[Mirikon]

That hopeful poke to future content out of the way I'm intrigued by its mention of something slowly rising from underneath Tokyo that's so horrible even the HMVV sufferers and spirirts are running scared.

Anyone have any ideas about what it might be that devours from beneath and whether it had anything to do with why Ryumu is so careful about construction and the leylines there?

Probably the same thing that eats the spirits the eggheads in LA keep sending into the Lacuna. Wouldn't surprise me if, down there, they found signs of an alchera... with an old Enemy formerly trapped inside now looking to get out...

[psycho835]

NEVER ENUFF FLUFF!!!

[Parker]

NEVER ENUFF FLUFF!!!

  HEAR HEAR!!!!

[Bull]

A bit strange that Japan has never got heavy coverage since, y'know, Japanophilism is one of the big backdrops to cyberpunk.

Shadowrun wrote itself into a corner early on, ad it took quite some time to work itself out of it.

In the early fiction and fluff, the Japanacorps were everywhere, and involved with everything.  Half the original "Big" AAA Megas were Japananese, and they had a major influence on the world (reflecting the late 80's belief that Japanese business dominance would continue).  Hence, Nuyen.  And there was a lot of little Japanese phrases and slang that were commonplace in the fiction as well.

But Japan itself was written as this hardcore, imperialistic, completely racist (to both gaijin and especially any metahuman), and totally corporate dominated.  There wasn't any ROOM to actually play a game set in Shadowrun shy of playing a team that was completely human and completely loyal to one corp and worked exclusively for them.

Over the years, and especially with Year of the Comet, we tried to shake that up and loosen it up a bit.  A couple corps moved away from Japan (or fell apart, like Fuchi), and a new Emperor with a different outlook rose to power.  This loosened the corporate stranglehold a little and relaxed the racism a bit.  It's still not the best place to run though.

[Wakshaani]

FWIW, Storm Front has an update on the Japancorps in it, including some implications about Japan as a whole.

[Wakshaani]

ALso? If I could talk them into it, I'd write books that were nothing *but* fluff.

For reals.

[Namikaze]

ALso? If I could talk them into it, I'd write books that were nothing *but* fluff.

For reals.

I'd say "good luck" but I'd be sarcastic.  Judging from the Freelancer posts here, it seems like fluff would be a lot of fun to write (and for some of us, to read) but it doesn't sell very well at all.  Therefore, it's unlikely to happen.  What I do like though is the push toward "enhanced fiction" which includes game-legal items, NPCs, qualities, etc.  This is, of course, in addition to the fluff.  So a book that is 99% fluff will still sell better because that 1% of crunch.

[Wakshaani]

Yeah, the crunch is what moves product, sadly. Still, even that part's fun to write, sometimes! Just no as fun as the fluff.

[Ariketh]

[Threadhijack]

As I said in another thread, the realities of that make me sad. I love buying fluff books and reading them. Arguably, I spend more time reading Shadowrun fluff than I do playing. It's a slight sore spot that my SR GMs ignore the fluff to do their own thing. For once, I'd like to take part in/witness/stop canon events. Or play in some of the modules. It especially hurts, because they are awesome SR GMs. If they sucked as GMs, I'd just fine new ones that used canon fluff more.

Le sigh.

[/Threadhijack]

-Ariketh