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Young Freud posted:I'm trying to think where this is some sort of corporate dystopia where upper management executives voluntarily ritually kill themselves for failing the company instead of running the corporation into the ground and leaving on golden parachutes to other corporations to continue doing more damage to society. In this very thread we have multiple examples of embarrassing orientalism and extremely stupid stereotypes about what Japanese culture is like. This (Shadowrun) is another.
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Feb 13, 2017 06:43
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Cinnamon Bear posted:In this very thread we have multiple examples of embarrassing orientalism and extremely stupid stereotypes about what Japanese culture is like. This (Shadowrun) is another. Yeah, everything with anything to have to do with Japan is super bad. Shadowrun is the most embarassingly orientalist RPG that is not entirely about embarassing orientalism. For example, traditionally the absolute best sword type in the game is katanas.
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Feb 13, 2017 06:50
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Ratoslov posted:Yeah, everything with anything to have to do with Japan is super bad. Shadowrun is the most embarassingly orientalist RPG that is not entirely about embarassing orientalism. For example, traditionally the absolute best sword type in the game is katanas. Young Freud posted:I'm trying to think where this is some sort of corporate dystopia where upper management executives voluntarily ritually kill themselves for failing the company instead of running the corporation into the ground and leaving on golden parachutes to other corporations to continue doing more damage to society.
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Feb 13, 2017 06:59
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Barudak posted:I think and do not quote me here, that Pushblock comes from Darkstalkers originally. Darkstalkers also features crouch walking, supers which augmented your entire move sets, and a curiously handsome fishman. Didn't know there was a 2D fighting game with crouch walking. Though I remember that Taokaka could do that. quote:The dropped combo resulting in a stun sounds like it could be many thingg s. It could be a really punishing version of a combo drop such as from games with p-linkig the worst of all combo mechanics, a blown due to randomness Faust combo, missed Jigglypuff combo, or any of a variety of supers with long built in taunt animations where if you whiff youre going to eat fist from the opponent while your character brags. Must be some kind of p-linking, maybe also combined with that weird mechanic in Brawl where running (aka trying to attack) could randomly cause you to stumble and fall. Could also work for wrestling, when one wrestler is just starting a complex series of throws only to be countered out of nowhere. Certainly is way too nasty to have on a per character basis. quote:I may have missed it but are their rules for damage scaling or the magic pixel? Every Move in a Combo after the first does half damage. The only exception from this are Moves that can only directly follow another Move that does no damage. Guy's command run that can combo into a jumping kick or slide is an example for this. The Guilty-Gear-like Block Bar in Round 2 can also cause you to suffer less damage. Magic pixels aren't really a thing since your "Life Bar" is just a number. Keeping it a secret from the opponent is not quite as useful as everyone with the same level has the same amount of health (your Stamina causes you to suffer more or less damage). The closest you might get to the magic pixel is introduce a check you can make to stay in the fight despite being at 0 Life, or have the GM secretly roll like a d4 or d3 for each Fighter and secretly add that as extra health. Barudak posted:Also if were going to design a fighter in Fight Im voting for Pullum Parna, who has lethal forced group dancing and a tag move where she hurts you by making her tag partner bounce the victim on their belly while Pullum does jump poses. Why not? The next chapter's a bit short, and she might just fight perfectly. Gotta need to research a bit first since I'm not too familiar with Street Fighter EX Doresh fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 07:12
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Cinnamon Bear posted:In this very thread we have multiple examples of embarrassing orientalism and extremely stupid stereotypes about what Japanese culture is like. This (Shadowrun) is another. At least Shadowrun gives them names and sometimes even faces. Rifts Japan will go the entire book without naming a single human living in Japan. Not one. Much like Rifts Africa, the stereotypes ring so much sharper realizing that it can't even be bothered to characterize a single person in the region. Oh, but it names some dragons!... so there's that. Doresh posted:Didn't know there was a 2D fighting game with crouch walking. Though I remember that Taokaka could do that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfGqEN5K0Dg
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Feb 13, 2017 07:18
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Ratoslov posted:For example, traditionally the absolute best sword type in the game is katanas. Not actually true, at least for the purposes of my 'Covering only 4e' review. The 4e Corebook has three separate listings that you can describe as 'Sword': The generic 'Sword', the Katana, and the 'Monofilament Sword', which is the same as the generic version but with a mono-molecular edge on it. They all have identical damage code, with the Katana and Monosword having a point of additional armor penetration and the Katana being slighty more expensive but easier to acquire and the Monosword being cheaper and harder to get. Since Katana are called out as being forged using modern techniques (including monomolecular edges), that means that (presumably) you can buy an off-brand Katana as a generic 'Sword', and the only difference between a monokatana and a monomachete is branding. Nessus posted:The katana thing could be genre-adherence... but I'm guessing, no it isn't. And they probably aren't super sick swords that just happen to resemble katanas for some reason, like in Metal Gear. That's pretty much it! The katana is popular because it's cool. and most of the current big Megacorporations have ties to japan.
