Does he carry akimbo Berettas, have a constipated grin on his face, and speak only in melodramatic metaphor?

Ok, so I'm in the habit of having a NPC or two along for the ride with those guys. Usually a decker (or some other role that the players need but don't know/ aren't filling/the rules are too complex and I wanna use simpler ones that would make it too easy on players), but there have been times where I've considered this. The simple answer to have the guy work with them, help 'em out, maybe even save their lives, and then spring the pain. No warning, very little chance off them discovering anythng until near the end.

Typically this is due to them allowing a corp to id them after they've done many runs against them. If you want to target one specific player for stupidity, make them the traitor and let the other players slowly figure it out.

In all fairness he only talks like that when under great emotional strain. In the second game he was largely normal intil his coworker betrayed him, then he was slipping but didnt fall into full Noir Metaphor mode until the last chapter of the game, aptly named "That Old Familiar Feeling" when he went full blown snappage.

I loved those games for the story. Those games had atmosphere.

Sure it is. Every PC runner is a complete professional who takes no chances, is reasonably paranoid, makes no mistakes, and never misjudges character. That new runner they hired for their shadowteam, the one who has years of experience in the shadows, was never a company man. Really. They checked corporate records, which are never purged of incriminating evidence.

That's the theory, but that's not how it works out. Consider:

pg126, Corporate Download. "Ares is normally willing to expose themselves as the employers of a shadowteam. If they do not, they pay in nuyen using the standard pay rates."

pg132, Corporate Download. "Lanier has even taken to capturing runners who engage in ops against Novatech, then making a bid for their services and turning them against their former employers." Meaning the runners pretty well know they work for Novatech, and implying they know who their employers are.

pg137, Corporate Download, "Shiawase pays standard fees, and will negotiate for 10 percent of the fee to be Shiawase stock."

While Aztech and Saeder Krupp are pretty intense about hiding their identities from employers, other AAA megacorps are not so careful, and Ares is pretty open about it.

Therefore, while runners may be used for plausible deniability, there are several megacorps that the runners can work for and know their employer, thereby being vulnerable to infiltration and government (or megacorp) stings.

Naw. You can just release a few company men...or, heck, even hire shadowrunners...to join a shadowteam, and see what intel they turn up from the shadows.

Well, that's true in general, isn't it? I mean, runner teams aren't unique in this particular venture.

BTW, why in the hell would the FBI give a rip about a runner team?

Well, yeah, shadowrunners might do crimes outside of FBI jurisdiction, but not always. After all, the runners are hired for those dirty deeds that the megacorp wants a measure of deniability about, correct?

So, to the FBI (or megacorp), the runners become a means to an end. For example:

*Infiltrating a shadowteam, or having agents pose as/BE runners is a GREAT form of counter-intelligence for megacorps

*Infiltrating a shadowteam answers questions like, "Who hired them?" and "Is anything naughty being done in [faction X's] jurisdiction"?

Any competent megacorp security branch will have counter-intelligence watching for shadowruns. An excellent way to do it is make some agents runners, or vice versa. The FBI might also be watching for shadowruns - are runners trying to launch a data steal or extraction against some key gubmint project?

Well infiltrating a team could be a really really detailed shadowop. Say infiltrate a team. Sure collect info on the shadows in the mean time, you know make yourself useful. Then somewhere down the line manipulate the team into going on somekind of "Run of the Century," and while thats going down the spy acomplishes the real objective all while framming the team and escaping or something.

Still to farfetched though, unless the corp was planning that one job months or years in advance. And even then it is still flimsy, unless its SK getting revenge on the team or something.


Heres another one though, Maybe the infiltrator isn't really trying to shaft the runners. Maybe they have infiltrated the team to "look after" one of the team members. Like a lost heir or the Presidents illegitimate daughter.

Maybe the spy still gets outed. Leading to distrust of two people affiliated with the team. I dont know...just fishin.

Great idea for one of those games when you can't find too many players. Like a one or two runner team. Thanks.

Counter-intelligence operations don't work by knowing exactly what the opposition is going to do - if a government or corporate security branch knew exactly what the bad guys were doing, there wouldn't be much need for counter intelligence.

So you go out looking. You put people out in the shadows and have them fish for information, feeding any interesting nuggets and rumors back to the agency or megacorp. The people back in the office build up a picture from those reports and (hopefully) determine what all the other factions are up to.

