Greetings from a old runner

Hello Chummers.

You can call me RB for now. I'm old on the streets but new to the territory, so I'm gonna need some contacts here to catch my bearings. That don't mean I'm gonna trust ya though, so don't get any ideas in yer frakken head.

So, anybody willin to help a troll out?

Sorry to move your post, it was put in the worng place. I moved it to the introduce yourself forum. (I was supposed to lock that last forum)

As for your question, all GM's on this site are very helpful. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. We are all here to have fun.

Ah, thanks. Forgive an old Troll for not looking harder for the intro.

The listings have been undergoing some changes to clean up the forums and make them easier to use. I am adding a new members page that will hopefully make learning the ropes on this site better. I have also added a librarian who will help with any questions in his A&Q area. He is a chummer of mine, and has proven that he knows Shadowrun inside and out. His character concepts are always interesting, and sometimes borderline in the rules. He never breaks the rules, but likes to push them to the limit at times.

He has been a great asset to us over here in the sandbox, and he will be a great asset to all new runners.

I am glad you chose to game here, if you have any questions don't be afraid to ask. We all try and make gaming here fun for everyone involved.

You're not even old! You're younger than me. You can't call yourself old while you're still in high school.

Yeah, that's kinda obvious from the side there. I play an old troll however... And yes, I consider 31 old for a troll....

It probably is because of prejudice and harder living conditions and stuff!

Or at least I know orks have shorter life expectancies because of that. I assume that's true for trolls too...?

Well, it's not just because of the "harder lifestyles" that they live a shorter lifespan. Troll's have a maximum expected life range of 55 years, and Orks are 45 years. Like a human, who has a maximum expected life range of 75 years; they can live to 110; but they will be frail beyond comprehension. I would imagine that the rules allow for a Troll to survive to 70, but that Troll would be an example of living decay.
According to the rules, both in SR, and in most table-top games out there, the different life ranges per race are not really relative to their living conditions or their relative capacity for stupidity. Think about it: A D&D Elf has a favord class of Wizard... how likely is it that an impetuous student survive her strange magical stretch-efforts? She tries to cast a fireball, and it goes off in her face... But the Elven Wizard who dies at 75 years old (a baby by DND terms) doesn't change the life range of several hundred years.

Well no, I didn't mean entirely because of living conditions, but the book says that it does play some role:

Quote :

Lifespans for all metatypes are on the rise, which scientists partially ascribe to gene therapy and leonization (anti-aging treatments) and partially to improvements in social acceptance— leading to better medical treatment, living situations, and other quality of life measures.

So they might not live as long naturally but then again "expected lifespan" is an average sort of thing, so every time they die because of poor conditions or violence or whatnot, it affects the average lifespan statistic. Although... that's just for SINners... I bet it's even worse for the SINless orks and trolls.

"Lifespans for all metatypes are on the rise..." Ok, does this seem off to anyone else? If I remember correctly, we have several "Immortal" elves. I am not sure that technology has anything to do with it, at least, in some cases. Besides which, it is 2072, meaning that the oldest elf and dwarf of this age would only be 60; in terms of the potential lifespan of an elf, that is just entering adolescense... Further than that, though, are magicians and magical healing.

As for the "expected lifespan" discussion, the super-younglings are thrown out of the data as "outliers" and not even considered. Mostly, those statistical analysis require that anyone considered as part of their "life expectancy" statistics life past a certain age. Frequently, that age is a societally determined "middle age".
And then, there is the fact that is there any real way to trust govt. statistics anyway? Maybe trolls all live to several centuries, like elves, and the govt. just wants us to believe otherwise... some sort of Placebo Effect, only with actual lifespans.

Hah, that's one freaky powerful placebo affect if true! But you're right, if there's anything to be learned in Shadowrun, it is the importance of not trusting anyone... especially the governments/corporations. And life expectancy and stuff is a matter of national pride so even more so there! But still, it's really the only thing we have to go off of...

Anyway, they said in the book that 'life expectancy is going up [...] partly because of better living conditions' so I'm going backward from there and saying that living conditions play some role in life expectancy. And that's all I'm saying.

