Ghouls, damnit! Options

[yesferatu]

Hey guys,

At the risk of tipping my hand if any of my players are reading...
I have a storyline coming up involving ghouls.

The theory is...
1. There are several opposing gangs in Milwaukee.
2. One of my teams basically depopulated one of the darker gangs in town.
3. That gang was using captured ghouls to dispose of bodies and evidence.
4. With that gang dissolved, the ghouls have escaped.
5. The group gets hired to hunt the ghouls down.
6. The ghouls have taken to hiding underground in a series of trapped sewer passages.
7. Interestingly enough, the ghouls just want to be left alone and will pay the group in scavenged technology for passage out of the city.


So...if you were a ghoul...what kind of traps would you use?
- I'd imagine they prefer to capture people alive.
- They're usually blind and poor, so nothing too fancy.
- Is the idea of a ghoul underground railroad just too damn stupid to function?

[Fatum]

Uh, mines? Rigged grenades? Alive, you say - gas grenades, then.

As a matter of fact, in my interpretation, Chicago ghouls run an underground railroad for the ghouls everywhere in NA. My players have used that to their advantage adventuring in the Bug City, using their ghoul contacts.

[Traul]

Uh, mines? Rigged grenades? Alive, you say - gas grenades, then.

Or frag: ghouls like hamburgers too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Wards. Plenty. That's the only thing that protects them from astral annihilation. If they don't want to damage the meat, they could use nets, pits and traps under the waterline.

[Fatum]

Oh wait. It's the sewers, right? So there's, like, water on the floor everywhere?
Do I even need to continue.

[Simon Kerimov]

If I were a ghoul, and I knew some jackasses were hunting me, I would go for an ironic victory.

1) Collect a few gallons of ghoul blood from myself and my buddies.
2) Build shrapnel based traps incorporating the infected blood.
3) Cover all the rusty razor wire with more infected blood.
4) Recover the corpses of your slain friends, blend them up into a ghoul slushy, and make an aerosol spray weapon of ghoul bits.
5) When the players get infected, tell them that it's their turn to go get food since they did such a smash-up job of fracking with the ghoul community.

[yesferatu]

Nice.

I think the ultimate goal of this run is the metahumanization of ghouls as a people.
There is always the potential of infection.

I'm pretty sure it's going to devolve into a shootem up no matter what I do.

*I was thinking about tranq patch pits, shiny toy gas grenade traps and really really low tech devices.

[Fatum]

Just make a couple of them ex-spec-ops with Ares Alphas, decent skills, and stick'n'shock. Hey, anyone can be infected.
Then watch and giggle.

[Simon Kerimov]

Nice.

I think the ultimate goal of this run is the metahumanization of ghouls as a people.
There is always the potential of infection.

I'm pretty sure it's going to devolve into a shootem up no matter what I do.

*I was thinking about tranq patch pits, shiny toy gas grenade traps and really really low tech devices.

Punji sticks covered in Infected waste is decidedly low tech, and costs less than the tranq patches. Also, don't forget the utility of having a paranormal critter trainer amongst the ghouls. Dog fighting can be a profitable occupation with Awakened dogs, and can be used to defend against bounty hunters.

[Stahlseele]

Why would the ghouls prefer them alive?
Ghouls LIKE their meat rotting . .

[Fatum]

Maybe because not all ghouls are mindless cannibals? Just throwing a thought here.

[The Jopp]

Why would the ghouls prefer them alive?
Ghouls LIKE their meat rotting . .

Well, technically speeaking they just need it raw.

They are meat eaters and canniballistic, I dont think they are carrion eaters.

[Simon Kerimov]

Why would the ghouls prefer them alive?
Ghouls LIKE their meat rotting . .

True. But if I were a thinly veiled metaphor for AIDS, and I was being hunted by some crazy bad-asses, I would prefer to convert them, so they could wallow in the irony of their new lives. Killing and eating them after they rot helps my tummy in the short term, but having a group of previously gung-ho ghoul killers to share the trash-can fire with me and be the targets for my verbal abuse helps me in the long term.

[yesferatu]

Um...mobility I guess?
It's hard to lift and store that much meat.

