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<blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8974486" data-attributes="member: 2209"><p>I don't think <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17321/KaraTur-The-Eastern-Realms-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">Kara Tur</a> is beyond terrible, but it does have some issues.</p><p></p><p>For me the biggest is tying 1e/2e Kara Tur to <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17334/Oriental-Adventures-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">1e Oriental Adventures</a> mechanics which is mostly fantasy Japanese classes and samurai honor with a bit of Chinese Kung Fu martial artists, while Kara Tur is two different era fantasy samurai Japanese islands, two fantasy Chinese empires, and some other South Asian fantasy analogues.</p><p></p><p>Having fantasy Chinese be samurai, bushi, and ninjas and have feudal Japanese style clans and samurai honor system is a bad fit.</p><p></p><p>1e OA is mostly a Player's Handbook of Japanese samurai fantasy stuff with a lot of cool 1e mechanics (classes, weapons, magic, proficiency options), an honor system I had no interest in using, and one of the best implementations of martial arts throughout D&D's editions. Kara Tur is literally covered in two pages at the back of OA briefly describing the two sets of Japanese and Chinese fantasy kingdoms, with four pages of daily life in Kara Tur which is all about fantasy feudal samurai culture.</p><p></p><p>Later the setting was fleshed out in a series of modules each with heavy individual setting area development for a different part of Kara Tur, and then a boxed set for the setting adding it to the Forgotten Realms.</p><p></p><p>In 2e it got fleshed out more with the Horde trilogy of novels and modules where the fantasy Chinese Shou gets spotlighted as being very fantasy Chinese and not Japanese. 2e Spelljammer took the FR Shou as getting into Spelljamming. Like every other spelljamming faction they basically get highlighted and fleshed out once then never really mentioned again in any of the follow up products.</p><p></p><p>3e and later has some Shou as having formed some enclaves in the core Forgotten Realms after the Horde events, so you can have fantasy Chinese canonically in normal FR stuff as part of the setting.</p><p></p><p>For me I loved a lot of 1e OA, the martial arts, the magic, the monsters, a bunch of the new weapons and armor and some classes and races and some nonweapon proficiencies (which was introduced in this book as a new mechanic). I had zero interest in the samurai feudal culture and honor system though so I never really got into the setting stuff, but I had a couple of the modules and I read the Horde trilogy and the spelljammer stuff and liked a bunch of what I did read.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Voadam, post: 8974486, member: 2209"] I don't think [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17321/KaraTur-The-Eastern-Realms-1e?affiliate_id=17596']Kara Tur[/URL] is beyond terrible, but it does have some issues. For me the biggest is tying 1e/2e Kara Tur to [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17334/Oriental-Adventures-1e?affiliate_id=17596']1e Oriental Adventures[/URL] mechanics which is mostly fantasy Japanese classes and samurai honor with a bit of Chinese Kung Fu martial artists, while Kara Tur is two different era fantasy samurai Japanese islands, two fantasy Chinese empires, and some other South Asian fantasy analogues. Having fantasy Chinese be samurai, bushi, and ninjas and have feudal Japanese style clans and samurai honor system is a bad fit. 1e OA is mostly a Player's Handbook of Japanese samurai fantasy stuff with a lot of cool 1e mechanics (classes, weapons, magic, proficiency options), an honor system I had no interest in using, and one of the best implementations of martial arts throughout D&D's editions. Kara Tur is literally covered in two pages at the back of OA briefly describing the two sets of Japanese and Chinese fantasy kingdoms, with four pages of daily life in Kara Tur which is all about fantasy feudal samurai culture. Later the setting was fleshed out in a series of modules each with heavy individual setting area development for a different part of Kara Tur, and then a boxed set for the setting adding it to the Forgotten Realms. In 2e it got fleshed out more with the Horde trilogy of novels and modules where the fantasy Chinese Shou gets spotlighted as being very fantasy Chinese and not Japanese. 2e Spelljammer took the FR Shou as getting into Spelljamming. Like every other spelljamming faction they basically get highlighted and fleshed out once then never really mentioned again in any of the follow up products. 3e and later has some Shou as having formed some enclaves in the core Forgotten Realms after the Horde events, so you can have fantasy Chinese canonically in normal FR stuff as part of the setting. For me I loved a lot of 1e OA, the martial arts, the magic, the monsters, a bunch of the new weapons and armor and some classes and races and some nonweapon proficiencies (which was introduced in this book as a new mechanic). I had zero interest in the samurai feudal culture and honor system though so I never really got into the setting stuff, but I had a couple of the modules and I read the Horde trilogy and the spelljammer stuff and liked a bunch of what I did read. [/QUOTE]
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