our games agrees that, on reflection, it could not have been done with less time and still have the same value.
The Curious:
So if you had to summarise it without embellishment?
i3 Gen:
You can’t predict the future.
But you can rehearse your strategy inside a plausible one, in competition, under constraint, and with credible consequences. Increasing your readiness and resilience.
Wouldn’t you agree that it is generally better to discover risks and opportunities in rehearsal than react to them for the first time in reality?
The end
Thank you for reading this. Hopefully, you found the format engaging as well as informative; if you have comments or questions, do write them below
