Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: SeriousOne338 on <03-02-12/1216:51>
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I know it's probably already somewhere in another thread but I can't find it. I read through the main book but it's not been specific enough for me, I'm from the older editions and some things change from here to there. So my question is Goblinzation still happening, the main book seems to state it was a one shot event. Is it still frowned upon? or have the masses given in?
Any help is appreciated.
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It's very, very rare. Most orcs and trolls are born that way in 2070. It still can happen - just not very often. And as orcs and trolls have become a part of society, I don't think that goblinization carries a specific stigma anymore - besides the normal rascism. Ok, perhaps there are orcs who think that goblinized orcs are not as good as born orcs, but that's a pretty special situation.
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I think that goblinization and racism are stock aspects of Shadowrun that aren't allowed to be changed.
One specific beef I have with 'untouchable' features is the ashy wastes in Puyallup Barrens that came from the Rainier eruption. That eruption happened mid 2017. There was still ash on the ground in 2050 (1st edition) and still there 2072 (4th ed). The problem is that recovery from a volcanic eruption generally only takes about 10 years... So why is there still ash on the ground 55 years later?
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IIRC, Puyallup has a background count in areas. It may very well still be in bad shape because it was an Awakened disaster and is resisting natural recovery.
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If you don't like the goblinization thing, change it. Trust me, I know this one since despite that elves were all born and not goblinized, I had a GM force a "goblinization" into an elf on me once--just because of the kind of wine I had the character drink no less.
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I heard that Hell's Kitchen was actually kind of 'clean' and thus good for foraging. I think there's some protective spirits there though. I know there's a big farm down there that uses nature spirits to ensure a good harvest.
I think that the western plateau (between Thrift and Ft. Lewis is where all the toxic castles are, which undoubtedly produce a toxic background. I'm also fairly sure that any of the squatter villages are going to be pushing out an emotional background as well.
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It's not that I'm GMing, I'm trying to write a Characters back story, involves his parents being dishonored because the character changed froming being an Elf to an Ork in college due to Goblinization.... is it possible?
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I don't think that one is possible. I think goblinizations are/were all going from Human to whichever they turned into. Though, with current stuff, there's nothing saying you couldn't have SURGEd into some Ork-like traits.
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Note also that having metahuman parents doesn't guarantee a metahuman baby. They are more likely, but not certain. Two trolls are more likely to have a troll child than two humans having a troll child, but both couples are far more likely to have a human child. This sidesteps the whole issue of orks overrunning the world due to their maturation rate and birth rate, they simply spit out more humans than ork children.
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I think that goblinization and racism are stock aspects of Shadowrun that aren't allowed to be changed.
One specific beef I have with 'untouchable' features is the ashy wastes in Puyallup Barrens that came from the Rainier eruption. That eruption happened mid 2017. There was still ash on the ground in 2050 (1st edition) and still there 2072 (4th ed). The problem is that recovery from a volcanic eruption generally only takes about 10 years... So why is there still ash on the ground 55 years later?
IIRC, Ranier still spews ash from time to time, if not most of the time, so it isn't like the ash there is all from 2017. Also, it is the Barrens, and outside of Tarislar unlikely to have anyone actually willing to clean it up.
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IIRC, Ranier still spews ash from time to time, if not most of the time, so it isn't like the ash there is all from 2017. Also, it is the Barrens, and outside of Tarislar unlikely to have anyone actually willing to clean it up.
I've seen a remark about Puyallup having lots of quakes, but no mention of Rainier still blowing ash. I could accept that, but that actually makes Seatac inaccessible by air. Volcanic ash has a lot of 'glass' in it. This can get sucked into jet engines and wreck them pretty fast with little warning. It tends to clog the cooling vents.
There are lots of people that have a vested interest in cleaning up the ash (loose ash). First, there is Petrowski Farms which is right in the middle of the lahar flow. Then there is Graham Cracker City, a low class area kinda in the middle. And further south on 161 is Twenten's (?) a bar run by a mage. If it is as bad as they make it out to be, there would also be the incentive program from the Salish to clean it up. Now, you might think that the Yaks and the Mob don't care about that, but their toxic castles run on machinery that gets torn up by ash clouds.
Of course, one thing that I'm very willing to believe is that the reports about the Barrens are written by someone that hasn't been there and only looks at 30 year old photos of the area. I loves me some unreliable narrator.
