Hello,
I am a experienced GM who played first and some second edition long ago. My group has recently picked up 4th edition and I am wanting to send the group up against a vampire and ghouls as part of a cleaning mission (cleaning out a future base of operations).

I am wanting to get the feel right and am looking for any input about how to best set up the mission and any suggestions that people may have concerning any part of the mission.

Thanks in advance.

Your group like dungeonning or wanna make it somewhat more original?

We all have played various games together and are playing SR in an alternating schedule with a 5th Ed D&D game. I am wanting to keep the game very "Shadow heavy". I liked the idea of the Vampire/Ghoul thing since it will give me a reason to allow them to take over a location as a base (old warehouse).

You should be very careful when sending ghouls as opponents.
The disease rules as they are make them highly contagious and very deadly. I recommend Patrick Goodman's unofficial errata for his rules in Running Wild: click me!

I figured that ghouls would be a good reason for a warehouse to be abandoned and give the characters something to strive against to claim it. If anyone has other suggestions I am open to them.

Why not squatters in the vampire's thrall?
He could use them as juiceboxes and give them ecstasy and food in exchange. Look up the Renfield rules for how that works. It's a parasitic relationship, but fanatic gangers make pretty clear-cut enemies.

Edit: Or you could of course handwave the ghoul-rules. Brainless ferals are unambiguous, too.

For added fun, have the Johnson hiring the team be a front for Tamanous who want the local upstart nipped in the bud.

Nothing gives you that warm glow like eliminating one evil so a bigger evil can move in. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

..what about large TerraFirst! eco-terrorist cell with nutzoid Mage/Shaman as big boss?

Plus, if the vampire has a clever escape plan, potential for a long term nemesis.

Always think ahead!


-k

Where does one find the Renfeild rules?

Running Wild, p. 68

Ghouls in Shadowrun aren't the same as zombies elsewhere. You can play them that way, as cannon fodder, but having intelligent ghouls with cyberware and/or magic is much more interesting.

Tanamous was mentioned earlier: they're a criminal group run by intelligent ghouls, who specialize in organlegging and body trafficking. They have a reputation for viciousness that makes the other organized crime cartels take pause. Luckily, they're also business people, so you can talk and bargain with them. They also support ghoul rights, and funnel money to political organizations to support ghoul-related causes.

My suggestion would be that the vampire is holding a bunch of ghouls in thrall, both intelligent and bestial. Tanamous doesn't like that someone else is controlling ghouls, so they want him gone. Thus, they hire the runners to take him out. The twist is that Tanamous wants the ghouls back in their fold, so the team isn't supposed to kill ghouls if possible. That sets up a number of interesting possibilities.

I like that twist on my suggestion about Tanamous backing the run, plus it keeps the players from just blowing the whole lot up or some other mass destruction option...



My ghoulfriends back and your gonna be in trouble......hey ya .. hey ya... my ghoulfriends back.

The infection rules are beastly - like, a troll or a dwarf absolutely optimized for resisting disease has at best a 50/50 shot at resisting HMHVV.

I'd seriously consider the fanatic gangers option instead, especially if it lets you play up something unexpected. Not all vampires are, after all, raging psychopaths or heartless predator types. You want to mix things up, make it like, a scared elf teenager who got turned without realizing what was going on, wandered out into the barrens in a daze, got grabbed by the gangers for fun times, and used her/his newfound power to enthrall them all.


On the other hand, maybe you want to throw an unambiguous villain at your players. If so, go for it. Every Shadowrunner who isn't completely sociopathic (coughClockworkcough) needs an opportunity to stomp on an unambiguous villain at least once in a while.

Would it seem off to have the ghouls that have been enthralled to be non-contageous? Perhaps due to some tampering by anti-ghoul efforts or some other mutuation of the disease. I like the idea of exposing the players to the concept of the HMHVV disease but since none of them as players know about it (and it would give away a lot for me to prep them on it). If they do their homework before hand then when the Ghouls seem to be non-infectious it might raise some questions, which could lead to more stuff, but I don't want to make it that bad.

