Pr maybe this is all planned by the GM and Fueldrop is acting in a manner he(the GM) expected and is both planning for and hoping for. Really those of us not in the game don't know.

Back to the topic, i'd say you can't go wrong with liberal use of explosives.

I'd go with Plan C: Have your chummers onboard from the outset. Zap the sonofabitch into submission with full auto stick 'n shock, have the troll manually subdue him while you put him in restraints (including face restraints,) and sell him the fuck off. If he's that much of a psychopath, someone has a bounty out on him.

If he doesn't have a bounty out on him, then just frag the sonofabitch and leave him facedown in a ditch down in the puyallups. The Shadows may be a rough place, but someone who's that completely maniacal that you have to actually worry about him turning you into dinner is going to cross the wrong group somewhere, and somewhen, and it might as well be you and your group that gets the reward money, or just the peace of being able to sleep at night in your own damn doss.

Ahh, you met the ex I see, so how is she?

And yes you are quite correct, however the question was would you trust working with Hanni and I gave a possible way to work with him for a run. Longterm is a whole other ball of wax.

Would I choose to work with him? Probably not unless the circumstances really warrant it, like he is somehow critical to the success of the run and even then I would need a seriously good reason for wanting to take the job.

Otherwise I would tip my hat and bid the Johnson and Co. adieu and get the hell out of there.



Again, depends on circumstances.

Should you have to act a certain way when addressing a Yak Oyaban (ie bowing, proper address) in the middle of his own compound so you don't get cut up for chum by his guards? Same mindset applies.

As enjoyable as the thought of taking that superior smirk off his face with a panther cannon may be, there can be circumstances where it might not be the best idea.


Thank You
The List is also handy when working with the Yaks/Triads or other group-oriented career criminal psychopaths, not just the flesh eating ones.


+1. Nothing wrong with walking away from a bad run/situation.
I would still talk with the GM first before leaving the group entirely as maybe the whole thing could still be defused, but ultimately you as a player can and should be able to vote with your feet.
Granted from the way this sounds it probably is going to go south, but one should still try to address this with the GM.

Awww... that wasn't even the full dissertation, just the cliff notes.
But yeah, someone needs to talk with the GM because there seems to be a riff forming here that seriously needs to be addressed.


Burning your bridges (and vamps) behind you entirely might be a bit extreme, but again a lot depends on the dynamic between the player and GM.

Everyone should be there to have fun and maybe the GM honestly doesn't see the issue because it is his pet or he has a longterm game plan that actually works to the benefit of the group or society
One example may be a vamp searching for a cure to their condition that doesn't require a wood enema, a napalm bodywash or SuperTan™. Nick Knight anyone?
Of course the one snag is he probably won't tell you everything since that would be a spoiler, but at least try to find out where he is wanting to go with this before lighting everything on fire.
If Fire ends up being the best option, WP all the way.



A good plan but one that should be done outside of the main run itself.


Don't want to work with the psycho... walk away from the run, then get your crew together to pay him a visit on your own time & dime.

There is no shame in walking away from a bad run whereas even if you ace the S.O.B. it doesn't reflect well that it happened on the job.
You might not care, but the Johnsons will as will some of your peers, who might applaud the action itself, but still think it should have been dealt with off the clock.

Going into a run with the intent to screw with one or more of the team during some aspect of the run is the Johnson's job and you don't want to be a Johnson.

On a related note, word is there is a ShadowKickStarter going for taking out Haze and you might want to get in on that action if the pool gets big enough.

Except that Shadowrunners are often just as bad as he is in the Shadows. Really.
Shadowrunners kill for profit and often for pleasure. They tend to take great delight in mayhem.

So, my question for you, Faelan, is do you treat all shadowrunners in the same manner. The smart ones tend to minimize the impact of personality and are very professional in their endeavors. All the rest piss in every one's Wheaties and then you have blood, pain and death. Which are you? Personally, I do not care for the infected. I don't run with them if I can help it. However, that is not ALWAYS possible, and terminating them at the end of a run (or arranging for them to die DURING the run) means I will likely not be hired in the future (Not that I am not like Old Man Jones - Contingencies are always in place if things turn south, but why instigate when you don't have to). So, Professional or Loose Cannon? Which is it?

What? That sounds an awful lot like Silly Talk to me Critias.

