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Fortune
It's not??? eek.gif

I always suspected, but now I know for sure.
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (ChicagosFineset)
I too agree that a reporter would be a smooth face character.

...Already have another reporter character in the wings named Medea Blitz (5 karma to whoever remembers where I stole that name from). This gal's also an adept with Kinesics, Facial Sculpt, and Voice Control.

She has some minor Cyber (Eyecam, Data Jack, Audio & Vision Enhancement etc.) & 1 level of Synaptic boosting to keep up with the rest of the team.
Fortune
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)
Medea Blitz (5 karma to whoever remembers where I stole that name from).

Too easy! American Flagg! biggrin.gif wink.gif
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (Fortune)
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid @ Nov 3 2006, 08:08 AM)
Medea Blitz (5 karma to whoever remembers where I stole that name from).

Too easy! American Flagg! biggrin.gif wink.gif

...you win.

Didn't think many would have remembered since it was ~25 years ago & was released by a now defunct (and one of the *ahem* First) independent comic book publishers to actually compete with Marvel & DC.

I have the entire run and graphic novelisation. Damn fun title & Chaykin's art was superb.
Fortune
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)
Didn't think many would have remembered since it was ~25 years ago ...

I'm old, and my mind's going, but it was pretty memorable. smile.gif
ChicagosFinest
sepaking of that how have comic books and table top RPG's changed in shadowrun T6W? Would we still be playing dungeons and dragons, or is it just mechwarrior?
eidolon
Man. P&P RPG has enough trouble competing with junior's television and MMORPG bred attention span now.

That said, roleplaying on the matrix would RULE, and I would quickly die of dehydration/starvation/sleep loss.

(Actually, not really. Just like anything else in Teh Fyoocher, you'd get used to it. Well, except for those morons that die while playing WoW. But that's just necessary culling of the genome, so no loss.)
mfb
there's at least one MMO in SR. it's based on ED.
ThreeGee
Someone's softening the masses up for the truth...
fistandantilus4.0
There's already been some, but they were silenced. Was it Black Angel run (?) rocker guy who put out two songs :Earthdawn, and Earthdaw:Scourge Unending , and then he dissapeared?

Fortune
There is, of course, the ever-popular FanPro Ltd. Shadowrun MMORPG™, which seems to cost only 50 ¥ per month. wink.gif
MK Ultra
QUOTE (mfb)
there's at least one MMO in SR. it's based on ED.

Yeah, 'Dawn of Atlantis' is basically ED as a Sim-MMORPG. You can play 'Lizard-men' & Earth-Elementals there and it´s got the Atlantean Foundation on their paylist as advisors.

But there was 'Paranormal Crisis', too, which is basically Shadowrun.

And of course BattleTech wink.gif

The new generation is MiricalShooter and other AR-Games
fistandantilus4.0
And the one in Renraku Arcology that they got sued for
MK Ultra
Right, That was the sequal for ParanormalCrisis.
Wakshaani
Today I started to wonder about Ork life. specificly how it went from 'Rumors' of litter births to a truth that twins are common but singel births to norm to now, officially, "Litters of three to five are the norm."

Yipes.

What kind of effect does that have, I wonder, when a family basicly breeds like hamsters? Do most Orks have one birth then call it a day? Two? How do Ork communities function when *everyone* has a half dozen brothers and sisters? How bad is the single mother situation when Orks are commonly arrested and rounded up by teh Star, leaving single moms trying to raise four kids of teh same age?

I'd like to see this side explored a bit more. I'm going to *guess* that a more community-based lifestyle arises, where you share more, since you're raised in a house where you *have* to share, and there's probably communal nurseries and the like ... too many babies for any one person to easily look after, so, instead, the ladies past childbearing years, the older kids, and teh moms when they can set up day care centers (Which, in truth, is just someone's house, most likely) wher ethey can help raise one another's kids. Since evryone gets raised together, the networking is probably tight as well, with everyone telling everyone everything, but, a more insular feel. Also wonder about nepotism... do you try and get yoru family a job if you get lucky, or do you get yours then turn your back on teh family, to try and get out of there?

Lots and lots of interesting possibilities, there.
fistandantilus4.0
Try reading Never Trust an Elf, good example for ya'
ChicagosFinest
QUOTE (Wakshaani @ Nov 2 2006, 09:35 PM)
Today I started to wonder about Ork life. specificly how it went from 'Rumors' of litter births to a truth that twins are common but singel births to norm to now, officially, "Litters of three to five are the norm."

Yipes.