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Feb 13, 2017 07:19
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wiegieman posted:Isn't everyone in darkstalkers some form of fanservice? Which is not necessarily A Bad Thing. I'm happy that fans of Australian punk zombies are represented, but I'm not sure who's getting turned on by Aztec robots or walking Suns. And I dunno who has the Bee Girl fetish. I just got the HD rerelease of Darkstalkers and the sprite art is still gorgeous. Some of Capcom's best. They made that, a Castlevania fighting game... a World of Darkness fighting game isn't the WORST idea. Though I dunno if any Hunter will be as cool as BB Hood, uzi-toting Little Red Riding Hood.
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Feb 13, 2017 07:52
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Darkstalkers is good and cool and it's sprite animations are gorgeous and should be appreciated. ...Also bee-girls is totally an uncommon-but-not-rare fetish.
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Feb 13, 2017 07:54
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I'm not sure I how I feel about Shadowrun's verson of NODAPL/Standing Rock Water Protectors almost causing WW3, but there's a ton in that book that almost works as satire. Darkstalkers does get over the top fetishy with the catgirl and the twin succubi though. In the cartoon it's worse, since the catgirl appears in some random kid's room.
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Feb 13, 2017 07:58
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Ratoslov posted:Yeah, everything with anything to have to do with Japan is super bad. Shadowrun is the most embarassingly orientalist RPG that is not entirely about embarassing orientalism. For example, traditionally the absolute best sword type in the game is katanas.
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Feb 13, 2017 08:49
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Wapole Languray posted:Tianxia Stuff Oh, hey, Tianxia! I used to hang out with Denise Jones online. She's good people.
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Feb 13, 2017 10:02
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Is there some kind of greatest hits page for people who don't want to dig through six years worth of threads?
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Feb 13, 2017 10:21
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Ghetto Prince posted:Is there some kind of greatest hits page for people who don't want to dig through six years worth of threads? Inkless Pen's directory is good. If you're looking for something like specific recommendations, you'll have to be more specific yourself. Do you like hearing about awesome games? Or trainwrecks? Long and exhaustive reviews? Or brief ones (there are very few of these, I think)? Something in between?
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Feb 13, 2017 10:39
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No. Scroll down to the bottom of the first page and you'll find the official page. Pick a game that looks interesting to you. Read the review of it. Enjoy!
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Feb 13, 2017 10:39
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Young Freud posted:I'm trying to think where this is some sort of corporate dystopia where upper management executives voluntarily ritually kill themselves for failing the company instead of running the corporation into the ground and leaving on golden parachutes to other corporations to continue doing more damage to society. This is an urban fantasy setting, so their suicide was probably an occult ritual thing.
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Feb 13, 2017 13:16
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Cythereal posted:This is an urban fantasy setting, so their suicide was probably an occult ritual thing. This is before magic came back in the timeline, though.
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Feb 13, 2017 14:05
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Crasical posted:No. It looks like inklesspen hasn't updated it since early October though. At least none of my posts since then have been grabbed.
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Feb 13, 2017 14:19
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Crasical posted:Darkstalkers is good and cool and it's sprite animations are gorgeous and should be appreciated. quote:...Also bee-girls is totally an uncommon-but-not-rare fetish. 
