D&D General Kara Tur 5e

[Shades of Eternity]

What's the PRC?

People's Republic of China.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

ok question

How much can you actually do when writing up a fictional China before you trigger the PRC?

I've had this writeup for my own work on my hard drive for years that I was itching to post, but been hesitant to avoid ending up on a list.

Depends, on where you live and do you interact with Chinese officials. I think I remember an incident of Chaosium getting some books printed in China pulped by the authorities over references to people like Zhou Enlai.
If you are not likely to interact with the authorities there you should be safe enough. I really doubt that they have the resources to go after everyone in every country that writes something they do not approve of. They are probably aware of the Streisand effect.

 

[JConstantine]

Well, there’s a lot there. The original drew on 70s/80s martial arts films mostly (Japanese/US ninja films and Shaw Brothers kung fu) and of course the state of the medium has moved on. Here are some media which are both authentic and well known:

- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000): Not really very recent but the best and most famous distillation of the wuxia genre for this century.

- Shogun (2024): As mentioned above, for Sengoku Japan.

- Alchemy of Souls (2022): Probably the best known Korean medieval fantasy series, comes with lots of worldbuilding and Korean fantasy tropes, available on Netflix. Basing Koryo on this series would be absolutely fine by me.

- The Untamed (2019): A relatively well known Netflix xianxia drama, with the bonus of being very gay (danmei). There are loads of these, though.

- The Apothecary Diaries (2023): A Japanese anime series set in a mixed (mostly Ming Chinese but also quite Japanese and Korean) East Asian medieval setting, also on Netflix.

One thing I'd add to this list is Blue Eye Samurai (2023).

Actually, as bad as a sequel it is to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I think Sword of Destiny is good inspiration for wuxia-inspired RPGs.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Since you guys are pretty good at this sort of media, I remember in the back of my head some movie that could be described as journey to the west on a train.

It was about in the late 2000s

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but yeah a fantasy asia should be incredibly diverse in cultures, if nothing else, for projection purposes and you might even make a few unique ones to allow multicultural projection.

Like my use of the thri-kreen in kara-tur was a homage to the riftwar novels.

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Also how would you do Fantasy Macau and make it feel special? Is it an independent island kingdom, connected to Tu Lung, or even a pocket dimension?

I see it run by bullwugs.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Every time someone brings up "but what about the PRC, we can't include anything Chinese because of that" I see it as an excuse to exclude Canadian/American/Australian/whatever born Chinese like me.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Every time someone brings up "but what about the PRC, we can't include anything Chinese because of that" I see it as an excuse to exclude Canadian/American/Australian/whatever born Chinese like me.

I'm like a vampire, I need to be invited first before I go ahead with any writings.

I'll consider this an invitation to proceed.

 

[Scribe]

Each Cultivation Path could be a Feat Chain of sorts, one separate from the feats a character can get through their class. PF2 sort of does it this way by having both Ancestral Feats and Class Feats (among all of the other feats that RPG offers. ). This way your character is advancing as a class and the member of a particular ancestry.

This is a Swifttail Enkoh from Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms.

I'm curious if anything beyond Ryokos is needed at all.

 

[Corinnguard]

I'm curious if anything beyond Ryokos is needed at all.

True. Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms does offer a lot of setting material for anyone wanting to adventure in a Far East-like setting. It has rules on how to fight Kaiju and harvest their body parts, craft pieces of equipment, Asian weapons, prosthetic limbs, advanced weapon masteries, new species/new subspecies, new subclasses, etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Every time someone brings up "but what about the PRC, we can't include anything Chinese because of that" I see it as an excuse to exclude Canadian/American/Australian/whatever born Chinese like me.

I'm confused as to why people are concerned about China's reaction to info in an RPG.

 

[TravDoc42]

I'm confused as to why people are concerned about China's reaction to info in an RPG.

Sales, maybe? I have no clue if TTRPG games are big sellers in China, though.