We considered a number of complicated corp systems and then decided that they were all awful. So instead, we are offering you the option of having a corporation with out all the staff bureaucracy (yuck).
Here's the deal:
Corporations aren't people. Well, ok they kind of are, but corporations, even in the World of Darkness, don't have bodies or wander around on their own. Corporations are made up of people and those people often act, often collaboratively, under the auspices or guises of a corporation. For example, Jake from Telesense uses Telesense's money to do a hostile takeover of Furries Incorporated. Now Jake, along with his team and Telesense's partners all worked on the hostile takeover, but what gets reported is Telesense attempts hostile take over of Furries Incorporated. Now, if Jake gets caught in a limo chowing down on bento with a bevy of under age hookers, hopped up on illegals then what gets reported is Jake from Telesense was caught in a limo chowing down on bento with a bevy of under age hookers, hopped up on illegals! News at 11, yo! While this might make Telesense's stock price a little limp (no pun intended) and might get Jake a corporate slap in the wrist, there is a difference between the actions of a corporation (made up of people) and the actions of a person who works for or owns a corporation.
So what does all this mean for you? Bento and hookers? No. Save your trolling for Pasadena. What it means for you is, as an organization, you have a couple of options:
- You and your Scooby gang can pool your personal backgrounds to form an organization (such as a corporation).
- That's right. If you have Resources, Influence, Contacts or Allies, all you need to do is give you and your pals cooperation a name and viola, you've got an organization.
- There are some benefits for this. The first benefit is that if you are the majority contributor you have the most say. Why? Because the ball is essentially yours and if you want to be bossy and boss around your Scobby gang like they are your underlings you can because at the end of the day, the Bat Cave was purchased in your name, with your Resources and you own it. You can kick them out of it if you want to. The downside to this is that if the Joker decides to kick YOU out of the Bat Cave with a hostile take over, military might or a cadre of Asian Vampire School Girls, you just lost the Bat Cave and allllll the equity you had tied up in it. So be careful who you get in bed with. CYA, baby, CYA. Also, if the majority player in the Org goes idle…well I guess you are left holding the bag.
- This may not always be the case. It may be that someone is the bank, someone is the brains, someone knows all the people and someone orders all the pizza. I'm not here to tell you how to structure your Org, I'm just saying there are a bunch of ways to organize it.
- Your second option is that you can your Scooby gang can purchase, with your XPeez, collective backgrounds that every member of that Org has access to.
- So lets say you and your witch friends start a Verbena coven devoted to teaching girls the wonderful ways of witchcraft. Your first order of business is to start creating a Library to teach your students out of. So the witches organize themselves and start buying up all the Witchbooks in LATMA. Now each of them also has a personal Library but together they pool the books they have duplicates of and what they can scrounge up from the Santa Monica and Ebay and come up with a Library of 2. That Library of 2 belongs to the Coven. What is the difference? Well, if Kalista, the coven leader with a personal Library of 5 goes idle, you can still learn Spirit magic from the Coven's Library. Granted, it's not as awesome as Kalista's but it's better than nothing.
A few things about pooled backgrounds:
- They do not stack. You either gotta give it up to the group or keep it as your own. You are welcome to lend and share (as appropriate) but the Coven Library of 2 plus Kalista's Library of 5 does not mean you get a Library of 7. You can, however, make use of either source individually, that is if Kalista lets you.
- There is a darkside here though. What if you give Moonspence, your ditzy but suspicious newcomer access to the Coven's book club room and she accidentally gets converted to the monotheism of the Pong Monks who order her to burn the pagan witch books and she does it! Kalista was away with her demon boyfriend in Japan buying shoes and drinking bubble tea. No one is there to save it and the books all burn! Yeap, that's right. Library down the drain. XP not refundable. So sorry! Better luck next time! There is no benefit with out risk. So if someone steals your mansion in the night, sue their pants off. It's what the Donald would do.
- Orgs are capable amassing resources beyond what any individual would be able to. Individual backgrounds are usually capped at 5. So it pays to get organized! For every active PC member above 3, your organization has, you are able to raise one trait above 5. That's right, so if your corporation has 6 members you can choose one pooled trait of your organization to raise to 6. If you have seven PC members you can either raise that trait to 7 or you can raise a second trait to 6. Yeap. You can rule the world in three easy steps.
These rules can be used to form Chantires, make mega-corporations, cyberbully the other shifter packs or collectively pool your Sabbat Pack's resources so you can eat the Camarilla's pie. MMm hmm!
So if you are interested in starting and Org, all you need is two players, a dream and a start. Oh and a +request. Staff will create an Org object for you and with it you can make your dreams come true.