Oriental Adventures?

I was woundering if any one has actually started a straight oriental campaign based on OA or if most of you are using as source material to add options to your existing campiagn.

For that matter has any one try D20 Rokugen?

I ran a straight OA campaign... and it has been my best so far. (Keep in mind I have been a DM for only two years so I am kinda new at it... not to mention the people I DM are teenagers, like myself, and are aptly distracted by anything that offers a greater reward at a faster pace.)

It lasted 6 months, it was clean cut, the group was made up of Emerald Magistrates from many different clans, and their "overall" goal that was never realized was that they were going to have to travel beyond the northern mountain range to find Sensei's corpse...

I am crossing Rokugan with Forgotten Realms as I had a few players wanting to play characters from Rokugan. The party is only just now going to head to Rokugan, but the effects of Fu Leng's and Iuchiban's legacies of taint can be felt all the way in Faerun .
There are several stories in the Story Hour forum that merges Rokugan with various other settings.

the homebrew campaign world in which i currently am a player/ co-designer (half of the gods and ruling families were my characters, i did half the work on the history of the world, the other half was stolen from the FRCS/wheel of time/ lord of the rings/dragonlance and so on, the DM drew the maps) has an oriental area. the OA book was invaluable for character concepts other then just a monk. we basically stole the clans, classes, prestige classes (non rogukan specific ones at least) and were able to put true depth into the most neglected part of our world.

I'm running an OA campaign right now (non-Rokugan, but with a few Rokugani concepts, like the clans), and it's working out great. My players leapt at the chance to play races other than the traditional elves/dwarves/little people, and the only real problem has been a bit of bickering over who got to be the group's samurai (I only allow one, as I think there are enough classes available that everyone should be able to find something different that interests them).

The biggest strain so far has been making the adventures feel "asian" enough. It's kind of difficult for a westerner who doesn't have a whole lot of knowledge of asian culture to get in the proper mindset. One thing I've done is play up the concept of "honor" rather than good vs. evil, and emphasize that lawful characters will be more respected/trusted than neutral or chaotic characters.

As for why I chose not to use Rokugan itself, I honestly found the setting a bit too restrictive. By my estimates, Rokugan only uses approximately half of the total content in OA, and it's all just too good to ignore any of it. What I've done for my homebrew setting is to steal liberally from any and all asian style forms of entertainment I'm familiar with. Specifically, the setting has been influenced by the Final Fantasy games, anime, manga, and movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

On a related note, if anyone knows where I could find some variant combat rules to allow for CT,HD style stunts, a link would be much appreciated.

I've done a series of one-shots in a campaign world based on the mythic india setting detailed in the online supplement to Oriental Adventures. It's worked out fantastically well, even the one person who had serious misgivings about the setting at first has really enjoyed them.

Cullain

I'm presently running a game that merged Rokugan into Forgotten Realms and I think it's going smoothly. There was an option to use other stuff from OA (I have one Vanara Shaman in the group) but mostly I'm sticking to the Rokugan books with a little taken from FR. For my money, D20 Rokugan is excellent, plenty of stuff I'd borrow and use in a regular DnD game.

I'm using OA to help 'feed the fire' on a setting I'm working on now. I like the Shaman idea, but I think it needs to be pulled off a little better. (the setting itslef borrows very little from OA in terms of rules, but makes major changes to the atmosphere.... think 'Indian Adventures' instead) The useful stuff include statistics for new monsters, the new creature descriptor (Spirit), about half the prestige classes (as starting points), and the idea of a tangible evil in the form of the Taint and Shadowlands.

I just started my players down my own varient of the "mystic rokugan" idea suggested in the OA book. You know, Elves = Cran clan, etc. Personaly I'm a big fan of strait rokugan, but it helps my players adjust.

Neowolf said:

The biggest strain so far has been making the adventures feel "asian" enough. It's kind of difficult for a westerner who doesn't have a whole lot of knowledge of asian culture to get in the proper mindset. One thing I've done is play up the concept of "honor" rather than good vs. evil, and emphasize that lawful characters will be more respected/trusted than neutral or chaotic characters.

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You could do worse than watching a few westerns. A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven come to mind.

On a related note, if anyone knows where I could find some variant combat rules to allow for CT,HD style stunts, a link would be much appreciated.

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Well, you COULD give everyone a few levels in blade dancer....

Other than that, Dragon 289 had some guidelines for that gravity-doesn't-matter style of combat. In a nutshell, everyone above 10th level flies (30' speed, average maneuverability). There's also an Improved Flying feat, which increases your maneuverability to good -- you can hover, fly backward, and make right-angle turns in flight.

There's also some other good tidbits for evoking that wuxia feel.