@Brazilian_Shinobi
The main differance is, that they are actually in no way a danger for the human race.
And give them some forrest land? What the hell? Their existance alone is probably interesting enough.

They could in general be integrated or completly segregated from the metahuman society.

If you go about in morally, you need to justify why you are acting this way and not any way else.

The point is, people are not really known for doing the right thing, to any time.

Thats why this "flowerchild stand" on infected annoyes the crap out of me.

Metahumanity is not discribed as a me second society. In no freaking way. It is not a society of pacifists neither.

The trouble with "rights" is that they are purely a philosophical construct. You can say that people have an inalienable right to life and freedom, or whatever, but in actual reality, people get oppressed or killed all the time. Society is what basically assigns who has the "right to live", but society is just another social construct that individual people may participate in, or obey, to various degrees. So even if, say, a liberal administration replaces Brackhaven and decrees that ghouls have certain basic rights, there will still be people who will decide, on an individual basis, that ghouls should all die.

If you compare human beings to other animals, then look at how prey animals behave. They congregate together for mutual protection against predators, and tend to attack potential predators whenever the odds favor them (set an owl loose in the daylight, and see how the other birds behave). So for humanity to try to wipe out the infected would hardly be "unnatural".

Our society and culture is all that separates us from the Barbarians at the gates, who have their own society and culture of being Barbarians at the Gates...

Bear a SIN, have money, be an obedient, constructive member of society, buy anything you need.

Still die from getting shot by a SINless Pink Mohawk Shadowrunner.

The UCAS and CAS still have good-sized portions of the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution as part of their own laws, so it would come from there. (There's probably a few pieces of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the UCAS Constitution as well.).

I'm probably as pro-infected as anyone, but I wouldn't describe my stand as flowerchildish. Like I said up thread, the disagreement seems to be between those who believe that infected are ravening monsters and those who believe not all infected are ravening monsters. In my game, I can use vamps and ghouls and the like as soul-sucking monstrosities, but I can also use them as "just folk".

So my question to the anti-vamps still goes, why is having one type of infected (only monsters) better than having a bunch of types of infected (monsters are people and people are monsters)?

Exactly. And I know I've said this at least three times: there is no 'flowerchild', there is only 'interested in complexity instead of easy, oversimplified situations'.

It is *realistic* that there would be rights movements for all the weird things in SR, including sapient Infected. The unrealistic position is saying there's not (and it's contrary to the canon and SR4 rulebooks).

You could feed the essence of feral ghouls and ppl with a death sentence to vampires

Makes me wonder if it is the other infected that is keeping the ghoul population in check.

OOH! Plot Hook!

Makes sense. Is there any hint that vampires/etc. can't feed on Infected? Apart from the Wendigo, of course. I could see there being such a rule, but I don't remember seeing one now that you mention it.

I don't understand why this has to be an either or siutation? Why can't some infected metahumans be mindless, feral creatures (Which makes them none too different than a lot of uninfected people in a lot of cases) and others be normal people facing adversity? I mean as a GM i use what's best for the story I want to tell. The world of Shadowrun is big enough and diverse enough for both sides to be right, and more importantly OOC: useful. For me as a Game Master it's about keeping as many options open to make the game fun, not removing potential plot hooks, or avenues that could lead to fun for my group.

Because a feral ghoul is as sapient as a smart dog at best. While only really mentally-ill people behave like rabid dogs.
People are usually locked down somewhere aside from the rest of society, rabid dogs are put down. Choose which one feral ghouls resemble most.

@Irion
Say that to Russia, I think they would disagree with you. *Looks ate Yakut*

I've played a character who would kill ghouls on sight. I would no go out of my way to kill one, but if I ever spotted one during a tough situation, I would shoot first and ask questions later.

The essence drain power just requires a physical sapient being in RAW.
Therefore shapeshifters, sasquatches and other infectes should work.
Note that infecteds still count as metahumans as they can be targetet by spells restricted to metahumans (slay orc, elf etc.).

Another thing on the whole essence drain topic:
Renfield (Drug in Running Wild i think) provides 1w6 essence per use and need 1 essence to be created thus it would provide an infinte essence loop for vampires and banshees and their happy mook. And the best thing is : you feel fucking damn good for the whole week the stuff lasts.

