Like I said, it's a major plot point in Interview with the Vampire, for one. (I think, heh.)

What else does purging internal organs means?

I don't know about you, but part of College is "Puking one's guts out", yet I still have internal organs.

...

Or is that just a Canadian thing?

Um…no. Your reasoning is officially rejected.

The Infected are not allegories for AIDS victims, or [insert group X as you please]. Such comparisons are ludicrous and totally invalid. Why? Because none of those people have been turned into creatures that are compelled to hunt down other sentient beings, murder them, and then EAT them.

This isn’t the World of Darkness. This also isn’t some Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, or Charlaine Harris angst-fest about being a lonely, misunderstood, immortal creature of the night. Such people have picked up the wrong game – try Vampire: The Masquerade (or Requiem, if your standards are that low) or Twilight the RPG or something. This is Shadowrun, and here the Infected are monstrous predators who, in the case of ghouls especially, are sufficiently predatory and infectious that George Romero ought to be invited to GM a few sessions at GenCon some year if the developers would actually start taking that into account instead of just sweeping it under the rug.

So, again, wanting to see them wiped off the face of the planet is not an instance of Fantastic Racism – it’s about wanting to contain a plague the likes of which has the potential to give Resident Evil a real run for its money. It’s about survival for all the rest of the non-Infected…those who haven’t (yet) been killed and eaten by the Infected.

I repeat – without apology – they’re monsters, not people, and they should be burned off the face of the planet.

Some of them? Sure. Most of them? Possibly. All of them? If they had another option given to them?

Don't forget that Dunkie's Will even gives them a chance. Gotta wonder what the reasoning behind that is...

Well Janessa at your table that may be chip truth. The rest of us aren't obligated to buy into your opinions.

Holy crap. I guess all that stuff about ghoul food banks and sapient Infected didn't happen. Oh well. It *is* much easier to consider everything in black and white, after all. Mostly, I just can't imagine caring that much, it looks exhausting.

I'm basing this off of what I've read in canon - I fail to see how it doesn't back me up.

Purging means "to empty" not "to remove."
As CanRay indicated, "Purging your internal organs" is another way for saying "Puking your guts out."
Used in other interesting temrs like "Binge and Purge."

Just because you choose to see Canon as backing your play doesn't mean that Canon isn't open to interpretation.

All roleplaying games have a long history of allowing people to customize the setting as they see fit. And since you've clearly made up your mind I fail to see where it'd be productive to argue with you. Simply put I don't think Canon backs your play a hundred percent, any more than it backs any ones play. But if you're having fun, good for you. I'll keep doing what's fun at my table for my players.

The fact that canon is changing indicates that you have little ground to reliably stand upon. Your opinion is obviously shared by MOST of the civilized world in Shadowrun, but not ALL of the Civilized World. Especially by those who are not the way that you portray them to be.

Yeah, that's the part I had objections with.



Errata it away?

Please?

Banshee's being hemovores ruin the canon-inity of my Banshee hispanic elf ganger Carlos who believes he's a vampire and thus drinks the blood of his victims because he thinks he has to...

It's just something of a hot button issue for me - the whole, seriously annoying trend by the developers (and players) of Shadowrun to continually angst and moan about the treatment of the poor, oppressed monsters who want to kill and eat them. Makes no sense, yet it keeps going on and on...

Next up will be Horror Rights. So they want to torture, maim, and kill everything on the planet. Is that so wrong? Aren't we just imposing our values on them? We should try to look at things from their perspective and correct our unenlightened attitudes. Just because they're a race of pure evil incarnate demons from the netherworlds who want to gleefully rip us to pieces for their own enjoyment doesn't mean we can't be friends. Geez...

I think the theme of 'carnivore with a conscience' has been adequately explored in our culture that I don't need to say anything, though. No one's saying, 'allow murderers to run free'. And, thanks to Patrick Goodman, they even tweaked the RAW infectiousness to be more sensible.

The point was never that everything is teddy bears and roses, just as much as the point *is* that everything isn't mindless monsters.