I suppose another option is extensive mining and quarry work. Someone could be out there literally throwing the ash into the air. It has the added benefit of explaining the quakes (actually explosive mining). I suppose toxic spirits could be doing it, but I'm hesitant to go with the 'a wizard did it' explanation.
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It's not that I'm GMing, I'm trying to write a Characters back story, involves his parents being dishonored because the character changed froming being an Elf to an Ork in college due to Goblinization.... is it possible?
No, but SURGE works quite well.
One specific beef I have with 'untouchable' features is the ashy wastes in Puyallup Barrens that came from the Rainier eruption. That eruption happened mid 2017. There was still ash on the ground in 2050 (1st edition) and still there 2072 (4th ed). The problem is that recovery from a volcanic eruption generally only takes about 10 years... So why is there still ash on the ground 55 years later?
Because clean-ups require money, and no one is willing to pay to clean up the Puyallup Barrens. The city is mostly okay, but there are cooled and active lava fields in Puyallup. Most of it got written off. Same argument can be had with the Redmond Barrens. After the entire economy is annihilated in the Crash of '29 and most of the area is abandoned, it became easier to cut their losses and focus what is left on the habitable areas while leaving the Barrens to rot. Besides, you just need a place to keep the SINless corralled.
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One specific beef I have with 'untouchable' features is the ashy wastes in Puyallup Barrens that came from the Rainier eruption. That eruption happened mid 2017. There was still ash on the ground in 2050 (1st edition) and still there 2072 (4th ed). The problem is that recovery from a volcanic eruption generally only takes about 10 years... So why is there still ash on the ground 55 years later?
Don't overthink it. It's Shadowrun. If something should be awesome, it's awesome (even if implausible). If something should be awful, it's awful (even if implausible).
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Because clean-ups require money, and no one is willing to pay to clean up the Puyallup Barrens. The city is mostly okay, but there are cooled and active lava fields in Puyallup. Most of it got written off. Same argument can be had with the Redmond Barrens. After the entire economy is annihilated in the Crash of '29 and most of the area is abandoned, it became easier to cut their losses and focus what is left on the habitable areas while leaving the Barrens to rot. Besides, you just need a place to keep the SINless corralled.
Ignoring the fact that the ash COSTS the mob money in lost productivity in their toxic castles, simple weather should have turned the area into a lush forest decades ago. You have to work REALLY hard and throw lots of money away to stop Mother Nature from springing back.
When Mt. St. Helens blew (1980), plants started appearing after 3 years. By 2000 the fauna had almost reached pre-eruption levels. Now that's not the same as 200 year old first growth timber, but it is very habitable.
Not thinking about it is fine, so long as you don't plan to do anything about it. But what if I decide I want to set up base in the Barrens? What if I want to plant some awakened trees for medicinal value? Is the ground fertile? Are there spirits actively killing stuff? Is there some whack job out there throwing dust in the air?
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Ignoring the fact that the ash COSTS the mob money in lost productivity in their toxic castles, simple weather should have turned the area into a lush forest decades ago. You have to work REALLY hard and throw lots of money away to stop Mother Nature from springing back.
When Mt. St. Helens blew (1980), plants started appearing after 3 years. By 2000 the fauna had almost reached pre-eruption levels. Now that's not the same as 200 year old first growth timber, but it is very habitable.
Not thinking about it is fine, so long as you don't plan to do anything about it. But what if I decide I want to set up base in the Barrens? What if I want to plant some awakened trees for medicinal value? Is the ground fertile? Are there spirits actively killing stuff? Is there some whack job out there throwing dust in the air?
Don't forget, they've always laid it on pretty thick with the acid rain and other terrible pollutants, as keystones of their dystopic future and excuses for why nature shrivels up and dies all over the place. Full on "lush forest" doesn't happen very often in the Sixth World, unless someone is going out of their way to make it happen (often magically, like with the Tir or some of the zaniness in the rain forests). The Puyallup Barrens suck because the books say they've always sucked. Work out details with your GM, campaign to campaign.
I mean, I know that "because" isn't the most helpful answer, but it's really the only answer we've got sometimes. I'm not just trying to be difficult, or dismiss your concerns, or whatever. It's just that realism hasn't ever exactly been the ultimate goal of the Shadowrun line (especially early on, when many of these precedents were set), and with 20+ years of momentum built on "it is ________ because we say it is __________," it's a little late in the game for us to try and rationalize or explain too much, without some real backpedaling and retcons.
