Product Publisher: Otherverse Games/Skortched Urf Studios
Product Author: Chris A. Field
Product Type: Roleplaying Game
Product Format: PDF
Product Version: First Printing / First Edition
Publisher's Web Site: //www.otherversegames/blogspot.com
Product Rating: 4

Product Blurb: "Editor's Note: I don't exist."

Currently Smoking: Mostly Maui Wowie, but it's got some Labrador in it


Black Tokyo Unlimited Edition is a worldbook for a setting that, at least for a while, caused a great wailing and gnashing of teeth in gaming circles.   Several years ago I saw a review of the original edition (based mainly on D20 Modern) at The Banning Place, so I was intrigued enough to pick up the PDF.   And as the review promised, it was a very transgressive, sex-obsessed (if not sexist) depiction of Japanese media as an RPG setting, and in that regard fairly useful given the reputation of works like Legend of the Overfiend.   One of the major problems with it was that the art was, I believe I recently described it as, "like a 5-year old trying to do a Jackson Pollock painting".  But supposedly the recent edition (published by the author's new friends at Skortched Urf Studios) was supposed to refine things somewhat in terms of production values.  And then it turned out that one of the products in this line had the lovely title Tournament of Rapists, depicting the scenario of a demonically-influenced Tokyo underground fight contest in which fighters battle to the death, except that male (usually monster) fighters get the option of raping female fighters in the process.  It wasn't made terribly clear that this was the sort of thing that PCs were supposed to oppose, and in the outrage, distributors had to pull the title and revise their rules for the approval and review of "adult content."

So I decided to buy the new edition, while I still could, and decided at some point I was going to do a review of this thing.  And I came to regret it.
See, when I review a game, I usually do this nice, neat thing, where I go over every discrete chapter or section in order presented so that people have some idea what the organization of the book is.  I cannot do that here, because I do not know what the organization of the book is.  And I suspect the author didn't either.  As far as I can tell, there is no table of contents.  There are no chapter headings.  There is no index.   It's like somebody took Eraserhead and made it into a Japanese hentai movie.  

Another problem with this book is that in some respect it isn't complete, even by its own standards.  The original Black Tokyo was, notwithstanding its subject matter, a understandable sourcebook in D20 terms: It was mainly about characters and how you made them in the setting, which meant adapting existing feats/prestige classes and such to Black Tokyo and also presenting its own (sexual/demonic/scatalogical) feats and prestige classes for the world.  This "Unlimited" Edition is much more of a worldbook or setting book, going over various parts of the setting in terms of the supernatural world, the parallel to the real world, religion, the roles of women, and so forth.  All in a scattershot, attention-deficit-disorder fashion.  But as a worldbook, Black Tokyo Unlimited no longer has most of the purely game-oriented material of the original; most of that is in a supplement subtitled Races of the Tatakama.  This would not be such a bad thing if it resulted in more focus to the setting material, but the result seems to be the opposite.

But after a few pages of such wandering (including a necessary list of additional Otherverse Games books needed to use this setting), the author does go to the important matter of how a GM is supposed to run a campaign with erotic-horror subject matter.  While he acknowledges the centrality of rape in hentai media (attributing it largely to the 'trapped' mentality of respectable Japanese salarymen who turn to this genre as an outlet) he de-emphasizes its otherwise common "lolicon" theme focusing on underage girls.  This may be due to an attempt to make this product less legally objectionable, though it's hard to say given the rest of the subject matter.  Hentai stories also seem to have a good deal of incest, although it is usually of a consensual nature.  Field does say that where child exploitation occurs, it is "something evil that happens off screen and must be answered on screen" just as in crime stories of other countries.  In this respect, a "good vs. evil" Black Tokyo game is probably going to look much like LAW & ORDER: Special Hentai Unit.  
Field also says more than once that in designing this material, he intended to showcase its "perverse and misogynistic" elements to give the PCs something to fight against.  At the same time: "This setting, more than any other, is about pushing players' boundaries, as much as it is (those of the characters)".  So the author takes a bit of time- just a bit- to go over how PCs are to encounter such subjects.  When running "any sexually explicit campaign" (presumably not just this setting), he advises the GM to warn the players what the nature of the campaign is and what the 'table rules' are- specifically on the matter of their characters getting raped.  Each player will have to be asked if they are okay with their PC getting raped- if so, they are "fair game" for the demons and other monsters, Otherwise the GM is obliged to make sure the PC wins the fight, gets away or at worst gets killed before such violation happens.  

In setting terms, Black Tokyo or "Black Japan" in general takes place in a universe in which the cosmology works like a Venn Diagram where one circle is the normal "Earth Realm", the other is the hell dimension called "the Black Else" and the middle ground is a twilight, faerie-like realm where the various non-demon magical creatures come from, called the "Tatakama."  There are a few times or places where these worlds intersect, namely at the Torii gates commonly found in Japan's Shinto shrines (although the gates are also said to be a natural phenomenon).  

