Oriental Fantasy

[Blackhawk748]

Just finished watching Legend of the Drunken Master (great flick) and now im thinking about possible Oriental campaigns. I tried this once awhile ago, and it kinda worked. It took a few sessions for my PCs to stop chuckling about the fact that i called them all *their Rank* -San. Hell it took me a full session to stop, baring that it went ok.

I was just wondering about any Oriental Campaigns people on here have played in/DMed and how they went. Id also love to hear if anyone knows of anymore 3.5 books for Oriental things besides OA.

[Arcanist]

I was just wondering about any Oriental Campaigns people on here have played in/DMed and how they went. Id also love to hear if anyone knows of anymore 3.5 books for Oriental things besides OA.

Well there are Rokugan campaign setting books that nobody owns, but were published for 3.5 rules so there is that.

[Blackhawk748]

Well there are Rokugan campaign setting books that nobody owns, but were published for 3.5 rules so there is that.

I have several of these, in PDF form, but holy crap where they hard to find, and im still missing like half. I fell like they really missed out on something here, i mean one Oriental setting (one that isnt even theirs) and one supplement (thats 3.0 no less) doesnt seem like a lot for an entire genre.

[Ephemeral_Being]

I think the "oriental" setting is called "Legend of the Five Rings?" It's set in Rokugan.

It doesn't seem to use DnD rules, though. I have no idea if it's compatible with other 3.0/3.5 material.

[thecrimsondawn]

I would say its more 3.0 then anything. Some things are overpowered as hell, while other things are kinda useless.

If I remember right, that is the one that added in jade type weapons, and you fight taint instead of evil.
I could be mistaken tho and be mixing this up with another setting.

The books that I am thinking about are highly focused on evil spirits and corruption. Various human races, skills that give up to +30 to acrobatics (or was it jump and climb, hell if I can remember) and some nice other features.

The reason I dont open that book much however is a rule they put in place - You can mix there classes with similar classes under another name. The rogue type class cant be mixed with rogue, and the Samurai class cant be mixed with Paladin (i think that one was paladin at least). That with the requirements often being a human race from a various clan, makes using nearly anything from that book rather troublesome.

[TrollCapAmerica]

D&D has had Oriental style settings since the mid 80s. It's usually a mixed of really cool ideas blunders trying to make things stand out from Core or just plain weird stuff slamming together every Asian culture on Earth so you have Samurai fighting Taoist Sorcerers or Penanggalans getting KOed by Muay Thai Monks(Which is awesome but rarely works out in gameplay

The Rokugan setting was it's own right independent game that was a fantasy Japan world where Samurai were like the weeaboo legends with ultra lethal combat emphasizing the "Samurai must be prepared to die at any time" motif because you really could die anytime

The D&D conversion completely loses that especially after a couple levels. D&D characters gain so much power that suicidal moves like charging into a 10-1 fight ignoring a hail of arrows getting trampled by a horse etc. barely phases a D&D system character

The catch is that while it was bad for simulating a game of L5R it was the bestversion of Oriental adventures they had ever put out

[thecrimsondawn]

D&D has had Oriental style settings since the mid 80s. It's usually a mixed of really cool ideas blunders trying to make things stand out from Core or just plain weird stuff slamming together every Asian culture on Earth so you have Samurai fighting Taoist Sorcerers or Penanggalans getting KOed by Muay Thai Monks(Which is awesome but rarely works out in gameplay

The Rokugan setting was it's own right independent game that was a fantasy Japan world where Samurai were like the weeaboo legends with ultra lethal combat emphasizing the "Samurai must be prepared to die at any time" motif because you really could die anytime

The D&D conversion completely loses that especially after a couple levels. D&D characters gain so much power that suicidal moves like charging into a 10-1 fight ignoring a hail of arrows getting trampled by a horse etc. barely phases a D&D system character

The catch is that while it was bad for simulating a game of L5R it was the bestversion of Oriental adventures they had ever put out

Sounds like it would be well played with E6 then :)

[daremetoidareyo]

L5R had its own roleplaying game back in the late 1990's and it was highly lethal. Also a blast. It was a D10 system with exploding dice. (reroll and add the new die to a 10)

Spoiler alert: nothing but personal opinion:
As far as I can tell, Oriental adventures tend to be ok in D&D...it just always feels like D&D.
* The alignment system undermines the feel of an oriental society: the struggle is between honor and family, not nebulous concepts like law and chaos.

