[dezmont]

They're also "coded" as Hispanics and white trash, and that's just in UCAS and CAS. The "coding" changes with local stereotypes and prejudices, so really, they're only "coded" as "prone to poverty and violent crime".

The term "Orksploitation" is a plot relevant in universe concept. A Jackpointer mentions the "X while black" meme but replaces black with ork. They are frequently banned from sporting events and experience literal Jim Crow era segregation. It is very much a racial coding, and while I could see some Hispanic coding as well. And yes, they are not used the same internationally in the setting, but it is disingenuous to pretend that they are, for the most part, used as a stand in for racial groups that are treated by mainstream society as violent, scary, and less intelligent outsiders. They definitely are not a metaphor for the lower class, their coding is extremely race based. Again, we have an in universe KKK preforming lynches, this isn't really a discussion I am interested in having. If you are trying to say goblins are not a very race based allegory, fine, but I super don't want to talk to you about that if that is the case.

Having a player 'race' choice in a game who bling out cars, wear grills, are relegated to jobs as laborers, combat, or criminals, have a massive incarceration rate which results in lots of single mothers, and who are assaulted and murdered by, lets face it, the KKK, with a penalty to how smart and well spoken they can be is pretty mortifying for a game line in 2019. I am very not surprised they are not retaining this element of nostalgia from older games, especially because I don't think many players have a big emotional attachment to it (at least when it comes to orks, I have literally never seen an Ork PC who was not logic 3 or 4 and I suspect the lower logic leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, which is why people avoid it and why none of the Jackpointer NPCs exhibit it. I have seen the 'cute dumb troll' archtype a few times).

Orks and trolls have always had lower mental stats throughout the five editions. It’s a balancing mechanism to their higher physical stats and possibly even Urge and the environment they grow up and live in.
There’s a long thread about that elsewhere on the forum. 

It doesn't matter if it was true across previous editions, that is a classic example of Status Quo Stonewalling, you don't make a new edition with the goal of keeping things the same because that is how they were, you do it to fix problems and make good changes. And and saying "You know what? This is a bad idea with some seriously terrible implications that hurts the intended message and justifies an in universe viewpoint that is intended to be incorrect, and it should be different" is a good change.

Yes, it was a balancing mechanic in previous editions, but balance is not an in universe concept. It is made by OOC designs and it is trivial to rework orks and trolls to not require their mental stats to be lower. And, more importantly, it actually fails as a balancing change, because orks and trolls are good (and in 4e orks were broken) at anything not requiring the character to have good logic. It doesn't balance the highpoint because no character who cares about the downside will be affected by it, only people who don't. You can't really balance via opportunity cost, and in fact they didn't in 5e, they balanced by costing, which had its own problems but was entirely unrelated to the logic penalty.

If it is intended to represent the traditional ork or troll upbringing, 1: It doesn't model what logic actually is in universe, we have qualities such as uneducated and low skill characters to represent people who didn't get a good education, and 2: It shouldn't be a mandatory penalty then, because the idea that all orks are slum dwellers who don't go to school and never read a book is incorrect, and PCs are intentionally curve wreckers. It doesn't actually make anymore sense as a mandatory limit than saying all elves need to assign resources to C because 'elves are traditionally rich' or giving humans a max logic increase because humans tend to get into good schools.

I am not saying you have to like the change, but I am saying it isn't a case of 6e trying to 'simplify the game.' It is fixing a pretty major and likely somewhat embarrassing thematic problem that inadvertently has Cata arguing in favor of unjust social structures and prejudice because it is saying that, objectively, orks and trolls (who are, again, coded as racial minorities extremely heavily) deserve discrimination because they aren't good at things that require thinking, so they shouldn't even try, and should just let the humans and elves do the thinking for them. That is a horrific disconnect from SR's intended statement about race that lines up with what real life biggots who call themselves 'race realists' say about race. The argument that a media depiction is really old isn't a good argument either, a big reason a lot of changes in depiction of race are being demanded now wasn't because people's preferences or feelings changed, but because people didn't have platforms to point out problems. Orks having intellegence penalties was a problem in 1989 when shadowrun was written, and is a problem now, but now there is an awareness of how people view this and are affected by this, which is prompting, again, a GOOD change by Cata.

