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Austere Emancipator
I suppose it was a semi-rhetorical question, then. Anyway, if you want to play a game where there is inherent Good and Evil, feel free. I do feel a Poll coming...
Dalassa
If you do the math non-troll ghouls don't have to eat that much metahuman flesh to sustain themselves. It would be pretty easy to get a corpse and stick it in a deep freeze and wack hunks off of it for a while.

About ghouls dealing with their need to eat flesh, has anyone ever played a ghoul who goes around killing people they think are evil and eating them?
Ancient History
Once had a guy in one of my hames run a ghoul that only ate other HMHVV-infected critters...including other ghouls.

Joking, of course. He cultivated a few contacts in the medical community and bought cloned material.
Austere Emancipator
Assuming that everything but the bones of a human count as "flesh" for a ghoul, a metahuman body will sustain a ghoul of the same weight for ~84 weeks or 588 days.
Ancient History
Well, freezer burn'll take some of that.
Austere Emancipator
Even if it took half of that, it's still a pretty good ratio. Assuming an average life time of 60, that only 2/3rds of the non-bones of a metahuman are edible for a ghoul and that all ghouls are born that way and at full weight (should skew the figures in an anti-ghoul direction), any metahuman population can support ghouls at 1 per 57 non-ghouls with cadavers only.
Dalassa
Feel sorry for the raw food unwashed food vegans who became ghouls. grinbig.gif
DV8
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
If you play a game where anyone eating human flesh automatically turns into an inherently evil murdering raping pillaging burning maiming monster, how can you justify the sanity of shadowrunners? They make a living out of ruining people's lives.

Ah, debate by extremism and exaggeration, nice.

I don't justify the sanity of shadowrunners, nor any other professional criminal. Detachment and empathic distance is a must in that sort of environment. And if you don't believe me, you can read just about any criminal psychologist's report on the matter.

Hardly anyone chooses a life like that, but nobody is left unaffected by it, especially if murder is your bread and butter...literally.
Steel Machine
QUOTE ("Austere Emancipator")
So there's two kinds of people who don't like Shadowrun vampires and ghouls: the people who think draining Essence is too munchy, or too bad for munchkins or something; and the people who think that any "creature" who messes with the "sanctity" of the
metahuman body is "inherently evil".


I think you're reading too much into what I said, and I admit I should have been clearer.

What I said really had little, in my own mind, to do with the game mechcanics at all-I think Vampires, Ghouls and Werewolves have their place in the game too.

And for the record, I never even thought of the M word at all-I rarely do. Its not a problem in my game, and thats the only game I care about. I don't presume to tell other people how to have fun, let alone judge how they do it.

Here is what I said originally:

QUOTE
I think that man would certainly try to classify and clinically examine Vampires, but only a faction.


By which I mean in the game world itself-Scientist, politicians, Military Researchers, etc...there would be a part of (Meta)Humanity who felt Ghouls, HMHVV, magic and more could be studied and eventually unraveled scientifically.

QUOTE
Other factions would see the light, and realize these thinsg eat people, and thus we have conflict.


So another group of people in the game world would look at the "HMHVV Problem" through idealogical or religous paradigms that don't allow for people who eat flesh to have morality, let alone a soul. (Not to mention a generation of Vampire Hunter movie fans.)

How any of that has do with power gaming is beyond me. I do however concede I should have been clearer.


QUOTE ("Austere Emancipator")
Or do we have someone with other reasons not to like SR HMHVV?


How about even by the rules its poorly done, and could be done much better? I personally run Vampires in a much more powerful way-they are far more dangerous than your average "creature of the night" from any of the three editions. Rarer as well.

I can easily see why some of the more "Cyberpunk" people would dislike using them. But int he end it all comes down to preference, so do whats fun, neh?
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Steel Machine)
But int he end it all comes down to preference, so do whats fun, neh?

