[BOLD] AFTERLIFE, INCORPORATED [END BOLD] You don’t have to be an immortal soul devouring demon to work here... but it helps! A metaphysical white collar satire by Nick Wedig suitable for tabletop, play-by-post or larping for 3-20 players [BOLD] BRIEFING PAMPHLET TEXT [END BOLD] So you died. Big deal. It wasn’t actually all that bad. You had a lot of sin on your soul, though. You were supposed to go straight to The Eternal Hell of Biting Fangs or the Hell of Crushing Stones or someplace. Somewhere that unspeakable monstrosities would rip your soul apart and feast on its dripping pieces for all eternity. You managed to escape that fate. Instead you wound up here: Afterlife, Incorporated. You’re a white collar desk jockey, processing souls of the recently deceased. Technically, you’re supposed to help them pick out the best afterlife that they qualify for. But if you can guide them toward a cheaper afterlife than they deserve, then the excess soul energy flows back to the company. If you can save the company enough, then you just might be able to afford a trip up the Great Big Elevator to the Heaven of the Manifold Pleasures. One day, everyone in the department received a memo from the Head Office. Any interference from Above is always bad news, but this memo was the worst. Receiving that memo is when everything began to fall apart. MEMO DATE 5/20/20** FROM Upper Management TO All Staff in the Sector 17 Processing Department The Head Office has been hearing some very worrying rumors concerning your particular branch. Something has gone horribly wrong. In fact, many things have gone horribly wrong. Soul energy has gone missing. A few unworthy souls found their way into the Heaven of Harmonious Repose. One soul entered the department but never seemed to pass on to any Heaven or Hell. Paperwork has been misfiled. Reports seem to indicate a certain lack of rigor or sloppiness in your overall corporate culture. Your departmental manager will be in charge of the inquiry to hash out exactly what happened and who is responsible. At the end of said inquiry, the most helpful member of the department will be immediately sent to the Heaven of Pleasing Forms. Any departmental members shown to be involved in any wrongdoing will be sent to the Hell of Burning Clouds. If the departmental manager cannot locate the culprits, then they will suffer a similarly unpleasant fate in the Hell of Unending Misery. We appreciate your utmost assistance in this inquiry. -Sincerely, Upper Management [BOLD] INSIDE BRIEFING PAMPHLET [END BOLD] To begin play, choose whether your PC will be Powerful in the company or if they will be Competent at what they do. You will take ten tokens from the pile. Red circle tokens represent more Power, Blue square tokens represent more Competence. If you have more red tokens, then you are more important in the organizations and respected. You make the decisions and people have to listen to you. If you have more blue tokens, your character is smarter, more level headed and able to actually get things done. Note that this means that the higher you are on the corporate food-chain, the less competent you are. You should also choose which department you will be working for. There are four to choose from departments in the game: [BOLD] PROCESSING [END BOLD] Processing takes each soul, examines their moral record and helps them choose an afterlife within their budget. People who were more moral in their life are allowed to travel to nicer afterlives than those that were not. But each afterlife costs some amount of soul energy - worse afterlives cost less than nicer ones. If the soul has any excess remaining soul energy beyond the cost of entry, then that excess goes to Afterlife, Incorporated. So your job is to make sure souls pass on to an afterlife they can afford... but the least nice one that they will accept. [BOLD] TEMPTATION [END BOLD] Temptation is a juicy role. You’re the only department given access to the land of the living. Agents of the corporation travel to the land of living as discorporated sentient essences and subconsciously influence the decisionmaking matrices of the living. Their goal is to convince the living to behave more immorally than they otherwise would. This increases the margins for when the mortal dies and is sent to Processing. [BOLD] RECORDS [END BOLD] Records keeps track of everything. In order to judge a soul, you need to know what actions they took while in life. Records keep track of every behavior, big and small. When a being dies, Records prepares a briefing packet for the Processing department outlining the soul’s transgressions. Records also identifies when a mortal’s behavior has been influenced by the Temptation department’s behavior. [BOLD] ETHICS [END BOLD] Ethics rates all behavior on their overall morality. As times change, different action move from being Blessed by Upper Management to being Immoral or even Abominations. Ethics tracks all possible behaviors and computes their current score. They update the Records department when souls change their moral standing because of these changes in universal morality. Choose a department that your character works for. Each department is associated with a deck of cards. Draw two cards from the appropriate deck. These cards will define the relationships that you have with other PCs. They give