I'm just starting a game up with some guys on an Australian computer game (but mainly off topic/general discussioin) forum. It's taken me a while to explain the whole cyber-punk with magic thing, but so far I've actually got one guy (a previous roleplayer, luckily) playing. He's a Redmond Ork with a huge squatter family and a sick girlfriend, (Dependant 15) and most of his siblings and cousins are involved in a small time gang who defend the apartment block where "the family" live. His background is that of a Covert Ops Specialist. He started as a pickpocket and petty thief, but snatched a purse from a pro Shadowrunner called Crazy May, who needed a new Ghost for her team, and she sponsored him and set him up with extra training and implanted cyberware (To explain why a barrens rat has 250k in gear). Anyway, because he didn't want to buy any contacts, his background involved a data steal where Crazy May and the whole team got killed, and this poor Ork who "talks like dis'" and has no real connection to the runner scene who can help him is left holding some very valuable paydata and the Johnson and Yakuza are after him. His name is The Orange (named after a cardboard box in metal gear solid ). So far he's had to deal with internal family disputes and finding a way to get a message back to the Johnson at Club Penumbra (an Ork with 2 charisma, no social skills and 90:nuyen: is a challenge to get into Club P), but he hasn't done the meet with the (Hispanic) J, yet.

Little does he know, the paydata is in fact a covert list of employees of a Blacker than black defunct corporate sponsored research team doing wierd things with ASIST and trying to replicate the creation of E-ghosts, to simplify it. The twist is that Crazy May is on that list, and that is why she accepted the job for so little, because she's afraid that the other sickos on the list are going to be after her now that the list is in corporate hands and Yakuza knowledge. And she was right, but it gets even more fucked up.

But that would be giving too much away. Enter Taatsu Karuda. Taatsu was Renraku, born and bred. His father was head of security in a tokyo Renraku facility, and Taatsu followed in his footsteps, becoming special ops for Renraku. He might have become Red Samurai, but he was lent out to a Yakuza boss as a favour. This is where his life went downhill. He had to kill a prostitute to save his master's honour, but he let her go, claiming she managed to escape. For this, he lost his hand, and then got the hell out of Tokyo. Now he's fresh off the sub-orbital, with a sister and mother, and basically no contacts and one (Low lifestyle) shitty apartment. He's about to get his hardware and start shadowrunning.

Now here's where the fun starts. Taatsu's dodgy japanese landlord, who runs a dodgy apartment complex for japanese immigrants in the International District, has a son who's an alcoholic and a small time Yakuza leg-breaker, Noguchi. He of course has no idea who Taatsu is, but I plan to have them run into eachother and notice Karuda carrying his new hardware (a bunch of pistols, an smg, an assault rifle, a katana, a few knives and a vibrosword) up to his apartment. He'll probably threaten to sell Karuda's attractive and pious sister into a Yakuza bunraku operation if he doesn't help Noguchi out with an operation. He looks japanese and has good Jap/Yak etiquette, so why not?

Anyway, the job Noguchi has been set is by a darker, more insidious Yakuza clan member, a young but ambitious powerbroker, and a complete sociopath. Anyway, this particular ringleader's recent assignment has been as security for a particular hispanic Johnson, who was supposed to acquire the black list for the Yakuza, but in an extremely unproffesional move, offered a copy of the list to the runner carrying out the steal, in the hope of exploiting Crazy May's self-preservation, and skiving off some funds for his own third swimming pool. The Yakuza would kill the Johnson straight off, but unfortuanately, he's the only link with the one lone ork with a datachip in his finger.


See where I'm going with this?


So who's ever pitted players against eachother? How do you do it? Spoiler tags and the honour system? Private emails? Tabletalk whispers? Got anything to contribute or comment on?

Can't help there. When my players went up against each other it was usually a "and this PC is out anyway, make a new PC that sticks with the team" affair.

One time they chased themselves, after hearing about a "team of crazies", not knowing that's how the rest of the "scene" called them when they were not around, and they cased themselves for quite some time until they figured it out - lots of "they've got a troll tank, like we do? And two combat mages like us? And an elven decker? Damned copycats!" and "That's our preferred bar too! And our table?!" remarks.

Mainly e-mails. But the times I needed to do something without a player there we just had a short game session without him.

As a GM, I love to run player versus player firefight sessions over IRC. It removes any question of bias from my role as the GM (I let the dice fall as they may and have no choice but to be totally objective) while 3 minds vs. 3 minds is usually much more interesting than 1 overtaxed mind running the whole game universe vs 6 minds focusing only on the firefight at hand.

i love that ^^

and by the way, who needs the GM to get player/characters to get up in gear against each other? O.o
usually, it is enough to let them dig their own grave by trying to do stupid shit like swindling the troll combat twink(me) out of his more than fair share of a run for example . .
or they try to get others in the group killed to get more money by only dividing between, let's say, 3 instead of 5 . .
or just by behaving assholish in/out of character . . the know-it-all-character types don't tend to live long due to their high non physical attributes and low armor . .
okay, maybe they won't get killed in return, but most characters on the receiving end either wish they were dead and refrain from doing it again, or they DO it again and they GET killed on purpose instead of just receiving a good beating like they did the first time . .