Quirks, hooks, and themes for a game set in a surreal modern-day place of business.
>The interior layout of the office is far larger, smaller or different than it ought to be given the exterior appearance of the building.
>The mirrors in the women's bathroom on the seventh floor malfunction.
>The building possesses an unusual number of basements and sub-basements that include things like vast storage facilities, underground lakes and model towns.
>Any plant brought into the office shrivel up and die by end of business that day.
>The elevator's control panel has buttons for "11A" and "11B," the first taking you to the eleventh floor and the second taking you to a mirrored version of the eleventh floor.
>Every department aside from the PCs is completely imaginary and aside from their floor the rest of the building is vacant.
>The PCs begin receiving prophetic emails, printouts and faxes.
>The CEO actually died sometime in the late seventies or early eighties, but he continues to lead the company by means of an absurdly exhaustive reel-to-reel library of prerecorded instructions.
>Phantom typing can be heard while staying late at night.
>Instead of keeping their employees late, the company has instituted an extra hour in the day after lunch to boost productivity.
>>38395797
>The top floor of the building can be reached by taking the stairs or elevators down from the bottom floor of the basement, and the basement can be reached by taking the stairs or the elevator up from the top floor in a sort of architectural Mobius Strip.
>Several departments seem to be composed entirely of mannequins posed into complicated dioramas.
>What is seen out the windows may not reflect what actually ought to be outside the building.
>The tile work on the lobby floor changes from day to day, displaying different patterns, colors and messages regularly.
>There either appears to be a single elderly but supernaturally quick janitor servicing the entire building, or more worryingly, about a dozen copies of this same man sharing the job.
>The young mailroom intern with the sad smile and the dark circles under her eyes suffers a terrible, fatal accident at the end of each work day, and yet always shows up on time for work the next day as if nothing happened.
>The PCs leave a meeting together to discover that all their coworkers have vanished.
>Cryptic messages are heard whispered over the office PA system.
>Alarms begin going off and the entire population of the office are herded downstairs into a series of fifties-era fallout shelters built into the underpinnings of the building.
>If left to their own devices, all the chairs in the department will start spinning by themselves.
>>38395828
>The men's bathroom on the fourteenth floor has no ceiling or roof above it and is open to the skies.
>There is something or somethings living in the ventilation system.
>Nancy in Accounting fills the PCs with dread.
>Water in the breakroom sink runs different colors depending on the time of day.
>One entire wing of the building is dedicated to the filing and storage of employee records that detail their lives and histories to an astonishingly all-encompassing degree.
>The cafeteria switches floors every couple months.
>Although the boss seems to have a different pretty secretary every time the PCs go to see him, she claims to have always been there and laughs off the PCs' puzzlement every time.
>All graffiti in and around the building seems personally directed at the PCs for their benefit.
>The only way to reach the 5th floor is by taking the stairs down from the 6th. The elevator will not stop there. Taking the stairs up from 4th will lead you directly to 6th. If you exit the stair well and go back down, the 5th will be there.
>After talking and sharing some personal information, all the PCs realize they live in completely different cities. All go to work in a building in /their/ city. If they try to exit the building at the same time, the doors will lock.
>The 17th floor seems to be a nineteenth century hospital ward. Rows of hospital beds and privacy screens. The odd bit of old fashioned medical equipment. Someone once said they were going to take a nap in the unused beds, the next day, they were reported absent on sick leave. They haven't come back yet.
>>38395797Any more?
>>38395797
Ah, Dujardin's photo composites (or as we call it in the industry, shoops). I actually ran into those while looking into MC Escher.
>While PCs can use the emergency stairwell to reach all levels of the building, it doesn't service each floor sequentially.
>There is a large tree reminiscent of a banyan growing on the roof of the building.
>It appears that the building has had a number of additions and expansions built haphazardly over the course of several decades, leading to a number of architectural oddities and anomalies.
>A light but steady rain falls indoors on the fifth floor of the building at all hours of the day.
