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Message no. 1
From: Flint <Mathieu.Dhondt@***.AC.BE>
Subject: Vampires and the lot (a bit of a spoiler this)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 11:24:47 +0100
In One Stage Before my runners met JetBlack, a vampire. My herm nearly
got geeked during an ambush, and so he played JetBlack in the final
assault on Teague's compound. Man, did he enjoy playing a vampire (more
than we all enjoyed playing One Stage Before). So, logically, my players
were asking what could withhold them from becoming a vampire. For the
sake of the group (and the game), I asked them not too, but I'd like to
give them some valid reasons. So, what are the major drawbacks of being a
vampire (apart from hunters (btw, are hunters tough guys?) and having to
sleep at day?

Other Q: Suppose a sammie rolled 23 for initiative, and he says he wants
to run from one place to another. According to the running multipliers he
can get there in one round, but what does this mean? Does he get there on
his next action (that's the way I play it, but then he could run 3 times
in 3 secs), or is that at the end of the round? If it is the latter, then
everybody would end their walks, or runs, at the same time, and those who
are injured enough to have an initiative of only 1, would move, say 20
meters in one thirtieth of a second (supposing the round has 30 segments).
Also, I don't like the system of: you can only run once in a round (as
someone's suggesting on autofire; ie one full auto per round, regardless
of how many actions one has. No: full auto=complex action, so: as much
complex actions as you can do)

Oops, is this understandable?

Hope so,
Flint.


"My boy, if ever you are lost at sea, drop right in and think of me."
- J. Heller
Message no. 2
From: Marc A Renouf <jormung@*****.UMICH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Vampires and the lot (a bit of a spoiler this)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 13:20:12 -0500
Flint writes: [what are the draw backs to allowing vampire PC's]

Probably the biggest problem in having vampire PC's is that they
tend to unbalance the game tremendously, especially if they are in a
party with normal (meta)human characters. Things can go from rational to
munchkinous in a very small amount of time.
If the players are *all* vampires, that could lead to some
interesting possibilities. If you want to run a campaign like that, I
suggest that you read White Wolf's "Vampire: the Masquerade" game for
source material ideas. They have quite a bit of fairly keen stuff on
bloodsucker politics.
But in the long run, vampire PC's generally just cause problems.
This is not *always* the case, but it usually happens that way.
You may also want to think about whether you want to allow people
to start out as a vampire in character creation. Be aware that if you
do, you will have set a precedent. I can almost guarantee you that in a
very short amount of time, people will want to play shapeshifters, free
spirits, wendigos, and all manner of other beasties. This also rapidly
gets out of hand ("Hey, you let him be a Weretiger, why can't I play a
dragon? I mean, a dragon can't even regenerate!) If you are prepared
for this and want to run a game with those types of characters, then you
have no worries. But you have been warned.

As to the question about running, running is not an "action" per
se. The reason that FASA wrote the rules this way was so you could do
other things while running, which makes sense.
Also, just because you have Wired-3 and catlike reflexes doesn't
mean you have any guarantees of outrunning someone else. You may be
quicker off the block, but running speed is determined by quickness, not
by reaction or initiative. This is one of the few areas where
unaugmented people don't get totally shafted (unless they are racing
someone with muscle aug 4, that is)
If you take running as an action, things get stupid very
quickly. Take someone with wired-3 and a quickness of 6. If this person
gets 4 actions (which is not unreasonable) they will move 6 x 3 meters
per action, times four actions for a total of 72 meters per combat turn.
That's over 60 miles per hour! See what I mean? Stupid.
Therefore, I suggest you keep things sane and keep the rules as
written. Yes, this does cause a couple of conceptual problems, like when
does someone actualy begin to move, what happens if someone decides to
run for only part of their turn, etc., but with a little common sense,
this kind of stuff can easily be figured out. Like if a character has an
Initiative score of 20 and needs to run 6 meters to get to cover. Say
his quickness is a 4. His running speed is then 4 x 3 = 12 meters per
combat turn. He needs to run half of this, so after half of his turn, he
will be in cover. Therefore, at initiative count 10, he will arrive at
his cover and gets cover benefits against anyone firing at him from that
initiative count on.
Granted, it takes a little thought, but it's better than having
people run around at Mach speeds.

Hope this all helps. Sorry my post is so long.

Marc

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