MEGACORP: The Evil Mothership Campaign

You are the man. You are the law. You are the invisible hand of the market. You are the lord who giveth and who taketh away.

You are the Company.

Behold and quake with trepidation: a new way to play everyone's favorite sci-fi horror RPG, Mothership, with a dark corporate twist. In this initial public offering, I'll extend extensive mechanics, tools and advice for players to assume the roles of high-powered Company insiders.

This is Anti-Mothership: Players trade in their traditional victims of economic horror for corporate agents of moral horror, vested with political and narrative authority so potent it extends into the ludo-structure* (and even outside the game!?). Suck players in with fun, silly and surreal LARP-inspired gimmicks; as they sink deeper into Company culture and privilege, will they find it within themselves to crawl out?

*Even the Warden is beholden to the Company.

Definitions

• MEGACORP: It's what I'm calling the thing you're reading right now! A blurred line between Mothership campaign framework and Panic Engine system-hack.
• Operators: Player-characters in MEGACORP (used both individually and collectively). Elite corporate fixers deployed to the field. Equivalent to Mothership's "Crew."
• The Company: The corporation employing your Operators. May refer either to the parent megacorporation at the heart of Mothership's corporate world or the specific subsidiary on the Operators' paycheck.
• Moral Horror: When players take morally disquieting actions; complicity. ALSO: The situations from which said actions arise, ramifications of said actions, a broader context of ethics under capitalism. Tough choices and moral dilemmas, lesser or greater evils.
• LARP: Live-action roleplaying. It happens when tabletop roleplayers stand up.

Credits

• Writing: Ian Yusem (me)
• Patch Designs and Graphics (not the terrible looking ones): Will Jobst
• Brainstorming Internship: Emily Weiss

Table of Contents

[HYPERLINKS TO BE ADDED SOON!]

• Moral Horror and Buy-In
• Safety Tools
• Secure, Silence, Satiate: Demand EVERYTHING
• Mechanics Wanted (No Experience Necessary)
• Workplace Stressors
• Class Concerns
• !! NEW SKILL UNLOCKED !!
• Corporate Onboarding: Your Place in the Office
• Corporate-Approved Patches!
• Company Slogan
• Terms of Your Employment
• Executive Perks: Company Assets
• Allocated Materiel
• Mission-Adaptive Surgeries
• You've Been Promoted to Chief Narrative Officer!
• Paradigm Shift
• The Loyalty Card
• LARP LARP LARP LARP LARP
• [Ad]venture Capital
• Now Hiring: Useful Modules
• Adapting and Prepping Adventures
• The Office
• Office Locations
• Everyone's Favorite Coworkers
• Workspace Intrigue
• WHO IS THE CEO!?
• Exit Interview

Author's Aside: This is a toolkit! Pick the resources you like, cut the ones you don't; build your own MEGACORP campaign. I intentionally overburdened this post with more materials and ideas than feasibly usable by any one Warden.

MEGACORP Bare Essentials

If you're going to use any mechanics or resources from this guide for your home game, choose these (the thematic core):

• Workplace Stressors
• Company Slogan
• Corporate Materiel
• Paradigm Shift

Moral Horror and Buy-In

WHY MORAL HORROR?

As a deeply political game, Mothership often flirts with morality as a component of its horror — where corporate jobs make players complicit in the Company's violence, and the choice to save NPCs from nightmarish predicaments is always optional.

This corporate campaign framework leans all the way into these moral choices and offers players the opportunity to explore the other side of Mothership's proverbial socioeconomic coin: unencumbered by financial hardships, blessed with tactical supremacy. Come scratch an itch you probably shouldn’t; revel in the filth of your own depravity.

THE WARDEN'S ROLE

Unlike your typical Mothership experience, our evil-campaign Warden does not wield the corporation against players (it's their Company). Nor should the Warden push players toward evil; that is the players' own right, privilege and pleasure. Let them explore (im)morality at their own pace.

CONFRONTING MORAL HORROR (THE PATH TO GOOD)

When is it too late to go back? What does it look like to try?

In standard Mothership, PCs struggle to survive against all odds; here, corpos mired in status and comfort grasp at faint remnants of their moral compass. Fledging their gilded cages means abandoning all corporate privileges, mechanical and fictional, and resuming normal (miserable) life.