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Feb 13, 2017 15:02
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 Actual Play - Beacon in the Black Those who backed the Aethera Kickstarter at the 420 dollar level got a special reward: a personal session run for you and several of your closest friends, run by Robert Brookes himself. As you may be about to surmise, I backed it at this level. I don't regret it. As I mentioned in my previous review, Robert Brookes is an old friend and getting to chat and play with him again was a delight. Before the game began, we were presented with an array of pre-generated characters. Our dramatis personae: A as Hauyne, a phalanx Unchained Rogue. She has boobs. D as Aleta, an infused spell sage wizard. He's old for an infused. K as Arakhu, an okanta cavalier. He rides a speeder bike and, thanks to an art mixup, carries a weapon that's literally an anvil duct taped to a pole. Z as Erryn, a human tech bonded hunter. His robot foxcat pet wound up with better HP than any of the rest of the party. And it still got knocked down to 1 HP. M as Tillanieh, an erahthi hydrokineticist. She's young for an erahthi. Myself as Oemathra, an erahthi alchemist. They haven't chosen to express a gender. You may note the near-complete lack of healers in that party, like maybe the alchemist could be a healer with the right discovery, but. Well, I have news for you: It was a complete lack. Level 1, baby. The most powerful options we had were my bombs and a scroll of Scorching Ray Aleta had. The adventure begins with some scene-setting. The Radiant Beacon was one of the first Paradigm-class dreadnoughts developed by the human Hierarchy, deployed in 3984 to patrol and protect human interests around the gas giant Seraos. It lasted only seven months before disappearing without a trace, leaving only a brief, garbled message behind indicating an emergency descent into Seraos' atmosphere. After two years of fruitless searching, the Radiant Beacon was declared lost with all 3,212 hands. Three weeks ago, an echo of the Beacon's final transmission was picked up by a colony outside of Seraos' rings. Rumors of the lost ship surviving for 20 years in the depths of the atmosphere spurred a gold rush, salvagers, glory hounds, and clandestine political operatives all racing to be the first to reach it. The crew of the salvage vessel Stormwrack collected a team of freelancers (guess who), aided by the crew's certainty they could find the Beacon's exact location in the storms.     Gotta admit I'm a big fan of Business Puma. From left to right, top to bottom we have: Captain Narl, an okanta war veteran. His First Mate Andis Felstrom, who uses his psychometric talents to help triangulate the Beacon's position based on debris we find. "Lucky", the ship's mechanic, who survived a head wound and now has a lot of creaky grindy quirks. And Raija Born of Thunder, Narl's chief of security. <LucentGM> "The air is good right now," Raija chimes in, the first thing she's said the entire meeting. "Some pockets of bad air," her brows furrow, "bubbling up from below. Dark, purple..." her eyes track from side to side, "more breathable than not." Narl offers Raija an askance look, then nods as if that isn't weird in the slightest. <LucentGM> "I forgot to mention Raija's... talents." Narl notes, "She's going to be our canary in the aetherite mine, so to speak. She's got a knack for predicting and sensing weather. If the Stormflow is going to collapse, or suck us under... she's going to keep us aware." OOC: <Oemathra> A canary in an aetherite mine doesn't die to warn you, it starts singing in Enochian.   We also have Gina and Serrem, a pair of salvagers brought on to aid in the hauling-stuff tasks. Meanwhile, the PCs are muscle, the forward team that goes in and actually punches the things that might need punching. Narl and Andis go over the details of the transmission that sparked all this business. It's definitely a live transmission, by a phalanx, which explains why anyone's alive after that long. The transmission has been narrowed to a region of Seraos called the Stormflow: A region of relatively calm and breathable air that we can actually go and adventure in without being torn apart by winds, crushed by pressure, or suffocated. Narl provides us with "portable" farcasters - 25-lb backpacks, roughly similar to World War II radio equipment. Erryn's player Z notes that Kitscha, his robo-cat, has a short-range farcaster as well. Erryn also makes a Geography check, discovering and relaying that the atmosphere in the Stormflow occasionally bubbles up toxic pockets of "Seraos miasma" and the planet features subjective gravity: With a simple Wisdom check you can alter which way is "down". Given that he's the biggest and strongest, Arakhu takes the farcaster backpack. <LucentGM> So far every game has had an Arakhu and every game he's taken the farcaster. The game begins as a hexcrawl, we descend into the Stormflow and find ourselves in uncharted territory. <LucentGM> In order for you to find the Radiant Beacon you will need to acquire clues that help lead you to location that the vessel is shrouded in. You need to acquire a total of 10 clues in order to reveal the hex that contains the Radiant Beacon. However you could stumble onto the Beacon by accident as well, depending on where you explore. Fully exploring a hex awards the PCs 1 clue, while other discoveries might award additional clues based on the PCs actions. Once the PCs have acquired 10 clues, the crew of the Stormwrack has enough information to plot a course to the Beacon’s location. Each different "terrain" (aerrain, more like: Clear skies, high winds, solid fog, or debris field) takes a different amount of time to traverse or search. Searching sticks to the clear spaces for the first day. General player concensus seems to be that until time pressure threatens, we should take it easy. <LucentGM> Debris Field: Debris field terrain includes small to large debris from asteroids or other solid bodies suspended in the subjective gravity of Seraos' atmosphere. Debris fields are considered difficult terrain for aethership travel (but not travel on foot) and aetherships traveling through or searching a debris field deals 3d6 points of damage to the vessel. <Arakhu> Oooh. Uh, that comment from earlier... how much health DOES this thing have? <LucentGM> The stormwrack has 151 hp and DR 10/adamantine <Oemathra> Worst-case scenario, we discover a new deposit of adamantine.  