So, got a player, and she decided to play a female troll. After looking through the books, we found, maybe, one picture with a female troll in it, and that's not even a good representation. Are there actually female trolls, and what do they look like? Do we have visual evidence? Someone toss me a book and page number!

Honestly, I'd love to see more artwork showing female representations of the races, just so people know what they look like. Trolls and orcs, especially, since I want to try to get past the stereotype of 'ugly brute'.

Isn't there one in the opening story of SR4?

I would agree there needs to be more artwork around female orks and trolls for that matter.

- J.

There's a female troll in the opening fiction of the core book.

There's a female ork featured prominently on the cover of arsenal (though she does look like she has the "human looking" quality)
The gunslinger adept in the sample character section of the core is a female ork (though again, pretty human looking).
On page 50 of runner's companion there's a picture of a female Ogre(?) (ork metavarient); that could be a stand in for a female troll in a pinch.
Page 56 of rc has a female Formori(?) (troll metavarient), though Fomori aren't as "tough" as trolls are.

I've never seen a picture of a female troll, though. Fair point there.

I totally agree with you there, Toshiro. For some reason, most of the newer pictures of female Orks make them look rather nice, but we still have a minority of Femal Trolls.

That said, this is an attempt I had done to try and depict one.

http://sakieh.deviantart.com/art/Shadowrun...-Alley-75274166

Getting dermal deposits was tricky, and I think the face is still too much "Human with horns" and I do not think I quite got the arms and chest right. But it is probably a good starting point

The one in the opening fiction is the one we think might be a female troll. The position is bad for it, though, and doesn't really give you a good idea of what they might look like.

I've seen some decent pictures of female orcs, but again, those seem to be a minority of all the orc pictures you ever see (which always seem to be butt-ugly orc guys). I think the better pictures of an crc I'd eve seen was from the Orc Street Samurai in the Street Samurai's Catalog (1E and 2E). The picture from the gunslinger adept I think is one of the other really good ones to give an idea of an orc's appearance.

The metavarient pictures in the new Runner's companion really, really disappointed me. I'd really have rathered better quality pictures, rather than what amounts, in my books, to comic strip drawings (no offense, web comic art can be really good for what they're needing to do, but I seriously don't think it worked for this)

...hmmm, I thought the colour plate of the Street Shaman in the 4th ed core book (p 102) was supposed to be a female troll.

Still a butt ugly one, though.

The problem is that a lot of the artists just go hog wild with trolls (and to a lesser extent orks), making them less a distinctive variant of homo sapiens, and more like freakish, cartoonish post-apocalyptic mutant freaks. There is almost no consistency in the artwork. I don't like the street shaman picture, or the picture on page 56 of Runner's Companion either, but at least they show semi-plausible looking characters. For some of the pictures, you wonder "How does this guy eat? Can he even close his mouth with those teeth?"

I don't really get the "they look like humans" complaint - metahumans are humans. They should look like humans with some exotic features, not like alien species.

OK...it is not so much "They look like humans" to me, but more...they "Don't look like trolls."

Trolls are supposed to have tusks similar to Orks(though, generally not as pronounced), they are supposed to have horns, Dermal Bone Deposits, broader heads and bodies, longer proportionally speaking arms, broad, powerfully built chests. They should not just be a really tall human with horns. However, I definately agree about the Street Shamanfrom the SR4 core book...Honestly, I wish we could give TPTB a challenge to put a canon, good looking, troll female in art for a book. Come on! Show us what the Troll Face would look like!

Agreed. Create a 'baseline' for each race, male and female, including the new metavariants. Then, with those base lines, what does an attractive or unattractive version of that race look like? I'm also curious to see a decent picture of each of the new races used as well -- satyrs, centaurs, naga, and pixies. What does a male or female of each look like?

I remember Para of Europe, and the centaurs there, do centaurs still have a horse head? That would be cool... but how do they talk?

Ask the Famous Mr. Ed?
Or Francis?

Here's my take on female metahumans:

Weibliche SR Rassen

And male metahumans:

Männliche SR Rassen

Your ork doesn't have enough 'orkish' in her. She needs heavier musculature, heavier facial muscles, and a rougher look to her skin and hair.

Your Troll is WAY OFF. Trollish phys is asymetrical, dermal bone growth like kerratinous plates that grow in patches, particularly over the flatter parts of the body (forehead, forearm, shin, back, chest). Remember that baby trolls are going to have piles of rather nasty teeth, and they're going to have to have *ahem* mammary adaption to such nursing habits. Trolls ARE ugly, even with a fairly okay charisma. Remember that your Charisma is generally the raw stat used to power your intimidation, and some Trolls have almost comical looks to them (slobbering, drifting eye, hunch-back style deformities, and Elephant-Man growths of bone structure).