Well, if they, as players, don't know about HMHVV, you should make sure to give them a short overview. It is a thing in Shadowrun, and not a secret. People know about it.

I am just concerned that by doing so I will be screaming "This mission is going to be dealing with these things so make sure you are prepared". While I don't mind educating I don't want to give that much of a glowing sign to the mission. I hope that makes sense.

Well, I'm not sure if I understand that correctly.
Here's my assumption, just tell me if I got something wrong:

Situation is that the group of PCs needs a hideout and is scouting for locations.
Or either, their job is to clear out the location on someone's behalf and they might just get to keep it for their base of operations

Either way, they should do some minimum amount of legwork beforehand, right? Like, actually looking at the thing, asking questions about why it needs to be cleaned out, and so on.
At some point of this (assuming they don't just rush in gun's blazing), the word "ghouls" at least should come up. Why is it wrong then to give them the information so they can prepare before they die horribly as either ghoul fodder, vampire tetrapak, from ghoulification or some combination of this? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Then make it part of side information during a mission prior of actually doing that particular HMHVV run. There are rather easy ways of doing that ... like a sudden and for the current mission totally unrelated news cast on trideo you mention a current uprising in the ghoul nation of Asamando or having the news folks talk about a higher than usual infection rate in a different town that lead a mega (like Ares) to send in troops to either kill or try to test a cure for newly infected people (at least some of the previous editions had means of avoiding a full ghoul transformation after an HMHVV-II infection, HMHVV-I is a different beast). If you're lucky enough your players will pick that up and try to learn more about HMHVV. If not? Bad things will happen to them.

I have no problem providing those kinds of details per the player request. I was more worried about giving a HMHVV "briefing" before the game and it giving a prelude about the mission.

Ah, gotcha. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

No, I wouldn't do that. But if they ask, it would be a bit unfair to let them go unprepared, because their characters should know about the implications, even if the players don't.

..no problem..just have your players test their charc. againts different things..
.to teach game mechanism before the campaign start..
first woulld be Troll ganger (or 2),then maybe mage, then Ghoul and so on..
..players then know how rules work..

If they know they're going up against ghouls, brief them on all the public particulars and remind them that they can always query the shadows for more.

If they ask about ghouls, same.

If they don't ask about ghouls, then the first time they see a ghoul, pause the game and narrate the particulars that everybody should be aware of, and that they can always query the shadows for more.


Remember to stress long and hard how insanely infectious HMHVV is, and that nobody, but nobody, wants to get into melee with a ghoul, unless they're a robot or a non-metahuman of a type who is immune to the virus, are already infected with HMHVV (like vampires, banshees, other ghouls, etcetera,) or are wearing hardened armor with full body coverage.

Personally I'll suggest that you stay away from using Ghouls, unless the players have a chance to REALLY prepare for the encounter. RAW the players have precisely ONE chance of surviving an encounter with that type of opponent. Taking them down before they can get anywhere near them. If the Ghouls get in touch range, the PCs are done. Even if they survive the melee combat with the Ghouls, they will, excluding grotesque amounts of luck, end up as Ghouls.

The edited rules in the link earlier in the posts above improve the chances to survive the infection, but I still wouldn't put money on the average character shaking the disease without turning into a Ghoul.

Vampires are "fun" enough, and using enthralled gangers or something similar ought to make for a nice group of opponents as well.

well, coming out of it without HMHVV can certainly suck, but is far from impossible.

most characters will have to burn edge for a critical success on their disease resistance test to pull it off, though (in really unpleasant situations, they may need to do so twice).

still, certainly a very nasty thing to spring on someone new to the game... if you're determined to use them, I would suggest you go a step beyond telling them how nasty it is, and actually let them actually do a mock resistance test before they even start the fight, just to make it clear: it's not just "really bad for ordinary people", it's also "really bad for everyone, including the most disease-resistant build a PC is capable".