Ok, Five years in the future you say but for the likes of me who has a troll that has survived, she is well on the way to retirement in Bubber's rest home for the aged and deranged.

So whats the deal on life expectancy? are Trolls the only short lived drek on the planet?

I have developed a fond attachment to my character over many run's and would hate to have her die of old age! (might have to go out in a blaze of glory!)


But joking aside, born in 2035 would make her 35 in 2070 and unless I am mistaken 40 is the average life expectancy for a troll??

What can be done to enhance age expectancy and prolong life...... has anyone invented the elixir of life by any chance??

torz x

There's Leonisation, but that's grimly, grimly expensive. Can't think of anything else off the top of my head.

Tell me more!.........

torz x

I'm guessing part of the life expantancy of the Troll is due to poverty and lifestyle.

There are places in the world where people have 40 years of life expectancy too (in Africa, mostly).

Leonization is a rejuvenation genetech. See M&M.

SOTA 2063 has the specifics on Leonization. It is a gene therapy that returns your character back to her early twenties. However, it costs a lot in both bio index and nuyen.

Keep in mind that SR doesn't have a "maximum age" like DnD. Your troll could live much longer than the average troll by dint of hardiness, good diet, medical care, or not getting shot. Alternateively, you could live in a gutter and get your throat slit by some punk elf while you're drinking a soybeer.

Yay my first post!!
I've always felt sorry for trolls and orcs in the life expactancy bit, most are past middle age before they can legally drink (not that obeying the law is a major concern for your average runner.) I can understand why trolls only live for around 50, what with their size and all, but why do orcs live for only about 40? Does it take into account their most likely living conditions?

There are always exceptions to the norm, but I expect a troll would start to get some major problems health-wise beyond their fifties, given the average lifespan.

EDIT: IIRC, orks birth in litters of between five and eight, some insane number like that. If orks lived as long as humans, they'd overrun the planet pretty quicksmart. So my money's on it being an evoutionary survival mechanism. Shorter life-span = less babies = no green tide of orksrolling across the planet.

Was your troll born a troll or did (s)he goblinize? If (s)he's a goblin, then the lifespan is on par with that of a normal human living in the same conditions. At least if you want to stick to outdated canonical material on the subject -- I don't recall life expectencies really ever being mentioned in 3rd Edition, though (as usual) I could be horribly mistaking.

Me, I almost always play older characters anyway. 40 is my starting age in most cases. I just dig that whole "I'm getting too old for this..." vibe. A 40+-year-old troll is right up my alley. Hell, the Troll Mercenary archetype picture is a great one to use for an older troll.

In the end, it's just a number on your sheet for flavor purposes. It has zero impact on anything important other than roleplaying concerns.

Would the merc's name be Murtaugh and is he only three days from retirement?

Erm. I think it was in Captain Chaos' rant at the start of the 3rd Ed book. I don't have mine on me, so I could be wrong. Try looking in that sensitivity training manual bit. I think it's there.

I played a 90 year old human once. Damned phys-ad punched him in the chest and stopped his heart.

Well technically shorter lifespan isn't neccesarily tied to higher birth rates as higher birth rates are more dependent on duration of sexual maturity, infant mortality, gestation period and incidents of multiple births.

However if you take the 1e orks as gospel then yeah they'd be overrunning the place as 6-8 per litter is pretty interesting (although highly unlikely unless they are significantly different than humans). Even factoring in short lifespans the fact that they reach sexual maturity much earlier than humans would indicate they could pop out a bunch of spawn quite regularly.


Personally I kinda like the idea that the 2nd generation have dramatically shorter lifespans as it plays into the depressing nasty brutish and short aspect of thier lifestyle as depicted in the source material.

Trolls are different but honestly I can see why they would have significant health problems based upon aging as animals with giant breeds tend to have reduced lifespans in the giants.

Of course I'd like for the trolls to be significantly downgraded in terms of size to meet what has by now pretty much been the artistic model of the troll rather than the enormous stature the source material seems to want to indicate.

But yeah chances are if you are a 1st wave orc or troll you are geriatric or dead by 2070. Of course the elves have it good (even the ones with the super-dooper 1337 IE genes) of course you could always have your troll be some unexpressed drake

Don't I recall the corollary to that high ork birth number being that most of them died in infancy?

hmm, where'd I put SR1..?

