WotC Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

[Bagpuss]

I'm not restricting anything.

Of course you aren't, it's just an expression of speech, that if you expect that I think you are asking for too much.

But generally, if you're designing a setting inspired by a historical period, you can and should absolutely deviate from history if you have good reasons. I just don't consider "Eh, couldn't be bothered to look too closely" a good reason.

And how do you intend to tell the difference between someone having good reason for leaving something out, and someone that can't be bothered?

 

[Wulfhelm]

"Ideally" they would have an infinite budget and staff to turn out that many different source books and have a market that could afford them all...

Oh come on, man! Do you have an idea of how many products TSR pumped out during that time period? In 1992 alone, four from the HR series.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But only that's the Shop keeper worth interacting with in a fantasy RPG. The normal dealer of mundane stuff is often not even worth the most basic description.

Players: We go out to buy a couple of ropes, hooks, blankets and rations for our expedition into the mountains
DM: Ok you spend 3 hours browsing the various stores. Make a roll to see whether you can negotiate some discount

The ordinary peddler not even gets a most basic description in this scenario

Um, the point isn't the peddler being interesting or not.

The point is that a vast majority of "old Chinese men" are peddlers. That's the stereotype.

 

[Aldarc]

If D&D was mostly a mash up of King Arthur, Robin Hood, Tolkein, and Narnia names and mythology some people might complain because that is all England stuff and not other European stuff they want, but I think most would not blink and it would not be that different from standard D&D.

Warhammer's game world fantasy not-Europe is basically fantasy Germany with a side supplement for Knights of the Round Table Britain/France and some Italian mercenaries. Some complain about it but most do not blink.

Probably the same way that the Japanese proofreaders of OA didn’t think anything of the absence of other cultures. And I believe that @Morrus found that 90% of users are come from the US or Commonwealth nations. So we definitely have blinders on about European fantasy, one that leans heavily on British history.

 

[Cadence]

Oh come on, man! Do you have an idea of how many products TSR pumped out during that time period? In 1992 alone, four from the HR series.

Thank you! I had I had completely forgotten all about those (And all the other supplements with the same binding).

I wonder how long the series would have had to run to get out of Europe.

Anyone know what the mid-2e TSR was like compared to mid-1e in terms of development budget, or how the sales were?

 

[Danzauker]

Ideally, a given Japanese setting, like the late Sengoku period, would have been given the full treatment in the historical reference series, like the Viking period, the Crusades etc. - complete with ideas how to transport them into a fantasy world. Even more ideally, there should also have been other East Asian settings in the same vein.

EDIT: Heh. I see Wizards/dtrpg has put that stupid disclaimer on all books from the HR series as well. Geeze...

I think there are 2 competing goals that they must try to break even. Focus and generality.

A more generalistic all-in product will attract casual or curious gamers. There you would probably try to fit as much you can, without much details and depth, which will usually end to rely on sterotypes.

The focused approach will appeal to dedicated and more expert gamers deeply interested in the topic. Here i'd expect accurate and profound attention to details at the expense of scope.

Most products try to strike a balance between the 2 aspects, some leaning more to one side or the other, some trying to sit in the middle.

OA, I'd say tried to stay in the middle. Given the times it was written it tried to put a decent amount of detail in the book. The downside was that it concentrated almost exclusively on Japan pop archetypes.

 

[Derren]

Ideally, a given Japanese setting, like the late Sengoku period, would have been given the full treatment in the historical reference series, like the Viking period, the Crusades etc. - complete with ideas how to transport them into a fantasy world. Even more ideally, there should also have been other East Asian settings in the same vein.

EDIT: Heh. I see Wizards/dtrpg has put that stupid disclaimer on all books from the HR series as well. Geeze...

Why? D&D is not historic at all, so why should Japan now receive special treatment and receive a historic setting? Because some people will whine again that it is racist for not being 100% historical (or too historical, or not written by enough Japanese people. Or the wrong Japanese people who didn't recognize it as racist)? They would whine anyway no matter what you do so let them.

I thought WotC had looked at the satan scare and that renaming demons and devils didn't shut them up. Yet again they cave in to fanatics objecting to materials in fantasy books.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am kind of curious how many other folks in the US had never heard the word Monk in a non-Christian setting before they encountered them in the PhB, and were wondering why someone like Friar Tuck in Robin Hood would have gotten a set of abilities like the 1e PhB monk had...

I would say zero. Very few people who would have been playing D&D hadn't seen "Kung Fu". There was a massive martial arts/ninja/whatever craze that started in the early 70's (I guess even earlier in some respects, like Bruce Lee). I can distinctly remember that the Monk, which first appeared in Blackmoor or Eldritch Wizardy, I forget which, in 1975/6, was quite familiar as an archetype. Now, that being said, the larger realm of wuxia and other genre of Chinese fantasy were utterly unfamiliar to most of us. Maybe I had heard of Journey to the West, maybe, but that was pretty much it. Even today most of that stuff isn't really accessible, at least not in anything like its original form.

So, no, the Monk was pretty clear as to what it was. In fact it pretty much reflected what was in the "Kung Fu" TV series, right down to the 'quivering palm', though the D&D monk is a bit more fantastic than the TV one, perhaps. Our question was really why it was there, when nothing else of the genre was present in any explicit form. It was a bit odd... How were you to play this monk? Unless the GM introduced eastern-style martial arts traditions and some kind of faux-Buddhism and monasteries it didn't really mesh. Anyway, the class was hideously under powered, so it rarely came up.

 

[Fenris-77]

Expecting a historical series on East Asian medieval cultures might be a touch overboard. Especially when you have no idea about writers or sales projections for those imaginary works. Companies don't generally produce a whole line of books in the name of 'equality'. That sounds neat, but it's not reasonable.

 

[Cadence]

I would say zero. Very few people who would have been playing D&D hadn't seen "Kung Fu".

I'm assuming it was more than just me. Our city of 140k finally got its fourth TV station in the late 1970s, but I don't remember that being among the re-runs that played before 9pm on it when I would have been able to watch. One TV in the house, so it could also have been opposite something that mom or dad watched.

Unless the GM introduced eastern-style martial arts traditions and some kind of faux-Buddhism and monasteries it didn't really mesh.

Which is why it confused the heck out of me in the early 1980s.