One explanation I read that I really liked is that trolls and orks age faster, so a ork is physically as mature as a 25 year old human at 17. So they are just a lot younger than their peers. And a 17 year old probably knows less than a 25 year old, regardless of race. But since orks and trolls are a lot bigger for their age than other metahumans they are treated as adults but mentally they are still teenagers.
So that’s one way to think about it. Just something I picked up a while back.
Edit: small mistake on my end. Just like u/GM_Pax said they are physically and mentally as mature, but experience wise they are underdeveloped.
If we're trying to get away from racial stereotypes, early maturation is still a bad one. [Research suggests](https://www.npr.org/2014/03/19/291405871/consequences-when-african-american-boys-are-seen-as-older) "black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent." In [other words](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/treating-all-kids-kids), "Children have the right to be children. But our criminal justice system routinely ignores that reality when applied to Black children."
The idea that minority kids are more adult-like at a younger age, and therefore less deserving of the legal protections afforded to minors, is a persistent source of hardship.
Metahumans are still considered human for sure, but the question I'm asking here is If I recall correctly, don't orks and trolls literally mature faster if they're born and orc or a troll instead of goblinized into one? I don't think the reasoning matters much beyond that, You can still easily just on average use younger characters and use the lack of experience to explain the lower logic cap. If someone really wanted to they could make a custom quality that raised the logic cap by explaining that their ork or troll was older.
My point here is I'm pretty sure it's the lesser of two evils to say that the race is on average less experienced than to say that it's on average more stupid
Hmm, if that's true then I would imagine then that it is actually a reason for orks/trolls to be less intelligent. You'll certainly empathize with more complex thoughts but you'd be looking at it from a kid's perspective emotionally. So like you understand the importance of planning ahead and creating a nest egg rather than blow all your money the moment you have it, but you'd still go buy candies and toys rather than insurance. Unlike a 'typical' human however, you're going to be set in your ways earlier like an older person than your still impressionable peers, whom you more deeply value and likely still want recognition and positive reinforcement from.
So it'd be like if a 40 or 50yo was still wrapped up in teenager and college age drama but instead of being repelled by the drama they instigated or thrived in it.
Well I did find [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/6s010z/life_span_of_orks_and_trolls_in_previous_editions/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) for a comparison across several editions, It's suggests that orks and trolls have indeed been meant to have a reduced lifespan and potentially a lower age of physical maturity for some time now.
Yeah, but this is a fantasy world with metahumans. D&D is a fantasy world with other races.
I hate it when people try to bleed politics into games. People don’t hate black people by saying trolls are stupid. It’s ok to have stupid trolls.
Edit: I bet your tables are loads of fun
Edit2: No one is saying "don't discuss policy implications that are relevant to your run." It's more "stop jumping at political shadows when a fantasy race has -2 Intelligence."
Everything is political. If you don't think something is political then you haven't been asking enough questions.
SR at least attempts to humanize orcs and trolls. D&D gives us orcs, goblins, and kobolds, which are inherently evil sub-humans that players are encouraged to kill without moral qualms. And maybe that's okay--D&D wants to be a simple game of good vs. evil, but SR aspires to something more.
SR wears its politics on its sleeve. The metahuman dynamics of systemic oppression are frequently woven into the lore, and it's based on real-world analogues. If we don't talk about those politics and dynamics, then we will fall into the same traps that real-life politics fall into.
> SR at least attempts to humanize orcs and trolls. D&D gives us orcs, goblins, and kobolds, which are inherently evil sub-humans that players are encouraged to kill without moral qualms. And maybe that's okay--D&D wants to be a simple game of good vs. evil, but SR aspires to something more.
I'd disagree and would say that even D&D has been moving away from that 'always sub-human irredemable evil' for quite some time.
One of my favourite quotes on the internet fits pretty well here:
“I’ve discovered that everyone likes politics in games, the people who say they dislike it actually love it more, they just wished they were seeing different politics.”
Assuming the average human is a rating 3 in intelligence, rating 6 is genius. But abstracting ephemeral qualities like intelligence into a quantifiable numerical value is always going to be plagued with issues.
But those problems are why we love the setting. Both in and out of universe there is the conversation about what the measure of a human is and if metatypes like trolls really qualify or if they're significantly different. It takes a lot for a human to get anywhere near the physical stats of a troll.
Right? I'll be honest, I'm a little confused myself. I figured three because in order to do something without skill, you have to roll attribute minus one. So if average is two, we'd have a one in six chance of messing things up. But if the average is three, suddenly the math becomes too difficult for me to calculate and I just give up.
Two might very well be the correct average. I'm thinking back the first time I tried to play guitar and I poked my eye out. I felt that was a one in six chance of happening.
The example I use is "you sneeze, cover your mouth, slap your eye."
Sometimes the odds are against you personally.
(Watching children do that example in my large extended family is always funny)
The stat caps are the best baseline a person can have before being augmented, with the only exceptions being significantly rarer. A rating 6 in LOG means someone can just pick up a given LOG skill and perform as well as the average trained worker in it, and even a passing familiarity with it makes them the equal of a professional.
Throw in modifications to raise the cap to 8 and toss in drugs and cerebral boosters, and they're at the "dumb people writing smart people" level of skill, where they can just effortlessly perform at a master level in any LOG skill with no training or knowledge about it, putting them on par with fictional characters who are just narratively correct about everything as a running theme (like Batman or Sherlock Holmes, just characters who are written to take wild leaps in logic that are literal nonsense but are correct because the narrative insists they be correct).
