Team Building Options

[Dog]

(Edited for my near-anal concern with grammar, and likely to be edited again.)

Lucky me, I get to duck out of GMing for a little while longer. My buddy is putting together a game and has specified that we play a team. I've been putting together some thoughts on what makes a good team that I'd like to share.

First though, a disclaimer: I'm talking about what makes a good team drama-wise, min-maxers may not have much interest in this stuff.
So here goes:

1) A team should have a common thread: This can be a shared history, a common ethnic (or in SR, racial) background, a common profession or professional network, a familial relationship, a common ideology. Obviously what the shared thread is will affect the relationships in the team. A bunch of Humanis goons with a shared ideology of hate will probably agree on goals, but might have a hard time determining method. A team that grew up together as kids may socialize well with one another, but have a difficult time focusing on the job if one of them is hurt.

2) A team should, in some way, care about one another: I need your skills to get the job done. These are my sworn brothers. I've made an oath. I respect what they stand for. My sister will kill me if I let something happen to her husband. These are choices for each individual player to make.

3) A team should have tension: A shared dark secret, basic differences in values, a rivalry, a romance-that-can-never-be. Be careful with this one. Don't focus on it too much or make the tension stronger than the bonds, or your team will fall apart. This is just a technique to provide drama.

4) A team should have variety: A variety of skills, a variety of perspectives on life, a variety of contacts, a variety of personality traits. There's no need to cover all the bases, but diversity will allow the team to try different approaches to problems.

5) A team should complement one another: I don't mean they should say nice things. The team should learn how to use their variety of skills together. If you have a stealth expert and a gun bunny on the job, and the gun bunny starts tossing grenades to clear Stealthy's path, you've probably got a problem. If gun-bunny takes a sniper perch, or provides a distraction elsewhere, then you're playing to each character's strengths and still working together.

6) A team should have foils: Remember high-school English class? Here and there, characters should have directly opposite traits. As with my comments about tension, don't overdo it. I would recommend that on whatever issue you have two characters sharing opposing traits, you should try to keep the other characters neutral. Your team has a shaman that shuns technology, and a mage that's a technophile? The other characters could be tech-savvy but prepared to use the holistic route, too, so no one is excluded from the team.

7) A team should have a leader: This is a little tricky for an RPG, because you don't want one player telling the others what to do. I suggest that the different team members take the lead as the situation calls for it. The detective can make the final decision when it comes to legwork. The samurai can call the shots when the drek hits the fan. The rigger can make the decision when it comes to transportation. Leadership, in my opinion, is one of the trickiest things to deal with in an RPG. However, it's often necessary just to have a decision made, and sometimes, it's the ability of the leader that makes the team. Come to think of it, this'll probably need its own thread, so I'll come back to it in a while....

8. (Damn emoticons...) A team should have its own personality. Make a list of traits that the team embodies. Does everyone on the team need to share the trait? Probably not, but probably most of them should. Here's another technique, take a person who the team can emulate (which could be easy depending on what brings the team together) and list that person's most obvious traits. Then pick a character to encompass each trait.

I'd like to hear what everyone else has to add....

[ronin3338]

These are right on the money (for "role"players)

I like that you mentioned foils, and you're spot on about the leadership role as well. When I put my current player's through chargen, these are exactly the things I tried to stress. I'm a firm believer in the GM having a campaign idea and a solid reason why the characters are working together, before anyone starts chargen.

On a seemingy contradictory note, I also try to steer my players a bit more toward the 2 dimensional side of things. It helps keep them focused on what their character is good at, and helps diminish having too much overlap in skill sets and gives more room for growth. It's a fine line to walk, because a character that is too narrow in focus becomes a one-trick pony, but we've managed pretty well so far.

[eidolon]

An interesting post, thanks.

Personally, I sometimes like the more "organic" mix you get when you rely more on in-game team building. Sure it can lead to some bad matches and stuff, but it usually ends up being extremely interesting to watch/play out. Although a certain bit of planning certainly helps during char-gen (mostly just to avoid specific overlap and to avoid having characters that just flat wouldn't work together.

[Dog]

Organic is good. In fact I'd usually prefer it. Problem for me is the flipside of that. Some groups that are put together randomly fall apart by organic process too, and the GM wants us to be an established team, so we have to be more contrived. Hence the challenge that led me to this thread. I've tried to force teams together by different methods after the characters have been created, and that hasn't gone over well, so now I'm trying to think of how teams can be created by the players just as characters are (without all the numbers and junk :) ).

(Edited for clarity.)

[Kyoto Kid]

[wargear]

Our most successful team was built somewhat organically, then fine tuned a couple of sessions later when we finally decided on a team concept.

All the characters were able to fit nicely together except one. We wound up killing that character a dozen or so sessions later after a lot of excellent roleplay, and the player made a new character that did fit into the group concept.

Organic is good, but don't be afraid to retune the team and/or bring in new talent.

And a NPC team member or two can round out both a team skill package and fill the role of foil/whatever. Having our team Decker be a NPC meant that our GM didn't have to ignore the rest of the group for an hour while the decker did his part of the run.

