More old-post-to-new cut-and-paste.


I agree that they don't add anything to the game as a player option.

However, some of the retconning you mention has been going on for a while now (whether I like it or not), certainly before Bobby did the Infected chapter in RC. I don't like the rules in RC, but laying all this on Bobby isn't right, in my opinion.

I also don't see where they particularly watered down the wendigo; they've always been essentially "ghouls with hair." They just have a lot of other things going for them (like Influence and always being magicians). I don't recall the PC wendigo Quality, and I'm away from my books, so I'll have to check later, but I don't think all of that was lost.


Yeah, and that's something I have handy at all times...frankly, it's way more trouble than it's worth. Not to mention it being even less ethical than just finding some poor sap on the street and chowing down. More on this later, I'm sure.



Don't even get me started on Infected rights....

That said, bounties are still on the books. They're fairly low, but it's not like they aren't there. I'll have to expound on this later, when I'm not up against the clock on my lunch break.

OTOH, I'm almost done with the old thread and can start talking at length about the stuff in this new one....

SR4A is roughly the same. You need a strong emotion, and a Charisma+MAgic (10-Essence, 1 minute) extended test without any disturbance or interruption - here too a bit more convoluted and complex than simply "sucking some secguard dry" as Hermit elegantly put it...

What was the Essence loss rate for the various Infecteds ?

I don't intend to. I point out what I dislike about the rules. Yes, some of these changes have been quietly happened before, like Banshees suddenly becoming haemovores. I also can wel imagine Ancient was asked to tone down a lot of the monstrosity in the Infected, and didn't really appreciate that; it would explain the drop in quality between these rules and a lot of his other stuff. This is not about me vs. Ancient, it is about why I dislike the rules, as they are.


The cannibal cult and preference of eating corrupted cannibal metahumans were a staple and indeed the center of the wendigo's monstrous nature in SR1 through 3. They abruptly are declared unnecessary in SR4, complete with making the Wendigo a Ghoul with Hair who drains essence occasionally.

And well, thanks for taking the time to work through all this as you do.


Edit: One point a month mostly, unless mentioned otherwise (is't with any of the infected).

Whether there's a connection between homosexuality and vampires or not, there's no need for gay-bashing ignorance like this. Vampires tend to be portrayed as sexier and more attractive than mere mortals, and I suppose it's a male reflex to label a prettyboy or any guy that makes them feel insecure as "gay/queer/[preferred homophobic term]", but it's really not warranted.

And for the record, vampires in V:tM are no more likely to be "gay" than anyone else; sexuality doesn't really apply to them anymore anyway (being undead things that don't reproduce sexually*), though vampires tend to prefer feeding on those they were attracted to in life. But do you worry about whether the beef you eat comes from a bull or a cow? Similarly, to a lot of vampires, a mortal is just a blood source, gender bedamned. And the "goth" stereotype people bandy about doesn't really apply either; vampires try to blend in with their prey, and since the goth movement isn't the rage it used to be, one that does the pasty gaunt loner in black shtick is greatly limiting his feeding options. (I daresay much of this applies to SR vampires.) In any case, try to understand the game before you bash it, please... lest I assume you're one of those undersocialized, pimply, morbidly obese cave trolls in a Star Wars shirt that only gets laid through cybering with other geeks in Anime Furry Chat -- like all gamers.

(* Extremely Thin-Blooded Kindred and Yang-imbalanced Kuei-jin aside.)

Is that written down that vampires are odourous too in any SR4 book?

For Ghouls, because of their carrion eating nature. So no, not explicitly. It would detract from the sparkling, after all.


Uhm, no? Those books referred to (not necessarily the vamoire as a concept, but a certain developnment of that concept; much like lesbian supervampires from outer space) are really more like a girls' variant of lesbian porn. A fetish where you dismiss the sex you do not find attractive for just those you do. Just like most fanfics are, sadly.

This has nothing to do with whether vampires as a concept have homosexual connotations (though yes, I can see that in V:tM), not anymore than whether girls' boarding schools (or, duh, female vampires) are inherently lesbian somehow. Sorry if I offended you; but I think you interpreted what I wrote (or rather, paraphrased, since I wasn't the first to bring this up) in a way that seems a bit reflexive.


My experiences are different, to put it mildly. Especially if played by women.


Not beef, but I sure worry about lamb or pork. That can end with a really awful smell if it was a ... male variant (lacking the proper words here).


