Looking for information on Bunraku parlors, as pertaining to Shadowrun. Which books are they discussed in, and to what depth? Assistance would be appreciated.

Vice, SimDreams, Unwired. All medium in depth.

Thank you sir.

There's a very low-rent bunraku parlour in SRM-04-01. Doesn't go into much detail, but some horrible details nonetheless.

Is that the one with the girl in the middle of getting chipped?

Yup, there she gets skillwires. Nasty business.

Yes it is...a twelve-thirteen year old, no less.

Will be an interesting day when I present that little scenario to my PCs...

I did the same with a kidnapped 10-year old, they simply bought her from the Yaks, taking a hit on the pay from the 'run, but going, "I can still look at myself in the mirror."

It was either that, or I really scared them with the woman that owns the restaurant on the docks.

Hurm, Unwired came up empty, Vice had a bit but mostly in passing, not too much more than basic definition and that MTC has some of their own. Sadly I don't have SimDreams yet.

Unwired has some in the BTL/SimSense section, where the skillwires are. Ah, and Twilight Horizon has implications, in teh PersonaFix chapter.

You should get on that. PersonaFixes are also in Sim Dreams/Nightmares.

I admit that I don't go so much into how they're set up or used, but the complications that occur due to abuse of Personasoft technology, which PersonaFixes also have (along with the problem you can have with Skillwires!) I don't really think I was successful in showing just how much Turbo Bunny is disturbed by the technology, but I was also writing from the view of someone drying out, so that's excusable from my artistic point of view. The guest commentator, RRW, had to edit his work a few times (In-Character!) due to him sounding far too angry and preachy.

...

Yes, my writing style does disturb me at times.

Not exactly about the palors, but somewhere, I forgot which book, there is a short story of how a former puppet useing her unique skillset to completely impersonate people. In this story she takes on the ID of a waitress to gain access to the comlink of a client in order to raise money to researxh her real identity.
Does anyone know where this story is from? I don't have my books with me currently.

^That's in Seattle 2072.

It's the short story for the Tacoma chapter.

Yes yes.... lol I should.

Imagine a Street Doc that works out of a Deli's basement... Because that's the place my group usually goes to get fixed up.YAY!

Well that's the thing, it was all three. 1) A Deli's basement with all that spicy meat smell, 2) The Bunraku parlor with gnarly unwashed sex dolls, and 3) The street doc room where apparently they're implanting the skillwires and stuff with no anesthesia, as the girl was screaming so loud you could hear it through the steel door.

Again, I applaud the author. Great mental imagery there, if slightly disturbing.

Turbo Bunny has a galpal named Marionette who's a former Bunkraku 'doll' who managed to leverage her way free and into the Shadows. She uses her Skillwires to adapt to situations and has experience with BTLs and similar issues. Not trusted enough to get a JackPoint account. (As TB mentions in Sim Dreams and Nightmares, once you get a rep as "The junkie", no one lets you live it down."

She's not the one from Seattle 2072, but, figured it was worth mentioning.

Thanks. That was one of my adventures, so... yay

That was a fun but VERY tough adventure to write, because it walks a fine line.

The very concept of a Bunraku parlor is just a horrible, horrible thing. I find prostitution to be fairly horrible in and of itself, but add a slavery aspect and it gets worse. But this? Just jacks it to a whole other level, and that's just terrifying and disturbing on a lot of levels.



Bull

I'm not entirely sure I want to add dark content like Bunraku parlours into the immediate experiences of my current players. They're unusually principled, and unusually resourceful, which means put face to face with things like the teenage girl getting chipped, they'd probably quite literally draw guns and level the place, consequences be damned, and they'd pull it off somehow too. They have a knack for doing the absurd and dangerous, and just throwing my expectations for a mission out the window in a miraculous display of recklessness and badassery.

I keep trying to find new ways to screw over these schmucks without resorting to cheese and munchkinned NPCs, and they keep rising to the challenge and coming away battered but triumphant. In fact, their latest run was a job where the Johnson was actually planning to set them up in a sort of Xanatos Gambit, where he hired them to assassinate a political figure, but didn't care if they succeeded or not - he just wanted a distraction and a notorious public incident.

I sent them against significantly superior forces and I fully expected them to be overwhelmed, especially since they took some pretty needless risks in approaching the target, but their two-man team managed to utterly annihilate the politico and his entire team of a dozen bodyguards in an isolated area without leaving any incriminating evidence, made off cleanly with some decent loot, unwittingly avoided the red herring false bonus loot lead that would have gotten them in trouble, and did it all well within the time limit that had been set. The Johnson was so impressed he decided to actually pay them (a criminally small amount given the difficulty of the mission) instead of skip town, realizing they were more valuable working for him than against him.

