Tokyo Options

[Snow_Fox]

With Corporate enclaves we have tokyo, the heart of the AAA Japan-o-corps at long last and now it's been out for a while I wondered. Has anyone set up a campaign set in Tokyo? Just gone there for the occassional run or just like having the details available?

[Angier]

I'm not that fond of anything japanese but it's nice to have intel on the city being up2date.

[Rad]

Well, my current character is an ex-yakuza enforcer from Chiba, so it was nice to have the info on what was going on there to flesh out my backstory and figure out who I know over there.

We did do a couple runs in Tokyo with Ghost Cartels, don't think we'll be going back for a while though...

[Shinobi Killfist]

I'm not that fond of anything japanese but it's nice to have intel on the city being up2date.

But what about the Women!!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

[TBRMInsanity]

I would like to do a run or two in Tokyo but I need more time to flesh out an idea (plus a copy of Corp Enclaves).

[Glyph]

It's like the two Tirs, a dreary police state that would be too tedious to want to do a shadowrun in. It's a shame, because Tokyo should be a high-tech cosmopolitan city chock-full of fun, intrigue, and plot hooks.

[AllTheNothing]

The setting is great for faces, but a nightmare for anyone that can't suffer the japanese obsession for etiquette, which means most of street types, add racism toward gaijins/metas coupled with the fact that roleplaying a native requires a level of knowledge of the japanese colture that non-japaneses probably don't have (I don't for sure) and the very particular feel that Neo-Tokio has and you can understand why it's not everyone's setting; it's nice and well crafted, but it's still catered toward a very particular type of game.

[TBRMInsanity]

I could see doing a run based off of the book Neromancer (which conveniently is set in Neo-Tokyo).

[Wesley Street]

Well it isn't called Neo-Tokyo in the book. That's an Aikra/Shadowrun euphemism. Neuromancer starts in Chiba (I don't think the word "Tokyo" is ever mentioned in the novel), moves to Istanbul, then the BAMA, then ends with the Freeside and Zion space stations.

[shuya]

It's like the two Tirs, a dreary police state that would be too tedious to want to do a shadowrun in. It's a shame, because Tokyo should be a high-tech cosmopolitan city chock-full of fun, intrigue, and plot hooks.

that's funny, i never got that impression from the corp enclaves write-up. the neo-tokyo they described sounded a lot more like that second sentence you wrote... like everything Japanese, you gotta understand that the real fun comes once you manage to get past the tatemae (facade) of what they SAY is going on and see what's really happening. i think that a place where one is often forced to run around in circles for either bureaucratic of social reasons would be the PERFECT setting for shadowrun - its the kind of system that makes "deniable assets" even more deniable because nobody can even make the accusation that then needs to be denied, as it were...

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

I'm running a massive campaign through the 4th edition and have plans on going for an extended stay in Neo-Tokyo. It's not on my table for quite a while for a few reasons though. We're running through all of the sourcebooks pretty much in chronological order of release and keeping things tight to what's going down in each city and doing the year by year play through what's been written. I've got a wonderful group right now who've created characters with more than enough backstory and past histories to bring the team to all six of the locations written about in the location books and involve them thoroughly at many different levels of involvement through the yearly event campaigns. We've got a high class escort razorgirl who got maimed by a client and found a BTL of herself getting maimed linking him to the Kong Chip trade of Hong Kong.
We've got 2 good characters with strong ties to Seattle as we make our way through the Emergence timeline.
There's an elf with strong ties to the Tir (an aristocratic runaway) who'll have to deal with his past catching up with him in LA because of all of the Horizon backing in the Tir.
We have a cat burglar who's part of a thief clan who'll bring us around to Neo-Tokyo to wrap up his loose ends.
Amazingly we have a 60 year old gentleman adventurer bent on a calm revenge that'll take us to Lagos to clear his name and pay back a betraying colleague.
We've got a martial arts adept who's sensei is a former seoulpa ring member killed by yakuza and the hunt for his teacher's killer will lead him around through Neo Tokyo as well. He also fled from Chicago as young kid and all spirits freak him the fuck out.
Of Course Ghost Cartels is such a significant world event around the americas and PacRim that there's no way we can just dodge the effects of it. Plus, we have an old party character turned NPC from one of our players that was wrapped up in border smuggling with one of the Cartels.

I'm just getting ready to launch the Hong Kong Campaign and before I started I asked what every player would want to get out of their trip there. So everybody gave me 1 or 2 run ideas for what would keep their interest up and what they wanted their characters to be involved in fro good development and storytelling. Of course the main campaign will center around our razorgirl, but everybody else wants to have a bit of fun as well. I plan to do this just the same as we make our way into Neo-Tokyo.

