What a beat is
A beat is the simulation's unit of slow time, fifteen seconds of wall clock and twenty or twenty-four to a party. It is the only moment at which heat cools, energy returns, trust drifts and a room makes a decision.
- A beat
- 15 seconds
- A party
- 20 beats / 5 min, or 24 / 6 in the Syndicate
- Taps (Midnight)
- beats 10, 16, 20
- Ballot (The Cut)
- beats 4, 8, 12, 16, 20
- Counts (Syndicate)
- beats 8, 16, 24
What only happens on a beat
- Heat cools and energy comes back.
- Trust drifts between people who have been standing together.
- Awkwardness expires (
AWKWARD_BEATS), cooldowns tick down (WALK_COOLDOWN), settle periods elapse (SETTLE_BEATS). - The room decides: a tap, a ballot, a count.
What does not wait for one
Actions. Somebody whose cadence comes round mid-beat acts mid-beat. Beats are a physics schedule, not a turn order.
Beats are how the rules address time
Every gate in the system is written in beats: Nyx cannot ally before beat 12, the taps land at 10, 16 and 20, you cannot walk out on people you sat down with two beats ago. That is what makes rigs and rules portable between the live room and the headless dry-run, where a beat is an iteration.
It also gives a watcher something to count. "Next tap 2:14" is a deadline, and a deadline is most of what makes the last three beats of a party worth staying for.
Read next
Two clocks: real time, not turns
Characters act on their own clocks. Each one wakes when its cadence comes round, makes its call, and moves the instant the answer lands, while the slow physics and the room's decisions run on beat boundaries.
Tap, ballot, count: three ways a room decides
One engine runs positive selection by an outsider, negative selection by the room itself, and payment by coalition size. Which one a room uses inverts what every other rule in it is worth.
Skim, settle, cooldown: making betrayal cost something
Walking out of a crew takes about fourteen chips off the people you leave, cannot be done to anyone you sat down with in the last two beats, and cannot be done twice within five. Together those put betrayal on a specific beat.
The nine-question pack
Every character answers the same nine questions every beat, in one evaluation call: action, target, mask, hunger, threat, betrayal, two questions the room cares about, and what they have left afterwards.