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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8032748">I mentioned D&D books because of this post, but my statement was meant to apply to any RPG dealing with cultural or historical material: There are still people who use oriental adventures in their 1E and 1E retroclone games. Like I mentioned before, I used 1E and 3E oriental adventures, greatly modified, to run 3rd edition wuxia-inspired campaigns (often taking classes here, mechanics there, reskinning them and using them for different kinds of martial heroes. The martial styles in both editions were useful as a foundation for what I was interested in doing. One of the big things OA introduced was Non-weapon proficiencies. So it is important in terms of the development of the game. But there are also plenty of people who run the game straight as is, for a more pastiche setting. I don't think it is a binary. Obviously anyone who has delved deeper into these topics, and has stayed with the hobby this long, is going to use newer games, be more aware of distinctions and information that OA didn't address or missed. But that doesn't mean you have to stop using OA. You can go back to it and run it sometimes (for a variety of reasons). Personally I sometimes like pastiche settings that are a bit gonzo. OA was basically like putting samurai movies, kung fu films and western inspired asian material (like Shogun or even the Karate Kid) in a blender. Now that isn't going to produce something terribly authentic. But it isn't meant to. It is just meant to be fun and to reflect the kind of media people found exciting at the time. And clearly if you are trying to do something that is like historically based Tang Dynasty or genre specific (like wuxia) OA isn't really intended for that kind of focused flavor (though like I said, I found plenty of stuff to kitbash from both versions of OA). Before I was super into wuxia though, I was just interested in martial arts in general (doing both traditional and sport MA). And in those days, I found OA useful for running a D&D style campaign that had martial arts in it.</blockquote>

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