Opinions on Kara-Tur

[Psyren]

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]

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]

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]

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 (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]

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]

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/collec...of-the-badass/

[t209]

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/JohnNephe...01457811742720
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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collec...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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.