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Message no. 1
From: Starjammer <starjammer@**********.COM>
Subject: Vampire strategies
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 03:48:10 -0500
At 12:04 AM 12/16/98 EST, K in the Shadows wrote:
>
>Here's a thought...

<snip request for vampire ideas>

>Ideas??? Come on folks, let's hear it!
>
>-K

Well, the first, last, foremost and always rule is: Screw With Their Minds.

Depending on your interpretation of the vampire, he'll either have innate
mental abilites (Influence, etc.) or at the very least a whole horde of
finely-tuned Control Manipulations and Illusions. Maybe both. Now, the
average ham-handed GM can fall back on the "look into my eyes and become a
slave to my pale, scrawny, anemic, vampiric, too-much-mascara-wearing,
too-little-food-eating,
you-wouldn't-give-me-a-second-look-if-I-didn't-have-fangs,
I'm-so-goth-I'm-dead lustiness" routine, but subtlety demands more.

First, any old vampire worth his salt is going to have feelers out all over
covering his sensitive interests, and the runners will show up on his radar
long before he shows up on theirs. And it should be fairly easy for him to
find them first.

So, being an old and wise vampire, he'll try the simplest method first:
Misdirection. Red herrings, false leads, mild distractions (like a dozen
good job offers from twelve different fixers and Johnsons within a month),
and so forth with a little subtle "encouragement" on the unconscious level.

If/when that fails to work, then comes the next part: Chaos. No overt
attacks, not yet. No, suddenly all that good fortune turns. Job offers
dry up. Milk runs go horrendously wrong for no good reason. People you
thought were friends just don't like you anymore. Nightmares. Things seen
from the corner of the eye. All your fake IDs get a tax audit. God simply
up-ends his shit-bin and you're standing underneath it. By this point the
runners should realize they've offended someone, though not who or why, and
should be getting jumpy.

Next stage: Menace. Unseen Things (TM) start Lurking in The Shadows.
Someone follows you for two blocks, then isn't there when you turn to
confront him. You find your pet cat's carcass on your front doorstep, and
it died when you were eight. Things Go Bump In The Night. Your old friend
turns up out of nowhere to apologize for being such an asshole to you for
the last three weeks, and you shoot him because you suspect he's one of
Them. An IRS agent turns up to conduct one of your tax audits, and you
shoot him when he pulls a gun on you; a gun that's not there when you look
for it. At this stage, God just drops the shit-bin on you. By now, the
runners should see that they're in a tunnel with lights on *both* ends, one
end's a way out, and the other's a train. Choose quick.

End game: Confrontation. By now, the runners from behind their barricaded
doors and ready to slaughter anything that moves should be finding out who
the enemy is and what's going on. Now comes the part where the runners
trace the strands of the web back to the center, running afoul of plots and
minions along the way and (to paraphrase Tommy Lee Jones) engaging the
forces of evil and killing them deader than hell. By the time they find
their way to the Master Vampire, he can offer them an ultimatum: Walk away
or else. Fight me and you'll probably die, for I am ancient and immortal
and so forth. Even if you can kill me, I've buried you so deep that you'll
never dig your way out of it by yourself. OR... walk away and this all
becomes a bad dream. You can't hurt me, you can't fight me, you can't stop
me. Do the sensible thing. The runners might just agree, if you've done
it right.

It all comes down to psychological warfare and the practice of patience.
You don't have to kill the runners and call attention to yourself if you
can make them ineffective by sapping their energy an erg at a time. I
highly recommend Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_ on this topic. Even though it
refers primarily to the arrangement of armies, the principles of strategy
are universal.

Starjammer | Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem.
starjammer@**********.com | "The one hope of the doomed is not to hope
Marietta, GA | for safety." --Virgil, The Aeneid
Message no. 2
From: Bryan Covington <bryan.covington@****.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 17:51:36 -0500
<snip vampires & shit-bins>

Man you are evil.



I LIKE IT!!!
Message no. 3
From: Starjammer <starjammer@**********.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:59:17 -0500
At 05:51 PM 12/16/98 -0500, Bryan Covington wrote:

> <snip vampires & shit-bins>
>
> Man you are evil.
>
> I LIKE IT!!!

