Dumpshock Times - Dumpshock Forums

Dumpshock Times, a shadowland newspaper.

imperialus View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 06:31 AM Post #1
Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,532 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Calgary, Canada Member No.: 769	Even though we arn't playing SR right now I figured this would be a good thing to get started ahead of time. I've thought about typing up a 1/2 page newspaper to give to my players at the beginning of each session. The idea is that it would be sorta like a news page on dumpshock talking about stuff that concerns shadowrunners. Everything from stuff as mundane as new toys and gadgets making it to the shelf (or falling off of trucks) to news about a growing shadow war between a couple of Seattle based AA's. What I need are story ideas. They don't need to be very detailed and generally not world changing, it's mostly to add a sense of reality to the campaign but it also seems like a good way to add a few worms to the plot hooks. Let the players hang themselves. :D Here are some ideas that I have so far: Traffic on the KE security net suggests that unknown assailants hijacked a shipment of Ares Alpha Assault rifles at 03:23 last night. All you sams keep your eyes peeled, those things will go fast if they hit the streets. Border skirmishes between Amazonia and Azlan have escalated again. Azlan reports one border guard killed and four injured after a windigo attacked their convoy. Amazonia claims that the “border guards” were actually Azlan Special Forces attempting to disrupt the reclamation efforts over an old diamond mine. The Seattle branch of Direct Cybertronics has brought in an consultant to “streamline operations.” There is likely going to be some shadowbiz as the serfs try to keep their jobs. The offices of Hydac Soy Supplements were firebombed last night and a security guard from Wolverine Security was killed. Lone Star has increased patrols in the north Tacoma area. Keep work quiet and quick up there unless you enjoy the view from behind bars. The Ancients and Spikes are at it again. Avoid traveling on I (name escapes me), or pack some heat if you do. As usual the Star is accomplishing next to nothing. A local mafia underboss was killed last week and buzz has it that the Yakuza is responsible. Keep your ears peeled, there may be some work with honest criminals coming down the pipe.

eidolon View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 07:37 AM Post #2
ghostrider Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333	Here are a few that come from the last campaign I ran. Some are directly the result of player actions, others were hook type stories. (Meaning "assume the causes and reasons that the press is reporting are completely off base" ;).) Un-Noted Seattle Resident Missing! Local recluse Herbert McIntyre, noted weapons designer and philanthropist, has been reported missing. Lone Star spokesperson Lauren Smith said that he was reported missing this morning, when he didn’t answer the door to accept his groceries. Police have since entered Mr. McIntire’s house and confirmed that he is not there. All normal attempts at location have failed thus far. Whispering Spirits Talk of Arson A local talismonger’s shop located near the lake in northern Bellvue was the site of what authorities are calling a religiously motivated arson that sparked a small riot. Sheila Dancingwind, a licensed Eagle Shaman and the proprietor of the Whispering Spirits talismongery, is in a Bellvue hospital and is listed as being in stable condition. Lone Star spokesperson Lauren Smith said that it appears that the riot began as a peaceful demonstration conducted by Say No To Magic, a local anti-magic group, and that the demonstration turned violent when one of the protestors started yelling that he had been the subject of an “evil magical attack”. Lone Star was able to quell the riot, and several arrests have been made. In total, it is estimated that no fewer than 36 people were hospitalized in addition to several that were treated on the scene. Mis-Adventures Unlimited Adventures Unlimited, a local Seattle company that provides “exciting adventures for the everyday urbanite” has been hit with a class-action lawsuit by 15 former employees, who claim that the company does not use appropriate safeguards when conducting operations. Several of the employees have also picketed the offices of Adventures Unlimited, although they left the site peacefully at the request of Lone Star officers. The suit is not expected to go to trial until September at the earliest. Adventures Unlimited spokeswoman Janice Webb, although never actually conceding that the company had any kind of safety problems, had the following to say: “Adventures Unlimited understands the concerns of these employees, and we hope to be able to come to an acceptable conclusion as quickly as possible.” Offshore Gas Rig "A Complete Loss" From the Australian news wire, we have the following story. A Central Industrial gas-drilling well just outside the Australian territorial waters was destroyed on Friday when a seal ruptured, causing catastrophic explosions and fire. The Australian and New Zealand navies both dispatched rescue vessels, but no survivors were found. Authorities are calling the rig “a complete loss”, and Central Industrial CEO Michael Richcreek has personally apologized to the families of the employees that were lost in the explosion, and has guaranteed that a full investigation will take place into what caused the seals to rupture. A safety warning has been issued to all other CI drilling rigs to check the seals in question and replace any that show even the slightest amount of wear. Search For Weapons Designer Continues The search for weapons designer Herbert McIntyre continues today. Yakesh An’hamal, the head of the McIntyre Foundation For the Future of Science, a charity providing tuition for promising young students in the scientific fields, has said that the foundation is willing to pay a 10,000 nuyen reward for any information that leads to Mr. McIntyre’s recovery. <<Unfortunately, the game ended before the campaign would have, so that's all there is.>>

