Old Shanghai RPG supplement

As you might have read, I just recently did a quick study of China from about 1909 until 1949, for potential RPG scenario/setting use. Recently while hanging out at a G+ TSR Gangbuster's community I saw a plug for Tom West's Old Shaghai from Horrido Publishing. Well what a perfect place to start for doing some "China RPGing" as well as the whole East Asian region for that matter? Set in the 1930s, the reader is introduced to vastly reforming world for the city. Japan steps into the role as regional aggressor of the Shangdon peninsula. The British Empire hovers over Chinese territories like a vulture over the corpse of Qing dynasty after its century-long antagonism pays off. The French show their tone-death lack of insight despite continued holdings. The fledgling Soviet Union and its refugees add distinctively even more brutal intrigue. The Americans and Germans kind of look on, at least in the early 30s, pretty much eating peanuts watching colonialism, militarism, and nativism vie for supremacy in the rather lawless city. A much proclaimed "cosmopolitan" city fills the world's newspapers while foreign gunboats patrol the Yangtze Delta and its tributaries. Nothing screams B&W and smoke-filled adventure quite as much this work.



This source book does a pretty good job making sure that the reader gets a good grasp of the city. First its layouts, then its organizations, and then some of the people. West then goes on to work out a couple of scenarios using bits and pieces of the book's elements before moving into some real nitty-gritty details. Throughout the book pages bearing articles from a newspaper, I am not sure if the periodical was real or not, its real articles appear without dates, giving a great atmospheric guide as well as adventure hooks for the DYI GM. It was these details that I found to be the best part of the work, being already somewhat familiar with period and place. Stuff like travel times from various major cites of the Far East via various modes of transportation, really put the cream on the pie for me-- Something about Vladivostok being 11 hours away by plane to Shanghai really kicked in some espionage notes in my head.

This work is very tall King Kong, a couple feet off of its height for a lack of more art and some editing. It is very, very close to a Godzilla. I will be buying more from this author.

China circa 1928

The Far East circa 1937