pentex subsidaries closest real life counterparts

[Vendrin]

I'm running a game involving pentex and would prefer to run the pentex subsidiaries as their real world counterparts because everyone automatically suspects endron, otolleys etc.

Looking for input on a few or suggestions if you think another company fits better.

Endron - Exxon Mobil
O'Tolleys- McDonald's
King Breweries- Budweiser/ annheisher Busch
magadon - ???
Sunburst - Google, Apple or Microsoft?
RED Network - FOX
Tellus Games - EA or Activision?

[mark]

wasn't there a pentex subsidiary that was a parody of whitewolf?

[Vendrin]

Black dog, but that counterpart is obvious

[idpersona]

Black dog, but that counterpart is obvious

I usually just use Wizard of the Coast, since it's one of the bigger (maybe biggest) RPG companies

For Magadon:
Quote from a Google search for "largest pharmaceutical company in new jersey":
The State is home to 14 of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck & Co., Novo Nordisk and Bayer Healthcare. Furthermore, New Jersey boasts a well-educated workforce with a high concentration of scientific professionals.

Pick one. Apparently NJ has very appealing tax laws and other incentives for pharmaceutical companies.

[Black Fox]

While some of the subsidiaries are clearly meant to be parodies of a well known company, I think a lot are generic parodies of certain industries as a whole. Circinius Brands is named as a play off the word carcinogen, an agent which causes cancer. Magadon is named after one of the trade names of the drug Nitrazepam. Also, some of the companies that served as inspirations are gone now – either bankrupt or bought out by another corporation – or no longer as dominant. Anheuser Busch, which produces Budweiser -the “King of Beers”, is clearly the model for King Breweries. However, Budweiser is now owned by ABInbev nased out of Belgium. Vesuvius Incorporated was a publisher of a wide range of books, comics, and periodicals – yet the only large companies that pritned comic books in the 1990s – Marvel, DC (as a branch of Warner Brothers), Image, and Dark Horse don't fit that description at all. They either published solely comics or was part of a huge media conglomerate with TV, movies, and music. Young and Smith makes both food and personal care products, but I don't know of any company which produces both – so which industry do you use? The writers were also US based, and there is a very strong US bias even when the industries in question (like mining) are more likely to be foreign.
Thus, different people are going to come up with different lists.
While you may want to use well known names for some of these companies, you may want to come up with some of your own names. Here is one list using some big name companies as stand ins.

• Ardus Enterprises - Waste Management, Inc.
• Autumn Health Management Systems - Health Management Associates
• Avalon Incorporated - Hasbro
• Black Dog Game Factory - White Wolf
• Circinus Brands - Altria
• Consolidex Worldwide - Morgan Stanley
• Endron International - ExxonMobil
• Good House International - Kimberly-Clark
• Hallahan Fishing Company - Trident Seafoods
• Harold and Harold Mining, Incorporated - Glencore
• Herculean Firearms Incorporated - Smith & Wesson
• Herrick's - Wal-Mart
• King Breweries and Distillers - Anheuser Busch Inbev
• Magadon, Incorporated - Merck Pharmaceuticals
• Nastrum Enterprises - Lockheed Martin
• Omni Television - The CW
• O'Tolley's: "The Family Place" - McDonalds
• Rainbow Incorporated - Rubbermaid
• Tellus Enterprises - Nintendo
• Sunburst Enterprises International - Microsoft
• Vesuvius Incorporated - Warner Brothers
• Young and Smith, Incorporated - Procter & Gamble plus Kraft Foods

Personally, I do not like the depiction of Pentex in the game for multiple reasons. The companies are far too big and well known to make effective Wyrm fronts. I'd prefer much smaller companies mostly privately owned, but in effective niche markets or second tier suppliers to the big boys. Why be McDonalds when you can be one of the nameless beef suppliers to them and the other fast food chains?

[glamourweaver]

• King Breweries and Distillers - Anheuser Busch Inbev
  
  The ultra-conservative King family is also clearly a Coors reference

[Su-tehp]

• King Breweries and Distillers - Anheuser Busch Inbev
  
  The ultra-conservative King family is also clearly a Coors reference

Budweiser Frogs get bossed by Coors alligator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoI911uawTU

[Lian]

http://www.kochindustriesinc.com/Companies/ here's a good list but it might be bit on the nose....

[Black Fox]

[LIST]The ultra-conservative King family is also clearly a Coors reference

Good call.

It just goes to show there is no one to one relationship. It's various rifts on the culture.

[Vendrin]

Fair enough. Thanks for the list black fox

[Peat]

[/LIST]Personally, I do not like the depiction of Pentex in the game for multiple reasons. The companies are far too big and well known to make effective Wyrm fronts. I'd prefer much smaller companies mostly privately owned, but in effective niche markets or second tier suppliers to the big boys. Why be McDonalds when you can be one of the nameless beef suppliers to them and the other fast food chains?

A good example of this is when Nestle recalled some Hot Pockets last year; Nestle didn't even deal directly with the company that was the source of the tainted beef (Rancho Feeding). You could get all sorts of horrid things into the supply chain with no one having a clue who you were.

It would be interesting to see what a more business saavy version of Pentex (or rather, Pentex's numerous successors) looked like.

[Traveller]

The online-game setting I'm working on has packs 'adopting' small wyrm-tainted companies and minor villains, so there's always someone to go after even when there aren't big sept-spanning plots going on at the moment, and they're generally things exactly like Peat said...local producers, "unaffiliated" mining operations, tainted hospitals. Something big enough that a pack can't (or won't want to) just wipe it off the map in a flash of violent ecoterrorism, but small enough that you just might run into the guys in charge. Also the guys who are actually in charge of the wyrm stuff at that operation, which is probably someone different that the figurehead might not even know about.

Fighting a monolithic corporation of evil and never being able to make much of a difference can be thematic but it's not all that interesting. It's fun letting a pack or two take on a corporate entity and actually win long-term for once.

Of course, there's no reason these small fry can't coexist with Pentex itself. Are they secretly still working for Pentex, or are they working alone--and which answer is the biggest conspiracy? Is there something back in Malfeas pulling all the strings at once, or does the right hand not know what the left is doing...if you pit these corporations against each other, is it a good thing, or are you still playing into their hands? Such are the conversations of drunk Galliards, depressed Theurges, and Ragabashes in tinfoil hats.

[Su-tehp]

Such are the conversations of drunk Galliards, depressed Theurges, and Ragabashes in tinfoil hats.

I thought the Ragabash stopped wearing the tinfoil hats because they kept getting ripped apart every time they shifted to Crinos. (The hats got ripped apart, not the Ragabash.)

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I thought the Ragabash stopped wearing the tinfoil hats because they kept getting ripped apart every time they shifted to Crinos. (The hats got ripped apart, not the Ragabash.)

The cautionary note reminds me of changing forms in an un-detected suit of armor in Werewolf the Dark Ages.

[Su-tehp]

The cautionary note reminds me of changing forms in an un-detected suit of armor in Werewolf the Dark Ages.

Undetected? As in "it's kind of hard to sneak around while wearing plate armor, never mind if you're in Homid form or, Gaia forfend, wearing plate armor in Crinos form?" Or did you mean "un-Dedicated," meaning the armor won't change forms with the Garou wearing it because it hadn't had the Rite of Dedication performed on it?

But yeah, if you meant un-Dedicated, that would get a bit...messy.