What percentage of the population are shadowrunners, do you think?

I would say that a fair number (of sinless) try to run in the shadows (couple of percentage points maybe), and the vast majority of those are either caught or dead within the frst year. The shadows have a steep (and very brutal) learning curve.

I'm looking for opinions on the percentage of the total population.

Want to define Shadowrunner for this exercise? A wide variety of acts could fall under that aegis.

I mean if we go by that definition on the inside page of the 5th edition corebook i would say it could be as high as 10-40 percent. But when i think of actual "professionals" physically doing the runs the numbers get much lower. Basically answer what makes a shadowrunner and we'll have our answer. Is it just a criminal? That's a fairly high percentile, is it a criminal that takes jobs from a Johnson to perform corporate espionage in the form of theft, kidnapping, murder, or terrorism for hire? That's a much smaller number

If it helps, the most common occupation for people in the US in 2012 was retail salesperson, at 3.5% of the population. Would shadowrunners be as common, more common, or less common than retail salespeople, and ballpark how much (there are no wrong answers in this thread).

Just like there are retail salespersons who are seasonal, salespersons who are in transit to another career, and salespersons who have selected it as there profession, I suspect that while a broad net may be cast out to define "shadowrunners", the true population count of seasoned runners is very, very small.

And shadowrunners who are in transit to another career, are probably better described as shadowrunners who are in transit to the morgue.

I suspect that even 0.01% of the population as Shadowrunners with more than a handful of runs under their belt might be fairly generous. But that's just one man's interpretation.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Funny... "Caught during his first mission" is part of the background of a story character I've been fiddling with for a few months now. Just now need to find and read good books on Aztlan during the late 60's.

I would go with the 0.01% of the population as well.

(about the same percentage as Private detectives in the US as per 2010 job count)

a few defining details for the ones I am considering for this amount:

Independent. May have criminal contacts/favors owed but is still outside the normal criminal organizations. If your still active in your gang, you're a ganger not a runner for purposes of this count.

Professional. By this I mean doing the runs/hacking/similiar is primarily what you are. If you are in the high end of society living comfortably aboveboard and occasionally strike out at the baddies or just for a lark you are Robin Hood or bored but not a runner. No weekend warriors for the shadows on this count. There is nothing wrong with maintaining a High Lifestyle ( who doesn't like a Jacuzzi? ), but the main way of supporting it has to be the runs/hacking/specialty jobs.

Burnt bridges. Something keeps you from walking in the light. Whether a lack of a SIN, on the run from a broken family or just dropped out of the sick rat race that the corps run all the wageslaves through, you can not/will not go back.


If you count those who only fulfil some of the above, your numbers will increase, but then the question of whether they are really runners or something else would have to be debated. A lot of your contacts/allies are probably not runners but they still support/aid you in some fashion.

Another way to get the answer would be to ask how many positions there are. How many jobs did Johnson's offer in Seattle in fiscal year 2074? Lets say 1000. With an average team size of 6 runners per job (because that’s the tables sizes for Missions as well as my home group), at a rate of 26 jobs a year (2/month). I would come up with 230 full time runners. Divide that by the population of Seattle (6 million?, don't have Seattle 2072 in front of me) I come up with a Shadow population of 3.84e-5 which I think translates to 0.000384% of the population. Even if there were 100,000 jobs instead of 1000 the number is still well below 1%.

Sounds like a logical sort of figure for Seattle White Buffalo. The "Shadow Community" in Seattle is probabley something like five times that figure and the "Fringe Community" probabley something close to three times the Shadow Community (basing off of contacts presented in fluff and gameplay to overage #per runner with an assumption of a 1/3rd crossover on those contacts). Wannabe runners and "casual" runners possibley add 50% to the Runner population.

So in Seattle the Shadows probabley hold somewhere around 20,000 people not including of course Gangers, Organised Crime and the SINless population as a whole. Which is still less than 1% of the Sprawl.

Depends on what you mean by "Shadowrunner". Do you include Fixers, Smugglers, and other nefarious Contact-Like characters to be "Shadowrunners", because they are very much people of the Shadows (just like they were people of the "Cold" during the Cold War), or do you not want them counted?

I've always figured the population stats for Shadowrun were in general borked - but aside from that, you have to think of what a Shadowrunner actually is. Is it the ganger who decided to make a few extra yen on the side doing the odd job here and there, or the hard-core professional ex-spec ops or what have you? I'd wager that both can legitimately be considered Shadowrunners, since part of the fun of Shadowrun has for me is mixing the streetscum ganger from Redmond with the ice-cold pro from Sioux. That said, my definition of Shadowrunner is primarily someone making most of their money from shadowrunning. So if the ganger still makes most of his rent jacking cars or pimping joygirls, or the Sioux pro makes most of the money on contract with a merc company, they're not runners, just contacts.

So how many people in Seattle make the majority of the living expenses from purely Shadowrunning? A few hundred at the most, probably, because A) the Shadows have a helluva casualty rate, and B) there really are jobs that pay more for less risk, legally or illegally in the shadows. Of course, ymmv, but to me a Shadowrunner has to have a reason to be in the shadows beyond money. Maybe they burnt all their contacts well enough that no one would actually hire them, maybe they've got mental issues out the wazoo that would hinder them working for an organisation, but not a loosely connected group of criminal terrorists for hire, or maybe they just prefer being independent.

It all adds up to 'not that many' in my head. Enough to form stable communities and gives places reps like 'runner bars', at least, but not to be any sort of meaningful number.

