One of the things i love about shadowrun is that at the end of most of the adventures they had News articles fort he players to take a look at that reflected the out come of the adventure. I think this was a great element to the game to make the world of shadowrun come to life.
As such i have started to write some of these for my own adventures- some times what the characters do does not show up in the news, but other elements of the plot do show through.

Does anyone else do anything with the news in their game?

Yeah, I do.

I use news to introduce people, the characters might come across during the adventure, to lead my players in some false directions by giving them information on things they never have to deal with or to do some foreshadowing.

It`s just as you said, it`s one of the best concepts they used in the books and because I liked it that much, I use it, too.

I do a "weekly" screamsheet. My players love it. Lets them know if they made the media outlets and what kind of spin si being put on the situations. As in "No, the big explosion at our plant was merely a malfunction with a generator" etc. I also see the screamsheet with random news articles from around the world, various plot hooks for side/downtime adventures, and sports for betting purposes.

Yeah I do that too. I run a OpenRPG game, with a thread here in the forums. The game is set in NYC, so I like to write little news articles about the political going-ons of that city, such as the Neo-Anarchist situation, or other little flavour bits. Sometimes it has to do with the plot directly, other times it's just to give the city some life.

I was thinking that the board as a whole could come together and create a reservoir of Shadowrun News bites/ scream-sheets. Just post a short news article that can work in any edition so that other Gms can come along and us them to help create story elements or just background for their games.


Today, Mr. Milton Thurmen, manager for the New York Marauders Combat Biker team was arrested in the light of trafficking in child pornography. The FBI was quoted in saying that they spent the last 6 months tracking a large child sex ring that was kidnapping the children of UCAS citizens in 12 cities and at least 9 other rural areas. Mr. Thurmen was quoted by Newsnet's own field report, Jessica Linslet, in saying, "I was framed! I was framed by the damn Japs! I would never to this, i have kids of my own".
We tried to get a world with the Thurmen family, but we were informed by the Family lawyer that any trespassing on the Thurmen property by anyone not invited will be dealt with as a treat to their safety.

I yank stories from http://fromtheshadowsrpg.blogspot.com/ as extra filler on a fairly regular basis. I believe a few people on DS run the site.

I do a daily newsletter with shadowtalk for each game day that passes. I find it a fun way to flesh out what is going on in the world for my players. I have about 300+ days worth. Obviously some of the stories would not be usable as they are based off of my worlds time line but if a data base does get set up I can donate the lot.