Fine. Since we have been derailing this thread a lot and this is not finished, the continuation of the discussion from the other thread is here.


True, but there are also bounties on criminals. Also, the same article says there are no more bounties on the newly citizenised Infected - so no, the government in the UCAS will not give you money for killing a ghoul anymore. It'll give you handcuffs and jail time instead. Because you really don't need to contain the zombie apocalypse when it is still possible!


This would refer to the feral Infected. Loup-Garou, Dzoo-Noo-Qua, Goblins and to a degree Banshees are hard to consider sapient, and so are many Ghouls. I suppose they check whether you filfill basic sapience premises before labeling you a citizen, dear child of the night.


'Poor' is what comes to mind reading this, yes. Pity the RW stuff wasn't used for RC. Pity so much space was wasted on double entries for the WoD crowd when it could have been used for more interesting stuff. Pity the Infected were retconned down for playability, raping previously established background left and right. Pity no consideration was paid to the fact these PC should be received with hostility by any sane human (meta)human being. Pity they were forced into the setting with a nonsense UN initiative like AI and Neo clones.

OK, hermit's problem with everything Emerged and Infected aside...


Nope, RW says they can be legally killed for bounty. Handcuffs may be optional, but the bounty still is on dead ghouls


Well, that's a matter of conjecture. It could just as well also apply to those Infected who can't just eat corpses but need to hunt down sapient being and drain their "life force".

Yeah, I had to quit reading his posts on the topic altogether around the time Runner's Companion originally was released. You can't absolutely refuse to see someone else's point of view and expect to retain any shred of credibility on the subject at all.

He has a point though. It is completely idiotic to give the infected rights and the protection of the law. These are things that kill and eat people, or infect you with a disease. Even in WoD where vampires are one of the character types you can play they actively hide from humans or they get hunted down and destroyed. While in a harsh future they are given the right to infect and kill people. Why? Seriously? It makes no sense what so ever, it boggles my mind with how stupid it is. Has the world (and education system) really gone that far downhill that people don't realize getting eatten or turned into a zombie is a BAD thing?

I'll throw in with Hermit. The Infected as antagonists in SR is acceptable though unnecessary, imo. PC Infected are a waste of space. Let SR be good at what SR is good at and leave the WoD stuff to WoD. I admit I am biased because I spent a good number of years playing and running games in oWoD and I've had my fill. When I run Shadowrun I want to leave the vampires and werewolves behind and concentrate on the things that make SR unique.

Let me put my two Nuyen in.

I'm one of the "WoD crowd" hermit claims SR was catering to. And they may have been. I like playing games like Vampire and Kindred of the East, stalking the night as undead predator, struggling to reconcile my predatory urges with what remains of my human morality. There's a lot of fun to be had in such games.

And yet I can understand strong objections to Infected characters in Shadowrun. The primary advantage WoD's vampires have over their SR counterparts (other than being truly undead and considerably more powerful) is the fact few believe they exist, and no one takes the ones that believe they do seriously. In SR, the existence of vampires and creatures like them aren't a secret, unlike in Vampire. The Infected are predators, feeding on others' life force and bodies; however, they have no "Masquerade" or the like to hide behind. Second, no vampire type in the WoD -- Kindred, Laibon or Kuei-jin -- can pass on their "curse" just by biting someone. So considering the existence of Infected is public knowledge and they, it's very difficult to understand why metahumanity doesn't declare open war on them and attempt to wipe out HMHVV and its carriers altogether. They're agitating for rights, and make some good points about being free-willed creatures that didn't choose their fate... but I think the level of tolerance the world is about to reach a breaking point. A line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere, and in front of monsters that not only try to eat you but can pass their hideous curse onto their victims is a damned good place to draw it.

"Okay, we've accepted trolls, dwarves and the like are actually people and deserve equal rights. Fair enough, my cousin is married to an orc and he's a nice guy. And we're trying to protect intelligent creatures unrelated to humans, like sasquatches and naga. Well, they're causing no harm to me, so I don't see why not. These 'technomancers' and emergent AIs... these guys scare me a little, as they're hooked into the Matrix, and the Matrix is hooked into everything -- including bank accounts and missile defense and the like. I'm trying really hard to wrap my head around this, because I'm an open-minded gal and I want to respect everyone. But now there are lobbies and movements by these Infected freaks? There's a real possibility goddamned ghouls -- a pack of which butchered and ate my brother's son, by the way -- will be recognized by the UCAS and afforded the rights and privileges of citizens? Are you shitting me? You know, with legal rights being given to mass infections and the very lives of my family at stake, I think maybe lovey-dovey tolerance isn't the way to go here..."

