Campaign Beginning

(I want to see what the reaction to the introduction to my latest campaign is. Dropping new players into something chaotic.)
(RECOMMENDED LISTENING: youtube.com/watch?v=PFk8HM7L5KE )

Welcome to L-Town, Greenie. It ain't like it was. Never is, but still.

See, back in the day there was a big rumble on the horizon. The Redcats, neko girl gang with more firepower than you can shake a stick at, baddest bitches in all of MC, come knocking on L-Town's door. Tons of areas they've taken from smaller cliques. When they come knocking, it's a matter of time. Nobody out here dared stand up to them, especially not back in '07 when this all popped off. Nobody save one guy: D-H.

D-H was a cowboy rocker, an oldschool one who embraced the newschool whenever he felt like it, and since the Redcats had control over Chrome rock and Rave most everywhere, he wasn't taking it. This dude fought three Redcat assassins barehanded and downed them before even drawing his gun to pick off six more. He became the hero that the small-time gangs needed, and from the shanties to the stacks the big gangs like the Lottomen, The Dangerous Motherfuckers MC, and even Whozon's First and the Big Pandawa triad were lining up to have his back. The war was long and bloody, and in 2010 they cut a deal: the redcats would keep the northern edge of L-Town in exchange for D-H leaving town. The bastard complied, taking off to the Red Desert. The Redcats kept to their word for four years.

During the first of those four years, the truce held. This was L-Town's golden era. The cliques got on, everybody did business, and there was enough market for small-timers and bigshots alike. Nobody needed to muscle anybody because even if you had two guys dealing on the same turf, they either dealt different shit or there were so many customers a handful of dealers could never sell to all of them alone anyway. You could get cheap black market software, scrap and salvage was booming, and there were people coming in to help build a treetop city in the godwood overgrowth (a big magical forest that won't die back and swallowed up part of the city) in order to start tackling the problem of dangerous wildlife. Then, the beef started.

Tower 1 and Tower 2 out in the Genforte Stacks hosted a pair of gangs with very different preferences in sporting event. The Lucky Puckers were all about hockey, whereas the ultra-patriotic Flag bastards were looking to watch a baseball game. Now, something happened, some shindig lost to the ages, where the LPs were hanging watching the MC Cup. They were drinking and partying like anybody else, but right as the clock goes into overtime, the Flag Bastards change the channel to a local baseball game they felt like watching. This started a brawl which led to a lot of politics. The bosses of both crews got their tower blocks involved, and soon, there were rivalries between a number of crews, dividing themselves into 'Evens' (gangs from even numbered towers) and 'Odds' (gangs from the other side).

This chaotic period took up another year, maybe year and a half. A lot of gangs didn't survive the wars. Yoyo Girl Army Kill All, for example, was fractured, and members of it ended up defecting to the (now pacified) Redcats. The Razors were shot to pieces outside their tower block during a run to get some smokes and beers. The Coppertops, thinking they had developed a new superweapon (some kind of homemade, rigged-together mortar), blew themselves to hell when it malfunctioned and took a good portion of the roof of their stack hab with it. The Malfioli family died shooting like the oldschool mobsters they idolized, holed up behind their armored cars til they finally were overwhelmed. And the Dawn ghosts? They killed enough enemy gang members to lift their blood curses, and just sort of ascended to their afterlife all at once. That's just a few. The herd got thinned plenty, though there's still too many fuckin gangs around here if you ask me.

Eventually, a few of the gangs from both sides of the aisle came together and admitted that, since the fiercest beefs were all taken care of, the only guys who wanted to keep fighting were the ones who started it. So the other crews backed off. In reaction, the leader of the Flag Bastards decided he'd set himself up a deal with the leader of a gang on his side of the street: The Rust Promoters. These guys had a boss who was some kind of wizard who put his brain in a robot body, and he was damned good at whipping up arcane shit. Some kind of deal was worked out where the FBs paid this guy to make suits of living armor that would kill off the Lucky Puckers for good.

