From SR Companion I remember a lot of purely european metatypes (ogres, night-ones, minotaurs, cyclops, giants, firlbogs, dryads, gnomes, satyrs, etc..): How much are these diffused if compared with the "normal" elves, orcs, trolls & dwarves?
I was supposing that in lands like Greece (not described by SoE) or Italy, due to the particular Classical roots minotaurs, satyrs & cyclops should be more present than elves, trolls and orcs (which are, roughly speaking, based on a mixture of Tolkienian- Medieval Northern mythology).

I'm interested in all the Eastern European but they just cut it....it's just a pity that they consider "European" only the boring centro-western part....anyway, I can understand the "space-argument" (Europe, thanks to God, is much a funnier and more interesting place than America...I can understand the depthd of Ute or Sioux culture....but one must be realistic, Europe NEED more space to be described)....and I come back to my point.
Races in SR are too "German-tolkien" oriented...I'm an Italian and I can say, for sure, that if I ask to my grandfather what a troll is like he probably replies that it is something to eat....I cannot imagine my sons in 2064 transformed in trolls and elves: I have no bloody Saxon\German genes in my DNA!!!!!

The distribution isn't pure...part of it has to do with the area and part of it has to do with genetics. So a troll of Greek descent born in Japan might express as a minotaur or cyclops, but perhaps not as easily as one born in Greece.

Generally speaking metavariants, even with SURGE, are a very, very small fraction of the metahuman population.

If the standard is 9.8% elves, 9.8% dwarves, 9.8orks, 9.8% trolls, 1% changeling and 59.8% human...well, let me look at some numbers, I don't want to pull something completely out of my ass.

Yes, but there is still a fact.
Minotaurs should be considered metavariants of trolls in North America or Germany....but I prefer trolls to be considered a metavariant of minotaurs in Greece!!!!
I do not like Italy or Greece to be full of elves.....we are not bloody, damned, Germans or celts, we are a Mediterranean culture!!

Too bad, Luca. Everyone has to live with elves. If it makes you feel any better, less elves probably UGE'd in Greece and Italy because of the mountainous terrain; and you can palm off most of the others as Theran descendants or imports.

And do you reaaally want the minotaur metavariant to be related to actual minotaurs? Think about that for a second. Nonsentient nonhumanoid critter -> sentient humanoid metavariant.

I mean, that's just begging for someone to go claim a bounty.

WELL, I was not clear. I was not speaking about the minotaur critter but the sentient minotaur.
Trolls-cyclops-giants-minotaurs are all linked. In places of Anglosaxon-western-German culture (if America can be completely defined as that....probably it is better to say "western" types of cultures) Trolls seem to be the norm while cyclops and minotuars the variants....I would like to do the opposite in Greece and in Italy.
In any case, do not care about my opinion, I, myself, just do not like the Germanocentric view of Shadowrun, but that's only me.
I would like to know if there is, around, any really official answer to my question.
How many metas in Europes are:
not trolls but cyclops and minotaurs?
not dwarves but gnomes and Satyrs?
not elves but Night ones and Dryads?
not orcs but ogres? (what the hell hobgoblins and ogres are supposed to be in the Medieval European traditions\legends? I think these metavariants are just "D&D-derived", except than in D&d ogres are supposed to be bigger. I have no idea of the EarthDawn world, I was only thinking about the Real World legends\culture connections)

"Germanocentric?" That's a new one on me, chummer.

I can understand a desire for the Grecian metavariants to be more prominent.

Also, Satyrs are an ork metavariant, not a dwarf metavariant.

The ogre and hobgoblin metavariants do have a mythological basis, but I wouldn't say they're based solely on DnD critters.

Just for reference, in the canon Sixth World metavariants are only a fraction of the standard metaexpression even in their "homelands". This "fraction" has never been given actual values but the wording assumes they aren't the majority. That being said at several points in SoE and previous books its suggested that the percentage of metavariant expression in some countries is quite high (giant trolls in Scandinavia, minotaurs trolls in Spain, menehune dwarves in Hawaii, Oni orks in Japan). As a guideline one SoE we assumed that these metavariant populations would number no more than 30% of their basic meta expression population.

