cont'd: Infected as PC Options in SR, Vampire the Shadowing - a good idea? Options

[Rasumichin]

Are Changelings still noted under their primary metatype, or do they classify as "other" for census?

Primary metatype. Same with metavariants.

I'm pretty sure dragons fit into "other" as well. Drakes might be "other" too, but i doubt very many of them are 'out' yet.

Yes, certainly. But...how many dragons are there in your average sprawl?

[HappyDaze]

Primary metatype. Same with metavariants.



Yes, certainly. But...how many dragons are there in your average sprawl?

Re: first point - then why are ghouls not treated the same way? Both are a secondary change to a primary metatype.

Re: second point - always one more than you want to be there.

[hermit]

I'm pretty sure dragons fit into "other" as well. Drakes might be "other" too, but i doubt very many of them are 'out' yet.

With a global population of around 1000 dragons and maybe 10.000 Drakes, these really fail hard at being demographically relevant.

Would you seriously expect anything else?

Come to think of it, no. I even ran an RE5 game once.

Re: first point - then why are ghouls not treated the same way? Both are a secondary change to a primary metatype.

Because the decision to make them an HMHVV variant was made after it had been established in canon that they are some kind of metatype. It's another, older, and more elegantly covered up retcon. Read old novels like The Changeling; ghouls are considered a metatype there (and, back then, were indeed a human only expression, as all metatypes are).

[HappyDaze]

Making ghouls their own metatype and removing the HMHVV link - and the infectious aspect of being a ghoul - is probably the best way to make them more acceptable.

[hermit]

And a sure contender for the prize of stupidest retcon in SR history. Not that I don't agree with you on that making them HMHVV carriers in the irst palce and the whole infection angle was a bad choice, but it's not gonna go away now.

[HappyDaze]

And a sure contender for the prize of stupidest retcon in SR history. Not that I don't agree with you on that making them HMHVV carriers in the irst palce and the whole infection angle was a bad choice, but it's not gonna go away now.

It just went away in my games. You have the power to make the changes in your games too.

But, why would it be a stupid retcon? Because it fixes the problem and leaves no need for bitching about the ghoul apocalypse?

[hermit]

It just went away in my games. You have the power to make the changes in your games too.

But, why would it be a stupid retcon? Because it fixes the problem and leaves no need for bitching about the ghoul apocalypse?

You presume much and know nothing. I can do without your advice, thanks.

It would be especially stupid because it is big and changes everything about how ghouls have worked since 3rd Ed came out. Retcons are cheap and an author's way of failing at storytelling no matter their size, of course.

[Fuchs]

They.
are.
not.
undead.

Making them undead solves a lot of issues.

Having ghouls be hunted, not protected, also solves a lot of issues.

[Dr.Rockso]

Making them undead solves a lot of issues.

Having ghouls be hunted, not protected, also solves a lot of issues.

Right, but I would argue that it makes the issue too black and white. I don't think the game designers wanted them to simply be a source of 'exp' and bounty to any runner coming up a bit short when the bills come in. Having at least some laws protecting them reminds us that they are for the most part still human and not critters. Besides, it's not like their rights are well defined or protected...

[MJBurrage]

Has any book ever said that—Asamando possibly aside—ghouls are automatically protected anywhere? A nation allowing some ghouls to become citizens, and "ghouls are protected" are two different things.

I can easily see a country that has a bounty on ghouls, and then grants non-criminal SINs to a handful of ghouls. The ghouls with SINs would have the "protection" of citizenship, but that does not mean that SINless ghouls are protected, nor does it invalidate the collection of bounties for killing ghouls that don't have SINs. There is no contradiction in "hunt them all, except this handful that play nice."

A bounty on wolves, does not mean you can kill the ones in zoos and collect.

[hermit]

Has any book ever said that—Asamando possibly aside—ghouls are automatically protected anywhere?

Runner's Companion, Running Wild.

I can easily see a country that has a bounty on ghouls, and then grants non-criminal SINs to a handful of ghouls. The ghouls with SINs would have the "protection" of citizenship, but that does not mean that SINless ghouls are protected, nor does it invalidate the collection of bounties for killing ghouls that don't have SINs. There is no contradiction in "hunt them all, except this handful that play nice."

A bounty on wolves, does not mean you can kill the ones in zoos and collect.

Runner's Companion is rather murky about details there, and somewhere mentions vampires with a SIN, too.

Having at least some laws protecting them reminds us that they are for the most part still human and not critters.

Barring born Ghouls (a concept of RC's, with some hints in the earlier Companion), they are rather more critter than human.

