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

[fenicedautun.livejournal.com]

This isn't a horror story per se, but this is what my job really was like (before laid off) and may work well for getting a character inserted into a LARP. I worked for a department based in Charlotte, on a national project, with nobody in the office building I was in working with me. Many of them encountered me on projects (I knew people, and they knew who I was and what I did), but my work was completely separate. And my boss would generally miss our meetings where she'd tell me what was going on, and then call randomly later. (I actually wondered whether she'd call me to lay me off, or whether I'd first know when I couldn't log in.)

And my first job after college, the office manager would hire her family to be admins, controlled the petty cash box, and was always out sick. And the office handyman was mentally disabled (really, he was what would have been called slow 50 years ago), and he had so much trouble understanding which sodas people wanted him to order for the Coke machine. (I think really I'm just giving you good ideas for NPCs who can turn up to make things happen.)

[jducoeur]

Fascinating. That first bit is almost the inverse of me personally: the person who is in the office every day, but has nothing to do with the project. Yes, I'll have to chew on that -- might make a very interesting character.

Very good point about nepotism: have to get that in *somewhere*.

And yes, many characters will be NPCs or such. Actually, I'm suspecting that this game will be "a little bit Horde", with a small number of players trading in smallish roles of 5-60 minutes...

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

You also need the requisite college student/grad student intern with really bizarre fashion sense and some kind of weird yet oddly domestic hobby.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I knew one intern who habitually wore blue jeans, a shirt that was never more than half tucked in, and a tie. A bright orange tie, loosely knotted.

[jducoeur]

Interesting -- the deliberately rebellious intern. That has possibilities...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Oh, he wasn't rebellious; he was just confused. Jeans and a not-tucked-in-shirt would've been normal in that office; what was bizarre was wearing a tie with them (or, indeed, at all).

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I have an online pal who seemingly wears only red, black, bats and spiders, and who knits. Lots.