Fair enough, although I don't find the game as such very appealing. And the gamers ... well, among those I know there was a noticable trend towards female goths with way more yaoi fantasies than would ever be allowed with male players. Just saying. A girl in one of my current groups fled the local V:tM because that put her, being gay herself, rather off.

But not for vampires. Would make sense that they're suffering from the same, but as long as it's not supported by RAW...

... they sparkle, yes.

If I misinterpreted what you meant hermit, I'm sorry, but I didn't see how homoeroticism specifically applies to the discussion. I think people's attempts to overly romanticize vampires (as either gay or straight) is mildly annoying, and that archetype just doesn't fit SR Infected. If people want to explore the romantic angle of vampire -- "romantic" in any context of the word, from Byronian drama to erotica -- there are games for that (Vampire: the Masquerade and its Requiem clone included, to a limited extent), but SR isn't the game for that. You can retool it so it is, I guess... but why the heck do that?

I'll grant you that people might play Masquerade certain ways; what I'm discussing is the game as it's written/intended. I'm sure people turned games into immature and gratuitous explorations of sexuality; some of the damned Vampire novels did that. But the people I played with were much more likely to turn Masq into some sort of asinine crossover combat-gumby bloodbath that would likely make even the most hardcore of you SR fans; the game broke fairly badly when people did that, as it wasn't designed for that sort of play. And the developers nailed home the unromantic angle of Kindred repeatedly in the sourcebooks. For instance, the undead were naturally sexually impotent and could only simulate sexual functions by tapping into their hard-earned blood reserves. (So doing the Casanova thing to feed from someone means that you have to blow blood points to get an erection or to create vaginal lubrication, which reduces the benefit you get from feeding because you have to replace the blood you just spent!) The desire for blood replaces the sex drive and romantic urges; the more attractive someone was to a vampire, the more the leech desired to eat the object of his affections; there were exceptions to this rule, the truly humane that could feel love apart from hunger, but it was damned rare and the desire to feed never went away. Underneath the glam and eternal beauty pitches, being a vampire sucked pretty hard (pun intended), and the books -- especially Revised -- emphasized this.

Of course, many groups simply glossed over the asexuality of Kindred in Masq, often to the detriment of the game. And in Requiem the non-sexual angle was removed, probably to cater to those who liked the eroticism angle of ambulatory homophagic corpses. But I'm not a big Req fan anyway or that style of play.

Dietary Requirement doesn't work nearly as fast as that.
The hemovore bit could become a problem here, of course.
But these situations are extremely limited.
Now, assuming that the group gets smuggled in a container (how often does stuff like that come up in games?) and it actually takes weeks, not days ("hey, let's get smuggled to Australia in a container, why not?"), without the group being able to stock up on food supplies beforehand, the group is hosed, vampire included or not.



Me? No, but i wouldn't want to spend it with a bunch of criminals for hire either.
Frankly, even a typical SR character is about the last person i'd ever want to meet IRL.
Assuming "me" refers to a potential PC (read : cybernetically enhanced killing machines that can insta-kill you with bare hands, people who can make your head explode with their thoughts and so on), things would look different.
Depends on the kind of infection, of course.
If it's "Contact Vector, let's just ignore the inevitable zombie apocalypse" (or the even more retarded SR3 equivalent "Pestilence, let's ignore the inevitable zombie apocalyppse, unless you're a PC and for equally miraculous and unexplained reasons don't have Pestilence"), then the answer is obviously no.
If it's Injection Vector only, an infertile infected or a vampire, why not?
I sleep with one eye open anyway, being a near-paranoid professional criminal used to lethal violence.



No, probably not.
Things look different with the improper version, though.
I admit that doubts about how necessary these retcons where are justified.
After all, RC didn't include player mutaqua or any of the new Strain II expressions from RW either. So one could argue whether wendigo should have gone in there along with the rest.
I personally approve of having all these templates to make NPC or do some theoretical minmaxing. I'd also love to have a writeup for mutaqua, gnawers and especially grendels (which make up for good opposition in a subterranian environment with their specific brand of Animal Control).
More fun for me to work with than "just make up appropriate stats".
But actual player interest so far seems limited mostly to ghouls and nosferatu, with the occassional vampire thrown in for good measure.

Yes, that is precisely my point. If you want to play the romantic children of the night with an inflated libido and vore fetish tendencies, VtM is for you. Not SR. But yes, maybe judging all VtM players over those I know is unfair. Just,the oversexualised Vampire is a staple of fiction. Vampires purely as monsters are very rare these days.

