It just hit me that Orcs are both the most common metahuman race after the baseline human, AND they have a tremendous birth rate naturally being prone to "litters" if I am recalling my old fluff correctly, and people still occasionally suffer UGE at puberty or as a consequence of a SURGE event. Now, Orcs are listed as having a VERY short natural life expectancy, but is that because of the poorer conditions demographically speaking that Orcs often seem to be subjected to (poor people don't tend to live as long) or is it a true reflection of their lifetime metabolic rate?

The second thing (and this is the part that prompted me to post this thread) is:

Is the global percentage of Metahumanity generally and Orcs specifically stable or increasing? (I think it's safe to say it's not DECREASING or Humanis would have announced success and gone rabidly on the offensive.)

Thoughts? Maybe one of the Devs want to weigh in?

(P.S.: White Dove need not reply. *grin*)

Almost by definition, if Orcs breed faster [and they're not dying off in equal numbers], Orcs will be the most common metahuman breed - not baseline Humans.

And the box text supports that... but is it GROWING?

Unless Orcs suddenly stop having sex and breeding, their majority will only increase.

Unless that "35 year" life expectancy is natural in which case the breeding just keeps up with natural losses from "old age".

I should think the 35-40 year life expectancy is the result of environment, unless something has happened to make humans die of old age sooner, as 55 is the listed lifespan for baseline humans. Or it was in an earlier book.

My opinion on Ork litters is definitely recorded on this board. I will not go into it in depth other than to say: stupid. I am obviously a filthy liar, based on my numerous responses.

Yeah, I pretty much agree here for the most part. I can see maybe instances of twins and triplets being significantly higher, but "Litters" where 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever is common is just kinda silly.

Um, no it doesn't, average lifespan relative to birth rate doesn't affect population that much. Rather, the average children produced/lifespan is the important bit.

For Sapiens Sapiens, a woman having 6 kids is very rare. For Sapiens Robustus it's average. Therefore, assuming a 50% attrition rate (death before reproduction), Robustus still increases in population by 50% per generation (out of 8 Orks, 4 survive to reproduce, resulting in 12 kids of whom 6 will survive to reproduce) Thus generation 2 is 50% larger than generation 1.

Now, as the population grows either the attrition rate must rise, or the birth rate must fall. Eventually. But in the meantime their population will rise very rapidly.

given the stated birth rates, i am of the opinion that the listed percentages of orks is in fact ridiculously low, compared to what it should be. they're sexually and physically mature at a younger age, and tend to have a lot more children. and sure, while the poor may not have access to the greatest health care (which can greatly decrease infant mortality rates) they also generally have less money to spend on birth control, and less education about why they should use birth control in the first place.

as stated, i have a hard time believing there aren't a lot more orks out there than the numbers show. maybe someone has a soylent green factory running full tilt or something like that.

Remember, the listed population statistics don't include the SINless. So the only Orks that make it into those numbers are the ones who can afford the birth control and have education on why to use it.

Soylent Green is made of people orks!

In which case, it is apropriate or INapropriate to eat Soylent Green with a Spork?

Well, I suppose if you're eating long pork it's appropriate.

I will not eat them with a spORK, I will not eat them with a fORK; I do not like Green Soy(lent) and Spam.

(And with that, this now heads straight down hill. *grin*)

More likely, no writer/developer/player wants Orcs to be the majority breed - except as poor, rubbishy characters.

It's one of the reasons Earthdawn paints a more realistic world - Orcs aren't just the stunty grunts with no education and few prospects

Though with so many of them likely to end up in various armies, their prospects should be quite good - education, money, etc.

Without wanting to sound racist, I'd say their position and options and lives probably are not too dissimilar to that of Blacks from 1940's-70's mainly...
...And, really, should Orcs be considered the same after all the years that Shadowrun spans ??

Not to put too fine a point on it, there is even to this day a certain element in so-called "black culture" that regards those who seek to educate themselves and better their starting lot in life through their own efforts as... well as sellouts and other highly insulting terms. I can see a certain amount of that in the 6th World, as well as a lot more blatant racism on the part of a large portion of Sapiens Sapiens. Granted, OBJECTIVELY there should be huge numbers of Orcs in the military or para-military forces of governments and corps, but they don't WANT them, no matter how "good" they may be. Now I am really inspired to gin up a "breaking the mold" orc.