* The sheer number of monsters of D&D undermines it (monsters should be like spices). I hate to be all story DM on you, but a great OA adventure is when you externalize the internal struggle (which comes from ideas of honor and karma rather than good vs. evil).

*And then D&D inherent imbalance really hurts when it comes time to samuraii apart a ninja: outside TOB, martials and rogues struggle to capture the essence of kung fu. Monks somehow make it boring in D&D structure.

*multiple spellcasters in a party just feels like D&D because the spells are so iconic (grease magic missile dominate etcetera).

[hiryuu]

* The sheer number of monsters of D&D undermines it (monsters should be like spices). I hate to be all story DM on you, but a great OA adventure is when you externalize the internal struggle (which comes from ideas of honor and karma rather than good vs. evil).

(edit: i just want to be clear, i'm not disagreeing. i prefer storygaman myself >_>)

I dunno... the Jade Emperor routinely flew into space with mountains and punched tiger demons in the face because Tuesday.

And if we're including all of Asia, you should see the stuff heroes get up to in the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabarata. We're talking guys who have capital-G-o-d as their chariot drivers and can turn their arrows into hailstorms and that's the low-level campaign stuff. The stuff Kratos gets up to in God of War would be like a toned-down version of the things that happen in Hindu and Chinese mythology.

Even Japanese mythology gets pretty crazy - eight-headed dragons and swords thrown like buzzsaws through mountains and the like.

I think the main thrust is that the veneer is what's important in a lot of cultures around the Pacific - the intent and appearance are more important than the results. Lying is perfectly acceptable as long as no one catches you, and farming is handled with the same cultural gravitas as surfing on your sword on your way to punch a thrice-resurrected two-million year old demon lord (oh, China...).

But I'm all for this: around the same time the Romans were trying to figure out how they copper and tin alloy, China was well into the Han dynasty, and the Indian subcontinent was practicing what is now the oldest extant religion on Earth - not to mention working iron in ways that Europe wouldn't replicate for a few thousand years.

I think the only real problem is in the magic system: there's no difference in the way magic works to most cultures you'd find. The arcane/divine split would make no sense at all, but that's because all magic is divine magic - what you'd call a "wizard" would just be someone trying to figure out how the gods worked. What you'd call a "sorcerer" in D&D/PF would just be someone gifted by the gods or descended from such beings.

[DrKerosene]

I have been wanting to doing an oriental themed campaign/adventure for some time myself. I'm not too keen on the L5R books, from what I've read about them.

All I have to contribute is, in my searching the best oriental campaign setting I've seen, and expect to steal from, is basically the Exalted ttrpg, but that's also only from what I've read about it.

[BWR]

Some notes on L5R:
- the d20 version was based on 3.0. Apart from OA (and the third/fourth party Bloodspeakers) AEG, creators of the CCG and setting, published all d20 books for it.Lots of good information about the setting, mechanics range from nigh-useless to really powerful with most being a bit shy of average power-level for 3.5. Nothing quite as abusable as what you find in D&D, and if everyone plays with little other than L5R classes and PrCs, things are fine.
- lots of R&K fans like to claim combat is far more deadly in L5R, but that's only half- true, at best. D&D can be just as lethal as R&K if played that way. L5R warriors generally get far more powerful as they advance, and can eventually take on hordes of lesser warriors without going down, and they can face inhuman monsters that terrorize entire cities and take them down. Sound familiar? The company-expected level of optimization results in R&K being more lethal than D&D at higher levels, but we all know that you can play with D&D so that people only survive one or possibly two rounds, which is not that different from L5R. Perhaps the biggest difference is that archery is pretty lethal all the way through.
- The magic-mundane gap is quite a bit smaller than in D&D. Practically, it's non-existent. Sure, warriors aren't going to be raining fire down on a city, but shugenja can't trivialize any encounter with a single spell or do anything as powerful as D&D magic.
- builds are handled a bit differently, and talk of building and optimization often rubs L5Rers the wrong way, for some reason. Dipping is right out, and in general you are better off being able to do a wide variety of things moderately well than overspecializing. You aren't capable of making the ridiculous builds that can throw planets or become a god (except that one slightly iffy build where you could, without Pun-pun-like assumptions, destroy the world as a starting character), but depending on edition, you can make characters with some really ridiculous numbers. 3E/R was the biggest offender in this respect, and it seems most people like the current 4e a lot more (though, for all its faults, I prefer 3er - they went a little too far in trying to fix things, imo).