PDA

View Full Version : Opinions on Kara-Tur



t209
2021-03-08, 04:23 PM
So I wanted to ask from any old school RPG players, amateur historians, and maybe someone who may have know it from Asians Represent's "Critical Read" (while they do bring up issues, they do seems to lack AD&D DM contexts or tend to go side-track, or kinda harsh but doesn't seem to bring up historical analogue...like forgetting Imperial Censors are based on Ming-era Jinyiwei, or quick to assume that it as "western white saviours" while ignoring having mechanics for local characters but mostly due to also reading Swords of Daimyo where the "optional" first adventure for "exporting western fantasy characters" is going to fantasy Japan and enter the most convulated prologue for samurai RP instead of trading outposts).
In my honest opinion, even ignoring their critiques, the setting is kinda old and not standing up to time now that Avatar kinda set the high-bar for Asian-esque fantasy along it being too historical analogue, too low fantasy (yeah, DnD at the time was Greymouser, Conan, and Dying Earth era human-heavy heroic fantasy, but it feels too off once it was stuck with more magical Forgotten Realms), and the "Evil China, Good China, Totalitarian Japan, and Chaotic Japan" to be somewhat annoying (at least why Evil and divided China wasn't steam rolled by Good and orderly China and two Japans doesn't seem to share the same history...somehow).
Any thoughts?

Yanagi
2021-03-08, 09:20 PM
Decades ago I bought Kara-Tur materials (circa 1989) because I grew up on jianghu and jidaigeki, and wanted to a run a D&D game that could get a bit of that feel going--plus the Mahabharata, but that don't matter 'cause turned out there's no India equivalent--and it was really disappointing how flat and uninteresting the setting was. Kara-Tur was boring and it unreasonably low fantasy given it's the other 3/4s of continent that contains Faerun. It, like Maztica and that wretched 2e guide to the Hordelands, was for some reason historically simulationist in a way that neither incorporates the magic level and feel of the Realms nor borrows from any of the fantasy literature or myths of the regions sampled, instead being a plodding top-down accounting of expy nations that manages to resemble a Britannica encyclopedia entry more than a compelling setting in which there's things for adventurers to do.

I can remember feeling vexed that, at minimum Pearl Buck's version of The Water Margin was available, as was Waley's Monkey...and you could literally just take materials in those two books and make a great "Chinese" setting that would fit in the Forgotten Realms. I didn't understand why they put no effort into sampling...anything. And, while I don't think the authors were trying to be jerks, the emphasis on "honor," etiquette, and rigid social order did come across as simplistic and thus really vexing for someone who loves both the historic and literary granularity of those concepts. I'd call it low effort, but they clearly put effort into stuff that was just...dumbed down versions of poorly-described features that 80s Americans associated with different countries like overly formal language and court etiquette.

The joke is that it was so disappointing my very first world-building project was trying to rewrite the setting into something more interesting, meaning there's a direct line from there to me handing here, contributing mostly to the world building forum.

t209
2021-03-08, 10:15 PM
Decades ago I bought Kara-Tur materials (circa 1989) because I grew up on jianghu and jidaigeki, and wanted to a run a D&D game that could get a bit of that feel going--plus the Mahabharata, but that don't matter 'cause turned out there's no India equivalent--and it was really disappointing how flat and uninteresting the setting was. Kara-Tur was boring and it unreasonably low fantasy given it's the other 3/4s of continent that contains Faerun. It, like Maztica and that wretched 2e guide to the Hordelands, was for some reason historically simulationist in a way that neither incorporates the magic level and feel of the Realms nor borrows from any of the fantasy literature or myths of the regions sampled, instead being a plodding top-down accounting of expy nations that manages to resemble a Britannica encyclopedia entry more than a compelling setting in which there's things for adventurers to do.
Yeah, Forgotten Realms was later addition, used to be Standalone with Sword of the Daimyo's "optional" prologue (export instead of trading post or maybe emissaries, tedious prologue that require level 5 or 6 to SURVIVE, or never thought of native-to-foreignor ratio aside from "DM's discretion") essentially being a blank land map as a starting area.
Definitely not Greyhawk since the map is west-ocean facing than east-ocean facing.
https://i.redd.it/mafu3l69zkx11.png
http://taxidermicowlbear.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/7/4/23742956/2014594_orig.png
Also I kinda dislike the world building of Here is two versions of China and Japan that only act as themeatic idea to what your campaign want to be and based on Star Trek's "singular culture based on single aspect and idea".

Elves
2021-03-08, 10:22 PM
Imagine...fantasy ASIA *spooky fingers*

t209
2021-03-08, 10:26 PM
Imagine...fantasy ASIA *spooky fingers*
Well, Legend of Five Rings and Avatar kinda had those and a whole lot better and raised a rather high-bar for fantasy Asia.

Yanagi
2021-03-08, 11:14 PM
Yeah, Forgotten Realms was later addition, used to be Standalone with Sword of the Daimyo's "optional" prologue (export instead of trading post or maybe emissaries, tedious prologue that require level 5 or 6 to SURVIVE, or never thought of native-to-foreignor ratio aside from "DM's discretion") essentially being a blank land map as a starting area.
Definitely not Greyhawk since the map is west-ocean facing than east-ocean facing.
https://i.redd.it/mafu3l69zkx11.png

Maybe I'm remembering my dates wrong, but the book I got was structured as people from Kara-Tur writing to Elminster to explain their nations. It was...well, I got a lot of use out of the map from that book.

I don't think I would have liked the material standing on its own any better, though.

All the mechanical bits and cultural bits were uninspired. Like, nothing cool was sampled but also none of the bespoke stuff was interesting.

The two Chinas and two Japans...was strange, but I could recognize that they were trying to do both regions in two different time periods in the setting. Sengoku and Edo bakufu Japan; Warring States versus pseudo-Ming Forbidden City...it made a sort of sense but was lamely executed (in keeping with that...well, they kind of tried and did some reading? thing).

Mechalich
2021-03-08, 11:14 PM
It, like Maztica and that wretched 2e guide to the Hordelands, was for some reason historically simulationist in a way that neither incorporates the magic level and feel of the Realms nor borrows from any of the fantasy literature or myths of the regions sampled, instead being a plodding top-down accounting of expy nations that manages to resemble a Britannica encyclopedia entry more than a compelling setting in which there's things for adventurers to do.


It's important to remember that the amount of information available to the audience with regard to foreign historical locales was much, much lower in the 1980s than it is now. This is pre-Wikipedia, pre-internet, and pre-the explosion of scholarly publications those enabled. The average player, seeking to learn about historical China, was limited to whatever was available in their local libraries, which was basically encyclopedia entries and a handful of general histories. Awareness the texts like Water Margin even existed was limited, and actually reading one of the translations meant either having access to a quality university library (which applies to basically no one who actually worked for TSR), or fishing through a long list of mail-order catalogues. For comparison, it's worth noting that White-Wolf felt compelled to introduce 'wikifacts' style information in many of their books about locations in what was nominally the modern world, well into the early 2000s.

The various non-European D&D setting zones were produced in a very lazy fashion with limited effort in an attempt to capitalize on demand. They're historically simulationist because the authors barely grasped the actual history they were working with and because they had absolutely no idea how to adapt D&D's magical system to a completely different context, so they minimized it. Maztica, Kara-Tur, and the Hordelands are all unbelievably low in magic compared to even their 1e/2e FR contemporaries. In 1990 I suspect there were probably more named casters just in Thay than in all three areas put together.


Well, Legend of Five Rings and Avatar kinda had those and a whole lot better and raised a rather high-bar for fantasy Asia.

L5R was initially released in 1995. That's fully 10 years after the initial release of Kara-Tur in the 1e Oriental Adventures book. Avatar: the Last Airbender (which is a kids show, not a game and isn't anything like and apple-to-apples comparison), didn't premier until 2005, another ten years further on.

Overall, the demand for an actual Asian-inspired setting remains fairly low. L5R and a small number of niche games are able to handle basically all of it. Demand for characters with 'anime-style' abilities is much higher, of course, but that doesn't require anything like a fantasy Asia setting and can instead be handled by things like the Monk class or the very existence of Exalted (sigh).

t209
2021-03-08, 11:36 PM
Maybe I'm remembering my dates wrong, but the book I got was structured as people from Kara-Tur writing to Elminster to explain their nations. It was...well, I got a lot of use out of the map from that book.
Well, Oriental Adventures started off as its own book while Kara Tur Eastern Realms--the book you go--was an attempt to integrate it into Forgotten Realms while adding more countries (mostly copy-paste since Korean pop culture wasn't availible, so basically Silla and other two kingdoms).

Tanarii
2021-03-08, 11:40 PM
It feels like something tacked on to give 1e Oriental Adventures a place to live. Which is terrible, because OA was fun as heck to play in its own right.

Zhakara on the other hand was absolutely amazing. At least as inspiring as The emirates of Ylarum, but not squashed into fantasy culture kitchen sink land, so it could be given far better breadth and depth.

t209
2021-03-09, 12:33 AM
It feels like something tacked on to give 1e Oriental Adventures a place to live. Which is terrible, because OA was fun as heck to play in its own right.
So how can you describe a seission or campaign from it?
Also maybe how do you supplement it, or at least if you want to try "anime-style storyline" (mostly Ninja Scrolls or Usagi)?

Brother Oni
2021-03-09, 08:09 AM
It feels like something tacked on to give 1e Oriental Adventures a place to live. Which is terrible, because OA was fun as heck to play in its own right.

Really? I've heard OA described as written by someone who watched an episode of Monkey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)) and decided to build a campaign setting out of it.


Also maybe how do you supplement it, or at least if you want to try "anime-style storyline" (mostly Ninja Scrolls or Usagi)?

Reading up on it, the 4 main countries listed (not-Sengoku Japan, not-Edo Japan, not-Ming China, not-Warring States China) are very different in terms of outlook and cultural sensibilities.

Not-Sengoku and not-Warring States would be far more pragmatic as benefits countries at war.

Not-Edo would be your typical historical Japan that you'd think of.

Not-Ming China would be the sort of setting you'd see in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, although that raises a separate issue of jianghu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia#Jianghu), where there's essentially an entirely separate sub-society of martial artists and the like, that follows their own rules and code of ethics. Some times they intersect with the 'real' world (a famous general in the real world might also be a person of some standing in world of jianghu), but they generally they remain separate.

There's also various cultural elements that are either semi-shared throughout all the countries (Confucianism) or ones that look similar but are very different (samurai honour and Chinese 'face' for example).


at least why Evil and divided China wasn't steam rolled by Good and orderly China and two Japans doesn't seem to share the same history...somehow).

I can't say for the Japans, but the China is quite easy - not-Warring States China is very good at fighting (they've had plenty of practice) and are more than willing to temporarily unify against a common enemy (not-Ming China for example), while not-Ming China is spending most of its resources on maintaining its control over its populace - one of the elements of the world of jianghu is that the central government is weak.

Tanarii
2021-03-09, 09:21 AM
So how can you describe a seission or campaign from it?
Also maybe how do you supplement it, or at least if you want to try "anime-style storyline" (mostly Ninja Scrolls or Usagi)?


Really? I've heard OA described as written by someone who watched an episode of Monkey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)) and decided to build a campaign setting out of it.
More like a cross between AD&D, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and the worst 80s ninja flick you can think of. It was glorious! As a teenager. :smallamused:

Martin Greywolf
2021-03-09, 10:34 AM
Here's the thing - it's a universal truth that, provided you personally are even mildly interested in a historical area, enough so that you at least download a few ebooks on the topic, you are usually a better expert on it that the person who wrote a random splatbook.

There just aren't that many people writing published TTRPG books, and most of them are interested in maybe a specific subgenre of fantasy and not dig that much deeper, because if you do, the rabbit hole is infinitely deep. That means that once you get a task of writing a, say, Snegoku Jidai Japan analogue, you get maybe a few weeks of research, and you're starting worse than from scratch, because you've seen the movies. That results in settings that have the skin of a given country, but are still effectively renaissance France underneath at worst, and some pretty shallow recreations of original countries at best.

Add to that that the cost of good books on these topics is staggering (there's a facisimile and translation of Codex Wallerstein I'd like to have, but not for 1000+ dollars), and you get quality of research that is what it is. Basically, if you have any depth of knowledge about a given historical setting, you're probably better off worldbuilding it yourself.

As for the mighty whitey trope, it's sort of an unavoidable (unless you are willing to make your PCs side characters in a story, which... not a great idea, usually) concession to immersion. Unless your group just so happens to be full of samurai re-enactors, you will have players that have no understanding of a culture they are supposed to interact with. Sure, you always have the option of explaining things to them as you go, but that takes a hell of a lot of time and brings the story to a grinding halt because of exposition. If you have an outsider, him not knowing how stuff works is natural - and such an outsider will come from what is the generic setting for the game, which is renaissance France.

As for Kara-tur specifically, it's not exceptional, really. It's a product of its time and its limitations, and isn't terribly interesting, except as a "this is the average thing" case for early TTRPG attempts at going outside of their comfort zones.

Slipjig
2021-03-09, 12:56 PM
Given how much Asian culture is accessible to the typical American consumer today, it's probably incomprehensible the extent to which Asia was mostly terra incognita for Americans even a generation ago.

I was reading a novel published in the early 90s recently, and the author felt he needed to stop and explain what a "ninja" was.

Overall, OA wasn't supposed to accurately represent any particular Asian culture any more than the FR is supposed to represent medieval Europe, and an OA Samurai has about as much in common with his real-world historical counterparts as a Paladin has in common with Charlemagne's knights.

t209
2021-03-09, 01:46 PM
Given how much Asian culture is accessible to the typical American consumer today, it's probably incomprehensible the extent to which Asia was mostly terra incognita for Americans even a generation ago.

I was reading a novel published in the early 90s recently, and the author felt he needed to stop and explain what a "ninja" was.

Overall, OA wasn't supposed to accurately represent any particular Asian culture any more than the FR is supposed to represent medieval Europe, and an OA Samurai has about as much in common with his real-world historical counterparts as a Paladin has in common with Charlemagne's knights.

I can agree, but the thing is that even by limitations, it does feel Too mundane or have issue with fear or diverting too much from “historical analogue” yet trying to implement magic, not accounting outside influence.
With Faerun, it was already made with enough familiarity to make it standout and obscure its analogue well enough.
On its own, at least since exposure is Kung Fu and Shambara with “one eyed men leading blind men” nature due to only Asian expert being David Cook, it kinda work; but got into problems once you stick it to Forgotten Realms that even Greenwood complain about it.
But maybe as you said, anime not being proliferated even ignoring “Calling Onigiri as donuts” dubs (even 90’s Sailor Moon had those).
Also for 5E, really need an overhaul since people are going to be Naruto, Tanjiro, or Shonen protagonists (also Non-Humans at that) in a setting where those are either non existent or not available to writers at the time (save for homebrew) and the monasteries of Shou-Lung/not!China and even Tabot seems to be Japanese Monks than Shaolin (like armed retinues, and armor) and latter having Ikko Ikki (break away militant monks) elements.

LibraryOgre
2021-03-09, 02:09 PM
Well, Legend of Five Rings and Avatar kinda had those and a whole lot better and raised a rather high-bar for fantasy Asia.

I'd say that those two went very different directions, but still came up with a better view.

Legend of the Five rings seems to lean very heavily into being a fantasy Japan, with fewer aspects from any other part of Asia. It was more concentrated on a single nation, and so showed it with a bit more nuance... while the Houses tended to be stereotypes, there was room within them, and there were enough different stereotypes that you got a range of characters. Kara-Tur didn't have enough detail anywhere to do this, and broad strokes cover over things like that.

Avatar is heavily pan-Asian, but it also presented some very distinct cultural blends, creating unique cultures out of elements of others. It's not the Kara-Tur "This is just like our limited conception of Edo Japan, but isn't called Edo Japan"; Kara-tur nations are expys for real-world historical cultures, not amalgams inspired from several sources.

Psyren
2021-03-09, 04:27 PM
A Wutai (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wutai) region in a standard european fantasy setting is an enduring trope for a reason, people like having characters that have backstory reasons to make use of that aesthetic.

About Kara-Tur specifically, I don't know much - though I doubt a region originally conceived of decades ago holds up to modern scrutiny. I'm slightly more familiar with Golarion's Tian Xia / Dragon Empires, though even that I think is comfortable resting on well-worn tropes than being particularly nuanced.

Mechalich
2021-03-09, 10:08 PM
Legend of the Five rings seems to lean very heavily into being a fantasy Japan, with fewer aspects from any other part of Asia. It was more concentrated on a single nation, and so showed it with a bit more nuance... while the Houses tended to be stereotypes, there was room within them, and there were enough different stereotypes that you got a range of characters. Kara-Tur didn't have enough detail anywhere to do this, and broad strokes cover over things like that.


Of all East Asian nations for an English-speaking author to emulate in a fantasy setting, Japan is almost certainly the easiest one. For geographic and ethnographic reasons its simply less complicated than a similarly sized state like Korea, and for historical reasons English-speaking scholars got better access to Japanese materials at an earlier date (and apparently had an easier time translating them for linguistic reasons, many extremely important Chinese histories, like the Shi Ji, are still not fully available in English), so popular works on Japanese history in culture written in English became available earlier and are more abundant. Japan also, unlike many other East Asian states, went through a distinct feudal period where there was a lot of broad structural overlap between structural elements.

Yanagi
2021-03-09, 10:22 PM
Given how much Asian culture is accessible to the typical American consumer today, it's probably incomprehensible the extent to which Asia was mostly terra incognita for Americans even a generation ago.


