Mod: Jomon, Broken Swords v0.8 RELEASED

[Sombre]

VedalkenBear said:
I have played this mod. It's very interesting, and challenging in the early game where you can have definite morale issues. I've never seen an O-Toyo fail a Seduction, though; what is their 'number'? (IIRC, Succubus is 16, right?)

As far as the flavor is concerned... doesn't really fit with my knowledge of Japanese culture/history, but ah well. It seems to please most people. (A woman-dominated Japanese nation should be EA, not LA.)

I haven't played the new version with the fixed national summoners, I believe. (I tried summoning one of them, and got Visitors?!? Or was that another mod...)

I'll take another look and check stuff out.

I missed this reply the last time, just noticed it now.

The O-Toyo has a succubus/seduce ability of 10, so they should fail more often than the real thing. Maybe you've just been lucky - they do tend to be really good assassins even if they fail though, but they come at a steep price. Not 100% sure on their balance.

Yomi, Shinuyama and Jomon don't exactly fit Japanese history. Indeed you could say that only Jomon is really Japan - the three eras feel like different places to me. Regardless the idea behind the mod basically came from modern J-Horror (which is full of females) the old legend of the Japanese 'cat vampire' and some other asian horror influences.

The summons possibly aren't that well balanced.

[Wyatt Hebert]

Just so you know, Sombre, Vedalken has a degree in Japanese Culture and Language, so he has a pretty good idea how close things are to history.

I'm curious as to his impressions on Shinuyama and Yomi. My guess, honestly, is that those two are closer to Japanese _mythology_, whereas the one you've come up with is much closer to, pardon the term, modern mythology.

Just a guess...

[HoneyBadger]

Yomi strikes me as slightly more pre-Buddhist Tibetan, or atleast proto-Asian than Japanese, but I'll admit it's more of an impression and perhaps a cutting-of-hairs than an absolute fact.

Also, I have to wonder why Onis are equipped similarly to Samurai-curved swords, armor, etc. when the Samurai culture apparently came after they did? I think I would have chosen to arm Yomi's nationals with Chinese influenced weapons over Japanese-or atleast used historically more accurate weaponry-and not shown the early Japanese influences until Shinuyama.

Later Oni *summons* would have been fine and appropriate with Samurai-garb, but the famous curved swords/bladeforms of the Japanese came as a result of Samurai culture, and didn't precede it.

[BandarLover]

O.K. Read back thru the thread and didn't see this posted so I found a new (but interesting) bug for you. With the newest download, Broken Sword Jomon now has recruitable Succubi, worth no gold and only 1 resource! I'm imagining this was unintended since they weren't there in earlier editions.

I was running a game with New Ulm at first and thought I would check and see if it might have just been a freaky number coincidence but it's the same running just new Jomon.

[Sombre]

Yeah that's my bad. I was testing succubi seducing against O-Toyo seducing to see if there was a problem and I forgot to turn them off.

I'll fix this after some more feedback. I can't keep uploading like a million little fixes one by one.

What I don't understand is how I didn't notice that when I tested the new verison. Weird.

[VedalkenBear]

Ah, the inspirations for Yomi and Sinuyama? It's quite clearly based on Tokugawa-period 'science fiction', if you will. Near the end of the 1600s, there was an immense burst of popular culture in Japan. Among other things that grew was the print industry, and there were entire genres that came into being. One such was the genre of the 'ghost story', which generally were set in the Sengoku Jidai (Warring States period, very well depicted in movies such as Ran and The Seven Samurai). Also think Inu Yasha. That would explain the references to samurai culture.

Sinuyama (which, BTW, means 'Death Mountain', and probably would be better as 'Siniyama) springs from the same genre, though more of 'popular folklore' with the kappa, etc.

As I said, I think I'll work on a true Classical period Japanese state, with a centralized government that no one really listens to, reclusive esoteric Buddhist sects (certainly not the populist Amida sects; this is where the Jomon Onmyozi come from) providing the magic, etc. etc.

If you link the references to the 'Kingdom of Wa' from BC Chinese sources to Japan (which many people do), their culture around 200BC appeared to be a female-dominated theocracy. I.e., women shaman were the community leaders. If you like, I could research this more.

[Sombre]

I thought it might be interesting to have a late period Japan where they've been heavily influenced or semi-conquered by LA Marignon forces, representing contact between the Portuguese / Spanish and Japan. Of course in history this was a gunpowder and cannon period, but it would still provide interesting inspiration for some sort of LA Jomon.

You could also have a MA / LA Jomon supposing they had been conquered by the Khans and their barbarian hordes, since historically the Mongols came close to launching a serious attempt on parts of Japan (stopped by bad / divine weather and distracted by other concerns).

Would your classical era Japan be EA?