TJ, if that's the case then… why would it even be in there? It's a totally meaningless description, even if your faulty linguistic analysis were right. 'Purge' can mean *either* one: removing organs makes sense from vampire lore, while 'clearing the system' is just extremely awkward and unnecessary. Either is possible, depending on the magic. The former is inconsistent with other fluff, and the latter is just awkward writing. Alas.

Luckily you're not required to abide by it. I mean seriously, if you don't like something don't use it. I mean I like some fo the people developing and writing for the game-hell some of them have sat at my table, and hoisted cold drinks with me. But they're just people like you and I.

I personally use it for what it's worth. Some Vampires in my game are monsters-others aren't I'll use them in a way that furthers our fun.

But definitely I hope they listen to your input and compare it to everyone else's.

I'd say it was in there because they did not want to use the more common "puke your guts out" terminology. I agree with you in that it is just bad/awkward writing. *shrug*

Well, I certainly can't say that you haven't been an exceedingly civil debate opponent.

Hopefully they will indeed listen to both of our viewpoints the next time something official is written up on the Infected.

Ah, we're not opponents. You just see something you don't like. Isn't that your right as a customer?

Well, that's certainly one way to look at it, I suppose. Canon does bounce around on this issue like a ping-pong ball - I think almost more than anything I'd like a clear answer on this. Some books go on about the "gains" of the Infected in gaining more civil rights worldwide. Others, like Feral Cities (Lagos), IIRC, talk about the truckloads of people rounded up daily in Africa by slavers and murdered to provide food for the ghouls of Asamundo. I read entries like that and think that Thor Shot target practice followed by a good wide-area crop dusting of FAB III sounds like a real good idea...

Ironically, if they puked their guts out… they'd be purging those guts from their body. Hehehe.

The English Language is a wild and harsh mistress...

You know, the more I think of it, the more I'm reminded of this!

I think technically it would refer to emptying the "Guts" since they are able to hold a thing rather than being the thing themselves so the out would be the emptying of the "guts". Maybe?

Vampires and their ilk ARE the victims of an uncurable disease, however. They are still people (well, some of them are, at least). Those who are still fully sentient beings, and who do not use their condition as an excuse for glee-filled killing-sprees, can get by without killing people. You can sort of compare it to people with diseases that will kill them unless they get bone marrow transplants, organ translants, or whatever. If they find a donor, they can live. Same goes for many of the infected, except they need donors all the time.



...except that in several of the sources you quoted, vampires can survive just fine on animals - they CHOOSE to kill and murder, which make them a lot worse than Shadowrun vampires. Plus, in the above-mentioned sources they are undead, i.e. not human anymore (and often ridiculously powerful) -- much more fitting of your 'monster' description.



I agree - it's not a case of 'fantastic racism', because they are not a race - it's a disease. So, wanting them burned off the face of the planet is somewhat similar to wanting Ebola victims - or those of any highly contagious disease - to suffer the same fate. Most HMHVV II victims, and feral ghouls, I'll agree are a very serious problem (especially without the unofficial errata for HMMVV II - now there's a plague waiting to happen...)



That's only ONE opinion, albeit one shared by large parts of the sixth world. Canon-wise, there have been speakers for ghoul rights since 1st Edition, and they grow more numerous all the time. So you might as well say that by canon, ghouls 'are people too'. They need fairly low amounts of metahuman flesh to survive, and there are a lot of ways to feed ghouls without having them go around and kill people. Of course, many of them are tasteless at best and often morally and/or ethically debateable -- just like many other practices.

Vampires and their ilk pose a different problem, but there has been canon speakers for their rights for a long time as well, just fewer of them. Some nations have bounties on them, while others give them SINs - this has been true since at least 2nd Edition (if I remember correctly), so it's not 'new'.
Supplying vampires with Essence is a more difficult matter - especially with those types of vampire require eating of the flesh or organs of still living subjects to do so--no way around that, really. Ethically, those people would probably have to be 'treated' with euthanasia.

