Seeking office horror stories

[jducoeur]

I seem to have accidentally wound up with the high concept for my game for Intercon next year. (As so often, it's all Christian's fault: he is always a font of game ideas.)

To that end, I am looking for any and all ideas for Drip -- the water-cooler horror game. It's going to be a vicious satire of All Things Office. The ideas are already flowing pretty quickly, but I welcome more: if you have character ideas, situations or just war stories about Office Life, send them along and I might work them in. Feel free to brainstorm wildly: weird and unlikely isn't necessarily a bar here. (Those who remember Panel will know how willing I am to get downright strange in my scenarios.)

(No, tpau, I'm not bidding it yet. Among other things, I haven't figured out the game's scope yet. It might be a one-hour 10-person Z game, a two-hour 20-person Sunday-or-Friday game, or a full four-hour 25-to-30-person slot. Once I understand how big the game is, I can think about bidding it...)

Comments

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

From recent experience:
* Office floods, requiring mass move to temporary space.
* Company that supplies water for the water coolers is very slow to respond to 'we ran out of water!' situations.
* General SNAFUs with Health Insurance paperwork. The HR dept, the provider, the insurer, and the employee all have differing ideas about who is responsible for what.

You might also check out Bureaucracy for ideas. A 'combat' mechanic based on Blood Pressure, for example...

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Good point -- haven't played Bureaucracy in many years, but it's clearly a good source to mine for inspiration...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Office floods [...] very slow to respond to 'we ran out of water!'

They're just trying to make sure you get your RDA of irony.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I know I kept commenting, but there was also the time back when our office was on the top floor of our building, and the roof kept flooding and leaking under heavy summer rains. Our ceiling literally caved in over our heads. The ED was disgusted when he came out of his office and we were standing around the bulging ceiling making bets on how long the water would take to break through.

It was later discovered that the building manager knew about the roof leaks, and instead of fixing them, had put turkey pans in the ceiling to catch the drips.