Intern Royale
The day started in the worst possible way: an email with a sudden, team-wide meeting invite, offering no clues to its content. Nervous interns shuffled their way into the cavernous meeting hall where they are met by their handler, Mr. MacCallan. He beams at them, with all the warmth and charisma of a shark. "Interns! I'm pleased to report that InternCo has secured several full-time positions at prestigious corporations. Soon, your time with us will come to an end, but I'm sure you will never forget the valuable lessons you learned here." There was a pause, long enough for everyone to figure out there was a catch. "Unfortunately, we will not have enough positions for everyone on the Intern team. Management will make its decision by the end of tomorrow." MacCallan lingered on the last three words. "So this is your last chance to make an impression and rise above the competition." The interns looked among each other, awkwardly shuffling away from what had now become 'competition'. "As such, I've taken the liberty of booking you all for another eight hours of overtime today, so you can really impress. No need to thank me." Their handler concluded. "And no, you won't be paid for it. Now get back to work and show everyone who the best intern is!"Intern Royale is a short adventure for 4-5 players set in an Intern Mill type of corporation, run by one Game Master. The players take the role of interns that has to rise above their competition to secure full-time employment by working together and screwing everyone else over. With stakes so high, the office soon becomes a battleground between interns, fought with ass-kissing and sharp office supplies. Players have sixteen work hours to gather merit awards, eliminate enemies, and generally be scheming little interns. Win, and rise above the minimum-income existence. Lose, and probably end up at a Brain-Box farm. Good luck, Interns!
Recommended Reading
Looking to get into the wacky world of Megacorpolis? Start here!The Rules
1: Creating Your Intern
Roll 2D6 to determine who your Intern is. You're better at stuff related to your internship. Internship- Engineering
- Programming
- Accounting
- Marketing
- Design
- Service
- DIYbernetics
- Corporate Mascot Collecting
- Conspiracy Theory
- End-of-world prepping
- Streaming / Live Streaming
- Contratianism
2: Energy
All interns start with 6 energy. You lose energy by:- Taking damage
- Improving rolls
- Indulging in your hobby
- Consuming Java, the brew of the world!
3: Doing Stuff
If you're trying to do something with a reasonable chance of success, roll 1D6. If you're doing something related to your internship, add another dice. You can also spend 1 Energy to get another dice. These stack, to a maximum of 3d6. If you get over 4 on any of the dice, you succeed. If you don't, you fail.4: Fighting!
Fighting works like any other roll, divided into Attack and Defense. A successful attack deals 1 Energy damage to your opponent. If you have an improvised weapon of some sort, that increases to two - then the weapon breaks, malfunctions, or otherwise is ineffective for the rest of the evening. Weapons of the same type are only effective once per combat - once you've beaned someone in the head with a coffee cup, people learn to duck. A successful defense roll reduces damage by 1. If you have an improvised weapon, shield, or armor, add one 1d6 to the roll (but you still only reduce damage by 1), and then the improvised item breaks.5: Merits
Merits are corporate awards to excellent interns, signified by a shiny gold star sticker. Only interns with 5 or more merits will pass muster and be awarded a full-time position at the end of the evening. Hurray! There should be at least 30 merits available. You gain Merits by:- Awarded from a full-time employee
- Reporting corporate rule infractions
- Performing assigned tasks
- Stealing them
- Generally being an impressive intern
- Taken away by Mr. MacCallan, at his whim
- Breaking corporate rules (and being caught)
- Failing assigned tasks
- Someone stealing them from you
- Being obnoxious, lazy, or not living up to corporate standards (and being caught)
InternCo Corporate Rules
- Destruction of corporate property
- Injury of corporate employees (Interns exempt)
- Stealing corporate property
- Unautherized access to restricted areas (especially by you, interns)
- Unauthorized use of corporate equipment
- Littering
- Being late to meetings
- Being early to meetings - that's time you could've spent working, intern
- Failure to respond to communications in a timely manner
- Unauthorised time away from desk
- Social media use outside designated social media use breaks
- Breaking InternCo NDA or sharing confidential information
6: Merit Examples
- Bringing Java to a manager
- Changing a worklog so it looks like you completed that task
- Stealing one from another intern or even corporate employee
- Acting like a soulless psychopath - aka management material
- Reporting another intern for most of the above
STOP RIGHT THERE, INTERNS!
From here on, it's the GM part of the adventure. Proceed at your own peril, and unauthorized access will earn you a demerit.
