The Inside Scoop on Gaming

DEMON CITY SHINJUKU

Demon City Shinjuku is Guardians of Order's foray into the world of anime urban horror, based upon the 1988 movie of the same name.

THE SETTING

In 1990, Levih Rah, a mystical martial artist-turned-demonic sorcerer, begins a ceremony atop the Shinjuku district of Tokyo designed to open a gateway to Hell and unleash his unholy master upon an unsuspecting world. Genichirou Izayoi, a fellow martial arts student of Rah's in happier times, interrupts the ceremony by attacking Rah. Rah defeats and kills Genichirou, but the interruption flaws the ceremony: instead of plunging the entire world into darkness, Rah succeeds only in turning Shinjuku into a Hell on earth, devastating it with an earthquake known thereafter as the Devil Shake in the bargain.

Cut to 2000. The Japanese government largely has given up the demon-haunted ruins of Shinjuku for a lost cause, its police and military forces having suffered crippling losses in their ill-fated attempts to retake the city. But as bad as things are, they're about to get a whole lot worse. For now that ten years have past, the time is once again ripe for Levih Rah to attempt the ceremony to bring his master to earth. And this time, it's up to Genichirou's reluctant son Kyoya - and/or the player characters - to stop him.

Guardians of Order takes a much different route with the Demon City license than have other publishers with their own licensed properties. Instead of attempting to expand upon the setting glimpsed in the movie, the book sets out to translate everything that is shown in the movie into game terms and provides suggestions for everything that is not.

As such, we get detailed descriptions of modern Japan as of the time of the movie, the sections of Tokyo, the neighborhoods of Shinjuku, and every character and creature from the movie. Everything else is described in terms of generalities and possibilities. We know that there are more demons in Shinjuku than were featured in the movie, but there is no bestiary - any creatures must be created using the character creation guidelines. We know that there's some form of world government - the World Federation - but are given no hard facts about how it operates, only suggestions. We aren't told what happens to Shinjuku after the events of the movie but are given several intriguing possibilities.

What this means is that this game is a wonderful choice for GMs who want to worldbuild. For casual gamers, it's a bit more problematic. Published adventures would help, but such adventures would have to either choose between the possible setting interpretations or else carefully avoid them altogether.

One major strength of the setting is its atmosphere: that of an entire city turned into a decrepit haunted house. The setting is also fairly versatile within its general premise, with possibilities ranging from straight-ahead horror to Buffy-esque demon bashing with Feng Shui-caliber heroes. (The rules add a twist to creating wimpy scholarly types a la CoC, however; see the rules review below.) And due to the compatibility of all Tri-Stat games, there's plenty of potential for going completely multi-genre. Throw in mecha, for example, and you've got Silent Mobius.

On the other hand, without a lot of work by the GM, the setting is inherently limited in scope: out of the whole world, only Shinjuku has the demons. Of lesser concern is the rather uneven level of technological advancement: while the general tech level is that of our own time, there are also such inexplicable advancements as rocket skates and laser rings. Of course, these problems are unavoidable in a direct adaptation of the movie.

THE SYSTEM

(NOTE: I'm aware that the second edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth addresses some of the issues I'll be bringing up regarding the Tri-Stat system as it appears in DCS. However, because I've only skimmed that book, and because DCS is designed to stand on its own, I'll be reviewing it as-is.)

Demon City Shinjuku uses a modified version of the Tri-Stat system first introduced in Big Eyes, Small Mouth. I know it's been described several times over, but I'm going to cover the basics to illustrate how well the mechanics work for DCS.

The (almost) universal mechanic involves rolling under a stat on 2d6, with negative modifiers adding to the roll and positive modifiers (such as skills) subtracting from it.

Character Creation

The hard numbers aspect of character creation comes in three stages: Stats, Attributes, and Skills. The first can be done with either randomly generated or assigned points, while the latter two are assigned. The book suggests several point values based on character power level for each, which provides a nice level of flexibility.

As the system name suggests, each character has three stats with scores ranging from 1 to 12 on a closed scale: Body (for all things physical), Mind (for all things mental), and Soul (for all things spiritual). This is nice and simple, but it poses two problems.

First, the scale is closed, which is intrinsically limiting. And second, the holistic Body stat puts some serious limits upon the kind of character you can create. Want a really strong character? Okay, then you've also got a character who's really agile and has excellent senses. I find it hard to believe that the monstrous Earth Demon, with its Body score of 10, is as agile as a world-class gymnast.

Derived attributes are next. The character's Attack Combat Value - the number below which he must roll for any combat action - is equal to the average of all three stats, and his Defense Combat Value (for all dodges, parries, and what have you) is two less than that.