[Fuchs]

Right, but I would argue that it makes the issue too black and white. I don't think the game designers wanted them to simply be a source of 'exp' and bounty to any runner coming up a bit short when the bills come in. Having at least some laws protecting them reminds us that they are for the most part still human and not critters. Besides, it's not like their rights are well defined or protected...

I disagree. I find the constant "ghouls are people too, don't shoot them, see, there's even Hannibelle" to make it too black and white, compared to the relative lack of "Security guards are people too" ("Don't murder them, it could be bad for your health" does not count).

Ghouls get a far too favorable treatment in official sourcebooks, and as others pointed out, despite any logic.

[HappyDaze]

You presume much and know nothing. I can do without your advice, thanks.

It would be especially stupid because it is big and changes everything about how ghouls have worked since 3rd Ed came out. Retcons are cheap and an author's way of failing at storytelling no matter their size, of course.

So you stick with the first retcon because it makes you unhappy? That's silly. My presumption may be that you want to solve the problem you've been bitching about for pages on end, but I see that you'd rather just whine more. So let's get back to the hermit show of "poor me, this is all wrong and there's nothing to be done to make it better" shall we?

[hermit]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

[Surt]

can I say I'm still a fan of a third world Ghoul army in Africa or Asia. Were the dictator uses the ghouls to perform atrocities to pacify rebels.

[MJBurrage]

I'd asked about this earlier in the thread, and when told I was mistaken went back and looked again once I got home (I was on a trip).

By my reading, even Runner's Companion never says that the world has embraced the infected. Rather some of the world has recognized that HMHVV is a disease, that does not necessarily turn one into a feral monster.

Noting that as with all Shadowrun books, the non-rule information is deliberately written with an in game POV (and so must be taken with a grain of salt, and may even be false).

• On page 59 we are told that only 35 countries afford the infected any rights, and even in those countries only some of the infected are given such rights.
• On page 60 we are told that UCAS, CAS, and most of the NEEC, no longer strip citizenship from SINers who become infected, rather they have their SINs converted to Criminal SINs, are placed on police watch lists, and feeding on the unwilling is specifically illegal. However even in these countries the majority of the infected remain SINless.
• On page 61 we are told that it is known that the infected must consume 1% of their body weight per week, and that some infected must also feed on "mana siphoned directly from the aura of a living metahuman or other sapient creature". It than says that cloned flesh and blood is usually good enough, but that research continues on a better solution.

All of the above always said to me that even in the "progressive" countries the infected are treated like we currently treat sex offenders.

The we get to rules.

• On page 78 we are told that the dietary restriction is 5% of body weight per week.
• On page 82 we are told that if someone has an infectious strain of HMHVV they suffer a -2 dice pool penalty on all social tests vs. subjects aware of their status.

The 5% vs. 1% may be a typo, but I always thought it was a deliberate indication of the NPC author's agenda in downplaying the actual dietary requirements, and makes the viability of eating cloned flesh even more dubious. The social penalty, just reinforces that even in the countries where you do not lose all your rights when you become infected, you are still seen as a pariah.

I would further argue that since only those with astral perception and good at assessing can quantify essence loss, that most people don't know what "mana siphoned off" means. If they did the infected would be even greater pariahs than they already are.

The fact that some read the fluff—and then read further between the lines—to see glittery infected, is not a bad thing so long as the GM and players remember that glittery is not the truth as supported by the rules, but rather the spin that some NPCs want to put on it.

[Patrick Goodman]

The 5% vs. 1% may be a typo, but I always thought it was a deliberate indication of the NPC author's agenda in downplaying the actual dietary requirements, and makes the viability of eating cloned flesh even more dubious. The social penalty, just reinforces that even in the countries where you do not lose all your rights when you become infected, you are still seen as a pariah.

Well, it's been 1% since Dietary Requirement was introduced in 3rd Ed. Peter (Synner) made a deliberate choice of making the real-world figure 5%, just so that the reality was worse than people think.

I know this because I specifically asked about it as I was gearing up to write about the Infected for RW.

I also question the figure, since I don't think I eat 5% of my body weight in regular food during the week, though I honestly haven't kept real good track of it. One percent, for me, is about a Double Quarter Pounder meal at Mickey D's per day. That makes one meal. I don't eat a big breakfast, and I doubt that my dinner and snacks during the day amount to another 4% of my weight per week. Mileage might really vary on this one, but I think Peter's attempt to show things were worse than we though might have gone a little overboard. (Synner, please feel free to jump in here if you've got better numbers than I do.)

