In Model UN crisis committees, an assassination is one of the most dramatic tools a delegate can deploy through a private directive (often called a "crisis note") to remove a rival character — another delegate's portfolio power, an NPC, a head of state, or a military commander — from the board. Unlike public directives debated by the full committee, assassinations are typically attempted covertly: the delegate writes a sequenced plan to the crisis backroom (the staff team running the simulation), which then adjudicates plausibility, resources, and likelihood of success.
Success depends less on the dramatic appeal of the plan and more on tradecraft inside the note. Strong assassination directives usually specify:
- The asset carrying out the act (a loyal officer, a hired agent, a sympathetic faction) and why they are trustworthy.
- Method and location, calibrated to the era and the target's actual security.
- Cover story and deniability, so the act cannot be traced back to the delegate's portfolio.
- Contingencies if the attempt fails or is exposed.
Crisis directors weigh these against the target's defenses, the requesting delegate's resources, and narrative balance. A poorly justified note ("I shoot the Tsar") will usually fail or backfire; a well-researched plan exploiting a real historical vulnerability is far likelier to succeed.
Assassinations also carry committee-wide consequences. The death of a monarch, general, or cabinet minister can trigger succession crises, purges, civil war, or retaliatory crisis updates that reshape the simulation for every delegate. For this reason, many crisis staffs discourage assassination as a delegate's opening move and reward it more when it is set up over several committee sessions through intelligence-gathering, bribery, or infiltration directives.
Most conference rulebooks — including those of large circuits like NMUN, WMHSMUN, and PMUNC — prohibit assassinating a fellow delegate's character outright without significant in-character justification, treating it as a balance and fairness issue rather than purely a roleplay one.
Example
In a 2023 collegiate crisis simulating the Russian Civil War, a delegate playing Felix Dzerzhinsky used a sequence of three crisis notes — recruiting a sympathetic guard, smuggling in a pistol, and staging a fake transfer order — to assassinate a rival delegate's White Army general, triggering a committee-wide leadership vacuum.
Frequently asked questions
Usually only with strong in-character justification, and many conferences explicitly restrict it for fairness. Targeting NPCs is far more common and more likely to be approved by the backroom.
Keep learning