D&D General Kara-Tur vs Rokugan

LuisCarlos17f · May 2, 2019

I have got the OA 3rd Ed (Spanish translation).

I like the background of the shen or spirit-folk but their racial traits aren't very useful for me.

OA is perfect for wuxia heroes, like in the movie "Tiger and Dragon", and for a remake of the warblade, crusader and swordsage from "Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords".

Ninja, Samurai and Sohei are too cool to be only subclasses. And if they aren't classes by WotC, then they be created by some third party publisher, like the warlord.

OA is perfect as hook for otakus and fans of manhwa and (Taiwanese) manhua. (China has too hard rules about censure and a true limit for the creativity in the speculative fiction. A mistake in the cultural war).

* Is there any creature from Asian folklore for a little furry humanoid race? Like the nekojin (catfolk), kitsune, hengeyokai or tanuki (racoons shipeshapters). Rat-goblin should be a PC race.

Desdichado · May 3, 2019

jayoungr said:
Since Kara-Tur is in the Forgotten Realms, and therefore allowed on the DM's Guild, there's a decent amount of third-party 5E resources for it.

Oh, yeah? Available online, or in print? I'm genuinely curious where I can find it. I can get the old OA on pds easily enough, but clearly that won't give me anything at all like modern rules*. Not that I need them, but I'm curious to look over them.

*For certain crotchety old fart definitions of "modern" that may actually have been current years ago.

Desdichado · May 3, 2019

The greater the expansion of furries (and... featheries? Scalies?) in a given OA setting, the less attractive it is to normal people. It's wise to minimize them, and even offer a cultural apologia for them if you include them at all.

jgsugden · May 3, 2019

To do such a setting justice, you need to really build it out. That requires a lot of time. If it isn't my primary setting, I don't want to disrespect it by doing it half-%@ed.

Accordingly, I prefer to keep Asia inspired areas as 'lands of mystery' and not flesh them out, but have them in my world as an option for players to utilize and flesh out in their character origins. I've had PCs that came from these areas, that traveled there in their youth, etc... but I have not had any adventures take place in Asia inspired areas since the 80s.

Kobold Avenger · May 3, 2019

Desdichado said:
The greater the expansion of furries (and... featheries? Scalies?) in a given OA setting, the less attractive it is to normal people. It's wise to minimize them, and even offer a cultural apologia for them if you include them at all.

I think the greater expansion of furries seems to be a mostly a particular niche. Generally stronger among Japanese sources as there's a lot of animal spirits sort of things like Tengu/Kenku, Nezumi or Tanuki. Kenku are already covered in D&D, and the Hengeyokai that's been in OA since the start could cover a large variety of those, and because they're shapeshifters they can be as furry or non-furry as a DM wants (one could simply remove or de-emphasize the hybrid form).

For other sources there's the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West (the inspiration for the anime Dragon Ball and the TV series Into the Badlands and many other things) might be one of the few expansion of furries for Chinese sources as it's main character the Monkey King/Sun Wu Kim could be depicted as a Monkey, but more often than not he's just been depicted as a Human too.

There's Chinese stories where there are animal spirits which assume Human form and live lives among Humans. They could be the Spirit Folk PC race, though that race seems to cover more case of spirits of plants or natural features.

Indian mythology has the Vanara, monkey like beings which are probably the inspiration for the Monkey King. Naga are another thing in Indian and Southeast Asian myths, but there's already Naga in D&D, even though they don't match most peoples expectation of a Human with a snake lower body.

But I don't think it's furrier overall among most Asian sources than it is for European or other sources, which have tales like Three Little Pigs or Red Riding Hood.

jayoungr · May 3, 2019

Desdichado said:
Oh, yeah? Available online, or in print? I'm genuinely curious where I can find it. I can get the old OA on pds easily enough, but clearly that won't give me anything at all like modern rules*. Not that I need them, but I'm curious to look over them.

Mostly in PDF format. Here are some that I found on a quick trip through the DM's Guild (disclaimer: I haven't actually read any of them).

Wrath of the Iron Dragon
Adventurers of Kara-Tur
Gargantuas of Kara-Tur
Samurai and Steel

Then there are also these very popular non-setting-specific books:

Heroes of the Orient
Heroes of the Orient: Unearthed Kensai (supplement)
Monsters of the Orient (available as Print on Demand)

SkidAce · May 3, 2019

jgsugden said:
To do such a setting justice, you need to really build it out. That requires a lot of time. If it isn't my primary setting, I don't want to disrespect it by doing it half-%@ed.

Accordingly, I prefer to keep Asia inspired areas as 'lands of mystery' and not flesh them out, but have them in my world as an option for players to utilize and flesh out in their character origins. I've had PCs that came from these areas, that traveled their in their youth, etc... but I have not had any adventures take place in Asia inspired areas since the 80s.

I have mainly approached it this way also.

SkidAce · May 3, 2019

jayoungr said:
Then there are also these very popular non-setting-specific books:

Heroes of the Orient
Heroes of the Orient: Unearthed Kensai (supplement)
Monsters of the Orient (available as Print on Demand)

Those last three I purchased. They really evoke the flavor of Kara-Tur into 5e mechanics.

Sword of Spirit · May 3, 2019

The thing is, Rokugan is very narrowly focused on what it does. So if you like what it does, go for it. Kara-Tur is more like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk of fantasy Asia. It gives you all the stuff to work with. If you like having more stuff, go with Kara-Tur.

Since you have the 3e OA, just look through the list of monsters to see the large number of cool monsters they have that aren't in Rokugan. And that's just a subset of all the cool monsters they made for Kara-Tur. Same goes with the character races at the beginning. And then you've got the really cool "shaman" class, which is the 3e take on the old 1e shukenja (name changed for obvious reasons) that represents the cleric substitute (since all classes in 1e OA were substitutes for the PHB classes) and the wu-jen, and the sohei.

If someone is thinking, "I want to do a D&D fantasy Asia," and picks up that OA book, unless something about the Rokugan material really jumps out at them, they're likely to look at it and think, "Why would I give up so much to bother with this Rokugan stuff"? I really don't even think they should have put Rokugan in that book--which I'm sure they did just because they had the IP and could.