Adventure Ideas

"Listen, you must stop that transmission now!"
"In that case they will kill their hostages in the studio."

"Can anybody hear us?"

"No, Minister, this line is completely secure."

"It better be. It is better to have clean martyrs than a pile of shit, shit that can dirty your own clothes. This farce is damaging our diplomatic relations with the PRC, as well as destabilizing the world system. It is worth much more than their lives."

"The terrorists seem to have solid evidence to back up their claims about illegal governmental nanotech research..."

"It doesn't matter that the claims they make are true! The transmission must end -- I don't care how you do it. The damage has been done, now it must be limited."

"Thank you for calling, Minister. Oh, by the way, I lied. I taped this whole discussion. Come and get it."

Setting Up Shop

A logical first adventure might be the founding of the PC's cell. This adventure could serve to bring them together, perhaps due to mutual goals and ambitions, perhaps due to mutual enemies or even chance. It might be quite possible to run a whole adventure about just getting in touch with the Concordat and convincing two cells to sponsor them. And even when they have joined up, their position is still weak and unsafe. How do you set up a cell? How to get resources, IOUs, physical security and information? How to combine being a fighter in the InfoWar with one's official identity? Who can you trust? All these questions must be resolved.

A Spectre is haunting...

Where's your revolution plan?
Where's your need to make a stand
To finalize, to synchronize?
Front 242, Hymn

The cell is involved in subversion, growing a network of contacts among people to resist FOG and the activists. The work can involve recruiting people to TU-friendly groups, spreading subversive ideas to people of the right inclinations, finding other groups with similar goals, avoiding infiltration or being uncovered. Setting up black market -- Market connections, earning IOUs and play money to finance the operation could also play an important part. As the network grows, it becomes harder to organize: can the cell keep it under control, or is there a risk that over-eager people reveal too much or go off and cause trouble? How to deal with other subversive networks? And what if it becomes obvious that the Big Day is coming? Lemming Lore, Charisma, strong crypto and Management might win the day -- but can the PCs also avoid making revolution mean "a 360 degree turn"?

Market Fluctuation

The team consists of Interfacers and others involved with the Market, making a living through organizing deals and fixing transports of contraband across borders. Adventures could include: pure trading, trying to gain Credibility, influence and wealth through the Market. The paranoid and exhilarating business of smuggling banned devices across the world between secretive Concordat cells while the FOG tries to stop the trade using all possible means. Gun-running from "free" countries to other places. The cloak-and-dagger potential when the team realizes that one of the cells they deal with has been infiltrated -- but which one? Quick wits, entrepreneurship, contacts and several passports are essential.

Research and Development

In the InfoWar, scientific inquiry can be subversion. The cell is involved with the attempts of the Underground Academy to develop technology further and disseminate the results to the world -- the truth cannot be hidden, no matter what politicians and corporations would like. The characters could be researchers, trying to go further (motivated by everything from burning ambition over curiosity to social responsibility) despite the oppression or people supporting the research for various reasons (a cure for disease? a way of paying back? truck-loads of money? faith?). Beside the research, it is a the dangerous business of disseminating the results, finding necessary resources or even stealing from the government, corporations or even other groups of the TU. Science ethics can be less dry than one thinks.

Intrigue

Knowledge of the spirit-world is to be obtained by divination; information in natural science may be sought by inductive reasoning; the laws of the universe can be verified by mathematical calculation: but the dispositions of an enemy are ascertainable through spies and spies alone.
Mei Yao-ch'en, commentary on Sun Tzu

The InfoWar is far from a conventional guerrilla war, not even an urban guerilla war. The main battlefield is in the minds and world-views of people, waged with weapons of information, misinformation, contacts and politics. Some members of the Concordat work against the System through subtle means inside its own structure. This is the kind of adventure where the protagonists wear suits and tie, and make their attacks during power lunches, cocktail parties and in closed meetings. The intrigues can range from worming one's way up in a corporate hierarchy, gaining influence and allies to subvert it from its old course over stratagems like making sure a truly incompetent person is promoted to an influential position in order to paralyze the organization to planning counter-manipulations in the media against the FOG. Allies from outside the steel and glass buildings can be essential; as long as you play by the rule you are harmless, but when you change the rules you become deadly.

Investigation

What is going on? In a world where information is power, secrecy is the ultimate power. If it can be breached, power will be redistributed. The team may be investigating what is being planned in government, international organizations and metacorporations. Not everything is a conspiracy, but there is enough dirty secrets out there to bring many down. What are the secret agendas of groups like Green Nation or Church of the Holy Cross? What are government agencies cooking up in secret laboratories? Are there links between ecoterrorist groups and those in power? Is the Concordat free from infiltration? Is Kommando Ragnar D.Skjöld really so nice as it appears? Is WETF really behind everything nasty, or are the Concordat groups blaming them for their own projects? This kind of adventure can easily become pure paranoia, a kind of X-files in reverse. But it can also be played as a classic investigation (just who attacked the fileserver and why?) or even information gathering (what are people thinking, and why?). You better find the answers fast, or it will be too late to do anything about them.

Lost Package

Sometimes things are misplaced. Now somebody has made a big mistake -- a piece of powerful technology or dangerous information has been lost. With all the paranoid schemes of blind drops, couriers and network trickery used by Concordat it was bound to happen. Now the Concordat needs to get the thing back, before it falls into the wrong hands. But where is it? How dangerous is it? Could somebody already have found it, and where did it go?

Action

Some people are right in the middle of the whole mess. As the cataclysm moves closer you have to move swift and sure. Technology is there for the taking, use it but don't get caught. There are many groups who want to stop you or twist your goals to their ends -- and vice versa. This kind of adventure involves hostile (but probably rather subtle) action against enemy groups: sabotaging the plans of technosupremacists like WETF to slow them down, attempts to bring down the deadly Knights of the Oppressed Earth, raids against FOG research labs and computer systems or media manipulation. The danger is much more direct, and tactics is crucial for survival. It can involve high-tech guerilla warfare with the Ghosts, raids against ecocorps a la Knight of the Double Helix or even helping the revolution in Togo.

The Future

The world is changing. The Concordat is changing. What will happen to it? How will it develop? What will happen to the cell? What will happen to the characters? They better try to take charge over their destiony before somebody else does it.