I have two ideas and I want to know if there is something already in the rules for it or if it wil defer to house rules.

1) Samurai O'yori in modern materials. I like the idea of guards in traditional looking samurai armor, but have it be made of kevelar and ceramic plates, not leather and silk. If in the rules what would the break down be?

2) A personal decrypt in your cybereyes. I saw this in GitS but it looked cool. You have a page of gibberish, but if you have the decode in your headware or a chip, your cybereyes can read it clearly.

I know the armor is in Arsenal.

As for the in-eye decrypt, with the speeds we're talking about in the '70s and technology, it's definitely feasible.

I mean, OCR technology can already read things, so it'd be a simple matter of OCRing what's in your eye, running it through the decryption algorithm on your commlink, and displaying the decrypted text overlapping the old into your field of vision (perhaps along with a recreation of the page under it so the actual text doesn't get in the way of the decrypted text).

I'd allow decrypt to run on visual input. OCR technology is pretty reliable today, so I figure perfecting it is a small challenge compared to DNI.

1) Arsenal Milspec armor.
2) Encrypted Data, works as normal. Anyone with the appropriate code, if there is one, can access it. Anyone without must successfully run a Decrypt or be SoL

Thanks. This is what I hoped for.
for the armor though, we don't have 4th ed. we have a lot of 3rd ed and a small child. are you saying this stuff is actually in the rules? Cool! But could you translate it to 3rd ed, Please?
Protection level, weight and cost.

4th edition:

Modern Samurai Armor
Oyoroi Armor 11/11 11 18F ￥11,000 ￥0
Red Samurai Armor 13/13 12 20F ￥15,000 ￥0
Kabuto Helmet +2/+2 4 --- ￥10,000 ￥0

It wouldn't even have to be milspec armor if you don't want.

Nothing says your armor jacket can't look like samurai armor.

It's the same thing as your "Aztechnology Pantera" conveniently having the same stat line as a Colt Manhunter.

Sssh!

Renraku's Red Samurai squads traditionally play dress up in old styled armor. Brainscan gives it the stats of a medium security armor with helmet.

Well the "personal decrypt" thing is based on 2D barcodes. Just have cybereyes (or glasses with a camera) to get the data, something to convert it into human-understandable data (a pocket computer or a Math SPU should be able to do it) and then you print the content on the cybereyes, replacing the codes with the content or you send it directly to the brain through a transducer.

It's not exactly house-ruling, it's more of the combination of existing devices to get something that's possible but that has never been described.

Cool. I didn't realize they actually dress that way. I thought it was just a cool name like "Screaming Eagles" or "Bronx Bombers." There was a group of real hard core Samurai in late 16th early 17th century Japan whose master was a loyal follower of the Tokugawa. They were dressed all in red armor to stand out on the field and so were called the "red samurai."

Ya know, DLN, I bet your daughter would look really cute in Samurai armour...

I have some kimonos for her when she gets a little older.

do you have back up for the claim they wear samurai styled? I got outy my copy for DLN to borrow but it just lists it as med sec armor and doesn't say anything about styling. The pic of someone in samurai armor is a matrix construct

At least Arsenal, Pg. 51, Red Samurai Armor. I did not find an older source.

There are two types of Samurai Armor listed in Arsenal ...

Red Samurai have used neo-samurai armors for quite sometime in canon. There are both written and illo references in several 3rd Ed books including Brainscan and Renraku Arcology:Shutdown.

Also, judging by the movements of the crack-head I walk by on my way to work, modern samurai armor is invisible.

So the Red Samurai discribed on pages 97-98 of Brainscan are the states for the faux Samurai armor DLN's looking for? Med Sec armor 7/7 rating with helmet. Obviously you know that stuff best but we always assumed that stuff looked like a cross between RL SWAT team armor and Star Wars Storm Troopers.

I would think that the samurai-looking Red Samurai armor would be for more ceremonial functions, even if the armor itself was still fully functional. That's just my take on it, though.

It does look like that. It looks like samurai armor, though, too.

Awww, no "Mommy's Little Samurai?"

You can also use the Heritage line armor if you are looking for something a little lighter--It is in Cannon Companion and Arsenal. IIRC, there are samurai lines, as well as, traditional scouts (Ashigaru?)

Just to quote Snow_Fox from the re thread - just delete 're' for 'Does it already exist?',


Descriptive thread titles are your friend.

I'm not sure what DLN has in mind, but suddenly in my mind, a conflict between guards from the big japan-o-corps is gonna look like a scene from a Kurisawa film.

That is going to be a great session! Thanks!

synner mentioned the illustrations, but in First Run for 3ed, there are picks of the Red Samurai in their neotraditional armor.

It's been a loooooong while, but I'm pretty sure it was covered in Never Deal with a Dragon too.

The Red Samurai are one of my first mental images of the Shadowrun setting.

