Do you have any canon reference that officially states that orks and trolls have the same median logic score as everyone else, or are you just stating the way you run it in your game. I don't remember reading this in any of the books, and don't think it's stated one way or the other.

The Seattle metroplex is a city-state and has a Governor, and each of the Districts has a Mayor. New Seattle Sb gives a fairly good rundown of the politics for the 2060s.

As far as Brackhaven, while the books never come right out and say it (so that each GM can decide for himself without any "but that's not right" from his players), he's The Man as far as Humanis goes in the Seattle area. He's the "kinder, gentler" face of Humanis, though no one's been able to tie him officially to Humanis, of course.

Gah, my eyes!!!! They kept spelling it "orc"! Gah! The only time that's acceptable in Shadowrun is when dealing with the organization they mention in there, the Ork Rights Committee, and only as an acronym O.R.C. Argh!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Sorry, pet peeve. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bull

It doesn't really say one way or another.

However, under SR1-3, it could be argued that the Ork and Troll median was lower, because they actually had a penalty applied to their Intelligence score. YOu also lost a point or two off whatever score you set their attribute at.

In SR4, though, they don't get a penalty, per se. Instead, they simply have a lower cap. Which means the Median is likely to be the same across the board. THere's no reason for Orks and TRolls to be actively less intelligent than the average human, just a reason for them to not be able to quite achieve the same heights.

Bull

As far as I know, you don't need 50% of the vote to be elected, just a majority. I doubt it was only a 2 person race anyway, so as long as you can out fearmonger the others, you do pretty good. Besides, more money spent in an election generally means more votes. Someone like Brackhaven will have a lot of backers, especially if the Humanis thing is true. The real story is not in voter fraud, but in campaign contributions, that is where the paydata (and potential runs) are.

Description of ingentis metatype in SR4A directly says that "stupid and frightening troll" is just a steroetype. Trolls are "no less intelligent or well-manered than other metatypes, though they do suffer from high illiteracy or poverty rates"

Bugfoxmaster, get a life, the racism against Trogs is perfectly justifed under the actual fucking rules, and since stats can be improved with karma the cap does in fact mean that orks and trolls can't be "as learned" as humans/elves/dwarves. And like it or not, in the Sixth World the SINless at best have as much rights as a stray animal so yeah, they don't count as people in the same sense as SINners are and if you honestly are the type of person who feels the need to get physical over imaginary terms in an imaginary world than you shoudl quit RPGs and seek serious help.

As for your quip about Daisy Eaters and Dwarves ( Hmm, I can't remember what the racist term for them are, must be because they are so easy to "overlook". ) making the fragging Breeders obstalete, well yeah, you're perfectlly right, Elves and Dwarves are genetically superiour to mere humans and this is why humans rightfully fear for their place in society if the elven and dwarven numbers keep climbing over time.

The rules for how a PC is created doesn't really say much for the median of a species in fluff. They changed the mechanic because penalties aren't "fun" not because the fluff suddenly changed.

Look you can pretty up any information if you let you political beliefs get in the way of science. The fact of the matter is Trolls should stick with there STRENGTH.

Next on when people forget they're playing a fantasy science fiction roleplaying game Jerry Springer is going to give us a few social tips...

Seriously.
I hate Elves because they stole my cheerios! And trolls ate my cat!

The other thing to consider is voter turnout. The number of people voting in elections has been slowly but steadily dropping in recent modern day history I believe so I could easily see it continuing to fall into Shadowrun's time, although online voting might arrest or even reverse this somewhat

fantasy science fiction roleplaying

Not all of us need the politically correct media figures like reverend Springer to tell us what is right. It would be nice if we all lived in Lollypop land where everyone is born equal. Sadly it isn't so and some are born to less fortunate circumstances than the rest of us. Pitty them and give them what work you can so they feel useful, like delivery man, mover, garbage man.

And if there is a backlash against the truth remember, don't shoot until you see the points on there ears.

You need to take a chill pill kiddo, and find your sense of humor.

Ok kids, be nice. Racism, as it applies to Shadowrun, is ok in moderation. But be careful not to cross the line into real life here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bull

I personally find the whole "trolls and orks cannot be as smart as humans, so it's not racism, it's fact" argument very interesting, ESPECIALLY in the context of 4th edition, where Intuition and Logic are two different stats, and where there are no penalties applied to stats, only lower caps, and where intuition isn't penalized for Orks (I forget if it is for Trolls).

Let's examine that for a moment.

The root assumption is an easy one - they can't be as smart at maximum, so they are an inferior species. Which is like, "Okay, sure. But they sure are huge as fuck and can pound you flat. So aren't you inferior?" And the usual counter I've seen players make is this: "Yeah, but intelligence is what counts in the modern world. Strength makes you a good construction worker, not a good biotechnician."