And I could just as well have made a snide remark about Vampire Lesbians From Outer Space. I just had, when writing this, my own VtM experiences (basically gay porn for a female audience) and the previous quote in mind. Mind you, there also is more than enough heterosexual vampire porn and romance to go.

Overall, I fully agree with you there.


Believe it or not, when the ladyboys were not fucking each other, they were like this. Yay for grautitious anime violence.


Huh. Now, I never spent much time reading the sourcebooks, but ... that is the first time I read this. I am not saying I disbelieve you, it's just ... that isn't Vampire as I know it. At. All.


Huh. Still makes for some Angst, but it's at least not the sparklestorm common vampire (porn)stories usually presents.


Not entirely certain, but they might have played Requiem ...

Okay, I see your point. Obviously, I am a bit prejudiced about V:tM, taking how I always saw it layed as how it was intended to be. Still, I hope you understand why this kind of vampire play isn't anything I want to see added to SR.

---


Once a day, isn't it? Otherwise, the vampire is HUNGRY. And I was only referring to hemovore; not to essence drain, which isn't much an issue in those scnearios, I agree.


Yeah, well, this happens in more adventures than you'd think; there are several official and semiofficial ones (IIRC Schockwellen has such a scene, and a few of the other adventures from WuWe magazine) and it isn't that unpopular among GMs. But take another scenario that doesn't lend itself well to hunting children of the blargh, like being with a band of rebels in the Amazon, doing a smuggling run up the Rockies, or bracing the Sahara or Taiga searching for a MacGuffin, and you're fucked.

The stocking up on food will happen, of course, but unless the character is outed as a vampire, why bring human blood in large 2 liter bottles? Oh, and human blood clogs and rots, you cannot just transport it as some kind of MRE. It's about as susceptible to decay as raw minced meat. Yum, if you're going to the desert ...


This was badly put. Of course I meant one of your PC, not yourself.

The point being, could you trust a vampire not to fall into a feeding frenzy if you're wounded and require treatment, or just to keep back and not suck your soul out because it feels like it. Most runners will not shoot each other except for rather rare circumstances, because they want to stay in business and as such have to maintain a certain reputation for being possible to work with. Most runners act in a way a normal runner can understand. An Infected? Not so much. Why trust it?


Patrick's stuff from RW is sufficient for creating NPC. I don't see the nescessity for chargen rules for building NPC anyway. And I loath the retcon bonanza that is the RC infected rules (the miraculous noninfectiousness of PC ghouls in SR3 was equally inane) just to streamline them for PCness. Especially with the wendigo, where they tossed the core concept out. It's like making a Vampire not a hemovore anymore, but subsisting entirely on sex, or something equally inane.

Do vampires in SR go into a frenzy if they are hungry? If anyone's stuck in a container without food they would be hungry as well, doesn't mean they'll eat the person sitting to their left in a hungry frenzy.

They certainly do when heir essence is very low. Not sure about blood. It would make sense, but it would also make sense for them to smell like the carnivores they are ...

Since they're dependent on blending in amongst their prey to hunt effectively, wouldn't it also make sense that they have developed some sort of biology that eliminates that smell, or even something that makes them more attractive to prey?

Like Ghouls, Wendigos (which stink according to a Co-Creator), DzooNooQua or any other Infected? Apart from maybe Banshees, the Vamps are about the only nonsmelly Infected.

Besides, what do they need to blend in for? They have mist form and are very hard to kill. They can just jump people and overpower them.

Sparkles, I tell you.

By RAW, the Dientary Requirement(x) weakness only requires someone to eat 5% of his weight in X per week. But vampires cannot hold down any other food except blood, so what do they eat the rest of the time? Or do they merely subsist on MAGIC™? The latter does not really satisfy me, which is why I consider the limitation on blood and only blood really odd.

And since you are still repeating it, this is what RC has to say on wendigos: Wendigo engage in the most extensive ritual cannibalism of all the Infected documented to date, and their transformation very often results in the triggering of latent magical talents.. To top it off they have the Influence power, which is a serious problem for anybody who thinks he can just go ahead and shoot a wendigo - chances are the wendigo will have more hits on a Charisma + Magic roll than the target's Willpower roll (no counterspelling since it's not a spell), and unless somebody tells the poor guy "hey, eating people is wrong" the wendigo has a new loyal servant.

An average vampire weighs 75 kilograms. That averages 3,75 kg of blood, equaling 3,75 liters. Minimum requirement. Is a vamp gonna be happy with a growling stomach? I thnk not, so he may drink more. Vamps don't gain fat, presumably, being the beautiful children of the night, therefore that too just vanishes, I guess. I doubt Vampires shit much. Too unsparkly.


