Short Supplements for Black Tokyo

Hey, guys I'm working hard on Black Tokyo's Unlimited Edition. In the last couple of days I've added some new heroic factions to the world- a community of anime styled Catholic demonslayers based out of Nagasaki, and an anti-death penalty investigatory group run by Kitsune. They are pretty bizarre and awesome, and either faction makes great backers for a group of player characters.

I'm putting out a couple of expanded occupation books in support of Black Tokyo Unlimited. The first, Expanded Occupations: Sumotori went on sale today. It's a 10 pager focusing on the sport of sumo and includes some neat starting talents, and even a few magic items for sumo wrestling heroes.

After that you've got Expanded Occupations: Maids, which is basically going to turn Black Tokyo into sexy harem comedy. It's a pretty sweet genre book, which will be well illustrated with cool new art. This one will be bigger than EO: Sumotori, though I don't quite know by how much yet.

Expect these, and Anthros of Endara out soon.

CHRIS

Found Online.....

Found this online today. It makes me smile in a very sadistic way.

CHRIS

Good Things Finally.....

Okay, first and most importantly, President Obama was re-elected last night. I'm glad because I never want an anti-choicer elected to any position, and especially not that fuckhead Paul Ryan. Now, I mention Ryan, not Romney because throughout the campaign I got the impression that Romney believed in nothing. He'd say or do anything to win the election, because all that was important to Mitt was POWER for its own sake. It's like Mitt Romney has no idea what he wants to do with his life, except win the high score, and becoming President would be the capper in the game of his life. Ryan, on the other hand, seemed to genuinely believe all the hateful misogynist bullshit he spewed. So he's at least a man of principle, even if he is still a raging asshole.

Of course, now both men are consigned to the footnotes of history texts yet to be written. And all those idiotic "GONE 1-20-2013" bumper stickers I see on the back of F-350 Fords rumbling around town will fade in the sun, becoming nothing but mementos of the fact that that the driver's chosen pair of idiots lost. Granted they didn't lose big, but they still lost.

So what's going on on the work front? Not much these last two days actually. I spent Monday night and much of Tuesday morning trying to fix a glitch with my lap top. Fortunately, I'm pretty religious about backing up my files so I didn't lose anything I was working on. I did however, lose my research folder which contained hundreds of Wikipedia pages on Japan, which I was using for Black Tokyo. Those I'll have to download again, but no big deal. Tuesday night, I went out drinking for the first time in YEARS. I got good and hammered and watched the election in a dive bar- everyone cheered when their candidate's electoral college numbers went up, like it was a horse race. I was the only one cheering for Mr. O, however, though I do think I made up for it in spirit. Anyway, I'm nursing a faint hangover as I type this.

Up top, you've got the colored Beetelor image from the upcoming Anthros of Endara. Dan Brenus just sent this image along. He's also going to be doing 2-3 other images for AoE, which sould be out in a couple more weeks.

Blessed Be,
CHRIS

Upcoming: Anthros of Endara, More Work on Black Tokyo Unlimited and SUMOOOOOO!

So what have I been working on?

Well, for the last couple of weeks I've been doing some serious revision work on Black Tokyo. I've already just about doubled the word count of the world information found in Black Tokyo I-III, and will be adding tons more content. Since I decided the Amakaze will be major villains for the setting, this has spurred the creation of a whole bunch of new plot hooks and interactions with the other factions. I will likely do something similar to the Affiliations from Otherverse America, to reflect the different major patrons for PC groups in the setting.

Right now, if the game master wants their group to be backed by someone, their options look something like this.

The Amakaze can either be backers for a morally grey team of 'shadowrunners' or can be major adversaries. If you're working for the Amakaze, you'll be well funded, have tons of magical gear, but will be sent on lots of black ops and artifact recovery missons, and get betrayed by your backers sooner or later.

If you're working for Police Section Seven, expect to be over worked, jumping from mission to mission with little chance to breathe, making do with substandard equipment and whatever magic you can beg, borrow or steal.

If you're working the Chrysanthemum Seven, by contrast, expect to be equipped with cutting edge, Ghost in the Shell type tech, including some cyberpunk tech. Everything's still fairly mission driven though.

Project GILGAMESH is home to freaky, monstrous anti-heroes using horrible bio-tech culled from the body of a slumbering god- a kind of Guyver, Neon Genesis Evangelion feel.

If you're working directly for the Imperial House of Japan, you're the 'big damn heroes' of the setting- paladin-esque good guys.

Of course, you could have a group sponsored by one of the 'magical high schools' in the setting: Clovers Academy, the Hanging Academy and the Monster's Juku. Tonight I want to write out a magical elementary or middle school, in case players want to skew younger. The elementary school will have a frilly, girly, shojo feel to it, thought it might have a bit of lolicon undercurrent. Why not?

