So, I was just busy lying face-down in bed when I realized that I'm not sure whether or not shadowrunners are fat.

The obvious response is, "most shadowrunners are poor, ergo they are skinny". But it's not that simple. It's possible that they're poor, but that all the soy based food products with their vaguely-defined supposed ability to feed the world in spite of ongoing shortages are extremely caloric. Think about how in the US you can have people who are almost destitute living in a slum but they manage to get fat by drinking beer, cheetoes, fruit drinks with corn syrup, and all that sort of stuff.'

As I lay face down in bed sniffing my sheets (not time for a wash yet) I realized that if most or many shadowrunners were fat, it would be awesome, because then they'd be fat guys in black leathers with katanas and uzis. They'd actually look like characters from a low budget amateur film about mercenaries if the director for the film took random fat people from the neighborhood for the roles and came up with the costumes and props (weapons) as cheaply as he could. And after all, that's probably about right, seeing as shadowrunners are supposed to be poor and disenfranchised.

Plus, it's probably a stressful lifestyle, which could lead to overeating, drinking, and even obesity due to stress. I'm also sure that many people, faced with an elevated probability of violent death, might not bother to watch their diet or "work out", so I could completely see lots of shadowrunners being fat.

It's not like you need much to be a shadowrunner. I mean, in principle you need a good reputation to get the most lucrative and delicate tasks, but anyone could grab a handgun, a leather jacket, and a Dolph Lundgren hairdo and be willing to go assault an office for money. Lots of people might do something like that and not even worry about the long term consequences if their mindset is very much rooted in the present moment. And I imagine that if I were a Johnson I wouldn't mind having some very cheap fat dudes with leather I could hire for simple tasks, or even as cannon fodder/diversions.

The question is how many shadowrunners are there, how many jobs are there and are most of them simple or complicated, and how many of the shadowrunners basically suck? I think these questions will let us know how many shadowrunners should be fat with a katana. And they might have cavities, too.

I wonder what the essence loss for liposuction is.

Along those lines, how many runners blow all the money from their latest score on lotto tickets?

All the ones who are bad at math.

"Man, last month I spent 5000 nuyen on lotto tickets, but nothing! But it'll work this time because I staked the whole 15,000 nuyen haul!"

lottery: noun A tax levied on those who do not understand basic mathematics.

Just as there are fat poor people and there are skinny poor people, so then would there be fat shadowrunners and skinny shadowrunners. The same applies for the rich. One need not look far for references from the real and fictional worlds. Remember the Bounty Hunters TV series? 'Nuff said.

If said shadowrunner is being all "Street Samurai" and fighting and running, then that exercise will make him less likely to be fat. If said shadowrunner is one who does nothing but haxxing Corporate files, then lack of physical requirement will make him more likely to be overweight.

Sumo wrestler physad! Powers like mystic armor, rapid healing, strength boost, and of course a specialization in subdual combat, and there you have a perfectly good fat runner

Of course, in a world of trolls, a human sumo would be pretty pathetic overall... 300 pounds of muscle and fat is nothing against 400 pounds of raw muscle. I wonder if you could have a sumo troll? I've never seen a pic of a fat troll, they are always bulging with muscles, though it should be possible. It would look like the classic D&D ogre, I imagine...

Either that, or a Hutt.

...HolyChampion did a pic titled Fat Samurai a while back. Best use of cyberarms in my book.

I think in the world of Shadowrun, only poor people are fat. Everyone else gets surgery or dietware. The exception would be people who really do not care at all about their meat body.

Actually I actually run it that despite tasting and looking like crap soy is actually good for you, and dirt cheap. So most people are actually eatting a lot healthier than today. Course life expectancy still sucks between the high rate of violence, toxins in the enviroment, and general stress factors of the fourth world. Also as an aside I doubt a Sam with maxed strength, agility, and body is going to be porker. Though I am willing to bet that riggers, hackers, and some varieties of mages are apt to be a mite chunky.