As someone who was travelling between the two continents in the 80s and 90s...no. No, Asia was not terra incognita. In my experience Americans had very precise, entirely inaccurate and self-serving, impressions of who the Japanese and Chinese were.


Overall, OA wasn't supposed to accurately represent any particular Asian culture any more than the FR is supposed to represent medieval Europe,

Also...no. Kara-Tur is not it's own thing with a creative direction orthogonal to its core references, it's an incredibly shallow gloss of D&D onto reference materials where you can see the tracing.

Kara Tur actually does try to portray specific Asian cultures by creating barely-masked parallel cultural institutions and histories, and bowdlerized versions of real things. I mean, the map really tells the story of how little effort is being put into differentiating this setting from its referents. And the part that weirded me out then...and weirds me out now...is that given a choice between maintaining a consistent house style--here is the Asian genre sector stocked with the familiar classes and high fantasy tropes that make D&D D&D, just as other regions are genre sectors but have been altered to accept the same cross section of adventurer classses, and the same post-Tolkien racial spectrum represented, and the same post-Vance magic that is universalized and references no actual culture--they instead choose to remove the house style precisely because adherence to Orientalist tropes meant there couldn't be high fantasy in the same mode.

Faerun is a rat king of tacked-on playsets evoking different genres and fictional settings and... I don't love it, but rarely is it explicit that region A is real world-region X and that's pretty good even if some of the writing is cringe (Mulhorand is wasted; Chult is based on tropes I hate). Nor does it attempt to contextualize itself relative to its referents by created Pig Latin versions of real things. Faerun is vaguely analogue Europe but is not dominated by the Batholick Church and people don't obsess over the philosophers Arisbotle and Blato.

(Yes Volo exists and he is The Worst, so he's the exception that demonstrates the rule)

If Kara-Tur wasn't supposed be accurate, it failed because the palette swaps were obvious. If it wasn't supposed to be referential, then it failed because it was mostly pre-existing "Oriental" tropes. It literally would be a better setting if even less research was done, a couple of core images were chosen to establish feel--Shaw Brothers plus standard D&D hijinks, "Sword of Doom" but also wizards--and the locations and history were whole-cloth fiction. Time and print space was used adding emphases that only made sense if one was using Orientalism as the reference point--the cockamamie version of honor, the constant yammering about etiquette--resulting in a duller setting.


and an OA Samurai has about as much in common with his real-world historical counterparts as a Paladin has in common with Charlemagne's knights.

A D&D Paladin is a metonym for a general idea for holy warrior. It's an interesting language choice...Chanson de Roland is a deep cut reference but I guess bogatyr was on the wrong side of the Bosphorous...but the core mechanical thing it does is an idea found in folklore and fiction worldwide. It is a convenient generality and over time has become more customizable.

A D&D Samurai is a Fighter whose options are limited by real world cultural impressions such that it resembles one narrow band--samurai as read by Americans who take Tsunetomo, Nitobe, and the Japanese dictatorship that started WW2 as authoritative sources. It is not a convenient generality nor does it express a common archetype: the two ironies of the Samurai class are (1) it's way easier to just do multi-class fighter to create a samurai that matches of the many, many iconic characters that inspire people; (2) the hyper-specific character built on oaths of loyalty and a special weapon represented strongly resembles a Paladin, mechanically, give or take the mirabilia.

This kind of distinction without a difference is actually a running theme in OA and Kara-tur design. Sohei, wu jen, shugenja--they don't have any interesting hooks that set them apart; as reader you are informed they different than the normal classes but it doesn't show through in what they can do or they role they're described as having.

t209
2021-03-10, 12:25 AM
Yeah, I can agree to the above.

As someone who was travelling between the two continents in the 80s and 90s...no. No, Asia was not terra incognita. In my experience Americans had very precise, entirely inaccurate and self-serving, impressions of who the Japanese and Chinese were.
I think he meant by “cool things” standard, but yeah even by Shaw Brothers standard...they kinda made Fantasy China into Japanese tone (Sohei and Japanese terminology).
Also maybe Sing-Song girl, aside from exotic women, kinda feel like “wearing a tuxedo in medieval fantasy” (also clothings being Manchu rule clothings but the art tend to lean towards Non Manchu fashion) and kinda ignore musical fighters (to be honest, the only one I can think is Kung Fu hustle, but I do remember music based or scholarly fighters).
Also contradictory tone like Shou make bad swords and therefore don’t use it and use Nunchuks, butterfly swords (knife thingies or misinterpreted version of hook sword) and horsehair spear...and showing art using Jian and Halberd.
I think Zeb Cook, the main writer of OA and Kara Tur (not sure about Pondsmith yet since he maybe Freelance and not sure how much Cook had authority at the time), did admit that he did left out Chinese part since capitalizing on ninjas and samurais and kinda feel bad in Jade Dragon intro. Maybe being only asianophile of TSR with a reluctant Gygax might have do as well.

JoeJ
2021-03-10, 01:25 AM
A D&D Samurai is a Fighter whose options are limited by real world cultural impressions such that it resembles one narrow band--samurai as read by Americans who take Tsunetomo, Nitobe, and the Japanese dictatorship that started WW2 as authoritative sources. It is not a convenient generality nor does it express a common archetype: the two ironies of the Samurai class are (1) it's way easier to just do multi-class fighter to create a samurai that matches of the many, many iconic characters that inspire people;

The devs probably thought it wouldn't make sense to allow humans in OA to multi-class when only non-humans could do that in the rest of D&D. And they'd have been right.

t209
2021-03-10, 03:12 AM
As for the mighty whitey trope, it's sort of an unavoidable (unless you are willing to make your PCs side characters in a story, which... not a great idea, usually) concession to immersion. Unless your group just so happens to be full of samurai re-enactors, you will have players that have no understanding of a culture they are supposed to interact with. Sure, you always have the option of explaining things to them as you go, but that takes a hell of a lot of time and brings the story to a grinding halt because of exposition. If you have an outsider, him not knowing how stuff works is natural - and such an outsider will come from what is the generic setting for the game, which is renaissance France.
Yeah, but Sword of the Daimyo’s “optional prologue” seems to be rather tedious even by ADnD character fatality standards or amount of obstructions even before starting an adventure.

Martin Greywolf
2021-03-10, 05:41 AM
As someone who was travelling between the two continents in the 80s and 90s...no. No, Asia was not terra incognita. In my experience Americans had very precise, entirely inaccurate and self-serving, impressions of who the Japanese and Chinese were.

That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about how accessible was the information on historical Japan and China, information of the grade you're likely to see in a good schoolbook or a good popular history book. And that was very much a terra incognita deal.

As an example, Osprey publishing is in business of making books about historical war topics. Generally speaking, while they aren't academia grade, their information is good and gear presented is accurate. They also published a book on Ninja that has the ninja in the typical theater all-black costumes, shows us many shapes of shuriken (except the one that was actually used, that being the building material one) and doesn't have firearms listed as a ninja weapon - it was published in 2003. That's the level of accessible research that was available to people who weren't willing to shill out a lot of cash for books or go do their own library research. Or contact a historian, who at this point may well not even use his email, so you better get used to waiting for letters or make phone calls.

Today? You can literally find more accurate YouTube videos on ninja than that book was.

Mechalich
2021-03-10, 08:39 AM
As an example, Osprey publishing is in business of making books about historical war topics. Generally speaking, while they aren't academia grade, their information is good and gear presented is accurate. They also published a book on Ninja that has the ninja in the typical theater all-black costumes, shows us many shapes of shuriken (except the one that was actually used, that being the building material one) and doesn't have firearms listed as a ninja weapon - it was published in 2003.

In Osprey and author Stephen Turnbull's defense the actual text of that book is rather more restrained than the color plates and emphasizes more than once that there's a whole lot of BS about the ninja, including in Japanese language sources, and the full story will probably never be known. The accuracy level of the other books in that series of Japanese feudal warriors (Samurai, Ashigaru, and Sohei) are more reasonable.

Osprey is actually a good example of how things changed over time. Their very long-running series periodically revisited popular topics. For example, they published two different books about the Mongols, one from 1980 and one from 2003, both written by Turnbull, and the differences are substantial. There was just dramatically more material, and more translation power, available.


That's the level of accessible research that was available to people who weren't willing to shill out a lot of cash for books or go do their own library research. Or contact a historian, who at this point may well not even use his email, so you better get used to waiting for letters or make phone calls.

I'd add that prior to the internet, and especially pre-Amazon, it was extremely difficult to get a hold of academic level publications even if you had the cash. Today, you can just go on amazon and order say, The Cambridge History of Japan ($80 dollars per volume, 4 volumes in total, though you probably could build a game setting around only 1 or 2), but in 1988, when it was published for the first time (3 years after Oriental Adventures came out btw) that only way to get your hands on it was to write an actual letter to the Cambridge University Press with a check for the ridiculously inflated price they were charging, which meant that you had to actually know the books existed in the first place.


Of course D&D was never built based on scholarship, it was based on other people's fantasy, but there was very little Asian fantasy available in the US in the 1980s either. It's worth remembering that the VCR did not become a commonplace household item until the mid-1980s, prior to which importing things like anime or kung-fu movies from Japan and China was essentially impossible for the average consumer. Even in the late 1990s importing foreign TV shows was still extremely cumbersome because of the limited capacity of VHS tapes and the high-costs associated with imports. Text too simply was far less available because translations took an immense amount of effort. Yes there were translations of the all time classics that were considered of academic import, but otherwise, it was basically an empty zone. Meanwhile, Tor Books managed to get The Three-Body Problem translated in 2014, less than ten years after it was originally published.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-10, 09:10 AM
From what I've read (in the game books and about the game from outside), L5R wasn't trying to give an accurate historical Japan or Asia setting, it was trying to emulate the modern mythos of "ye olde samurai Japan" as constructed in Meiji and subsequent Japanese internal propaganda, post-WW2 Japanese fiction, and western fiction. It doubles down on the "death before dishonor", "death before disobedience", stifling and steep caste system, intense emphasis on etiquette and courtly values, etc aspects that were retroactively emphasized long after the samurai class were critical on the battlefield. It doubles down on the myth of "superior Japanese steel". Etc.

And I guess that would explain why it's about as historical as "medieval knights in shining plate armor" or "the American west of gunslingers at high noon and wandering cowboy heroes".

As for Oriental Adventures... even the name reflects the different time in which it was written.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-10, 09:17 AM
I'd add that prior to the internet, and especially pre-Amazon, it was extremely difficult to get a hold of academic level publications even if you had the cash. Today, you can just go on amazon and order say, The Cambridge History of Japan ($80 dollars per volume, 4 volumes in total, though you probably could build a game setting around only 1 or 2), but in 1988, when it was published for the first time (3 years after Oriental Adventures came out btw) that only way to get your hands on it was to write an actual letter to the Cambridge University Press with a check for the ridiculously inflated price they were charging, which meant that you had to actually know the books existed in the first place.


Good point when looking at works written before the mid-90s -- research was simply harder then unless one wanted to invest a lot more time and money.

Tanarii
2021-03-10, 10:03 AM
Lack of historically accurate information was not and even is not an issue. D&D has almost never* been about historically accuracy in their expy settings. They're about pop-culture and having fun a setting based on that.

If anything, having accurate historical information would have made anything Oriental Adventure or otherwise historical-society based setting less fun to play, more boring.

If Kara Tur fell down, and it sounds like it did for some folks, increasing accuracy isn't the way to make it more interesting. It sure wasn't what made Zhakara awesome. It was setting that appealed to the pop culture tropes, while having a wide variety of exciting lands to explore (politically and geographically) and lots of fantastical stuff going on.

*exception was attempted for the 2e green softbound historical series

t209
2021-03-10, 10:20 AM
Lack of historically accurate information was not and even is not an issue. D&D has almost never* been about historically accuracy in their expy settings. They're about pop-culture and having fun a setting based on that.

If anything, having accurate historical information would have made anything Oriental Adventure or otherwise historical-society based setting less fun to play, more boring.

If Kara Tur fell down, and it sounds like it did for some folks, increasing accuracy isn't the way to make it more interesting. It sure wasn't what made Zhakara awesome. It was setting that appealed to the pop culture tropes, while having a wide variety of exciting lands to explore (politically and geographically) and lots of fantastical stuff going on.

*exception was attempted for the 2e green softbound historical series
Yeah, the thing is Kara Tur’s updating need to stand up to Avatar and Legend of Five Rings.
I get the idea but kinda feel that they kinda have conflicting idea of whether to make it more accurate (being to copy paste-y) or more pop culture (at least making their China more Japanese looking, like Sohei as in armed retinues).

Tanarii
2021-03-10, 10:30 AM
Yeah, the thing is Kara Tur’s updating need to stand up to Avatar and Legend of Five Rings.
I get the idea but kinda feel that they kinda have conflicting idea of whether to make it more accurate (being to copy paste-y) or more pop culture (at least making their China more Japanese looking, like Sohei as in armed retinues).
I don't know about Avatar, but WotCs 3e take on L5R had about the same 'these classes are cool' factor that TSR's 1e Oriental Adventures did. The worldbuilding didn't appeal very much though, except for the variation it applied to some classes.

t209
2021-03-10, 10:38 AM
I don't know about Avatar, but WotCs 3e take on L5R had about the same 'these classes are cool' factor that TSR's 1e Oriental Adventures did. The worldbuilding didn't appeal very much though, except for the variation it applied to some classes.
A bit more fleshed out mechanics I can agree.
Still kinda ironic that TSR only had Kung Fu weapons and Chu No Ku except Chinese armor--at least "pretty pictures for reference"--but has one (at least Brigantine art look Northern Chinese) in Japanese-focused setting (excluding Yobanjin--at least wiki stating them having Chinese vest--or Dragon Clan's not!Chinese forebears).
Maybe it might have been made for Kara Tur update before they switched to L5R at somepoint.

Psyren
2021-03-10, 10:56 AM
I can agree that, even had they wanted to, D&D writers in the 80s and 90s had very little practical/cost-effective access to decent research about the "orient". So we end up with Wutai settings that are tone-deaf at best and may even contain actively harmful portrayals and stereotypes at worst.

But speaking personally, on the whole I'd still rather have an attempt at a setting element like Kara-Tur than not. What matters is what they do with it now that those barriers are much lower. This is why new editions are important, not just in terms of game mechanics but setting updates as well.

And honestly, D&D without any form of (Shaolin-esque) monks just feels incomplete, at least to me.

t209
2021-03-10, 11:03 AM
And honestly, D&D without any form of (Shaolin-esque) monks just feels incomplete, at least to me.
Pedantry: Mostly Kung Fu fighters since they do have hair, aren’t bound by celibacy (DM’s discretion), but Martial Artist would be mouthful.
But true, even ghost of Gygax might have come around after putting it reluctantly...also ignoring its reputation as one of the worst and out-of-place (no thanks to DnD’s let’s see what it sticks that led to Clint Eastwood with revolver in Greyhawk or Barrier Peaks) classes.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-10, 11:08 AM
It feels like something tacked on to give 1e Oriental Adventures a place to live.

I can agree, but the thing is that even by limitations, it does feel Too mundane or have issue with fear or diverting too much from “historical analogue” yet trying to implement magic, not accounting outside influence.
With Faerun, it was already made with enough familiarity to make it standout and obscure its analogue well enough.
I think these circle around the main point. I think Kara-Tur was designed to bring AD&D's Oriental Adventure game into the Forgotten Realms, rather than start with historic/mythic Asia, the basic AD&D game, and Faerun, and make something that fits a venn diagram of where those 3 things would best work.

I call it 'AD&D's Oriental Adventure game' because, although it used the same basic engine as 1E, it was a different experience. Although it had some wacky stuff straight out of Saturday afternoon Kung Fu theater (including some clearly-not-balanced-against-the-rest-of-the-game martial arts), much of it was more mundane, more limited, more constrained than even RAW 1e was. Bushi, Shukenja, Wu Jen and Yakuza were mostly Fighters, Clerics, Wizards, and thieves, except with more limits and constraints (be it armor, weapon, poison/burning oil-type restrictions, or spell lists; plus often codes of conduct that would require significant thought to just going about adventuring). Even classes like ninja tended to have a mostly constrained interpretation of the class (their special abilities: at 1st level, use your ki to increase rounds one can hold their breath by 1/level; at 5th, use ki to walk across smooth water 5' per level, disrupted by any injury; at 12th, if ki has not been used at all today, can walk through one wall, 1' per experience level, if take damage or run out of distance because you misjudged wall thickness, you die).

Enough people have gone over OA in the past such that I won't re-hash it here. David "Zeb" Cook was an general medieval Eastern aficionado, but that then again Gary was a medieval European aficionado, yet got studded leather and ringmail and extreme sword supremacy into the game. It isn't accurate. However my main point is that it hewed towards the more mundane side of the 1e game (kind of like the green-backed historical setting splatbooks did for 2e), while Forgotten Realms headed off in a more fantastical direction, and (to my mind) clearly no one either noticed or took the time to deal with the fact that this setting was trying to straddle a widening divergence within the game.

Psyren
2021-03-10, 12:33 PM
Pedantry: Mostly Kung Fu fighters since they do have hair, aren’t bound by celibacy (DM’s discretion), but Martial Artist would be mouthful.
But true, even ghost of Gygax might have come around after putting it reluctantly...also ignoring its reputation as one of the worst and out-of-place (no thanks to DnD’s let’s see what it sticks that led to Clint Eastwood with revolver in Greyhawk or Barrier Peaks) classes.

The "-esque" was an attempt to circumvent said pedantry :smalltongue: (Maybe I should have said "inspired?")

