My point is you're an annoying little hater who has already made the changes to suit themselves in their own game and now decides that the best use of their time is to piss on everyone else's game by constant, repetitive, incessant, and overblown bitching. Whatever valid points you have about the changes to the rules in SR4 have long been overshadowed by your whiny, obstinate, and generally belligerent posting. What do you possibly think is going to happen - CGL is going to pull back all copies of the PDF and change one word for your convenience? There might, at some future date be errata, yes. Those who have worked with the company have said is much. Why do you persist in going on and fucking on about it?

Hey Patrick? This is OUR way of coming together and hashing out possible rules quirks. You use a dozen people consisting of devs and freelancers to look a rule over and hash it out. Dumpshock uses potentially hundreds, and that's not including people who only lurk here for information.

Seriously, this is part of why Dumpshock exists. Attacking us on that idea isn't exactly good form.

Simply put, a single person emailing a dev is no where near as effective as a whole community attacking a possible rule issue and coming up with one or more possible interpretations and solutions. If it was, Cain would have gotten all kinds of crap changed long ago.

hey, AH, by now you should know that this is exactly why RPG players frequent forums

Don't get me wrong: it is a player's Ghost-given right to bitch, moan, kvetch, and tear the shit out of rules and fluff. It really is. It's dwelling on the subject after your point has been made that irks me, it's hitting a horse with your car and then getting out, shooting it in the head to put it out of its misery, an then punching it repeatedly when you see what it did to your vehicle. Point made, let's move on.

Oh, I'm sure a bunch of us have, but if we do that, then there's really no reason to post in this thread than to say, "Oh, that rule is wacky, let's not use that."

Indeed. And anyway, there are much more important subjects in Running Wild to discuss. A travesty has occured, and it must be fixed immediatly.

You got the Latin name for the Common Armadillo wrong! CodeBreaker demands reperations be made!

Then stop making belligerent posts back at him.

No one forces you to read anything, AH and Patrick. But if you post, please don't stoop to insults. We're discussing a rules/fluff issue here. Simply saying "hey, house rule it, but shut up" is pretty short-sighted - you get feedback here, often very well founded, and mathematically sound. Blowing it off doesn't really look professional.

It's also worth to consider that acknowledging errors without getting all up in arms about it does a lot to keep discussions civil.

how about this, maybe its not a error, maybe its foreshadowing some future event in the metaplot?

keep in mind tho, neither AH nor patrick are in the full know. they are told to write a piece on some subject, hand the result of to the developers, get feedback on changes needed, and thats it. they are not told the full why the developers want it the way they want, except maybe something in the ballpark of "rising mana level"...

I have been summoned to say "Hey people, please knock off the personal attacks. Step away from your computer. Shadowrun is -- believe me -- not important enough to hate someone over. Ask your doctor about your blood pressure."


However, I must laugh a little at the idea of the "whole community" actually agreeing on anything.

What if the question was "Do Doc Funkenstein and Frank Trollman often loudly voice their opinions?"

i think frank is no longer part of the freelancer pool, so...

Oh, that's true, I meant "in general, on Dumpshock" - not specifically as a freelancer.

Well, I do not think Shadowrun needs to copy resident evil and turn the world into a zombie (sorr: Ghoul) wasteland. People who do want such a game can already simply use the RAW rules, and apply them to a city/country of their choice.

(double post)

Nearly choked on my sandwich. Good play, Adarael, good play.

Excellent point.

Basically my position.

House ruling to fit a particular play style is acceptable.
House ruling because the rules are fucking broken is not.

Fix the goddamn rules, so house rules are not necessary, but rather for adjusting flavor.

QFTW

Damn good thing a single email is not enough - only rarely does Cain have a good point.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=26019

Many of us do, but it would be nice if more effort was put into using common sense when writing those rules, so that we wouldn't have to. To admit rules are bad and act like that's the customer's fault and not the producer's isn't exactly stellar professionalism.


No, but the RAW are what we spend our money on, and it's nice when they make sense so that we can feel we're purchasing a high quality product. Most of the time -- obviously, or we wouldn't be here -- most of us do like what we buy, or we wouldn't buy it. Likewise, most of us are plenty capable of house-ruling when we feel it's needed...

...but that's a band-aid, and we shouldn't have to do that. Nor should we be insulted into doing so by those who write these products. If anything, it seems as through unhappy customers should be insisting you guys "use the common sense God gave a bowling ball" when writing in the first place, not the other way around.

