Trying to figure out roughly where the population breakdown globally stands at 2075 for the different metatypes. I vaguely remembering a chart of it back in 3rd edition somewhere but I also figure that those numbers have changed slightly in regards to ingame years passing. I'm pretty sure orks are supposed to be 2nd behind humans but how common are trolls and elves supposed to be? Elves have their own nations and it seems like every bar has a pair of troll bouncers so that can't be too uncommon.

Seattle 2072 has a breakdown per district, save the Ork Underground. Beyond that the other region books might have some numbers.

I don't know the exact numbers, but as I recall Humans are of course most populous, then Orks, then Elves, then Dwarves, then lastly Trolls. This tendency applies across all regions, except for notable exceptions.

~Umi

Follow on question that's entirely unrelated. Do they allow Adepts/Magicians to play professional sports? Do they have separate leagues?

for me it was something like
Humans 60-65 %
Orks 15-20 %
Elves 8-10 %
Trolls and Dwarfs 3-4 % each
(and Metavariants 10-20 % of the Original Metarace)

HougH!
Medicineman

Crunched some numbers from Seattle 2072 and here's what I've got:

Total Pop: 3,116,000
Human: 2,036,310 ~ 65%
Elf: 392,290 ~ 12%
Dwarf: 63,350 ~ 2%
Ork: 517,020 ~ 16.5%
Troll: 59,130 ~ 1.8%

The missing 50K are "others". I figure the numbers might be a little skewed based on SINless residents, especially since I've always gotten the impression that orks, trolls and to a lesser extent dwarves and elves are more likely to be SINless than humans. Also the total pop seems low to me, that's about the population of San Diego's metro and I always envisioned New Seattle being a little denser than that, VITAS be damned.

The only thing I really managed to figure out from this is that next time I walk into a bar and there are two troll bouncers I'm going to ask them how many hours they work a week because they've got to be pulling some serious overtime.

Most of that varies from sport to sport. Attitude is the most recent book to go into it.

Is there a sport in particular you're curious about?

I remember something about this from a very old sourcebook. Shadowbeat, maybe? IIRC there are indeed separate leagues for Magic users and augmented athletes.

Shadowbeat tackled it first (HAH, tackled it, because we're talking sports, amirite?), but it's way out of date now (though still very awesome, and everyone should buy it if they can), in terms of what magical folks can and can't do.

Sure, but I don't see why they would change their approach when it comes to magical/augmented athletes. If there hasn't been updated fluff on this in a book I missed I guess it'd be safe to stick with the Shadowbeat ideas.

Well, I don't mean to sound difficult, but they have changed that approach. Like I said, Attitude gives the most up-to-date info. Urban Brawl, for instance, allows spellcasting now, but it's limited to flashy, highly visible, spells; they don't want opposing players just keeling over quietly, they want lightning bolts and jets of flame and cool visual effects. In Shadowbeat, there was no spellcasting allowed at all, so the approach has very much changed.

Likewise, I had hurley (albeit in Land of Promise, not Attitude) finally allow Adepts in particular, because it seemed weird for me that the highly pro-magic Tir wouldn't let naturally augmented players excel at their national sport in that smug elven way.

So yeah, there is updated fluff.

*Snerk* if you go by stories from game groups, or some of the posted chars here at times, you'd think the world was inhabited by Metavariants, infected and changelings, with nary an elf or troll in sight.

Metavariants, Infected, Changelings, and other Non-Metahuman Sapients are literally twice as common as the Awakened. Hell, there are probably as many Ghouls alone as there are magic users - each makes up roughly 1% of the total global population.

On the topic of metatypes, though, the one I personally see the least of is Dwarves. You can always find someone playing the other four metas, but Dwarves are kind of niche - mostly Riggers, too.

~Umi

Which adds another thing. If you go by game reports and postings here, one would assume the world is over 50 percent awakened chars with levels of initiation and access to Force 10+ foci.

To be fair, there are going to be higher ratios of Awakened to Mundanes in the Shadows, compared to global numbers.

If you do happen to be Awakened, you're almost certainly going to be either Corporate (veritable slaves), Independant (shadowrunners), or part of a Magical Group (have to wear a dress and a funny hat, and listen to the Grand Poobah ramble on about mumbo jumbo, also maybe get sacrificed to bug spirits).

~Umi

Demographics don't matter at a game table. Or, rather, global (or city) demographics don't matter when it comes to the demographics of said game table.

