The issues affecting metahumans-all metahumans-with regards to their needs or size have been addressed in SR before (probably nowhere more than in the novel Changeling, but I digress). It's not something that is blithely skipped over, just not dwelt on overmuch. Games become a bit of a pain in the ass when your character has to roll damage because the ceiling fan clipped their horns again, nobody wants to take the flaw Hunchbacked because they grew up with a continual stoop and their back never straightened properly. Gamemasters might want to charge quadruple for shoes that could be used as hats by a pair of dwarfs.

I had a friend with acromegaly, who passed away some years ago. Anyone in the Seattle con scene about ten years ago would remember Ogre. He reported his own height as something over 7 feet tall.

Granted, Ogre was a skinny man; I probably weigh more than he did. But I remember walking with him down the Ave, going into stores and restaurants. He had to duck, but he didn't have any issues getting into buildings. I never saw him get out of a car, but I recall watching him try and sleep in a normal sized bed.

Basically, I think some of the height problems are overstated. Ogre didn't have that much difficulty getting along on a day-to-day basis. When he did have difficulty, he managed it with dignity.

Besides which, I would hazard a guess that the handicapped probably occupy about 1% of this country, and there's a large market aimed at them. Curb cuts and braille on ATMs (even drive-through ones, heh) are familiar sights nowadays; most shows are closed-captioned for the deaf.

But in this edition, you don't apply a negative modifier at all, you simply have a lower maximum. So under the current rules, the average troll has an logic of 3, just like the average human. And there would actually be MORE logic 4 trolls than logic 4 humans in the sample set, because all the logic 5 and 6 trolls are logic 4 instead.

Here's some fluff.

I'm pretty adamant that in creating a troll character (in any pre-SR4) Editions a character creating a Troll character had to spend AT LEAST 3 Build Points in Charisma, and if they only spent that minimum they would get an attribute of 1. An Elf who spent 3 points of Charisma would end up with an attribute of 4.

So, if you disregard the exceptional Attribute edge (and cyberware and adept powers, of course), the maximum Charisma a troll could start the game with was 4 (spending six points).

This is what we're talking about, right? So for averages, your average citizen has 3 of all attributes (except for the special attributes) and if you want to make your average metatype citizen, you apply the attribute modifiers, and yes the attribute modifiers so an average Troll does have a Charisma of 1.

OK, gang, some of the above arguments appear to have logical flaws.

1) Some of the arguments so far work with random distributions of numbers.

If you took the human range of values from 1 to 6, and averaged them, the average value would be 3.5, not 3. A whole mess of random rolls averaged would approach that value. If you took all the 5s and 6s and made them 4s as was suggested, the average would approach 3. If you restricted the rolls to a range of 1 to 4, the average would approach 2.5.

None of these necessarily represents the way players would generate their PCs. Players will choose non-randomly to assign numbers to the affected Attributes according to their needs. There is no arithmetic or statistical phenomenon that forces a player to put a value of 1 into CHA. If a player wanted a PC to have a CHA of 4, they could have a troll with a CHA of 4. The fact the maximum of the range is 2 lower does not imply that the average must be 2 lower. The average value for CHA as assigned by players could be higher than 3, or lower than 3, or anywhere depending on the wishes and prejudices of players. It could be 4 if we all put as much into the Attribute as we could.

2) BP are assigned as the player wishes, and no subtraction occurs afterwards. You put 20 BP in at character generation, you get 2 points higher than the minimum.

3) The increase to the average value generated by the increase to the minimum value for trolls in other Attributes is not somehow nullified by the phenomenon in 1) above, as has been suggested. The range of values of 5 to 10 for STR or BOD, if randomly rolled, would approach 7.5. If you rolled 1s to 10s and treated all the 1s to 4s as 5s, the average would approach 6.5. Not 3, given 2) above, and the absolute lowest average value would be if all players added nothing to the base value, leaving 5.

4) As has been suggested, the whole troll relationship to the rest of us thing is up to the role playing of the players and the GM. Sure, there could be more fluff describing the problems, but do we really need help to figure them out?

I don't believe so, but if I'm wrong, then what things should have been spelled out for us? Specifically what fluff should have been written but was not?

Peter

Metagamingly, all of the metahumans with attribute modiers have paid for those bonuses and penalties via their racial cost. Instead of forcing you to buy an attribute and then take those points away, they just folded the price into the racial cost and saved a step.

