Team Conflict., Shadowrunners are anti-social criminals and can't seem to get alon Options

[Sir_Psycho]

My initial Shadowrun experience had been one on one GM to player. The biggest face-to-face pen and paper I played was three people. Lately I've been playing some PBP games on Dumpshock, and I've noticed a theme in every game I've played.

Shadowrunners don't seem to get along. There always seems to be IC conflicts that pop up out of no-where. I'll provide a few examples.

I've mentioned in a few other threads the elf/orc duo who's animosity was pretty mild, but actually escalated to a very unproffesional rolling of initiative and a subsequent punch-up while on a run.

Sink, Hollywood, Sink, our LA game run by Johnathan C, has so far resulted in a lot of repartee. I play a borderline Bolshevik hippie photojournalist named Blackie Pilger, along with an ork dancer adept, and a new orleans french transplant (face/hacker) wanna-be sim-starlet shadowrunner, who have started to engage in some slightly bitter ribbing. Blackie resents P2.0 as trash flavoured egocentric porno-journalism, while the face is constantly looking for ways to get high ratings and capture our team on sim. Some of Blackie's conversation with DD (the face) has turned to subtle and not-so subtle jibes towards her morally questionable and exotic prior line of work, and on the titillating wardrobe of our dancer.

Another game I'm playing, with 7 characters all up, has already escalated to animosity and provocation in the introductory posts! My Hacker/Doc character, has already derided our aging sammy's antique "dinosaur" of a cyber-arm, to which he promptly flipped her off with the tech. She's also a militant vegan, and freaked out when our roof-rat started frying vat-grown eggs, and then annoyed the rigger by jumping into his van without permission and having a nap. Our scorched possession mage has already called at least two team members up on being cavalier with DNA traces, and then our face took it and ran, putting cigarettes out in the coffee and walking out of the safehouse.

Does anyone else find these sort of in-team conflicts sprout up? Anyone have any amusing anecdotes? I remember the C.L.U.E files had some examples of a team blowing eachother up with explosives due to a competitive and impromptu road-race.

[DWC]

I find the situation to be very binary. When it's pink mohawk night, and everyone is playing their own defective weirdo, everyone thinks everyone else is a screwup, and no one gets along. When the games go more "professional", the characters tend to be more mellow, the conflicts don't arise as much.

[Zak]

I think this is perfectly fine as long as it stays in character. With most players the in character animosities tend to have a negative effect on the overall motivation to play tho.

Might be less of an issue online, when you don't have to look the other person in the eyes while moving against him. But my experience is that things get taken too personal too fast, which is a shame, esp in a game like shadowrun.

[Naptown Wendigo]

Unfortunately PBP games can suffer the same problems as other areas of the internet; without a face to face situation people seem much more likely to cause problems and be confrontational, seems like a by-product of the anonymity.

An easy solution that I've found running other RPG's is to issue rules to the characters before the game even starts. Something as simple as "you have to know at least 2 other people at the table". This doesn't have to be friends either but it usually ends up that way. Rivals or just "she owes me money!" can work too. This serves to give players more of a reason to work together and resolve any conflicts before they get out of hand.

[Chrysalis]

Aleph our burnout mage, was prissy because someone called him by his name. Aleph also was angry at Beta for putting out her cigarette on the floor. Vera showing solidarity towards Beta and directing Aleph's anger towards her also put hers out on the floor. Aleph says

"Fuck you, V! This is no swinger club – no perks for spilling DNA samples all over the place. Maybe we should add the rest of our biometrics for the first forensic sweep to find?", which when coupled with what Zero said just a few moments ago,

"Sit tight until V to works her unique brand of magic." He looks at the striking woman his chest tightening as he does, "Any leads?"

is the equivalent of slapping her across the face calling her a whore and then the rest of the team silently waiting around demanding to see the money she had made. Who wouldn't be pissed?

-Chrysalis

[Emperor Tippy]

I've mentioned in a few other threads the elf/orc duo who's animosity was pretty mild, but actually escalated to a very unproffesional rolling of initiative and a subsequent punch-up while on a run.