Regarding the mythological/geographic links, it's pretty much assumed in SR that the cultures that carried the legends through the downcycle had the same geographic roots as the original metavariants which inspired said legends, hence: Cyclops and minotaurs probably originate from Greek, Minoan and possibly Phoenician ethnicities; satyrs are likely Greek, Italian and from around the Mediterranean basin (there are several Turkic and Arabic legends about goat-footed men); gnomes and ogres originate mostly from Germanic and Nordic lore; giants and dryads fit a number of different ancient legends from the Fey, the Germanic, Norse and even Roman mythologies (although the former figure most preeminently in Norse and Germanic mythology); hobgoblins are from Eastern Europe and might be linked to legends of the Fey. Fomorians, gnomes and night ones (if we link them to certain legends of the Unseelie/Winter court of the Fey) are mostly of Celtic and Nordic inspiration.

There is very little "Germanocentric" about SR's approach to metahumanity and particularly not to the metavariants.

Plus, if you ignore the Names, elves greatly could very well be equated to sirens, nymphs, about a zillian other things that appeared as inhumanly attractive and magically potent in Classical Mythology; not to mention abnormally clever and charismatic heros.

Most cultures have abnormally short people, too, so dwarves aren't that farfetched.

Orks and Trolls are a bit more difficult--but every culture has barbaric monsters that were just intellegent enough to get tricked by the more clever hero.

Hey now-Barbarossa was a troll too!

Well, the thing is, the meta-variants will be very sparse. And, I can tell you exactly why. Shadowrun is the successor (in time anyway) to Earthdawn. In which, there were none of these silly meta-variants. They are simply the result of thousands of years of inbreeding and (in the case of shifters) bestiality. >_<

And, being that Earthdawn takes place in south-western Russia (between the Black and Caspian Seas and just north of the Caucus mountains), which is a part of Europe, the dominant Type of meta-humans should be dwarves.

The only reasons that i can come up with that humans are still the most dominant are:
1. Mana level has not finished rising yet.
2. The cross-breading has brought out a human dominant gene in most people
3. Because the players of Shadowrun are human, they didn't want to make it too far from reality.

I think the third is the most likely reason, and the first is the most likely SR reason.

just my .02 ^-^

EDIT:

I actually have to disagree with you on that last point. Formorians (or Fomoiri in Old Irish) are AFAIK only in Irish myth and they're attested to as otherworldly opponents of the Tuatha De Danann a good bit before anyone would have been confusing them for Scandanavians. Anyway, the Irish saw a lot of Scandanavians when they started seeing them and would probably not have been confusing them for strange monsters or anything.

Another thing about the Earthdawn connection is that we really don't know anything about the end of the 4th age - maybe lots of the metavariants got started then? Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but, hey. And, anyway, Earthdawn didn't cover much beyond Barsaive IIRC so variants could have been around in other places and the 5th world just allowed them to spread their genes around. So maybe Greece really did have a lot of Cyclopses back then. Who knows?

I'll have to go back and re-read some things to make sure, but, Scandianavia WAS like an 'otherworld' back in the day (but, yes, i know what you mean) and, you are right, that is what the newer stories say. (And by newer i'm not talking NEW) But, the way it's worded in the old tales... i'll look it up, and post again when i find something.

It's not strictly true that metavariants didn't exist in the 4th world...the differences between races become more extreme in many cases. Ogres, for example.

if we are talking about variants of mythical creatures what class would harpys come under? most of the mythical creatures of ancient Greece were cool just look at the stuff Jason had to fight and i can definitely say they were not elves!

Also look at northen Europe we had the best Warewolves and vampires originated in hungary and Germany!

torz x

The division Elves/Dwarves, to my knowledge, is a rationalization made by Tolkien of legends from Northern (or germanic, or Saxon or whatever you like but NOT MEDITERRANEAN) folklore.
I doubt that that Saxon farmer of 10th century AD was able to distinguish dwarves and elves as we are able to distinguish them through tolkienian pespectives.
In any case, the point is that the SR races are still dependent of Tolkienian parameters and therefore northern parameters.
The presence of Troll in Greece is a bit strange to me but the presence of Cyclops in Greece is more interesting. Therefore I`m just thinking about how much the local folklore was really important in shaping metavariants.
maybe in Germany local traditions favoured Elves and Trolls....but in any case, for sure Italian Folklore do not comprehend Elves, Trolls and Dwarves. I can tell it because I`M ITALIAN.
Even if you want to identify Sirens with Elves (and it is a shit of hypothesis) I cannot support it because I can tell that we had further folklore after the Classical Period Literature and Italian medieval tales have no Siren to my memory.....
Let be FRANK: Shadowrun creators look at the thing with an Western, American Anglo-Saxon perspective, not with a local one....an example is the fact that in SoE although Germany section was written by german authors the Italian Section was written by a man with a certainly NON-Italian-but-english name.....and this could say a lot about the real "local feeling" of that section...