Black Tokyo Unlimited goes through various factions of the setting – again, in a brief, disorganized fashion – and there are a lot of them to go over.  The primary forces of organized evil are demonically corrupted businessmen called the Akamaze, who often war with each other for resources or simple prestige, to the point where some are willing to act as patrons for more heroic organizations against their rivals.  Some of these include: the special forces of the JSDF (Japanese Self-Defense Force, the closest thing Japan is allowed to an official military), the feminist/monster-hunter Eryrines Sisterhood, the Nagasaki Christian group called the Hidden Cathedral, Section Seven of the Tokyo Police, and "Project GILGAMESH", a multinational research center on the Kuril Islands (currently administered by Russia) that is charged with monitoring against the reappearance of a cthonian horror buried under the islands that revived with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a creature called "Genbu."
The book continues on going over various Japanese locales and specific D20 rules for them to reflect the "Black Japan" setting – for instance, Yamagata prefecture has been a home of the Amakaze for so long that the magic of the place both prolongs life and enhances necromantic magic.  In this travelogue various aspects of the setting are mentioned such as the artificial Doujinishi race, who are not given game stats or background here, but in another sourcebook.  (An example of how the book does not present information well, especially since the sourcebook in question is not mentioned where relevant.)

Down in page 106 (of a 264-page PDF) the book finally gets to some character rules.  There are character templates for various groups within the background, such as the "Idol" template, which grants bonuses to Charisma and Perform checks but also mandates a virginal public image in Japan, such that acting "inappropriately" causes an interaction penalty for several days, along with a barrier against buying expensive items (this seems to require a Wealth Check system that again, is not explained in this book).   There is also a Hentai Hero class that seems to be more like a character "base" that uses talent trees like those in D20 Modern (which Black Tokyo was originally built on).  Setting-specific character concepts like the Ghostkissed hero (who can see and otherwise 'interact' with the spirit world), the Tattooed Warrior and the Flow Witch (a female character whose mystic powers stem from her bodily fluids) are built with these rules, although there is yet again a problem with the necessary rules not being in one place (the 'Lovely Medicine' sex magic tree requires the 'Lemon-Pink Hospital' feat, which does turn out to be in this book, although you have to look through the whole thing to find it- remember, there is no table of contents).  There are also Pathfinder archetypes for the "Chaste" female Monk and the "Freudian Oni" (a modern Japanese male who has the power to summon his Oni rapist dark self; rebuilt in these rules as a Summoner archetype whose Eidolon is the Oni).  These rules are actually somewhat usable.  

From here, the book more resembles an actual RPG book.  In addition to the above, there are "talents" (which again seem to be based on the D20 Modern rules set) and actual feats, as well as several magical items.  Many of these, like the "Fukujin" items associated with Japan's seven gods of Luck, tie into local lore.  A more modern example is the Coinless Card, a credit card that serves as a universal credit card allowing the owner to make purchases equivalent to 10 GP or less without a Wealth Check.

Monsters include not only the "Rape Pure Fighter" from the aforementioned Tournament of Rapists, but the half-oni businessman who started the ToR, and the "Genbu"entombed under the Kuril Islands.  Should it awaken, said monster has the D20 stats of a CR 29 Tarrasque, except that it has a spined penis, "hard, massive and unbreakable as an ancient redwood" that can make a ranged attack at 500 feet that ignores concealment (due to the thousands of faces and eyes lining the penis) that will impregnate any female struck, causing her to give agonizing birth to a diabolic creature in 1d4 rounds.  It also allows the Genbu to cast an Earthquake affect by "(driving) its spined cock into the earth to maximum depth, literally fucking the entire planet."

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.  

SUMMARY

Even secondhand, Black Tokyo is a useful example of the dark side of Japanese media, which even in its "kawaii" face can be summarized as Japan Is One Fucked Up Place, or No Seriously, This Is Some Fucked Up Shit or We Swear We Are Not Making This Up.  In and of itself, the subject matter is not unworthy, because for one thing, it is real, or at least based on real Japanese mythology and modern culture.  If anything, the Black Tokyo setting isn't weird and perverted enough.  For a relatively tame example of what I mean, Google the phrase "tanuki balls."

Black Tokyo Unlimited is unsatisfactory mainly because it doesn't work even as well as the original book.  It has a better selection of art, though some of it still resembles the crappy stuff.  However the organization of the book is so piss-poor as to be non-existent.  This becomes a problem because even if one is enough of a fan of Japanese media and its "eroguro" subgenre to want to do a game with this material, it's never made terribly clear whether the author is drawing from D20 or Pathfinder material, or where the "Modern" equivalent rules for the Pathfinder RPG are supposed to be consulted for characters who require skills with modern technology.  That's just one issue.  

Another issue: The fact that the adjectives "crappy" and "piss-poor" are way too appropriate.  Among the various other taboos addressed here, you have scatology.  One of the Otherverse sourcebooks has a race of undead shit-eaters called the Akamane and an actual class called the Shit Witch.  While the ultra-violence of hentai might translate to American tastes, and the ugly but exaggerated sex might have an audience, I'm not sure how much of the filth fetish is usable among even a sex-positive group of gamers, and I know for a fact I'm not into it.  I mean, I have enough diarrhea in my real life.  I don't need any in an RPG.