HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT

I've been thinking about Business a lot recently.

This is probably because, as Rowan Rook and Decard grows as a company, the ideas of Professionalism and Management and all those fascinating concepts we wrap ourselves in to blunder through capitalism are coming to the forefront.

What does it mean to be professional, and why does it matter? What do we owe each other, as humans both trapped in and inherently separate from the capital machine? Given the relentless nature of the dominant global philosophy which we find ourselves born into, can we truly maintain a work/life balance or are those both the same thing?

I answer none of these questions in HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT, a survival horror game where you are hunted for sport by up-gunned Executives in the blood-stained halls of your office after a corporate buyout.

It's come out a bit edgy, perhaps, which wasn't my intention but here we are. I like to think that the first table, which reveals the motivations behind this Most Dangerous Game, offers a bit of depth - the idea that that the Execs themselves aren't really into it, and can be manipulated or reasoned with, gives players and GMs a bit more to mess around with. I was leaning on Sorry To Bother You, a bit, as well as the excellent scene in the horror film You're Next where the villain of the piece gets a bit grossed out with what's going on in the plot and needs a break.

Mechanically, the game is inspired by Eat The Reich, or rather I played Eat the Reich last week and felt like it was missing something so I wrote a game about that. When I was kicking my way through the streets of occupied Paris as Iryna, I had a fun time roleplaying and bouncing off the Flint and Chuck players - solid comedy group all round - but there was no way to mechanically support each other to reflect that camaraderie.

So HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT started with the idea that, to succeed, players would need to help each other out. And then, for drama, I came up with a resource called Tangle (still not sold on the name tbh) which you spend to help and earn by being generally awful to be around. That's pretty much it; I like the SPOILED mechanic which puts in a counterpoint to slamming loads of dice on everyone's rolls, which provides a bit of texture, and the way that you can invest more points to really help someone out.

AND there's a fun death spiral thing where you don't get worse at your job the more you're hurt, but you do become increasingly likely to get trapped and need the assistance of other players, and eventually they're going to either die saving you or leave you to die, and that's some good stuff I think.

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UKGE this weekend, and Pyrkon a couple of weeks after that, and the Hollows crowdfunder launches today (agh) and and and. Lots going on. Thankfully I wrote the back pages for March and April ahead of time, so I should be able to get the physicals out to those of you who are owed some time in, oh, June? July at the latest.

Love and horror,

• Grant