Casting Shadows

This week’s seed is for Shadowrun, mostly because I have been looking at Technoir a lot, but have yet to get enough contiguous time together to finish formatting my Transmission for Seoul. With all that cyber-atmosphere percolating, it is hard not to direct it somewhere, so here we go~

The Seed:

All over the runners’ neighborhood(s) someone has been putting up graffiti and setting up equipment to trigger invasive AR overlays in passersby, advertising something they are calling Sun-Day. The gist of the message is that one day, not too far in the future, the group behind the messages will produce a day without the Matrix, and everyone will have to make-do with vanilla reality for a full 24hr period.

Planting the Seed:

This time it is easy, and requires very little set-up on the part of the GM, but the more lead-time you give it, the more control you will have over its impact. Factors to be considered are whether you want the players to dismiss the warnings as amusing, see them as a cover for something else, or view them as a genuine threat and/or sign of a new player entering the shadows.

In the early stages, all that needs to be done is to remember to describe the bright new graffiti which has been painted on prominent walls in the neighborhood, and similar hoods throughout the sprawl. The message is simple at first, a large golden sun with the words ‘Sun-Day’ is coming boldly emblazoned inside.

The Details:

As the days pass, at a rate that you determine, a new element will be added to the spread of the graffiti. In some areas, passersby will suddenly be overwhelmed as their augmented senses come under what amounts to an invasive spam attack pronouncing that Sun-Day is near, and it is time to put away one’s wireless things, and rejoice in the real world.

The message takes on serious religious and political overtones, but no matter how fanatical the messages get, the delivery is polished, professionally done, and seemingly untraceable.

No one sees the graffiti artists at work, and the spam equipment is clean, tied to nothing and no one.

What is going on:

For once, nothing untoward is going on (unless you decide to add it). This series of events is nothing more than what it claims to be, a concerted effort to force people to stop jacking in, stop using computers for everything, and to go the frak outside to play in the sun.

The question is… if they can do it. If they can actually cripple the matrix for a day…. How can that be taken advantage of?

Enjoy~

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• Shadowrun Diary (deadmanstales.wordpress.com)
• Shadowrun: Runner’s Toolkit (My Review) from The Rhetorical Gamer (morrisonmp.wordpress.com)
• Seattle Scream – Issue 29 (Shadowrun prop) (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)
• Shadowrun and Seattle Scream (Issue #30) prop (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)