That needn't be the case in your personal SR setting, but it will be in mine, by-golly. I can see the brouhaha triggered by the Infected rights movements not only creating a shitstorm for them, but backlashing on other entities (like Emergents and Sapients, even some metahumans) and setting back civil rights for them.

I thought it was odd they presented the Infected as playable characters in the Runner's Companion. For that matter, I don't like drakes much either. But I don't object to them being in the book. As a GM I can simply say they're off-limits as PCs in my games; that's easy for me to do. It would be a lot harder for some GM to have to create rules for PC Wendigo if he's willing to allow them and a player really wants to play one.

Like giving full citizenship to dragons?

Just kidding, yeah, I get the difference, it is not like SR vampires could live of Tru Blood™ if it existed, since they ACTUALLY NEED vital force through blood instead of just blood.
It never made any sense to me they got citizenship either and no matter how biased the UN council might have been to the green agenda, Infected are not necessarely tree-hugers or any crap like that, they are people who got infected by a disease that forces them to kill other metahumans to keep alive.

I mean, if Ghouls and vamps can have citizenship, why not the squatters don't try to become one? gaining Magic and becoming dual-natured makes them possible to work in corp security or research or something and this is better than live on the streets and scavenge for food or shelter.

Not a bad way to look at a portion of the infected wannabees.

I'm away from books, so don't quote me on this, but I think vamps and ghouls are restricted to criminal SINs, aren't they? I doubt this is something most of them want. Not to mention the infected in the workforce would be a bit ridiculous. We can't have Henry the office ghoul near the other wageslaves, now can we? What I'm getting at is if they are offered citizenship its more to keep tabs on them rather then give them any rights.

Well, the point of this thread is the question whether vampires are given rights, because the canon info is ambigious at best. The fight for ghoul rights has long been a part of the backstory, and objectivley Ghouls are not that bad - they eat dead bodies, which in many places are simply thrown into the gutter or sold for parts, and have a communicable disease, which hardly is a reason for segregation (assuming you use injection and not contact vector, but I'm just going to assume some basic sanity here ). IMO this fits into the universe quite well - nobody cares if a SINless hobo dies, so why should anyone care if somebody munches on the body? Humanis, obviously, but SINs and social acceptance are different things.


Vampires on the other hand can go to the local blood bank for one half of their dinner, and their HMHVV variant is less communicable. But the other half of their nutrition requires them to do permanent damage to a sapient being, which is hardly allowed in any jurisdiction. Another problem is that HMHVV I is extremely rare, which means vampires simply do not have the lobby of Ghouls. Probably even many ghouls have adopted a kind of "kiss up, kick down" mentality: "we are good upstanding citizens, the problem are those filthy bloodsuckers"

Corps can provide SIN's too. And even if they can't be around other employees (for dietary requirements issues), you may as well have a complete division or sector run by Infected.

I thought they also require Essence on their meal, don't? If so, ok, Ghouls are "less" dangerous then vamps, but HMHVV is not the same thing as HIV (although I can see where the inspiration came from)

Seems like there are a lot of gaps in the Infected canon. Not surprising since the game doesn't center around vampires. WoD has all sorts of background, organizations, and other detail. To make vampires make sense in Shadowrun, players and DMs are going to have to fill in all the gaps.

This is fine, in fact I prefer it that way because I don't want the writers to really devote that much time to Infected at all. There are some rules, they need some cleaning up, but all of that other detail should be left to the players. I mean, do you want an Infected in the Shadows book? Not me.

In my own game, a powerful NPC is trying to develop weaponized HMHVV including a small elite force of Vampires to be used in a military role. One of the PCs got turned into a vampire by him (he's actually that PC's level six connection contact), he's beginning to learn that having a very powerful contact isn't all roses cause he's been manipulated by this guy a lot.

Meanwhile the PC is stuck in the middle of a number of forces, some trying to develop the same technology, some trying to keep it from becoming a weapon, some just trying to hunt vampires for profit and umm, well they're vampires, what other reason do you need to kill em? Not to mention the other runners, who are beginning to wonder how he heals so quickly, and why he never seems to eat or drink anything.

The vampires that have Sins have it because they are working for the UCAS. It's amazing what power hungry corrupt people will do after all.

Anyways, they can be an interesting part of the game, but only if you work at it.

More or less...the HMHVV II and III Infected require meat (or other parts) which once had contact with a metahuman aura, so they cannot survive on cell cultures*, but they do not need to drain Essence from a living victim.


