I know they're mainly descendant from samurai but while reading up on the Yama–Ichi war it gave me a good idea for my setting Let's look at the similarities first:>Chivalrous (or at least they try to look chivalrous)>Loyalty is paramount >They clean up the streets of drug dealers and help those in need (probably just a public image thing)>Somewhat followed and even worked with the law before the Yama–Ichi war>Heavily religious >Didn't engage in violence/kill unless absolutely necessary Now let's look at the differences >They have their vices (except drugs)>They are criminals>They don't use the same equipment even back in the Edo period >They usually engage in vigilante working outside (yet beneficial) to the law (again probably just a public image thing)I'm interested in using this idea alongside building the religious factions in my setting but I want to know if I'm on to something or am just being schizophrenic Also had the idea of drawing different irezumi for the different factions like a holy symbol of sorts
>>93889279If you go with how yakuza would want to you to see them then sure. Its probably most orginal way to do it.But you would definitely have to ignore the bad stuff.
>>93889279It'd be even closer if you did it with italian mobsters
>>93889279At that point you could use Italian mafia too. Maybe as more pragmatic counter to yakuza who would fit robin Hood idealism
>>93889279So you're telling me that you don't know about all the hallucinogens irl paladins would take before and after crusades? What an irl lorelet
>>93889279I'll name a system so that we have something to work with:Palladium Fantasy Palladins:>Not much comparisons. While Yakuza are religious they are not a part of the religious order. PF paladins are an arm of the Church of Light.>PF paladins excel in education, martial training, and being well equipped. Yakuza do not have a high standard for education most of the time.>PG paladins can manifest their goodness into a magic strike of their sword that can damage the undead and evil invulnerable entities. Yakuza cannot make magic strikes or if they can it has very little to do with their Yakuza training.I'd say they are more like a well trained man-at-arms class like a knight or mercenary. They just do not have the magic powers or emphasis on reading that is synonymous with paladins.
>>93889444If we're talking about that we may as well throw in the Berserkers and Úlfhéðnar too.
>>93889323>>93889339Yea but the Italians don't really use full body tattoos like the Yakuza do so I'd have to scrap that idea...I'd rather keep the tats desu, saves having to painfully search for different armor styles to differentiate the different factions>>93889314>But you would definitely have to ignore the bad stuff.I can do that, most weebs already do that so I just gotta be intentionally stupid kek
>>93889466Exactly, imagine those fuckers but with 1 gorillion times folded pure Chinesium opium om top of the power of God and anime on their side
>>93889323Ah yes, throwing kids into acid baths, classic paladin behaviour.
>>93889599Yeah, Ork and Goblin kids. The fact that the fantasy yakuza set them loose themselves on businesses and farms when they don't pay is secondary.
>>93889279It would be funny. It would be even funnier to base the fallen paladin faction on ms-13. They too put a lot focus on tatoos so that idea could stay Also if yo do included them you wouldn't even have to clean up Yakuza actions too much. Everyone looks better compared to peak power ms-13.
>>93889279>Could Yakuza reasonably be interpreted as paladins?Could jihadis?
>>93889713That's cool, they could issue ultimatum to the whoever is ruling the country that unless their demands are meet in 24 hours they will just kill any civilian they come in contact with for as long as it takes to deliver on the demands (like they would often do irl)Then player party can come in and save the day before they start their slaughter
>>93889789Frankly it's less stupid. You can set the story in the context of a war where they're being invaded so their more unhinged behavior can be attributed to wartime
>>93889479>>93889713The Yaks stopped doing tats during the 90s, I understand.
>>93889279No. They're criminals. But even criminals don't want crime to happen where they live. So they keep out other criminals on their turf while reigning in their own members. They also do perfunctiory PR activities as part of the carrot and stick approach to keep the local people in line and not rat them out.
>>93889853CloseYou see those signs that say no tattoos outside those bathhouses? Well after the Yama–Ichi war the japanese had their version of the RICO act set in called the Yakuza exclusion ordinancesPretty much scorched earth in a bill, you can't do any legal business with the Yakuza nowadays
>>93889279>I know they're mainly descendant from samuraiThey're not
>>93889279A lot of yaks are actually from socially ostracized groups. People with foreign ancestry for instance. The Samurai families just became Zaibatsus and successful professionals not thugs. For the most part at least. Yes there were some paramilitary groups post ww2 that became Yakuza that were made up of former military and some of the military was of samurai descent, but the idea that the yaks are the inheritors of the samurai culture/tradition is just yak propaganda.
>>93889279>>93889973 This, you're falling for propaganda if you think what they're doing is in any way paladin-like. My pet peeve is seeing them shown as "wow, not that bad after all!">Main source of income nowadays is scam calls targeting the elderly>Heavy involvement in drug trafficking for some syndicates>Human trafficking in the Philippines>More than 220 gunfights in 1985 to 1989 in Kansai, several civilians killed in the crossfireFantasy games have a tradition of using such naive interpretations of cultures as fantasy cultures or even races, so it would be pretty dope to see their aesthetics in a paladin order though.