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Okay, I'll admit it. I'm the one who's doing it, but I gotta have some place to dump out my dustbuster. :-[
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I'd like to think Goblinization still occurs when the parents are of different "races", most often if the mother is human and the father is ork/troll. Of course, I also like to believe the universe is a nice place that wouldn't punish people that are in love.
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HAHAHAHAHA
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I'd like to think Goblinization still occurs when the parents are of different "races", most often if the mother is human and the father is ork/troll. Of course, I also like to believe the universe is a nice place that wouldn't punish people that are in love.
I feel sorry for the mother if the father is a troll. *shudders*
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I gotta ask, thanks to CitizenJoe there: How many of you actually play up the Racism in SR? I ask because I have yet to see anyone I know take anything related to it Neg wise, and outside of two groups and a Country (Humanis, Sons of Saruman or what ever it is, and Japan) off hand, it seems people GENERALLY don't care about your race any more. I mean, do you guys have any NPCs that specifically go out of their way to bug the random elf/ork/whatever coming down the street just because he's different? I can only think of 3 or 4 situations I would, specifically bars (because alcohol can bring out the worst) and..well...Japan, or the Underground.
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Heck yeah, I do. People are assholes to one another based on silly nonsense like who they want to hump, what color skin they've got, or and what team they like, IRL. Take all that normal stuff, and pile onto it that there are now even bigger differences, too, coupled with a media and world-view that minimizes the value of (meta)human life even more than it already is, today?
Others resent elves for being pretty and living a long time. Elves resent others for breeding like rabbits and offending their aesthetic sensibilities. Dwarves hate everyone else for being tall. Orks hate Dwarves for being socially accepted. Trolls hate everyone but Orks for living longer than them and buying stuff that fits. Humans hate and fear Orks and Trolls for being so strong. Orks look down on everyone but Trolls for being smooth-skinned and media darlings, and they fear Trolls for being bigger and tougher than them.
And on, and on, and on. And that's not even bringing into play regional antipathies, like pro-and-anti Elven sentiments in the Tir (especially following the coups ten years ago), neighborhood beefs in Seattle (metaracism in several districts), ethnic hatreds (particularly with so many brutal organized criminal groups affiliated with certain nationalities/ethnicities, and with the NAN playing a role, in Seattle), Technomancer fear, resentment and fear of those with magical Talent (or disdain for those without it), SURGE and all that it entails, metavariants making everything worse, jingoistic and almost fanatical loyalties to Megacorporations twisting people's opinions just as much as any cult or nation in real life...
And to top it all off? The Sixth World's a miserable bitch of a place to live, and that always makes attitudes worse and lives cheaper.
So heck yeah. There's hardly a location you can name, I can't find some NPC in a crowd that ain't gonna hate some PC for something.
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When I'm GMing, I tend to use it quite a lot; prejudice based on metatype more than ethnicity, but both are present.
I'm also playing in one game at the minute, and play an absolutely vile dwarf who is racist (both on ethnic and metatype lines) against everyone who isn't, well, him.
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We've been playing with it in the Missions adventures some. It's one of the underlying problems between Seattle and the Ork underground, after all. Plus, racist scumbags make such good bad guys.
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I gotta ask, thanks to CitizenJoe there: How many of you actually play up the Racism in SR? I ask because I have yet to see anyone I know take anything related to it Neg wise, and outside of two groups and a Country (Humanis, Sons of Saruman or what ever it is, and Japan) off hand, it seems people GENERALLY don't care about your race any more. I mean, do you guys have any NPCs that specifically go out of their way to bug the random elf/ork/whatever coming down the street just because he's different? I can only think of 3 or 4 situations I would, specifically bars (because alcohol can bring out the worst) and..well...Japan, or the Underground.
Racism comes up fairly often in my games. We have a werefox and a vampire in the group. The werefox is of Native Am stock, which isn't always the most popular with some folks (See Northern Cali, parts of Seattle, plenty of the UCAS...) as well as being a paracritter which might be worth something to a number of corps. And the vampire technically has a bounty on his head in some parts of the world just for being infected.