At the end of the first day, we've gone three hexes in. Our third hex triggers an encounter, as the ship's farseeker (Read: radar) picks up a small derelict. A tiny blockade runner labeled the HAV Skycrawler, it suffered the loss of an engine sometime in the Century War and was drawn into Seraos' atmosphere.  Inside the derelict, Arakhu takes the lead, only to be ambushed and flanked by a pair of hungry corpses: Ghouls with the degenerate template. He tanks things like a champ, taking three or four hits and passing two saves versus paralysis. Erryn does a backflip onto the ceiling thanks to subjective gravity and shoots one of them with his rifle. His cat then bites it to death. Hauyne simply makes julienne fries of the other. Detect Magic from Aleta picks up some transmutation from the engine room: Some charge remaining in the derelict's aetherdrive, which siphons out into his Day 2: First Mate Andis raises some concerns that we're literally fighting off the hungry dead as we search, but Narl brushes him off, especially as we find a large hull piece in a cloud bank. The search continues. A mysterious asteroid, gray with green iridescence, floats in midair in the eye of a storm, three large tunnels boring into it. Knowledge rolls reveal it's a source of an antimagic ore known as noqual, the eye of the storm around it is an anomaly caused by something besides the noqual, and the nature of the rock indicates it was originally part of a planet, the most likely candidate being Amrita, the shattered homeworld of the Progenitors that now forms the Amrita Belt. <LucentGM> So, I'm not going to put the dicking arm on the map for this, but assume that the docking arm is available for withdrawl at the northwest entrance <LucentGM> DICKING ARM GODDAMNIT <Arakhu> We need the dicking arm to penetrate one of this asteroid's holes. * Aleta cries a little <Arakhu> We're going in deep. * LucentGM weeping <Arakhu> And though it may be hard... <Arakhu> I'm certain good things will come.  <LucentGM> As the Forward team continues down the tunnel, their handlights shine across shimmering metallic surfaces growing up and out of the walls. At a sharp corner inside the planetoid, the noqual fibers embedded in the walls weave together into two six foot wide nodules of wispy, crystalline-metallic noqual. Ancient reliefs in the rock wall, reminiscent of fossils, cover this entire passage. The shapes are the skeletal remains of quadrupedal creatures with long tails, large eye sockets, enormous teeth, and strange orifices along their skulls. Hundreds of these fossils press out from the cavern walls, dusty and ancient. The nodules -including a large one with some form of mechanical inclusion in the middle of the chamber- begin to shake and rattle, and our team decides discretion is the better part of valor, or at least not getting surrounded is a good idea, and begins to retreat. All except Arakhu, who charges up and tries to pull what is probably the ancient Progenitor machine creating the storm's eye out of the big nodule. Hauyne flips onto the ceiling and moves to defend the big lunk from whatever comes out. As Arakhu gives up on the machine as a bad job, three zombie-like things with parasitic lamprey mouths come zipping out of the southern tunnels, setting off the readied actions half of us have been taking. Erryn's scrap rifle misfires twice, while Oemathra's alchemist bombs go wide and only singe a couple of them. Then the eggs hatch.  Arakhu and Hauyne's pogs are upside down to indicate they are on the ceiling.  Inside are a pair of akata- lion-like blue beasts whose bite is infectious- and the larger node disgorges an akata primacy. Things start going badly almost immediately. The smaller akata had 30 fire resistance (And thus functional immunity to Oemathra's bombs and the better spells Aleta has access to) while the multiple attacks of the bigger thing and the void zombies knock Arakhu into negatives and Erryn's robo-foxcat to 1. Erryn notices the biomechanical nature of the primacy and attempts an Aethertech Empathy roll on it. He totals a 20, which is not good enough to change the primacy's attitude, but it does... notice him. As the enemies begin to focus on Hauyne, they seem confused about attacking the phalanx. Almost as if there is some connection between the ancient humanoid construct created by the Progenitors and this biomechanical horror found lairing in a piece of the Progenitors' planet. Hmm. Hauyne, for her part, pledges to not abandon Arakhu ("again" as she puts it. Hauyne has Space PTSD, and A did a nice job roleplaying it) and ties up the worst enemies while the rest of the party escapes. She falls, but we take out the lesser enemies as we retreat, including Tillanieh critting one of the small akata for more HP than it started with, leaving only the big guy. Most of us retreated a ways, but then we