As for monk's reputation being "worst" or "out of place" - I think its enduring popularity in the core game belies that assertion. This is especially notable given how weak the execution of that concept has been in D&D's history, yet people (both players and designers) continually try to make it work - because it's just fun to be the weird mystical person who is marching into a dungeon armed only with their fists or a walking stick, yet is able to kick all the ass they find down there.

JoeJ
2021-03-10, 12:44 PM
I think these circle around the main point. I think Kara-Tur was designed to bring AD&D's Oriental Adventure game into the Forgotten Realms, rather than start with historic/mythic Asia, the basic AD&D game, and Faerun, and make something that fits a venn diagram of where those 3 things would best work.

Given the timeline, that pretty much has to be what was going on. The land of Kara-Tur was first introduced, very briefly, in the OA book, and Kozakura was fleshed out a little bit more in the adventure Swords of the Daimyo, both of which came out before the FR setting was released. In fact, I don't think there was any real attempt to bring Kara-Tur into the Realms until 2e.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-10, 12:45 PM
Lack of historically accurate information was not and even is not an issue. D&D has almost never* been about historically accuracy in their expy settings. They're about pop-culture and having fun a setting based on that.

If anything, having accurate historical information would have made anything Oriental Adventure or otherwise historical-society based setting less fun to play, more boring.

If Kara Tur fell down, and it sounds like it did for some folks, increasing accuracy isn't the way to make it more interesting. It sure wasn't what made Zhakara awesome. It was setting that appealed to the pop culture tropes, while having a wide variety of exciting lands to explore (politically and geographically) and lots of fantastical stuff going on.

*exception was attempted for the 2e green softbound historical series


Settings that try to live in that "eat your cake and have it too" liminal space where they use the pop-cultural trappings of something historical but have almost nothing to do with the reality, bug the hell out of me.

Especially when, like 300, or The Last Samurai, they present an actively garbage harmful myth of the past.

https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warrior-part-iii-the-cult-of-the-badass/

t209
2021-03-10, 01:08 PM
Given the timeline, that pretty much has to be what was going on. The land of Kara-Tur was first introduced, very briefly, in the OA book, and Kozakura was fleshed out a little bit more in the adventure Swords of the Daimyo, both of which came out before the FR setting was released. In fact, I don't think there was any real attempt to bring Kara-Tur into the Realms until 2e.
I think I remember John Nephew Twitter about production.
Especially his Bawa ideas never coming to fruition.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnNephew/status/1319001457811742720
At least we got Sina Una for Phillipines (not by halbeit as 3rd Party Standalone Book.
Or Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire being closest concept to be adapted.

Tanarii
2021-03-10, 01:43 PM
I think Kara-Tur was designed to bring AD&D's Oriental Adventure game into the Forgotten Realms, rather than start with historic/mythic Asia, the basic AD&D game, and Faerun, and make something that fits a venn diagram of where those 3 things would best work. What I said, just with more words.


I call it 'AD&D's Oriental Adventure game' because, although it used the same basic engine as 1E, it was a different experience. Although it had some wacky stuff straight out of Saturday afternoon Kung Fu theater (including some clearly-not-balanced-against-the-rest-of-the-game martial arts), much of it was more mundane, more limited, more constrained than even RAW 1e was.OA was all about wushu martial artists (including "clerics") and Magical thieves/assassins. Only Wu Jen were really a bit more limited, but that's not saying much. 1e Magic Users were very limited anyway, unless you skipped straight to higher levels. AD&D 1e was very much a mundane game itself. OA added a bit more craziness to it, especially the martial arts.

sktarq
2021-03-10, 01:57 PM
Honestly I think while the above is almost all true there is another cultural moment aspect that is being missed.
IN the 80's there was a degree of Nippon-o-mania. Japan was going to take over the world, it was just a countdown till economy overtook the USA's etc. This had a cultural effect. Japan was COOL, ninja's were slapped randomly on all sorts of things. Martial arts WERE magic to many people. and Katanas could do anything...And this was really the basis of Kara Tur. The idea of Japan/Imperial China that existed socially in the American mind was in a kind of Orientalism somewhat similar to the fascination that Europe has gone through a few times historically.

And one aspect of the lack of knowledge of Asia REALLY hurt OA, KaraTur etc was that while a skeletal historical and cultural was available it had very little amount of legends, occult, etc on a level of detail that could be well incorporated. And lots of the European-inspired D&D involved a lot of ideas of European legends and myth and mixed with historical ideas. Without a even basic amount of that for East Asian cultural there is left only historical expy's and poor European myth systems badly tack welded on. But there was enough to actually have firm ideas of some historical norms (some of which were wrong) in the mainstream.

And also there was a lot of MISinformation out there too. Lots of propaganda was still normal and the Cold war was still in place. Governments were RIFE with historical revisionism in terms of both their own and their neighbors pasts. And that is before you get into historical misconceptions that the west already had...but that propaganda was also swallowed by a lot of people due to the lack of other sources (and that "from Asia" sources would automatically be better)

and weirdly I would say there backhanded, self harming respect for the East in them. There was respect for the idea of Japan (and Imperial China) in a lot of this. Which meant that lots of people wouldn't accept anything that wasn't an expy. "That's not how it worked" with little-to-no actual knowledge would be tossed around a lot in respect to this. And I think it gutted the creativity needed to actually make an China/Japan/et al inspired region actually work. I would say that the Arabian Nights inspired aspects and New World legends inspired chunks of Ferun worked much better because of this they were willing to take bigger jumps from expectations.

And I would say these themes very much got into the public view of how these nations were seen in minds of...customers. and remember TSR etc are aiming to sell stuff so aiming at customers expectations is more important than historical accuracy. If people in middle America wanted their super katana then TSR will give them that.

But yeah the basically clueless creation as a curiosity/experiment that never should have gotten welded onto Ferun is IMO basically true. It never really had a good start with the ideas of theme and what makes things different in the game. It was also working with levels of resources that today would be considered low for someone on this site making a homebrew. And it has been pretty anchored to those ideas since.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-10, 02:08 PM
Honestly I think while the above is almost all true there is another cultural moment aspect that is being missed.
IN the 80's there was a degree of Nippon-o-mania. Japan was going to take over the world, it was just a countdown till economy overtook the USA's etc. This had a cultural effect. Japan was COOL, ninja's were slapped randomly on all sorts of things. Martial arts WERE magic to many people. and Katanas could do anything...And this was really the basis of Kara Tur. The idea of Japan/Imperial China


See also, much of the cyberpunk genre -- very much a product of the 1980s fixation on supposed Japanese 900 pound gorilla.

Lemmy
2021-03-10, 02:26 PM
I'll never forget how on the very first episode of the 90's TMNT cartoon, the police (correctly) deduces that the criminals behind a certain crime are ninja of all things, because the rope left behind by said criminals has a "Made in Japan" tag.

Tanarii
2021-03-10, 02:27 PM
Especially when, like 300, or The Last Samurai, they present an actively garbage harmful myth of the past.
Eh, it bothers me more when they actively push a message. 300 and the Patriot could have been clones of each other.

Satinavian
2021-03-10, 02:53 PM
And one aspect of the lack of knowledge of Asia REALLY hurt OA, KaraTur etc was that while a skeletal historical and cultural was available it had very little amount of legends, occult, etc on a level of detail that could be well incorporated. And lots of the European-inspired D&D involved a lot of ideas of European legends and myth and mixed with historical ideas. Without a even basic amount of that for East Asian cultural there is left only historical expy's and poor European myth systems badly tack welded on. But there was enough to actually have firm ideas of some historical norms (some of which were wrong) in the mainstream.
Honestly, D&Ds general portrayal of pseudo medieval Europe is hardly any better.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-10, 03:36 PM
OA was all about wushu martial artists (including "clerics") and Magical thieves/assassins. Only Wu Jen were really a bit more limited, but that's not saying much. 1e Magic Users were very limited anyway, unless you skipped straight to higher levels. AD&D 1e was very much a mundane game itself. OA added a bit more craziness to it, especially the martial arts.

I have the book here in front of me, and I'm just not seeing it.

Bushi are like AD&D fighters, except poorer, with the ability to cutpurse, a chance of finding "loose" equipment, and a +rounddown(level/5) bonus to AC to compensate for the lesser armor they are likely to have (armor in general caps at 3).
Shukenja are like clerics, except with armor limited to Leather, Padded, Hara-ate, Haramaki, Jingasa, Studded, and Leather (so much less than plate mail), and their spell list, while flavorful, does not do anything exceptional compared to 1e (Flame walk and Possess Animal being the most exciting one I saw when looking at it, plus Levitate and Polymorph Self, which are normally arcane only spells in AD&D).
'Monks,' unsurprisingly, have pretty much the same abilities as they do in AD&D, although they can use the OA martial arts system --which, as I mentioned, seems to be go in the other direction from the rest of the game, but still is mostly being able to do 3d10 at first level, leap over an opponent at the cost of an attack, fight from prone, push someone back 1' per level, or levitate at 5' per round after 10 minutes of concentrating -- rather than the default 1e monk attack and damage setup. Certainly fun (particularly back when fighting had very little variety except surprise and modifiers for facing/flanking/elevation/correct weapon-vs-armor choice), but still pretty grounded-- with the typical Gygaxian give 'em an option and tell them all the hoops they have to jump through first/all the ways something can interfere.
Ninja, as mentioned, can walk across a very short distance of water if undisturbed, or at level 12 walk through one wall (that they had better have pre-measured, somehow).
Wu jen are wizards who must sacrifice familial benefits and must have 1+rounddown(level/5) taboos such as 'Cannot have more treasure than the character can carry, Cannot bathe, Cannot light a fire, or Cannot sit facing to the east). Other than some more permutations of elemental damage (some of which, like ice knife, are not considered commonplace), none of the spells are particularly notable.
Leaving classes for a moment, OA was one of the books which introduced the non-weapon proficiency system. This one resembles the others (and what eventually made its way into 2e), and also is decidedly mostly grounded. A lot more entries for calligraphy and flower arrangement than wushu cinematics (iaijutsu exists, but compared to 3e's somewhat powerful version, this one allows the user to get surprise on their opponent if they succeed, but only in a noncombat encounter).

Regardless, my point was that this book was very much of the early AD&D era, whereas Faerun was very much of the expansive direction that would come later. By trying to fit OA into Faerun instead of creating a freshly minted Asian-themed expie land into Faerun, Kara-tur set up some tonal dissonance, which think is what the OP noticed. This is of course all opinion.

t209
2021-03-10, 03:40 PM
I'll never forget how on the very first episode of the 90's TMNT cartoon, the police (correctly) deduces that the criminals behind a certain crime are ninja of all things, because the rope left behind by said criminals has a "Made in Japan" tag.
Yeah, Gaijin Goomba had a pick on 80's and 90's Ninja Turtle absolute lack of ninja professionalism (even April had to suggest a disguise despite being raised by Splinter who was formerly human in this series who is also a former ninja).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyin0PqwLZw

Bushi are like AD&D fighters, except poorer, with the ability to cutpurse, a chance of finding "loose" equipment, and a +rounddown(level/5) bonus to AC to compensate for the lesser armor they are likely to have (armor in general caps at 3).
Yeah, I was initially bothered by Asians Represent video--Steve and Kwan only at that time--since they had no idea of it being an Ashigaru foot soldier and assume "Bushi" as "Bushido" instead of "warrior".
The way you mentioned it would kinda fit with Warhammer Fantasy or Low Fantasy rpg, where scavenging for weapons aftermath of a battlefield is an occupation, but some of it might be redundant with DM loot system (not sure how the AD&D loot system involves dice rolls or "finders keepers" prepared by DM).
Also going through various forums, I found someone mentioning Bushido RPG, which is stated to be more "average joe" (at least most of the classes being peasants) than DnD.

Tanarii
2021-03-11, 09:19 AM
https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warrior-part-iii-the-cult-of-the-badass/
By the by, after going back and reading about a dozen of this guys articles, I can conclusively say he is a selective quoting agenda pusher who is attempting to reframe history into his own narrative.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-11, 09:36 AM
By the by, after going back and reading about a dozen of this guys articles, I can conclusively say he is a selective quoting agenda pusher who is attempting to reframe history into his own narrative.


Examples?

So far, I've seen him tearing down a lot of garbage history that arises from wishful thinking and even that arises from deliberate toxic mythmaking.

Palanan
2021-03-11, 04:09 PM
Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf
They also published a book on Ninja that has the ninja in the typical theater all-black costumes, shows us many shapes of shuriken (except the one that was actually used, that being the building material one) and doesn't have firearms listed as a ninja weapon - it was published in 2003.

And as it happens, the artist on that book was none other than Wayne Reynolds, who went on to be the signature artist for Paizo.

Stephen Turnbull is Osprey's go-to man for Asian military history, the same way they tend to rely on Angus Konstam for maritime topics. I wouldn't be surprised if Turnbull issues an updated edition in the next few years, since he's doing just that for one of his earlier books (https://www.stephenturnbull.com/books-and-articles).


Originally Posted by Mechalich
I'd add that prior to the internet, and especially pre-Amazon, it was extremely difficult to get a hold of academic level publications even if you had the cash.

…you had to actually know the books existed in the first place.

Well, the publishers wanted to sell their books, and they had catalogs to that effect, so the titles were available if you did a little searching.

Not to mention the best place to find academic publications is an academic institution, and university libraries did exist before the internet. That also helped with the cost issue, which has always been a factor.


Originally Posted by JoeJ
The land of Kara-Tur was first introduced, very briefly, in the OA book, and Kozakura was fleshed out a little bit more in the adventure Swords of the Daimyo, both of which came out before the FR setting was released. In fact, I don't think there was any real attempt to bring Kara-Tur into the Realms until 2e.

What were the primary sources on Kara-Tur in 2E? And was it ever updated for 3E?


Originally Posted by Tanarii
By the by, after going back and reading about a dozen of this guys articles, I can conclusively say he is a selective quoting agenda pusher who is attempting to reframe history into his own narrative.

Agreed.

I’ve seen his blog linked several times here lately, but his actual academic credentials aren’t that impressive. His publication history is extremely limited, and it looks like he’s still sending out chapters of his dissertation for review.

He has every right to publish an opinionated blog, but I wouldn’t rely on him as an authority.

t209
2021-03-11, 04:45 PM
What were the primary sources on Kara-Tur in 2E? And was it ever updated for 3E?

Mostly 1E campaign modules except Mad Monkey (set in Tu Lung, basically training montage the module.) and Yakuza (set in Wa because Ninja and Cities).
Also there’s DND magazines that tried to make Kara Tur transfer and the last one being Xiousing (FR’s Chinatown in Cormyr) and Five Deadly Shadows in 2011 being the latest one...in minor update.

Palanan
2021-03-11, 05:17 PM
Originally Posted by t209
Mostly 1E campaign modules….

Thanks, that was my impression. Not sure why they never expanded Kara-Tur for 3.5, given the geographic supplements like Silver Marches, Shining South, etc.


Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
I think Kara-Tur was designed to bring AD&D's Oriental Adventure game into the Forgotten Realms, rather than start with historic/mythic Asia, the basic AD&D game, and Faerun, and make something that fits a venn diagram of where those 3 things would best work.

So using these criteria, what do you think would make a better fit?

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-11, 05:23 PM
I’ve seen his blog linked several times here lately, but his actual academic credentials aren’t that impressive. His publication history is extremely limited, and it looks like he’s still sending out chapters of his dissertation for review.

He has every right to publish an opinionated blog, but I wouldn’t rely on him as an authority.


Again, I'd ask... examples of where he's wrong?

JoeJ
2021-03-11, 06:04 PM
What were the primary sources on Kara-Tur in 2E? And was it ever updated for 3E?

The 2e Kara-Tur campaign setting didn't include a bibliography, but there is one in the back of the original 1e Oriental Adventures. There is a 3e Oriental Adventures, but I don't know exactly what's in it.

Palanan
2021-03-11, 07:00 PM
Originally Posted by JoeJ
There is a 3e Oriental Adventures, but I don't know exactly what's in it.

This is the one that I have. It has 3.0 versions of the shaman, shugenja, sohei and wu jen classes, as well as introducing nezumi, hengeyokai and spirit folk. It’s set in Rokugan, but the book as a whole is focused more on PC options, with only a brief overview of Rokugan and the Shadowlands.

The introduction sets out that the material is intended for “a campaign based on the fantasies, myths and legends of Asia,” and there’s no bibliography per se. Kara-Tur is only mentioned in the introduction as the setting for the 1E Oriental Adventures, and it doesn’t come up at all in the (extremely short) section on world-building.

Satinavian
2021-03-12, 05:16 AM
Again, I'd ask... examples of where he's wrong?No, but he is strawmanning a bit. The stuff he debunkes is probably less common misconceptions and more completely outdated ideas and elements of power fantasies hardly anyone actually believes while still employing them in fiction.

It is a bit like reading a text meticulously listing all the plot errors and worldbuilding problems for a pulp magazine or for 40k. Every single argument can be completely correct while still not contributing much of note overall.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-12, 07:56 AM
No, but he is strawmanning a bit. The stuff he debunkes is probably less common misconceptions and more completely outdated ideas and elements of power fantasies hardly anyone actually believes while still employing them in fiction.

It is a bit like reading a text meticulously listing all the plot errors and worldbuilding problems for a pulp magazine or for 40k. Every single argument can be completely correct while still not contributing much of note overall.

