So, I've got a Quest idea. Probably not going to do it myself, given I'm barely keeping my head over the water right now.
Disney Quest.
Basically, you are The Mouse, and you dictate what they do. It would take a Crusader Kings format, much like the usual Dynasty Quest, but you'd be more akin to a faction with people like Bob Iger serving as Hero Units. *sarcastic* Essentially, the Outer God Mih'ke is intent on ruling the world with a gloved fist! *sarcastic* But more seriously, you'd be more akin to the Zerg Overmind than Kerrigan/Queen of Blades.
If played seriously, it would mostly be a Quest to become a Megacorp, justified in that branching out to other markets than entertainment doesn't actually violate Anti-Trust laws. If played comedically, Disney would be a Megacorp just benevolent enough that the government doesn't destroy the entire thing because they're willing to play ball and keep the other corps from getting too uppity. This might change if Disney, oh, I don't know, starts making battledroids, but that's a ways off either way.
Here's a basic layout:
Disney: Turn 1. Year: 2000. Walt Disney founded an animation company in the 1920s. Though trials and tribulations have abounded since it's very founding, the company has grown very successful. To the point that it's one of the more powerful companies in America, and one of the most powerful in the world by entertainment standards.
Martial: While you theoretically don't need anything in the way of musclebound thugs, raising defenses against corporate espionage can only be a good thing as long as you don't go crazy. Improving fire safety and anti-mosquito defenses down in Florida is also good for improving park quality of life and reducing the risk of lawsuits is something that the executives always appreciate. Choose 2 per Turn.
[ ] Corporate Backups. Server farms are required to hold all the transactions involving the company over any significant length of time. Creating a backup would cost a pretty penny and require updating which would accumulate more cost over time, but would make the company more secure against hacking in the long and short term, as well as errors in the bank, deliberately engineered or purely accidental. Cost 3. Increase upkeep by 1. Corporate sabotage must succeed check twice to do significant damage.
[ ] Mosquito Traps. While Florida is the worst offender, every location has bug problems of some kind. Investigate methods to improve rates of repellation, capture, and extermination. Preferably without causing enough environmental damage that there would be hand-wringing. Cost 1 Income. Small chance of Income boost. Potentially significant if enough progress is made/on a crit. May have synergy with certain Learning options.
[ ] In Case of Fire. Fire is always a potential hazard. Find ways to prevent or halt it without ruining the ambience. Who knows? Other theme parks might want to get in on it. Small chance of Income boost. Potentially significant if enough progress is made/on a crit. May have synergy with certain Learning options.
[ ] In Case of Hurricane. Though not a problem for California, the Florida location has to worry about this regularly. If your team does very well, it might even be something the public or government might want. Small chance of Income boost. Potentially significant if enough progress is made/on a crit. May have synergy with certain Learning options.
[ ] Secure Secrets. Everyone has secrets. The Mouse is no exception. Make them harder to crack. Raises check threshold for discovering Disney secrets, from the normal corporate skullduggery to the bizarre. Like whether some sort of eldritch abomination is guiding the higher echelons.
Stewardship: Improving old rides, making new ones, building new locations, supply lines for merch and the ridiculous demands of actors and directors. There's always something that needs doing. Choose 2.
[ ] Improve A Park. There's always a higher peak of park quality. Given that the parks are one of the largest and most consistent sources of income for the company, improvements are always something to look for. Locked without Park Survey actions invested.
[ ] Open a theater. Disney has long wrestled with theaters for control. A private theater may show old Disney films, as well as release Disney content 24/7 whenever it wishes. It also sends a message to theaters: We can replace you if we wish. Don't push us. Costs 3 Income.
[ ] Increase Supply Line Efficiency. There's always going to be some loss to inefficiency. The bigger and more successful the company gets, the more this will occur. Reducing it can lower Upkeep, and in extreme cases increase Income and increase defenses against theft and fraud. Grows more effective as Total Income rises.
