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

[cellio]

The intercom. Not only is it annoying when the announcements are semi-legitimate, but it's even worse when people abuse it -- pranks, OT stuff, solicitations (girl scout cookies etc), etc. This could be a running gag through the game. (One we hear a lot that's on-topic but still... "so-and-so, please come to your meeting in $conference_room".

Fridge: tragedy of the commons as mentioned above, and also the food thief.

Microwave: burnt popcorn. If you sit within 100 meters, you're affected.

Annoying noises: cell phones (left behind on people's desks while they go to meetings) with annoying ring tones, Loud Howard, gum-popping slob, guy who plays music just loudly enough to intrude (but too quietly for you to really hear), long personal phone calls (get a room!), the substrain of the previous involving arguments...

IT policies.

[jducoeur]

The intercom.

Several people have brought this one up -- I hadn't realized that it was such a topic of hatred, but I'm clearly going to have to try to do something with it.

Microwave: burnt popcorn. If you sit within 100 meters, you're affected.

Well, not 100 meters, but a very good idea -- having some sort of ranged-attack mechanic around the microwave might work quite well. (Combining with hfcougar's idea above, I now have an image of everybody taking 3 Hit Points of Rancid Catfish Damage. Not that the game will probably have hit points per se, but you get the idea.)

Great stuff -- thanks!

[cellio]

Related -- how could I have forgotten speaker-phones?

oh, man, not kidding...

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

First thing I did when I got our new PBX was to disable the page features.
It's bad enough that the windows face Harvard Square and every siren makes the customers think the building's on fire, but to have pages too? No way.

Hmm...are customers a part of the game? Making them thread the PBX or front desk would be interesting.

Re: oh, man, not kidding...

[jducoeur]

My current thinking is that customers / clients may be horde / cast, but probably aren't principal characters -- it's just too hard to tie them deeply enough into the plot web to make them satisfying to play.

(But having some as horde is *very* possible. This makes me think about the possibility of the rude / abusive / persistent client, who keeps calling various people to yell at them...)