Yeah. So? Which PC will actually engage in this? It was a nescessity before. Now, it is an option, and every last PC wendigo is gonna be the Drizzt do'Urden of Wendigos, the rare L/G type, just because wow, it puts a stereotype on it's head and the player can feel oh so angsty and persecuted wrongly.

This is bad news for an NPC wendigo, since they just became a whole lot more nasty (how many people can they keep under thier influence at a time? unlimited? Wendigo cannibal apocalypse?), but for PC wendigos, nah. Never gonna happen, if only because there, metagaming will win.

So, it is both a cheap cop-out for PC wendigos and a possible major design flaw, all in one. this is even worse than I thought.

Glad to see that you know the one true way to play Shadowrun. Glad you can preach it without being insulting to those that have other tastes too.

Glad you can read larger blocks of text.

And yes, I maintain that vor vampire fantasies of all sorts, including the wildly popular vampire angst goth porn of any sexual persuasion, Vampire is a whole lot better suited (being a game centering around, basically, vampire fantasies of any kind with a slight slant towards the porn in Requiem, apparently) than shadowrun, a game centering around the idea of mercenary agents, terrorists and petty and not so petty crime.

Is that now understandable?

I had a free spirit of man in my game, I didn't break out RC to make a free spirit character. You can have vampire bad guys in your games, you don't have to make them from RC.

All of those variants are for people who want to throw a twist into their games. I like that there are rules in RW if I want to throw in a bad guy in my game, and another for the same thing if I want to let a player play one of those critters. It's just more tools for the GM to use. What's wrong with that?

Oh, I understand what you're saying. I simply don't agree with you. While playing Vampire might be better for a group that's all into that sort of thing and enjoys greater vampire societies, it may be that only one (or a small portion) of the group likes vampires. In this case, Shadowrun allows for such play while not making everyone else in the group dive in fangs-deep. This is especially true if the vampire in question is more into "the idea of mercenary agents, terrorists and petty and not so petty crime" just done as a vampire ,as opposed to whatever you refer to as vampire porn. I'm sad for you that such a middle ground between genres cannot be found - especially with Shadowrun which is built on combining two genres (magic, of which vampires have, and cyberpunk which vampires parallel the dark side of the tech with the loss of their humanity through HMHVV).

I can quote page numbers and whatnot, but I don't think that's necessary. In the core V:tM Revised rulebook, it states a Kindred must spend a number of blood points equal to 8 - Humanity to simulate any lifelike function, including sexual activity but also warm skin, heartbeat, etc. Which means the lower a vampire's Humanity, the more blood he has to spend to pass convincingly among the living. This means vampires at Humanity 8 or above can get erections and warm breath and whatnot "free of charge"... but it is a conscious act of will, and isn't automatic. Less than 5% of vampires manage to get their Humanity that high, and that's a fairly generous estimate. And vampires following Paths of Enlightenment (alien forms of morality that don't care about Humanity) can't simulate lifelike functions at all.

And you said these orgiastic vamps were combat monkeys as well? Yeah, that's not very conducive to Humanity. But I'm willing to bet bottom dollar they and their Storyteller had no idea what to do with a Vampire book. I've met plenty like that myself.


Vampire may not be your thing, hey, but don't let those knuckleheads sour you on the game. And agreed... if I wanted Vampire I'd play, oh I dunno, Vampire. I'd hesitate to call people that want to recreate the V:tMasq/Req experience in Shadowrun stupid... but one may as well strip the tech out of SR and play it like D&D. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to reinvent the wheel. If you want to do something, and there are games out there that fit the bill, why not play those? Why use a wrench as a hammer when you can use a hammer as a hammer? *shrug*

If you're going to play an Infected in SR, I say, at least respect the setting enough to play them as written; enjoy the experience of playing a forlorn Essence-eating hemovore instead of some pastiche from a movie or another game. IMO. Masq is great and Twilight is just dandy, but their protagonists belong in the SR setting about as much as drow elves and Klingons.

The question of hemovore eating habits came up earlier, and made me curious.

Estimates for the calorie content of blood vary—640 C/kg, 800 C/kg & 1,600 C/kg—with the lower end seeming better reasoned; so I'll go with the 800 C/kg for this calculation.

The average vampire needs 4 kg of blood per week, so from a mundane point of view, around 460 calories per day. Either their metabolism is very efficient or it's magically enhanced.

