"Kenada, were going in once the cameras go down. Delta, crash those cams. Flashback, I want to know what's waiting for us in astral space. Marques, you're driving and I may need artillery if things get rough. Everybody got your headsets? Ok, gang, let's do it."

Ah, the ideal Shadowrunning group. A glorious web of professionalism, efficiency, and devotion. The goal: To get the job done. Every time I encounter a new role-playing group I come to the gaming table with this utopian idea frolicking in my mind. And then, when I see what I have to work with, this world comes crashing down.

The sammy wants to blow away every living things he sees. There is no decker. Nobody even has Street Etiquette so there's no way to go out and hire one. The Rigger only owns a two seater Wasp. The mage is an adept who has blown all of his money and magic on making himself the fastest draw in the west. And astral space? Nobody even thought about astral space. Two of the three mercenaries have already started arguing. Now the sammy slips me a note: He wants to cheat the rest of the group out of part of their pay.

Augggghh! Sometimes I wonder why I even SHOW UP. The bickering. The cheating. The yelling and screaming. And most of all, the selfishness. It is very clear to me that many, many people out there don't really know the definition of the word "team". Perhaps I missed something but I'm pretty sure the purpose of the game of Shadowrun is to participate in activities known as, gee, what are they called, oh yeah: SHADOWRUNS!!!! Now, granted, the overall purpose is to have fun, but again, this fun is supposed to manifest as a result of working in a team with the common goal of successfully completing those little, what are they called again, yes: SHADOWRUNS!!!!! Even when these groups go to a bar, or toy around the mall during down time, they still are supposed to remember that their purpose on the face of the Earth is to work together to better their skills for the sole reason of completing bigger and better....damn, what are they called again?

You'll have to excuse me. I'm just getting sick of it all. Of all the apathy and lack of professionalism and just general careless mucking about which has reduced many, many of my games to a idiotic series of internal conflicts, stupidity, and selfishness. I'm sick of the "WAHHH! I can't have FUN unless I KILL EVERYBODY and am a COMPLETE ASSHOLE throughout the ENTIRE FREAKING GAME" attitude. The "I only work for myself" players. The millions of times teams of players have SAT THERE and done NOTHING because they don't want to pick up the damn Seattle Sourcebook and plan a meet at a decent restaurant and the times when they have and some jerk off ruins the whole deal because "My character HATES corps so I just HAD to spit in that company man's face."

Perhaps I take the game too seriously. Perhaps I'm an idealist. Or perhaps I'm right on the mark. For some reason or another the world has forgotten the idea that, without a team, you do not have a game. The purpose of this writing is to provide a few suggestions on how you can create the ideally balanced Shadowrunning team. These suggestions are not going to work for everybody because there are some people who are going to keep on being their normal "Screw you" selves no matter how many times you beat them over the head with a good idea.

The key to a good Shadowrunning team is balance. This balance must be achieved in several different areas:

Power: If any one of the characters is substantially more powerful than another then the gamemaster is forced to elevate the degree of risk to compensate for this spike. If the gamemaster simply kept the risk level on the same plane as the less powerful characters, the more powerful PC would have the run of the town. Unfortunately, elevating the level of risk to a degree which would challenge this more powerful character puts the rest of the team in an uncomfortable, and often times fatal, position.

Archetypes: When you have a team of three samurai's and a shaman the odds of the team becoming successful is almost nil. Who's going to drive? Who's going to deck? If a group doesn't possess the basic decker, rigger, magician, sammmy mix then they won't stand a chance at succeeding at any run more complicated than a drive by shooting.

Personalities: You can't have a good Shadowrunning team which possesses personalities which are in complete opposition to each other. If a majority of the team values life then the slaughtering sammy would never have made it into the team in the first place. Then again, if the group does not value life, a softy never would have stuck around either. Members of a team must have at least a few things in common in regard to their attitudes, desires, and goals. Essentially, they must be friends.

Leadership: I've always been a firm believer that a Shadowrunning team should have a leader and that the rest of the team should follow this leader's orders, unless these orders are stupid or inherently lethal. I also believe that this individual should be placed in the position of leadership on the basis of knowledge of the actual gaming system, not aggressiveness. The leader should be somebody who has read all the books, knows all the rules, and, most of all, knows how to use what he knows and has read to successfully carry out a run. He or she doesn't have to be the one who negotiates the best, or has the prettiest face. This leader should be somebody who can take in all of the facts given to him by his team and use them to come up with the best course of action for the given situation.

Ok, now you have some swell ideas on what the ideal team should be like. Now the question is: How the hell do you successfully build one? The big problem with teams is that they are comprised of characters who were probably drawn up in somebody's spare time and who were created without any knowledge of who they were going to work with. The result is usually five people showing up to play with incompatible characters. Some characters simply will not work with other characters. It's like taking a football player, a surly bus driver, a street bum, Bill Gates, and Mother Theresa, throwing them into the same room and asking them to work together. Never in a million years would this work. Similarly, if you take a human Sammy who hates trolls, a troll sammy who hates magic, a physad who hates everybody, and a shaman who talks to a tree all day, and put them in a group you're not going to be able to get anything done. Plus there's nobody to deck or drive. So we can, hopefully, see the importance of working together to make sure everybody gets along. As I said before, everybody must be friends. Teams who have the common goal of money or simply adventure quickly fall apart because the participants quickly see that they can obtain either of these without necessarily giving a crap about his team mates.

The only good way I've found to achieve a good degree of group unity is through the use of Character Creation Sessions. What you do is get everybody together who's going to play and then spend a rather long time creating everybody's characters AT THE SAME TIME. This allows the group to work out a common goal, compatible personalities, a good spread of archetypes, a good leader, and so on. It also gives them a chance to work out the group's backstory. Backstory is the string of events which occurred that brought them together as a team in the first place. Perhaps some of them were old friends, or old lovers, or old coworkers, or were all put through similar adverse conditions which resulted in them teaming up. Two characters may purchase a bartender contact and determine that it's the same person. The rigger may purchase vehicles which make it unnecessary for other characters to purchase their own. If somebody's character runs out of money during the creation phase they can strike up a deal with a "friend" in which they trade weapons, a ritual that dates back to their hunting days in the NAN. Perhaps all of the players will decide to start out rather weak, diverting their points and money in unique ways, because they know that, with the group strength consistently low, the gamemaster won't throw anything too tough at them until they build themselves up. The possibilities are endless.

More importantly it allows players to keep an eye on each other to make sure nobody is getting too far out of line with their characters stats, power, etc. It also allows the gamemaster to interject with advice and questions so he or she can stop potential problems with the characters BEFORE they enter the game. The whole session is structured rather democratically with each player being able to voice concerns or complaints with the ultimate goal of "ratifying" everybody's characters and, eventually, the entire team. And I know, as a gamemaster, I'm a million times more likely to give the players and their characters a few breaks if I can see how much effort they went through to create the team. They deserve it.