Thank you. I try to attain a certain professional level of evil in my
thinking, but it's always nice to have the affirmation of one's peers. ;)

Starjammer | Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem.
starjammer@**********.com | "The one hope of the doomed is not to hope
Marietta, GA | for safety." --Virgil, The Aeneid
Message no. 4
From: Bryan Covington <bryan.covington@****.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:45:49 -0500
> > <snip vampires & shit-bins>
> >
> > Man you are evil.
> >
> > I LIKE IT!!!
>
> Thank you. I try to attain a certain professional level of evil in my
> thinking, but it's always nice to have the affirmation of one's peers. ;)
>
I am printing this to use as a reference. (You better get
initiated quick Lee >:)
Message no. 5
From: Lehlan Decker <DeckerL@******.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:52:11 -0500
Thank you. I try to attain a certain professional level of evil in my
> thinking, but it's always nice to have the affirmation of one's
peers. ;)
>
>I am printing this to use as a reference. (You better get
>initiated quick Lee >:)

Wait a second! I wasn't following all of that thread. Now I'm
worried. Maybe instead of pain resistance, killing hands would
be more useful....that or its time to invest in a weapon focus. :)
Besides I'm not worried, that is what I have the Avalanche for,
(Just like the old saying you don't have to swim faster then
the shark, just your buddy) :)
Now if the damn magical support would show up to play, I'd
feel safer....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lehlan Decker, Unix Admin (704)331-1149
deckerl@******.com Fax 378-1939
Moore & Van Allen, PLLC Pager 1-888-608-9633
Message no. 6
From: Patrick Goodman <remo@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:00:03 -0600
From: Bryan Covington
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 9:46 AM

>> > <snip vampires & shit-bins>
>> >
>> > Man you are evil.
>> >
>> > I LIKE IT!!!
>
>I am printing this to use as a reference. (You
>better get initiated quick Lee >:)

Due to some incredible personal clumsiness, the message in question
appears to have been deleted from my system. I don't suppose someone
could forward a copy to me, privately? I appear to be the only klutz on
the list this time around, so I don't think it needs a general repost.
Thanks in advance.

--
(>) Texas 2-Step
El Paso: Never surrender. Never forget. Never forgive.
Message no. 7
From: Steven McCormick <stardust@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:50:46 -0600
At 10:00 AM 12/17/98 -0600, Patrick Goodman wrote:
>From: Bryan Covington
>Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 9:46 AM
>
>>> > <snip vampires & shit-bins>
>>> >
>>> > Man you are evil.
>>> >
>>> > I LIKE IT!!!
>>
>>I am printing this to use as a reference. (You
>>better get initiated quick Lee >:)
>
>Due to some incredible personal clumsiness, the message in question
>appears to have been deleted from my system. I don't suppose someone
>could forward a copy to me, privately? I appear to be the only klutz on
>the list this time around, so I don't think it needs a general repost.
>Thanks in advance.
>
>--
>(>) Texas 2-Step
> El Paso: Never surrender. Never forget. Never forgive.
>
>

No Patrick, you're not the only one, I did the same thing. And I thought I
was keeping up with the Vampire thread, hmmm.
Must be something in the Amarillo water supply. :)

BlueMule
Message no. 8
From: Bryan Covington <bryan.covington@****.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 13:45:30 -0500
Since there were a few requests...

Some was snipped but this is what I was replying to.

At 12:04 AM 12/16/98 EST, K in the Shadows wrote:
>
>Here's a thought...

<snip request for vampire ideas>

>Ideas??? Come on folks, let's hear it!
>
>-K

Well, the first, last, foremost and always rule is: Screw With Their Minds.

Depending on your interpretation of the vampire, he'll either have innate
mental abilites (Influence, etc.) or at the very least a whole horde of
finely-tuned Control Manipulations and Illusions. Maybe both. Now, the
average ham-handed GM can fall back on the "look into my eyes and become a
slave to my pale, scrawny, anemic, vampiric, too-much-mascara-wearing,
too-little-food-eating,
you-wouldn't-give-me-a-second-look-if-I-didn't-have-fangs,
I'm-so-goth-I'm-dead lustiness" routine, but subtlety demands more.

First, any old vampire worth his salt is going to have feelers out all over
covering his sensitive interests, and the runners will show up on his radar
long before he shows up on theirs. And it should be fairly easy for him to
find them first.