And my response now, as it has ever been, is that the 'potential maximum intelligence' of a metatype, or lack thereof, makes precisely zero difference for their worth. Because the ACTUAL intelligence of an individual is what matters, and the slice of people who have maximized their intelligence in the real world approaches, in my experience, less than 1% of the entire populace of the world. Potential achievement doesn't matter. Actual achievement does. Nobody is considered handicapped because they DIDN'T go get their PhD, and just decided to get a BA. These people are normal, not subject to scorn.

Well, unless you're an ass.

They cannot become as intelligent as the smartest smoothskins, fairies or halfers.
Ruleswise, they have absolutely no problem of reaching a LOG of 4 or 3, respectively, and it's well possible that it gets as high as an unaugmented 5 resp. 4, or even 6/5 with Exceptional Attribute.

That's raw IQ, they have no limits on Knowledge or Active Skills, which where always the determining factor for education under SR rules.

We've only got one sided racism here mainly because of the humanis references, but what about other meta vs meta racism? Do orks think trolls are stupid as a race? Clearly the elves at least think they're something special amongst the others. What do the trolls think? What about the SURGED?

My last post was in character, this post is out of character.

This looks 100% like real politics. Great interest in the rumors and sideshow, no interest in the actual position or its use. Does anyone have any info on Brackhaven besides the ever spooky humanis stuff?



BlueMax

I'm sure we get all kinds of fantasy racism in the sixth world.
Dwarven supremacists, probably even modeled along the lines of classic fantasy racism (humans are ok, but elves are just out of their mind and orks and trolls are pure evil).
Ork and troll racism has an official example in the Sons of Sauron policlub.
There may as well be trolls who think all non-trolls are weaklings, who even think that orks are barely better than humans.
There may be orks who project the typical anti-ork prejudices on trolls, or even other orks perceived as "too orkish".

RC has a couple of examples for racism within a given metatype (widespread dwarven prejudice against gnomes, for example).

As well, there may be Infected who view all non-Infected as cattle (radical ghoul activists are in many cases an official example for this).
For many nosferatu, any non-nosferatu is inferior.

And don't get me started on dragon prejudices...

Ask the Devs. Brackhaven is there for whatever a particular GM needs him to be.

While the subject of races and racism is very interesting, and in many games, very central to the Sixth World, there's still plenty of info out there about Brackhaven. Let's keep this thread to that topic, and not the tangent of racial (in)equality. Feel free to open a new thread along those lines.

Meanie... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

So, here are some run ideas based off of Brackhaven. I would love it if people critiqued so that I could get a feel for what people thing.

Run 1) Brackhaven's Adoptive mother (anyone know her name?) Confesses, on her deathbed, to having killed her actual son when he goblinized. A reporter has gotten hold of footage of this, and the Brackhavens are trying to bury him . . . six feet under. Runners are hired to protect him, and to get his info to the nightly news.

Run 2) the Backlash from Brackhaven's testimonial causes massive political flair-ups. People are calling for Brackhaven's head . . . literally! During the massive riots, a video surfaces of an ork murdering brackhaven in cold blood, while speaking in Or'zet about ork supremacy. The Brackhavens play the martyr card and race-riots erupt in Seattle (almost as bad as the night of rage.) The Runner's Fixer personally hires the runners to defend his bar from the damage.

Run 3) A Lone Star officer hires the runners. He is a guy who doesn't like big lies and cover-ups, but knows how the system works. He has found several inconsistencies in the paperwork about Brackhaven's murder, and want's the runners to dig deep for him. Turns out, Brackhaven isn't dead, and the murder scene was all staged (complete with someone surgically altered to look ork, and with an ork linguisoft.) The entire thing was planned to save Brackhaven's face and his company. How the runners are to disseminate this information to the public is up to anyone.

Meh, sounds too "preachy" for me, but with that aside...

( 1 ) Actually this run isn't too bad, just make sure to include a counteroffer made by a repersentive of Brackhaven to turn over the footage and replace it with an "edited" copy.

( 2 ) Doesn't really fly for me, although the tape would shake things up and be bad PR, unless something else was going on to have racial tensions at a boiling point this is just plain crazy.

( 3 ) Ok, why in the nine hells would they bother to use a fake ork? There are plenty of SINless orks who would be willing to do the deed, knowingly or not... Also unless this job literally comes on the tail of the "murder" (And hence your paperwork angle would need to be reworked.) Brackhaven doesn't stand to actually gain anything by pretending to be dead. So what if a high risk politician uses body doubles in the middle of race riots where he is the number one target?


Also something to remember is that like him or not, Brackhaven was elected and I don't remember reading anything that even hints that he had to "steal" the election in order to do so. Making him out to be a cheesy mustache twirling cliche is a huge diservious to the setting as a whole.

Yes he is a monster, but he's the dangerous kind.