Seattle 2072, P. 8: Seattle Demographics (sidebar)

The population demographics also do not include changelings, since the SURGE tended to cut across metatypes, but it’s a fair estimate that least 10% of Seattle’s population - or some 300,000 - are changelings of some variety. That number has been steadily rising, too, as changelings from the surrounding areas and elsewhere in the UCAS migrate to the Emerald City, which has had a reputation as a haven for freaks and weirdos, or at least did, up until recently. We’ll see how Brackhaven’s administration changes things (not for the better, I suspect).
-Mad Tom

That would suggest that there are in excess of 300,000 "changelings" in Seattle by 2070, and that the number is likely rising. Now, my question is: by "changeling" does that mean the expanded metavariants from Runner's Companion like Cyclops and Gnomes, or are we talking exclusively of those with some level of the SURGE quality and the attendant Metagenic Qualities?

In either case, that tells me Seattle is getting to be a particularly ... unusual looking place, and oddities aren't going to stick out quite as much as they might have in past years.

"That big troll? Nah, he's nothing! Didn't you see that Minotaur!? And the blue Oni really creeped me out, too!"

The one upside to all this is that the heads of Humannis must absolutely be in appoplexy 24-7-365, and if we're lucky, the small-souled cretins will do themselves in with a series of anuerisms.

Any thoughts?

Since we don't know what the Mana level is doing then we can only assume that Seattle is a "safe" city for SURGElings. You know, "Birds of a Feather" and all that.

IIRC, YotC pretty much stated that after the initial SURGE burst was over, there were very few cases reported. Nothing printed thus far has changed this.

SURGE does still happen, but like Goblinization, it happens very rarely. I would just guess that, as KC Kitsune says, Seattle is considered a "safe" harbor for Changelings, and a lot of CHangelings have moved there to be with their own kind.

Plus Seattle is long regarded as the "Shadowrun Capitol of the World". THere probably are limited job opportunities for Changelings where they can make real ¥¥. So like Mages and Trolls, I expect that a large portion of their population turns to Running, and where else would you go to find work?

Bull

Shiit, I normally say don't shoot until you see the points of there ears but in Seattle i can pretty much just shoot. Protecting humanity 1 bullet at a time.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough in my intent:

Does "changeling" include the metavariants, or is it just people with the "surge" quality and the attendant metagenic qualities?

Put another way: is Seattle overrun with rare metatypes, or is being flooded by "freaks"?

If you want a serious answer well fine then. My reading was it included rare metavariants and freaks.

You know, you just reminded me of a button I got for my sister; When she saw the button, she laughed so hard she had to run to the ladies room. She wears it on the strap of her hippie-purse/bag/satchel/body-bag:

"I am not immature you stinky butt poop head!"

i would tend to assume that when it says changelings, it means changelings, and that if it meant rare metatypes, it would probably have said rare metatypes.

while i expect that for the same reason, it probably includes at least a greater incidence of metavariants, i believe that specific paragraph is referring primarily to changelings.

note that there will be more than 10% looking weird... there's gonna be the people who use various means available to alter their appearance to something unusual too, since (after all) there's a lot more weirdos around and more people there will be used to it.

It'd be a good place to put in a something like Clive Barkers 'Cabal' as a proper horror setting, rather than this furry-anime bullshit it seems to have devolved into.

Wow, if it's really getting that bad in the seedier parts of Seattle, I am going to have to petition my GM to put the Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes "Cantina" themes from Chalmun's Cantina in Episode IV onto the iPod mood music machine! Cripes!

Sounds like these people aren't modifying their appearance to be "weird" ... they're modifying it to be more normal.

Ok, to be completely serious for a second Adam, is it really getting that "weird" in the shadows of Seattle? Does the stone-cold professional in mirror-shades really start to stick out that badly?

i would say it's worth noting that just because 10% are changelings doesn't mean that a normal person looks out of place. i mean, if you go to a changeling hangout, you'll look out of place, but that's true whether there are 1 in 1000 or 100 in 1000. consider that maybe only 1 in 10 people might have a certain (naturally occuring) hair color... for the sake of argument, let's say red hair.

does this mean that if you walk down the street and have brown hair that you're going to stand out like some sort of inhuman freak, and everyone is going to be staring at you because you don't have red hair?

