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?

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

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...

But what about the Women!!!!

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

Sounds like a great campaign.

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.

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.

I ran a solo-campaign online set in Tokyo:

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

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 . .

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

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?

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...

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


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".

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.

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!

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.

Well, imperialism and xenophobia are fairly integral to Shadowrun Japan. That's the way it's been from the start of the game and it's so much a part of Shadowrun that removing it overnight would be heavy-handed and weak.

Neo-Tokyo is a very different setting from Hong Kong and that's intentional. It is going to be a tighter, more controlled society. It's not going to lend itself to the same type of shadowrunning as Hong Kong does, but that's pretty much the point. And to be honest, any long-term Shadowrun campaign set in Neo-Tokyo is going to take a lot more work and tweaking than a campaign set in Hong Kong. But it's still an important setting for Shadowrun, especially from the corporate angle, which is why it belongs in Corporate Enclaves.

I agree with that. Still Imperialism doesn't mean you lose all the wackiness.



I disagree. Run for the yakuza, or as part of the yakuza.

People don't think Neo-Tokyo is weird enough? Damn, I knew that sidebar on wacky Japanese gameshows should have gone in.

One has to remember that Shadowrun is a game where all of the best elements of a culture's history are wrapped up into our near future high tech juicy goodness. Japan is imperial and expansive because that influence and oppression was important. The samurai class has become resurgent with new daimyo (corporations) and all of that wacky Japanese non work free time is more prevalent than ever.

That's what the writers did the Hong Kong. Right now, Kowloon walled city is a park. But, some of the most interesting history comes from when that area was actually a walled city of crime and corruption just as described in Runner Havens. That's where the Hong Kong underworld sequences from movies were always shot (Bloodsport and Crime Story) and it was a pretty vile and corrupt place right up until they leveled it and turned it into a park in the 90's. Well, instead of forgetting what it was and building off of a lame park for the game, they turned it back into the walled city again. History has a tendency to repeat itself, and Shadowrun makes full use of that.

That being said, if there are elements of Japans culture that you think are missing, put them in. By all means put them in. The writers only have 60 or so pages to write up a city setting, and for the most part, they have to divide that up between locations, sectors, corporations, crime, gangs, and weird shit. They only get 3 or 4 pages to give a write up on etiquette and runner tradition in the city, which IMO is more important than how the common non-shadow crowd acts all the time. One just has to get that kind of information through stereotypical portrayals in the media. Want Hong Kong? Watch some Chop Sockey flicks. Want Tokyo? watch some Japanese films (and Japanese TV... wow those guys are nuts!). Before I send the crew to Lagos, you bet your bottom NuYen that I'll be watching a bunch of African crime and war stories...

Or just steal their tricks.


I'd say it's more to do with a healthy respect for privacy and politeness. Far fewer people care what you do in your spare time, which is rather freeing when you get down to it. Folks can be wackier because, so long as you don't go bringing it into the public sphere, nobody is going to care. Or, at least, nobody who cares is going to act like they do.

Than put it onto the game resources page of shadowrun4.com; that's not like it is something that can fill a supplement like Digital Grimoire (if that's just a sidebar) and it can help to make the setting more enjoyable.

That was a joke, mate. There was only one Unpublished Neo-Tokyo Fragment (Warning: Adult Content!).

yeah, it's a bit dark, but well written.
as for japan . . imagine my fun playing a dwarf or troll and ending up over there . .

I'd have preferred in Japan as a whole was just as imperialistic and xenophobic as written but Neo-Tokyo was their gateway to the world. In effect, have those elements diluted somewhat to open the city to non-Japanese (and, in effect, non-humans) a bit more.

i always felt that SR-Japan's imperialistic bent was the result of of the very real and serious problem of corruption in the Japanese government and collusion with businesses - in the wake of the Shiawase decision and what it meant for these already fictionally powerful companies, the ability to lobby the government to spread your corporate influence elsewhere in the world through militaristic expansion is actually quite believable (*cough*USA*cough*)
i feel like the write-up of Neo-Tokyo actually did a lot to humanize SR's Japanese, and it serves as a wonderful juxtaposition between the international face of the evil Japanacorps and the people "back home" who might oftentimes be wholly uninvolved with the more ruthless business practices of their parent corps in locales where they no longer enjoy the "homefield advantage" of priviliged business practices and a more established network for enacting control over the way they do business (again, a very real part of the interrelation of companies in Japan).

my those were two crazy run-on sentences...

