Daddy... where do katana's come from?

[AkumaWolf]

It's an old joke.

Used on OOTS and many other D&D based comics.

A samurai or ninja class character comes in the party, they ask him where he's from, he says "Japan" and the rest of the party like... "what's a 'Japan'? "
{ba-dum... phish!}

Now when think about it... D&D has Katanas and Ninja-to's... they have Samurais and Ninjas and Monks with their distinctive eastern themed ablilties in their class descriptions, but in truth... there is no 'East' as we know it.

Take the Katana for example. 'Katana' is derived from the Japanese word for 'sword' or 'blade', thus, there must be some Japanese language in the realm, and thus... Japan! :D

And that's not only thing... what about Scimitars and Rapiers and other weapons. Don't they also have a name that's derived from a certain language and culture.
Hell, even most mythological monsters in the MM has a name and purpose that derives from some form of culture and language.
In fact, is 'common' actually English, since there's no England
(luckily they didn't call 'common' English... kudos to that)


The reason I'm saying this, is cause I'm trying to create a D&D world in minute detail. But I ran into a dead-end when it came to various human cultures and languages.
How *would* the east or west or south be like in a fantasy world.
Our world, cultures, customs and armaments were all influenced by certain events in history. Change that even a little and it could be very different in the future. And I'm pretty sure our history didn't follow the exact same way as in a fantasy world.
Don't get me wrong, I really want a Samurai and Ninja infested east and a Nord populated north... but I want them there LOGICALLY.

I'm really at my wits end here.

If anyone has some suggestions or advice or has found a recipe for creating worlds that works for them, please help a guy out :P

I'm about THIS = [---] close to mailing Rich Burlew for advice, looking at OOTS so far, it seems whatever he's doing is working.

[Telonius]

The katana was created by a two-person smithing team, Catherine and Anna.

EDIT: Seriously though, this is a perennial problem for fantasy authors. Tolkien overcame it by having his books set up to be a "translation" of the "originals." (Of course the "originals" only existed in his fantasy world, not in the actual world). If you think of the words you use describing the game as translations, it makes a lot more sense. Your gaming world might not actually call the thing a "katana," it might be a "blorpscralcher" or whatever in their language. But calling it a "katana" makes it understandable to you and the players.

[vrellum]

There isn't any reason to have a sword called a katana in any game. They are just bastard swords or bastard scimitars, take your pick.

[The J Pizzel]

I always thought they were created by Sean Connery's father-in-law, Masamune. (cookie for the movie reference)

[Delaney Gale]

Some cultural elements emerged due to climate. Maybe not language as much, but (traditional) architecture is dependent on climate (a mud hut might not work as well in England as it does in Africa, for example)... there are some evolutionary adaptations for skin and hair color that are found by latitude (melanin production- pale skin allows for more production of Vitamin D, dark skin provides more UV protection). Start by thinking about climate and terrain, and some traditional elements will emerge from that.

[AkumaWolf]

EDIT: Seriously though, this is a perennial problem for fantasy authors. Tolkien overcame it by having his books set up to be a "translation" of the "originals." (Of course the "originals" only existed in his fantasy world, not in the actual world). If you think of the words you use describing the game as translations, it makes a lot more sense. Your gaming world might not actually call the thing a "katana," it might be a "blorpscralcher" or whatever in their language. But calling it a "katana" makes it understandable to you and the players.

Funny you should say that...

Taking a look at cultural stuff an all, I changed names for *some* things.

For example, 'samurai' means 'to serve'... so I changed them to 'sword servants', changed ninja to 'shadow servants' and changed monks to 'spirit servants'.

But yeah... that's as far as I got :(

[bosssmiley]

You want to apply logic to a game where giant flying lizards breath fire and crotchety old scholars summon fire by manipulating bat poop? 'kay.

Seriously though. Similar environment and resources + similar tech level + human nature ("There's gotta be an easier way to do this...") = similar responses.

