If you think about, he works exactly like a virus, ie has the ability to multiply yet not adhearing to the basic prinicples of life. And if a person is changed so dramatically in all those ways, is he the same person? He's not just changed. Its not a different paradigm on life. Joe Wageslave no longer exists. Joe Vampire, however, does.

EDIT: Eep, my first double post!

Going from Wanderer's stance that if consciousness and memories are the same, it's the same being, then one could say that with such deep spiritual and mental changes, it's not the same being anymore.

What about Ghouls, then?

Its another strain of HMHVV, right? Still Infected, just a different flavor. I personally don't play ghouls in my games anything more than mindless monsters.

Yes, it is still the HMVV. So why is it they're allowed to become mindless ravenous creatures who feast on the flesh of the deceased (or not quite deceased yet), when that strain is actually known for making you change less, making you into less of a wildly divergent supernatural beast than the versions that handle vampirism, etc?

I can see a good potion of the recently Infected offing themselves, sure, maybe. Even if you were to house rule it so that no mental/spiritual change takes place, a great many people couldn't live with themselves (even if finding Essence volunteers for themselves, the way many vampires do)... but I think you're overestimating Joe Wageslave and the strength of his moral compass a little bit.

A great many people in the world today would leap at the chance to be immortal in exchange for hurting strangers routinely (nevermind all the other benefits that come with the virus aside from the lack of aging) -- in The Sixth World, where there are even more teeming masses of worthless lives no one cares about, and so much else plagues humanity at every turn (making it even easier to rationalize to yourself that they were gonna die eventually, anyways), I imagine even more people would be just fine with it.

What the hell? Malicant, this is the last time I will respond to you on this or any topic, because talking with you is frustrating and pointless. I asked you to find a rule to support your rules based position, and not only did you refuse, you physically can't.



YES! I Know what near-death means. I'm an ambulance technician. I worked in hospice care. I'm in medical school. Near Death means literally that, that you are extremely close to being completely dead. It does not mean that you automagically recover. People who are near death actually die every day. In fact, most people who are near-death, die. We make such a big deal out of the people who come near to death and then pull through because they are unusual.

Seriously, all you have in this argument is a tragically optimistic personal definition of a word which has nothing whatever to do with the word's actual meaning. Well, that and the presuppositions that you bring to the table from how vampires work in other games or how you think the self and the soul work in the real world, which are both complete non sequiturs in this discussion.

The rules are that you spend 24 hours in "near-death," and that you die, and that a "new critter is created." You can go ahead and think that everyone in "near-death" survives, but this is offensively not the case and if you've ever treated the actual sick and dying you will come to the realization immediately of what a complete insensitive tool you are being.

You don't live when a vampire drains your Essence. A new critter may or may not come into existence, but "you" cannot survive this process. And if you (like me) have a more Lockeian view of the Self such that continuity of experience necessitates continuity of self, all that means is that vampires in your world have to have a discontinuous experience - the extra knowledge and opinions added by the virus must be that much more intrusive, the absorption of the host's old memories that much more incomplete. Because however the Self is defined in your world, the newly created vampire is defined as not having it left over from the human that just got brutally tortured to death over two days.

-Frank

I would say that the sentence "newly created critter" (SR4 p. 289) indicates that the vampire is not the same being as the infected human.

However, the wording on the same page 'player characters transformed through the Infection power automatically become NPCs upon their "death" and are ontrolled by the gamemaster' might go both ways - it could mean they do niot really die, as in survive and are simply transformed, or that they die, but they revive as a new critter, and therefore it's not a final "death" from the POV of the new critter.

Natural cyberzombies would mean the original soul is in there and in charge

Essence =/= soul
essence == the thing that keeps your soul there
if otherwise was true, cyberzombies would not exist

try this rule, from the essence loss section

"If a creature is reduced to 0 Essence, it will die in (Body + Willpower) days if it does not replenish itself. A creature in this state is extremely dangerous—a starved predator that hunts for fresh Essence with mindless ferocity."

yes, these things can l;ive for DAYS at 0 essence.

ALso if the original does not survive, Jetblack never existed

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the rule apply to essence drainers like vamps? Idf so it doesn't apply to metahumans. Atleast not until they have died and came back as "a new critter"

as far as Jetblack, I think the argument is, the "new critter" has access to the metas feelings and abilities. They might even think they are the same person. Think of it like implanted memories and skillsofts.

Well, that doesn't really matter since the runners killed him anyways to get the encryption key. He is worth more money that way.

This is exactly my metaphysical point. When your essence reaches zero, you die (your soul has left, been consumed, whatever I don't care). Becoming a cyberzombie requires the crack team of mages to go somewhere and do a very tricky magical ritual to recover or bind the soul to the body to prevent it from leaving despite the fact that essence = 0 or less = dead.