I completely agree there. And it was, in fact, me who was being unclear: by the wording of your message, I assumed you to be part of the second group, the "Inherent Evil" camp. However, if you actually run your world so that some people are scientific and some religious about it, then your reasons to dislike the HMHVV-infected (if any) don't really fall into either group. The only one, so far, who has brought up the munch-point was fctarbox3.

QUOTE
How about even by the rules its poorly done, and could be done much better?

That sounds much more logical to me. How do you suggest they be made better, rule-wise?
Steel Machine
I don't have any hard suggestions-just a lot of vague ideas, and cool scenes I play over and over in my head. One of these days I'll organize them into something other than a grabasstic sludge and post them. smile.gif
Kanada Ten
As a note, almost all originally infected ghouls suffered some - often massive - brain damage during the transformation, making the debate about Ghoul psyche less important, IMO. Those born infected, Second Generation Ghouls, are raised eating flesh. Sort of changes the debate there too. Thirdly, Ghouls are a simple reflection of Mental Illness. Mental Illness in extreme forms can be argued - and is today argued - to render murderers effectively innocent of the crimes they commit. Of course, we lock them up but for their own safety. This is a direct connection between how Ghouls are treated in SR.

For the mysticism... what caused HMHVV to develope? How does a simple virus allow for such transformation? These answers are left blank, no one really knows any more than how Trolls happened. Astral Shadows and channeling Mana hardly demystify something. What if HMHVV is really the physical form of a "demonic" spirit? What if the mythology of possession causing sickness was actually correct (in SR) and that malignant spirits coalesced or mutated into viruses when the Mana level fell? When magic returned, only some of the virus demons regained even a fraction of their power. Vampires certainly seem related to Blood spirits, IMO; and Ghouls to Corpse Cadavers. YMMV.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Steel Machine)
How about even by the rules its poorly done, and could be done much better? I personally run Vampires in a much more powerful way-they are far more dangerous than your average "creature of the night" from any of the three editions.

More powerful than +Essence to all physical attributes? Remind me to just cut and run anytime I see a vampire in your games.

~J
Kanada Ten
Something about sleeping dogs...

Pet theory: the Queen of Asamondo became a ghoul after eating an infected dragon.
Spoiler basically says the same thing in a long and rambled way.

[ Spoiler ]
Austere Emancipator
This forum needs a Not Worthy smiley that doesn't smile.
Steel Machine
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
More powerful than +Essence to all physical attributes? Remind me to just cut and run anytime I see a vampire in your games.

~J

Yeah, Vampires are amongst the list of really bad things to play around with in my own games-which is why they are much rarer on the whole than they are in Canon.
Kagetenshi
I can understand wanting to make a more powerful enemy out of vampires, but how does that make the existing rules bad?

~J
Steel Machine
Look, I understand you want to kick this around a little, but I'm not intrested.


The rules aren't "Bad", they just can be better in my opinion. Does that mean I want people to stop buying SR books? No. Does it mean I want to burn Mike M's house down? No.

Like anyone I realize there is room for improvement,as there is in any game system, and not all of it revolves around "power level." Not everything I'd change is a statistic, and since I can change whatever I want at the easiest level-my own game-I'm cool with it.

I understand I said rules, when I should have said rules and world view in game. Both can be improved on, but there is no quantifying it-its just personal preference, and a preference I don't feel like kicking about for any number of reasons.

Sorry. smile.gif
Kagetenshi
So what you mean is that the existing rules don't work for you? That's fine, you don't have to go into why. I'm just taking issue with your calling the preexisting rules bad just because you happen to have a different idea.

~J
Kanada Ten
Asamando
Estimated 25,000 ghouls spread across 28,000 square-kilometers of North Ghana. Boarders are very roughly straight lines from the towns of Wa at 0º, Tamale at 90º, Wenchi at 0º, and Bouna at 90º (very roughly). Largest town is Nyamkopon, with houses craved into the trees to protect the population from scavengers. Basically, only the Black Volta is considered in ghoul control.

Thema Laula is the Queen, and the pay for dead metahuman flesh is five to ten yen per kilo, paid for by diamond and gold mining. Cyberpirates page 101 and 110.
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