a tiny amount of description of the relationship, then ask a leading question. Look at the relationships that you drew. When you first meet someone, during or after your first interaction, you can give them a relationship card. You should try to make sure you’ve given away both your relationship cards pretty early in the game, as they influence how interactions will happen and spur players on to action. When another player gives you a relationship, they’re saying that they want your character and theirs to be intertwined. Read the background on the card, then answer the question in the way that seems most interesting or dramatic to you. You then ask the granting player a further clarifying question about the relationship (any question that you want), which they must answer. Now you know the outline of the relationship between your two PCs. [EXAMPLE] Jude has been invited to play a game of “Afterlife, Incorporated” with some friends. He decides to play Mr. Kite. Mr. Kite was an old and tired bureaucrat in life and now he’s an old and tired bureaucrat in death. Jude decide that Mr. Kite should have more Power than Competence, but not too much Power. He’s a middle manager, not the man in charge. Consequently, Mr. Kite has 7 Power and 3 Competence. Jude decides that Mr. Kite works for Records, because that sounds like the most soul-deadening of the departments. Jude draws two cards. One of them reads “I’ve been altering records to cover for your mistakes. What was the biggest mistake of yours that I covered up?” Jude looks around at the other players and sees Claire’s PC Penelope doesn’t have many relationships yet. He gives her the card and asks her what mistake he’s covered up for her. Penelope is a junior clerk in the Ethics department, so Claire says that she accidentally had moved the eating of shellfish from “Abomination” to “Beloved” when she was supposed to move the wearing of mixed fabrics thusly. After realizing the mistake, she convinced Mr. Kite to change the Morality Update forms to reflect the current ethical standings. Then Claire asked Jude “So, what did Penelope have to do to get Mr. Kite’s help with that?” Jude thinks and says that Penelope still owes Mr. Kite a huge favor of his asking. Penelope has to do anything that Mr. Kite asks. Anything at all. Jude is planning ahead, you see. He wants to have resources on his side when the big purge comes down. [END EXAMPLE] [BOLD] GAMEPLAY [END BOLD] During the regular course of the game, you should agree and build upon the statements of your fellow players. If they say that a big project was a failure, you take that and add details rather than denying that the project was a failure. Whenever possible, you should say Yes to what others say. You can always throw in a qualifier or complication to what they’re saying by saying “Yes, but...” Sometimes, though, players encounter a situation that cannot be easily resolved. Perhaps players can’t reach a simple agreement or perhaps you are larping out a fight and don’t wish to resort to actual violence. If simple player agreement can’t reach a conclusion, any player involved can call for a Consultation. You need at least three players on hand for a Consultation. (You may need to pause the action and locate additional players for the Consultation, particularly if you are larping out the action across a large area.) One player will be the Client and the other two will be Consultants. If the Consultation involves corporate culture, matters of social hierarchy or corporate policy, then the Client will be the involved player with the most red Power tokens. If the Consultation involves anything else, the Client is the player involved with the most blue Competence tokens. The two consultants are the players with the next highest totals are the Consultants. The Client asks the Consultants how the situation goes forward from here. Each Consultant describes a different brief scenario for what happens next. The Client chooses whichever one they prefer and gives that Consultant a token of the appropriate color (Red if dealing with Power, blue if dealing with Competence). Then you roleplay out the scenario as outlined by the Consultant and play on from there. [EXAMPLE] Jude is still playing Records clerk Mr. Kite. Mr. Kite is trying to expunge records of his wrongdoing from the office filing system. Another player character, Marian Manciple, is trying to uncover any violations of company policy by combing through the same files. Jude recognizes that this would be bad for his PC. He decides to call for a Consultation. Marian’s player Miranda glances around and finds Clair, playing Penelope. This is clearly a Consultation concerning the corporation, so Power is the important attribute. Claire currently holds two red Power tokens. Miranda has five and Jude has six. Thus, Jude will be the Client and Miranda and Claire will be the Consultants. Jude asks Miranda how the record-scrubbing turns out. Miranda has a tough decision to make: if she suggests that Mr. Kite is caught but Claire doesn’t, Jude will pick Claire’s answer over hers. She could, instead, say that Mr. Kite gets away but introduce a complication of some sort. But what if Claire also wants Mr. Kite to be caught? Then letting him get away is giving him more than he would get otherwise. Miranda has to consider the situation and frame