ghouls, Vampires, and Wendigo? Yeah...real vacation spot(that is what is stated in Corporate Enclaves PDF as all that was left on the island).

So, basicly, Yomi was never a prison island? Despite a more recent source then Shadows of Asia saying it was?

Or is it just that no-body knows the answers to the questions I asked because they are not rules related?

The information I have from the references in Corporate Enclaves(including a side bar of someone describing life there!) was that it was a bad place, where if you got cut, you gave serious thought to whether it would be better to be infected with HMMVV or die of the imminent infection, since there was no medical support given there.

Now, that does not sound right to me...especially when it is considered that moving to the Yokohama Ward was only trading one Hell for another, just one with a semblence of freedom.

So, basicly, though, since there are no canon answers, my GM should either abandon running a game in Neotokyo, because some of the players want to play metahumans, or say that all Metahumans have to be 6 years old, or from another country?

Oh, and as for the people who say this is not an official website, allow me to point out 1)Dumpshock is run by Adam Jury, the same guy who runs Catalyst's main page and the shadowrun webpage, 2) is where the line developer himself refers people to discuss the game in the same capacity as the official CBT forums. While it may not have Catalyst and Wizkids stamp on it, this is where the people in charge tell us to go, and, you know, Developers and Writers for other catalyst products don't post on unofficial forums(never seen a post from Randall or Herb on Sarna.net or Solaris7.com), so this *is* an official forum. If it walks alike a duck, talks like a duck...(If it is maintained by TPTB, is where TPTB speak, and is where TPTB tell us to go, then it is the defacto official site)

Well I'd say that if developers or representatives of a company tell you that something isn't an official site, that's a pretty unshakeable argument that it isn't.

And aside from which, whilst the developers are accorded huge respect on these boards (stop laughing, you lot! ) when you ask a question on Dumpshock you are in no way entitled to expect the responses to represent official rulings. I'm not a developer, but I imagine they don't particularly want every comment they make here to be regarded as an official proclamation.

All that said, I first recall reading about Yomi in the SR fiction line in Choose Your Enemies Carefully by Robert N Charrette, second volume in the Secrets of Power trilogy. I don't have it to hand, but it seemed that anyone who goblinised was shipped off to Yomi which was briefly described as a lawless barrens, where ghouls ran riot. I can't be certain, but am pretty certain that the metas shipped there wasn't just the goblinised, but included elves at least. You can find more information on it in the Sixth World Wiki here (that may or may not be sufficiently "official" for you). It says that there's information available in Cyberpirates.

Hope this helps,

-Khadim.

EDIT: Fixed link as Ryu pointed out.

My understanding of what Grinder said was: When he said alot was changed in SHadows of Asia(remembering that there was always precious little devoted TO Asia before then), and that it was no longer a Prison Island(without providing an answer to any of my questions) was that Shadows of Asia was a Retcon that had been Retconned by Corporate Enclaves.(After all..this is FASA/FanPro/Catalyst..things that were accepted for a long time tend to get changed out of the blue sometimes)

Admittedly, I do find it hard to see how the Japanese could justify sending INFANTS to a prison island(as Elves and Dwarves, as I have always understood it, were born elves and dwarves originally, while Orks and Trolls Goblinized).

But, OK..so things my GM and I should tell players is that if they want to play a Meta, they need to either explain how they stayed out of Yomi, or they need to have decent combat and outdoors skills to represent that they spent all but the last 6 years in a place where they were being hunted by rape gangs, ghouls, vampires, Wendigo(the mention of the laser fence to keep the Wendigo in), hardened criminals, corps wanting to grab them for experimentation, and guards just wanting to have some fun, right?

As much as my GM and I loathe houserules, I could almost see making Human Looking 5 points more in Neo-Tokyo, just because it is so..useful.

Nope, it wasn't retcon.
Yomi used to be a metahuman prison island before it was liberated by the Huk rebels and the Emperor abolished the anti-metahuman laws (detailed in "Shadows of Asia").

The point is that to the Japanese metahumans were not human! They were something unnatural, lesser even than animals.
Hence no qualms about sending these creatures to some giant concentration camp. At least removing them from sight would take a bit of the shame from the poor parents who gave birth to such a monstrosity...

The simple answer is yes. You just need to have an explanation for what they were doing, and it can't be that they were just living a casual life strolling down the streets of Tokyo whistling a happy tune.

As has been mentioned, they could have had someone protecting them, shielding them from the public. Perhaps out of compassion or perhaps out of shame. Maybe they left Japan and are just now returning, following the Emperor's promises to change the nation (and learning that it's not quite that easy). Or maybe they joined other metahumans and fled to the tunnels underneath Tokyo, forming inclusive communities that hid from the Japanese government (see the Sub-Tokyo entry in Corporate Enclaves).

It seems like you have an unusual perspective on the relationship between the people that write the game and the people that play it.