Nothing racist about it, the source material has pointed to orks in 2070 being parallel similar to blacks of the 1970s. I mean, Orxploitation?

Actually you also need to take into account their lower age for maturity (breeding). An Orc mother can easily have well over 8 offspring over her life, 2-3 pregnancies, bam. Humans can do similar numbers but you more or less have to "try", rather then taking up 2-3 pregnancies and several years of outlay (something many people choose) a human would be looking at 8+ preg's and most of the adult life (something few people choose)
The Orc also will tend to start about 2-4 years earlier then the Human. Enough time to "rifle off" one or 2 batches before the humans even start having naughty dreams.

As presented unless there is some outside influance thinning their numbers (disease, conflict, lack of food) or controlling their breeding (steilization, wide spread absinance, gov't incentives on smaller families) their numbers will monserously outstrip the remaining meta types over a few (shorter) generations.

Most mammals with the breeding rates listed for orc have high fatalities in infancy or are smaller prey animals and have a moderatly high death rate thought thier lives. Assuming they are not dying at or shortly after birth in droves (75% +) or that only on in 8 or so survives to breed and far fewer to breed repeatedly...

Assuming they have been around in numbers since 2030 that gives them 40 years, 2 generations. As presented each genreation will EASILY triple the previous. So a 9 fold increase in new YOUNG. 12 if you could the current breeding generation and a few of the "elderly" are still kicking around.

This is one of the few things I outright ignore in the books. I assume litters happen but are NOT the norm and twins are fairly common. I bought the population numbers back in 2050 but another 20 years is not going to result in the Orcs only gaining a few slim percentile points on the humans, not by a long shot especially if they are slotted to the stereotypical "breeding urban poor labourer" with large families in slums they seem to have been pegged for in alot of the matierial.

Very, very stupid. It isn't the case in my games, because it's so bleeding stupid. Neither do elves "appear not to age," unless they happen to have the word "immortal" in their name somewhere.

Screaming Eagle,

Do you think those life expectancies are just average observed? I mean, there's a comment (or used to be in an older edition) about "based on observed metabolic rates" they put Dwarves and Elves at hundred years+ for lifespan.

It's not that they "don't appear to age", it's that with their "predicted" normal life spans, compared to a human, they age so slowly as to appear to be standing still chronologically. A human at 50 is middle age metabolically speaking, but an elf is still in the first 15% of their predicted lifespan. If they age proportionately after hitting adulthood (nothing about a 30 year childhood in the fluff) then that would basically make them look like they are still in their early twenties, leading to the perception of agelessness. In another century or so, we'll start seeing "middle aged looking" elves as a matter of course if they were born near the Awakening.

either there are half a million SINners in redmond and puyallup (each; ie 1 million total) or the population figures include the SINless. personally, i'm inclined to believe the half a million includes the SINless. (then again, there are apparently 10 voting areas in each, which seems a little weird also)

Previous editions reported a lifespan of 55 years for humans, this was labeled as the worldwide average.
The lifespans of other metatypes never where labeled as "worldwide average" and aren't in SR4.
The BBB claims that humans have an average life span of "65(worldwide)", whereas it says "more than 100 years" for dwarves, "Several hundred years" for elves, "35-45 years" for orks and "55 years" for trolls- in any case without the "(worldwide)" restriction.

Moreover, it says on p.65 :

"Many first and second generation
orks and trolls—especially those who goblinized—died young,
indicating the relatively low lifespan of these metatypes. The early
dwarfs and elves are still around, however, many of them showing
little sign of aging. Lifespans for all metatypes are on the rise,
which scientists partially ascribe to gene therapy and leonization
(anti-aging treatments) and partially to improvements in social
acceptance—leading to better medical treatment, living situations,
and other quality of life measures. Few countries, however,
factor the SINless into their average lifespan statistics—after all,
how could they?—and thus official figures may be especially
misleading, as orks and trolls are statistically more likely to be
SINless than the other metatypes."