an outcome that achieves as much of her goal as possible. She suggests “Mr. Kite is able to remove anything that points back to him. But only through thoroughly destroying some key records, so it is obvious that somebody has been messing with the files, though I can’t say definitively it was you.” Jude then asks Claire for an alternative way this could play out. Claire suggests “Maybe Mr. Kite destroys the files but makes it look like a computer glitch erased everything. Like, way more than he meant to. So much so that the office won’t be able to process hundreds of souls who don’t have any background any more.” Jude considers these two. The second sounds more funny to him and so he goes with the bigger, messier option of destroying far more records than he ever intended. Jude gives a token to Claire because she gave the winning scenario. Then everyone works together for that to happen and work from there. [END EXAMPLE] [SIDEBAR] What to do in case of ties In case of a tie between players for Client, then the player with the next most number of tokens is Client and the two tied players are Consultants. In this instance, the Consultant whose description is chosen gives a token to the Client. This is the opposite of the normal rule, but the really important part is that the person with more tokens gives one to the player with fewer. [END SIDEBAR] [ANOTHER EXAMPLE] Later on, Jude has discovered that Marian Manciple has been hoarding soul energy in her pet goldfish’s tank. He is running out of the office with Marian chasing after him. Miranda suggests that something goes wrong for someone. Everyone likes the idea that this is where things turn out badly for someone. But how does it come crashing down? This is a good time for a Consultation, and Competence seems the most relevant as it’s about physical action and such. Jude recruits Otto to help with the Consult. Jude holds four blue Competence tokens, as does Miranda. Otto holds but a single Competence token. Because Jude and Miranda are tied, they will be Consultants and Otto will be the Client. Miranda suggests that Marian Manciple chases Mr. Kite directly into the conference room where the Lawyer From Hell and Upper Management are both sitting and waiting for a meeting to start. Both PCs then are found with their hands on the fishbowl full of soul energy. Jude says that maybe Marian Manciple tackles Mr. Kite to the ground, breaking the soul energized fishbowl to pieces. Otto has a tough choice, but picks Miranda’s suggestion over Jude’s. Miranda thus gives a token to Otto (trickle down token economics at work). The group then plays out a scene where both PCs are caught redhanded with embezzled soul energy, with Otto roleplaying the NPC Lawyer From Hell and member of Upper Management. [END ANOTHER EXAMPLE] [BOLD] ENDINGS [END BOLD] Keep playing as long as is appropriate for your group. Depending on number of players and format, that might be two hours or it might be several days of interconnected sessions. I’d expect the game to implode in on itself in a few hours, but your group’s mileage might vary wildly. [BOLD] RELATIONSHIP CARDS [END BOLD] Each department has a deck of cards specific to their department. Each card has the logo of the appropriate department on the back. On the front, it has a brief bit of background text describing a relationship and then a question for the players to answer. [BOLD] PROCESSING [END BOLD] [PICTURE: LIFT.PNG - The Processing department logo. A thick double-edged arrow pointing both up and down. In the center of the arrow stands a stylized silhouette of a figure. The figure symbolizes a recently deceased soul, which can go either up to a Heaven or down to a Hell.] -I’m always arguing that the Processing department should get a bigger cut of the soul energy, as we fulfill the actual mandate of the corporation - shuffling souls to their appropriate afterlife. Why are you always disagreeing with me about this? -I’m looking to get out of Processing and transfer to your department. What job offer have you dangled in front of me? what would I have to do to earn it? -You and I are both candidates for the same position (I’ll transfer departments if needed). What have I done to sabotage your chances? -You and I have decided to bypass the system and just send ourselves to the Heaven of Uninterrupted Prosperity. But to do so, we need what one item to make the plan work? -You were scheduled to go the the Hell of Slicing Winds. But I instead found you a job here. What did you say to me to give you a second chance? -When your spouse came through recently, you begged me to save him/her from the Hell of Boiling Pus. How did you finally convince me? -The one of with a higher Power score is training the other in their new job at Afterlife, Inc (even if we're in different departments). Why do I resent your new job? -You and I have been embezzling soul energy from the company. How have we been siphoning off the energy? -You and I knew each other in the land of the living. How were you responsible for my death? -We recently had a brief romantic affair, which is against company policy. Why do I now regret ever sleeping with you? [BOLD] TEMPTATION [END BOLD] [PICTURE: APPLE-MAGGOT.PNG - The Temptation department logo. A black and white icon. A white apple has a small hole in its left side. Emerging from the hole