Also... some people became elves and dwarves at a later age though, right? So they would have already been some age that translated to having been alive for longer as an elf...? And they might have died in the years since? I'm not really sure. It's all magic to me.

No, Elves and Dwarves were born only, none of them were the result of "Goblinization". "Goblinization" applied only to trolls and orks. So, yes, in terms of life-span for an elf or a dwarf, the SR universe only has immortals to give data regarding that. There aren't any elves or dwarves that have died of old age yet; at least, not from this age. So the only way we can even guess at what a life-span for an Elf or Dwarf is, is by asking an immortal (Immortal Elf, or a dragon) who has survived from the last age, what the life-span WAS back then. And then we assume that it will be similar this time around.

Oh... huh... wow, that is weird then. I guess we're supposed to ignore that little leap of logic.

Yeah... Another possibility would be by reading the Gene Coding, and extrapolating the rate of degeneration written in to the Cell-Regeneration portion of it. Again, I am not a doctor (much less a gene specialist), so I can only really guess at whether or not that would work; but my guess is that once the language of Gene Coding is worked out, it is likely written right in to a relative time-span, at least, in terms of total numbers of cell-splits. Also, there is the logical guestimate that could be put together regarding "observed aging" that occurs. Right?
You get an Elf who was one of the first born, and is not 60 years old. Take a good look at him, and notice that he hasn't shown any specific aging since reaching adulthood... Logically, they either live a period of time, and then drop dead with know discernable warning, or their aging cycle is a LOT longer than a humans.

An interesting difference between SR and DND: In DND, the gestation period of an Elf is proportionate to their life-span. In SR, this is true of Orks and Trolls, where they are fully adult, physically, at a younger age than a human. But for Dwarves and Elves (at least, that I have noticed) their gestation period is significantly shorter relative to their life-span than would be expected of a long-lived human.

Really? Elves and dwarves age normally? That's weird, since they have longer gestation periods...

I guess we just have to willingly suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy the game!

No, they don't "age normally"... since aging normally would indicate that not a single living Elf from this age would have reached adult-hood yet. I am saying they don't age normally. Their gestation period is disproportionate to their expected life-spans. At least, from a humanity = normal perspective, in terms of proportions.
If you figure that the average human lives to 75, and the average human reaches physical adult-hood at approximately the age of 20. That means that roughly 25% of their life is spent in pre-adult-hood. If an Elf is expected to live several hundred years, and I take "several" to be 3; then 25% of 300 years is 75. No elf of this age has reached 75 yet. Does that mean that there are no physically mature elves? No. It means that their gestation periods do not match that of their human counterpart. And remember, the lifespan of an Elf is longer than 300; so their gestation period would be longer than my example above.

I completely agree: This is fantasy, and it wouldn't be quite right if it weren't fantastical! Suspend disbelief and just have fun!
You should read my Metahumanity In the Shadows posts... you may enjoy them

Yeah, I meant 'aging normally' as in, maturing at the same rate as their overall lifespan. Sorry for being vague.

I just found that topic and am reading it now. I have some things to say but I'll post them there so we can stop hijacking poor Bear's introduction thread.

LOL: look forward to it... And sorry RB!

Below is an excerpt of the Races description from Wikpedia.

Characters in Shadowrun can be humans, orks, trolls, elves and dwarves, as well as certain diverging subspecies (known as metavariants) such as gnomes, giants, minotaurs, etc. As magic returned to the world, Humans began to give birth to elf and dwarf infants, a phenomenon called Unexplained Genetic Expres​sion(UGE). Later, some juvenile and adult humans "goblinized" into other races (mostly orks, but also some trolls). The term "metahuman" is used either to refer to humanity as a whole, including all races, or to refer specifically to non-human races, depending on context. With the return of Halley's Comet new human variants called "changelings" arose. While not as many people were affected by this change as the previous "goblinizations" it was enough to spark new controversy in the Awakened World, especially since changelings were frequently regarded as mutants or freaks due to the large variety of exotic traits they show.

Two of the metahuman races have fictional languages. Many elves speak Sperethiel which some of them, being immortal, remember from the last age of magic. Some orks speak Or'zet, which was forgotten until the will of Dunkelzahn, an assassinated dragon, released the Or’zet Codex to the public.

