Well, if it makes y'all feel any better, I just joined this forum and I have to say that a 13 page argument about the Civil Rights of Trolls is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard of. That's not a shot at anybody specifically, but for fucks sake, will you dudes step back and realize how absurd that conversation is?
And you see, here I actually thought it was a fascinating discussion. One of the things with discussions like this is
that they tend to put a spotlight on those areas of Shadowrun, whether it be mechanics or setting or both, that many
people don't usually want to deal with. Remember that, originally, Orks and Trolls pretty much WERE being handled
as metaphors for the civil rights discussions, a way to address those issues without having to deal with with the RL
politics. If you are having people put a group of Orks in poor, inner city neighborhoods, letting them be killed by police
for fun with impunity, etc, etc, well..people can't get up in arms about you doing bad things to (insert ethnic group here)
because its being done to ORKS..they aren't even human! That is an aspect of the setting that is there that GMs can
explore if they really want to.
And, remember that part of the setting really is Meta-human rights activists, Mother of Metahumans, vs Human
Supremacistgroups, Humanis Policlub. There is a reason that people were willing to join the Universal Borhterhood,
after all...there isa reason why the one hotel that provided safe haven for Metahumans during the Night of Rage gets
specific mention of that fact in Seattle 2070, and, I am pretty sure, the original Seattle Sourcebook and New Seattle.
Now, you don't want to deal with that at your table? You don't have to. There is stuff I don't address at my table because
of my group meeting in public. However, just because you don't want to address those issues at your table, and go for
a different style then someone else does, does not mean that is is wrong, or "absurd," that someone else WOULD. This
thread spawned out of someone uncomfortable with those issues at his table. It has, for the most part, been about
those issues and how they cross from setting thematics into the mechanics. That is absolutely not absurd.