State of Exception — our gaming salon
Our political salons challenge players to push limits to create the future they want.
In 2025, The Atlantic sent a reporter to one of our Salons.
The article described what happens when a room of senior people — journalists, lawyers, technologists, executives, people from defense and intelligence — spend three hours competing to shape the future of the American Republic, advised by AI characters with disclosed biases, and judged by a rules engine none of them can see.
What the reporter found was not what most people expect from a political simulation. Players leaned into positions they didn't hold when they walked in. Coalitions formed between people who disagreed about nearly everything else. The outcomes surprised the people producing them — and predicted the future more accurately than most pundits.
More than two hundred people have played since December 2025. While AI systems playing our simulation restore the American Republic only about 20 percent of the time, real humans save the Republic about 50 percent of the time. This 30-point gap is the clearest evidence we have for why this work matters.
Where it comes from.
In 1908 — the year the Tsar's pogroms were driving Jews toward America, German officers were committing the century's earliest genocides in Namibia, and Pinkertons were breaking strikes with private violence — Jack London published The Iron Heel, imagining oligarchic factions fighting over America's soul.
State of Exception resurrects his archetypes. The three factions — Force, Money, and Law — are drawn directly from London's framework, translated into the present moment. The parallels between 1908 and now are not incidental: They are the point.
What a Salon produces.
A Salon is a three-hour structured experience in which three teams compete to shape the trajectory of the American Republic from spring 2026 through December 2030. Each team works with an AI advisor with perspectives and blind spots. Moves are adjudicated by a rules engine. The simulation resolves to one of six historically grounded outcomes.
The play is the experience
The verdict is the analysis. Participants consistently describe the verdict as the more valuable of the two.
Participants leave with a written verdict
What scenario was resolved, how each faction performed, what their AI advisor recommended versus what they actually did, and the moments where a choice closed off a path they didn't realize they were foreclosing.
Salons operate under the Chatham House Rule
Content can be discussed freely; attendance is not for attribution.
The Salon runs in three rounds, each separated by a major political hinge point: the 2026 midterms, the 2028 election, and its aftermath.
How it works
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Teams receive a public news briefing — written in the voice of the Associated Press — plus a private briefing from their faction's AI advisor.
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Teams deliberate and submit moves. The Capitalist team also manages a private investment portfolio running alongside the political game — because money is always playing two games at once.
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A rules engine adjudicates. Moves are classified by type — invest, coerce, litigate, organize, frame, perform — and outcomes are determined by dice, faction modifiers, and a published pipeline. Players see results, not mechanics. The opacity is intentional: you are reading intelligence reports, not staring at a dashboard.
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The Nationalist team works with the Grey Cardinal, patient and ruthless. The Institutionalists work with the Weaver, procedurally correct and risk-averse. The Capitalists work with the Broker, orthodox on property rights and skeptical of unified fronts. None of them are neutral. Players learn, usually by the second round, to accept some but not all of what their Handler recommends.
Teams can negotiate across factions in the common area. Verbal deals don't count unless they are logged by both teams.
How it ends
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The final news briefing tells you how it resolved — across one of six possible outcomes, each mapped to a historical precedent.
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Zero, one, or two teams can meet their win conditions. Never all three.
Who should be in the room.
A Salon works best when the room mixes professional backgrounds rather than narrows them. It does not require expertise in political science or game design, but instead requires a willingness to hold a position you may not fully believe in for three hours, plus a willingness to find out what your own instincts reveal.
Bring a Salon to your network
Salons run in cities from Berlin to Los Angeles, including Boston, New York, and Washington DC.
We provide the game design, the Handler infrastructure, and trained Hosts. If you would like to host a Salon for your organization or network, we offer a full hosting protocol and Host training.
If your organization faces a specific strategic question — a policy decision, a geopolitical scenario, a technology risk — we accept a small number of custom commissions per year. The development process takes two to four months and produces a Salon-ready scenario and the analytical infrastructure to support it.