I know several players who would love to play ghouls, myself included, just for the fun of it. It doesn't help CGLs when the authors use a ghoul as character, even if justa supporting one, and players are not allowed ghouls.
there is great fixer who is vampire from 1st ED. sometimes I buy that conrtact just for the flavor
of course if you let ghouls, then you got to let the other vamps, drakes, and shapeshifters in....
I understand it is about game balance (& PCs turning their new buddy over to LoneStar. Hey I have mislead teammates to keep them from getting me killed)
on playing alternate races: its all in how you role play
I have played a Sas, and none of the teams realize because I played him a certain way to avoid suspition. It was fun
my daughter has played a Pixie. when she got shot in the last fight, the team panicked big time
a friend of mine played a blue dwarf, or a smurf. with a chainsaw. enough said
here is my request: either playtest some of these mission forbidden races at cons, or show me playtesting records that they either proved too powerful or wrecked the somehow
Again, it's not that they are too powerful or game-breaking. It's that they could easily be abused. Let me give you an example.
Tony plays a ghoul in a GenCon Mission. During the mission, him and his teammates are out and about, doing their thing. They go to the meet with the Johnson when he notices Tony's character:
Holy shit! It's a ghoul! Kill the thing! Kill it!That may be a bit extreme, or the team knows better than to take Tony along on the meet with the Johnson. Okay, go that. So, the team's doing some legwork for the mission to try and find out how deep the drek is that they jumped into. The team sends out feelers with their contacts, when the contacts ask them if they are still hanging around with "that creature" and let's them know that they know of a 100,000¥ bounty for ghouls, no questions asked.
Maybe the team isn't that hard up for cash, or they may even have some of that
honor thing the TriD keeps talking about. Either way, they pass on the bounty. Now, a little later, they get in a firefight with Knight Errant due to a misunderstanding of local traffic laws and the use of rocket-propelled grenades. Sara, playing an elf mage, gets hit with a stray bullet, and Tony's the only one close enough to stabilize her. So, our friendly ghoul runs over to her, breaking out the medkit to make sure she doesn't die. Unfortunately, as soon as he touches Sara's PC, she has to make Resistance test against HMHVV and, in her weakened state, it doesn't look good for her. Now we have two ghoul characters!
Are these all extreme? Yes. Could they still happen? Of course. The problem isn't that ghouls (or other infected) aren't fun to play, or overly-powerful, it's that they
CHANGE the nature of the game they are involved in when they are used. And since Missions are meant to be used by anyone, anywhere, with minimal alterations, they simply don't fit into the spirit of the game.
