In my old campaign, the team leader was the street sam/sniper, who had "won" the post via longevity and strength of personality; he had been playing in my campaign the longest and was the only player to stick with me the entire time. As such, his position of being the planner and leader in the beginning shifted to overall leadership after the other early players phased out and others joined up. The new players followed his plans and orders almost unquestioningly, except to make improvements, which were acknowledged and added. They did have a few arguments, but those were during planning stages, and out in the field, people listened to him. And I didn't see anyone try to usurp his position over the course of the campaign.

So, I've been wondering, given all of the tales of musical backstabbing that I've heard of runner teams, in most games in which you've played, who is the formal or informal team leader? Or is there even a team leader?

My group doesn't really have a team leader. The gun bunny informally leads but that's mostly because he's the tactician and the guy with the most extensive contact list (we're still trying to find a face). The team is small (only 3 players right now) so they've never really had to vote on anything. So far we haven't had any backstabbing so... yeah, leadership musical chairs hasn't happened yet.

In most of the games that I've played in or GMed, there really hasn't been a leader. I tried to pick just "majority vote" but it wanted me to pick a leader too.

1. nobody says no to the troll combat monster street sam and mundane gun-bunny with the strategic and tactical skills and the practical combat versatility if he has a body of 16, a strength of 15 and int of 4 *g*
2. We follow him who has the best plan . . mostly . .
3. if the best plan does lead to failure it's more or less instant WH40K Orks Playing style including screams of waagh and dakka dakka dakka while running for our characters *g*

My old group, the decker was clearly the leader, but ruled by majority vote.

The new group, the sam/doctor was always butting heads with the adept (one believed in minimizing loss of life and would actually stop to stabilize fallen guards, the other went out of his way to kill as many random people as possible, then blow everything up when he was done) and no one else cared to say anything. But now we brought in some new people and one of the mages is taking the lead, since she knows how to focus on the mission and leave how many people get killed to individual discretion.

Mainly majority vote. I have been experimenting with making different character (through the use of various contacts) the "lead" of a mission...some of the players are pretty good at it, and others really suck and make a mess of missions (normally by not telling the group all the objectives or changing too many details they were given).

But, no matter who the lead, it still ends up being majority rules...

This is one of those tricky things in which if the player's social and planning skills and the PC's social and planning skills are significantly different, friction may ensue.

In mundane life, I've held a lot of small-scale leadership roles, so it's hard for me to play a character who just follows like a sheep, and often my PC takes a leader or co-leader role regardless of character conception.

In Stormcrow's group, WeaverMount plays a mage, and that gives his character a great deal of say in how the team handles any situation involving magic, which has been a lot of our situations.

Some groups are OK with "Fine, you wanna go that way, good luck; I'm going this way no matter what you say or do." Other groups work hard to avoid that. It requires the GM to figure out the consequences for each, and requires each player to wait while the GM resolves what happens to the other's PC. Consider R2-D2 and C-3PO splitting up after the escape pod landed on Tatooine; they met again later.

I reckon parties can be sorted into 'proactive' action focused groups, and reactive parties who don't do the same level of pre-emptive action, instead responding to the situation. On the other axis you have planning/unstructured groups.

Me DMing: A tactican with an introvert personality, a guy who always played wizards no matter what the system, game, concept, or anything else was, an extroverted madman, and a moron who played huge tanks no matter what the system, game, concept, or anything else was.

Plans were often difficult to come by as the wizard guy was also a backstabber, and the moron was slightly mad, and they'd pull in opposite directions, and the only guy with a good idea (the tactican) was not the sort to shout over the rucus, so hilarity ensued. They were very proative but 4 guys pulled in 9 directions all at once. High on activity, low on structure

Me playing: Me, the previous introverted tactican, and another guy, who was sort of middle of road on all mad personality types - I called the shots, though we never really overode each other (mostly). We are/were 3 like minded blokes, so we almost always came up with one or two plans by putting our heads together, then called between them. High activity and structure (which caused problems with the DM, who was not prepared for that sort of extreme tactical behaviour, despite using a battlemap and models?)

Me dming again: A tactican with an introvert personality, A roleplayer with an introvert personality and a poor grasp of tactics, and an the aforsaid middle of the road guy. While the previous group through alike, despite featuring 2 of the same 3 people, this group had internal friction with all parties disagreeing and rarely developed a solid plan before the situation came to a head. Very reactive. Low activity and moderate structure

In my games I tend to be "leader" regardless of character archetype because, well, I'm bossy and loud >.>

At least that's what I'm "jokingly" told by my home game group, ahem.

...

In general though, I do find "team leader" is almost always a function of player rather than character. At Cons where I've GMed at had the opportunity to see various kinds of table mixes, I find that if there is a "charismatic" player he tends to evolve as the team leader, and lacking such a personality it tends to be more democratic, or possibly (rarely) come down to roleplaying.

I do generally, because I have no problem with telling others what to do. In the RL group I play in no matter what system the others look to me for the plans and go along with what I say. Online it's basically between me and one other person as the leader.

*Raises an iron fist*

My old street sam often found himself playing the role of leader, partially because he had good ideas (and was willing to assign himself more risk than anyone else), and partially because he was just really bad at being told what to do by anyone else.