Runner's Companion also addresses the issue on p.49 :

"The common features among all ork variants are: short gestation
periods of about 6 months, multiple births per gestation,
accelerated maturity cycle, and short life expectancies."

Yes, Rasumichin. I know what the book says. What I am saying is that the book is retarded for saying it.

Thought experiment about ork litters.

Out of the 6 billion people around during the goblinization, let's suppose 1% goblinized into orks. This is a low number: it's probably more like 5%, given that 10% of the world's population goblinized, period. That's 60 million. They have litters, averaging 5-6 orks. Let's assume half of those die before they can reproduce, or otherwise do not have children, right? That's some insane mortality, but even so... So every generation will be triple the size of the preceding one. Let's assume the first generation of native orks is in 2020, and a new generation happens every 15 years.

2020: 180 Million new orks.
2035: 540 Million new orks.
2050: 1 billion, 650 million new orks.
2065: 4 billion, 860 million new orks.

That's a lot of orks.

Experiment 2: Let's assume 5% of the world's population becomes orks, but each generation is only double the size of the previous one, because Orks just plain get killed THAT MUCH.

2020: 600 Million
2035: 1 billion, 200 million.
2050: 2 billion, 400 million.
2065: 4 billion, 800 million.

Either way, litters are just plain not supportable unless several BILLION orks are killed every year. Shadowrun is bleak, but not THAT bleak. To give you an idea, in order for orks to sustain their shadowrun percentages WITH having litters, they would have to have a death rate on the order of 250 per 1000 orks that actually manage to reproduce. The worst places in Africa have a mortality rate of about 30 per 1000, per year. During the holocaust, after the Final Solution was enacted, there was a death rate for Jews of about 180 per 1000 per year.

Yes. In order to keep orks in check, you would have to exceed the holocaust. For decades. Seriously, that's just ridiculous.

Edit: Yes, I know this is not mathematically perfect. To compensate, I have been exceedingly generous with death rates.

So, your vote? What do you think the "natural" old age point is for orcs (and trolls)?

I always disagreed with the birth rate of Orks for the same reasons given so far in this thread. I've described their birth rate in my personal SR world as averaging two per (Anything from 10~25% single or triplets, depending on family. Bump the genetic stock up by one, so high twin rate stock has a high triplet rate for orks).

As for the lifespans, I take them as average life expectancies world wide. I tend to knock an Orks max age down by about the same % as their early maturation. Even SINner orks normally get the most crappy jobs and have the worst health care of any of the SINners so this knocks their average down. I figure humans with good health care but no access to life span extending treatments can live to ~110 years old, with orks pulling in at ~80 or a little more.

Just in my world though. Go with what makes the most sense to you.

I was trying to get multiple viewpoints and maybe toss things to the people who hadn't wanted to ask or for whom it hadn't occured to them yet.

I have to say, I like the way you're going with those numbers there, because I remember that 110 year number from one piece of fluff or another. When do you think Orcs are "mature"?

Okay, when we sum up the official information given on the various races, orks would be the most numerous metatype, but 95% of them would be ghouls anyway...
Now who would've expected that something in SR doesn't make sense?

Don't get me wrong, i totally see your point.
I'm just unsure wether it would be more interesting to make orks the dominant metatype or change the fluff for reproduction rates.
So what should be the "reasonable" figure for orkish reproduction rates, given that according to SR2 material, around 5% of the world's population has goblinized and they make up around 20% of the world's population by SR4 fluff?



Hard to say, as that can already vary a lot for humans.
I'd say that orks could, in very rare cases, live into their 60s without leonization.
In exceptional cases, one may even get to celebrate his 70th birthday.
But on average, the mean (not the average life expectancy, see below) for naturally occuring deaths would be somewhere around 40.

However, figures for life expectancy may be a bit misleading because low birth weight due to short pregnancies and litters could lead to increased infant mortality, which would mean that the figures had to be moved upwards a bit.