I figure that's just the dietary requirement, not their requirement for total calorie intake. They're probably filling out the rest with pig's blood or flat Sprite or something.

How much clearer does it have to be written? Reading the passage quoted from RC, it is clear that Wendigos are cannibalists - I can't read a line that makes it to a rule for NPCs only, so it's the same for PCs and NPCs.

Actually, I don't see where you're going for middle ground there. It seems to me more a notion of 'everything's better with vampires' and about as inane as playing an elf in Cthulhu because everything's better with elves. Your 'middle ground' means every other player has to bend theitr characters over backwards to accept your character, the plot needs to ignore your character and how NPC would adversely react to it (remember, the Masquerade is there for a reason). In effect it would be you and your vampire (and some other dudes who don't mind vampires at all).

And essence loos does NOT automatically equal humanity loss. It means you lose your True Pattern, which is bad in itself, but does not affect your humanity. Yeah, cyberpunk was all technophobe and all about how tech is gonna kill your sould. Cyberpunk also is dead. SR never subscribed to cyberware = humanity loss (that would be CP2020, which incidentally also has a Vampires book, because unlike SR, CP2020 and VtM have a lot in common).

And Shadowrun magic is more about all myths are true than anything from Vampire or even MtA.

----


Only one set of rules would be needed. Two is a waste of space that could have been used for something else entirely. I'd even have welcomed rules for Dour, Munchkin, Leshy, and ohther small humanoid PC. The amount of redundant coverage the Infected got, though, is about as annoying as the amount of redundance in regard to AI.

----


Probably not. Yeah, kind of makes sense, but their game was more like Elfen Lied with more gay sex.


I guess because some people need to play a vampire regardless of system. Because everything's better with vampires! Of course, that may or may not be as inane as playing elves in Cthulhu or a surly P.I. in a high fantasy game.


Agreed. Oh, and I still am quite surly about the dumbing down of many of the vampiric vampires in RC. That was unnecessary.

----


Sprite Sparkles. For ... you know.

----


The cannibalism cult's an option and not a must any more. And the wendigo doesn't have to corrupt the people they deal with any more either - which would have been the players - but instead can just quietly chew on Squatter parts and essence drain someone every few weeks. The optionality of it means no PC must ever do what is as central to the concept of the wendigo as drinking blood is to a vampire. And that is not the cannibalism in itself, it is the cannibal cult and corruption of people. Essentially, this reduces the scariest of the pseudovampires to ghouls with hair. For playability, presumably.

And they're not toxic any more either, but that went quietly with SR3 already and was annoying enough back then.

So the part quoted from RC had "option" or "optional" or sth. similar as a header? Or do you need hard rules how a cannibalistic cult run by a Wendigo (PC or NPC) has to be brought into the game?

It didn't have a must, which is just as good. Something like a compulsion would have been necessary.

And once again your standard problem, you assume crappy roleplaying and then complain that a wendigo played with blatant disregard to the canon turns out as a wendigo in blatant disregard of the canon, just like a vampire played as metrosexual sparkling emo turns out to be a metrosexual sparkling emo.

Following your logic, streetsams also suck - I mean there is no rule stopping you from playing a sam as an oh so tragic emo goth, how stupid is that?!
Oh, mages also suck, for the same reason. And hackers, faces, riggers and every other concept, too. So in short the whole game world scuks, which is really emo, so...

Uhm, yeah, I assume the standard PC screen of protection and not wanting your own character to be shot in the face by other players, let alone not pissing the group off by fucking with their charactetrs, and the GM for shooting his campaign just because you absolutly HAD to play a wendigo.

That goes for the vamp on a lesser degree, and not for the sam or mage, because last time I looked, "eat fellow PC" was not a prerequisite of either concept (and toxic/twisted mages are strongly advised against in SM because of exactly the above mentioned problem with those characters).

Because, if played appropriate to canon, a wendigo (and, to a slightly lesser degree, any Infected) is unfit for any but the most fucked up groups. And even there, it'd probably cause strife. So you either play the wendigo like crap or not at all. Unless, of course, you accept RC's plethora of retcons. Speaking of which, didn't nosferati originally need elf blood with certain genetic markers?

Hermit, you are essentially whining about how vampires & other infected are "gay sparkling emo's", with absolutely no support whatsoever outside your own personal opinion, which you are blatantly throwing around as if it was undisputed fact.

That seems rather emo to me. Seems like playing one of your "hated" vampires would be a damn good idea for you to try.