I usually ignore the idea of soy. It's like eating pills and driving around in flying cars.

However, I suspect that many Shadowrunners are not only fat, but are big. Actually our rigger is a butter ball of a machine engineer who most likely secretly wanks off in the used panties of the face.

But. That might be too much information.


Let's not forget that when the body fails, modern technology continues.

Our nerdy machine engineer wants to become the girl of his dreams:

Type

Essence

Availability

Cost

Severe Modification (changing from 5'6" 250 pounds to 5'2" 100 pounds)

0.5

12

10,000

Sex change

0.3

6

20,000

Clean metabolism

0.1

4

2,500

Dietware

0.1

4

2,500

Silky Skin

---

4

1,500

Breast implants

0.25

4

3,000

Commlink Hermes Ikon with Simrig

0.2

---

6,000

Total cost: 45,500

or he just wants to look like a chiseled superstar:
Moderate modification

---

6

5,000

Clean metabolism

0.1

4

2,500

Dietware

0.1

4

2,500

Total cost: 10,000

I am of the mind that in a line of work where image makes or breaks the job shadowrunners would be acutely aware of how they look. I can imagine a few deckers being morbidly obese to represent their relaxed contempt for the meat, but if the street samurai split his pants at the ass is sweating and wheezing after the short stair climb to the exclusive part of the club they are meeting at...

Lets put it this way: Who would you rather hire, Frank Martin from 'The Transporter', or Tyrone from 'Snatch'?

NERPS!

Like the cover of New Seattle?

You guys are missing something!

Did any of you ever saw those "strong-man contests"?
I mean these guys are big and some of them i would say are fat, too. But they are running and lifting heavy things and doing a lot of other stuff that is very exercising.

So why shouldn`t a sammie look like one of these? A mean meat-ball....

To me this idea is great and next time i play myself, i will for sure have some mean, bad, fat sammie.

Strongmen have *lousy* stamina, by and large. You can only train so much without your body breaking down and strongmen spend all their time on getting stronger. They generally aren't terribly quick on their feet and are hauling so much upper body mass around that they run lousy mile times. Even at the level of olympic decathletes, the concentration on the burst power useful for the majority of the events means that the winners are very often the worst performers in the 1500m section. Sure, some of the men on "World's Strongest Man" can run, but that's not their focus.

Huge sammies though, will be relatively common. 2m+ 180kilo shootfighters with cyberware. Not many of the good ones will have much of a spare tyre though.

Fatness, up to a point, is also a sign of wealth which might be good in some social circles.

@Wounded Ronin: If we ever meet, we should definitely play a SR game set in a low-budget action movie. Something with Dolph Lundgren, Richard Harrison, a blond girl with a shower scene and a black friend who'll get killed to save them, directed by Godfrey Ho with a story involving ninjas and cyborgs.

Where is fatness a sign of wealth in Shadowrun? Apart from areas where people are starving, and where weapons and cyberware are a much better signs of wealth already.

Yeah, the whole fat as wealthy thing hasn't been true for the last century. Now everyone in the first world can afford to eat enough to be fat, but only the wealthy can afford the time to exercise it all away. The sedentary nature of most modern jobs also increases the weight. Rich people in SR can afford weekly bodysculpting.

On the other hand, you know who in SR would probably idolize fat? Orks. For one, it looks a bit better on them. You know an orks got muscle under that fat. Plays up on the whole ugly monster thing. They can pull it off. Since it's the opposite of the idolized human/elven beauty standards, adopting it as a standard of beauty helps separate them and build self-esteem. Not to mention that they seem to have inherited ghetto culture. "room for a litter" and whatnot. I totally want to play a fat orc now. Mama Gitka, I'll call her....

From what I've heard, the new way to show you have money is to have several kids, like 3, at a minimum. I never started noticing it until it was pointed out, but...

I've seen this in action in the suburban neighborhood where my son's daycare provider lives. Lots of big houses, stay at home mothers, and lots of kids. All the older kids seem to come in 2's, while the younger mothers seem to be popping out the kids like crazy. Purely anecdotal, I know, but still...

