Crisis Committee Judging Criteria

What Crisis Judges Actually Evaluate

Crisis committee judging is fundamentally different from GA committee judging. In GA, awards often go to the most eloquent speaker or the best resolution writer. In crisis, the evaluation is more holistic — judges assess your strategic thinking, creativity, crisis note quality, character consistency, and overall impact on the simulation.

Most conferences evaluate crisis delegates on some combination of:

Strategic vision (30-40%). Do you have a coherent plan? Are your actions building toward something, or are you just reacting to each update? The best delegates have a clear crisis arc — a narrative of ambition and achievement that spans the entire conference.

Crisis note quality (25-30%). Are your crisis notes specific, creative, and plausible? Do they demonstrate knowledge of your character's capabilities? Crisis staff reads every note and evaluates whether the delegate understands how crisis mechanics work.

Committee contribution (15-20%). Are you contributing to committee debate? Building alliances? Proposing directives? Leading discussions? A delegate who only works through crisis notes and never engages the room misses an entire dimension of the evaluation.

Adaptability (10-15%). How do you respond when your plans fail? When crisis staff throws a curveball? When another delegate undermines your position? The ability to pivot gracefully is a hallmark of advanced delegates.

Building a Winning Crisis Arc

A crisis arc is the narrative thread that connects all your actions across the conference. The best crisis arcs have a clear structure:

Phase 1: Establish (first 2-3 hours). Build your power base. Establish alliances, secure resources, gather intelligence. Your early crisis notes should be about positioning, not action.

Phase 2: Execute (middle of conference). Launch your strategy. Use the assets you built in Phase 1 to pursue your objectives. This is where covert operations, bold directives, and alliance shifts happen.

Phase 3: Consolidate (final hours). Secure your gains. Tie up loose ends. Position yourself for the endgame. The final committee session is where awards are often decided — delegates who have built incrementally often overtake those who peaked early and faded.

The key is intentionality. Judges can tell the difference between a delegate who is building toward something and one who is improvising. Even if your plan does not fully succeed, the strategic coherence of your arc demonstrates the kind of thinking that earns awards.

What Loses Awards in Crisis

Understanding what judges penalize is as important as knowing what they reward:

• Recklessness without strategy. Attempting five assassinations in the first hour is not bold — it is chaotic. Judges want to see calculated risk, not random aggression.
• Breaking character. If you are playing a devout religious leader who suddenly starts ordering mass executions without narrative justification, judges notice the inconsistency.
• Ignoring consequences. If your actions cause your country to collapse and you do not address it, that signals a lack of strategic awareness.
• Lone wolf syndrome. Crisis rewards individual initiative, but delegates who never collaborate, never build alliances, and never engage the room limit their own impact.
• Front-loading. Delegates who spend everything in the first session and have nothing left for the endgame often lose to patient, methodical competitors.