You'd be very surprised how many people believe whole-heartedly in the myths and misconceptions he's tearing down.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-12, 08:55 AM
So using these criteria, what do you think would make a better fit?
Something tailor made for the Realms. Something on the scale of epic-ness. Something where (for example) a ninja couldn't just walk through one wall at 12th level, but get multiple gaseous forms per day or similar. The setting could have still been a few pseudo-expy countries I suppose (in the same way Mulhorand was not-Egypt), or brand new place not unlike Silverymoon and Waterdeep -- but either way they should be on the same scale (or at least order of magnitude), as such places. Let there be a wu jen who was, if not at the level as The Simbul and Szass Tam, be the kind of person that the two of them think 'but what would that action cause _____ to do?' before they act (be part of that web of good and bad actors that keep the epic level NPCs on the continent of Faerûn in a position of stasis). Rokugon/L5R, or what 3e did with OA, would not have been a bad attempt (at least for the time period when Kara-Tur came out. by early 2000s, 3E OA already felt a bit outdated).


You'd be very surprised how many people believe whole-heartedly in the myths and misconceptions he's tearing down.
I think this might be when everyone else can ask you for your sources. Do you know that a lot of people whole-heartedly believe this, and if so how?

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-12, 10:26 AM
I think this might be when everyone else can ask you for your sources. Do you know that a lot of people whole-heartedly believe this, and if so how?


If you have read or interacted with anyone how does one of the below, you've met someone who believes in the overarching pseudohistory.

* tells you the Spartans were a noble warrior culture who saved democracy and had remarkable military success.
* believes in the "universal warrior" / "warrior ethos" garbage -- and that stuff is widespread on reading lists and in training programs for military and police in the US.
* espouses the notion of cyclical history where "hard men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create hard times, hard times create hard men, repeat endlessly".
* or relevant to RPGs set in pseudo-historical not!Japan, believes that the constructed mythos of the samurai, bushido, etc, is accurate to any real period of Japanese history.

There are some detailed examples I can't get into here, but that are laid out in the articles on the blog in question -- those articles aren't a revelation, they're a good summary of a known and persistent issue.

Satinavian
2021-03-12, 11:01 AM
If you have read or interacted with anyone how does one of the below, you've met someone who believes in the overarching pseudohistory.

* tells you the Spartans were a noble warrior culture who saved democracy and had remarkable military success.
* believes in the "universal warrior" / "warrior ethos" garbage -- and that stuff is widespread on reading lists and in training programs for military and police in the US.
* espouses the notion of cyclical history where "hard men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create hard times, hard times create hard men, repeat endlessly".
* or relevant to RPGs set in pseudo-historical not!Japan, believes that the constructed mythos of the samurai, bushido, etc, is accurate to any real period of Japanese history.
I can honestly say that i never interacted with anyone doing any of that. I do remember people believing some pseudo-history and half-truths about Japan but not to the extend that one could say they believed in the samurai/bushido mythos.

Have i read such things ? Sure. Some of those ideas are ancient and can persist a long time when brought on paper. Macchiavelli was a fan of number three. Does not mean they are pervasive now.


Now i don't live in the US. Mabe it really is different over there. The cultural attitude to soldiers certainly is and maybe that extends to interpretations of history. But I really don't want to do this whole "Americans are uneducated about history" thing again and do instead opt to assume that those myths are not particularly more widespread on your side of the ocean.

t209
2021-03-12, 09:54 PM
Well, back to the topic,
I will give you my take.
1. I tried reading Swords of the Daimyo, assuming if the modules were set of storyline or episodic, but it does act as a prologue (even the "Over the Sea We Go" seems to be rather tedious or "welp, your character died, care to take this pre-made character that you have little to no care about" even by 1E "Killer DM" standards or maybe came off as annoying unless you timeskip it...instead of trading post since the lore stated that ships were already travelling to Kara-Tur, so there should be foreign quarters or emissaries). Rest of the adventure had good ideas for political intrigue and Mad Monkey seems promising in making "Monk Backstory prologue", but kinda felt mundane.
2. Most of my exposures were Asians Represent and CJ's Don't Stop Thinking's reboot ideas, which kinda colored my opinion even if I have mixed opinion on former (just that their Realmsian lore or Asian history is lacking, schedule, or still go back to orientalist assumption) yet kinda agree with the issues (the Sing Song Girls since it does feel like having a Pop-Band in medieval Fantasy and kinda show that they wanted to make Geisha-equivalent...or Shou-Lung being more Imperial Japan at all). Also I may have read the book, and forums (Let's Read on rpg.net) along with this forum just to have a different take.
3. The world building feels meh and feel like a theme-park-ish (maybe got used to not!China and not!Japan as two countries rather than four, or maybe spoiled by Avatar and anime as well).

Honestly, D&Ds general portrayal of pseudo medieval Europe is hardly any better.
Yeah, that does also affect OA also. Like I know that they are trying to hammer in the world building idea to players, but it kinda felt like any wargamer's fanfic, like the horse archers beating the archers? (*cringes in Ventidius, Corbullo, Trajan, Aetius, and Otto; generals who defeated Horse Archer nomad army*) and wouldn't it be better if they just described a Samurai battle ala proto-Shogun 2 Total War intro instead of "fantasy knights vs. samurai".

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-14, 01:07 PM
I can honestly say that i never interacted with anyone doing any of that.

On this basis, I can only assume that this message board is the only example of social media with which you engage.

Satinavian
2021-03-14, 05:12 PM
On this basis, I can only assume that this message board is the only example of social media with which you engage.
No, i am also on three other, smaller forums. One of those is even in English.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-15, 12:32 PM
By the by, after going back and reading about a dozen of this guys articles, I can conclusively say he is a selective quoting agenda pusher who is attempting to reframe history into his own narrative.

No, but he is strawmanning a bit. The stuff he debunkes is probably less common misconceptions and more completely outdated ideas and elements of power fantasies hardly anyone actually believes while still employing them in fiction.
It is a bit like reading a text meticulously listing all the plot errors and worldbuilding problems for a pulp magazine or for 40k. Every single argument can be completely correct while still not contributing much of note overall.

I’ve seen his blog linked several times here lately, but his actual academic credentials aren’t that impressive. His publication history is extremely limited, and it looks like he’s still sending out chapters of his dissertation for review.
He has every right to publish an opinionated blog, but I wouldn’t rely on him as an authority.
Full disclosure – I do not have time right now to go through this blog and determine what I think of this individual academic. They might be good, or bad, and my judgement on that will have to wait.

I do agree with the general trend of academic bloggers and posit that what you see in this guy is something I see in many of them (again, cannot comment on how accurate it is for this one) – framing the knowledge they provide as an exclusive true glimpse into how things really work that slavering hordes of lesser minds simply don’t know (and aren’t you superior for having this knowledge?). It’s a really tempting framing device, and one that draws in adherents. Nothing is quite so alluring as being in on a secret (except maybe being outspoken), and nothing quite so easy as finding someone else to point to as the other. Especially easy when you can then find a group of like-minded individuals to agree with how superior one is to be in said group of like minded individuals and toss back and forth individual instances of such and such ridiculous person who doesn’t know what they in the group know.

There certainly are plenty of aspiring intellectual influencers who create such blogs, and they often get something of a dedicated following. Given the ease at which one can create an individual brand, and the dearth of universally trusted sources, it was almost inevitable. It’s the modern equivalent of the proverbial soapbox, and sifting the brilliance from the self-assumed brilliant; the outspoken from the self-declared outspoken; and those fighting against a real mass of misinformed rubes vs. those in love with the sensation of outspokenness; is one of the real challenges of keeping oneself informed.

And again, I have no idea how much this specific blogger falls into those categories.

You'd be very surprised how many people believe whole-heartedly in the myths and misconceptions he's tearing down.

If you have read or interacted with anyone how does one of the below, you've met someone who believes in the overarching pseudohistory.
* tells you the Spartans were a noble warrior culture who saved democracy and had remarkable military success.
* believes in the "universal warrior" / "warrior ethos" garbage -- and that stuff is widespread on reading lists and in training programs for military and police in the US.
* espouses the notion of cyclical history where "hard men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create hard times, hard times create hard men, repeat endlessly".
* or relevant to RPGs set in pseudo-historical not!Japan, believes that the constructed mythos of the samurai, bushido, etc, is accurate to any real period of Japanese history.
There are some detailed examples I can't get into here, but that are laid out in the articles on the blog in question -- those articles aren't a revelation, they're a good summary of a known and persistent issue.

On this basis, I can only assume that this message board is the only example of social media with which you engage.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Most all of us have met someone (particularly out on the internets in forumlandia) who believes any given thing. Heck, I’m sure I know people who last checked in on their medieval Japanese war/weapons knowledge when they were teens in the 80s and bought into the whole ‘katana is the most epic’ kind of stuff that was so prevalent at those times and haven’t necessarily had an update since then. That does not show that there is a massive and persistent misunderstanding, nor speak to the actual prevalence of such understandings. This hints at a numerator. Without an attempt at a denominator, this is no better than my above-described adherents banding about their cherry-picked cases.

Yeah, that does also affect OA also. Like I know that they are trying to hammer in the world building idea to players, but it kinda felt like any wargamer's fanfic, like the horse archers beating the archers? (*cringes in Ventidius, Corbullo, Trajan, Aetius, and Otto; generals who defeated Horse Archer nomad army*)
Ah, a good example. I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type (and not Khan the tactical and strategic leader, the historical context, the state of his opposition at the time, and so forth). I feel like that’s a common misconception – but I don’t have any real evidence of how prevalent that misconception really is.

I can honestly say that i never interacted with anyone doing any of that.
Japan and Sparta are rather common targets of fanboyism in Western media. Perhaps there’s something that would be more prevalent from your other language forums that would be analogous. I do agree with Max and FIATH (oh, hey, never noticed that before! Clever) that one does tend to run into ‘that guy’ if one hangs around forums long enough. I just want to reinforce that that’s not a strong indicator of the existence or non-existence of widespread misconceptions (to which further evidence is required).

t209
2021-03-15, 01:40 PM
Ah, a good example. I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type (and not Khan the tactical and strategic leader, the historical context, the state of his opposition at the time, and so forth). I feel like that’s a common misconception – but I don’t have any real evidence of how prevalent that misconception really is.
True.
But the way it was written might be confusing who sees Samurai as katana wielder yet the description seems to be lifted out of Kamakura-era Samurai (horse archer), or lumping every East Asian archetype to sound cool (at the time).

JoeJ
2021-03-15, 03:20 PM
It always seemed to me that Kozakura, the first of the realms to be shown, was strongly influenced by Clavell's Shogun (although possibly as much or more based on the 1980 TV mini-series as the original novel).

t209
2021-03-15, 04:41 PM
It always seemed to me that Kozakura, the first of the realms to be shown, was strongly influenced by Clavell's Shogun (although possibly as much or more based on the 1980 TV mini-series as the original novel).
But from what I read, it's more Kamakura, like "here's Emperor, Shogun, Shogun's regent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikken) as an irony on Shogun being real power behind the Emperor, and retired Emperor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daij%C5%8D_Tenn%C5%8D) who actually has power behind the curtains".
I think Swords of the Daimyo's prologue for "foreign characters" is trying to emulate it.
But in my opinion, it is kinda tedious if someone is up for Samurai Adventure but have to go through with a prologue that may include fatality and getting harassed by locals for months--unless they handwave the timeskip, but might not be a good first impression if it was the first session--once you reached there at that, or if DM keeps insisting on running it despite having Kozakura party members, depending on ratios of foreign to native characters.
Instead of staring off at trading outposts despite various ships having made runs through it, depending on if Miyama was too remote from these lanes...but the game seems to insist on going west.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-15, 06:49 PM
Full disclosure – I do not have time right now to go through this blog and determine what I think of this individual academic. They might be good, or bad, and my judgement on that will have to wait.

I do agree with the general trend of academic bloggers and posit that what you see in this guy is something I see in many of them (again, cannot comment on how accurate it is for this one) – framing the knowledge they provide as an exclusive true glimpse into how things really work that slavering hordes of lesser minds simply don’t know (and aren’t you superior for having this knowledge?). It’s a really tempting framing device, and one that draws in adherents. Nothing is quite so alluring as being in on a secret (except maybe being outspoken), and nothing quite so easy as finding someone else to point to as the other. Especially easy when you can then find a group of like-minded individuals to agree with how superior one is to be in said group of like minded individuals and toss back and forth individual instances of such and such ridiculous person who doesn’t know what they in the group know.

There certainly are plenty of aspiring intellectual influencers who create such blogs, and they often get something of a dedicated following. Given the ease at which one can create an individual brand, and the dearth of universally trusted sources, it was almost inevitable. It’s the modern equivalent of the proverbial soapbox, and sifting the brilliance from the self-assumed brilliant; the outspoken from the self-declared outspoken; and those fighting against a real mass of misinformed rubes vs. those in love with the sensation of outspokenness; is one of the real challenges of keeping oneself informed.

And again, I have no idea how much this specific blogger falls into those categories.



The plural of anecdote is not data. Most all of us have met someone (particularly out on the internets in forumlandia) who believes any given thing. Heck, I’m sure I know people who last checked in on their medieval Japanese war/weapons knowledge when they were teens in the 80s and bought into the whole ‘katana is the most epic’ kind of stuff that was so prevalent at those times and haven’t necessarily had an update since then. That does not show that there is a massive and persistent misunderstanding, nor speak to the actual prevalence of such understandings. This hints at a numerator. Without an attempt at a denominator, this is no better than my above-described adherents banding about their cherry-picked cases.

Ah, a good example. I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type (and not Khan the tactical and strategic leader, the historical context, the state of his opposition at the time, and so forth). I feel like that’s a common misconception – but I don’t have any real evidence of how prevalent that misconception really is.

Japan and Sparta are rather common targets of fanboyism in Western media. Perhaps there’s something that would be more prevalent from your other language forums that would be analogous. I do agree with Max and FIATH (oh, hey, never noticed that before! Clever) that one does tend to run into ‘that guy’ if one hangs around forums long enough. I just want to reinforce that that’s not a strong indicator of the existence or non-existence of widespread misconceptions (to which further evidence is required).

As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years... and loads of fiction about same...

Tanarii
2021-03-16, 12:56 AM
I'm inclined to agree it was a pretty heavy mishmash of American pop-culture version of "Japanese" (especially the classes) plus "Kung fu". That was fine at the time, after all that's exactly what D&D is, a mishmash of pop-culture.

But yeah, if I had campaign nations that are any other asian culture analogue going on, that doesn't really work at all.


As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years... and loads of fiction about same...
Touché. The sheer number of American High School and College sports teams named "The Spartans" is pretty impressive too. There is a reason for that.

Mechalich
2021-03-16, 01:48 AM
Pop culture absorbs new historical research slowly if it does so at all.

300's treatment of the Spartans is actually a nice example of how this works. First, 300, isn't historical fiction at all, it's a comic book movie - Zack Synder et al. have been quite clear on this from the start - with the comic book in question being Frank Miller's 300, from 1998. And that work, in turn, was derived primarily from his recollections of the film The 300 Spartans from 1962. That means that the historical references used for a film that hit theaters in 2007 lie all the way back in the early 1960s (a film that was not, itself, intended to convey any sort of historical accuracy, but to make a point relevant to the cultural clash of that period). And while this is a somewhat extreme example, it happens all the time. The MCU is built primarily around characters invented in the 1960s, and the major DC characters are even older (Batman and Superman are both creations of the 1930s).

Satinavian
2021-03-16, 02:11 AM
Japan and Sparta are rather common targets of fanboyism in Western media. Perhaps there’s something that would be more prevalent from your other language forums that would be analogous. I do agree with Max and FIATH (oh, hey, never noticed that before! Clever) that one does tend to run into ‘that guy’ if one hangs around forums long enough. I just want to reinforce that that’s not a strong indicator of the existence or non-existence of widespread misconceptions (to which further evidence is required).
I have seen my fare share of Japan fanboys, yes. Never Sparta though, i was aware that there is a silly comic and a silly film based on the comic but not that there actually a relevant number of people idolizing this idea of ancient Sparta.
As for Japan, while i have seen many people idolizing some imagined historical Japan which is full of misconception and results from a rose-tainted view otherwise, it still didn't match Max_Killjoys comments. Japan was not seen as warrior culture, the samurai were not put on a pedestrial and bushido was not perceived as particularly relevant compared to other perceived japanese cultural mores/attitudes.

Palanan
2021-03-16, 09:30 AM
Originally Posted by JoeJ
It always seemed to me that Kozakura, the first of the realms to be shown, was strongly influenced by Clavell's Shogun (although possibly as much or more based on the 1980 TV mini-series as the original novel).

In his introduction to the 3.0 Oriental Adventures, James Wyatt writes:

“TSR, Inc. published the first Oriental Adventures just a few years after James Clavell’s novel Shogun aired as a TV miniseries. The legend of the samurai shaped much of the D&D gamer’s concept of what fantasy Asia should and could be, and games such as Bushido brought that vision to life alongside Oriental Adventures.”


Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type….

I can’t recall horse archery ever being mentioned at any game I’ve played in, certainly not in 3.5 and Pathfinder. There aren’t a lot of good options for that style in 3.5, and while it might be a little more feasible in Pathfinder, I’ve never seen it come up.


Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years... and loads of fiction about same...

What are you considering misconceptions?

And what sources are you drawing on that counter these misconceptions?

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-16, 10:05 AM
What are you considering misconceptions?

And what sources are you drawing on that counter these misconceptions?

Sticking to the topic of RPGs in not!Asia.

* The mythology of the katana as a superior weapon.

* The idea that "eastern" martial techniques stood in contrast to Europeans of the comparable time periods supposedly beating each other over the head with sword-shaped clubs.

* The idea that "the Samurai" of the Sengoku period and earlier were "the Samurai" of the deliberate political revisionism conducted by the state in Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods.

https://thegoldeneggs.wordpress.com/


...

For the Spartans, we're surrounded by the mythology of Sparta as a land of stoic heroes of great martial skill and success...