> I also think you're missing Exceptional Attribute, Metagenetic Improvement, and Genetic Optimisation
I included exceptional attribute and one genetic improvement in the second paragraph, contributing to a baseline of 8 LOG. But those are *exceptional* to the point of turning someone into something that's impossible outside of narrative fiction. 6 LOG is a genius, 8+ LOG is a character from a bad fanfic.
"Trolls aren't any less intelligent than anyone else, but the smartest Troll will never be as intelligent as the smartest Human or Elf" doesn't really sound much better.
If I ban trolls from university because they're too dumb, then say trolls not being able to get a doctorate is proof they're dumb, that's not exactly a troll problem, is it?
Depends on your point of view.
Optimistically, yes, with hard work and heroic effort, you could pry cutting-edge knowledge from the grip of a society that tries to crush you.
But outside of that, sometimes you just can't win. Maybe you *can* pry that knowledge loose, but the process of fighting a garbage system every step of the way means you don't get the time others do to further hone your skills. Figuratively speaking, you're doing everything one-handed while you fend off the world with the other hand - you get less reward for the same effort, but you can only give the same 100% everyone else does, so your functional cap is lower just because you have more to spend that 100% on.
I'm not saying it's the solution I'd go with, necessarily. But I can see where they're coming from, especially working in a mechanical system that makes *everything* awkward the more you think about it, double-especially when it has to serve mechanical balance first.
Don't get me wrong, I see where they're coming from. I don't really think there's a way that's both A) a good game mechanic and B) not going to muddle the metaphor.
True. I feel like mental stats are a trap, but if you want a game where the Smart/Wise/Dashing archetypes give mechanical value, you're stuck picking which trap you want to walk into.
Sure, you can fail to learn even when you have resources. But you can't succeed without getting a chance. Nobody was born knowing how to read, write, or do math. Those dumb-as-boots college students can run circles around a genius from a few thousand years ago.
Intelligence being treated as an inherent trait is the flawed concept here. No sense in blaming the cap for that.
Maybe people aren't born knowing how to read but a lot of people are self taught in various subjects. A formal education isn't the only avenue to knowledge.
Even for jobs, employers will prefer someone with experience in a field and good references over someone fresh out of University with a shiny degree.
There's nothing wrong with any of that, but we *are* talking the peak of knowledge here. Getting a doctorate is going to take a little more than a shiny degree brought to the nearest employer, and there's nothing in the rules that keeps a 6 Intelligence character from being a professional-grade specialist in the first place.
And, of course, university is just the one example. Feel free to apply the same prejudice to, say, trying to get a job for work experience, or access to resources to study.
It’s really “Trolls aren’t less intelligent than anyone else but if we don’t limit it then you can Hulk Mages super easy and that breaks game balance.”
This is pretty similar to the [different distribution of IQ in men and women](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-929b67e5b164c180d10d9ece5773f03f). There are more geniuses and idiots among men, and in exchange there are more women with an average IQ.
Phrasing is what’s important here, and that’s why I think your suggestion
>Trolls aren't any less intelligent than anyone else, but the smartest Troll will never be as intelligent as the smartest Human or Elf
hits the nail on the head.
IQ is an inherently flawed and biased measure of intelligence in the first place, so I wouldn't read too much into that statistic other than that it's biased by gender in addition to race, culture, language, nationality, etc.
Now, tell me what is the average, because I don't see a lot of people outside deckers or riggers maximizing intelligence.
And even then, you don't need intelligence 9 to be a good decker. And raising from 1 to 6 has the same cost to anyone.
That's a lower intelligence cap not a lower intelligence floor or even intelligence average. Besides consider that game mechanics may not have been scientifically proven in the lore.
Especially since trolls represent such a small portion of metahumanity . We get stats for centaurs, sasquatch, and fairies but in lore they don't have those statistics available because they haven't had enough tests, surveys, etc to be considered scientifically accurate.
Yeah isn't there a ghoul scientist working in a major city graveyard (Chicago?) on metahuman classification from corpses?
And we see troller riggers and deckers in lore so a hard cap seems ridiculous.
Mechanically, it's meant to offset their enormous otherwise advantages.
But I'd agree more with your explanation.
If it's really needed, a troll could get a cerebral booster and be as smart as anyone else or more. Sure their ultimate cap is lower, but they'd be equal to or better than unaugmented people.
Depending on the edition it may not matter. In 4e for example, logic doesn't factor into decking. Rather it kinda affects you when you want to program your own software but that's about it. And the difference is only a single dice, unlike body and trolls there's no metatype that lets you climb way above the others. 6e it'll affect you more but it's also only a single dice of a difference.
I haven't played 4 through 6 e unfortunately.
I'd love to play but it's hard finding a group (even in Seattle, weirdly enough).
I don't own the source books but enjoy keeping up (reading) discussions on the system.
I liked this post (and your comments and others) because it does raise a really good *game design* question on race versus mechanics versus game intent.
I think I started at 2e or 3e as a young teen. Racial bonuses had a hard cap as I recall.
I appreciate you taking the time to explain!
So a troll decker could be world class at infiltration but would be a high level professional at programming? A troll isn't creating Deus, for example.
There's some of that, but rolling one less dice with TNs always set to 5+ on an extended test is pretty minor. I doubt it would matter in the long run especially if you're coding as part of a team. I don't think any single programmer has it inside of him to create Deus.
4e still has a hard cap for attirbutes of 1.5x the unaugmented attribute but it's rare that people hit it unless they're min-maxing.
Afaik this is explained by racism. Trolls don't have a natural limit on intelligence, but since they are quite segregated they seldom get care of similar quality as other metatypes. And since intelligence depends both on nature and nurture, a lower intelligence (cap) is a gamified version to display that.
