You're right. Missed that part.

<Raises hand> Count me in too.

i have nothing against elves . . i think there should be one hanging from every tree!
alternatively: there's many elves in my life . . and i only have a Desert Eagle!

I like elves, In SR I pretty much only play elves. I have played 2 different trolls though. An aspected Shaman, and a pure Shaman in 2nd ED. The Aspected was too narrowly focused, and so I created the pure shaman. Funny thing is I'd have the most diverse sort of luck. I'd Hellblast and get high damage and pull off a No-Drain, and then I'd shapeshift with only 1 light(previous to casting the spell) and pass out. I probably played the only troll to cast a relatively minor spell to turn himself to a Rhino, and then pass out. My very first character(which was in 2nd ED as well. And also My first RP ever), was an elven mage with no athletics and very low strength and body. With probably the only char that I ever min/maxed(with help from GM who was my Uncle) I had purely awesome starting stats for spellcasting, and middling for summoning. I was pretty much a pans with everything else. I ended up forgetting that we were in the Relatively middle of a Corp Building Lobby, with only 1 way out, and Hellblasted the Sec forces + "Independent Contracters" that had us trapped(They had blocked the entrances to the Lobby). GM mentions that having Hellblasted the first floor and doing a massive ammount of damage(with only moderate drain), the lobby was being engulfed in flames. We had to make an escape from the roof of the building in a team-mates Chopper. Unfortunately for some reason I can't remember the chopper had to hover over the edge of the building instead of landing, and we had to make a running leap into the 'copter to escape. Needless to say with my "Perfected" stats I botched, and had to get a consensus for using a point of the team-karma pool. The other players and the GM allowed this, it being my first run, and did a cinema-esque "do-over". First I've failed the jump and am falling rapidly towards the ground, then time rewinds itself, and the Sammy catches me in the descent of my wonderful arc. Made more cinematic by the sammy holding on by my arm as the chopper takes off, leaving me hanging for miles.

After that char, which I ended up abandoning(Per player and GM suggestion), and the two following trolls mentioned above, I ended up with what anyone who's read my previous postings would recognise as "Tact".

"Tact?" "Tact is good! I like Tact!"

As to the Subject of this Topic. I personally have found that I like humans being called "breeder" and Keebler for Elves. I even had a team-mates Human Mage tell my character (Obviously an Elf) to "Go back to The Tree and Making Cookies."
What was humorous is that after the above mentioned chars, my Elves made afterwards were more balanced, and I ended up knocking him out with extreme martial arts(Meaning I had moderate starting stats and skills, but rolled very well). It was all in fun though, we were playing the characters that way.

PS, anyone can remember what HMHDV stands for get a karma cookie!

For elves? Hum... tree huggers (playing an elf character right now) since my character is a high charisma elf male people sometimes say "Damn calm down woman!" when he gets upset about a plan.

I hope it's not bad form to dig up old, dead threads, but this is something that's been bugging me since OH ABOUT SHADOWRUN 1 I think. Why do Orks call Humans "breeders"? I mean, "breeders" is a gay slang term for straight people, because straight people breed (I know that gay people can too, but they generally don't enjoy it as much, and also I don't want to start a discussion on gay vs straight). So how does that work as slang? Some Ork talking to his siblings "hey Bob, Sara, Dave, Yoonikway, Edwin, Juan and Amal, you know how we can make fun of humans? We'll say they have large families! Ha!" or what?

Are they being ironic? Like "nativists" in the US referring to Mexicans as "Canadians"? Or do Orks think that all humans look like Kim Deal? What gives?

(Also: can people in the future agree regular humans="Humans" and all H. sapiens subspicies="Metahumans"? )
(Also Juan and Amal look practically identical).

Orks call humans Breeders because a fair percentage of those orcs actually originate from human parents. Humans breed, and the end results could be anything from an ork to an elf to a troll ... or even the occasional human. It is basically saying that the only thing humans are really good for is breeding, preferably more trogs.

Sometimes a writer has added something to Shadowrun cannon that doesn't make sense. It's a shame, but there you have it. You can go through contortions like Fortune has (no offense) to come up with something that roughly justifies it, or you can just drop it from your game.

"Breeders" is one such thing. The paucity of metahumans from various ethnic groups is not an error, but something that always strikes me. There's a shortage of black dwarves, chinese elves, arab trolls and all the rest.

i'll hazard a guess and say that the term BREEDER comes from the single simple fact that orcs and troll have a shorter time-span from conception to birth than humans

I don't really see how that makes sense -- humans have a gestational period longer than that of orks and trolls (which in itself is odd, really) but shorter than that of elves and dwarfs(sic). In other words, the median.

@knasser is it really the case that black dwarves are uncommon? I remember reading a thing about orks less common among noble families in the UK, but with a suggestion that this was, er, well the result of infanticide actually.

you have to take into account, that with orcs and trolls triplets and more are not really uncommon, whereas humans breed for longer periods of time with less output in the end . . so in total they breed one child much longer than an orc would . .
and they are humans, the more or less 80% of the world, whereas dwarfs and elves are comparatively seldom

I was always under the impression that baseline humans were called breeder not because of their rapid rate of propogation but because they were "pure breed/ers"

I also will point out that the appropriatness of an insult might have nothing at all to do with how popular/effective it is. It's a matter of intent and dissemination. If some 5 star trid star spend an entire series deriding elves with a particular word, even if wholy incorrect in it's usage, he will popularize it and Humanis Poli club member will still scream it gleefully as they curb stomp some elves.

Knasser--I think a big piece of this comes from the fact that writers tend to write the familiar. I, as a white heterosexual male, tend to have the NPCs that I write be white and heterosexual, unless there is a reason to be different. Part of my writing development is including various ethnicities, sexualities and metatypes--without it feeling like tokenism. This may not be true of everyone, but if I'm doing it, likely a few others are too.

OP--I like tusks, half-pint, meatshield, and flower-eater.

Keep in mind that 'humans' are the only metahuman 'race' to live in the open (with the rare exception) during the magic low times of the 5th World. During this time, the humans bred, passing the hidden ork and troll genes (and the others) down through the generations until such time as the magic level rose enough for those genes to fully express and reveal the races for what they truly are, in all their glory. From the trog point of view, humans are merely the 'breeders' who carry the gene, but are good for pretty much nothing else.

Really, if your language has a single word for "pig-fucker", you probably have a very weird culture as it is.

I would sort of give German a pass because of how compound nouns are constructed, but probably they have a shorter word for things like "Gummikrankenschwesterfetischist" anyway, because they are like that.

See, to me, none of the "breeder" explanations are better than gay people using it as a derogatory term for straights. I think something like roundear or blunt (short canines) might work better. Beyond that, there's the very effective tactic of referring to someone using the name of a prominent person of the same ethnicity -- useful because while it's depersonalizing and rude, it seems like it should be a compliment. "Hey don't get your breeches in a bunch, Elrond".

Oh plus Orks have Or'zet so they must have a term like gweilo/gringo/gaijin.

Shrug. Not every slang term has to be the perfect-fitting putdown. Like real language, it could very well have just been one of many terms thrown around in the early days, but it just happened to stick. There doesn't have to be any more of a reason than that.

I can see why both Orks and Humans would call each other "breeder" (though I'd personally much rather call a human "incubator").

elf,
ork
dwarf,
troll
changed one.