Satinavian
2021-03-16, 10:45 AM
I remain unconvinced.

For those not particularly interested, samurai are just the Japanese version of knights. And while there are many differences, that is not particularly far off.

For those that know details, they tend to know better anyway.

t209
2021-03-16, 11:16 AM
I can’t recall horse archery ever being mentioned at any game I’ve played in, certainly not in 3.5 and Pathfinder. There aren’t a lot of good options for that style in 3.5, and while it might be a little more feasible in Pathfinder, I’ve never seen it come up.
I mean the ADnD 1E version, page 98 and 99.

Palanan
2021-03-16, 11:34 AM
Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
*snip*

Do you have any sources other than a random blog?


Originally Posted by t209
I mean the ADnD 1E version, page 98 and 99.

If you mean the 1E Oriental Adventures, that’s not one I’ve ever used.

Is horse archery a better option in-game for 1E than it is for 3.5? If it is, that may influence the views of 1E players vs. 3.5 players.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-16, 11:36 AM
I remain unconvinced.

For those not particularly interested, samurai are just the Japanese version of knights. And while there are many differences, that is not particularly far off.

For those that know details, they tend to know better anyway.

It is very possible that the fascination with samurai, etc, is country-specific.

In the US, it surges and fades as a big deal, but it's always there. Movies like The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, the pseudo-not!Japan of Oriental Adventures and Legend of the Five Rings and other settings, etc, don't come out of nowhere.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-16, 11:47 AM
Do you have any sources other than a random blog?


Are you trying to dismiss the fact that belief in the largely mythical history of the samurai, bushido, etc is a largely a product of later deliberate revisionism and fictional distortion -- or are you trying to dismiss the fact that the belief is widespread in modern pop cultural thinking about Japanese history?


I'd love to see a game setting that started from more serious scholarship about historical and ancient Japan, but sadly I doubt it would sell well... between having to fight uphill against "everyone knows" bullcrap (see, Reality is Unrealistic trope), and the fact that many gamers actively want to indulge in the genre and trope and myths established within existing fiction and pop-culture.

Palanan
2021-03-16, 11:58 AM
Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
Are you trying to dismiss the fact that belief in the largely mythical history of the samurai, bushido, etc is a largely a product of later deliberate revisionism and fictional distortion -- or are you trying to dismiss the fact that the belief is widespread in modern pop cultural thinking about Japanese history?

Neither. I haven’t made either of those claims, and I’m not trying to dismiss anything.


Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years...

Here you seem to be suggesting that you know better than thirty years of documentaries on samurai. That’s a bold claim. I’d like to know what sources inform this belief.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-16, 12:50 PM
Try:

Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian's Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition
Death, Honor and Loyalty: The Bushido Ideal
Inventing the Way of the Samurai
War and State Building
Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan

If you want an example of how commonplace and ingrained the bunko ideas are in pop-history and fiction, try the current Netflix documentary series... Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan... from what I've read in reviews, it's a dumpster fire.

t209
2021-03-16, 12:52 PM
Do you have any sources other than a random blog?



If you mean the 1E Oriental Adventures, that’s not one I’ve ever used.

Is horse archery a better option in-game for 1E than it is for 3.5? If it is, that may influence the views of 1E players vs. 3.5 players.

Well, i am just referring to fluff.
Crunchwise, as I can summarize its idea, it generally have half rate of fire and penalty to aim while requiring horsemanship proficiency to perform horseback archery.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-16, 01:02 PM
I remain unconvinced.
For those not particularly interested, samurai are just the Japanese version of knights. And while there are many differences, that is not particularly far off.
For those that know details, they tend to know better anyway.
That’s kind of what my un-backed-up-by-stats take is on the matter. The average Joe Bloe who may or may not think Vikings had horned helmets and can’t remember which of the Native Americans had the feathered headdresses might well think of samurai as ‘the Japanese swordy-fighty guys’ and not really have the details down at all. For anyone further down the done-any-research/has-any-knowledge scale, if there are serious and significant (and widespread) misconceptions, I think I’m confident calling that a claim in need of supporting evidence.

In the US, it surges and fades as a big deal, but it's always there. Movies like The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, the pseudo-not!Japan of Oriental Adventures and Legend of the Five Rings and other settings, etc, don't come out of nowhere.
My take is that there was a strong injection of fascination with Japan around WWII or just after, as a generation of young men were stationed there just long enough to get a brief taste of the place, without really having a chance (or have the background to) to do scholarly research (plus lots of people willing to sell them ‘the true secrets of Japan’ for exactly as much as they deemed a tourist would willingly pay). There seemed to be another fad of it in the 70s, which road alongside non-Japanese Asian fandom with the kung fu craze. That one encompassed Shogun, and probably influenced the 80s ninja craze. That one seemed to have a resurgence in the late 80s/early 90s when fear that Japan was going to be the next great economic powerhouse also included a fair amount of fascination. Since then, I haven’t really seen a lot of obsession with Samurai or really anything Japan-specific martial, at least in a way that was divorced from general anime obsession.

Are you trying to dismiss the fact that belief in the largely mythical history of the samurai, bushido, etc is a largely a product of later deliberate revisionism and fictional distortion -- or are you trying to dismiss the fact that the belief is widespread in modern pop cultural thinking about Japanese history?
Oy, this is not a good start. Being defensive when asked to provide evidentiary material is not going to make this thread go well.

Try:
Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian's Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition
Death, Honor and Loyalty: The Bushido Ideal
Inventing the Way of the Samurai
War and State Building
Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan
If you want an example of how commonplace and ingrained the bunko ideas are in pop-history and fiction, try the current Netflix documentary series... Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan.
This is a good start. Thank you.

I'd love to see a game setting that started from more serious scholarship about historical and ancient Japan, but sadly I doubt it would sell well..
Okay, there’s definitely some here. Games aiming towards historical accuracy (for many different cultures) never really gained steam. Probably most never saw the light of day, after someone determined that they wouldn’t be able to find a market.

Palanan
2021-03-16, 01:25 PM
Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
Try:

Good to see some Karl Friday in there. Definitely a better source than a random blog.


Originally Posted by t209
Crunchwise, as I can summarize its idea, it generally have half rate of fire and penalty to aim while requiring horsemanship proficiency to perform horseback archery.

Sounds like significant drawbacks in the 1E version as well.

In 3.5, archery and mounted combat are both not very good, and combining them even less so.


Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
My take is that there was a strong injection of fascination with Japan around WWII or just after….

There was also a growing cultural interest in Japan after the war, and a recognition that Japanese culture had a lot more to offer than had been recognized (or could be voiced) before then.

One example is Saburo Sakai’s account of his role in the air war, which wasn’t published in the US until 1957 or thereabouts.


Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
That one encompassed Shogun, and probably influenced the 80s ninja craze. That one seemed to have a resurgence in the late 80s/early 90s....

Also worth mentioning the impact of Wolverine, whose involvement with Japan no doubt influenced countless kids who were also heavily into D&D at the time.


Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
Okay, there’s definitely some here. Games aiming towards historical accuracy (for many different cultures) never really gained steam. Probably most never saw the light of day, after someone determined that they wouldn’t be able to find a market.

Any recommendations?

Willie the Duck
2021-03-16, 01:54 PM
Any recommendations?

Not many (and none for Japan). That was kind of our points-they never got published because no one saw a market for them. Wargaming there has been more, which is why we have the mongoose guides (with the massive disparities in scholarliness involved, depending). GURPS of course had more than a few sourcebooks which were at least researched in a scholarly fashion (oftentimes by PHDs or Grad students in said field, although as mentioned above that's no inoculum to it becoming one person's soapbox. AD&D 2nd edition has the greenback historic setting splats which... all I will say is that they are pretty good considering the state TSR was in at the time (and that they were definitely fitting the settings into D&D and not the other way around). Mythras isn't a specific setting, but does a pretty good job of being convincingly bronze age (and the combat is significantly more accurate than most medieval TTRPGs). There is a fan-made Traveller port to classical Mediterranean called Mercator that is pretty bare bones, but does the job. I guess, for me, the most notable situation (other the eternal one that D&D exists and sucks the oxygen out of every conversation) is Pendragon. It is, ACAICT, the most popular TTRPG where you actually focus on the kind of things which would make historical accuracy plausibly useful -- there's a lot more statecraft and loyalty checks and tracking stuff across generations than straight busting heads (and wizards and dragons only if you want them as add-ons). However, this one is decidedly not historic, being as wikipedia says, "a pastiche of actual fifth- and sixth-century British history, high medieval history (10th to 15th centuries), and Arthurian legend." That's definitely a missed opportunity (were demythologizing history to be a design goal, which it wasn't), and I suspect a case of 'the market didn't want'-ism.

LibraryOgre
2021-03-16, 03:50 PM
* The idea that "eastern" martial techniques stood in contrast to Europeans of the comparable time periods supposedly beating each other over the head with sword-shaped clubs.


Part of the reason I started setting up OA martial arts for non-!Asian settings.

Mechalich
2021-03-16, 04:48 PM
If you want an example of how commonplace and ingrained the bunko ideas are in pop-history and fiction, try the current Netflix documentary series... Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan... from what I've read in reviews, it's a dumpster fire.

I watched the first two episodes. Dumpster fire is perhaps a bit much.

The documentary hews to a modern documentary style of being split into two primary states: historians talking against studio backdrops and 'dramatic recreations.'

The former part is fine. The scholarship isn't exactly in-depth, and they gloss over a few cultural conventions that they probably thought were confusing (like how most many Sengoku Era figures went by different names throughout the course of their lives), but the overview is acceptable and they make salient, if generalist, points. And I wouldn't say the samurai are held up as any sort of virtuous figures at all, if anything they maybe demonize a bit much (but then Nobunaga is the central figure of the the first two episodes so, you know, what can you do).

The problem is the 'reenactments.' They're terrible. Most it's just a small number of guys in samurai and ashigaru getup (not especially accurate getup either) running around slamming weapons at each other. Or actors chosen to represent historical figures gesticulating furiously. The series has nowhere near the budget necessary to actually recreate these sequences with anything even resembling accuracy.

This sort of divide is commonplace in the modern documentary style. The History Channel documentary on Grant from last year had the same problem. It simply isn't possible, on a documentary budget, to invoke anything like the scope of major historical conflicts. Reenactments are maybe appropriate for a documentary trying to sell pivotal emotional moments in small settings like the backroom deals of organized crime or courtroom scenes or internal family events, but they simply don't fit military history at all.


Not many (and none for Japan).

Well, there is the Sengoku RPG. Its accuracy level is actually pretty good, though it does deliberately indulge in some misconceptions because it is ultimately a game and is trying to emulate the feel of old Japanese samurai movies and not actual life in 16th century Japan. But yes, it's a niche project by a tiny publisher that never made much of an impact in the market.

Of course overall historical fantasy, especially that built with any accuracy at all, is significantly less popular than high fantasy. In the latter the modern trend seems to be towards even more stylized and even less historically grounded settings than ever before, and even when someone tries to do 'realistic' the most likely outcome is something like ASOIAF, which misses the mark massively.

t209
2021-03-17, 10:16 AM
Well, there is the Sengoku RPG. Its accuracy level is actually pretty good, though it does deliberately indulge in some misconceptions because it is ultimately a game and is trying to emulate the feel of old Japanese samurai movies and not actual life in 16th century Japan. But yes, it's a niche project by a tiny publisher that never made much of an impact in the market.

Of course overall historical fantasy, especially that built with any accuracy at all, is significantly less popular than high fantasy. In the latter the modern trend seems to be towards even more stylized and even less historically grounded settings than ever before, and even when someone tries to do 'realistic' the most likely outcome is something like ASOIAF, which misses the mark massively.
I was asking about that.
From what I heard, at least from RPG.net, people said that it did a better job.

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-17, 11:31 AM
The plural of anecdote is not data.

Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/slq/detail.action?docID=957104

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42896787

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34005681

https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/history/about/staff-profiles/profile_tab1_academic.php?uun=charding

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299486002_Transforming_Sparta_new_approaches_to_th e_study_of_Spartan_society

https://www.history.org.uk/publications/resource/9797/sparta-and-war-myths-and-realities

https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/spartans-war-myth-vs-reality/

Tanarii
2021-03-17, 11:56 AM
Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:
But apparently the plural of anecdote is how fast can I google up some links hahahaha

Seriously though, how long did it take to put that post together? It can't have been quick, even with a wonderful research tool like Google.

(Edit: this wasn't intended to be a big put down, more a joke about google and how handy it is. and I thank you for the fresh reading material!)

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-17, 11:59 AM
Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/slq/detail.action?docID=957104

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42896787

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34005681

https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/history/about/staff-profiles/profile_tab1_academic.php?uun=charding

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299486002_Transforming_Sparta_new_approaches_to_th e_study_of_Spartan_society

https://www.history.org.uk/publications/resource/9797/sparta-and-war-myths-and-realities

https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/spartans-war-myth-vs-reality/



And going back to the source I originally posted a link to regarding "warrior mythos":

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/

Palanan
2021-03-17, 12:49 PM
Originally Posted by FrogInATopHat
Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

Can you post the title of the book in the first link? The link is sending me to an Australian government site which I don’t have access to.

As for the others, whenever people proudly proclaim that they're "debunking myths" or promoting a "radical new interpretation," it often means they have an axe to grind. Sometimes that's in the context of good scholarship, sometimes not.

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-17, 12:58 PM
Can you post the title of the book in the first link? The link is sending me to an Australian government site which I don’t have access to.

Whoops. That'll be the '.../slq/...' in the url. Not sure why ProQuest can't just link to the book in their holdings and let people sort out their own personal or institutional access.

Have a citation:

Thorsten, M. (2012). Superhuman japan : Knowledge, nation and culture in us-japan relations : knowledge, nation and culture in us-japan relations. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com


As for the others, whenever people proudly proclaim that they're "debunking myths" or promoting a "radical new interpretation," it often means they have an axe to grind. Sometimes that's in the context of good scholarship, sometimes not.

Absolutely. I'm not supporting the quality of any of these works under any circumstances. But they are pretty reasonable support for the existence of commonly held misconceptions about various other cultures both Eastern and not. And that's the only point I've even come close to making in this thread.

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-17, 01:23 PM
It is very possible that the fascination with samurai, etc, is country-specific.

Oh, not at all. It was reasonably prevalent in Ireland and the UK at the time. And from my time in Australia, they seem to have experienced the same waves

Willie the Duck
2021-03-17, 01:28 PM
Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:
<list of articles>

It has nothing to do with what you were trying to present, but upon what you were commenting. The existence of individual people on message boards who have a specific misconception doesn't inform us regarding the prevalence of said misconceptions. They are individual data points speaking to an unclear numerator, truly unknown denominator, and no understanding of cofactors which might have influenced that outcome. I am in no way saying that one shouldn’t discuss what one personally has seen out in the wider world regarding these potential misconceptions (you will notice most everyone else is doing so as well, mostly couched in qualifiers), only that it doesn’t answer the question of prevalence.
I actually have a little free time (the huge upsurge in non-covid-related healthcare usage that keeps being about to swamp us is still waiting in the wings) and I'll start going through these. It’s super frustrating not being a student or teacher right now, and not having a university access to some of these journals. I’ll have to find my public library ID login and see how many of the paywall-gated ones I can grab. I see others have found some link issues as well. Do you have a direct link to the one from https://www.ed.ac.uk/? The original link is sending me to the professor’s staff page instead.
A few of these are quite nice. The Macquarie Ancient History Association chapter references some seminal work by Moses Finley, which I read in my second go at undergrad. I agree with the chapter that it was transformative in the understanding of Sparta (admittedly transformative in 1968 from the model that had been perpetuated by Nazi-era Germany and other early 20th century work, or of course historians of antiquity such as Herodotus or Plutarch, who of course had an incentive to portray the Spartans and worthy adversaries/frenemies). One thing that I note about most of these is that they are history texts related to what is known about Japan and Sparta, without much sociological analysis (except in some cases fiat declaration) of prevalence of misconceptions. It would be interesting to find some studies related to that issue (perhaps some of the paywall ones will bear fruit in this regard)

And going back to the source I originally posted a link to regarding "warrior mythos":
https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/
There’s definitely some good reading in all of this. Page one showcases a couple popular culture Spartan references I had forgotten about, as well as a case of an academic disagreement the author has with another academic, with some relevant material used to back up their point. I will have to see if said individual has a counterpoint. This is all numerator stuff again, but it is interesting.
It also brings us back to a question of which question we are exploring – which population (general public or academia) are we mostly discussing misconceptions within, and how much non- or mis-knowledge counts. If Joe Schmoe on the street’s gut reaction to Spartan is ‘I don’t know, they’re proud warriors or something? Else why would they be a sports mascot, along with Vikings, wildcats, and uh, makers of steam engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Boilermakers#Origin_of_%22Boilermakers%22_n ickname):smalltongue:?’ does that tell us anything?

Well, there is the Sengoku RPG. Its accuracy level is actually pretty good, though it does deliberately indulge in some misconceptions because it is ultimately a game and is trying to emulate the feel of old Japanese samurai movies and not actual life in 16th century Japan. But yes, it's a niche project by a tiny publisher that never made much of an impact in the market.
Oh, I do remember that one! It seemed like it was fairly good, while still being quite playable. I think, like Pendragon, it fits the mold of ‘this is what got made, instead of a purely accurate one, because indulging in some of the mystique-version of history is what people actually wanted’ that we are running into.

Tanarii
2021-03-17, 01:30 PM
https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/spartans-war-myth-vs-reality/I thought this was was pretty good, except for the conclusion going all political-agenda pushing. The writer did a good job of acknowledging when and at what Spartans were actually quite skilled militarily, as compared to what's commonly attributed to them, and laying out the timeline / progression of the way they changed and the way the myths about them changed. (Or more accurately per the article, vice versa.)