*: OK, a sidebar in RC says that clones and even bioware are suitable food, but since this contradicts everything else we have heard about HMHVV (why would Big D promise a reward for ersatz ghoul food if simple vat-grown organs do the job?) I just ignore that

Yeah, that wraps up the worse additions to the setting all in one.

But yeah, I'll handle this mess like that too, I think.


But ... but Infected rights! They're people too! And with essence regeneration, they mustn't even really kill you by sucking out your soul, they can slap a bunch of creds into your hand and ship you off to uniomni to regenerate so they can feed on you again!


One of the Retcons I was refering to.


One could argue that they, having their own world conspiracy, are better networked than other Infected.

Also, Ghouls are a plague. Why should anyone let them get into contact with uninfected?m Taht is so stupid it boggles the mind. HMHVV II always is a zombie apocalypse waiting to happen. And where the idea that ghouls are some kind of persecuted, innocent minority comes from is anybody's guess anyway. Who would stand up for pedo rights? Hey, they only need to rape a child once a month and never chose their fate! Just give them contingencies on orphans, they're screwed up anyway! Eh? Where's the pedo rights movement?

And Pedos don't even turn perfectly harmless people into more pedos. Still, they receive quite a shitty treatment. Ghouls, on the other hand, are now somehow accepted (much like AI, because AI aren't prone to genocide AT ALL).

Glad to see my contribution wasn't completely overlooked.

Oh look, it's this thread again.

I think that should be emphasized. Depending on who is running the show, enough money or influence and anyone can get their agenda passed. Not everywhere in the 2070s follows the will of the people.

Replying to the old thread in the new thread. Hope I don't really botch things up or upset people or stuff like that. Mostly, I hope I don't botch things too badly.


My Infected do not sparkle. Just sayin'....

I believe Bobby had seen my earlier, SR3-version of the Running Wild piece (and critiqued it savagely, as one might expect and as the piece needed at that stage of the game), but it didn't have much effect on what he did for Runner's Companion. Nor should it have. It did, however, leave me with a bit of a problem.

I don't like Infected PCs. In fact, I fought fang and claw (you'll pardon the expression, I hope) not to do them back in the day (see my initial proposal for my stance on that). I thought Infected PCs in the RC was a bad idea when I heard about it. It's also not Bobby's best work, by any stretch of the imagination...and that pains me to say, because I like Bobby and in general I like what he's brought to the game.

That chunk of the Runner's Companion, though, was not among his works that I like. Especially since I had to deal with the after-effects of it in my Running Wild piece when Synner approached me for that book. Having to deal with those after-effects definitely affected my approach, but I tried to work past it as well as I could without ignoring it completely (which neither Peter nor John would let me do, and which was probably wise from the standpoint of developing the line).

There were some real vocal discussions, though, and I tried to buck the RC stuff where I could, especially where it flew in the face of decade-plus-old canon.


I tend to agree with the first two sentences. A lot. That was my reasoning against Infected PCs then, and it remains so now.

The emphasis at the end is mine. When you say "Gorn," I see a two-meter tall, very strong reptilian life form with a bad attitude. I don't think that's what you mean here. What are you trying to get across?


This is a very true point. Vampires and banshees are hemovores, and must consume a considerable amount of metahuman blood to survive (though some of the Infected are cannibalistic carnivores; it's a lot harder to recover from being a goblin's meal than it is to recover from being a vampire's).

It's harder still to recover from Essence Drain, which requires Sapience. The two do not automatically go together, however; vampires sucking blood (which they must do to survive) doesn't do permanent damage unless the vampire in question is really thirsty and drains the victim out. Draining the victim's Essence, however, does.

So no, they can't subsist on rats (though they can raid blood banks if they don't mind the taste of anticoagulants), even rats endowed with the Sapience power (which is kind of sick, and not worth the work considering a rat doesn't have much Essence to drain in the first place).


I would argue that, Infected rights weenies aside, being a bloodsucker is not, in fact, socially acceptable. Vampires and banshees are viewed askance even in quote-unquote Infected-friendly countries. Even Aztechnology doesn't just give the Infected a SIN and say, "Here's the keys; don't forget to fill the tank when you're done." Not because they might misconstrue "fill the tank" (though that is a risk), but because even to a blood magician, the Infected are creepy.

I'll expound more on that later; I'm overdue reading my daughter some Fancy Nancy book or another...so chew on that and I'll get more vocal and wall-of-texty later.

Since when does every single AI ever have to be HAL, Skynet, or Deus?

