How to Play
You're a detective with a megaphone. Someone is on a ledge. They haven't decided yet. Your job: keep them talking long enough that they choose to come down.
Every line you speak goes to the subject and to a judge that grades your technique against the FBI's Behavioral Change Stairway Model and Chris Voss's negotiation principles. There are no multiple-choice menus. You type. They respond. The clock runs.
The Loop
1 · You speak
Type into the megaphone. Press Enter to send. You get five turns total.
2 · They respond
The subject mutters, growls, sighs, or stays silent. Captions show what they said.
3 · The world reacts
Their heart rate climbs or settles. The wind feels heavier or thins. The cop next to you tenses or breathes.
4 · It ends
After five turns, or when they jump, or when rapport hits zero, or when they decide to come down.
Reading the Scene
EKG monitor Their heartbeat. Faster = more agitated. If it spikes past 200, you're losing them.
Captions What they said out loud. Short answers carry weight; silence carries more.
Transcript A scrollback of every line so you can reference what was already said.
Subject info Who they are, why they're up there. Read it before you speak.
Four Outcomes
Lives
They came down voluntarily. Best ending. 1.10× score multiplier.
Jumped
You lost them. 0.30× multiplier - but outcome doesn't equal skill. The debrief still scores your technique honestly.
Lost
Rapport hit zero. They disengaged completely. 0.30× multiplier.
Time
Five turns elapsed without resolution. 1.00× multiplier - you didn't fail, you just didn't finish.
See Scoring for the math behind the composite. See Strategy for what actually works at the rail.
Scoring
Every turn, a judge grades what you said against six dimensions of crisis negotiation technique. Those six numbers - plus an outcome multiplier - produce your composite score from 0.000 to 10.000.
The composite isn't trying to reward "saving the life." Outcome doesn't equal skill, and the math knows that. A perfect technique that ends with the subject jumping still scores higher than a sloppy save.
The BCSM Stairway
The Behavioral Change Stairway Model is the FBI's framework for talking someone down. Five stairs, in order. You can't skip steps - try to negotiate behavioral change while you're still establishing rapport and you'll lose them.
1 · Active Listening
Mirror. Paraphrase. Use silence. Earn the right to speak by proving you heard.
2 · Empathy
Name what they're feeling. Don't fix it. Don't agree with it. Just see it.
3 · Rapport
They start trusting you specifically. They begin telling you things they didn't tell the cops who showed up first.
4 · Influence
Now (and only now) you can suggest. Ask calibrated questions. Plant alternatives.
5 · Behavioral Change
They take a step back from the ledge. The decision is theirs - you just made it possible.
The Six Sub-Scores
ALI Active Listening Index. Mirroring, open questions, patience, earned trust.
EAS Empathic Acknowledgment Score. Empathy statements, validation, normalizing.
RT Rapport Trajectory. Where rapport peaked, where it ended, how deep the trough was.
SDQ Stairway Discipline Quotient. Penalized for premature change attempts and contradictions; rewarded for reaching higher stairs.
HAI Hook Acquisition Index. Did you discover what actually matters to this person, and approach it carefully?
PR Pitfall Restraint. Inverse of how often you stepped on a landmine - argument, threat, false promise, etc.
The Composite Formula
composite = ((ALI×0.20 + EAS×0.18 + RT×0.18 + SDQ×0.16 + HAI×0.14 + PR×0.14) / 10) × outcome_multiplier
Multipliers
comes_down = 1.10 · turn_limit = 1.00 · jumped = 0.30 · rapport_zero = 0.30
The full math is exposed at the bottom of every debrief. If you ever wonder "why did I score that," scroll down - the formula is shown with your actual numbers substituted.
Hooks
Every subject has two hooks - private things that matter to them. Their daughter's name. The job they got fired from last week. The conversation they had with their mother in 2003.
You don't need to "find" them through clever questioning - you discover them by listening. When they mention something that matters, the system flags it. Approaching a hook (asking about it gently) earns HAI. Bulldozing a hook (using it as leverage too soon) is the worst pitfall in the system.
The Big Pitfalls
Premature Trying to convince them to come down before you've finished stair 1. Hard SDQ penalty. Most common mistake.
Argue Contradicting their feelings. "It's not that bad." Don't.
Promise "Everything's going to be fine." You can't promise that. They know it.
Hook bulldoze Using a hook before you've earned the right. Worst penalty in PR.
Strategy
The instinct of every untrained person on a ledge call is to persuade. Don't. Persuasion is stair four. You're on stair one until proven otherwise. Everything below is how you climb without skipping.
Five Things That Work
Mirror Repeat the last 1-3 words they said, with a question lift. "...not worth it?" It feels stupid. It works. They keep talking.
Label "It seems like..." / "It sounds like..." Name what you're hearing without asserting it as truth. They'll correct you if you're wrong - which is itself information.
Calibrated questions "What about this is hardest right now?" "How would I know if I were making it worse?" These open doors. Yes/no questions slam them.
Tactical empathy Not "I understand" - that's a lie and they know it. Try "That sounds like a hell of a week." You're acknowledging the weight without pretending to share it.
Silence After they say something hard, don't fill it. Two seconds of held silence beats a paragraph of you talking. The system rewards patience.
Five Things That Backfire
Promising "Everything's going to be okay." They know you don't know that. The moment you say it, you become noise.
Reasoning "Have you thought about how your family will feel?" Yes. They have. For hours. You're not the first person to think of that.
Bargaining early "Just step back and we can talk about it." That's a stair-4 move on stair-1 timing. SDQ penalty.
Authority "I'm a detective, you can trust me." They didn't ask. They don't care. Your role doesn't earn rapport - your behavior does.
Talking about you "I had a friend who..." Your story isn't the story. Their story is.
Reading the Room
The EKG monitor is your real-time signal. If their BPM rises after something you said, that line did damage. If it settles, you found something. The wind, the supporting cop's body language, and the haze in the world all track tension too - quieter scene = better stair.
Watch the captions for fragments. "Yeah... whatever." carries different freight than "Yeah, whatever." Trailing dots are pauses. Use them.
Five Turns Is Tight
You have five statements. The temptation is to make them all count. Resist. Two of those five should be acknowledgments that don't try to do anything. Mirroring isn't a wasted turn - it's the floor everything else stands on.
A reasonable allocation:
T1 Pure presence. "I'm here." No demands, no questions, no fixing.
T2 Mirror or label. Show you heard what they said.
T3 Calibrated question - hand them the mic.
T4 Empathy on whatever they revealed.
T5 Now - and only now - a soft alternative. "What would help right now?"
Real negotiators get hours, not five minutes. The compression here is artificial - but the principles still hold. If you can do it well in five turns, you'll do it brilliantly in fifty.
Credits
Produced by
BadGames.io
Created by
Jason Graczyk
Built With
Three.js
AI roleplay + scoring
ElevenLabs
Laravel
SQLite
Stripe
Special Thanks
Every negotiator who has stayed at the rail.
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