Bunraku parlors.... Where? Options

[Pepsi Jedi]

Looking for information on Bunraku parlors, as pertaining to Shadowrun. Which books are they discussed in, and to what depth? Assistance would be appreciated. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[hermit]

Vice, SimDreams, Unwired. All medium in depth.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Thank you sir.

[SIN]

There's a very low-rent bunraku parlour in SRM-04-01. Doesn't go into much detail, but some horrible details nonetheless.

[Lionhearted]

Is that the one with the girl in the middle of getting chipped?

[hermit]

Yup, there she gets skillwires. Nasty business.

[tasti man LH]

Yes it is...a twelve-thirteen year old, no less.

Will be an interesting day when I present that little scenario to my PCs...

[CanRay]

I did the same with a kidnapped 10-year old, they simply bought her from the Yaks, taking a hit on the pay from the 'run, but going, "I can still look at myself in the mirror."

It was either that, or I really scared them with the woman that owns the restaurant on the docks.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Vice, SimDreams, Unwired. All medium in depth.

Hurm, Unwired came up empty, Vice had a bit but mostly in passing, not too much more than basic definition and that MTC has some of their own. Sadly I don't have SimDreams yet.

[hermit]

Unwired has some in the BTL/SimSense section, where the skillwires are. Ah, and Twilight Horizon has implications, in teh PersonaFix chapter.

[CanRay]

Hurm, Unwired came up empty, Vice had a bit but mostly in passing, not too much more than basic definition and that MTC has some of their own. Sadly I don't have SimDreams yet.

You should get on that. PersonaFixes are also in Sim Dreams/Nightmares.

I admit that I don't go so much into how they're set up or used, but the complications that occur due to abuse of Personasoft technology, which PersonaFixes also have (along with the problem you can have with Skillwires!) I don't really think I was successful in showing just how much Turbo Bunny is disturbed by the technology, but I was also writing from the view of someone drying out, so that's excusable from my artistic point of view. The guest commentator, RRW, had to edit his work a few times (In-Character!) due to him sounding far too angry and preachy.

...

Yes, my writing style does disturb me at times.

[Bull]

Yup, there she gets skillwires. Nasty business.

[ Spoiler ]

I'm really, really surpised after that scene at how many players ended up cutting a deal with Junior/Torinni later on.

[Ixal]

Not exactly about the palors, but somewhere, I forgot which book, there is a short story of how a former puppet useing her unique skillset to completely impersonate people. In this story she takes on the ID of a waitress to gain access to the comlink of a client in order to raise money to researxh her real identity.
Does anyone know where this story is from? I don't have my books with me currently.

[tasti man LH]

^That's in Seattle 2072.

It's the short story for the Tacoma chapter.

[hermit]

[ Spoiler ]

I'm really, really surpised after that scene at how many players ended up cutting a deal with Junior/Torinni later on.

[ Spoiler ]

So was I. My group went two ways, one actually tried to betray the others for Torrino. The one group member whose backstory is made of all kinds of abuse and slavery no less. Who also adopted (kinds) this girl and took care she got to a Horizon School in the end.

[Pepsi Jedi]

[ Spoiler ]

I'm really, really surpised after that scene at how many players ended up cutting a deal with Junior/Torinni later on.

[ Spoiler ]

Just read it. I doubt our group would have let the doctor live after that. But we play pretty 'light gray' side if Shadowrunners most times. Tojiro would very likely be very painfully dispatched and Knight Errant and an ambulance called.

The mental image of that sort of dirty sex shop mixing with the smells from the deli and the meats... *shudders* Yuck.

Good imagery (If dark and gross.) I applaud the author, but yeah. That's gnarly.

[Pepsi Jedi]

You should get on that. PersonaFixes are also in Sim Dreams/Nightmares.

I admit that I don't go so much into how they're set up or used, but the complications that occur due to abuse of Personasoft technology, which PersonaFixes also have (along with the problem you can have with Skillwires!) I don't really think I was successful in showing just how much Turbo Bunny is disturbed by the technology, but I was also writing from the view of someone drying out, so that's excusable from my artistic point of view. The guest commentator, RRW, had to edit his work a few times (In-Character!) due to him sounding far too angry and preachy.

...

Yes, my writing style does disturb me at times.

Yes yes.... lol I should.

[CanRay]

[ Spoiler ]

Just read it. I doubt our group would have let the doctor live after that. But we play pretty 'light gray' side if Shadowrunners most times. Tojiro would very likely be very painfully dispatched and Knight Errant and an ambulance called.

The mental image of that sort of dirty sex shop mixing with the smells from the deli and the meats... *shudders* Yuck.

Good imagery (If dark and gross.) I applaud the author, but yeah. That's gnarly.

Imagine a Street Doc that works out of a Deli's basement... Because that's the place my group usually goes to get fixed up.

Yes yes.... lol I should.

YAY! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Pepsi Jedi]

Imagine a Street Doc that works out of a Deli's basement... Because that's the place my group usually goes to get fixed up.YAY! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Well that's the thing, it was all three. 1) A Deli's basement with all that spicy meat smell, 2) The Bunraku parlor with gnarly unwashed sex dolls, and 3) The street doc room where apparently they're implanting the skillwires and stuff with no anesthesia, as the girl was screaming so loud you could hear it through the steel door.