Last Day of InternCo
It's your last day, one way or the other.The time has come: the Interns have a full workday (about 16 to 20 hours) to make sure they are the ones who'll graduate from Internship. They'll have to navigate their usual workload with scheming rivals, demanding overseers, and their own haphazard plots to get ahead. It is up to the players to figure out how they want to proceed, but if they need some prodding, MacCallan (or a suitable replacement) is happy to provide some subtle hint that maybe they should do some schemin'.
There are no set amounts of Merits, and no real limit to how many demerits you can earn, either.Besides the players, there are 2d6 + 20 other interns working there. Generally, you'll only need to track how many merits the important interns have - for the chumps, use your own best judgement or roll a 1d3-1. The day is divided into three parts: Morning, Day, and Evening. After that, it's a wrap.
Make A Corp!
If you want to run the adventure somewhere other than the InternCo, roll to see where your poor interns work. Types of CorpsExample Corps:
- Arms & Armor Corp - Lots of weapons, research material, and engineering stuff around!
- Marketing Agency - Lots of scheduling, design work, and maybe a celebrity or two!
- Travel Agency - Intern in all kinds of exotic locations to perform borderline slave-labor in!
- Genetech Corp - Putting mad scientists to shame, with a lot of weird critters and bubbling vats around!
- ThougthFarm - Harvesting raw human emotion for mass-market!
- Augmetics Corp - Making better people, with metal or expensive drug subscriptions!
Indestructible Inc - Armor and fortifications for every occasion
Illuminaughty - Consumer engagement at gunpoint
WeekendWarriors - All the fun of going to war, none of the 'getting shot'
Best Friends Forge - Custom made pets and companions through science!
ThoughtFarm & Friends - Selling thoughts, feelings, and personality at a discount
Legendary You - Self-help through pharmaceuticals and augmetics
Morning
For interns, morning means 7am (07:00 sharp. Morning is a relatively quiet time, with Employees shuffling into work, getting ready for the day, and drinking delicious Java. For our brave interns, it begins with MacCallan's meeting - he explains the summary at the top of the adventure. After that, the interns are set loose on the office to work. Being late to work, not paying attention at MacCallan's meeting, or being disruptive - that's a demerit.Give the interns a chance to earn about 2-3 merits at this point... And chances to lose them, too.Besides any schemes the players want to initiate, the morning might contain the following:
Every intern has their favorite Generic-Aid flavor and there is an opportunity for trading, giving away, or otherwise bartering for stuff or favors. No intern will at this point be willing to give away merits (except the traitor, if rolled - the slimy little git).The lunch-meeting is a long, droning presentation on corporate business standards and ethics, broken up into two thirty minute segments with a ten minute break in the middle. The pre-recorded presentation is held on a large screen at one end of the room. There are no employees there to supervise (MacCallan will very visibly depart) and the lunch hall is large and cluttered enough for skullduggery. Interns have a chance to sneak of, cause havoc, steal stuff, or generally prepare themselves. During this presentation, the interns are told the InternCo corporate rules. If they're able to remember them when asked about them at the end of lunch, that's a merit. As the lunch ends, a few (1d6, if you aren't sure) intern is escorted out of the building for failure to show enough initiative and drive.
by Midjourney by Q
Day
The work day goes on from between 13:10 to 18:00. This is the interns main opportunity to interact with other employees and try to curry their favor, either by deception, force, or being brown-nosed little lickspittles. Their actual workload is light by design - MacCallan has arranged for the interns to be able to properly scheme, believing that a sort of corporate survival-of-the-fittest will benefit them and InternCo. Sometime during the day however, the intern will be given an important mission - bring refreshments (especially Java) to a work meeting on the Senior Employee Floor above them. Success will earn each intern a merit - failure, the opposite.At some point during the Day, the players should find another intern - dead as a door nail, killed for their Merits. Failing to report the corpse might result in a demerit, but finding the killer will get everyone a merit (and a mortal enemy)To complicate things further, the interns aren't actually allowed to access Senior Employee Floor, and must lie, cheat, or steal past the key-code locked door. To make things more complicated, other interns heard of their task, and seek to get the refreshments from the PCs to deliver it themselves. After that and if you think the PCs need some more chaos in their lives, roll below:
Evening
After 20:00, most of the employees go home. Interns have another 4 hours of work to go and are in the home stretch. The doors are locked, the security guards absent, and the interns left alone in the highrise office. Sometime after the last employee has left, the security cameras mysteriously and visibly go offline. And, well...
by Midjourney by Q
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