Again, this holistic approach creates some odd results. For example, Sayaka, the Kyoya's love interest in the movie, has a really high Soul score that puts the average of her stats - and therefore her Attack Combat Value - one point higher than Kyoya's! Taking the defect "Inept Combat" drops that back down a point, but she's still his equal in basic combat potential - something not borne out in the movie. Another problem is that if the assigned point method is used for the stats, every character in the group will have the exact same Combat Value. In other words, it is impossible to create a natural warrior.

The other two derived attributes are Health Points, which are your basic hit points and which are determined by [(Body + Soul) x 5], and Energy Points, which can be used to temporarily boost Stats and to power special abilities and which are determined by [Mind + Soul) x 5].

From there we move on to Attributes, which are a mix of what other games might call "Advantages" and "Powers" and which cost a varying number of points per level. In addition to such things as boosted skill points and resources, Attributes include the three manifestations of supernatural power in the game: Nempo, Demonic Powers, and Supernatural Training.

Nempo is the Force-like martial art used by Kyoya. It's a very generalized ability, with a list of suggested applications that include Nempo-powered strikes, shields, leaps, and telekinesis, along with whatever else the GM finds reasonable. To my way of thinking, this is much closer to what Force powers in the Star Wars RPG should have been.

Demonic Powers, by contrast, consist of a list of much more specific supernatural abilities. Enough powers are provided to cover every demonic ability seen in the film, along with some that are not. These powers include abilities that allow characters to break out of the closed-ended 1-12 Stat scale; unfortunately, they don't do so with much grace. For example, "Unholy Strength" adds to damage and lifting capacity at each level, but does not give a mechanic for improved strength-related Body rolls. Another problem is that some of the powers are a little too specific. The Illusion power, for example, can only be used to make one thing seem to be another, and cannot create an image of something that simply is not there; for that, you need the Mind Control power. Still, the list of powers available is impressive: not only can it be used to create almost any supernatural creature, but it is also sufficient to run a respectable superhero game.

Last up is Supernatural Training - the weakest of the three supernatural abilities both in terms of power and (IMHO) concept. At its lowest level, it simply means that a character has studied the supernatural and knows the powers demons and ghosts may possess - an ability better handled by a skill. It moves up through the ability to detect the supernatural, to create wards against and exorcise supernaturals, to banish supernaturals, and finally to be immune from supernatural attack unless the character attacks first. This mix of learned abilities and spiritual prowess would have been better off divided into more than one Attribute.

As an aside here, I think this game really should have included some sort of magic system. Certainly, the demonic powers can be pressed into service as magic spells, but they really don't capture the feel of the occult ceremonies with which Levih Rah clearly is familiar. My suggestion would be to tie knowledge of ceremonial magic to the Supernatural Training attribute in some manner.

Characters may take Character Defects to gain more points to spend on Attributes. Among these are defects that give supernatural creatures their requisite weaknesses and supernatural investigators their requisite twitchiness. Others simply take away points from Stats, which makes little since if you're using point-based character generation. Characters can pick up a few more Attribute points by giving a few details of the character's background.

Skills function as negative modifiers to Stat checks, thereby increasing the chance of a success. (This takes a little getting used to.) Interestingly, the point cost of skills depends upon their utility in DCS. So, for example, combat skills and stealth are the most expensive skills, followed by investigative and scientific skills. (Call of Cthulhu this ain't!)

And speaking of combat…

Combat

One would expect anime combat - especially anime action/horror combat - to be dramatic, brutal, and fast.

Is it? Well, that depends. DCS shares a problem with Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying and other "roll-under" systems: Between poorly-trained opponents, combat is a long string of misses, while between highly-skilled opponents, combat is an extended festival of parries and dodges. This is appropriate to the genre to a degree, but it can become tiresome. The fact that Combat Value adds to attack damage helps somewhat on the high end, since it means that attacks that do finally hit will do more damage.

On the other hand, at the extremes, victory depends upon rolling a natural 2 - a critical hit that allows no defense roll and that can result in anything from double damage to automatic death, depending upon a roll of a d6. I'd prefer that any roll after modifiers of 2 or less result in a critical, thereby reflecting the influence of increased skill in combat.

And, again, the holistic nature of the Combat Value manifests in some strangeness. All things being equal, for example, a nerdy genius professor will hit with more force than an above-average athlete. For some anime styles, this makes sense, but not for a serious setting like DCS.

That aside, the combat mechanics are easy to understand and should suffice for gamers uninterested in "sweating the details".

