D&D 5E Oriental Adventures 5e: How would you do it?

[Guest 6801328]

I probably wouldn't actually call it Gurkha, but a subclass based on them would entail some kind of loyalty. So maybe at the end of a long rest you get to choose a companion who you are 'protecting', and when that companion is attacked you get a reaction. It might be that you get to choose from three different reactions, which you would base on whether it was a weapon attack, direct spell attack, or aoe spell attack.

Or something like that.

 

[Yaztromo]

My biggest takeaway from Oriental Adventures is the Sight Duel, that can be converted to 5e quite easily (and that could be all!), while you can manage and customize weapons, artifacts, classes and races taken from oriental mythology as you like, with no huge issue. I just wouldn't mix up too much myths coming from different coountries and traditions.

 

[QuietBrowser]

So, if we can kindly shut up about the damn name and focus on what actually matters - namely, what kind of content could actually fit in an Asiatic Fantasy themed expansion book?

Because, whilst too many people have been talking about the political correctness angle, I haven't seen a lot of actual crunch talk, and that's what I started this thread for. In particular, I'm interested in races; I have plans for my own setting, and I don't really want to be stuck with a fantastical "not India" continent where my only native races are vanaras, mongoose hengeyokai, reskinned aasimars, and humanoid white elephants.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So, if we can kindly shut up about the damn name and focus on what actually matters - namely, what kind of content could actually fit in an Asiatic Fantasy themed expansion book?

Because, whilst too many people have been talking about the political correctness angle, I haven't seen a lot of actual crunch talk, and that's what I started this thread for. In particular, I'm interested in races; I have plans for my own setting, and I don't really want to be stuck with a fantastical "not India" continent where my only native races are vanaras, mongoose hengeyokai, reskinned aasimars, and humanoid white elephants.

OK. Can you give a bit more detail about your own setting then, and what sort of races you do want to be 'stuck with' then?

Are you trying to evoke a different place? A "not japan" or a "not China"? Or is it more original?
What sort of races will be common enough to it to be regular PC options, and how do they fit in and interact with each other?

Any classes that you think would be necessary that aren't already around? Or adjustments to current classes?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

So, if we can kindly shut up about the damn name and focus on what actually matters - namely, what kind of content could actually fit in an Asiatic Fantasy themed expansion book?

Monsters, mostly. Most character tropes from East Asian folklore and media are adequately covered by the core classes: although you could write a new "ninja" and "wu jen" and so on, it's not really necessary and may just be pointless exoticism. But the monsters are very distinctive, and the existing monster products only have a handful (almost all Japanese).

In particular, I'm interested in races; I have plans for my own setting, and I don't really want to be stuck with a fantastical "not India" continent where my only native races are vanaras, mongoose hengeyokai, reskinned aasimars, and humanoid white elephants.

Wikipedia apparently has a list of non-human races in Hindu mythology. That seems like a good place to start. If I were you I'd pay particular attention to the guhyakas, the yakshas, the kumbhandas, the kinnaras, and maybe the pretas.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am biased towards Rokugan, for which I have made a 5e conversion, but it's a very specific oriental settings and I think that instead if WotC does an "Oriental Adventures" sourcebook it should be as broad as possible (apart from the fact that WotC doesn't own the Rokugan IPR, so it just won't do an official 5e version of it unless it partners with AEG).

I don't really know much about asian folklore, but just like D&D core is always a hodgepodge of western mythologies (greek, european medieval, celtic, egyptian, nordic, modern gothic etc...), so I think an Oriental Adventures probably better be, full of diverse stuff which a gaming group could eventually narrow down if they want to.

I think WotC did actually a pretty good job in 3e, so I would expect the same kind of variety. However 5e books are notoriously slimmer than 3e books. For this reason, I fear they would sacrifice monsters in favor of more PC material than may be really necessary (but still probably sells better). I may speak from my own echo chamber, but personally when playing oriental adventures I very rarely saw non-human PCs. In fact I think those non-human oriental races tend to have a stronger "alien" feel compared to Elves and Dwarves, and so I wouldn't really want 50 pages on oriental races only to see players pick up humans most of the times.