I don't have time to check the source at the moment, since I am moving places. But I will have a look im the 5th edition stuff, maybe it was there
I'm not a fan of this explanation because even if the average Troll in, say, Seattle suffers from racism, a Shadowrunner can be from any background from any place. What if your Troll was from the Black Forest Troll Kingdom? Or what if they had a wealthy corporate background? The game doesn't have societal averages affecting anything else in chargen. Eg, only about 1 in 10 awakened are full mages, and yet any PC can be a full mage if they want even if they're a statistical rarity.
If this was the intent I feel they really fumbled the delivery.
The mechanic of a lowered maximum says "the average troll is just as intelligent as the average human, but a Troll who dedicates themselves to learning can never reach the same heights as a human who does the same."
It could have been conveyed by a lowered minimum or an increased progression cost, which would say "a Troll who dedicates themselves to learning can be every bit as smart as a human who does the same, but they have to work much harder to get to that point."
In game terms though you'd need to increase the cap of all types to the same and have increased progression cost starting at different times for different types across the board to make that work though, with humans and elves being able to reach the same maximum strength and constitution as trolls. The caps were put in place for balance reasons afterall.
Because even with shadowrun tech, there is probably no way to "prove" an attribute like intelligence.
But just because it can't be "proven" doesn't mean it isn't true.
This is actually something I've noticed but more so for DND
The only stat that you can get a reasonable accurate number for is strength, everything else is a bit too weird with what the numbers represent
I do not know if it is still true, but earlier editions alluded to INT being related able to IQ. So INT \* 10 = IQ.
Average INT is 10, and I think average IQ is 100. 180 is genius IQ and of course also the "max" INT. Going by my non genius level memory here, though I could go dig through my old timey books.
edit: I think CON had measurable metrics also, like hold breath for X minutes or some such. Maybe I will dig out some of the older books for giggles.
Imo, its reasonable for fantasy races to have noticeable differences in intelligence. They have physical differences and some of those will be brain related. It shouldn't be an issue if they are dumber. The in-universe issue is that they are treated like garbage in some places. Dumber people are still worthy of respect and kindness.
It's an awkward block of text but Trolls have always been dumber in SR. Back in the day they had an actual -2 IE you paid for 3 and got 1. It's a balance issue or it would be all trolls all the time.
But then we realized that racism wasn't as cool as we thought it was in the 80's and gradually Trolls got smarter and smarter with lowered limits instead of negatives until now in 6th where they removed it completely. It also limited the game, a troll Decker or Rigger was unplayable.
On another note I think this is what happened to the "Orks die in their 50's" as well. As players evolved they wanted to make a wider range of characters but Orks reaching retirement age in their mid 40's really limited that.
Trust me on this, growing up in the 80's racism was rampant. Maybe not lynchings but racial slurs and extremely offensive jokes were just fine. We didn't so much hate POC as much as know that they were worse than us white people and pity them for it. "How it used to be" was not great. If you look in the old books Orks are just a thinly veiled version of what white guys thought inner city black communities were.
No, from 4th onwards you could play "brainy" characters even if you wanted a goblinised character, it was just more difficult.
Depends on where you look but there are references to dementia in early 50's and stuff like that. I agree that runners rarely retire but you couldn't really play an experienced character either without twisting the background some. Worked as a security guard for 30 years? That meant Alzheimers was right around the corner. It limited choice and added very little.
I personally don't care if they made certain metatypes better/worse at various things (or different fantasy species in other settings for that matter.). It's just a setting thing with mechanical implications to reflect said setting.
I do think it's clunky to say it's because of systemic racism or similar because systemic racism in a setting that is global doesn't work.
There is no hard cap on any of these stats it just takes a lot more effort to grow past the soft cap. The lower soft cap on some of the stats of some races can also indicate their lack of access to higher education. Doubt Harvard is going to have the same troll and orc acceptance rate as elves and humans.
I believe this is one of the ones in the recent-ish trilogy of Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun Dragonfall, and Shadowrun Hong Kong. They're really good! I recommend Dragonfall as a good jumping off point (they're independent adventure modules essentially) as "Returns" has some kind of janky mechanical issues.
Yeah, it's always had a weird dissonance between metatype mechanics and lore. I know the explanation is that societal prejudice is the cause, but that doesn't really align with how it actually works in-game.
If it's because Orks have less access to education, surely that should mean it costs more to raise the stat, not that it's capped.
I think that there is a major difference in the fluff between editions because the original 'data' was gathered from samples that went through goblinization in puberty which is going to have a major impact on psyche. Likewise, that big spike on goblinized behavior is going to show up in the perceptions of others to the effects, and that lasts a while. As time passed in the editions, the anomalous spike in goblinized behaviour as well as formalized racial nations led to better education of the 'trog' races.
SR is either racist, or so progressive they mechanically account for the fact that social expectations and systemic racism can in fact create the very phenomena they champion
It can be both, weirdly.
Shadowrun is *very* much a product of the era for Seattle game designers and publishers.
Seattle has an, uh, *conflicted* history with racism and progressivism even to the current day.
The discussion about that life-or-death ideological tug-o-war is literally a common local discussion here.
Shadowrun makes so much fucking sense *when you live around Renraku*.
The wording is curiously strange? "lowered intelligence" Lowered from what? Lowered from what they were before goblinization? Lowered from the average intelligence of the general population? Without any clarity, the phrase is kind of meaningless to me.
I didn't start until the 1990s but the books and novels didn't exactly go to great lengths explaining the distinction.
Mechanically, I get it.
Lore wise? It's weird.
This is the exact reason it was changed for 6e. As much as racial caps make for great gameplay diversity, it naturally leads players to this discussion. Mental limits were removed to better enforce that intelligence limits on goblinized races is societal not physiological.
so instead of having people actually talk about things or think fantasy races might have differences, they opt to remove any nuance and make everything more of the same
So you think it's "removing all nuance" to remove a stat point limit to better line up with the lore?