Thorn Black View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 07:47 AM Post #3
Target Group: Members Posts: 32 Joined: 6-April 06 From: UK Member No.: 8,431	I have been doing similar in my games for some time now. I actualy write it like a newspaper (only just the front page). If the runners did anything that would make the front page the week before they get to see what mayhem they have caused for the general populace. I usually also put in a feeder clue or two for up and coming runs. With the newspaper the players get to see other events which are going on in my Shadowrun universe that they wouldn't usually care about or notice. X corp took over Y etc. Every now and then they shuffle back though the old papers to pull out an old clue left a few weeks before.

Witness

Jun 13 2006, 08:40 AM

Post #4

Moving Target

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QUOTE (eidolon @ Jun 13 2006, 02:37 AM)

Mis-Adventures Unlimited

Adventures Unlimited, a local Seattle company that provides “exciting adventures for the everyday urbanite” has been hit with a class-action lawsuit by 15 former employees, who claim that the company does not use appropriate safeguards when conducting operations. Several of the employees have also picketed the offices of Adventures Unlimited, although they left the site peacefully at the request of Lone Star officers. The suit is not expected to go to trial until September at the earliest. Adventures Unlimited spokeswoman Janice Webb, although never actually conceding that the company had any kind of safety problems, had the following to say: “Adventures Unlimited understands the concerns of these employees, and we hope to be able to come to an acceptable conclusion as quickly as possible.”

Now why didn't I think of that one?! That could seed such a brilliant game or campaign. Imagine if that was a business your players set up and ran?

DireRadiant View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 12:39 PM Post #5
The Dragon Never Sleeps Group: Admin Posts: 6,924 Joined: 1-September 05 Member No.: 7,667	Screamsheets...

TBRMInsanity View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 01:20 PM Post #6
Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 22-April 06 From: Canada Member No.: 8,494	You should put your newspaper on a website and update regularly. I would read it.

ShadowDragon8685 View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 02:44 PM Post #7
Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445	This sounds like it's worth becoming a collaborative venture. Like, everybody can submit one or two articles a week, and the editor in charge can put them together. Exploits your PCs have done can be hotmarked for extra consideration for inclusion. Of course, individual DMs are free to leave any bits they don't like out....

Thorn Black View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 03:28 PM Post #8
Target Group: Members Posts: 32 Joined: 6-April 06 From: UK Member No.: 8,431	Well I blog the game we do at the moment. I'm sure it won't be too hard to convert the newspaper to PDF to post. Will let you know. On the colaborative thing, I would gladly write up some stories to be posted.

Tetsuyama View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 03:56 PM Post #9
Target Group: Members Posts: 17 Joined: 30-May 06 From: Near Seattle (Eastsider) Member No.: 8,622	ShadowDragon, good idea. I'd be willing to try to come up with one a week. Any thoughts on how it would be published? RSS feed? E-mail to an editor who then posts stuff to a blog? Eidolon, those are totally awesome. Got any more you'd care to share? For some samples from the Seattle Times, you can hit seattletimes.com, choose "Nation / World" in the left column, then under "More Nation and World" in the center column find the articles tagged with "\| World Digest" and "\| Nation Digest". They appear to be some kind of newswire briefs, and are probably in fact longer than most folks need (or would be able to write on a really regular basis). Has anyone else read any of Palladium's "Hook, Line, and Sinker" quick plots? In some ways these screamsheet blurbs remind me of those.

Backgammon View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 04:06 PM Post #10
Ain Soph Aur Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,477 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Montreal, Canada Member No.: 600	You should hit up K10 and see about ressurecting the New Seattle Intelligencer, which is exactly what you're talking about.