[ ] Increase Department Efficiency. Purely internal matters may also be streamlined in order to increase efficiency. Lowers Upkeep, amount dependent on roll. High rolls may provide extra benefits such as lowering DCs or discovering synergies between people which may provide Stat bonuses or improve mental health. Critical Successes will automatically provide another action slot. Write-in Department. If no Department is specified, a general check is run. Crits and 90+ rolls will, if they provide an additional action, run a 1d6 for which one. Personal is not a valid input.
[ ] Appoint Department Head. Though the CEO and President control the company, someone must ride herd on the various sections. Do note that Stewardship provides benefits regardless of Department in a Head, though having a 10 points in the directly relevant Stat and 20 in Stewardship is worse than the other way around. Provides additional Action slot in a given category. Only one Head per Department per 25 Total Income.
[ ] Appease HR. Adding a few mental health professionals to Disney's workforce will go a long way towards getting HR off the execs backs. Break and rec rooms will allow for some stress relief, which is also something HR cares about. Reduces worker discontent, which reduces the chances and severity of scandals. Total Income determines the extent of benefits, with higher rolls necessary to adequately satisfy the workforce at higher rolls. Rolls determine how great those benefits are. Costs 1 Income.
Diplomacy: In theory, you are a purely capitalist venture, which provides survival of the fittest as it's credo, where coin is king. In practice, it's a bit more complex. Everyone wants something, but it isn't always money. Choose 2.
[ ] Reach Out. Hiring on actors is a crucial part of any movie-making process. This means a certain amount of negotiation and wheel-greasing is necessary. Find and hire the film crews for movies. Higher rolls provide bonuses for the movie. Anything above a natural one is likely to follow it's pre-destined course without personal intervention.
[ ] Recruit Hero Units. Dredge up candidates to run projects, aid in running the business, or simply to be part of it. Gives out candidates. Number and quality depend on roll. Crit fails give no one. 2-20 gives 1-3 of moderate capability. 21-40 gives 2-5 of decent capability. 41-60 offers 3-6 of good talent. 61-80 offers 4-8 of great talent. 81-99 gives you a list of 5-12 of excellent talent. 100+ offers 12 excellent Heroes, and 1-3 King-tier Hero Units. King-tiers are those who might have been like Ghengis Khan or Alexander the Great in another life, or Leonardo Da Vinci or Einstein if Learning is their specialty. Kings also automatically unlock another action slot in their specialty, where normally you need a department head to accomplish that or Stewardship Actions, regardless of how many you already possess. Sub-vote for who and how many to hire regardless of roll. High rolls may lead to projects having their DC lowered or being autocompleted. Stewardship in particular.
-[ ] Specialization. While you can simply trawl for good candidates, specifying a specific field of talent will give you a smaller pool, with better Stats in that field. Quality is raised on average, but numbers have the upper range lowered by 2, and the lower range lowered by 1.
[ ] Government Lobbying. Attempt to relax Anti-Trust laws, help hush up a scandal, keep good old Mickey out of public domain. High rolls have a chance of raising government Opinion. Low rolls have a chance of the reverse. Costs 2 Income.
[ ] Soothe the Public. The average person has a fairly short attention span. Other scandals, personal troubles, it's so very easy for your displeasure with a specific company to become lost among the noise. Lower impact of any outstanding scandals and accompanying loss of public and/or government Opinion. Cost 2 Income.
[ ] Collaborate. Let's face it. Disney's video games aren't known for quality. Why not loan out your IP to a company with more expertise in that field? Square makes Final Fantasy, and no one who actually knows anything about video games would tell you those aren't popular despite the cultural differences between Japan and America, so they're clearly doing something right. Collaborate with another company, from acting as Pixar's distributor, to lending your IPs and knowledge of the characters to a video game company.
-[ ] Write-in Company.
Intrigue: A company as large and old as Disney will have skeletons in the closet, and produce shadows, distortions in society arising from it's influence. Maybe someone is getting a little too nosy about whether Walt froze his head and are trying to get into storage. Maybe they're looking into the towns nearest to Disney's theme parks and the effects, good and bad, of being rest stops on the way there. Or, maybe they have a grudge because they got passed over in favor of someone else, either directly or due to Disney's success sapping the resources of other entertainment companies. There are ways to handle this, though murder is usually a last resort. Choose 2.
