Yes, I'm still confused by Oriental Adventures

[hong]

I know that people think it is a great book but I must assert my opinion that this is a Rokugan primer and not a very good "Oriental Adventures" sourcebook.

I'm trying to create an oriental flare to a section of my campaign and I'm finding that if I want to avoid Rokugan material (the clans), and simply have a Human character, I must remove 46 feats from consideration from the book. Only 22 feats remain that do not have a clan requirement.

_No_ feats in OA have a clan requirement. Some have "ancestor" listed next to them, but the only game-mechanical effect is that you can only take such a feat at 1st level. If you actually read the intro to the Feats chapter, it specifically says that anyone can take any ancestor feat, regardless of their clan.

Furthermore, while the feats in AEG's Rokugan books may be questionable, the ones in OA itself are perfectly reasonable. In fact, some are copied directly from other D&D books, eg Luck of Heroes first appeared in the FRCS. You can freely mix and match without running into too many problems. I'm doing exactly this in my Britannia 3E game, in fact.

 

[Timothy L. Miller]

Hehe, you're too nice on it. I had the book, and thought it was the absolutely worst load of GARBAGE that any publisher had, as of the time, put out. I couldn't find a single thing from it that I really liked it. Even the spells section didn't seem to have any incredibly cool spells. If I were ever to run a campaign based on a eastern setting, this is about the last book I would use. And I agree 110% on the too rokugan-centric. I bought it with the same basic idea, use parts of it to integrate into my world. But like you, when looking through, almost everything was rokugan. They should have called it Rokugan Adventures, with a bonus 2 page section on generic oriental adventures.

 

[Nellisir]

Ah! Clarity.

Nyambe: African Adventures did a fantastic job of really wrapping up the entire African continent and creating a diverse and cohesive campaign world...

Ah, this clears things up. If I understand you, the problem isn't that OA presents a generic toolkit -- it's that it doesn't "wrap up" the Asian continent and create a single "cohesive campaign world". That's certainly something we can agree it doesn't do.

Personally, that's exactly why I dislike Nyambe. It takes a large, diverse continent and, IMO, mushes it together into one big stew. The flavor text is intermingled with the mechanics, meaning that much more work for me to use Nyambe rules in my own campaign setting, and there's very little (to my eye) effort to link game mechanics to real world regions...useful if I'm running a region-specific campaign in some pseudo-historical Africa. OA, at least, makes an effort in this direction.

But I want to touch on feats, since you specifically brought them up. In OA, 5 feats mentioned Rokugan-specific material in the effects description. Two of these mentions were "if you belong to (Rokugan) prestige class X, you get a +1 to this ability", one referred to kuni crystal, one referred to the Shadowlands, and one referred to maho. Every other "Rokugan" feat was setting-neutral. Many, if not most, were +2/+2 feats, working on exactly the same principle as the Alertness feat from the PH.

I also want to make it clear, I'd love to see more asian, african, indian, and other "real-world inspired" fantasy material. I like OA far more than I like Nyambe, but my objection is to people labelling it a "Rokugan primer", not to whether or not someone actually likes it. Like it, don't like it; makes no nevermind to me. But an honest-to-goodness "Rokugan primer" wouldn't have included spirit folk, hengeyokai, korobokuru, varana, wu-jen, shaman, or sohei.

Incidently, none of the 17 prestige classes in the prestige class chapter are Rokugan specific, not even the Void disciple.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Nellisir]

Re: Lets remove the OA debate and focus on my issue

So, basically, TO ALL PUBLISHERS, this seems to be a neglected area and I want to buy this new hypothetical book for my shelves...

Ditto.


Nell.

 

[d20books]

Sengoku D20

OK, so basically, if Nellisir and I can get an NDA from anyone that is doing an Asia-centric sourcebook, and if we BOTH like it, it is bound to be a fantastic book that will sell like hotcakes after a cold night in the woods.

I don't want to just complain, I actually want to participate and assist anyone doing such a project. I'm volunteering myself. Hit me!

You got my contact information in my sig.

Secondly, I'm looking more and more at Sengoku for a possible D20 conversion or actual sourcebook. I know it is focused on Japan and not other Asian cultures, but it could be a start to a series of Asia-Centric sourcebooks.

 

[Nellisir]

Re: Sengoku D20

I'm looking more and more at Sengoku for a possible D20 conversion or actual sourcebook. I know it is focused on Japan and not other Asian cultures, but it could be a start to a series of Asia-Centric sourcebooks.

What is Sengoku?

Cheers
Nell.
Who would love a southeast asian setting, with verdant jungles, vine-covered ruins, and tiger warriors.

 

[Ranger REG]

Sengoku is a Feudal Japan Chanbara RPG, published by Gold Rush Games. The current version is based on the Fuzion ruleset, but GRG will be developing an Action! version

[ In case you haven't heard, GRG have released the Action! System ruleset under the Open Game License and have followed suit with an Action! System Trademark License. ]

P.S. Chanbara is Japanese Samurai genre, much like Wuxia is Chinese "Wire Fu" genre.

 

[d20books]

Sengoku

http://www.sengoku.com/

It is a game designed on the Fuzion game system put out by Gold Rush Games.

It is very popular, and from what I'm learning about it, it is very well done.

It has "D20" written all over it in structure. It even has four schools of magic.

The people that do Sengoku think that there would only be 500-800 books worth of sales, however, and won't do a conversion. Considering what I've seen, this is a very low estimate. I'm not on the publisher end of things.

As a retailer, I can see selling 30 of these just by myself, if it is as good as I think it will be. 20 if it is just "Good" and not great.

 

[Nellisir]

Huh. I'm not much for Japanese-style fantasy (ie samurai, ie katana & wakazashi), but I'd certainly give it a look if it were d20.

On another front, I just saw a blurb in Game Trade Magazine about a southeast asia-style supplement from Green Ronin; #3 in a Mythic Vistas series. Maybe something worth looking into?

Cheers
Nell.
Off to poke around GR.

Update: Mythic Vistas is the Green Ronin series that begins with Testament (Biblical Roleplaying), continues with Skull & Bones (Spanish Main roleplaying), and extends to Mindshadows (pseudo-southeast asian martial arts psionic roleplaying campaign setting). Phew.

Interestingly, the books get smaller as the series goes on. Testament is 240 pages, S&B is 192 pages, and Mindshadows is 128 pages. MSRP $22.95

 

[d20books]

Sengoku not going D20

Apparently, Gold Rush Games is going to do their own OGL version of rules called Action!

I'm on their Yahoo Group and am now moderated and accused of advertising for my business because I mentioned how Traveller D20 and Fading Suns D20 were run out of stock and they were considered niché and not likely to be profitable. I only mentioned it because they think there are only 500-800 books worth of sales if they did it.

Anyhow, it looks like it is a lost cause and we'll likely need to do our own Asia-Centric series to get what we want in that area.