Ideas for Players as Corporations

[Christopher Hawkins]

I'm putting together a cyberpunk game at the moment. Players are, for the most part, playing fictional versions of themselves.

However, I've had a couple of players express interest in playing corporations within the world. Not CEO's or executives; actual corporate entities.

I've worked out a basic ruleset for running them - the game as a whole uses the Savage Worlds engine, so I've built the corporate rules from that. Corporations have attributes (might, cunning, etc) and skills (research, legal, marketing, covert ops). Corporations can spend resources to re-tool their structure, allowing them to change their skills and attributes.

Instead of wounds, corporate entities have profit. For this, I'm basically using Rogue Trader's profit factor system, but it's based on a d20, rather than a d100. A corporate entity that is damaged looses points of profit factor.

Profit factor can be used to purchase assets that give bonuses or allow certain actions (manufacturing plant, elite security forces, large headquarters, corporate arcology, etc). Assets can be liquidated for profit if required.

I'll be running the corporate games as 1-on-1 sessions. Each corporate player starts out as a small, mobile hyper-corp, and has to fight their way up the chain to try and reach mega-conglomerate status.

I was wondering if any of you have any thoughts or suggestions for what kind of challenges or 'adventures' to throw at these players.

 

[Stormonu]

This sounds like an interesting idea for a game, but coming up with adventures I think will be the most difficult part. Since the players are running the corporation at large instead of an individual, it's hard to zoom in on individual opposition and probably harder to find areas where several corporations will need to work together.

I suppose the adventures would mostly be the same vein as you might expect when running a country (such as in Birthright). It might help if the corps that are being run would have reason to work together - say, perhaps one is a Marketing Congolmerate, another does Shipping, and another does Retail.

Some adventure ideas:

1) A new technology emerges. Who will be able to secure the rights to market, manufacture and distribute the goods?

2) A blackmailer or whistleblower has gotten some juicy secrets about the company and threatened to reveal the info, which could cause a serious profit loss. The individual has to be found and silenced.

3) A rogue manager in the company has been performing illicit operations on the side. The corporation can see that something is wrong, and needs to uncover the operation and deal with it.

4) War, protest or some other unsavory rebellion breaks out in an region where the corporation has a lot of investment. What can the corp do to protect its assets and see the issue through?

5) Paradigm shift. Society changes and the corporations have to scramble to keep themselves relevant. The expenditure of capital to "modernize" has to be balanced with the long term effects of change.

6) Hostile Takeover. A new corporation attempts to muscle in on existing business. The corp's gotta go to war over this one to survive.

 

[Christopher Hawkins]

Thanks Storm, those are some really nice plot seeds!

I agree with you that it would be very difficult to get the corporations to work together. I agree so strongly with that point, that I'm running the corporate games as solo affairs. That way, each of the corporations in the game will be free to plot, maneuver, and seek world domination... *ahem*. Sorry, 'Market Supremacy" .

I'll be running some of the corporate games in person, and some of them over Skype.

I'm also planning on having a certain degree of causal crossover between the human and corporate sides of the game. eg:

1) Actions of one of the corporations may make certain resources more or less accessible for a few sessions.

2) Actions of the human players may weaken a rival corporation, giving the PCorp (Player Corporation) a momentary advantage.

3) The PCorp may contract the PC's to do a certain job (or even be running as an adversary). In these cases, the player of the corporate entity will be listening to the game over Skype, and typing in their own sinister commands...

 

[Christopher Hawkins]

Oh, and if anyone's interested interested, here's the background for the setting (With images!)

Cyberpunk: The 2012 Overture: Welcome.

 

[Remus Lupin]

If you haven't read it, you should check out "the Unincorporated Man," which delves into these themes. You seem to have grabbed your premise right from it.

The Unincorporated man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin

Not wild about the politics myself, but love the future world building.

 

[Stormonu]

By the way, while this is designed around running a nation, with a little bit of tweaking, you might be able to use some of the ideas for running a corp:

NationStates | create your own country

 

[Christopher Hawkins]

Well, now I'm addicted to Nation States ^_^

& Remus, I'll have a look at it - Seems interesting!