HOW IT WORKS

Each week you receive a corporate directive, assess your 12 stores, and spend action points to visit stores, coach managers, fight fires, or take care of yourself.

Four meters track your survival: Burnout, Frontline Morale, HQ Approval, and Actual Performance.

If any meter hits zero (or burnout hits 100), your quarter is over. Every choice has a tradeoff. There are no right answers. Welcome to the middle.

THE CORE LOOP

Each of the 13 weeks follows the same rhythm:
1. Read the corporate directive (sets the week's pressure)
2. See what random events hit your district
3. Spend your action points (5 in Normal, 4 in Hard, 3 in Nightmare)
4. Read the drive home monologue
5. Repeat until you survive... or don't

THE FOUR METERS - WHAT KILLS YOU

BURNOUT (starts 15) - Your personal energy. Rises every week. Hits 100 = you resign. Self-Care is the only action that lowers it. Do not ignore this.

MORALE (starts 65) - Your frontline teams across 12 stores. Drops when you cut hours, ignore crises, or make too many phone calls instead of showing up. Store Visits and Phone Coaching help.

HQ APPROVAL (starts 70) - Corporate's perception of you. Not the same as actual performance. Corporate Schmooze and Prep for RVP Visit boost this. Miss a call or ignore a directive and it tanks.

PERFORMANCE (starts 60) - The real composite score of your stores. Store Visits, Strategic Initiative, and Hire/Recruit improve it. This is the truth that HQ Approval pretends to measure.

THE 10 ACTIONS - WHAT THEY DO

Store Visit (1 AP) - Best all-around action. Boosts morale, performance, PM trust. The bread and butter.

Phone Coaching (1 AP) - Quick morale and performance boost, but less impactful than showing up in person.

District Call (1 AP) - Broad morale lift across all stores but smaller per-store impact. Good for maintenance.

Hire/Recruit (2 AP) - Expensive but critical. Boosts performance and morale. Use when stores are understaffed.

Coach Out (1 AP) - Remove a low performer. Short-term morale dip, long-term performance gain.

Corporate Schmooze (1 AP) - Purely for HQ Approval. Does nothing for your stores. Sometimes necessary.

Prep for RVP Visit (2 AP) - Big HQ Approval boost. Expensive. Use strategically before review weeks.

Self-Care (1 AP) - The only way to reduce burnout. Easy to skip. Fatal to ignore.

Put Out Fire (1 AP) - Emergency damage control. Reduces the impact of active crises.

Strategic Initiative (2 AP) - Expensive but largest performance boost. Best used in calm weeks.

WINNING STRATEGIES

THE SECRET: TALENT IS THE STRATEGY. This is not a resource game. It is a people game. The #1 way to win is to invest in your team. Here is how:

1. Build the Talent Flywheel. Stores with high staffing (70+) AND high PM trust (60+) start self-improving automatically. Performance and satisfaction grow on their own. Get 6+ stores into this zone and the quarter runs itself. This is how real districts work.

2. Store Visits build trust. Every visit adds +8 trust. Three visits to the same store create "momentum" - the team knows you care. Trust makes everything else work better: coaching calls land harder, problems surface earlier, and the flywheel kicks in.

3. Hire early and often. Recruiting costs 2 AP but when the hire lands 2-3 weeks later, it boosts staffing, performance, satisfaction, AND district morale. The earlier you hire, the more weeks of compounding growth you get.

4. Self-Care is not optional. Burnout rises every week regardless. Skip it too long and you resign. Take it at least every other week.

5. HQ Approval through schmoozing has diminishing returns. Each consecutive schmooze gives less. Your people notice when you are managing up instead of showing up. The real path to HQ Approval is actual performance - which comes from investing in talent.

6. Watch for event chains. Some events trigger follow-up crises 2-3 weeks later. A pharmacist quitting in Week 3 can cascade into a coverage meltdown by Week 6. Well-staffed stores absorb these shocks better.

7. PM Trust is hidden leverage. High-trust pharmacy managers warn you about problems early. Low trust means crises blindside you. Invest in relationships - that is what real leadership looks like.

DIFFICULTY DIFFERENCES

Normal: 5 AP/week. Standard event frequency. Meters are forgiving. Good for first playthrough - learn the systems.

Hard: 4 AP/week. More frequent crises. Faster meter drain. You cannot do everything. Triage becomes real.

Nightmare: 3 AP/week. Start with 2 active crises. Relentless events. Burnout rises faster. "If you survived 2020 as a DL, you might survive this."

ABOUT DISTRICT ZERO

Created by Dr. Jeff Bullock, Pharm.D.
18 years at CVS Health. Tech, pharmacist, district leader. 20-32 stores. 47,000 miles on a Camry.

Every scenario in this game happened. The names are changed. The feelings are not.

This is the sequel to PHARMAGEDDON. That game told the story from behind the counter. This one tells it from the driver's seat.

🎮 PHARMAGEDDON: pharmageddongame.app