The Long Game ProjectWorkshops
Your strategy looks great on paper.
Now let's see if it survives.
A tabletop exercise puts your leadership team inside the decisions your strategy does not rehearse. Market shocks, competitive moves, regulatory reversals, operational failures - compressed into a day, facilitated with the discipline of a boardroom wargame, debriefed into commitments you can hold each other to on Monday.
What we do
Tabletop exercises
Your team faces competitor moves, market dislocation, a policy reversal or operational failure under a live clock. The pressure can come from a competitor, a regulator, a minister or inside the building. Every scenario is built around the pressures your organisation actually faces, not a generic template. You leave with a sharpened view of where the strategy is brittle - and what you will do about it before the real version arrives.
Principal-led facilitation
The person who designed the scenario runs the room: Dr Dan Epstein, who has consulted across public and private sectors, from pandemic preparedness to behavioural economics. The facilitator's job on the day is to keep the exercise honest: hold the clock, provoke the quiet disagreements into the open, and stop the room retreating to safe answers.
Bespoke scenario design
Dr Dan Epstein has designed 130+ bespoke scenarios across defence, financial services, technology, consumer goods and government. Yours is built new, from your question and your own papers, and the section below says where those papers go.
Honest debrief
The exercise surfaces the gaps. The debrief closes them. Structured reflection, named assumptions, owners against actions, and a single-page record of what the team agreed under pressure - because memories fade faster than calendars.
The engine as referee
If you want it, our engine referees the game: your people make the moves, and the engine rules on them with written reasons that stay on the record. A firm or department that designs its own exercise can bring us in for the engine alone. This option is new and on its first client runs, so it is scoped and priced per job.
How it works
01
Discovery
A 30-minute call with the principal. You describe the decision on the table. We tell you honestly whether a tabletop is the right shape - and if it is not, what is. No pitch, no proposal theatre.
02
Scoping
A one-page brief covering objectives, scenarios, participants, format, and investment. Agreed in writing before any design begins, with the engagement agreement alongside it so you can read the terms first. No scope creep, no ambiguity.
03
Design
Two to four weeks of bespoke scenario design drawing on your industry, competitive context, and the specific question on the table. Built by the principal, reviewed with your sponsor, iterated until it bites.
04
Deliver
Half a day or a full day, on-site or remote. Your team runs the scenario under a live clock. We facilitate, provoke, and hold the room to the commitments it makes under pressure.
05
Debrief
A structured session within 48 hours, followed by a single-page action record. What you decided, why it matters, and what happens on Monday - in the form your board meeting will accept.
Investment
A$12,000 to 25,000, excluding GST
Half a day or a full day. Priced and agreed in writing before any design begins. About four weeks from the first call to the day.
Where your material goes
Client work runs on Anthropic's Claude through its commercial API. If you ask, we run it on a local model instead, and nothing leaves the practice.
Your material is kept apart from the public reports and deleted 90 days after delivery. At the practice, only Dr Dan Epstein can reach it.
What our clients say
“What I didn't expect was how much the simulation helped our organisation plan for future risks and decide the most important metrics to track. The value for time of working with The Long Game Project is off the charts!”
Director, consulting firm - name withheld
“I was impressed by the level of nuance captured in the game design. If you want an engaging, bespoke exercise tailored to your needs, work with this team.”
COO, research organisation - name withheld
Names are withheld because client exercises are confidential.
Tell us the decision you are facing.
Thirty minutes with Dr Dan Epstein - the person who will design and run your exercise. No pitch. If we can help, we will say how. If we cannot, we will point you to someone who can.
Book a discovery call