Which of the Japanese megas in 2058 would be the one closest to Horizon and Pathfinder Multimedia? I've designed a character who is a retired Japanese pop idol and I need to know which company would be most likely to to have been her "handlers" during that time. Also, how heavy was the Japanese racism toward elves? Were they the media darlings they were elsewhere in the world or were they stuffed in the ghettos like other metahumans? Would a Japanese elven pop idol even fit lore in 2058? Or would she be best employed by another [North American] mega trying to capitalize on the influence of "Japanese culture" that was so hot at the time?

There are a few good options. In 2058 Yamatetsu was becoming more meta-friendly, and would probably embrace an elven pop starlet as part of that shift. They would later become EVO.

Fuchi might also be an interesting option, if you want the corps implosion to factor in to your characters back story. In that case, your character could have been signed by Fuchi North America, which would be more meta friendly. She could also have friends and or enemies inside NEOnet who survived the transition.

in the SR 50s According to corporate download, Mitsuhama Computer Technologies was the world leader in Entertainment & Media. MCT is not exactly one of the metafriendly corps, but I am sure as the number one in the entertainmentindustry worldwide, they will cater to many tastes. an elven j-pop idol would still be the odd one imo, and probably not very successfull in japan itself, but japanese cultural influence will be fealt in other regions of the world that might be more open to it.

That said, I think u can pick any other of the big 8, as they are all diversified enough to have some media assets and japanese cultural influence is huge in the 50s. Or pick any of the smaller media outfits, i.e. Affiliated Artists and Amalgamated Studios in LA, MegaMedia in Seattle, DeMeKo in germany, Sol Media in Spain, Regency in India, Briliant Genesis - no idea where they sit, ... the list goes on, but thats what I know of the top of my head.

EDIT: But of course MCT also comes with lots of Yakuza-goodness

Now I feel old.

As to your question, I'm not up on 4th edition, but I get the feeling that the sort of corporation you talk about represents a fundamentally different view of megas, and thus wouldn't be represented in the 2050s.

If you're just looking for the general "feel" rather than being wedded to specifically an Elven J-Pop idol, you could go with a Wuxing-backed K-Pop/Tai-pop/Cantopop/Mandopop star. Yamatetsu is weak in entertainment, but it's not unthinkable that they could have a pop star—it's just a bit of a stretch to try to market a J-pop star with no market in Japan.

~J

I agree and thing the Wuxing c-pop option would preserve most of the feel (and there can be a lot of j-pop influence included) while making an elf less unresonable. Otherwise, why not make her human at that point and then SURGE into an elf - that might also be a reason, why her career endeed

You and me both....

Shut up and hand me my walker.

Can't, got a limp arm and have to use the other one to hold my cane.

Aw come on guys! Haven't you heard that retro is all the rage in SR now-a-days? We're all going to be hip with the kids again...

*Pulls out ear trumpet* Who has a new hip?

I need a new back, does that count?

As for the kid who posted originally, I'd go with MCT. Even though they aren't very metafriendly, they could probably have an elf rocker that's low-profile in Japan and marketed elsewhere (or a human looking elf...)

No corp in 2058 would be the media-mogul that Horizon is, though, but MCT would be close in Japan.

Sorry guys. If it makes you feel any better, I know how you feel. I've seen D&D become D20, the rise and fall of WEG, and played BattleTech back when they still made pewter mechs for it. I always knew about Shadowrun (since probably 2nd ed), but never had a chance to pick up or play it until SR4. I blame it on living (at the time) in a small backwater in Idaho.


I'm 30... Also, Horizon wasn't founded until 2061, which is the reason for the whole question.

To everyone who suggested Wuxing, I appreciate the idea, but it doesn't match her backstory. Yamatetsu does though, so I'm gonna go with them. Basically, here's what I'm thinking for her backstory.

She was born into occupied San Francisco in 2044, daughter of a Imperial Japanese officer and an local elven mother. Obviously, being a meta, they couldn't get married, so her father quietly supported her and her mother through whatever ways he could. Later, when she got older, she showed a talent for singing and had a way with crowds. He used his contacts in the Imperial Navy to get her a contract with Yamatetsu North America (conveniently based out of San Francisco according the Wiki) and she started touring at age 14 (2058) as a Neo J-pop idol in North America and Europe. At 18 (2062), she retired to Neo-Tokyo with her father and mother (newly married), becoming one of the first meta families welcomed back to Imperial Japan after Emperor Yashuhito rescinded the Yomi Island Decree. Shortly after the Crash of '64 wiped out her SIN with Yamatetsu (soon to be Evo), but left her parents' SINs untouched, she took the opportunity to move back to CalFree, to LA, and become a citizen of the newly-minted media king: Horizon. She's been with Pathfinder Multimedia ever since, working for their "Neo-Tokyo Pop" imprint writing manga and doing the occasional anime theme song. She started with a semi-autobiographical manga about her life as an idol; except in the manga, she was Awakened and ran the shadows as a magical girl named Mercury. Funny thing? It was true. In 2069, after The Twins, she decided to leave LA and the shadows behind. The shadows in LA were starting to fill up with the lights and cameras that filled so much of her youth, so she left for the peace and quiet of Seattle. But, as we know, in Seattle the shadows are everywhere and pasts only stay buried for so long...

edit: Minor punctuation and word choice fixes.

yeah, me too.

OFF:

I know CanRay avatar actually shows a dying guy, but somehow my brain interprets it as a drunkard.

Maybe he was both?

I don't drink that much. And I certainly stay away from bars that would leave me with more holes than a colander.