Would you like to know more? See: The Loyalty Card.

MEGACORP PLAYER QUALIFICATIONS

Players must be highly self-directed, as impetus for moving play forward falls to the empowered. Play leans more toward narrative gaming in the grand Forge* tradition, however: don't sweat it if players have little "storygaming" experience. Your OSR*/NSR*/WhateverSR-heads will abuse the narrative tools like cheat codes, and that's good too!

The idea of playing scumbag corpos may lodge firmly in the moral craw of many players (and good on them). So don't even consider playing this if anyone in your crew seems hesitant — "but the bleed-heavy LARP mechanics are a systematic metaphor for corporate oppression" will resonate only with deeply jaded horror sickos.

*If these words mean nothing to you, keep it that way.

Safety Tools

Speaking of dubious moral content: 

ALWAYS PLAY MEGACORP WITH SAFETY TOOLS!!!

Moreso than standard horror games (which already definitely need them), safety tools like Lines and Veils* and the X-Card* are desperately required here — not to mention content warnings.

Others have advocated for use of safety tools far better than I can, but here's my elevator pitch: Safety tools enable roleplayers to navigate dark and uncomfortable topics by giving all players agency over content included at the table. Through mutual trust and informed consent, we probe deeper into the black void that is the human condition.

As the Warden: be proactive to work safety tools into the natural flow of play. Judiciously deploy the tools yourself to break the barrier of entry for your players. MEGACORP is more than a little close to home, keep an eye out for each other.

*Look these terms up if you're unfamiliar, they and many other great safety resources besides abide on the world wide web.

Secure, Silence, Satiate: Demand EVERYTHING

Like Mothership's classic Survive/Solve/Save triumvirate, we have our own villainous maxims:

• Secure: Protect the company's interests.
• Silence: Prevent the incident from leaking.
• Satiate: Pursue self-interest and gratification.

We omit Survival intentionally because it is assumed (by the Operators). They are inevitable, invaluable, non-expendable… right?

Players Should…

• Strive to achieve all three S's in every mission: anything less may reflect poorly on your quarterly evaluation.
• Be bad! Seize any and all opportunities to make others' lives worse for corporate gain.
• Be human. Demonstrate flaws, idiosyncrasies, vices, and your personal agenda for all the table to see.
• Use every asset at your disposal, then push the Warden for more. You are the Company.
• Bind NPCs with obligations: debts, favors, blackmail, corporeal litigation.
• Dare to flirt with hubris.

Hostile entities and inexplicable phenomena are merely assets to be seized and studied; the true problem, your worst nightmare, is the labor getting in your way.

Mechanics Wanted (No Experience Necessary)

Additions and deviations from standardized Mothership regulations: concerning Stress, Classes and Skills.

Workplace Stressors

All Mothership Stress and Panic rules remain in play. However, we do have a few… mandatory addendums.

Corporate Trauma Response*: Gain no Stress when witnessing human suffering or otherwise experiencing empathy.

*In addition to, not instead of, your class's Trauma Response.

GAIN STRESS WHEN…

• You suffer a professional setback: personal embarrassments, checked power, loose ends.
• You take damage: you weren't prepared to dirty your hands or consider your own mortality.
• You fail to indulge your vice(s) regularly.

PANIC WHEN…

• A core mission objective slips irrevocably out of reach.
• Confronted with the Company's ultimate fallibility.

Class Concerns

There's only one unbreakable rule in MEGACORP: THE TEAMSTER CLASS IS BANNED!

As tragic working class hero, card carrying unionizer, and everyone's favorite girl Friday, Teamsters are of course enemy #1. With this no-good troublemaker out, who can we find to fill the position?

When using core classes, consider what role they play in an elite corporate context:

• Marine: More officer than grunt, politically connected Company marines may command a personal squad of stim-popping killers (~3 NPC followers). Marines liaise with other Company military assets, like fleet bombardments and extraction teams.
• Android: Even among insiders, the Android's connections run deepest. You may have a personal relationship with or be a fork of whatever fell sentience lies at the heart of the Company. You probably know everything there is to know.
• Scientist: You invented something so critical to the Company's operations, they may actually need you more than you need them. The scientific world is your oyster.