Shadowrun has had a long and tumultuous history of changing hands from one company to the next, and most of the people who originally wrote the story have long since moved on to other things.

The point here is that the freelancers (note the use of that term) are just long time players like you and me that have taken up the cause to ensure that the game lives on. They do a great deal of work, and the time they spend around here is just a bonus for the rest of us.

We should all be thankful to have such unprecedented access to them. But it is a privilege, not a right.

Welcome to the American side of things...You germans got so many sourcebooks that we never got...with information that we only get peripherally, that it is kind of sad. I would have loved reading about the fight between Lofwyr and that other Great...but, that was for Germans only.

Maybe when Holostreets emerges oneday(My current bet: december 24, 2012, if we are REALLY lucky), we Americans will see the English Translations of the german sourcebooks.

Of course, you could always do what I did: go to the Battleshop, and buy the PDF. It is not quite as nice having it in dead tree, but...it is a way to get it before I have to spend 2-3 weeks for my FLGS to get it in after I have to special order the dead-tree version.

I didn't have problems to find Corp Enclave in several webshops.

Exactly.
For the record: I didn't know that there was reference to Yomi in Corp Enclaves, 'cause I haven't read the book thus far. I'm sorry for the confusion I caused with my first post.

Immunity to HMMV, all strains; failing that, really good hygenic practices.

Etiquette enough to get along with people forced to create their own society and sub-societies, and who have lots of reason to distrust newcomers.

Intimidation, or visibly dangerous enough not be a safe target for anyone who's hungry or feels like picking a fight to blow off steam or wants your stuff, or bodyguards with same. Suffering brings out the best in some people (cf Victor Frankl), and the worst in others.

An identity with SIN and connections that will be respected by JIS (since you'll probably cross their path on the way in and/or out), and one with social status and connections that will be respected by the Huks; if those are not the same, the ability to rapidly switch identities.

If you have Ork Poser or Elf Poser, buy it off with Karma before entering Yomi!

1) I thought you could not take immunity to HMVV?

2) I know my GM is not going to allow the two Poser negative qualities, in fact, she is going to be strongly discouraging people taking guns. And she is talking heavily about upping the price of Human Looking.

Of course, this raises an interesting question: If someone re-patriates from Yomi following the repeal of the Yomi Act, do they have a regular SIN or a Criminal SIN?

You can't.

Exactly. Immunity is strongly recommended, but not available. So the best you can do, and you'd damn well better take it seriously, is very, very careful hygenic practices. Pack some food and water, and plan how to disinfect anything you'll ingest. Spend a week wearing gloves with paint on them, without once getting paint on your face or other exposed skin, and that's good practice for the habits that will get you through your time on Yomi without losing your enjoyment of daylight. (While I was working in a preschool, and washing my hands every hour or so, my roommate was working with radioactive tracers in a biolab. Our kitchen was kept clean!)

While I'm on the topic, and since it's a plot point in my campaign - if someone is infected, and receives a Cure Disease spell before the transformation, would or could that stop the virus from transforming them into a vampire, ghoul, or other paracritter? My PC is assuming that the earlier, the better, although as a player I know the GM will make it work or fail depending on plot. An NPC is infected with Krieger strain, and afraid of losing her intelligence, and my PC hopes to save her by getting her to a mage. If Cure Disease fails, we might try getting Increase BOD and Increase WIL cast on her, and sustain those through the critical period, to increase her odds of staying alive and sapient while she becomes a ghoul. In which case, now there's a ghoul that owes us a favor...

That raises questions beyond the granularity/specificity of RAW. I doubt that the international registry marks SINs with a single bit (1=criminal, 0=noncriminal). I imagine that JIS databases would have a flag specifically for Yomi repatriates. Anywhere in JIS, and many other places, people who check your profile and see that flag, may treat you differently and with suspicion. So I'd say it qualifies for the extra points as a negative quality. Some people might see that flag and be sorry that your nation treated you poorly, and try to be nice to you... but not many, and that might be patronizing, annoying or draw attention to you, more often than it's helpful. If you're an elf and you go to Tir and they see that flag on your profile, you might get the kind of respect that a Holocaust survivor gets in Israel. Or they just might be uncomfortable.

House ruling has infected another GM!

Ok, for back stories, you came up with a few yourself Cardul (escaped corp experiments, Yomi survivor) as well as the others have suggested, human poser, ex-pat, or well hidden. In addition to this, I'll add resistance fighters (Meta Liberation Front or some such guerilla type group).

Anyway, welcome to dump shock!

I think it is impossible for a GM to NOT house rule. The difference is, unlike the impression she gets from here, any of her house rules fit on one sheet of paper, while most DumpShockers plot down a folder of House Rules bigger then the main book. Also, the only changes she ever does generally only effect Qualities in CHargen(upping the points of one, banning others). They don't actually effect game balance like what happens here often does.

Unarmed Combat should be in the package too. But Clubs are common too: large sticks, bones or arms.