Additionally, a virus known as the Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus (HMHVV), with many variant strains, has been known to cause further change, frequently resulting in fierce abominations that are no longer human and sometimes no longer even sentient—bandersnatches, banshees, dzoo-noo-quas, goblins, ghouls, nosferatus, vampires, Wendigos, wild Fomorians, and other creatures, depending on the victim's original race.

Dragons are also present, but these are NOT available as player characters. Dragons are very powerful physically, magically, and financially (in Shadowrun, there is no such thing as a poor dragon). The dragons found that the riches they had hoarded and their intelligence allowed them to gain a great deal of influence very quickly, they have embraced capitalism.


As we know, Dracoforms are now a playable race in SR4. Also there are many metavariants that have been added through the books and house rules that people have adopted.

Now as for the age of elves, everything I have seen in Shadowrun shows the elves that were born are all in their teen years, no matter how old they are from running. A 60yo elf is still very, very young. The runners have just had to grow up quickly by trying to survive on the streets. Remember, less than a centery ago, a 13yo was considered old enough to not only work, but old enough to fight wars and get married. As times change, so do people.

As for the rest of the races, I would like to see this discussion continue.

It's all just food for thought on our lovely Shadowrun Universe...

Yes, but a 13 Ork is physically an adult. A 13 year old human has only just passed their half-way point of physical adulthood. As that pertains to Elves and Dwarves, I can understand the expediency issue of simply "ignoring" infancy. That being said, there are nearly no mention in the racial descriptions that ALL Elves of this age are physically adolescent, at best, and likely younger. If that were the case, it should probably be very first line in the racial descriptions...

The age-to-maturity thing may be clarified a bit more with the question of when the character expressed. Did they undergo UGE-- which may be a uncommon at this point in the timeline, but not impossible, or were they born that way?

If born that way, then they inherit the races traits, good or bad. If Expressed, then they had a human childhood up until puberty, likely.

Actually, the question is mostly irrelevant. The first Elves and Dwarfs were born into their race. It is not entirely clear in the SR4-20AE text (and I appologize, I have sold all of my outdated books) whether or not Elves or Dwarves were Goblinized (page 27 in SR4-20AE for Goblinization; page 26 or 71 for UGE). But the question is irrelevant since it is quite clear that the first Elves and Dwarves of the 6th world were born, and those Elves and Dwarves are now 60 years old.

Which, unfortunately, returns us to the matter most recently at hand. Why is it that the descriptions in the book do not refer to Elves, mostly, and Dwarves, as being physically adolescent? This is a relevant question because the very first Elf born during the initial UGE would have only reached 60 years old now, which would approximate a human at about 10 in terms of relative physical aging. Also, relative to game-lines, this question SHOULD have been further exacerbated by the return of the Immortal Elves. If there are fully physical adult specimens available to consider, wouldn't it stand to reason that this precise question would have been asked and answered by society?
That is why my previous assumption was put down. I assume that in the SR universe, Elves and Dwarves age as a human until physical adulthood (or perhaps moderately, but not significantly, slower). At the point that they reach physical adulthood, they then begin to age as their meta-type lifespans would suggest. Again, this is just an assumption that I am making, to rationalize the lack of literature response to what should have been a GLARING issue.

When the Sixth world came, Goblinization occurred in two waves. First the Elves and Dwarves, then the Orks and Trolls. These occurrences were separated by an outbreak of VITAS, and somewhere in the vicinity of the Night of Rage.

I'm afraid I can't agree, unless you can provide page references for me to review. I have checked everything I can find, and Goblinization, in every reference I can locate, refers to only Orks and Trolls. Thus, all Elves and Dwarves were born, none were goblinized.
That still doesn't answer the question on the table: Why is it that Elves are not referred to as "Adolescent" in the texts... particularly considering we DO have adult versions (the Immortal Elves) to compare to?

I think it's because, to some extent, the elves are mature. It's like little kids that have the understanding and maturity of an adult. So while not exactly mature, they are not adolescent either, they're somewhere in between. But then there are the idiots who ruin it all for everyone else by doing the silliest of things and proving they are not mature. I'm not sure about any of this, but that's what I think.

I love how everyone is posting this in my intro. Hehehe...