While there's nothing wrong with limiting class options to the terrible three (see above), suitable products are available to round out your evil lineup:

• Agent: Found in the eponymous pamphlet publication by Anodyne Printware, this corporate espionage specialist acts as the team's hands-on fixer. Practical, expendable.
• Lawyer: Likewise published by Anodyne (me), Breach of Contract contains a corporate attorney class. While BoC postures Lawyers as fallen angels, suitable for slotting into a low-life Mothership crew, ours are loyal corporate commissars: equipped to treat with external parties and entities.
• Executive: Tuesday Knight Games previously teased their upcoming 5th official class with some new, appropriately corporate skills (like "Management" and "Sales"). You can find it in the official Mothership Discord server by searching "WIP executive class" (look for someone named "seanmccoy"). Hopefully for you future readers, this already exists in final form.

So you don't have to buy an entire book just to see what the Lawyer Class is about, here are its pertinent mechanical stipulations:

BONUS LIST: D&D Class Comparison Chart

• Half-Elf: Executive
• Dwarf: Lawyer
• Orc: Marine
• Night Elf: Android
• Goblin: Agent
• Wizard: Scientist

!! NEW SKILL UNLOCKED !!

All corporate PCs gain access to Corewise when allocating bonus Skills. In practice, Corewise allows players to dictate shifts in elitist culture — with potentially drastic setting consequences.

Corewise (Expert Skill):

Prerequisites: Art/Theology/Athletics. Advancements: Command/Xenoesotericism.

Capacity to present one's self as a practitioner of taste and authority; familiarity with Corespace trends and politics.

Breach of Contract addendum: The Lawyer may choose Corewise in lieu of Rimwise (must choose Prerequisite Trained Skill as bonus).

Corporate Onboarding: Your Place in the Office

Session zero tools and prompts for situating your characters in the corporate world.

Corporate-Approved Patches!

1. "Sleep Is For The Cryofrozen"
2. "COMPANY PROPERTY // DO NOT DISTRIBUTE"
3. "Executive Toy" (Kissy Lips)
4. "CEO In Training" (Larva)
5. "MANDATORY UNIFORM EMBELLISHMENT"
6. (Anthropomorphic Scissors, Red Tape)
7. "Who Will Stop Us? / Executive Retreat XX25" (Palm Tree)
8. "This Is My Capitalist Face" (Anime Girl)
9. "Not Just You / Everyone You Know"
10. "I Love My / CORPORATE WIFE / Who I Met / ON THE JOB / Where We / FORCE MULTIPLY / And / SHIFT THE PARADIGM"

Company Slogan

Create a Company slogan or memetic touchstone with your party before the session; a catchy office saying that you just can't help repeating and repeating and repeating….

1. "That's not appropriate workplace conduct."
2. "A win is a win."
3. "Let's keep things apolitical."
4. "Thought leaders don't cry."
5. "I'm just looking out for the shareholders."
6. "There's always voluntary redundancy!"
7. "Could we be thinking bigger?"
8. "Have you heard the good news?"
9. "Yes, this is ethical."
10. "You are like a [father/mother/parent] to me."

After players create or select their slogan, count down to your inaugural group cheer. Then do it again, "I can't hear you!"

In an ideal world, players will perpetuate the slogan as a running gag throughout your session(s) — vying against each other for best comedic timing. If players don't pick up the phrase naturally, repeat group countdowns as needed.

Terms of Your Employment

!! BONUS CONTRACT !! BONUS CONTRACT !! BONUS CONTRACT !!

IT'S IN A GOOGLE DOC! LINK HERE!!!

What's this? An employment contract written by actual attorney Emily Weiss of Picket Line Tango and Breach of Contract fame? …am I dreaming?

Like with the BoC originals, this document serves dual purposes:

1. A fun little handout prop to immerse your players in the world of corporate bureacracy. In other words, support the LARP.
2. A reference sheet of professional perks and employment conditions. Of the latter, Wardens should note Section II: requiring Team members take initiative to bring in new business (IP and subsidiaries) quarterly. Players shall be left to manage their own perks.

If you're brave, consider allowing players to write-in an additional perk or two before signing (within reason and tone). Premium management demands the best from their compensation package, after all.