"Gore" + "porn" = "gorn."

I do see your point about the limits of tolerance, and it's a good one. My approach has traditionally been to water down the predatoriness and infectiousness of the Infected rather than push societal attitudes towards more of a forceful approach, because in my mind, if those attitudes were that strong, the Infected would be wiped out. An Infected population that's seen as less of a threat explains the citizenship rather than violently purging. So I'm toying with making Essence Drain something like the Vitae system in WoD; it doesn't tick away on its own, it's just if you use your powers or something. And you have to actually be clawed by a ghoul to get Infected, not just touched. Although, I do make the vampiric infection spread a little less mystically; I just treat it like HIV in terms of infection vectors, which I think opens up a lot of possibilities to twist the associations people have between vampires and sexuality.

So really, the vampire you are most likely to meet in my games is the guy that does night shift in the gas station in the C-security neighborhood, whereas an infectious ghoul probably lives in a remote leper colony type facility out in the back woods. Those are kinds of things you wouldn't be able to get in WoD; you really couldn't get them in any other setting. And it still leaves things like feral ghouls and nosferatu as less-than-ambiguously-hostile opponents.



I think the usual term is "guro". That people will understand.

Your rights end where they inhibit other people's rights.


The same sidebar still mentions efforts to give ordinary meat the traces of a metahuman aura required by the Infected. A section which is not even internally consistent doesn't retcon jack


Some reason we don't put HIV positive people on an island? Unless you get some ghoul blood in your bloodstream nothing happens. And given the conditions many people in the barrens live in, one extra plague hardly makes their life worse.


Nicht alles was hinkt ist ein Vergleich...if you want a to compare it to a paraphilia, how about necrophilia?


Your standard problem...you see something in the worst possible light and then complain that it sucks
Sure, if you see AIs as homocidal maniacs their inclusion sucks, just like vampires suck if you only see them as sparkling emos ^^

Up until SR4, that's what AI in SR were like. Every one of them. And that Tlaloc-Station-Seizing AI that wanted to wipe out a city every hour until it got it's way certainly wasn'T any different. I don'T say it's a physical nescessity that AI be genocidal or anything, but I have serious problems to accept AI being as accepted as they are after Emergence because Horizon mediablitzed everyone. Talk about cheap-ass plot devices. And people complain about Ghostwalker.

Even IF the crash somehow generated ohnly nice AI (which it didn't), I'd imagine them to face a steep uphill battle for acceptance. However, just a few years after three AI caused the second crash and killed millions, an AI is trusted to run AL's public facilities and surveillance, and nobody cares. That flat out makes no sense. Humans don't dispose of prejudice easily, and they have a much harder time when this prejudice is entirely justified by previous behavior.


Okay, then the disparity makes sense (And the RC options will just be ignored by me). Also, yes, your Infected don't sparkle. RC', however, do. Much as I enjoyed most of Ancient's previous work, I cannot say I found much good in this at all. I can only imagine he was given directions to make them playable.

And Jeez, Infected Rights. Why not give rights to the Bugs too? They're clearly sapient. And oh, the horrors ... they're just hungry. Can you blame them for being hungry?

I agree with the Life-Hater: you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere, just like you have with tolerance of other things, like deviant sexuality (many would agree to leave homo/bisexuals in peace, since they don'T hurt anyone; few would say the same about pedos).


So would I; however, since those countries recognise them and give them basic human rights, or are prepared to, how do they justify denying them sustenance? Clear violation of article 3. Why give them rights at all then? This makes no sense whatsoever.


Please don't take that as a personal offense, but that would take away the entire concept of the vampire as a monster and generate sparkly, clean emo goth type characters. Go for it if it floats your boat, but for all I am concerned you could just rename your game into Seattle: Olympic Coven, then.

This is exactly the kind of stuff RC opened the door to I loath to see added to SR, myself. There's WoD for this kind of stuff. Why drag it into a different system?


Will keep that in mind, thanks.


By that reasoning, the Infected violate human rights by existing. So how exactly should human rights for them be justified?


Wrong. HMHVV3 is contact, not injection.

HIV infection works differently from HMHVV3 (Contact versus Injection). If it were touch transmissible, there would be absolutly no reason not to put them on an island at all - wh do you think there were Leper colonies back when the disease was a serious issue? (No, ignoring the rules will NOT make them go away). If you want to compare diseases, compre Ghouls to Lepers, not HIV infected.