No, of course not, but changelings are drifting to Seattle because they can fit in with the other oddities, which means there will tend to be a super-concentration many times higher than what their absolute numbers might suggest in the context of the city as a whole, thus the reference to the "rougher parts".

To be completely serious -- and this is my personal opinion only -- that's really up to you. There is a lot of "weird stuff" in the Sixth World, and a lot of potential play styles [special ops vs. mirrorshades vs. pink mohawk, for example], and whatever your group thinks is the most fun, go for. I don't really think that the metaplot-based supplements really force you to conform to one end of the spectrum or another; you aren't going to "lose" anything from the game if you don't like the weird stuff, or if you think that paracritters are weird enough, but SURGEd changelings are just a little too far. I do think the Sixth World is great because of all the strange and wonderful things in it -- but it's not going to be broken if you yoink some of them out.

But right now ... things are a little bit weird, yes.

If it's that weird (20-30% changelings, 50% metas - including the variants) in the shaddowy parts of Seattle, then that's how it is, Adam. We play as close to canon as we can, but I guess that might have a LOT to do with the increasing tempo of Humanis activity and anti-Freak rehtoric and machinations in the "hints" section, huh? OK, so having a changeling or a ... whatever (I think I'm going to adopt that phrase from now on when referring to anything that doesn't look like one of the base meta's: "a whatever") in the party isn't an automatic re-check by every passer-by. There was a time when a troll was enough to make everybody stop and stare at your group. Now, in many parts of Seattle at least, it sounds like even a whatever isn't going to draw too much additional notice.

Why am I suddenly reminded of a scene from the movie Enchanted where the prince holds Arty at sword-point and threatens then interogates him. After wards he and Pip (the chipmunk) dash off to find Giselle, and Arty turns to the rest of the Verizon maintenance crew and he says "Did you guys see that chipmunk!?" completely ignoring the guy dressed like a fantasy medieval prince and threatening him with a sword.

Welcome to the 6^th World, Omae; It just gets weirder from here.

i suspect they mostly stick to specific neighborhood, and then mostly lower class parts of the city, or even barrens for the most outrageous ones...

What do you mean by "this furry-anime bullshit"?

Why is SURGE so bad?

On a personal preference level I thought surge was epic fail. I liked everything else about year of the comet, but surge was a pike of suck. The adventures were fun and the story of the race to see which mega could make the comet satellite was cool.(Did they actually follow through with the contest?? or did they just make it the mega they wanted it to be any inside scoop?) Surge just felt like a lame emo party tacked onto my shadowrun.

And it's played such a major part in the game since then ... oh wait, it hasn't, has it? Interesting...

Yes, one of the few times my preference seems to match the preference of whoever has been handling the fluff of SR4.

I almost want to start a remember the NAN rallying cry, but sadly that bit of fluff has fallen into disfavor.

Please! Nothing that might restart my NAN Fading thread!

Keep in mind though, that not all changelings have to look like catgirls, Hindu gods, vampires who sparkle in sunlight or something out of a 90's X-Men issue.
There's a lot of cases where SURGE is rather inconspicious.
If a human gets low-light vision, tusks and a slightly decreased Charisma because SURGE triggered some odd ork metagenes, or if his case of SURGE is even limited to things completely unnoticeable or at least not necessarily freakish, no one would notice that you're a changeling when running into you on the street.

Of course, these characters are much less prone to move to another area where freaks are more accepted.
The same goes for SURGElings who have undergone surgery (lame pun not intended) to remove their freak traits.

1 in 10 Seattleites being Changelings is an interesting statistic, because it mirrors the mainstream media's "pop-science" interpretation of the Kinsey Report's data on what percentage of the population is homosexual. When you combine that with the fact that a Changeling with a surge metagene that is not externally visible could keep their status "in the closet" it seems that the intent is that Changeling be the analogy for same-sex orientation in Shadowrun just as metatype is the analogy for skin color.

Agree with Adam here. When my gaming group came back to SR after ten years, we looked at SURGE and decided to discard it entirely from our version of the setting. There are already so many bizarre and fascinating things in the setting that our collective reaction was "why?"

i really wish i knew, tho it seems to be used as the indicator for when SR turned "anime" (another whiskey tango foxtrot for me)...