I walk away from those missions. There is no such thing as a must take mission. As to Shadowrunners being just as bad, I disagree. Been in plenty of games where if you had to shoot it was a failed mission. I don't knowingly work with addicts, and that is what infected are. They have to have their sustenance, they have no choice, and you are that sustenance. A regular runner can choose to betray you or not, nothing you can do about that, just try to mitigate the circumstances. Infected will always in the end betray you, they do not have a choice. So I choose to be a professional who does not work with loose cannons, and infected are wired to be loose cannons.

Infected that are making a real concerted effort to be civil and non-threatening to their teammates will tend to go out of their way to make that clear.

If you run into one that isn't perfectly upfront about their condition and making copious assurances that they can be trusted? Be wary.

I mean, one could be lying about being safe and trustworthy, but if they're not even bothering to lie about it...

Be polite. Be professional. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet. That includes teammates, and not just the infected ones.


-k

At the risk of sounding emotionally sensitive, find a better way to express yourself please. One that isn't prancing the lines of the ToS.

Prancing? I like that. Will have to remember that one.

Here to serve.

My little Line Prancer . . my little Line Prancer . . aaahaaa haaa haa

I would base the decision as to whether or not to run with addicts on a per character basis. Most of my characters would, but some wouldn't. Some characters in either category might make exceptions depending on circumstances.

This is the thing, just because a sentient infected character must feed, it doesn't mean that it will feed on you or even anybody you know. Runners are not low-hanging fruit. Just like it would be a deadly mistake to steal from the runners to get a fix, the infected NPC should know that trying to feed on the team would be even worse. I hope your GM doesn't think that a vampire would plot to gain the trust of shadowrunners in order to feed upon them.

*Depends on what they're addicted to and how bad they're addicted. Someone with a tobacco addiction is a non-issue. Worst-case and I get stuck with him on stakeout, I'll bring my own wheels, or if we're stuck in the same vehicle, a mask and a respirator. Someone with an alcohol problem could be trouble if they show up drunk, but I'll keep a slap-patch of sober-up (they have that by the sixth world, right?) on hand. Getting into harder stuff gets worse: you don't want to Run with someone who has a raging addiction to Kamikaze, but the rest of it is on a continuum.

Also, sex addiction? That probably won't be an issue at all. (EP has this as a possible addiction. I take it for my characters. )

⁑ Yeah, really. Infected with resources and self-control can even manage to ethically source their foot: Ghouls can make a chummer at the morgue or Tanamous to provide their supper, for instance.

⊛ That would be suicidally stupid, especially for a Vampire. Think about how many teenaged girls and young women would gladly become a Vampire's suck-toy. (Also fuck-toy.) Just because they're a vampire. Get some minor cosmetic body-mods to sparkle, and that vamp will never want for blood. Hell, with the right falsified documents, they can pass as a normal person who just has allergies and a vampire fetish.

Unless both characters at the stakeout have said addiction and are of each other's preferred gender

You can minimize the distraction with the right acts and positions.


It would also help to have a muse to keep reminding you to keep an eye out, though if you have a muse, you don't really need to do a stakeout personally.

Or you're playing addiction closer to real world equivalency, and sex addicts without any consensual partners get into bad idea land really, really fast.

Sex addiction is not necessarily related to rape.

Since the alternative is "Us vs. Them" and "Us" are just folks (PCs) while "Them" is God (GM), I'll stick to the kind that is enjoyable for everyone and not just "Them".

Not sure where you are getting your information from, but okay.
I don't write games/missions/scenarios so that my players can metagame. I write them to be entertaining and fun, and to tell a story. Maybe that is just not for you. My games are never "Us" vs "Them."
If I wanted my players to just metagame, I would write a novel instead.

This is Shadowrun, after all. The above is just as important as never cutting a deal with a dragon.

Indeed...

With my primary character, he has run (& technically still does) with a PC vampire. It can be done, but you always have a plan to kill them,but I consider it common practice to have a method to kill everyone in your crew, not that you'll need it, but so you are not screwed.

Approved, canon materials.


And how do they accomplish this, if not by metagaming? At some point somebody will need to know which kind of explosive is better for the run, and THAT requires someone to open a book and look it up. As soon as someone is looking at the rules, metagaming is taking place.


Then you're not the kind of GM I'm addressing anyway, and have no reason to be offended about me mentioning things you don't do.