Luca: What type of mythological beings from post-Classical Italian folklore would you like to see in SR?

OK,
I've not been able to reach the forum for a while.
Synner, I got your point and sorry if I went straightly to the conclusions, probably I was rough and too simplistic but I still feel some of my ideas are reasonable.
Possibly metatypes as are you say and that's it. But I still think that for some Northern countries you based the percentage of metaraces on local legends. For example it is pretty clear that Norway has a fair amount of dwarves and trolls (which in this country are more numerous than Orcs!!!!!!) and possibly can be explained with local mythology..........but here probably starts another folkloristic fight!!!
Probably I'm wrong about my interpretation of metatypes, next times I will not say again that the principal SR races are Germanocentric but Tolkien-centric which in any case took more from Northern mythology than Classical one....but it is clear that the real division orcs-elves-dwarves is a tolkienian idea.....in any case, Hermit, the presence of pointy ears in satyrs (like those in the Boscoreale-House of the Mysteries frescos) have something to do with the fact that they are half-man and half-goats (goats have pointed ears, if you look at them!).
I've no idea if really Celtic or Germanic creatures and feys have or not pointed ears in the legends and local represenations but if they have, there could be plenty of reasons fro exchanges of ides with the GReco-ROman world.
Exchange of objects and visual models from the MEditerranean world to Northern EUrope are well attested in Greco-ROman times (the crater of Vix for example), therefore some ideas could have passed...and one must consider that the so called "Romanisation" once arrived until Britain and it could have left some signs in the local stories....but, at the end of the day, Mediterranean legends and Northern ones remains pretty different worlds.
I have no idea of any celtic representation and really I'm not so well versed in Celtic\German Archaeology like I am for CLassical Archaeology...in any case I would like to see some early representations of feys in miniatures and old books, although I really do not know how early they could be (not earlier than 17th century I guess? but I\m quite ignorant in that sense and possibly I'm saying stupidities).

I really enjoyed some parts of the Italian chapter inside SoE. The mixture of Catholic culture (good Pope, bad Curia, stereotypical ideas many italians have) and Anarchism (I see the Italian young culture in "LeonKavallo" and "Dylan DOg") is quite interesting and respondent to some Italian taste. But, in any case I still do not completely appreciate the Italina section in SoE by 100%.
I think the chapter suffered in some ways from not having being completely written by Italians, but that is probably only me.
For example I have doubts that any member of the "Medici family" is still around or is still called "Medici". Well, so often it seems that we Italians just remains fixed to the Renaissance times!
Furthermore I found the image of Mezzogiorno and Papal States quite stereotypical: did your Italian friends are all from Northern Italy? I really know a lot of Piemontesi, Liguri and LOmbardi and they really believe that we, in the SOuth, are all no-job-Mafia and Camorra slaves......
The image of Mezzogiorno, in particular, is quite depressing: it is not even clear if it is or not a Republic and if there are, or not, cities outside Naples. The so-called no productivity of Southern Italian soils are, furthermore, quite a stereotycal ideas based old prejudices and bad understanding of how things really are.
Hey, man, regions like Marche, Abruzzo or Puglia do not have certainly the space for grain cultivations like the American Midwest but their low hills are the best if you are interested in cultivating high quality olive trees or vines fro strong-taste wine which, I can tell you, are more profitable to sell than Tuscan wines (they cost less and are more sold around). Even Southern Italian pasta is more sold abroad! De Cecco have more clients in USA than Barilla, as far as I know.
Another example which I do not like is in the summery sidebar where you put the "Sicilians" as a completely different ethnic from "Italians". Well, I'm from Abruzzo which is in the Centro-South, and I could say that Sicilians (for my perspective of what Italian culture should be) definitively are more Italian than Piemontesi (too french for my tastes).
But, at the end of the day, I should say that we are all Italians.
As it said in the "Game Information" section, never confuse a NEapolitan with a Sicilian and this tells a lot about our local differences. PRobably Italy is one of the places in Europe where dialects are more different (do no counting places like UK where Welsh is a completely different language than English) but I can say for sure that after Garibaldi times (and it was 150 years ago!) we are really all Italians. I have both Piemontesi and Sicilian friends and I can confirm this.
In any case, this consideration of "Sicilians & Italians" was a bit too much out of topic, and sorry if I went to it. It was just an example.
I still enjoy SoE but I have my ideas.
Furthermore I understand that, probably, anyone from any other European region should have some complain about some part of SoE. It is pretty natural.
In any case that book is, at the end of the day, a good book. For me is much more enjoyable than SoNA, so in any case, you did well, even if faults are impossible to avoid.
If I want to put some more "Italian flavour" in my Italian runs I will put it, but you did well in giving me some broad picture on which I will built and possibly change things (for example I liked the GeMiTO idea but really I do not think that any Italian Catholic would like priestesses which seem to be allowed by the 2064 Church....but that's only my idea).
Sorry, Synner if I exagerated a bit too much on it.
Back to the real point: there is any real, official statistic about the proportions of european metavariants to normal races in Europe?

