Idea: Dungeons and Deadlines

[Reynard]

Working out a game idea and need input: Dungeons and Deadlines

The game takes place in our modern world and all the PCs are office workers at Big Faceless Conglomerate, Inc. Due to a random (or was it?) elevator snafu, they discover a "Narnia" style portal in the basement. Down there, they not only have heroic fantasy abilities, there is danger, romance, drama and adventure. But the only way to access it is by staying working at BFC and so they still have deadlines and quarterly reports.

And that's it. That's all I got. Help me mold this idea-clay into a real campaign/setting/adventure form.

What system should I use? How should the game structure demand the PCs return to work (I really like the idea that they literally only get their lunch hour to adventure)? What would you want to see happen if that was the pitch made to you as a player? As a GM, what would you do with that as a pitch from your players?

 

[John Dallman]

Look at it from the potential PC's point of view if they are reasonably rational. I'm a software developer at a BFC, so I find this pretty easy. I also have a different view of adventure and danger from typical fantasy PCs. There's lots of cool stuff here but it's also dangerous and I could get killed. Selling off gold for real-world money isn't all that easy, and is likely to involve me with real-world criminals while I am not a wizard.

Some plausible things for PCS to do are (a) dive into the fantasy world and never come back. (b) try to find out why this is happening or (c) don't use it as a long-term adventuring environment, but try to use it to change their mundane lives for the better. Naively becoming a lunch-time adventurer seems a really bad idea, both for survival and profit.

So I think you need to think about why this is happening, and what will happen if these approaches are tried. Once you understand what's causing this weirdness, you can build stories around it.

 

[MGibster]

The lich Grogord the Gargantuan created the portal, entered our world, and took control of the human resources information system gaining access to all the personal identification information of all employees. This information is being used by Grogord to establish a magical link between his minions and our world so they can infiltrate and conquer. So human resources has done some internal recruiting of company assets to find those employees best suited to getting that data back and preventing Grogord's plan from coming to fruition.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Working out a game idea and need input: Dungeons and Deadlines

The game takes place in our modern world and all the PCs are office workers at Big Faceless Conglomerate, Inc. Due to a random (or was it?) elevator snafu, they discover a "Narnia" style portal in the basement. Down there, they not only have heroic fantasy abilities, there is danger, romance, drama and adventure. But the only way to access it is by staying working at BFC and so they still have deadlines and quarterly reports.

And that's it. That's all I got. Help me mold this idea-clay into a real campaign/setting/adventure form.

What system should I use? How should the game structure demand the PCs return to work (I really like the idea that they literally only get their lunch hour to adventure)? What would you want to see happen if that was the pitch made to you as a player? As a GM, what would you do with that as a pitch from your players?

I’d recommend taking a look at the Die RPG coming out from Rowan, Rook, & Decard, based on the comic by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans. It has similar elements… players create a “persona” which is their mundane character who then gets whisked away to a fantasy world (a la Narnia or the old D&D cartoon, or any number of other examples).

There, each persona gets a class and related abilities and they go on adventures.

The basic premise in Die is that they’re trapped there and can only return when they all agree to do so. You could tweak it a but so that it’s more about these brief daily incursions, and give them some reason to continue going back. I don’t think it’d take too much effort to get it to where you want.

The Kickstarter is already complete, with pdfs coming to backers lateOctober or early November. I think it may become available at that time, or you could preorder it now if you wanted. There is currently a beta that’s available for free which gives the classes and the basics of play.