Would it be ok, to take "Prejudiced against Humanis Policlub" as a quality for a character? I mean, are you really prejudiced, if you are prejudiced against people because they are prejudiced?
Especially if the character is a metahuman himself, is it really that big news, that he is biased against people that hate him for what he is?
Would you allow it as a GM?
Maybe the bonus BP the quality gives should be reduced by 5 in this case, so that you have to be at least Outspoken to get BP.

If you took the notion that any human could be a member so they should be at least suspected I'd allow it (along with what ever negative pool mods it woild make for social interactions with said humans). Otherwise it sounds like a quick handful of extra BP's. I mean, Humanis is one of the actual few bad guys of the game.

"If it doesn't have an actual negative effect on the character, it shouldn't be worth any BP."





-k

I would say no. You can only be prejudiced against races, creeds, religions and sexual orientation. Those are the things that are not likely to change over time. If they wanted to take it against bigots I would probably allow that. Its more broad and more likely to come into play.

Isn't humanis club similar to a creed/religion? I don't see how 'prejudice against humanis members' is different than 'prejudice against jews'. The main difference being that most people play as being prejudice against humanis club regardless of actual qualities. Of course, you could put it as levels above this normal level of hatred. I think most metas are going to be naturally the first level or two against humanis, so additional levels above that can be taken, quickly taking you into "Actively hunt down humanis members"

The examples in the description of the quality are among other things "lawyers" and "artists". Those are not separate races, creeds, religions or sexual orientations.

I do agree it should be at minimum taken at Outspoken to get any BP.

As I said, it has to have a negative effect. If the character is essentially the same with or without the negative quality, then no BP.

Most metahumans are going to be naturally prejudiced against Humanis, and a good amount of regular humans are probably going to be prejudiced against Humanis too. In order t be an actual negative quality, the character needs to be visibly prejudiced above and beyond the norm.

Being hypersensitive and prone to fly off the handle getting into angry arguments at the slightest even PERCEIVED anti-metahuman talk would qualify.

Also, since it's about a guy hypersensitive to discrimination against "his people"...




-k

Personally I don't like the "professions" allowed in the text. However I will say that profession should be added to my list.

If you are strikt with this statement, you can't even allow the Drone Rigger Example Character from the basic book. He has a Moderate Allergy to Gold for +10 BP. How likely is it that this will ever have an actual negative effect on the Character, without the GM extremely metagaming?
(King: "As a reward for saving the princess, you shall be deluged with gold and silver!"
PC: "Oh, NOOO!")

While this attitude is also ok, I see qualities slightly different:
If a negative quality gives a character more style, deepness or credibility, its ok that the player gets a few BP for it.
For example Prejudiced(Biased) doesn't do much, no matter what group it is against, because you dont have to show it. But it fits into the dystopian setting and is an opportunity for roleplaying.
The main purpose of negative qualities is not to disable the character, but to give him more deepness and details that differentiate him from other characters.
Many fictional characters from movies or novels have also weaknesses, but obviously weren't created by the autors with a BP system.
But in a Roleplaying game, most players wont give their characters weaknesses unless they get something in return.

Which is fine, but most everyone already has a prejudice against Humanis. It stinks of trying to get something for nothing. At least with a gold allergy that rigger's going to have an issue with some electronics.

A troll has a prejudice against Humanis? Welcome to the UCAS, population: every metahuman ever.

"There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch"

Ok, seems that most posters agree with me that everyone should already have "Prejudiced against Humanis Policlub (Biased)", but you can get a higher degree and get the difference as points. For example get "Prejudiced against Humanis Policlub (Outspoken)" for 5 points.


He could use his tools to touch the electronics, or the gloves from his medkit. Still not a real disadvantage for 10 BP.
The Covert Ops Specialist has a gold allergy too by the way.

Which is fine. If you've got a guy who's talking crap about Humanis while they're in earshot and doesn't stop, then that's going to make a bad day for somebody(and entertainment for me). If it's just 'oh, he doesn't like Humanis' well, congratulations. Not a lot of folks do.



Doesn't work as well when they're implanted, as some electronics are. Can't look good in gold jewelry which can confer social penalties in the right circles. Won't make it far in the Azzie priesthood, etc. Can't handle orichalcum. The allergy quality distribution is somewhat borked since it's a rare metal allergy (5 points) and only offers mild, almost negligible discomfort (5 points), but the disadvantage is still there and still in ze mechanix.

That's what fake gold is for, or platinum leaf, and any part of the electronics that is gold isn't going to actually be touching you even when implanted, it would have to be insulated (Not that anything uses gold any more, it's all fiber optics according to the books).

