Designated Survivor (canon arc)

Designated Survivor is available only to premium subscribers. It opens with five scripted events, each written to happen in a specific month of the term rather than being drawn at random. Around them, the scenario continues to generate its own scripted developments for the rest of the term, driven by the state of the rebuild, the investigation, the rival candidates, and the emergency powers the player has taken.

The premise

The setup screen describes a decapitation attack that has destroyed the government. The player takes the role of the designated survivor, who must rebuild the Cabinet, the courts and Congress, hunt down the attackers, and try to avoid removal from office. The picker offers the classic survivor, one of forty real designated survivors from 1990 to the present shown with their real cabinet post and year, or a custom survivor with a chosen role, starting in one of nine January years between 1993 and 2025. Each start year uses the world of the presidency in office that year.

At the start of the scenario, only a small number of members of Congress remain, in the same balance between parties as before the attack. Every cabinet post is vacant, and each post's previous holder is recorded as killed in the attack. Most of the Supreme Court is dead as well. The perpetrators are unidentified, and several organisations are named as plausible suspects. The scenario always plays week by week, and it always uses the game's classic event style rather than its dynamic one, so that ordinary day-to-day politics does not crowd out the emergency. Dirty Tricks and Expanded Congress are switched off and cannot be turned on.

The five opening events

• Month 1, The Survivor Takes the Oath. A crisis event. The President is sworn in in a bunker corridor, with the military on high alert and the markets closed, and must speak to the country for the first time. The suggested responses are to mourn and promise justice, to project strength, or to speak plainly about never having sought the office.
• Month 2, A Month of Funerals. The country holds weeks of state funerals and eulogies, while talk radio and cable news ask why this person survived. The suggested responses are to publish the selection record, to ignore the theories and lead the mourning, or to sit for a raw interview about the night of the attack.
• Month 3, Governors and Scholars Question Your Authority. A coalition of governors calls for a special election within the year, and two of the governors slow-walk federal coordination. The suggested responses are to reject the demand, to meet the governors and offer them consultation on the rebuild, or to pledge not to seek election.
• Month 5, The New Congress Finds Its Voice. The largest freshman class in history, seated through the special elections, demands a joint committee with subpoena power and asserts a role in continuity decisions. The suggested responses are to welcome the oversight, to draw a line at executive privilege, or to bring the freshmen in with a shared agenda.
• Month 7, Six Months On. Every network audits the accidental presidency, measuring it against the seats confirmed, the courtrooms still empty and the justice done so far. The suggested responses are a formal address to the reseated Congress, a week on the road in the towns that lost their representatives, or setting a concrete completion date for the restoration.

Because the scenario is weekly, each month runs as four turns, and each of these five events plays in the first week of its month. As with any other event, the player answers in their own words and the game reacts to the answer.

Scripted developments through the rest of the term

Beyond the opening five, the scenario produces further scripted moments as the term goes on, tied to how things are going rather than to a fixed date:

• Progress in the investigation brings its own developments as the leads accumulate, eventually leading to the culprit being identified.
• The remaining plotters may strike again while still at large, though a repeat attack becomes less likely as the term goes on and is affected by which emergency powers are in force.
• Rival survivors can enter the race for President, whether from the President's own party or the opposing one, and a rival who leads the investigating committee can also issue subpoenas over the pace of the case.
• Campaigning in an openly partisan way during the special elections that refill Congress triggers its own event, the first time it happens.
• Taking each of the three emergency powers, the National Guard, surveillance, or military tribunals, triggers a one-off event, and taking all three at once triggers a larger one about the dangers of an emergency presidency. Holding surveillance powers for a long stretch triggers an event about an emergency that never ends.
• Publicly blaming the wrong culprit for the attack, whether that leads to a killing, a capture, or a lasting political legacy, produces its own scripted response.
• Losing the party's nomination to a same-party challenger, and the government finally being made whole again, are each major scripted moments in their own right.

Alongside these, a number of authored dilemmas appear over the course of the term as the government rebuilds, spaced out from the second month onward. Some of them refer directly to the actual rival, accused organisation or leading suspect in that particular game.

The ambient news

Alongside the scripted material, the scenario also draws on several hundred ordinary news events written for it, covering the state of the rebuild, the investigation, the emergency powers, and the various rivals. These ordinary events tend to reflect where the presidency currently stands, and become more common as the term goes on and the government moves toward being whole again.

The rebuild

The Senate is refilled first, as state governors appoint replacements, and returns to full strength within the first several months of the term. The House is refilled more gradually, through special elections held in waves starting a few months in, and does not return to full strength until well into the term. The president's own conduct affects the pace: leaning on state governments speeds the Senate's return, while giving them more room slows it, and the national mood, the president's own campaigning, and a hostile opposition leader can each tilt how a given wave of House elections turns out. Once enough of the House has been refilled, Congress can legislate again, and the government counts as officially rebuilt once the cabinet, the vice-presidency and both chambers are close to full strength. This ends the state of emergency, although the election that follows still decides whether the president keeps the office.

The investigation gains some ground automatically as the security agencies are rebuilt, but most of its progress comes from leads the player chooses to follow, most of which turn out to be genuine. Once it is complete, the hunt for the culprit is resolved. Meanwhile, rivals manoeuvre for position, and both parties begin to rebuild either around the president or against them. A same-party rival with enough support forces a nomination fight at the start of campaign season; losing that fight ends the president's candidacy, though not the term itself. Throughout the scenario, voters are aware that this president was never elected, and their reactions reflect how far the rebuild and the investigation have come, and where public trust in the presidency currently stands.

If public trust collapses once enough of Congress has returned to work, the president faces removal from office. If public trust falls to zero outright, the presidency ends immediately regardless of how much of Congress has returned. Winning the presidential election in the president's own right ends the state of emergency and closes out the scenario with a graded verdict. A president who is elected, uncovers the truth behind the attack, and finishes rebuilding the government earns the title The Rebuilder. A president who pledged not to run for the office, and kept that pledge, earns the title The Caretaker instead.