Jessica Hammer

Decade is the role-playing game of reunions. Take a group of old friends and put them together at a New Year’s party every year for ten years. The booze flows freely – and so do the old grudges, affections and secrets. Time changes us all, but not always as much as we’d like to think!

Restriction: Ten One-Hour Sessions
Each session takes one hour, and lasts from 11pm to midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Each session begins exactly one year after the last, so the game takes place over a decade.
Character advancement takes place outside the hour of session, but lasts only a few minutes at the beginning and end of each.

Ingredient: Ancient
The characters focus on their shared past.
In addition, ten years is long enough to make anyone feel ancient by the end!

Ingredient: Emotion
The central game mechanic revolves around Staking and winning emotions in Scenes.
The New Year is certainly an emotional time – and even more emotional when it’s old friends you’re spending it with.

Ingredient: Glass
The characters (and players!) toast each other at the New Year to end each session.

Decade takes place entirely at a New Year?s party. When your group gets together to play Decade, therefore, the person who is hosting the get-together has the role of Host. Your character will actually be hosting the party, just as you are actually hosting the game. Everyone else is a Guest at the party.

For most purposes, Hosts and Guests are identical during play. Both Hosts and Guests can tell stories about their characters or play NPCs for other players. However, the Host has a few additional duties and abilities beyond those of the Guests.

1. The Host is responsible for organizing the time and place of sessions.
2. The Host creates the Premise for the game and makes sure that all players know what it is. (See ?Starting The Game.?)
3. The Host decides the composition of the Decade deck used for a particular game, and may modify it between sessions. (See ?Ending the Game? and Appendix I.)
4. The Host designates which Guest begins the first Scene. (See ?At The Party.?)
5. The Host can introduce any character, including themselves, into a Scene. (See ?At The Party.?)
6. The Host is responsible for timekeeping during Scenes, and may end a Scene which goes on too long. (See ?At The Party.?)
7. The Host must hand out glasses with twenty minutes left on the clock, pour the champagne with ten minutes left, and start the countdown to midnight with one minute left. (See ?One Minute to Midnight.?)
8. The Host has the final authority to arbitrate any disagreement between Guests, if the Guests cannot come to an agreement themselves through voting.

In every other way, the Host is identical to the rest of the Guests and has the same role in the game. Unless otherwise specified, the term ?Guest? includes both Guests and Host.

Generally, the person who organizes a game of Decade will take the role of Host. However, if the organizer is not hosting the game at his or her own house, the person who is actually hosting the party gets first shot at the Host role, with Host duties passing to the organizer as a second choice. Alternately, either the organizer or the actual Host can nominate any other player to be the Host, so long as that player is willing to take on the Host duties.

The group can change hosts between sessions, particularly if they do not always meet at the same place. This can provide an interesting change-up to the game and should be explained narratively as well as logistically.