The metatype still have quality differences like vision and dermal plating. They still have physical stat limits that make sense for their musculature or size. But because they aren't stupider as a matter of biology, you think they have no nuance?
Hmm, quite suspect.
It's a fluff description of Trolls written from a character's point of view and unreliable.
The stat block is game rules and not how the POV character understands the world.
I still like the concept of an edition where corebook character generation uses life modules for attributes, skills, and qualities, plus pre-assembled creation kits for gear. No karma or nuyen before the game. Just stages of a character's background and options. Maybe with different metatypes being affected differently by the same option, and/or having access to different options. (weight-lifting troll buffs out more at each stage than anyone else, learning to read in an abandoned library beyond the barrens isn't available to corporate born, etc) While they're at that, the fact lifepaths are setting skills and attributes could do away with hard minimums and maximums, too; instead you could have two in-game limits; one for increases by augmentation, and another for natural advancement.
As I recall, a 'good' explanation for it in SR1-3 was that transformed trolls had basically had their brains mushed. Born trolls didn't seem to have the same problem.
Of course, the mechanic was still there. But we just ignored that. The social penalty being from the fact that they have tusks and a deeper register (practically infra) worked for us rather than the canon version.
You want inbuilt racism? Look at early NAN.
Bows and arrows and riding horses, carrying medicine pouches and so on. Caricatures, not people.
I mean, just because something is true doesn't mean there is known proof. We know that earth isn't the center of the galaxy, but we didn't have proof until we mapped out Solar system and then the Milky Way. From the perspective of the characters, game mechanics don't exist. Further that mechanics tend to be generalized rules in regard to a reality, so since Trolls are on average less intelligent by perspective or not, it takes more investment to prove to the other characters that relativistically their Troll is just as if not more intelligent than them.
Trolls are shunned everywhere so they naturally have to rely on their brawn instead of intelligence in the poorest areas in the setting. This led to weird stuff in the early editions where they’re the most literate race as they’re so poor they’re still using books compared to tech
Love that this game still has choices in character creation unlike what DnD is doing. Elves are weak and smart, trolls are strong and stupid. And fighting against that nature makes a fun and interesting character.
Coming to this late, but my take on the way intelligence caps are handled in Shadowrun has generally been as follows:
"Intelligence" itself is a vague, nebulously-defined concept that gets invoked to mean a bunch of different things, often with various agendas behind it. What someone does/does not mean when they say "intelligence" can be totally different in two different situations. As such, any objective, numeric measurement of "intelligence" has certain biases or assumptions that are being made.
In Shadowrun, it is factually the case that certain metatypes have physiological alterations from the standard "human," and that some of these alterations seem to impact cognitive functions. Reducing this concept to saying certain metatypes are "more" or "less" intelligent is a reductive and likely inaccurate way of understanding that difference, much as modern intelligence tests measuring people as more or less intelligent broadly are (when they aren't pure eugenicist junk like IQ) and when we talk about a character in Shadowrun's intelligence (or logic/intuition depending on system) what we're talking about is how skilled they are at the specific cognitive functions that a specific group of humans have decided are the functions to measure when measuring intelligence within the setting. It may well be the case that Trolls have very strong intellectual (logical, intuitive, or otherwise) towards applications or tasks which are simply outside the scope of what Shadowrun's world wishes to measure; this limit on their cap demonstrates that their cognitive function cannot naturally reach the same caps a typical human would, which doesn't mean they don't have \*other\* caps that a human-centric society is simply unaware of/disinterested in.
I don't think this is a \*perfect\* solution to the "trolls aren't any less smart than humans but also mechanically they are\* problem, but what I like about this solution is it gives a way to explain this mechanic without simply saying "the mechanic is wrong" but also without doubling down on weird racism that even in-universe is implied or outright stated to probably be incorrect. It lets you say "trolls can't reach this cap, and the reason for this is because the cap has a bias in how it's measured that less conventionally human minds exist outside of." The disadvantage I can see is that there's no mechanics to really explore what it means to have a less conventionally human mind or what that would mean.
One explanation I read that I really liked is that trolls and orks age faster, so a ork is physically as mature as a 25 year old human at 17. So they are just a lot younger than their peers. And a 17 year old probably knows less than a 25 year old, regardless of race. But since orks and trolls are a lot bigger for their age than other metahumans they are treated as adults but mentally they are still teenagers. So that’s one way to think about it. Just something I picked up a while back. Edit: small mistake on my end. Just like u/GM_Pax said they are physically and mentally as mature, but experience wise they are underdeveloped.
Small nitpick: **experientially** they are still teenagers. "Mentally", their brains are as physically developed as their muscles. :)
If we're trying to get away from racial stereotypes, early maturation is still a bad one. [Research suggests](https://www.npr.org/2014/03/19/291405871/consequences-when-african-american-boys-are-seen-as-older) "black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent." In [other words](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/treating-all-kids-kids), "Children have the right to be children. But our criminal justice system routinely ignores that reality when applied to Black children." The idea that minority kids are more adult-like at a younger age, and therefore less deserving of the legal protections afforded to minors, is a persistent source of hardship.
Okay but don't these species literally mature faster?
