A Present for Gunny and Daki

[Cazmonster]

Okay, this should be fairly obvious - Gunny, Daki, and everyone within easy driving range of Chi-town, don't read this thread. It's based on an idea I was presented with a while ago. If you folks do read this thread, you're only going to be disapointed later and you'll only have yourselves to blame.

Here's the deal, for the nuptuals, should they ever happen, Gunny had asked me to run All Flesh at a bachelor/bachelorette barbacue. I've had two great ideas, but am not sure which one to pursue.

The first is to set an All Flesh game in Shogun-era Japan. Let the characters play fairly realistic samurai, ninja, shinto monks and the like. I don't know enough classic Shinto mythology to yank japanese zombies out of my ass. Any help or pointers would be most appreciated.

The second game is horror-anime. The characters would be anime-college types, with weird abilities. They'd be up against Demon-Zombies with anime powers. I'd stay away from tentacle monsters, mostly to not get Daki riled at me.

Let me know what you think of the two concepts and which you think would make for an enjoyable game. Keep all your responses black - I don't want anybody catching wind of this stuff by mistake.

[sinsual]

ROXXERS!

Oriental Adventures actually has a pretty good info for an oriental game your suggesting. As to the Anime that would be cool too. It sounds overall like much fun had by all

[Anguirel]

Personally, I think I'd enjoy either, but I think historical Japan would be slightly broader appeal and could end up much niftier in play. The anime-esque game would be really fun, I think, only if everyone playing knew a lot of anime cliches which you could draw upon.

Shinto, as I understanbd it, has almost a complete lack of "standard" doctrine. It's a very personal faith, and each temple did things fairly uniquely to match with the local populace and landscape. It was a ritualized worship with an absence of philosophy (which is why Zen Buddhism was able to penetrate so easily and seamlessly around Shinto). That said, there are certainly commonalities -- oni, spirits, "excorcism" and binding, traditional methods for a variety of things... Depending on the exact time period, you'll probably need to familiarize yourself with peasant weaponry (converted farm-implements, mainly) and some buddhism. If you haven't read it, Shogun, by James Clavell is a good read and is, I'm told, decently period-accurate. And -- if you find anything that really explains Shinto decently, I'd love to know. My Asian Philosophies class noted it and then went on to talk about everything else but...

[FlameBlade]

Nifty points to Cazmonster, for he is the greatest!

[Cazmonster]

While this is going to be a cool game, no way in hell am I going to sit through James "I'm in love with the sound of my typewriter" Clavell. If it comes down to something as simple as the zombies are here because of a pact between an evil Shogun and Demons, great. However, I'd like to be able to reference something on Japanese mythology like I could Celtic or Eastern European.

Thank God for people like Adam, who've given me the d20 BESM stuff. I was planning to use those rules for the game and ditch the All Flesh mechanic entirely. d20 Anime has most of the anime-type stuff I plan to use anyway.

Daimyo of the Dead – Medieval Anime Japan
The characters (a mixed bag) will have to thwart the march of an army of the undead. The undead are numerous, and their Captains are powerful. The characters will be above average in ability.


NeoTokyo Nightmares – Cartoon Anime Space High School
The characters will have their lives interrupted as the living dead invade their school. The dead come from many sources, but a unique event made reanimation possible. The characters will be very powerful, in spite of their High-school origins.