There are plenty of things to say 'this is a weird pointless change that seems to be done to oversimplify things or because its being changed for change's sake' but this definitely has a lot of really compelling reasons to change.

[Ixal]

This again...

[Ghost Rigger]

Having a player 'race' choice in a game who bling out cars, wear grills, are relegated to jobs as laborers, combat, or criminals, have a massive incarceration rate which results in lots of single mothers, and who are assaulted and murdered by, lets face it, the KKK, with a penalty to how smart and well spoken they can be is pretty mortifying for a game line in 2019.

You're welcome to stop playing any time you want. Though, I find myself doubting you ever played in the first place.

[dezmont]

You're welcome to stop playing any time you want. Though, I find myself doubting you ever played in the first place.

Great discourse!

[AJCarrington]

Let’s keep the discourse civil and respectable.

SR Mod

[PiXeL01]

Should there be true balance then all the races should be the same, no highs, no lows.

Society for those on the lowest rung of the ladder is the same for all races. The trogs are being kept down because they look monstrous and therefore rarely raise above high lower class into the middle or upper ranges.
Orks have their lifespan against them. That’s fact in the SR universe. It’s their metabolism. They reach maturity faster and “burn out” around 40, so they live harder. There’s nothing in our world that’s similar.

[dezmont]

I agree that the metatypes really need a rebalance to matter less, but that is my personal preferences, I like it as an aethestetic and narrative choice rather than serious crunch, even though I am a crunchhead, because I like to line up my crunch with a specific story. I get why 'mechanically heavy' species/races/metatypes in games are fun too, shifters are great and I have seen a lot of interesting stories with Naga. I think 6e hit a good compromise where you can easily make any type of PC any metatype but there will also be things to make your PC more 'orky' or 'trolly.'

It sorta fits how we see SR in transmedia, like in SRR most of the major ork NPCs are 'humans with pointy teeth or horns' rather than these big thug things, but also there WERE very orky-orks. It also crops up in the art: Some trolls are just big humans with horns and a few patches, some look like literal monsters. 6e gives a scale. Assuming the 'advancement' options you can take for your meta are something you can take at gen by putting your metatype priority higher, that results in a lot of modularity where people trying to make someone like Eiger who is essentially just a tall human with horns and big tusks who is only influenced by her metatype in the form of in universe prejudice can get what they want, but if you want to make someone who fits the lore of the troll as someone who has legitimately bullet proof skin and the ability to flip a car this actually gives the designers more room to put more powerful options into metatypes by effectively allowing every metatype into a 'monster' metatype like vampires or drakes where you can continually invest in abilities.

I think the thing that was objectively distasteful was the reduced mental maximums, simply because they didn't service any story or any fantasy for making a PC (save for big teddybear Troll ala that one troll in DangerSensei's reality show) and had really unfortunate implications. I will, again, point out that the similarities between our real world and what is going on with orks and trolls is intentional and overt. It is nakedly evoked, and a minor fantasy trapping does not change that it is a commentary on the real world. Yes, in the real world minorities don't die when they are 40, but that isn't the actual thing orks are commenting on. They are commenting on extreme prejudice from society against a type of person because of perceived issues of their temperament, and judgement of their culture. For example, the 'metahuman reduction' surgery is, intentionally or not, a pretty spot on allegory for things like hair straightening (which if you don't know is a really major and complex issue in real life), there is a pretty naked commentary on the funnel of goblin youth to the millitary, labor jobs, or prison, ect. It is coding, it intentionally draws you to notice the similarities while maintaining distance that allows you to more safely interact with this really emotionally charged and difficult topic.

Again, I am not super interested in the debate of IF goblins are coded as real life racial allegories, because it not only obviously is true but has been admitted to multiple times. I don't feel like I need to prove it to be true at this point. I mean Ghost Rigger themselves made a pretty long post on the subject that treated this as extremely obviously true, so I could just link to that. So with the knowledge that this is in fact a racial alegory (and a surprisingly heavy handed one for something like SR), what does applying an objectively true negative thing to orks and trolls that, while certainly unintentional, justifies the in universe bigotry, and thus makes a similarly troubling statement about our real world?