Given the racial division/diversity of street gangs, it certainly works well to help define one more element of their all-important identity, as one runner has a past related to Kumon-Go, while another grew up in Puyallup in the Tarislar. we even throw in a bit of ageism, with one girl being a tiny blonde teen who has sociopathic tendencies (she's an AI piloting a realistically human drone body), and another being an older man, the team rigger who was once a celebrated motorcycle racer but had an as-yet unspecified fall from grace.
We've had Trolls pick fights with our Elves, Humanis pick fights with every Meta, hackers pick on mages, one notable case of a Changeling running from a lynch mob during Emergence, ghouls pick on squatters, AIs pick on "meatsacks", vampires pick on "Cattle", and a number of gangs and personal conflicts which showed the extant hostility of Korean Rings vs Japanese Yakuza. There's a LOT of division in SR, and part of a cyberpunk setting (well, MY cyberpunk setting) is emphasizing the dystopian element alongside the wonders of technology and magic. And there's little so dystopian as the idiocy and villainy of prejudice.
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I gotta ask, thanks to CitizenJoe there: How many of you actually play up the Racism in SR? I ask because I have yet to see anyone I know take anything related to it Neg wise, and outside of two groups and a Country (Humanis, Sons of Saruman or what ever it is, and Japan) off hand, it seems people GENERALLY don't care about your race any more. I mean, do you guys have any NPCs that specifically go out of their way to bug the random elf/ork/whatever coming down the street just because he's different? I can only think of 3 or 4 situations I would, specifically bars (because alcohol can bring out the worst) and..well...Japan, or the Underground.
It is a fairly common theme in the Missions series. Also, add two other nations to the list of 'heavily racist': Tir Tairngir and Tir na Nog. Tir Tairngir is split currently between the anti-human racists and the elves-only racists. And, of course, there's Japan, and the Japanacorps.
Racism is a big thing, but just because someone is racist doesn't mean they foam at the mouth like Clockwork does with technomancers. For instance, if you read Iceblade's comments in the Virtual Underworld 93 threads, you might not see on the surface the fact that he is, in fact, one of the elves-only type racists, though not as rabid about it as some. In his case, it isn't that he hates other metatypes. Instead, he pities them for their unfortunate condition, and those who are Awakened, Emerged, or just show great potential at what they do, he respects for having worked so hard to overcome their disadvantaged birth. His helping Murphy get his footing after Big Murphy died is a form of nobless oblige, the responsibility of those with advantages to do what they can to help their lessers, though he wouldn't say it like that. In his writeup of Big Murphy, there are subtly racist tones throughout the piece, even though he's praising Big Murphy.
Racism isn't just things like what Humanis and Alamos20K do. In Conspiracy Theories, when talking about the Human Nation, there is a good example of a different form of racism. Human Nation members don't want to see metahumans killed. They work to find ways to humanely end those genetic lines, such as by spiking drinks to make metahumans become sterile, and so on. They see themselves as defenders of the human race, guiding them away from the corruption of these genetic 'dead ends'.
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I gotta ask, thanks to CitizenJoe there: How many of you actually play up the Racism in SR? I ask because I have yet to see anyone I know take anything related to it Neg wise, and outside of two groups and a Country (Humanis, Sons of Saruman or what ever it is, and Japan) off hand, it seems people GENERALLY don't care about your race any more. I mean, do you guys have any NPCs that specifically go out of their way to bug the random elf/ork/whatever coming down the street just because he's different? I can only think of 3 or 4 situations I would, specifically bars (because alcohol can bring out the worst) and..well...Japan, or the Underground.
It is a fairly common theme in the Missions series. Also, add two other nations to the list of 'heavily racist': Tir Tairngir and Tir na Nog. Tir Tairngir is split currently between the anti-human racists and the elves-only racists. And, of course, there's Japan, and the Japanacorps.
Racism is a big thing, but just because someone is racist doesn't mean they foam at the mouth like Clockwork does with technomancers. For instance, if you read Iceblade's comments in the Virtual Underworld 93 threads, you might not see on the surface the fact that he is, in fact, one of the elves-only type racists, though not as rabid about it as some. In his case, it isn't that he hates other metatypes. Instead, he pities them for their unfortunate condition, and those who are Awakened, Emerged, or just show great potential at what they do, he respects for having worked so hard to overcome their disadvantaged birth. His helping Murphy get his footing after Big Murphy died is a form of nobless oblige, the responsibility of those with advantages to do what they can to help their lessers, though he wouldn't say it like that. In his writeup of Big Murphy, there are subtly racist tones throughout the piece, even though he's praising Big Murphy.
