Senior assassin lives or dies in the first week. Skipping a single step now means hours of chaos later. Some games collapse after two weeks because the organizer did not nail down the rules, or the target chain got copied wrong, or players did not know where to report eliminations. This checklist walks you through each of the first seven days so none of that happens to you.

Day one: write your rules

Before you recruit a single player, your rules must exist. Written down. A player should be able to open the rules and know exactly what wins or loses the game.

Start with a template. The rules template gives you fill-in-the-blank sections for game scope, target assignment, elimination methods, and dispute resolution. You do not have to reinvent this.

Most games answer these questions: Do players get safe zones? How do you eliminate a target far away? What counts as an elimination? Do players have immunity after being eliminated? Can a player text their target to reveal themselves? Rules answer all of these before the game starts.

Day two: generate your target chain

Once your rules are written, build the target chain. Use the target chain generator. Upload your player list, and it creates the secret one-way chain where each player targets exactly one other player. Do not manually create this. The generator handles the math and randomization.

Export or screenshot the chain so you have a backup. A player will quit. Someone will complain they got their best friend. You will need the truth to fall back on.

Day three: recruit and share rules

Now that your rules are locked and your chain is generated, you can start recruiting players. Share your written rules everywhere you advertise the game. A player should see the rules before they commit to playing, not after.

Tell interested players the launch day, the join deadline, and where they will report eliminations. If you are using senior assassins.com for your live board, give them the code. This is also the day to write out announcements for launch day, purge day, disputes, and the finale. Having templates ready means you are never scrambling for words.

• Share written rules with every recruit
• Confirm the launch date
• Decide where eliminations get reported
• Write announcement templates

Day four: set up your board and verification

Players need a place to report eliminations and see only their own target. Set it up now and test it. Make sure a player can join, see their target, and report an elimination without errors.

Decide how you will verify eliminations. Will players text a photo? Will a friend witness it? The more verifiable your process, the fewer disputes later.

Day five: launch day dry run

The night before launch, run through the whole flow as if you are a player. Join the board. Look at your target. Report a fake elimination. Does everything work? Are targets updating correctly?

This is the last moment to catch and fix problems before players depend on your setup.

Day six: launch day

Players join the board, see their targets, and the game is live. Your job is to respond to immediate problems and spot early trouble.

Watch for players who are ghosting or going silent. Sometimes a player disappears on day two. Sometimes they quit because their target moved away. This is normal, but you need a plan for how to handle it. Having rules for quitting and a process for fixing the target chain will save your season.

Expect one or two disputes by the end of day one. A player claims they eliminated their target but no witness agrees. Do not panic. Use your written rules to settle it. The disputes that kill a season are the ones that get messy because the organizer never answered the rule in writing.

Day seven and beyond: hold your first check-in

By day seven, some players will have been eliminated, some will be paranoid, and some will have questions. Call a quick check-in in Discord, text, or at a meeting. Ask: Is anyone stuck on the rules? Has anyone quit? Is the board working?

A public leaderboard can keep players invested, but be careful. A leaderboard that shows who has been eliminated also leaks who has not, which exposes targets. A good leaderboard shows total eliminations and big moments without showing the current target chain.

By the end of week one, you should know what you got right and what to adjust.

• Check in on rule clarity
• Watch for quitting or ghosting
• Verify eliminations are reported correctly
• Note what confused people

The one thing that sinks most games

Every game that falls apart in week two skipped one step. Most often: the organizer never wrote the rules down before starting. Players invent different versions of what the rules are, and by day four they are arguing about something that should have been decided on day one.

The second most common failure: the target chain gets corrupted. A player quits. The organizer manually fixes it wrong. Two players now have the same target. Regenerating from your backup solves this in five minutes. Trying to fix it by hand never works.

Do these seven things in order and your game will survive the season.