hermit - The problems with the German setting date back to the original DidS (and the very edited English-language version Germany) and are a product of the times and some misconceptions about what made SR cool - there was a lot of wierdness in the original book that made it into canon.

DidS2 (and now B:ADL) did a good job of bringing some of the excesses back in line, and SoE was our opportunity to iron out some of the remaining inconsistencies (people tend to forget at one point Germany had 4 Greats around not to mention all the metahuman kingdoms). SoE and all the recent projects have been written in close collaboration with the FanPro Germany's current batch of freelancers (Tobias Wolter and Lars Blumenstein who wrote for both SoE and Dragons of the Sixth World are FanPro D regulars) - in fact you can look at DotSW and see how the GD situation was tidied up and explained (Kaltenstein's death in the English version of Germany and the whole thing with Feuerschwinge).

Luca - The way I've explained the metatypes is simply the way they've been referenced several times in SR canon. Metatypes are human genetic traits which are activated/triggered when mana reaches a certain ambient level (the same applies to critters btw). Our legends and folklore are inspired in hold-overs from the previous age of Magic and from mini-Awakenings that occured during manaspikes which happened during the downcycle (when the mana spiked temporarily to reach the necessary level). All of this has been established and reaffirmed in canon material dating back to the original Harlequin campaign. You can take it or leave it, that's your perrogative, but this is the current canon take on these things.

Its ironic that some of the stuff you mention you don't like in the Italian chapter was material I "inherited" from previous canon sources (namely the novel Black Madonna) and was kept for continuity's sake. Stuff like the Medicis (who btw are still around today just not under that name) and the Papal States (and Venice) were established (for better or worse) years ago, and I just gave it what I thought was a twist and a believable grounding. IMHO they do contribute to underline the Renaissance-style fragmentation of Italy though.

Mezzogiorno and Papal States are quite stereotypical. I take full responsability for it (none of my Lega Nord friends had anything to do with it ). If Mezzogiorno is depressing you should see the flak I got from my friends in Turin... regardless, this definitely feels to me like you might be getting defensive about the way your backyard was treated. I do state what industry there is agricultural based and that in fact the soil is getting increasingly productive (contrary to some people's preconceptions). As to the rest of it - well a lot of places suck in the Sixth World, Mezzogiorno isn't particularly bad its a loose federation of dropouts, utopists and maladjusted types (as the text says the perfect place to lose ourself) represented on the Confederation Council by Naples - other cities exist but they're too busy making do and getting by to worry about national government (on the upside they don't have taxes). Its a good place to introduce off-beat elements of the Sixth World rather than to run Seattle-style. In fact SOTA64's Magic chapter mentions one of the wierder groups that frequent the area.

As with every SR book you're intended to take the best and drop what you don't like. My ideas are no better than yours because they're published.

OK, this means I have to stop organizing a campaign with a Cosa Nostra war against those damned Lega Nord guys.... wherever they hide in 2064!! (Serenissima I guess?).
They can rest well!
One single question: Was you or them (Lega Nord friends) to put Sicialians as "not Italians" in the stats?

Just my 2 , but I have met a couple of Sicillians who were pretty keen to be identified as Sicilians rather than Italians. Maybe they were extreme, but that's my experience, anyway.