-paws

Poor and thin is more an undeveloped/third world situation.

In the developed countries, there are lots of (relatively) cheap processed foods, so fatness can be a sign of being poor.

Cheap food isn't very healthy and has a lot of carbs and fat (which are cheap).

Think snack foods, fast foods, pasta, peanut butter, and the like. Cheap alcohol does the same thing.

Same goes for someone who doesn't get good exercise (be it Trivid, chipping, or playing some matrix game).

As pointed out, soy food may have changed that some but...

I think hackers and riggers can get away with being fat, but the ones who have to go inside the building have to be fit to survive. I think Agility and Reaction would be a good indicator of this.

Oi, leave Tyrone alone, he can move when he has to!

High physical scores are common with many shadowrunners, which contraindicates obesity.

It's not directly addressed in canon, but one might suppose that in the technologically advanced setting, affordable and effective weight loss treatments are available over the counter.

Shadowrunners aren't poor, and this contraindicates obesity. I'm going to start another thread on this topic of shadowrunner economics.

Dietware bioware. Canon.

It was a funny angle.

But yeah, I could see some slightly overweight runners of any variety. And depending on the quality of their 'ware, they could likely weigh even more because of it. Also, it's been my experience that soy is a huge joke in many games...

"soyfles"
"soysage"
"soyrup"
"soyflakes"
"soyburger"
"soydog"

I've heard all of these in my sessions. Also, isn't there something about soy making women go all crazy-like... maybe it doesn't mix well with estrogen, or maybe it increases estrogen production or something?

Mais non. Though fat people are usually unfit, they are not always. Case in point: sumo wrestlers. Those guys are athletes, they train their bodies full time. Also, as has been mentioned, strongmen can be very fat, while also being able to break you in half. Fatness and fitness are not mutually exclusive. It just happens that most fat people are not fit. But someone can easily have a high body and strength while being fat. You can exercise plenty, as long as you also eat a ton you will be fat without being terribly unhealthy. It might not make much sense for fat guys to have high agility, but strength and body are no problem. You'd think that high body = high health = not fat. But the idea that thin = healthy and fat = unhealthy is flat out wrong, so that doesn't hold up. In most cases it does, but it's not a law of nature.

Define fit.

Usually, fit means has good aerobic endurance. Most sumotori probably couldn't maintain a run for more than a minute, even if they're lightning fast in the dojo's ring and could snap you like a twig.

When you're training a lot aerobically, it's difficult to stay fat. You can stay slightly porky (look at international Rugby front row players - they're *pretty* fit, and some are mighty strong, but their lighter packmates keep going for longer (it's not unusual to have the entire front row replaced for the last quarter of the game) and get through more work, usually, and the really fat prop is less common these days at top level where endurance is more important.

Edit: Sumotori don't do any aerobic training, once they're past young apprentice level. They train in strength, then they rest. They sleep as much as cats do, or so the mythology says... endedit.

There will always be exceptions, but a fit fat man is very rare indeed, and wouldn't have the aerobic endurance of a fit lean person. Drop 'em in a survival environment and the advantage changes hands...

...until the fat man deals with starvation better due to his stores of fat.

I don't disagree that a truly fat person typically has less aerobic stamina, but there are TONS (pardon the pun) of exceptions. Just look at American/Canadian football players (not soccer), especially the front linemen. There you have huge guys, often packing probably a good 60-100 pounds of fat on over their muscle. And believe me, these guys have a lot of stamina and can definitely run. They spend tremendous amounts of time practicing on the field and during their down time doing strength training (and eating). There's no two ways around it, a big street sammy can certainly be packing quite a few pounds of fat.

Vlad

Well, I'm honored. And that would indeed be the ideal SR scenario.

Women are already crazy, the soy wouldn't seriously bother them.