If you plan to run in Neo-Tokyo, it'll take a group who wants to read the source material and have a good idea of how things will be going down in Japan. If they want to act like most Shadowrunners, staying out of the land of the Rising Sun is a good idea. Before we began our lengthy 4e romp though, we all discussed how cool it would be to run through the timeline and participate in all of the 4e conflicts and power struggles and generally just get a nice dose of the source material, so we designed our characters with lots of backstory and world ties to help us be more mobile and globe hop.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

We seldom visit foreign places. We find it difficult to give a real feel for what life is like in those places. We stayed in Hong Kong for a couple of months, a while back, and nothing except the weather every felt any different than Seattle. Oh, and it was more crowded. Japan might be a little different, if we're actually forced to act differently, though.

[SincereAgape]

I'm running a massive campaign through the 4th edition and have plans on going for an extended stay in Neo-Tokyo. It's not on my table for quite a while for a few reasons though. We're running through all of the sourcebooks pretty much in chronological order of release and keeping things tight to what's going down in each city and doing the year by year play through what's been written. I've got a wonderful group right now who've created characters with more than enough backstory and past histories to bring the team to all six of the locations written about in the location books and involve them thoroughly at many different levels of involvement through the yearly event campaigns. We've got a high class escort razorgirl who got maimed by a client and found a BTL of herself getting maimed linking him to the Kong Chip trade of Hong Kong.
We've got 2 good characters with strong ties to Seattle as we make our way through the Emergence timeline.
There's an elf with strong ties to the Tir (an aristocratic runaway) who'll have to deal with his past catching up with him in LA because of all of the Horizon backing in the Tir.
We have a cat burglar who's part of a thief clan who'll bring us around to Neo-Tokyo to wrap up his loose ends.
Amazingly we have a 60 year old gentleman adventurer bent on a calm revenge that'll take us to Lagos to clear his name and pay back a betraying colleague.
We've got a martial arts adept who's sensei is a former seoulpa ring member killed by yakuza and the hunt for his teacher's killer will lead him around through Neo Tokyo as well. He also fled from Chicago as young kid and all spirits freak him the fuck out.
Of Course Ghost Cartels is such a significant world event around the americas and PacRim that there's no way we can just dodge the effects of it. Plus, we have an old party character turned NPC from one of our players that was wrapped up in border smuggling with one of the Cartels.

I'm just getting ready to launch the Hong Kong Campaign and before I started I asked what every player would want to get out of their trip there. So everybody gave me 1 or 2 run ideas for what would keep their interest up and what they wanted their characters to be involved in fro good development and storytelling. Of course the main campaign will center around our razorgirl, but everybody else wants to have a bit of fun as well. I plan to do this just the same as we make our way into Neo-Tokyo.

If you plan to run in Neo-Tokyo, it'll take a group who wants to read the source material and have a good idea of how things will be going down in Japan. If they want to act like most Shadowrunners, staying out of the land of the Rising Sun is a good idea. Before we began our lengthy 4e romp though, we all discussed how cool it would be to run through the timeline and participate in all of the 4e conflicts and power struggles and generally just get a nice dose of the source material, so we designed our characters with lots of backstory and world ties to help us be more mobile and globe hop.

I'm fascinated by your newsletter and would like to inquire and become a subscriber.

Sounds like a great campaign.

[gargaMONK]

I've been to Tokyo a couple of times, each for no more than a few days, and I was really happy to find SR4 material so that I could translate my first hand experiences into storytelling capital.

A couple of things about the real place convinced me it led itself to the genre. I remember the first time I got there, by highway bus, we were traveling along the same road we'd been for hours, and all of a sudden we dove. Seriously. Without warning, we went downhill to another "floor", if you will, of road and buildings beneath the one we'd been on, under a "canopy" of roads with their own buildings. All-in-all it was about 3 stories of transit.

I don't really think roleplaying the natives is that much of a difference, either. J-culture has become rather ubiquitous in SR anyway, with the yaks all up in everybody's business.

The biggest barrier I felt is distance and transportation. Seattle's right inside Salish-Sidhe, and Denver's got the four nations, but transit can be on foot (if need be) amongst a plethora of other options. Also, travel time is shorter. The ways to get into/out of Japan are more limited, and if something went wrong in Neo-Tokyo you could be SOL.

[imperialus]

Going to end up in Neo-Tokyo for a bit during Ghost Cartels. Other than that though we've always been more attracted to the High-Tech low life aspect of Shadowrun. Tokyo is just too straight laced for my groups taste.

On the other hand we did have a very successful albeit somewhat short lived campaign in Hong Kong.