I think the problem with the distribution of the metatypes (and sub-metatypes) is approached from the wrong side.
Luca assumes that the metatypes should be distributed according to the Middle Age and earlier RL legends.
But that's forgetting that SR is not based on real life, especially for the old continent, but rather on Earthdawn. In SR mythos, the human legends of elfs and trolls (etc.) are old memories of the previous cycle of high mana. Distribution of metatype should rather be loosely connected to the Earthdawn era distribution than to legends based on ancient memories that are inherently very innacurate.

In a sum, my thoughts are: There are elves somewhere but no local legends mention them? That simply means that people forgot about them, but long time ago during the ED era, there was lots of elves living there.

Did I say anything that forbids you to play SR the way you like it?
No.
But your original complaint was about the game as it is canonically. So I offered an explanation to its current state.

it's actually the other way around: ED is based on SR. and even that isn't really true, anymore.

Only because both game are held by different companies now.

ok Otaku, no prob.

Played both, and I must admit I prefer SR more not to say it is not a good game!

torz x

OK, I reply to this topic after so much time.
Looking again to "Paranormal animals of Europe" I found that in page 122 it is said that ogres are the "most common form of ork in continental Europe".
I understand that "continental" is the opposite of England and Tir Na Nog and so,
possibly, continental are countries like Germany, Poland and France. I have doubts if this includes Southern European places like Italy and Greece since in Italy when we say "continentale" we refer to central Europe.
What do you Americans mean with "Continental Europe"?

Hiya there Luca (and wotcha there Synner & fellow dumpshockers - its been a while) just going to stick my oar in the water.

OK, first up Paranormal Animals of Europe was mainly written via a British perspective (methinks it was Carl Sergeant & Marc Gascoigne - the duo responsible for London & Tir na nOg sourcebooks, not to mention the novels Streets of Blood, Nosferatu & Black Madona). Theres details about Greece in there via the shadowtalkers although not much to base current Sixth World society on, but at least they attempted to give it a bit of flavour. Unfortunately the not enough space in SoE meant that the Greek chapter was shelved with a mention by those Powers That Be, that it would be a good topic to include in a Target: Awakened Lands 2. A shame because that draft had oodles of great stuff.

Anyhow as to the metahuman varient distribution question. As Synner has already mentioned metahuman expression is based upon dormant genetics in 5th World humanity. Now, in the last age of magic (Earthdawn = 4th World) there were localised "species" for various places around the world, which are the source of all those colourful types of mythology and legends. Its the isolation factor, same with the different "racial" traits of today's homo sapiens - coloured skin, arian eyes & hair, redheads, medditereanean features, etc. Standard Darwinisian laws of evolution - a lifeform adapts to its environment until eventualy it becomes a different species but linked by a common ancestor.

Now consider that all the old tales and legends mentioned these distinct cultural species, but in the seperating centuries/millenia the populations of these locations has interbred with non-locals, travelled or migrated to different areas, or even been subjected to depletion whether by natural disaster, wars, disesease, famine or genocide. This is especially so in European history and the main instigators was in fact the Roman Empire - they conquored new territories across Europe and then took the natives into the legions and as slaves and redeployed them in new countries to reduce their chances of rebellion. This has somewhat diluted the pure strains of those ancient local genentics and so therefore the metahuman varients unique to those regions in the past can theoretically crop up anywhere in the Sixth World - with the colonial expansions and current globalisation of society this is more than a plausable reason of why specific mythological metatypes appear in cultures that have no relation to their ancestral legends.

OK, I'll grant you that if a culture is still strong in its original location there will be a higher than ususal percentage of the local metevarients being dominant, but overall the percentages are for the national average. However, its up to you to decide what the environment will be like in your games. I personally like the idea of troll being the strange local expressions instead of minotaurs.

You can even say the same thing about magical traditions, after all shamanism in SR was basically a Native American concept, but whats to prevent a japanese buisenessman becoming one if that's his destiny?

Because Native American shamanism in all likelihood is believed to be anthropologically tied to Siberian samans and medicine men of Asia?

I understood that near all Orks in Germany are ogres (at least according to 2nd edition Paranormal Animals).
Ok, I re-do my question to british people: Are Southern Europeans "continental" or not?
Therefore the great part oforks in Italy are Ogres or not?

Well, practically anyone who lives in Europe rather in the British Isles are termed as continentals to us. Primarily though, I guess we generally refer to continentals as those from France, Germany, Italy and Spain - although the latter two and Greeks get coined more accurately as Medditerraneans, and the northern European inhabitants are usually called Scandinavians. Oh and the Irish are the Irish, Scottish are Scottish and Welsh are just depressing