>The parking garage is a many-storied labyrinth with inadequate signage in which can be found abandoned cars decades old and worrying graffiti and notes left by long-lost employees.
>There is a "Wall of Remembrance" in the lobby bearing far too many names and photographs of employees that have died, often times right in the building.
>While riding the elevator, a peacock boards on the third floor and gets off on the eighth floor.
>Roughly sixty-percent of the building is actually unoccupied, and the further the PCs wander into this vacant sixty-percent the more the rules of physics begin to break down.
>Both the mens' and womens' bathrooms on the third floor seem to have been constructed upside-down.
>The breakroom fridge is kept closed by five hasps and padlocks, and no one knows who has the keys or remembers why it was sealed.
>The PCs go in to work to discover that the top five floors of the building are gone along with everyone who worked in them, and no one else seems to notice or care.
>Over the course of the day, the plane of gravity inside the office gradually swings around to a new "up is down" orientation.
>While the lobby has stayed more or less the same as long as the PCs have worked there, the building's office tower has been slowly but surely been sinking into the earth.
>Upper Management demands that all departments pull their facts and figures from census data and records for the year 1953.
>The building is home to a flock of small birds.
>The entire eighteenth floor consists of an elaborate, indoor miniature golf course complete with water-features and brightly-painted moving obstacles.
>The office in which the PCs work is a cube farm with limited visibility and an almost mazelike floorplan, and every so often, they will hear a coworker yell or shriek and then go silent.
>Ever phone number and extension in the company appears to spell out a cryptic word or phrase.
>There is a doorway in the back of the supply closet behind the metal shelving unit, from the other side of which a telephone can be heard ringing constantly.
>A sudden and unexpected darkness falls outside the building and the fluorescents fail, swathing the offices inside in half-light and shadows cast by the inadequate emergency lighting.
>>38395797
>Any plant brought into the office shrivel up and die by end of business that day.
Including plastic ones.
>Aside from the expected cars, trucks and motorcycles, the parking garage houses a strange variety of other vehicles as well like trains, planes and ships, some of which the garage seems to have been specifically built around.
>On rainy days small, bare footprints seem to appear all over the office, tracking water and mud about.
>From the lobby level the employees can access a very green and pleasant courtyard open to the sky in the middle of the building in which to eat lunch or socialize, even though this courtyard simply isn't part of the building on any other floor.
These ideas sound really cool, but how would you go about actually using them in a game?
>>38396802
>There is a doorway in the back of the supply closet behind the metal shelving unit, from the other side of which a telephone can be heard ringing constantly.
Found the helpdesk office
>Management dictates and memos get more insane over time, to the point where dress code includes thread count and leaning back in your chair is forbidden
>>38397291
>PCs are innaoffice for some reason
>Have to spend a while investigating something
>Maybe something like Delta Green?
>Then Shit happens
>>38397421
Will the events be introduced randomly? Or used gradually from smallest to batshit crazy?
>>38397446
Yes.
>Investigate this office because it might be a money laundering outlet for the Cult of Transcendence.
>Notice shit like this little by little
>As you dig deeper more of this stuff happens
>Gets so bad you are no longer trying to investigate
>Only escape
>>38397494
>>Gets so bad you are no longer trying to investigate
>>Only escape
Oh, you
there was never any escape
>>38397494
I think the investigation plot sounds cool.
Or if you want to add a more surreal element to the plot, like the PCs are workers at the office, and were either given a simple task by their boss or was trying to get a stapler or something, and then weird shit and crazy coincidences happen that make a mundane task confusing.
>>38397291
There are several ways one could go about it I think. The first way would be the easiest where you could simply use them all as-is if you wanted a wacky, off the wall sort of surreal one-shot. The second and probably more useful way is to think up an idea for a game that requires a surreal office setting, and pick and choose the ones that are most thematically appropriate to that story or are the most jarring. The third option is to select a handful of quirks and think up a way to work them into a single one-shot story.