Was that during the legwork part of a run and with at least a semilegitimate reason?

Because I can assure you that my characters would either a) shoot the guy right then or b) shoot him as soon as the run is over.

Characters don't have to like each other. They don't even have to get along very well. But a shadowrun is a group of people getting together and committing a laundry list of felonies, enough that shoot first and ask questions later is Lone Stars general response. So anyone who reduces your risk of surviving, or increases your risk of getting caught, is a liability.

So you shoot the other character, strip his body of gear, take his funds, and then have someone say 'I know a guy who might be interested, he definitely has the skills to keep up'. You hire the guy, giving him a signing bonus equal to the cost of the dead characters cut and gear less expenses and thats that.

[Stahlseele]

oh yes, i have some stories like those . .
my favourite is the one about my face/samurai and the groups rigger . . egoistic, proud, quick to anger, headstrong . . yes, both of us, actually . . players AND characters . .
after the meeting with the johnson was over, my Face and the Rigger were in his Car and he decided to show off again . . so he did a half doughnut and sprayed the two Trolls standing Guard holding LMG's with Dirt and Stones . . seconds later the GM goes KLANK . . questioning glances all around . . one of the Trolls had thrown a Rock at the Car . . so what does Rigger decide to do? yep, he wants to stop and go head to head with the troll outside of his car . . so me being more or less the combat monkey, i allways have around 3 different pistols on my character . . Dart-Pistol with Gamma-Scopolamine, Savalette Guardian with ExEx and an Ares Viper Sliver-Gun of course with Flechette . . so i pushed one gun below my own arm/shoulder directly and very strongly against riggers rips and told him to keep driving if he does not want to find out which gun was getting friendly with his lungs . . ok, so it was the dart-gun, but still . . and yes, same player and different characters and we were still most often the ones going against each other . . and no, it was not me, it was him . . we figured that one out, when we as a group without him actually set two of his own characters up against each other and made them hate each others guts *g*
he's kinda a gun/car nerd, so one got the Car with the Ammo and one got the Panther Assault Cannon after we had dropped some hints as to who was responsible for the others problems *g*
sadly we never got to watch that one play out <.< . . party-pooper/spoil-sport(s) *g*

[Hatspur]

We have someone on my ventrilo group that attempts to stir the pot every time. My ventrilo group is a very straightfaced professional group of runners who go to great lengths when it comes to courtesy and dealings. We were trying to sell this military grade EMP we hijacked from Kochi Japan to a group of ecoterrorists who just left Seattle after the heat piled down on them. When we landed on their boat, My character and the other player in the group got off the chopper and began the detente discussion. Meanwhile, while Mexican standoff is the currently agreed form of detente, this 'stir it up' player decides to try to sneak onto the chopper and kill people on board. Myself and the other player both use edge on perception and get around 7 hits. Needless to say there was much gun raising and elevated volume of voices that did not push negotiations in a positive direction.

[Fuchs]

As long as it's only banter, and no actions that run counter to the run's success are taken I see no problem. Professionals usually can keep their temper in check, and keep the banter at a level where it's not affecting the team's performance.

[Damatory]

We make it fun in that respect. The token girl runner "Dark Eyes" is narcissistic as hell, and hates to get dirty. So we've made it a running joke to sneak attack her out of no where to scuff her shoes, or flick blood from our blades at her.

We all tend to be extremely laid back though, tight nit friends from way back, so it's all in good jesting.

[Stahlseele]