Anyone who denies that from a practical standpoint is just being a douche.

I had an ork who paid the money to gel-pak his SR3 bag, because I figured that was the most rational way to handle a PC with ceramic bone lacing, muscle augmentation 4, and a very high base strength.

I agree with you a lot, Doc, but making that argument lessens this entire thread. You're arguing semantics. We all know what he meant when he said, "trolls are no less intelligent or mannered than other metatypes." It's commentary on racism and stereotyping, not on statistical bell curves.

The argument you lay out is essentially picking a fight where none is needed. Purely looking at statistics, elves are more charismatic, but most of the players I know play them as uppity assholes, which is why we hate them. The same is in effect for trolls. No matter what their scores, people generally play them as dumb as rocks. It's a stereotype, and one that's relied on far too much.

From my perspective, the charisma stat has to do with physical appearance alone. The higher the charisma, the prettier. But a low charisma doesn't detract from intelligence or manners. Sure, the first impression is libel to be poor, but if the character tries hard and plays a kind hearted and well-mannered character, he can overcome his charisma. We're talking about statistically intangible traits here. Just as dignity should not be equated to charisma, neither should manners.

Intelligence... well that's a completely different beast.

So just being pretty is enough to innately help you out with certain magical tasks? And here I always thought it had more to do with force of personality and stuff.

Does that mean that my Dikoted Ally Spirit won't sleep with me if I am not pretty enough?

Aren't we getting a little off-topic? Whether we're running trolls in fourth edition or third edition, we're talking about whether Trolls as a race, belong in SR.

Doctor Funkenstein, I'll gladly concede to being a douche if you show me where in third edition it says that the negative attribute modifiers are factored in? And if it's true, then why do elves and trolls cost the same in build points, while only Trolls suffer from negative attribute modifiers. If you're strictly talking about SR4 though, where there IS a ten point difference, then I am saved from douchehood. But again, it's not on topic, anyway.

Simon, take another look at the charisma attribute description.

Doc Funk said "please"! OMGROFL!

Here's my interpretation of "Trolls are no less intelligent or mannered than other metatypes"
it's one of those approximate, heuristic statements, kinda like "the Earth is spherical".

If you really want precision, the Earth is not exactly spherical (it bulges due to rotation). And the statistical distribution among trolls, and the statistical distribution among other metatypes generally, is not EXACTLY the same.
For less demanding levels of precision, the Earth is spherical, and the vast majority of humans, elves, orks, and dwarves - and trolls - have INT, LOG and CHA of 2, 3, or 4. For everyday purposes, if all you know about someone is their metatype, that gives you low predictive value for their mental stats.
When you go looking for high-CHA people, as in CHA 5 or higher, you get very few trolls (adepts and the ones with Exceptional Attribute), a few orks, some humans and dwarves, and a lot of elves. The metatype distribution among that subset of humanity is different than the metatype distribution of, say, the total population of Seattle, or of Earth. Among any given million elves, maybe 20% have CHA 5 or higher, and of those 200,000 elves, the percentages of pop stars, sales reps, shamans, and shadowrunners are higher than among the other 800,000 with CHA 2,3 or 4. Among any given million trolls, maybe 1% have CHA 5 or higher. When you go to ultra-high CHA, eg 10+, there are no trolls at all, very few humans, mostly elves. So there is a useful and true statement about elves being higher-CHA than trolls... at that level, from that perspective.

Okay, your turn. It's an explicit statement in BBB. What's *your* interpretation?

I posted two possible "CHA among trolls" distribution approximations earlier in the thread. Were you able to understand them, and if so, do you have an alternate approximation of distribution?

Again, you get to play Shadowrun how you want to. If you prefer "THERE ARE NO TROLLS", go for it. If you prefer "LIFE IS SIMPLE, ALL ELVES ARE PRETTY, ALL ORKS ARE STRONG", then go for it. If you're trying to persuade me that I would have more fun playing that way, or that the BBB tells us to play that way, then you've taken on an uphill proposition.

Of course trolls belong in SR. They do have an important part in the game's background: would your players be afraid of prison if it wasnt' for Bubba the Love troll ?

Good catch.

Which just reinforces my opinion that I've never had much reason to pay any attention to Dwarves, makes me glad I put "I believe you'll find..." in the above quote, and makes it all the more amusing to me that it's Elves who are being complained about being too cheap (when they cost more than Dwarves and get fewer attribute points).