If, after all, a bowling ball's worth of common sense is the measuring stick by which we'll decide this sort of thing. If that amount of common sense is what's required to house rule something, that must mean -- looking at it mathematically -- that that amount of common sense was lacking when the RAW was typed up, right?

Who berates a paying customer for their own mistake, and expects those customers to remain happy and cheerful about it while taking it upon themselves to fix that employee's problem? Seriously? Is this customer service you would smile about at a fucking Taco Bell?

"Yeah, I know you ordered a burrito and not a soft taco, but oh well, it was the dude in back that screwed up not me up here at the register. What the wrapper and the receipt call something isn't what's important, it's all about how you eat it. You've got thumbs, use them! Roll the soft taco up like it's a burrito, for God's sake, and eat it that way. Jeeze, do I have to do everything for you?!"

I do as well. But sometimes we do reach a general consensus. The HMHVV Krieger strain contact vector being too much is only the most recent example. Once in awhile, we do come together with a vast majority on a single issue. I'll grant that it's fairly rare, given the wide range of personalities, opinions and play styles that Dumpshock represents, but it does happen. At the least, we as a community do manage to cough up workable house rules and fixes on our own. Hell, often we end up with 3+ solutions to the same issue, because people see it differently. *shrug*

Critias--I can't speak for all of the freelancers, but there is generally a lot of discussion. Yes, sometimes mistakes happen. Personally, I feel that the virulence and mechanics for HMHVV is accurate, though I would personally change the wording of Contact to specify that it takes either prolonged physical contact or fluid exchange--have sex, make out, catch a splash of blood, all contagious. Shake hands, not effective except in the rarest of circumstances.

That said, we all make mistakes. Yes, it happened. I know that I try to minimize the number of mistakes that are made, and then correct them when brought to my attention. An example of this would be the exchange between Stormdrake and I about Swarms and Mischiefs in the Running Wild thread. I thought it was all perfectly clear, and when others read it they didn't have any questions. Stormdrake did though, and his perspective as a non-freelancer and someone who hasn't read through the three previous versions to come up with the best way to say something, is valuable.

Watching the fans react on Dumpshock had a mixed value to me, I was curious to see how you would review my work and worried about explosions of vitriol that may come out of it. Too often, I think, people forget that the authors are here and we say things on forums that we would never say face to face. Also, because of the electronic format, all of the body language and tone cues that we would take away from the discussion are missing, making communication harder--the reader is more prone to ascribing emotional context which may not have been the writer's intent.

Just food for thought...

Back on the subject at hand--Besides changing the numbers of the disease (I've seen a few options bantered around) would people agree that clarification on the Contact Vector could also be useful? I know that "Common Sense" is a touchy subject at the moment, but where do you think we can draw the line for a safe contact and a possibly contagious one?

I think that a clarification is much needed. I personally am going to be ruling it so that it is closer to AIDs virulence than straight up contact. Bodily Fluid transfer, including sweat. So don't go licking your local Ghoul, wear gloves and don't have sexy time with one either.

if so, those gas based weapon toxins becomes somewhat odd...

i guess thats the problem of using the same system for toxins and diseases...

As was pointed out to me on another forum by Frank Trollman there's also the effect of the "unresisted disease power adds to the next test" rules when coupled with the agony and nausea rules in Augmentation:

Agony: The character is wracked with excruciating pain that is
difficult to describe. For every unresisted point of the disease’s
Power, the character suffers a –1 wound modifier (as if she had
suffered 3 boxes of damage). If the unresisted Power of the
disease exceeds the character’s Willpower, she cannot speak
coherently or move at more than a slow crawl

Nausea: If the current unresisted Power of the disease exceeds
the target’s Willpower, she is incapacitated for 3 Combat Turns
out of every 6 Combat Turns (she is incapacitated half the
time). So long as there is one unresisted Power of the disease,
the character suffers double wound modifiers.

The Disease Resistance Test
The victim makes a resistance test using Body + the rating of
any protective systems, implants, or medicines. Every hit reduces
the disease’s Power by 1 point. If the Power is reduced to zero, the
disease takes no effect; otherwise apply relevant effects depending
on the remaining Power rating.
If the pathogen’s Power is not reduced to zero, it is added to
the pathogen’s Power when rolling the next subsequent Disease
Resistance Test. This accumulation continues only for a number
of resistance tests as listed in parentheses after the Speed in the
pathogen description. After the minimum number of tests have
been made, the infection has peaked, and Power will no longer accumulate.
The effects of the disease will continue until subsequent
resistance tests finally reduce its Power to zero.
The application of pharmaceuticals (p. 134) may assist in
resisting diseases.