Yeah, options are stupid.
We should have less options.

GMs, for fun try putting a hit on one of your characters using a changeling with celerity, satyr legs and wired reflexes. Then you get a whip-fast gunman who can run 50m a turn and gets 4m/hit on sprint tests. We're talking about someone who can spend one pass laying down cover fire, and then round a building and flank them almost immediately after. Or just fire a sniper rifle and bug out way faster than anyone can track him. What's not to like about a guy who can run at 60k/hr without even trying?

hmm... sounds like Kid-Stealth but with less cyberware.

Seriously. 1 in 100 people exhibiting some small weird trait isn't that far off... Considering how much cosmetic surgery is going around so that people can willingly look like a freak, a person with Surge - unless it's something obviously physical - won't really stand out. Like it was stated, not everyone will grow fur, a tail and look like a walking cat. If you read through the list of Surge traits, some of them are quite unnoticeable.

Oh, sure you will get your furry-fans going "Oooh, I can now embody my favorite fur-toon!" to which I tell them frankly... "Okay, it's a random roll, lets see just how many traits you get." They generally get discouraged fast - because they won't get everything they want, won't settle for less, drop the whole SURGE issue, and we all go happily along with the game. I've never flat out told a player they can't design their own orgasmic version of their ultimate fur-look-a-like. I've also clearly stated to them that the time they wasted creating their ultimate freak-munchkin doesn't mean I will automatically accept the character in a game.

I've always assumed that all the popular flavours of Shadowrun coexist in greater Seattle.

In the 2050s, attention (media, the shadow community etc.) was dominated by punks taking cues from the still-recent-to-many changes as magic and metahuanity returned to the world. But the stone-cold pros deliberately not drawing attention to themselves were there also.

In the 2060s, attention shifted to those more quiet professionals, in part as a reaction to the punk 2050s. But the punks did not go away they just became less prevalent downtown, and more prevalent in surrounding areas.

Thanks to Surge, Crash 2.0, and just the fact that pendulums swing, "weird" is again seeping downtown with its post-punk, post-black-ops, style.

I.E. all play styles have always coexisted in Seattle, the game just shifts where the light is focused from edition to edition.

I would just assume that as the communities around downtown get stranger, downtown itself tries to get more vanilla in reaction. This also fits well with a Brackhaven administration and whatever agenda a GM wants to use for them. How do they keep the "nice" parts of Seattle clean? How disturbed are they by how weird greater Seattle is becoming?

This is only a problem in my games when some players really want the freaky-punk, and others really want the black-trenchcoat. I have one of each, but to date they go along with the group moving back and forth as we start new characters around once a year.

A book I would love to see, is one that focuses on a number of playstyles with advice/info for both players and GMs.

• Historical campaigns (c.2030s, 2050s etc.)
• White-hat campaigns – characters with a patron fighting toxics, bugs, etc.
• Quiet sneaky professional thieves
• Way-out-there groups of "freaks"
• Gangers just breaking into the low shadowrun level (i.e. lower powered than standard)
• Hard-core mercenaries
• Lone Star undercover

etc...

See, I've just never seen what the big hoopla about SURGE is over. Magic goes to change people and short circuits because of weird, fucked up genes. They could grow a monkey tail...but it's just as likely they get low-light vision and a prediliction towards eating cardboard. It's not that big a deal.

You could do catgirls the moment cosmetic surgery was brought up, the same as you could do the vast majority of SURGE traits. Hell, Shirow is seen as one of the grandfather's of cyberpunk, and he's had catgirls (and cowgirls and snake girls and...) in his works as far back as Dominion Tank Police. If a player wants to do it, chances are that it exists within the Shadowrun universe without having to go the SURGE way.

Now what I find most interesting about changelings is their parallels to other minority groups in our world and what their presence affects within the Sixth World. We've seen changelings used to create hate groups (the Seventh Seal nutcases); we've seen changeling performers (the catgirl in YotC, the ex-music producer in On the Run) and I've even used one for the Data Haven. Changelings with odd appearances change things in interesting ways, and I think it really demeans what they could be doing when people shortcut them with, "oh, those are for those anime freaks that like catgirls".

