Calamity Cards

Your fast and frequent reality check

Organizations are often motivated to pay attention to the risks within their organization. But setting up creative crisis exercises is not always so evident. Lare-scale crisis exercises require a lot of energy. They often find insufficient time and inspiration to do this thoroughly.

To prepare for crises, however, you don’t have to pull out all the stops all the time; what you can pull out are Calamity Cards (©). This handy deck of cards generates unique scenarios for you that your team might not immediately think of, but could hit your organization at any time. It lets you and your team start a conversation about risks and crises simply and shortly and have ‘what if’ conversations to address a scenario. Ideal for all kinds of exercises and simulations. Results guaranteed!

Email me the brochure

The brochure covers game objectives, inspiration for session types and more.

How to play the game

Determine your objectives

First choose one or more objectives for your Calamity Cards session. What do you want to achieve? Make sure to take into account the available time and the number of participants.

Draw two cards

Your first card is a scenario card, with a colourful character on the front side. This card sets the scene of a workplace incident or crisis situation. To add randomness and extra complexity, draw a context card, with the Calamity Cards logo on the front side. Combine both cards and apply the scenario to your context.

Pro tip: if you are feeling ambitious, we challenge you to draw extra context cards!

Reach your objectives

The scene is set and the scenario is on the table. Now it is time for the fun part. Try to reach your objectives as a team: see if your crisis plans hold up, if you can reach key people within your organisation or draft a reflex communication.

Repeat if needed

The scenarios are truly limitless. Draw new cards and continue, or store your set of Calamity Cards until next time!

Calamity Cards is created and developed by PM • Risk Crisis Change. All (copy)rights concerning the game and game materials belong exclusively to PM. It is prohibited to use game materials or parts of it for own purposes unless explicit permission was given. Making copies, adjustments, translations, adaptations and changes in content of this website and all texts, in any form whatsoever, is prohibited without prior written permission from PM. If agreed, a link to the PM website must always be included.