Cold coastal area with short growing season? Burly hunters and fishermen (Ainu, Norse, Inuit).
Arid or semi-arid area with occasional oasis and wadis? Nomadic pastoralism, burnouses and trade cities (Medinah, Timbuktu, Samarkand)
Arid area with a big river? Hydralic despotism, granary temples and cat worship (the Nile, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley)
Underutilized resources, available labour and links to a ready market? Gold Rush!!!
Mounted warriors needing to kill people without getting their swords pulled out of their hands as they ride past? You get katanas, scimitars, tulwars, sabres, etc.

Personally I've never been one for rationalizing my fantasy cultures (and their weirdly decontextualized elements) beyond the level of basic, self-evident logic ("You wanna try wearing steel plate armour in the desert? Lemme just fish out the heat exhaustion rules and you'll see exactly why they wear burnouses over here..."). I'd much rather go for the "wow!" factor now and then rationalize later though.

"Sorry, I was too busy having fun to wonder where the cartwheel chandelier came from."

[tainsouvra]

It is quite probable that lands would not develop the same cultures as their real-world equivalents due to the same events occurring...but they could quite easily develop cultures with some similar attributes by wildly different events that happen to have the same practical effect.

Unless your world is very high magic, there shouldn't be too much trouble with just plopping them on different sides of the planet, deciding what they should be like, then inventing a history for them that matches the result you wanted.

Edit: also, the climate/terrain point in terms of architecture and economic factors is definitely a given.

[Ulzgoroth]

Well, you may have already looked, but there is a set of world-building articles under the 'gaming' tab. Worth a read, though I don't think they actually address what you're looking at.

So...In the beginning, there is geography. Figure out what it is. Then there is climate. Figure that out, by location, world-wide. This is created by geography, though you can probably get away with geography and climate that don't actually make any sense with real climatology. Do, at least, pay attention to the equator. Putting tropical regions at the poles will disturb people.

I don't think that there's any particular reason for the east-west cultural differences being oriented as they are on that geographic axis, though it's possible something resulting from earth's rotation lead to it.

Theories from Guns, Germs, and Steel:
-Agricultural basics will have a fair bit in common along east-west axes, especially with trade, but not along north-south axes. Having an adequate pool of similar agricultural regions around you is vital to developing productive crop/livestock mixes, and everything food production implies.
-A large, fragmented region with both trade and competition tends to produce technology faster. Not so much as a matter of locally faster advance as everything being invented someplace and then stolen.

...Er, there's a lot more, and far, far more I don't know. If you want to build your world with real-parallel cultures, though, set it up so that their respective habitats have a lot of similarities to their real ones. And gloss over the details that neither you nor your players really know about...if you can't say how Japan wound up with Samurai and Ninjas, you can't say why your version shouldn't have.

Put your Nords somewhere cold, with good fishing and whatever other properties seem important (milder climates within easy reach over water?). An inland or otherwise sheltered sea might be good...longboats made some impressive Atlantic passages, but they weren't exactly optimized for open ocean.

To reproduce Japanese history, you're going to need to site it off the coast of something like China. IIRC, japan never actually developed agriculture, instead receiving it (and much else) from their neighbors. Provide plenty of isolation, and at least a few invasion attempts from the overseas neighbors. I have no idea what other factors are important, but any parallel you can stick in has to help.

[Xefas]

I think one thing you should consider before doing this is whether or not going into this much detail really matters. D&D is a game...played for fun. Will the fun somehow be impacted by katanas being more culturally correct? What happens if your players never stop to ask "Hey, y'know what...I'd really like to know the history of katanas and ninja in your game setting!".

I know in the past I've made a moderate effort to design a race's culture in detail, and the conversation went a lot like "Yeah, and...did you notice, the buildings...they...errr...well, the Aztecs really designed that stuff, and yeah, the Yuan-Ti are a lot like Aztecs in my game. Isn't that neat? And those weapons they have...yeah...they made those because of the-" "Yeah yeah, that's nice. Now, off to the action, already! We have a vampiric dragon and his death cult to find!"

Your group might be different. They might find the fact that your world has a little more verissimilitude in it more exciting than the actual playing of the game itself, but they also might not. Just something to think about.