I've written three changeling characters so far: Karen, underwater archaeologist that SURGEd into having blue skin, gills, and fins, Dent, singer in a GWAR-esque Mythos band (he looks like a Lovecraftian monstrosity), and Brittany, who gained clorophyl skin and an empathy to plantlife. Tell me, which one is anime-esque or furry, hm?

I completely agree. Discarding all of SURGE just for one possible combination that the traits can make it silly. Now, if you have looked over all of SURGE as a whole, and decided that you don't like any of it, then that's your choice. But discarding simply because "everyone is a catgirl" is being ignorant. That would be like someone refusing to play Shadowrun because "everyone is a troll with an LMG." I think that (like ravensmuse's examples) SURGE traits, used in certain situations, can add interesting depth and angles to a character and perhaps freshen/liven up your SR game by making a more memorable character.

I seem to recall somebody bringing this up in what might have been this thread or an earlier incarnation of it; i wanna say that if different metatypes were like the shadowun equivalent of contemporary "racism" that SURGE and its treatment was in ways parallel to alternative sexuality in the 6th world... a large part of me, seeing how negatively some players react to SURGE, can't help but feel that their place in the SR Universe is worth it for the troubles their existence must cause for some people

I do see the parallels to alternative sexualty and (personally) transgenderism, but I keep those thoughts to myself because it's a landmine topic to walk through. Especially considering that I'm a white heterosexual male, so I'd have to choose my words really carefully to make sure that I don't step on anyone's toes.

But I do see it there, and I think that's why it makes me more sympathetic towards changelings. SURGE was not something any of them chose - they just "won" the genetic lottery and poof, now they've got problems on top of whatever other problem they had. One of the changelings in YotC died because he needed to be immersed in salt water 24/7, or else his skin dried up. But his positive traits were probably nothing more than gills and funny looking skin!

Would anyone want that to be their lives? Stuck in the ocean away from your family because all of a sudden you're the monster from the Black Lagoon? Or Zuri from the 4e BBB, who went from spoiled corper princess to troll and now her family wants nothing to do with her? I bet she loved that. Or, again, the ex-music producer in On The Run who exiled herself away from the world because her SURGE mutation was the thorny bones sticking out of her.

A lot of this is parallel to UGE back in the day, yes, and trolls and orks are only a small fraction better off than their changeling brethren now, post fifty years after the Awakening. But while the trolls and orks fall into neat little fantasy niches and have cultures and family that they can fall back and rely on, changelings are broader. Again, Type I SURGE definitely ain't on the same level as a Type II or III - it's hard to commiserate with the guy who only got astral sight and became a vegetarian when you've suddenly sprouted two extra arms and a third eye in your head.

But hey, some people can make furry characters without needing expensive surgery to do so! So let's just toss the baby out with the bathwater.

For the people who decided they dont like SURGE becasue of the potential for furry-ism. Please remember, shapeshifters have been in Shadowrun from day 1.

Shapeshifters do not have an intermediate state: they are either in human or animal form.

Peter Taylor told me it was a mistake: it should have been 1%. I don't know if the current devs will correct this or will leave it as is, but for me 1% is enough.

As for catgirls, when one of your PC wants to become a "teenage-fire-breathing-mecha-raptor-from-outerspace" you realize that the male dwarf who wants to become a catgirl isn't that disturbing.

And from day 1 in 1989 I've chosen to ignore shapeshifters and vampires. If I want to indulge in those archetypes for player characters, there are games out there that do it better. It doesn't fit with my idea of what Shadowrun is about. I feel the same way about SURGE. YMMV, of course. I'm only posting this response to point out that people can choose to ignore these elements for reasons having nothing to do with distaste for the furry subculture.

Most of us can agree with you on that point Semer. But this is what you most often see:

Poster One: SURGE!
Poster Two: Doesn't fit with my Shadowrun
Poster One: That's cool.
Poster Three: Fucking anime catgirls RUINED SHADOWRUN.
Poster One & Two: Uhh...

makes me ponder how cities always have one or more part thats somewhat "unstable" socially.

the classical example i guess could be 80's bronx. In folklore/hollywood, if not in fact, it was bordering on a warzone at times. This seems like very similar to the barrens of SR, where cops only go with riot gear and heavy backup.

basically, it will be simpler for the police to have a area of town where they can contain the really extreme elements, and cracking down on it when it spills to much into the "nicer" areas in a show of force/"we care".

these areas may shift tho as younger people with cash to burn and a image of immortality buys a cheap place in the areas and start refurbishing. over time this will drive value up, and have the "undesired" elements pushed out and start looking for other areas to grab.

