japan Options

[protean]

is it just me or is it sad that there is no japan sourcebook? there has always been hints dropped throughout the various source book that the cyberware/bioware found in japan is better than delta grade that is found else where. anyone else feel this way??

[TheOneRonin]

I'm pretty sure that Japan is going to be covered in Shadows of Asia...whenever that comes out.

I don't have any of my books handy, but all I can remember is Chiba getting a lot of mention in regards to cutting-edge cyber. However, I don't think the designers were hinting at Chiba-ware being nastier than Deltaware.

Anyone have anything more solid on this?

[protean]

[Nath]

Sad there's no good Japan Sourcebook ; good that there are no bad or useless Japan sourcebook instead. All you could get could be a country where every metahuman walking the street bring on him corporate death squad packing 18-worth of Essence of Chiba-grade cyberware (whatever the hell it could be) with assault rifles that make your morph-seeking sniper rifle looks like a paintball gun. By luck, they only focus on metahuman and foreigner, letting Akira-style bikers gang, tattoed Yakuza and Ninja doing their jobs.

Be careful what you're asking for without a detailed contract, you may well get it.

And I wouldn't like to be the guy who'll write it oneday, because it would be so awaited with the best possible work you couldn't avoid a bunch of hateful reaction claiming "you're a moron with no idea of what Bushido and Yamamoto spirits really are and that your description of Kobe southern suburbs, which globally sucks, obviously displays your complete lack of knowledge of the Japanese society..." and don't expect being a 50-years old Japanese researcher living in Kobe southern suburbs would prevent that :grinbig: People posing as Japanese culture expert can really be annoying.

On the other hand, even an European writing on the country next door could miss some major subtleties, and Japan is really alien to most westerners.

[protean]

yeah i agree with what you are saying about the subtleties, i know using the germany source book is one of my favs since i lived there for 9 years

[Wireknight]

See, the cyberware available from that special clinic in Chiba, in Maria Mercurial? That was before the inception of custom cyberware and similar rules, back in the very early days of SR1. I would consider such cyberware rules to be wholly overridden by subsequent rules for alphaware, betaware, and deltaware. I would subsequently make the best clinics in Chiba beta-clinics or delta-clinics, with an unusually well-trained staff, thus allowing the use of more positive surgical options to reduce the Essence or Bio Index of an implant, than would ordinarily be available.

[Nath]

Beta clinics for the most part. There is one Delta clinic in Chiba according to Man & Machine, but the number of those is more precisely known, under fifteen in the whole world.

[spotlite]

The whole Chiba thing is a leftover from Gibson. That's where all the best 'ware is made in his universe. They just kept it in SR, I think.

I've always found it odd that in a game where (at least initially) any mega worth the name was from Japan (yeah, yeah, SK, Ares and Atech being exceptions), that there is so little available info on the place! I remember seeing some home grown rules on the net somewhere that had made Tokyo out to be like Bladerunner, complete with hovercars and undercity because the overcrowding made getting around in a ground car just about impossible. There's some stuff in YOTC i think about the Emperor, as well as the odd bit mentioned whenever there's talk of the San Fran sitch. Hopefully Shadows of Asia will cover it.

[protean]

[Kagetenshi]

Isn't there a lot of info on Japan in the Japanese version of Shadowrun?

Admittedly it has almost nothing to do with US/German canon Shadowrun.

~J

[protean]

[spotlite]

But kagetenshi, if you're volunteering for the translation job... :D

[Kagetenshi]

I'll be perfectly happy to do the translation job if someone pays for me to learn Japanese first :)

~J

[spotlite]

Damn.


:grinbig:

[Nath]

[Kagetenshi]

A badly-written critique, but from what I know of the sourcebook, fairly accurate.

~J

[FlakJacket]

Well with the way that FASA wrote up the country, would you like to play it like that? Not exactly surprising that they made a lot of changes for the domestic market.

[Dax]

From reading that little critique, it seems to me that Japan got turned into one huge Anime Cliche. Shadowrun is pretty far from that reality, something that perhaps FASA should have mentioned to the company who published that in Japan.

The way I look at Japan in 2063 is much closer to the way it was during WW II. That of an Imperial Dictatorship. Until the YotC shook things up that is...

[mfb]

*looks at the magic katana, the blue-haired people, the cat-girl*

yep, no anime here.

[Adarael]

Chiba's not only a left-over from Gibson, but the reason even Gibson had a big thing going with it is because during the 1980s bubble economy, Chiba was the most rapidly expanding subsection of the Tokyo megaplex with regards to electronics and technology corporations. I think it may have been that northern section of Yokohama with the ferris wheel - Odaiba - that was the most rapidly expanding in general, but I forget.

Why did Chiba expand so rapidly?

Well, not only do several major corporations have huge offices there (Honda, Sony, and Hitachi among them), but Chiba has an astoundingly intense engineering university - matched only by Tohoku University in Sendai. Which, if you'll recall your Gibson, is where Case's deck was made. An Ono-Sendai Cyber 7.

Just a little bit of historical and cultural information from your resident infodump on Japan.

[Kanada Ten]

Year of the Comet has some information on Japan as does Cyberpirates and Target: Smuggler Havens. Just not very much.

We had two very cool threads on the old forum:

About metahumans described in the 'Tokyo sourcebook' This one gets better as it goes on, IMO, but it makes points the whole way through.

SR Japan This one is pretty good, too, IIRC.

[Dalassa]

[Tzeentch]

[Maollelujah]

While it hasn't been updated for a long while, this site does have some good ideas about Shadowrun in Japan:

http://www.kjps.net/user/m287f/SR/

There is an English page for those that can't read Japanese.

[Dalassa]

Tzentech: I haven't decided to study Japanese history or "Japanese studies" yet. I consider myself a historian but all the areas that I study are a little too recent to be considered history.

Not that it really matters until I can get into a prorgram that will let me live in Japan for a year or two so I can get into grad school.