[storybookknight]

I always thought they were created by Sean Connery's father-in-law, Masamune. (cookie for the movie reference)

Highlander, obviously. With soundtrack by Queen.

[AkumaWolf]

Well... let's put it this way...

When I say 'minute' detail... I really mean *MINUTE* detail.

I wanted to go as far as having a time line... that stretches from the creation of the world up to interplanetary spaceship battles.
So that if I start a campaign, I can ask my players "Where do you want to begin" while pointing at the time line (don't know what I'll do when they choose interplanetary space battle, though :/ )

But basically I want a history for everything. Like for example, these types of weapons don't exist in this time period, of you can't play a sorcerer in this time period cause of such and such.

Also, having a detailed world could really help RP along... having your character choose from what country they hail will automatically give them basic lore of the place.
It would be cool to see a PC say "hey, can we make a stop at my hometown, they make the best mead ever!"

[Jack Mann]

I find samurai and ninjas no worse than paladins and druids. They're cultural-specific names. Where is France in D&D? Who are the celts? Why should a guisarme or a glaive seem more likely than a katana or a scimitar?

So you'll need to work out why the European analogs are where they are just as much as the eastern analogs. Smiley and Ulz probably have the best suggestions so far. Figure out why they came around in the real world, and mimic that. If you want, you can change the names of the weapons to fit the local culture better.

I'll also say that Xafas has a bit of a point. One shouldn't drag the game down by telling your friends about the details you've come up with (unless they're really, truly interested, in which case go ahead by all means). However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do the research or the worldbuilding. That adds verisimilitude to the game. But let them encounter these things naturally. They find out what the Yuan-Ti culture is like by encountering them, dealing with them, exploring their city (as they loot, plunder, and kill their way through it, naturally), not by being told. Research exists to make it look easy.

[kjones]

"Katana" is just a word, as are "ninja" and "samurai". What makes you assume that Common = English?

[internerdj]

Eastern warfare is often at least imagined as skill based as opposed to the western technologies based. What makes the samurai is not his sword but his skill with the sword. This is easily explained by a large fractioning of the people leading to small groups of skilled warriors. In medieval fantasy it is easy to force the next peasant to pick up a pike, but if there are a handful of men to choose from it is not viable to rely soley on the technological edge (hence a greater amount of time being spent on properly training warriors as opposed to making the next best weapon to defeat the last best armor...). There are also resource issues that can lead to a training oriented vs a technology oriented military.

[Totally Guy]

"Katana" is just a word, as are "ninja" and "samurai". What makes you assume that Common = English?

I wanted to choose Posh as my bonus language to compliment my Common, but I only had an intellegence of 9.

[de-trick]

forgotten realms haves most of this covered, there is a middle east area, a Oriental area, Nothern area, and alot of middle

[lukelightning]

They come from a Tennesee William's play titled "Katana Hot Tin Roof."

[Ulzgoroth]

Eastern warfare is often at least imagined as skill based as opposed to the western technologies based. What makes the samurai is not his sword but his skill with the sword. This is easily explained by a large fractioning of the people leading to small groups of skilled warriors. In medieval fantasy it is easy to force the next peasant to pick up a pike, but if there are a handful of men to choose from it is not viable to rely soley on the technological edge (hence a greater amount of time being spent on properly training warriors as opposed to making the next best weapon to defeat the last best armor...). There are also resource issues that can lead to a training oriented vs a technology oriented military.

...Maybe, but not accurately. There were plenty of peasant levies in China. And I seem to recall a limited, hereditary pool of trained heavy cavalry from some continent beginning with 'E'.

[tainsouvra]

When I say 'minute' detail... I really mean *MINUTE* detail.

Be very, very careful doing that. Players, quite justifiably, have a tendency to only be interested in details that directly relate to their characters or their current quest. If you truly go into excruciating detail during your planning, do so with the knowledge that the vast majority of it will never have any relevance to the players.

This is easily explained by a large fractioning of the people leading to small groups of skilled warriors. In medieval fantasy it is easy to force the next peasant to pick up a pike, but if there are a handful of men to choose from it is not viable

Is this the flavor that your group plays with, or is that the way you believe the history actually played out? If it's the former, that's a fun spin to put on things...but if it's the latter, then I believe another trip to the history books is in order

[elliott20]

When I first read the title, my first gut instinct was to think, "well, junior, when a man and a woman really loves each other, they embrace in a special hug..."

