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In: Leverage RPG, Thought Crimes

Sometimes, when you work on your own for long enough, your plans become inseparable from you, attached irreparably to the way you think. This is all well and good until the plan leaves your grasp, and others start to grapple with it, only to find that what has been created wasn’t made for them, despite that being the original point of the project. Once past the rose-colored glasses, the plan becomes riddled with failure points, uninteresting, and frustrating, not because there’s anything wrong with the perspective of the recipient, but because that perspective wasn’t fully considered. When this occurs, there’s little to do but ask your friend to cut out a LARGE amount of frustrated side talk, question your self-worth as a GM, dread the premiere of the episode, and write a pretentious introduction paragraph in the style of your other pretentious introduction paragraphs to warn the listener.

After all.

It’s Only GMing.

My Bad.

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In: Leverage RPG, Thought Crimes

The cogs continued to turn, squealing under the friction of the grit placed within them, but turning nonetheless. Tired, twitching fingers fretted at the keyboard, eyes bouncing between shorthand sections of past plans. The links were there, even if a good number of the boxes were marked with a small, passive aggressive “x”. At least when part of the plan failed, it didn’t require attention. It was like tossing a ball aside while juggling; the overall effect is diminished, but what remains is more reliable, more likely to work. With Project Lachesis standing at the forefront of his workflow, mental energy was always a resource to carefully ration for a rainy day.

Thunder was starting to echo on the horizon, but he continued to type, to work, to plan, to scheme.

After all,

It’s Only Business,

But maybe one day soon, that would finally change.

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In: Leverage RPG, Thought Crimes

Another day, another demand. The city had long since stopped paying for the upkeep of the few remaining public prisons, after years and years of shrinking budgets. Strategic privatization meant only so much of the city revenue came through the tax system, and it became politically difficult to allocate that money to the housing and well-being of people the public had been encouraged to despise. That meant that the prisons were encouraged to find “Alternate Means of Solvency”. These ranged from using modified jail cells as secure server storage, to leasing out guards as private event security, to any number of projects on which the prisoners can be put to work. As they say, “If the service you’re being offered is free, then you’re the product.”

Over time, the prisons became more and more insular, with less and less oversight. Internal programs were no longer municipally investigated, as long as they brought in enough money to keep the building afloat. And it was only a matter of time before the wardens found a way to be paid under the table for NOT keeping certain cells secure. Leasable space is worth a lot in a city of millions, arguably more than the prisoners that occupy it.

After all,

It’s Only Business

MUSIC CREDITS

“Lightless Dawn” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

PLAYERS

  • Greg – Andrew Burke. An aging corporate spokesman, Andrew has worked for many companies to defuse tense situations and make questionable sales pitches. After surviving cancer, a car crash and a mugging, he takes precautions to ensure that he packs a lot more than just words for when things get rough.
  • Kevin – Isaac Soklarus. A company man, Isaac has been working for Polycorp for the last year, becoming closely entangled with their inner workings. Something of a know-it-all, he has an extensive array of knowledge and a few specialized cybernetic implants to help him through his day to day life.
  • Matt – Kayla Fox. A late thirties ex-Silicon-Valley network engineer who started working on the black market after realizing that sexism was less rampant in the criminal sector.
  • Molly – Pepper Abe. A short and scarred yet deathly fashionable Japanese-American woman, Pepper is almost as adept at solving problems as she is at creating them. With an entry plan to anywhere and a deep seated anger toward society her reputation is louder than she ever could be.

PLAYERS

  • Greg – Andrew Burke. An aging corporate spokesman, Andrew has worked for many companies to defuse tense situations and make questionable sales pitches. After surviving cancer, a car crash and a mugging, he takes precautions to ensure that he packs a lot more than just words for when things get rough.
  • Kevin – Isaac Soklarus. A company man, Isaac has been working for Polycorp for the last year, becoming closely entangled with their inner workings. Something of a know-it-all, he has an extensive array of knowledge and a few specialized cybernetic implants to help him through his day to day life.
  • Matt – Kayla Fox. A late thirties ex-Silicon-Valley network engineer who started working on the black market after realizing that sexism was less rampant in the criminal sector.
  • Molly – Pepper Abe. A short and scarred yet deathly fashionable Japanese-American woman, Pepper is almost as adept at solving problems as she is at creating them. With an entry plan to anywhere and a deep seated anger toward society her reputation is louder than she ever could be.
  • Greg – Andrew Burke. An aging corporate spokesman, Andrew has worked for many companies to defuse tense situations and make questionable sales pitches. After surviving cancer, a car crash and a mugging, he takes precautions to ensure that he packs a lot more than just words for when things get rough.
  • Kevin – Isaac Soklarus. A company man, Isaac has been working for Polycorp for the last year, becoming closely entangled with their inner workings. Something of a know-it-all, he has an extensive array of knowledge and a few specialized cybernetic implants to help him through his day to day life.
  • Matt – Kayla Fox. A late thirties ex-Silicon-Valley network engineer who started working on the black market after realizing that sexism was less rampant in the criminal sector.
  • Molly – Pepper Abe. A short and scarred yet deathly fashionable Japanese-American woman, Pepper is almost as adept at solving problems as she is at creating them. With an entry plan to anywhere and a deep seated anger toward society her reputation is louder than she ever could be.

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Monopolies are often more complicated in the modern era than the board game would have you believe. With the size and complexity of the business incorporation space, a corporation of a certain size often needs to build both horizontal and vertical integration. A certain size above -that- often needs to start spending a great deal of money in Washington to make that expansion process go smoother. However, any self-propagating organism of sufficient size begins to have sections within it that are not aligned in function, that do not operate in pursuit of the same goals. Often these difficulties become known through some minor disaster, and the company resolves them through some small amount of money, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands. However, the more underground these parts are, and the subtler each of its parts remains, the harder it is for their interactions to come to light. And the easier it is for a corporation to stab itself in the back.

After all.

It’s Only Business.Continue Reading

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Some days it was better than others. Today was not one of those days. Some days it was a minor annoyance at the back of his mind. Today, it felt like lightning was pouring through his nerves. Another day in the dark, fingers clutching at the remote as he scanned for something to distract him, when he knew full well that what he sought to avoid would be doing the distracting. His fingers balled into fists, even that motion betraying his frustrated gravitas by evoking a soft groan.

He’d given so much of himself. He’d served his country in so many capacities, gained so many skills, saved so many lives, and ended so many more. He did things that he would never, ever confess to, even if he weren’t sworn to secrecy. And the moment those skills became obsolete, the very week that his injury removed his capacity to serve, he was discarded. Set back at home with a brief tribunal, a half-hearted salute, and a quarter of the money he needed to survive. And he was only likely to survive for so long, if nothing changed.

Luckily, that’s exactly what happened. It all seemed like a blur. A man in a suit, a briefcase with a tech corporations logo on it, and promises of an experimental nervous system surgery that would make him never care about his pain again. He smiled that day. And there would never be another day that he -didn’t- face his work with a smile. Because loyalty can be a fickle thing, but sometimes, the price is high enough to earn it forever.

After all.

It’s Only Business.

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