• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

I'm Designing an RPG About Working in an Office...With a Twist.

Shiv

Explorer
Hey there,

I'm Craig Campbell. I've been working as a freelance game designer in my free time (I have a day job as an architect) for five years or so. I've designed primarily for D&D, along with some stuff for Pathfinder and Gamma World. Primarily articles and adventures in Dragon and Dungeon Magazines and the Wizards website.

For the past several months, I've been designing my very own small-scale, rules-light RPG. The rules are written and I'm running playtests. In the next month or so, the playtest push will move to some friends and industry contacts to garner more feedback on the game. In time, I'll be looking to push playtests to an even larger audience. And, in time, assuming the game gains traction, I'll be looking to publish it.

My game is called "Murders & Acquistitions." Here's a very brief synopsis of what the game is about, taken from my rules document.

“Murders & Acquisitions” is a tabletop role-playing game set in an alternate real world Earth where deception, espionage, subterfuge, and murder are the norm, and even taken to extremes.

The players portray a team working at one of the corporations in this world. But they’re not simply drones content to toil away in the corporate trenches for their entire lives. Rather, they are upwardly-mobile go-getters who strive to rise through the corporate ranks as quickly as possible. They seek money, power, and prestige and will stop at nothing to attain these things.


As you might surmise from the above, M&A is intended to be a fun, ridiculous, gimmicky game play experience. It’s built around hyperbole and a strong sense of tongue-in-cheek humor used to create an evocative, fun story.

There's a basic rule system, with modular add-ons if you want your world to have magic, monsters, cybertech, horror elements, mutant powers, etc. Very simple system but versatile, I hope.

I've been blogging monthly about my game design process here:

http://newworldalchemy.com/wp/

Scroll thru and look for the entries titled, "Murdering and Acquiring." There are five posts up, with more to come.

Why am I posting about this? Two reasons.

First, I'd like to generate some traffic at NewWorldAlchemy.com. My posts deal with my game, but the site's owner, Dave, also posts very regularly about his board game designs, which he's looking to publish in time.

Second, I'm putting this out there as a heads up, just to put in in your heads. In time, I'll be coming back here to look for additional playtesters.

So, check it out. I hope you enjoy my little game.

And feel free to ask questions here.

Craig Campbell
http://www.nerdburgershow.com/
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad


Do you plan this to be a long term campaign like a DnD game or are you thinking more fun, quirky one-shot like Fiasco?

I lean toward one-shots and mini-campaigns (perhaps 6-10 sessions). Character advancement will support shorter campaigns. But if a group really wanted to play a much longer campaign, I suppose they could by just "leveling up" a little more slowly.
 
Last edited:

My first thought is the Mirror Universe from Star Trek. Sounds almost how things may have progressed before Earth gets advanced technology.
 

Two games come to mind that you might want to check out for inspiration:

The Laundry by Cubicle 7. It's a game about working in an office where bureaucracy interferes with saving the world from otherworldly horrors. It's not the same as what you're proposing but just reminds me a little due to the office environment.

In terms of the focus on trying to get a promotion with the humor theme, that reminds me a bit of Paranoia. Not an office environment but it does feature characters trying to rise through the ranks which often involves murder and humor.

I like the idea of what you have so far :)
 

In terms of the focus on trying to get a promotion with the humor theme, that reminds me a bit of Paranoia. Not an office environment but it does feature characters trying to rise through the ranks which often involves murder and humor.

I like the idea of what you have so far :)

Yeah, it certainly has some themes in common with Paranoia. Which I consider a feature of the game. :-)
 

I've sent out playtest materials to about a dozen friends and industry contacts around the US. So it looks like I can successfully take my notes and turn them into a rule book of sorts. Or at least they'll tell me if I was successful.

17 page Player Guide
7 page Supervisor Guide
A bunch of pre-generated character sheets and whatnot

In time I'll be looking to bring in some of you ENWorlders to do some playtesting. But for now, I want to focus on this round of playtesting.

Craig Campbell
http://www.nerdburgershow.com/
 

400 views. Wow.

Any questions? Bueller...Bueller...?

I'm still tracking this thread and am willing to discuss the game here.

Craig Campbell
 


Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top