[Falconer]

Interesting,...so you see 4th Edition full of bleeding hearts and the majority of runners too P.C. for your taste?   Maybe you're aching for the good old days of Teachdaire and Winternight.  After all, they were villians.  Of course, to work with them made your character a labeled bad guy.  Unless ya got off on shooting into a crowd of civilians and justifying it later as preventing possible witnesses from emerging.  Well?

You're not even arguing my point, you're setting up a straw man by pulling up the bogeymen of old and tarring me with that brush.  I agree strongly with the other poster about how different Shadowland/Shadowsea seems to be compared to Jackpoint.  The one left for a lot of grey area as to motivations and some mask of anonymity of the posters.  The current version fills in all those details a bit too much so.

As for your tarring, I've seen a lot of things... and most runners I think have their price and are quite grey.  Not the level you're talking about, but there's no shortage of people out there who will do those kinds of things for money (or get used as dupes by the powers that be in true shadowrun style).


The setting as a whole now has the whole ghoul rights nonsense, push for more ork recognition regardless of ignoring the social problems that come along with what make them different and special.  (on top of the idiocy and non-playtesting that was the disease rules and the virus in particular!!!  we're talking Resident even levels of plague vector here).

And Netcat seems to have mostly gotten where she is because she's been lucky and sympathetic and seems to have plot armor.  She seems to do no wrong.  Contrary to many's views I tend to see hers as a charmed existence which allows her to maintain her high horse and ignore the harsh realities of the world.  Clockwork on the other hand seems much more calculating and circumspect... willing to play multiple angles.  Also, outside of his technical contributes which don't say much about his personal stuff...  he's always a bit of a shadowy figure.  Nowhere near as one-dimensional as all the hate that seems to come out for him.

[Mirikon]

I'm sorry, Falconer, but I believe you're wrong about Clockwork. He's a rabid bigot. In other things, he might be circumspect and calculating, but his rabid hate for technomancers (and the way he's apparently fixated on Netcat) are NOT a circumspect and calculated course of action, and it is bleeding over into everything else. Just like how if a klan member goes to a PTA meeting, that doesn't make them any less a racist.

As for the ork rights, "the social problems that come along with what make them different and special"? Really? The social problems orks have are due to the fact that even before the Night of Rage, they were basically shut into dirt poor status. Then a whole bunch got rounded up into warehouses, which were then lit on fire, and the survivors and their families fled either underground or to the Barrens, where for a long time they lived lives that makes an orphan in a Dickens tale look well off. Now things are a bit better for them, and they'd like to get a few things, like basic sanitation, a voice in government, and equal protection under the law. You know, basic rights.

But we probably won't agree on this topic, so I'll say two things, and then turn elsewhere:

1) Expecting a society, any society, to stay the same over decades (2050-2074) is insane. Compare the US today to the US in the 1980s. WILDLY different.

2) If you want to play Shadowrun in a setting where everyone's a bigot, and life is terrible for everyone except the uber rich, there are places even now you can go for that. The three main ones are Chicago, Bogota, and Lagos. In other words, the drek end of metahuman civilization. Because while most people may have biases one way or the other, they are NOT anywhere near the point where Clockwork is.

[Critias]

1) Expecting a society, any society, to stay the same over decades (2050-2074) is insane. Compare the US today to the US in the 1980s. WILDLY different.

In the real world?  Certainly.  But in an RPG, I think it's reasonable to expect some facets of a society, even if not the whole society itself, to remain stable over a long period of time.  If I buy a sourcebook about the city-state of Fantasy City-State X, I kind of want Fantasy City-State X to stay kind of static, for me, so that my sourcebook remains a worthwhile investment and handy piece of reading material.  We fans are like that, y'know?  We want Superman and Lex Luthor to always be butting heads, we want the Joker to break out of Arkham and cause Batman more trouble, and we like it when Peter Parker has to juggle responsibilities at the Daily Bugle as part of his struggles as Spidey.

Sometimes the status quo is appealing, particularly to us geeks. 

2) If you want to play Shadowrun in a setting where everyone's a bigot, and life is terrible for everyone except the uber rich, there are places even now you can go for that. The three main ones are Chicago, Bogota, and Lagos. In other words, the drek end of metahuman civilization. Because while most people may have biases one way or the other, they are NOT anywhere near the point where Clockwork is.

Now this part, it all comes down to what aspects of "dystopian future" you enjoy role-playing, and which sections of which sourcebooks you want to focus on.  There are some complaints that SR4 has gotten very clean and safe and pretty compared to prior editions, and in part I can agree with them.  In a lot of ways, we've moved the focus out of the shadows (and gutters, and dirty back alleys) and spent more time talking about "real" society, complete with technology advances, detailed looks at all kinds of secrets and NPCs, etc, etc.  Some folks dig that.  Some folks like that they have the option of their Shadowrun game being a little more modern and a little less crap-sacky.