Well, that was the intent, somewhat. The whole Old Way versus New Way theme (which was a major part of our planning for the Neo-Tokyo write-up) is a way of presenting the change that is coming to Japan, focused squarely in Neo-Tokyo.

Exactly. We are a team of metahumans, I can tell you which Yakuza factions we'll be siding with when me make the trip...

Neuromancer, please. Also, it is more based in space, with a good third of the action taking place in and around the Tessier-Ashpool spacestation (the rest of the book is continent hopping, with another good third taking place in various parts of an ubiquous sprawl called BAMA that seems to stretch from Boston to Atlanta and is sonehow an independent political entity, though drawing world maps has never been Gibson's strong part). Chiba (as in, a Suburb of Tokyo) serves as a setting for some three chapters. And frankly, bringing about yet another singularity event that crashes the net would not be a fun run for as far as I am concerned.


It is, and right in the first sentence ('The sky above Tokyo bay was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.'). Just, that's about it, save for some mentions of Chiba being next to Tokyo in some way.

Myself, I could see me using Tokyo as a setting for an international run, or a part thereof, or for character background, but not much more. It's just that I'm not really on the Japan craze bandwagon, I guess. Hong Kong, on the other hand ...

Top Ten Tokyo Gameshows

10. Feel This! The show where contestants are rigged up before being subjected to a variety of emotional stimuli, from having to comfort a crying baby to enduring a salvo of berating vitriol from their boss, all without registering a response on the Feel-O-Meter. Whenever someone's emotion level peeks (as shown on one of the twelve giant dial-gauges): BAM! They're kicked off, usually in a spectacular manner based on which emotion peeked. A recent scandal in which one contestant was found using emotional inhibiting drugs has put a damper on the show's popularity.

9. Canonball Run. Fitted with waxed up skis, contestants race down the side of the Renraku pyramid in Chiba, dodging obstacles and handing off "mail tubes" at various stations along the slope. Each tube delivered earns a skier 500 nuyen. Safety nets are deployed to catch those unlucky enough to narf on the way down, and Renraku offers a nice cyber package to those few who miss the nets.

8. Is That Safe? Contestants construct armor suits from hundreds of household items and common clothing materials, which are then tested against the five elements in a series of complex challenges, such as: standing in front of a flamethrower, withstanding a volley of arrows, and drowning. Free resuscitations provided by CrashCart.

Pure gold, man. Go on, please!

(Continued...)

7. The Word of the Day Is... A reality slash gameshow, Word of the Day starts off with seven hundred seventy-seven contestants who are given a word each morning that they can't say. The first words are usually pretty common, and contestants drop out left and right, with the funniest bloopers and most impressive saves shown during the broadcast. As the numbers get smaller, the words become more personalized and more difficult to simply avoid (like the name of a child, for example). Once the number is down to seven, the words begin to stack until eventually it's impossible to complete a whole sentence. The show is popular largely because one of your friends or family is always on it. Large groups of co-workers or student will sign-up at the same time, making it a game to see who can make whom say what.

6. Breakthrough. Using mystical mind probing techniques, host Johnny Fortune teases out the contestants' darkest demons... And then summons them! Contestants must battle their demons in the ring of fire and come out victorious to win the fabulous prizes offer - beyond just a better night's sleep. The demons themselves take on a wide spectrum of bizarre and frightening forms.

5. Cookies! A cooking plus all-you-can-eat extravaganza. In addition to the exotic and often dangerous ingredients, the contestants are handicapped in various manners, from the classic "hand behind the back" to having a favored pet or child dangled over a vat of acid.

4. You Call That Begging? A VR gameshow where contestants are tortured until they beg for it to end, and even then the torture only stops when the audience thinks you really mean it. Whoever goes the longest without begging wins. The audience also participates in the torture, choosing which "torture device" to use on which contestant. The Chinese Laser Torture is the current favorite, beating out the Infinite Gut Punch by a slim margin.

foro urselves we haveen't had a chance at a run there yet but I love the detailed information.

I don't htink it should be too hard for a campaign, I mean we were all using Seattle for years and I only got to visit last year-an absolutely wonderful place by the way-but the racism of Japan might be an issue for a campaign. As for the manner, that might cause more runs, but yeah it would give the shoot 'em up types a problem.

In the Flemming book You Only live Twice even James Bond gets po'ed waiting his turn in a bath. his handler points out an ancient hyku poem on the wall, Bond comments "And after writing it he drew his sword and asked ' how long until #4 is ready?'"