Corpse Run: Onboarding the New Hires
A TiGGR Setting Expansion — here, the future has weekends.
Touchstones: a certain grim darkness (you know the one) • Corpse Run • For personal use
Getting Started
Touchstone
A second portal event in Receiving. A second displaced adventuring party — except these five aren't refugees from a game built around enjoyable empowerment. They come from a world where every institution is predatory, every object is covered in spikes, and suffering is a moral virtue. They arrive at Cassiday's and discover that the lights stay on, the authorities are mostly ineffectual rather than murderous, coworkers can disagree without becoming cultists, and the store cat — while probably supernatural — does not demand blood. This is almost more destabilizing than the hourly wage.
Scene
Cassiday's City of Books, mid-campaign. The original five are now veterans of the transition — and, improbably, trainers. (The store is chronically understaffed, and the newcomers interview intensely well.)
Goal
Get the new hires through Orientation Week employed, un-fired, and beginning to believe that tomorrow will resemble today. Their long campaign: learning that preserving a mildly decent workplace can be a more meaningful act than saving yet another doomed empire.
What this expansion assumes
The base Corpse Run setting document and the TiGGR rules. Everything there — Then & Now, Old Habits, Hurt Feelings (Retail Edition), the household-as-vehicle, the pressures — remains in force. This document adds to it.
How This Expansion Bends Corpse Run
Broken Then Rows
The base setting's loose-stats clause now extends to player characters' Then rows. The newcomers' old lives did not respect a 3-point budget, and their statblocks shouldn't either: Then totals may exceed 3, and Then stats may be negative. A negative Then stat is never rolled except through Old Habits — it sits on the sheet as a warning label. When it is rolled, 2d6 minus the stat applies, and the gap to the Now stat sets the complication as usual. The first party's tragedy was losing points. This party's tragedy is that some of their points were never assets.
On the Clock (Veterans' Universal Special Ability, once per scene)
When a newcomer's Old Habits complication lands, a veteran present in the scene may step in and absorb it: the veteran takes 1 HP of embarrassment, the incident report downgrades to a raised eyebrow, and the veteran narrates how they smoothed it over. Found family, mechanized as cover. The veterans keep this ability forever — including after the Handoff, when the GM runs them.
The Handoff (Table Procedure)
This expansion's starter scenario begins with players running their original characters one last time, as trainers. Partway through (the scenario says when), players hand their veterans to the GM — full sheets intact — and take up the new hires. From that moment the original party is supporting cast: the store's institutional memory, still on the schedule, still On the Clock. Nobody is retired. Somebody is always in the doorway, watching like a proud, tired ghost.
The Tone Guardrail
The old world is discussed in the break room, never depicted on screen. Spikes are described, never deployed. The worst thing that happens in this game is still a smoke break. The horror stays grammatical — "then we display his skull above Receiving" is dialogue, not an action declaration — and the joke works best when the newcomers are not incompetent. They may be the best workers Cassiday's has ever had. The problem is never their ability. It is their calibration.
The New Hires (Playable Characters)
Five arrivals, one basement sublet. Their Then rows break the rules on purpose.
The Penitent Engine
Once an armored zealot kept alive by hatred and machinery. Now works Returns, where she listens — fully, silently, without interrupting — to a customer explain why a coffee-stained workbook is "basically unused."
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then | 4 | 0 | -1 | — | Engine of Penitence |
| Now | 0 | 1 | 2 | 5 | Returns Desk (a different penance) |
Special Ability: Patience of the Machine — +1 Charm when absorbing a complaint without interrupting, once per scene. (Formerly: Righteous Fury.)
Signature Gear: The Devotional Ledger — +3 to a Mind roll once per scenario when citing the returns policy as scripture, chapter and verse.
The Last Castellan
Commanded a fortress whose defenders had been dead for centuries. Now Night Supervisor. Nobody has ever completed the bathroom checklist so thoroughly, or with such solemnity.
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then | 2 | 3 | -1 | — | Warden of the Silent Garrison |
| Now | 1 | 2 | 0 | 5 | Night Supervisor |
Special Ability: Closing Procedures — +1 Mind when securing, checking, or accounting for anything at end of shift, once per scene. (Formerly: Hold the Wall.)
Signature Gear: The Ring of Keys — +3 to any roll once per scenario when a door, gate, or register must open — or stay shut.
The Ash Confessor
Extracted heresy through pain, revelation, and elaborate iron instruments. Now conducts employee onboarding. His training sessions are technically compliant but leave new hires convinced that failure to complete the tax forms will imperil their immortal souls.
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then | 1 | 3 | 2 | — | Extractor of Truths |
| Now | 0 | 1 | 2 | 5 | Onboarding & Training |
Special Ability: Technically Compliant — +1 Charm when delivering required information with terrifying sincerity, once per scene. (Formerly: Extract the Truth.)