So, being an old and wise vampire, he'll try the simplest method first:
Misdirection. Red herrings, false leads, mild distractions (like a dozen
good job offers from twelve different fixers and Johnsons within a month),
and so forth with a little subtle "encouragement" on the unconscious level.

If/when that fails to work, then comes the next part: Chaos. No overt
attacks, not yet. No, suddenly all that good fortune turns. Job offers
dry up. Milk runs go horrendously wrong for no good reason. People you
thought were friends just don't like you anymore. Nightmares. Things seen
from the corner of the eye. All your fake IDs get a tax audit. God simply
up-ends his shit-bin and you're standing underneath it. By this point the
runners should realize they've offended someone, though not who or why, and
should be getting jumpy.

Next stage: Menace. Unseen Things (TM) start Lurking in The Shadows.
Someone follows you for two blocks, then isn't there when you turn to
confront him. You find your pet cat's carcass on your front doorstep, and
it died when you were eight. Things Go Bump In The Night. Your old friend
turns up out of nowhere to apologize for being such an asshole to you for
the last three weeks, and you shoot him because you suspect he's one of
Them. An IRS agent turns up to conduct one of your tax audits, and you
shoot him when he pulls a gun on you; a gun that's not there when you look
for it. At this stage, God just drops the shit-bin on you. By now, the
runners should see that they're in a tunnel with lights on *both* ends, one
end's a way out, and the other's a train. Choose quick.

End game: Confrontation. By now, the runners from behind their barricaded
doors and ready to slaughter anything that moves should be finding out who
the enemy is and what's going on. Now comes the part where the runners
trace the strands of the web back to the center, running afoul of plots and
minions along the way and (to paraphrase Tommy Lee Jones) engaging the
forces of evil and killing them deader than hell. By the time they find
their way to the Master Vampire, he can offer them an ultimatum: Walk away
or else. Fight me and you'll probably die, for I am ancient and immortal
and so forth. Even if you can kill me, I've buried you so deep that you'll
never dig your way out of it by yourself. OR... walk away and this all
becomes a bad dream. You can't hurt me, you can't fight me, you can't stop
me. Do the sensible thing. The runners might just agree, if you've done
it right.

It all comes down to psychological warfare and the practice of patience.
You don't have to kill the runners and call attention to yourself if you
can make them ineffective by sapping their energy an erg at a time. I
highly recommend Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_ on this topic. Even though it
refers primarily to the arrangement of armies, the principles of strategy
are universal.

Starjammer | Una salus victus nullam sperare
salutem.
starjammer@**********.com | "The one hope of the doomed is not
to hope
Marietta, GA | for safety." --Virgil, The Aeneid
Message no. 9
From: Starjammer <starjammer@**********.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:43:13 -0500
At 10:50 AM 12/17/98 -0600, you wrote:
>At 10:00 AM 12/17/98 -0600, Patrick Goodman wrote:
>>
>>Due to some incredible personal clumsiness, the message in question
>>appears to have been deleted from my system. I don't suppose someone
>>could forward a copy to me, privately? I appear to be the only klutz on
>>the list this time around, so I don't think it needs a general repost.
>>Thanks in advance.
>
>No Patrick, you're not the only one, I did the same thing. And I thought I
>was keeping up with the Vampire thread, hmmm.
>Must be something in the Amarillo water supply. :)
>
>BlueMule

Foolish mortals. Do you think I'd want my best techniques to get around to
just anybody? :)

Starjammer | Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem.
starjammer@**********.com | "The one hope of the doomed is not to hope
Marietta, GA | for safety." --Virgil, The Aeneid
Message no. 10
From: "Ratinac, Rand (NSW)" <RRatinac@*****.REDCROSS.ORG.AU>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:06:10 +1000
> Since there were a few requests...
>
> Some was snipped but this is what I was replying to.
>
> At 12:04 AM 12/16/98 EST, K in the Shadows wrote:
> >
> >Here's a thought...
>
> <snip request for vampire ideas>
>
> >Ideas??? Come on folks, let's hear it!
> >
> >-K
>
<Big Snip(TM)>

Okay, I snipped all of Starjammer's 'Vampire, the Mindgame' post,
because I didn't want to address anything specific in it. I just wanted
to add one caveat (IMNSHO).