Leaving all discussion of rules behind now, the vampire that comes after you've had your life force sucked out is a creation of an evvvvviiiillll magical virus, and can very well have parallels drawn to the shedim. The virus is a magical thing that swarms into empty hosts, triggered by the experience of fatal essence drain, and reanimates it with a new evil and malicious agenda.

And HMHVV leaves you in a near-death state while the virus does its very tricky magical transformation stuff to prevent you from dying, after which you revive.

Yeah, this is another valid reading if you accept the position you outlined previously. I'm not sure we'll ever agree.

Interestingly, if you do take that perspective, as critters have essence (don't they?), what I don't get is why doesn't everyone and their dog become a vampire in SR4? I'd be voluntarily infected. And you don't have to become an unreasonable asshole. You just need to farm some very fast breeding animals. I'd suggest rabbits.

Smart predators would work to prevent this type of thing from occuring for various reasons, not the least of which is that it would greatly diminish their 'preferred' food supply. Also keep in mind the need for 'intense emotion' during the Essence Drain process.

Okay so we switch to deers and call them all Bambi

But still, if I had the cash I'd hire a team of runners to abduct a vampire and coerce it into transforming me into a vampire via xtreme violence. Free super powers and immortality? Hell yeah. It doesn't make any sense not to do it, unless of course you die and are replaced by a shedim like creature, and plenty of 'players' in SR have more than enough money. Then you don't have to die in a plane crash.

And hell if people are willing to keep wendigos and banshees on staff, vampires are the least of the problem.

Cybermancy, remember? AN example of something other than your essence holding your soul in place
Infection suggests, due to the lack of death for 12 hours (in the essence integrity theory, the brain rots beyond repair in minutes), that the virus is holding the soul in place.



Then why do so many Vampires have NO EVIL AGENDA in SR canon? The bartender that only takes a single essence point off someone, and only from volunteers (popular enough to get one a month tho). Jetblack, who gave up fame, fortune, babes and adoring fans so that others would not repeat his 'mistake' of becoming a vampire to escape death. De Vries, who hunts other vampires. Janine Verner, who chose to die rather than eat ppl. If the virus was in charge and sentient, these characters would not exist.



I was using it to show that an infected can survive for a while at 0 essence. This would be precident that the virus can keep the host alive for 12 hours no problemo. Frank wanted a rule that showed an exception to 0 essence = insta dead.



Makes no sense. If the virus was in charge, the memories would be secondary. NO shedim has been as selfless as Jetblack.




It matters, edven if you kill him in On the Run. That means for 18+ years he resisted the urge to reveal himself and get a legion of adoring gothy fans who would give him a near limitless essence supply and all the money and nookie he could have. He would have been safe, protected, rich, powerful, famous. An amoral virus would have absolutely no reason to turn such down.


1: the emotional content suggests that the essence drain must be from people
2: Why doesn't everyone and his dog get wired reflexes? it makes you so much faster and more powerful. Similar logic
3: The real cyberpunky question here is "What makes you a person? What makes you a machine/monster?" Where is the line drawn. Some people draw it at 3 or less essence, others draw it at Cyberzombie or brain in a jar. Many will draw it before "Creature thast needs to drink human blood and bits of their lifespark to live"
4: oh wait, the book says they must drink from SENTIENT beings. SOrry babi is off the menu

Maybe the newly created creature isn't under the influence of the virus beyond the compulsion to irrepairably drain people's life force - which is unquestionably evil no matter how you slice it.



cool, but I can shoot down all your arguments here really easy. If a 1 month old baby is a viable target, so is a dolphin.

Also, don't spirits have essence scores? Checking reveals that they do. They are obvious suckers for this job. I just accept 'spirit bane' earth spirits is something I have to live with and beat down force 1 spirits with essence drain. Tada. No cost unlimited essence on tap that is unquestionable sentient, and additionally, as it will have implacable hatred towards you and that you'll have to savagely beat it down every time, fills the strong emotion part.

And even better, you automagically become a mage! No cost vampirism! If I actually have to drink blood as well I can just buy cloned blood from doc wagon. That is so cheap as to be the same as free.

Seriously, why wouldn' you become a vampire when immortality is as low cost as this (you're out some cloned blood instead of food and probably want to buy some sort of assault rifle)? And you get to be mage AND you get super powers.

Vamps aren't shedim, Unless something has changed to say they are.

never said they weren't evil. But your arguement here assumes killing=evil.




Not necessarily. Dolphins are quite likely, as SR canon suggests they might be sentient. But puppies will never work.



