31 Days of Character Creation #9 – Cabal

Cabal is a game where the character is the evil corporation you create. Employees are assets the company moves around to work towards its nefarious agenda. Essentially, if you want to play a mix of Succession with horror elements, you have found the game for you. Here’s how Cabal is described on its Kickstarter page:

Cabal is an RPG that works in reverse to the way tabletop RPGs usually function. Instead of each player creating their own character, you create a single character between you. This character is an organisation with its own secret plan and goals. It might be a conspiracy, a corporation, an activist group, an occult society of magicians or even a collection of hidden alien refugees. The size, influence, resources and pawns of the group depend entirely on what attributes the players choose between them for the organisation.

In most RPGs, the characters go on adventures created by the Gamemaster, and gain improvement points they can use to build their characters. In Cabal, the players decide what aspect of the organisation they want to improve, and work with the Gamemaster to create a project that will improve that attribute if they are successful. These projects require the organisation to use specialty teams to complete the goal. Such teams are created to give each player a character to run for that team’s part of the project. Several teams might be required to complete a project, and compared to the organisation, any of them are expendable […]

Cabal is what you want it to be; a game of corporate greed, activists and hackers taking on the establishment, or even mercenaries working for the highest bidder. The motives, agenda and methods of your Cabal are entirely up to you.

Here is the dastardly corporation I created: Blackburn Media Holdings (BHM)
Blackburn Media Holdings was founded in the early 20th century by Alexander Blackburn, an ambitious industrialist with a vision of controlling the world’s narrative. Starting as a small publishing house, the company expanded rapidly, acquiring newspapers, radio stations, and eventually television networks.

By the time of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Blackburn Media Holdings had already begun subtly influencing major news events, ensuring certain stories were amplified while others were buried. The digital age brought new opportunities, and under the leadership of Alexander’s grandson, Marcus Blackburn, the corporation’s reach extended into social media, online news, and global streaming platforms, making it one of the most powerful media entities in the world.

In recent years, Blackburn Media Holdings has played a shadowy role in shaping public opinion on major events. During the Arab Spring, key narratives were pushed to favor specific outcomes beneficial to the corporation’s hidden agenda. The company’s top operatives, such as the cunning strategist Evelyn Devereaux and the tech-savvy former journalist Leo Kincaid, orchestrated campaigns that subtly manipulated perceptions and sowed discord where necessary.

From influencing election outcomes to controlling the flow of information during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackburn Media Holdings continues its covert mission to shape humanity’s future, all under the guise of providing unbiased news and entertainment.