Re social structure: I disagree about the ridged social structure thing. I just don't think that that is the "only" way you can have a ridged social structure. Again, my goal isn't to make Japan. It's to allow Japanese-style DnD characters.
The taint mechanism; the fact that the dragonborn were resistant to the taint, effectively explains why it developed.
Due to their emphasis on honor, and service they were somewhat resistant to the taint (which ultimately requires you to give into emotions like greed); and that when they effectively took over imported and elevated that whole ethos (service to the society as represented by the leader who deleigates authority in a strict line of command, discipline to put aside your personal desires and do what was required) to a state religion.
You get the same strict social code, the same spying on your neighbors, but you get it differently.
[sblock=Japan and DnD]Most DnD players don't have much of a historical understanding of Japan. They have images and want to play those images.
They think "kick-ass, rogue, katana-wielding bad-asses, who bow to no one and blow through towns in a storm of blood and ass-kicking". They want to emote in a certain fashion, while kicking ass.
Actual Japanese-style social structures and expectations flumox and annoy them.
They usually have completely impossible backstories (a poor orphan who winds up becoming a samurai and then a ronin).
I think, btw, that this is great stuff. You go out, you grapple with something that you're not familiar with you try to understand it; it's DnD, not The Blossoms are Falling....
I'm reaally leery of trying to put some sort of "realistic" social structure that imitates Japan into a setting. It's just not viable unless you do it from the ground up (and even then people don't usually like it in play).
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Another way I suppose to look at it:
1. There is actual, nigh-unknowable truth of what Japan was like during the various periods.
2. There is historical analysis which probably gets you fairly close to what life was like again for those periods.
3. There is the common domestic (i.e. Japanese) view, which is
fairly extremely romanticized. (the ji-dai-geki type stuff you see on TV) It's period mulched and effectively includes a lot of modern biases.
4. There is the western interpretation, which is rooted mostly in Japanese pop stuff (#3).
There are a few 2.5 type considerations, where it's a lot darker in tone (some Kurosawa, the Beat Takeshi version of
Zatôichi) and potentially more realistic (in terms of not glorifying the caste system, or the situation of the pesantry).
(And correspondingly Westerners who are more clued into 2.5 and thus would be a 4.5 maybe)
But at the end of the day the question really, isn't "what's most realistic". It's...
People want to play "samurai/bushido style characters, like they've seen in the movies". They want something that's close to 3 and 4 -- a romantic view. So you have to build for that. Saying "that doesn't make sense" isn't really supportive of those people.
The idea that the existing power structure of the Jade Kingdom brainwashes people into beleiving that "dying a pure death, taint free is glorious; the ultimate aspiration of every man woman and child" sort of fits in with everything else for me.
And I think it potentially enables those sorts of characters people want to play.
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I see it as the same sort of situation as a spider/demon/S&M goddess for the drow. Is it necessarily what I'd create if I had my druthers?
I'm not sure that it is.
But... people want to play characters with a relationship to that sort of goddess. So we can tweak to add elements that enrich it, but we have to support it. IMHO natch.
)