In SR1 and SR2 all races did indeed add up to the same +3 total. SR3 came up with the brilliant idea to take the Quickness penalty away from Dwarves and make them cost less points "for no reason".

Elves and Trolls were always more popular than the others because Trolls had the biggest differences from normal and elves had no weaknesses. SR3 bent over backwards to make being a Dwarf game mechanically viable - hell being a Dwarf outright paid you points.

There's no underlying game mechanical justification for why the various races cost what they do. Hell, the SR4 BP costs of the four main races are just the percentage of metahuman characters of that metatype, rounded up to the nearest 5.

--

That being said, in the sixth world Trolls and Dwarfs are supposed to be rare. Both of them together account for less than 5% of the world's population. Trolls in particular are drawn to rural areas and tend to avoid city life. Their impact on politics would be expected to be pretty minimal.

Trolls really are a lot like gorillas. They can rip a steel belted radial in half with their hands and they can outrun world class sprinters. But they are as a people shy and live in the woods more often than not. And like gorillas, or orangutans, the world wouldn't be that different if they weren't around. But the world would be diminished with their passing.

-Frank

I dunno, how common is it to drown retarded babies in human culture?

OK, so the official fluff hasn't fully explored or thought out a place for trolls in the SR4 universe. How is life for them? How have they made a world designed for little people work for them?

Aside from all the various side arguments here, I think we can all agree on that, no?

If so, what do we do? We can continue ad infinitum pissing on the system, or do something about it ourselves. Here's one suggestion.

Most of the world is not built for troll size metahumans. Trolls therefore would gravitate to places where their size would not be an issue, or where they could rebuild the environment to suit their needs. Rural settings as suggested in the books are excellent in that regard, and there is lots of precedent for misfits stepping out of the mainstream and making a go of it in the farmlands and the woods.

This wouldn't help those trolls who wouldn't want to be marginalized to a bucolic backwater or disconnected from medical and other services. Thrasher music needs an urban environment! And SR needs a stock of urban-savvy trolls to fit the job market. So we need an urban environment that would take in trolls and accommodate. Where might that be?

I propose the city of Toronto. First of all, it already has a reputation worldwide for multiculturality (#1 in the world according to the UN) and draws people from everywhere because of it. The local and Canadian federal laws (which I guess may be skewed by amalgamation with the US, but we can work it out) are already designed to include easily targeted communities. (Such as gays: everyone should experience Gay Pride Week once in their lives!)

Second, at the time Canada and the US would have been fractured by the resurgence of NANs, the displaced people from the Canadian west would have one very large city available to them (Montreal being in seceding/-ed Quebec) to which to emigrate. I recognize that not all non-NAN people would move, or choose Toronto to move to, but there would be a massive social upheaval as literally millions of people would be looking for a new place to live. Whether Toronto would actually want it or not, it would be refugee central for the Canadian non-NAN diaspora. One more displaced community, of trolls, would be just one among many.

I know this is not part of the canon. I understand Toronto and Canada as a whole are seen as an afterthought by the literature. A logical look at the social realities of the disrupted SR world, which I think is what people are calling for, would suggest that Toronto would be driven by those social forces to become one of the largest, most diverse urban regions in the UCAS. Seattle, bless its SR-originator-loved heart, is smaller in the SR world of 2070 than Toronto is today. It is entirely reasonable to see an immigrant-swollen city expanding to swallow its contiguous neighbouring cities and grow to 10-15 million people. It would in fact become a city state.

The pursuant chaos and disruption would overwhelm the infrastructure and force change/problems/opportunity. All of which would cost huge amounts of money. The flip-side of the dissolution of Canada is that the peculiar system we have of transfer payments from wealthier parts to poorer parts would disappear as well. Toronto as it exists today pays out $12 billion a year more than services come back from the federal and provincial governments, which are the very levels of government that are supposed to deal with issues of immigration, employment, health care social services, etc. Most of that money goes to places that would no longer be part of Canada. When that money stops going out, because the system that sucks it away collapses,it can be spent at home, for example to deal with the issues of newcomers and their accommodation.

In the model of the current organization of the city, a huge influx of people with as defining and as specializing a nature as trolls would naturally gravitate to one or more enclaves, in which the rebuilding effort would naturally take into account the physical needs of trolls. And once the ball starts rolling, and trolls elsewhere see a mega-city building troll-size homes and services...

So, what do you think? How do we build this into the fluff?

Peter

PS. Please, no "Trollonto", OK?