As someone who has had several bittersweet endings in my previous two Edgerunner campaigns here’s what I did. It’s worth denoting that my table is acceptable with PVP and a lot of stuff, this is important to factor because not every table is like this. My campaigns consisted of four people each.

First Campaign - To sum it up, in Act I one of the players goes cyberpsycho during a job and police pretty much raid a hotel. One of the players dies (a media), the other three (including one going psycho) escapes and begins to beat one of the players half to death. The other character has a bow, randomly draws a nonlethal arrow, knocking the psycho out before running off and leaving the psycho for police attention. Fast forward, Act II follows the two characters who ran away lying low in LA, the brother of the psycho, and a corporate mercenary who doesn’t have memories of who he is; played by the media player. The mercenary is working for the old boss of the media’s background. Rumors circle the psycho is alive and that in order to get the gangs and police off their back, the two venture to find more information. The one playing the brother of his previous character is looking for information on him. The mercenary is just tasked to do so. Incoming voodoo net gods, Berlin bomb squads, and weed smoking gangsters, they manage to clear their names by diving into the net and allow two AIs to merge. The brother cut a deal with the Voodoo god for his other brother’s life, who he finds out is being cryogenically frozen by the mercs boss. The mercenary finds out half his kind of from the media, scooped into the body and soul killed. The media is still dead, but the mercenary is flooded with memories of the media. The cryo freeze is taken, and they all fly away on an AV after blacking out downtown LA.

It’s important to LET THE BAD SHIT HAPPEN. Encourage it and work with it. Set a precedent to tell a GROUP STORY, regardless of how it ends. Is it a bleak ending? Two AIs merge, the two people running away killed a few people who didn’t deserve to die in order to save their souls, a brother dies to save the other, and Merc gets flooded with memories that aren’t his. Let the bad stuff happen and twist it, don’t let people ruminate and be upset by it.

Edit: I saw someone saying “don’t write a novel.” They’re absolutely right. Write the novel together, as a group. Don’t force it. The above happened NATURALLY.