Signature Gear: The Laminated Onboarding Binder (iron clasps optional) — +3 to a Mind roll once per scenario when procedure must be followed to the letter.
The Carrion Seer
Read destiny in battlefields and entrails. Now works Inventory Control, and can identify shrinkage patterns no spreadsheet has noticed. Regards pivot tables as a debased but serviceable form of divination.
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then | 0 | 4 | 0 | — | Augur of the Red Fields |
| Now | 0 | 2 | 1 | 5 | Inventory Control |
Special Ability: The Numbers Are Lying — +1 Mind when the numbers are lying, once per scene. (Formerly: Read the Entrails.)
Signature Gear: A Deck of Pivot Tables — +3 to a Mind roll once per scenario when divining a pattern in the data. She must not explain her methodology to Corporate. Ever.
The Nameless Wretch
Literally raised in a plague trench. Does not understand the question "how is your work-life balance?" Becomes, unexpectedly, the store's best organizer — because he regards paid breaks, predictable schedules, and clean drinking water as near-miraculous victories worth defending to the last.
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then | 3 | 0 | -1 | — | Survivor of the Trench |
| Now | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | Floater (and Petra's protégé) |
Special Ability: Miraculous Baseline — +1 to any roll when treating an ordinary decency as a wonder worth defending, once per scene. (Formerly: Endure.)
Signature Gear: A Tin Cup, Polished — +3 to a Charm roll once per scenario when reminding everyone, plainly, what they are owed.
Supporting Cast Additions
The Dread
Not homesickness — its opposite. The conviction that this world's decency is a trap: the lights will fail, the manager is secretly a cult, the cat will eventually demand blood. It rides in with the newcomers and sits with them on every break.
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2 | 1 | 8 | The Other Shoe (recurring force, not a foe) |
Special Ability: The Other Shoe — once per scene, reframes a mundane kindness as a probable trap; -1 Charm for any newcomer who entertains the theory that scene.
Dread Track: its 8 HP is a dread track, depleted only by evidence of durable ordinariness — a schedule kept, a grievance actually resolved, a paycheck that simply arrives. Nothing dramatic can deplete it; drama is what these five already trust. At 0, nobody celebrates. One of them quietly hangs something on the break room wall, and stops standing near the exits.
The War, Still Calling
Their door. Iron-banded, smelling of ash, it will open in Receiving eventually — because it always does. It does not offer what they miss most. It offers what they were built for. No statblock: when it opens, there is no roll. Each newcomer simply answers. The question is not "do you want to come home?" It is "will you let this place stay real, even though the other one is calling you back to the war?"
Vehicles
The Basement Sublet
Below the duplex: low ceilings, one hotplate, five bedrolls arranged with tactical spacing that is slowly, week by week, relaxing.
| Body | Mind | Charm | HP | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 10 | The First Defensible Settlement |
Special Ability: Defensible — +1 to any roll made while everyone is accounted for, once per scene.
Scenario Seed Tables (2d6)
Roll 2d6 on either table (or both) to spark a shift. Remember: 7 is most common, 2 and 12 are rare and extreme — let the odds guide the weirdness.
Grimdark Assumptions Misapplied
| Roll (2d6) | Result |
|---|---|
| 2 | A newcomer performs a full threat assessment of children's story time and files it, in triplicate, unprompted. |
| 3 | The fire drill is treated as a siege. The muster point has never been reached faster, or in formation. |
| 4 | A newcomer attempts to swear a blood oath of loyalty to the dental plan. Petra gently substitutes a signature. |
| 5 | Someone laminates a purity seal onto their badge. Doug thinks it's flair. It is not flair. |
| 6 | The break room microwave beeps three times. Three newcomers assume it is a countdown. |
| 7 | A quiet shift. The newcomers find this deeply suspicious, but — progress — file nothing. |
| 8 | Overtime is offered, not demanded. A newcomer asks what the punishment is for declining. There isn't one. Existential crisis. |
| 9 | The suggestion box receives its first suggestion in the old world's script. It is, on translation, surprisingly constructive. |
| 10 | A newcomer "fortifies" the fuzzy keychain endcap. It has honestly never looked better. |
| 11 | The Carrion Seer predicts Tuesday's rush to the minute. The Liaison requests her methodology. She must not provide it. |
| 12 | Asked to "take ownership" of a task, a newcomer begins drafting articles of stewardship, with witnesses, in blood-adjacent ink. |
Small Decencies Encountered
| Roll (2d6) | Result |
|---|---|
| 2 | A paycheck arrives a day early because of a bank holiday. This requires a long sit-down. |
| 3 | A customer says "thank you" and means it. The newcomer stands very still for some time. |
| 4 | The schedule is posted two weeks out, as promised. Twice in a row now. A pattern is forming. |
| 5 | Someone covers a shift with no favor demanded. The debt ledger has no column for this. |
| 6 | The water in the break room is clean, cold, and free. Still. Every day. Unbelievable. |
| 7 | An ordinary lunch break, taken in full, uninterrupted. Nobody dies. Nobody even yells. |
| 8 | Doug apologizes for a mistake. Out loud. In front of people. Unprompted. |
| 9 | Petra resolves a grievance by Thursday. The newcomer inspects the outcome for hidden costs. There are none. |
| 10 | A coworker disagrees with the Ash Confessor — openly, to his face — and then brings him coffee anyway. |
| 11 | The store closes for a holiday and everyone is paid for it. One newcomer weeps at the bus stop, quietly, off the clock. |
| 12 | Ilium the cat sits in a newcomer's lap, demands nothing, and stays. The Dread takes 1d6 without a roll. |
Starter Scenario: Orientation Week
Five terrifying new hires, one handoff, and a meeting where somebody must not say the thing about the skull. Three scenes, coffee throughout.