Would work for ghouls, but not for the other infected. Still, there'S a reason necrophilia is shunned by most people (and in SR, another reason to not keep corpses lie around,w hich requires life, pre-corpse storage, which gets us back to pedophilia as in, massive abuse and trauma caused in victim before murder).


Oh, of course not, why would a zombie apocalypse matter.

As for AI, I have presented my reasoning. Like with Vampires, the change of public opinion makes flat out no sense, but then again, so does the entire attitude of carelessness of everybody with the new, improved and incredibly insecure wireless matrix in general, which is the biggest mind-boggler in SR4.

I dont really have a problem with Ghouls – If i would play one. But my other characters sure as hell would. With that in mind when playing a Ghoul one understands a few things.

Although there is a written text saying that a ghoul has protection under law and at the same time there is a bounty we have several things that can happen.

1: I am protected under the law
2: …Unless someone has a bounty hunting license for ghouls
3: …Or the guys I work with who are all criminal shadowrunners who shoot me in the face regardless.

End result? Regardless of “laws” and “protection” a player who is a Ghoul must have the acceptance of the GM to play one, and must be able to keep it secret from the team because you don’t know hot the other characters will react regardless of what the players tell you – why should they reveal all their characters motives and backgrounds…

Regarding sustenance for Ghouls. I can accept bioware and cultured parts as long as they have once been connected to a metahuman – otherwise I might as well go to the butcher shop and buy meat and sprinkle some blood from the hospital on it.

Getting a SIN. Yea, if a Ghoul manage to convince the government or the right people that he is a SANE Ghoul then he can get a SIN, preferably by getting said SIN before revealing his condition to a medical staff to become registred – this might be easier if one has the quality of Infertile Infected (which should be a POSITIVE quality…).

Just my 2 yen.

I doubt anyone claimed that. The new AIs just have to play nice, because they are not immortal gods any longer.


There's a difference between not being seen as somebody's property, civil rights on paper, and acceptance. See the history of blacks in the US...


But in general I have to agree with you, the Emergence plotline sucked. First came 4th edition and here be technomancers. Then came emergence, and TMs suddenly were a rumor on some matrix SIGs, which the corps tried to keep down at all costs...right...


...and that line in general is exactly the point at which another person's right for self-determination is violated: Gays have consentual sex, no problem. Persons below the age of consent cannot give consent (duh!), big problem.


Uhm, my point is that those Infected are not granted human rights...


All involved authors have stated that this was an oversight and should have been injection, because otherwise the ghoul apocalypse would be just a matter of time...which of course would also solve the rights issue.


Uhm, what? I seriously have no idea what you are trying to say here

Quite frankly, American Blacks never caused the country any noticable harm, unlike AI in Shadowrun. That's a bit hard to compare. It's more like why Russians are not very popular in Eastern Europe (and russian minority face rather impressive amounts of racism), just a little more intense.


And everybody forgot about DEUS, yes, ignoring the fact that in SR3 there were TV shows about the Arcology desaster, and it was well public that an AI caused it. But that didn't mesh well with Emergence forcing AI PC into the setting, so it was retconned. Given that Arsenal claims Renraku's household drones tanked because nobody would trust their applicances not to murder them any more, Emergence's stance makes even LESS sense.


And you take that from where?


Shedim. It's stated in the Lagos writeup that, after a bit of trouble with their food wanting to eat them, the wise and respected nation of Asamondo decided to instead snatch hundreds of thousands of live people each year and cut them up bit by bit. Hey, they're only taking what is their right to take, right?


Uh, right. So Ghoulism suddenly is retcnned into not being infectious much, at all. That makes Ghouls more logical as some sort of glorified suffering lepers, true, but it also is a blatant retcon. Not that the Infected chapter in RC isn't rich in them regardless.

Not quite.

Making the infection an injection powers fits more with the Zombie plague theme - Once they bite you are so doomed.

Having it being a touch based attack power is far to powerful since any deranged individual (players, GM, twisted shadowrunners) can liquify a few hundred ghouls and process them into the citys water supply or use crop dusters to sprinkle ghoul plague all over the city.

I would not call Ghouls "not being infectous at all" since they now have to bite people, the ghoul infection is still very powerful.

Besides, Ghouls are so much less of a problem since they are all metahumans as well, which means they can eat each other - presto, send Ghouls to hunt Ghouls.

Though current books are silent on that matter, I seem to remember that didn't work before.


No, it downgrades the threat Ghouls pose even further, so as to promote them to viable PC via retcon. Much like the Wendigo suddenly lost the whole cannibal cult idea, which is absolutly central to the Wendigo myth.


