01

Welcome to InsightRPG

Welcome

Welcome to InsightRPG, a tabletop exercising (TTx) system that draws on the principles of traditional tabletop roleplaying games and merges them with the rigours of business strategy. The result is a dynamic, engaging, and effective tool for exercising strategy and risk within your organisation.

This system fosters creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration in a team setting. It combines the dynamics and agency of gameplay with the practicality of real-world business situations, creating an immersive experience that enriches your strategic thinking and decision-making.

InsightRPG encourages you to take on various roles, adopt diverse strategies, and collaborate to navigate complex scenarios. This approach provides a unique platform to unearth fresh perspectives, encourage insightful discussions, and stimulate innovative problem-solving.

This guidebook is your companion on that journey. It provides an understanding of the system's fundamentals, mechanics, and applications. Use it to simulate outcomes through discussion and probabilistic thinking, and to improve decision-making across a range of situations.

Design Principles

Five core principles guided every design decision in InsightRPG.

Simple

You can understand the system in 10 minutes. Rules stay out of the way so players focus on the exercise, not the mechanics.

Familiar

Game Masters gain immediate confidence because InsightRPG does not reinvent wheels. If you have played DnD, you can play this.

Modular

The system scales in complexity to fit different situations and contexts. Add or remove rules as your exercise demands.

Pragmatic

The system is user-friendly and versatile, catering to beginners just starting out and experienced facilitators looking for a deep dive into advanced play with modular add-on rules.

Insightful

Thinking over crunchy mechanics. The system prioritises impactful discussion and improved decision-making over number-crunching.

About The Long Game Project

In 2023, we designed over 130 scenarios for organisations with a combined market cap of $3.4 Billion, and our services achieved a Net Promoter Score of 74.9 (world class).

This is an incredible impact to be proud of, but there is more to be achieved out there that requires tabletop gaming to scale. We need more passionate professional Game Masters with the right skills to provide the service and grow the culture.

Organisations and governments recognise the impact of tabletop gaming across organisational decision-making, leadership, risk, operations, strategy, and team building. Tomorrow's leaders grew up taking games seriously, and it is crucial for professional Game Masters to get the culture right.

We need to scale up the practice and help grow the next generation of Game Masters.

About the Authors

Dr Dan Epstein

Dr Dan Epstein is the Director of core team strategy and game design at LGP. Dan is a Medical Doctor and an academic with a PhD from Monash University's Faculty of Public Health. His expertise includes decision-making, behaviour change, tabletop game design, behavioural economics, pandemic prevention, forecasting, and philanthropy.

His previous work has included being an academic consultant across public and private sectors, a medical educator, and an amateur forecaster. Dan has been designing tabletop games for 10 years and playing Dungeons and Dragons since he was 11.

Sanjana Kashyap

Sanjana Kashyap is a management consultant who has worked on strategy and implementation for Ministries under the Government of India. Her previous roles have primarily been in working with key ecosystem partners from industry, academia, and civil societies to enable strategic decision-making for better citizen outcomes. She also holds a Master's degree in Management Studies with academic specialisations in Finance, Statistics, and Economics.

At LGP, she is part of the core team supporting strategy, operations, and partnerships.

How to Get the Most Out of This Guide

Acknowledgements and SRD References

This work uses modified material from The Quest Creators Resource by The Adventure Guild LLC, and the SRD 5.1 by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Both are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Other Inspirations

Mechanics and GM instructions were also inspired by these fantastic TTRPGs:

  • Into the Odd
  • Electric Bastionland
  • Cypher
  • Fate
  • Mythic Oracle
  • Mausritter
  • Index RPG
  • Worlds Without Number
  • Honey Heist
Go deeper
Learn to Facilitate
Free course on designing and running tabletop exercises for your team.
Start the course →
Provocation cards
PRISM
Structured provocation cards for richer scenario design and deeper debrief.
Explore PRISM →
Need help?
Consulting
Want us to design and run an exercise for your organisation?
Get in touch →