John Doe Thomas Cook Blog

I'm an Android Developer by day, but enjoy dabbling with other stacks. I also enjoy playing TTRPG games solo and writing up my adventures for other people to read about.

Thomas Cook Blog

This document was supplied by Paddy to serve as a primer for a campaign setting using the modern warfare system.

Preface

It is not at all intended to be politically-correct. It is intended to engender fun discussions regarding the construction of a fictional tabletop roleplay campaign based loosely on a geographic region of modern-day Earth. No offense or disrespect is intended to the people, organizations and governments in Southeast Asia, nor any other region. Some of the assertions I make in this document may be partially or completely incorrect, I do not claim these to be accurate depictions of reality, as this is intended to be used for fiction.

Overview

Many settings have been explored for tabletop RPGs, yet Southeast Asia is not a place I considered all that interesting until watching the anime Black Lagoon. This led me to do some very minor research into the region. Apparently it has been home to the pirate capital of the world for some time. It even surpassed Somalia and western Africa for percentage of the world’s pirate attacks in 2013. 

What impresses me about the region is simple. It’s a region of the world where a person, a group, or even an entire city can hide with little-to-no attention from authorities or governments. This means that a location may only be as lawful as the group, or groups, controlling it. The police may be in someone’s (or multiple people’s) pocket. Rogue militias may stop into a bar for a drink and rub shoulders with assassins, spies, or mercenaries. While this is a somewhat fanciful view of the area at large, this deviation from reality allows for a fun “what-if” setting. More importantly, in certain areas and according to certain sources, this is not terribly far from the truth.

In a region where there is so much piracy at sea, it makes sense that there will be a booming trade for stolen goods. From my research I grew to understand that pirate crews have land-faring contacts who handle connections to fences, corporate spies, etc.

As we can see, pirates are no longer a single crew on a single ship. They are a highly-advanced unit with technological know-how and connections reaching all the way back to Europe, according to some sources.

As mentioned on TIME.com,  there was an attack which took 10 hours, during which the pirates had free reign of a captured tanker, where the invaders siphoned “…3,700 metric tons of fuel into a second vessel…” This means the pirates were able to operate with impunity for such a long period of time with no interruption with two ships trading liquid cargo.

It seems the region is not unfamiliar with the technical expertise needed to pull off feats such as these, a far cry from the stereotypical Somalian pirates.

The number of countries in the region likely has something to do with this. The various jurisdictions and competing nations, in conjunction with criminal enterprises create a complex web of fealty which mires attempts to curb illegal activities in the region. This is exacerbated by the lack of law enforcement experience, know-how and training, in general.

Cities & Locations

The semi-urban locations in most of the region are somewhat rundown and “messy” by western standards. A few have signs/ads in English with another language and many villages do not seem to have names or harbor much prominence socially/geographically. 

There are many small nations / regions that encompass numerous villages and large swaths of unmonitored and undeveloped coastline on the mainland. Islands are much the same, some with settlements and others without.

Interestingly, there seems to be a large quantity of roads on the mainland, rather than being the typical jungle that springs to mind for most westerners. There are also a number of highly-developed areas within some nations, some of which I have listed in the examples section alongside their less-developed peers. With so many locations, it seems easy to drop a fictional city or two into the region, allowing a great deal of freedom for developing a story with the overall regional issues as a backdrop.

Examples

There seems to be far more to the region than the small amount I can fit on this note document, including cultural zones. A number of great articles are present online and will allow for further research by those interested in making the campaign.

Concepts & Atmosphere

Urban Jungle - There are towns of ~30,000 registered citizens and cities of over 1 million. Yet there are a number of seemingly-nameless villages and swaths of undeveloped coastline. Still yet, there are islands with varying levels of development, including coffee shops (seemingly a common staple in the region). This could allow a campaign to have a wide range of settings and adventures utilizing a variety of skillsets. It might also allow for diversity in NPC attitudes and trade.

Corruption

How many people are really “corrupt” in the region? Is it only those in power, or does every citizen and fisherman have a different definition of corrupt (similar to what we see in Chinese views on intellectual property)? This corruption spreads as far as northern Europe, where good stolen from ships are sometimes old, according to some sources. What does this mean for characters and in-game governments?

Nightlife

Contrary to initial expectations, there seems to be a number of ethnicities present in many Google Maps photos of the area (both urban and otherwise). This ensures that players and GMs can bring in a character of several ethnicities and still maintain immersion and suspension of disbelief. Given the few tourist locations on the maps and images, one does wonder: how is the nightlife, especially in the larger cities?

Characters fighting in the jungle, racing illegal gunboats between islands, flying large twin-engine bombers converted into cargo planes, or walking down a sidewalk lit in the many colors of the redlight district of a Southeast Asian city with a cigarette in their mouth. The possibilities seem nearly endless and far less homogenous than typical fantasy or sci-fi settings.

Conceptual Features