As far as maturity is concerned, i generally asume that 14 year old orks are roughly comparable to 18 year old humans, even though they'll lack some experiences of humans that age.
I'd consider the latter to be a limiting factor as far is maturity is concerned- even though they physically mature faster, are out of puberty sooner and will show a more grown up behaviour at a much earlier point, time doesn't run faster for them.
They may be inclined to catch up with this, knowing that they have less time to waste than humans, but still, there will be outside limitations to how fast they really mature on the mental level.

Hm... no one has caught this little gem in Runner's Companion? I'm surprised:



Italics mine.

Now that you bring it up, Tiger Eyes, I DO remember the passage, but it had totally snuck away from concious thought until you mentioned it, and I remember at the time (a while ago now) scratching my head and wondering about that quite a bit, thinking it would be a GREAT bit for a 'run (or actually, a whole ARC!) but I was hoping for something more cannon before I decided to play with it directly.

Thanks for weighing in (and helping settle the whole "why aren't we awash in orc babies?! debate) for us on the matter!

To properly calculate birth rates, you'd also need variables such as "male/female birth ratio" and of course how many orks actually are breeding.

Like in most developing countries, once the standard of living becomes better, the birthrate will drop, and I am sure the same thing will happen when it comes to robustus, how to handle the "litters" tho are an entirely diffrent thing..

I know I'm dropping in late, but here are my two .
Taken from Shadowrun 2nd Ed. (How I love the fluff from there:
Orks weight around 95kg and female orks usually have 4 children per pregnancy but 6 or 7 are not uncommon. The children weight at birth is around 4.2% of the mother's weight. Breastfeeding lasts more than 7 monthes. They reach puberty around 10 years old. They live to 35 - 40 years old and the gestation takes 187 days.

The problem is that the 2nd ed says that methabolic studies gives them a life expectancy of 35-40 years old and Trolls around 50 years old, it is a lot different when you see that the average life expectancy of humans is 55 years old.

Anyway, Tyger Eyes was kind enough to show us that for some unknown reason the birth rate of Orks diminished so this might explain because nobody thought of giving them a final solution or sterelization or another eugenistic technique.

And I thought it was the high number of gangs, poor food, disease and the occasional crackdown by government that kept their numbers in check.

I've generally held Orc life expecatncy of 35, like others here, to be the world wide average and skewed low. given that human is listed at 55 and in most developed countries it over 70, and in some over 90 I'd be prone to site it is a LOW average with the actual "hard" max just over double. I tend to run that orc feel like retiring/ seeming elderly in and around 40-45, the old bones just not holding up any more and aging really starts. Most developed country orc deaths by "natural causes" occuring from 45-60 with the equivalent to the "century mark" for humans being in and about 65-70. Of course I like to make a point that retirement age is still 65.... poor orcs...
I similarly assume Human life expecantcies are down a 5-10 years in all countries from the pre-awakened world owing to the dystpoic future thing, fake food everywhere and the crap in air, land and water.

Then again I also have had the sea level rise in game over the last 10 years and low lying areas of Seattle are periodically flooded by the near toxic watse the town calls its harbour so what do I know?

It's mentioned in one of the recent books (forget which one, can someone assist?) that ork reproduction rate has hit the floor. Suffixed with "such a drop is unlikely to be natural."

See Tiger Eyes' post above.

Aside from being mathematically imperfect, you've also done the math wrong. That initial 60 million figure is actually 30 million, you neglected to split the value. 30 million ork females would have 6 children, of which 50% would have died (by your initial figures). That would be 90 million new orks, not 180 that survive to have children. While doing an even 50/50 split on gender is mathematically imperfect, without actual male-female population split, 50/50 is the best estimate.

Typically creatures in nature that have a high birth rate have other issues necessitating such. This was touched on earlier by another poster as being prey animals. Another cause might be low fertility rate. Such a thing might require large litters to get 1+ breeding capable result. The rest would be born sterile.

But given what Tiger Eyes mentioned... perhaps someone is putting some birth control in the food supply that affects Orks only.

Or maybe something after the YotC altered the flow of mana somehow, essentially reducing their birth rates? Or perhap originially the mana was seeking to bring orcs up to a certain representation as quickly as possible but now that it is achieved or well on the way, that initial "surge" of fertility has fallen off?