Racism isn't just things like what Humanis and Alamos20K do. In Conspiracy Theories, when talking about the Human Nation, there is a good example of a different form of racism. Human Nation members don't want to see metahumans killed. They work to find ways to humanely end those genetic lines, such as by spiking drinks to make metahumans become sterile, and so on. They see themselves as defenders of the human race, guiding them away from the corruption of these genetic 'dead ends'.
Early Shadowrun included a great many of these projects being funded by megas or subverted. One notable example was DNA/DOA, where Alamos 50K terrorists want to use new research into metahuman gene mapping and targeted mutagenic viruses to eliminate metahuman targets, or just wipe out their ability to produce "tainted" offspring.
Come to think of it, we've never heard ANYTHING with that mutagenic angle since that adventure... you'd think Aztechnology would be more keen to capitalize on something which, while not effective in the intended way, still had such dramatic potential...
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Good news. I figured out why the ash is still in the air. Mining companies are going around harvesting the volcanic ash layer without proper safety protocols. This, combined with limestone mining and conversion to quicklime results in a pretty decent alternative to Portland Cement. That creates a construction product industry in Puyallup, which is probably run by the Mafia and or the Yakuza. On the plus side, this old school product (invented by the Romans) is less toxic to the environment than plastcrete and plasteel, and thus popular exports to the SSC as well as receiving potential incentives... although the shortcuts being taken might risk those incentives.
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Yes... We'll go with that, and not that it's cremated ashes of my enemies which I dustbusted up and dumped there.
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They aren't mutually exclusive... I did say it was Mafia run...
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what i find amusing though is that if the 4th world earthdawn tie-ins ever become important then a lot of that racism is self destructive, especially since human kind made all those different things, dwarves, elves, orks, trolls, and dragons. then the fight against the horrors is going to suck. another thing i find weird though is why didn't humans create some sort of genetic base against the dragons that made them default to human control? it kind of sucks that dragons have such a superiority complex that causes their racism and slows down the military build up need against the horrors.
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Dragons don't come from humans. Some take human form via magic. There are Drakes which are metahuman-dragon hybrids. And then there are the immortal elves which may or may not have some sort of relationship with dragons. But mucking with human genetics wouldn't have any effect on dragons.
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You're thinking in mortal terms, BRKN. Dragons and elves tend to take the long view of things. They believe that, aside from a few early breakthroughs, the Horrors are at least a few centuries away. That is plenty of time to build a power base to fight them, without letting anyone know that's what you're doing. And the dragons are NOT a united front, just as the immortal elves aren't. They have different ideas about how to do things, and their own rivalries, as one might expect of any group that has known eachother for a few thousand years.
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nah i didn't mean dragons and humans were related but i read on some wiki over the history of earthdawn is that humans created the dragons using magic to help combat the horrors, though i don't know about if they still actually have the time they think they have cuz i read in another wiki that big d sacked himself in order to level out the mana spikes that caused the early cross overs with the insect spirits and the shedim and the shadow spirits. course the dragons the humans actually created are all dead with a sort of civil war with the newer generations over how humanity should be dealt with.
and if your wondering what are my sources, unfortunately i don't remember them and even though the burden of proof falls on me i seriously have no idea where to find them, i found them while looking for the earthdawn names of the different dragons.
also i found it hilarious when i found out the immortal elves city exploded when the magic went away
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No, Dragons came first then humans. What humans invented was Naming. That's where our strength lies. Back in the Second World (the Age of Dragons) thing wielded immense power, using raw mana to bend reality to their will. However, in each case, the creature could only bend reality to the extent of their OWN will, not beyond it. When people invented Naming, every person could focus on one thing because it was uniquely named. While people had minimal effect when taken alone, the combined effects of thousands enabled them to surpass even the dragons. In the Fourth World (Earthdawn, Age of Heroes ?), Naming (Pattern Magic) grew into its full strength, imbuing things and places with power. Far worse than anything else we've done, when people abandoned their name for a number (SIN) we gave up the one thing we held over the Horrors.
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We've been playing with it in the Missions adventures some. It's one of the underlying problems between Seattle and the Ork underground, after all. Plus, racist scumbags make such good bad guys.
And did it work well with SRM 04-01, my group was really conflicted over the end of the mission.
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in 'spells and chrome' there is a short story that deals with goblinization process. it really is pretty good.