GM Summary

It is late morning on a warm summer day. An hour or two ago, Seamus O'Malley went on a rampage at his workplace, Decameron Enterprises, shooting several people before being killed himself. This story is set in the aftermath, as the victims try to come to terms with what happened, and the vultures begin to circle.

The story is set in Violet City, the capital of the fictional state of Vermillion. Yes, the names are deliberate, at least for now -- this is a middle-American town in a typical swing state, currently in the throes of an election whose primaries are imminent. Many of the characters are involved in politics, ranging from the candidates for a hotly-contested Senatorial election to the reporters and talking heads who will dissect everything they can relate to it. One of the major themes of this game is that real world politics and issues are messy. We should be strongly encouraging roleplaying uber alles in this game: by and large, most of the characters are less trying to win, and more trying to get through this day intact.

The violent act itself is messy and complex. Seamus, the shooter, was a largely peaceful kid, if a tad unhinged at the end. He has been increasingly agitated by the company's current hush-hush big-money contract, codenamed Project Sureshot, to develop a "bullet" that is actually a computer-controlled micro-rocket, designed to adjust its path in flight to always hit center-of-mass, to devastating effect. The prototypes have been built for the military, but he assumed (probably correctly) that as soon as the system was successful, the gun lobby would agitate to make it available on American streets, in the name of "self-defense". Thus, his plan was to use the company's own device on the CEO, as an (ill-advised) demonstration of the horror of this new advance.

Suffice it to say, in the event things went far worse than he had expected. He had only intended a couple of victims, but killed others essentially by accident, because Sureshot proved more effective than even he had expected. In the end, one of his closest friends shot him, to end the rampage.

Now, the company is being torn apart by the power struggle set off by the CEO's demise. The media have shown up -- both the traditional TV stations and a blogger who was close to Seamus -- and everyone is spinning the story. The politicians are all necessarily there, posturing as their parties demand. And meanwhile, the cops are simply trying to figure out what the hell happened.

Current Status: the general shape of the game is fairly well-established at this point, and there are enough Character Archetypes to begin serious writing. Please skim through the Archetypes for more information, and note that they are a bit inconsistent currently; we'll need to pull them together properly as they become real Characters. Most of the game exists in the Archetypes so far. I am beginning to write actual Character sheets, but have just started.