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Message: <blockquote data-quote="occam" data-source="post: 9450780" data-attributes="member: 39815">For those interested in Tian Xia as an East Asian analog setting but not familiar with it, I can add some commentary.In general, I prefer Kara-Tur as a base setting for my own use. Overall, its adaptation of East Asia to a fantasy setting is fairly straightforward, which I know is one of the problems some folks have with it. ("Oh, great; two fantasy Japans from different points in history? And two fantasy Chinas from different points in history? And fantasy Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, etc.? LAME!") I get that, but its relatively close adherence to real-world geography and history is part of its appeal to me, as someone who became an Asian history buff largely because of the publication of Oriental Adventures and the subsequent Kara-Tur-based adventures.Tian Xia takes some steps away from identifying with real-world regions and time periods, while remaining recognizably East Asian. It does that by leaning hard into the D&D-ness of things, including the modern "Mos Eisley Cantina" atmosphere, as some refer to it. For example, you have organized nations of bird-people (tengu), snake-people (nagaji), hobgoblins, aasimar, oni and giants, locathahs, and pseudo-Japanese elves, and lots of other PC races/species without nations of their own (kitsune, wayangs, ratfolk, dwarves, gnomes, etc.). There's also a nation run by a kraken and its boggard (frog-people) and kappa minions. And, like most of the world of Golarion, to the extent that Tian Xia can be related to the real world, it's in what would be considered a fairly late-stage historical period for a D&D setting: there are well-established transnational organizations (such as the ubiquitous Pathfinder Society), regular contact exists between Tian Xia and the Inner Sea Region, etc.Both Kara-Tur and Tian Xia have similar amounts of setting support, although Kara-Tur still has a greater amount of adventure material published for it. Of course, you can adapt non-setting-specific adventures for either, although sticking closer to the real-world historical baseline can make doing that for Kara-Tur a little easier. (For example, it's pretty easy to adapt a lot of Rokugan material for Kara-Tur by stripping out the Rokugan-specific stuff, while the analog of Japan in Tian Xia would require a bit more effort from the DM to make things feel like they fit.)One setting presents a human-centric analog of feudal East Asia with a relatively light veneer of fantasy; the other is a cosmopolitan multi-species modernist setting with very prominent fantasy elements. Which one is preferred is a matter of taste.</blockquote>

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