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Posted by: GM Lich Oct 25 2011, 04:00 AM

So I'm running next week, and I was looking over ritual magic in the corebook and it looks like it can be used for some very cool things from a GM's standpoint, then the idea hit me: The Runners are hired to act as "security" for a massive pro/anti meta humanity peaceful protest (probably pro but slightly extreme) . The leader or "The Johnson" has a small list of suspects he thinks may cause some trouble but wants this protest to keep good PR so he wants the runners to take down the right one, meaning they can't afford to zap/subdue the wrong one. The suspect is actually not planning to do much because hes acting as the spotter. The runners have to figure it out which one it is. (Hint no one has astral perception) The plan for the mages is to cast mob mood or mob mind and spread chaos. The basic idea plot is that the groups PR will take a hit, while the mages now have a chance to take out the leader either using the mob directly or as a distraction as security tries to handle the crowd.
The suspect list idea is as follows:
Dwarf Conspiracy theorist: Noted for his blog on the matrix and conspiracy blog that has a cult like following. The conspiracy is basically "Elves are the puppet masters of the world" The conspiracy needs to be more developed but sounds fun to rp considering two people in our party are elves.
Gun Advocate Ork: This is a less developed idea, I was thinking a redneck ork with a gun obsession and
The Addict: Claims to have gotten clean off of some combat drugs that he was addicted to
The Rich Kid: A college kid that comes from a rich family with a background, daddy was a humanis club member.

Anyways this idea still needs a good amount of work, I was wondering if you guys could help develop the ideas.
Things to do:
Flesh out the suspects
Add one to two more suspects
Motivation for the mages for the protest
Have an interesting but unrelated event happen at the event or a twist

Posted by: Manunancy Oct 25 2011, 05:57 AM

One possible motive for a mage - and one that would be difficult to trace - could be to use the emotional height from a riot to feed power into an allied or controled spirit. They don't give a fart about the demonstration's agenda, it's only a power source for them.

Of course you can have some Humanis stooges involved as foot soldiers and to provide a nice red herring and fall guys for the mages to hide behind. Those guys would be more than happy to help turnign the demosntration into a riot to show those damn trogs and freaks are by nature incapable of civlized behavior and deserve being kept on a tight leash.

For the ork gun advocate, I'd suggest taking a page fom the Black Panthers - someone spouting fiery web rethorics about guns for protection gainst The Man's control and opression will definitevely end up on a 'watch for trouble' list.

Other likely suspcts could be Neo-anarchist or similar evolution of today's Black Block semi-pro rioters. Those guuys are there to make a mess and fight with the cops and want to involve as many 'sheeps' (read peaceful demonstrators) as they can into their fight to open their eyes about how the system is repressive and stacked against them.

As far as unrelated events go, a bunch of shadowrunner or a corp hit team doidoing some mayhem using the demonstration as a distraction is a fairly classic but effective problem.

Posted by: Udoshi Oct 25 2011, 06:18 AM

I like this. Such an emotionally charged environment is PERFECT for the various breeds of Shadow spirits - the ones that feed off of certain kinds of emotions, turning it into karma, like the muse and the succubus. Mechanically they all have Energy Drain(karma) that may only be used once victims or victims have been coerced into a certain act. I forget what the specific type that feeds off of violent emotions or fear is, there may even be one for each.

The mages could, in fact, be being manipulated BY such a said spirit, and not entirely expecting such an incredibly disastrous outcome. It could be they're only going to do a 'harmless' prank during the middle of a speech, and their 'spirit' "friend" uses their own magics and Compulsion powers to turn it into something much, much more ugly.

More twists: it may even be doing with WITH the informed consent of the ritual mages, and promising them power - just far, far less than it siphons off for itself.
Or, given that Free Spirits are full magicians, capable of ritual magic, it could even be infiltrating the mages themselves, trying to twist the ritual about to its own ends from inside.

A good complication could be someone from the party witnessing something they weren't supposed to - the spirit's true form, one of the spotters letting slip a critical piece of information over a headset where it could be heard, seeing through one of the red herring targets to the real culprits - something that forces the runner team to deal with this threat, because they know too much. Depending on the intentions and allegiances of the mages responsible for the riot, and how much they were tricked, a good complication may be for one of them to feel guilty over what happened, come forth, and try to set things right by bringing their companions in(if the shadow spirit is indeed an embodyment of rage, conflict, and strife, it may even be turning the mages against themselves. Weeding out the week, and seeing who's strong and sneaky enough to come on top, and thus worthy of being its student) - but not by going to the authories, because that's just trouble, but through the shadows by hiring a runner team to mop them up. Guess WHICH lucky runner team gets the job!

Posted by: Seriously Mike Oct 25 2011, 07:48 PM

The twist: it was a misprint. It should say "Elvis is the puppet master of the world". Battle the spirit-possessed skeleton of The King in the finale.

Posted by: GM Lich Oct 26 2011, 05:31 AM

Accidental double post please delete

Posted by: GM Lich Oct 26 2011, 05:31 AM

Manunancy and Udoshi thank you for your suggestions they great. I like the idea on shadow spirits so I gave them a read, I wish they gave them more fluff because they feel barebone compared to insect spirits section. They don't really discuss origins at all which would of been nice. I am thinking that the Mages made a pact with this spirit, probaly for more power. However, I was thinking the main objective is that the mages come from a school of magic thats tradition relies heavily on emotions. The place where the protesters are, I'm thinking a park, the reason behind the protest was because of a violent hate crime of a metahumans that happened recently there. The protesters thought it would work well symbolically to protest there. The place that is protested, actually has been domained to the shadow spirit's liking. Now the spirit is using the mages to increase his domain rating even more and to get a taste snack out of it. While the spirit does promise power its mages, (Aka the karma it will steal), it will take a larger percentage of it. They will regret it later down the line, because the don't realize the scale of what they are causing.

A humanis hired runner team seems to be the obvious, hired to take down the leaders.


Protesters: I like the gun advocate idea, does anyone have some good arguments posted online on this, it would give me insight on the mindset.

Right now I need some sleep, but its a great start thanks for all who replied

Also Mike, that does sound quite funny, maybe a hacker replaces every single word with "Elvis" instead of elves.

Posted by: Manunancy Oct 26 2011, 06:25 AM

Having a look at what wikipedia's got to say about the Black Panthers should give you enough material to work with.

About the Humanis runners, I don't think it's the likeliest option. Of course if there's an otherwise unreachable pain in the butt that shows up they might, but killing met leaders in plain sight is bad PR. Derailing the demonstration into a riot is far more effective to push the 'metahumans aren't able to function in society' agenda. Though it can be mixed with using members into the riot police to have some of the ringleaders 'killed resisting arrest'.

things like infiltrating some agents provocateurs, distributing drugs and the like are good and discrete ways to drive the demosntration into violent chaos.

Remember that the Humanis aren't only goons with pointy-headed robes, they have smart public relations guys amongst them and can come up with fairly sophisticated media campaigns.

Posted by: GM Lich Oct 26 2011, 08:04 PM

Good point perhaps, I should make one of them the red herring where they are trying to sneak around drugs, or heck they might be trying to gas the air with drugs causing some disruption and proving Humanis. I'm thinking that maybe the neo-anarchist. I'm also trying to figure out what pcs will do to try to weed out the suspects, I expect hacking or surivlance from the technomancer and probably our face adept will try to talk him up and commanding voice him into something. The mage might summon a spirit, I plan on having the domain penalize that, also acts as a clue. Trying to think of any other tricks, that a shadow runner may do. I want to make this challenging, but have everything be preventable if they try hard enough.