Possible still-born and infant mortality rate considerations aside,
If you have had even a single child then you can more fairly
put into perspective the prospect of having to raise/support 4-5 offspring per birth.

Given that Orks are depicted as poor and uneducated,
I doubt they would be able to sustain a single litter well, let alone multiple litters.

When it comes to orks I have never bothered to tweak the numbers,
but SINless sprawls are a large source of grittiness in my games.
Huddles and swarms of homeless destitutes, orphans, abandoned infants, etc.

Puyallup resembles great depression painted green.

Such as the orks themselves?

Think about it, what if there's a treatment that reduces the number of children per ork pregnancy?
The only one availbale under current medtech would be selective abortions, but i'm sure some corp (EVO notably) would try to develop a method that is more widely accepted.
Demand for this would be high, as the prospect of raising 4 to 7 kids at once is something many orks will not look forward to.

Then, there's the issue of willingness to reproduce at all- imagine a young orkish male who only has 35-50 years to live anyway.
Does he want to spend half of it with raising a litter?
How many ork dads run away as soon as possible and how many orkish infants end up in orphanages because their single mom cannot raise them on her own?
What effect does having suffered through such hardships firsthand have on the family planning of young orks?
How does potentially giving birth to litters affect the attractivenes of orkish females as potential partners?

Given these prospects, how many orks opt for sterilization alltogether?

I had thought on a similar theory. This could work, if you consider that the "Mana" is just like the "Force" (without the midchlorians, of course).

Yes, but I would expect in that case that 4th Edition would make note that "orks have less babies now", not "orks just don't get viable pregnancies as much". But some fix is better than no fix, I suppose.

StealthSigma, I know it's not good math. I suck at math. But those numbers also assume any ork that has kids may do so more than once. I didn't divide by 2 to take into account females, because for purposes of that thought exercise, we're only assuming that the ork numbers double with each generation. Given 2 parents and litters of 6-7, where only half or slightly more survive, I think that more than makes up for dividing by two, because a 50% mortality rate by the age of *12* is just plain nuts.

It's not supposed to be good math. It's just supposed to be a swift illustration that without massive external controls on breeding, Orks rapidly become the dominant race on earth, no matter what you do. It's my opinion that very high instances of twins, combined with their earlier maturation and 6 month gestation cycle more than explain their rapidly growing numbers.

The Ork lifespan is, by canon, natural. Some of the 1st/2nd edition books make mention of orks who goblinized with the initial UGE, and have survived to 60 or 70, and how that is literally unheard of. In one of the Twist novels, the ork character visits the Ork Underground and meets with his... grandfather? Dunno. But they make a point of mentioning that, since he was one of the original orks who goblinised, he's outlived his wife by 30 years, watching her age and die, while he was still relatively young.

I don't recall seeing anywhere whether a human that goblinizes later enjoys a human lifespan or an ork lifespan, but orks born as orks are definitely screwed.

That makes sense only if medical care is not factored into the natural lifespan. People routinely live to much older than 60 *right now*, so you can't reasonably say the natural human life span is '60' when you include medical care.

I've been ignoring the ridiculous crap about ork lifespans and litters for so long that when I scan over stuff like that it doesn't process. Nice that it's there for people that want "official" solutions to stuff they don't like.

Exactly what he said!

It also mentions that 65 is the world-wide age for humans. That takes into account a LOT of variables and some places' rather low life expectancy rates. Conversely, in 1st world countries and AAA corps, life expectancy is MUCH higher. It's quite normal NOW for people to live to their mid to late 70s. People in my family live to their mid 80s. It's gone up each generation.

By taking into account life expectancy from various places, you are by default taking into account access to medical care on a per capita basis.

Even if Orcs are having "litters" what is the child mortality rate? I would expect that since most orcs live bellow the poverty line that they have a well above average child mortality rate (especially amongst the SINless in the Barrens). This would also help slow a orc population explosion.

I would think that an orc living under ideal conditions should be expected to live almost as long as a human (if not longer as larger animals tend to live longer in the animal kingdom). Trolls again, I would expect could reach an age of around 150-160 years old.