Competing runner teams, Has this been done before and if so how disastrously? Options

[TheMadderHatter]

A question to GMs on here: have you ever had the player runner team not be the only one going after the target, to the effect that you end up with multiple teams fighting each other within the run target? It occured to me while writing up missions for the group I'm about to GM, and while it seems fairly silly, it also seems appropriate for missions where the real object of the run is to incarcerate, eliminate, or otherwise remove from the field as many runners as possible while exposing the target's horrible security.

So has it been done before? Has it worked to have the PCs surprise another team or vice versa?

[WyldKnight]

It's not silly at all. Multiple people sometimes want the same object. They all hire runners to go after it. Ta da, you have a Shadow gang bang that's going to leave a lot of people dead. I've done it. They of course didn't know about the other team at first but when the hacker did a lot of leg work and pulled together a bunch of info for his contacts to go on I gave em the info that more then one team was after the this one guy. At first the team was going to race their and get him first but the Sami said why don't they stake out the corporate grounds, wait for another team to extract him and then take them out and grab him. Everyone agreed so it became a waiting game. Fast forward and the team watch as 2 other Runner groups are fighting over the guy, he gets away and starts running. One of their drones knocks him out with a splash grenade and they rush him while putting suppressive fire out, throw him in the back of the van, and have a racing fire fight with the other teams. Eventually they get into friendly territory (Loyalty 5 group contact Gang) who proceed to shoot at the other team (the third them had been wiped out by a series of HE grenades.) All in all it went well and they liked the idea of facing other teams because it gave me an excuse to be more creative with their gear, tactics, and appearance.

[Lantzer]

That said, while multiple teams could be trying to get the same target, it's unlikely they'd all go at exactly the same time. They could have done it last week. They could be planning it for tomorrow night. They could have snuck over the north fence with it as you came in the south sewers.

Edit -
Now, I have seriously annoyed my group in the past with teams that had conflicting goals. They trashed one, and swore a lot about the other.

[WyldKnight]

The Rule of Cool states a three way mercenary dual wins over logic.

[Steven]

I think the easiest way to do it is to let your runners get the object(s) in question, find the Johnson dead, lose the object, Johnson 2 lets the players know it's their ass if the object(s) isn't recovered, the players have to track the object(s) and team 2 down, only to find out Johnson 2 was running both teams against each other because of something both teams had done in the past. Think Keyser Soze against everyone in the Usual Suspects.

You could easily make a campaign out of just getting the object(s) back. Game 1, the runner have to go to Paris, game 2, they're caught in Bogata during the war, game 3 back in Seattle, etc.

[Niemand]

I tnd to use this quite a bit. Last mission my players ran another team ambushed them as they were making a get-away from a Corp facility. One of the PCs has a bounty on him, and another team got wind of it. So as the team was in the clear after some wetwork, they find themselves under attack from a team that had followed them and laid in wait. Everybody lived (they were shot up pretty badly though), but they had some pointed questions for the guy with the bounty.

[TheMadderHatter]

Excellent ideas; thanks all.

<<self-edited. i apparently post bad versions of my ideas at 3 AM>>

[Seth]

That said, while multiple teams could be trying to get the same target, it's unlikely they'd all go at exactly the same time. They could have done it last week. They could be planning it for tomorrow night. They could have snuck over the north fence with it as you came in the south sewers.

I agree unless there is a reason they are going at the same time: the guard shift changes at 2 in the morning, and there is an easy way to distract the backup guards. Or there is a shipment moving from place A to place B, and there are 3 optimal places to ambush (now the odds are only 1/3 that another team is going to pick the same spot).

The other fun thing as mentioned above to drop a clue that there is another team at work (your decker spots their decker, your point scout spots their point scout, your contact tells you someone else is asking questions).

I love the the three way fight. Interestingly I have never had my players wait for the other guy to do the hard work: they usually want to be sure that the target is acquired. They are also somewhat careful: dead bodies attract a lot of attention, and if a lot of people die from the other team, there will be a massive multiple homicide investigation and if they have the goods...then they get to take the heat.

[MikeKozar]

I always wanted to have the team encounter a guy doing the Splinter Cell thing up in the hung ceiling as they go through - they spot him on Ultrasound, and see him scoping them out as well. Before they can move, he whispers, "Are you here for Accounting?" The players remark that they're going to R&D. Guy whispers "Well, Good hunting!" and spider-mans off in the other direction.

[Ranarion]

We had that once.. our mission was to make an Labor in a forrest unrentable so that the company will Sell it to another company.
The Company then hired a Runner Team to find us and Take us out.. we lay an ambush and totaly wiped them out. Left no survivor..

Enemy Runners are dangerous Oponents and you n eed to be sure they are dead.. like player Characters you never know how much of a punch they can stand, so you will punch with full Force..