THE BOOK

The cover, which features Kyoya dramatically energizing his training sword with Nempo energy with Sayaka's face in the background, is beautiful and lyrical; however, I don't think it quite captures the apocalyptic feel of the setting. (It took me quite a while to spot the ruined buildings in the far background.) Interior art consists of black and white movie stills and a full-color 7-page spread of movie images. (Well, actually, there are eight color pages in the spread, but the last one is a character sheet.) The formers are used effectively to illustrate various game mechanics. The latter go a long way to help convey the feel of the film. Ordinarily, I'd say that such heavy use of art is wasteful; however, DSJ clearly aims to cover the content of the movie and leave all else to conjecture. Because it does an admirable job of this in the allotted pace, I didn't find the color plates to be too indulgent.

The writing is fairly clear and concise. Although somewhat dry in the rules sections, the locale descriptions were engaging and informative, frequently (but not always) capturing the setting's creepy flair.

The book contains two sample adventures: one in which the PCs are members of a biker gang trying to rescue some soldiers, and another in which the PCs are demons(!). Both seem too restrictive to be the springboard for viable campaigns, but as one-shots they do serve to show some of the possibilities of the setting.

The book's organization is top-notch, featuring both a comprehensive index and an appendix of useful charts. Wisely, it also includes a black and white version of the full-color character sheet. My only complaint is a minor one, and that is the placement of the calculations for the derived attributes at the end of the character creation section.

SUMMARY

I'm a big believer in rating games by how well they accomplish what they set out to do.

