D&D 5E Do you think we will get an Oriental Adventures setting for 5th edition?

So some time in late 2016 after five APs, none of which I'm likely to buy. I'll be surprised if I still care about anything WotC comes up with.

I did use up almost all of my 500 words in the latest survey about what it is I was looking for. Hopefully 2016 sees me actually buying a product that puts money into WotC's pockets. Last thing I purchased was some spell cards (really useful!) right before Christmas 2014. I assume WotC gets some amount of money from them being a licensed product.

I have found two UA articles particularly useful, though. I liked the Ranger with no spells from Class Design Variants and everything from Waterborne Adventures. The WotC website should have a better organization for the UA articles and archive them for easier access.
 

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If WotC chooses to revisit Kara-tur, i'd like to see an effort made to make it less japano-centric. At the very least, i'd like to see elements inspired by "Journey to the West" be as prominent as the "Lord of the Rings" inspired bits are in the D&D basic game.

Inspiration drawn from Water Margin and Three Kingdoms would be welcome as well!

I'm hopeful we'll get an updated OA. The name honestly sounds a little dated at this point, so perhaps they'll go with something more current sounding, like "Wuxia Adventures".
 

I really enjoyed the Oriental Adventures setting for 3rd edition and I really hope someone, whether it's WoTc or a 3rd party (Here's looking at you Sasquatch), puts out an oriental setting. I would love to see classes and monsters done with the 5th edition rules.

Probably not as such... As in, don't expect it to be called "Oriental Adventures". The use of the term "oriental" was not well received when the 3e OA was released, so it's unlikely that they'll use that title again. I'd expect what you're looking for will be part of a Kara-Tur setting book if anything.

I also doubt that we'll many of the classes that were in either the 1e or 3e OA, especially samurai, bushi, ninja, or yakuza—as there are too many variations on those that they don't fit neatly under a single umbrella (and existing class/background combinations already do a great job of covering many of the variations). The wu jen really doesn't need to be a class, either—at best, it'd be a subclass of wizard (but given that its only claim to fame was an initiative bonus, and its use of the Chinese "elements" rather than the Greek/Indian/Buddhist elements, it's unlikely, IMO). Sohei might be salvageable as a paladin subclass, and the shukenja (1e)/shaman (3e) might make for a druid or cleric subclass or some sort of shaman base class. Kensei might make for a decent fighter or monk subclass. And the 3e shugenja is very Rokugan-specific and unlikely (at best) to be addressed. I'd also expect the classes to be renamed something generic (like kensei becoming "weapon master", shugenja becoming "shaman", etc.).

As for races, there's a lot more to salvage there (just don't expect the Rokugani Nezumi). Hengeyoukai, Korobokuru (more properly, Koro-pok-kuru), Spirit Folk, and 3e's Vanara all (mostly) add something to the game.

There's also some equipment that could be added (though most of the weapons—outside the weirder ones—and armor are already covered in the PHB). As an aside, I find the inclusion of the "o-yoroi" Japanese armor in the OA books kinda funny (given that it was an older, pre-Sengoku era armor and is pretty much the equivalent of scale armor).

If WotC chooses to revisit Kara-tur, i'd like to see an effort made to make it less japano-centric. At the very least, i'd like to see elements inspired by "Journey to the West" be as prominent as the "Lord of the Rings" inspired bits are in the D&D basic game.

Absolutely! It's funny that of the classes that were introduced in 1e's OA, other than the Wu Jen (the Monk and Barbarian had appeared earlier), all had Japanese names are were Japanese-inspired. And while the Wu Jen was inspired by the Chinese Daoist mystic, it's name was entirely made up (taking the Chinese characters for "magic" and "person"). I suppose it's more generic than "daoshi" (not that that got in the way of the shugenja), but given the otherwise Japanocentricy of the book, they could have gone with "onmyouji".
 

It might be rolled into the Forgotten Realms core book, when that comes out. There was a reference to "The East" in a recent Adventurer's League offering.

I agree, the term "Oriental Adventures" is a tad, shall we say, dated.
 


Here are some things you can get a bit there...

Pg 41 DMG - Wuxia and Wuxia weapon name chart (converts longsword to jian and katana, etc)

Pg 264-265 DMG - Honor System (useful for Samurai Bushido etc)

Most other things are common since flavor conversions. A monk is straight forward, battlemaster makes a good samurai, lots of the rest are just no-brainers I won't bother typing.

I think someone combining some of the honor situations with a campaign setting specifically for 5E would work well, but I wouldn't hold my breath on WotC making it anytime soon.
 

I really enjoyed the Oriental Adventures setting for 3rd edition and I really hope someone, whether it's WoTc or a 3rd party (Here's looking at you Sasquatch), puts out an oriental setting. I would love to see classes and monsters done with the 5th edition rules.

I hope for the same. If they publish such book, it would probably the first 5e supplement I would buy.

If they don't, I will continue with my own 5e conversion of the Rokugan setting:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ersion-for-D-amp-DNext-(preliminary-thoughts)

Hm. Not entirely sure... after all, we didn't get anything for 4e, and it was much more release heavy than 5e. And 3e was pretty light on OA stuff as well,and it was willing to go into some strange directions with official releases (remember Ghostwalk?).

Realistically, I'd expect something from Unearthed Arcana, or some sort of quick and dirty conversion. After all, isn't there an honor system in the DMG? Something like that could be kitbashed into OA, for sure.

3e was 'light' in terms of WotC books because they chose Rokugan as default OA setting, and then let AEG publish 3e books for that, and they have released 20+ titles, before dropping d20 and building a new L5R edition from scratch.

It's very likely that first we'll see an article in UA column. It's the perfect place for playtesting anyway. But then how much material you need, depends on what kind of conversion you have in mind...

A 'cosmetic' conversion can certainly use the same classes, 3-4 new races, alternative weapons names, and that's it. This could give you some oriental flavor, but certainly wouldn't get you anywhere near Rokugan at least (not sure about Kara-Tur).

For a strong-identity setting such as Rokugan, you have to find ways to represent honor/dishonor, clan, family, ancestor, schools, taint, void use, a correspondence between magic & religion & nature, different types of magic items... Almost all core classes are inappopriate for different reasons, as are all non-human races. All in all, not something that can easily fit in just one UA article at least. (check my own conversion link above if you want to get a vague idea :) )
 

Yeah, the use of 'oriental' is rather problematic. (Wuxia could work, except that that's overly specific.) Plus, there are issues with cultural appropriation that were less of an issue even a decade ago.

Honestly, I think we'll see some conversions of classes and the like in a UA article, but any actual Asian-themed setting is most likely to come out of the third-party scene. Which may be no bad thing.
 

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