Its something Cata is no doubt certainly aware of, and such messaging neither is on brand for Shadowrun and isn't something you want to be associated with in the RPG market which leans extremely progressive. So even ignoring the real world morality of such a statement I think it is a given that Catalyst wants to avoid a White Wolf scenario. This is probably an inevitable lore change due to growing sensitivities to real life issues, and real life realities of operating in the RPG market, and because it kinda makes the intended message stronger by making Humanis wrong about the limited capabilities of the metahuman mind, and makes the mechanics of orks and trolls more match how they are portrayed by jackpointers and major ork and troll NPCs.

[PiXeL01]

Sorry for poking, but what about the longer agility for dwarves and trolls? Shouldn’t those be raised as well? Just because you are “really” short or tall doesn’t make you less agile ...

[dezmont]

Sorry for poking, but what about the longer agility for dwarves and trolls? Shouldn’t those be raised as well? Just because you are “really” short or tall doesn’t make you less agile ...

Probably from a mechanical standpoint stat penalties in a game like SR aren't a good idea because these stats are so important, and because lowered maximums aren't really tradeoffs so much as hard limitations on the types of characters you can make. They seem like the mechanical equivalent of a -2 from D&D, but they aren't because they are a cost you don't pay if you don't make a PC who cares about getting those stats to racial maximum, while a D&D say... dwarf... always has the -2. And even in the context of D&D, they moved away from penalties for a reason, because they limit the diversity of character types that can exist.

These penalties are slightly less problematic in a real world context because we don't as a society assume as much about your personhood based on your agility compared to your intellegence, but I would say that mental BONUSES are also pretty non-ideal and play into the metatype metaphor poorly. Yes, historically elves have had a charisma bonus but in a hypothetical reality where the 6e 'pay to get metatype benefits' exists you could just cap all mental stats at 6 (which I believe I heard was going to be the case) and give elves the ability to get a pseudo-first impression as a racial ability if you REALLY wanted to play up the 'beautiful elf' thing. As is, there are so many rude, crass, and unpleasant elves in the canon that it is clear that the mechanical bonus to charisma doesn't make anymore sense than the mechanical limit on intelligence preventing all these smart orks and trolls we keep seeing as NPCs from being PCs.

The biggest difference though is that lowering ork and troll intelligence is sort of making a pretty terrible real life statement by accident while lowering agility does not. The context is very different because people are using this assumed lower intelligence to justify real world bigotry, while lower agility doesn't really have a real world analogue and is more one of the fantasy trappings. The reason Orks and Trolls having lower mental stat maximums is so... eugh... is because they are very overtly based on real life racial groups that bigots and even like just not actively biggoted but still awful prejudiced people believe to be less 'naturally intelligent.'

And there is also the real world context of the White Wolf Nazi dog-whistling that is kinda waking everyone up to this sorta thing in the RPG industry. A lot of very established tropes may not be the kinda worlds we wanna create in our fantasy, so the idea of 'metatype is mostly assumptions people make about you and your metatype identity is at most a source of strength for you' fits better with the anti-racism messaging of SR than 'your metatype is a mixed bag, we all come out mechanically equal, but you are objectively just worse in stats our society values highly and better in ones we don't!'

EDIT: Also never be afraid to poke. Also, this is sorta drifting from topic. I just wanted to express that I didn't think this is an example of 6e oversimplifying and didn't want this good idea to be lumped in with any negative feelings towards 6e people may or may not have. Always a risk of good ideas being thrown out due to association. 6e may or may not turn out great, but there are clearly good ideas, like moving decker power out of destroy-able gear that isn't an intrinsic part of them and into personal investments like implants, or removing BGC as not a great balancing mechanic and ultimately not fun. If they will be executed well remains to be seen, but if it fails that doesn't mean these ideas were themselves bad.

[Duellist_D]

Orks having intellegence penalties was a problem in 1989 when shadowrun was written, and is a problem now, but now there is an awareness of how people view this and are affected by this, which is prompting, again, a GOOD change by Cata.

It never was a problem, it will never be a problem, except for certain people that need to pour politics into everything and have the strange need to make themselves an unasked spokesperson for every other (perceived) minority.
Funnily enough while usually being white and from a midlde-class background.

