I Want Edopunk

I didn’t back 7^th Sea: Khitai for three reasons: 1) I honestly haven’t gotten much use out of my 7^th Sea 2^nd Edition books so far; 2) I already own all of Cubicle 7’s Qin: The Warring States line for my wuxia needs (not that I’m not capable of making that up myself); and 3) I just didn’t like the preview material for Khitai’s version of Japan. While the blending of Ainu and Japanese culture was intriguing, I’m just not interested in another pseudo-Sengoku Jidai. I want an Edopunk setting.

I want a setting that looks like a Wagakki Band video. I want a setting that delves into the non-samurai side of Japan—the colorful world of courtesans, fireworks makers, freelance “police,” geisha, sumo wrestlers, ukiyo-e artists, and yakuza seen in such works as Miss Hokusai, Oh! Edo Rocket, Sakuran, and the Zatoichi series. If there’s going to be the supernatural, then I want it to be the weird, wacky world of yōkai folklore, with all of its banal yet bizarre monsters. I want a game that kicks the myth of the samurai in the nards. I want a setting that could be illustrated by the person behind the Edopunk Tumblr.

Frankly, it drives me kind of nuts that in a world where the equivalent of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715) is running around, the version of Japan that exists is set prior to 1600—but I realize John Wick probably wants a chance to revisit and create his own definitive version of Legend of the Five Rings. I also realize that the world of 7^th Sea also has Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) and Louis XIV as contemporaries, so it’s not like presenting a cohesive version of alt-history is a priority for Wick and his crew. I do think that there’s something lost in presenting an ahistorically fractured Japan as contemporary with the developing nationhood of England and France; if the setting is going to focus on samurai, I’d rather see courtiers in ruffs confronting the Tokugawa bureaucracy than a land in the middle of civil war.

I realize that World of Dew (which I really need to get around to buying) presents a Tokugawa Era setting, and that Wick has a good relationship with the creator of that game (which is, after all, based on Wick’s Houses of the Blooded rules). But, again, I’d rather see a game about the common people of Edo Japan, the people who resisted and rebelled for two hundred years. (Yeah, that’s right, the history of Tokugawa Japan was riddled with peasant uprisings and even samurai rebellions; the idea that Japan is a land of peace and harmony is Meiji-era propaganda.)

Man, I guess that means I'm going to need to write it myself. I'll put it on the schedule for 2023.