~Umi

I read something interesting the other night about metatypes and marriage/reproductive ages in Shadowrun. I know Corp guide says Evo considers it 13 for Orks, both for sex and marriage.

But then Vice (177) says Evo considers the following the legal age of consent:
10 for Orks
14 for Trolls
16 for humans and dwarves
18 for Elves.

Doesn't change the fact that what happened to the 13 year old human was horrible by any means, but it does sort of make you stop and go "Wut?" When you think about sexual and social norms. If 10 is the age of marriage & consent of about 15% of the population, that really makes you pause and look around.

Well when our own human life expectancy was 40 or so years, we historically married much younger too. So with Orks actually maturing much faster than humans, it's not nearly as bad as our own human practices were a few centuries ago.

~Umi

Personally, I think Vice is on crack. I have serious issues with the ork lifespan issue and would love to have a nice a nice hearty retcon or something. I can live with a slightly shorter lifespan, but 30-35 is just ridiculous on so many levels.

Metahumans are different than humans, but not majorly so. ANd there's only so fast a person can absorb information and experiences, and our world just keeps increasing what you're expected to know and be able to do at an alarming rate. Tack on the mental "limitations" of Orks and Trolls, and I can only imagine they learn and mentally develop slower rather than faster.

So while you can say an ork is fully grown at 10 years old, he's still only 10 years old. He may even have the biological instincts of an adult, but again, he's only 10. He only has 10 years worth of learning, of education, of experiences. Instinct and natural... maturity? I dunno. That only gets you so far. Working off pure instinct makes you little better than an animal.

But if you say "OK, well, they go to school till they're 18", that poses problems as well. Because they effectively don't become an adult until their life is fully half over. That would be like saying that you can't graduate High School until you're 35 or 40 now. Think about that.

I hate it, hate it so much. And it's one of the reasons I don;t give a rats ass how old Bull is supposed to be (Or any other Ork for that matter), and I will flaunt and proclaim the "goblinzed Ork/Troll Lifespan" thing from the high heavens if I need to to justify any ork or troll who has lived "too long", because again, hate it. It's one of the handful of canon things I will actively work to nullify whenever I can.

Bull

Right, but back then, you needed to learn one trade, and that trade was "building barrels" or "growing crops" some some other trade that you could start doing after a year or two. Add in some really basic schooling (basic math and reading/writing), and that was it. You were set for life. YOu can't do that anymore. Even the Amish around me, who generally only need to learn a basic trade and don't need a broad education, they still go to school until they're 14 and they're still not considered adults and allowed to marry until they're at least 18 (In Ohio, you can legally get married at 16 with Parental Consent).

Re: the Orc/Troll lifespan thing. I think that's bollocks, too. I just attribute that as an average based off the fact that far, far more Orcs and Trolls are SINless, and among those who aren't, they're still much more likely to lead violent lives than those who are. They're also much more likely to suffer from infant/early mortality than the average Human or Elf. And the whole "Biologically adult at 10" thing is kind of stupid. Maybe they physically mature faster, but not MUCH faster. I'd say maybe so much that by the age of 15 or so, they're where a human would be by 18 or 19 - a big difference when you're talking about a high school sophmore who's as big as a senior jock, but not much once the others metahuman races have evened out, too.


Re: Creeping your players out, I've done that. I wanted them to get furious and question what they were doing. It worked, but I recently found out that it left a bad taste in at least one of their mouths when he called me out for it after he decided to leave the game that succeeded the game I was running because Life. Basically, I was running On the Run, but two years after On the Run was meant to be set in, so some stuff got changed. One of those was the run to get the snuff BTL for Delphia; she already had the Aztlaner torture session chip, and it was her "old kick," and now she needed a new one, which had wound up in the hands of an Orc doctor in the Underground because she sent a junkie to collect it, and her junkie couldn't handle what she chipped and ran crying to the only doctor she knew of hoping for something to fix her. (Well, a quick dose of Laés will do that, never you mind where it came from.)

They never chipped it, but the Doctor they wanted it from had (in cold sim mode) and she was clearly disturbed by it, and described in medium levels of detail what it entailed. My players vowed that when they had the time and money, they'd hunt down the guys who made it (but as it was made in what was probably the Philippines, that wasn't likely any time soon.)