But even if you support the view of them being non-humans (often false, strictly canon-speaking) you can't just legally go on a rampage and put them down. If they are animals, they have to be treated according to the laws that apply to all other animals dangerous to mankind. That is, you can't kill them off-hand because of what they are. In theory, populations could feed off of each other and leave metahumans well and alone, and you would only have to 'put down' those who prey on humans - and that can only legally be done after the fact (well, unless you're in Quebec...).

By 'canon', the rights and treatment of the Infected is a complicated matter that different countries and cultures have chosen to deal with in different ways, and this has been 'canon' for pretty much 15-20 years now.

In reality, focus should mostly lie with combating the virus, and working on a cure - NOT on executing those who happen to have been infected by it. The torch-and-pitchfork approach has been used countless times in human history towards that which humans either cannot (or will not) understand, or what they fear--be it lepers, natives, infidels, witches, wolves, or whatever.

Well it looks like you get to fight some one.

i definitely agree with snowRaven

This thread is being watched with interest. Just saying....

Janessa, when it hits, I hope you'll read my story "Another Rainy Night."

Patrick,

That's good to hear. And I'll certainly check out your story - when/where is it due to be published? I suppose it doesn't matter - I buy any/all new SR products that come out (as PDFs, I like my gaming library digital), so I'm bound to acquire it.

Will post/respond more later this evening when I have more time.

I enjoy debating the civil rights of imaginary creatures.

I've found the canon to be fairly consistent on the "monsters are people too" matter. That is, sometimes there are vamps and ghouls who are mindless killing machines, and sometimes they're people infected with a disease who are doing what's necessary for survival. They don't have to be all one way or the other.

If corporations are staffed by basically normal people and they're still capable of exploiting any human misery for profit-- say, by withholding lifesaving medications from the great unwashed so they can make a lot of money selling it to people of means-- it makes one wonder if the monsters are really all that bad.

MImimi, the goth vampire fanboys are whitewashing their special snowflakes by removing their weaknesses...well, that would be your reaction if somebody else announced that

@Vanessa:

...the game which introduced the theme of Infected rights ages ago, and where killing people for sustenance is what the typical session is about. So before you tell other people to GTFO from your sacrosanct setting, maybe YOU should evaluate if this is the game for you...

It's hard to call people like Tamir Gray, Hannibelle, and Jetblack as "monsters"; they're just as sentient as you and I or anyone else in the Sixth World.

What happened in Chicago post-FAB III was seen as a tragedy by a large portion of the world - a large(ish) community of sentient beings killed by the equivalent of magical gas. Why else would there be a memorial to them? Or the fight for their cause taken up by folks like Dunkelzahn?

The nice thing about Shadowrun is that they've taken steps to show that with the horror that comes from transformation, there's still some hope. Tamir Gray was seen as a prophet. Jetblack is still a decent guy. Sure, Asamando has had to take certain "steps" in order to keep themselves protected, but they're actually one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.

I just can't agree with painting people infected with a magical disease (which is why if you brought this question to my table, I'd just give you a look and say, "seriously? A wizard did it,") as "monsters" and then ending their lives for no reason other than, "he eats people!".

Yeah, he eats people, but so do you. Or are you a vegetarian?

I have taken all vampires to be my province...and since no one else is really doing anything with them....

It's currently scheduled for a January release, if I read things correctly.

ravensmuse, plants are people too!

Didn't say I wouldn't give them some other weakness. I just don't find that one to be at all in character, in keeping with tradition, or in keeping with the previous editions in terms of how banshees are/were handled.

Things are not going to be all fun and games for vampires, starting...well, soon. Not gonna be fun and games for the rest of the population, either, for much the same set of reasons.

I hope this story does well; I'd love to write the rest of them.

Looking forward to it!

That said, I really appreciate that you are working with the Infected - they've been on the back-burner for far too long! (Oh, and PC stats for the new ones in RW would be really awesome! I like the 'hunt' connection between Banshee and Harvester, as well).


