Cyberpunk Japan

I love this book, it's like the anti-weeb's guide to Cyberpunk Japan and has soo many take-that's concepts from anime, manga and video games.

It even has the "Kami Kill Club" a grimdark parody of Pokemon where genetically engineered bioforms with cute, colorful looks and weird animal weaponry like claws, teeth, tentacles and poison glands are forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the home audience.

The only way to get your weeb shit right is to become a weeb. Go watch cyberpunk anime (it's the current year and you should be able to google this and find a relevant list) and try not to be a cringe-worthy faggot about the memes and pidgin Japanese, nobody likes that shit. Stream and you're a faggot; setting up a video player is not hard and something you can also Google, I'll take the high road and assume you lack brain problems.

You'll know that your prerequisite knowledge is complete when you find yourself having watched things that they haven't watched yet. That is to say, you need to be better at being a weeb then them. As writing something based off of a medium, genre, or style, normally requires knowledge of it.

Also, do some research into this place.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejima

Have fun, omae.

I don't know much about Japanese cyberpunk user (other than that you'll have people who are incredibly loyal to their corps, both at the sarariman and at the executive level, and that body horror should be emphasised a fair bit), but I'm going to do an imagedump

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This one I feel is relevant enough I don't feel bad about posting the whole card

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Where was the link for that?
Kinda late here, I can't find it

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I just opened the OP pdf and ctrl+F'd for "interface zero" with hope in my heart, and there it was.

I could only find Core and Hacking

Which is great, but I was looking for the Jap one - is it there and I'm too tired to find it?

>empire of the setting sun

God even the title dig at japan.

Does Interface Zero have the obligatory Asian Superpower in the setting then?

Or did the pendulum shift so far America and Europe is in charge and everyone is going around dressing like mediaeval Knights or Cowboys?

Oh. Please excuse me for being a giant blistering retard. Here's the japan one.
img.fireden.net/tg/image/1459/45/1459454168565.pdf

No.

In Interface Zero the Chinese Communist Party were overthrown in a bloodless coup. China's new rulers, the Mandarins proceeded to re-establish Confucianism and Chinese Legalism. In theory this should have created an enlightened meritocracy, but in practice the Mandarinate are aggressive, expansionist and imperialist.

The Chinese army, bolstered by limitless legions of expendable clones and robots have conquered all of East Aisia with the sole exception of Japan, who now live under the specter of an imminent Chinese invasion.

In response, the Military took over and re-established the Shogunate system. All in the name of security, of course.

In a word, the Asian superpower is China.

In fact, China is the sole superpower in Interface Zero's 2090, and that's scary as fuck since they are very much the bad guys in the setting.

>restablish Confucianism and Chinese Legalism.
That's sound really... stupid, even for cyberpunks usual hard on for neo-whatever throwbacks.

At least Japan is fairly traditionalist to begin. Neo Confucianism doesn't even have the cool factor desu.

Thanks man

Man, I have seen some stupid maps in my time, but holy shit that has to be one of the worst

It makes a little more sense with the back story, to put it mildly, India and Pakistan ruined everything for everyone.

Even with that being the case, you don't draw a North-South border directly through Russia, and you certainly don't do it through the middle of nowhere Siberia

>China
>A superpower
What a meme. Manpower in the 21st century doesn't mean anything, and it's the only thing China has going for it. The country is doomed to be irrelevant by 2025.

And I've said this before and I'll say it again, the idea of a nuclear power ever being annexed is silly.

Russo-Jap Union > China

>The chinks didn't capture Omsk
>Or Nowosibirsk
What a joke.

Interface Zero's background is pretty stupid.

>Chinese Mandarinate? Bwahahaha!!! That's one of the dumbest thing I've ever read in a cyberpunk setting.
>Japanese Shogunate? WTF? Japan didn't a shogunate to join WWII. Some powerful zaibatsu, nationalist Buddhist monks, and secret societies were all it needed.

They fucked up the UK too
more than we already did

I've heard pretty good things about the system thought. Is it one of those things you can ignore easily?

What a silly fucking disclaimer.

I would also like to mention that Interface Zero is absolutely not in the spirit of Japanese cyberpunk. Even Cyberpunk 2020 has more Jap influence (Mike Pondsmith is a huge weeab).

Here's some inspiration for you:
A.D. Police
Appleseed
Armitage III
Cyber City OEDO 808
Ergo Proxy
Ghost in the Shell

The cyberpunk thing to do would be not to put a fucking gay disclaimer in the first place.