For instance, let's make a simple sort of story out of some of the quirks already posted:
>A sudden and unexpected darkness falls outside the building and the fluorescents fail, swathing the offices inside in half-light and shadows cast by the inadequate emergency lighting.
>Cryptic messages are heard whispered over the office PA system.
>Alarms begin going off and the entire population of the office are herded downstairs into a series of fifties-era fallout shelters built into the underpinnings of the building.
>The office in which the PCs work is a cube farm with limited visibility and an almost mazelike floorplan, and every so often, they will hear a coworker yell or shriek and then go silent.
>The young mailroom intern with the sad smile and the dark circles under her eyes suffers a terrible, fatal accident at the end of each work day, and yet always shows up on time for work the next day as if nothing happened.
>>38397662
From these five quirks, we could build a horror story in which a supernatural, apocalyptic darkness falls over the world and cuts power off to the building the PCs are working in. Confusing and terrifying broadcasts are heard over the employee's phones, radios and other battery operated communications devices. Upper management, clearly spooked and worried themselves, announces over the PA that everyone ought to try and shelter in the old cold war bunkers built into the basement of the building. In the course of the office's evacuation downstairs, something begins stalking amongst the cubes, spiriting the PCs' coworkers away unseen. Panic ensues, and the orderly migration to the fallout shelters becomes a frantic rush.
There's the basic premise that can play out any number of ways from there.
>>38397595
>pc's go to investigate office
>everyone greets them by name and says good morning
>asks specific questions about their personal lives, as a friendly coworker might
>complaints about boss, idle water cooler talk
>DM acts as if they have always worked there
>boss gives pc's assignments
>coworkers show legitimate concern for pc's paranoid behavior, offer helpactually not a trap
>boss calls them all in at the end of the day
>surprisecaring boss talks to them about if they're having any troubles, he knows they're all close friends but the past few weeks they've been acting distant and detached and he wants them to know that if they need anything, he's here for them. (add elements of sincere concern as needed)
>next session is also Office Troubles, hastily throw together a system for exploration, being productive, etc.
>the session after that resumes as normal, preferably in the middle of a sentence from an NPC
>>38397595
Personally, I'm a fan of the idea of a mundane task getting blown to hell but a cascade of surreal happenings.
>>38397834
What is this
I need it in my life
Continue. :)
>>38397853
Why hello there, japanese schoolgirl.
>The PCs stumble upon a filing cabinet full of invoices for things like body bags, surgical tools, straitjackets, electroconvulsive therapy gear anddecaf coffee.
>>38397834
Same here, so an example of my idea would be one of the PCs gets told by the manager of that floor to go file some tps reports. All of the filing is done in the west wing of the building. As he starts his journey to the elevator small, hard to notice things start to happen. Really simple stuff like weird things said by co workers, or small accidents and spills, maybe some cryptic messages and such about the centerfold of the plot, or foreshadowing of events likely to occur. Then when they get to the elevator, all of the PCs meet there. Then they have to work together to get the the west end (filing room and such). I can go one if you guys wish.
>>38398138
The decaf coffee should be the only thing on the list that wasn't approved by the managers. Like a side note written down stating the disgust of decaf and the waste of resources from purchasing it. The other suspicious items aren't notified and considered normal or unremarkable.
bumping the thread for interest.
You should make a Dilbert-like office surreal horror.
>>38395828
Ford Cruller!
>trying to enjoy your newspaper in a toilet stall
>distracting splashing, is something leaking?
>still hasn't stopped after 10 minutes
>it's a guy at a urinal
>>38398122
Fine I'll just Google it
>not a movie, just art
damn
Finally found a use for this thing I made. Half assed, but more or less playable.
>>38398427
I'm getting a strong Initech feeling from this.
>>38397567
Even if you start taking out windows and walls? How does it counter that?
>>38398527
>Take out a wall
>Enter into another room
>Take out that wall
>Just another cubicle farm
>Doesn't matter how many walls you take out, there will still be cubes behind it
"Ill just take out a window!"