IMO, Vampires had it easier than Banshees in earlier editions - the vamp had to seduce/terrify the victim and drink some blood to drain essence, while the Banshee had to 'toy' with them, scare them and hunt them down, which is harder to find a good secluded spot for. The way I saw it, the weakness of the Banshee way of feeding was that their victim had a greater chance of escape (though still small, probably) and they took a larger risk of being discovered while feeding.

(Going with the 'it takes the victims Essence minutes to drain 1 point' rule, the vampire can do this in any 'safe' spot after doing their prep work, but the Banshee has to hunt and scare the victim for those long, long minutes)

As a PC, it would take a whole other level of prep work to effectively feed in that manner...

I was not presenting any reasoning. I was presenting some observations about some other people's intentions. I was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with any beliefs you may hold about the Infected in Shadowrun. My advice to you would be to set the testosterone on the back burner. This isn't a debate, and it's not a fight. It is a conversation, or a dialog. Neither of us will win anything, no matter where the discourse leads. If you're interested in having an opponent - and it seems that you are - please, look elsewhere.


I believe that they are. I've talked with developers and freelancers about this for a couple decades now, and yes, the Infected rights issue is indeed an allegory for [insert group X as you please]. Your objection seems to be that it's an inaccurate allegory, and I would not dispute that: the nature of metaphors is that they are, by definition, not precise. The "twist" in this allegory is that Infected need to do something to sentient beings in order to survive, typically something on the spectrum of "something bad," which is obviously something that's not true about, say, Gypsies. [Well...*]


Perhaps you're operating under a mistaken belief that all Infected are creatures who are compelled to hunt down and kill other sentient beings. This is, in fact, not true. If the Infected in Shadowrun were senseless monsters [barghest], or murderous-but-mindless [Loup-Garou during their phase of the moon], the question would indeed be more cut-and-dried, but in many cases, the question is one of nuance and subtlety. Many Infected needn't kill; in fact, many don't require metahuman flesh or Essence at all.

In the case of Infected with no ability to avoid killing metahumans, but who have sentient intelligence, we're faced with a situation much like any horrific contagion: killing [or allowing to die] a minority of sentient beings, to avoid the deaths of the remainder of sentient beings. It's necessary but horrific, and a situation which has not existed in reality, and which thus can only be explored through a fantasy allegory such as this. Roleplaying games can be fertile ground for such explorations of the human condition under artificially distorted circumstances.

It should be noted that assuming the whole is identical to a few is also common to prejudice and discrimination of other forms. I don't mention this because I think you're some sort of horrible person for not liking the Infected - this is all fiction, right? - but rather to point out that this very debate exists because the Infected are an effective - if imprecise, by its nature - allegory for discrimination of other types.


My apologies: I of course didn't realize your family had been eaten by ghouls, which I assume is the cause of your powerful reaction to this fictional tolerance. You of course have my deepest condolences. ;)

*Poor Gypsies. If I said, "Dude, that guy totally jewed me out of five bucks!" most people would look at me askance. Substitute "gypped," and no one blinks an eye. We get a similar pass on dissing the Welsh.

You can have them.

Me, I have taken all knowledge to be my province, just like Sir Francis Bacon and Captain Chaos.

Ok, time to get armed with canon. Somehow inviting Burt Gummer to come around for a pithy quote seems appropriate, but moving on…

For purposes of discussion here, I will stick strictly to SR4 materials. At the moment, that’s Runner’s Companion, pp. 59 – 63 and 76 – 83, which deals with the specifics of creating Infected characters and their unique Qualities. I note here the complete list of all 10 Infected monsters and their feeding habits/requirements:
1) Bandersnatchii: Carnivorous and cannibalistic; Dietary Requirement (Sasquatch Flesh). Sasquatches are sentient beings, so they’re eating people here.
2) Banshees: Hemovores; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Blood), Essence Loss.
3) Dzoo-Noo-Qua: Omnivorous, but prefer raw meat and are cannibalistic; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Essence Loss.
4) Fomoraig: Omnivorous, but prefer raw meat; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh).
5) Ghouls: Carnivorous and cannibalistic; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh).
6) Goblins: Omnivorous with cannibalistic tendencies; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Essence Loss.
7) Loup-Garou: Carnivorous and cannibalistic; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh).
8 ) Nosferatu: Omnivores, but must consume some metahuman blood; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Blood), Essence Loss (every 6 months).
9) Vampires: Hemovores; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Blood), Essence Loss.
10) Wendigo: Omnivorous, but cannibalistic and prefer raw meat; Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Essence Loss.