How long would a normal human - meaning, those who end up ghouls - be nauseated and in agony after the transformation?

Assume they have body 3, and so get one success per test, meaning 7 left per day and added to the next day test, stopping after 10 days at 70 - but having to be reduced by daily tests, meaning by 1 per day, meaning 70 days after becoming a ghoul spent in agony and nausea, unable to do anything with those modifiers (-70, for example).

Numbers seem to be borked anyway, even if you change the vector to injection.

Clarification regarding the contact vector *in relation to HMHVV* would be awesome. That would settle so much here. Either people would need to definitively house rule it, or accept it as fine, and there would be no more debate on it.

oh joy...

Make "Contact" the same as a venereal disease (blood, sexual fluids, etc), just shaking hands with a Ghoul* should not be enough to get the disease.

* == who would want to shake the hand of something that is looking at you like you're a big mac?

Hobgoblin--Most gas based weapons are inhalation by my recollection, and I would presume that Contact vector gases generally target mucus membranes. (Tear Gas for example)

Any thoughts on how to make it work for both?

How about have Strain 3's contact vector be "Other" and have a more specific bit on it?

I might as well ask here, to save a new thread (in this economic crisis we have to budget our thread consumption, after all). Is there any point in HMHVV II having more than one test except to deliberately catch anyone who had enough dice or protective systems to get 13 hits on the first test?

I know what it's like to put your work out there for public consumption. While not Shadowrun (for whatever reason) yet, I've written for about a half dozen other games, myself, as a freelancer. I know mistakes happen. I know how compartmentalized the freelance structure can be (almost like terrorist cells, I swear, the way one small group has no idea who is in another small group, and no one knows what anyone else is working on)...that's not my issue. My issue isn't even with someone who works on a game suggesting folks house rule it if there's something they don't like.

My issue is -- and yeah, screw it, I'll be point blank -- how Mr. Goodman was suggesting it. You talk about the rest of Dumpshock talking like we wouldn't face to face? Go re-read Patrick's posts. As someone who puts himself out there as a freelancer, and as such (even in a limited capacity) a "public face" of this game, it seems to me like he'd be better served toning it down about eight notches.

It's bad enough when anyone hops into a thread and insists everyone else isn't using common sense, tells them to use the brains God gave a bowling ball, calls them a bunch of bitchers and moaners, stating that we've in theory got brains, and pointing out that it's not the job of the devs to "hold our hands" (by making a product that's of high enough quality we wouldn't need house rules).

But when it's someone partially responsible for the screw-up we're all talking about, it's just a slap in the fucking face. It comes off as "Yeah, we screwed up. But so what? Fix it yourself, stupid!"

That would be the way I house rule it. Still technically contact based but with some sanity around it.

- J.

hi hi

I'm cool with Ghouls being treated as normal people in society, I'm cool with them being ultra-contagious horrors, but not at the same time. The moment my GM says the word "Ghoul" my response will be: "have you read the rules for infection and what is your take on it?" Depending on what the GM says, I'll either pull out my assault rifle and spend edge on a narrow full burst, or engage in conversation.

Even if you restrict contact to mean contact with fluids, how long do those fluids remain infectious after leaving the body? Seconds, minutes, days?

SR4:
CS/tear gas
neuro-stun
pepper punch
seven-7

arsenal:
ekyelebenle venom
ke vi
ringu
warp
white star
ymir

augmentation:
hsv-5
aura deficiency syndrome
mana-active aura deficiency syndrome

i suspect the real problem is that contact is specified in SR4 as short skin contact, rather then something like "see specific toxin for minimum conditions for infection".

The sort of 'contact' vector you are talking about here is commonly known as the 'injection' vector.

You can contract HIV from contact but only if you have unrelated 'injuries' that permit the virus to enter your bloodstream. Which is effectively the same as injection.

I definitely think that injection would be the vector to change HMHVV-III to rather than watering down contact.

The real problem other than the ease of infection is it's virulence.

The mechanics are poorly understood. Anything with a power over 4 is massively deadly, the average human without access to medicine can't survive a disease with a power of 2!

Penetration should be all you need to deal with pharmaceutical resistance. MRSA might have a power of 2 and a penetration of -4. Something with a penetration of -6 is already effectively immune to medical intervention.

Fluff indicates that it is possible for a human to fight off HMHVV-III which means it cannot have a power greater than 6.

I would suggest changing it to injection, reducing the power to 6 and the penetration to -4 and removing the text that disallows anti-virals.

The best your average human could hope to achieve is about 10 dice to resist which makes the chances of survival vanishingly small. Even with Cure Disease and medical attention you might as well just flip a coin and you can probably kiss 0.3 Essence goodbye.

