I know that TSS article and like it - but it's not official (and SR3).

IMHO the only piece of SR artwork showing trolls in the right scale (body height, size of hands, overall "massiveness") compared to a human is the cover of Sprawl Survival Guide.

The depiction of dwarfs on the other hand has IMHO reached a new low with the "Face" sample char in SR4.
Judging from the picture she's an elf (slim figure, pointy ears, human-like body proportions) standing above a troll lying on the floor.
But the stats say she's a dwarf!
A dwarf? Where's the barrel-like torso? Where are the short legs?
An explanation could be that she's no actually a dwarf but a gnome - but that metavariant has not yet been introduced to SR4...

And with a bit of luck, won't be.

You are observing my biggest beef with SR4 (and most other SR products), crappy artwork. I love this setting, and I hate the artwork (with sparse exceptions). There are a few pictures of dwarves at the other end as well. Comical large nose, overly bushy wild beard...

May as well call him Thorin or Balin and be done with it.

I know in my mind what a dwarf in 2070 will look like...precious few decent examples in the book however. They also don't have many decent pictures of elves that aren't humans with pointy ears.

It isn't official, but it was written by the guy they went to for the new heights and weights for the various metahuman races in SR4...namely me. I don't have my notes in front of me right now, but I know they didn't stick with the numbers I gave them initially...but they came a hell of a lot closer than they have in the past. Close enough, in fact, that I can live with it easily enough.

If there's an interest, I'll see if I can find my original numbers and post them (at least, if it doesn't turn out to be a violation of my NDA...I'll have to check on that).

It's interesting to me that no one's commented yet, that I've seen, about trolls being 30cm shorter than they were in the first three editions....

There is, as always, interest.

Heck, we wouldn't have any idea how the Fubuki was supposed to be reloaded without its artist showing up and shedding some (unofficial) light on the matter.

you mean, something like this, maybe?

sometimes you just gotta look a little closer

i find it interesting to see how many times a given comment has to be made for someone to pick it up... i know i've been caught by stuff like that before

My Interest-fu is strong!

And they got SHORTER? Dear...god...BLAH!

minor point: unless they changed the description of dwarves, they don't necessarily have thicker torsos than sapiens sapien. the text in SR3, at least, indicates that dwarves are pretty much normal humans from the waist up.

Emphasis by me.

Which to me simply seems to be an attempt to make trolls more playable/believable.

Actually, trolls have been my single biggest (no pun intended) problem with SR ever since I started playing in 1992.
It's an acceptable concept (big dumb fighter-type) - but the execution is flawed beyond belief.

While the descriptions tell us a troll most closely resembles an upright-walking rhinoceros and fluff texts are full of scenes were trolls are too tall for room sizes, have hands bigger than human heads and are so heavy they damage floors the rules state trolls can use normal cars and motorcycles with just different seats (while a bit of thinking and some size comparizons clearly indicate troll cars would have to be at least small trucks or large SUVs with massive internal modifications - a troll in a HMMWV would look like a human in a Mini while rules-wise the troll would even fit into said Mini), can use stealth skills like everybody else (Sneaking with a body weight of 300+ kgs? Hiding behind anything smaller than a MBT or a freight container? Not when I'm the GM.) and can use regular equipment with a simple modification resulting in a higher price*.
I'd love to see a picture of a, say, troll-modified Ares Predator. Just how large do the grip and trigger area have to be to fit a giant troll-hand (And if the grip is so large why does the gun still have the same magazine size? How is it reloaded anyway?)
How does a troll with his giant fingers load ammo into a pistol or rifle magazine?
It would have been much more consequent to say: "Trolls use shotguns as pistols, assault rifles as SMGs and may handle medium MGs like other metahumans use rifles."
Which of course could have been somewhat unbalancing.
On the other hand that's what trolls are good for IMHO - living artillery platforms.
But they are completely unsuited as runners in my style of play (more Splinter Cell less The Matrix) where stealth is paramount and combat most likely means the run is botched.

*Combined with artwork almost uniformly depicting trolls way too small.
Smells like a conspiracy...

250cm - 175cm = 75cm. That not a head's height difference, more a torso's height difference, meaning when a troll and a human stand side by side the human's head is in the troll's stomach (or lower chest) area.
Assuming the legs account for 50% of body height a sitting troll looks into the eyes of a standing dwarf.

Can you imagine the movement noise of a two-legged creature weighing 300+ kilograms (~660lbs). How his steps make furniture shake and small items dance around? How his massive body constantly touches walls, ceiling and furniture in an environment constructed for much smaller and slimmer people? How loud his voice (and breathing) is even when he tries to whisper (considering the resonance of the chest)?

