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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8493159" data-attributes="member: 18">OA's being problem was indeed being called Oriental Adventures. Not only was that already a bit of a "grandpa title" in the 1980s, but it was really misleading, and misleading in exactly the way that was actually a problem at the time (and sometimes still is), which is the view that all "Asian" cultures are "essentially the same" or "very similar" and also that they're "exotic". OA fed that a bit by arguably over-differentiating stuff. Classes like Bushi didn't need to exist. Fighter had that. But because of exoticisation, they had to re-make Fighter as an "oriental" (sigh) class. And as you say, it super-Japan-specific, particularly in terms of classes, races, magic, weapons, etc. Not exclusive, but the focus was very clear.If it had a better title, and was more openly Japan-centric, and maybe hadn't doubled-down on "THE EXOTIC ORIENT!!!" quite so hard with stuff like classes and honor rules and so on, I think it would be a lot better-regarded than many later titles - it was one of the first to use cultural consultants (indeed, maybe the first, and only one for a long, long time), and whilst it's overly keen on being "exotic", it's rarely negative about the cultures involved and certainly doesn't point and laugh or anything, nor stir fears that these cultures are a "threat" (which was a bit of an unfortunate trope that appeared in some RPGs - whether it's endless Asian hordes, quasi-Islamic conquerors, Japanese corporations coming to take over the US or whatever).Lo5R/Rokugan isn't perfect but did a better job by consciously combining mythical and cultural elements from various cultures, and saying it was doing so, and combining them into a whole that looked much more like an RPG setting rather than a weird approximation of medieval Japan. I think part of the issue with OA was that, at this time with D&D, there was a strong tension between fantastic and historical elements, and some people wanted D&D to be more of a straight-up fantasy game, and others to be something close to a historical game, just with fantastical elements. This tension continued into early-mid 2E, before the success of stuff like Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape, the wackier parts of the FR and so on, and just a general change in what the audience wanted (I would suggest) as younger players came in, which caused D&D to largely abandon quasi-historical stuff (a good decision, frankly). It's never gone back since.</blockquote>

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