It is missing a "whatever XYZ is playing" as an option. The most active char can fancy himself a leader; if you´ve got multiples of those, and they don´t have a democratic process going, have fun. Plan easy runs, they will manage to mess up those, too.

So I can not really vote on the second part, either. Most time one player takes initiative, and the other chars follow his char. Sometimes multiple players are making up a plan, and the whole group is lead by democratic process. On other occasions, there is no organised decision making, several I´s in team, and the multiple plans executed at the same time ensure failure. Lets call in anarchy...

I do not know what to say. Our shaman is the face.

Our leader is usually whoever the Hand of Responsibility ends up with. (For reference, the HoR is a Halloween prop severed hand given to the character/player that is "the responsible one." The implication is that it came from the previous owner of responsibility) The result ends up being interesting at the least, and most players don't *want* to end up the responsible one.

I lead because I am the face. I just happen to also be a shaman.

it's not letting me vote, saying I didn't mark a spot, but I have been.

There are two sections. Did you vote in both?

I lead of course

My group doesn't really have a true leader, they generally try and get the street sam. to "lead" simply because he's a smarter player than the rest of them but he doesn't want to hog the spot light so they've really been doing a whole "who ever gets the call (ie. if it's a special contact, that person, otherwise, dice roll) is leader" this time.

I don't often have a designated "team leader" so much as cooperative effort. One player usually takes the initiative to make suggestions and the party shambles along.

Typically, each player has strengths or weaknesses and we lend weight to their opinions accordingly.

-Siege

That has to be one of the greatest ideas I´ve heard off lately. My players will hate you...

i would allways have that hand . . even if i am playing charisma, int and will on 1 . . even if it's not a troll for a change . . deckers and mages with int 7, elves with charisma 8, dwarves with will 8 . . somehow, they all listen to the can-troggy . . if he's played by me <.< . .

Tony Danza.

*sigh*
i guess someone had to do it O.o
hrm . . about that idea with the hand . . maybe that's given me an idea for a character concept or at least a gimmick . .
The Red Right Hand

Methinks someone reads Comedity

of course we do *g*
and you have noo idea how exactly that very strip fits my playing style ^^
I plan and plan and plan and do the whole military tactical and strategical warfare with a specialist team of guerilleros . . and i do have contingency plans . . and if all else fails, i just draw the biggest weapon i have at hand and make Colossus and Juggernot proud ^^
i was thinking of a red right cyber-hand . . and maybe a black one to leave as a personal card or something . . (wee are the blaack haand!/ wiir siind diiee schwaarzee haand!)

That's awesome!

hrm, make him a dwarf and *grumble mumble*

We tend to have the character with the most specialization in a field be the leader for that run/encounter. My magician is the de-facto leader when it comes to magic/magic related endeavors. I take advice(IC and OC) and utilize the abilities of those who have abilities that can be a positive factor, but I still have the final "Vote" when it comes to magic.
The Mystic adept tends to say, "Um, no clue!" and the other of course is quite willing to have me try, and perhaps die, first.
We extend the same courtesy to the other players. I for instance while giving what input I can in the magic related part of the plan, default to the character that has the best tactical skill amongst us in relation to what we are attempting/dealing with.

In your own field you are law, in theirs you are support. I voted the Magician(I always go for "The Magix") and other in support of the above.

yeah, having the best suited be leader in the appropriate situation sounds like a good idea O.o

Our team is fairly democratic due to the fact that the team members come and go. Our team operates similar to what Athanatos mentioned. In general terms, the Face leads when negotiating with Mr. Johnson and the Weapons Specialist leads in combat situations, etc. etc.

I tried to vote but it did not accept it. I got this error message:


You did not choose a poll choice to vote against. Please go back and ensure you click on one of the radio buttons next to the choice you wish to vote for

There's two sections to the poll. Did you make a choice in both sections?

What is this "Leader" thing that y'all keep discussing?

on our team we usually argue about what to do for about 15 minutes until everyone gets bored or p*ssed off and then just wing it,hoping to get out by the skin of our teeth. kinda like a hippy commune approach.

honestly, though. we usually let everyone fill the niche that they are built for, mage takes the magic stuff, hacker the securty stuff, street sammy to catch bullets and break stuff. It works fine unless someone doesn't make the game and then we are hosed, like the time the physad didn't show and my Coyote shaman tried to fill in( may he rest in peace).
Personaly, I am usually the mojoslinger in the group and don't care to lead as I am usually busy covering the big lumbering combat monsters hoops since they all seem to have the willpower of a plaster garden gnome

I'd go with the Decker/Hacker. Especially if they're running in VR. They handle the communications between each team member and constantly have the matrix and drones at their disposal for constantly updating intel. They bring it all together.

Our group has a player who is always a min/maxed street sammie, and is always chromed to hell. We call him Leader for a reason. That reason is a sense of irony. No matter what, we never listen to leader unless everyone else's plans are batshit insane. Which, unfortunately, is often. Oh, and Leader is a great bullet-sponge, so we follow him just so that he gets shot first. And if he dies, we use the body.

Most recently, our group had the face/hacker leading, and he ran things by consensus. It worked for team harmony, but got somewhat disorganized in tactical situations.

We just rebooted and started a new campaign with new characters and a couple new players, though. No leadership structure has been evident just yet.