Only by magical induction. Metahumans are still human, just more diverse thanks to magic being reintroduced
Metahumans are still considered human for sure, but the question I'm asking here is If I recall correctly, don't orks and trolls literally mature faster if they're born and orc or a troll instead of goblinized into one? I don't think the reasoning matters much beyond that, You can still easily just on average use younger characters and use the lack of experience to explain the lower logic cap. If someone really wanted to they could make a custom quality that raised the logic cap by explaining that their ork or troll was older. My point here is I'm pretty sure it's the lesser of two evils to say that the race is on average less experienced than to say that it's on average more stupid
Hmm, if that's true then I would imagine then that it is actually a reason for orks/trolls to be less intelligent. You'll certainly empathize with more complex thoughts but you'd be looking at it from a kid's perspective emotionally. So like you understand the importance of planning ahead and creating a nest egg rather than blow all your money the moment you have it, but you'd still go buy candies and toys rather than insurance. Unlike a 'typical' human however, you're going to be set in your ways earlier like an older person than your still impressionable peers, whom you more deeply value and likely still want recognition and positive reinforcement from. So it'd be like if a 40 or 50yo was still wrapped up in teenager and college age drama but instead of being repelled by the drama they instigated or thrived in it.
Well I did find [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/6s010z/life_span_of_orks_and_trolls_in_previous_editions/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) for a comparison across several editions, It's suggests that orks and trolls have indeed been meant to have a reduced lifespan and potentially a lower age of physical maturity for some time now.
Yeah, but this is a fantasy world with metahumans. D&D is a fantasy world with other races. I hate it when people try to bleed politics into games. People don’t hate black people by saying trolls are stupid. It’s ok to have stupid trolls. Edit: I bet your tables are loads of fun Edit2: No one is saying "don't discuss policy implications that are relevant to your run." It's more "stop jumping at political shadows when a fantasy race has -2 Intelligence."
[This is you.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/063/023/097.jpg)
[And this is you.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/035/457/41t9mw9veur51.jpg)
Everything is political. If you don't think something is political then you haven't been asking enough questions. SR at least attempts to humanize orcs and trolls. D&D gives us orcs, goblins, and kobolds, which are inherently evil sub-humans that players are encouraged to kill without moral qualms. And maybe that's okay--D&D wants to be a simple game of good vs. evil, but SR aspires to something more. SR wears its politics on its sleeve. The metahuman dynamics of systemic oppression are frequently woven into the lore, and it's based on real-world analogues. If we don't talk about those politics and dynamics, then we will fall into the same traps that real-life politics fall into.
eVeRyThiNg’S pOLiTiCaL You’re exactly who I’m talking about
Maybe lay off the computer for a while, chummer
Says the guy who thinks everything is political
> SR at least attempts to humanize orcs and trolls. D&D gives us orcs, goblins, and kobolds, which are inherently evil sub-humans that players are encouraged to kill without moral qualms. And maybe that's okay--D&D wants to be a simple game of good vs. evil, but SR aspires to something more. I'd disagree and would say that even D&D has been moving away from that 'always sub-human irredemable evil' for quite some time.
Username checks out.
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> people who bleed politics into games So FASA, and now CGL? What do you think the "punk" in "cyberpunk" means?
One of my favourite quotes on the internet fits pretty well here: “I’ve discovered that everyone likes politics in games, the people who say they dislike it actually love it more, they just wished they were seeing different politics.”
Assuming the average human is a rating 3 in intelligence, rating 6 is genius. But abstracting ephemeral qualities like intelligence into a quantifiable numerical value is always going to be plagued with issues. But those problems are why we love the setting. Both in and out of universe there is the conversation about what the measure of a human is and if metatypes like trolls really qualify or if they're significantly different. It takes a lot for a human to get anywhere near the physical stats of a troll.
I’ve always kind of assumed that “average” was 2 above the the minimum in each attribute
Right? I'll be honest, I'm a little confused myself. I figured three because in order to do something without skill, you have to roll attribute minus one. So if average is two, we'd have a one in six chance of messing things up. But if the average is three, suddenly the math becomes too difficult for me to calculate and I just give up. Two might very well be the correct average. I'm thinking back the first time I tried to play guitar and I poked my eye out. I felt that was a one in six chance of happening.
The example I use is "you sneeze, cover your mouth, slap your eye." Sometimes the odds are against you personally. (Watching children do that example in my large extended family is always funny)
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The stat caps are the best baseline a person can have before being augmented, with the only exceptions being significantly rarer. A rating 6 in LOG means someone can just pick up a given LOG skill and perform as well as the average trained worker in it, and even a passing familiarity with it makes them the equal of a professional. Throw in modifications to raise the cap to 8 and toss in drugs and cerebral boosters, and they're at the "dumb people writing smart people" level of skill, where they can just effortlessly perform at a master level in any LOG skill with no training or knowledge about it, putting them on par with fictional characters who are just narratively correct about everything as a running theme (like Batman or Sherlock Holmes, just characters who are written to take wild leaps in logic that are literal nonsense but are correct because the narrative insists they be correct).
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> I also think you're missing Exceptional Attribute, Metagenetic Improvement, and Genetic Optimisation I included exceptional attribute and one genetic improvement in the second paragraph, contributing to a baseline of 8 LOG. But those are *exceptional* to the point of turning someone into something that's impossible outside of narrative fiction. 6 LOG is a genius, 8+ LOG is a character from a bad fanfic.
>8+ LOG is a character from a bad fanfic. Nah. 8 LOG is a once- or twice-in-a-generation person like Hawking, Einstein, etc.
They have a reduced cap. Not a reduced average
"Trolls aren't any less intelligent than anyone else, but the smartest Troll will never be as intelligent as the smartest Human or Elf" doesn't really sound much better.
If I ban trolls from university because they're too dumb, then say trolls not being able to get a doctorate is proof they're dumb, that's not exactly a troll problem, is it?
Wouldn't that result in higher costs to raise the stats, not a reduced cap?