About classes, honestly I would try to do a minimal work, by adapting the PHB classes rather than designing entirely new base classes from scratch. In my Rokugan conversion, I use the Monk as-is and then I have a Samurai which is a small adaptation of the Fighter, a Shugenja which is similar to a Wizard with a different spell list, and only the Courtier is a class designed from the ground up. A more generic oriental adventure setting obviously needs more than just 4 classes, but it probably can still feature Barbarians, Rogues, Sorcerers and Clerics with their own modifications.

As for new rules systems... not sure what we really "need". Martial arts are notoriously difficult to represent with their intricacies, there's a risk to job bog the game down in rules minutia for minimal benefits, but presumably at least something is needed. In Rokugan we have small rules systems for measuring Honor and Taint, and I love them, while rules for deadly duels always work awkwardly in conjunction with the HP-based framework of D&D.

Ultimately, the monsters are really the most important thing. I don't think that the mechanics are nearly as important as the narrative, in order to deliver an oriental feel to the game. So lots of monsters lore is what actually makes it work in the end.

 

[Slit518]

Adventures of the Exotic East? How about that?

 

[Shasarak]

In D&D's history, twice now, a sourcebook called Oriental Adventures has been published - the first for AD&D 1st edition, written by none other than Gary Gygax himself, and the second for 3.0.

I probably would not get too excited about seeing Garys name on the cover. In essence Zeb Cook did most of the work on this one with Gary adding his name to boost sales.

 

[77IM]

One thing I would definitely include is a batch of new Backgrounds, even ones that have substantial overlap with existing Backgrounds.

I'm also going to float the idea that, instead of having a setting with a Japan-analogue, a China-analogue, a Thai-analogue, etc. all side-by-side, you could just lump all of it together into one single setting: Shaolin monks and Taoist priests interacting daily with ninja and samurai. I suggest this because standard D&D has druids (Celtic origin), paladins (French origin), monks (some sort of Asian origin), bards (British/Gaelic origin), barbarians (ancient Greek origin, but popularized by Rome, and often applied to Germanic peoples), berserkers (Norse origin), etc. The races and monsters have similarly diverse origins -- it's basically a giant melting pot of European history and mythology, with the occasional element pulled in from more distant cultures (especially the monsters; certain really iconic creatures, like gold dragons and ogre magi and nagas, were Asian in origin). So I think you could do the same thing for an Asian-inspired setting: pull together all the common popular elements and just go hog-wild. It's not like China didn't have assassins who resembled ninjas, or that Japan didn't have martial arts monks.

The most important thing here would be to have an author who is well-versed in Asian cultures, preferably someone who actually grew up there. An outsider's perspective is always going to produce something slightly skewed and artificial-feeling.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I'm also going to float the idea that, instead of having a setting with a Japan-analogue, a China-analogue, a Thai-analogue, etc. all side-by-side, you could just lump all of it together into one single setting: Shaolin monks and Taoist priests interacting daily with ninja and samurai. I suggest this because standard D&D has druids (Celtic origin), paladins (French origin), monks (some sort of Asian origin), bards (British/Gaelic origin), barbarians (ancient Greek origin, but popularized by Rome, and often applied to Germanic peoples), berserkers (Norse origin), etc. The races and monsters have similarly diverse origins -- it's basically a giant melting pot of European history and mythology, with the occasional element pulled in from more distant cultures (especially the monsters; certain really iconic creatures, like gold dragons and ogre magi and nagas, were Asian in origin). So I think you could do the same thing for an Asian-inspired setting: pull together all the common popular elements and just go hog-wild. It's not like China didn't have assassins who resembled ninjas, or that Japan didn't have martial arts monks.

Your reasoning seems fine on its own, and I don't mean to resurrect the PC discussion, but "Asian fusion" settings are something of a hot-button topic, and in the current climate are... frowned upon. Always something you have to be aware of.