Demon City Shinjuku sets out to translate the setting of its eponymous movie as directly as possible into the Tri-Stat system, making intelligent suggestions about setting elements beyond the movie's parameters but leaving it to the GM to provide the concrete details. I am not a huge fan of the Tri-Stat system and do not think that it handles the setting particularly well, but Tri-Stat fans will be well pleased with the way it's used here. Likewise, while I prefer licensed RPG properties that expand upon the source material, do-it-yourselfer GMs will find a solid foundation and a sturdy framework upon which to build their own vision of the DCS universe. So, since the game does a good job of accomplishing its goals, it gets a 4/4 from me. Nice work, Guardian guys.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Demon City Shinjuku
Author: David Pulver, Mark C. MacKinnon, Jeff Mackintosh, Karen A. McLarney Category: game Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order Line: Demon City Shinjuku/Tri-Stat Cost: $19.95 Page count: 152 ISBN: 0-9682431-9-3 SKU: 05-001 Playtest Review by Dan Davenport on 09/18/00. Genre tags: Modern day Horror Anime Post-apocalypse Vampire Gothic Asian/Far East	DEMON CITY SHINJUKU Demon City Shinjuku is Guardians of Order's foray into the world of anime urban horror, based upon the 1988 movie of the same name. THE SETTING In 1990, Levih Rah, a mystical martial artist-turned-demonic sorcerer, begins a ceremony atop the Shinjuku district of Tokyo designed to open a gateway to Hell and unleash his unholy master upon an unsuspecting world. Genichirou Izayoi, a fellow martial arts student of Rah's in happier times, interrupts the ceremony by attacking Rah. Rah defeats and kills Genichirou, but the interruption flaws the ceremony: instead of plunging the entire world into darkness, Rah succeeds only in turning Shinjuku into a Hell on earth, devastating it with an earthquake known thereafter as the Devil Shake in the bargain. Cut to 2000. The Japanese government largely has given up the demon-haunted ruins of Shinjuku for a lost cause, its police and military forces having suffered crippling losses in their ill-fated attempts to retake the city. But as bad as things are, they're about to get a whole lot worse. For now that ten years have past, the time is once again ripe for Levih Rah to attempt the ceremony to bring his master to earth. And this time, it's up to Genichirou's reluctant son Kyoya - and/or the player characters - to stop him. Guardians of Order takes a much different route with the Demon City license than have other publishers with their own licensed properties. Instead of attempting to expand upon the setting glimpsed in the movie, the book sets out to translate everything that is shown in the movie into game terms and provides suggestions for everything that is not. As such, we get detailed descriptions of modern Japan as of the time of the movie, the sections of Tokyo, the neighborhoods of Shinjuku, and every character and creature from the movie. Everything else is described in terms of generalities and possibilities. We know that there are more demons in Shinjuku than were featured in the movie, but there is no bestiary - any creatures must be created using the character creation guidelines. We know that there's some form of world government - the World Federation - but are given no hard facts about how it operates, only suggestions. We aren't told what happens to Shinjuku after the events of the movie but are given several intriguing possibilities. What this means is that this game is a wonderful choice for GMs who want to worldbuild. For casual gamers, it's a bit more problematic. Published adventures would help, but such adventures would have to either choose between the possible setting interpretations or else carefully avoid them altogether. One major strength of the setting is its atmosphere: that of an entire city turned into a decrepit haunted house. The setting is also fairly versatile within its general premise, with possibilities ranging from straight-ahead horror to Buffy-esque demon bashing with Feng Shui-caliber heroes. (The rules add a twist to creating wimpy scholarly types a la CoC, however; see the rules review below.) And due to the compatibility of all Tri-Stat games, there's plenty of potential for going completely multi-genre. Throw in mecha, for example, and you've got Silent Mobius. On the other hand, without a lot of work by the GM, the setting is inherently limited in scope: out of the whole world, only Shinjuku has the demons. Of lesser concern is the rather uneven level of technological advancement: while the general tech level is that of our own time, there are also such inexplicable advancements as rocket skates and laser rings. Of course, these problems are unavoidable in a direct adaptation of the movie. THE SYSTEM (NOTE: I'm aware that the second edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth addresses some of the issues I'll be bringing up regarding the Tri-Stat system as it appears in DCS. However, because I've only skimmed that book, and because DCS is designed to stand on its own, I'll be reviewing it as-is.) Demon City Shinjuku uses a modified version of the Tri-Stat system first introduced in Big Eyes, Small Mouth. I know it's been described several times over, but I'm going to cover the basics to illustrate how well the mechanics work for DCS. The (almost) universal mechanic involves rolling under a stat on 2d6, with negative modifiers adding to the roll and positive modifiers (such as skills) subtracting from it. *Character Creation* The hard numbers aspect of character creation comes in three stages: Stats, Attributes, and Skills. The first can be done with either randomly generated or assigned points, while the latter two are assigned. The book suggests several point values based on character power level for each, which provides a nice level of flexibility. As the system name suggests, each character has three stats with scores ranging from 1 to 12 on a closed scale: Body (for all things physical), Mind (for all things mental), and Soul (for all things spiritual). This is nice and simple, but it poses two problems. First, the scale is closed, which is intrinsically limiting. And second, the holistic Body stat puts some serious limits upon the kind of character you can create. Want a really strong character? Okay, then you've also got a character who's really agile and has excellent senses. I find it hard to believe that the monstrous Earth Demon, with its Body score of 10, is as agile as a world-class gymnast. Derived attributes are next. The character's Attack Combat Value - the number below which he must roll for any combat action - is equal to the average of all three stats, and his Defense Combat Value (for all dodges, parries, and what have you) is two less than that. Again, this holistic approach creates some odd results. For example, Sayaka, the Kyoya's love interest in the movie, has a really high Soul score that puts the average of her stats - and therefore her Attack Combat Value - one point higher than Kyoya's! Taking the defect "Inept Combat" drops that back down a point, but she's still his equal in basic combat potential - something not borne out in the movie. Another problem is that if the assigned point method is used for the stats, every character in the group will have the exact same Combat Value. In other words, it is impossible to create a natural warrior. The other two derived attributes are Health Points, which are your basic hit points and which are determined by [(Body + Soul) x 5], and Energy Points, which can be used to temporarily boost Stats and to