D&D General Non-European Campaigns?

[Fenris-77]

@Voadam - Sahasra isn't really what I'm looking for, sadly. Leaving the D&D classes and magic mostly unchanged really takes something away from the setting IMO, at least in terms of what I would like to see from it anyway. I'd prefer something a little more purpose built. Good suggestions though, for sure.

 

[Voadam]

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny was a great Indian mythos/Siddhartha fantasy/sci-fi novel. There are also a bunch of English language movies incorporating Hanuman, even if a lot are more from a Chinese than an Indian perspective. Then there is Bollywood which might have some inspirational material.

AD&D 2e had the Indian-themed Island of Darkness Sri Raji in Ravenloft with a decent module RM3 Web of Illusion. I had a lot of fun running that.

Exalted at different points had some Indian flavor to its anime white wolf system fantasy setting.

 

[Fenris-77]

Exalted at different points had some Indian flavor to its anime white wolf system fantasy setting.

Now that you mention it I remember liking this about Exalted. I haven't cracked that book open in a dogs age. As far as a Mythic India Setting in general, I don't feel like I know enough to want to build my own setting out of source material. It's something I'd play with the right support though. I can run euro fantasy, urban fantasy and Cthulhu stuff off the back of grocery receipt, but only because I'm so familiar with the tropes and conventions. Mythic India would be a ton of work. So, to the back-est of back burners it goes, awaiting the day a source book will rise from the ruck to liberate it.

 

[Voadam]

Against the Dark Yogi. Not D&D but designed for doing Mythic India as a setting and adventure tropes without being already familiar with the concepts.

It is also part of the Covid-19 $19.99 Charity Bundle for Doctors Without Borders which presents a ton of stuff for 97% off.

 

[David Howery]

way back in 2E days, I had a part of the WoG that I intended to use as a pseudo-India, and drew up a set of rules for Indian-type NPCs, monsters, kingdoms, etc., based on much too little research. Sadly, the PCs never did make it to that part of the world...

 

[Nytmare]

I've been running a Torchbearer hexcrawl game built off of a bastardization of Sumerian mythology.

 

[Quartz]

way back in 2E days, I had a part of the WoG that I intended to use as a pseudo-India,

Zindia, wasn't it?

 

[David Howery]

Zindia, wasn't it?

that was EGGs' version, on that map that came out in one of the Dragon Annuals, showing the full map of Oerth (something I was less than impressed with). My attempt was long before that, and based on that expanded continental map of Oerik that appears in the WoG folio... there is a peninsula heading down to the south that you can see part of; I decided to turn that into pseudo-India.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I've just started playing in a Zakhara game recently. So far haven't seen anything that wouldn't be in a European-inspired game, so can't speak much on it.

I did have an idea to either pick up Ankh or Rising Sun from C'Mon Miniatures, and use the games minis as the base of inspiration for a whole campaign.

Ankh: Gods of Egypt

Take the role of Egyptian gods fighting to become the one true god in an epic board game from the creators of Blood Rage and Rising Sun

www.kickstarter.com

Rising Sun

Clans must use politics, strength and honor to rule the land in this board game with amazing miniatures set in legendary feudal Japan.

www.kickstarter.com

In the case of Ankh, I'd probably use Golarion's Osirion, and create a plot where the gods themselves have taken mortal form in an attempt to take control of the entire world, and make themselves the only gods allowed for worship. From there it would be a bit of a Pokemon-style defeat each god and their entourage one at a time from place to place, with side quests and encounters in between.

I mean, a lot of these minis tell the story themselves and you just have to fill in the blanks yourself. Imagine stumbling upon these two while taking a break in a desert oasis?

 

[MGibster]

Played in a fair amount of L5R campaigns and a couple non European based fantasy games. I think the biggest problem is an unfamiliarity with other culture's mores and the like. In L5R's case they have to devote a not insubstantial amount of space informing player characters of how society is structured, what you can and cannot do etc.

I've run into a lot of that when running Legend of the Five Rings. In the very first game I ran, the PCs defeated a group of samurai and immediately set upon the corpses to loot them of anything valuable. I paused the game, explained the social ramifications of their behavior, and let them decide what to do. So ingrained is the pattern of defeating and looting enemies ingrained into the minds of many gamers that it's tough to break the cycle.

I had another player who wanted to make a Lion samurai was had been a geisha in the past. I explained the rigid class structure making such a concept difficult. The character could certainly possess all the skills of a geisha, I think most of them were high schools anyway, but to have actually been a geisha would have been a considerable embarrassment to her family. We could have worked in a dark secret into her background but she declined.

When you stray from the normal role playing games it requires a bit more investment from the players and the GM. I find that sometimes the rewards are worth the investment though.