From:	Paul Jonathan Adam <Paul@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Re: Shadow community Size
Date:	Thu, 28 Sep 1995 17:24:49 GMT

Gurth wrote:
> Let's see, Seattle has a population of about 3,000,000 people. 1% is
> magically active, makes 30,000. Of these, 10% (not 1%) are full magicians,
> makes 3,000. Erm, yes, it seems the shadow community is a lot smaller than
> we (or at least I) tend to think...
> The trouble here is that in this case any PC would know just about anybody
> else in "the biz," if not by name then at least by face...

Depends how "in the biz" they are. Some shadowrunners moonlight. Several of
ours run under carefully-built false identities. Not many people know that
Paladin and the Lady are actually the same person, for instance... Even in
a smallish community, there's plenty of scope for not recognising someone.

Also, from a purely economic point of view... Middle lifestyle is Y60,000
a year, right? So for a half-decent standard of living, you need to pull off
three or four "typical" jobs a year without running up big expenses (and
that is *just* to live and eat: never mind all the exceptional costs a runner
has, whether it's magical items, new software, or upgraded chrome).

Just how many shadowruns happen in Seattle? I mean, are we really saying that
virtually every night there's a twenty-kY a head shadowrun going down?
Because that is what a shadow community of more than about 100-150 involves.
Do the maths... if you work in teams of five, and do one job a month, thirty
teams (150 runners) mean one run a night!

We played the pool of active shadowrunners in Seattle as only numbering
about twenty or thirty, with about the same number of "retired... mostly"
types and several times as many wannabees.

--
"When you have shot and killed a man, you have defined your attitude towards
him. You have offered a definite answer to a definite problem. For better
or for worse, you have acted decisively.
In fact, the next move is up to him." <R.A. Lafferty>

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk