In the comments of a previous post, Alzrius posted this, in response to a question I posed about what he would like to see in future Black Tokyo releases:
alzrius said...
Wow, has it taken me too long to get back to you on this! Sorry for the delay, Chris.
In
regards to what's missing from Black Tokyo, I think you've already got a
fairly good handle on what's missing - namely, setting material that's
more focused on the campaign as a PLACE, than on the mechanics. I
remember being fairly confused by the location material in the first
Black Tokyo, so something that tries to flesh that out more (pun
intended) would be welcome.
As it is, I don't quite understand
things like the setting's planar structure (this doesn't mean it needs
to use mechanical planar traits, though that would be a nice extra) -
the language seems to be alluding to it, rather than saying in the
plainest possible way just what the Tatakama actually IS and how it
interacts with the Material Plane.
Do the people living in
(Black) Tokyo know about this? Or is it generally hidden from the public
eye? Does it only affect Tokyo and the surrounding parts of Asia, and
if so why only there?
I also think that the setting needs more
iconic characters. I don't follow the Otherverse America setting too
closely, but I still know about characters like Choice Meredith or the
Ghost of Babies Past. I can't name one individual from Black Tokyo - to
put it another way, I wish the setting got the campaign development that
Otherverse America is receiving.
In regards to what I think
Black Tokyo needs from a mechanical standpoint...what I really want, I
mean what I REALLY want to see, are ways to make sex relevant in a
mechanical context. I've blogged about this before, but ultimately
role-playing games are reward focused, and the rewards are found in the
mechanics, whether in-game (e.g. treasure) or meta-game (e.g. experience
points). What's necessary to make sex truly tempting to the
player-characters, rather than just the players (which would be awkward
anyway) is a way for it to have some sort of reward mechanic. That's
damn hard to do, however, and just handing out XP for having sex with a
creature ("seXP"?), a la the Well Educated Slut spell (from TotT) isn't
enough (and has its own problems).
Ultimately, the game needs not
only a way to make sex have a reward mechanic, but also make sex (and,
perhaps, a wider array of non-combat interactions) have as many options
and variables as combat does now. However, I've only seen one attempt to
make any such thing in the d20 System, and it remains unfinished and
forgotten by the fans who were making it (due to the Book of Erotic
Fantasy taking the wind out of their collective sails).
There are
other, easier-to-attain things I'd like the setting to have, of course.
I think you were wrong to immediately renounce "loli"-type material
(the nikusui notwithstanding), though to be fair I also can't think of
much in the way of mechanics for such a theme (beyond just saying "bust
this race down one size category" or perhaps an erotic version of your
Innocent base class).
I hesitate to say, where are the combat
rules for sexually assaulting a character? In Black Tokyo, that's going
to come up, either by a PC or an NPC.
I'd also like to see some
sort of "sex magic" supplement, but I'm not sure how well that'd work
with the Vancian casting that the d20 system uses. That is, this is how
sex can be incorporated into the actual method of casting spells, rather
than just new spells based around eroticism.
Those are just some off-the-cuff ideas, but I think they'd be cool to see.