Trolls are not just bigger people. Their body proportions are different than those of a human.
They are not only taller but also broader and thicker. Their bones are thicker and heavier, they have much more muscles. Their arms are longer than those of a hypothetical human the same size.

This is Leonid Stadnyk, the tallest man alive (253cm/8.3ft).
But a troll doesn't look like Leonid with horns!
A troll would have longer arms and be all around much more massive.
Can you imagine such a person sitting in a Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit (non-convertible)?
I'm only 179cm tall and I've sat in enough cars where my head almost touched the ceiling. How should a creature 70cm taller fit in there?

I'm sure cars could be converted to fit a troll driver. But those cars would have to be of a certain minimum size. The driver's seat would have to be moved to the back to make room for the legs and to the middle (instead of left or right) because of the driver's broad shoulders.
The ceiling would have to be heightened at least 50cm.
And I don't even want to think about passengers - other trolls maybe...

That's why I would like to see official size variances.

And the whole time we're talking about a healthy average troll. Imagine a fat troll. Or a troll version of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his best days.

(Notice: I do not count a troll's horns when talking about body height!)

It boils down to a matter of taste:
If you like trolls and consider them playable because the rules support it - go ahead, it's your game.
If you put game background above the rules (as I do) trolls are, while not unbelievable as beings, unbelievable as Shadowrunners (except under special circumstances) and the rules simply don't fit the background descriptions.

Well, I know only one fantasy setting with trolls - and those are completely different from SR trolls.

I'm well aware of this.

I don't know D&D so I can't really compare...
There are numerous descriptions throughout SR1-3 of dwarfs and trolls having different body proportions than humans while elfs and orks are quite similar to norms (elf: taller and skinnier, orks: taller and more muscles).
Dwarfs are short and compact with disproportionally short legs. While their torsi may have roughly the same dimensions as human ones their small figure makes them appear broader (the dwarf metavariant gnome on the other hand is described as a having the figure of a human child with a disproportionally large head). The SR3 race description picture is a well-drawn dwarf IMHO.
Trolls are generally described as being not only tall but big and massive, with heavy bones, massive muscles and elongated arms.
The cover od Sprawl Survival Guide has a good drawing of a troll. Another good example is the race picture in SR2. The SR2 picture showing all metatypes together gives a good impression of a troll compared to other metahumans (note that he's not standing fully upright, his knees are bent).
I can really recommend Patrick's TSS article.

You misunderstood me.
I cited an example of human gigantism to illustrate how trolls are not.
Yes, giant humans are clumsy and prone to illness because their body operates putside the limits.
Trolls of course are built that way. It's not a problem for them.
The problems arise when trolls have to operate in an environment where everything is too small for them - buildings, furniture, vehicles, equipment. And that's most of the Sixth World except rare occasions of areas/equipment specially tailored for troll use.
A troll does not bump into walls, ceilings or furniture because he's clumsy (though it might seem so) but because there's not enough room for him just like a human/elf/ork would have problems moving through a house specially built for dwarfs.
The other aspects I mentioned do not come from comparison to giant humans but to beings of similar size and weight.
Have you ever heard the sound of a running rhinoceros (its heavier than a troll but it has four legs)? In the case of a troll we speak of 300kg moving on two legs. One can only make assumptions as there exists no two-legged creature of this weight today (gorillas in captivity can reach such weight but the gorilla must be counted as a four-legged animal).

My view is not based on stats but on the description, the fluff found in sourcebooks, adventures and novels that depicts trolls as big (too big in the eyes of the world), heavy and massive.

I'll see what I can and can't do about this in relation to my NDA, then.

My answer for this is the exact same one as for Azralon's post, but I'm so seldom called "the man" around here that I thought I'd quote it just to make my ego feel better.

I'm glad you liked the initial article.

Yes, something exactly like that.

Yeah, they let me lower their official height from 280 cm (about 9'2") to 250 cm (about 8'2"), to more closely match the art that keeps coming out.

Well...yeah. You say that like there's something wrong with the notion of making them more playable and believable. I clearly believe the opposite.

I'm not going to address how they've been implemented through the years, since I didn't have any say over that.

That's likely to be true, but it's going to be because players like their characters to be the biggest and the baddest looking.

While average human height has increased over the years, it hasn't increased that quickly, and with a couple of massively lethal pandemics that chop something like a third of the human population off (when all is said and done; actual figures don't actually exist for what the VITAS plagues did to Earth's population, beyond saying a significant fraction each time was killed), it's not likely to get that much taller than is shown.