What kind of effect does that have, I wonder, when a family basicly breeds like hamsters? Do most Orks have one birth then call it a day? Two? How do Ork communities function when *everyone* has a half dozen brothers and sisters? How bad is the single mother situation when Orks are commonly arrested and rounded up by teh Star, leaving single moms trying to raise four kids of teh same age?

I'd like to see this side explored a bit more. I'm going to *guess* that a more community-based lifestyle arises, where you share more, since you're raised in a house where you *have* to share, and there's probably communal nurseries and the like ... too many babies for any one person to easily look after, so, instead, the ladies past childbearing years, the older kids, and teh moms when they can set up day care centers (Which, in truth, is just someone's house, most likely) wher ethey can help raise one another's kids. Since evryone gets raised together, the networking is probably tight as well, with everyone telling everyone everything, but, a more insular feel.  Also wonder about nepotism... do you try and get yoru family a job if you get lucky, or do you get yours then turn your back on teh family, to try and get out of there?

Lots and lots of interesting possibilities, there.


Please refrain from making gross generalizations based on RL ethnicities. Thank you.
-eidolon
X-Kalibur
And which ethnicity would that be? I can name several that fall into the some of those categories.

Not to mention Orks are obviously meant to fill the role previously held by african americans. (I hate that terminology, but I won't go into that can of worms.) Thats why you have Orxploitation.
Kev
QUOTE (Wakshaani)
Today I started to wonder about Ork life. specificly how it went from 'Rumors' of litter births to a truth that twins are common but singel births to norm to now, officially, "Litters of three to five are the norm."

Yipes.

What kind of effect does that have, I wonder, when a family basicly breeds like hamsters? Do most Orks have one birth then call it a day? Two? How do Ork communities function when *everyone* has a half dozen brothers and sisters? How bad is the single mother situation when Orks are commonly arrested and rounded up by teh Star, leaving single moms trying to raise four kids of teh same age?

I'd like to see this side explored a bit more. I'm going to *guess* that a more community-based lifestyle arises, where you share more, since you're raised in a house where you *have* to share, and there's probably communal nurseries and the like ... too many babies for any one person to easily look after, so, instead, the ladies past childbearing years, the older kids, and teh moms when they can set up day care centers (Which, in truth, is just someone's house, most likely) wher ethey can help raise one another's kids. Since evryone gets raised together, the networking is probably tight as well, with everyone telling everyone everything, but, a more insular feel. Also wonder about nepotism... do you try and get yoru family a job if you get lucky, or do you get yours then turn your back on teh family, to try and get out of there?

Lots and lots of interesting possibilities, there.

Actually, ghouls eat half the kids. No more overpopulation! Thanks HMMVV!

I always did wonder when they decided to change the birthrates of orks.... I mean, they're already the most abundant of metahumans (outside of good 'ol homo sapiens sapiens), so the fact that their birth rates are so alarmingly high, and given that it's been over 50 years since the Awakening... wouldn't the earth be teeming with 'em?

I mean shit, if orcs banded together into an army, nobody could stop them!
ChicagosFinest
AWWW they erased what I said! I understandwhy and I can see how its a gross generality but I live those cultures everyday. They were just observations I see as a minority in my own (and another) minority culture. Just because there is no hard facts to back it up doesnt mean its not true. Geesh, I feel like I'm in college again and I just got asked a question about black people I dont know!
Wakshaani
QUOTE (Kev)
I always did wonder when they decided to change the birthrates of orks.... I mean, they're already the most abundant of metahumans (outside of good 'ol homo sapiens sapiens), so the fact that their birth rates are so alarmingly high, and given that it's been over 50 years since the Awakening... wouldn't the earth be teeming with 'em?

I mean shit, if orcs banded together into an army, nobody could stop them!

Yeah, going from "Twins are common and tripplets about as common as twins are to humans" to "Orks have litters of 3-5 each time) is ... man. Huge. BEYOND huge. That's a societal shift like I have trouble imagining. With such a high Body, they don't even have the usual death rate for births in a developing economy, nor teh high rate of birth fatalities of mothers.

HUGE change.

I'm hoping that we'll get a Shdowtalk correction again at some point.

"Oh drek, THIS again?! Who keeps letting Humanis goons edit these things? Frak. Alright, for the last stinkin' time, ORKS DON'T HAVE LITTERS! They have kids, just like everybody else. Twins are more common, sure, and triplets happen about one in twenty births, AND Ork gestation is only six months, rather than the nine of a human, but that's it. Any discussion of "Litters" is pure Humanis drek and fear mongering."