[ ] Lawsuits. Libel suits are generally pretty easy to win when you have as much money to throw at lawyers as Disney does. Most people get at least a little carried away in their vitriol. Propaganda with no emotion behind it isn't very good propaganda. Therefore, finding actual untruths to sue over is pretty simple a lot of the time. Plus, businessmen and lawyers alike know how to find a loophole if one exists. Cost: Variable. Chance of Success and potential rewards depend on a number of factors.
[ ] Investigate Nosy People. Perhaps it's a reporter, looking for something to spice up a slow news week. Perhaps it's a conspiracy theorist. Perhaps it's an employee, either someone who genuinely just wants to know, a plant, or simply someone who stumbled across this stuff. Regardless, having some dirt of your own can generally at least buy some time for a more permanent solution, or at least damage whoever is responsible. Cost: Variable. May be used on multiple people, but the importance and number of people will influence the cost.
[ ] Hire A Professional. They don't care why. They don't care who. They will silence the wannabe detectives, or actual detectives. They will also avoid leaking their contractor, as professionals have standards. Take care that they aren't already working for someone else. The problem with people with standard is that they can't always be turned with money or blackmail. Critical Failures are unusually nasty, but successes and even normal failures will not affect you negatively. Critical Successes have been known to throw entire cities or companies into chaos.
Learning: Knowing what the customer wants is absolutely crucial to removing their money from their clutches. You can sell them garbage if you have cultural and/or economic dominance, but that can only be pushed so far. Prohibition is proof of that. Patents are also a good source of Income, so developing new technology is always going to be profitable. Choose 2.
[ ] Customer Survey. It's always good to know what customers want. Unlocks Stewardship Actions. Lowers DC on some Diplomacy Actions.
[ ] Develop Technology. Patents are always profitable, and having access to new techniques in movie-making can only be beneficial. Available technologies depends on Hero Units, year, companies under Disney control, technologies already researched, and, due to #&(@% fiction library. Depending on roll and technology, benefits may extend beyond boosted income. Hologram technology, for example, has immense potential for entertainment, though it's likely to be a high DC without adjacent technologies being improved or high-tier Hero Units. CGI Improvement would be the most closely aligned Technology of the Real technologies available.
-[ ] CGI Improvement. At this point, CGI is... usable, but it's a lot more expensive than either conventional animation or live-action. As such, it's currently somewhat niche, generally a supplement for the other two. Improving it would likely lower costs and open opportunities.
-[ ] Animation Techniques. Animation is extremely time-consuming. Less than 25 minutes of animation can take most of a year, even with outsourcing. Improving it will lower costs and open opportunities, as this is the company's bread and butter.
-[ ] Live-Action Techniques. Though most of the company's more successful movies are animated features, many of the B-Movies and a significant portion of the television properties are live-action. Improving the process may lower costs and open opportunities.
-[ ] Animatronic Improvement. Generally less than convincing, and often considered creepy. Still, these robotic actors feature heavily in rides and attractions.
-[ ] Write-in. Any technology from Disney franchises as of 2000 is technically available, though the influence of #^#^&@ making them possible means that the DC is still fairly high. On the bright side, they won't abruptly stop working outside of the solar system or anything. Technologies adjacent to those are possible, but have even higher DCs. For example, the anti-gravity substance of The Absent-Minded Professor(1961), the digital-physical conversion of Tron(1982), the shrink-ray of Honey I Shrunk the Kids(1989) or growth-ray of Honey I Blew Up the Kid(1992), The Rocketeer's jetpack(1991), the eponymous Flubber(1997), Inspector Gadget's cybernetics(1999), etc.
Personal: Your influence is limited. That being said, you can put a thumb on the scales still. Choose 3.
[ ] Defy Fate. Fate decrees certain actions and events take place. That is both boring and irritating to you and your designs. Provides a reroll for one Action. Choose the higher roll. May be taken once per Turn. If no action is specified, automatically allocated to critical failures, failures, and low rolls, in that order.
[ ] Influence Reality. The epitome of placing your thumb on the scales. +3 to all Actions. May be taken multiple times.