10 seemed way young to me as well. Then I sort of pause and think about it. Most (30) of the states in the 'modern' US, the legal age of consent is 16. Fewer say 17, with 9 states, and 12 say 18.

What's a bit scarier still is the age needed to marry. Most states for just straight up 'normal' marriage, you need to be 18 with ID. That being said, most every state allows marriages under 18 with either parental consent or court consent. Some are even a bit scarier. Say, New Hampshire, not one you'd really 'think' about, happily allows 13 year old girls to marry with parental consent and a waiver. 14 year old boys.

Yikes. 15 seems to be the sort of 'default' with parental permission, but that's still young. If we take that as an average and look at the human life span, vs that of orks, 10 doesn't look scary just as a number. Knee jerk goes '10?? that's CRAZY!!!" but when you look at New Hampshire that allows 13 year old girls to marry if poppa says so, and she's going to live two to three times as long as the ork, it's not quite so kneejerk just as a number.

I happen to agree with Bull. Even if you're 5 to 6+ Feet at age 10 to 12, you haven't had the time to take in life experience and mature to that of an adult. (( for that matter neither have 18 year old humans really. lol))

I think alot of the 'ork aging' thing is like others have postulated. Lots of hard living and lives that are not what you'd call excellent for good and continued health, but this doesn't cover all. Nor would it for trolls.

I generally top Orcs out as 'old' in their 50s and 'really old' at 65 or so.

Still if human age of consent is about 16, and their age of marriage is roughly 15 to 16 with permission, where DO we put Orks and trolls? Clearly 10 seems silly young. (( Personally I think 18 is young for humans... 24 or 26 or so would likely be beneficial, but that's another conversation all together). But with 10 being silly young, and humans coming in at 16ish, where do Orks land?


A small side note about Orks. They DID retacon the 'litters of babies' thing. Not exactly the aging thing but it popped up somewhere, maybe Augmentation? But the tendency for Orks to have 'litters' (Their word not mine)) has decreased dramatically in Shadowrun. The indication in the book that it is --not-- natural, but still the multiple births are dropping off like a cliff.

So, with that in there, there is the possibility of another retacon pertaining to Ork age and aging. With the birth rate lowering dramatically the death age might increase. A few generations after goblinization, Orks and Trolls have better opportunities that might 'raise' their typical age of death.

Now.. I'm not holding my breath for it to just appear in 5th edition. Seems like a little thing that's likely overlooked and not thought about too much, but maybe in the future it can be addressed. I would like to see better writeups on the Metatypes. Hell I'd pay good money to get an entire book on the Metatypes and their variants. Not just the paragraph or two we get in the core book and paragraph or two from the Runner's companion. I'd love to have a full book on it. Each Metatype looked at in depth and detail. Address some of the stuff that's been hanging on them for 20+ years now. Sure, address the ork aging and birth numbers. Address the same thing for elves. Address the metavariants with more than just a few paragraphs and never again. Show me regional variances and details about the Metatypes. For this, I'd be all "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" lol. But.. that's just me.

I'd put them, ideally, at the same age as humans. They probably hit puberty faster, but that doesn't mean they are mentally able to be "adults". I mean hell, boys and girls can technically have sex and children as young as 10 or 11 now. Doesn't mean tehy're old enough to know what they're doing or to be able to raise children.

I agree with you.

Thing is, if "Being old enough to know what they're doing (Mentally, socially, and responsibly, not physically) and be able to raise children" Wouldn't the age of consent be in the mid to late 20s? (( not joking at all))

Well, at the end of the day, consenting age is really just an arbitrary number and depends on the culture of the people in the government deciding it.

And, as such, people have different ideas what is the "right" age to claim adulthood.

I'm with Shadowdragon on hand-waving the average ork lifespan as being skewed by lots of orks on the fringes of society dying really young. Definitely wouldn't pay any attention to an age of consent for orks that put them at being able to legally have sex any younger than humans - completely agree with Bull here. Hitting puberty younger makes perfect sense, but being emotionally mature sooner seems unlikely, especially given them being less mentally gifted generally speaking.

Also, I agree with Pepsi Jedi - I'd lap up a well done dedicated metatypes source book. Lots of detail for each race, stats for ages, heights and weights etc., write ups of what life is like for the average troll/dwarf/whatever. I'd want lots of pictures - I still feel like we need more pictures of what orcs, trolls and dwarfs look like - they get a bit overlooked often. I also think it'd be a good place for the metavariants to go, again with some decent artwork - Runner's Companion was a bit of a disaster on the art front.

