RPPR Episode 170: Inhuman Resources – Control and Bureaucracies in Games

News: Check out the latest RPPR After Hours for an in-depth discussion on traps in fantasy RPGs!

Synopsis:Thad and I both recently played Control, a new video game about a secret government agency that tries to protect the world from supernatural forces while also trying to exploit that power for their own ends. Obviously, this is a riff on the SCP Foundation, but even that is part of a larger tradition of giant and usually evil (or at least corrupt) bureaucracies in horror games. Whether they are corporate or governmental, these bureaucracies wield as much power as an elder god and cannot be easily stopped or slain. We talk about how to subvert or change these tropes to make your next game or player character more interesting.

Thad is @ThaddeusStrange on Twitter and I am @rosspayton

Shout Outs

Songs: Selections from The Iron Triangle: Bureaucracy by The Great Wall

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2 Comments

  1. great episode. Control does feel like it was specifically made for the subset of the RPPR crowd who are REALLY into concrete!

  2. Never thought of having a petty coworker help the party for their own ends, I’ll have to use that. Also, another game in the same vein is Lobotomy Corporation. It’s a management sim in which you hold and research abnormalities to extract a new type of energy and having to deal with them when they escape.

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