Role Playing in China

[NewJeffCT]

Okay so I'm thinking about trying to put together a china themed campaign. Does anyone know any good resources, besides the oriental adventures book, that would help me with this? Even stuff like music for atmosphere would be great too.

AEG’s version of Swashbuckling Adventures has a source book called “Cathay: Jewel of the East” that has a lot of China material, including some Chinese words at the back.

http://www.swashbucklingadv.com/products.html and scroll down a bit.

Quick Chinese pronunciation guide:
Q sounds like CH, or even tCH – i.e., lovely actress Shu Qi’s name of Qi is pronounced CHEE (her only US movie was The Transporter)

X sounds like SH, - the famous city Xi’an is pronounced SHEE AHN

ZH sounds like J – the silk city of Suzhou is pronounced SUE JOE

Ni Hao (Knee How) is the most common greeting between people.

I would also research Chinese government from that era, as it was more emperor ruling over semi-hereditary governors and a bureaucracy than the feudal state of medieval Europe.

 

[JimAde]

Quick Chinese pronunciation guide:
Q sounds like CH, or even tCH – i.e., lovely actress Shu Qi’s name of Qi is pronounced CHEE (her only US movie was The Transporter)

X sounds like SH, - the famous city Xi’an is pronounced SHEE AHN

ZH sounds like J – the silk city of Suzhou is pronounced SUE JOE

I know I'm veering off topic, but this has always bugged me. If Q sounds like CH, and written Chinese doesn't use Roman letters anyway, why not just write CH? Why? WHYYYYY?

Sorry. I don't really expect an answer. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

 

[Neil Aitken]

'Hero' is a good movie, as is 'The Emperor and the Assassin' with Gong Li.

I'll second the vote for "The Emperor and the Assassin" with Gong Li -- this movie actually captures a lot of the complexities of the Chinese court intrigue as well as being a great action movie.

Any of Jet Li's "Once Upon a Time in China" series as well as his "Huang Fei-Hong" series (sorry I don't recall the American release title). Definitely watch "Swordsman II" and "Twin Warriors" to get a feel for sword fighting styles as well. I'd also recommend "Iron Monkey" for martial arts.

Other good sources on the web:

the I-Ching online (great for generating story ideas)

Pebbles Campaign World - a d20 campaign based on Chinese culture

ZhongWen.com - online Chinese resource with dictionaries and online texts in Chinese and English -- very good site.

The Oriental Hardpoint - another campaign world based on HK martial arts and Chinese history with pdfs versions of each adventure (really useful)

Phillip Riley's Oriental Adventures Site -- also features several interesting articles on Chinese names and mythology

I'll post more when I think of some others.

Hope this gets you off to a good start.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I'll second the vote for "The Emperor and the Assassin" with Gong Li -- this movie actually captures a lot of the complexities of the Chinese court intrigue as well as being a great action movie.

Any of Jet Li's "Once Upon a Time in China" series as well as his "Huang Fei-Hong" series (sorry I don't recall the American release title). Definitely watch "Swordsman II" and "Twin Warriors" to get a feel for sword fighting styles as well. I'd also recommend "Iron Monkey" for martial arts.

Hope this gets you off to a good start.

Great post. As a reference, in America, it is usually spelled Wong Fei Hong, not Huang... so, if you search IMDB or something. I generally describe him to folks that don't know that he is the Chinese version of Robin Hood, only he uses kung fu instead of bows & arrows.

 

[tarchon]

2. Very little grammar. If you know a few vocabulary words (around 100+), with what little grammar you are taught in class, you can start putting together your own sentences and you will be understood (assuming you continue to pay attention to your tones). This is not true of non-tonal languages like Japanese and more so Korean (the language I'm currently studying) which has a LOT of grammar in which you must follow or else you will sound silly or worse stupid.

Mandarin has just as much grammar as any other language. Inflections aren't the only means by which grammatical function is expressed.

 

[Neil Aitken]

Great post. As a reference, in America, it is usually spelled Wong Fei Hong, not Huang... so, if you search IMDB or something. I generally describe him to folks that don't know that he is the Chinese version of Robin Hood, only he uses kung fu instead of bows & arrows.

Oops -- I knew something looked odd about Huang Fei Hong (as opposed to Wong Fei Hong) but since I didn't have the DVD in front of me, I didn't check which character it was. Thanks for catching my mistake.

Glad it was useful

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I know I'm veering off topic, but this has always bugged me. If Q sounds like CH, and written Chinese doesn't use Roman letters anyway, why not just write CH? Why? WHYYYYY?

Sorry. I don't really expect an answer. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

Because that's how you spell it in the Pinyin system, the official method of romanization created and used in the PRC by its government since 1979.

 

[Neil Aitken]

Grammar and Idiom

Mandarin has just as much grammar as any other language. Inflections aren't the only means by which grammatical function is expressed.

What Mandarin has is a set order: STPVO

Subject-Time-Place-Verb-Object

But while the order is set, there are still thousands of variations as to which elements you include or leave out, which clauses you create, how nested you want to make a statement, and what you can assume from context.

What complicates things further is the frequency of idiomatic expressions drawn from classical and contemporary literary, religious, and political texts. Most people in Taiwan and China learn Chinese through the memorization of these texts -- which in turn become commonplaces that all native speakers are familiar with. So, by referencing a 4 or 5 character line from a commonly recalled text, native speakers of Chinese can communicate a wealth of information. These idioms then can be used to neatly sum up a complicated situation by referencing an already known and studied text.

It'd be like us looking at a couple and saying "They are so 'Romeo and Juliet'" -- at once implying a deep romantic relationship and at the same time hinting at an eventual tragic ending. If it were already known that the couple's parents hated each other for some reason and disapproved of their relationship, the use of the reference would be even more warranted. And yet, all that is necessary to say is "Romeo and Juliet".

 

[johnsemlak]

Because that's how you spell it in the Pinyin system, the official method of romanization created and used in the PRC by its government since 1979.

To expand on that, The Chinese Pinyin system is basically a system of pronouncing Roman letters when written in that system; and it's the official method of writing in the Latin alphabet in China.

Really, when you think about it, pronunciation of letters in English is rather arbitrary, and loads of sounds have many different ways of writing them.

For example, the sound "ch" as in 'choice' is spelled differently in the following words:

witch, picture, mixture, question, cello, and concerto.

The letters 'ch' are pronounced differently in a number of words as well, compare choice, chemistry, machine, Chicago

 

[Neil Aitken]

More recommendations

I almost forgot one of the best places to turn to for ideas for building a Chinese centered game: anime.

Try the following (you can get them from Netflix):

Twelve Kingdoms -- this one is set in mythic version of China which is broken up into twelve kingdoms. Lots of monsters, demons, and political intrigue. Very much derived from traditional Chinese mythology.

3x3 Eyes -- a pretty good but short series (I think 6 episodes long) set mostly in contempory China with lots of monsters and demons as well.

Also some more links to look up:

Mandarin Tools -- another portal site with lots of dictionaries and useful tools for learning Chinese.

Encyclopedia Mythica - several articles and entries on Chinese mythology and gods

Internet Sacred Text Archive - this pretty cool -- lots of English translations of obscure and difficult to find ancient texts. The website is free, but you can order the whole thing on CD for pretty cheap as well.

Chinese Astrology Online - probably the coolest thing about this site is that you can look up the "Rise and Fall of Your Life" chart It also has an online Chinese almanac.

Mah Jongg Rules - just in case you've ever wondered how real Mah Jongg is played.

Have fun