Executive Perks: Company Assets

The players are agents of change, not desperate survivors or victims of fate. Equip them appropriately.

Allocated Materiel

Before each deployment, players roll, choose or invent up to three (3) substantive widgets to use at their discretion. Materiel should feel "overpowered" — game-breaking, world-shaking. This is not your Mother's loadout.

1. 500mcr incidentals fund.
2. Jump-3 executive transport ship fully loaded with all means of sin.
3. Key NPC's family member, as prisoner.
4. Programming override code for relevant android or AI.
5. Backup sleeves hibernating on site (1/PC), receiving constant memory upload.
6. Terraforming pylon. Controls weather on continent scale, planets habitable in 25 years.
7. 20 networked baboon soldiers, understand basic commands [C:20 Dorsal Mortar 3d10 DMG I:15 W:1].
8. SCUD program ordinance (sentient nuclear payload, perfect tracking).
9. Unthinkable airborne virus (sealed) and 6 doses antidote.
10. Gun®. Kills what it shoots.

If players request additional corporate assistance mid-mission, if feasible, the answer should be yes. Reward creativity — they have the resources of a megacorporation at their backs. Such supplementary assets take 1d100 [+] days to reach the Team unless already established as in-system.

Mission-Adaptive Surgeries

"Congratulations! You aren't required to consent!"

1. Doppelganger facelift (as key NPC).
2. Fatty compound internally cooks limb for emergency rations (tingles pleasantly).
3. Auto-cryosleep (mucous cocoon).
4. Pre-coagulated blood.
5. Total organ replacement from preternaturally lucky donors.
6. Pain receptors neutralized.
7. Four-legged ambulation.
8. Sleep-inducing functions cauterized.
9. Photosynthetic graft.
10. Advanced++ metastatic cancer. You have 72 hours to live (your given notice).

You've Been Promoted to Chief Narrative Officer!

The #1 most important thing to remember while playing: this isn't a roleplaying game, it's a LARP. The further you can push things away from usual roleplaying dynamics (and even into the real world), the better. Needless to say, MEGACORP works best for in-person play.

Paradigm Shift

Narrative superpowers up players' sleeves — mechanical representations of their characters' political status. The rich play a different game than you and I.

Each player starts the campaign with 1 available Paradigm Shift, refresh when you…

• Crush a soul utterly under the Company boot.
• Burn a $20 bill in real life.
• [insert your own refresh condition here!]

PARADIGM SHIFT EFFECTS:

1. This here NPC is a Company plant (cannot be a primary mission target).
2. Advance time up to 24 hours. The Warden summarizes elapsed events.
3. Change a word in a contract or other document.
4. Induce a faction to act decisively, according to their current ambitions.
5. Summon a friendly dropship, no matter how improbable.
6. Restrict the Warden from saying a word of your choice (for 15 minutes).
7. Confirm a pre-existing conspiracy or rumor, birthed into reality.
8. Set a timer for 30 seconds. You may look at the module until the timer is up.
9. A dwindling or scarce resource immediately runs out (e.g. air, food).
10. OFFICE PARTY!!! Session pauses for 10 minutes. In real life, dance or play a party game.

Pluck more ideas from player brains between sessions.

The Loyalty Card

Using this optional tool, we represent PCs' internal moral compass with a simple physical chit (one for each player):

• On one side: "LOYALTY"
• The other: "DOUBT"

All cards begin showing LOYALTY. Flip your card to DOUBT when you no longer feel absolute loyalty to the corporation. This signals to the remaining players that you've gone a bridge too far — you can't keep doing this.

If everyone flips their card to DOUBT: the Team resigns from the corporation. You are excommunicated, cut off from all assets and perks, and potentially in grave danger (see Employment Contract). You're a normal Mothership Crew now.

CEDE ALL NARRATIVE AUTHORITY TO THE WARDEN! 

ONCE MORE INTO THE ECONOMIC HORROR BREACH!

Fellow corporate operators smell disloyalty on you like stale sweat: the first to flip their Loyalty Card immediately exposes themselves to liability (everyone else in the party is still LOYAL):

• They could exploit you: keep tabs, manipulate, blackmail.
• They could betray you, severing the liability.
• Perhaps most terrifying, they could join you.