All infected have the Dietary Requirement of at least 5% of their body weight per week, or they will enter slow starvation (Runner’s Companion, p. 78). Essence Loss is 1 point per month (SR4A Core Rules, p. 298); technically this should be every 4 weeks or 13x per year as it’s “every lunar cycle.”

Metahuman Flesh/Blood: This is the one where you, and others, are arguing for some wiggle room on behalf of the monsters. Apparently cloned metahuman flesh doesn’t work for them, though I don’t see a real reason for why this is so. As it must be the real thing, there’s a bit of a problem in that you need a sufficient number of people dying on a constant basis to supply this (if it’s flesh, as opposed to blood, which is obtainable non-lethally and possibly even legally). That said, this is the Sixth World, so one can argue that this is not likely to be a big problem given the constant violence present in any given city. However, given the number of Infected around (do we have any confirmed real numbers in canon for this, as opposed to fanon speculation?), I would assert that at some point they’re likely to end up hungry. It’s unlikely that everyone that dies in a given city/area will cheerfully and willingly give up their flesh upon death to the Infected for consumption, and they may very well to be unable to steal corpses from any given area in sufficient quantity to stay fed. Almost certainly, I’ll bet that at some point they’ll be forced to…help the process along a bit by arranging for the early death of sufficient people to fill their bellies. This is certainly the case for Asamando, as per Feral Cities (Lagos), pp. 62, 70, 72, and 83, who apparently like to order takeout. That place needs a generous helping of several Thor Shots and some FAB III, stat, I say.

Essence Loss: This one is the real kicker – blood they could get from a blood bank but Essence has to come from live people. Such monsters must permanently maim at least one person per month to keep up with their dietary requirements (twice per year for Nosferatu). I say this as, the last I checked, Essence Loss is rather permanent, barring the Revitalization therapy as per Augmentation, pp. 84 and 88, which is rather pricey and lengthy to boot. So, if they spread this out to the maximum number of victims, this is still 12 permanently maimed victims per year (2 for Nosferatu), at minimum, just to keep them alive and healthy. You could possibly find donors for this, but it’s not like a particular donor can last all that long; and if they drain them all the way, they’ll infect them, adding to the problem by creating more of their kind. I would argue that this really isn’t sustainable unless the population of such creatures is rather low worldwide. Inevitably, they will kill people – and those they kill will rise to kill others, and so on. And please note that 6 out of the 10 possible Infected monsters have this Quality.



Yes, in some of them they can. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from going on and on (and on and on and on…) about the constant temptation of the “real thing,” and bemoaning their tragic fate – “Oh, woe! Oh, angst! I am a pitiful creature of the night, constantly tempted by real human blood.” Gah, someone hand me a hammer and stake just so that I can shut these little Mary Sues up…

At any rate, the point I was making was that settings such as the World of Darkness are far more appropriate for the angstier-than-thou character the OP wanted to create as per his expanded post on Page 2, Post #28. Seriously, VtM is all about that; especially the darn LARPers. Sufficient exposure to those people at game shops had me periodically showing up to the occasional LARP game – as a vampire hunter. “Die, wangsty twits!”



I’ll say again, comparing HMHVV to any RL disease is a totally invalid comparison. It is not AIDS. It is not Ebola. It is not Leprosy. That comparison just does not work as there is no RL disease that fairly quickly transforms its victims into super-powered killing machines – you’d need actual magic for any disease to have that effect on its victims, but that’s literally the case for HMHVV in SR, which makes all the difference in the world. No Ebola victim will suddenly jump up off their sickbed and try to tear your throat out with their newly acquired sharp teeth and claws. To quote Dawn of the Dead (1978): “Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!”

