[Spinoza]

Hi all!

I'm new to this forum and new to GM'ing Shadowrun. I'm currently working on a campaign set in Memphis 2080 and am having to build quite a bit of story myself. I'm doing a modified SR world where there hasn't been an Awakening or goblinization, so everyone is human. Magic exists, but pretty much in the way that it "exists" IRL. Also, the US hasn't split into the various geo-political groups found in standard SR (yet!), in my world.

As much as I'd like to pour through tons of published materials, funds are a bit limited at the moment so I've been looking for alternate (free) sources for inspiration. I found one that I've found super helpful is futuretimeline.net.

I just thought I'd share that one with the fellow GM's here and ask the question: What other sources do you find to be helpful in inspiring your games/conflicts/intrigue?

[Shadowjack]

You can check out the Shadowrun wiki for starters. Corporate Guide or Market Panic have tons of info on megacorps.

[BeCareful]

I also like looking up what the current place is like on Wikipedia, then extrapolating from there. If any players are from the general area, and they ask something like, "Do they still have this place in the future? That place sucked!" I'd totally declare That Place to be the place for a meet/mob-controlled/a subsidiary of a megacorp that player wants to bother/any or all of the above.

[Sphinx]

Atlas Obscura is a good source for unusual locations in familiar places (search results for Memphis).

For NPCs, I get a lot of use from this Random Name Generator.

[Reaver]

if you are just looking for adventure ideas, here are where I start looking:

Newspaper. No shit, you can find a metric tonne of story ideas just from story headlines that you can then play with an adapt to an SR mission idea.

Youtube. Do a random search on you tube for "Crime Story" and you'll get 10,000 responses covering everything from fiction to history, all of which can be played with for a SR mission.

As for location... I generally place the players in an area with the most published info on it, just so everyone has the same level playing field for info on the setting, as opposed to just "winging it"... but then again, I play with a pretty traveled group, so...