Tips on Planning an asian themed/ Oriental Adventures campaign

I have always run games in a classic fantasy setting and want to try and broaden my horizons. I have greated a pretty cool asian campaign setting, I just need a good story. I based the nations of the asian themed continent on my homebrew world on the story of the chineese zodiac. each of the nations was founded by the ancestors of the original zodiac race that got each creature on the chineese calendar. Cats and the Tibbet race from the Dragon compendium #1 are hunted and killed as they are usually thieves and assassins, trying to take out the Rat Emperor (who is not a nezumi, but most of the people in the rat nation are, some are human). The nations have racial breakdowns as follows.


Rat
Humans and Nezumi (OA)
This nation houses the emperor
Ox
Krynn Minotaur (DLCS)

Tiger
Humans
NPC race - Natural weretiger

Rabbit
Korobokuru (Modified to match Japanese myth more, they are actualy closer to halflings than dwarves)

Dragon
Humans (some are able to be sorcerers..i disallow sorcerers in mosto f my campaigns)

Snake
Greensnake Naga (OA)

Horse
Human
Centaur (NPC)

Goat
Human

Monkey
That monkey race from OA

Rooster
Humans

Dog
Humans

Pig
Humans

There might be more, but I am at work and thats all i remember. The creation myth is the race that is described in the chineese zodiac. My friend who also runs in this world has set up a governmental system with the emperor and Samurai and the like.

I dont really know where to go from here. My wife and I watch Avatar: the last airbender and I have been trying to look to it and kung fu movies for inspiraion, but I am not sure how to roleplay an asian setting well and Im not sure how to make the adventure different enough so that it definitively has an asian theme.

any ideas...exspecially from people who have run alot of OA type games. Even L5R stuff may help

thanks,
Shoe

I'm a casual L5R fan and I have found I really, really like Rokugan - though its inspiration is more Japanese than Chinese. Also, when building an oriental campaign, I would suggest also remembering that areas like Korea, Tibet and even India's cultures could be represented - they are vastly different from even Chinese & Japanese cultures.

Some additional race suggestions:

Cat
Tabaxi

Dog
Gnoll
Lupin (from the Red Steel Campaign)
Werewolves

Goat
Ibix (goat-people)
Biabaur (goat centaurs)

Monkey
Consider the entire "planet of the apes" scenario...
Also, you might want to consider humans to fall under "monkey"

Ox
Yakfolk (sorcerous humanoid yaks from Al-Qadim)
Manotaur (minotaur centaurs)

Pig
Wereboar
Orcs/Goblins (reskinned for the orient, of course)

Rabbit
Usagi (Rabbit-people; check out the usagi yojimbo comic book)

Rat
Dark Creepers
Githyanki

Rooster
Aarakocra
Achaierai (they are quite intelligent...)

Snake
Yaun-ti (fits if seen as Vedic invaders or thugees from "India")
Ophidians

Other things:

You probably want to strongly consider what mythos to incorporate in your campaign world, whether you use the gods specific to your campaign world, powerful spirits (kami), shintoism (worship of the Emperor and ancestors), Buddhism or some other religious outlook.

<Edit>
An idea to consider is that with the zodiac founding, lycanthropes may be a natural "spiritual bond" to the founding individual. Thus, the emperor may come from a line of prestigious wererats (who are not all evil or filthy) and so on. In fact, it could be a requirement of the nobility to sport some sort of kinship to the founding creature; the greater the kinship, the higher the social station.

I like to watch Kurosawa movies like Ran, Kagemusha, and The Seven Samurai for inspiration on running adventures in a feudal Japanese-style location. I also check out comic books like Usagi Yojimbo for inspiration.
Various Shao-Lin and wu-shu movies provide some inspiration for the Chinese end of things.

I find that the general rigidity of the social strata and social etiqutte in feudal Japan make it pretty easy to portray in D&D and make it distinct from generic Euro-style fantasy. It's a little more difficult to set a Chinese atmosphere the farther you get from a monk's temple. Focusing on the environment and customs - clothes people wear, food people eat - can help.

I would suggest also remembering that areas like Korea, Tibet and even India's cultures could be represented - they are vastly different from even Chinese & Japanese cultures.

Click to expand...

Concur.

I'd just say use the real world for inspiration. I did a lot of historical research about the Orient, from Japan to Persia, in order to create and play this party, and the things I discovered about the real East seemed to me far more interesting and fascinating than any game setting.