I don't remeber where that was stated (Underworld Sourcebook maybe?) that about 0.3% of all crimes (in Seattle at least) are connected to Shadowruns. With arround 30% of People beeing SIN-less (I just made that up, away from books) and having to be criminal in some way to earn a living (even if their major crime is not to pay taxes as Tax ID is connetced to a SIN) I'll try to go from there.

Disclamer:I am making a LOT of assumptons here.

Greater Seattle as of 2010 (Wich I assume to be roughly the same due to some of the catastrophic events surrounding the sixth world):
Population 3,639,809 with a legitimat SIN
Population 1,559,918 without a legitimate SIN
Total Population 5,199,727

If I now asume that every Person without a legitimate SIN is by definition a "criminal" in some way or another and 0.3% thereof are tied to Shadowrunning the Seattle Shadowrunning Community (Counting in Fixers, Johnsons, Shoemakers, Smugglers and other "Shadow Service Providers") would be arround the Size of 46,797 beeing 0.89% of the total Population. Thereof only a quater would be "full time" Shadowrunners IMO.

Arround 1% would be the "Top Performers" (Full Time Shadowrunner Teams, 7+ years experience): 468 Persons
Aarround 5% would be "Professional Regulars" (Full Time Shadowrunners, more tha 3 years, less than 7 years experience): 2340 Persons
Arround 20% would be "Regulars" (Full and Part Time Runners, less than 3 years full time experience): 9360 Persons

That would make a Population of 12168 Shadowrunners in Greater Seattle which is 0.23% of the population.

Now, Seattle is a MAJOR Shadowrunner hub (as is Hongkong, etc.) so extrapolating that to the World I'd halve to quater that number in relation to the World Population arriving at the conclusion that arround 0.0575 to 0.115 percent of the World Population are Shadowrunners (counting from the Runner who makes his first paycheck up to Prime Runners who are in the business for ages).

Considering a World Population of arround 7.15 Billion (add growing population, subtract for 6th World Catastrophes) there would be between 4,112,500 and 8,222,500 Shadowrunners at any given time in the Shadowrun Universe arround. Which would be arround 2/3 of WoWs Subscription record or the Total Population of Austria in the High Nummbers.

If I now try to figure in Sendaz "Qualifications" (Independent, Professional, Burnt Bridges) I'd subtract at least 70% from previous numbers comming down to between 1,233,750 to 2,467,500 Shadowrunners Worldwide or arround 3650 Shadowrunners in Seattle.

And all that baseless (making fun of myself here) mathemagic only to come back to arround 0,01% of the Population. Which I would consider only for major sprawls or "hubs" of shadow activity and not for rural areas.

having fun with nummbers,
Sunshine

That makes a lot more sense than my version, and I feel small in the pants now

Nicely extrapolaited. far better than I could have done.

You wouldn't happen to be related to the Chromed Accountant by chance?

No, but I LOVE this Shadowtalker.

Your method assumes 100% employment among runners.

True, I also don't account for part timers who only work 1 job a month or those on sabbatical for healz or new weres/metaplaner quests. I could easily triple those numbers for that. Shadowrunning is kind of a "It's good work when yo u can get it" kinda job.

Least until it's tax season as shown here.

Yup. On the other hand, you have to assume that a decent number of runners get ground up.

Am I the only one who thought that the nature of the shadowrun business has it makes sense for a collective group of runners to organize as a guild that has a front man to contact Johnsons with another person who coorrdinates the logistics of who to put on runs?

Shadowrunners usually work more at the team level, whereas a guild tends to work metagroup.

It's a certain level of order that can be hard to find among the more independent minded runners.

That said some teams have organized a bit more and gone on to do quite well, Assets Inc with Ryan Mercury from the books comes to mind.

Others, especially those with military backgrounds, can become more like Mercenary companies. But even then you do not usually mix up the teams too much as they form pretty tight bonds within the group unit.

This thread makes me pine even more strongly for accurate population stats and breakdowns in the Sixth World. Heck, even just knowing the global population total would help me calculate a lot of the other numbers I'm curious about.

~Umi

Given that the Corp Court, UN and the megas can't even decide what is sapiant it's hard to get real population figures.

That will last precisely as long as it takes to get out onto ShadowSEA. Then suddenly, the tax-man who shows up at the door gets tagged by all the criminals in the area and when he's separated from his Knight Errant or Lone Star goon-squad, he gets grabbed by some gangers or Runners, hauled into a faraday cage in the back of a van, and he gets "audited" by tanamous. Sooner or later tax men won't go out without full-time HTR escorts, and that will make this process economically unviable, and the experiment will end in dismal failure with the UCAS IRS suddenly having a lot fewer experienced agents.

The rulebooks are written by Catalyst, not by the imaginary corporations of the imaginary Sixth World.

Both as a GM and as a player, I would like to have some numbers to work with to get a better sense of the world and how it is made up. Call it metadata, whatever, I'd find it very useful to have some proper numbers to help me to better simulate the Sixth World in high detail.

~Umi

They used to do that in all the regional sourcebooks ( London, shadows of Europe, etc..) but don't think I ever seen anything for the global whole.

The Sixth World Almanac would have been perfect for this, but it only lists population and not the racial breakdown.

I get the sense that they may even be wary of putting out hard numbers, for fear of not checking them thoroughly enough and perhaps eventually someone finding they don't match up with other numbers already in books.

~Umi