Anyway, I figure that each prefecture and each backer represents a different 'feel' a different genre, of not just hentai, but anime in general. I figure that will open up tons of design space, and give the setting a much greater versatility, as well as making it more interesting for me to write.

I'll put up some previews in another few days.

So what else is going on? Well, I'll have the last art on Anthros of Endara soon, and that will go up. I'm also waiting on an Amanda Webb piece, which I'll use to illustrate a 10 pager Expanded Occupations: Sumo PDF. That one will focus on expanding the Athlete starting occupation into a full mini-campaign, with tons of info on sumo, both in the real world and in Black Tokyo. I came across tons of good info in my research for BT Unlimited, but it's a bit too specific and too wordy for stand as a part of a larger book, so I'll break Expanded Occupation: Sumo into its own short PDF. I'm looking forward to it- it's a fun little book, so research heavy that it could almost be considered non-fiction. Very cool.

Look for Sumo and Anthros of Endara soon, plus some more cool stuff before the end of the year.
CHRIS

Upcoming Projects and Bast Rides Again

Okay, I'm going to be laying out The Modern Grimorie tonight and tomorrow, and it should be up in a couple of days. Right now, unless I add another spell or two, the Grimorie stands at 119 spells for modern and sci-fi gaming.

Sex and Story just hit and seems to be selling very well. Free20: Fight for Choice should be coming out sooner or later, probably this week.

I'm working on Black Tokyo's Unlimited Edition, and having a great time of it. As I mentioned last post, I'm going prefecture by prefecture. My original draft had most of the plot hooks concentrated in three main locations: Tokyo, which is understandable because it's both one of the largest cities on the planet and because it is part of the campaign's NAME, and Northern Japan, specifically the Amori Prefecture and Okinawa. I knew those last two the best because I was stationed at Misawa AFB for about two years, and as a military guy, I'm plenty familiar with Okinawa as well.

Anyway, as I'm laying out the new edition, I'm trying to give the rest of the country more love and some more screen time as well. As I'm writing, I've noticed several plot threads starting to emerge, each of which could be the center piece of a campaign. So far we have a 'magic high school' thread, a 'artificial girls' thread, a 'blue collar modern magic' thread and a 'mythical police' military thread. I'm also building in tons more NPCs and supporting characters and I think I will include a fictionalized version of Princess Aiko as a benefactor and force for good in the campaign- a kind, innocent child empress that sends good guy PCs on missions.

The artificial girls thread is something that just jumped out at me... you have all these artificially created female races running around Black Tokyo as store-bought magi-tech sex slaves, and in many cases the artificial women are smarter and more determined then the men who buy them.So that creates an interesting dynamic and opens up some cool plot hooks.

Anyway, with Otherverse America, I had the core conflict and main storyline mapped out before I wrote a single page, though occasionally new elements would creep in and take my setting in a new direction: the Nuremberg AI especially. With Black Tokyo Unlimited it's less planned out. I have some things I want to explore- the role of women in Japan, surviving rape, turning weakness into strength, raunchy sexual humor and extreme fetish elements, which I think a hentai adventure game can be a good fit for. However, beyond those rough concepts, I'm just letting ideas come as the come.

Should be interesting to see where everything ends up.

Finally, a cute Halloween note.

One of my coworkers told me this morning her 9 year old daughter picked out her costume early and was now bored with it. While my friend wasn't going to buy her daughter an entirely new costume, she was thinking of modding the existing one to make it more fun for her kid. I asked her what the costume was, thinking I might have an idea.

My friend replied her daughter had picked out a Cleopatra costume. Now, I was kinda amazed that a 3rd grader even knew Cleopatra, but told her why not do an Egyptian god? Get a dog mask or a fake snout and she could be Anubis, a beak and some feathers in her hair she could go as Toth or Horus (and I know those are male gods,but in a kid's Halloween costume, theological accuracy is neither needed nor required)...or she could get cat ears and some whiskers and go as Bast. My friend loved the last idea the best, so I think as a result of this conversation, an adorable little Bast will be trick or treating Wednesday night.

Blessed Be,
CHRIS

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

Anthros of Endara: The Beetleor

Just received this rough sketch of a Beetleor warrior, from the upcoming Anthros of Endara. The piece is by Dan Brenus, a cool Italian artist who posts kick ass fan art regularly on He-Man.Org and other MOTU fansites. I reached out to him at the beginning of this project because he's going to help really establish Endara as a faithful homage to Eternia.


Blessed Be,
CHRIS