I'm pretty sure somewhere in the core book the approximate population of each metahuman race, but I could only find that humans have a slight majority. Does anyone have any numbers on this?

60-66 % Humans
15-18 % Orks (slightly less since 2072)
8-10 % Elves ( but varies widely >65 % Elves in the Tirs)
4-6 % Dwarves
4-6 % Trolls
<1 % Others (including Shapeshifter , Dragons & Sentient Critters)
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1% of Humanity is Awakened (> 50 % Adepts)
2 % Surged
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These are the #s I Remember

HokaHey
Medicineman

Thanks so much. Where did you read this?



Why is it slightly less since 2072? I thought Orks bred like crazy.

Not anymore.

Human Nation sponsored 'health care'?

What happened?

Hard to tell. For some people it's a "conspiracy", for others it's just the race adapting itself to the situation: they breed more or less depending on the population.

Mostly, it's a retcon by Catalyst

It's not really a retcon when it's a change to current situation and has no effect on the past.

Yeah, not so much retcon as a tool to avoid having the entire world populated by Orks in a few years. When you come of age at 12, and breed like bunnies, you quickly outstrip your available resources.

Unless of course your death rate is also high, either because of war, famine, wathever or because of a natural predator (What did Great Dragons used to eat back in Earthdawn?)

Depends on your definition of retcon, I guess. If by retcon you mean making up a transparently contrived and poorly explained mechanism by which a previous game-world assertion is rendered invalid, then yes. If the change manages to reduce in frequency the racism-tinged flame wars about exponentially multiplying orks taking over the world or leading to the collapse of civilization via the drain on resources, then I forgive them.

Using numbers from Aztlan (2056), Shadows of North America (2062), Target: Wastelands (2062), Shadows of Europe (2063) and Shadows of Asia (2064), I found human 73.14%, dwarf 5.73%, elve 6.82%, ork 10.57%, troll 2.60% and "other" 1.14% (though I'm not sure that all authors are counting the same things as other) on a recorded total of 2,290,514,134. India weights a lot on those results, with 750 millions humans out of 965 millions. In North America, we got human 65.94%, dwarf 6.81%, elve 9.84%, ork 11.85%, troll 4.91% and other 0.65%. In western Europe, we got human 69.49%, dwarf 6.34%, elve 8.71%, ork 10.21%, troll 4.21% troll and other 1.05%.

wait the World of Shadowrun has 2.2 billion people in it?
That's it?

VITAS 1 killed 25% of the population of the world in 2010 (!), and VITAS 2 took off another 10% later. Add wars around the world, the infestation of Chicago, etc, and I can see the population dropping below 3 billion.

No, that's the population for which sourcebooks have given a demographic breakdown by metatype : Aztlan, Algonkian-Manitou, Athabaskan, California, CAS, Denver, Pueblo, Québec, Salish-Shidhe, Sioux, Tir Tairngire, Tsimshian, UCA, Ute, Aleut, Austria, Basque Country, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, India, Japan, Russia and Korea.

dont forget that VITAS 1 killed off 75% of the African Population

And yet, cities are desenly packed because of the Awakening bringing new creatures that can REALLY destroy farmlands, add the whole "back to nature" agenda of some countries and magical reflorestation and you have a world with less people and higher rates of people density in urban areas.