Resources for asian campaigns

[Yora]

Are there any good resources for campaigns with an asian theme in addition to Oriental Adventures (and its web enhancement)? And maybe even some that don't try to copy feudal Japan?
I got Sengoku, but it's even less fantasy than OA and completely focused only on samurai.

[The Rose Dragon]

There is Qin: the Warring States, which is my third favorite tabletop RPG. There is also Exalted and Weapons of the Gods.

You can also look here. Be careful, as most of it is Exalted.

[Fhaolan]

If you're willing to use a book for just fluff:

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/China/

GURPS books tend to be heavily researched, so they're a good resource even if you don't use the GURPS system itself.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm gonna go a little different, and suggest historical manga. Take a look at two series in particular for "standard" games of that type... Samurai Executioner and Path of the Assassin. I'd also suggest Lone Wolf and Cub, but they deal a lot more with someone who is well outside the social norms; Yamada Aesamon is outside the usual line, but he's still part of society.

[jiriku]

The Rokugan Sourcebooks, whether 1st or 2nd L5R or 3rd edition L5R/D&D, are densely packed with background material, and top-quality material at that. 2nd edition is probably best. 4th ed is currently in development, but won't be released for months.

[AslanCross]

India's a big part of Asia too, and in fact some of Chinese and Japanese mythical concepts were copied from Indian mythology. I know there was a book about it somewhere, but I can't remember its title.

OA has the Vanaras, which were the monkey-people who appear in the epic Ramayana.
D&D core has the Rakshasas, although they're not necessarily like that in Hindu legends.

Persian mythology is also pretty awesome, but I don't know of any RPG sourcebooks for it.

If you really want to go back to the sources, the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are full of lore. For Persian legends, there's the Shahnameh (Book of Kings).

[Yora]

I once did a paper on Mahayana and Ramayana. The Illias and Lord of the Rings are cheap knockoffs of them.

[The Big Dice]

A lot of the D&D Asian material in 3.X is directly inspired by Legend of the Five Rings. Prsonally, I don't think the D20 system did the setting justice, but it seems to have been pretty popular.

I'd suggest picking up L5R, as it is a seriously good game, but the 3rd edition revised rulebook suffers from a severe lack of editing.

If you can find it, the original Japanese flavour RPG was Bushido. But that suffers from the fact that it's a product of it's time. Early 80s games tend to be overly dry in writing style and full of charts, formulas and other things that just get in the way.

If you get hold of the True20 rules system, the Worlds of Adventure sourcebook has an Asian themed setting in it. That one is pretty good, despite it only being short.

[dota600]

A lot of the D&D Asian material in 3.X is directly inspired by Legend of the Five Rings. Prsonally, I don't think the D20 system did the setting justice, but it seems to have been pretty popular.

I'd suggest picking up L5R, as it is a seriously good game, but the 3rd edition revised rulebook suffers from a severe lack of editing.

If you can find it, the original Japanese flavour RPG was Bushido. But that suffers from the fact that it's a product of it's time. Early 80s games tend to be overly dry in writing style and full of charts, formulas and other things that just get in the way.

If you get hold of the True20 rules system, the Worlds of Adventure sourcebook has an Asian themed setting in it. That one is pretty good, despite it only being short.

I will go with this guy.

There is however L5R books that are not under d20 rules, they say that it is more fluff heavy than their d20 counterpart so you may want to look at it too.

[Yora]

But it's all copies of feudal japan. :/

[The Big Dice]

But it's all copies of feudal japan. :/

Rokugan isn't really a copy of Japan. There's elements of China, Korea and India in the setting too. And if you pick up the Legend of the Burning Sands addon, that adds a Thousand and One Nights flavour, while expanding the world.

[nevpalmer]

there really is only one option. Bushido the role playing game. Sure its a little antiquated. But it captures a good balance between the samurai or nothing aspect, or the WTF i thought this was a samurai game feel of Legend.

we've just started running it here..

Bushido samurai role playing game

[nevpalmer]

or you could also try this

Dry but useful guide to RPG gaming in the feudal Japanese setting. A quick flick through makes it look like a condensed wiki cut and past job, but this book is more than that. Best to skip the extensive Daimyo section as it is mostly stats. The section on religions and government is good, and worth a read. The rest is mostly flavour and a browse through from time to time as you play should give you a fair idea of the role playing setting in use for Bushido.

only happy to help

totalpartykill.net

[Terraoblivion]

In general my recommendations would be to look beyond simple roleplaying supplements. Instead i would recommend historical fiction, Asian fantasy literature and actual research into the history and mythology of whichever Asian country you feel like, which probably means China or Japan as they are the largest and most popular in the west. I'm not quite an expert on the older history of either, but i can assure you that both practical conditions and cosmological beliefs changed a fair amount in both countries. Heian period Japan would be vastly different from the usual Sengoku/Edo/Meiji melange that is the norm for portrayals of "feudal Japan", for example. And that is nothing compared to the difference between early Han period China and late era Qing.

So my recommendations would be to watch a lot of wuxia set in historical settings for China and movies by Kurosawa for Japan. As well as performing research into the cultures in question. The only actual roleplaying system resource that i would recommend is looking at the loresheets from Weapons of the Gods. While they do take a rather lighthearted, kung-fu oriented look at pre-Tang Chinese culture, religion and society, it still has one of the best descriptions of social norms in historial China i have seen.

While i do believe that Legend of the Five Rings is a nice system with excellent fluff, trying to pry generally applicable fluff from what is setting specific would be quite tricky. It would especially be hard to try and learn anything about religious and cosmological topics from it, as it cleaves quite closely to European and D&D'ish forms in that. So unless you want to specifically play Legend of the Five Rings, i'd advice you to not use it for too much inspiration. That being said it's an awesome enough system that you should want to play it.

A final, and perhaps fairly odd, piece of advice is to look into Touhou. While the actual information about historical Japan is next to non-existent and the knowledge of specific youkai is to be taken carefully, it is an example of what a Japanese person creates when he sets out to create a very Japanese fantasy world. Also, with a few exceptions, every character is based on a figure from Japanese mythology or superstition.

[Knaight]

The Qin: The Warring States RPG is really good as a resource from what I've seen, though I haven't been able to get a really good look at it yet. Here's a review.

[nevpalmer]

well, with respect to the backgorund and feel for the system you choose. id add wikki.

We started bushido about 3yrs ago, and as a gm, theres not much out there, and wikki was poor. wikki has improved since, and you can browse a long way until you get a feel for it.

me, i started with a couple of fantasy/historical books, and then went down the route of the serious text books for university courses. but still we are missing the day to day culture..

so for that yes of course we are going to find movies accessible and provocative. Yojimbo and seven samurai are gold dust. personaly id add the baby cart series.


totalpartykill.net

[nevpalmer]

just got hold of qin from drive thru.. looks sharp.

totalpartykill

[Ravens_cry]

there really is only one option. Bushido the role playing game. Sure its a little antiquated. But it captures a good balance between the samurai or nothing aspect, or the WTF i thought this was a samurai game feel of Legend.

we've just started running it here..

Bushido samurai role playing game

Heh, I own that, dead tree style. I bought some old Dragon magazines and saw an ad for it. It looked neat. Then I saw it at a thrift store. Score! I have never played it, sadly.

[averagejoe]

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