-- Bull, the best Ork decker that you've never met

^^^ Like that, more or less.
ChicagosFinest
Well the main issue is numbers and stats. Single most of the humanis stuff might be true especially for ork males who might be the equivilant to black males in todays society. Low numbers of those who make it past HS let alone college. They if your lucky you get to see a middle class ork. The only rich ork I have heard of is Crime Time. Although he's mainly the public one
fistandantilus4.0
QUOTE (Wakshaani)
^^^ Like that, more or less.

hehe.. maybe you should just PM a request to Bull. wink.gif
Wakshaani
QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0)
QUOTE (Wakshaani @ Nov 3 2006, 07:15 PM)
^^^ Like that, more or less.

hehe.. maybe you should just PM a request to Bull. wink.gif

...

Holey cow, you can actually *do* that here, can't you?

...

*boggle*
fistandantilus4.0
whether or not he'll actually DO anything is up to debate. You'd be better off submittting something yourself if you want it to see something added to canon. But yeah, many of the freelancers are around here, and most of them don't mind answering questions. Peppering them with suggestions through PM may not be the best way to go though.

As far as PM'ing Bull, I just thought the choice of 'posters' was ironic. But yeah, you can PM Bull. I just hope he doesnt kill me for pointing that out. dead.gif
eidolon
Except the formatting is all wrong. If you're going to submit something for consideration, is should look

>>>>>[Like This.]<<<<<
- eidolon <00:00:00/00-00-00>

biggrin.gif

(And ork "litters" and ridiculous life spans are just a couple of things I'd love to see dropped from all SR canon. Heck, I'd even volunteer to travel the world and use a black magic marker to void all references. Oh, you'll need to buy my ticket(s) though. wink.gif)
SL James
Yes. God forbid the world is dark.
eidolon
It has nothing to do with the world being "dark" or "light" or anything else, other than "ork litters" and them having short life spans just so the writers way back when could go "see? see? Huh??? see? they're totally different than humans" strikes me as being silly.

edit: After giving this just a tad more thought last night before going to bed...

Do you honestly think that it takes "orky litters" for ork life and ork society to be "dark". It's plenty dark when you've got 2 kids that you can't afford to feed, are working a crappy job because of societal prejudice, live in a bad neighborhood.

Again, I just don't see how it takes silly, unsupportable "litter breeding" that breaks down as a story element without silly, unsupportable "short life spans" holding it up (and that's not even terribly logical, given the assumed numbers) to get across that orks don't have it all that great. I know it's a "dark and dreary" game. It's not lost on me. I just tend to try to lessen what I feel are the cartoon aspects of the world in my games.

YMMV blah blah disclaimer and all that.
ChicagosFinest
I wonder... Does high times still exist? Do they sell all types of drugs now or do they just stick to the sticky icky? That would be hallarious if it still did. I want to see wacky mentions of stuff like that I know all you writers have a since of humor grinbig.gif

Plus what happened to the good ol' Nation of Islam? Did that get swallowed but by that new progressive Islamic movement?
fistandantilus4.0
eidolon, it could just be that it's another hold over from the ED>SR connection, as it was the same way "back then". Continuity and all that.
knasser
QUOTE (eidolon)

Again, I just don't see how it takes silly, unsupportable "litter breeding" that breaks down as a story element without silly, unsupportable "short life spans" holding it up (and that's not even terribly logical, given the assumed numbers) to get across that orks don't have it all that great. I know it's a "dark and dreary" game. It's not lost on me. I just tend to try to lessen what I feel are the cartoon aspects of the world in my games.


What is supposed to be the cannon life-span for orcs? I have it in my head that it's about sixty, though I can't specifically state where that came from. At any rate, even if it were as low as forty that would still actually be just long enough for a species to perpetuate itself without a crippling penalty. Undomesticated humans would be reproducing from their early teens (and do in some of the less pleasant parts of the World). I would imagine that orcs could do the same.

But in the case of a shorter life span, you might well expect a species to take more forceful measures to ensure the survival of its genes. Increased number of children is one such strategy. In fiction and possibly in Earth Dawn history, orcs are categorised as warlike and less civilised, so might have an increased turnover compared to humans. Nature compensates. I would imagine that elves would be less fertile by nature based on similar arguments.

All of this is a bit academic though because surely by 2070, birth control is almost invisiblly automatic, and the technology for choosing your number of children should be prevalent.
ChicagosFinest
Nature or society? You have to assume that most orKs live in poverty. Poverty breads irresponceability (what a republican thing to say) and thus male orks are tied to gangs and other illegal and nafareous activities (not to mention racial discrimination) that end them up in jail.