From personal experience, essentially every one of your assumptions about what a vampire is like is blatantly false. Yes, some vampires may be like that. Just like some humans, elves, trolls, hackers, whatever may be like that.

Having the Infected as playable options does, in fact, add quite a bit to the game - very little of it negative. If you don't like the Infected, just don't play one, and shut the fuck up.



For the record, I played in a single session of Mind's Eye Theater (WoD LARP), and a single short lived World of Darkness campaign, & I will likely never go back for multiple reasons - every single one you have stated not being on the list, as they never actually appeared in the game.

I have two vampiric characters - one of which vaguely fits your 'stereotype', but was that way long before I decided to make her a vampire (which took several months to actually decide upon, & was based on numerous things). The other is not even remotely close to what you describe, and the few other vampiric characters I have seen played have never been like that either.

Oh, & the 'normal' vampiric character is not well suited to a standard Shadowrun game, but fits quite well into the setting overall. The sadistic bitch works quite well as a Shadowrun player character.

Muspell, you are essentially claiming no vampire ever is a Twilight and/or Ann Rice type emogoth at all, with absolutly no support whatsoever outside your own personal opinion, which you are blatantly throwing around as if it was undisputed fact. Seems rather emo to me.

And, y'know, from my own personal experience, your claims are blatantly false.

Well, we know that all trolls are big-eyed pink-haired treasure trolls with bear-like homoerotic tendencies that demand that the group bend over backwards to make concessions for their size and eccentricities. How inappropriate! They shouldn't be PCs!





Musp said the above twice, and while it may have just been a double post, I really feel it needs to be said a more few times.

I think Muspell is very happy you edited his posts!

Also, why can't you take the concept of Infected as PC be criticised in a rational (mostly) manner, but instead seem to take any and all criticism of this concept so personal?

In other words, grow up and/or stop reading this thread if it gets you so upset.

Not to mention this opinion is far from only my own. Several people have expressed personal disregard for Infected characters, including the author of the most comprehensive bit of fiction about the Infected in a sourcebook so far. So, it should not only be 'fuck you, hermit' but also 'fuck you, Angelone, TheMonk, Patrick Goodman' and several others. Think about it before insulting so many people next time, maybe.

You might be surprised that I have never played an Infected character, nor have I ever had one in a a game I GMed. I have played in one game alongside a pair of ghoul PCs. They neither dominated the game nor detracted from my enjoyment. So I don't know where you see vampires as "my beloved" at all, but since the rest of your points make no sense either...

You know, the line of argument's been brought up at several points here that runners would not be okay with having Infected teammates. I'm wondering how true that holds at lower levels. Magicians can't be all that easy to come by for a runner team; the fic with what'shisname in the new core book working with a team of new kids, he says as much, that their team is lucky to have a magician at all. I could see a lot of newbie runner teams being desperate enough for some kind of astral support and spirit defense that an always-dual-natured ghoul might be accepted just on the basis of that need.

Well. At least before SR4 screwed up the payment balance, shadowrunning was just a good way for Awakened to make fast creds. Somehow, there is not the shortage in mages in the shadows that exists in the general population. I agree it would make sense for very base level teams in a way, but then again, would the risk be worth the benefits? Also, would street level runners even be so aware of the intricacies of magical security measures? I'd assume they would be with the problems Ghouls cause. Plus, associating with Ghouls warrants bad rep.

A Vamp might be worth it, being a full mage. A Ghoul? If they're not a close combat ace, they get their ass handed to them by a med level fire elemental. Not to mention they have a hard time passing through wards, which makes them all but useless in silent infiltration.

@HappyDaze:

You rather specifically claim that vampires are"Twilight and/or Ann Rice type emogoth". You are quite hesitant, at best, to even allow for the possibility that not all player vampires (if not all vampires entirely) do not fall under this.

I rather specifically stated (which you conveniently ignored for your poorly executed attempt to refute my statement) that a vampire can be like that, just like anyone else.

You state your biased opinion as fact with no support whatsoever, & utterly ignore any claim to the contrary.

I state that I have, and have seen played by others, numerous vampires that do not fall under this trope (& have not even seen a vampire character actually played like that, ever). There are numerous examples of vampiric characters utterly unlike that throughout numerous works of fiction. Thus, your claim cannot be correct. Mine cannot be incorrect (I did not make a blanket true-or-false statement in a true-andfalse instance as you did).


And when did quoting become equal to editing?



