It was supposed to be a standard “report on the target’s movements” job, so why on earth are all these ads staring specifically at us? And how do they keep climbing out of their posters to give out free samples?
In this session the adventurers are tasked with following the daughter of a ranking official, before being dosed with a hallucinogenic agent by a marketing company, having to fight off advertisements that come to life, and disabling the van dispersing the agent so everything can return to normal.
Setting:
This narrative takes place in Night City1, a neon metropolis of towering skyscrapers, high-tech advancements, and urban decay. The city breathes with glitzy life 24/7, and there's nothing that you can't find here for the right price provided you also know the right guy. Even if you don’t, this city’s a melting pot of neocorporations, street gangs, and the increasingly rare ordinary person; use your wits and I’m sure you’ll do just fine.
Specifically this session takes place during an ordinary day at a local street mall, filled with pedestrians, vendors, and the occasional pickpocket.
Story Beats:
Tracking the target
Tracked by advertisements
Disabling the king’s carriage
Tracking the target:
We begin as the cybermercs2 trail their target through the Goodman Mall. They’ve been contracted by a local job coordinator to keep tabs on Adriana Kondor, the teenage daughter of a local crime lord who is convinced their child is fraternising with their rivals but doesn’t have the evidence yet.
It’s an ordinary bright day, almost a little warm if not standing in the shade of a building or palm tree. As with most popular places in NC, there is a sizable crowd walking about and window shopping if something catches their eye. Any wall space not taken up by a shop window or door is crammed with posters and screens advertising any other multitude of products in a spectrum of unnatural colours.
Adriana has, as is typical of teens, arrived to the mall to go shopping with friends. The cybermercs will need to keep track of them through the loud crowds, and the tedium of several brightly lit stores while they try on new fast fashion outfits.
After a few stores, whomever has the best line of sight to Adriana is accosted by a persistent perfume salesman representing the Popken Perfume Company who steps out from a van displaying the company logo. They absolutely insist that everyone in the area indulges in a sample, and very explicitly sprays some in the face of the cybermerc, which blurs their vision for a few moments. Despite their earlier efforts, once they’ve sprayed everyone they re-enter the van, which departs trailing musk and without taking any sales from the crowd.
Once the crowds clear, the cybermercs regain sight of Adriana as they hastily make their way down a side alley.
Tracked by advertisements:
Moving to follow Adriana, colours undergo a shift, as if someone had placed pastel lenses over the cybermercs eyes and everything became more vivid. Glancing down, parts of the sidewalk begin to reassemble themselves into topographical maps of childhood neighbourhoods, complete with tiny ground cars navigating the streets. A person from a teeth whitening poster starts to follow the cybermercs as they walk down the alleyway, suggesting they would have more luck finding Adriana if they just smiled more.
Coming to the dead end at the end of the alley, surrounded by posters and defunct vending machines, there is no sign of Adriana. Turning around, they can see the night sky above them replete with stars, and all of the posters coming to life. the vending machines hum jingles to themselves, as the posters vie for the cybermercs attention.
Walking back toward the alley entrance, the stars begin to fall like snowflakes all around, and amongst them a small marshmallow moon begging the cybermercs to eat them3. Even if they eat this one, more soon follow with each of them begging to be eaten and following the cybermercs around.
Waiting at the end of the alley is a motley crew of assorted mascots who appear to be made out of meats and vegetables (although fruit is notably absent). They’re engaged in a debate over which is healthier for people, meat or vegetables? They refuse to let the cybermercs pass without resolving this debate.
Ignoring the marshmallow moons though agitates them. Soon they decide they’ve had enough and descend on the cybermercs in a soft gooey hail, attempting to force feed themselves to others. The other advertisements become more chaotic as time goes on as well, frustrated that people aren’t buying as fast they should.
Knights gallop valiantly past on steel steeds probably trying to save an unknown maid from the horrors of yellow teeth, before being driven off by cars that you too could afford with a car loan from this new online lender. Small birds swarm the cybermercs faces attempting to spam them with messages from people claiming to know them. All around ordinary people appear distorted and attempt to flee.
Before the cybermercs, a mech emerges out from a defence recruitment billboard and sweeps its heavily armed limbs across the crowd. While the cybermercs may believe these to be hallucinations, their bodies don’t understand this and will react traumatically to any threat, real or perceived.
Emerging from behind this mech a small horde of goblins, elves, and dwarves emerge armed to teeth with swords and axes. These characters are not designed to sell clothing or food, they’re here to sell a game where they’re the biggest and strongest and yours to command free with this limited time only invite code.
And further behind this company of motley heroes and armoured mech, the cybermercs can spy a gilded horse drawn carriage spraying scented perfume as it makes its way through the adoring crowds.
Disabling the king’s carriage:
Floating over the wind, the king’s horse drawn carriage carries much the same scent that still lingers on the cybermercs from their run in with the salesman from Popken Perfume Company. Observant persons may note that the adverts started coming to life after being sprayed with the “perfume”.
The gilded carriage (which appears to be a regular van to anyone unaffected) drifts slowly around on the far side of the mall, with shining knights regularly stepping around to make notes on small stone tablets (clipboards).
In approaching the carriage to take it out and put and end to this nonsense, the cybermercs must decide on their approach:
If approaching socially (After having first dealt with the mech and motley heroes), the knights will attempt to stop them and will overtly use force to get the cybermercs back in line if they step too close to the van. To disable it without detection, they will need a combination of distraction and technical know-how.
A violent approach means the van takes off at speed to escape. The cybermercs need to give chase on horses (motorbikes) to order to force the van off the road and disable the aerosol agent being disbursed.
After the van is disabled, the world slowly returns to it’s normal neon and grey hues. A lawman groundcar turns up to start taking witness statements, however don’t seem overly concerned with the situation as a whole. As far as they can tell nobody got hurt (The advertisements returned to their normal inanimate selves), or at least seriously hurt. If they are concerned about either the person or the pay, Adriana appears again near a fountain, consoling a friend who wanted to keep one of the marshmallow moons for themselves.
Another day, another corp experiment on the general public. Welcome to Night City
What did you think? Any ideas, feedback, want anything expanded on, or do you intend to use this in a session? Let me know!
This session was originally written with Cyberpunk Red in mind, and the original prompt was: A corpo marketing test causes crowds to act incredibly irrationally, and a dip into unreality.
Cowritten/Edited with the assistance of Alsanna.
HowTTaS is unofficial content provided under the Homebrew Content Policy of R. Talsorian Games (Creators of Cyberpunk Red) and is not approved or endorsed by RTG. This content references materials that are the property of R. Talsorian Games and its licensees.”
Note: This session was written before I have established my own cyberpunk setting. So this section may be updated some time in the future
The player characters
