I've been playing in a Shadowrun group with a few friends for a while now, and I am currently playing a reclusive paranoid nosferatu hermetic mage who is committed to learning hidden truths, secret histories, and putting a stop to the dark conspiracies that he feels are growing and threatening the future of metahumanity - like cyberzombies, blood magic, insect spirits, the Ordo Maximus, shedim, and possibly shadow spirits (I was inspired by the immortal elf Harlequin for his character concept, if you were wondering). His mental attributes consist of a 4, 7, 6, and 6, in order, and I'm adopting a cunning plan that I found on these forums for his character that involves making a pact with a succubus and purchasing a brothel to obtain large amounts of Karma, which I think is an appropriately devious plan for a nosferatu with such high attributes.

But I'm having a bit of trouble doing him justice in regards to roleplaying. Other than avoiding people I won't be feeding on like the plague, telling my teammates that I'm vastly superior to them, and mostly keeping to manipulation spells for their formulaic complexity, how should I go about playing as a nosferatu? And are there any other nasty plans that he should have sitting in his brain?

In addition, I'm afraid that my GM is not quite as familiar with the Shadowrun game world as I am, and the fact that he doesn't like reading doesn't help things in the slightest. I wouldn't call him a bad GM per se, but his familiarity with the Sixth World is largely rudimentary. He was wholly unaquainted with the concepts of the Ordo, cyberzombies, Aztlan, blood magic, shedim, and insect spirits until I explained them with my character, and largely still is =/. Other things I have had to teach him along the way in the Sixth World include the Horrors, the Great Ghost Dance, the fact that material currency largely doesn't exist, the events of Chicago and Los Angeles, and the districts of Seattle, to name a few. I'm currently getting him to read the rules for free spirits and the metaplanes for my as-yet-unrevealed plan, and I want to show him soon that people REALLY HATE NOSFERATU, that there are uses for knowledge skills, and that there are more ways to GM than his traditional kill-all-the-generic-enemies-kill-the-boss-get-paid style. I have no desire to find a different group though, before anyone says that. What is the best way to (nicely) go about teaching him rules and fluff related to my character, and how can I get him to present challenging opportunities for my nosferatu?

I can post my character's stats if anyone needs them for their responses

Wait... a guy who doesn't like to read is running a pen-and-paper RPG? What.

First of all, accept that there will be some limitations with this GM. Not everybody sucks fluff up as eagerly as the people on this board do. Back in the day, me and the other part-time GM in our group spent hours talking about rules, settings, campaign ideas and other game-related stuff.
But not everyone's like that.
Expect inaccuracies if he takes on some hooks and cut him some slack.
You could compile extracts from your sourcebooks so that he can limit reading to relevant parts.


Regarding your character, you've got the basics covered.
The infection seems to highly increase a tendency towards paranoia, emotional detachment, plotting and scheming and a superiority complex.
That's what sets nosferatu apart from uninfected humans and these changes are encountered almost universally among nosferatu, so they seem to be "hardwired" to some extend, as if the virus would alter the victim's brain chemistry in significant ways (likely, given how mental attributes change).
Besides that, he's still an individual.
You've got the part that sets him apart from humans covered.
Make sure that you give him traits that set him apart from other nosferatu, too.

And keep in mind that a single character shouldn't dominate the game. Don't hog the spotlight to show off, wait for good opportunities to highlight your character and make sure that the other players can do the same with their PCs.


@Tanegar : man, you can't link to tvtropes without warning. That's just cruel. People could get lost.

Hey, tropes are not bad.

No, but that link of yours made me waste spend an hour of my life on that site.

playing a nosferatu: take 1 interesting individual, add appropriate maladjustments that seem to affect all nosferatu, receive interesting nosferatu character.

Just be like Klaus Kinski

Or Monty Burns.

It's not an "appropriately devious plan", it's a cheesy rules exploit designed to take advantage of a GM who is not as familiar with the rules, and one likely to result in house rules such as "From now on, no nosferatu and no spirit pacts," after the current campaign gets wrecked by the power imbalance that this tactic will create.

Considering that the GM allows, and even encouraged, another player to purchase (with no hassle whatsoever) two construction diggers and use them to dig out a cavern underneath his character's weapons shop in the middle of the city where he will build his own armored and well-armed zeppelin, it seems to me like the GM finds game balance to be a bit of a non-issue, despite my occasional warnings to the contrary. But that is a different issue that he and I will address in time.

Play Vampire: The Requiem instead?

Why aren't you the GM? When you have a group of people and one of them (you, in this case) has obviously superior knowledge of the setting and rules and a penchant for munchkinism, why isn't that person running the game?

Seriously, you aren't going to get what you want out of this game. You're going to run circles around this GM and dominate the game. You're not going to have fun because in the end it will have all been too easy. The GM won't have fun because his game wasn't really his game. The other players won't have fun because they'll spend much of their time sitting around watching you carry out your nefarious schemes that mostly seem not to involve them. I can understand wanting to educate your GM, but is breaking his game with your munchkin character really the way to go about it?

Sounds like you're in the most pink-mohawk game ever.

I agree with semerkhet for the most part.

Good question.

I'd given a bit of thought to that option, but I'm rather reluctant to ask him to let me take over. He is the person who introduced me to Shadowrun and RPG's in the first place, and I have a feeling I might come off as trying to steal his game - which would be a bit rude.

But considering both his rudimentary familiarity with the intricacies of the game and my own character's power level being significantly higher than the other two players' (the GM let me use 650 BP for my nosferatu, for goodness sake, while the other two just made up semi-reasonable stats - though the first has a hammerspace, and the second can summon 9 types of spirits. I was still new to the rules at chargen time, so none of us knew what we were doing, it seems ), I think it might be a good idea to do so for just two or three sessions, and rebuild the other players' characters at the same time. Would that be enough to teach him more about the rules, the storytelling, and the setting, do you think?

As do I.

'Show him how its done' per se.

I would approach your gm - perhaps after a day of rules education - and say 'hey. I know a lot about this system. Would you like me to run a few mini-sessions for everyone so we can get a hang of the rules, maybe some pre-made adventures(Food Fight comes to mind), before really kicking off your game and plot?

And...just be honest and up-front about it. Don't try to manipulate him, or the game, just be upfront with telling him that you know the setting, and offer to help.

Ahh, food fight... good times. I ran it for my players recently - the rigger drove his van (armored enough to not have to roll when hit by a HE grenade) into the big hole, ran over a ganger, backed up, ran over another ganger... priceless.