Anybody up to feeding a loving vampire? Think of it : the drain essence power intensifies the emotion you have while being drained. image being drained while a hot banshee chick rides your lap and after a long night you just take your shot of renfield and bang you are filled up with essence again.
Aint that bad, huh?

Come spend a day with me at work. I know plenty perfectly rational people, who are violent and not mentally ill. In the end people are arguing their personal preferences.

They might be violent. I don't disagree, but I'm talking about mentally-ill people with a condition that makes them violent, not someone who resorts to violent to get what they need.

Sounds like a fun character; there are tons of possibilities for someone like that in a shadowrun game. However, only some (possibly most) Infected are monsters in the same sense that Invae, Wraiths and Horrors are. All of them (along with some other critters and types of humans; blood mages, toxics, insect shamans, shedim...to name a few) would be excellent targets for a 'monster hunter'. However, such a character works 'best' in games where both the player and the GM understand that not all of those targets will act like monsters. Most might, but there should really arise moral issues like what we've been discussing here.



I don't really think that Infected are a metaphor for AIDS victims, nor do I care if they are. I'm only basing my view of Infected on in-game, canon material.

The only reason that I've used real-life diseases as examples is to try and make a point: that the Infected ARE humans, albeit diseased, and that taking the stance that they should all be exterminated because they pose a threat is a very inhumane position to take.

For my examples, we can easily substitute VITAS for HMHVV - if there was a new VITAS outbreak, should those proven to be infected just be killed and burned instead of treated and possibly saved? After all, we've seen VITAS kill millions of people on each sweep - a MUCH bigger threat that HMHVV in anything but really long-term scenarios (and very few humans, and even fewer organizations and corporations, consider time-spans beyond a generation or three). So, to save those potential millions of victim, should we kill and burn the VITAS-infected without second thought or due process? Would you kill and burn your sick grandmother because she might infect you and kill you?





It's even been mentioned specifically that creatures with Esssence Drain can use it against other creatures with Essence Drain. I can't remember if there's a specific mention of this in SR4, however.




Exactly my point. There can be no case made that all Infected are inherently good and innocent. They're not. That's pretty much undisputable fact. Likewise, there is plenty of canon, in-game 'proof' that not all Infected are soulless monsters, and that some of them can have higher morals and better values, and work harder against social injustices, than a large part of metahumanity.




...and Slay (human) working on vampires is even further proof that they still ARE human, and just victims of a disease.

As far as Renfield goes...Interesting point; I wonder if the case with Renfield being a renewable source of Essence was intentional, or just an oversight? After all, if vampires can create pawns and feed off of them ad infinitum, there would be little reason to chose another method of draining Essence. I'm not sure I like that possibility. Something like that will create just the type of menial vampire-fetish world that Janessa so vehemently hates. Complexity is good in a game world, as well as in the real world.

Now, I can fully understand playing a character who is prejudiced against Infected for one reason or another (and I can come up with many, many reasons) and killing them any chance you get. That's fine, and can create a lot of interesting situations. But I have a hard time understanding why a player would take that stance and apply it to any scenario and any character that comes along; especially when that view so clearly contradicts canon -- to me, that seems like a whole lot of metagaming...

Potato, potatoe.

Since a Ghoul is a metahuman, a feral one should be treated as a feral human: apprehended (or be killed while trying to apprehend) by law enforcement and either incarcerated or treated.

If you treat Infected as non-human animals, you also take away their accountibility. After all, can you arrest a dog who rapes a human? One who steals? One who endagers others?

Treat an intelligent, thinking and communicating (metahuman) being as if he has no rights and no obligations, and chances are he or she will do what they can to take advantage of that. But hey, just kill them and forget about it, right?

In all honesty, do you expect anyone who isn't a psychopath or the like to not feel guilty about murdering say, a crying teenage girl pleading for her life while clutching a teddy bear, just because she's injured someone and likely will again? Especially if the person doing the killing normally has a strict moral code about killing? If the killer catches the girl brutally murdering or mutilating someone, that's one thing - I can understand that. But just off-hand murdering her?

Nightmares, and guilt-trips, and issues, oh my!