Your Dwarf chick is spot on and hot. You may want slightly more aquiline features on your elf, but other than that, your proportions are all spot on. Your trolls arms are the right length, your elves have that slightly emaciated 'please eat a sandwich' look, and your humans are good lookin.

The issue with the races is that, genetically, they come from similar stock, but you may notice that crossbreeds are /always/ expressed as one meta-type or the other. No such thing as a half-elf. Earthdawn and Shadowrun are the same world, and we've seen the racial variant in that game. They aren't human. The lack of magic just forced them to express as human. Trolls are the most inhuman of Meta-Humans, not counting the expression of the Infected. Their bodies have undergone the most painful of warping and growth, and like the Elephant-Man their general phys is stolen from, they aren't symmetrical or pretty in pretty much any way.

Personally I like that troll better then a version of Warf from Star Trek. The second thing is orc females also have horns, which were forgotten in Fuchs drawing. Trolls also do have natural armor so their skin would probably not be smooth as a babies bottom, but personally I don't view them us green over the top witches on steroids with horns.

Orc females have horns? That's the first I've heard of that.

For me the problem isn't that they look "too human" - most metahuman pictures simply don't match the actual written race descriptions!

• Elves aren't slim and tall enough.
• Orks aren't muscular and tall enough and their faces are usually either teethy caricatures or show hardly any tusks.
• Trolls are, on almost all pictures, way too short and slender, with too symmetrical horns.
• Dwarves often have wrong body proportions, making them look simply as very short but otherwise normally developed humans.

And the ears... all metahumans have pointy ears, yes. But only elves have elongated and pointy ears!

If you have access to them you could swipe some of the Troll artwork for Earthdawn.

The Namegivers of Barsaive pt2 or the Crystal Raiders book had Trolls in and seem to remember (though I could be wrong) that there where some female Trolls in there.

Still some quality Shadowrun Ork and Troll art would be great!

Maybe they can get Alex Ross back to do some more art? Shadowrun gallery

Remember that biosculpting is cheap and widely available. No one with a bit of money to spare will have to be ugly in SR.

I have to disagree with this one. I've seen even official artwork that says otherwise now and again. All trolls don't *have* to be ugly piles of monstrous bone deposits.

We've always played it that there can be handsome trolls, ugly trolls, handsome orks, ugly orks, handsome elves, ugly elves, same with dwarves and humans, and everything inbetween. I've seen some excellent canon art of trolls which made them look not too ugly; i wouldn't say pretty, but I don't think every troll has to look like a giant Quasimodo.

One that sticks out is the troll on the back of the Shadowrun 3e Runner's Companion. He was a heavy-metal looking troll; longhaired, horns, tusks(but they were symmetrical), some piercings in his lip and eyebrow I think. He wasn't a prettyboy or anything like that, but he looked fairly normal, and he could totally had been in some heavy-metal bar and have some non-troll female who liked his ''big, rough, biker type'' hit on him. Granted, there are plenty of trolls that do fit the quasimodo look in the art, but I wouldn't mind seeing a mix. Like humans, I'm sure some get the good end of the genetic stick, while others fall out of the proverbial ugly tree, hitting every branch.

It does say in the book elves tend to be more slender and dwarves more stocky, but I totally think you can have a beefy elf if they work out for it, or a skinnier dwarf. The skinnier dwarf might not look like a Calvin Klein model skinny, but skinny enough. It also doesn't say elves are ''skinny'' in the book, it calls them more slender, but equally strong. I think sometimes elf skinniness is overplayed in artwork.

Well, it could easily be an ork with BOD as dumpstat and low STR.
That woman could easily have BOD and STR 4.

IMHO, all elfs and all but the toughest orks (those with more than 7 in BOD and STR) should have a stature that would also be possible for a human- they will only lean more heavily in a certain direction (of course, an emaciated elf would be frighteningly thin by human standards).



But it would be spot on for a fomori or a troll with extensive biosculpting.
I think that a lot of the trolls who could afford it would try to get rid of their dermal deposits or at least make them look more symetrical.
With the advance of cosmetics and plastic surgery that is described in the BBB and Augmentation, that shouldn't be much of a problem.
Won't help your troll squatter in the barrens, but in the corporate sector, i'd expect most trolls to be heavily biosculpted.

But then, i never understood why there where almost no orks who would try to get their teeth fixed.
Okay, ork pride may be an issue in 2070, but imediately after goblinization took place, i think that a lot of orks would have tried to do something about their tusks.



Does it say anywhere that trolls are born with teeth?

Here's one my wife did a few years ago: Troll Biker Mama

I have a friend who was playing a goth troll raven shaman in my SR3 game... I'll check and see if the character portraits she made ever got scanned.

