Enterprise RPG

What is the 'Enterprise RPG'?

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The enterprise is an hostile environment in which various set of skills are employed : technical ones, but also political ones. For decades, the enterprise landscape has changed, not really for the best, especially in big structures:

• Political and communication skills are, more than ever, on the frontline;
• Technical skills seem to stay in the background;
• Nowadays, who is concerned about change management, or reporting reality to bosses?

This game started as a reflection around a simulation system that would be adapted to simulate what's going on in modern enterprises in which nothing can be called a "failure" anymore and everything is always a success, where intentions are too often sufficient and overpass reality.

The objective of this game is to turn catastrophic situations in funny situations. In the game, you will be able :

• To create the PC (Player Characters) that correspond to your colleagues;
• To create various "encounters", for instance meetings, seminars, audits, etc.;
• To determine who is the best PC or NPC (Non Player Character) to win a challenge or a contest;
• In one word, to play the roles of your colleagues.

This system is not serious but let's say, it could be a fun way to deal with the office as the "setting" for a RPG.

First glance on characteristics and skills

Let's go straight to the point: many characteristics and skills in Enterprise RPG must represent the bad reality of companies.

First list

Let's try a first list:

Characteristic or skill?	Type	Comment
Lying	Skill	Could be attached to some alignment notion
Politics	Characteristic	Lying could be a skill deriving
Physical	Characteristic	Not so useful
Technical skills	Skills	Per domain
Sell	Skill	Can be used in other contexts
Invent stupid project	Skill	This should probably be generalized to other stupid stuff
Misunderstand	Skill	A good skill for manager is misunderstanding
Paranoia	Skill	Ability to imagine that someone is plotting agains you
Plot	Skill	A useful skill in enterprise
Detect Plot	Skill	Same
Bad faith	Skill	Same

A lot of skills should find their places in "combat rules".

First Ideas About Combat Rules

Combat rules could have several flavours:

• Confrontation: face to face
• Group combat: influence in a meeting, groupe versus group, etc.
• Plot

Spells, classes and armor class

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Spells

Some enterprise PCs have Charisma but not only. They are able to seduce people even if their real skills are low.

On the contrary, many people can be charmed by those spells, above all if they are not skilled enough to realize the subterfuge.

Skills should influence on saving throws with bonuses. Low skills should provide a malus for saving throws.

Anyway, the seduction should be considered as a magic power.

Magic could be based on Charisma.

Classes of characters

Indeed, as all PCs are human (are they really? ;), there are no races. But classes of characters also exist.

The Classes should match basic profile characteristics. Engineer could be a profile. Salesman or saleswoman another. HR, Marketing, Finance, etc. could be classes.

Classically, PC classes should require some level in a certain characteristic.

The belonging of a certain "influence cycle" should be possible. In France, ENA, X or ENSAM are acting like secret societies that create networks of people assigning themselves positions without them to be always connected to their real skills. That belonging could add some bonus or malus in different situations.

Armor class

Generally the boss of a company will have a very low armor class. If the business is owned by him, the AC is 1.

But for companies where the boss is just a nominated guy, which means he can be replaced, the his AC should be 2 or 3.

For the rest of people, their AC should be the boss AC minus the number of hierarchical levels between the boss and the PC position.

For instance, let us suppose your PC is the n-5 of a big boss who has an AC=2. Your AC is 7.

Note: PC should have AC modifiers depending on the situations.

A D20 system based on Microlite?

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Let's be clear, we need a D20 system. We could be inspired by the best compressed D&D game available now: Microlite (I love it and many of its variations!).

Characteristics:

• TAL-ents: your real technical talents that, too often, do not really matter
• POL-itics: your non-technical skills that, too often, are the things that matter
• SAN-ity: because like in CoC, you could become mad!

Detailed skills can be inspired by the ones named before.

To be continued