Because of the high jail rate young orks know there a target and get there jollies off ASAP. Poverty = the need for fast money and a fast lifestlye thus fast ork women who want to get out either do it the hard way (through education) or do it the easy way (becoming an up and comming thugs baby mamma).

Comments?
fistandantilus4.0
QUOTE
All of this is a bit academic though because surely by 2070, birth control is almost invisiblly automatic, and the technology for choosing your number of children should be prevalent.

If you can afford it. Things get out of your price range quickly when you have no health care and are struggling just to feed yourself because of job placement disrimination combined with poor education and living in the barrens.

A few of the novels do place orks reaching old age as soon as their 40's (Never Trust and Elf ). ED backs this up in the Denizen's of Barsaive 2nd book. Check the average life spans in the SR books, and they keep it around the same, although they do say "average world wide" so that can also include other factors.
knasser
QUOTE (ChicagosFinest @ Nov 4 2006, 02:42 PM)
Nature or society?  You have to assume that most orKs live in poverty.  Poverty breads irresponceability (what a republican thing to say) and thus male orks are tied to gangs and other illegal and nafareous activities (not to mention racial discrimination) that end them up in jail.

Because of the high jail rate young orks know there a target and get there jollies off ASAP.  Poverty = the need for fast money and a fast lifestlye thus fast ork women who want to get out either do it the hard way (through education) or do it the easy way (becoming an up and comming thugs baby mamma).

Comments?


Ah yes, orKs. smile.gif

Poverty is the uniting factor in violence, lack of education, ill health and rapid and early reproduction. Agreed. Doesn't affect the number of children in one pregnancy, though. We're going to have to look for an evolutionary reason for this. I'd say the danger of an environment is the best rationale. Humans have fairly few children (compared to dogs and cats for example), because it takes an enormous amount of time and resource to nurture a child to adulthood, or at least to the stage that he or she doesn't require round the clock care. In modern society, we use birth control to have even fewer children because it now takes even longer to raise a child to the stage where he can fend for himself. But we're only allowed to get away with that evolutionary strategy (fewer children to conserve effort and resource) because we can minimise the risks to them. If the World were a much more dangerous place in evolutionary history, such that it no matter how much we looked after our children there was still a significant chance they'd be killed by the environment, then we'd be forced to have evolved to have more children. To prevent massive over-population in times of plenty and safety, though, we'd probably compensate with shorter lifespans. Sounding familiar, yet?

This suggests to me that orcs are better adapted to living in more dangerous environments than humans. Now this could be a literal component of the environment, such as geographic, it could be a social factor, such as orcs living in more violent societies, or it could be something else. In any case, number of children per pregnancy is a valid response.

The something else by the way, is an interesting idea I just had. Orcs (and the rest of metahumanity) only occur in a mana-rich environment. In evolutionary terms, it must confer some advantage, so you could say that the goblinisation into orcs is a response to an increased danger in the environment (i.e. the magic rich world was historically more dangerous than the non-magic world), resulting in increased strength, endurance and ability to repopulate the species after the tribes last encounter with a dragon. Similarly elves develop a longer lifespan as a different coping strategy etc. By that argument, normal humans are the weakest - an evolutionary legacy that is unable to mutate. smile.gif

@fistandantilus: I take your point, but if you look at contraceptive technology today, I find it hard to imagine that it will be out of the reach of even the poorest citizens of a modern society in 2070. Heck, if the disenfranchised start growing too numerous and organised, I would imagine the corps funding some public contraception programs "for their own good." As to the average age, if it doesn't exclude environmental factors then it's pretty much useless, given the huge gap between rich and poor in SR2070 and ork's tendency to be on one side of it.

In my game, I'm probably going to compromise and peg the ork natural lifespan to be about 55-60. Trolls I think I'm going to give at least a human lifespan, perhaps a few years more. They seem like a high-survival rate sort of species to me. wink.gif
ChicagosFinest
I thought ork baby periods were 6 months vs the human 9? I know I read that somethere. Since multiple births are common too I bet an ork mother has twins and then turns around maybe a moth to 2 moths later and is pregnant again. By the time the second set comes around the first set is 8 to a 1 old. Could that explain the litters theory? (Oh how I sound like a humanis).
fistandantilus4.0
QUOTE (knasser)
I would imagine the corps funding some public contraception programs "for their own good."


Some of them have in the past. Genome corp out of Switzerland for example. There was a huge backlash. It was sterilization.