BONUS LARP SUGGESTION: Fuck around with your Loyalty Card! Mar, tear or burn the card to hint at your Operator's inner turmoil without resorting to the irretractable flip. Record notable ethical [mis]deeds on the LOYALTY face for posterity — like an extension of your character sheet. Express trust by lending your cards to other players. Go nuts with it!

LARP LARP LARP LARP LARP

I can't reasonably flesh out every deranged LARP idea I had for this blog post without driving myself to monetization, so I'm leaving you some half-baked nuggets. Use them if you dare!

DISCLAIMER: I know that LARPing and ~Story Gaming~ are not the same thing, I'm intentionally conflating them for comedic effect. Don't @ me! P.S. I play and enjoy both.

Tangible LARPing Accoutrement

• Get up and move around! Concoct secret plans with fellow players, negotiate privately with the Warden for personal gain, arbitrate outcomes with tests of strength, dexterity and wit instead of dice.
• Dress up! Wear formal business attire for your sessions. Use character nametags.
• Play muzak! For extra fun, roll intermittent ads (turn off your adblocker and/or log out of Spotify).
• Adopt real-life corporate jobs!
• HR: Bring snacks and drinks.
• Secretary: Record the minutes.
• Freelance Artist: Fashion handy props during the game. Don't forget your crafts supplies!
• Treasurer: Pay out actual currency (small change) to fellow players as reward for cool plays.
• Middle Manager: Enforce slogan/catchphrase usage.
• COO: Maintain the horror atmosphere: jump-scare fellow players when they least expect it.
• Intern: Play nude, exposed to raw corporate greed [JOKE ALERT! NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMTPTION!]
• …other stuff!
• Fuck shit up, nerds! Get freaky in this thing!

Put More Story in Thar

Worldbuilding prompts!?

To help players feel more ownership of and responsibility for the Company, you may wish to host a structured, prompt-based worldbuilding jam before (and/or between) sessions.

Who is the Company? What's their aesthetic? What evil might they do in the world (and what good)?

Intra-party conflict!?

In true corporate fashion, players could violently jockey against one another for fiscal position rather than working together as one big happy capitalist family.

You might best accomplish this via establishing venemous character bonds before play, rolling out conflicting secret objectives, and/or designing some sort of mechanical PvP subsystem (involving Stress?). See Who Am I (Corporate Gossip Edition!) below for a silly tool in this vein.

Narrative overhaul!?

The Paradigm Shift idea only barely scratches the surface of player-driven narrative authority (as political metaphor). If you want more, I'd start by looking at the give-and-take Move mechanics and location/concept-based "character" sheets from Belonging Outside Belonging games. Imagine the players taking actions as "Company HQ" or "The Subjugated Masses." Wow!

The issue lies in marrying these narrative systems harmoniously with Mothership's core rules, and retaining some of that NSR problem solving we want from Evil Mothership gameplay. It's tricky, but conceivable.

Maybe I'll tackle this conundrum as a PRODUCT someday.

Who Am I? (Corporate Gossip Edition!)

Stick an index card on every player's forehead (or elsewhere on their person, where'er they can't see). The card lists personal gossip about their character, as conceived by another player. All other players act as if it is true, and you heal 5 Stress if you guess yours during the game. Example ideas follow:

• Mole
• Pacifist
• Incompetent
• Toupee
• C-suite's child
• Smothers doves
• Contagious
• Secret android
• Secret reptilian
• Bad kisser

IMPORTANT NOTE: The above is the least serious, silliest, most impractical idea in this post. Don’t use it, probably.

[Ad]venture Capital

The above stuff is cool and all, but of course we need good old-fashioned Mothership adventures to make it all work. Let's explore together which kinds of adventures work best, and how to adapt them for MEGACORP-style play.