Hell if I had 6-8 hungry mouths to feed when I could barely feed myself "culling the herd" would almost certainly be fairly common practice in slums and z-zones. It really would come down to a decision for most orcs do I sacrifice some for the benefit of the remainder or risk losing them all. Considering orc mothers might be making this decision at 10 years of age or so and it becomes even more dire.

Looking at the problem of infant mortality among people in poverty IRL I would think the problem would only be excerbated in orc communities if the SR1 racial blurbs hold true.

I don´t see any problems with a troll being of good health above 50 years of age. The avarage life spans must be calculated with lifestyle in mind, as others have said. A PC has a good chance of dying, so if the character has survived to that age, so be it.

They're also worldwide averages, not just North American averages. People in North America typically live considerably longer than the worldwide average now, because of conditions. I don't see why this would change in any way except degree.

I new about multiple births in the ork population but what is it for trolls? I don't think I have ever read anything about them, I mean it might be the time for Brindell to settle down and start a family???

Bwhahaha I don't think so but it would be nice to know!


Edit: yes I saw my mess up with the age of 40 not 50

Brindell was born troll

torz x

True but you never think of things like age really, and if you are reaching the end of life as such surely this would affect the characters abilitys??


torz x

Yes realistically unless you have access to leonization shadowrunning should be a young person's game but unless you have more extensive rules for attribute and skill degradation than most people use there seems to be limited effects of age within the game system although within the fiction it seems to be a common concept.

I must admit I have never thought about the age thing until SR4 , and we were moving into the future. Like i have said before its not too bad unless you reolise that your troll or ork is getting abit long in the tooth!

I am reluctant to retire the character but i surpose i will end up having to do it!!

torz x

Since your character is a shaman, she might work out some kind of Deal with Cat. In exchange for longer life, she might take some geas or do stuff for Cat ... it would require a mini-campaign just geared towards getting the ritual components, the astrat quests, and the initiate group she'd need together, but it might work out without losing a magic point to leonisation.

Leonisation in 3rd edition is as expensive as ever, if not more so. 2 mil and SI 2.5, and a whole point of bio index. Ouch!

As far as age goes its not that big of a deal other then RPing.

Life span for any Shadowrunner is always untill 2-3 bullets find there way in to there head.(or you piss off your GM. Never tell them to get there own freaking pizza)

A couple of ideas:

- For the Troll. Don't just jump 6 years into the future. You'd have to assume he hadn't accomplished anything in the intervening years since he hadn't earned karma or improved skills. Play throught the 6 year break until any characters people care about die or retire. Then start up new characters in SR4 time.

- Regarding the Orc birth rate. I think they could have the 6-8 litter births, not kill them all off in infancy and still avoid overrunning the Earth with Orcs. Why? you ask..... because I think Orc wimmen folk would be extra careful with contraception unless they REALLY wanted babies. Who wants to go birth 8 babies and then raise them all! Maybe more Orc families forgo children than the other metahuman races?

Leonization does give me an interesting idea for a PC. Presume, for example, Joe the 90 year old Human walks into a clinic and tosses the receptionist a cool 5 million for a "no questions" job. Joe then goes under the mask, and ends up in a coma for about a year. Now, he's concious, but he does'nt know who the heck he is or what's going on. This allows for all sorts of nifty roleplaying, too, and a convinient excuse for a 1 million starting character budget. The PC could also manifest magic powers, goblinize, or SURGE as a result of the genetech. Then, the PC could try to figure out who he/she was.
This, in itself, has interesting implications. For example, a PC could find out he/she was an evil druglord, and try to atone by doing all sorts of goody-goody things. Alternately, the character's enimies might identify him and try to kill him before he figures out what's going on.

And one other question:
Who here thinks FastJack as leonized?

I dunno, I sort of like to imagine ol' Fastjack (who, for my mind, had his best bit during the kinda-sorta decker dogfight with Bash in the Denver Boxed Set) as being really old behind the deck and looking it.

Anyway, trolls.

I'd expect the successful troll shadowrunners (i.e., the 5 or so percent) probably would live longer than the 45-50 put forward. They most likely make enough money to live decently, eat well, all that.

Suddenly, though, I'm kinda curious about troll biology - like how big their hearts are. Maybe the strain of their frame on the ticker takes its toll, accounting for a low lifespan, etc.