Horde Manual

How to run the horde

The horde should have a separate staging area from the main gamespace, which should have a small table for the horde character sheets. Each sheet should be in an envelope which is labelled with the number of players it requires (almost always 1) and with the gender of said player(s) (M for male, F for female, N for neutral/can be played as either gender). The sheets are kept in a pile (plus some specialized piles as described below) at the back of the table, and spread out in batches of 10-12 at a time on the front of the table for the horde players to take. Some characters also require extra labels; those will be explained below.

The basic job of the horde GM is to keep the horde table full of 10-12 sheets and to answer any questions the horde players might have. Most of the characters can be placed out in random order. The following characters are exceptions to this rule and should be included in the first set of horde characters that are available at game start:

• Mark Adamson

Additionally, the following special cases must be kept track of:

Character Groups

As mentioned above, most characters go in their own envelope and are simply labelled "1M", "1F", or "1N". There are certain characters for whom this is not true. They are listed below. In the interest of spreading these evenly through the game, no more than one of these should be available at any time. The simplest way to handle this is to make a separate pile for these characters, and replace them separately from the other characters.

• Reporters - 2N
• Harold Rather / Sally Brady - these should be placed in the same envelope - 1M & 1F
• Time Police Saga - 2M
• The Hitler Troupe - 1M & 1F
• Protesters (Con) - 2-5N
• Protesters (Pro) - 2-5N
• Moneychangers - 2N

Triggered Characters

There are a few characters who should not be made available unless the board takes certain actions. It is the responsibility of the timeline GM to keep track of when these actions are taken and inform the horde GM to make said characters available. The simplest way to handle this is to write the trigger number that activates each character on the outside of the envelope (in addition to the standard player count and gender). That way, the timeline GM can simply tell the horde GM "Trigger 27," at which point the horde GM can bring the envelope labelled "t27" into play.

The triggered characters and their trigger numbers are as follows:

• Jane/James Wilkes - t27
• Sue/Sam Wilkes - t28
• Jake Hensman - t43
• Adam Marcus - t83

Tracked Characters

There are a few cases where two characters should be given to the same player. These are called "tracked" characters. The simplest way to handle this is to place a colored sticker on the outside of the envelope and another one inside. Have the player who takes the first character in any track place said sticker on his or her person in a location that you can see. Then place a third sticker of that color on the table in front of you, to remind yourself that that track is active. For the second character, do not place it out on the table, but instead give it directly to the person who has the sticker. The tracks are listed below, in no particular order. Feel free to use the colors specified or whatever other colors are convenient.

• Red track
  • Jane/James Wilkes and Sue/Sam Wilkes

• Blue track
  • Jake Hensman and Ya'akov Tarngolet

• Green Track
  • Mark Adamson and Adam Marcus

Note that all three tracks contain triggered characters as well. This is not a problem. The triggered characters simply do not become available until their triggers occur. This means that, if some or all of the relevant triggers do not occur, one or both tracks might not ever play out fully, which is a perfectly acceptable scenario. The point of tracks is not to make sure both characters are played, but only to make sure that if they are both played, they go to the same person.

Endgame Characters

Rivka Sturluson and the Stevicans are contingency characters, and should not be made available until endgame, as follows:

Five minutes before the end of game, the timeline GM will inform you of the value of the apocalypse track and the Steve track. When he does this, perform the following actions:

• If the apocalypse track is at 30: discard Rivka and the Stevicans. Wait five minutes. You are now playing Mr. Sturluson's employee. Take the flashlight, go into the game room, turn off the lights, tell the floor GM to put up the alternate 2104, turn on the flashlight and place it under your chin, and announce in a loud, clear voice "Welcome to Sturluson's Concession Stand at the End of the Universe! May I take your order?" Make it clear from your tone of voice (or by explicitly stating it if necessary) that this indicates the end of game.
• If the apocalypse track is below 30: write the Steve count on the character sheet. Grab the next female horde player and send her in as Rivka. Give her 2-3 minutes. Then grab the next 5 horde players (or less than 5 if you're waiting for longer than 2-3 minutes). Once they are ready, turn off the lights, wait for a few moments, and send them in as the Stevicans. The Stevicans should end the game.

Steve Okazaki

This player is secretly a cast character, even though they look like a horde player to everyone else. Here's how it works: find someone who you trust to be a strong roleplayer and who is good at ignoring information they have but their character doesn't. Tell them they'll be playing a character who's going to show up about every twenty minutes and stay for up to five minutes. Don't tell them anything else. Then give them the character snippets at the listed times. If they are not accepted, after 5 minutes, they scream in pain and disappear (only to reappear later with a new snippet). After they get accepted or disappear they can play horde characters until Steve shows up again.

Here's what's actually going on: Steve Okazaki invented time travel, and promptly attempted to travel FORWARD into the future. This was a very bad idea. The timestream reacted to his presence by saying to itself "What's this? He's not supposed to exist here yet. I'll shunt him back a bit at a time until he gets somewhere he's supposed to be." Unfortunately, this shunting process is very painful, and will eventually kill him. If he uses the time machine to travel backwards, bypassing that shunt, it'll hurt a lot less. Note that if he ever attempts to travel to some destination other than the appropriate one, the timestream will reject that and shunt him through time back to where it wants him, so if that does happen, he'll still keep playing as normal.

What this means is that, subjectively to the character (although not the player, obviously), the game actually happens in the reverse order. The player probably won't figure that out right away; that's ok, the time jumps are messing with the character's memory, so however it's played, it will make sense.

Give him the first snippet before game start, and tell him he can read it now, but should not act on it until you bring him in, which should be one of the first things that happens after the board gets settled. Then when Steve enters, stage him in the corner of the room behind some furniture as described, and let the board know (if they ask) that they never actually saw him enter the room.