No, you would write a novel if you wanted to REMOVE the rules and people's ability to use them. When you write a game instead, you've intentionally introduced people who you want manipulating your story.

It is not metagaming to assume that professional criminals have the information to be professional criminals. That information is not hard to come by. At all. It is not metagaming. However, if that character has absolutely no idea what is the BEST explosive (because the character has no clue due to lack of various skills) then no, he will not know which one to pick up without a little bit of research or working of contacts. I tend to enforce that - So do the other GM's we play with. Metagaming is using information you could not possibly have to make a decision that affects in game narrative. Does it occasionally crop up? Sure, but we tend to squash that like the bug that it is. *shrug*

For instance...
Your team member is out on the town having a good time (by himself) and gets jacked by a couple of thugs, mugged, beaten unconscious and tossed into the canal. It is metagaming for you to start immediately searching for him, for no apparent reason, and to just happen by the canals (after casually encountering the thugs and having killed them and recovered your mates gear) where he was dumped to find him before he drowns, because the PLAYER happened to be present in the room listening to what happened. I call BS on this and do not allow it.

However, if after several hours your partner does not show up, well, then you can become concerned. You can start looking for him. You can start asking around. Eventually, you just might find him washed up on the banks of one of the canals, or in a hospital because someone else found him and called authorities, etc. However, in my experience, most teams in Shadowrun are not even close enough to warrant that kind of concern to start with, so... *shrug*

If you have absolutely no way of knowing information in game, and then you use said information anyways, you are Metagaming. Squash it before it gets out of hand, and it will never get out of hand. *shrug*

Happy Trees, are you sure you understand what "metagaming" means?

It is NOT merely looking up game information.

It is having a character act based on information the character could not reasonably have.

It is, for example, reasonable to expect a Shadowrunner has access to information on equipment, weapons, etc. In-game, certainly, the character would not discuss the gear using the game stats but rather in-game equivalents, like "penetrating power" rather than "AP" or the like. A good shadowrunner should keep up to date on the latest gear related to his or her speciality, after all.

It is not reasonable for a player to, say, declare that his character is avoiding certain tiles on the floor of an ordinary hallway simply because the player saw the GM's notes earlier indicating a trap in that location. Or, more closely relating to the subject, taking actions against another player's character based on information you, as the player, know but that your character has no good reason to possess.



-k

By that logic, it's not metagaming to consult a forum on the best way to wax a vampire. I don't necessarily disagree with the terminology, I just wonder what the difference is.

The difference is that the character won't be acting on the advice until he..

A: Figures out that there's a vampire about.

And B:

Does some research about vampires. Either by asking Contacts, doing a Data Search, or buying Knowledge: Paracritters before executing the plan - as a sensible Runner should before taking on a supernatural adversary.


If he does act on it (and it exploits obscure knowledge he shouldn't have*) without doing the IC legwork, then he's metagaming.

* I assume most people know that sunlight and wooden stakes through the heart work on vampires, but probably wouldn't think that wooden bullets or sawdust grenades do. And "you can kill vampires by shooting them a lot and setting them on fire" isn't exactly occult knowledge.

It is metagaming if you, the player, consults a forum on how to kill vampires, and then suddenly have your character out of the blue know all about the vampire murderin' skills, especially if this happens in the middle of a fight with said vampire. It is NOT metagaming if the character actually goes and consults in-game sources of information ahead of time on how to off the bloodsucking pests, and then later in the fight uses that information.

The character getting attacked by a thing, then the player immediately cracking open a rulebook to find out the thing is vulnerable to X, and having his character use X to defeat the thing = metagaming.

The player hearing about the thing, then telling the GM he is going to research the thing, represented in-game by asking around and looking it up on a Matrix search and out-of-game by the player reading the rulebook, then equipping his character based on that research = not metagaming.



-k

You both make good point about roleplaying the situation, but I can't overlook the fact that the infected are physically twisted shells of their former selves. It's not unreasonable for a player, with nothing more than sight of the monster, to at least suspect infection. SR vampires are not like Count Dracula, they're more like Orlock.

Only Nosferatu are like Orlock. Vampires are quite inconspicuous, if they are careful.

Edit: Are you talking about Stoker's Dracula or Coppola's Dracula, by the way? Because SR vampires resemble neither really but lean more toward Coppola, especially if they are magicians.