-paws

I have to concede to all these. I thought those pictures were supposed to be average representations of the species though?

Many babies are born with budding teeth, and some with full heads of hair. With the amount of pronouncement on the tusks, I'm willing to bet they come in /early/. As for dental growth, do I remember reading in old editions that both Orks and Trolls went through more than two sets of teeth in their short lifetimes?

I also disagree with this. Trolls may have dermal deposits and horns, but this doesn't necessarily mean their facial features have to be ugly. Trolls, due to their pronounced jaws, foreheads, and noses (minotaurs are an exception, with the flat noses) are the features that we associate with masculinity. Many women find these pronounced masculine features to be attractive. Take Mickey Rourke for example, especially in Sin City with the pronounced face make-up. He's "ugly", but he's also a big macho man, both in the face and in personality. A charismatic troll can work this angle.

Also, I have no idea where you got the idea that trolls slobber and have skewed eyes. They're humans, and don't have a natural predisposition towards deformity. The hunching is likely to be a byproduct of the longer arms, but could easily be corrected by good posture.

When it comes to intimidation, Trolls make up for lacking charisma with the gamut of positive intimidation modifiers they get from their awe-inspiring size, horns and nasty reputations.

Well, a better question would be: Who would not have surgery done? Biosculpting is not really expensive, after all. And cosmetic surgery is booming today already. A shadowrunner can afford minor biosculpting easily (it's about the cost of 4 uses of a nano-disguise, if I remember right).

In fact, the issue of hunching comes up in a bit of fluff I once read. Not sure if it was canon (probably it wasn't)...

The speaker (a troll) claimed that the reason trolls appear to hunch all the time is that there aren't many buildings (especially older ones) built with their height in mind. Consequently, that have to hunch over or they'll either tear the ceilings up with their horns or continuously bump their heads.

-paws

Makes sense, actually. I do like the Earthdawn pictures of trolls I've seen, and some of the SR ones that seem to mirror it -- big, shaggy guys. But I've wondered what the female trolls are like -- are they 'shaggy' as well? *shrugs*

Oh, and I take back some of what I said with Runner's Companion. Two pages have what I'd call 'webcomic art', but the other pictures showing the meta races were pretty damn good, and gave a better feel for the races.

There's a lady troll prostitute (trollstitute?) ink drawing in the Tir na Nog sourcebook. It's the most accurate rendering I've seen.

You know, whenever I picture a female troll, I just kind of picture a thick, tall woman with tusks. I mean, yeah, let's face it - they're gonna be ugly as sin by modern definitions, but similarity breeds attraction, so trolls would have a different definition of beauty than, say, an elf.

If I had my tablet, I'd whip up a quick sketch of what I picture a female troll to look like.

Also, jumping on the idea of troll charisma; charisma isn't how you look (though this will help - see the old SR3 quality "Good Looking and Knows It") - it's how you act. Your confidence, your ability to talk, your sense of humor, wit, and timing. All of these things are your charisma.

How do you think Jack Black is so popular? He's ugly as sin, but he can still woo the ladies because he has high charisma.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Jack Black is just a really charismatic ORC.

Trolls and orks shouldn't be born with tusks, and trolls shouldn't be born with horns. Why? Because labor is dangerous enough as it is without large hard sharp things getting in the way. Teeth are one thing, they're fully contained within the mouth, and hair is fairly soft, but animals that have prominent sharp protrusions aren't born with them. The massive internal bleeding that would naturally result isn't exactly conducive to maternal survival.

Dermal. Plated. Vagina.

More to the point, do female players willing to play unattractive characters actually exist?

I think it would be worthwhile for Catalyst to have an image showing the major races, in both sexes next to one another, police lineup style, complete with height grid in the background.

Something similar to this http://www.cliffordbbowyer.com/Race_Example-PH2.gif but with both sexes depicted. (Forgive my referencing of that OTHER game here...it was for a good cause!)

This thread has some still linking troll females. In swimsuits, no less.

By the fact my female player is playing a female troll, possibly?

Is there any reason... logic, fluff, whatever, that trolls -must- be ugly to non-trolls?

Depends on your interpretation of a trolls natural Dermal Armor. While it may look "tough" on males, for females it posses a large problem to overcome based on our societies idea of beauty.

There is a picture of a possible Troll-ess that is an EVO advert. I say possible because she has a beautiful horn and body but no obvious dermal. And thanks to the lack of scale, I am not certain on the size.

There are numerous references in canon to female trolls. As for what they look like, that's more of a problem.

I agree that with the widespread availability of biosculpting anyone with any money will not be ugly. The lower charisma of Orks and Trolls I put down to their generally fearsome proportions, rather than any obvious deformities.

That being said, the dermal deposits ought to be fairly disfiguring, and would be pretty tricky to remove without their removal being obvious (either in terms of assymetry, or excessive symmetry).