Surprise, surprise, turns out the things are chock-full of evil spirits. The armor began to create more of its kind and even took on a 'wearer' that it keeps alive in some kind of weird mockery of life. The armors took over tower 4, calling themselves the 'Knights of Voidmetal' and they are attempting to perform some kind of ritual to bring back a moon god. Still at it, too. Nobody's dealt with that yet. Either way, the rust Promoters and their allies got evicted, big time, and had to shack up in Tower 6 with the Dangerous Motherfuckers, some crazy bikers who only ever got along with a gang of greasers they roomed with. They already had problems (and still do) with sewer mutants tunneling up into their building and squatting in the basement levels, so the place is pretty fuckin crowded for their liking, which leads to occasional 'outbursts'.

With all this insanity going on in the towers, a bunch of new cliques show up to cause havoc. The Pandawa triad breaks their alliances, stealing weapons in order to tool up against a crazy robot and his clique who decided they were (quite literally) the 'Kings of the Night Market'. In the shanties south of the stacks, Whozon's first loses its leader to old age, and nobody has any control of the gang, leaving new psychogangs like the Crucifix Kidz, Love Is A Battlefield, and Joust to make moves on the traditionally peaceful neighborhood with the intent of causing their own brands of havoc.

>Neko girl gang
>all these lame tryhard anime names

what the fuck

Meanwhile, in Tower 2 where the Flag Bastards were, they had zero cash to burn having given it all to the Rust Promoters for payment. The gangs in their building became more and more desperate for cash, and now pretty much everyone But the Flag Bastards has to steal to get by. They just happen to all still get on with each other because it's easier to steal things when you have a ton of friends to help you. The Flag bastards keep waging that war, hoping one day they'll be able to bag the boss of the LPs. With one tower out of commission, a number of gangs down, another tower overcrowded and fighting amongst itself and the third strapped for cash, the Evens very clearly lost the war, even if the Flag bastards insist on fighting on.

After that, the Redcats got their big break: the Local Clan was allowed to sell Blue (if you haven't tried that shit you're missin;' out), as several local clubs had been gaining popularity recently and so selling a club drug was a no-brainer. Suddenly, the Redcats weren't in hibernation, cutting off a little slice from the snowcone stalls outside gang-owned clubs or other petty shit. Suddenly they have more money than god. This worries a lot of people. Then, they do it. They Kill Greg.

Okay, rewind a bit. You see, that fancy club boom the Redcats were banking on? It was mostly because of this guy. Sure, there's other places to party in L-Town now, but a year back and before...Greg's was the nightclub to be at. Great booze, hot girls of just about whatever metatype you want, loud, pounding music of a different genre every night, and outings that got way out of control in the most fun ways...you just had to be there. Even Greg himself could be the life of the party, glorious robotic bastard he used to be. Then, Greg got clipped and replaced with a Redcat affiliate so they could push their dope easier. Sure, he's a classy guy, but to the neighborhood that loved Greg, it was war. Word about Greg got to D-H, and word was he wasn't too happy over the phone with the guy that told him. He figures the Redcats just broke their truce by whacking a local icon, and so he felt the need to do the same. But first, he made a few calls.

He hopped a train to MC, but the Redcats were ready, sending interceptors. Word is he killed em all with nothing but his six-shooter, though he was worse for wear when he got back into town. They wanted him exceptionally bad, and they had a good reason. See, he'd found a contact who could make Blue of his own, and of higher quality than the Redcats. Had a secret lab out in the desert, and a complex set up. Thing was, this was unheard of. Blue's crazy complex to make, and usually only the catgirls from the east know the gal who knows the gal with a means to make the stuff. Tons of gangs in MC kept their formulas a secret, and the Redcats were no exception, ferociously so.

How he got it was anyone's guess, but D-H returned to let the gangs sell Blue, to compete with Redcat country. Offers the Flag bastards a chance to sell for him if they call a truce, but they don't. His tower's even poorer now, because of it. Lets the triad in the north Sell to help them fight off the robot and his regal cape-wearing cronies. Tells Whozon's crew they need a leader before they can sell anything, and snubs em, which leaves them bitter with D-H. Nobody knows if they're gonna stay loyal or flip to the redcats side.

