CUBE FARM: CHARACTERSYou will make two characters for Cube Farm - an employee and a manager. You will normally play your employee, but always have the option of calling in sick and adopting the role of your manager. There is no GM.
Each character has a rank, a set of aptitudes, and unique qualities. Employees have a soul attribute; managers have no soul - they have credibility instead.
Think about what kind of person your employee and manager will each be. Determine your employee's rank. Allocate your initial dice to aptitudes reflecting this initial concept, then add a few good and bad qualities, adjusting dice, credibility or soul accordingly. You are then ready to play.
DIE ALLOCATION
Each character has 8 dice to divide among rank, aptitudes, and qualities. Note that this will almost certainly leave some aptitudes with no dice - this is a sad fact of life. Pick your battles carefully, or rely on the support of friends, because in certain areas you are definitely going to suck. Do not share these weaknesses or they will invariably be exploited.
BUYING RANK
Everybody gets the same number of dice to allocate, but the higher your rank, the more dice you can pump into a single aptitude. This means that managers have the opportunity to be devastatingly good at one or two things while being completely useless in all other areas. Scuts, on the other hand, must spread the incompetence around.
| INITIAL RANK | COST IN DICE | MAXIMUM DICE PER APTITUDE |
|---|---|---|
| Temp | -1* | 4 |
| Scut | 1 | 2 |
| Drone | 2 | 3 |
| Manager | 3 | 4 |
| Consultant/Senior Manager | n/a** | 5 |
* Temps get an extra die to spend, and cannot put any dice in Influence or Gossip. This will make them pretty competent characters, which is nice, because they can only last one session. After that, they either need to be hired as permanent employees or hit the bricks. If hired, they lose a die as punishment and must take a scut job. True, temps can be ex-managers with 4 dice in an aptitude - pretty cool stuff. But what manager in his right mind is going to hire one of those permanently?
** You can't play a consultant normally. They only show up, like avenging angels, when the story demands it. Then everybody is sorry.
APTITUDE SCORES
There are four aptitude categories, and each category has a corporate and personal component. Aptitudes are measured in a number of six-sided dice, and each is rated individually - there is no connection between corporate and personal aptitudes in the same category. The higher your rank, the more dice you can put in an individual aptitude.
Corporate aptitudes are all meaningless crap with no bearing on the real world - but they are how you will be evaluated. Personal aptitudes reflect the actual sausage-making aspect of office life. The categories are the same, but the aptitudes are a little different.
| CATEGORY | CORPORATE | PERSONAL |
|---|---|---|
| Communication | Teamwork | Influence |
| Knowledge | Professionalism | Dirt |
| Work Ethic | Productivity | Skill |
| Motivation | Loyalty | Power |
CORPORATE APTITUDES
Teamwork is supposed to reflect your interpersonal communication skills and ability to work effectively with others. In reality it reflects your ability to delegate your responsibilities to others. If you find yourself pleading for help, see Productivity.
Professionalism reflects your demeanor and attitude toward work and the office environment. The more dice you have in Professionalism, the more people think you take your job seriously.
Productivity reflects the volume of work accomplished with your name attached. It has nothing to do with skill, efficiency, or speed, but has everything to do with the appearance of same. If this is at the expense of others, it is called Teamwork (see above).
Loyalty reflects the perception of your love of the company and its operating principles, typically through sycophancy, hollow gestures and regular attendance at team-building exercises.
PERSONAL APTITUDES
Influence reflects your ability to manipulate others through whining, subterfuge, populist rabble-rousing, or bribery.
Dirt reflects the volume of intelligence you have gathered relating to the embarrassing, illicit, and outright criminal activities of your co-workers. It can usually be directly correlated with years of service.
Skill reflects your actual competence as a human being, at everything from your job to fixing the color printer.
Power reflects your ability to dominate others through sex appeal, moral superiority, threats of violence, or being the bosses son.
The possession of guns; swords or knives; martial arts weapons including jitte, sai, kusari-gama, nunchaku, tonfa and bo-staff; and commercial or home-made explosives are prohibited on company property.
QUALITIES
Qualities are character quirks that provide general advantages and disadvantages. Good ones have a cost in dice, and bad ones give you extra dice. Remember that you cannot put more dice into an aptitude than your rank allows, so you'll want to balance your initial dice with any "bonus dice" you get from qualities. Be reasonable about piling on the qualities, because if you are too weird, you will invariably be fired as soon as possible.
