THE COMPANY

Hi! I recently discovered and purchased The Company and Psykers and they are fantastic! Any chance of an additional printing of The Company? 

Hello!

I am having trouble printing out the zine pdfs and actually putting together the booklets! I cant seem to get the pages in the right order. Is there a specific way to have it done?

Hello!

I gmed this game as a oneshot with my players last night, and it was really nice! We used the story provided.

We loved the map, the backstory, and the premade characters! Made everything run smoothly.

It was lots of fun!! The system is easy to understand and the story is really fun.

Thanks for creating this!!

Hi,

 Wonderful job you did here! This system is amazing! Simple, but very solid and atmospherically creative.

 I just have one question: on the items description, as well as in the optional rules gazette, it's implied that ranged weapons need to reload. But there is no description for ammunition rules, or a correspondent item. Is ammo an item? Does reloading requires an action? Does the assault rifle need to reload twice?

It's very possible I can't read, but I had a couple questions. 

1. Do players gain stress even if they succeed on their roll? E.g. if they rolled 4 dice, got 2 Successes and 2 Failures, but only needed 1 Success, do they accomplish their goal *and* take 2 stress? One of my players built up ~8 stress in the first two sectors in the Eurydice mission and that seemed like a lot??

2. Do items/perks/etc add dice to the pool or do they increase the rolls of the dice already in the pool? E.g. does the handgun add 2d10 to an attack or does it turn the 6 you rolled into an 8?

Sorry if these are answered in plain english in the book :)

I just discovered that my files were out of date so I downloaded the latest versions, and noticed some typos (at least some of which were brought up previously and corrected as the Rule fix development log but it looks like there was an accidental reversion).

The Singles and Spreads version of the Employee Handbook (but not the Zine Spreads) have contradictory tables.  The Overview and Introduction pages have different numbers for how many successes you get with a critical success (the zine spread has both tables showing +1 success so I'm assuming that is the correct number).

Less importantly, the zine spreads overview page shows +1 success but both the singles and the spread layouts have the overview page missing that + (it just says 1 success).  The management manual version of the overview page is missing the + in all layouts.

Also, the equipment section has weight for different pieces of equipment and also range categories for different weapons but I'm not seeing rules on either of those so I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if the rules just aren't there.

Loved the game so far! Got a couple of questions if that's OK?

1. What do Digital Schematics do? The Engineer has them, but they are not a listed item. Unsure if they confer a bonus.

2. The Technician's job is 'Protect and/or repair Company assets' but this is different on the sample character sheet which says it is to 'Bypass security protocols'. 

3. Do characters start with any additional gear, is there an easy way to decide what is balanced? We weren't sure whether only one person having a gun would be an issue for Eurydice.

Ended up playing part-way through the Eurydice campaign, which is a really nice put together campaign. Unfortunately had to cut short due to Discord issues, but retrying again. The game has been great so far and everyone found the system intuitive and creepy.

I'm reading through this and can't wait to run it! This looks fantastic! One quick question: when reading the Employee Handbook, the Overview page list a critical success as +1 Success, -1 Stress, but the Introduction page lists it as +2 Success, -1 Stress. Could you clarify which it should be? Thanks so much!

The Company is a corporate dystopian survival horror RPG in the broad style of SCP, Resident Evil, or The Belko Experiment.

It's 48 pages, split across a player-facing Employee's Handbook and a GM-facing Management Manual. It's also got solid, evocative art, and a pretty clean, readable layout---although some pages can be a little densely packed sometimes.

Mechanically, The Company is pretty compact, but it packs a decent crunch. You roll small d10 pools with the individual dice tipped towards failure, but tools or help swing the odds way back towards success, and there's a distinct feeling of being less vulnerable when you're in a group.

There's a sanity/attrition system called Burnout, where you accumulate Stress, and your Stress determines the odds of you suffering penalties or loss of control at certain junctures.

There's also mechanics for pushing your luck, rerolling failed dice, and rolling over successes into new rolls, giving you ways to grit your teeth and try to fight your way out of a bad situation---or make it worse.

Characters are supposed to be pretty disposable in this system, and your +Dice currency (Drive) is also your exp, so it's on you to balance buying character advances against banking Drive to avoid getting torpedoed by a low dice pool in a bad situation. That said, Drive doesn't add a lot of dice per point spent, so it feels more like a last line of defense than something you have to consider using on the regular.

There's quite a good range of perks and items to dress up and customize your character, and the books do a good job of building and maintaining a tense but engaging atmosphere. It's pretty easy to see The Company being run as a one-shot or mini-campaign, but I think it can hold its own in regular play too. A lot of how it runs is going to depend on the GM's scenario-writing, but the game's basic premise makes it easy to write for.

Which brings us to the Management Manual.

The MM pulls back the curtain on what the setting looks and feels like, it gives some great GMing advice, and it contains a ready-made scenario to intro teams to the game.

The scenario starts pretty abruptly on page 6, but it's a very nice high stakes creature feature with a slow burn at the beginning and a lot of gunfire at the end. If you're a GM who likes to build tension, there's *lots* of opportunities for that, and if you're a group that likes tactics and combat, there's plenty of that in the scenario as well.

Overall, if you like pulpy action survival horror, you should add this to your library. It's easy to learn. It's got its own distinct flavor. It does a very good job of balancing player agency with growing danger and risk. And it lets you shift back and forth between being heroic and being scared as your resources wax and wane. This game page feels very blank, but the books are absolutely the opposite, rich with cool art and content. This is a sleeper hit. Don't sleep on it.

Minor Issues:

-EH, page 5, Resting, the text here says "spend loyalty" but the text for Drive suggests that you should be spending Drive instead. I also couldn't find any text that indicated what loyalty points were or how you accumulated them.

-EH, page 6, the formatting of the right sidebar makes it hard to read.

Will there be any more print editions for this? I hate to say I found this after the crowd funding had ended.

How many players do you recommend it for? Does it require a GM?