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

Also if they want to build on the FR brand Kara-Tur is the way to go

Which is why Kara-Tur is a foregone conclusion. If WotC is going to approach Asian-inspired D&D at some point (and that's something that is extremely likely), they will use Kara-Tur—it's part of their most popular setting. WotC isn't going to pay money to license some other company's IP when they already own a more diverse setting that they can use (Kara-Tur), and that setting is part of a larger setting (the Forgotten Realms) that also happens to be their money-maker setting.

Without going back into the whole thing, Kara-Tur as part of FR was just part of the great EGG ousting from TSR.

It was originally conceived of as "campaign neutral / Oerik" when written. That said, I acknowledge that Kara Tur, like everything else, has been placed in the FR.

Sort of. While 1e's OA was originally intended to cover Western Oerik (from the first announcement of the product in Dragon magazine), I think that plan was nixed during the writing (it's been said that the manuscript that Zeb Cook turned in was far different from what Gary Gygax and Francois Marcela-Froideval had originally intended). Also, by the first module for OA that showed Kara-Tur as the Eastern side of an then-unnamed continent, it didn't fit Greyhawk (as Kara-Tur would have needed to me on the Western end of the Oerik continent). After the unfortunate ouster, when Greyhawk was setting non grata and FR was bought up to be D&D's flagship setting, Kara-Tur got attached officially to Faerun (though the had to reduce the scale of the Kara-Tur map to make it fit). By the time of the Kara-Tur boxed set (which I still can't fing my copy—it's got to be around here somewhere, dammit!), it was fully integrated into the Realms.

Personally, if I had any say in what WotC does, I would choose to develop Western Oerik for Greyhawk, as it's a tabula rasa for creating something new and different without all the baggage of past design and expectations. And also because I'm a Greyhawk fanboi. :-D
 

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Still not. Recorded European history goes back to more than 200 years before Christ. By that measure, the Catholic church hasn't even been around for the majority of the time. When you factor in the time it took for Christianity to become the dominant religion, not to mention the time before the dominant sect was Catholic, and consider that the rise of Protestantism and indeed the Enlightenment saw that dominance challenged and then over-turned, you're struggling to get a majority even in the years AD.

I was clearly speaking of the time period in which D&D is closest to the real world level of technology.

During a time prior to the wide spread use of personal firearms, but after the wide-spread adoption of metal armor. When castles were still considered serious defensive structures and the laws of the land were feudalistic in nature. Back when you had the thing that Paladin is based on-- Crusading Knights out there waging a protracted war with the Muslims over control of the Middle East (and killing any pagans or jews or anything foreign they came across while doing so).

If you are playing D&D during an equivalent of the pre-Christian Roman era or after the widespread use of firearms, I would wager a lot of your class balances get knocked way off by either the lack of heavy armor or martial weapons in the former or the fact that you have weapons so powerful that armor no longer affects the game.

During that time there were literally laws in the books that being non-Christian or engaging in non-Christian practices or rituals was a crime punishable by death. They even happily put to death children who engaged in petty crimes. And you can be quite certain that any travelers from Mongolia or China were not Christian and were certainly engaging in non-Christian acts.
One merely needs to look at some of the old wild and brutal laws put on the books throughout those middle ages or look at the records as to why people were executed to see these sorts of things.

The fact that D&D decides to adopt many of the aesthetics of that particular era and presents their whole globes of their worlds as universally European yet in choosing to do so make no attempt to force any of the uglier aspects of the culture into their settings, deciding to clean the whole thing up and present it according to modern sensibilities with modern cultural standards and practices and modern levels of rationality....

Means that if you are going to present a world that is supposed to be based on the cultures of Asia such as Kara-tur or that god awful abomination known as Rokugan that only the blissfully ignorant manage not to find sickeningly stupid, you should not be exaggerating all the aspects of the culture that are brutal, irrational, and otherwise offensive to modern sensibilities. Particularly when these are the exact same things you erased and cleaned out of your European setting.

So when I see stupidity like "all disputes between people are settled with sword duels to the death and no one can ever refuse to fight an opponent no matter how vastly and obviously superior!" or "they kill themselves the moment they mildly fail at anything" or "they follow the commands of their lord to the letter without any free thought" when you don't have Paladins doing the same exact things even though they are just as true for European knight as Japanese knights....

Or you strictly enforce gender roles in your Asia setting while hand-waving them in your European setting even though gender roles were just as strict in both places?

Or you make a total caricature out of Asian religions still being practices while totally avoiding doing so with western religions still in practice in your settings by avoiding putting them in there at all?

Or you have your Asian-inspired characters talk in weird pseudo-Confucian language while never having your European-inspired characters talk in Shakespearean or Nordic sonnets?

You just are clearly not being even-handed about it.

Honestly, there has been so little printed about Kara-tur in so very long, its probably not even a problem to keep using that name. Just remake the entire thing from the ground up. Treat the Asian elements in the setting as if they are just as normal as the European elements, don't try to focus on or exaggerate the foreignness-- just present a land where they happen to use Japanese/Korean/Chinese/Thai/Mongolian/Indian architecture, clothing styles, landscape, ships, animals, mythological creatures (those best suited for the role turned into peoples). Sensibly go ahead and put the jungle stuff in the south and the snowy stuff in the north (or vice versa if it is in the southern hemisphere), put the desert stuff somewhere sensible and the clearly islander stuff on some island chains, but otherwise suggest there is free travel from region to region and the peoples get all mixed up. Have the control of the government be just as loose as in Faerun and posit some lost ancient empires and hostile non-human peoples and such to make room for adventurers doing dungeon exploration and other adventures. Maybe take the most basic aesthetics from Buddhism and the bare bones of Daoism and Shintoism (even mixing them together and evening them out), but don't try to copy them in any deep or meaningful way and posit them as just fantasy religions that happen to share some aesthetic similarities. Confucianism can be forgotten to the extent Plato/Socrates and other greek scholars are absent from Faerun.