From the guy who apparently made pics for the failed Shadowrun Online project...

http://shadowrunonline.deviantart.com/art/...amurai-41626393

This is for me a nice example of how they would look - and not only that, but with a Wujen(?) suport guy also in neotraditional Heian (?) imperial court nobleman version.

The only issue I have with that is the Ork. Japanacorp = no Orks/Trolls. In fact, Corporate Download specifically states that the only non-homo sapien sapiens are a few home sapien nobilis let in because of magical talent. 99.8% of the Red Samurai are Japanese Humans, with 95% being male Japanese Humans. But that is one heck of an illustration

Oh, they'd let an ork become an asset to the company... as a Yomi Island prisoner. Well, until the new Emperor took over.

Didn't they also say Oni were being used as traditional bodyguards?

Not that I recall, but I may have missed it. I personally like that, but I still feel very leary about having Metas in Japanacorps outside of Evo. I like my Japanese being racist bastards, because every setting needs a good Nazi plot

I think in more meta-friendly Japan 3.0 (I'm being serious here), I see it as: "of course I'm not racist! Do you not see these oni working for me?"

Though I could swear I saw the reference in older books - but maybe that was post-Comet, when the Child Emperor came to power.

And if you want Nazi's...what, Aztech wasn't good enough for ya?

They never had the Jack Boot-ed feel. I can't imagine the full on goose stepping Gestapo (sp?) parades of Jaguar and Panther Guards. They always made me feel like they would move more like the cats they are named after. Now the Japanese, I can see them goose stepping. No clue why, but it just works in my head. <--My head

They might hire an ork or troll as a token to show they have bowed to the Imperial orders but I think the ingrained prejudice would prevent most metas getting into the ranks of 'elite forces. The RL Japanese culture is incredibly racist, not just against blacks and whites but against non-Japanese Asians. It makes the red necks of the American south 60 years ago look tolerant. I see this as being extended into the world of the metas too.

I think the Emperor telling the Japanese people to do a 180 on ingrained institutional racism is the equivelant of the Emperor telling the people "We must endure the unendurable."

In a mildly on-topic tangent...

Honestly, I wouldn't call it racism as much as cultural overprotectiveness. When my wife asked her students about immigration in America, they all agreed, quite unilaterally, that America should be more tolerant of immigrants and work harder at reducing the red tape involved for Mexicans, for instance. The next day, when she asked about immigration in Japan, the answer she got was pretty much "NO."

In any case, the current generation of Japanese is as fascinated by American culture as the current generation of Americans is about Japanese culture.

The tangent works because it hsows the current culture of racism in RL that can be expanded into the game racism of metas.

I am Japanese-american and a New Yorker more than anything, but I can appreciate the culture and keep track of it. when asked about allowing immigration of non-Japanese to Japan the answers invariably are racists in a manner they do not see as wrong. That they like the relatively 'pure' ethnic profile of the Jaspanese becasue they all look the same and they understand the same things and think the same way and are afraid of outsiders they can't understand. To an american, raised with the melting pot of cultures this is just wrong (I married a caucasian and am very happy). at least in the racist south the red necks accepted that blacks had a role to play. In Japan, even with a desperate need for health care workers and Philipino women willing to learn Japanese and adopt Japanese names the Japanese still don't want them.

I also remember having the "Brazilian problem" described to me by one of my own tutoring students. That was... enlightening.

That's another reason why Shadowrun was always so appealing to me. It takes the real world racism and applies it to the sixth world. Some of the events even parallel events in our own past. Heck, Orksploitation is right out of the Blacksploitation movement of the 70s. Heck, my current ork martial arts adept plays off of blacksploitation for inspiration. I took Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones and Enter the Dragon) and a little bit of Berry Gordy's the Last Dragon and wrapped Bruce LeeRoy and Williams together in ork form. I don't know much about Orksploitation, but I can find out a lot about blacksploitation as a parallel to help me roleplay.

The key is to not overdo racism, as one of the older books advised. It exists, and had a realism to the game, a grittyness... but to overdo it is really not fun, to say the least.

Moderated doses.

BTW, the 'ork' is not one probably - it seems more like you confused the 'demon' facial mask/protector for an ork's face. Now, what is under it...

It's in Arsenal 2070. Two different suits, no less - Red Samurai, Renraku's, and more generic.

In 3rd, use the stats for Red samurai Armour in Brainscan. It's handled as medium security armour with Helmet (7/7) there.


In 4th, you can run your programs on anything.

In 3rd, it's essentially GM's call, though I'd propably allow i, if only because that's something I've really come to appreciate in 4th. You'll propably need Headware Memory to run it though.

I hear that. There's a difference from roleplaying racism and actually coming across as racist.

Thats why I never play with anyone without explaining to them my vision of the Sixth World is far, far darker then most people prefer.

Just for reference, here's a picture of Red Sam in action from First Run.

Haha, love that picture.