Derek--
I enjoyed reading about your virus strains because they were just the sort
of odd things I hoped people would do, and which for me signalled that
this stuff is "real." Real life has this physical sensation for me of a
creative, dynamic tension between polar opposites, stuff that seems
unlikely, but there it is. Bacteria that live in the core of nuclear
plants, duckbulled platypi, all the weird, duplicated, specialized
critters in specific niches, the things people do to themselves.
And you're right that people are always worse, but by the same token,
Virus was created by people, and when Virus becomes a Vampire identity, it
is basically a "people," both in game terms and in RPG reality.
Frank wrote Sandman, so I don't remember personally without a book or
notes in front of me.
> I always loved virus as both a villain and a plot device, and I used it
> liberally in both ways in my campaign but typically the worst things in
> space weren't the machines, they were the people.
>
> The first strains I introduced in my game were relatively benign. An
> overhead crane in a cargo hold that had been turned into a nightclub, a PA
> system in a space station. Eventually the strains became more unusual and
> occasionally deadly, a lift system in a starport that went crazy, an
> orbital anthropology study center, and crazed cargobots with jury-rigged
> weapons, but it was always the humans who were the most dangerous.
>
> I could never really wrap my head around why Sandman had evolved from a
> planetary traffic control network, i suppose the idea of keeping the
> people in the air alive might have played a part. IMTU the peacemaker
> derived from a kind of anthropological observation stations mainframe. It
> couldn't interact with its subjects but it could watch them and learn from
> them.
>
> Derek Stanley