we have another one in our group that is also kinda . . bleh desu x.x . .
arrogant little know it all smart ass . . out and in game actually . .
played a willpower 7, intelligence 7 dwarf . . andybody know the anime series detective conan? yeah, kinda like that one . .
him and the rigger guy(actually, a dwarf with willpower 7 and intelligence of 6 too) decided to accompany the dumb troggy (me, Int 4 Troll Cyber/Bio-Combat-Monster this time) to keep him out of trouble, because we were sneaking into a corp. building right then . . we had decided to keep quiet, but not neccessaryly non-leathal . . so when i actually managed to sneak up behind a guard(yes, a 3m tall Body/STR 15 Troll manages to sneak up on somebody) they started to complain out of game that it would be more realistic if they did that . . (none of them had a weapon-skill higher than 4 and none of them had a silenced weapon and none of them had a non-shooty weapon) so a little pissed of i decided to do something to show them what happens if a Troll gets angry . i used my Dikote-Pole-Arm on the poor unsuspecting guy right before me . . so that makes 18D right there . . and i rolled like a god, 8 dice, 8 successes . . i refrained from using combat pool on that one . . so guard splits up in two and they are STILL complaining about me being not stealthy enough and screwing things up . . and then the both of them together actually trip an alarm and get knocked out the first round of combat . . guess who had to carry them on the way out? guess who got dumped into an open sewer "on accident"?

oh, and i am sure all of you had to deal with the stereotypical charisma 8 elven bitch played by a bear of a man right?
well, said specimen fucked up, lead the wole group right into a trap somehow and netted my troll wounds that stopped 1 box before deadly . .
so on the way out a very pissed off troll dragged a screaming elf through all the blood and mayhem that had just happened some minutes before by holding her out of the back of a driving van . .he is my best buddy, but gods help me if he decides to play that character ever again . . i plainly told him out of game about all the modifiers i had racked up for holding her a little bit above the ground and that he had better not make his character struggle because i would not spend any karma to hold her up <.< . .

[Sir_Psycho]

Was that during the legwork part of a run and with at least a semilegitimate reason?

Because I can assure you that my characters would either a) shoot the guy right then or b) shoot him as soon as the run is over.

No. It was during the actual run. We were in the upstairs bedroom of the target politico's mansion, and he was standing right there as we went to fists.

Long story short, our orc sam had no unarmed combat skill, and was only skilled with a katana or his spurs. We sent him upstairs to grab the guy while we finished tying up the wife and security team. The politico managed to sneak up on the sam, bash him in the skull with a candelabra, and when the sam's unarmed combat defaulting didn't work, he said to our gm "fuck it I just use my spurs". So my character, an elven covert ops spec, goes running up the stairs, leaps across the room and kinghits the sam to the floor. They proceeded to roll around on the ground punching eachother (the sam decided to sheath his spurs) and the sam even managed to get a lucky default roll and headbutt my character in the face. We both ended up with a few boxes of damage.

Needless to say, the politico managed to run away in the confusion, and we had to catch him climbing out a first story window.

[Sir_Psycho]

is the equivalent of slapping her across the face calling her a whore and then the rest of the team silently waiting around demanding to see the money she had made. Who wouldn't be pissed?

-Chrysalis

I make no value judgement on the IC conflict, but I understand.

If the IC fighting actually gets out of hand, we can easily come to an OOC agreement, but I personally don't see a problem yet.

I'm curious, I haven't gone through your character sheet in a while, Does vera still have those breast implants?

[Siege]

IC disagreements can happen often or not, depending on the situation and PC personalities.

OOC conflicts tend to be rarer, in my experience and tend to revolve around personality conflicts - typically resolved by one person dropping the game or not being invited back.

Of course, sometimes the group just implodes and a new wave of melodrama erupts, but that's a worst case scenario. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

-Siege

[Chrysalis]

I make no value judgement on the IC conflict, but I understand.

If the IC fighting actually gets out of hand, we can easily come to an OOC agreement, but I personally don't see a problem yet.

I'm curious, I haven't gone through your character sheet in a while, Does vera still have those breast implants?

I really don't see the problem either. It's a character who was being yelled at not me as a player. I may play a character, but the character is not me the player.

The IC posting is just less, since Vera is not physically there and five minutes of walking through the rain does not interest anyone.


And yes Vera does have breast implants. Why?

[Sir_Psycho]

Because you mentioned Zero's "unique brand of magic." The severity of the euphemism is debatable, But you do play the mercilessly beautiful and manipulative elven face (with afore-mentioned breast implants), so I imagine "striking woman" is an apt description.

[Chrysalis]

I think it is a good description. I also sent images of the character as well. Did you get them?

-Chrysalis