power special abilities and which are determined by [Mind + Soul) x 5]. From there we move on to Attributes, which are a mix of what other games might call "Advantages" and "Powers" and which cost a varying number of points per level. In addition to such things as boosted skill points and resources, Attributes include the three manifestations of supernatural power in the game: Nempo, Demonic Powers, and Supernatural Training. Nempo is the Force-like martial art used by Kyoya. It's a very generalized ability, with a list of suggested applications that include Nempo-powered strikes, shields, leaps, and telekinesis, along with whatever else the GM finds reasonable. To my way of thinking, this is much closer to what Force powers in the Star Wars RPG should have been. Demonic Powers, by contrast, consist of a list of much more specific supernatural abilities. Enough powers are provided to cover every demonic ability seen in the film, along with some that are not. These powers include abilities that allow characters to break out of the closed-ended 1-12 Stat scale; unfortunately, they don't do so with much grace. For example, "Unholy Strength" adds to damage and lifting capacity at each level, but does not give a mechanic for improved strength-related Body rolls. Another problem is that some of the powers are a little too specific. The Illusion power, for example, can only be used to make one thing seem to be another, and cannot create an image of something that simply is not there; for that, you need the Mind Control power. Still, the list of powers available is impressive: not only can it be used to create almost any supernatural creature, but it is also sufficient to run a respectable superhero game. Last up is Supernatural Training - the weakest of the three supernatural abilities both in terms of power and (IMHO) concept. At its lowest level, it simply means that a character has studied the supernatural and knows the powers demons and ghosts may possess - an ability better handled by a skill. It moves up through the ability to detect the supernatural, to create wards against and exorcise supernaturals, to banish supernaturals, and finally to be immune from supernatural attack unless the character attacks first. This mix of learned abilities and spiritual prowess would have been better off divided into more than one Attribute. As an aside here, I think this game really should have included some sort of magic system. Certainly, the demonic powers can be pressed into service as magic spells, but they really don't capture the feel of the occult ceremonies with which Levih Rah clearly is familiar. My suggestion would be to tie knowledge of ceremonial magic to the Supernatural Training attribute in some manner. Characters may take Character Defects to gain more points to spend on Attributes. Among these are defects that give supernatural creatures their requisite weaknesses and supernatural investigators their requisite twitchiness. Others simply take away points from Stats, which makes little since if you're using point-based character generation. Characters can pick up a few more Attribute points by giving a few details of the character's background. Skills function as negative modifiers to Stat checks, thereby increasing the chance of a success. (This takes a little getting used to.) Interestingly, the point cost of skills depends upon their utility in DCS. So, for example, combat skills and stealth are the most expensive skills, followed by investigative and scientific skills. (Call of Cthulhu this ain't!) And speaking of combat… Combat One would expect anime combat - especially anime action/horror combat - to be dramatic, brutal, and fast. Is it? Well, that depends. DCS shares a problem with Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying and other "roll-under" systems: Between poorly-trained opponents, combat is a long string of misses, while between highly-skilled opponents, combat is an extended festival of parries and dodges. This is appropriate to the genre to a degree, but it can become tiresome. The fact that Combat Value adds to attack damage helps somewhat on the high end, since it means that attacks that do finally hit will do more damage. On the other hand, at the extremes, victory depends upon rolling a natural 2 - a critical hit that allows no defense roll and that can result in anything from double damage to automatic death, depending upon a roll of a d6. I'd prefer that any roll after modifiers of 2 or less result in a critical, thereby reflecting the influence of increased skill in combat. And, again, the holistic nature of the Combat Value manifests in some strangeness. All things being equal, for example, a nerdy genius professor will hit with more force than an above-average athlete. For some anime styles, this makes sense, but not for a serious setting like DCS. That aside, the combat mechanics are easy to understand and should suffice for gamers uninterested in "sweating the details". THE BOOK The cover, which features Kyoya dramatically energizing his training sword with Nempo energy with Sayaka's face in the background, is beautiful and lyrical; however, I don't think it quite captures the apocalyptic feel of the setting. (It took me quite a while to spot the ruined buildings in the far background.) Interior art consists of black and white movie stills and a full-color 7-page spread of movie images. (Well, actually, there are eight color pages in the spread, but the last one is a character sheet.) The formers are used effectively to illustrate various game mechanics. The latter go a long way to help convey the feel of the film. Ordinarily, I'd say that such heavy use of art is wasteful; however, DSJ clearly aims to cover the content of the movie and leave all else to conjecture. Because it does an admirable job of this in the allotted pace, I didn't find the color plates to be too indulgent. The writing is fairly clear and concise. Although somewhat dry in the rules sections, the locale descriptions were engaging and informative, frequently (but not always) capturing the setting's creepy flair. The book contains two sample adventures: one in which the PCs are members of a biker gang trying to rescue some soldiers, and another in which the PCs are demons(!). Both seem too restrictive to be the springboard for viable campaigns, but as one-shots they do serve to show some of the possibilities of the setting. The book's organization is top-notch, featuring both a comprehensive index and an appendix of useful charts. Wisely, it also includes a black and white version of the full-color character sheet. My only complaint is a minor one, and that is the placement of the calculations for the derived attributes at the end of the character creation section. SUMMARY I'm a big believer in rating games by how well they accomplish what they set out to do. Demon City Shinjuku sets out to translate the setting of its eponymous movie as directly as possible into the Tri-Stat system, making intelligent suggestions about setting elements beyond the movie's parameters but leaving it to the GM to provide the concrete details. I am not a huge fan of the Tri-Stat system and do not think that it handles the setting particularly well, but Tri-Stat fans will be well pleased with the way it's used here. Likewise, while I prefer licensed RPG properties that expand upon the source material, do-it-yourselfer GMs will find a solid foundation and a sturdy framework upon which to build their own vision of the DCS universe. So, since the game does a good job of accomplishing its goals, it gets a 4/4 from me. Nice work, Guardian guys. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)