is a hideous worm-like creature with no appendages, ridges down the spine, four eyes and a pincer mouth. The apple represents temptation, as in the story of Snow White, the start of the Trojan War or the Garden of Eden. The worm represents the sin coming from the temptation.] -I’m way above my temptation quota. And that’s because you and I have a secret, slightly illegal scheme to boost my ratings. What is it? -I’m way behind in my temptation quotas. And I blame you. Why do I blame you for my failing? -I’m always saying that Temptation should get the lion’s share of the soul energy, as we keep profits up where they belong. Why are you always opposed to this change? -I sometimes use my access to the land of the living to deliver messages to your living loved ones. This is, of course, wildly against policy. What do I get out of this arrangement? -While you were in the land of the living, I tempted you away from a life of monastic purity. What sin did I convince you to perform? -We are currently in a romantic affair, which is against company policy. Who else knows about our affair? (Tell that other player.) -A consultant suggested cutting one of our jobs, but the administration hasn’t decided which yet. Why us two? (Tell your superior, if you have one.) -I’ve convinced you to do my Soul Transit paperwork. What favor did I do for you in return? -We were both supposed to go to Hell of Frozen Blood for the same earthly sins we performed while alive. What sins were those? -I was just about to tempt a nearly saintly old lady into finally committing a really heinous crime. But you managed to screw it up, right before she sealed the deal. How did your meddling ruin the biggest closing of my career as a professional tempter? [BOLD] ETHICS [END BOLD] [PICTURE: PAPER-LANTERN.PNG - The Ethics department logo. A stylized paper lantern is in the top left quarter. A person is silhouetted, but only the side of them that the lantern light touches is visible. The figure represents a soul wandering through life and only guided by the light or morality, symbolized by the paper lantern.] -You’ve been bribing me to alter the ethics ratings of certain actions. Which actions and why? -I think that you’ve been modifying the ethics board for your own benefit. What makes me suspect you? Am I wrong? -I’m always saying that Ethics should get a larger percentage of the company’s soul budget, as we keep the other departments in line. Why do you always disagree with me about this? -You’ve been arguing that we should downgrade more actions to ‘immoral’ status. Why have I been opposed to this change? -What sin did you and I upgrade to “beloved and holy” status as a drunken joke last Dia de Muertos? How has no one noticed yet that we did so? -You stole my favorite piece of office equipment. What was it? -We both want to retire to the same Heaven, but there are a limited number of open slots in the next millennia. So only one of us will get it. What Heavenly reward do we both desire? -As a prank, I’ve been secretly defacing the pictures of cute cat skeletons that decorate your cubicle. How have you decided to enact your revenge? -I’ve been warning you that one of your behaviors is a breach of company protocol, and that if you continue then they’ll send the Lawyers From Hell after you. What behavior is that? -We knew each other in the land of the living. How has our relationship from there reversed itself? [BOLD] RECORDS [END BOLD] [PICTURE: BRAIN-FREEZE.PNG - The Records department logo. A black and white icon. A giant, egg-shaped head with a stylized face is visible. Inside the head where the brain would be is a hexagonal white snowflake, large enough to occupy about half the head. The snowflake represents information that has been crystallized and stored in memory.] -You and I have been forging paperwork. What have we been forging paperwork concerning? -I’ve been altering records to cover for your mistakes. What was the biggest mistake of yours that I covered up? -I’ve been pestering you for months that you needed to turn in the Soul Transit report for a deceased that you worked with. Why haven’t you turned it in yet? -You are working here because you came into the office without any records whatsoever. I forged a file that made you a new hire. Why did I take pity on you? -I’m always saying that Records should get a larger percentage of the company’s soul budget. Without the Records department, there would be only chaos. Why are you always disagreeing with me about this? -My records seem to suggest that somebody is skimming soul energy out of the company. What did you do to bring these accounting discrepancies to my attention? -I illegally lent you the key to the Records system, and you never gave it back. Where did you lose it? -You say that the missing Morality Status Report files were in my possession last. So how did you really lose them? -We both died in the same horrible accident. What was it? Why do you blame me? -I have a set of records that indicates that you’ve been doing something very much against company policy. What blackmail material do I have on you? AFTERLIFE, INCORPORATED by Nick Wedig is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The images used are all created by “Lorc” and taken from http://game-icons.net/, and themselves licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.