>>93892681>Fantasy games have a tradition of using such naive interpretations of cultures as fantasy cultures or even races, so it would be pretty dope to see their aesthetics in a paladin order though.This, we could debate all day if the yak's were good guys for fighting off foreign gangs or bad guys for trafficking people in the Philippines but in the end it's all about aesthetics In which Yakuza were kingBtw anybody got a good template for sketching full body irezumi?
>>93889279Of a lawful evil religion, sure
>>93889279>I know they're mainly descendant from samuraiThey're not, like not even a little bit.There was a brief overlap of the former samurai class and the yakuza in the period between ww1 and ww2. (When the Yakuza basically ran Manchuria) But the yakuza were gamblers, peddlers and societal dropouts.
>>93893766Sorry to double post here but this entire post is just weirdly hagiographic about the yakuza.What do you mean the Yakuza don't do drugs and clean up drug dealers, they turned an entire province of China into a fucking drug farm, they have a monopoly on the drug trade in Japan, I think like a fourth of Yakuza arrests or something is for selling meth (And like 10% is arrests for calling elderly people and saying they're their son and need money). What the fuck are you talking about. They're criminal scum, and their main difference from other organized crime groups is that they're really fucking pathetic criminal scum.
>>93889279> samuraiLmao.More like 'ethnic Koreans and other undesirables.'Former samurai and Japanese nobility just became rich business people now
>>93893843Explain how that makes them different from politicians, Retardanon
>>93892723>or bad guys for trafficking people in the PhilippinesNigga It's HUMAN TRAFFICKING. Kidnap and slavery at best. Nightmarish things at worst.
>>93890001Problem being that the first anti-tat ordinances date back to the Meiji era, with the legalistic screw being loosened a bit when that british royale with the cock ring publically stated that he got some real cool tats during his stay in Japan. And mind you, that was back when plenty of the previous gen of day labourers and firemen would have had full upper body tats done.>Pretty much scorched earth in a bill, you can't do any legal business with the Yakuza nowadaysGood thing most of their business was shady AF all along.
>>93894442it's also not aimed at yakuza as much as ainu who had a huge focus on tatoos in their culture. It's like asutralians banning abos.
>>93894499Anon, the point of the tat ordonance was cleaning up the streets of Tokyo and other major cities of shirtless and pantsless tatooed porters. Various political efforts were being made at improving Japan's international standing by tyding up major public spaces and the Ainu minority really wasn't on anybody's mind. Their lifes were probably being ruined by a specific set of colonial codes anyway.
>>93889279The yakuza weren't descended from samurai they were descended from a mix of the non-noble bodyguards formerly hired by the independent merchant class before the samurai suppressed said class, and professional gamblers who went underground after gambling was banned.
>>93894791A reasonably sizeable outlawed or self-regulated section of real estate and people existed through most of Japan's history and it generally acted as a repository for recruitment and business activities associated with the underworld.The specifics of it changed across time based on who was currently getting the short end of the stick and where regulations were being slackened, sometimes multiple times within a lifetime.
>>93894251Anon, that's not even funny. Kill yourself.
>>93889279There's no religious component, so they're just a guild, which is a fancier, cleaner name for a gang.
Whenever anyone tries to glamorize the yakuza, I gently remind them that Junko Furata's torturers/murderers were aspiring yakuza (chinpira). Their relatives were actual yakuza, and not only allowed the crime to continue, but tried to cover it up. These are horrible people.
>>93889279>Could Yakuza reasonably be interpreted as paladins?No. Wrong archetype.Wrong aesthetics.Wrong alignment.Wrong race.You may be retarded for even asking.
>>93893843>province of China into a fucking drug farmOh no don't get me wrong they sell shit tons of drugsThey just don't do them
>>93894279Did... Did you read what I said???Yes, that's bad... I literally said that was bad
>>93895047No he's right Politicians are scum lmao
>>93896568>Junko Furata's torturers/murderers were aspiring yakuzaRetard those 2 dumbfucks just said they were Yakuza to rape a chickThat wasn't actually yakuza
>>93897272>>93895418It's a boomer joke to defend being referential to the lamest organized crime group. Kill yourself, but one of you has to go back to /pol/ first.
>>93889279>>They are criminalsThis is a fairly big obstacle.
>>93889279>can a violent mafia reasonably be interpreted as paladins?Hell no
>>93899800Seethe more lmao, politicians are subhuman and deserve no respect Not almost subhuman, not even borderline subhuman, those ratchet fucks are unironically subhuman trash>>93899820>>93899848Yea alright fair enough, what about clerics thenOr a better way of looking at it is this: does a cleric inherently have to follow the law?