Now, that’s not strictly true in SR. Victims drained of all Essence by a vampire will rise as vampires themselves, but people ripped to pieces by ghouls are just…ghoul chow. That said, someone who has been scratched or bitten by a ghoul is rather like being bitten by your typical Hollywood zombie, and this is where we get into full-on George Romero zombie apocalypse territory as that infection is very difficult to resist (and my fellow players wonder why I go on runs dressed in full sealed-tight body armor, just in case) – seriously, HMHVV III in particular is nasty stuff.

It’s been said before here, and I’ll echo it again – even with the adjusted infection rules, I see no reason why the ghoul population has not reached global pandemic numbers, with the very strong possibility of transforming a good chunk of the world’s population into ghouls in just a few years. Such a situation is not the time to play happy-joy-hug-the-friendly-ghouls-let’s-all-be-friends. Either contain them – or join them. It really will come down to that, sooner rather than later.



After a bit of refreshing my memory by perusing my older edition files, I’ll concede that this strain of nonsense has indeed been around a while. That said, I can’t help but perceive the newest edition as featuring the most “Shiny Happy Politically Correct Infected” to date. Just, ugh.

As for not being able to “just legally go on a rampage and put them down,” well, skipping the “legal” part, that’s exactly what I do – we are playing shadowrunners here – when has legality stopped us? Experience has taught our normal SR GM to not feature the Infected at all. She’s sympathetic to them, while she knows I hate them utterly. Unless it would totally screw up a run, upon sighting one of these abominations (and I’m constantly on an astral lookout for them), I will immediately abandon all other objectives in favor of wiping them out. In quick succession, Fireballs, Toxic Waves, and Force 6 Fire Elementals are coming down on them like a load of bricks and I don’t stop until every single last one of them present is dead and burned to ashes. Accordingly, these days, the Infected are typically “out there in the background,” but exceedingly unlikely to put in an appearance anywhere near the party (or at least nowhere near me); I concede that given our difference of opinion, this is probably for the best. That said, my character background notes that my PC spends her weekends hunting down the Infected as a hobby – forget the bounties, it’s just her way of giving back to the community in a meaningful way.

As for a cure, while that would certainly be nice, until it’s found the Infected must be contained. As they typically resist being contained, more permanent measures are the safest to protect the rest of non-Infected society. I realize we disagree on this, but since we’re not at the same gaming table, I suspect we can both live with that.

Yup. Again, no one said they're all *not* monsters. But 6/10 isn't 10/10, and the metahuman flesh requirements are actually crazy small in terms of actual mass. Neither are all the variants equal in population numbers. Lots of people die all the time, so there are indeed sources for them.

So, do we damn them all for the minority (or even a sizable majority) being monsters?

Weren't Trolls considered Monsters not that long ago? And Magicians? And Technomancers?

...

OK, Technomancers are still monsters that can hack your kid's brains while they're doing their homework so you should turn them into your nearest Mega for the bounty, but that's another story.

EDIT: That said, what do you do with the Monsters and the People? How do you separate the two? Do you even bother to try?

And that, gades and lentlemen, is the hook that is firmly placed upon the HMHVV-Rights issues.

Yes, that's the plan. Enough of them are that extermination is the safest course of action.


Trolls don't eat people. Neither do Magicians. Nor Technomancers. Or any other non-Infected metatype.


CanRay, I'm so glad you asked me that! Personally, I set the bar fairly low here - namely, are you compelled by your nature to eat sentient beings? If yes, you are a Monster. If no, you are a Person. I realize I could certainly have higher standards here, but this is the Sixth World (in all it's dystopian glory), so I'm sort of grading on the curve here.

I know someone already said it: humans are compelled by their nature to eat sentient beings… constantly.

There are more than 10 types of Infected. If you have Running Wild, page 55 onward would be most illuminating.