Not in any SR material I've ever seen. While it's true I've only been gaming SR for a few months, I've been involved in the universe since the 90s. I've never seen an infected who wasn't a Nosferatu style vamp.


I presume you're talking about the difference between the movie with Gary Oldman and the book written by Abraham Stoker. If so, the difference is nonexistent, as that movie is as close to the book as I've seen in cinema, and the Dracula characters were virtually identical.

Think of it in terms of Vampire: The Masquerade. The Dracula I refer to is like clan Tsimiscze, debonair men with tons of sex appeal and vast wealth. The Orlock character would be like clan Nosferatu, twisted, misshapen creatures so ugly they live in the sewers or catacombs under other vampires holdings, only venturing out when they can't be easily seen (and therefore identified as not human).

Now that should be cleared up.

Also, the movie and book Draculas are amazingly different. Stoker's is a hairy-palmed beast without real personality except xenophobic clishees. Coppolas's is a tragic anti-hero with a backstory, cute features, and romantic feelings.

More like Aids victims, actually. *shrug*

Pale, gaunt, overlarge teeth. These are the very features I was talking about that would make them stand out easily in a crowd. In a world of infected, it's not unreasonable that a person would be at least wary of such a character.




Yes, they removed some scenes that the book used to bring out how evil he was. Still, over all, he was much more like his literary counterpart than almost all movie characters of the 90s.

You do realize that fashion subcultures such as Victorian Gothic are very popular in the 6th World, and so is the Goth Emo Vampire look. If I caught a player metagaming vs vampires, I'd pull such an NPC on them. Have fun telling your story to Bubba after KE incarcerated you for staking a VIP's son "because he totally looked like an Infected".

Well, if you like your infected conspicuous, have them that way.

Wait, whacking emogoths isn't justified?

Then I don't want to be right.

Reminds me of the Twilight Culling of 2018..... Saving the world from Sparkles, one twilight fan at time.

The book states that they're "nearly identical to normal humans." Thus they don't stand out in a crowd, easily or at all. With all the myriad shades of metahumanity, especially now with surge, you would really need to hold down every thin irish dude you met, so that you could do a thorough inspection of their bite profile, just in the off chance that they turn out to be afflicted with vampirism. Such lines of reasoning smacks of Humanis, if actually in character and not metagaming.

It's also worth noting that it's not like illusion magic isn't a thing. They won't stand out unless they want to, even the fugly ones.

Also, the Disguise skill. Doubly good on a race with Intuition bonuses (like, say, Nosferatu and Vampires).

Ummmmm...no. Not really. Nosferatu are, as has been pointed out elsewhere, but vampires aren't. They're fairly human in their appearance, in general. Some of them look like Timothy Dalton or Tori Amos or Vin Diesel or Christina Ricci or Denis Leary.

Also...illusions (as has also been pointed out). Nosferatu are, in fact, all magicians and would likely have any number of illusion spells.

Fixed that for ya.

But yeah, I don't see being pale and gaunt as unusual in the Sixth World. Being underfed and rarely seeing the sun (due to the smog, constant rain, or Matrix addiction) is pretty standard. So that leaves the fangs..And cosmetic bodymods aren't uncommon either,

*whiny, nasaly voice* "Perceive them astrally man, it's the only way to be sure."

Good plan, but with Vamps being more inclined to express as mages, many mundanes have gone under the fang to arise not just as a vamp but as a mage to boot, so one can expect more than a few of them to initiate at least once and Masking would help protect against casual assensing at least.

That settles it: compulsory blood tests for everyone!

*Imagines how that might go...*

*Joe Runner waves a vial of blood around* "Who wants it? Who's a good vampire?" *Random guy snatches it out of Joe's hand* "Wow, I can't believe that worked."

I originally thought of mandatory taking & analysis of blood, but baiting them with free samples should do the trick.

On that note: Could an infected with the genetic heritage quality be masqued or genewiped?

only if someone can bait YOU with your favourite chocolate bar into revealing yourself in a police lineup.

okay the perp dropped a kitkat, we line them all up and see who grabs for it when we wave it at them.

Don't shame me for my weakness.

I would think you wouldn't even have to run vamp blood through any lab tests. They are undead, after all, which means the blood would be very low in oxygen (not being replenished, in theory) and easier to identify by just swishing it around in a tube, rather than cycling it and observing it under microscope.