Yes, and with injection, you'd need ghoul spit, shit, or blood. The difference being? Touch based is grushing a Ghoul's shoulder, or sitting where a Ghoul sat a few hours before. HIV versus Leper.


And HMHVV3 suddenly stopped being curable in the early stages, yes. Another need- and senseless retcon.

Sure their history is different, but it still shows that being no longer seen as anyone's property does not equal full civil rights and the acceptance of those rights (lynching was illegal, but who cared?)



Frst posting in this thread?


..which is ruled by an queen with dreams of a superior race of ghouls, and where forced sterilization for anyone who does not live up to that norm is mandatory. Certainly not one of the most elightened places in the 6th world, ghoul rights or not.


Retconning something requires that something to be part of the canon. The global ghoul apocalypse never was close to being canon.


Edit:

Uhm, that's still part of the fluff. Rules-wise, it is represented by the influence power


Injection requires body fluids to enter the bloodstream, not the stomach. same story as with HIV, oral sex normally does not transmit the virus.

Where Wendigos, Vampires, and the other intelligent essence drainers were not mentioned?


Not if you ask the Lagos writeup. Or the UN, which for some reasion (RC) wants to recognise the Ghouldom as a nation. Because, unlike Somalitopia, it is such an enlightened place and it's denizens are all just misunderstood. Oh, and Horizon supports them, like it supports anything the writersd want to promote, because Horizon is always right.


Point being, AI are getting the full civil rights treatment somehow, despite having damaged and murdered millions. Because people seem to be incredibly forgiving so long as something has a fluffy icon.

I'd saywendigos and vampires count as "Infected who can't just eat corpses but need to hunt down sapient being and drain their 'life force' "...


That is straight from the Lagos writeup in Runner Havens...


Come on, the hints that Horizon has its own agenda rather than being the good samaritans are not exactly suble

More old-post-to-new cut-and-paste! I'll get caught up eventually.



Emphasis mine.

Er...no, it hasn't. Dietary Requirement weaknesses like Metahuman Blood or Metahuman Flesh can't be worked around that easily, nor can the Essence Drain power's requirement for Sapience (there is no Sentience power; this is an errata issue that's being addressed).

Not nearly so easy as you make it sound with this part of your argument. They wanna live. they gotta injure people, if not kill them outright. Otakusensei's right, they can't get around that.


Possibly, though the Essence Drain power in RW is cut-and-pasted, typos and all, from SR4A. As stated above, there's no way around hurting or killing Sapient beings.

More later; I might even get to address things in the new post sometime this year....

Metahuman blood can be from a blood bank, and there is a workaround for the Essence if you can get a Great Form Guardian or Task spirit. You can still sparkle, it's just not easy.

Yes, it's the sentience power error (A typo, mistaking sentience for sapience, which I took as a retcon because it fit the overall picture). No, the Essence requirement does not work quite as easily.

The flesh and meat CAN, though, it's in the RC (cultured bioware or cloned limbs work; as well as cloned vat blood).

Not sure about RAW but my personal opinion is that there must still be some kind of bond to a living or recently living being.

That is, an arm cannot be clonegrown and presented on a platter. On the other hand, if a process of cloning fully grown humans, or at least semigrown and that they have been at least somewhat alive enough to count as metahuman and then be slaughtered/die then they can be used.

I can see a new market for some gruesome cloning labs creating a metahuman meatfarm.

Is it me or does it strike anyone else as weird that vampires need BOTH blood and essence, but not in the same "product"?

Yes, it is weird (and yet another retcon), as in previous editions, Essence was all Vampires needed, and blood or meat was purely symbolical of that essence drain.

As soon as you endow an animal with sapience, you have a fully sentient being.
You don't eat the soul of a human being, but unless you're extremely speciecist, it's morally just as bad.
Same goes for buying a naga from an exotic pet vendor and draining it (which would be absolutely fine under UCAS law, BTW, there's people who wear naga skin boots mentioned in RW).

A sparkly vampire would have to go for willing donors.
Unless you have a close friend or relative who opts as a donor and you can pay for Cellular Repair or Revitalization treatment, this opens up new problems.
Do you want to feed off depraved vampire groupies or junkies looking for the ultimate high?
What about poor people selling a part of their Essence?
How much real consent can you expect under such circumstances?
What about mortally ill people offering their essence?
What do various religions have to say on this issue, given the implications the whole essence thing can have ingame?