"Hundreds of thousands of individuals from six sapient species; that number rises into the tens of millions when you count ghouls." [RW, p57] That's number of infections since 2011, not population, so the actual population of the Infected is comparatively low.


Yes, at some point, some of them will. Economics and mathematics dictates this would be true. Whether it's worth killing all these sentients for something some of them will do is a matter of some debate.


Perhaps some of your frustration comes from sources with which I'm not familiar. Where are you seeing this mass of Infected in canon talking about the temptation of metahuman flesh? Is this in every book, or just several pages in a few books?


Seriously?

Really? I eat cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep, and fish, oh, and plants of various sorts. I have yet to notice demonstrable sentience in any of them. If you have conclusive evidence of such, I'm sure the scientific community would love to hear it. Chickens in particular I've found to be momumentally stupid - seriously, have you ever raised any? I have.

[tangent] Just wanted to throw these out there, regarding vampire LARPs...

a friend of mine is a long standing player in some of the local vampire LARPs; a year or three ago, one Malkavian player showed up with a bottle full of glitter and started sprinkling it on various players... he met Final Death very, very quickly, but was apparently very satisfied at getting some of the players to break their composure...

And, on another occasion, my old gaming mentor--S'TarKan, a.k.a. Viridian, if anyone's familiar--was at a convention and some of the younger LARPers got out of hand and started bothering the other guests; they needed to shut down the LARP in ten minutes or the hotel was going to throw them out. So, he fills out a character sheet on the fly, goes into the hall where all of the LARPers were gathered, marched up to the sprinkler system, set it "off" and the Storyteller announces that everyone just took 15 aggravated damage from the holy water sprinklers because everyone was too busy scheming/plotting/backstabbing/etc to go deal with vampire hunter who just strode in... thank you, and have a nice convention... [/tangent]

Mostly, I agree with Janessa's comments regarding the Infected; the comparison to HIV/AIDS I feel is actually somewhat insulting to those people who have the RL disease--they don't feel the need to go out and infect other people with it IRL--and that the ones who angst about it need to find a different game. However, it is possible to explore having a Horror Hunger character that's dealing with persecution without angsting, whining, or jumping down the slippery slope to become a complete monster. But it's a difficult line to toe and I doubt that I would allow an Infected PC without a lot of lobbying from a good RPer who I know will avoid the common pitfalls.

Now, it being part of the world and everything, I will admit to having a few recurring NPC contacts in my game that are Infected (all but one are ghouls), who try to integrate and, instead of angsting about it, deal with their problem and try to be, well, productive members of society (even if that society is on the wrong side of the law). As my ghoul street doc NPC (ex-DocWagon paramedic; got infected in the line of duty and dropped like a hot rock despite 9 years of service) put it, "Yeah, I got dealt a bad hand. Doesn't mean I'm gonna whine to the dealer about how unfair it is. Nah, I'm gonna play the best game I can. So, how're those cracked ribs feeling?"

However, I will note that I've houseruled the ghoul strain to not be so incredibly nasty (reducing the power and penetration and changing the vector to Injection), so, yeah...

*glances at clock* God, is it midnight already? Okay, post now before...

Cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep, and fish are all sentient. Some plants are arguably so, although I'd consider the argument strained.

Um...okayyyyyyy. Is there some hidden civilization of talking, thinking animals that I've missed all my life, outside of cartoons, anyway? You've basically just announced that 2+2=5. If you honestly, truly, believe that, I'm not really sure what to say.

Thank you; I try.

Not too long ago, I had cause to run some numbers to find the worldwide Infected population. While these numbers aren't hard and canonical (yet), they're a pretty guesstimate.

Sentience apparently doesn't mean what you think it means. That's okay. You can admit that you made a simple mistake and move on.

Now, how do you deal with criminals, especially murderers, or just plain cannibals? Are they non-persons?

I confess, I tend to use sentience and sapience fairly interchangeably, could you issue a clarification on the definition you are using?

As for cannibals, yup, monsters.