What is the ration of mundanes to awakened people in SR3?
Simple, straight, and to the point... All in all I'd say it has most, if not all, the qualities of a good question

Iirc 1% of the population are magically active.

Albeit there is some variations in some places and also in some other groups... Probably that places like Tibet and Tir na nOg have an higher %, and the Ork metatype Oni was supposed to have more Awakened too in % than the common %.

And a few texts suggest that the number is rising. (Cue sting.)

It is actually pretty funny. The percentage has been rising in fluff text for ages, yet the percent is always 1%. Sort of like a rolling status quo.

Remember that the 1% is only registered mages with SINs.

i don't believe that's correct. i'm pretty sure the 1% figure has always been from the total population, SINner and SINless.

It was total pop in Sr1
by SR3 SIN pop was implied but not stated
maybe in SR4 it is officially SIN pop

If 1% of the SIN population is magically active the percentage of the magic SINless will be much lower.

how so?

Because magically active children born SINless have the possibility to be educated and hired by a corporation and thus get a SIN.

that assumes that the corporations can find a significant portion of the SINless Awakened population. considering how huge the population of SINless is, i'm not sure that's a safe assumption. on a more theoretical note, it also assumes that the 1% is evenly distributed. it's possible, especially given the "primitive = magical" leanings SR shows, that the SINless have a much higher percentage of Awakened than the SINners.

I think "primitive" cultures just had a much better intuitive understanding of how magic works, because they practiced it as part of their religions. They had a starting advantage. But that is fading.

Roughly 1% of humanity worldwide has the potential for magical ability. Less than that actually every discover their potential, for various reasons, and less than that ever turn it into any sort of real power. Only the tiniest minority end up in the shadows. At least that is what the magic sourcebooks say.

This percentage is a statistic so it would be figured out through random sampling of the population, so wether they count every registered and unregistered magician in the world is not important, they just need a big and diverse sample in order to get results that should apply to the entire population.

Magic has always been treated as something genetic, being a SINner does not make you any more likely to be a mage, just more likely to be spotted and given a scholarship by a corporation or government body. The places that have more magicians are either looking harder for them (the Megas), do not strongly fear or discriminate against them (Tir Tairngire), or have a strong cultural or historical tradition of magic and mysticism (NAN, Ireland, etc).

The rising percentage bit has been a growth from like 1.1% to 1.2% that has occured over decades. A very small and slow increase and not worth changing the fact sheets for. This I recall coming across in... I think it was the 2nd printing of the Grimoire.

possibly. the corps did manage to clear out Kilimanjaro, for instance. but it's also true that high technology hinders magic; spells and even spirits have a harder time affecting techology than 'natural' objects, not to mention the effects of implanted technology on one's personal ability to manipulate mana. the idea that this works on a larger scale appeals to me--that societies with less technology are, in general, more in touch with magic stuff.

Hell Hound: Grimoire's info is pretty dated, isn't it? IIRC SR4 gives no numbers, just an "on the rise." Whether that means 1.2% or 5% is currently up to the GM.

Runners are more likely to know magically active people than the guy in the pizza shop or the file clerk in Renraku's insurance office. She might know in "that wing' is the office of the complex' mage but actually see magic? nope.

...seems in my campaigns it broders on about 60% as of late.

That is isanely high.

1% is still something like what 30-60 million?

Yes, that's enough to fill a medium-sized country, but then the rest of the world wouldn't have its bound spirits multiplying the speeds of barges and stuff. Then again, it would be really simple for them to bind spirits and send them on remote services...

I think if you go with somewhere between 10 and 14 out of every thousand has magical potential you're probably safe. A breakdown of what percentage of Magically Active are Adept, Mystic Adept, and Full mage would be interesting but I don't recall it ever being given. Then Statistics on what percentage of the magically active are trained, self taught, and undeveloped talent would be nice to have as well.

well, keep in mind that the the percentage of active US military personnel is less than 1% of the population. how many of you know someone in the military?

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

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

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.

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

if he's a physad...

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.

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.

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%.

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