Wrong. If the player chooses SURGE at Chargen, then he can take whatever traits he wants. If you're being an asshat, then maybe you can choose his flaws, but any reasonable player will take flaws that can be role played and not as a min-max device.



And if you do this and lose players... no skin off *YOUR* nose. God, I hate GMs like you. The purpose of this game is to have fun! It is NOT to conform to your idea on how the universe works. Face facts pal, SURGE is a part of Shadowrun. It's canon, and no amount of belly-aching is going to change that.

it doesn't make your opinions any less valid though!

i was fortunate enough to be able to introduce my first real transgendered friend to the idea of 'transhumanism' (that 'trans' prefix can be a pretty powerful one sometimes), a topic that i have been interested in since i started to devote a serious amount of time to cyberpunk literature and criticism.

for me, one of the major defining elements of the shadowrun universe IS transhumanism; whether it be cyber or magic or resonance or the matrix or genetics or whatever, most shadowrun characters find someway to surpass their cis-human (i just made that word up but i think it makes sense) limitations.

the philosophical considerations of an _environmentally_forced_ change based off inherent genetic qualities, as opposed to a _personal_choice_, of course, change the playing field (PLEASE don't debate this line, i'm being very general at the moment, and even today, no matter how a transgendered person feels about him/herself, actually transitioning is still a personal choice) when it comes to comparing SURGE to contemporary transgenderism, and i sometimes feel that the social implication of SURGE is glossed over a lot compared to the more 'traditional' treatment of race (re: goblinization) in many SR books still, so it might be kind of difficult to pull any really concrete interpretation linking the two...

traditionally, it seems, gender and sexuality haven't been too terribly deeply explored topics in Shadowrun. not that they NEED to be, of course...

Thanks. Transgenderism is a very interesting subject to me.


A poster on rpg.net once said that Shadowrun has moved beyond cyberpunk and into the range of post-cyber to transhumanism, and the more Shadowrun 4e stuff I read, the more I agree with it. My games and writings aren't as grimdark as some around here like it, but they don't involve pink bunnies either

I've also read that games like Shadowrun and Eclipse Phase and other games that allow you to become more than you already are resonate really strongly with transfolk, because it allows them to live out the person that they want to be. I think that's really great that a game can do that for a person. Also, the bold is powerful, true stuff.


To start, I'm not going to debate the bold with you at all, as it's what I agree with myself.

Either way, I agree with you that UGE and SURGE allow us to explore race and gender topics that might be sensitive issues to players. I'm trying to say this gently, but UGE / Goblinization remind me a lot of the turbulent 50s and 60s of our world, with race riots, segregation, Jim Crow laws, et al. SURGE, in my eyes, is like the growing visibility that gender issues are becoming today, things like sexuality and gender roles.

The choice is there for changelings to get their freak factor taken out, especially for Type I and II SURGE, but the point that comes up is, is that really going to make you happy? Yes, people think that you're an abomination and they stare at you and point you out, but it's you. Do you feel any different? Are you any less happy the way you are now? Is this, in fact, something better, in your eyes? Very interesting stuff, at least to me.

Which is why glossing the issue over with, "players can make furry characters now! OMG!" is a frustrating view for me to see. Changelings haven't really been touched on post-YotC; they get mentioned as a historical sidenote and you'll find a character or two in official materials, yes, but I think there really is room for something to actually come out of it, y'know?


I imagine because it's hard, for the reason that I'm usually loathe to post my thoughts on it online. Like I said, I'm a white male heterosexual with an interest in transgenderism, but that's as far as I can go. I'm not TG and I'm not bi or homosexual; I am who I am, and that puts a barrier up there for me to speak about it with any authority.

Do a search on Dumpshock for the outcry that erupted when Augmentation came out and people discovered the penis and breast implants you could get and how "unneccessary" it was for it to be in there. Then you'll get a quick snapshot of why it's a hard subject to broach in a roleplaying supplement.