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-17, 03:00 PM
I thought this was was pretty good, except for the conclusion going all political-agenda pushing. The writer did a good job of acknowledging when and at what Spartans were actually quite skilled militarily, as compared to what's commonly attributed to them, and laying out the timeline / progression of the way they changed and the way the myths about them changed. (Or more accurately per the article, vice versa.)

Those endings, those conclusions on these articles, are part of the point of writing them -- it's not just academic accuracy that's at issue when it comes to the idolization and idealization, of the myth-making in question.

We both know why I can't explain that more plainly, right?

Setting the facts straight is not "an agenda".

And when these games uncritically and enthusiastically take up the concepts that originate how and why these deliberate myths originate... it's not great.

JoeJ
2021-03-17, 03:32 PM
I don't get the impression that historical accuracy was a major goal, either of the devs or the players. If I want to roleply in a accurate historical setting, D&D is not my system of choice to do it with.

Tanarii
2021-03-17, 03:45 PM
We both know why I can't explain that more plainly, right?

Setting the facts straight is not "an agenda". The reason the conclusion is an agenda is the same reason we can't write about it breaking it down and explaining our points of view. It's real world politics. I agree that breaking down a myth for that reason may be the entire point to some people. I don't find it interesting though.

Mechalich
2021-03-17, 06:26 PM
Oh, I do remember that one! It seemed like it was fairly good, while still being quite playable. I think, like Pendragon, it fits the mold of ‘this is what got made, instead of a purely accurate one, because indulging in some of the mystique-version of history is what people actually wanted’ that we are running into.

The authors of Sengoku were very up front, in the game text, that they were trying to recreate a setting that fit the mold of the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_cinema]chanbara[/film] film style rather than a perfectly historically accurate setting. However just the intent to emulate historical fiction based on a specific time period made by people with a decent knowledge of the time period raises the bar significantly.

People definitely want a slightly pumped-up version of history as opposed to what actually happened, which is hardly a new impulse. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written at some point in the 14th century (probably) and represents a distinctly pumped up and stylized version of the grand history of the period even though it mostly sticks to the course of real events.

One of the things that makes cross-cultural adaptations fraught is that it adds another layer in which the natural tendency to go 'bigger and better' with each iteration of a property further distorts the fundamentals. This can easily be seen even in the case of totally fictional constructs, like Godzilla, who continues to get more and more ridiculous over time.

Palanan
2021-03-17, 09:14 PM
Originally Posted by FrogInATopHat
Oh, not at all. It was reasonably prevalent in Ireland and the UK at the time. And from my time in Australia, they seem to have experienced the same waves

A friend of mine in Brazil was also quite taken with the samurai. He was very enthusiastic when I gave him one of Stephen Turnbull’s hardcover books.


Originally Posted by Mechalich
[/film]

Interesting bit of coding there. :smalltongue:

Satinavian
2021-03-18, 02:42 AM
Oh, not at all. It was reasonably prevalent in Ireland and the UK at the time. And from my time in Australia, they seem to have experienced the same waves
Well i can say that the for the two Germanies those waves don't match at all with the most divergence obviously from before, during and after WWII. And even later at least Eastern Germany got to really share western pop culture only after 1990 and usually had a completely different reaction to it. That is even neglecting what communist propaganda had to say about Japan. And while the FRG might have more success at least to the translated stuff, it was still not all the same or at the same time and they didn't really fear Japanese economic resurgance either instead they thought it mirrored their own.

So ... definitely country dependend. But the Anglosphere might be closer to each other.

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-19, 05:22 AM
Do you have a direct link to the one from https://www.ed.ac.uk/? The original link is sending me to the professor’s staff page instead.

That was deliberate. He was quoted in the BBC piece and has published additional material, listed in his bio.


It also brings us back to a question of which question we are exploring – which population (general public or academia) are we mostly discussing misconceptions within, and how much non- or mis-knowledge counts. If Joe Schmoe on the street’s gut reaction to Spartan is ‘I don’t know, they’re proud warriors or something? Else why would they be a sports mascot, along with Vikings, wildcats, and uh, makers of steam engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Boilermakers#Origin_of_%22Boilermakers%22_n ickname):smalltongue:?’ does that tell us anything?

My understanding is that we are discussing common misconceptions among the general public.

Given the mis-steps by Legendary Games, both in recent days and in their wider... loose interpretation... of Asian culture, coupled with the prevalence of articles addressing 'popular misconceptions' of Asian and other cultures, I'm not sure how one could support any assertion that these cultures are fully and widely understood.

But, since evidence has been provided that they weren't and aren't, I would welcome any evidence you can provide to the contrary.

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-19, 12:51 PM
I thought this was was pretty good, except for the conclusion going all political-agenda pushing. The writer did a good job of acknowledging when and at what Spartans were actually quite skilled militarily, as compared to what's commonly attributed to them, and laying out the timeline / progression of the way they changed and the way the myths about them changed. (Or more accurately per the article, vice versa.)

We're probably skirting veeeery close to forum rules on this. But modern militaries absolutely fetishise that aspect of Spartan culture, incorrectly. So the article isn't wrong in that regard.

We're not very pro-military in my country as a whole, mind you.

Tanarii
2021-03-19, 01:00 PM
We're probably skirting veeeery close to forum rules on this. But modern militaries absolutely fetishise that aspect of Spartan culture, incorrectly. So the article isn't wrong in that regard.Political agenda doesn't mean it's wrong, nor that I don't agree with it. It's a label of what it is, and not what I'm particularly interested in, and not what we can discuss on the forums.

I'm assuming the objections are because it's often used as a pejorative to dismiss alternative political views. In that case, please mentally revise to "political aspect discussion with a particular viewpoint" and leave it there.

LibraryOgre
2021-03-19, 02:17 PM
Ad res, I've picked up a number of Usagi Yojimbo trade paperbacks from work. Now, there's some rose-colored samurai. Fun books, though.

FrogInATopHat
2021-03-19, 02:23 PM
I'm assuming the objections are because it's often used as a pejorative to dismiss alternative political views. In that case, please mentally revise to "political aspect discussion with a particular viewpoint" and leave it there.

To be frank, the militarism and the misinformation seem to go hand-in-hand when it comes to Spartan common mythology. At least at the superficial level that's sufficient to actually impact real politics in the US.

There are reasons that both the Spartan lambda and 'molon labe' aren't tattoos that lefties get.

'Agenda' is certainly not a dirty word. But some agenda are indisputably grubby.

LibraryOgre
2021-03-19, 03:31 PM
The Mod Ogre: Let's back away from the politics before I have to get my thumpin' stick.

t209
2021-03-20, 12:42 AM
Well, let's get back to Kara-Tur.
From what I read...seems that either Cook or Pondsmith wanted to include China (the "good" China and somehow split responsibilities to two authors instead of the same author, who would make the same culture, or the fact that Tu Lung is over-the-top unstable and tyrannical while Shou Lung is "well-meaning and large bureaucracy but overall-good guy") but decided to make Japanese-equivalent.
This is not mentioning the Japanese terminology instead of Chinese words for some reason.
I mean they kinda was Geisha equivalen for not!China with Sing-Song Girl, but these kinda like having a medieval fantasy with tuxedo tone (ignoring the sexual aspect due to professional being courtesans) since those are kinda long after "ancient China" was long-gone (like radio age). Maybe "Asian" Bard equivalent.
My favorite being "Shou kinda suck at sword making compared to not!Japan, so we don't use swords and our soldiers use Kung-Fu and martial art weapons even if we had arts of everyone carrying Chinese swords, or a fully armored soldier with a Halberd".
Also maybe copy-pasting from entire tourist or text book, which kinda had inconsistent art since the text say the equivalent of "Qing dress" but the art tends to be "anything with few Manchu".
Yeah, other than sensitivity, it kinda seem too jumbled even comparing it to Forgotten Realms (that is ignoring that TSR kinda had bad years later on and may not have continued it).

Satinavian
2021-03-20, 02:45 AM
Yes, what i have seen with various kinds of China is that they are often all over the place regarding which dynasties they take inspiration of. As if people have a problem understanding that China is not one setting, it is many of them. And at the same time there is no problem avoiding to populate your fantasy London with Roman legionaries, Norman knights and Red Coats at the same time as if the idea of different European time periods were easier to understand.

Mechalich
2021-03-20, 03:13 AM
Yes, what i have seen with various kinds of China is that they are often all over the place regarding which dynasties they take inspiration of. As if people have a problem understanding that China is not one setting, it is many of them. And at the same time there is no problem avoiding to populate your fantasy London with Roman legionaries, Norman knights and Red Coats at the same time as if the idea of different European time periods were easier to understand.

Chinese-origin historical fiction, or history-inspired fiction in the form of various Wuxia productions has a tendency to do a lot of temporal flattening and in particular tend to use costuming, arms, and armor that is vaguely Early Ming Dynasty in effect regardless of when the story is set. So a film like Jet Li's Hero, nominally set in something like 225 BC since Qin Shi Huang is not yet Emperor of all China, and a film like Red Cliff, set in 208 AD during the battle of the same name, and a film like Curse of the Golden Flower, set mid-tang Dynasty so probably like 750 AD, all use very similar styles, materials, and weapons none of which match the historical periods they are nominally emulating.

There are probably a lot of reasons why this is the case, including the long standing influence of Chinese Opera to bring these various stories to the masses and the necessity of opera troupes to use the same tools for all of them, but it definitely serves to blur the distinctions between historical periods in terms of fantasy settings.

Satinavian
2021-03-20, 04:38 AM
Yes, but...

I really like playing in pseudo-China and do so in various groups. But i am not really that knowledgable about Chinese culture and history and still even i have to cringe when i encounter stuff clearly borrowed from Han and later Qing existing in perfect harmony. It is not exactly a subtle mistake if an amateur like me gets it.

And yes, Ming works best as compromise, and i get it, there is a really good reason to do Three-kingdoms-stuff with Ming esthetics but sometimes i with settings were a bit more focussed instead of being a weird melting pot.

Tanarii
2021-03-20, 10:39 AM
Does it make you cringe when there is a mix of Viking and French Flower of Chivalry and Arthurian Legend stuff? D&D not-Europe (or however you guys are symbolizing it) is full of this stuff. Including in sub-regions of Forgotten Realms, e.g. Waterdeep and the North, the Heartlands, Comyr/Dalelands/Sembia.

Same for not-Arabian Zharhara, which I know includes stuff from pre-that-one-real-world-religion times all the way through Ottoman Empire stuff.

Yanagi
2021-03-20, 11:59 AM
Ad res, I've picked up a number of Usagi Yojimbo trade paperbacks from work. Now, there's some rose-colored samurai. Fun books, though.


Nothing wrong with rose colored historical romance as long as you do something interesting with it.

t209
2021-03-20, 01:44 PM
Chinese-origin historical fiction, or history-inspired fiction in the form of various Wuxia productions has a tendency to do a lot of temporal flattening and in particular tend to use costuming, arms, and armor that is vaguely Early Ming Dynasty in effect regardless of when the story is set. So a film like Jet Li's Hero, nominally set in something like 225 BC since Qin Shi Huang is not yet Emperor of all China, and a film like Red Cliff, set in 208 AD during the battle of the same name, and a film like Curse of the Golden Flower, set mid-tang Dynasty so probably like 750 AD, all use very similar styles, materials, and weapons none of which match the historical periods they are nominally emulating.

There are probably a lot of reasons why this is the case, including the long standing influence of Chinese Opera to bring these various stories to the masses and the necessity of opera troupes to use the same tools for all of them, but it definitely serves to blur the distinctions between historical periods in terms of fantasy settings.
I can agree to that. But Kara-Tur--mostly because it was 80's and Chinese works weren't widespread even with Kung Fu.
I mean even the description of "Forbidden City" (kinda go back and forth and not sure it wanted to be a city or palace by writing) is "let's put magic-shield over it" (I mean maybe add more fantasy-like Fu Dog statue which is actually Golem or "Bronze Men" would be good).

Does it make you cringe when there is a mix of Viking and French Flower of Chivalry and Arthurian Legend stuff? D&D not-Europe (or however you guys are symbolizing it) is full of this stuff. Including in sub-regions of Forgotten Realms, e.g. Waterdeep and the North, the Heartlands, Comyr/Dalelands/Sembia.

Same for not-Arabian Zharhara, which I know includes stuff from pre-that-one-real-world-religion times all the way through Ottoman Empire stuff.
Yeah, but I think I've said that while I do agree to that, the writers do know when to draw a line to keep the "authencity" (like the whole "firearms--even musket--in fantasy" argument) and Kara-Tur and Zakhara was added to Forgotten Realms later on (at least "officially", it was more stand-alone before 2E).
But Kara-Tur writing, especially Sing-Song Girl, is like introducing an equivalent of a modern age pop star to medieval fantasy (mostly I think they wanted Geisha equivalent and not sure if they had seen musical fighters, but all I can think is Kung Fu Hustle that was released two decades later). Also the issue of wanting to keep authenticity but being too afraid to add more fantasy due to fear of ruining it.
Also maybe Shou Lung having more Japanese analogue or terminology (Gaijin and the monasteries seems more Sohei-y than Shaolin) didn't help, though being spoiled by more consistent cultural themes (like Avatar the Last Airbender, Exalted, recent Total War Three Kingdoms. or World of Warcraft's Pandaria being consistently Chinese) didn't help.
Interestingly, players I've met tend to found Zakhara to be more interesting than Kara-Tur.

Palanan
2021-03-20, 03:54 PM
Originally Posted by t209
I mean even the description of "Forbidden City" (kinda go back and forth and not sure it wanted to be a city or palace by writing)....

I can't quite follow you here, especially in the parentheses. Could you elaborate, please?

t209
2021-03-20, 04:19 PM
I can't quite follow you here, especially in the parentheses. Could you elaborate, please?
Well, the descriptions of Forbidden City in Kara Tur, which the entire palace complex does seem to be copy-pasted from real-life and not much magic, aside from magic shield negating flight and levitation, even for fantasy analog.
Parentheses were just what they should have included since they have mages and can include fantastical defenses like "statues that are actually constructs/magic robots" (also a nod to Bronze Men of Shaolin, which would have been popular in TSR days).

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-20, 06:07 PM
Does it make you cringe when there is a mix of Viking and French Flower of Chivalry and Arthurian Legend stuff? D&D not-Europe (or however you guys are symbolizing it) is full of this stuff. Including in sub-regions of Forgotten Realms, e.g. Waterdeep and the North, the Heartlands, Comyr/Dalelands/Sembia.


The way FR does it... or the way the Hyborian age does it... yes, it makes my cringe.

Tanarii
2021-03-20, 10:29 PM
The way FR does it... or the way the Hyborian age does it... yes, it makes my cringe.
Did you ever read the BECMI gazetteers? The known world had a bunch of adjacent cultures modeled on a variety of time, late Feudal (with vampires/werewolves), Arabian, glantri was a pastiche (with lots of Magic & vampire werewolves), Islander / Pirate, Viking, merchant kingdoms (one sea and one land), horse nomads, and Roman. It'd probably drive you crazy :smallamused:

t209
2021-03-21, 01:59 AM
Did you ever read the BECMI gazetteers? The known world had a bunch of adjacent cultures modeled on a variety of time, late Feudal (with vampires/werewolves), Arabian, glantri was a pastiche (with lots of Magic & vampire werewolves), Islander / Pirate, Viking, merchant kingdoms (one sea and one land), horse nomads, and Roman. It'd probably drive you crazy :smallamused:
Gazetteers, I understand that point since it was supposed to be theme based setting.
In fact, it would fit well with Kara-Tur, and maybe it was planned for this area...or Greyhawk.
But Forgotten Realms seems rather out of place--at least the magic-heavy 5E feel, not sure about previous editions--and even Greenwood disliked it. Being more how he would say "ruin the fantastic feel with historical analog and cause arguments on setting context to historical aspect".

The Glyphstone
2021-03-21, 10:21 AM
Which brings to mind the question: If the cultural kitchen sink approach of Faerun and Golarion doesn't work, how do you make a world with iconically distinct cultures while constraining them into the geographical region players will tend to interact with? Or are those mutually exclusive, and you cannot have widely divergent cultures in close proximity without a continental or oceanic gap?

Tanarii
2021-03-21, 11:00 AM
Which brings to mind the question: If the cultural kitchen sink approach of Faerun and Golarion doesn't work, how do you make a world with iconically distinct cultures while constraining them into the geographical region players will tend to interact with? Or are those mutually exclusive, and you cannot have widely divergent cultures in close proximity without a continental or oceanic gap?You can't, not to that degree. But you can within the overarching culture. Theres a reason real world very diverse cultures get divided up by large geographic divides.



But Forgotten Realms seems rather out of place--at least the magic-heavy 5E feel, not sure about previous editions--and even Greenwood disliked it. Being more how he would say "ruin the fantastic feel with historical analog and cause arguments on setting context to historical aspect".
Interestingly AD&D is much lower magic than forgotten realms is considered to be.

Just as BECMI os much lower than Mystara ended up being, once they introduced Glantri and Alphatia.

The reason is both have far more extremely high level NPCs than it is reasonable for the population and adventuring to support. Getting to level 10 in either is hard, on the order of one in a million of the population. Getting to level 20/36 should be one in ten billion or more, in other words on the entire planet.

Mechalich
2021-03-21, 04:57 PM
You can't, not to that degree. But you can within the overarching culture. Theres a reason real world very diverse cultures get divided up by large geographic divides.