rallied, taking a moment to buff up and actually landing some shots on the thing as it rounded the corner. Oemathra opens up with the pistol, Erryn casts Enlarge Person and starts trying to tank, Aleta uses Color Spray before falling back on repeated Acid Orbs, and Tiillanieh does what she does best: Smack it with water. We drop basically everything we have on it in what amounts to a fighting retreat, as it has three attacks and takes out half or more of anyone's HP in each one. We retreated back to the docking arm of the Stormwrack, intent on having the crew shoot the akata primacy with the ship's weaponry, when the DM fell asleep. Which was expected, we were always planning to go until one of us passed out. The encounter was nearly a foregone conclusion at that point. We could reach the ship easily, their weapons could easily splatter the primacy, and we could return to drag our fallen comrades back. Perhaps borrowing a cargo dolly for Hauyne, she weighs 500 pounds. Plus there was the slight problem that both of them were on the ceiling. We really liked the subjective gravity. According to Robert, only one other playtester had used the gravity at all, turning things sideways in a later area and dropping through windows at enemies. Robert admitted that he'd beefed the encounter up a little for us, since he knew it would be the last encounter we could manage before people started falling asleep. We had a lot of apparent bad luck with the dice, missing a lot and Erryn's rifle misfiring multiple times, but a statistical analysis showed that the dice rolled an average 10.3. Our good rolls were just mostly on skill checks and saving throws. We might have done a little better if we'd remembered all the features of the pregens, like Aleta's ability to boost caster level by 4, Arakhu's challenge ability, or Oemathra's mutagen, but we did quite well all told and had a lot of fun. Because it was pregens for a one-shot, I think we felt a little braver, a little more willing to sacrifice our characters. As for the adventure itself, nothing really negative comes to mind except the intentionally inflated challenge of the asteroid fight and the 30 fire resistance on the akatas, which even took Robert by surprise. The pregens aren't built strictly optimally, which is almost never a thing anyway, and K suggested might be a way to get players to think about how they would build differently in an actual campaign. I like the hexcrawling search for the Beacon, and the fact that searching takes significant time implied that we'd be in a race to get to the ship before something else happened, which I also liked. I don't know how much was Robert himself (the man has a knack for florid description) and how much will make it into the adventure text, but the descriptions were vibrant and immersive, and adequately researched, with liquid ammonia and mercury raining across the windows of the Stormwrack at various points, the ship groaning and shaking with the pressures and winds, and the whole thing just feeling appropriate for the actual conditions of searching a planet-wide storm system. The encounters felt right, the first one was dangerous but not excessively so, and the second one was a worthy boss fight. Running it for a table that'll knock out one or two more encounters that same night, I think the un-buffed version of the fight should go okay. I will be doing a full review of this adventure, as well as the other three that were available for this advance session. But first, the actual setting book should be released within the foreseeable future. In the meantime, have this sneak peek at Arakhu being awesome: 
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Feb 13, 2017 15:31
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Asimo posted:It's important to remember that Shadowrun came out in 1989, and this was kind of at the height of that weird pop culture Japan fad in America. I mean poo poo like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles didn't emerge from a vacuum, and when you combine that with the Reagan-era paranoia of "Japan is an inscrutable economic superpower that will inevitably crush the west!!" you wind up with... well, this sort of nerd culture stuff. I'm not sure if it's the most dated element of Shadowrun but it's certainly the second if not, and it's hardly alone there. There's a lot of other games from the late 80s/early 90s era that share the same sort of orientalist bullshit due to the nerd fashions of the time; we've already got RIFTS Japan a page back, TORG was covered recently, etc. I think it's worth pointing out that, apart from the martial arts stuff, Nippon Tech didn't have any real "glorious Nippon" going on. The focus was on corporate culture and how lovely is was/is. They do talk about it more in the Tokyo sourcebook, which I didn't cover, but really Nippon Tech is deliberately set up to be about as unglorious as you can get; remember, this is a setting where pharmaceutical companies do testing by dumping things in the poors' water supply to see what happens, and one company has a factory that literally does nothing except generate pollution to drive up sales of their pollution-blocking face masks. As stated, back in the very late 80's and early 90's, there was a big concern in the States about how Japan was suddenly becoming this unstoppable economic powerhouse. But the human cost of that big economic burst is still affecting Japanese culture today. I know the joke is about the heads of the corporation committing ritualized sepuku because of the nerd fascination with Japanese culture, but bear in mind this is the same culture that has a word for working yourself to death.
