So my group has made it through two full-scale runs. The first was a daring raid on a Knight Errant office complex to retrieve some leftover tech from the previous occupants, followed by a hit on a prisoner transport. The second was a daring raid on a ship at sea to retrieve a sample of a weaponized VITAS-3 plague before it made it to Japan and corp bioweapons labs.

These were mostly stand-alone runs, designed to get some new players into the game and test out their fancy abilities. The players have ended up with some money and karma, and a few NPC friends and enemies on the back burner.

So I've started moving into a longer story arc, and I'm looking for ideas to fill out the middle. I'll explain.

My game is set in early 2070. We started in February and are about to move into May. I've decided I want my team to be critical in the Brackhaven election campaign (and subsequent Knight Errant takeover of the Seattle police contract), albeit working in the shadows.

My set-up: the team's fixer throws them what looks like a milk run, after their excellent work for her on the previous mission, the one that involved the ship. She sets them up with Mr. Johnson, who is secretly an agent for the Brackhaven campaign. His goal is to undermine Lone Star by increasing drug trafficking crime (tempo) and making sure there are some embarrassing public failures to turn public opinion against Lone Star.

TL;DR -- in the spoiler text is the story detail so far:



The next thing planned (for next week's session) is the twist. Mr. Johnson is hiring them again, but this time the rules have changed. The pick-up is in Bellevue, the nicer side of SR's Seattle, at another construction site. Through contacts, Mr. Johnson is tipping off Lone Star that a minor drug deal is going down, and since Lone Star likes good publicity (especially around the rich folks) they're going to pull a COPS filming of the bust. But since they think it's only a small-time clean-up-the-already-clean-streets bust, they're only sending two cars and 4 agents, with the filming being done by a helicopter. When the team shows up, Lone Star will pull up with its lights flashing. The "smuggler" is ready to open fire on the cops immediately, then duck behind his vehicle while the team has to deal with return fire. When he gets the right moment, the "smuggler" is going to launch a guided missile and take out the helicopter. By dawn, news and the video of the chopper getting hit will be all over the Matrix, and there will be a public uproar over the drug cartels turning downtown Seattle into a war zone, with Lone Star obviously powerless to stop it.

So after that long explanation of what's going on and why, I'm wondering where to go from there. My overall arc is going to involve certain as-of-yet vaguely-defined events -- the team getting even more involved with making Lone Star look incompetent, and probably having something to do with Brackhaven's competition "falling ill" and dropping out of the race.

But basically I have six in-game months to fill between now and the Brackhaven election, and I'm looking for good ideas on how to fill it with all sorts of politically-angled runs. This of course all ends with Brackhaven taking over as governor, ousting Lone Star and installing Knight Errant, and the team wondering about their part in potentially screwing over a lot of runner teams (and themselves) in future encounters with the law.

You have plenty of options for a politically-savvy game. The first thing - and something shamelessly nyoinked from reading stories for Crass and Fatman's games - is get your players to pay attention to the News. Put a little bit of effort into describing current events. Its a good way to let them know whats going on, and remind them the things they're doing may have ramifications, or even push the guilt button from time to time.

I might suggest making a job or two around political sabotage, possibly for brackhaven's competitors. It doesn't have to be huge things. Small things like 'masquerade as a roadie/sound guy, and break or sabotage all the sound equipment being used in a public speech to discredit the competition', to planting evidence. Doing stakeouts for a third party(recon/surveilance/papparazi?) who absolutely doesn't want to be known they're, say, sniffing around a political candidate for an affair.(everyone loves a good scandal). Its election time! Bribes are all around. Creating money trails is a great way to get people in trouble with the feds or the irs - as long as you can prove it.

On a similar note, one of the recent supplement books had a topic that made me laugh, but may be relevant here: runners being hired to Serve court or legal papers to people that Big Brother can't necessarily get to. If you take it a step further, you can have runners doing jobs like these just to waste an important person's time tying them up in court for a trumped up charge, or breaking into an exclusive club to deliver a subpeona. At the same time, you can use runs like these to groom your players for more politically themed runs, which are more about causing a bit mess for someone else and getting away with it, than making a celebrity bloodbath by accident.

The money angle is a big theme in shadowrun. Everyone's goal is to make it, from criminals to corps. How its gotten, whether its dirty or being spent for illegal things are things to think about. I could easily see a team of runners being hired to steal/transfer/fake datatrail money to a campaign election fund - from someone who wouldn't/shouldn't normally be able to (public funds?), or an enemy(why are the yaks giving brackhaven money?) just to create a massive stink and piss everyone off, for the benefit of a third party.