Valentinew View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 04:41 PM Post #11
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 207 Joined: 3-November 05 From: KCMO Member No.: 7,922	If nothing else, one of your articles could be about the craziness emo gets his players into..... I like the idea!

ShadowDragon8685 View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 05:35 PM Post #12
Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445	Well, if we can get me a bootleg copy of Adobe InDesign, which I'm trained to use (Thank you, CGA 101), I could probably devote a couple hours a week to kitbashing your stuffz into a newspaper. I made an SRish newspaper for the final of the InDesign stuff for that class, and blew the teach and the rest out of the water.

Xenith View Member Profile	Jun 13 2006, 06:58 PM Post #13
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 399 Joined: 27-May 04 Member No.: 6,361	Local Squatter Gang Found Squished A local Seattle gang calling themselves the Blood Wolves was found slaughtered to the last man this past Thursday. Nine bodies were found in an abandoned warehouse only a few blocks into the Barrens. Most had been murdered with little resistance and a few had been burnt to a crisp. All were missing their canines. The rest of the gang was found outside inside two small cars that had exploded; one from what looks like spontanious combustion, likely a fireball, and the other from a heavy weapons round from a Panther XXL. The killers are unknown and Lone Star seems unwilling to conduct an investigation.

eidolon

Jun 13 2006, 08:26 PM

Post #14

ghostrider

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QUOTE (Witness)

Now why didn't I think of that one?! That could seed such a brilliant game or campaign. Imagine if that was a business your players set up and ran?

Hehe. It was fun. That was actually the result of one of their jobs.

[ Spoiler ]

They were still up and comers, and so were taking whatever jobs they could get. They had just come off a hard one, and so when this came up they jumped on it. (This was set in Year of the Comet) Long story short, one of the big players in the Probe Race wanted to off their lead program team to keep them from leaking information (they had already suffered one such leak, and didn't want it to happen again). They were monitoring the programming team 24/7 to figure out how and when they could do this in a way that would give them plausible deniability.

So one day, Jack Behrenger (one of the programmers) is sitting around in the same room he has been in every night for three years (the corp had them on lockdown while working on the project, with the only time they let them out being when the leak occurred) when he gets word that they're actually getting a week off, and can actually leave the building! A few days prior, he had been watching a Shadowrunning Movie Marathon when he saw a commercial for Adventures Unlimited.

<cue commercial>
That’s right, you can be anything you want. Do anything you want. You want to explore the Australian Outback? Done! You want to be on an Urban Brawl team? Done!
</commercial>

It was settled. Jack wanted to be a Shadowrunner For a Day (the name of the run). So he booked a flight for Seattle, and made arrangements with AU to be a shadowrunner. AU wanted the experience to be as realistic as possible, so they hired "outside talent" to form Jack's team (cue 'runners). AU also "rented" a nicer section of the barrens and roped it off with guards at the perimeter. Then AU stocked the "target" building with "terrorists" and a "hostage", all played by AU actors.

Knowing all of this, the corp (SK in this case, because it fit the ongoing plot) sent their own talent to replace the actors and kill Jack.

The other complication? A rival corp had found out that Jack (and the other programmers from the team, but Jack is the only one that matters here) was going to be in Seattle, and through their own legwork, that he would be at this building doing this "adventure". So they hired a team of SRs to go in and extract him.

So, the job ended up being:
- Protect Jack
- Rescue hostage AU employees
- Escape from crossfire between SK goons and another SR team
- Figure out why all these people were after Jack, and how they could make more money off the situation (okay, so they made that goal up themselves wink.gif).

It was great fun. A huge cluster. The best part? The runners' weapons were loaded with blanks and hooked up with lazer zap equipment for the simulation. So here they are "sneaking up on the building" with their lazer tag guns and this chattery dorky programmer guy that knows nothing about combat, and I tell them "you hear a weapon go off (faces steady), and the wall of the building next to you explodes in a shower of concrete (faces not so steady)". smile.gif Thankfully, they're paranoid enough that they brought actual ammunition for their weapons, and back up weapons. Also there's the mage, which kept them safe long enough to make the quick B/R check to take the lazer zap junk off their weapons (it was low and only there as a tension device).

So that's why the AU employees were striking. :D

All in all, one of the more fun runs over that campaign.

QUOTE (Tetsuyama)

Eidolon, those are totally awesome. Got any more you'd care to share?

