Auctoritas

Latin: the standing that makes people obey you — as distinct from the power to compel them. A decade spends it.

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One decade, 1950 to 1960 — twenty to forty minutes. No sign-up; your republic is saved in this browser alone.

Vol. I — No. 1Kota Karunia · Morning EditionPrice: Ten Cents

The Karunia Herald

Special Edition · All the News the Ministry Permits

Can You Survive the Decade?

New republic seeks a President. Fictional country; real history; six known ways to fall. Reader may apply within.

Engraving: the customs house at Kota Karunia, the new flag flying from its gable, palms and a latticed crane on the quay, two carriers bearing a rubber bale on a pole — The customs house at Kota Karunia, the new flag over it. On the quay, the season’s first rubber goes aboard under the old crane. — *Herald engraving*

KOTA KARUNIA, JANUARY 1950 — The flag over the customs house is new; the economy beneath it is not. The Republic of Karunia — an invented country set down in the true Southeast Asia of 1950 — enters the decade with a full treasury of debts: rubber that answers to prices set abroad, a north governed from a port it has never visited, and a cabinet of three who each believe they could do the President’s job better. The President is you. The history coming for you — the Korean War boom, the armistice bust, Suez, the election of 1955 — actually happened, on the dates given, and the newspapers warned everyone at the time. Whether you read them is your affair.

A full term runs 1950 to 1960 and takes twenty to forty minutes. It plays in the browser, on a telephone or a desk set. Your republic is saved in this browser alone.

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Take Office

Standing for Office

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How a Year in Office Works

Read the papers. The World panel carries real, dated dispatches — tap one for the full wire brief. The republic’s own trouble arrives on the situation card.
Spend your attention. Two acts a year: public works, envoys to restive provinces, treasury audits, a dinner for a wavering minister, grain for the reserve.
Read the cabinet. The option cards say almost nothing on purpose. The ministers state their positions — and their positions have owners, as does everything at your table.
Commit the year. Then read this newspaper: what happened, and — in the ledger — exactly why every number moved. When a line reads “unexplained shortfalls,” that is not a typo. That is a clue.

The world remembers what you did in 1951 — usually in 1953.

Five provinces, one treasury. — Herald cartographic bureau

Notice to Readers

This is an early prototype, printed to answer one question: is governing fun? Expect rough edges; an update may retire an old save without notice.

Planned for future editions:

The full arc, 1950 to the present day — decade by decade: the oil shock, the Cold War’s turns, debt crises, globalization, each researched like the 1950s.
Foreign powers at your table — the blocs become actors, not just headlines: embassies that court and threaten, aid with covenants, sanctions, basing rights, and patrons who remember what you refused.
Live news at the end of history — reach the present day and the situation feed hands over to the real world’s current events, interpreted for your republic as they break.
Further regions — found your republic in 1950s Latin America, the Middle East, or newly independent Africa, each with its own true history bearing down.
The weekly gazette — all readers govern the same decade, same dice; compare chronicles and see how the other presidents died.
The end-of-term debrief — your decade laid against what really happened: which real countries made your choices, and how it went for them.
A deeper palace — more ministers with longer memories, succession, and rivals who write memoirs.

From the Editor’s Desk

Our quiet ambition, dear reader, is that you leave this paper knowing things. Every historical event herein is real — dated, sourced, told at the level of forces rather than famous names. If the game does its work, you will have felt what most only read about: why commodity booms are traps, what a deficit truly costs, why the heavy hand breeds what it means to crush, and how republics actually fail. History is the teacher. The game merely makes you sit in the chair.