Abstract: Emergencies are management challenges, and emergency exercises that involve multiple collaborating parties is a means towards mastering them. Such exercises are often conducted in a virtual training environment based on complex disaster scenarios. The reported study was carried out using a requirement-focused design approach. The aim was to describe and discuss a relevant design for lean, dynamic, and cost-efficient emergency management exercise systems. Data were gathered from a literature study and analyses of earlier emergency management projects in which the authors had participated. Despite the complexity of many current emergency management exercises, the scenarios usually involve only the response phases and have a linear structure that hinders both didactic aspects and the software structure. The conclusion drawn from the study is that an emergency management exercise model should focus on managing the activities that correspond to alternatives that unfold from a dynamic scenario. Finally, the authors recommend the principles of alternate reality games as a way towards more dynamic and cost-efficient emergency exercise systems.