This should NOT be SOP for vampires. First of all, you have to remember
that a lot of (well, some) vampires are supposed to be a) psychos who
just like killing things and drinking blood and cause fear through death
and destruction, or b) plain nutjobs who've totally lost the plot (or
who were loonies beforehand). If you read the Nosferatu entry in PAoE,
it mentions that the Nosferatu are the tricky ones. The vampires tend to
be more direct (I think it has something to do with being overwhelmed by
bloodlust).

Secondly, even vampires aren't going to go to all this trouble for every
little runner who crosses their path. To make this kind of effort, the
runners would have to have REALLY screwed with the vampire's plans, or
look like they could become a BIG threat to the vampire in the future.

All that aside, if your runners are anything like most PCs, they WILL be
big threats to Mr. Fangjob, so go for it. :)

*"Hmmm...I always wanted to be immortal. Just call me...*

Doc' Fangjob

.sig Sauer
Message no. 11
From: Patrick Goodman <remo@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 12:59:54 -0600
From: Bryan Covington
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 12:46 PM

>Since there were a few requests...
>
> Some was snipped but this is what I was replying to.

Bingo. That's it. Many thanks.

--
(>) Texas 2-Step
El Paso: Never surrender. Never forget. Never forgive.
Message no. 12
From: Starjammer <starjammer@**********.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 22:22:59 -0500
At 10:06 AM 12/18/98 +1000, you wrote:
>>
><Big Snip(TM)>
>
>Okay, I snipped all of Starjammer's 'Vampire, the Mindgame' post,
>because I didn't want to address anything specific in it. I just wanted
>to add one caveat (IMNSHO).
>
>This should NOT be SOP for vampires.

<big snip>

>Doc' Fangjob

Just for the record, my post was in response to K's request for ideas on
how a crafty, old, immortal vampire would go about handling runners who
were getting in his hair.

No, not every vampire should act in this manner. Otherwise, there would be
no runners... :)

Starjammer | Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem.
starjammer@**********.com | "The one hope of the doomed is not to
Marietta, GA | hope for safety." --Virgil, The Aeneid
Message no. 13
From: Patrick Goodman <remo@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 23:03:09 -0600
From: Starjammer
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 2:43 PM

>>And I thought I was keeping up with the Vampire thread, hmmm.
>
>Foolish mortals. Do you think I'd want my best techniques to
>get around to just anybody? :)

Well, Steve doesn't want it, that's for sure, since I'm his GM most of
the time and he's pretty sure his Spider shaman is going to get in
trouble soon....

--
(>) Texas 2-Step
El Paso: Never surrender. Never forget. Never forgive.
Message no. 14
From: Bryan Covington <bryan.covington@****.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:18:46 -0500
> >Okay, I snipped all of Starjammer's 'Vampire, the Mindgame' post,
> >because I didn't want to address anything specific in it. I just wanted
> >to add one caveat (IMNSHO).
> >
> >This should NOT be SOP for vampires.
>
> <big snip>
>
> >Doc' Fangjob
>
> Just for the record, my post was in response to K's request for ideas on
> how a crafty, old, immortal vampire would go about handling runners who
> were getting in his hair.
>
> No, not every vampire should act in this manner. Otherwise, there would
> be
> no runners... :)
>
No sane ones anyway.
Message no. 15
From: Lehlan Decker <DeckerL@******.COM>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:19:07 -0500
<SNIP Vampire and idea>
>No sane ones anyway.

Sane?!! Just what are you trying to imply. :)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lehlan Decker, Unix Admin (704)331-1149
deckerl@******.com Fax 378-1939
Moore & Van Allen, PLLC Pager 1-888-608-9633
Message no. 16
From: Steven McCormick <stardust@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Vampire strategies
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:29:56 -0600
At 11:03 PM 12/17/98 -0600, Patrick Goodman wrote:
>From: Starjammer
>Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 2:43 PM
>
>>>And I thought I was keeping up with the Vampire thread, hmmm.
>>
>>Foolish mortals. Do you think I'd want my best techniques to
>>get around to just anybody? :)
>
>Well, Steve doesn't want it, that's for sure, since I'm his GM most of
>the time and he's pretty sure his Spider shaman is going to get in
>trouble soon....
>
>--

Hmmm, I just thought of something. Bats eat spiders don't they <shiver>. :)

BlueMule
aka Kal Moira, spider shaman

Further Reading

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