Now Hiring: Useful Modules

Unlike Mothership's wily, minute-to-minute scramble for survival, MEGACORP gaming encompasses a broader perspective and more ambitious scope. When players might level a planet on a whim; claustrophobic ship/facility dungeon crawls are far too small a pond to play in. Look for these qualities when selecting adventures:

• Substantial setting size: stations, colonies, whole planets or systems. NPC populations in the hundreds to millions.
• Emphasis on social conflict and intrigue. Avoid solitary creature features, except perhaps as a twist or change of pace for unprepared and unsupported Operators.
• Big problems, well beyond the reach of a standard Mothership crew: alien invasions, war, pandemics, religious schisms. Things that might be contextual backdrops or forgone timeline calamities in Mothership become achievable objectives in MEGACORP.
• Of interest to the Company: opposition to be quelled, revelatory technology to be harnessed.

Sample Adventure Recommendations

• A Pound of Flesh: Muscle in on Golyanovo II Bratva. Usurp Yandee. Stabilize the Dream.
• Gradient Descent: Bring Monarch to heel. Re-open Cloudbank for business.
• Owe My Soul to the Company Store: Infiltrate Isotelus, pocket the winning faction.
• Picket Line Tango: Break the blockade. Acquire and pacify the colony, useful assets.
• Hull Breach Vol. 1: Pick a lowly Publico subsidiary as your Company and climb the pyramid OR wage war on Publico as an outside competitor. Manipulate Publico's internal politics (see Company Pyramid) and sector crises to your advantage. Leverage of individual articles might entail…
• Siesta-3 Autonomous Zone: Stoke labor resistance using the rogue station as kindling.
• WNDRLND / Residue Processing / Road Work: Seize or sabotage key competitor holdings.
• Manhunt / Bones and Videotape / Hellkites / Parasite Portfolio: Weaponize and deploy xenofauna against hostile targets.

Author's Aside: Of these, I'd recommend Owe My Soul by Archon's Court Games highest as a manageably open-ended introductory adventure for this style of play (minimal adaptation needed). A Pound of Flesh and its upcoming expanded campaign resources are your best option as the main focus of longer-term play.

Supplements to Raid

• Breach of Contract: Expansive legal horror toolkit — invaluable for peeling back the hood on corporate infrastructure. Contracts as Operator ordinance.
• Agent Class: Stylishly evil spy archetype with a mini-corporate espionage toolkit to boot.
• Corpocrat Dogs (Hull Breach Vol. 1): Corporate handler NPC generation tables, must-have for expanding the Company's freakish hoard of employees and/or embodying competitor organizations in rival operators.
• WNDRLND (Hull Breach Vol. 1): An extravagant S-Class station, potentially the Operators' home. Even more corporate NPCs and ideas to steal.

Adapting and Prepping Adventures

Most adventures will need a little elbow grease to accommodate such elite corporate Operators. Use these precepts as a starting point.

Hooks as opportunities for faction intrigue:

• Why are they sending you to deal with this, rather than disposable contractors?
• Why does this matter: Whose neck is on the line? How does this fit into broader corporate machinations? What happens to the Company should you fail?

Corporate objectives; more ambitious, more sinister:

• Where a normal Mothership crew would surely founder.
• Emphasis on open-ended, player-directed play.
• Implying ample possibilities for moral horror.

Plan for the long-term. Missions in MEGACORP might span weeks, months or years, with loftier player ambitions resolved via time-skipping abstractions (e.g. terraform a planet, seed a conspiracy, siege a colony):

• What will this place look like a month from now? A year from now? 10 years?
• What countermeasures might a rival corporation deploy against lingering Operators?
• Which supply and logistics problems could impact player efforts? Where is the nearest help?

Briefing Operators:

• Offer players insider knowledge. Maps, key NPCs, anticipated threats. The Company's eye sees much, but not all.
• Players choose Materiel, undergo Adaptive Surgeries, consult with corporate contacts (see The Office below).
• Encourage players to concoct a plan of action, but be mindful of session pacing. Set a hard time-limit (e.g. 5 minutes) for strategizing while you prep possible responses.

Example Objective Archetypes

Don't be afraid to turn an adventure on its head, using typical disaster scenarios as mere staging grounds for deeper, stranger corporate aims. Leave leeway for player interpretation and execution.

• Render the location suitable for colonization.
• Capture and extract the horror.
• False flag atrocity.
• Broker acquisition of/install new leadership in local organization.
• Profitably harness rogue/alien technology.
• Manage a safe and exotic corporate retreat (50+ guests).
• Open a warp gate in the manner of our custom.
• Shift a universal paradigm.
• Identify the new CEO, prophesized to be in the vicinity.
• Establish formal relations with non-human culture.
• Trial and convict relevant undesirable(s).
• Increase productivity by any means necessary.