I always assumed this was the point of Renfield… that's why it's called 'Renfield'. It's supposed to allow relatively stable master-slave dynamics (logistically and socially).

I don't think there was an inherent Essence-well in vampiric pawns in previous editions, though...

One 'Renfield' pawn could supply a handful of vampires with all the Essence they need, forever (unless there's something about the creation of 'Renfield' we don't know of).

At a 'cost' of 4 Essence a month, you receive 4D6 points of Essence that month, which is on average 14 points; enough for the Renfielder, his master, and 8 more vampires. Some months, you'll lose a point, but most you'll go plus-minus zero or gain points.

This would shortly reduce the entire 'vampires prey on humans' debate to one issue: 'is this pawn willing or not?'. Bad idea, IMO. Just as bad as going on a crusade and killing as many Infected as we can muster... =/

I mean, you can tweak the numbers, or change the side effects, but presumably Renfield *is* fundamentally intended to create long-term servant relationships. It also has its own fun issues with being a drug, being an addiction, etc. I'm not saying the implementation is perfect, but it wouldn't exist and be called Renfield otherwise. Another option is to remove it entirely, of course. Also, screw previous editions.

My preferred implementation would have long-term degenerative effects.

@snowRaven
That's my question actually. Should feral ghouls be legally treated as mentally-ill, diseased humans or as diseased animals?

Relevant.

Where's an AC-130 when you really need one?

Nope, but if the disease was as bad as HMHVV, I'd give her to the CDC for quarantine, and once she passed from the disease, I'd consent to her body being burned to prevent others from getting sick. That's not happening in Shadowrun. Instead, there is call for giving the disease-ridden individuals full rights and privileges of a non-infected person, and to allow them to roam free because "They're people too!" Except by intentionally allowing them to interact with the public, you are exposing the public to a highly contagious disease and potential physical harm. I'm fairly sure that even in SR, that is frowned upon. One person's rights stop where they start negatively impacting the rights of another. (Though to be fair, our RL justice system seems to have forgotten this)

Oh, now we are using balance issues to prove our point...
Vampires are in the critter section, so they are critter.
Since there are no metahumans in the critter section, his word seems to exclude metahumanity.

Oh and the slay argument would mean, that orks are no humans. And since there is a slay vampire spell, but this spell would be useless against other metahumans...

Hm you need incredible forces to tear a human apart like that so easily.
So they must be ghouls or augmented, but only ghouls would do something like that.

Seriously: what the hell is going on there?



Keep the setting in mind. Today a small army of doctors and specialised personel would be deployed to contain such a disease if the relatives cant pay the state will and even if its just in self interest. We have laws here that strictly forbid to let a person die. You will get sentenced here if you dont help persons in life danger even if this persons doesnt have a passport or something, the hospital still will do anything they can to keep you alive at least.
The whole thing works totally different in SR. Approximately 60%-70% of sprawls are D or E zones where law enforcement is so weak and time delayed that its often too late to be somehow effective against all this hordes of desperates. No corp gives a damn fuck about all those people out there so even mundane diseases like cholera and the likes have an easy prey on people.
HMHVV is just one of them and a more serious one as it doesnt kill people of but change their necessities into eating parts of people or their essence.

Everybondy in SR knows that ghouls are ridiculously strong, vampires and banshees get paranormal powers and stop aging.
For some people who are on the bottom of the food chain becoming an infected is also an option of getting strong and powerful, an option to survive instead of starving or rotting away to a common disease because you cant afford medicine. And corpses are enough out there, you can even make one if you need to.
When your chances fade aways, you might take more radical paths in order to survive.



Please refer to Runners companion, there explicitly written that infecteds are metahumans and therefore can be targetet by spells who can target metahumans.
The argumentation is, that they can be targettet by those spells because they are still metahumans, not the other way round.
I went to my parents over christmas so i cant give you the citation from the book, please excuse me.

@Hamsnibit
They are called post-metahumans.

Yeah, I know this paragraph and it is "stupid" to say the least. Because it would actually mean that infected could still drown etc. Which actually they can't...
In the end it is an upright lie.
Can be effected by most the things affecting metahumans?
Poison? No. Disease? No. Aging? No. Food and Water are out of the window, too.
So yeah, it might have been a good idea to freaking do a positive list about it. Because if you go after "they are affected byeveryhing they do not have an immunity"... Well, the results might be a bit funny.

please provide a rules example where "the infacted" (incl. ghoouls, loup-garou etc.) cannot drown, do not age etc.
I'm 100% certain that a ghoul can drown.