Meanwhile, the Odds get the right to sell Blue from D-H, a gang of his choosing from each of the three towers acting as a middleman to the other crews in their home buildings. They get crazy rich, get armed up to hell, and are prepping to counter whatever the Redcats throw at 'em. The Evens get poorer, and the Knights of Voidmetal keep doing their rituals. More conflict in tower 6 due to the overcrowding leads to a few all-out brawls. The Flag bastards STILL insist on fighting a war without anyone on their side against the LPs.

The treetop town got finished, so now there's all these toughs coming in looking to hunt monsters for their rare horns, scales and whatever the fuck else they've grown in the overgrowth. Plenty of em shack up with gangs when they realize they're cannon fodder the government supports so they don't have to send in their own guys. So now all these warring cliques are full of trigger-happies looking to prove themselves to anyone and everyone. Some bird-faced beaky asshole decides to take advantage, start his own club and his own gang. Now, the rave slaves are a constant problem. Guy can't make blue, yeah? So he just steals it. From Redcats, from Tower gangs, from the fuckin buyers of other dealers. He just has them swipe as much as they can to resell in his club. He pays them in the shit they steal, so he makes cash hand over fist and he's pissed off everyone doing it. Todd Ra is an asshole.

So you got Bedlam in the Night Market, bedlam in the Stack hab towers, and bedlam in the shanty towns. Pretty much the only safe place is the Clubs, unless you're going to that one down south. That place...yeah, the cops don't go anywhere south of the clubland district for a reason. Parties can get plenty wild but you might get robbed, stabbed or rolled. Not where I'd go to party, man. Ra's club, scummy as the guy is, is at least a safe spot if you don't get in bad with the Rave Slaves. Same with the Redcats club. Everywhere else, there's a good chance of catching a stray bullet, brass knuckle or STD.

(The party is a sentient bear with a mohawk, an alien with no english skills and a rocket launcher arm, a man who can turn into a horde of snakes and an 80s computer hacker who can hack things with his brick cell phone. This is my attempt to take a jab at the 'mod everything' sandbox games and go overboard.)

Sounds neat OP. Good luck out there.

As someone who has run a whole fuckload of anime inspired RPGs your problem seems to be the word salad doesn't have a simple hook at the start and so isn't memorable.

Boil it down to.a simple narration and introduce factions and backstory a bit at a time. My way is to have handouts for the players as a kind of glossary of stuff a character would know, and add to it. Makes it easier to help the group remember NPCs and speculate.

For example I ran a mecha campaign. There was a lot of backstory for those interested but I could sum it all up as "China and Japan are at war over alien tech found in an asteroid".

Likewise the Jojo-style game I ran - "You are members of superhero Interpol investigating an evil secret society called the Human League"

...is...is all this an Intro? Or thinly veiled "look at my cool setting...I have no friends to play with cause I chased em away"

I'll be honest here, i kinda zoned out on a second post and zoned in only in the end.

As said, start from something small, then go full autism with your worldbuilding when your players are hooked and invested.

If you start ANY form of media with long expisionary narration people are just go in to zone the fuck out. It's the same for movies, tv, books, and yes, RPGs too. I got about three sentences in before I saw the length of your entire post and zoned the fuck out. Drop your players in somewhat cold, maybe with some brief setting explanation during char gen, then as things progress explain more and more.

I feel if you go for the big narration drop you just have to re-explain things once players are actually invested and asking questions. Your just end up answering questions that you've already answered, because none of them were paying attention to your ridculously long word vomit.

If I'm starting the players mid-action I usually give about 3-4 sentences to set the scene then quiet down my voice and say, "Now roll initiative". That gets people excited since they immediately get to interact with the game world. You can explain the enviroment then and the allies of the fight more as they take actions. Since the players know these descriptions will have a direct effect on them they'll actually care.