The Office

What is a corporation without its office? Your workplace serves as a campaign hub, replete with definitely-normal coworkers, water coolers and other workplace locales, and random events to disrupt the industry status quo.

Yes, this is the office.

Office Locations

• Reception. Verdant garden of exotic xeno-flora, dangerous specimines cordoned off and labelled. A short zero-G leap across the threshhold betrays the entire office is air-gapped, suspended by powerful magnets. Couriers constantly ferry drive-borne data in and out. Given the faintest whiff of intruders, the front desk unfolds into an armored anti-personnel drone capable of slaughtering a small army [C:90 Seeker Missiles (5) 5d10 DMG I:75 AP:20 W:5(30)].
• Cubicle Pastures: AI-integrated, automatically organizing cubicle walls reshuffle constantly for "maximum worker synergy." Increasingly idiosyncratic and favoritism-prone: strands messy eaters in convoluted labyrinths, shyly abuts budding romances. Pray it favors you come an emergency.
• Water Cooler. Inside the tank — the office mascot, a striped eel, contorts to form single-word conversation starters. It's fine. People still drink the water (carefully). It tastes… ok.

Eel Words:

1. Divorce
2. Fluids
3. Value
4. Content
5. Movies
6. Dinner
7. Aging
8. Jokes
9. Confidence
10. Revenge

• Your Personal Office!: High-tech office chair featuring deep tissue massage, electromagnetic brain pulses, subliminal affirmations. Sitting in it feels better than anything you ever have or will experience. Heals 1d10 Stress between missions. Coveted by all.
• Truth Zone. An airtight, soundproof conference room rigged with foolproof ambient lie-detectors. The air feels chokingly close, silence buzzing angrily in your ears. Original portraiture of shareholders glower from the walls.
• Showroom. New and prototype Company products available for employee trials and appreciation. Foods, inscrutable but satisfyingly fidgety widgets, live weaponry, substances. Lovingly maintained by gentle robot arms that descend from the ceiling.
• Office of Family Planning. Agents secretly manage employees' loved ones to achieve domestic harmony. Complicit employee clients gain pacified children, attentive spouses, prompt friends — life made seamless. Killer candy bowl.
• Executive Stables. Every team member recieves their very own newborn Foal when they join the Company. Its health and prowess is representative of your career. You have a sense your Horse will be killed if you ever leave. Race track, dressage court included; gambling facilitated.
• Ethics Training Suite*. A veritable bowling alley of trolleys and bridges, crisscrossing like a board game. The trolleys are occupied.

Ethics Props:

1. Men
2. Your Horse
3. Your office chair
4. Puppies
5. Women
6. Androids
7. Child version of you
8. Credsticks ("DO NOT STEAL")
9. Company IP (floppy disc)
10. Cure for advanced++ cancer

*For added fun: Call a real-life parent during the game and ask for their trolley decision; this becomes the Company's objective moral truth. Gain Stress if you failed.

Where in the World is Your Office? You might be located at corporate HQ, an insulated cell in a buzzing hive of departments just like yours. Or you might be on your own in the commercial frontier, built like a burrowing parasite into a non-Company station (e.g. Prospero's Dream). Stick your office someplace interesting!