BAD QUALITIES
BAD REP
You have a bad reputation and will never be given the benefit of the doubt. You are widely considered shifty and undependable. 1 free die.
BURNED OUT
You are beat down and near the breaking point. 1 free die per point you subtract from your soul total, up to 3. Goes well with Old Timer.
CENTRAL OFFICE PLANT
Everyone thinks you were sent by the central office to keep an eye on things and report back. Nobody trusts you. 1 free die if it is just a vicious rumor, costs 2 dice if it is true - but you can rat people out and get them disciplined and/or fired.
CHUMMY
You would like nothing better than to be best friends with your co-workers, and spend a good deal of energy trying to win them over with home-made gifts and baked goods. 1 free die, 2 if there is a religious angle.
DRESS CODE ISSUES
You dress in entirely inappropriate ways. Maybe you are a dress code rebel, or an artiste, or maybe your Mom dresses you. Maybe you dress like a prostitute and don't know it. 1 free die, or 2 free dice if you wear a science fiction uniform of some sort.
GOAT
When things go wrong, you are the one who is to blame. People will vengefully turn on you and mete out ruthless punishment for things you not only didn't do, but couldn't do. It is your lot in life. 2 free dice.
IMPOSTER
You are not who you say you are. Maybe you completely faked your resume. Maybe you stole somebody's identity. If caught, you will be fired (this is really just a flavor of Horrible Secret). 3 free dice.
MINOR BEHAVIOR PROBLEM
Smoking, carelessness, horseplay, sleeping, insubordination, failure to use safety equipment, chronic lateness. Maybe you compulsively surf porn at your desk. 1 free die.
NUTBAR
You are a raving (or mumbling) lunatic. Although you get your work done, and are perhaps an excellent employee in other ways, you are completely crackerdog and everyone avoids you. This can take a variety of exciting forms, from barely sublimated homicidal rage to sea elves in the water cooler. 2 free dice.
PALS
You spend a lot of time talking to your friends during work hours via telephone, IM, email, heliograph, etc. 1 free die.
PERSONAL ISSUES
Loud talker, close talker, stinky, baseball fan, conspiracy theorist, extreme athlete, neat freak, gum chewer, obtuse-person-who-asks-too-many-questions. Pick one and make it irritating. 1 free die per personal issue, up to 3. If you take more than one, expect some "counseling" from management to occur rapidly.
SECRET
If you did something bad, amusing, and possibly work related. Maybe a sweaty rendezvous after an office party, it is worth 1 free die. If you did something both amusing and horrifying that could cost you prestige or your position - water cooler gold! - 2 free dice. If you did something so amazing that if it came to light you would be fired in a heartbeat, collect 3 free dice!
SERIOUS BEHAVIOR PROBLEM
Gambling, drugs, sexual harassment, brawling, intoxication. Maybe you run a lunchtime cock fighting ring. 2 free dice.
THIEF
You steal stuff. Expensive stuff, like LCD projectors and the company van. If you can work an embezzlement scheme (even if it is just the coffee money), you will. If caught, you will be fired (this is really just a flavor of Secret). 3 free dice.
TIME BOMB
You are a little tense. OK, you are a lot tense, under tremendous pressure inside and out, and likely to explode in fits of furious anger, weeping, or general drama at the slightest provocation. 1 free die.
TMI
You cannot resist sharing Too Much Information about your personal life, which is tawdry when it is not repulsive. 1 free die.
TOADY
You curry favor every chance you get, and it works. Choose an Antagonist who is your defender and champion. 1 free die, because this is odious and will earn you the contempt of everyone in the office. Better put it in Loyalty.
GOOD QUALITIES
AWKWARD JOB TITLE
Your job title does not fit the established hierarchy and leads to ambiguity that can be useful. A "Senior Office Manager", who is actually a scut-level receptionist, has an Awkward Job Title. Costs 1 die.
CHEATER
Making up data for reports, faking phone logs, hacking the snack machine, taking credit for the work of others - these things are as mother's milk to you, and you are rarely caught. Costs 2 dice.
C.Y.A.
You are adept at the art of covering your ass. You are an expert at shifting the blame. Like Cheater, this is almost a mystical gift, and transcends logic. Costs 2 dice.