You can have a large geographic divide that's not impassable though, like the Mediterranean or the South China Sea, and have wildly different cultures spread around it in very different environmental conditions. The tricky part, in such a circumstance, is preserving the cultural diversity of the initial state against homogenizing forces after the barriers to accessibility fall. In the case of a sea that's usually a major innovation in shipbuilding technology.

In a fantasy world you could produce some kind of artificial barrier to cultural exchange and trade and then drop that barrier shortly prior to the campaign, thereby creating a window in the timeline with widely divergent cultures that the characters can move through. For example, in the not!Mediterranean example, perhaps sea travel was nigh impossible for centuries because the sea was infested by a hyper-aggressive Sahuagin Empire. That Empire got destroyed for some reason and now people are spreading throughout the sea again.

LibraryOgre
2021-03-21, 05:43 PM
The reason is both have far more extremely high level NPCs than it is reasonable for the population and adventuring to support. Getting to level 10 in either is hard, on the order of one in a million of the population. Getting to level 20/36 should be one in ten billion or more, in other words on the entire planet.

I have to wonder if there's not plateaus. Like, if you make it to 3rd level, you have a pretty good chance of making it to 7th. Then, if you make it to 9th, lots of that cadre make it to 13th and, while few make it from 13th to 20th, those that do make it to 20th have a really good chance of making it to 36th, or whatever, eventually.

Tanarii
2021-03-21, 05:56 PM
I have to wonder if there's not plateaus. Like, if you make it to 3rd level, you have a pretty good chance of making it to 7th. Then, if you make it to 9th, lots of that cadre make it to 13th and, while few make it from 13th to 20th, those that do make it to 20th have a really good chance of making it to 36th, or whatever, eventually.
Might be, most likely after name level. But remember, the requirement to gain XP is to adventure and gain loot. And that's inherently a risky behavior, encouraging stopping once you're wealthy enough.

If you figure 1/10 the population is Fighting Men (with maybe 1/10th or less of that Cleric, Thief, or Magic-User), and 3/4 of them die or retire before hitting the next level, 1 in 2.5 million make it to 10th level. If you assume far less are PC classed among the pop but a better survival/continuation rate it still works out to very rare. Most module & campaign demographics have way too many high levels. :smallamused:

Mechalich
2021-03-21, 06:13 PM
I have to wonder if there's not plateaus. Like, if you make it to 3rd level, you have a pretty good chance of making it to 7th. Then, if you make it to 9th, lots of that cadre make it to 13th and, while few make it from 13th to 20th, those that do make it to 20th have a really good chance of making it to 36th, or whatever, eventually.

The minute Raise Dead comes online, permanent character mortality absolutely plummets. That's the really big plateau, and the various means to evade death and/or adventure with greatly reduced risk - such as always hiding behind Project Image - only increase as level advances further. One of things FR gets right about its worldbuilding is also one of its more infuriating traits: high level characters almost never die.

Tanarii
2021-03-21, 06:35 PM
The minute Raise Dead comes online, permanent character mortality absolutely plummets.Not in AD&D. You need a cleric high enough level to cast it, you need the body, you need the money, and most importantly you need to pass a system shock check, lose a point of Con ... and after all that still decide to go back to adventuring to keep gaining XP instead of retiring like a sane person.

PCs are special because they're stupid enough to keep doing that until they are perma-dead. :smallamused:

JoeJ
2021-03-21, 06:45 PM
You can have a large geographic divide that's not impassable though, like the Mediterranean or the South China Sea, and have wildly different cultures spread around it in very different environmental conditions. The tricky part, in such a circumstance, is preserving the cultural diversity of the initial state against homogenizing forces after the barriers to accessibility fall. In the case of a sea that's usually a major innovation in shipbuilding technology.

In a fantasy world you could produce some kind of artificial barrier to cultural exchange and trade and then drop that barrier shortly prior to the campaign, thereby creating a window in the timeline with widely divergent cultures that the characters can move through. For example, in the not!Mediterranean example, perhaps sea travel was nigh impossible for centuries because the sea was infested by a hyper-aggressive Sahuagin Empire. That Empire got destroyed for some reason and now people are spreading throughout the sea again.

Within something like the Mediterranean basin you don't need to a barrier to sea travel to justify having a situation as varied as Egyptians at one end and Celtic tribes at the other, with Greeks, Etruscans, and Carthaginians in between.

t209
2021-03-21, 08:09 PM
Within something like the Mediterranean basin you don't need to a barrier to sea travel to justify having a situation as varied as Egyptians at one end and Celtic tribes at the other, with Greeks, Etruscans, and Carthaginians in between.
Agreed on that.
In fact, I was thinking "Forgotten Realms or DnD's Sicily" since those area--at least Norman era--have Arabs, Greeks, Italians, Russian-Vikings, and French-Vikings yet no place in fantasy Arabia (then again Zakhara might be one-shot fantasy, so maybe homebrew slotta). Also Souther Italy since they were part of Kingdom of Sicily.
Not sure if Calimshan or Chault had those since they have Euro-Arab mix populace and architectures.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-21, 08:23 PM
Within something like the Mediterranean basin you don't need to a barrier to sea travel to justify having a situation as varied as Egyptians at one end and Celtic tribes at the other, with Greeks, Etruscans, and Carthaginians in between.


It's not a matter of having different cultures spread out across a region, it's a matter of having wildly mis-matched cultures packed right on top of each other, radically different without any real explanation as to how or why.

awa
2021-03-21, 09:03 PM
The huns and Germanic tribes were pretty different than the Romans and they were right next to each other.
People are complicated and that applies to culture as well

Tanarii
2021-03-21, 09:11 PM
The huns and Germanic tribes were pretty different than the Romans and they were right next to each other.
People are complicated and that applies to culture as well
Not for 1000 years they weren't. Not to mention that the Roman Empire was huge at its zenith, it expanded to be right next to everyone at some point or another.

The Known World has notVikings next to notArabs next to notRomans next to notfeudal-Europeans next to 2 different notVenetian-merchant-traders. With the notRomans including notJapanese and notPacific-Islanders.

Forgotten Realms isn't quite that bad except around the Sea of Fallen Stars.

awa
2021-03-21, 09:22 PM
d&d is inherently inconsistent in that regards because none of those societies looked anything similar to how they started after a 1000 years. A thousand years is a long time, a lot of societies simply don't last that long period.

Satinavian
2021-03-22, 01:36 AM
Different cultures near each other work better than different technology levels near each other. There should still be a lot of bleeding though, especially if there is enough contact to establish some commonly understood language.

Yanagi
2021-03-22, 01:56 AM
Which brings to mind the question: If the cultural kitchen sink approach of Faerun and Golarion doesn't work, how do you make a world with iconically distinct cultures while constraining them into the geographical region players will tend to interact with? Or are those mutually exclusive, and you cannot have widely divergent cultures in close proximity without a continental or oceanic gap?

Well, is a kitchen sink really about distinct culture or about distinct play environments?

Sociological storytelling is always available as an option when writing materials, but generally the point of a setting is about application-to-gameplay, which emphasizes the short-and-sharp detail that are relevant to doing an adventure in a place: expectations about monsters, weapons, and maybe some architecture. I tend to lean on anthropology when I do world building or help others, and I can talk about social geography and subsistence methods and inter-generational communication of worldview, but mostly players want an inn with a tavern that posts jobs that involve stabbing something in a ruin.

I ask because while I'd say Faerun is a kitchen sink, it's a kitchen sink because it has both a Quartermain Jungle Adventure Land playset and an Arabian Nights Desert Land playset just off of the Tolkien-Lieber Anachronistically Pluralistic Basic European Zone (Elven Ruins in Walking Distance!). At the same time, all the stuff from different times and places stacked in the same environment is because each region is informed not by the attempt to create continuity, but by a collage of themes that match novels and stories rather than places; aesthetic images that look good as splash art; and anticipation that players would want a high degree of character customization.

And the thing is...I can criticize specific choices in assembling the kitchen sink, and despise the genre conceits and occasional ethnocentrism that underlie bits of the kitchen sink, but I can't hate the idea because it makes no more sense for that much space to be uniform in its challenges or adventuring potential. As a piece of sociological world building, Faerun is actually kind of sparse--a map cut into modern nations with modern national identities but absent the patina of pre-existing regional identities, migrants that retain culture, culture interposed by invasion that becomes normalized, etc.

[Which is basically why I view Kara-Tur as lose-lose, bad writing. As described it's not very interesting to adventure in because it's "story" is barely-masked history from its expy sources, so all the important stuff is about social structures and institutions that don't mix with adventuring...but at the same time the sociological detail isn't even interesting because it's less-detailed versions of real stuff, let alone "fantastic" in keeping with high magic and many playable critters.

When I tried to fix Kara-Tur what I ended up doing was making it into a kitchen sink in the sense of many-playsets--different regions having different feels and themes--but also a kitchen sink in the sociological sense--in that I took the flat generic cultures and tried to give them more detail and more internal variation such that it seemed like a more natural distribution of commonly-held values imposed top-down by institutions and regional conditions that bottom-up created different perspectives and worldview.]

LibraryOgre
2021-03-22, 07:54 AM
Might be, most likely after name level. But remember, the requirement to gain XP is to adventure and gain loot. And that's inherently a risky behavior, encouraging stopping once you're wealthy enough.


Depends on the edition, doesn't it? I mean, if you've got Rules Cyclopedia, then you can gain a fair degree of XP by spending time as a lord, to say nothing of defeating the occasional orc band.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-22, 09:51 AM
d&d is inherently inconsistent in that regards because none of those societies looked anything similar to how they started after a 1000 years. A thousand years is a long time, a lot of societies simply don't last that long period.

D&D (and fantasy in general, usually) is inherently inconsistent for many reasons, not least of which being what (I believe, so this is all IMO) the average gamer wants. They want to play in the Court of Charlemagne or Agincourt or some specific (or non-specific) era of Japan or Chinese Dynasty or whatnot -- but with dragons and goblins and beholders, despite that the existence of dragons and goblins and beholders would mean that those places wouldn't have existed as they did. Usually there is some kind of accommodation for the grand differences (a lot of extra ballista on castle walls to defend against the multitudes of flying monsters, some kind of precaution against disguise self/doppelganger infiltrators in the courts of higher nobles, etc.), but rarely a thorough backwards look at what would have lead to said situation.


The Known World has notVikings next to notArabs next to notRomans next to notfeudal-Europeans next to 2 different notVenetian-merchant-traders. With the notRomans including notJapanese and notPacific-Islanders.

Forgotten Realms isn't quite that bad except around the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Known World tends to wear its whole 'we wanted to write a gazetteer about a Viking culture, and that was a spot on the map not-yet-defined. The end.'-ness on its sleeve a bit more than FR. However, I think they both work by the same logic of someone wanted to build such and such a culture first, and figured out how it dealt with its neighbors second (when at all).

Tanarii
2021-03-22, 12:30 PM
Known World tends to wear its whole 'we wanted to write a gazetteer about a Viking culture, and that was a spot on the map not-yet-defined. The end.'-ness on its sleeve a bit more than FR. However, I think they both work by the same logic of someone wanted to build such and such a culture first, and figured out how it dealt with its neighbors second (when at all).
What country/culture was where was on The Known World map in X1 six years before the gazetteers started to come out. It was part and parcel of the Expert Set. They knew what and where most of them were going to be, very very roughly, long before any of them were written. (Shadow Elves would be the exception.)

But agreed, how they interacted with each other was developed as they went along. With some of it being set in previous Gaz abut a different country by a different writer, just because it came first. Usually the new writer stuck with the established lore and expanded on it, sometimes they revised it.

Lapak
2021-03-23, 07:43 AM
The minute Raise Dead comes online, permanent character mortality absolutely plummets. That's the really big plateau, and the various means to evade death and/or adventure with greatly reduced risk - such as always hiding behind Project Image - only increase as level advances further. One of things FR gets right about its worldbuilding is also one of its more infuriating traits: high level characters almost never die.Sort of, but most of those methods were substantially less powerful in AD&D (Project Image requires line-of-sight, for example, and ends if the image moves out of the relatively short range) and there was a much bigger issue with the tyranny of random numbers. The upside of high-level AD&D play was that saves were set values, not based on the caster level; the downside is that saves were set values, not based on the caster level. A high-level adventurer is going to face a lot of save-or-dies and run face-first into the law of averages sooner or later, and face enemies who are both powerful and thorough enough to destroy them utterly/Trap the Soul/Imprison or some other such thing that takes you out of circulation for good. Especially when you're talking about individual people rather than full adventuring parties; PCs are protected by both their tendency to wander in 24/7/365 permanent groups and their plot-centeredness. That's something that's under-represented in NPC calculations, honestly; most actual people living in the world do not hang out with even their best friends literally all the time.

Willie the Duck
2021-03-23, 08:12 AM
What country/culture was where was on The Known World map in X1 six years before the gazetteers started to come out. It was part and parcel of the Expert Set. They knew what and where most of them were going to be, very very roughly, long before any of them were written. (Shadow Elves would be the exception.)

But agreed, how they interacted with each other was developed as they went along. With some of it being set in previous Gaz abut a different country by a different writer, just because it came first. Usually the new writer stuck with the established lore and expanded on it, sometimes they revised it.
Okay, yes. I wasn't intending to be literal with the gazetteer reference. The point was that they wanted cultures, X, Y, and Z and placed them on the map, not carefully thought about how each culture would evolve if they did so next to the proto-state of the other nearby cultures, such that each would end up looking like they did at default start date. IMO, game settings are, most often, a large group of planet-of-hats, and deliberately so.

SunsetWaraxe
2021-03-24, 01:18 AM
I think Kara-Tur is best left in the past. If you want Fantasy Asia, it would be far easier to just create a new setting whole cloth than to rehabilitate such an aged and problematic setting.

t209
2021-03-24, 03:49 PM
I think Kara-Tur is best left in the past. If you want Fantasy Asia, it would be far easier to just create a new setting whole cloth than to rehabilitate such an aged and problematic setting.
Yeah, but these questions keep coming to mind.
- Western Fantasy is still reductive and blend different culture? (which I tend to go with "because it has some commonality--at least Western Europe except Italy due to castle, knights, feudalism, connections. and religion being shared by the region despite different practices")
- What about Avatar and Legend of Five Rings? (This gets me since I never get cringe from Avatar and L5R but with Kara-Tur)?
Also maybe being inside a moth ball for four editions, put in Forgotten Realms because it was popular (even if Greyhawk and Mystara were popular and fit more since they are analog heavy and use same theme), and having little to no updates (except for Malatra RPGA campaign that shifted from copy-paste Vietnam to "aliens, bird people, and magic, Oh my.", Spelljammer,and few articles; nothing serious updates aside as "this is where your Samurai and ninja came from"). Plus I think they meta-migrated to Faerun even with the lore stated that not!Asian cultures being filtered into not!Europe.

Max_Killjoy
2021-03-24, 06:31 PM
Yeah, but these questions keep coming to mind.
- Western Fantasy is still reductive and blend different culture? (which I tend to go with "because it has some commonality--at least Western Europe except Italy due to castle, knights, feudalism, connections. and religion being shared by the region despite different practices")
- What about Avatar and Legend of Five Rings? (This gets me since I never get cringe from Avatar and L5R but with Kara-Tur)?
Also maybe being inside a moth ball for four editions, put in Forgotten Realms because it was popular (even if Greyhawk and Mystara were popular and fit more since they are analog heavy and use same theme), and having little to no updates (except for Malatra RPGA campaign that shifted from copy-paste Vietnam to "aliens, bird people, and magic, Oh my.", Spelljammer,and few articles; nothing serious updates aside as "this is where your Samurai and ninja came from"). Plus I think they meta-migrated to Faerun even with the lore stated that not!Asian cultures being filtered into not!Europe.

You'll get plenty of cringe from me for L5R, as explained earlier.

Anything I said about samurai or other mythical retro-constructed "warrior elite" cultures, applies to L5R. L5R even encodes "their steel was better" and other myths right into the rules.

Mechalich
2021-03-24, 07:35 PM
You'll get plenty of cringe from me for L5R, as explained earlier.

Anything I said about samurai or other mythical retro-constructed "warrior elite" cultures, applies to L5R. L5R even encodes "their steel was better" and other myths right into the rules.

Beyond any historical accuracy issues, L5R's policy of 'card-game first' means that the setting history wrapped itself in absolute knots and quickly became utterly impenetrable to anyone not deeply committed to it. The publication history of the setting is a game burrowing ever deeper into its own very specific niche. This is one of several reasons why WotC trying to link it to a 3e 'Oriental Adventures' when they briefly owned the property didn't work and was quickly dropped. Even as East Asian inspired fantasy has grown massively more popular in the US over time, L5R's popularity has declined.


This gets me since I never get cringe from Avatar

Avatar the Last Airbender is a lovable kids show. It's very well-made, has a genuinely great visual style for the combat animations, and managed to get the martial arts flavoring right. However, it's overall worldbuilding is very limited (and in many cases played for jokes, like the whole combo-animals bit) and the world ran into its limits in a very big way the moment it tried to age up from 'loveable kids show' to 'passionate teen drama' in Legend of Korra, a show that received all-kinds of pushback.

There are a whole lot of techniques available and passes given to properties aimed at the under-12 demographic. That's fine, shows targeted at children should be targeted appropriately, but elementary school students are not a significant TTRPG demographic (and should not be, very view school-age children have the mental maturity to properly differentiate between 'player' and 'character').