Again, I applaud the author. Great mental imagery there, if slightly disturbing.

[SIN]

[ Spoiler ]

I'm really, really surpised after that scene at how many players ended up cutting a deal with Junior/Torinni later on.

[ Spoiler ]

The bunraku parlour was the one thing that made my players unhappy about dealing with Junior. I wrote this up in the play results section of the SR4 Forums (I'm AceFace over there), but basically they killed the doctor and only agreed to cut a deal with Junior if he ceased his funding of puppet parlours. One of the characters (not the player) was a 17 year old girl too, so the other characters all went to great pains to hide what they'd found from her. Uncomfortable, but a good scene to roleplay.

[Wakshaani]

Not exactly about the palors, but somewhere, I forgot which book, there is a short story of how a former puppet useing her unique skillset to completely impersonate people. In this story she takes on the ID of a waitress to gain access to the comlink of a client in order to raise money to researxh her real identity.
Does anyone know where this story is from? I don't have my books with me currently.

Turbo Bunny has a galpal named Marionette who's a former Bunkraku 'doll' who managed to leverage her way free and into the Shadows. She uses her Skillwires to adapt to situations and has experience with BTLs and similar issues. Not trusted enough to get a JackPoint account. (As TB mentions in Sim Dreams and Nightmares, once you get a rep as "The junkie", no one lets you live it down."

She's not the one from Seattle 2072, but, figured it was worth mentioning.

[Bull]

Well that's the thing, it was all three. 1) A Deli's basement with all that spicy meat smell, 2) The Bunraku parlor with gnarly unwashed sex dolls, and 3) The street doc room where apparently they're implanting the skillwires and stuff with no anesthesia, as the girl was screaming so loud you could hear it through the steel door.

Again, I applaud the author. Great mental imagery there, if slightly disturbing.

Thanks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) That was one of my adventures, so... yay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That was a fun but VERY tough adventure to write, because it walks a fine line.

The very concept of a Bunraku parlor is just a horrible, horrible thing. I find prostitution to be fairly horrible in and of itself, but add a slavery aspect and it gets worse. But this? Just jacks it to a whole other level, and that's just terrifying and disturbing on a lot of levels.

[ Spoiler ]

And yeah, I expected the doctor to die. And the other scenes were bad, but they were "typical crime stuff". The little girl on the stretcher outside the bar was a cheap shot on my part, I admit, but it's also a standard action movie moment. The Bunraku Parlor, with the young girl getting forcibly implanted? That was a nasty, terrible scene I really wanted to include, but I fully expected that to be a line Torrino wouldn't be able to come back from, even for the most hardened Shadowrunners. Which was frustrating, because it was tough to give him a "good" moment that was equally as powerful Underground. And I wanted players to be torn on what to do. I succeeded, apparently, though it was unexpected.

I think every character I've played would have put him on a slab for that.

Bull

[Umidori]

I'm not entirely sure I want to add dark content like Bunraku parlours into the immediate experiences of my current players. They're unusually principled, and unusually resourceful, which means put face to face with things like the teenage girl getting chipped, they'd probably quite literally draw guns and level the place, consequences be damned, and they'd pull it off somehow too. They have a knack for doing the absurd and dangerous, and just throwing my expectations for a mission out the window in a miraculous display of recklessness and badassery.

I keep trying to find new ways to screw over these schmucks without resorting to cheese and munchkinned NPCs, and they keep rising to the challenge and coming away battered but triumphant. In fact, their latest run was a job where the Johnson was actually planning to set them up in a sort of Xanatos Gambit, where he hired them to assassinate a political figure, but didn't care if they succeeded or not - he just wanted a distraction and a notorious public incident.

I sent them against significantly superior forces and I fully expected them to be overwhelmed, especially since they took some pretty needless risks in approaching the target, but their two-man team managed to utterly annihilate the politico and his entire team of a dozen bodyguards in an isolated area without leaving any incriminating evidence, made off cleanly with some decent loot, unwittingly avoided the red herring false bonus loot lead that would have gotten them in trouble, and did it all well within the time limit that had been set. The Johnson was so impressed he decided to actually pay them (a criminally small amount given the difficulty of the mission) instead of skip town, realizing they were more valuable working for him than against him.

~Umi

[Pepsi Jedi]

I read something interesting the other night about metatypes and marriage/reproductive ages in Shadowrun. I know Corp guide says Evo considers it 13 for Orks, both for sex and marriage.

But then Vice (177) says Evo considers the following the legal age of consent:
10 for Orks
14 for Trolls
16 for humans and dwarves
18 for Elves.

Doesn't change the fact that what happened to the 13 year old human was horrible by any means, but it does sort of make you stop and go "Wut?" When you think about sexual and social norms. If 10 is the age of marriage & consent of about 15% of the population, that really makes you pause and look around.

[Umidori]

Well when our own human life expectancy was 40 or so years, we historically married much younger too. So with Orks actually maturing much faster than humans, it's not nearly as bad as our own human practices were a few centuries ago.

~Umi