Just do some research on real world Oriental cultures, adapt them to your game or setting, and go from there.

Also, don't limit the research to your own query for knowledge. Involve the players; get them to watch some of the inspirational films or explain to them how things will be different or they'll only be confused when things don't work like they expect or NPCs take umbrage at some social mistake they've unintentionally made.

For my money, the best introductions are Seven Samurai and Yojimbo (from which Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars were based ).

If you can sit through it, Shogun is a great outsider's view of Japan.

By the way, if you are going to incorporate Chinese elements, I would strongly advise looking into the history/mythology of the 3 Kingdoms era, as that appears to be the most popular era of Chinese history - akin to our western stories of King Arthur & Charlemange.

i actually have a vague familiarity with 3 kingdoms and with some other asian elements. Its not so much creating the setting I am having problems with as it is creating storylines/adventures. I watched Kung Fu panda recently which inspired me to get back on the OA train.

Here is kind of what I have so far. An important lord of a territory gather the heros in a garden to discuss business, during the discussion I was thinking of having 3-4 Tibbet ninjas "invade" and assassinate the lord. I have a cool asian garden map I want to convert and use for the combat. after the lord is slain the players will have an element of mystery. Why do the ninjas want them and this lord dead, what issue was the lord calling upon them to address...but here is where I get stuck. How do i make the campaign move beyond this. I am using a Japanese governmental system (even though i use the chineese zodiac...i wanted to include some of each asian culture sans india because I have a different continent where I use indian cultures and themes.) I use the same gods in this setting as I do in my traditional fantasy setting, albeit with different names, symbols and visages, however I want the worship of spirits and ancestors to be important as well.

Not really sure where to go from here...not even really sure what I want the POINT of the assassination of the lord to be...

any help is welcome. Thanks for all the comments so far.

I also forgot, the nation of the pig does have oriental "Orcs" in it, but the orcs in my cs have the same stats at a half orc and are a PC race. I have a good history and governmental system I like I just need something interesting for the PC's to DO

THanks all,
Shoe

I finished up a 10-year long Japanese/Chinese themed campaign in 2008.

The plot in that game was a bit convoluted, but ultimately revolved around the issue of karma vs freedom.

One of the PCs was the son of a middle-class merchant family who had been adopted into a samurai house that his family was financing. He also fell in love with a dragon in human form who was hiding on earth because she was disobeying her family's orders (I can't remember the details now, but it concerned a dispute between Sea Lord and Storm Lord family members. I also tied this into elements of TSR modules like OA3 and OA7, which involve various spirits and their machinations - I had all this connected to disputes between dragon dynasties). In the end he ended up trying to reach an agreement with her family (I think by blackmailing them) so she could be free from their control and the two could marry.

One of the PCs was a fox spirit, and part-way through the game the player decided (with my agreement as GM) that he was in fact an animal lord who'd been banished from heaven for some sort of impropriety. So parts of the game involved conflicts in the courts of the animal lords, and also the PCs protecting their fox companion against constables of hell who were trying to enforce the terms of the fox-spirit's banishment (which he was breaching by living as a human and gaining levels/doing non-foxish stuff). This was partly inspired by a bunch of 1990s Hong Kong films, including Green Snake.

One of the PCs was a yamabushi. He entered into a sort of communion with a "dead" warrior god who was trapped in the void (ie off the wheel of karma) endlessly fighting an elder evil that the gods had banished from the world at the beginning of time, in order to help maintain its banishment. The last couple of years of the campaign focused on the PCs finding a way to return this god back onto the wheel of karma while trying to ensure that the elder evil was not released. (I drew on ideas from the WoTC module Bastion of Broken Souls for some of this.)

One of the PCs was a weaponsmith and warrior. His plot was pretty lowkey for most of the game, but he ended up being the founder of a dynasty that played a crucial role in keeping the elder evil trapped even when the dead god was freed from his imprisonment.

One of the PCs was a monk of an esoteric school. He was able to see the past, and travel into dreams. He helped the other PCs with knowledge of the spirit realms, the heavenly realms, etc. There were also tensions between his Buddhist ideals and the Cthulhuesque elder evils that played a prominent role in the game, because the idea that reality is an illusion comes very close to some of the ideas of the Cthulhuesque cultists, who also think that reality is an illusion (this was inspired in part by the Dr Druid limited series by Warren Ellis from the mid-90s, and also my own experience teaching philosophy of Buddhism). The PCs would discover texts written by the cultists in which they attacked the esoteric Buddhists as still enslaved by the world, and defended their own voidal entities as having achieved "super-enlightenment".