[Fuchs]

I ran a solo-campaign online set in Tokyo:

Tokyo in the Shadows - Wiki
Tokyo in the Shadows - Campaign thread

[Stahlseele]

i would have wanted to vote "not there. ain't going", but because i was swindled/pressured and conned and about everything else into one or two runs over there . . i voted that one . .

[HappyDaze]

The Neo-Tokyo write-up left me rather uninterested in it. Sad as I wanted to like it.

[Sir_Psycho]

One of the interesting things about Tokyo in my opinion is that guns are a big no-no. This means that using and carrying fire-arms is going to bring down responses of overwhelming force on Shadowrunners. It also implies that guns used in crimes will be much easier to trace in Neo-Tokyo. It's something that might make running in Neo-Tokyo interesting. Sure, if you're hitting an extraterritorial facility, you'll bring some fire-arms (if you can find/smuggle some), but if you're out on the streets, it would be a very interesting dynamic to push the runners into using melee combat. Think of it as a holiday away from bullets.

Sure, there's not much in the way of intriguing hooks for Neo-Tokyo in Corporate Enclaves. But the real star is Japanese culture, which is a wealth of wacky opportunities. There's fundamental cultural differences that are downright alien to most westerners. On one hand you've got the perfectionist work ethic, ingrained, rigid and stratified cultural shame traditions(and the related suicidal tendencies), strong and pervasive racism (I know, in Shadowrun), a rare monopolized organized crime (Yakuza are the big fish), resurgence in religion (particularly interesting because in this case the conservatives are against it), huge drone workforce and high density population, among other things. Then on the other side you've got the colourful wackiness, moe, otaku (not the children of the matrix), fashion, AR "friends" (read: Hilarious pokemon analogues), an obsession with explicitly illegal gambling, sexual fetishes and more.

What would people have liked to see that wasn't in corporate enclaves?

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

I'm fascinated by your newsletter and would like to inquire and become a subscriber.

Sounds like a great campaign.

It's funny that you say that, because we've collectively decided to try and detail our runs in a form of webcomic. Too bad we're too busy right now to get any kind of page up and running. Between sacrificing time to play and time to get the page up and running, we all choose playing over working on a page. If I ever get it up and running, trust me, dumpshock will be the first to know...

[HappyDaze]

One of the interesting things about Tokyo in my opinion is that guns are a big no-no. This means that using and carrying fire-arms is going to bring down responses of overwhelming force on Shadowrunners. It also implies that guns used in crimes will be much easier to trace in Neo-Tokyo. It's something that might make running in Neo-Tokyo interesting. Sure, if you're hitting an extraterritorial facility, you'll bring some fire-arms (if you can find/smuggle some), but if you're out on the streets, it would be a very interesting dynamic to push the runners into using melee combat. Think of it as a holiday away from bullets.

I've had all of this done better way back in 1st edition with the London Sourcebook.

What would people have liked to see that wasn't in corporate enclaves?

I don't know, but since I've liked the LA description and overview along with Hong Kong (and, to a lesser extent, Seattle) from RH, I'll just say "a bit more of what those have".

[nezumi]

Japan is too tight for enjoyable runs, plus Japan works better as the faceless 'other' - and running ther edefeats the purpose. I'm sure it would be a great setting, but not for my group.

[ICPiK]

Out of the states runs r what i consider making it if your team is so good they pull you that far from home. Traveling is a sweet add to the game!

[Glyph]

Then on the other side you've got the colourful wackiness, moe, otaku (not the children of the matrix), fashion, AR "friends" (read: Hilarious pokemon analogues), an obsession with explicitly illegal gambling, sexual fetishes and more.

What would people have liked to see that wasn't in corporate enclaves?

That. That's what I would have liked to see. A Japan where you have all of that interesting stuff. A place with strict gun laws, fine, a place where there is a subtle bias against Westerners in some quarters, fine. But they went too far with the 80's Japanophobia, and in regressing them to WWII-level imperialism and xenophobia, they lost all of that wacky, interesting stuff. They've been trying to fix it since mid-SR3 or so, but they really messed it up.

[Dream79]

That. That's what I would have liked to see. A Japan where you have all of that interesting stuff. A place with strict gun laws, fine, a place where there is a subtle bias against Westerners in some quarters, fine. But they went too far with the 80's Japanophobia, and in regressing them to WWII-level imperialism and xenophobia, they lost all of that wacky, interesting stuff. They've been trying to fix it since mid-SR3 or so, but they really messed it up.

I think in part the wackiness factor is part of that rigid social structure and in some ways doesn't need mention I suppose. I would have to include the whole boardroom drama element that today is all the more enhanced with the customs adopted from the yakuza during the 90's. Even something like a minor social fopaux in the boardroom ends up front page news and avid speculation. It's like a soap opera for the sararimen.