[ ] Firmly Grasp Reality. Your influence is felt very strongly in one specific area. +20 to one Action. Can negate Natural 1s. May be taken once per Turn. Extremely potent reality-warping may lead to additional effects. Hard to say if this will be for good or ill, dependent on rolls.
[ ] Research Anomaly. For whatever reason, the entire 'Sol System' as the locals of a paltry million years call it, is highly resistant to your influence as well as that of your kind as a whole. Each planet and the star produce some sort of interference. This is not the case elsewhere. It's what drew you here in the first place. It also shields your presence from others of your kind, allowing your recuperation from a clash gone wrong. Investigating it would be prudent, now that you've recovered sufficiently that action is once again possible. The similarities to the energy in the galactic core cannot be ignored. High DC. No penalty for failure, but only a high roll will make any progress to discovering what's happening.
[ ] Scan For Threats. If the Earth is destroyed by an alien race, Disney will never achieve economic or cultural hegemony. It is best to do something about that. Perhaps some earthquakes on their worlds. Alternatively, a wormhole in the path of a gamma ray burst to redirect it into the nearest black hole may be necessary to prevent the Earth from being stripped of life. Prevent random natural disasters or direct invasions from scouring Earth of life. Low rolls may lead to attention from outside forces. High rolls may lead to a civilization advanced enough to, for example, see the gamma ray burst coming and also see your entirely incidental saving of their world/worlds. Even unknowing worship of millions can be beneficial. Range is 1000 lightyears. Most threats would provide at least some warning within that range, though there are some that would not.
-[ ] Deep Scan. A full 1 million lightyears may be scanned, with greater intervention sub-voted on, but the normal scan carries no risk of drawing attention. This version is more or less guaranteed to draw attention. Most likely unfriendly attention. It is more a question of how long it takes to find you than whether they do.
AN: Since it's not the sort of Quest where a lot of actual combat would be at all likely, at least initially, Martial would absorb more defense-oriented Stewardship and Intrigue projects, as well as safety protocols. If you get far enough on the Learning chain, it might have stuff like defense contracts, but you'd either have to get very lucky or lean hard on the Learning. This would be a 3-month Turn Quest.
If treated semi-seriously, there'd be some in-universe musing that there are a lot of expies of Disney Hero Units to draw expertise from, which is from Mih'ke's influence. Bet you thought that was just a joke didn't you? Nope! It's a Blind-Idiot God that nation builds to nation build. If they aren't malevolent in the technical sense, at least one of them has to benefit somebody at some point. This would lead to some serious mad science over time, which Disney would be mitigating mostly by poaching at least some of it for it's own ends. And yes, this would include any IPs from bought companies. For example, Fox getting bought out would lead to a place like Springfield, and people would swiftly notice the eldritch topography, such as being adjacent to Washington DC and New York simultaneously, as if a suburb of each, while simultaneously bordering the States of Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky. Only the first and last share borders with each other IRL. It also has the 636 and 939 Area Codes simultaneously. Somehow.
Over time, people are going to figure out Disney's the center of the madness, even if Disney itself isn't actually doing anything to cause it on their own, which will lead to escalating attempts to infiltrate. Plus, Mih'ke isn't the only supernatural being on the block. Firmly Grasp Reality and Learning Actions centered around Disney property technologies will make people figure this out faster, but people will notice Not!Springfield being retconned in when Fox gets bought. 30-50K people don't just appear from nothing, even if the systems insist they were always there. A 'stealth' run where Learning focuses solely on Animtation bumps and the like while Mih'ke burns two Personals on Influence Reality to provide a general improvement to Disney's fortunes while smashing it's head against Research Anomaly every Turn is theoretically feasible, but that sounds kind of boring doesn't it? Using it as a stealth mode whenever Disney buys a company is entirely viable though.
If you're wondering why all this weirdness is happening, well, Mih'ke is able to use Disney's company mascot, Mickey Mouse, as a focus to influence the world, despite the massive resistance the area has. The greater plot is actually tied to this resistance, and one of the most major ways to advance the plot is to research this stuff.