Thanks! :) I have a few more from that campaign, but they're only particularly pertinent if you're running Year of the Comet, since they mostly have to do with the news that comes from getting involved with the corps during the first Probe Race, and they're the results of what the runners in my last campaign did.

[ Spoiler ]

imperialus

Jun 14 2006, 02:37 PM

Post #15

Shooting Target

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QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685)

Well, if we can get me a bootleg copy of Adobe InDesign, which I'm trained to use (Thank you, CGA 101), I could probably devote a couple hours a week to kitbashing your stuffz into a newspaper. I made an SRish newspaper for the final of the InDesign stuff for that class, and blew the teach and the rest out of the water.

only thing I'd be worried about with that is that if people actually wanted to use them in their campaign they'd need to edit dates and the like in and possibly change stories a bit to fit their players. I'm assumeing InDesign uses a propriarty file type? That would make it either very expencive or very illigal to edit.

I'd think something more along the lines of a .doc or .rtf file. Not as pretty but I'd guess that everyone here can A, open it and B, knows how to use it. If people want to get creative and do something fancy up then they can just cut and paste from the word files.

Moon-Hawk View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 03:25 PM Post #16
Genuine Artificial Intelligence Group: Members Posts: 4,019 Joined: 12-June 03 Member No.: 4,715	Microsoft Publisher? Most people have that if they have a halfway decent MS Office package. It'll look better than .doc or .rtf but still be editable by most people.

Witness View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 03:28 PM Post #17
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 681 Joined: 28-February 06 From: UK Member No.: 8,319	Just stick with rtf. It's all you need and everyone can open and edit it.

ShadowDragon8685 View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 04:04 PM Post #18
Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445	InDesign uses Adobe PDF, Imperialus, because it's an Adobe product. :) And yeah, it might be illeagal... But given how much Adobe charges for it's products, and how much shit they give their customers, it's like stealing from the RIAA.

stevebugge View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 04:24 PM Post #19
Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996	Upcoming Headline from a character development side plot for one of my Players: Reputed Mob Enforcer Francesco Luciano was found murdered in his apartment earlier this morning. The body was found by his housekeeper in the bath tub along with about 3 dozen live crawfish, suggesting that this may have connections to organized crime. At present Lonestar is being stymied in their investigation by the Security Contractor Luciano had contracted and Luciano's attorney citing privacy concerns.

Synner View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 06:44 PM Post #20
Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185	Nice to see someone pickup the torch. Kinda makes me want to reboot the Intelligencer, specially after Kanada Ten went to all the work of putting our last issue together.

ornot View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 08:10 PM Post #21
Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,266 Joined: 3-June 06 From: UK Member No.: 8,638	Just read this thread. Nice one Eidolon! I just wish I had more time to read them and maybe write my own. Unfortunately my work productivity has already been slashed due to my skimming through DS every 10 minutes!

eidolon View Member Profile	Jun 14 2006, 09:34 PM Post #22
ghostrider Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333	Hehe. I don't have to worry about that at the moment. No job! Woohoo! (Getting out of the Army, and I'm working on leaving, so I'm off "work" for two weeks. Just have a bunch of random, short appointments.) Eventually it'll sink in that I need to find something that pays me money, but right now I'm getting paid to post to DS, paint miniatures, read, etc. :D

imperialus View Member Profile	Jun 15 2006, 03:53 AM Post #23
Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,532 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Calgary, Canada Member No.: 769	well I've finished issue 1 of the Shadowland Times unfortunatly I can't get it in a position that anyone can download it. I'll fix it as soon as I can. It's pretty rough. I'm trying to figure out how to use MS publisher as I go. I'm just running off a generic template for now that didn't seem too out of place but pretty it ain't. Let me know what you think. edit Bah. I don't think it's actually the file type. It's just an MS publisher file. I think it's the stupid hosting site that isn't co-operating. Try copy pasting the link. Nevermind copy pasting doesn't work either lemme find a better host.

eidolon View Member Profile	Jun 15 2006, 03:59 AM Post #24
ghostrider Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333	You'll probably want to save that as a PDF. Right now it's still a .pub file. I couldn't get it to open with anything I have.

DireRadiant View Member Profile	Jun 15 2006, 12:47 PM Post #25
The Dragon Never Sleeps Group: Admin Posts: 6,924 Joined: 1-September 05 Member No.: 7,667	Is there a wiki that could be used for this?

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