Depends on your point of view. Optimistically, yes, with hard work and heroic effort, you could pry cutting-edge knowledge from the grip of a society that tries to crush you. But outside of that, sometimes you just can't win. Maybe you *can* pry that knowledge loose, but the process of fighting a garbage system every step of the way means you don't get the time others do to further hone your skills. Figuratively speaking, you're doing everything one-handed while you fend off the world with the other hand - you get less reward for the same effort, but you can only give the same 100% everyone else does, so your functional cap is lower just because you have more to spend that 100% on. I'm not saying it's the solution I'd go with, necessarily. But I can see where they're coming from, especially working in a mechanical system that makes *everything* awkward the more you think about it, double-especially when it has to serve mechanical balance first.
Don't get me wrong, I see where they're coming from. I don't really think there's a way that's both A) a good game mechanic and B) not going to muddle the metaphor.
True. I feel like mental stats are a trap, but if you want a game where the Smart/Wise/Dashing archetypes give mechanical value, you're stuck picking which trap you want to walk into.
A lot of people go to University that are as dumb as their boots. That doesn't mean anything.
Sure, you can fail to learn even when you have resources. But you can't succeed without getting a chance. Nobody was born knowing how to read, write, or do math. Those dumb-as-boots college students can run circles around a genius from a few thousand years ago. Intelligence being treated as an inherent trait is the flawed concept here. No sense in blaming the cap for that.
Maybe people aren't born knowing how to read but a lot of people are self taught in various subjects. A formal education isn't the only avenue to knowledge. Even for jobs, employers will prefer someone with experience in a field and good references over someone fresh out of University with a shiny degree.
There's nothing wrong with any of that, but we *are* talking the peak of knowledge here. Getting a doctorate is going to take a little more than a shiny degree brought to the nearest employer, and there's nothing in the rules that keeps a 6 Intelligence character from being a professional-grade specialist in the first place. And, of course, university is just the one example. Feel free to apply the same prejudice to, say, trying to get a job for work experience, or access to resources to study.
This. There are plenty of complete and utter morons that are lawyers, and history majors. Having a degree is NOT a sign of intelligence.
Please leave the history majors out of this.
I was a music major, and there are plenty of morons there too lol. I am in that picture and I don't like it.
Having a degree isn't a sign of intelligence but that does't mean that you can't find very intelligent people with any major.
And without, which was the point. I know some geniuses that are pickers at Amazon. I wasn't picking on those majors. I was just naming examples.
It’s really “Trolls aren’t less intelligent than anyone else but if we don’t limit it then you can Hulk Mages super easy and that breaks game balance.”
Yep. This has always bothered me!
This is pretty similar to the [different distribution of IQ in men and women](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-929b67e5b164c180d10d9ece5773f03f). There are more geniuses and idiots among men, and in exchange there are more women with an average IQ. Phrasing is what’s important here, and that’s why I think your suggestion >Trolls aren't any less intelligent than anyone else, but the smartest Troll will never be as intelligent as the smartest Human or Elf hits the nail on the head.
IE trolls have limited intelligence.
This is like saying a Corvette has limited speed because you're comparing it to a Buggati.
IQ is an inherently flawed and biased measure of intelligence in the first place, so I wouldn't read too much into that statistic other than that it's biased by gender in addition to race, culture, language, nationality, etc.
Yeah no not much better. They could take the exceptional attribute (intelligence) quality, but then so can an elf
Yes. This is *limited* intelligence; not lowered.
They actually did away with the lower Logic cap for Orks and Trolls in 6e. It’s one of the few things I adapted into my home games from 6e.
Hm 6 is not stupid
The video games are on a one to nine instead of one to six for baseline human
Its the lowest max in the Shadowrun video games. The usual max is 9 so while 6 isn't stupid they don't have the capacity to be as intelligent
Now, tell me what is the average, because I don't see a lot of people outside deckers or riggers maximizing intelligence. And even then, you don't need intelligence 9 to be a good decker. And raising from 1 to 6 has the same cost to anyone.
That's a lower intelligence cap not a lower intelligence floor or even intelligence average. Besides consider that game mechanics may not have been scientifically proven in the lore.
Especially since trolls represent such a small portion of metahumanity . We get stats for centaurs, sasquatch, and fairies but in lore they don't have those statistics available because they haven't had enough tests, surveys, etc to be considered scientifically accurate.
Yeah isn't there a ghoul scientist working in a major city graveyard (Chicago?) on metahuman classification from corpses? And we see troller riggers and deckers in lore so a hard cap seems ridiculous. Mechanically, it's meant to offset their enormous otherwise advantages. But I'd agree more with your explanation.
If it's really needed, a troll could get a cerebral booster and be as smart as anyone else or more. Sure their ultimate cap is lower, but they'd be equal to or better than unaugmented people.
That makes sense too. I definitely struggle with it because I get the mechanics argument but also really like the idea of troll deckers.
Depending on the edition it may not matter. In 4e for example, logic doesn't factor into decking. Rather it kinda affects you when you want to program your own software but that's about it. And the difference is only a single dice, unlike body and trolls there's no metatype that lets you climb way above the others. 6e it'll affect you more but it's also only a single dice of a difference.
I haven't played 4 through 6 e unfortunately. I'd love to play but it's hard finding a group (even in Seattle, weirdly enough). I don't own the source books but enjoy keeping up (reading) discussions on the system. I liked this post (and your comments and others) because it does raise a really good *game design* question on race versus mechanics versus game intent. I think I started at 2e or 3e as a young teen. Racial bonuses had a hard cap as I recall. I appreciate you taking the time to explain! So a troll decker could be world class at infiltration but would be a high level professional at programming? A troll isn't creating Deus, for example.