Eh. Whatever.

[RainOfSteel]

[Tiger Eyes]

In our current campaign, our GM gave us the 'concept' of our team but kept everyone's characters completely secret. We developed them over email with him and he told us there would be a limit on certain types - ie, 1 magic user, 1 adept, 1 hacker, 1 gunbunny, etc. First come first served (I grabbed the hacker. I'm always the hacker). We knew who would be hiring us ahead of time and were told to tailor our characters to that knowledge. We also knew that our employer would be hiring us to make a 'team'. (We all agreed ahead of time that we wanted to work for the Draco foundation and actually have a mission, instead of being the random criminals we've played in the past). Part of the key to building this team was that we all sat down and discussed what we were going to be doing, rather that what kinds of characters we wanted to make. We basically voted on our current campaign focus - the Draco foundation - and went from there.

So far, this group of characters has meshed better than any other set we've ever played. Although we have some overlap of skills, and some glaring gaps (horrible contact base, started rather short on combat skills), it feels very natural. We were all strangers hired to be part of a team. Everyone made it through the probationary period (the first 5 jobs) and our characters actually all like each other.

The probationary period is part of what made it work so well. We knew that if any character just didn't work, we had 5 runs to figure it out.

As far as a team goes, we're pretty happy with each other. Developing our characters in secret and then getting thrown together was pretty fun. So what if we've got more people with advanced degrees in archeology than with useable pistols skills? It is a very fun group. And we've learned how to shoot things by now, thank you very much! 8)

[Samaels Ghost]

[will_rj]

[Wounded Ronin]

I think a team needs a guy with a SAW, a grenadier, an advanced rifleman, a couple of mages, some air support, and some cybered guys with guns. :)

[Pendaric]

Well covered, a nod to utility I think is the only stress I would add to the above points.
We favour a middle ground between organic and pre-planned to allow for in play drama to decide things. Roleplay is after all the aim. Worked pretty well so far bar purely out of character problems.

[eidolon]

[wargear]

Another concept that emerged in our campaign was that of a maxi-team. Effectively, two or three established teams of shadowrunners, band together to share resources and fill mission specific team complements.

Result? They were able to supply a wider range of clients and missions, and were able to maintain a shadow-presence even after sustaining a few casualties.

How this could work for a campaign is to have each player create a couple of characters, and assign teams from the available personnel.

It worked quite well for us.

[Samaels Ghost]

[eidolon]

That's exactly what I'm talking about. You immediately assume that there's no fun to be had in roleplaying that situation. Why?

Does your SR have to be happy smelling roses? Real life: not all "teams" are teams. It doesn't make for the best team, and it might not fit the "sporting" definition of the word "team", but it could still happen, and it would still be quite realistic.

Like I said, seems to be a prevalent thing that a lot of people have played pretty narrow defined games of SR. If it's what you enjoy, that's totally cool. It's just not the only thing you can do with the system.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Frag-o Delux]

[Samaels Ghost]

[Firewall]

Our team kind of sits outside normal classification. There is a mage, a face, a weapon-specialist and a smuggler. The last two are right out of the SR4 book.

Since the face has a legal SIN, he actually advertises his services openly as a security consultant. At the moment, the team is new. One (perfectly legal) job under their belts and shares in one of Ares' smaller rivals. (Yeah, sneaky DM... Paid us in :nuyen: and the bonus in shares, to stop us double-crossing them later) It was very much a case of rolling what we wanted, rather than trying to make a team, but it works.

I cannot say I have ever ben in a 'perfect' team, with one of everything. My favourite teams are the ones with glaring problems. Well, they are glaring to the GM. The first thing you often know is when you get to the extraction point and realise nobody knows how to drive a speed-boat.

[dog_xinu]

a team could be family (doesnt have to be brothers/sisters but maybe cousins). I played in one game where everyone at the table (playerwise) was related to each other. I was the demented cousin that liked to blow stuff up. You know, people, cars, cargo in the riggers boat, my commlink, etc.


A team needs to have history with each other and needs to gel with each other. If one team member is any-violence (not pacifist but abhores violence) and you have another one that like to hurt people (and kill them too). That generaly doesnt work. As a player at DragonCON last night ask me, "what D&D alignments do you like in your games?... you know if ShadowRun had them?...." Personally I dont care as long as the group gels. Now the closer you are to LG, the harder it will be to do a lot of missions. The closer to CE you get the more "non-friendly" people will be to you and probably more likely to turn you in when you do bad stuff. the closer you get to N, the better off you will be. Truly the only side you should really care about is your own (your team's). You should not care about the Johnson's, the team's side that you are running against, nor even people like Lone Star (unless you are playing a cop).


but then again this is my opinon on no sleep....

[Dog]

[Sicarius]

I can see advantages to either way. There can be alot of fun in roleplaying that geling of the team, as the PCs start to appreciate each other, and form bonds under fire.

I would always recommend that at least OOC the GM help players by saying "you will need to cover these skills." or be like me, and design the adventure after the characters are built, rather than the other way around.

[wargear]

[eidolon]