You might consider offering up a Reporter contact - someone who's willing to pay a little bit of money for runners to go places he/she can't(plausable deniability) and record things for a story. There's plenty of damage a savvy journalist can do when looking around corporate, political, or police business - especially if there's Proof or "proof" that someone in charge can be blamed for it. Use your imagination!

Think about the political Hot Topics. Racism is alive and well in 2070 - so whats humanis up to? Another theme you're going for is to discredit lonestar, and show they're not fit to do their job. Go for things that might hit the average citizen close to home - things they rely upon to be safe, regular, guaranteed parts of regular life.

A run on a water treatment plant, for example, and a follow-up or tie-in run to help point the blame at someone(whether or not its lonestar). Think typical fox-news fearmongering. Terrorists on the home turf? Who ever would have thought!

Don't forget there's plenty of infighting among the varied police forces. They occasionally hire runners to snag case files or plant disinformation in other organizations systems when they're not being entirely forthcoming about important criminal cases. This is a good way to get Knight Errant's foot in the door ahead of time - have them bag a high-profile criminal, maybe after the players help them steal a lead they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Red herrings are good too. You might want to avoid making the next six months of in-game time being purely about bashing lonestar. Them being kicked out ought to come as a surprise("Its bad, but, really, THAT bad?"). There's tons of competing interests in seattle - have a few more of them make their presence known in runs. Election season should be a bit like christmas season - everyone's out hitting the streets, trying to make sure they get what they want before the big day.

Just some ideas. Anything in particular you like?

I've started portraying the news in the game, sort of as a Chekhov's Rifle so far. I like the news angle, since it makes the world seem realer, and that there are very normal things to care about other than guns and magic.

Political sabotage would be great, maybe even going up to general espionage -- record conversations, steal sensitive data, that sort of thing. I'm thinking also about a run where the team is hired to vandalize/rob Brackhaven's estate and spread anti-UCAS propaganda around.

The subpoena angle is hilarious, though I'm not sure this team wouldn't shoot the person they're serving papers to.

Planting evidence of fraud is good, but anything too scandalous would potentially throw the election too early.

Reporter run idea, just as a general thing and not necessarily specifically for this: Reporter hires runner team to guard him while he conducts a hard-hitting undercover expose of some corp's holdings.

Lone Star's about to get kicked directly in the teeth, so I imagine something where Knight Errant seizes the opportunity to get better recognition would make for a good run. Maybe a run that sells out the runners so Knight Errant can get in the news.

Red herrings are good, but it's hard to get them to work. Players tend to naturally assume everything is connected in some way or another, so while it's fun to watch them fall for obvious bait, sometimes it distracts them far too much from what's really going on. Cue a D&D story about a party so focused on a tunnel that abruptly ends that they spend the next six days bringing in more and more digging equipment to find that secret door or chamber that must be around here somewhere, because no one digs a tunnel and just stops.

Its actually quite easy to get red herrings to work. The trick is to make the players help create the scenario. If you're doing it right, and you have an exciting, entertaining game, then the players WILL talk about whats going on, theorize about who is doing what. Feedback, noting cool details, that kind of thing. Occasionally, they will come up with better ideas than what you had planned. You know what I'm talking about. The "god, I wish I'd thought of that" moments.
So you listen. Good GMs borrow, great ones steal. The best ones do it out from under peoples noses when they'er watching. Done right, you can kind of trick your players into coming up with material for you to snag, tweak and incorporate. its a similar concept to the dirty dungeon, which is a bit more formal, but you might find interesting.

On fraud: Sometimes just the implication can be enough to do damage(Smear campaigns)

On the reporter: I like it. If the reporter's savvy, he might try to get the team to do the work for him - though the team might like some kind of legitimacy to hide behind.

Another thing to think about is locations. I get the feeling that you have a bloodthirsty group of players, but I have to admit I don't know a lot about them. A run where they can't really take weaponry into the target zone without a huge hastle might be worth considering. A reporter-run could be nice, just to have an in-character influence and guidance to teaching runners a bit of a delicate touch for sensitive political runs. If they pay's better, then they have motivation too. If you can break the players of the 'stick a gun in everyone's face' habit, then you have more leeway to do interesting plots without them screwing it up as badly.... or generating hard feelings if it doesn't work, and their characters get in trouble because of it.

Another approach to a run or job might be the Spy. Whether there's an investigation going on, or rumors of someone selling state/corp secrets or leaking insider trading information for leverage during the election shenanigans, someone's probably there keep an eye on things. Which could be a decent way for your players to get roped into an espionage job.

I've also thought about doing something with the election at some point. If you can get a copy of the 2nd Ed Super Tuesday book you can tinker with the runs to make them about the Gubernatorial election instead of the presidential election.