If you like the system, go for it. Lots of people seem to enjoy it and I don't know it well enough to give any positive or negative feedback about it. I made a superficial reading of Interface Zero 2.0 and didn't like the background so much.

Forgot to mention the HL2 mod NeoTokyo. It has some pretty good visuals and an excellent soundtrack (youtube.com/watch?v=0t4fGJep748).

Probably as revenge for the Opium Wars.

>Even Cyberpunk 2020 has more Jap influence
Cyberpunk 2020 is more heavy on the Euro influence. The European Economic Community is the big powerhouse in 2020. Though, as you said, the Nipponese are still around and doing stuff.

To add to that list as well, Bubblegum Crisis. Priss is in fact the original rockergirl.

No, I meant IZ's writers.
For some reason I don't think our northern cities are going to go back to 1800s-esque industrial workhouses regardless of how fucked the world gets.

I don't think IZ's writers know how the world works. They have the geopolitical knowledge of Twilight 2013's writers. I think some people sometimes forget that Cyberpunk was meant to be a hard scifi genre.

Greatest ded game

Is anyone else captcha getting weird? The last five posts in a row look different/crappier, and instead of verifying it gives me a huge code to copypaste into a text box.

Happens sometimes, just refresh a bit

>direct astral projection into magical drug cyberspace where the ghost of your ex gf lives
>hardscifi

That being said, most rpg writers have very little political science, philosophy, economic theory, sociology, or any of the shit that's useful for creating cohesive and believable worlds. Doubly so in scifi because they're mostly STEM-worshipping-without-understanding neets.

No shit man, it was considered a hard scifi genre back in the day. Are you saying the Matrix isn't possible? Because it totally is. The Flatline from Neuromancer was just a digital copy, and it's mentioned several times that it's not actually the real thing.

That said, I think GURPS Cyberworld presents a very believable cyberpunk world, with only a slight exception made for Russia and Japan deciding to work together
SAKHALIN IS NIPPONESE

Twilight 2000's writers also seemed to know what they were talking about, giving a pretty believable WW3 scenario. Aside from those two though, nothing super believable comes to mind.

That is what I'm saying. Direct neural copy/simulation of consciousness in the ways imagined by cyberpunk and transhumanists is flying car bullshit. You can keep hoping for digital heaven if you want though. I'm sure as fuck not going to argue with you on the internet about it.

Are you saying that it thinks in the same manner as humans, and isn't totally alien? Remember, the Flatline wasn't a direct copy. It was some weird psuedo-AI program that used whoever his name was as a base.

As a neurobiologist, it seems perfectly reasonable that at some point we could map brain patterns and transfer them to a digital medium to be emulated. What makes you think otherwise? Genuinely, I want to know.

Japanese corporations also have flags, anthems, and a corporate culture of silence and maintaining face to the outside world that is similar to that of organized crime, like the Mafia's code of omerta.

Personally, I say depict American and Chinese megacorps like the multinats in When Gravity Fails (they move in, hire people, and then lay them all off once they've extracted everything of worth from the area). The unfeeling, blind, and bland Walmart-Foxconn style corporation. Japanese corps as your typical Gibson zaibatsu (which were inspired by Japanese corporate culture) with the company loyalty and true company men.

Here's WGF's writeup of the multinats this user mentioned.

Problem with that is that the company will end up with thousands of disgruntled employees. And disgruntled employees are never good. They might sell valuable intel to your worst enemies or sabotage their work.

In a world where the multinats just do service industry and resource extraction shit, there are no high-tech secrets to sell to rivals. 80's style cyberpunk with its emphasis on hi-tech industry was wildly optimistic.

Though even with most multinats being Walmart/Foxconn, I guess someone has to be the Apple. But they are probably a weird cult and have the least possible number of employees.

There are some things in Interface Zero's Japan that don't make any sense in light of Japanese culture. The writing overall just seems too "American" in a lot of ways.

For example, the Kamicuties. These were simple bioforms, about a foot tall at most with a cute, colorful appearance based on Japanse mythology and equipped with a rudimentary intelligence and able to warble a few stock phrases. Obviously designed as pets for kids. They were quite the craze to, had an anime and everything. Then the kids grew up, moved out and massive numbers of Kamicuties were abandoned in the countryside. Since then,feral Kamicuties have become a massive pest problem in rural areas.

This doesn't make much sense though. Since in contemporary Japanese culture, cutness really is not something you "grow out of" the way it is in the West. It's not like pet abandonment is any less of a problem than anywhere else, but still. That scenario, however hilarious, doesn't seem to fit.