Ok, let's do a checklist
1: Target is sentient? Check
2: Target has strong emotion toward myself? Check
3: Target Target has blood? Ah crap The target needs blood to feed off at the same time

Who says it is not happening, right now, in the setting ? I'm willing to bet that occasional runs are managed to do just that. Differently from leonization, vampiric immortality has no cap whatsoever, and whereas it is gives more hassles and drabacks than becoming a formula for a free spirit, it gives more power, too (HMHVV the only widely-accessible way that person utterly lacking the potential for Awakening can break through). Likewise, I do expect that somewhat of a black-market does exist between some wealthy seekers for immortality and the more business-minded of the vampires and wendigoes. Selling out Infection is but a pure gain for the latter, they only have to take care not to create an overpopulation (just keep the price very high, but not so high than going through the kidnapping run becomes the only viable option for the would-be wealthy immortals).

Keep in mind that there is still a small chance that you won't rise up as a vampire (yeah, a small chance, but there is one for failure). Also, not being able to eat other food, nor alcohol, having a permanent allergy to wood and sunlight plus being bad at swimming, not having necessarily having magic (it's not described how they get it, as not every vampire can cast spells) no practical cyber- and bioware... Also, drinking blood will become very boring with the time, especially considering that you have enhanced senses.

In the late 21st century of the Shadowrun World, being a Vampire isn't all that snazzy anymore, if for some grands you can easily become young again, and still live the good life.

If you want real immortality, a copy of JackBNimble and a drone shell is the way to fly.
But that's just my take on it.

Immortality is overrated.

And as for JetBlack, I don't think his removal from the public is selfless in any way. He realized that he might be risking his precious immortality if he never aged in the public eye. It was not because he didn't want to be adored, seeing as he then gathered his own vampire possy. He is like most of the vampires/nosferatu in SR: intelligent and cunning.

It's not small. The Vampire rolls Charisma + Magic, the victim rolls Body + Willpower. If the victim rolls more hits, or ties, the victim spends several hours wracked in agony, dies, and then stays dead.

Joe Vampire has a Magic + Charisma of 8, and thus has a better than 1 in 4 chance of failing to infect an average civilian that they murder with essence drain (and is basically a coin flip or worse on anyone who is considered competent). Becoming a vampire voluntarily is an incredibly risky proposition. Aside from the fact that it's not "you" on the other side according to the game metaphysics, your chances of actually creating a vampire rather than a cold lump of meat are pretty similar.

-Frank

really? didn't someone mention blood now being dietary requirement so they have to drink blood but that has nothing to do with their need for drained essence?

as for the turning . . does the vampire throw down his dice every time he sends someone into 0 essence regions or does he get to decide wether or not he wants to try and create a newbie?

In order for the first part of this to hold up, logically speaking, you'd have to define what constitutes a self.
If a vampire isn't 'you' despite retaining all your memories, beliefs, habits, skills and whatnot, then neither is a successful adult cyborg or a teenage goblinization (rare as they are) the same person as it was in the meat body.

I'm not saying you're wrong, mostly because I refuse to get into that definition war. I'm just saying that one cannot concretely say that it's "not you" without first defining what is you and what isn't. It definitely isn't the same person in terms of abilities, but I don't know if I'd go as far as to say it's not fundamentally the same 'you' any more than I'd say it about someone who gets cyberlegs and the cyberpsychosis flaw after a car accident.

Meh, if the target was willing, I'd just drop the +willpower part.

You can't drop the part, as you have no influence over the transmogrification anymore, since you dropped to 0 essence, and this discussion non-withstanding, you're dead, or unconscious, or watching spirit tv, or doing it with yourself. Being willing only helps for the being sucked-part, but not being transformed into a sucker in the end.

SR 2070+++ is the age of the transhumanists (*sob*). Being a measly vampire in that ages has lost quite much of its appeal. 2070+++, nobody cares about longevity, but about entertainment, and how to pass the boring days of that moment you call life. And with simsense abundle and practicable non-expensive cyberware, nobody really needs to be a glorified mosquito with transilvanian accents who fears garlick anymore.

All that matters is if you're rich or not. If you're rich, you don't fear age. If you're poor, life sucks anyway more than a vampire could ever.

Yeah, I'm not sure if I would let people drop the +willpower thing, either. Mostly due to the fact that allowing something to kill you and change you into another creature type is a pretty freaking alien concept that the subconscious should probably recoil in horror from allowing to happen.
Especially since fundamentally, people generally have reservations about eating other people.

You're bringin' me down, Particle Beam.

It is both
they need it as a Dietary thing, AND they can only essence drain a target while drinking blood from them

I never said finding a willing target would be easy, just that IF you could find one who was really willing, +willpower on the resist roll doesnt make sense. There are always caveats you could throw in there if you dont wanna make it easy for those people.

warning SR1 spoilers ahead







sorry it was a selfless act

Well, that's both true and untrue.