Yes, I can see that dermal armour seems to be the sticking point for a lot of people. In terms of society's ideal of beauty, that is very malleable. What was considered beautiful in 1870 is different from that in 1970. 2070 could be just as different, particularly with the advent of a whole LOT of new expressions of sub-species of homo sapiens.

And whatever the modifications for sub-species, they are just that... trolls are meta-humans, not meta-rhinoceroces. Rhinoceri? Rhini? ...my brain hurts...

One thing that I think would make me grumpy if I were a troll is the knowledge that all I have to do to fit into human-size building is...

knuckle walk. Just like a fraggin ape...

So, do I want to constantly humiliate myself, or constantly fix drywall...

Nah, I think I'll go dismember some wageslaves.

Not that I can think of.

re: Dermal removal
While this may be one of the more extensive and time intensive cosmetic surgeries available, its certainly not difficult.

My personal (non-canon) view of troll dermal armor is that it can ranges in appearance from the rocky/spiky, dermal protrusions (a la the SR3 Sprawl Ganger) to a smoother, rhino-like hide (a la Orthoskin). Children born as trolls tend toward the latter, while those undergoing UGE tend toward the former. The most hideous expressions of troll metahumanity occurred during the early days of goblinization and again during the YotC SURGE phenomena.

Also, I think it would be a good idea to take a cue from D&D 3e and do a lineup of the common metahuman races for general comparison. This was sort of done in RC, well, sort of.

(BTW, the female orc from the PHB 3.0 is frickin' awesome. That is how I picture a buff SR ork girl. The gunslinger adept being the other end of the spectrum; small-ish, lithe, and wiry.)

-paws

As I biosculpter, I personally hate working on trolls. I don't even do it at my shop at the mall. Why would I pay ten percent more for all the equipment and beds I need - plus the specialized machines for dermal treatments and horn modification, for less than one percent of my clientele? It's not like most trolls have money, or even jobs for that matter. How many trolls do you see walking around the mall? Yeah, nada. Plus, even when you're finished, after all the hours of work and programming, they're still ugly. They don't call them trolls for nothing, if you know what I mean. Now, orks... orks I can handle, though their sense of humor is beyond me. You need a brain surgeon to fix that.

Actually, that would be even worse. It would greatly increase the probability of the baby getting stuck and suffocating to death, necessitating major surgery to remove the rotting baby corpse or else risking deadly infection.




That's where you'd be wrong. Dermal is beautiful, my man. Some trolls see these supermodels on the trid and spend a small fortune getting their deposits shaped and augmented to conform to the media's idea of beauty. But me, I prefer naturals. You can always tell when a troll has their dermals lifted, tucked, polished, or enlarged and it never looks exactly right. But natural dermals, whether big or small, glossy or matte, knobby or smooth, rough or fine, symmetrical or asymmetrical uniform or irregular, perky or saggy, they're all amazing in their own ways. And they all deserve respect.

And you know how some sex toys have bumps or protrusions to increase stimulation? Well, you've never truly lived until you've gotten dermal from an experienced troll.

Interesting point. However may I add that they will rip out your arms and beat you with it if you piss them off?

Also trolls would be more likely to be hired more then any other meta race. They are good grunts, good for security slightly less intelligent then most of the other meta races (except orcs,) you also can charge trolls twice as much, since you have to get specialty equipment (and if you did you probably wouldn't set up shop in a mall that was not built for trolls.) There are probably specialty troll malls, but I would think that they would probably be a drive to get to (kind of like outlet malls.)

*edit* dang it hyzmarca that sure did change the beat of this thread. Oh well... it was bound to happen. *edit*

I had to perform cybernecromancy on the Shadowrun Swimsuit Issue thread. I'za sorry, it needed to live again... well... as alive as a cyberzombie ever gets anyway.

Excellent. I was going to home in on that point.

She's covered in horns and dermal plating and she's beefy and tusked. To a male troll, she's drop-dead gorgeous, and those knobby bone deposits are in just the right places.

There is a picture of one in Target:Matrix in the section dealing with matrix brothels. Yes, I do know its 3rd edition.

Female Ork?
BBB, Gunslinger Adept in the sample characters.

Female Troll?
Tir na nOg sourcebook p. 56.

In Arsenal there's a reference to a dwarf dealer that has a fetish for male trolls (I couldn't belive my own eyes reading it ).

I follow more of the logic that Trolls are altered humans essentially. I love the muppet looking trolls from Shadowrun art, and if someone wanted to play one in my games I'd think it was great. I Kinda like to draw "hot" Troll and Ork chicks:

Like this one I did for ImmortalElf of his character Silver

Or this quickie I did of a troll chick

There's some more on there in the mix