@NiL_FisK_Urd
So the wording is not true for vampire?

I am alright with that...

Vampires has the induce dormancy "weakness" which make them literally fall asleep instead of dying when they are deprived of air.
I think by air, they specifically mean oxygen but thats just my personal impression.

My guess would be that they (Goodman?) wanted to pick up this cliche that vampires cant suffocate even when their magic attribute is reduced to 0. Powers diminish but weaknesses remain at that level.
Still theres no word about banshees which are merely a little different from human vampires so the interpretation at my table is that infecteds need to breathe very well. The fact they they have some kind of metabolism still working may be a hint in that direction.

The main question which is still open and was the reason for my very initial post here is: How and how much vampires/banshees are "alive" and how does their metabolism works?
An answer or hints to that question would help in the whole dietary requirement discussion.

So guys and gals ... what is it?
Spit or swallow?

You can still have Renfield be a drug to create long-term pawns, without giving the vampire 'free' Essence; sometimes in copious amounts (possibly as much as a net gain of 18 points in a month; the equivalent of draining three healthy non-augmented humans). This is really only acceptable if Renfield is highly costly to produce, or requires some very rare ingredients. Well, or if you really want to make Vampires and Nosferatu have a greater impact on the world by taking away a major drawback...



Besides what was already pointed out about dystopian problems in shadowrun: many expressions of HMHVV aren't *that* contagious. There's can be a good case for ghouls, but the problem is that they are likely to not die from the disease. So, if you quarantine your ghoul grandmother, she turns...and now you will actively have to kill her, let her slowly starve while under heavy restraint, or feed her metahuman flesh. None of those are situations most hospitals would like very much...so in this case, what would you do? You are informed that your grandmother is alive and healthy, stronger and more fit than ever, but looks a bit strange - except, she can now only consume raw flesh and a small portion of that has to come from humans. When you talk to her on the phone, she's pretty much the same person, says she feels great but is a bit hungry. She's really scared because she overheard the doctors talking about intentionally killing her, and she wants your help.



Orks aren't humans; they are metahumans. Distinct difference.







Umm...yes, it is true for Vampires. The text talks about Infected in general, and any exceptions to that are noted in their individual descriptions, as far as powers, weaknesses, and notes go. Where do you get the idea that Infected can't be affected by lack of air, poison, starvation, acids, disease, aging, mental problems; and whatever else you can think of that affects metahumans?



I'm not sure what you mean by 'funny results'...Infected can starve, though different Infected have different dietary needs (mentioned with their descriptions); Infected can surely drown or by choked to death, except where their descriptions and powers note differently. Those who do not have an Immunity to Age, Poisons or Disease will surely be affected by aging, poison or disease. Notice that a Vampire's 'breathing and heartbeat become shallower and slower (except when feeding). They still need to breathe, or they will fall into dormancy (noted in their description). Infected with regeneration won't be likely die from lack of air, though - they'll often regenerate any damage at a higher rate than they take it.

Also, note that the descriptions of Infected as 'post-metahuman' and the rest of the info in those sections are in the form of a sourcebook shadow-text, and NOT game rules; those come in the section 'game information', which clearly states that 'Infected are still metahumans'. There's little Jackpoint commentary in the 'sourcebook text', sadly - but the chapter on Drakes, just before the Infected-section, has it. See page 46 for information about the in-game nature of the document (Précis of a report from the International Committee on Human Rights'). As with all other shadow-talk documents and in-game points of view, that information isn't necessarily 100% accurate, since it represents the views and findings of people in the game world. It can be used to discuss the views of Infected from an in-game perspective, but not their game-mechanics 'true' nature.

So, talking about them from an in-game point of view, it is true that Infected aren't viewed as metahuman by most people, but it is equally true that there are rights-movements for several of them and that some countries allow legal registration of vampires for example; that some are employed by extraterroitorial corps, and that research funded by 'extensive grants' (from Aztechnology and Draco Foundation) is being done to create synthetic food for them and magical means for turning animal auras into 'metahuman' for purposes of feeding those who need the 'living energies of metahuman auras'.