(Apologies if this is scatterbrained, I'm supposed to be out the door as we speak. Will revise later)

They dont have an "intermediate state" as you say, but many of them do retain some of their physical animal traits. For instance a Fox shapeshifter retains the tail while in human form, and Jaguar shapeshifters retain the slitted pupils and reflective eyes.

Im sorry to say it, but, having a freaking fox's tail pretty much qualifies as a furry-ism in my book.

SURGE is an option like any other. It makes sense to me - rising mana levels combined with factors such as genetic drift and damage from things like pollution result in the occasional magical mutation that doesn't quite fit into an established paracritter or metatype.

Sure, you can do a cliched catgirl (although not every catgirl has to be a cliche), but cliches abound in this game - there are lesbian elves, trolls with LMGs, martial artists based on Spike Siegel, street samurai based on Wolverine, and about a zillion attempts to make a jedi knight or create a gunblade.

It may not be even mentioned in the metaplot, but as long as the options are listed along with other options for character generation, someone is going to want to create the changling PC.

When I was active in the SR Commandos, and reaching out to players new to SR, every group had at least one player wanting to play a changling. Maybe it was just the demographics of where I was playing, but their idea of SR and fun usually ruined the game for the others. Because I was a Commando representative, I had to try playing nice to everyone. If it had been a non-commando game, I would have been inclined to throw a book at their head or just say "No".

My point is - sure it was one little part of one little book, but the option is there and it is going to appeal to kids who grew up on those type characters, either on tv, collector card games, comics, whatever. And in my experience, at more than the 1 in 10 ratio.

To comment on another poster saying the way they sidestp th issue is explaining it is all a random roll. True, for existing characters, plying in a historical game and going through the chance of Surge. But many games are set at the forefront of the timeline, or at least later than YotC, and when they create their character, they get to choose. You making it a random roll is lying to them, and in my opinion, cheating. (Though, I admire this lie and cheat. )

I don't admire this "lie and cheat". It's wrong to screw over your players.

Seriously. If you don't want something in your game, then tell the players about it up-front. Simple. Easy. It seems a lot of GMs seem to think that they have the right to be a dick to any player who doesn't read their mind and come up with a character that exactly matches their idiosyncratic view of the Shadowrun universe.

When Dranem said "roll" I believe they meant the old SR3 way of doing things, which was to roll and see what changeling traits you picked up. SURGE was changed around for 4e, where it became a positive trait that unlocked changeling traits when taken.

I figure most of the people talking now know that, but for those of you skimming or lurking, just wanted to throw it out there.

Were SURGE rules published post YotC but pre-4e? I only know of them in YotC and Runner's Companion.

***

If you stop and look at them, changelings aren't mechanically all that different from any other metatype or metavariant. They get some interesting positive qualities depending on how far into SURGE they're willing to go, and some nasty drawbacks as well. However, the majority of these traits are ones that players can take at character generation through 'ware, genetics, and magic, so it still remains balanced.

This does not preclude the people that go, "enhanced ability: logic! Mwahahah!" like I saw some people doing here on Dumpshock. To me, there is a difference between creating a character and minmaxing to the limit. Some tables may agree with the latter, but I'd rather err on the side of the former.

You also have to play to your audience too. Your players are there to have fun just as much as you are, and changelings are so far down on the 'watch this really carefully' spectrum of player options in 4e (playable nagas, centaurs, and sasquatches fall at the upper end for me - though I totally would allow a dragon if it was someone I knew would have fun with it) that it wouldn't bother me. And if I'm running a game for a younger kid - early teens or so - and they approached me with a kitsune-esque changeling named Naruto that was an adept of the Silent Way - I gotta be honest with you, I'd probably chuckle and let it ride.

So in the end, just like anything else in the roleplaying hobby, it all comes down to a matter of trusting your players and running with your given GM style. People would probably love running with me, because I'm big on the freaks: I love ghouls, drakes, changelings, technomancers, AIs, heck, even dragons would be welcome at my table!

You know if the kid is having fun and is trying hard to play in character (the carrot approach of extra Karma for good role playing), then this would be a grand RP Experience for him and the people at the table.