>Remove window
>Climb outside
>Realize you are in a very loopy and erratic courtyard that's still surrounded by buildings on all sides
>No matter where you climb out of the building, you only exit into a courtyard.>Office building starts to exhibit extra-dimensional properties
>>38398527
>break a window
>there's wall behind it
>break down wall
>there's offices behind it
no matter where in the building you are
>>38398524
Sorry not familiar with that.
>>38398609
Actually I prefer this explanation of Windows to my own
extradimensional courtyard > lolwalls
>>38398637Office Space
>>38398637
Office Space, a pretty decent movie
>>38398637
From a satirical movie on office white collar life.
Office Space.
>>38398649
>>38398652
>>38398655
Oh, right... I'll show myself out.
>>38398609
>the building is a warped tesseract
>The DMPC is a more-or-less insane manager whose directives only make sense in the context of this warped building.
>>38398278
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITL4NqOKmzk
>the boss has been on vacation for more than 90 years, but still relays instructions via telephone call every morning. The ambient noise on the other end of the line suggests he may be sending these calls from hell (screams, burining sounds, daemonic whispers and laughter)
>The taps in the upper floors of the building all dispense milk. Hot tap produces full fat, cold tap semi-skimmed.
>the building is wide at the base at the top and narrow inbetween, like some sort of tree
>The building is in fact a tree, and is the latest iteration of yggdrasil, the world tree
>all floors have their documents printed on different colours of paper. this colour coding is different on each floor, and transporting a piece of paper down a floor will make it change to fit the colour key for that floor.
>new employees frequently arrive by post, to their post.
>There is a many-armed being in the mailroom sorting parcels, but none of the other mailroom staff seem to notice or care.
This will call be canon when I run a CV game.
this reminds me of night shift
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=night+shift
>Coworkers often appear wildly inappropriate for the tasks they have been assigned.
>>38396294
Looks like a Standard Metabolist building to me.
>In the stairwell leading to the upper floors, a cat is sometimes seen rolling about on the ceiling, if it spots the onlooker it will immediately run away upstairs out of sight, where it won't be seen for at least few days
>Small metal musical triangles are commonly found in the elevators.
>the second floor is filled with water up to the knees and the elevator doesn't stop on that floor any more.
>no one acknowledges the heirophant in room 23
>the taps in the women's bathroom on the fourth floor occasionally produce eels
>smoking is mandatory on room 5
>the photocopier on the 8th floor never breaks down or jams
>a baby is sometimes seen plummetting past the window in room 211
>anyone who suffers a fatal wound on site cannot die from their wound for 48 hours
>Some coworkers are clearly non-human, ranging from small yet irregular features (gills, a third eye Crimson skin tone, etc) to absurdly bizarre (8 arms, covered in fur, non-humanoid, more insect than human, etc).
>The women's bathroom on the eighth floor is laid out like a squared-off circle, and is normal in all ways when walking clockwise around the center but appears to be endless when walking counterclockwise.
>The watercooler usually has more than just water in it, whether it be vodka or goldfish or loose change.
>The number of elevators the building has seems to change on a week-by-week basis, and not all of them service every floor as they ought to.
>Various company photos depicting employees from previous decades hang about the building, and include various NPCs as well as the PCs themselves taking part of company activities long before they were hired or even born.
>The items up for sale in the breakroom ending machines aren't always food, and can include red staplers, pocket watches, birth certificates, musical instruments, urns of ashes, or anything else.
>Each and every record and file in the company's vast and labyrinthine archive has been heavily altered, with names, dates and whole sentences censored with black ink.
>A white cat with a bell on its collar has been seen and heard traipsing around the building, but no one has confessed to owning it.
>While always told that the top floor of the building is reserved for the company's Chief Officers, the PCs discover that all the offices there are unoccupied and unfurnished, and that the entire floor seems abandoned.
>In the security guards' suite of control rooms, the PCs discover a set of closed circuit cameras and screens that appear to be monitoring their desks or offices exclusively.