I've been GMing Shadowrun for almost 23 years now


Yeah, I know about Horizon - just pointed out that there would be no corp quite similar to it as far as media/entertainment goes.

Forces in Yamatetsu started pushing for a more meta-friendly attitude in 2056, and it makes some kind of sense to push for an elven pop star as part of that strategy. In May 2059 they made the decision to move their HQ to Vladivostok.

I'm not sure about SF being Yamatetsu NAs main seat, though: by 2061, it's stated to be Seattle (Corporate Download, pg. 110 and 115). There's Yamatetsu California in 2057, though, located in SanFran (and Oakland, but that is disputed by the shadowland posters), with an arcology in San Fransisco (California Free State, pg. 136).

Okay, I'll concede that one. And I just misunderstood your post then. --shrugs--

As for San Fran being the NA headquarters, that was a mistake on my part. I'll change it after I check out the sections you pointed out in the old books and make sure that's the route I wanna go. Looking at the wiki now, I can only assume that since they listed the North American office first in the listing of area headquarters, I just skipped it thinking they would be smart and list the main office in Vladivostok first and went until I found an office in North America. Apparently, I need to slow down and read. Then again, the wiki lists the name change as "after the Matrix Crash 2.0 in 2070," so I might need to just ignore the wiki altogether. Granted, the only other even remotely accurate and detailed timeline I have access to is my copy of Sixth World Almanac, which isn't exactly stellar either. Of course, that's the entire reason I post things like this is to get help with the history. Studying over 20 years worth of books takes a lot of time and effort, of which time is in short supply for me. Hell, I'm just happy that as a GM I'm doing well enough with the background that my players know what Bug City and the Arcology are, let alone what a cyberdeck was. <.< Granted, that seems better than Catalyst can manage sometimes.

I'll repost the full character background when I'm done writing it and I'll let you tear through it with a fine tooth comb, okay?

Edit: Christ, that picture of Buttercup on page 113 of Corporate Download is gonna give me nightmares! Whoever drew her seriously managed to nail the whole "not quite right" feeling they sometimes describe spirits with. Yeesh.

Slight threadjack here, but I always thought CanRay's avatar was a drunk as well, mainly from him being from the great north and all...
What? I'm Australian! I can make value judgements based on alcohol consumption!

As much as I dislike punching holes in an interesting character concept, as a GM, I'd find it highly unlikely an Imperial officer would support such an embodiment of shame and dishonor as an elven child of his own producing... weird fetishes aside, you could write in a nice patch job about how mother hid his child's "deformities" until she managed to get some sort of trust out of daddy and then ran for the hills before he'd kill them both (What? This is a happy ending..!)

That way you've got unhappy family plothooks, which could be tied into the whole, "This is why my life is shit" shadowrunner backstory.

As to which Mega would have an elven pop idol...why just go with the megas? You could easily second-tier it, have the production house implode along with the Fuchi backers and be another discarded pop princess with a grudge, an empty credstick and no other options.

-0.02 Tir.

I was originally going to work the "local whore" angle and do something very similar to what you suggested, but considering this group had (when I found out about it) a genetically designed elf catgirl who was a former maid/bodyguard for the Shotozumi-gumi and a SURGE'd elf Technomancer with four arms running a banraku parlor (including rigging some of the girls --shudder--) for the same gumi; I figured having her father be the one decent person involved with the occupation of San Fran wasn't too much of a stretch. Besides, I wanted to play up how good life has been to her, despite what should have been an absolutely terrible childhood.

For the record, this isn't the group I GM, it's another group who have never played Shadowrun before. This Friday we're going to get together and go over the "A History Lesson for the Reality Impaired" section in the SR4A book so they have a vague idea of the history of the world. I also convinced them that would never fly with the Old School yaks and showed them the New Way Kenran-Kai, which the GM was grateful for because he wanted the organization they belonged to to be a lot less powerful than the Shotozumi. Spirits help me.

FWIW, SURGE doesn't hit until September 2061.

(They'd also be Otaku at the time, but that mixes in rule changes and gets messy)

~J

Not to mention scarcer, younger (Otaku were only children IIRC), and considered to be only an urban myth.

They only started losing their powers in their 20s. Exactly how long it takes to end up non-Otaku depends on how many times you expect Otaku to have Submerged; at minimum it takes as many years as Submersions plus one, and successes for the first few years aren't so hard to come by. Matrix claims that "nearly all otaku lose their abilities by the age of thirty", which sounds about right for about five Submersions or less. That said, Pax and Ronin (who is a bit different) are the only two I remember mentioned in canon as being in their twenties, and the teenagers mostly seem to get left in the background as not atmospheric enough.

I don't remember exactly when the lid came off the Otaku situation, but I think they weren't secret by 2058—IIRC someone annoys the Denver Data Haven sysop by spilling the beans earlier (though they're probably still not particularly well-known until late 2059/early 2060 and the Arcology Shutdown).

Edit: the Halberstam's Babies data dump is posted by the Cap on April 5, 2057, and the timestamps internal to the dump are from January of that year. That's not the thing I was thinking of, though… *dig dig*

Edit^2: it's not clear whether he knew what she/they were, but Rapier mentions having known Pax and her tribe in Atlanta in 2056 (RA:S p45). On the same page, Wingate suggests knowledge of Otaku for "the past few years" as of sometime after 10 February 2060.

So yeah, little-known but not secret any more.

~J

@Kagetenshi, Grinchy McScrooge

The game is actually set in 2072, so being SURGE'd or a techno isn't the issue. ^_^ All of my questions have been to get this character's backstory right, my retired pop idol is 28 years old.

Oh.

Well then

~J