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Feb 13, 2017 15:32
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Yeah, it's a grim irony: the real dystopia isn't corporate executives becoming idealized feudal lords and acting as such. It's people who are effectively serfs, working themselves to death for nothing.
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Feb 13, 2017 15:45
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Business Puma is straight up a Charr from guild wars.
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Feb 13, 2017 15:52
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Halloween Jack posted:Yeah, it's a grim irony: the real dystopia isn't corporate executives becoming idealized feudal lords and acting as such. It's people who are effectively serfs, working themselves to death for nothing.
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Feb 13, 2017 15:54
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd say it's also the idea that the corporation itself is all that matters. Oh, you're a lifetime CEO with millions of nuyen who brought the company up from nothing? Tough poo poo, you hosed up big time now you have to basically be sacrificed so the corporation can keep going. Oh and by the way that's the new normal. All I wish is for neon signs to make a comeback. Then we'd live in a proper cyberpunk future.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:12
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Siivola posted:For thos who don't follow the news, pretty much this actually happened back in December: http://fortune.com/2016/12/29/dentsu-president-resigns-suicide-overwork/ We have met the dystopia, and it is us.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:25
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Street Fighter is ruined. And having watched the other video too, it seems that Demitri prefers Chun-Li's look from SFA.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:53
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Siivola posted:For thos who don't follow the news, pretty much this actually happened back in December: http://fortune.com/2016/12/29/dentsu-president-resigns-suicide-overwork/ While it seems noble, the timing is suspicious in so far as the business is conducting a multibillion dollar review of misapropriation and incorrect billing for agencies associates with it. Its an rumor hes using that to dodge admitting culpability in the obvious billing scandal where its too systemic for him not to be involved as a face saving "I did it" Im loving fight because it has gone out of its way to encorporate as many fighting game gimmicks as possible.
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Feb 13, 2017 18:32
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Siivola posted:All I wish is for neon signs to make a comeback. Then we'd live in a proper cyberpunk future. That's what AR is for. No actual construction needed, and you can change them every week.
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Feb 13, 2017 18:37
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wiegieman posted:That's what AR is for. No actual construction needed, and you can change them every week. Now let's think about the possibility of all those big neon AR signs containing hidden information that only shows up for the right people.
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Feb 13, 2017 19:05
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Asimo posted:It's important to remember that Shadowrun came out in 1989, and this was kind of at the height of that weird pop culture Japan fad in America. I mean poo poo like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles didn't emerge from a vacuum, and when you combine that with the Reagan-era paranoia of "Japan is an inscrutable economic superpower that will inevitably crush the west!!" you wind up with... well, this sort of nerd culture stuff. I'm not sure if it's the most dated element of Shadowrun but it's certainly the second if not, and it's hardly alone there. There's a lot of other games from the late 80s/early 90s era that share the same sort of orientalist bullshit due to the nerd fashions of the time; we've already got RIFTS Japan a page back, TORG was covered recently, etc. I wonder why the same love affair hasn't been translated to China, despite the fact it fills the same position. Instead it's more just fear and dread. Evil Mastermind posted:I'd say it's also the idea that the corporation itself is all that matters. Oh, you're a lifetime CEO with millions of nuyen who brought the company up from nothing? Tough poo poo, you hosed up big time now you have to basically be sacrificed so the corporation can keep going. Oh and by the way that's the new normal. I think he may have meant "In real life".
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Feb 13, 2017 19:15
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Josef bugman posted:I wonder why the same love affair hasn't been translated to China, despite the fact it fills the same position. Instead it's more just fear and dread. Chinese pop culture isn't as exportable. Also commies.