My answer is that any line that is drawn for the Contact vector would and should apply equally to all toxins/diseases/nano-weapons, unless specific and explicit exclusions are written in.

I think this is why Shadowrun does not have a true, official Forum. You will also note that Dumpshock is no-longer listed in the SR4A book.
If Shadowrun had an official forum, like BAttletech does, there would be something distinguishing Writers from regular joes, and, well
Battletech supposedly HAS fired a Free-lancer due to his/her posts on the boards. So, the Shdowrun team protects their Freelancers
by not having an Official Forum. In fact, we only have Mr. Goodmans word that he wrote anything, and that he is indeed who he
claims to be.

On one hand, I do partially agree that "Common Sense" is not being used..I mean, "contact" vector is contact with the disease, not contact with the
infected, and it is the GM's discretion what counts as Contact with the Disease. Personally, I, as a GM, would say that you are not coming in contact
with the disease without injury. Do Ghouls ahve the Infection Power? No..so they are not going to infect people just by touching them. There has
to be something MORE to it. From this application of "Common Sense", one can conclude that we turn to the fluff for when contact occurs..which is
when you are bit or scratched by a ghoul, or touched IF YOU HAVE OPEN WOUNDS. However, what is "Common Sense" for me, might not be for you.
I mean, for me, "Common Sense" is that when a door says "automatic door," you wait for it to open before going through it, or if it does not,
you read the sign on it, and follow the instructions there. That, unfortunately, is not Common Sense for 90% of Americans(conclusion based
on observation working at a hotel at night). So, Common Sense is a subjective term, and not an absolute. I am quite sure that Mr. Goodman has
broken his nose running into the locked for security automatic hotel doors, because his attack on the Dumpshockers certainly does NOT show
common sense to me.

And you're absolutely correct. I was way the hell out of line, and I apologize to all involved. The life outside of this shiny little box left me a little more raw (no pun intended) than I at first realized. I let things get to me that I shouldn't have.

So to all I've offended: I'm sorry. Won't happen again.

Well, my name IS in the credits, and I can provide witnesses and references as to my bona fides.

For all we know Tiger Eyes is actually a very sneaky hacker with access to some real devs timetables and such. Conspirasah Theory Tiem!

We are ten thousand monkeys.

IIRC, Drakes are immune to HMHVV, right? Would Latent Dracomorphosis (a mere 5 BP Quality) also proide this protection?

Again, I didn't write the rules, but from where I'm sitting: Yeah. It provides a whole other source of major problems all its own, but you won't be turning into a vampire, so exactly that much is right with the world.

Ten thousand immortal elven monkeys, you mean. Did you fight in the shade too?

The hilarious thing is that I got slammed in the Adventure review thread for suggesting that the deiease was much more lethal than thought, and thus no-one dying seemed unlikely. haha.

The comments I made about posting on the forums are for all parties involved. (I know I've done it myself a few times.) They weren't meant to excuse any one party's actions. The entire argument was a mess. For my part, I'm trying to get us back on track and found an answer. I saw that Patrick came back in, and I think the last few days have just been a little rough on the nerves.

I would agree. Personally, I hate making Ruling X with Exceptions 1,2,3,4,etc..., so I would want the Contact Vector application to work for everything. I'm not a Dev, but I am interested in finding a solution.

Cthulhu--Yes, it is deadly. I will admit that I didn't put the fight in my playtest notes regarding the survival chances of HMHVV--maybe if I had, things would have been different.

Starting from here, how would people like this changed, or corrected?

I once again point out that there is more than the vector. Please check the disease rules in augmentation, and see how long ghoul victims would be left unable to move or act from agony and nausea - about 70 days on average.

Reading through the rules for the infected, I realized that, technically, essence loss from HMHVV III (or any other strain) does not cause magic loss, unless it lowers your maximum magic below your current magic. After all, if you've caught the disease then you are Infected even if you aren't transformed yet.

Of course, any spellcaster I make is still going to have the flamethrower spell for a good reason.

Stunbolt and/or stunball. If the corpse eating freaks just fall down then the chance of them bleeding or biting you are very much reduced. After you knock them out, just bolt/ball them again and go into physical overflow and kill them. Less drain than a physical spell.

Of course I'll use stunbolt to knock them out. Flamethrower is for incineration of biological contaminants. Just because I know better than to touch the corpse doesn't mean anyone else does, and I'd rather not have anyone else exposed either. It's not that I'm humanitarian or anything, but every new ghoul is another ghoul that might infect me.