Just my tuppence worth.

It certainly pushed all the wrong buttons for me, it almost makes me want to give you a finnish "kiss", but I suppose that was the point to begin with

I always thought that was because in the 2050's, a greater preponderance of Orks were sinless, desperate, and dying violent deaths more so than other meta types. IIRC their average lifespan now is somewhere in the 40's. IIRC one of the more recent books stated that fewer orks are having litters of kids and they now have just a higher chance of twins or triplets at most.

I'm pretty sure the real reason behind Orks living such short lifespans is solely because in Earthdawn they only lived to 40 years.

Similarly, they probably face persecution and hatred by other metahumans for much the same reason - in Earthdawn Orks were enslaved by the Theran Empire and after they gained their freedom they became hyper sensitive to that fact, reacting violently to even the suspicion of others thinking them lesser than other races.

~Umi

Actually, that goes back to SR1, which was conceived before Earthdawn. If anything, they live to 40 in Earthdawn because of Shadowrun.

Now... i am going purely per memory here... but wasn't the "standard" life expectency pretty low for humans too. (I thought in the SR3 core it said: 35 for Orcs, 55 for Humans and Trolls?) That points to REALLY messed up problems and BOATLOADS of people dying very young.

I have no/few problems with orcs being "mature" in 10 years (Let's give them 13 though) - another good reason to keep them down as "barely sentient animals" for hard labour and as soldiers to burn in conflicts. They CAN'T POSSIBLY be as sophisticated and matured... and valuable in society as any other Meta-Race *g*.

Come on, give it to them... it's just a little stretch of the imagination.

#humans 75 years, orks 35 to 40 years, trolls 50 years, dwarfs "more than a hundred" years, elves "several hundred" years. But since the text is written ingame and rather racist, the short life expectancy might coem from catastropic conditions, in part, I think.

-k

You have to wonder how they learned it minding that the Awakening happened about half a century ago.

Estimated due to maturity rates and cellular aging?

With magic as an active force in the setting?

IIRC, it was based on Telomere length.

I'm told that today 13 is the age of consent per the Japanese national penal code, though every province can establish higher ages. It appears to range from 13 to 17 across the country. It was 13 in Tokyo in the mid 90s IIRC, though I think it was raised after some sort of international furor caused by a newspaper. Of course, Japan has a lot of very different ways that their social system works and hence behavior is different compared to the rest of the West.

Didn't various dragons disseminate old 4th World artifacts and tomes of knowledge and lore? I mean, the Big D helped Orks learn about Or'zet and was interviewed regarding the "new" magical paradigm numerous times, and I'm fairly sure the various powerful elven nations have gotten their hands on old elven knowledge from long past. Also remember that there are living Immortal Elves who date from before magic disappeared who could supply knowledge on the elven lifespan.

As for Dwarves? I honestly have no clue about what sort of information they'd have available, but I do feel that they're actually the least well fleshed out metatype of all. They seem woefully lacking in "racial" significance or even just a distinctly "dwarven" culture.

~Umi

*Chuckles* "Magic" Does answer alllll sorts of difficult problems in settings where-in magic exists. It's one of the good (and arguably bad) Aspects of Magic.

I agree. Mostly the only thing you get on dwarves is 'They're widely accepted by most everyone almost as much as humans' and..... not much more.

We need a dedicated "Metatype and Metavariants" book.

Failing that... a small supplement. 50 pages or so, per Metatype and their meta-variants.... You'd make alot of money off me on those too. I'd buy every one.

Maybe some archaeologists can dig up the ruins of Throal, or something. (Or rather, "Totally-Not-Throal" to avoid any kerfuffle over intellectual property). Heck, while we're at it, dig up even a partially intact ancient library of 4th world knowledge and it could start a corporate war over that stuff. Lots of plot potential.

With Dwarven craftsmanship being one of the three pillars of their ancient society, maybe they could also overhaul enchanting and crafting to go along with a newfound modern dwarven identity as craftsmen. Rework the technical skills and the enchanting system and gives Dwarves a slight bonus in those fields to help make them more distinct from the other metatypes.

~Umi

With a new edition coming out...

A "Sixth World Life" book with a long chapter devoted to metatypes and metavariants would be a good start. Make it basically the Runner's Companion, but basically all about character options and flavor it intensely with volumetric info about the setting and the people who live in it..