[The_Werebear]

Be very, very careful doing that. Players, quite justifiably, have a tendency to only be interested in details that directly relate to their characters or their current quest. If you truly go into excruciating detail during your planning, do so with the knowledge that the vast majority of it will never have any relevance to the players.
Is this the flavor that your group plays with, or is that the way you believe the history actually played out? If it's the former, that's a fun spin to put on things...but if it's the latter, then I believe another trip to the history books is in order

A lesson I learned the hard way. The first campaign I ran with the group I currently play with had that flaw. I tried to explain a bunch of history so they would get the setting. Didnt work. It eventually got so bad that I canceled that game and started over by having them play through that history. I just finished that game, and I am going to retry the first.

So. My advice is to start at the beginning. Players tend to be more interested in the future if they helped create the past.

[BardicDuelist]

I suppose a good thing to take a look at might be the FRCS. It (though it may have many flaws) has a decent description of different cultures and how they interact based on relation to other cultures and climates. Also, there is nothing stopping you from creating an Eastern part to your world.

I personally do not allow Eastern classes into my games, or scimitars for that matter. Rapiers still exist (because my world is somwhat more advanced than midevil, but less than rennaissance because of magic).

[Jack Mann]

You can get away with a lot so long as you don't expect them to know too much right off the bat. Tell them as much as they strictly need to create their characters, and anything else they ask about. Lay out the rest as they go along. "The ferryman turns to you and says, 'With the troubles in Ankrband, I dunno how well business is gonna stay.' You know that Ankrband had periodic difficulties with hobgoblins. Roll knowledge (history) and (local) if you have them, please." This avoids the pain of infodumps.

One thing I'd suggest is setting up a wiki for your world, where you can write down all of the relevant information. Put up sections with basic overviews and sections that go into greater detail. Tell them which parts are essential for them to read, and which parts aren't. Then they can get as in-depth as they wish, or just skim the surface. Your players can also go and look things up after the game if they like, to give them a better idea of where they stand.

A wiki will also help you to stay organized when you create games for your world, especially since it's easy to maintain and update the wiki.

[AkumaWolf]

Be very, very careful doing that. Players, quite justifiably, have a tendency to only be interested in details that directly relate to their characters or their current quest. If you truly go into excruciating detail during your planning, do so with the knowledge that the vast majority of it will never have any relevance to the players.
Is this the flavor that your group plays with, or is that the way you believe the history actually played out? If it's the former, that's a fun spin to put on things...but if it's the latter, then I believe another trip to the history books is in order

Actually... half it's use is for playing D&D

I'm actually planning to make a D&D themed comic and having a living, breathing world as a template would just make it so much easier...

[Polarbeast]

The reason I'm saying this, is cause I'm trying to create a D&D world in minute detail. But I ran into a dead-end when it came to various human cultures and languages.
How *would* the east or west or south be like in a fantasy world.
Our world, cultures, customs and armaments were all influenced by certain events in history. Change that even a little and it could be very different in the future. And I'm pretty sure our history didn't follow the exact same way as in a fantasy world.
Don't get me wrong, I really want a Samurai and Ninja infested east and a Nord populated north... but I want them there LOGICALLY.

All good advice given so far... and I agree with those who have suggested cultural growth in response to climate. Creatures evolve and civilizations emerge according to their environmental stimuli, and I'm sure you can make sensible deductions about that (I liked bossmiley's suggestions).

Climate first... then politics. If you manage to figure out how a world would logically proceed when there are gods manipulating it, beings with enough magical power to own parts of it, dragons, elementals, multiple planes adjacent to it, and multiple intelligent races all vying for the same resources, then you've succeeded in something that thousands of game designers and authors have pushed creative envelopes to do. The D&D universe may be TOO large and varied to be logical.

