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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3201333" data-attributes="member: 1465">My personal opinions:Absolutely not, it's a great change of theme, especially if you've played many western settings with the same staple ideas. Changing to a setting where players cannot make the same assumptions is refreshing for everyone (except very monolithic players).I expect it to provide a different flavor and image both in the details and overall, and at least something different in how the things work in the world for example religion, economy/trade, technology, magic, training, information gathering... not necessarily all of them but at least some.I think that to capture the feel you need to model something. It's not important that it's actually exact (D&D has IMO a poorly realistic economy model in the standard setting too, but that doesn't make the game bad), as long as it somehow matches some common ideas of what asia was or could have been in the past.Stereotypes are good for the start. Most of us started running D&D with archetypical paladins and wizards and orcs and elves and dragons, and later moved for sophisticated or altered concepts. But if you're running an asian setting for the first time, SET THE STANDARDS first! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Try to teach the players what are the basic concepts of an eastern dragon (quite different from the western dragon). Have classic Samurai, Ninja and Monks, etc.Characters are not going to be completely different from roleplay point of view, the motivations and personalities will not be utterly different. But because usually there is a change in the view of the society as a whole, then I expect certain differences to test your roleplaying against. For example, we play in the Rokugan setting, and the concept of private property is completely different, and so is the concept of honor. Actions during adventuring are affected by these (e.g. the importance of treasure) and this makes it a nicely different game. OTOH, mechanically there is no change, combat is still combat and so on. But I like the idea of giving even mechanics a "spin" by having different classes/feats/skills at your disposal (tho this is not related to the eastern nature of the game, and can be done for a western setting too).In our case, no one is an anime fan and no one is a munchkin, quite the opposite. Rokugan has more abusable characters options than core D&D, at that means that playing with a munchkin can spoil the game for everyone else. But at the same time, strong roleplay frameworks like that of honor & duty, or the different take about property (i.e. equipment) are likely to keep a munchkin away.I think it always helps in order to make the setting feel different from the others. They don't necessarily need to be big changes such as "armor as DR" or totally different spellcasting rules. But for example I find that additions like Void Points or Iaijutsu Focus in Rokugan really work great, the important thing is that they have an in-game explanation. You don't actually NEED to have a whole set of rules for martial arts for example, there is no single topic that MUST exist as a new mechanic to make an asian setting work, but additional rules can help make that topic stand out.For an oriental-asian game of D&D, yes of course <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> . But then if what you have in mind is an anime-manga game, then I think we're on very different tracks.</blockquote>

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