Some folks don't, though.  They still like the Barrens more than Downtown, even in a Seattle game, y'know?  Both play styles are valid.  Both readings of the setting are valid.  It all comes down to what you want your Sixth World to be like.  Earth's a big place, the Shadowrun canon has an awful high word count total by now, and there's plenty of room for both interpretations, in my opinion.

[Black]

Thanks Critias.  I would echo that everyone is likely to play their games differently.  Some play up the difference society, others make it more... friendly.  I've always felt the inherent racism in the Shadowrun world to be a core component.. but things have changed for some.  An Orc became head of a megacorp, Japan changed its policies like the Yomi Island stuff, Alamos 20K and Hands of Five have been low key for some time.  The original Seattle book at almost as many locations being hostile to metahumans as they did metahuman friendly ones, these days its not such an issue anymoe.

Personally, I also think this whole beat down on Clockwork to be a bit strong sometimes, and that there is a somewhat smugness in how people treat the Clockwork stuff.  I don't think Clockworks attitude would be uncommon, he may just be more vocal and active in that attitude.  I, and I doubt many are, am not a supporter of Clockwork's behaviour, but I feel the response feels... um... just a bit off-kilter for the characters and settings.  But maybe I haven't read enough of the recent fiction to become attached to her character.  Maybe I support the underdog, even if he is a bastard, and don't like seeing a guy get so ganged up on.  Maybe I like my shadowrunners to be less self-rightous (in my very humble opinion), which is different from being professional (the professionals keep emotion out of it and are most likely the ones completely silent on this issue, probably hoping it goes away because its just a distraction from sharing info and networking).

Actually, this whole discussion (and the sometimes emotional charge it can have) on Clockwork is not too different from how I imagine Jackpoint is feeling right now.  Some are coming out strong against Clockwork, some are providing limited support, and the majority may be wondering when this (and the related threads) will finally slow down (or they are just completely ignoring it for the more relevant threads to them).

This whole matter won't be resolved until the Shadowrun team of writers decide to resolve it.  I just hope it turns out to be a bit more interesting then Clockwork just getting his arse handed to him... there is a lot of potential here and the audience (us) are diffinently invested, so give us some special and I sure will snap it up.

[Falconer]

Excuse me... you obviously haven't bothered to study your orc'ish lore.  At the risk of going too far off topic.

Look at the literature, they breed in LITTERS (hence why I used to refer to them as pig people... goes along with the tusks).  Their lives tend to be nasty brutish and short.   Who pays to send an orc to school for 25 years and an advanced degree (or even 4 year college), when said orc will be pushing up daisies 10 years later?!   The point of orcs has always been that they breed fast, but don't live long.  They're sort of like the rabbits of the barrens, rabbits of caerbannog... but rabbits nonetheless.

When a lot of entrenched power structures are based on longevity... orcs kinda lack that element.  They make great muscle.. great unwashed levies to man your peasant army enlisted ranks.   That kinda thing does make the orc'ish underground a huge impact on the game setting if it suddenly changes from shadowy to full fledged legit.



On clockwork you miss my point, he's more real to me than netcat.  He's got his prejudices... and is in a position to act on them.  And has obviously done so successfully, since he's still kicking.  He has that old school feel where it's not a run til the Johnson has screwed you over twice... (and you've dicked the Johnson in some way he's not supposed to know about).

[CanRay]

I thought Dwarves were the ones that had lives that were nasty, brutish, and short? 

[Mirikon]

MrBlack, the reason everyone's dumping on Clockwork is not because he hates Technomancers. There are definitely other people on Jackpoint who distrust or are heavily biased against technomancers, though they see their uses. The reason everyone started dumping on Clockwork is because he sold out a member of the network to the corps in order to try and make a quick payday, and when Netcat called him on it, he said "Screw you guys, I'd do the same to any of you, and I expect you to do the same to me." It isn't his bigotry that got him in deep drek, it was the betrayal of the network. Putting a hit on her would be distasteful, but nothing to write home about (note how Haze hasn't caught any drek for putting a hit on Pistons). But he sold her out to the corps, the big bad enemy of runners everywhere.

The most recent round of dumping on Clockwork is because he threatened Netcat's kid as a part of their feud. As has been discussed in this thread and others, that is a BIG no-no, even to hardened criminals. You can have an axe murderer, members of two different gangs, and a Klansman in the same cell block, and the only thing they agree on is that the child molester is getting shanked. Why? Because they all have family. Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters.