Since anyone but a runner is only go to have second hand information of what happens on a run, and will never get the straight deal on what goes on between runners and Mr. Johnson, an excellent way to see what the opposition is doing is to plant someone amongst runners.

Maybe the agent won't hit jack pot, or will work for boring employers, but you have to start somewhere, right? A little on-the-job experience is a great pointer toward bigger and better "fish."

As for law enforcement, they would want to do one of two things: A) look the other way, because the runners aren't disturbing the public order, or b) kill them all as quickly as possible, because they are a "danger to society." There's no need to have an undercover guy join them, because you already know they are criminals, and besides, they're SINless; you don't need to prove jack squat beyond a reasonable doubt.

Naw. Runners are just a means to an end: learning who's employing them, and when they're hitting the agent's megacorp.

That is, of course, supposing it had the potential to be a good story line.

Suspending disbelief is one thing, hanging it from the neck until dead is another matter entirely.

-Siege

Reasonable driving causes:

*Politician made some campaign pledge to lower shadow crime
*Politician got caught redhanded and needs to distract the public with eye-catching action (runners: great media attention getters)
*FBI looking to sting politicians hiring runners
*Megacorps are hiring too many sloppy runners and boiling over into FBI jurisdictions; it's time to make an example of some runners

Why these runners?

*They're sloppy and unsuspecting. The real pro runners would leave the infiltrator/turncoat naked, duct taped, and in S&M rig on the desk of the local FBI chief.
*If the FBI is going to make an example, it doesn't want to actually anger the megacorps, so it picks sloppy runners no one'll miss.

How to infiltrate?

*It's time to make a long-time runner, the one that was captured in FBI HQ, cough up that favor he owes. He's got the shadow rep, the skills, the toys, and would be a welcome addition to any shadowteam.
*The team is hired for a run by a new Mr. Johnson (FBI plant) for a minor (real) run against the Mob, Yaks, a minor Triad, etc. Mr. Johnson has hired a few other runners who the team will work with. Meet Mr. Turncoat. (This is where the team gets to know and trust the agent.)
*After several more runs with the team, the agent is well on his way into the shadow world to carry out his mission (see Driving Causes).
*Or it's time to spring the sting on the sloppy runners and drag them in, so the politician, FBI, and/or whoever else can make their point (see Driving Causes).

And I just gave reasons on how and why to infiltrate a group, just as Mr. Platinum was asking about in his OP.

The Mr. Johnson step I suggested was one of the methods of infiltrating the group - infiltration is not necessarily a job for the infiltrator alone.

Is it a tightknit group? How often do the players switch through PCs?

What NPC? The agent could be the new PC, like I suggested earlier. Let/give the player's character a "dark secret," don't tell the player what it is, and invoke it at a later date: "That dark secret of yours, Bob? You're an FBI agent."

That's about what I've been suggesting.

Go for it.

Oh yeah. huh. good point, my bad!

Someone has probably already pointed this out, but you could always find other ways to deal with "sloppiness". You could try having contacts charge more for help, make comments about sloppiness, etc. You could also have johnsons offer less for the jobs and generally offer only second rate jobs.

You get the idea.

That with your group, if I GM'd, I'd ask a player to run a character with that dark secret I've been talking about.

Hence the use of an integral team member PC as the agent.

Absolutely.

There's no difference. A new subcontracted runner, an NPC runner, a PC runner: when they infiltrate the team and finally turn on them, it's betrayal one way or another. It's also infiltration one way or another.

Semantics -- betrayal happens incidentally. Infiltration happens with the express intent to betray.

One may happen, the other happens with the express intent of causing the other.

-Siege

I wonder what this leads up to. Runners have to deal with the FBI or some other Big Player. Now what? Will the runners be forced to work for them under less than favorable conditions? Wow, that'd be really creative, I've never heard this before. Or will they be hunted "just because"? Suppose that all of a sudden, your players experience a stroke of genius and reject the plant. What's gonna happen now? Are you going to railroad them into being hunted anyways, or are you just going to scrap your (potentially) good storyline?

I think that if you want to make your players be less sloppy, the whole infiltration idea is the path that would be least likely to yield satisfying results. Try to just confront the characters with the sad fact that if their reputation goes down the drain, no Johnson will want to hire them anymore. That's how it has always worked out for me: Characters screwed up a run? Salary goes down. Characters get their faces on camera? Salary goes down. And so on.

Aside from all this, I'd like to point out that if done right, having somebody infiltrate a team of runners leads up to some veeery rewarding adventure hooks. But that's not something I'd waste on sloppy runners.