D&D General Asian D&D

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I’m thinking WotC should release 5e in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean with a thoroughly updated Kara-Tur. That is a huge market that loves the genre and could lead to a lot of growth IMO. Why haven’t they done this yet?

Edit: I wanted to clarify that I think the translated core books is the primary vehicle for interaction with Asian markets and the reimagined or new fantasy Asian setting being secondary. I watch enough anime and read enough manga to know traditional D&D has quite a following in at least 2 off those 3 markets

 

[Nadan]

Kara-Tur? I believe it have too many cultural appropriation stuff that will deem problematic. Beside they got Yeonido (Korea), Yongjing (China) and Umizu (Japan) which are Nebula Award Nominated (the whole Journeys through the Radiant Citadel got nominated). Why trying to fix up Kara-Tur when they have three new and promising setting.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Kara-Tur? I believe it have too many cultural appropriation stuff that will deem problematic. Beside they got Yeonido (Korea), Yongjing (China) and Umizu (Japan) which are Nebula Award Nominated (the whole Journeys through the Radiant Citadel got nominated). Why trying to fix up Kara-Tur when they have three new and promising setting.

I’m talking about completely rewriting it probably

 

[Azzy]

I’m talking about completely rewriting it probably

It might be considered not worth the effort to completely rewrite it—rather just ignore it and pretend it never existed.

 

[Nadan]

I’m talking about completely rewriting it probably

Again, why bother rewrite it completely when those three have good foundation, they even write with a shared founding legend that is perfect to put three settings in one grand shared world.

 

[Tonguez]

Yeah extracting and expanding the east asia parts of Radiant Citadel is probably a better bet

and Tarkir

 

[Kalmi]

Interestingly, the most popular TTRPG in Japan is actually Call of Cthulhu. It's pretty big in youtube plays and is especially popular with women compared to other games. D&D is popular too of course, but it's not the dominant game like it is in the west.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Interestingly, the most popular TTRPG in Japan is actually Call of Cthulhu. It's pretty big in youtube plays and is especially popular with women compared to other games. D&D is popular too of course, but it's not the dominant game like it is in the west.

any idea why coc is popular?

 

[Blue Orange]

any idea why coc is popular?

Replays--people chronicle their games, first in text and now on video, and it gained a fan following:

The many-tentacled reach of Call of Cthulhu, among Korea and Japan’s most popular RPGs

Chaosium’s take on H.P. Lovecraft has gone global

www.polygon.com

Horror RPG Call of Cthulhu is bigger than D&D in Japan

The classic RPG has seen its popularity explode in the last decade thanks to web series and anime.

www.dicebreaker.com

I doubt Kara-Tur would be that important; since it's already a Western game (it's coming out of the USA after all) they might as well lean into the pseudo-European tropes. If Japanese people, say, want to watch ninjas and samurai they've got no shortage of domestically produced jidai-geki shows with better accuracy and more realistic locations. I think cultural appropriation would be less a concern over there than running afoul of lousy Sino-Japanese, Sino-Vietnamese, or Korea-Japanese relations, somehow using a location name that takes the wrong stance on Taiwan, or something like that.

 

[Oofta]

I think it would be cool if we could get settings and options for D&D that weren't founded on pseudo-medieval western societies. I'd love to add flavor to my own campaigns, but lack the resources to do anything significant.

I do empathize with authors though. You can take concepts from vastly different times and regions in D&D if they come from western mythology and nobody blinks an eye. Have a campaign where one day you're fighting the minotaur of Greek mythology and the next you're fighting some Celtic Fey and then it's Norse frost giants. It's okay to take these ideas and stories, throw them into a blender and call it D&D.

It's difficult to both use different cultures for inspiration without at the same time being insensitive. Try to do anything similar to what's been done with European mythology for other regions and times of the world and it's cultural appropriation. I wish there was a good way of doing this, my ideal would be books that take the same blender approach to other cultures and come up with something inspired by their stories without being offensive. I'm not sure it's possible. Maybe hire authors from, say, Japan to write a supplement book? I'd be interested.

It does seem like there would still be touchy subjects of course. There are very few people who are still polytheistic in the west so I'm probably not going to offend anyone with my depiction of Odin and Thor, but a variation of Shinto or Buddhism? It could be quite easy to step on toes.