(Okay, the first VITAS plague wiped out 25 percent of the population, and the second did similar damage. Maybe a third is over-stating it, once it's all added up, but not by much.)

I stand about 6'3" in my bare feet. My ceiling in my house is 8'. Simply standing up shows me that my ceiling is more than a head's height above the top of my head (which my wife tells me is about 10" high).

Even if players make their human characters 6' tall, the average troll is still about 26" taller than that human character. That's the height from my lap to my chin if I sit up straight. No matter how you look at it, trolls are pretty big.

Then there are those who are going to make their trolls taller than average, just as there are those who are going to make their humans taller than average....

Not a bad pic, but he's short (or there's some funky perspective going on; I personally think the elf chick's standing on something, or she's freakishly tall).

Well,I would have prefered fitting the rules to the background (defining the problems trolls face due to their size, defining the equipment trolls can (or can't) use and necessary modifications, etc.) instead of the other way round (making the background a bit less extreme while keeping the rules - that still don't fit).
IMHO.

That'd be 244cm, then.

Think the other way:
Would giant maintenance tunnels be built to accomodate troll workers - or would rather humns and dwarfs employed as maintenance workers and the tunnels kept small?

It irks me that the world, buildings etc. should be so meta-friendly while the books keep on talking about rampant racism.
Trolls are the rarest and most extreme of the metaraces. Why should The Powers That Be pay attention to them?

More muscle does not necessarily equal more grace. Trolls aren't just taller than humans, their proportions are different (which I tried to take into account when I did the weights for SR4).

It has occurred to me, and that's why I didn't use the whole system in my article (Body and Strength bonuses) into account when I did the heights and weights for SR4, or things would have been really, really massive in places. The bigger metaraces, IMHO, do have longer, heavier tendons and ligaments, which accounts for some of their strength.

Let's see, what did I have originally for the five metaraces...? Ah, here we are:

And, just for shits and grins, here are some humanoid critters:

It is your world. Make it however you want. I would think that there would be quite a few "legacy tunnels" that would be fairly cramped for trolls. Newer stuff might take them into account.

As far as rarity, I thought that the metaraces were equally proportioned.

It is the law in the United States that the handicapped be taken into account. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aren't metaraces an even larger portion of the population?

And as for racism, maybe what you mentioned irks quite a few others as well.

I think the system you created is great! I was implying that there is no need for additional rules that subtract dice from trolls for things like infiltration. In extreme cases the GM should use common sense.

If anything maybe you could include sentence in each metarace size description to the effect of " . . . are typically XXX cm tall but can range anywhere from XXX cm to XXX cm."

Nope. Here's a reference, not the most recent, but these numbers are pretty steady regardless of edition:

Thanks for that. I will try to find the reference I was talking about. I think I read it in first edition and they were talking about worldwide after the awakening.

I can't find some of my references right now, but on either side of average you can typically find a 15 to 20% variation in height, if I'm remembering everything correctly (and it's entirely possible that I'm not, but my brain's a bit scrambled at the moment from getting ready for the birth of my child, so you gotta cut me some slack).

With that in mind, you could wind up with trolls as short as 212 cm (with 15% variance) to 200 cm (at 20%), to as tall as 288 cm (again, at 15%) to 300 cm (at 20%). That's assuming an average of 250 cm. Assuming the book's weight of 300 kg, weights would range from about 154 kg at 200 cm to a whopping 518 kg at 300 cm. With the 335 kg I initially recommended, that weight range goes from 172 kg to 579 kg.

This is, of course, without getting into abnormally tall or abnormally short trolls. A troll with acromegaly, the affliction which eventually killed Andre the Giant, could conceivably reach 450 cm with a weight of 1,750 kg...and expect to die of natural causes long before he turned 25.

Trolls in European countries (from SoE)

AGS: 8%
Austria: 2%*
Czech Republic: 5%*
Denmark: 11%
Euskal Herria: 6%
Finland: 8%
France: 2%*
Italian Confederation: 2%*
Norway: 10%
Poland: 3%
Portugal: 5%
Spain: 4%
Sweden: 6%
Switzerland: 1%*
Tír na nÓg: 2%*
United Kingdom: 3%*
United Netherlands: 2%*

* = rarest metatype in country

European population averages (calculated from SoE data)

Human: 67.29%
Elf: 10.35%
Ork: 9.18%
Dwarf: 7.24%
Troll: 4.71%
Other: 1.29%