[CitizenJoe]

Look at the literature, [Orks] breed in LITTERS.  Their lives tend to be nasty brutish and short.   Who pays to send an orc to school for 25 years and an advanced degree (or even 4 year college), when said orc will be pushing up daisies 10 years later?!   The point of orcs has always been that they breed fast, but don't live long.  They're sort of like the rabbits of the barrens, rabbits of caerbannog... but rabbits nonetheless.

That might be Humanis propaganda.  It may also be anecdotal rather than statistical analysis.  In poverty stricken communities, you typically see many children to one woman.  That doesn't mean they are all hers.  Every able bodied person needs to scrape to make enough to survive.  Why dedicate a woman to taking care of one child when you can just dump that child on a woman already doing it? 

[Critias]

Look at the literature, [Orks] breed in LITTERS.  Their lives tend to be nasty brutish and short.   Who pays to send an orc to school for 25 years and an advanced degree (or even 4 year college), when said orc will be pushing up daisies 10 years later?!   The point of orcs has always been that they breed fast, but don't live long.  They're sort of like the rabbits of the barrens, rabbits of caerbannog... but rabbits nonetheless.

That might be Humanis propaganda.  It may also be anecdotal rather than statistical analysis.  In poverty stricken communities, you typically see many children to one woman.  That doesn't mean they are all hers.  Every able bodied person needs to scrape to make enough to survive.  Why dedicate a woman to taking care of one child when you can just dump that child on a woman already doing it?

It was presented as in-universe, medical rather than social, fact in prior editions.  Omniscient, word of God, impartial, truth (not in-character chatter). 

I'll admit that I think the early writers may not have throught it through (and figured out just what kind of population boom they were causing)...but it is the case that orks bear litters of several squealing little mini-orks at once.

[CitizenJoe]

Has the population distribution of orks changed since 2050?

[Critias]

In some places, yes.  In others, no.  I agree that it probably should have (and the one place I've been able to make that call, I've both increased the orkish population some and provided some reasons for why it hasn't gone up more).

But here it is, presented "word of God" style, omniscient third person, in a very clinical, professional, medical report circa the very first write-ups on metahumanity, SR1, p. 28:

Young: Ork mothers usually bear four children, but litters of six to eight are not uncommon.  Birth weights as a percentage of mother's weight is 4.2.  Suckling time is over seven months.  Most newborns are obviously robustus, but may appear as sapiens; 95 percent of the latter will goblinize at puberty, which occurs at an average age of ten.

So it's there, it's canon, and it's been canon since pretty much day one.  It was presented the same way in SR2, except they removed the word "litter."  In SR3, we got much less clinical narratives about each metaspecies, but the first-person speech given by an ork still acknowledged that they had "high incidence of multiple births," and were "the world's fastest growing population" and the "most numerous" metahuman species.

It has been used as Humanis propaganda, don't get me wrong, but it's never been retconned to only be said propaganda (and it's been mentioned in other sources since, these huge natural families that orks have).

All that said, we're a little off-topic from a conversation about Clockwork.  Not too long ago someone started a thread specifically about orkish life cycles, so maybe we should go there if we're going to keep this up: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=6085.0

[Angelone]

Runner's Companion pg 49-50 says Hobgoblins are predisposed to being jerks and that they take slights against their honor seriously. Clockwork being a "tech guy" sees what techos can do and is angered by the fact that they can naturally do what he was worked so hard for.

It also says they are strongly discriminated against in the Middle East. Which kinda throws me as you'd think it would give him some empathy for technos who are also discriminated against.

[CanRay]

Sometimes those that are most discriminated against can be the biggest racists.  For a believable character in that manner, I suggest paying close attention to Samuel L. Jackson's character, Zeus, in Die Hard With A Vengeance.  He gets over it right quick after John McClane (Bruce Willis) tricks him into thinking one of the found bombs was at a predominantly black neighbourhood's school, IIRC.

[Angelone]

Which kinda shows how far off Clockwork is, he can't see he's doing the same thing that's been done to him and his people. Plus he seems okay with harming children and babies. I said seems because he hasn't acted yet and could have been just trying to get a reaction, or test the waters to see what kind of reprisal he'd face.

I'm not arguing that shadowrunners or Jackpointer's are happy people that hold hands and sing songs, but that Jackpointer's shouldn't be selling each other out. If no one else they should be able to trust one another and Clockwork has proven he can't be trusted.

[CanRay]

Is Netcat a very liberal person that tries to have high morality?  Yes.

Is that a reason to hate her, no.

Everyone has their reasons for 'running, maybe hers is a moralistic journey.  And then she got preggers.