Canon fluff, source-text and RAW is full of references for Infected-rights, and their complicated status as both actual metahumans and monsters in the view of the world. I can't honestly see how that can be disputed, regardless of anyone's personal feelings regarding them, or how they are treated in SR canon.

@snowRaven

The point is, that vampires in SR are stolen together from several settings and mixed in with SR elements.

"It is like, yeah it should turn people but they still shut be people, you know man for the moral and stuff"
"Yeah, man. That sounds right. But you know, lets put in this, this and this from stetting where vampirers are undead. Because it is cool"
"Cool. Yeah, I like the predator of the night style. Thats what I so like when playing mascerade"

The point is, this shit does not make sense if you start combining.
Lets start with the "Lack of air" thing.
This is super cool in a setting were Vampires are undead. (Mostly you do not need to get it airtight as far as I know, it just has to be an enclosed space)

So you can put a Vampire in Tomb, break down the wall, and the dead may rise.

The point is, in SR you have in the end no Idea how it should be handled at all. Well, since the lungs of any creature would be filled with air... So it can't be meant that way. Is it enough if I cut you off from the "surrounding" air? Does pressuered air help (diving?)?

Every possibility is out there...

The point is, the quality of their fluff makes it in my mind impossible to handle them anything else than a monster race... Or you start making up your own rules.

Exept for the part, that there are bounties on their heads...

Hey, this is a setting where regular old human beings, just because they lack a number attached to their identity, no longer officially exist and can be murdered by security guards without generating too much red tape.

Even a human WITH a number is often only safe from being murdered by a security guard because it's too much trouble to have to file all the paperwork.

It's a dystopia. Life and Human rights mean very little in these settings.



-k

Which just means, KarmaInferno, that it's not too much to asked that ghouls be treated the same.

Irion, I don't see how bounties in any way removes the "complicated status as both actual metahumans and monsters in the view of the world". It's just one more complication.

Actually, I don't understand why this 'can't drown' thing is an issue. Lots of things can't drown. Free spirits, metasapients, sapient water critters, whatever. Vampires are alive, and they can die (and there are other Infected besides vampires).

@Yerameyahu
Free spirits do not have a hearbeat etc.
It is defined what a free spirit is. So you can assume what kills and what maims a free spirit.
(Still, I think they are not defined good enough, if you go into details. And we all know that this is one of the reasons they are hardly playable under the given rules.)

I still don't understand the point. Everyone knows what kills and maims vampires, but how is that even relevant? Being able to drown is not part of any human rights definition I've ever heard. Have you switched to a playability argument? Because I don't think Infected are PC-playable anyway, and it has nothing to do with drowning.

@Yerameyahu
Well, I admit I switched arguments, because I think the moral debate is over. Yes, you can argue for both sides, thats all I actually wanted to say.
The point is, that the "moster" should be the more popular in a world like SR. Just lookt at what people think of TMs.
It always annoys me a bit, that the "heavy duty criminals" are even shown as the most "tolerant" punch. In Reality, it is mostly obvious they are not.

The point I was aiming at is, that it actually has not very much merit to make them "real NPCs" since they are actually not "playble". I mean not only not playable as PCs also if you use them as NPCs outside of "look at me, I am a Vampire".

The drowning was just one example where you just can't tell what the fluff really wants. (The point is, it does not make sense to have a negative quality which actually prevents you from drowning/suffocating.
And if they have a heartbeat, do they need the blood to reach their Organs? Can you strangle a Vampire?
This is all stuff, which is quite hard to cover in actual rules. For this I think you need a description of how vampires are supposed to funktion/look like...

Actually, I'd say criminals would be more tolerant, because it becomes a case of 'the enemy of my enemy is my sort-of-friend', or another way to look at is that you don't want to burn too many bridges, and if you can reason with the damn thing, you might be able to use it. So, all that weird stuff out there? You hedge your bets, see if you can get it to work with you, and go from there.