And just call the setting "Forgotten Realms: Kara-tur Adventures"

It may seem like a tight-rope to walk, but it can be boiled down to "Just how much did you care about what was French, German, Russian or English when you designed Faerun and took their aesthetics and cultures as your base before building on it? How much of the real world history and religion did you actually incorporate, how many real world figures did you stick into the history under pseudonyms and how much did you perfectly align each region with a very specific real world nation? Okay, now do the same for Kara-tur except how we are using a different list of countries."
 

I was clearly speaking of the time period in which D&D is closest to the real world level of technology.

Which would have been fine, had you said that was what you were talking about. Detail matters.

Back when you had the thing that Paladin is based on-- Crusading Knights out there waging a protracted war with the Muslims over control of the Middle East (and killing any pagans or jews or anything foreign they came across while doing so).

Indeed. But, again, details matter - you did say it was the majority. The Crusades, for all that they were a big event, were very much a minority event.

During that time there were literally laws in the books that being non-Christian or engaging in non-Christian practices or rituals was a crime punishable by death.

Lots of crazy laws have made it onto the books in various places at various times. Lots of crazy laws get casually ignored. Something being on the statute books is actually a poor guide to what the majority of people necessarily believed.

The fact that D&D decides to adopt many of the aesthetics of that particular era and presents their whole globes of their worlds as universally European yet in choosing to do so make no attempt to force any of the uglier aspects of the culture into their settings, deciding to clean the whole thing up and present it according to modern sensibilities with modern cultural standards and practices and modern levels of rationality....

<snip for brevity>

You just are clearly not being even-handed about it.

All true.

Again, the issue is not your objection to the presentation of the two OA settings, nor indeed to your acknowledging the ugly parts of European history (or the whitewashed version used in FR). I'm not going to pretend that there aren't some very ugly parts of European history.

But the issue is that when you exaggerate that to the extent that you say:

Most of European history, everyone in the continent was a Catholic Christian and, if not, they were killed in horrific manners until the remainder converted. They were literally viewed as being servants of the evil god aka "devil" and thus no matter what cruelty was exacted upon them, it was justified in order to convert them.

then you've over-stated your point to an absurd extent, and to the point where it undermines the otherwise valid points you might otherwise have made.
 

While I chide Kara-Tur for taking the rather lazy approach of filing off the real-world names and such and and replacing them with new names (or, in some cases, using historical names—Wa and Koryo, I'm looking at you), I cared for Rokugan less as it just seemed homogeneous and , at times, too gimmicky).

I remember one designer positing the argument that it is better to base your settings as close to real settings as possible because it is easier for your players to identify with real things and therefore get a better experience.
 

I was clearly speaking of the time period in which D&D is closest to the real world level of technology.
Which D&D doesn't have any, as even at it's european inspired core it's wildly mixing half a millenium of real world level of technology together
The fact that D&D decides to adopt many of the aesthetics of that particular era and presents their whole globes of their worlds as universally European yet in choosing to do so make no attempt to force any of the uglier aspects of the culture into their settings, deciding to clean the whole thing up and present it according to modern sensibilities with modern cultural standards and practices and modern levels of rationality....
Actually there are plenty of realms and city states where the uglier aspects are turned to eleven
So when I see stupidity like "all disputes between people are settled with sword duels to the death and no one can ever refuse to fight an opponent no matter how vastly and obviously superior!" or "they kill themselves the moment they mildly fail at anything" or "they follow the commands of their lord to the letter without any free thought" when you don't have Paladins doing the same exact things even though they are just as true for European knight as Japanese knights....
Actually in 2e paladins were supposed to be just as stupid. It was with 3e they started to loosen up
Or you make a total caricature out of Asian religions still being practices while totally avoiding doing so with western religions still in practice in your settings by avoiding putting them in there at all?
You mean like Oghma, Mielikki, Loviatat, etc? And of course for some it's the biggest insult to their one true god that there are pantheonic deities put in at all.
 

From a mechanical standpoint, and including concepts such as martial arts or chi, 5E can not provide an oriental setting enough room to flex it's legs without having maneuvers implemented for martial classes.
 

OA probably has a better chance than other settings because it's part of FR. I fully expect WotC to transition from Forgotten Realms to. . . yet another part of Forgotten Realms instead of one of the settings that I'm hoping for (in order: Ravenloft, Spelljammer, & Planescape).

Oh well, maybe I'll see some 5e Ravenloft material come out when I retire in another 30+ years.
 

I just did some quick research (google) and it seems to me that oriental is still used in Europe without and negativity. Might be considered old fashioned, but not negative.

The political correctness movement is a tiny minority with a huge voice and massive overpromotion by the media and courts. They like to take exception on others' behalf. They need to be ignored when they go too far.
 
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The political correctness movement is a tiny minority with a huge voice and massive overpromotion by the media and courts. They like to take exception on others' behalf. They need to be ignored when they go too far.

Or, y'know, you can just be a decent person and consider their feelings rather than use words that'll insult them. Asking for a better name than "Oriental Adventures" isn't going too far

As to it, I would reboot the entire area. Word-crushing events are a dime a dozen in FR, get rid of the old areas and actually come up with some interesting ones that aren't just "Real life poxy with serial numbers filed off". I would keep Spelljammer not-China but, y'know, work on it to be something other than Spelljammer not-China.
 

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