On a slightly different note, many RPGs (and other sorts of games) face a strange pressure in that there's actually not a lot of desire for Fantasy-Asia, there's desire to play Asian inspired fantasy characters in Fantasy Europe. People want to play samurai, ninja, and Kung-Fu masters in the West rather than bothering with actually going to the source. This is very clear in the superhero genre, which includes all sorts of characters with supposedly East Asian martial arts training (including the OG himself, Batman) while being firmly Western-based characters. Exactly why this happens is no doubt some sort of complex sociological phenomenon - one that it should be noted seems to be universal, as many East Asian origin properties low to include Western-origin characters and fighting styles - but its definitely a thing.

Beleriphon
2021-03-25, 11:20 AM
Agreed on that.
In fact, I was thinking "Forgotten Realms or DnD's Sicily" since those area--at least Norman era--have Arabs, Greeks, Italians, Russian-Vikings, and French-Vikings yet no place in fantasy Arabia (then again Zakhara might be one-shot fantasy, so maybe homebrew slotta). Also Souther Italy since they were part of Kingdom of Sicily.
Not sure if Calimshan or Chault had those since they have Euro-Arab mix populace and architectures.

Calisham is more less FR Baghdad. Zakhara is Arabian Nights writ large, and Chult is basically sub-Saharan Africa trough the lens of Heart of Darkness.

t209
2021-03-25, 11:32 AM
Calisham is more less FR Baghdad. Zakhara is Arabian Nights writ large, and Chult is basically sub-Saharan Africa trough the lens of Heart of Darkness.
Well, Chult has a port city with mix of not Arabs and not Europeans that seems to be Constantinople but with dinosaurs and Wakanda. At least a coliseum for chariot racing—even joking suggested making rival teams as Blues and Greens—next to a palace and Hagia Sophia looking building but ruled by a council than an Emperor.
Maybe not Calimshan, but “Arabs in Europe” seems to fit Sicily (at least Emirate of Sicily or early Norman rule era).
That or Tethyr where population are ethnically mixed due to being migrated, conquered, and reconquered by various cultures.

Beleriphon
2021-03-26, 08:22 AM
Well, Chult has a port city with mix of not Arabs and not Europeans that seems to be Constantinople but with dinosaurs and Wakanda. At least a coliseum for chariot racing—even joking suggested making rival teams as Blues and Greens—next to a palace and Hagia Sophia looking building but ruled by a council than an Emperor.
Maybe not Calimshan, but “Arabs in Europe” seems to fit Sicily (at least Emirate of Sicily or early Norman rule era).
That or Tethyr where population are ethnically mixed due to being migrated, conquered, and reconquered by various cultures.

Arabs in Europe would be the al-Andalusia, or pre-Reconquesta Spain since the region was taken over by North African Marinid dynasty, which I think think fits Tethyr nicely.

For Calisham you might want to look to Morocco as well. That might be a better fit, specifically Tangier or Casablanca.

Vrock Bait
2021-03-26, 08:31 AM
I’m not as old as a lot of people here, but I generally range from not really liking Kara-Tur to not having an opinion on it. Western fantasy settings have mage nations, warrior nations, priest nations, etc, but a lot of “foreign” settings like Kara-Tur just have totally-not-Japan and totally-not-China. And these settings always generally lump local groups like Yuezhi and Qiang into big boring lumps of “totally-not-Mongols.” I get they’re not as well known in the West, but barbarians tribes are a huge component of Chinese history and have wildly different flavors.

So usually I just end up tracking the name down for one or two of the setting’s locations and shoving in a ton of barbarian tribes who have more difference than “we worship a different animal” or just balkanizing the heck out of everything so I can play Warring States/Three Kingdoms/Sixteen Kingdoms/what-have-you. That way I can have some imagination in making countries, not just fake version of real cultures.

ETA: I know technically there already is a Warring States, but part of what I enjoy about Chinese history is that there’s generally a greater empire everyone wants to restore. It’s different ideas of what China should be fighting it out on the battlefield. The Warring States in Kara-Tur are bland.

Telwar
2021-03-26, 09:51 AM
My only exposure to Kara-Tur was the Horde trilogy, so I can't say how good or bad the setting was.

Doing a new version that's an equivalent fantasy kitchen sink to Faerun is going to run into the problem that WotC isn't doing detailed settings any more; we've gotten one release per setting since 4e.

Couple that with the need to spend a lot of time on the setting such to minimize social media roasting, and I suspect that the most we'll see is someone doing a Kickstarter for "Kara-tuur" that over promises and underdelivers.

Palanan
2021-03-26, 08:09 PM
Originally Posted by Telwar
...WotC isn't doing detailed settings any more....

I haven't paid much attention to WotC in quite a while now. Do you mean they're not putting out detailed setting supplements? And if not, why not?

Willie the Duck
2021-03-26, 08:26 PM
I haven't paid much attention to WotC in quite a while now. Do you mean they're not putting out detailed setting supplements? And if not, why not?

Well, thus far with 5e we've had exactly one campaign sourcebook for Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Wildemount, one of the MtG settings, the Aquisitions Incorporated land, and various adventures set in specific locations (Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Barovia), but no other campaign sourcebooks (much less sub-region books like AD&D's Volo's Guide to the North, or 3e's The Western Marches or whatever). Supposedly we are getting some setting books this year, but those too will probably be one-and-done affairs.

As to why, the prevailing wisdom is that multiple settings just split the buying base, and lots of books set in the same setting just caused diminished returns (plenty of people bought the D&D books, many of those bought the original FRCS, some more bought the next few setting books within the FR, a few people kept collecting once you got to the 10th or 12th book, and so on). Exactly how true that is is anyone's guess.

Telwar
2021-03-27, 02:56 PM
Well, thus far with 5e we've had exactly one campaign sourcebook for Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Wildemount, one of the MtG settings, the Aquisitions Incorporated land, and various adventures set in specific locations (Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Barovia), but no other campaign sourcebooks (much less sub-region books like AD&D's Volo's Guide to the North, or 3e's The Western Marches or whatever). Supposedly we are getting some setting books this year, but those too will probably be one-and-done affairs.

To expand on this, for 3e Eberron and Forgotten Realms had *many* books published; I count 13 3e Eberron books on my shelf and 15 FR, without knowing those were the only ones. I don't remember if Greyhawk got anything, I vaguely remember a Gazetteer but that's it; checking on DMs guild I see the Living Greyhawk journal, and I presume there was more stuff in Dragon (which is where 3e Dark Sun wound up).

Whereas with 4e, FR, Eberron, and Dark Sun had two books each published by WotC, though FR got a Neverwinter-specific setting book, so that makes 3. Presumably they had good data on their sales numbers, so I can see why they reduced the overall number of books released for settings, since people weren't using those directly.


As to why, the prevailing wisdom is that multiple settings just split the buying base, and lots of books set in the same setting just caused diminished returns (plenty of people bought the D&D books, many of those bought the original FRCS, some more bought the next few setting books within the FR, a few people kept collecting once you got to the 10th or 12th book, and so on). Exactly how true that is is anyone's guess.

For me, at least, I'd love to see Birthright levels of support, with one major box, four regional releases, and a dozen or so individual realm supplements. That's what I'd like to see again, and I'm well aware I'm not likely going to see it again.

On the one hand, we can easily mine the previous setting materials from previous editions, and to be fair, at least a certain element of the customer base enjoys the hell out of conversion. But on the other hand, for anything brand new, we're not going to see anything beyond the one hardcover book, and that bothers me.

I think, in their "nobody's going to use stuff for a setting they don't like," they also discounted the idea of DMs borrowing from existing settings for their own or porting things over into another setting.

Digital publishing would negate the TSR problem of vast quantities of unsold product, and proper writing could make supplemental materials edition-agnostic*, but they'd still have to pay someone to write that, or at least open settings up for that level of support, and I don't think they will do that at this point.

* - which has its own issue of pigeonholing classes for ones that are almost always in print. But that's an edition thing.

t209
2021-04-09, 11:11 AM
Some thoughts.
Do you notice that there are discrepancies between (miniscule) art and writings?
Like saying that Mandarins and aristocrats wore conical hats in texts, yet the art show them wearing Sokka/Judge Bao Zheng pointy hat but with no flaps (even the Koryo, which is interesting that they use three kingdoms but with faux Chinese, instead of Joseon and Gats). Either a. Realized that it would look like coolie caricature or B. Copy pasting (of typewriter equivalent) text books that described clothings but no art.
Same with “Shou use Kung Fu and martial art weapons (nunchucks, or anything from 36th Chamber)” but art have them using swords, spears, and halberds.
At least in Shou Lung part, which is interesting since Pondsmith of Cyberpunk wrote this (assuming how much is he writing or how much is Cook—the coordinator—had more role in lore). This is not explaining having Tu Lung be written by another writer instead of delegating to Shou Lung, which Tu Lung wouldn’t be needed since Shou Lung already had many interesting plot hooks there.

Satinavian
2021-04-09, 12:12 PM
On a slightly different note, many RPGs (and other sorts of games) face a strange pressure in that there's actually not a lot of desire for Fantasy-Asia, there's desire to play Asian inspired fantasy characters in Fantasy Europe. People want to play samurai, ninja, and Kung-Fu masters in the West rather than bothering with actually going to the source. This is very clear in the superhero genre, which includes all sorts of characters with supposedly East Asian martial arts training (including the OG himself, Batman) while being firmly Western-based characters. Exactly why this happens is no doubt some sort of complex sociological phenomenon - one that it should be noted seems to be universal, as many East Asian origin properties low to include Western-origin characters and fighting styles - but its definitely a thing.
Having had quite a number of fantasy asia campaigns i would disagree with that.

t209
2021-04-09, 04:59 PM
Having had quite a number of fantasy asia campaigns i would disagree with that.
You do, but probably small.

Palanan
2021-04-10, 10:54 AM
Originally Posted by t209
You do, but probably small.

What exactly do you mean here?

t209
2021-04-10, 12:00 PM
What exactly do you mean here?
Like "audience and people who want such setting" would be rather small.

Tanarii
2021-04-10, 12:20 PM
You do, but probably small.


Like "audience and people who want such setting" would be rather small.

Is this a riddle or poetry? :smallamused:

t209
2021-04-10, 04:04 PM
Is this a riddle or poetry? :smallamused:
I was just saying that while there are people who might want fantasy asia setting, the audience would be too small enough to publish one.
Aside from homebrews and third party.

The Glyphstone
2021-04-10, 05:01 PM
The confusion seems to have come from you leaving out half the words required to form a coherent sentence in the original reply...

Beleriphon
2021-04-13, 12:01 PM
I haven't paid much attention to WotC in quite a while now. Do you mean they're not putting out detailed setting supplements? And if not, why not?

Why, because according to their own sales numbers, which they don't release but I'm assuming somebody at WotC has actually looked at, big setting books don't sell super well past a certain point while adventures sell better and they can link setting material to the adventures. If you'll note WotC is releasing I think four books per year, basically on per quarter, three are split between player material and DM material and one is an adventure. There have been a few exceptions, but those are kind of extra stuff. For example Acquisitions Inc. is a WotC published booked but it was written by the Penny-Arcade crew rather. Wildemount is similar (I think I don't own it) in that it was published by WotC but not written by the staff.

t209
2021-04-19, 12:35 AM
Just curious, did any of the L5R staff part of Kara-Tur in TSR days.
I mean some of its idea did get implemented in card-game and non-3E OA books.
Like Shugenja and maybe some ideas from OA's region books (Hai Yuan maybe Mantis Clan or Tien Lun/Plains of Dispute* being Scorpions).
*I know it's borderlands and DMZ againt Tu Lung, but I kinda feel that the writer should have used "bandits, soldiers and their families, or convoys for forts" or put in reason why they are defending the province along with proses, descriptions of people, locations, and "nothing grows here" if you ignore that Chu'Yuan already fulfilled the borderlands without resorting to "these locals are treacherous, violent, and always think about stabbing people yet live in area with nothing grows".

Satinavian
2021-04-19, 03:03 AM
I was just saying that while there are people who might want fantasy asia setting, the audience would be too small enough to publish one.
Aside from homebrews and third party.
Don't know. Other systems do that quite regularly. Looking a.g. at Splittermond that fantasy-Chinahttps://splitterwiki.de/mediawiki/thumb.php?f=Cover_Zhoujiang.png&width=208
Was one of the most popular setting books and also one of the earlier ones. And it is not even the only fantasy-Asia-Setting. We also have

https://splitterwiki.de/mediawiki/thumb.php?f=Cover_Badashan_%28Publikation%29.png&width=199
https://splitterwiki.de/mediawiki/thumb.php?f=Cover_Das_Erbe_von_Kesh.png&width=393
https://splitterwiki.de/mediawiki/thumb.php?f=Cover_Farukan.png&width=206
https://splitterwiki.de/mediawiki/thumb.php?f=Cover_Sadu_%28Publikation%29.jpg&width=254


There more fantasy-Asia setting books than fantasy-Europe setting books (and some that are neither like fantasy-Oceania, fantasy-Sahara or pure fantastical setings without close links). Ant that is likely to continue as we don't have books for fantasy-Japan and fantasy-central-Asia yet while those do have a place on the world map and even some official modules.

And that certainly is not because the players of Germanies third most popular fantasy game want to play in fantasy Europe all the time.

If you don't treat fantasy-Asia as some tacked on half-hearted extra, players will likely embrace playing there.

sktarq
2021-04-19, 04:28 AM
I think there is a pretty steep learning curve of pre-1700's cultures by most modern players. There is a quite clear self-delusion that this is an issue that can be ignored in the not!Europe settings but is difficult in the not!Asia, not!MiddleEast, not!Africa, and not!pre-columbian-western-hemisphere type settings. I am regularly amazed at how ignorant of other cultures and history most people (including most D&D players) are. So adding historical realism just makes the player do work in a way that isn't fun for them. Realism isn't fun for most. And this is true for dealing with the politics of family ties, family punishments by imperial forces, social pressures due to birth or religion, the mentality of what makes a hero to the local culture etc and that is true for the Roman Empire, The Chinese Empire, or whatever other group you may want.
It is just really obvious in situations like Kara Tur....enough that it makes people uncomfortable.



Also as for cultures living right next together but not mixing...it really does happen. Look at places like Syria or the Crimea. In the Crimea when the Russians invaded there were still towns that were Greek (remains of colony from classic Hellenistic times), towns who mostly spoke Gothic (yes the goths who were left behind when the rest moved into the Roman empire) along with the dominant remains of Tartars/Golden Horde/Crimean Khanate etc. So such cultural smoothing is not a forgone conclusion. So wide cultural mix is possible . So wanting to pull from say Japan, Korea, Manchu, Xian, Nanjing, Wuhan, and dozens of others really shouldn't be impossible to do well.

t209
2021-04-19, 03:31 PM
I think there is a pretty steep learning curve of pre-1700's cultures by most modern players. There is a quite clear self-delusion that this is an issue that can be ignored in the not!Europe settings but is difficult in the not!Asia, not!MiddleEast, not!Africa, and not!pre-columbian-western-hemisphere type settings. I am regularly amazed at how ignorant of other cultures and history most people (including most D&D players) are. So adding historical realism just makes the player do work in a way that isn't fun for them. Realism isn't fun for most. And this is true for dealing with the politics of family ties, family punishments by imperial forces, social pressures due to birth or religion, the mentality of what makes a hero to the local culture etc and that is true for the Roman Empire, The Chinese Empire, or whatever other group you may want.
It is just really obvious in situations like Kara Tur....enough that it makes people uncomfortable.
Well, I am not sure if DM at that time would "Roll for courtly gesture...and you are executed on the spot for missing for a few inch in bowing to the Daimyo" even by "player-kill-heavy" OAD&D era.
Heck, even Swords of the Daimyo had a "export" prologue where it seems to want to kill players at level 5--even encouraging to go west even with morale penalty that lead to mutiny--and probably replace with local pre-gen that they may or may not have a say in.
And even reaching Kara-Tur, it also had "you got jailed, but you might be free months later albeit with catch" that might not sit well for someone who wanted far-east fantasy but had to go through tedious seission.
Assuming if DM would be creative enough to make a better prologue, or just skip it and make a better hook.

t209
2021-05-11, 08:44 PM
Speaking of Kara-Tur, is there any other Asian Fantasy setting and how are they compared to Kara-Tur?
Also maybe what kind of home-rule or addendum to deal with shortfalls (namely "how to get Ninja, Barbarian, and Shugenja to work together despite how contradictory their goals are").

Beleriphon
2021-05-12, 02:52 PM
Speaking of Kara-Tur, is there any other Asian Fantasy setting and how are they compared to Kara-Tur?
Also maybe what kind of home-rule or addendum to deal with shortfalls (namely "how to get Ninja, Barbarian, and Shugenja to work together despite how contradictory their goals are").

Tenra Bansho Zero, an actual RPG that is made in Japan for Japanese consumers.

Qin: The Warring States - guess what it's modeled after!

Sengoku - also, take a guess.

Depending on how you take it Exalted can be Asian inspired.

Satinavian
2021-05-12, 04:26 PM
I know a couple of fantasy Asia settings, but to be honest, i am not particularly knowledgable about Kara-Tur, which makes comparisons difficult.
But if you ask a bit more concrete questions, i might go into details.

Also none of them are D&D.

Max_Killjoy
2021-05-12, 04:45 PM
Rokugan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokugan

t209
2021-05-13, 12:08 AM
Rokugan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokugan

Yeah, I was wondering if any of L5R writers worked for TSR before.
I know they adapted for 3E but just heard about it from AznsRepresents (but they do seem to be assuming it from 3E though, but they do point out similarities with some provinces* as clans).
*For some reason, the Plains of Dispute locals being treacherous and evil...instead of trying to say “outposts, military garrison families, soldiers serving in exchange for farms, and maybe bandit/raider clans paid off by either side”.