SR is full of 'bittersweet' negative (and positive) effects, so I don't find vampires-immune-to-drowning to be even weird, let alone imbalanced or anything. I agree that it's *unclear*, but many rules are. Presumably, they do need blood to circulate. If you strangle a vampire, they go dormant (=helpless), so that's fine with me too.

@Yerameyahu

Actually he would die... (After the rules....)

It's a big help, when we're talking about specific rules, particularly when there's some dispute, if we cite the location of the rule [preferably book+page], and maybe quote it for people who don't have books with them. It's easier, then, to make sure everyone's on the same page with regards to the rules being discussed.

@3278
Negative rules a can't be quoted, because they do not exist.

The point is, after the paragraph insufficient inhuman we would have to assume, that all which is not told to be different is the same than with metahumans.

Either way, Irion, I don't see how it's an *problem*. I was answering with my opinion based on your 'lack of oxygen to the brain' idea. We know that the SR4 rules aren't based on physics or biology, so it doesn't matter how strangulation 'really works'. Personally, no one ever strangles anyone in SR4 games, so I don't care. But neither one makes vampires more or less okay, and it's extremely aside from the discussion of Infected as people *or* PC-able.

Vampires haven't changed that much throughout the editions. My SR1 BBB (1989) description includes a lot of the same phrasing as my SR4A does. The only big change that leaps out at me is that the "Dietary Requirement: Blood" was added in the later editions, before that they took a small amount of symbolic blood along with Essence. What ever vampires are or aren't in SR, they've been that way for a long time.

As was said before, if you don't like vampires in general, you'll probably not like them in SR. SR vamps are based on the idea that there is a (magical) disease that existed in previous ages that all our mythologies of vampires in the popular imagination spring from. My pick for the biggest influence on SR vamps is probably Bram Stoker's Dracula. (It wouldn't be the White Wolf game series, if for no other reason than Vampire: The Masquerade didn't come out until two years after Shadowrun was first published-- although there is a pretty good argument to be made that SR was an influence on WW.)

Given the prevalence of the Twilight books and movies, I can understand anyone being sick of vampires. But rather than a reason to get rid of vamps in SR, I see it as just more bullshit the vamps in SR have to deal with. For every person who wants to burn them off the face of the earth with fire and acid, there's probably ten suburban housewives (or husbands) who are writing them love poetry. (Relevant, if mind boggling.)

You know, I think it's possible that, even here, you'd have a difficult time finding someone who would disagree with you on that statemen. However, if you believe that a vampire would die if he were strangled, that has to be based on something you've read in the rules: it would be helpful if you would cite what that is. And I'm not singling you out: I was very careful to make it a general recommendation, and not a personal complaint.


Here's a case in which a citation would be helpful. I think you're referring to a paragraph we discussed upthread, about something mentioned in Running Wild, but I don't have books with me, and a keyword search of the thread hasn't been useful. If there were a cite, I'd know at least what you were referring to.

It's totally cool to not do it - I mean, who the hell am I? - but it doesn't make much sense to say, "You can't do it when talking about the absence of a rule...now, about this rule that's not absent..."

@Yerameyahu
It was just one example I was bringing up to show what I mean... It is not any major thing.
The point is, if I incluede something, which ist not like in the real world and also "different" from the "normal" definition in fantasy, you should make the rules clear.

The point of vampires is, that they chose to make them different but did not care to explain in which aspects . So in the end "Vampire" burns down to the stats in the critter section of the core book. And everything there is more or less things to be shot from a metagaming point of view.

@3278
Yes, it was. But actually it does not matter.
My only clue is that there is nothing else mentioned and they still have heartbeat and bloodflow. So if you interupt it, and most things which apply to metahumans also apply to infected it would need to be mentioned anywhere if strangeling could not kill them...

Martin de Vries feeds on the Infected. I mention a fight between him and a wendigo in Street Legends. They're both trying to Essence Drain one another (though Rigger X doesn't know this), and de Vries gets the upper hand.

Missed this the first time around. Yeah, they could do that, but it's a hell of a waste on the part of the vampire. Renfields lose Essence just like vampires do; occasional doses of Renfield are the only things that keep them from flatlining. Besides that, vampires male pawns for other reasons...not as perpetual snacks (though a number of them would, in fact, probsbly volunteer for that duty).

I really need to expand on Renfields in the future.