I was gonna open up a new thread for this but I guess this is already Cyberpunk.

I wanna run a Cyberpunk 2020 game soon, my friends have never played before and I only played it 4-5 times when I was a teenager, I've asked my old DM for help but he's 40 and has kids and hasn't gotten back to me yet.

I wanna know how much of the base game is necessary, I know when we played our DM cut Netrunners completely and I'm thinking of doing the same, they look like they only serve to slow the game down. Any ideas or houserules you'd recommend?

Also, is there any 'condensed history' of Cyberpunk 2020? I'm planning to set it in England, I have the sourcebook for Europe and the one for the UK, but I want a quick reference to how shit got fucked across the world.

Here's my extremely convoluted and needless houserule list (I typically don't use all of them, it's more or less a list of shit I thought up and will likely never use) pastebin.com/rb6cc4ZX

Pic related is Pt. 1 of your 2020 world history lesson.

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There, that's about 5 books of lore condensed a lot. It misses some stuff like the Second Korean War leading to unification, and the Japanese/Arasaka invasion of Vietnam, but whatever.

Thanks my dude x

Give me a few seconds here, and I'll post the American specific timeline, as well as the Asian specific one.

I'm kind of just wanting something to say to my players to tell them where they are and how they got there, something brief as I'm not planning on my campaign being grand, I just want them to be in the setting without having to write my own course of events, like I had to for D&D

The Yakuza are small fry compared to the big Japanese keiretsu, whose distinguishing feature is that they are "owned by no-one" because of their complex, interlocking cross-sharingholding stock structures that work both vertically and horizontally.

The Yaks only run a few small to medium size companies, usually in the real estate, enterainment and retail sectors, where it's easiest to extort protection money and squat on property while intimidating the real owners.

The Yakuza don't own anything in Toyota, Mitsubishi, NTT, etc. It's the government, both at the national and prefecture level, that has its fingers in all kinds of commerce and industry, and often strategically invests in order to strong-arm various corporations into doing something shady or illegal.

Guys, what is EC? I bet it's something super obvious that I'm not putting together but they keep mentioning it in the sourcebooks and don't mention what it means at any point.

European Community = European Union. EC was the name before 1992, IIRC, when the Treaty of Maastricht went into effect IRL and changed the name.

Nice one, I was born in 95 and i guess it's something that doesn't come up very often

Interface Zero's setting has some real howlers in it (eg, Africa becoming the global banking & genetic research center), but China as a superpower is not one of them. China is already a superpower. It has the second-largest economy, approaching the size of the USA, with a manufacturing base that is 20% larger than the US. It has the world's largest banks, now. The world's largest foreign assistance program; the world's longest high-speed train network, etc. etc. etc. That's now. In 20xx it might be 3x larger.

That said, China annexing Siberia/Yakutia with military force is a none-starter, given Russia's massive working nuclear arsenal. There's no "it's magic, ain't got to explain shit" stuff like in Shadowrun, so unless Russia SELLS those territories (a possibility), there's no way it's falling to China. SE Asia, though, is quite another story. China could steamroll those countries today, if it wanted to and if the USA wasn't inclined to intervene on a scale comparative to WW2.

But China is not a superpower in the way the CCCP and USA were. Their nuclear arsenal is pathetic (Low amounts of 400kt-ish strategic warheads, and hardly any, if any at all, tactical warheads) their military uses equipment that you would expect to see a 1980s Soviet soldier wielding, they have nearly no international pull or allies (NATO, Warszawa Pact, etc), etc, etc. They are economically strong, but they're not a superpower. They don't control the world the way the USA or CCCP did.

>talking about anime in broken and incorrect japanese in english characters.

T-thats not how you guys play cyberpunk games?

M-me either hahaha.

>broken and incorrect japanese in english characters.

Implying this doesn't describe 90% of future Cyberpunk slang.

Shit, I got China mixed up with Pakistan in the nuclear weapon thing. They have limited amounts of 10mt strategic weapons. Still, not having tactical nuclear weapons just kills your ability to wage any sort of winnable nuclear war. Strategic weapons are a joke, really.

Forget "traditional" Japan, it's cyberpunk, so read a bit about the specificity of japanese corporativism.

My take on japanese megacorps in a cyberpunk world would be
They don't might not give a shit about consumers and even less about human life in general, but they do care about their loyal employees, who usually serve a single corporation for life. That doesn't mean they aren't expected to work their asses off and respect the strict hierarchy.
Also bloodline would matter, and it would be hard for someone to rise to the top on merit alone.