But i give you props for actively stating your point here and taking the flak for it, as opposed to just silently inserting your political views into the system, like others do.
It also is quite good because it allows the readers to know what to expect in which direction this is going.
Well, on top of the horrid 6e rules (judging by the information out so far, and prone to being reevaluated should new data warrant it), this looks like another good reason to not throw any money at CGL in regards to 6e.

turbo-SJW infestation in Comics was quite the financial disaster for the big brands, i doubt it will be much different for RPGs

[dezmont]

It always amazes me when people complain about politics being inserted into SR, a game in the cyberpunk genre (which is explicitly a politically motivated genre) with the thesis statement that can be summarized as "Violent destruction of authoritarian and capitalistic institutions is not only ok, but morally makes you a hero."

The genre and game are heavily influenced by the Punk movement, a generally progressive anti-authoritarian social movement that emphasizes direct action and resistance to all forms of violence and oppression despite them being socially sanctioned or 'soft.' It is literally where the game's aesthetics comes from. Like the game takes the actual Nazi punchers and says' they are heroes, and society saying that they don't condone this violence doesn't make it amoral, because society has no right to declare that its own oppression of you is just."

Like you do realize this is the setting which has our heroes shooting up KKK rallies and blowing up banks that own the slave labor that produce your Nikes, right? And it was putting out this message in 1989. If anything, SR became tamer because the message that political violence against unjust oppression was unpalatable after 9/11.

If you think 'people are forcing political messages into shadowrun' you just aren't paying attention, it has always been an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-racism game line  that takes a pretty extreme view of the justifiably of violence against oppression even when your own society condones that oppression.

When it comes to the RPG industry the only real major political blowout so far we have seen in regards to this post-gamergate discourse was that White Wolf was putting Nazi dog-whistles in its game and just generally taking a game line that his historically been pro-LGBT+ and anti-authoritarian and making it homophobic and ridicule progressive ideals, which caused such a backlash among fans of the line White Wolf as a company no longer exists and has been disbanded by Paradox studios.

P&P RPGs have historically been pretty intensely progressive spaces, considering the amount of LGBT+ members, the fact that it requires you to be emotionally vulnerable, its affinity for other pro-LGBT+ spaces like theater, and the fact that the games sorta force you to learn empathy for other people. I mean WOTC posted articles about how to tastefully portray LGBT+ characters and people of different races than your own back in 2005, so this not at all a new sudden thing people are forcing in your games.

[Duellist_D]

Yes, Cyperpunk IS a very political genre in itself.
That doesn't mean that it is a place to insert your personal worldviews just because you think something is problematic.

Punk is about talking and tackling problems and differences, not making wish-belief they don't exist like this sad attempt at political correctness does.
Its also about tackling the vast grey areas, instead of this ridiculous "the good" vs "the evil" stuff that sounds like it was ripped right from a golden age cape comic.

[dezmont]

Punk is about talking and tackling problems and differences, not making wish-belief they don't exist like this sad attempt at political correctness does.

So are you claiming that the idea of having a coded ethnic race be less intelligent is more honest than not having mental differences between metatypes? In essence, you think that CGL is 'lying' and pushing an untrue agenda by removing mental differences from different kinds of people?

[Duellist_D]

Orcs aren't "less intelligent" though, and neither are trolls.
It takes them the same amount of work to get to average levels of intelligence (3, which would/should correspond to an IQ of 100) and also the same amount of work to get to above and way above average levels of intelligence (4 and 5, speaking in 5e terms). The only thing that they do have is a lower cap on the highest intelligence levels. That is quite the important difference.

And yeah, having actual differences in the genetic makeup (however they might make themselves explicit) between different races is an honest thing. Because they are a thing in real life, no matter what the latest class on gender studies might say.

Sure, you don't need it in every game. But it is good to have it in a game whose whole background tackles issues of social and ethnical conflicts of various sorts.
Among other things because its a way more honest and true to say "yes, there are differences between us people, but we still can and should overcome these to work together to strife for a better future" instead of this easy "no, we are all the same, its just the evil nazis that tell us different, just hit them boys and everything will be better!". The former makes people THINK, the latter is just creating a thought-bubble for people who already share the same opinion and gives them an outlet for their IRL fantasies.

[AJCarrington]

Enough.

For those who want to continue to debate about postulate about race, take it to elsewhere.

SR Mod