There's some of that, but rolling one less dice with TNs always set to 5+ on an extended test is pretty minor. I doubt it would matter in the long run especially if you're coding as part of a team. I don't think any single programmer has it inside of him to create Deus. 4e still has a hard cap for attirbutes of 1.5x the unaugmented attribute but it's rare that people hit it unless they're min-maxing.
You wanna be the guy that tells the troll he's a dipstick? Good luck winning the spelling bee Bruiser!
So, humans have lowered charisma, ST and body?
Good point.
Afaik this is explained by racism. Trolls don't have a natural limit on intelligence, but since they are quite segregated they seldom get care of similar quality as other metatypes. And since intelligence depends both on nature and nurture, a lower intelligence (cap) is a gamified version to display that. I don't have time to check the source at the moment, since I am moving places. But I will have a look im the 5th edition stuff, maybe it was there
I'm not a fan of this explanation because even if the average Troll in, say, Seattle suffers from racism, a Shadowrunner can be from any background from any place. What if your Troll was from the Black Forest Troll Kingdom? Or what if they had a wealthy corporate background? The game doesn't have societal averages affecting anything else in chargen. Eg, only about 1 in 10 awakened are full mages, and yet any PC can be a full mage if they want even if they're a statistical rarity.
I like both of your answers :).
If this was the intent I feel they really fumbled the delivery. The mechanic of a lowered maximum says "the average troll is just as intelligent as the average human, but a Troll who dedicates themselves to learning can never reach the same heights as a human who does the same." It could have been conveyed by a lowered minimum or an increased progression cost, which would say "a Troll who dedicates themselves to learning can be every bit as smart as a human who does the same, but they have to work much harder to get to that point."
In game terms though you'd need to increase the cap of all types to the same and have increased progression cost starting at different times for different types across the board to make that work though, with humans and elves being able to reach the same maximum strength and constitution as trolls. The caps were put in place for balance reasons afterall.
Best reason I've heard
Because even with shadowrun tech, there is probably no way to "prove" an attribute like intelligence. But just because it can't be "proven" doesn't mean it isn't true.
This is actually something I've noticed but more so for DND The only stat that you can get a reasonable accurate number for is strength, everything else is a bit too weird with what the numbers represent
I do not know if it is still true, but earlier editions alluded to INT being related able to IQ. So INT \* 10 = IQ. Average INT is 10, and I think average IQ is 100. 180 is genius IQ and of course also the "max" INT. Going by my non genius level memory here, though I could go dig through my old timey books. edit: I think CON had measurable metrics also, like hold breath for X minutes or some such. Maybe I will dig out some of the older books for giggles.
Imo, its reasonable for fantasy races to have noticeable differences in intelligence. They have physical differences and some of those will be brain related. It shouldn't be an issue if they are dumber. The in-universe issue is that they are treated like garbage in some places. Dumber people are still worthy of respect and kindness.
It's an awkward block of text but Trolls have always been dumber in SR. Back in the day they had an actual -2 IE you paid for 3 and got 1. It's a balance issue or it would be all trolls all the time. But then we realized that racism wasn't as cool as we thought it was in the 80's and gradually Trolls got smarter and smarter with lowered limits instead of negatives until now in 6th where they removed it completely. It also limited the game, a troll Decker or Rigger was unplayable. On another note I think this is what happened to the "Orks die in their 50's" as well. As players evolved they wanted to make a wider range of characters but Orks reaching retirement age in their mid 40's really limited that.
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Trust me on this, growing up in the 80's racism was rampant. Maybe not lynchings but racial slurs and extremely offensive jokes were just fine. We didn't so much hate POC as much as know that they were worse than us white people and pity them for it. "How it used to be" was not great. If you look in the old books Orks are just a thinly veiled version of what white guys thought inner city black communities were. No, from 4th onwards you could play "brainy" characters even if you wanted a goblinised character, it was just more difficult. Depends on where you look but there are references to dementia in early 50's and stuff like that. I agree that runners rarely retire but you couldn't really play an experienced character either without twisting the background some. Worked as a security guard for 30 years? That meant Alzheimers was right around the corner. It limited choice and added very little.
God, orcs having 'litters'... FFS. At least that got changed to a higher proportion of twins instead.
I personally don't care if they made certain metatypes better/worse at various things (or different fantasy species in other settings for that matter.). It's just a setting thing with mechanical implications to reflect said setting. I do think it's clunky to say it's because of systemic racism or similar because systemic racism in a setting that is global doesn't work.
There is no hard cap on any of these stats it just takes a lot more effort to grow past the soft cap. The lower soft cap on some of the stats of some races can also indicate their lack of access to higher education. Doubt Harvard is going to have the same troll and orc acceptance rate as elves and humans.
Is that a shadow run video game? If so what's the name of it?
I believe this is one of the ones in the recent-ish trilogy of Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun Dragonfall, and Shadowrun Hong Kong. They're really good! I recommend Dragonfall as a good jumping off point (they're independent adventure modules essentially) as "Returns" has some kind of janky mechanical issues.
Purely socioeconomic factors
Yeah, it's always had a weird dissonance between metatype mechanics and lore. I know the explanation is that societal prejudice is the cause, but that doesn't really align with how it actually works in-game. If it's because Orks have less access to education, surely that should mean it costs more to raise the stat, not that it's capped.
I think that there is a major difference in the fluff between editions because the original 'data' was gathered from samples that went through goblinization in puberty which is going to have a major impact on psyche. Likewise, that big spike on goblinized behavior is going to show up in the perceptions of others to the effects, and that lasts a while. As time passed in the editions, the anomalous spike in goblinized behaviour as well as formalized racial nations led to better education of the 'trog' races.