All are possibilities, none are particularly sparkly when you take a close enough look at them.
You are still forced to do massive damage to the holistic integrity/chi/soul/lifeforce/whateveryouwannacallit of a thinking, feeling being on a regular basis.
It's not irreparable damage anymore thanks to advances in gene therapy, but this doesn't take away the fact that these donors take massive strain and spend months at a time floating in a vat. It is certainly more acceptable than hunting, but introduces yet another, financial, problem to feeding.

This doesn't even begin to adress the problems that feeding by a goblin, DNQ or wendigo would entail.

Getting the meat for Strain II and III patients seems easier at first.
There's a few people who donate their bodies, and some jurisdictions would have no problem giving them the remains of SINless sqatters or executed criminals (Atztlan, anyone?).
Still, i see massive supply problems here (and Feral Cities shares my opinion).

I could certainly see how Horizon markets their new vampire gothpop superstar as the tragic, sparkly prince of the night, and there would be more than enough adolescent self hurters offering themselves up as the next snack.
But your average infected will live a life of constant malnourishment, which is why the fluff mentions a sizeable portion of infected that doesn't give a damn about civil rights and stays underground, going for the whole top of the food chain cannibal supremacist approach instead.
Ultimately, they might at least be honest about their nature.

The infected in SR are never the tragic, romantic, homoerotic superheros from an Anne Rice novel (if they come close to that, it's more Philadelphia than Interview with a Vampire).
They are certainly not the neutered, family-friendly, sparkly guys from Twilight, even though they might try to appear as such.
They are either predatory monsters more reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer than Edward Cullen or unbelievably ill, pitiable persons waiting in line for their next feed while their comlinks broadcast warning signals to every citizen around, most likely also huddling in ghettos in most jurisdictions.

That said, i have always liked fictitious moral dilemmas.
The infected fit perfectly into SR's tradition to deconstruct established fantasy clichés, which i have also always approved of.
And even though i'd likely never play one, i'd have no problem allowing them in my game, or playing in the same group with an infected character.

But don't give me any of that Twilight crap, it's not how vampires in SR work, even though SR4 makes it alot easier to delude yourself into thinking so.

Round the very worst criminals and scum the Shadowrun world has to offer -- rapists, pederasts, men that beat their wives and kids into pulp, serial killers, and the like. Let them loose in prison-like "preserves" set aside for vampires, ghouls, goblins and the like. Bon appetit.

Sure, you're killing sentient creatures. And if you take a liberal angle on this (I don't), what you're doing could be defined as "wrong." But the Infected get to eat and society benefits. Win-win!

In the CAS, yes.


I can agree with most of that, however I would make it abundantly clear to the player the character would be in for a very hard time, and the player would need to do a lot of convinving they actually mean to play the vampire like this, and not like some homoerotic VtM cliché.

And even if you dismiss the more stupid retcons, you'd still have a lot of discussion before you because the player before long would want house rules like Megu suggested, effectively undermining your SR game for Vampire - the Shadowing.

And when slapped with all the downsides of being Infected discussed, the character would hardly make a runner many other runners would want to work with.

Vampires are kind of hard to notice, unless they run about baring their fangs at everyone, and most Mr. Johnsons dont show up to the meet with a wage-mage to assense everyone that comes to the meet.

Blood AND essence are relatively easy to get during the course of a Shadowrun unless things just go absolutely perfect and noone gets shot/dies. At least for the blood part, it's easy enough to use the optional house rule for increased lifestyle costs. Theres too many places that a shady individual like a shadowrunner could get metahuman blood easily.

As far as the emogoth WoD players, you should know what kind of character is goign to come out the gate before your player ever makes one. I'm playing a nosferatu in a game right now, and my uncouth quality is a problem for the group much more than being infected ever was, but then again I tend to follow the rule: you dont shit where you eat. To the members of my team, I am the nicest vampire they will ever meet. But! We have been playing for about 4 months now, and it took 2 of those months for my secret to ever come out, by then being infected was no worse than any of the other stuff we'd done.

Like I said, the very same sidebar also mentions efforts to "imbue" meat with the metahuman aura traces required by the Infected. Yep, RC is more than just a bit contradictory...


@Ascalaphus:

I guess most vampires will still do both at once because their "tradition" believes the two are coupled and thus they actually need to suck blood to perform the neccessary ritual. Remember, as far as magic goes belief equals reality.

Uhm, no, they must *smell*. Carrion eaters and pure carnivores always are odourous. Lots of sulfuric amino acids in meat.


Since the average runner group has a mage team member, not taking magical backup with him would be enormously stupid of Mr J.