Scene: One week after the second portal event. The paperwork is (mostly) legal, the badges are printing, and the veterans have been voluntold to train.
Goal: Get the new hires through the week employed and un-fired — and hand over the keys.
Pressures in play: The Dread, ShelfCorp Initiatives, The Gap (new ownership) — and, late, The War, Still Calling.
Scene 1: The Paperwork (Setup)
Players run their veterans one last time. Badge photos, tax forms, the store tour. Let each veteran establish their trainee with one small task — no rolls unless it turns risky, and On the Clock is live.
- The Ash Confessor turns the W-4 walkthrough into a rite of confession; a mundane new hire (hired the same week, cosmically unlucky) is near tears (Charm 8 for a veteran to reframe; "he means it's due Friday").
- The Penitent Engine cannot stop standing at parade rest for her badge photo (Charm 6 to coax something adjacent to ease; the photo will still look like a war memorial).
- The Castellan declines to accept his keys without a proper ceremony of investiture (Mind 8 to improvise one that satisfies him using only break-room materials; Doug is delighted and wants it added to the handbook).
Scene 2: Shift Shadowing (Escalation)
The Handoff happens here. Players pass their veterans to the GM and take up the newcomers; the veterans remain on the floor as mentors. Then the shift gets interesting.
- Returns: the coffee-stained workbook, "basically unused" (Charm 8 for the Penitent Engine to process it by the book; her Then Body 4 whispers alternatives; the Old Habits gap is a canyon).
- The schedule changes without notice — the inciting grievance. The Dread feeds; the newcomers convene in Receiving (Mind 8 to document it Petra's way; the skull option will be proposed in this huddle, and must be talked down before Scene 3).
- The Carrion Seer's shrinkage report is impossibly precise, and the Liaison wants her methodology by end of week (Mind 8 to explain pivot tables convincingly without once mentioning entrails).
Scene 3: The Meeting (Climax)
After close, break room, Petra chairing. The grievance is on the table, and the Dread stands at whatever the week has worn it to.
- Naming, out loud, one decency you now believe will still be there tomorrow is Dramatic (Mind 8); publicly proposing the documented, non-skull remedy is Climactic (Charm 10). Success depletes the Dread 1d6 (bonuses apply). The Other Shoe still tugs (-1 Charm for anyone entertaining the trap theory).
- Midway through: a glow under the Receiving door — iron-banded, smelling of ash. Their door. The war is calling its soldiers back. No roll. Each newcomer simply answers, in front of everyone.
- At 0 Dread: nobody celebrates. Someone hangs something on the break room wall and stops standing near the exits. The veterans watch from the doorway like proud, tired ghosts.
Epilogue: Ask each player: what does your new hire post on the break room wall — and what do they finally put down?
Running Onboarding the New Hires
- The old world stays in the break room. Discussed, never depicted; spikes described, never deployed. The worst outcome is still a smoke break.
- Deplete the Dread undramatically. Resist the big moment — it falls to the third quiet Tuesday, not the grand gesture. Drama is the one thing these five already trust.
- Play the competence straight and the calibration crooked. They are frighteningly good workers whose baseline assumptions are grotesque. The joke is never that they fail.
- The veterans are the store's institutional memory now. Keep them visible, keep them On the Clock, and let the players feel their old characters watching them be good at this.
- The long arc belongs to the Wretch: paid breaks, posted schedules, clean water — near-miraculous victories, worth defending. When he finally says "we organize," someone from the old world should be listening.
- Ask yourselves: "What would happen in a workplace sitcom cold open?" Then ask what the newcomer is convinced is actually happening.
Built on the TiGGR system (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0) by The Grey Ledger Society, and on the Corpse Run setting. Onboarding the New Hires is an unofficial homebrew expansion created for personal use, with affection for every doomed soldier who ever deserved a lunch break — and finally got one.