Everyone's Favorite Coworkers

1. Hoyt Herringbone (Receptionist). Each and every day is "exceptional" or "special" and "don't you just look fantastic in that little number?" Brings "pet" feral hog Pennsylvania into work. A pretty face with zero combat training.
2. Bob Cobb (Acquisitions). Supreme nasality, squeezed into latex several sizes too small. Constant and embarrassing martial arts practitioner. Procures and briefs Team on Materiel usage.
3. Helga Blum (Foreign Relations). Velvet gown with train, terrible fake accent (Warden's worst). Degenerate bloodsports gambler, in debt to everyone. Android. Refers Team to mission-critical contacts.
4. Jai Hooper (Fleet Manager). Tattooed to all hell. Dangerously optimistic ladder climber: "Don't you think we could run this place better ourselves? Let's pull a coup!" Supervises ship maintenance and dispatch.
5. Vic the Tick (Licensed Corporate Jester). Unthinkably filthy, unsettling dead-eyed stare. Serial arsonist. Beloved by unknown exec, untouchable.
6. Uther Necropolis (In-House Surgeon). Several extra eyes, jumpy. Mutters insults in Pig Latin, as if no one else understands. Prefers replacing worn bodies with fresh sleeves.
7. Aramis de la Vega (Hyperspace Oracle). Disease-proof bubble helmet, shyly flirtatious. Sees ghosts, is very relaxed about it. Replaces need for warp gates; prophesizes Jump malfunctions.
8. Citrine Tanaka (Human Resources). Hairless, downcast eyes (at first). Pathological copycat. Follows you everywhere, adopts your mannerisms, attempts to replace you. Manages mercenaries and prisoners.
9. Tiffany Le (Internal Affairs). It's pronounced "luh." Trying incredibly hard to be your work mom. Probes for weakness, always listening. Knows what you did. Armed.
10. Byrd ("Branch Specialist"). Metallic eyes, loud affair with the Keurig coffee machine. Painfully sincere and likeable. Infiltrator android from another corporation. Mission: Collect CEO DNA.

Workspace Intrigue

Commit these random events to your office battlefield; enriching between-mission downtime with on-brand content and corporate drama.

1. Rumored merger with fiercest rival, delegate visits the office (your nemesis).
2. Report: Operator-championed product induces [agony] in 30% of customers. Recall!?
3. Agonizingly awkward cubicle orgy.
4. NEW POLICY! Bring your children to work.
5. NEW POLICY! Less lethal methods only.
6. NEW POLICY! Assigned a Work Wife (gender non-specific).
7. Experiment loose in the office [as Xeiram, Hull Breach Vol. 1 OR your favorite monster].
8. Product brainstorming session. Best idea wins single-seat racing ship.
9. Mysterious pizza delivery.
10. !!! DOWNSIZING !!! Lowest PC earner at risk in 1 month (track new acquisitions). :(

WHO IS THE CEO!?

Isn't that just the question? Someone could make a whole zine outta that idea! That someone could be me, if the appropriate incentives are in place…

SHADOW CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN RUNNING NOW!!!

• Goal: $2000
• Here's my PayPal: http://paypal.me/anodyneprintware
• In your payment, include the message "MEGACORP" so I know what it's for.

!! DISCLAIMER !! Sending money via the above link constitutes a one-time, non-refundable, non-tax-deductible donation and DOES NOT entitle the payer to any goods or services.

Crowdfunding Q&A:

• How do we know what the total amount raised is? You don't.
• When does the crowdfunding period end? That would be telling.
• Is this a joke? Pay me and find out.

Exit Interview

Blah blah conclusory sentences blah blah restated thesis blah blah. I'm tired. In my traditional fashion, I may have gone a little overboard with this post. I hope you like it.

Though it may shock you, I intend to design EVEN MORE content for MEGACORP in my next newsletter post. In that upcoming post, I'll also be extrapolating immediately applicable Warden tools and advice for using moral horror in traditional Mothership campaigns.

Want more moral horror in your life? 

Sign up for the Anodyne Direct newsletter here!

Patches!?!?

Yeah, Will did a pretty fucking sick job right? I bet you would like to OBTAIN PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of one or more of them, you capitalist dog you.

I do intend to print these up as ACTUAL IRON-ON PATCHES someday soon. Want to know when? Well I'll just have to direct you again to my newsletter :).

 

Actual(ly) Play(ing)?

If someone out there gets this thing to their home table, I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT! A great place to share MEGACORP experiences would be the Anodyne Printware guestbook :)

ALSO: I hereby encourage all fair game designers of the land to expand support for corporate-aligned Mothership crews in their own blog posts! If you dare take up my challenge, I offer you this advice: the corporation is FUCKED UP and WEIRD, yo! Don't write boring companies.

Further Reading

I was heavily inspired to write this by my favorite convention, Metatopia, and all the rad narrative games and LARPs I get to play there each year. Particular credit goes to Papers: A Surreal Office Larp which has been kicking around in my brain since late 2024.

To quote Papers: 

"This is totally normal. It's just something you do at the office."