Corps don't tend to fund much in the barens. Hell, the food trucks are armored. They always have need for more bodies, whether for experimentation (2XS IIRC) , manual labor, or cheap shadow assets. The barrens has it's own built in population control. Violence and need.
ThreeGee
QUOTE
We're going to have to look for an evolutionary reason for this. I'd say the danger of an environment is the best rationale.


Is it evolutionary? According to ED weren't the original orks created by elves as a slave race? Perfect reason for them to be big, tough and fast breeding. They were created to be assets rather than people. Great reason for them to have a short lifespan as well, stops them getting too feisty. In this context, SR orks are akin to the Replicants in Bladerunner. That's how I play my Ork Activist Mystic Adept anyhow. There's a certain nobility in a short, hard life.

Time to die
eidolon
QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0)
eidolon, it could just be that it's another hold over from the ED>SR connection, as it was the same way "back then". Continuity and all that.

Quite probable. The more I find out about the ED/SR connections and how they continually stupid-up my SR, the less I want to go looking for them. smile.gif
hyzmarca
QUOTE (ThreeGee @ Nov 4 2006, 04:04 PM)
QUOTE
We're going to have to look for an evolutionary reason for this. I'd say the danger of an environment is the best rationale.


Is it evolutionary? According to ED weren't the original orks created by elves as a slave race? Perfect reason for them to be big, tough and fast breeding. They were created to be assets rather than people. Great reason for them to have a short lifespan as well, stops them getting too feisty. In this context, SR orks are akin to the Replicants in Bladerunner. That's how I play my Ork Activist Mystic Adept anyhow. There's a certain nobility in a short, hard life.

Time to die

Orks spran from the Tears of NightSlayer, blasphemer!

The draconic creation myth includes all the Namegiver races. If the orks were created by elves then the dragons would probably know, considering all of the genetic experimentation they had been doing on elves.
ThreeGee
QUOTE
Orks spran from the Tears of NightSlayer, blasphemer!


Hmm, my mistake. But before the original foundation of Cara Fahd, the orks were enslaved by elves weren't they?
hyzmarca
QUOTE (ThreeGee)
QUOTE
Orks spran from the Tears of NightSlayer, blasphemer!


Hmm, my mistake. But before the original foundation of Cara Fahd, the orks were enslaved by elves weren't they?

Yep.
MYST1C
QUOTE (knasser)
What is supposed to be the cannon life-span for orcs? I have it in my head that it's about sixty

According to SR4 the average life expectancies of the metahuman races in 2070 are:
Dwarfs - 100+ years
Elves - several 100 years
Humans - 65 years*
Orks - 35-45 years**
Trolls - 55 years

* "global average".

** Various sourcebooks (not to speak of novels) have established that this results not only from the typical poor and violent life of Orks but in fact from rapid aging (puberty at 10, physical maturity at 15, etc.).
Wakshaani
I'm trying to remember how old the one Ork was from DNA/DOA that was near the end of his natural lifespan. I want to say that he was 35-ish, maybe 40, but he wasn't looking good at ALL.

Heck, there's been three (four?) full generations of Orks since the Night of Rage.

IIRC, it's also established that Orks reach sexual maturity around 8-9 years old and full physical maturity by 12-15. (This compares to sexual 12-14 and physical 16-21 for humans)

So, that thar's some quick metabolism.
Draconis
Great, we'll be hip deep in Orks in the 2100's.
eidolon
....must...control....urge....to rant....
Draconis
QUOTE (eidolon)
....must...control....urge....to rant....

You're admin, your rights to rant have been revoked. Hey there's some free alliteration for you.
eidolon
Pshaw!
wink.gif
lorechaser
QUOTE (Draconis)
Great, we'll be hip deep in Orks in the 2100's.

We can only hope....

Fortune
QUOTE (Draconis)
Great, we'll be hip deep in Orks in the 2100's.

Yep, because we won't be able to dispose of the bodies fast enough.
lorechaser
QUOTE (Fortune @ Nov 6 2006, 03:59 PM)
QUOTE (Draconis @ Nov 7 2006, 01:29 AM)
Great, we'll be hip deep in Orks in the 2100's.

Yep, because we won't be able to dispose of the bodies fast enough.

Stuffer Shack's new product line for 2097:

Etoufee Jack's Spicy Trog Legs
Greenskins, in lemon/lime, nacho cheese, and french onion flavors.
Orkrageous and Trolliscious Sloppy Soy's, now in 80 oz!
Gobs n' Gobs of Gobs! Now in a chocolate coating!
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