But I offer this: it might end up more important to your players to concentrate more on personal details than worldly details. It is fun for me to have encountered a unique shopkeeper who taps the counter to ward off spirits; I feel more immersed in the world when I know that the individual I'm talking to has his hair in a gem-studded topknot, therefore telling me he's a chieftain.

I feel more compelled to think up details and background for my character when the NPCs have it. The reasons WHY they developed those cultural details matter less to me. Such reasoned chronology is impressive, but not always useful (except again, as interesting detail; e.g., I know this city was founded 287 years ago on the ruins of an older one, or that this sword was forged ## years ago).

Of course, I only now have just seen your latest post in regards to a comic while I was typing, so feel free to disregard the last couple of paragraphs... ;)

[Wraithy]

as other posters seem to have said, logic doesn't apply to D&D. in a world where a cleric counting loaves of bread can have a pile of six loaves, and a pile of three loaves, and put them together to get twenty loaves, you don't need to explain anything beyond a shallow level.
the origional forger of the katana could have named it after his uncle's boat because one cuts through flesh like the other cuts through waves or any number of reasons that would need a DC 30 bardic knowledge check.
depending on your group, you might not even need to come up with a reason, when someone asks you just wing it (sadly this is the case in my group).
as for cultures, most fantasy books I've read seem to follow this system: north is cold and filled with barbarians/goblins/orcs/giants. the central "civilized" world contains mostly humans, one or two forests of elves, and dwarves in the territory between central and north. a little further south there is usually a sea and clusters of islands for pirates and slave galleys, though the sea monsters don't really appear in these parts of maps. the south generally represents arabic-esque states aswell as african-ish ones further south, usually acompanied by a well established empire that threatens the centre, in these bits of the world there are fewer "intelligent" monsters, like the monsters of the north, favouring mindless monsters such as giant vermin or low-intelligence abboritions (ogres seem to break this rule because of their mythic orrigins). sometimes (though less often than the previous areas) there is another land across the western sea (less often eastern for some reason), this land usually contains an ancient empire that has crumbled, or none has ever been there to begin with, the result is mostly a lawless place of bandits and petty self-made lords, the sea between the lands is often packed with sea monsters and almost definately free of pirates, the monsters on land vary too much from author to author, though most contain the same monsters as the south.
as for asian style areas, they don't really appear in the books, they're a bit too specialised, the only one I can think of is the Tsuranauni in the riftwar novels, they turn up on an entirely different worls however, so probably don't count.

these are very broad generalisations with either vast or minute variations from author to author, but the afore mentioned ideas seem to travel from book to book quite regularly in my (perhaps limited) experience.

[SilverClawShift]

"A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet".

We call a katana a katan because that's what we know it as. The same goes for Rapier, Quarterstaff, Handaxe... anything and everything.
You could go on to detail 25 pages of history about the first dwarf society, who created the first double sided battle wedge, and that they called it a "CravBrank". But when you draw a picture of it, a designer, a DM, and a player are all going to say "Oh. It's an axe. I know those things"
The same applies to classes. A skilled stealthy warrior who weilds a sai and a tanto blade is called a Ninja, because that's what springs to mind to we-the-players when we think of the word "Ninja".

A fantasy world like Faerun (for example) is a two part thing. On one hand, it's a "Place that is not this world" where fantastic races and creatures do fantastic things and weild fantastic magics. But it's also a world we're intended to interact with and play around in. Giving everything a unique name and history that bears no similarity to its real-world counterpart isn't just making your world thorough, it's also making it unapporachable as a player (or DM).

*Edit*

Er. I probably shouldn't get distracted for a few hours, and then assume that my reply to a thread will be fresh.

"What everyone above me said" then.

[The J Pizzel]

They come from Japan. Because everyone knows thats where cell phones originate from.

[UserClone]

You might consider looking to 3.0 Oriental Adventures Campaign Setting called Rokugan. It's the D&D adaptation of L5R. It has its own "Kami," or gods, its own history, its own "Evil Place," and it's all self-contained because of virtually impassable mountains to the west, virtually impassable desert to the north, and vast ocean the the East/Southeast. Its geographical isolation helps explain its cultural differences to the remainder of the world.