China is far stronger than the Soviet Union ever was, because of its economic strength and global financial reach. The SU was weak economically, often could not even feed its people (it had to buy grain from the USA at more than one time) and that in turn corroded its military strength. Let me repeat: China now has the world's largest banks and is the largest lender in the world. The Soviets could only have dreamed of such financial strength...which in turn feeds into military spending, which is on track to match US spending (from a lower % of GDP level) in about 8 years.

Your impression of Chinese military hardware and training is about 15 years out of date. Read the latest report, linked from this synopsis here:

nationalinterest.org/feature/the-pentagons-2016-china-military-report-what-you-need-know-16209

China matches the US in naval surface ship capability (with the exception of aircraft carriers), submarines, stealth fighters (with the exception of high-performance aero-engines), land platforms, special forces; and exceeds the US in missile tech, HGVs and possibly offensive lasers.

And China has saved itself about $600 billion in R&D costs by stealing all the plans for the US's most high tech weapon platforms, including the F-35.

>you certainly don't do it through the middle of nowhere Siberia
It's a military front along the Yenisei River, in the region of Krasnoyarsk, you bumblefuck. It makes perfect sense.

Man, I can't believe I'm actually defending IZ, but these posters are retards who can't even spend 5 minutes in Google Maps.

Why do people seem to forget this: america owns china. Economically we're one of the sole providers. We cut the tap they starve. This lets us sell them shit they don't want to sell for less than its worth again that way we have money to stay ontop of the debt and they have money to live. This is why any realistic future war scenario where china comes out ahead of america or even aims their guns at america is pure trash as they simply can't survive without us. Those manufacturing bases that are 20% larger? We supply them with 80-95% of their raw materials then buyback the cheaper made products than if we did it at home. We put the banks there cause they have far less restrictive laws for capital and therefore far less loss.
Beyond that any nation that aspires to crush us is shorter sighted than trump as we also are the heart of the global market and if we die in that aspect the world dies. China would never and will never become a super power in the form america is nor will india or any middle eastern country and so long as the european bloc stands neither will any of them.

There's nothing bullshit about flying cars

Then why aren't you driving one now?

We're not talking about technology here, we're talking economics.

Huh, those damn psuedo commies seem to have gotten ahead while I was looking away.

I'll still say they have no international pull like America or the CCCP did. I have not once heard of Chinese funded juntas, and as we all know, every good superpower throws coups and sets up juntas.

In all seriousness though, in a land war against Russia, China is going to lose. If they managed to make such significant gains that they reached the Jenisej river, the Russians would begin using tactical nuclear weapons. In the best case scenario, it would end with both of the nation's forces being decimated, realistic case China and Russia collapse, worst case America considers reissuing its nuclear assistance pact with China. Warfare in the 21st century just can not be theater-wide without the introduction of nuclear weapons, assuming no ceasefire is called for before that.

Obligatory tropical Britain's fucked

Partly right on the first one, but hilariously wrong on the rest.

>Why do people seem to forget this: america owns china.
No. The US and China are financially co-dependent. But so were the UK and Germany in 1913.

>Economically we're one of the sole providers. We cut the tap they starve.
No, again. The US accounts for ~22% of the world economy, less by PPP.

>This lets us sell them shit they don't want to sell for less than its worth again that way we have >money to stay ontop of the debt and they have money to live.
That's partly right. The Chinese are producing some products very efficiently and some very inefficiently (at a lose). And their debt is skyrocketing faster than anyone else's.

>This is why any realistic future war scenario where china comes out ahead of america or even aims their guns at america is pure trash as they simply can't survive without us.

No. They would get hurt, but they could survive, and if they conquered most of East Asia in the process they could thrive in the future.

>Those manufacturing bases that are 20% larger? We supply them with 80-95% of their raw materials then buyback the cheaper made products than if we did it at home.

Completely wrong. Please consult these tables:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China

The US is certainly a large market for the Chinese, but so is the EU. And so is the rest of the world. And if the Chinese capture East Asia, they have the world's largest captive market. It would put the Imperial Preference system of the British Empire to shame.

>We put the banks there cause they have far less restrictive laws for capital and therefore far less loss.

Pardon? Those are Chinese banks. Foreigners have no control over them. They are controlled by the State Council. And they have far MORE restrictions over capital over there.

>and so long as the european bloc stands neither will any of them.

Sounds like pure bluster.