I'm balancing on the ghouls as monsters/ghouls as persecuted metahuman minority tightrope.
How would you, an assumed functioning human, deal with having to keep a day job and eat 5% of your weight in necrotized human flesh per week?

The possibilities are hilarious!

[The Dragon Girl]

deterrent type traps? trip lines, sticky nets.. heh, trip lines that open up water mains when triggered. Nausea inducing motion triggered spray chems, And of course theres always riot foam traps, those are hilarious.

(Also if you like ghouls who aren't mindless cannibals, check out my story link)

[Fatum]

I would prefer to convert them, so they could wallow in the irony of their new lives. Killing and eating them after they rot helps my tummy in the short term, but having a group of previously gung-ho ghoul killers to share the trash-can fire with me and be the targets for my verbal abuse helps me in the long term.

Actually, no, I don't believe it does. Before anything serious happens, you have a chance to negotiate passage. Once the runners are infected, there's a fair chance they shoot you first, themselves second.

[Fatum]

How would you, an assumed functioning human, deal with having to keep a day job and eat 5% of your weight in necrotized human flesh per week?

You can always fall back on govt support and the flesh of volunteers who bequeath it to you after death. RC and RW have some info on that system, I believe.

[Traul]

Actually, no, I don't believe it does. Before anything serious happens, you have a chance to negotiate passage. Once the runners are infected, there's a fair chance they shoot you first, themselves second.

Real men shoot the ghouls who infected them.
Real roleplayers shoot themselves after a tragic final monologue.
Loonies put on their Dracula costume, including fangs and cape.
Munchkins get +4 Body, +2 Reaction, +3 Strength, +2 Willpower.

[Stahlseele]

Worst thing the ghouls could do would be catching them, keeping them alive and keeping eating them alive and making them watch . .

[yesferatu]

That was kinda my thinking too...and you've included the link I would have used!!!
HE MADE ME COMMENT ON HIS POST!

[Daylen]

Um...mobility I guess?
It's hard to lift and store that much meat.

I'm balancing on the ghouls as monsters/ghouls as persecuted metahuman minority tightrope.
How would you, an assumed functioning human, deal with having to keep a day job and eat 5% of your weight in necrotized human flesh per week?

The possibilities are hilarious!

Work in a morgue or funeral home...

[Badmoodguy88]

I think like with AIDs some people would want to spread it around to as many people as they can to vindictively share the misery, but the vast majority most people would not want to spread it. Booby traps could get any wandering bum in the sewers so a lot of the outer traps may be nonlethal. After the players have already attacked the ghouls and killed some, if they have time the ghouls would go back an cover some of the traps with blood and such. The virus would not last forever out side of a living host anyway. A lot of the spike traps might have no infection just because they have not be covered in blood lately.

[Ascalaphus]

The potential of infection traps to scare the players should be amazing however..

[Stahlseele]

That was kinda my thinking too...and you've included the link I would have used!!!
HE MADE ME COMMENT ON HIS POST!

Yes well, i did not get my post count by being lazy ^^

[The Jopp]

Since we assume a rather (more or less) intelligent Ghoul community we can assume several things.

Anyone with Magic 1 and any kind of implant will be fully blind as their dual nature is removed along with their magic - Unless they have... (mostly second hand)
-Any cybereye
-DNI connected sensor (Commlink+Trodes+Camera Sensor)
-DNI Ultrawideband Radar
-DNI Ultrasound Radar

[Whipstitch]

If you're just discouraging people there's always fishing line and hooks at roughly head and eye level. Deadfalls are also low tech, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of primitive booby traps are actually more work than explosive ones and people are better at recognizing such things for what they are than animals are. Still, one thing you could have is the ol' bucket on the door trick, except the bucket has been filled with concrete or densiplast instead. I dunno what sort of damage code that would typically result in, since the rule of thumb for deadfalls is that you typically want something 4 or 5 times heavier than the critter you're trying to kill, but it'd at least hurt and the noise of the object hitting the ground could make for a decent warning if said ghouls are too cheap/unsophisticated to bother with other forms of surveillance. Still, tbh, unless you're at war or something and have access to explosives such things are usually more trouble than they're worth. And obviously they can backfire.