And why couldn't you handle orichalcum? Just because it is made from gold doesn't mean it would trigger a gold allergy. Salt is made from sodium (explodes on contact with water) and chlorine (poisonous gas) and yet salt doesn't kill you (At least not so directly )

Wearing costume jewelry to a social function where they're looking for the real thing. 'Kay. Let me know how that goes.

Sodium and chlorine, while poentially deadly, counterbalance one another naturally(I.E. does not require magical intervention). One also isn't allergic to them. The gold content of orichalcum is magically bonded (or in the case of naturally-occuring orichalcum, assisted by a rise in the ambient mana). One can also be allergic to it, rare as it might be (and thereby earning the cheap BP assigned to it).

Look, if you want to try and draw correlation in order to justify harvesting BP for a dislike of folks that the writers created in order to be disliked - okay, fine, go crazy. Trying to liken it to an allergy to gold is...honestly not worth the time to talk about it.

I'm the one who suggested allowing it buy only at higher levels to show how much above the normal prejudice you are, so I'm not arguing that you should be able to take biased for humanis and be okay.

And no, you aren't allergic to sodium or chlorine, they just have the ability to kill you. And magic or not has nothing to do with it. Just because something is made from X, does not mean that someone allergic to X is allergic to the thing made from X.

And platinum is hardly costume jewelry. Good luck spotting platinum leaf without very close inspection. And if it is really a problem, wear silver and expensive jewels instead.

I'm not arguing that. I'm supporting that. I'm all for that. It's why I'm trying to differentiate between the 'we don't like Humanis' and the 'fuck Humanis, Imma go smash a purple-hooded skull in over on Sixth.' All for it.

I just don't want to see someone say 'I don't like Humanis, gimme 5 BP'. A 5 pointer for Humanis doesn't exist. Go big or don't go, I say.



You realize you just argued that someone with an allergy to peanuts is fine eating something made from peanuts, right?



Fake gold is costume jewelry. You want to go platinum, be my guest. The stuff's fantastic, but gold's still cheaper.

I would say it is the DUTY of the GM to offer opportunities to Players to highlight their strengths and their flaws.

If you want to take that flaw I have the obligation to create someone like "Goldfinger" or "Midas" to make the flaw worth the points.

You're adding wrong, anyway. It's 2 for Uncommon, 8 for Moderate (not 5 and 5).

That's just how the rules work. Uncommon should show up sometimes, and can be deliberately used against them.

Meh. I'm going off faulty memory, but it added to 10 eventually. Four words and a hyphen:

Molten Gold Death-Trap.

Isn't everyone 'allergic' to molten gold?

Becouse the fact that you have moderate allergy to gold is your biggest problem at that point,right.

Well, you will be at a -4!

-4 is nothing to sneeze at in Molten Gold Death Trap.

Sneezing itself would probably be very difficulty, but also dangerous to bystanders.

Which is the #3 thing to worry about in MGDT, after the trap itself and the Inevitable Monologue.

Well, gold is an element, peanuts aren't.
Elements in other chemical compounds can have completely different characteristics. Breathe O2 and you are fine. breathe O3 and you die.

But if you are still allergic to orichalcum is a good question. I dont know, to be honest. It is a magical alloy after all. No clue what it does with the gold. The only way to find out, would be to test it

Well, it all depends. Alloys aren't chemically altered. The gold is still there to affect you. People who get nickel dermatitis aren't generally handling pure nickel at all.

Yes, I know, but its a magical alloy. Anything that follows from that is hard to predict.

Sure, but I was more speaking to the other 'chemistry' arguments we had earlier (salt, peanuts, etc.).

Still, it's a magical alloy, in addition to being a "magical alloy". I agree that we don't know for sure, but it's just as possible either way.

What I wanted to say is that the comparison of peanuts and gold is flawed. But if orichalcum was a normal alloy with gold, you would be indeed still allergic to it.
But its more than a normal alloy. It is created with alchemy, and I think I read somewere that orichalcum contradicts some laws of nature.

But if I had to decide, as a GM, if the player is allergic to orichalcum or not, I would probably decide that he is.

How about a Severe allergy to Styrofoam. Now -that- is worth the BP!

Especially when the runner ends up in Hong Kong and food is one lifestyle higher than normal.

I don't mean to be rude or anything, but I think there is a flaw in the OP's logic that most of you are missing.



A prejudice towards the Humanis Policlub would have to be an unjustifiable prejudice for the quality to apply. In this case, I believe that the hostility necessary for this quality to apply towards Humanis would have to be truly extraordinary and intense, probably getting into the areas of extreme violence towards Humanis members (like torture and mutilation - one example that comes to my mind is the kind of violence from the Saw movies).


I am unfamiliar with this latter claim that it contradicts the laws of nature. Are you perhaps thinking of the fact that scientific analysis of orichalcum is extremely difficult because all attempts at spectroscopic analysis break it back down into its component metals?