And that assumes fellow PC will shrug the fact their team member is a sould eating monster just off, PC screen of protecxtion, or something. Personally, any of my PCs would kill the Vampire character the first opportunity after my PC becomes aware of what they are. Can't trust these buggers. You could as well run with a bug spirit.

And if that floats your boat, fine, but I'd have trouble imagining a character trusting a vampire any more than they'd trust a bug.

Also, if you don't behave uncouth to the team, you are, IMO, doing it wong, but that'S the PC screen of protection again, I guess.


Rationalise it as you will, it still constitutes a massive and unnecessary retcon. One of several, the much-quoted incoherend sidebar providing several others.


Contradictionary isn't the first thing that comes to my mind, but it also starts with a C.

Not sure about the naga, but there's a bunch of sapients that are legally treated like every other animal in the UCAS.



If you have a player who wants house rules for added twilightyness, all is lost. If he wants to skew the game in the direction of WoD, it's not much better (especially if it's oWoD).
I seriously hope this never happens to me, and anyone who is burdened with a player going down the sparkly road can always have my pity.
Discussing this is more or less pointless, though. You either have a player like this, or you don't.
Let's stick to rules and setting here, not problem players.

There's a few things that absolutely wouldn't work, of course. Like registered infected with a criminal SIN. Like with all things that can cause legal troubles, i expect the players to take care to cover things up. You don't go downtown with your Thunderstruck over your shoulder, and you don't feed on runs or walk around without a good cover when you look like the troll version of the elephant man. You especially don't try to drain your teammates, but choosing runners as your victims is so terminally stupid that we are in problem player territory again.

If you keep basics like that in mind, it shouldn't be too hard to pull this off.
Easy mode would be simply getting a bunch of vampire groupies as a group contact, or an organlegger contact for a ghoul.
Wendigo would be another can of worms. These would only be an unproblematic option if you play a group of hunters, ironically.
You want cannibal essence? Go eat Edward.


@ Sengir : "believe equals reality" isn't canonic truth, it's just a widespread ingame opinion, especially among those with a hermetic approach towards magic.

Fair enough.


The feeding on PC problem appears as soon as you take a run out of the urban surroundings and have to lie low in the wild for more than a few days. Or if you get locked up with the Vamp in a container, being smuggled from Sprawl A to Sprawl B. And that's assuming an Infected you cannot recognise at first sight. Would you want to spend a week long travel in a container with an Infected?


True, but the UCAS recognises more sapients than many nations. Not sure about Naga, though.


True with the retconned 4th edition wedigo which misses the whole point of being a wendigo. This retcon made these 'wendigos' about as much a wendigo as the Cullens are vampires. Really, please, look it up.

A Wendigo is a creature that inspires cannibalism in others. That is the whole point of this monster. Now, SR chose to dismiss the gaunt giant shape in favour of an obscure X-men reference, and SR4 chose to just keep the Xmen reference. It might as well sparkle.

A proper wendigo would make you eat Edward. And then eat you. Not something you'd want to have on your team, eh?

I'm not saying that I like this dualism between sucking blood and sucking essence (just like I find the idea of vampires eating ONLY blood a bit odd), just that the average vampire will probably act like a classic vampire because he believes drinking blood and draining essence are fundamentally connected. Then again, aren't you the guy who is complaining that SR vampires are too much like the ones found in the movies?

The retcon makes eating blood on a daily basis a nescessity, while the vampire still needs to essence drain only about once a month. So either he will starve before long (not being able to essence drain beyond 12), or he eats blood from the fridge, like vamps from the movies.

See what I'm getting at?

If I'm not mistaken, while an SR4 vampire can perfectly draw blood without draining Essence - and need to do that fairly often - he cannot drain Essence without taking blood. The bite and bloodletting establish the connexion to the aura of the victim that allow him to replenish his own fading life force.

Was were the exact mechanism about that in the previous editions ?

Bite and blootletting, as well as emotional connection of any kind (love, hate, a victim being raped) and the victim being immobilised by restraints or magic were required for the essence drain of a Vampire to work, which would take something around (essence+2)minutes - requiring a bit more than just sucking some secguard dry, as some would have it (that would be V:tS again). Nosferati worked similar.

A banshee would require the same without the bloodletting - and needed to put enormous fear into the victim, utilising it's critter power (howl of the banshee and all).

A Dzoo-Noo-Qua would somehow drain Essence by restraining and ... well, just restraining, and the victim in it's grip aging for some reason.

And a Wendigo would require a cannibal to be cut up and fry him and eat the entire meat for essence.

None of the infected would require regualr sustenance, though.