>>93897272Politicians are scum, but paladins aren't politicians.
>>93899848They just have to be right. Like Batman.
>I know they're mainly descendant from samuraiDear heavens no. Their ancestry is mostly burakumin and korean "guest workers". Even the yakuza themselves onyl point to samurai ideals as the supposed origins of their organisation and credo.The rest... is just the image they want to uphold. Which they mostly have upheld by being decidedly unchivalrous to those who point out that (morally) the Oyabun is naked. Like Yuzo Itami, who "committed suicide" after releasing the movie "Minbo no Onna".Basically they're mostly just another bunch of criminals, who occasionally try to hide under a myth of being something more. Now you could of course use the myth rather than reality as inspiration for some kind of fantasy organisation, but basically of the the good points of that myth is just generic soldier-for-good stuff that has no need for the yakuza connection. So unless you want these religious groups to be fundamentally corrupt bunches of thugs then I'd say you'd be better served severing the yakuza connection, and if you want some other groups to be inspired by then you can look at rival religious schools (mostly Buddhist) and martial arts ryu in Japan (though if there's any info on that side of their existence in English outside of Amdur's "Old School"... probably not), and the various non-crafters guilds in Europe, perhaps also along with the sometimes strained relationships between different Christian groups there. Should be plenty of power plays and shenanigans just within the catholic military orders.
>>93901291I don't think the Ryu, unlike indian martial arts schools, were ever involved in organized crime though? Indian martial arts schools took cuts from real estate projects through threats of violence as late as the 70s, from what I've read, but the Ryu seemed to have been reasonably well integrated socially and economically. As in the families at least owned real estate and had connections that could be developed into alternative income streams.And yeah, the Yakuza postwar used to recruit from non-ethnic populations within Japan (Koreans and Chinese secondos and tercios), from system dropouts and from people who otherwise had been marked for societal expulsion.
>>93899820>>93899848>Paladins can only be Lawful Good and follow not!Christian stand-in religionsIt's not true for past... 30 years. Have you tried playing the game OP is asking for?
>>93889279>mainly descended from samurai Kek what? The opposite is true you moron
>>93901412>I don't think the Ryu, unlike indian martial arts schools, were ever involved in organized crime though?Not in general, which is kind of why I feel they'd likely be better inspiration for a bunch of good guys than the yakuza. That said some (far form all) ryu could be highly belligerent bunches of hotheads beating the shite out of each other (and possibly also anyone looking at them funny) for fame and glory and to show who was the cockiest rooster of them all. (Shades of the original bosozoku...)
>>93890877Yeah, they're mostly Burakumin (a local version of pariahs doing the unclean or forbidden trades) and immigrants from Korea etc. These people couldn't get normal jobs because of background checks done at most companies (they'd turn you down if your grandpa was an immigrant etc) so they had to engage in illegal stuff. That's also why they doubled down on patriotism and honour, they were just larping as "true Japanese".
>>93889279Real world yakuza? No, not really. But if you make a paladin that behaves exactly like Kiryu Kazuma, he'd be a pretty fucking excellent paladin. Unbreakable, self sacrificing, fights for those that need help, and always encouraging others to follow their dreams and live their best life.
>>93902161For those who don't know and might want bizarre lore for something: Burakumin were people who had jobs rejected by shintoism because they were stained by Death. Jobs like butcher and leather worker (not samurai, those were okay). When the dominant religion changed businesmen took those markets, but the families that were pariahs remained such.By the 70's, 1970's, they were printing books listing names and adresses of supposed burakumin so you knew and could avoid them, fire them and not marry them.
>>93889279They are not descended from samauri, they are descended from criminal gans and untouchables "Burakumin" (butchers, leather tanners, undertakers). The samauri descendants mostly form the japanese middle class, they mostly filled the imperial guard and officers in the meiji/pre-ww2 eras.
Paladin with Oath of Conquest.Not more
>>93889279Are we talking about the carefully nurtured public image that the yakuza take pains to uphold, or the actual yakuza yakuza?
>>93906045>Are we talking about the carefully nurtured public image that the yakuza take pains to upholdPublic image Although now in curious if they could be clerics since clerics aren't inherently good Sure they heal but no one says they *have* to be good
>>93907843Considering that there's nothing religious whasoever about the yakuza beyond a few rituals looking vaguely shinto-ish on account of being a Japanese high-school dropout's attempt at looking all cool and cultured and samuraish and stuff...
>>93909340Yea fair enough Aight this thread can die now unless anybody has anything else to add
>>93909340That's every form of organized crime though, and I think it's fine.Like how the mafia do a lot of shit based around folk catholicism, with burning saint images and shit.Or how triads and tongs do a lot of stuff based around taoist imagery.
>>93902321This post is rad. >>93889279Paladin can be made to fit a bunch of other cultures' "hero knight with a code" types from samurai to Varangians to hussars.