I also converted the original Freeport modules for use in the game (pirates become wako, priests of the god of knowledge become esoteric monks, etc). This worked OK, and gave the samurai PC a town that he was able to take over and turn into his own military base.

I also had ninjas who were spider cultists who turned out to be linked indirectly to the Cthulhuesque entities. This provided a bridge between the more worldly, samurai parts of the game and the more other-planar, mystical parts of the game. Another connection was when the samurai's daimyo had a monastic advisor who turned out to be a cultist.

Sorry that the above is a handful of rambling snippets from a long campaign. But that's some of the ideas I used, where I thought the distinctive cultural tropes of an Oriental Adventures game - family obligations, karmic obligations, relationships to the spirits and the gods, the relationship between illusion, reality and enlightenment - really helped bring out the thematic issues we ended up exploring in that game.

If you want to run a campaign in a setting similar to ancient China, I strongly recommend reading either The Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Water Margin. Water Margin (alternatively titled "Bandits of the Marsh" or "The Marshes of Mount Liang") is a particularly good source since it focuses primarily on various heroes and bandits as they have adventures across China. It is not only a great source to get a feel for Chinese society, it is full of adventurers who can serve as inspirations for D&D characters. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms on the other hand is much more about war and politics. Though, I have to warn you that either read is very, very long, since both books have .

If you want to run a campaign in an Indian setting, I would likewise strongly recommend reading the Ramayana. It is one of my favorite pieces of literature.

I will recommend against using Rokugan as a source of information. I am a big fan of Chinese and Japanese settings, and I can't stand Rokugan.

Shoe said:

i actually have a vague familiarity with 3 kingdoms and with some other asian elements. Its not so much creating the setting I am having problems with as it is creating storylines/adventures. I watched Kung Fu panda recently which inspired me to get back on the OA train.

Here is kind of what I have so far. An important lord of a territory gather the heros in a garden to discuss business, during the discussion I was thinking of having 3-4 Tibbet ninjas "invade" and assassinate the lord. I have a cool asian garden map I want to convert and use for the combat. after the lord is slain the players will have an element of mystery. Why do the ninjas want them and this lord dead, what issue was the lord calling upon them to address...but here is where I get stuck. How do i make the campaign move beyond this. I am using a Japanese governmental system (even though i use the chineese zodiac...i wanted to include some of each asian culture sans india because I have a different continent where I use indian cultures and themes.) I use the same gods in this setting as I do in my traditional fantasy setting, albeit with different names, symbols and visages, however I want the worship of spirits and ancestors to be important as well.

Not really sure where to go from here...not even really sure what I want the POINT of the assassination of the lord to be...

any help is welcome. Thanks for all the comments so far.

I also forgot, the nation of the pig does have oriental "Orcs" in it, but the orcs in my cs have the same stats at a half orc and are a PC race. I have a good history and governmental system I like I just need something interesting for the PC's to DO

THanks all,
Shoe

Click to expand...

An easy answer would be the Tibbet are working for another lord who wants to put their own Emperor on the throne (someone who'd be more tolerate of the Tibbet than the current emperor - sorta like Scar & the Hyenas from Lion King). Likely, the lord called the PCs because he caught wind of the plot against the Emperor.

From there, someone's got to replace the dead lord. If the lineage isn't clear (and why should it be when it can generate more adventures), the PCs might be courted by various factions within the household to support a certain member gaining control. Also, the death of this particular lord may spark some grudges among the others, who might seek to take advantage of the weakened lord's holdings, or cause family members who hold grudges against other lords to lash out wildly (and dangerously) accusing this lord or that of plotting the assassination.

Of course, as things further develop, the characters will likely have to discover more about who planned the assassination, reveal the plotters and possible save the emperor themselves. This could be set against a rising tide of war started as the lords begin accusing each other of treachery and seek to avenge grudges - new and old. In the end, this could wind up being a simple plot by one lord to make a grab at the throne, the works of a secret rebellion or even the sly manipulations of a supernatural force - or even all three.

Along the way, if the characters play their cards right, they may come into lands and holdings of their own and may have to prove themselves against others who would willingly add the character's wealth, land and peasants to their own.