GOOD REP
You have a good reputation and will be given the benefit of the doubt more often than not. People often call you "a good egg", regardless of the truth. Costs 1 die.
LIAR
You are widely known as a compulsive liar. No one trusts you, and you cannot resist an opportunity to tell an untruth. Since this is actually an excellent advantage, it costs 1 die.
LOST IN THE RE-ORG
You report to the office and get paid, but nobody quite knows what you do and you do not appear on the org chart. Pick a cryptic title like "Assistant Business Analyst". Nobody is the boss of you. Costs 1 die.
MINORITY
You are a minority - ethnic, sexual, religious, disabled, gender, whatever. Costs 1 die per, up to a maximum of 3, so a wheelchair-bound East Asian Sikh would cost 3 dice (but be well worth it - put the dice in Power and Influence).
NAÏVE
You are fresh-faced and ready for adventure! For a cost of one die, add 1 to your soul. For 2 dice, add 3. For 3 dice, add 6, but you better be pretty damn naïve.
OLD TIMER
You've been around so long nothing surprises you. You know everything about everything and don't care about anything but retirement, a few tantalizing years away. You have so much seniority, and so many connections, that firing you for anything short of beheading someone on the Internet will be extremely difficult. Costs 2 dice.
SLUT
Everybody knows you are a slut. Whether it is mean-spirited gossip or not is up to you, but combining this with Dress Code Issues and some dice in Power can go a long way toward making it true. Costs 1 die, because sluts rule.
TONER KING
You have a knack for repairing office equipment. Costs 1 die.
Insubordination Policy: It is against our policy for you to refuse to follow the directions of your supervisor.
JOB TITLE
Your job title indicates which circle in hell you occupy. Scuts flit about the periphery like wee coffee-fetching moths, drones do the heavy lifting, and managers rest their ponderous bulk in the very center. Your job title is a quick way to establish initial dominance and is therefore important. Best of all, you get to create your own!
The formula is RANK + SPECIALTY + SUFFIX, although temps and consultants just get a rank. Scuts can add a Roman numeral between I and IV for a particularly demeaning title if they like. Managers can have two specialties if they prefer: "Senior Customer Service IT Analyst", for example. Job titles don't have to make sense, but they should sound good when shouted indignantly.
RANK
| RANK | POSSIBLE TITLES |
|---|---|
| Sub-scut | Temp, duh. |
| Scut | Trainee, Junior |
| Drone | Assistant, Associate |
| Manager | Senior, Chief, Executive |
| Consultant/Senior manager | Consultant, VP, multiple titles (Senior Chief) |
SPECIALTY
| POSSIBLE SPECIALTIES | ||
|---|---|---|
| Account | Administrative | Application |
| Art | Audit | Business |
| Customer Service | Data Entry | Design |
| Editorial | General | Human Resources |
| Information Technology | Marketing | Office |
| Product/Production | Project | Purchasing |
| Regional | Sales | Software |
SUFFIX
| RANK | POSSIBLE SUFFIXES |
|---|---|
| Sub-scut | Temp, duh. |
| Scut | Trainee, Junior Assistant, Associate, Clerk, Intern, Specialist |
| Bonus degrading scut suffix | Roman numeral between I and IV |
| Drone | Accountant, Analyst, Auditor, Buyer, Designer, Director, Editor, Lead, Programmer, Researcher, Technician |
| Manager and above | Administrator, Coordinator, Manager, Supervisor |
SOUL/CREDIBILITY
Soul is the "hit points" of Cube Farm. It is an abstract number equal to the total of all dice in Corporate and Personal aptitudes. It can and will be relentlessly chipped away during play in battles vicious and mundane. Note that this number is calculated by die totals, but is distinct from dice and have no bearing on them in play. If you lose or gain a die, re-calculate soul at your convenience.
When soul reaches zero, you either quit abruptly or freak out in some noteworthy way intending to get yourself fired. An exceptionally cruel manager will keep you on as an object lesson to other employees, a soulless husk that immediately becomes a horrible NPC. In either case, make up a new character.
Managers, lacking souls, use credibility instead. The effect is the same, except that rather than quit when reduced to zero, they will be transferred to a less desirable branch office.
SACRIFICING SOUL/CREDIBILITY
You can deliberately drop soul/credibility by one point in exchange for a single extra die in any conflict. If you care this much, and need to do this, chances are you are in a lot of trouble.
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