[X] My Assistant

[PBTHHHHT]

Quite a few actually, but then again I do live in DC...

[emo samurai]

I'll have at least a 20% Awakened security force in my game, and the people my players have faced have all been Awakened.

[The ubbergeek]

[Prospero]

That's actually a really good comparison - it's probably exactly like that in SR. Some people probably know a few magicians - maybe they live in a certain area of the NAN or TT where there are a higher percentage of magicians. Or maybe there are a lot in a certain family. And these people get talked about a lot on the news in a general way, but they really do only represent a very small portion of the population. Nice.

[emo samurai]

My group has two magicians, a Technomancer, and a physad. The only mundane is a bioware physad with 20 dice for shooting.

[mfb]

if he's a physad...

[eralston]

Perhaps "bioware physad" is distinct from "physad" in that the aren't awakened? No idea. Read the book emo

Yeah, we once had the thought of rolling for the privilege of being awakened instead of actually allocating for it, which everyone was pumped about breaking and even at 10% chance no one got it. Everyone was quite sad. Being awakened is just way too cool to not abuse the numbers on it.

[stevebugge]

I think the awakened to non awakened ratio is more important in the sense of NPC's, particularly interlopers and bystanders, than PC's. This means that in general the PC's don't run in to much magic by chance, though if something went down say at a Mariners game to a large crowd of say 40000 people the chances of some awakened people just being there (not involved in the actual plot) is pretty good, there could be a few hundred in fact, which you can use to rachet up the tension or paranoia when the mage makes his astral sweep of the area. A bus in Seattle can hold about 50 people, so that means that if the characters use public transportation there is a reasonable chance that there will be a random awakened interloper on 1 out of every two buses the characters take. In more structured settings like a corp where mages tend to get moved to specific departments the population at large statistics become less meaningful, so it may still be reasonable to always have a mage in a security team even if that puts the numbers way higher than 1% of the security team.

[mfb]

well, it's not like the 1% figure applies across the board to every profession, location, or even culture. the percentage of Awakened accountants and short-order cooks is probably a lot less than 1%, while the percentage of Awakened shadowrunners and security personnel are probably far higher than 1%.

[Butterblume]

Joe normalo will see a few mages per day (if he isn't a couch potato). Seeing magic actually done is quite another matter.