Doctors are rare. Really rare. But you know what? You can find 'em pretty easy at a hospital. Tabletop gamers aren't a huge portion of the world's population, I bet, but you'll run into a whole lot of them in Indianapolis next weekend, right?

Likewise, with the shadows. Certain character types may be very rare in day-to-day life in the Sixth World, but still congregate in great numbers in the shadows; the cracks in society, after all, the best of the SINless, the folks who are exceptional (for better or worse), right? Trolls may be rare, Drakes may be rare, the Awakened or whatever the heck else may be rare...but that doesn't mean they're not going to naturally gravitate towards the jobs where they might be able to make a buck and keep breathing despite being rare, or being shunned by normal society, or being exotic looking, or what-have-you.

If you've got the right skill set, the shadows are open for business. That weird sense of counterculture, of tolerance, of meritocracy, has always been one of the good things about running the shadows, in my opinion.

Which is part of why certain negative views on Infected characters baffle me so much, to be honest. For as much as Shadowrunners are the freaks and malcontents of the world, you'd think they'd be at least a little accepting of such a heavily marginalized group. For comparison, how often do you see Runners who are members of Humanis or the Sons of Sauron?

Considering how few other options they have, I'd actually think Infected would be disproportionately drawn to working in the Shadows, and consequently would be at least somewhat tolerated in that setting, even if never quite genuinely liked or wanted. Heck, logically speaking there should probably be more Infected in the shadows than Mages, as a spellslinger at least has the option of a legitimate lifestyle in the Corporate world.

~Umi

Which I didn't know, because I haven't gotten around to read Attitude. So thanks a lot for the update!

We had one (they crop up from time to time), in the early days of SR4... "Freddie" Minh, a Vietnamese Hacker out of Hong Kong, was a card carrying member of Humanis, and a vocal supportrer of the Human League. What an ass he was, always spouting off about the superiority of Humans, and denigrating everyone else (including the human Magician, of course) to make sure they understood their place. In the end, the Dwarf finally killed him (Took advantage of a situation and made sure the rat-bastard biggot died a horrible death). The Human Necromancer would have felt vindicated had he not died as well, just a bit earlier, and been possessed by a Shedim. Ahhh, those days were glorious.

I miss the days when SR writers didn't understand population dynamics and made a metatype with short gestation periods, that matures much faster then humans and gives birth to literal litters! not be the most populous metatype...
My Orks still do that and they're outnumbering humans 3-to-1

Ork gestation is 187 days. Ork mothers have four children that total weigh about 17% of mothers weight! Mother mortality is probably quite high, even before factoring in nutritional requirements. Birth control does exist, so orks are not going to be popping out kids every year, and their lifespan is very low (35 to 40 years). That appears to factor in decent health care, going by the human lifespan in SR1. Many orks are on the low end of the economic spectrum. Their overall demographic profile may look something like citizens of contemporary Burkino Faso.

I would love for you to back this up, obviously if Orks give birth in litters their physiology will be built to handle it, cats don't seem to have any issues with it...


That one tends to show a trend towards getting more children, while an Ork mother might not be popping out one every year, they would tend towards 3+ kids on average as opposed to 1.5 or less, factor in litters and you're at 10+ kids per family (factoring in mortality rates most likely less)
then of course we got the wild card of goblinization... Which can happen on "purebred" humans to... or not happen to ork

Sure Orks are more short lived but they also mature much quicker then humans...
It's very hard to justify a low ork population without rampant mortality rates... You know the kinds you contend with when you factor in malaria...

Now I have to go back through the books, because I remember somewhere there was a bit about some free clinics being fronts for Humanis and some involuntary sterilization going on as well as other groups basically doing shady stuff in the background to ensure the litters had an awfully high mortality rate.

Given the normal factors in orc biology, we should be seeing far higher populations, but something is knocking it back down.

I'm just giving some possibilities. The population percentages have been pretty constant in Shadowrun canon since 1989.

They also don't overpopulate the Earthdawn world, for what that's worth.

The UCAS began allowing Physical Adepts to compete in professional sports in July of 2045.

Im not that familiar with ED orks, except that Barsaive orks was a bit more civilized then their standard fantasy counterpart...

But orcs form hordes, providing for a healthy natural way to control population

That gestation period sounds like it is from the original SR rule book from 1st ed. They had gestation periods for all the meta humans in it.

It is. SR1 p.28

I was refering to the part where mothers had a high mortality rate