If you're being nerve gassed, you're probably willing to jack yourself in the leg with atropine. Yet despite that willingness, a very large percentage of people who have had to inject themselves with a visible needle hesitate to do so. That's why autoinjector pens were created.

Just because the forebrain things it'd be a good idea doesn't mean the subconscious doesn't fight it.

It is explained by genetics. Meta genes are still genetics, no matter how little understood they are. And we wouldn't have orks etc running around today, since those genes activate if enough ambient mana is present. BTW, genetics 101: inactive genses are junk, but they are still present and still carry information.
Also, Essence is not soul, but that was pointed out like a gazillion times already. Kind of frustrating.

Look who's talking. I won't quote those rules again since I and others already did and you just ramble on how page 62 wins all.


Wow, so you are in medical school. Like I was a few years back. Does this really help here? I don't think so. Just to elaborate on death a little more. If someone dies, he cannot be revived. If he was revived, he did not die, was just clinically dead (I used that term like a gazillion times too). Also, people near-death pulling through is not as unusual as you make it sound. I know a few people who should be dead, most from cancer and similar terminal diseases, a few from ridiculous accidents. Big deal.


What optimistic personal definition? Now you make me wonder if I missed a few of my own thoughts. Also, I don't bring to the table the workings of other games vampires, since the only games I know about vamps are realy different then SR vamps are presented. Well, I guess D&D vamps have a few similarities, now that I think about it... but I define SR vamps by using the SR BBB only. And it does not speak about space virii host invaders from outer dimensions. Or awakend virii host creatures while we are at it.


Actually, the rules are the victim enters a near death state and revives within 24 hours. He dies only if we believe page 62 overrules every exception (which is by definition impossible). And then he would actually stay dead, since science cannot bring back dead people and magic can neither.


Actually, if the vampires has my body and all my memories, he is me. So I did actually survive the process and now am not a virus but a vampire. And I'm loving it. Because the transformation makes me love it.

So, while you accuse me of being optimistic (kind of, which I am not in any way the word is defined), I will acuse you of being stubborn to no end for no reason at all but to have other people follow your way of though. And since you actually propose HMHVV to be a virus possesing the Inhabitaion power, I have the strong need to oppose this, since NOTHING but your weird out-of-context interpretation of zero Essence and Infection support this. But don't be hatin'

*sorcery* (spellcasting in SR4) cannot bring back dead people. no such limit exists on magic in general.

Like there is really a difference. Between magic and spellcasting, that is. Like, spellcasting is a means to do magic, and stuff.

Well, there are metamagic rituals, and the conjuring-skill group, which varying by paradigma either bring back dead people, or shadowy astral clones of them, but as always, nobody really knows.

actually, it does make a difference. in earthdawn, you could restore life to people with magic; it therefore stands to reason that it's a theoretical possibility for shadowrun to have that same possibility... just not with sorcery.

(for example, cybermancy or, arguably, HMHVV)

Yeah, you could restore it in Earthdawn. With bad ass pattern magic. But then again, in Earthdawn spells sustained themself, you could summon spirits with spells, and so on, so I guess it is not really a valid arguement here.

Also, vamps in Earthdawn were just angry undead corpses

welllll... it is pretty much.





Actually I went home and checked and it doesn't work on astral entities either which probably precludes spirits... UNLESS!

We use inhabitation and force the spirit into bambi, or a bag of blood, as described earlier. That beats 3 and the rules

Vampirism has a no cost to society outlet for essence draining, so there is no reason (unless you are actually killed) not to become a vampire.

My reason for not becoming a vamp would be you cannot eat stuff without getting sick. I love food. Hm... foooood.

You're wrong. Emo goths are a tremendous burden on those who have to put up with them

You also can't drink alcoholic beverages anymore. In the year 2070+++, there aren't enough perks for becoming a vampire. It would surely have been wicked cool if it were 1670 A.D., or 570 A.D., or even 1970 A.D.

But 2070+++? Man, being a blood-sucking looser surely blows...

Worse even, you can't drink yourself into a storpor and try to forget the shitheap you've become. Or take any drugs.

How has a vampire become a shitheap? They are freaking awesome. Immortality hurrah.

Sure I mean it would be a bit of a downer if you where actually meaningfully restrained from doing anything, but i can get essence by slapping spirits around and doesn't street magic has a suppress allergy spell? That I can wack into a sustaining focus and stroll around and high noon?

On the upside, now I'm an awesome mage with super powers. And immortality. Sweet.

People always wish for immortality while they don't even know what to do on a rainy sunday.

Like there is really a difference. Between fruit and apples, that is. Like, apples are a kind of fruit, and stuff.



So... that girl who killed her father, to stop him from raping her little sister, while he was doing that very act, is evil?