[MJBurrage]

Well a double-quarter-pounder is half a pound of meat, but then you have the rest of the burger, fries, drink etc.

Looking at it another way, a medium sized frozen dinner is 1 lb. Assume that breakfast and lunch are only 8 oz. of food each and you have 2 lbs. of food per day not counting any snacks.

2 lb./day = 14 lb./week = 5% of 280 lb. (unfortunately pretty close to my weight). So 5% seems right on to me for most peoples food consumption. Factor in snacks, soda, etc. and I would guesstimate that that most Americans eat closer to 10% than 5%.

P.S. Another example, a 16 fl.oz. soda/juice is also a pound of food, and most people eating out drink more than that per meal these days.

[Glyph]

Ghouls may be the most common of the infected, but I imagine most of them are feral. Given their dietary needs, a ghoul rights movement only makes sense if they are relatively low in numbers - I'm not talking about successful ghoul rights, just the existence of ghoul rights as any kind of political movement, at all. Also, I agree with the consensus that it should be an injection, rather than contact, vector, for ghouls to not be hunted down all of the time (as opposed to most of the time).

I like the moral ambiguity of having a few struggling, non-feral ghouls out there. But I don't like the whole ghoul rights movement described with loaded terms such as "progressive". That's just as one-dimensional as the previous feral monster ghouls were. Given that most of them are little more than animals, given their diet of metahuman flesh, and given their ability to infect others, ghoul rights should be a more morally ambivalent topic.

Vampires and their ilk are handled about right - RC implies that only a few countries give them extremely limited rights, coupled with constant tracking. And some of them work for corporations, of course - although I doubt any of them do so openly, more likely they are used for certain types of dirty work.

The wendigo retcon (a bit late to this part of the discussion, sorry), I actually prefer. The specific behavior exhibited by wendigos only makes sense in the context of the original aboriginal cultures where the myth originated. It seemed goofy to me that getting infected with a virus would make someone suddenly start a cannibal cult. The infected version works better with the retcon, especially for PCs. Inflexible rules for this would be like requiring all vampires to wear fluffy lace cravats and talk with East European accents. If they wanted to do the mythical type of wendigo, it would have worked much, much better if they had made it a type of possessing spirit, rather than a type of infected.


Infected as shadowrunners have numerous potential problems, but I think they would work out better in that vocation than they would in other areas. Shadowrunners are already social outcasts, living outside the system, who kill people for a living - infected should fit right in. The only difference is that they need to drain some blood/essence or take a few chomps out of the security guard before they cap him. Granted, that is a bit of a generalization, but an infected being is every bit as plausible as some other concepts out there.

I do think that, just as with a few other more "out there" concepts, they are not for every group of characters. If the group would be okay working with a ghoul or vampire, that's good, but otherwise, they shouldn't have to metagame to accomodate your character. At least, not to the point where their concept of their own characters, or immersion in the game world, is ruined.

[Sengir]

I also question the figure, since I don't think I eat 5% of my body weight in regular food during the week, though I honestly haven't kept real good track of it. One percent, for me, is about a Double Quarter Pounder meal at Mickey D's per day. That makes one meal. I don't eat a big breakfast, and I doubt that my dinner and snacks during the day amount to another 4% of my weight per week. Mileage might really vary on this one, but I think Peter's attempt to show things were worse than we though might have gone a little overboard. (Synner, please feel free to jump in here if you've got better numbers than I do.)

Hm, given that the dietary requirement only makes up a small part of a ghoul's diet, as it is stated in canon multiple times, ghouls should be quite prone to obesity. OK, one could argue that ghouls are the kind of people who can eat what they want and don't gain a gram of fat..

[Lansdren]

For a giggle I did put together a concept for running an infected character for a game as a thought experiment

Ended up with a Vampire adept initiate who worked as a bounty hunter. Took masking for the initiation with the intention of him claiming to be vanilla mortal but works nights mostly as has an allergy to to much sun. If a bounty is dead or alive as long as he was careful feeding shouldn’t be more of a problem then one to three bodies a year plus an increase to lifestyle costs as per runner’s companion.

For flavour added in the enemy (father of someone killed when first woke up) quality to give the GM some options as well

Was planning on running him as very quiet, going with the faux ninja look. Have him claiming to be straight human with no magic just very good at his job and pretty lucky with mostly off scene (one to one with GM until the team find out) doing the vamp thing with the idea being he's hiding it from the team for good reason.

Whilst I do think the infected can be pretty silly and more useful for npc's if played right and with a GM who is comfortable with the differences they can be an interesting counterpoint for roleplay.