You have been trolling this for quite some time now (yes, you are a fucking troll - you rant on the topic without any regard to actual discussion whatsoever). Your repeated whining on the subject looks very much emo to me - precisely what you claim to hate about vampires. You have provided nothing substantial or constructive to conversation.

Until you can come up with something other than 'vampires suck and everyone who says otherwise is wrong', Stop Fucking Posting.

Oh, sorry, I missed that this piece of profanity was an actual quote. I apologise. I should have known better anyway. It's not like you have any rational arguments left, so resorting to profanity is the logical way to go.

Your arguments, which come down to "I play different vampires, and I am right, because I say I am!" are childish and immature, as are your insults. I am sorry to trouble the Moderators with your childishness, but you and HappyDaze have been reported for violating ToS.

And you, might want, like HappyDaze, to extend your 'fuck you' to others, like Patrick Goodman, too. Because they 'troll' the forum with similar opinions.

Learn to live with dissenting opinions or don't post at all, if you have nothing else to contribute.

Man, it is like watching an old married couple argue about how their brand of emo muffins is better than the other brad of sparkly muffins. Or something. Cool it down a bit. Want to know one great thing I have always loved about roleplaying games? It is the disclaimer that almost all of them have at the beginning of the book, without fail, stating that you are free to run the game however you want. The world will not end if you choose to not run vampires or if you choose to run wendigos the way you want to run them.

Keep in mind that this is all make believe. And arguing about make believe just makes you look stupid. Not like you are arguing the fate of the real world or anything.

What?!?! But when December 24, 2011 shows up, this will be the real world™

Now, I can see hermit's point about giving Infected build points as a bad move. It is just like DnD, if you give character creation rules for something, then there will pe at least one player wishing to play as one, no matter how disruptive, inappropriate to the game it might be, like a friend of mine who once wanted to play as a half-clay golem/half-celestial/human...

Infected and Artificial Intelligence are the kind of characters that have every reason to be distrusted by anyone, EVEN runners. While Artificial Intelligence might even get along with technomancers (but what kind of actual player's group you would find a TM and an AI together?) most of the time they will have to hide their nature because:

a) there might be a corp who wants back its "IP" or/and
b) people might as well remember Deus and the Renraku Archology Shutdown

If I discovered that the "shy" hacker tagging along with us through a drone was actually an AI, I would try my best to destroy it or try to sell it to some corp for extra cash.

The Infected get the same treatment. The whole "Ghouls are people too" movement does not make sense. It is human nature. When leper was uncurable, the infected were exiled/mistreated all the time, because they were infectuous and sick. The same thing goes for the HMHVV-Infected... Human rights is not even 400 years old. Only now the world is becoming more "civilized" and even then, the dystopian world of Shadowrun sure as hell is not more civilized than ours. So, yes, playing with Infected is not comparable to playing with good, rebel drows who forsake their old ways and now try to live under the sun's light with their elven brethren. They are similar to playing with Illithid, sure, the squid-thing might be a good friend now and sure he is a great wizard. But are you really going to trust him(it?) when his(its?) stomach begin growling?

Hint : ghoul rights turned out to be the same as that the day the Cabrini refuge was opened.

Ghoul rights, at least in practice, isn't affirmative action, it's switching from bounties to leper colonies as a means to deal with the problem.
The fluff says little about that, but every time they get specific on what ghoul rights actually mean when they are implemented as actual policies, it's something along that lines.
Well, actually it's a lot worse than that, just read up on the description of ghoultown in Bug City ("inside, it's like a sewer and feeding time is like a zoo").
Which is why you have ghoul radicals like Blaine Hammond.
Which is why there should be descriptions of ghouls leaving their ghettos only in hazmat suits, or controversies about how to handle non-infectious second generation ghouls, or how to minimize infection with multiple strains among the infected population.

My main concern about ghoul rights is not that they are there in the first place.
We are still dealing with human beings, it automatically opens up a moral and legal dilemma in a world that remotely shares the morality and laws of ours.
The problem is that the fluff fails to clearly bring across how this would logically be implemented.

Dude, it's not your right to shut him up. Someone could just tell you to stop fucking reply, and I'd take issue with that too. You don't like his opinion, you don't agree with it? Fine. I don't agree with him on everything either; I don't particularly care for the idea of Infected as PCs, and I feel that the space devoted to them could have been put to better use, but it's not that big a deal to me. He has a right to complain about people trying to emasculate vampire weaknesses to make them less like what they are and more like something else; in fact, it's his right to bitch about what he damned well pleases. I do like AIs, and I think they make delightful PC options, but I don't tell hermit to shut up about them because I like them.