>Arriving at work in the morning, one of the PCs finds a snubnosed pistol and a list of names taped under their desk.
>Just about anything can be found in the warehouse, including some things that would have been better off forgotten.
>>38398609
>The CEO of the company visits the office later on. Instead of a man or woman it is an audio recorder machine, with the play button pressed at all times.
>He speaks in a typical middle aged male voice, not too deep, or light.
>There is a heating device attached to the machine that simulates smoking when a cigarette is placed in it.
>He will ask for people to smoke him up from time to time.
>While he is just an intercom with wheels, an assistant is with him at all times, and he seems to know the situation too well.
>Like all CEOs, saftey isn't his #1 concern to his employees and lackeys.
>>38399137
I love your vending machine idea. Instead of medical kits in the bathroom or whatnot, you have to pay out of pocket for bandages or creams.
I also think the snub nosed pistol is pretty cool, like when doing that task, it seems like the people on the list know ahead of time that they are being hunted by the PCs, and have taken precautions by either hiding, or arming themselves the take on the PCs.
>>38398427
>>38398899
Essentially you can play a setting like this as a corporate, white-collar version of Night Shift.
>>38399720
*to take on the PCs.
My bad.
>>38399720
>NPCs know their on the hit list
>Start barricading themselves in break room
>Setting lethal traps made of office supplies in the hallway
>Armor up with cube furniture and wield a fire axe with pins glued to it as weapon
>Takes pre-emptive strikes against the PC
>Entire day is a game of cat and mouse between the PC with a gun and half a dozen misc employees from around the corp
>DISCLAIMER: Hit List is only valid for 24 hours
>Next day, any surviving NPCs act like nothing happened
>Greet PC exactly the same in the morning, except now he's wearing an eye patch from when you stabbed him with a pen
>>38399611
>The CEO is always calm no matter the situation.
>If the machine is broken, a new one always comes in the next day.
>The location of the speaker is never revealed under any circumstances.
>While he may be calm, he can be somewhat paranoid, and usually has his attendant armed.
>Later on in the story if the PCs get far enough in the game he can either be the BBEG, or the primary quest giver. (GM's choice).
>If the PC's choose to escape, the CEO can fire them in the end, or Promote them to a higher status, either way freeing them of torment.
>Some times the CEO can be aware of surreal happenings, but will never bother to fix it. (GM can choose why).
>>38399965
Usual day at the office any way.
>>38398748
>The building is in fact a tree, and is the latest iteration of yggdrasil, the world tree
Ryoma, pls.
>>38399506
>>38399965
Every time someone dies in the office, their body is found in the warehouse the following day in a body bag. After 24 hours they are gone and never seen again. Only PCs are safe from this, and their bodies are always in wood coffins at the back of the seemingly endless warehouse.
>>38398899
Exactly what I was thinking.
The 'mirror malfunctioning' was even directly
used in NightShift.
>>38400398
>>38399746
We're essentially AC Prime in this game, Anons.
>>38400609
Basically Dilbert, except scary and surreal.
>>38396405
>>Roughly sixty-percent of the building is actually unoccupied, and the further the PCs wander into this vacant sixty-percent the more the rules of physics begin to break down.
There was this video someone posted earlier in the week, where there's these giant floating blocks moving around in the sky, and in those floating blocks in a bunch of people just floating around. And then it gets corrupted and all the people explode into horrible monsters.
I'm thinking this would work best in Don't Rest Your Head, maybe with some adjustments to allow for long-term play.
>>38399965
Huh, kinda sounds like a viable shooter vidya idea. If the gubbament special interests weren't worried about office shootings anyways.
still pretty bitchin idea. Especially if they have only enough bullets to fill one clip/mag/drumbarrel
>>38400988
I'm not familiar with Don't Rest Your Head. would you mind summing it up while I try and think of some more quirks?
>>38401178
Its a very rules-light system where a bunch of insomniacs use dream logic to fight nightmares
>>38401141
Of course the shooty bit would only be a small portion of it. Perhaps it could be played off as a metaphor for paranoia in the work place or some shit.