However, soy is a great source of phyto-aestrogen, basically a plant analog to estrogen. It's more of a problem with men, especially boys, since estrogen is a female sex hormone. Too much estrogen for young boys and pregnant women may (studies are still inconclusive) lead to a reduction in the boys particularly manly assets, and may also lead to an earlier onset of puberty for young girls.


I've played several fat shadowrunners. Generally though, I assume that Body, Strength and Quickness indicate whether a guy is buff or just fat. Deckers, riggers and, perhaps surprisingly, mages, are more likely to be a li'l chubby. That said, as runners get out of the streets and acquire karma, I rarely see any with a Body score of less than 3, and therefore I assume most people have run off that chub.

OK, see, If I saw a character with high body, and low agility and strength, I'd think "Fat".

:pointsup: Me too

How about a dwarf or troll?

High/low for the metatype. Whether they put 1, 3, 5 or whatever in their stat before the metatype adjustments.

A BOD 6/STR 6 Troll is just as much of a wimp as a BOD 1/STR 1 Human.

Body is the default for athletics. You can't very well run the mile when you're 200lbs. overweight. Now that isn't saying you're not BIG, but a high body indicates you have toned muscles and your cardiovascular system is in reasonably good shape.

http://holychampion1.deviantart.com/art/Fat-Samurai-52382934

Linked stat for climbing, running, swimming: strength.
Linked stat for gymnastics: agilty.
Skills which link to body: diving, parachuting for some ungodly reason.

Or are you using sr3, nez? I don't have that book anymore.

Shadowrun stats are pretty abstract. Body represents two things that aren't related: your general health, and your ability to survive damage. Someone could be healthy without being tough, and someone could be tough without being that healthy. A high Body could be explained either way, yet system-wise, your high Body stat would say that you're both. Sometimes you just have to ignore the system so that it lets you play the character you want. I'm not going to let one number on a sheet tell me "if you are healthy, you must also be big and tough." I'll play it how I want, because the numbers can't push me around when it comes to roleplaying. Obviously they set limits, but when they're arbitrary limits on how you can merely describe yourself, they're out the window.

I remember reading something about modified tapeworms somewhere. ( but then I may have imagined that as I have quit smoking and can't really think too clearly yet )

If I didn't imagine it I think it would be pretty common. just implant the parasite and pig out . let the bug eat all the extra stuff.

Hey, wait a minute... I have just figured out the teams next run....

Oh yes, my pretties...kill my cockroach shaman in two passes will you? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAHA!!!!!HA!!

*kanis runs off to google land to see if tapeworms can be worked like insect spirits *

Body is also applied as a negative dice pool modifier to avoid setting off pressure pads. this implies it has something to do with weight. It is also the stat that determines if you are "large" or 'huge" for being shot at purposes. This implies it has something to do with size, though it is odd because that means I can have a "large" dwarf.

A 'Runner's weight probably shifts with his fortunes. After a big run, and lots of partying, there'll be a bit of weight gain, followed by weight loss after a few missed meals and lean times.

For the guys who think that fat= high body, you would have obese people being able to soak up bullets better than scrawny guys. However, I don't think that either would be good at resisting pain from bullets breaking the skin.

Proof that obese people can soak damage very well.

you are clearly not a compulsive food label reader. they put that crap in everything already.


non-fermented soy products are actually pretty bad for people. phytic acid, phytoestrogens, non-absorbable b12 analogs, trypsin inhibitors, etc... which makes sense why it would be in everything in a dystopian future. it's just the end result of the consumer "race to the bottom" that is poisoning both people and the planet today. soy is the new fluoride.

Ah, you clearly play SR1! Good fellow.

(Yes, I play SR3, the one, true game, disregarding the two preceding it.)

I DO still have my sr1 book.

Ah, defaulting tree, how I miss you.

I dug my SR1 book out a month or so ago to mine it for ideas. Its not holding up well to the new-found use though.

The less said about the skill web, the better.

Something fans of SR3 and SR4 can agree on - SR1, for all of its flaws, was a beautiful game... *sniff*