You seem to not be accounting for globalization. If China went to war with America, the very world would find itself on its knees thanks to the global economy dying.

>I have not once heard of Chinese funded juntas
You haven't read enough then. Myanmar, Laos, Eritrea, Congo among many others are huge Chinese client states. Not ideologically like during the Cold War, but economically. And that suffices.

China has a larger internal population than the entire Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It doesn't need feckless allies. It has all the manpower it needs.

And? All of Europe went to its knees during WW1 and WW2, because of the imperial ambitions of Germany. You think countries won't go to war because of this nebulous concept of "globalization"? The world was more globalized in 1890, according to The Economist, than it was in 2005. Globalization is not a cure-all for war. It ebbs and flows and sometimes, like in the 1940s, almost disappears. That can happen again.

What I want to know is (and this actually pertains to my actual IRL situation), is what will happen to the Chinese diaspora around the world if China becomes the Evil Superpower that IZ envisions?

Will the US deport Chinese? Will there be Free Chinese like there were Free French during WW2? Will the Imperial Chinese have a racial hierarchy as the Imperial Japanese did?

If IZ wants to tackle tough questions about politics, it should answer some of these.

Manpower doesn't mean anything in the 21st century. Manpower becomes more and more irrelevant as tech and doctrine progresses.

Oh man, if the Africans thought Europeans were bad, they are going to be very surprised once the Chinese start going "You want industrialization and respect on world stage?" "Too bad, you colony now, fuck you."

>I'll still say they have no international pull like America or the CCCP did.
No? I'd say they have more. There are Chinese in almost every country in the world. Americans aren't in every country in the world in anywhere such numbers. Nor were the Soviets.

nature.com/nature/journal/v527/n7577_supp/full/527S68a.html

>Chinese outside mainland China
>Hong Kong
I know that's technically right, but it's still hilarious.

I guess you're still waiting for the day Iceland becomes the global hegemon. Human capital is tremendously important to CNP.

Manpower is the basis of economic mass. It's not everything of course, but it's the foundation. Upon that foundation you lay technology, productivity, innovation, investment, financing, exports and education. China has advanced an amazing distance on those factors in the last 30 years, nearly matching or even exceeding the US in that time.

Read up on Comprehensive National Power some time.

Well yeah. China is a benevolent imperial power now, but man it can get nasty in a very short period of time. Just because they were on the losing end in the 19th/20th centuries doesn't mean they were nice guys.

That's kind of a non-issue in IZ. There was a civil war in the United States in the 2060's after an extremely low turnout election put the worst elements of the Religious Right in power. This includes a president so much like Ted Cruz it's actually scary.

When the dust settled, the US had been torn apart and we'd managed to drag Canada into the war as well. The Treaty of Tokyo was signed after it was found that reconciliation was impossible and the United States was partitioned into a half-dozen new countries.

>Ted Cruz is the cyberpunk president
>Not Donald Trump
He's making America great again. Seriously, the character is so much like Trump it's scary.

>highly competent design engineer
>started a big tech company

That doesn't look anything like Trump.

Ted Cruz actually scares me way more than Donald Trump. Say what you will about the Don, at least he wasn't raised from birth to believe he's a divinely appointed "King" who was chosen to claim the American government for Christ and pave the way for something called "The End Times Transfer of Wealth."

President Webber from IZ pretty much matches that to a t.

youtube.com/watch?v=kNa5w9js48s

That's more on the "He's a corporate" generalization, rather than the specifics. He's far right wing, corporate, wants to make America great again, you know, the Trump stereotypes.

Dude, stop harping on your pet political peeves. Those clips you're posting don't match any of the current political players.

And the Cyberworld timeline is even more hilariously ridiculous than the Interface Zero one.

>Chilentina
>Russo-Japan
>Fucking Australian ayyy-lmaos

>Australia will never be killed by a plague
The real world timeline sucks.

It's at least better than Cyberspace's wacky ass timeline.

It does indeed. And I still miss my neural interface plug. But such is the nature of cyberpunk.

Hmm, seems a bit more coherent to me. A Japan-US war was speculated on by a lot of people in the 1980s. Most "experts" thought Japan would dominate the US and the only option was to fight a war.

Just goes to show you that nobody is an expert on the future.

>2032 - Megacorporations start loaning money to hard-pressed governments

Dudes, that started happening around the 12th century. It was called the Medicis and Borgias et al., who were the megacorporations of their day.

You're all wrong, Canada will the future global superpower:

akarlin.com/2011/06/future-superpowers/