It would be more focused on trying to complete seemingly simple tasks that become more difficult to do the further the game gets.
>>38401224
Is good plan. Everyone else has obtained worklist of tasks to do. One guy's task just happens to be killing without getting caught. Yes?
>>38401382
Either that, or the co-workers and upper heads that aren't on the list don't care or bother noticing.
>>38401224
>>38401141
The office-shooter scenario could only be one of several possible paths, or could be the happening of one particular day. It could be that the game, whether it's tabletop or video, takes place over the course of a work week where everything is just goes from bad to worse.
>>38401382
Amongst other things.
>Get the TPS cover page update to accounting before 10
>Attend the Class 4 Engineering Review
>Submit timecards for the past month
>Kill Pat in accounting
>Empty out the fridge in the 2nd floor breakroom
>Survive until quitting time
>>38401382
I like the idea of each of the players being given a random "secret assignment" that they need to accomplish within a given time frame. One of those assignments might just be to kill the others.
>>38401421
Like Postal 2. From Monday to Sunday, and things get more chaotic as the days pass. Love that game.
>>38401458
I have this schedule twice a week.
>>38401460
Secret assignments are a good idea! ones that conflict with other party members, ones that are but a part of a longer running scheme, ones that are deadly, and some that may just be out and out impossible (but not really)!
>>38401460
Like the game paranoia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%29
>>38401460
>Paranoia
>>38400722
Metachaos I think it was called
>>38401527
Just Trouble Shooting here. Don't mind me.
>>38401527
>>38401511
Maybe Paranoia can be adapted to this setting.
>>38401688
Friend Computer becomes CEO, clearance colors become security clearances, bam.
>>38401800
Isn't the Friend Computer just a bunch of Higher-Ups taking on the appearance of authority?
>>38402088
Nah. Friend Computer is the computer that runs Alpha Complex. However, it is in turn run by the High Programmers, who are the guys in charge of programming it. Regrettably, 90% of the Computer is legacy code, with some portions even dating back to before the Big Whoops.
>>38402112
So it's like the US Constitution?
>>38402157
Not really, FC takes a much more active role. Think a combo of the president and congress.
>>38402348
Yeah. Yeah I see. The Trouble Shooters could tie in with the office RPG. Select workers (The PCs) are promoted to investigating the surreal parts and reporting back to the Higher-Ups.
>>38402442
Or perhaps that could be one choice.
Maybe they could be security guards trying to help people stuck in anomalies.
Or they could be IT guys running from department to department fixing things.
Or the average Joe trying to survive and get paid.
Or all of the above, if they are adventurous.
>There is NO smoking allowed anywhere in the building. Employees may smoke in the designated area.
>The area is only accessible by walking down the emergency stairwell. It is not serviced by any elevator.
>Going out the fire escape door leads to an outdoor courtyard that is an exact replica of Auschwitz.
>Employees who spend more than 10 minutes in the designated smoking area are required to change into prisoner clothes.
>>38395797
>>The PCs begin receiving prophetic emails, printouts and faxes.
>>receive email
>>"you're fired"
>>next day PC is fired
>>38402442
I like this. The PCs have been assembled as a group to investigate the strange comings and goings around the building. They've been granted a generic committee name and have been invested with varying levels of authority and clearance.
>>38402683
Yeah, just like in Paranoia, with the color coded city districts.
>>38398427
>PM
you fucking genius
>>38402578
kek
Message from: Crazy_prophet.exe
To: You
Lol your fired bich!!!111!
Reply Forward Delete
>>38395797
>>38402772
Thanks.
>>38395797
So Nightvale Incorperated ?
>>38402578
And by fired, naturally, this means he combusts.
>>38402919
The Night Vale branch of Initech
>>38395797
You know, this is horrifying in so many ways, and also absolutely incredible.
Considering most of my players played and loved The Stanley Parable, I expect it to be rather successfull.
This is my kinda thng right here