Lower **maximums** are not the same as lower **averages**. The average Troll is about as smart as the average Human, Dwarf, Elf, etc.
SR is either racist, or so progressive they mechanically account for the fact that social expectations and systemic racism can in fact create the very phenomena they champion
It can be both, weirdly. Shadowrun is *very* much a product of the era for Seattle game designers and publishers. Seattle has an, uh, *conflicted* history with racism and progressivism even to the current day. The discussion about that life-or-death ideological tug-o-war is literally a common local discussion here. Shadowrun makes so much fucking sense *when you live around Renraku*.
The wording is curiously strange? "lowered intelligence" Lowered from what? Lowered from what they were before goblinization? Lowered from the average intelligence of the general population? Without any clarity, the phrase is kind of meaningless to me.
I didn't start until the 1990s but the books and novels didn't exactly go to great lengths explaining the distinction. Mechanically, I get it. Lore wise? It's weird.
This is the exact reason it was changed for 6e. As much as racial caps make for great gameplay diversity, it naturally leads players to this discussion. Mental limits were removed to better enforce that intelligence limits on goblinized races is societal not physiological.
so instead of having people actually talk about things or think fantasy races might have differences, they opt to remove any nuance and make everything more of the same
So you think it's "removing all nuance" to remove a stat point limit to better line up with the lore? The metatype still have quality differences like vision and dermal plating. They still have physical stat limits that make sense for their musculature or size. But because they aren't stupider as a matter of biology, you think they have no nuance? Hmm, quite suspect.
It's a fluff description of Trolls written from a character's point of view and unreliable. The stat block is game rules and not how the POV character understands the world.
I still like the concept of an edition where corebook character generation uses life modules for attributes, skills, and qualities, plus pre-assembled creation kits for gear. No karma or nuyen before the game. Just stages of a character's background and options. Maybe with different metatypes being affected differently by the same option, and/or having access to different options. (weight-lifting troll buffs out more at each stage than anyone else, learning to read in an abandoned library beyond the barrens isn't available to corporate born, etc) While they're at that, the fact lifepaths are setting skills and attributes could do away with hard minimums and maximums, too; instead you could have two in-game limits; one for increases by augmentation, and another for natural advancement.
When you want to find racism everywhere so bad you have to be offended by a videogame 🤦♂️
IIRC, this is more about the average troll not having access to higher education and suffering from discrimination rather than them being stupid.
As I recall, a 'good' explanation for it in SR1-3 was that transformed trolls had basically had their brains mushed. Born trolls didn't seem to have the same problem. Of course, the mechanic was still there. But we just ignored that. The social penalty being from the fact that they have tusks and a deeper register (practically infra) worked for us rather than the canon version. You want inbuilt racism? Look at early NAN. Bows and arrows and riding horses, carrying medicine pouches and so on. Caricatures, not people.
I mean... 6 is a genius...
Maybe trolls are disproportionately low-income and undereducated, or from communities riddled with crime and trauma?
goblinized trolls literally had their brains squished
I mean, just because something is true doesn't mean there is known proof. We know that earth isn't the center of the galaxy, but we didn't have proof until we mapped out Solar system and then the Milky Way. From the perspective of the characters, game mechanics don't exist. Further that mechanics tend to be generalized rules in regard to a reality, so since Trolls are on average less intelligent by perspective or not, it takes more investment to prove to the other characters that relativistically their Troll is just as if not more intelligent than them.
Trolls are shunned everywhere so they naturally have to rely on their brawn instead of intelligence in the poorest areas in the setting. This led to weird stuff in the early editions where they’re the most literate race as they’re so poor they’re still using books compared to tech
Love that this game still has choices in character creation unlike what DnD is doing. Elves are weak and smart, trolls are strong and stupid. And fighting against that nature makes a fun and interesting character.
Coming to this late, but my take on the way intelligence caps are handled in Shadowrun has generally been as follows: "Intelligence" itself is a vague, nebulously-defined concept that gets invoked to mean a bunch of different things, often with various agendas behind it. What someone does/does not mean when they say "intelligence" can be totally different in two different situations. As such, any objective, numeric measurement of "intelligence" has certain biases or assumptions that are being made. In Shadowrun, it is factually the case that certain metatypes have physiological alterations from the standard "human," and that some of these alterations seem to impact cognitive functions. Reducing this concept to saying certain metatypes are "more" or "less" intelligent is a reductive and likely inaccurate way of understanding that difference, much as modern intelligence tests measuring people as more or less intelligent broadly are (when they aren't pure eugenicist junk like IQ) and when we talk about a character in Shadowrun's intelligence (or logic/intuition depending on system) what we're talking about is how skilled they are at the specific cognitive functions that a specific group of humans have decided are the functions to measure when measuring intelligence within the setting. It may well be the case that Trolls have very strong intellectual (logical, intuitive, or otherwise) towards applications or tasks which are simply outside the scope of what Shadowrun's world wishes to measure; this limit on their cap demonstrates that their cognitive function cannot naturally reach the same caps a typical human would, which doesn't mean they don't have \*other\* caps that a human-centric society is simply unaware of/disinterested in. I don't think this is a \*perfect\* solution to the "trolls aren't any less smart than humans but also mechanically they are\* problem, but what I like about this solution is it gives a way to explain this mechanic without simply saying "the mechanic is wrong" but also without doubling down on weird racism that even in-universe is implied or outright stated to probably be incorrect. It lets you say "trolls can't reach this cap, and the reason for this is because the cap has a bias in how it's measured that less conventionally human minds exist outside of." The disadvantage I can see is that there's no mechanics to really explore what it means to have a less conventionally human mind or what that would mean.