Something like that, but I think I read it in the 3rd edition magic book. But I'm not sure.


Yes, that is another question. Maybe you can't be prejudiced against humanis, because no matter how much you think that they are stupied and evil, you are always right. Its not a prejudice anymore but simply the truth. But maybe I am just prejudiced against humanis here.

Maybe a Quality like "Poor Self Control (Compulsive) Starting fights with humanis members" would be better.
Or maybe you should just invent a new negative quality that is called "Hatred" and is for justifiably hating members
of a specific group of people. This should be less BP worth than "Prejudiced" and/or have stronger consequences.

Or you could just used the prejudiced template, but knock off 5 points from it because the first level is 'automatic' for basically everyone.

@peanut butter - I suppose I should have specified "Isn't necessarily allergic to.."
Since nothing is really known about orichalcum, it is impossible to say for sure if it would trigger a gold allergy.

My opinion on the matter goes back to when someone asked if they should take Prejudice (Technomancers) as common or uncommon.
"Technomancers aren't just uncommon. They're so rare that they are statistically insignificant. Therefore the only way to make that prejudice work would be to assume some people are technomancers even when they weren't."

So, one option for making the Prejudice (Humanis Policlub) work in an "unjustifiable" sense would be to have the character assume that certain people are Humanis just because of their appearance. Then the negative penalty applies, and the character is making an ass of themselves like a proper bigot should.

Technomancers are statistically insignificant for normal people, but for runners they are just uncommen. Its not that unlikely that you have to work together with one.
Imagine a character that is Radical Prejudiced against Johnsons. While this would be no problem for a normal citizen, because it is unlikely that he meets and recognizes a Johnsen ( I'm talking about a runners employer, not just someone with the name), for a shadowrunner SC it would be a disadvantage that makes him nearly unplayable.

*edit: And don't forget that having the negative quality makes it even more likely that the SC meets a Technomancer.
Like said before in this thread, if you have a moderate gold allergy and are Outspoken Prejudiced against Dutch, it is very likely that your next adversary is Goldfinger.

Now I have to resist the urge to make a character that has radical prejudice against people named Johnson.

Native Americans *HATED* Andrew Johnson...

That could be your tie in.

If Technomancers are about the same chance of ocurrence than Awakened people, then, they occur around 1% of the time. You might think that 1% is a very low number and practically rare and I can't find the numbers right now, but I'm almost sure that the medical population of Brasil is around 0.25% and they are not that hard to find. If someone could be prejudiced against medics, why not against TM's?

I think you meant mages, and many are against TM's.

Either that, or he's saying 'doctors are rare, too'.

I don't know. I have a ghoul NPC that tells me that they're medium on occasion, but that's because there was a riot and a hospital burned down.

I meant both, doctors are a "rare" bunch, but nonetheless still easy to find. Like I said, I know Awakened population is around 1%, I think the same percentage is true for the Emerged.

Hmm, sucks for somebody who can't hold down cooked meat

I'm pretty sure that technomancer are lot more rare then awakened.

Actually, I was under the impression that TMs were even rarer than Awakened. Keep in mind that Awakened have been cropping up for several decades now, but TMs only started showing up in the last decade or two, that alone would indicate there are likely to be less purely on there being fewer old TMs than old mages.

Also, prior to the crash of 64, TM's power apparently faded with age, so once again, very few people will have been a TM for more than a decade or so, while one could have been a mage for several decades.

Other than that I can't find anything that says their exact rarity, but I still think that it is significantly less than mages.

The other, bigger problem with a prejudice against TMs is how absurdly difficult it would be to pick one out. A TM could easily masquerade as a hacker with an internal commlink, or pretend to be using their external commlink. Even a mage would have trouble picking them out due to the 5 or so net hits needed to spot resonance. At least mages will occasionally dress/act weird, and you can tell fairly easily (by the new rules) when they cast a spell.

That's why you buy a dog that can sniff (matrix-wise and meat world-wise) technomancers, just like Clockworkd did. If Clockwork can be EXTREMELY prejudiced against TM's AI's and sprites, why can't I? My current character has an active prejudice against aztlaners because he thinks everyone of them is a blood mage or a blood mage's slave. It doesn't mean they all are... The same can be said of someone with prejudice against TM's, if he sees someone without a comlink, will he wait to check if the person has an internal comlink? It might be too late and by then the probable technomancer has already hacked his comlink and his cybereyes and is editing his sight on the fly creating an ilusion (again, not that this is possible, but that this could be someone's line of thought).

technomancer sniffing dogs are stupid and should not freaking exist.
A Dog with the same Magical alteration as technomancers? That's just.. painful.