D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Azzy]

The 1e book, for sure. the 2e boxed set did a better job of creating separation and different cultures.

But it was designed for and defaulted to the rules in the OA book. Which just made things more egregious.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The races and most of the classes (save the barbarian, monk, and, to an extent, the wu-jen) in OA were "inspired" by Japan, at the cost of the cultures of most of Kara-Tur. And, even then, it was bad at Japan, too.

You definitely had to bend the core material in OA to fit a pure wuxia or kung fu campaign. Kensai could still kind of function as wandering swordsman from wuxia, but they seemed to be more japanese. I did a lot of reskinning, changing and bringing in material from other books and games to make it work. So I don't disagree that the game felt very heavily weighted towards Japanese material. I don't think that presents the moral issue some say it did, but it was a frustrating part of the book if you were more interested in something like Chinese inspired classes. I do understand why though because that was an era when stuff like Shogun was still in the air. There is a wuxia novel for example that was translated into English (I want to say in the 90s but it may have been the 80s) and because they thought people would be more familiar with it, they translated Kung Fu as Karate (which is confusing because in these kinds of stories you do still occasionally have characters from Japan show up). I think their assumption was just that a lot more people knew what karate was because there were karate schools every at that time

 

[Voadam]

The races and most of the classes (save the barbarian, monk, and, to an extent, the wu-jen) in OA were "inspired" by Japan, at the cost of the cultures of most of Kara-Tur. And, even then, it was bad at Japan, too.

1e OA had a huge 80s American focus on Japan with Samurai and ninjas and such with a secondary focus on Hong Kong martial arts movies and then a tertiary (if that) focus on other stuff. If I was republishing a similar book today I would call it "Katanas and Kung Fu."

The Japanese focus is not particularly surprising from that time given the cultural prominence of Japan in the U.S. at the time and the research materials the author had locally available and the group of Japanese players the author sent the manuscript out to for review and commentary.

The 1e OA book is heavily Japan focused including giving everyone in Kara Tur a feudal samurai clan background system and a (terrible) honor system and even social stuff like the tea ceremony and the rice based money system. The Oriental Adventures Kara Tur line of setting and modules is more focused outside of the two Japanese analog islands with a bigger focus on the two Chinese analogues with Chinese Shou Lung ending up ultimately being a bigger deal in Kara Tur and the core Forgotten Realms and even spelljammer than other OA stuff. The mismatch of applying Japanese cultural stuff across the board to Chinese inspired stuff was quite noticeable and was generally deprecated over time. When reading the Horde trilogy of novels for example I don't remember any Japanese elements in the characterization of the Shou.

 

[Bedrockgames]

1e OA had a huge 80s American focus on Japan with Samurai and ninjas and such with a secondary focus on Hong Kong martial arts movies and then a tertiary (if that) focus on other stuff. If I was republishing a similar book today I would call it "Katanas and Kung Fu."

The Japanese focus is not particularly surprising from that time given the cultural prominence of Japan in the U.S. at the time and the research materials the author had locally available and the group of Japanese players the author sent the manuscript out to for review and commentary.

The 1e OA book is heavily Japan focused including giving everyone in Kara Tur a feudal samurai clan background system and a (terrible) honor system and even social stuff like the tea ceremony and the rice based money system. The Oriental Adventures Kara Tur line of setting and modules is more focused outside of the two Japanese analog islands with a bigger focus on the two Chinese analogues with Chinese Shou Lung ending up ultimately being a bigger deal in Kara Tur and the core Forgotten Realms and even spelljammer than other OA stuff. The mismatch of applying Japanese cultural stuff across the board to Chinese inspired stuff was quite noticeable and was generally deprecated over time. When reading the Horde trilogy of novels for example I don't remember any Japanese elements in the characterization of the Shou.

We were right in the middle of a ninja craze in the 80s, so it made total sense

The Forgotten Realms Kara Tur material also had modules and stuff that were often useful if you wanted to do something Chinese. Mad Monkey Vs. the Dragon Claw is one example that clearly was drawing from more hong kong cinema

 

[Faolyn]

I’m not suggesting that Gygax was an anti-Semite. But I’m pretty sure he was aware of the cultural associations of the word, and wasn’t looking into Greek antiquity to find something obscure, which he then Anglicised.

Would he have been? Unless he had decided to become well-read in Jewish religion and practices, all he really had access to books written in the 70s and earlier. At best, he likely saw that phylacteries were used by Jews to hold prayer scrolls but didn't realize they had actual importance--he was JW/christian and christians tend to put prayers and scripture on all sorts of things but those things rarely seem to have much cultural importance.

 

[Maxperson]

But it was designed for and defaulted to the rules in the OA book. Which just made things more egregious.

I don't see how expanding the cultures for the non-japanese areas of Kara-tur to bring things more in line with how they should be makes things more egregious. It would make the classes from the book incongruous, but it wouldn't be more egregious.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't see how expanding the cultures for the non-japanese areas of Kara-tur to bring things more in line with how they should be makes things more egregious. It would make the classes from the book incongruous, but it wouldn't be more egregious.

Yeah egregious is the wrong word. There isn't anything inherently wrong with leaning on a particular source of media. Samurai and Ninja movies were popular at that time. I would have liked more kung fu and hong kong action in there, but I understand why they did what they did

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah egregious is the wrong word. There isn't anything inherently wrong with leaning on a particular source of media. Samurai and Ninja movies were popular at that time. I would have liked more kung fu and hong kong action in there, but I understand why they did what they did

2e did that in dragon magazine 127. They came out with a lot of kung fu styles. Dragon Kung Fu, Tiger, Crane, etc. with different damage amounts and some special maneuvers. Pretty sure it was a feat, too. It wasn't just a monk thing.

 

[Dire Bare]

Yeah egregious is the wrong word. There isn't anything inherently wrong with leaning on a particular source of media. Samurai and Ninja movies were popular at that time. I would have liked more kung fu and hong kong action in there, but I understand why they did what they did

I'll trust Asian voices on how "okay" Oriental Adventures was, rather than folks in this thread who refuse to accept any progress towards a more inclusive D&D.

I highly recommend the Asians Represent podcast, where a panel of Asian-diaspora gamers go through Oriental Adventures (and later, other books) and discuss what works . . . and what very much does not.

 

[Azzy]

I don't see how expanding the cultures for the non-japanese areas of Kara-tur to bring things more in line with how they should be makes things more egregious. It would make the classes from the book incongruous, but it wouldn't be more egregious.

Well, it became more egregious in that the rules could not represent or catch up to the setting and were mostly trash.