When I was leafing through SR4 core, it felt as it they were giving more concentration on magic users than they did in SR3.  Will New Seattle still have as strict of a restriction on who can play magic users as SRS?

Current plans are as follows:

No restrictions during the beta period.

After that, we'll review the number of magic users and technomages on the grid and determine whether restrictions are necessary to keep numbers down to an appropriate percentage (I think it's about 10%, according to the book, maybe beefed up a bit).

We all know how unpopular this policy is. However, we're serious about sticking to canon here. Magic users are meant to be rare. Maybe a bit more common in the shadows, but rare all the same. So, we'll have to see what happens after beta.

Is there any requirements to participate in the beta?  (sorry if this was already mentioned, i don't think I saw any posts that referred to this.)

Um. are you breathing?

Do you have access to SR4?

That's about it.

SR4 doesn't have any reference to the prevalence of magicians, at least not that I've read. The only canon reference I know of is page 28 of MitS, which puts it at 1% of the population being magic-capable.

Sorry if I caused a confusion and should have specified more.  I was just referring the the possible archetypes that they refer between SR3 and SR4.

You didn't cause any confusion. I was responding to Noor, "I think it's about 10%, according to the book, maybe beefed up a bit."

But of course, there's no way 1% is ever gonna happen...y'all would +whine constantly. The correct answer is still that there won't be any restrictions during beta.

My feelings on quota systems having been heard in many forums, namely that I hate them, I'll state this only.

The concept that a percentage of the population consists of magically active people and attempting to make a proportion based on that for shadowrunners is rooted in the assumption that the PCs represent an accurate sampling of the population spread.  If your game is based on shadowrunners as PCs, you are going to have a **MUCH** larger percentage of magically active PCs.

My belief is that the "typical" shadowrunning team (as indicated by presumptions of, say, 6 players in a TT game) has 3 to 4 of its 6 players being either (a) mages, (b) adepts, (c) magical adepts, or (d) technomancers.  That would argue for a shadowrun game to have a "percentage distribution" of 50% magically active//technomancer people, not 1% or 10%, as has been previously stated.

Good that beta is not gonna have any limits, hope it lasts forever.

The TT games I've been inolved in held only one or two Awakened characters out of a group of six.  It was considered teh right thing to keep your new mage out of the group if someone else was already playing one.  So, that gives you a twenty percent magic rate.  Basing the percentage on TT rates isn't a good, or rational, thing to do.

From another perspective, you could call Mojo-ers in the shadows even more rare than the 1% the book says.  After all, is the entire magical population going to be running the shadows?  Probably not, they get spiffy jobs burning themselves out for the corps.  A greater percentage of the Runner population is going to be the mercs, the down and outs, those without magical talent.  The rare are even rarer in a situation like that.

We can bicker all day over how big a percentage of mages run the shadows (I myself would lean toward a pretty high percentage, but hey, that's me), but it won't do us any good, because it's all just smoke out of our collective ass. To me, the main point is, it's pretty silly to limit the number of mages on the game. Yeah, magical talent is rare... but so is a guy willing to risk his life and shell out the price of a new -mansion- just to fill his body with combat cybernetics.

-Everybody- that runs the shadows is an outlier on the social scale. Everyone. So far, the only two reasons I've ever heard for putting a quota on magic PCs are: A, magickers are rare in the canon, and B, magic is overpowered under the rules, so we need to limit it. The first is pure wankery, as we've seen in the previous two posts: two knowledgeable, experienced SR administrators, two wildly different interpretations of canon. The second is a matter of ruleset. In SR3, yeah, magic was overpowered. In SR4, it's been toned back, because it's a known rules problem. So for our reasoning for limiting, well, let's see. The first is admin fiat and a matter of opinion, the second has been solved. Admin fiat isn't a problem per se; we have admins to help interpret how the game is played. But it loses a bit of steam when you consider that in the rules, you can become a mage just as easily as any other archetype, which tells me that among shadowrunners, they're just as common as sammies or riggers or deckers. MUSH isn't like TT, you say, because there are more and different types of PCs? Maybe in the past, but it's been my impression from reading these boards that we're trying to make the game more TT-like, with a greater focus on runners and a decreased focus on PC faction-types. Take it as you will.

This is probably my fault...I think I'm going to resign in shame and disappear into the mountains, never to be seen again. Except by sasquatch, but they don't care anyway, being too busy with their keggers.

And the Gnomes.  Don't forget about the Gnomes, Waffle.

The best reason I can see for limiting Magic users is that, if you let them build it, they will come.  A game filled completely with Mojoers may not be that fun.  I'm not saying that would happen, just spouting off thoughts. 

In general, we will have to see how Beta goes before it's decided what, if any, restrictions are put on the mages.

My next PC is going to be a Gnome that kills mages for sport.

I've played on that MUSH. It wasn't much fun at all.

I haven't, but I can imagine a run full of nothing but mages and shamans.   Bullets are nice friendly things.  I think I'll have some shaped like a Gnome.