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Feb 13, 2017 19:38
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Josef bugman posted:I wonder why the same love affair hasn't been translated to China, despite the fact it fills the same position. Instead it's more just fear and dread. Id argue its because Japan was a) very top level takeovers so the idea of culture was mythologized and b) the US beat them in a war and their population was smaller so there was no existential country ending dread associated with it. Part C) is, critically, Chinese history is poorly understood and lacks romantic historical memes to latch onto like the Samurai and Ninja so you end up with less random co-opting of things from say the Three Kingdoms era. Art of War though, that made it through. Oh and their current media output is basically legally mandated to be absolute trash so their isnt much interest in their home made media as of yet. Barudak fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 19:42
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Barudak posted:Oh and their current media output is basically legally mandated to be absolute trash so their isnt much interest in their home made media as of yet. In fact the process seems to be happening in reverse, with a lot of Hollywood blockbusters adding extensive China-set sections to be more appealing to the Chinese market.
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Feb 13, 2017 20:13
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Japan was occupied by the US, and had every reason to follow Western trends in consumerism and entertainment as their economy grew rapidly. They also had the luxury of doing this without going through multiple stages of dictatorship like South Korea did.
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Feb 13, 2017 20:13
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Flavivirus posted:In fact the process seems to be happening in reverse, with a lot of Hollywood blockbusters adding extensive China-set sections to be more appealing to the Chinese market. Thats also due to laws and kickback schemes, as well as laws against owning a movie studio and a theater chain not existing and Wanda specifically being a guy who wants China to have film presence and prestige. Friend of my wifes family is responsible for Marvel in China, so uh, its an interesting topic. TV in china is extra dire as its limited to 4 approved settings for fiction, and rampant abuse by big networks to legally prevent iterating on succesful or unique concepts, and heavy government interference and meddling.
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Feb 13, 2017 20:23
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Barudak posted:memes Please don't dignify that word to mean anything other than an internet in-joke, it's a failed paradigm that was never a good idea in the first place
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Feb 13, 2017 20:44
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I think the other part is that when Japan started competing seriously in the market, there was a targeted effort by certain industries (namely, automotive) to really paint them as a threat. US auto was losing share and had egg on its face after claiming for years it was impossible to produce a cheaper more fuel efficient car than what they were churning out, and the WW2 generation was right at or near to their peak in importance to politics and business. So you had a fairly deliberate campaign that tried to get both a general blue collar panic and war veteran antipathy together to claim that the Japanese were going to steal all our good jobs. China, by contrast, is a lot more amorphous, doesn't have a generation that specifically viewed them as an enemy, and are already pretty well integrated into the world market in a specific way. The conservatives have been trying to turn the Chinese into our new Cold War-esque enemy since about 5 minutes after the USSR collapsed, but its never stuck as well.
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Feb 13, 2017 21:40
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In many ways, China is still a developing nation. Because they use so much coal they are choking on their own pollution, enough that they are seeing impacts on crop production. Comparatively large numbers of their population are rural illiterates, whereas other economies typically see a wide spread of technical skills required in those areas. They still rely heavily on sate-sponsored industrial theft rather than home-growing ideas. Most dangerous of all, they are fast approaching the point where their half-commitment to fair business cannot be propped up by government spending on fake projects and aggressive currency controls. Meanwhile, Japan as viewed through the cyberpunk lens coalesced during a time when they were experiencing a strong bull market. They were buying up land in the US and stuff, everybody thought they were going to take over the world with lean manufacturing and jumping jacks performed in unison.
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Feb 13, 2017 23:52
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wiegieman posted:Meanwhile, Japan as viewed through the cyberpunk lens coalesced during a time when they were experiencing a strong bull market. They were buying up land in the US and stuff, everybody thought they were going to take over the world with lean manufacturing and jumping jacks performed in unison. IIRC that was even after the Lost Decade had started, but unless you were watching Japan's real estate market closely the indicators were hard to see.
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Feb 14, 2017 00:00
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wiegieman posted:IComparatively large numbers of their population are rural illiterates, whereas other economies typically see a wide spread of technical skills required in those areas. Not to get nitpicky but illiteracy is actually pretty low to nonexistent in China. I doubt it's the 100% they claim but it's incredibly close. Being able to speak and fully understand standard Mandarin is another story.
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Feb 14, 2017 00:50
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