Thursday, October 25, 2012

Arranging Black Tokyo

Okay, this last week (in between brawling with punks) I have been working on Black Tokyo's Ultimate Edition, a revision which has been long in coming and sorely needed.

Black Tokyo really began as a whim, just something I wanted to try and see if it worked or not. It was only with Black Tokyo II and beyond that I really started concerning myself with coherent world building. So, compared to Otherverse America which I'd been working on for YEARS before publication, Black Tokyo's map seems a little empty. One of the things I plan to do now is give a greater focus on the setting's villains and their plots.

The Four Big Bads are:

We have the Amakaze (from BT II) which are basically cruel, capitalist undead master manipulators.

The Ubume Empress represents female guilt and misogyny, and is a kick ass Easter Egg (Ostara Egg??) linking Black Tokyo and Otherverse America.

The Genbu, slumbering somewhere in the Sea of Othosk, who is basically a Godzilla/Tarresque/Overfiend hybrid. I want to include a "Wake the Genbu" mechanical system, where sooner or later that fucker will wake up and rampage, and even as he starts stirring the campaign's difficulty spikes: earthquakes and other disasters plauge Black Japan, and monsters as a whole get a CR bump. Conversely, if the players can figure a way to keep the Genbu in a deeper than normal slumber, things get easier.

The Revered Shogun trapped under Marine Corps Base Okinawa. He's a mind-fuck villain, a source of corruption and insanity for the heroes.

Right now, I'm trying to decide how to lay out the book and the world information. I'm seriously considering using the image on the top right as a basis for the book's organization. Go prefecture by prefecture, list all the plothooks, major NPCs and weird locations in that prefecture and move on. I just picked up the Inner Sea World Guide, and Paizo basically does the same with Glorian's multiple countries, and that layout seems to work pretty well.

Anyway, thoughts?
CHRIS

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you ever checked out Daimyo of 1867 and its sequel work Shogun & Daimyo?

They're rather pricey, but they're incredible resources about late-historical Japan. I bought them at Gen Con and I'm slowly working my way through them; they're really spectacular.

Chris A. Field said...

Oooh, I like those. Pricey, yes but definitely cool. However, I don't think I'm going to go for that deep in terms of historical accuracy, though.

CHRIS