We're discussing things. That's the point of this thread, this whole damned forum. You can try to end the discussion, or his part of it, by yammering at him to shut up. And it won't work. It just makes you look childish and may well turn the discussion into a flame war that provoke the mods into shutting down the thread. If that's your actual intent, it's trolling, and I imagine against the forum's rules -- and it's futile anyway, because someone will just start another thread.

So, I ask you to pretty effing please find something else to do than yell "shut up, no one likes you, you suck, shut up!" to hermit.

Emphasis mine. More on this later, if I'm not lucky.

Hermit, while you're right that I don't care for Infected PCs, and some of the superficial reasons we both have are the same, a lot of your core issues with the concept are not my own. I don't feel the least bit insulted by what Muspellheimr said, because it wasn't aimed at what I've been saying, and I don't feel like he told me to go fuck myself.

While I appreciate the support, and will continue to support the "Infected PCs aren't good for the game" stance...with respect, in future I'd ask you not to put words in my mouth or thoughts in my head. If I ever feel insulted by anything said here, I'm quite capable of defending myself.

Thank you.

That is not the impression I have, though it would indeed make sense (until you'd have to come up with a way to feed the Ghouls, that is). Granted, there're Ghoul Caps, but whether they actually work or not is debatable (and it would be a bit cheap of a cop-out again IMO).

My impression is, however, they're going for Integration. And that makes no sense whatsoever. Same with the other Type 2 and 3 Infected, and doubly so with those who need to consume the souls of intelligent beings to sustain themselves - vampires, wendigos, banshees, dzoonooqua, and goblins.

Even if you could force everybody to turn over their corpses to ghoul feeding and all medical waste too, it'd not be enough. You'd have to clone vast numbers of bodies for a growing population of Ghouls. What to do with them? How long will this work?

Ghouls have to be kept in check. All infected have to be. It's where rights end. Because sooner or later, they will turn upon uninfected metahumanity. It's the same as with bugs, really. Bugs are clearly sapient creatures too. Bugs also used to be human. Busting bugs is just the same as busting Ghouls - taking out an awakened threat.

But they do different things. If I wanted to throw in a Wendigo bad guy into my game I don't want to build one with BP. The stuff in the RC is for players to make characters.

I would much rather they clean up the rules in the RC to be consistent with established cannon. If it makes some of them unplayable in a typical group, so be it.

But it would be weird and cool to play a group of shadowrunners with a wendigo "leader," where you are trying to find people to join your cannibal cult so that you can feed them to Wendy the Wendigo, along with jobs from the Johnsons. How many years of playing cyber spy magic ninja before this concept becomes appealing?

I think you made your assumption quite clear: Everybody plays the Infected as angsty crybaby goths.

And since there is no rule saying "don't play Infected as angsty crybaby goths" you deduct that the rules suck. Now, the rule "don't play streetsams as angsty crybaby goths" doesn't exist either, so when can we expect your rant about that archetype, or an arbitrary other one?

I'mn sorry, but I don't get what you're trying to say here (may be a translation issue).

Trying to say that the PC wendigo has nothing that - as has been canon before - forces the creature to engage in ritual cannibalism. He may engage in it, but he doesn't have to. The player can just decide his character is the Drizzt among the wendigo, who doesn't corrupt others because that is not nice, and thus become a viable PC (unlike the corruptor, who is guaranteed to stir up trouble in the group as he dooms and ultimatly eats all other PC). Also, the path of the nonconformist wendigo almost demands various angsty clichés, like the creature being persecuted on false premises despite being the only of a type of creature not being a monstrous corrupting cannibal cultist; angsting about the urges he has but brushes away to blend in and how little acceptance he gets by evil mainstream society and other, similar problems (not a 'must', either, though).

If the RC rules were designed with keeping canon in mind instead of streamlining by retconning, as they seem to me, there would at least be a compulsion (must form cannibal cult) flaw associated with the wendigo 'edge'.


I'd rather switch to a system dedicated to that sort of game (possibly WoD of some kind or Cthulhu) than force this into shadowrun, which is designed not with this, but magic spy ninja mercenaries in mind. I'm not seen much of an appeal there, anyway, but that's personal taste.

@Sengir: Where does



(meaning why if one wants to play a wendigo it basically has to be dumbed down non cannibal hairy ghoul type wendigo that misses the central idea of being a wendigo) mean



Please explain.