Northwest Limited is a relatively unstructured Corporate RP, where characters are employees of the company and plot happens through "emails" sent back and forth. This RP is open to anyone and everyone. The original Northwest Limited RP is in Equilism, and can be read (for many laughs) here. To make this a more entertaining experience for everyone, here are some ground rules:
General
All posts must be in email form. No in-person conversations, telephone calls, broader description, or anything of the sort. JUST emails.
Using emails, you are free to tell a story directly through a conversation, or hint at it indirectly ("Oh dear, I hope your project doesn't turn out like Jim's did last year. We never did find all the marbles..."). Please be as creative as you like!
On a similar note, part of the fun of this style of RP is making use office stereotypes and bringing them some extra absurdity! Have fun with excessive bureaucracy, stolen lunches, defaced bathroom walls, coworkers chewing gum, whatever you want! And if you've read Company, feel free to take some cues from the horrors of Project Alpha.
Characters
Please stick to only one character at this time. For one thing, we want everyone to be able to find something that interests them, and if early players create multiple characters at once, that might close off several options. For another, this works out better when characters get some development and interpersonal interaction, and adding too many too quickly detracts from that.
Please don't everyone default to playing as a manager - it can be easily overdone, and most of the best jokes are only possible with lower level workers - like the poor, beleaguered IT person trying to explain a computer virus to someone computer illiterate.
(My favorite line of all time is still from Sev's IT character: 'Please be aware that "bug reports" should be filed on computer crashes and other software glitches. For literal infestations of ants, please contact Pest Control.') That kind of thing isn't possible when everyone is a manager, because managers generally don't do the same work as the employees of their departments.
You do have complete freedom to invent NPC characters by word of mouth - that is, your email can definitely mention "Lisa in Accounting" and what she said last week. But you can't control them directly, and you're not in charge of what they're like or how other characters interact with them. All participants are heartily encouraged to expand on previously referenced NPCs for entertainment purposes.
All NPCs should be treated as plausible individuals with collaboratively developed personas. If an NPC has been referenced extensively in prior emails, future ones should be in keeping with the personality as established.
New players are welcome to adopt referenced NPCs as their own character, if they feel comfortable playing the persona that has been already established.
Plot
The long-term plot is a secret collaboration between myself and Grim, and we're going to reveal it in drips and drabs as appropriate. Please leave that aspect of things, as well as really any reference to the outside world, alone. Obviously it's fine to mention partners/kids/whatever if it's relevant to the character, but this doesn't take place in TNP or in the real world, so the events of either one won't come up. No emails about Syria, or the latest war between Nebula and Syrixia, or anything like that.
Small-scale, though, you can invent whatever plots you can imagine. A conspiracy between catering and accounting to drive administration insane? Great! A plot by security to manufacture a crisis and earn themselves raises? Perfect! Past disasters and current mistakes? Wonderful!
But do keep in mind that this is collaborative, undirected storytelling, and events described should be flexible enough for all participants to work creatively with them, as well as remain within normally plausible real-world limits unless otherwise granted permission by a thread OP (either myself or The Grim Reaper).
This thread can be used for questions, plot plotting, character assassination, and more! Now, get cracking.
