Yes, I'm still confused by Oriental Adventures

[Ranger REG]

First off, the big irritance was with the way Oriental Adventures did the armor and equipment. If you look at all the armor bits and pieces, there is no such thing as a single "Great Armor". In Japanese amrors, you have several types of torso armor, arm, head, thigh and leg armors (all of which many people have written wonderful books on) that is really pieced together. The original Oriental Adventures 1st Edition for AD&D actually attempted at simplifying and did a decent job of it. Any unifying "Great Armor" is simply matched sets of the various armors colored and styled the same.

That's because Wizards of the Coast shied away from doing a piecemeal armor rules. They had their chance with the core rulebooks and the Arms & Equipment Guide.

On the Chinese side, there was a total neglect of focus on their armors. No focus on other Asian cultures like Southeast Asia, Mongolia, India, or the far interior China.

Oriental Adventures is not meant to be a historical sourcebook. Just provide rules for Asian fantasy genre alongside D&D ruleset. How you utilize the ruleset is up to you.

As for feats, there is a ton of material that could be added here. There were all the Rokugan Ancestral feats, but they really neglected the various natures of Asian cultures as their outlook on the dead. Curiously, the Asian and Latino cultures are very similar as they deal with family ghosts and how they walk the earth and live within the same plane of existance as the living.

See my above statement regarding historical referencing.

It would also be interesting to get a feel for the various Martial Arts. I know you could do a complete D20 book on Martial Arts (and there are a few, actually) but they could be used as feats. A specific feat for Kenjiutsu to add a bonus to the use of the Gatana for example. Many of the Asian Martial arts have some focus on particular weapons. Some of the "farmer" martial arts focus specifically on making anything a weapon.

Again, why not try to utilize the ruleset for martial arts mastery to develop other types of martial arts, as well as feats that offers new MA maneuvers.

Which is why I'm trying to push Wizards to make OA OGC. The rules makes for a good reference point for third-party publishers to utilize and come up with their own brand of Asian fantasy products. Personally, I hate having only one brand dominating that market: L5R/Rokugan.

But we should thank our stars that Mongoose provide Quint Monk and Quint Samurai; or that Avalanche Press did Mystic China. And for those who remembered Dragon Fist, downloadable RPG by Chris Pramas from TSR, it is being redone by Chris Pramas himself to be published under his company label, Green Ronin.

 

[hong]

Just reposting something originally posted at RPGnet.

This is one of the things that always bugs me. In regular D&D, it's generally accepted that the PC classes aren't meant to model any specific time or culture. D&D druids are D&D druids; they mix and match bits of Celtic druids, animist shamans, and various other "pagan" religions. The D&D bard isn't a Celtic bard, medieval troubador, or whatever, it's a D&D bard. Okay, it has roots in those particular occupations, but ultimately it's a unique creation.

Similarly for classes like the paladin and ranger. (Oh man, don't talk to me about the ranger.) And then you get classes that are made up completely from whole cloth, like the sorcerer.

Even the typical D&D campaign setting is a mishmash of times and places. You can have quasi-Arabian-nights characters mixing with Renaissance swashbucklers and Viking berserkers. And what about those pointy-eared dudes in the forest? Where are _they_ from?

And yet when you introduce any sort of alternate setting, you always get the nitpickers coming out of the woodwork. "The samurai is all wrong!" they say, "it doesn't model how the katana was 3 1/2 feet long in the Edo period, but 4 1/2 feet long after the ninjas killed John Lennon!" Or something.

Really, if the epic-scale idiosycrasies and anachronisms of stock D&D don't bother you, why should these trivialities be worth a look-see? As long as the book captures the _feel_ of that particular setting, that's good enough, right?

 

[Nellisir]

With all due respect to Hong and Ranger REG, I did ask Jeff what would be in his ideal OA book, and if partial armor rules and historical accuracy are part of that, so be it. There are publishers that share that view, and he may very well get what he wants.

Historical accuracy was never a big concern of mine, but neither is super-intensive roleplaying (which is not to suggest the two are related...it's just an example). I'm more curious to find out what other people would like from an asian sourcebook.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Ranger REG]

With all due respect to Hong and Ranger REG, I did ask Jeff what would be in his ideal OA book, and if partial armor rules and historical accuracy are part of that, so be it. There are publishers that share that view, and he may very well get what he wants.

Well, that's what the OGL and SRD are for. I'll take a look-see and if I like it, I'll add it to my game that are already using D&D and OA rulesets (minus Rokugan cosmetic elements).

 

[d20books]

Feat packages

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Basically, I thought this up and am using it in my campaign with 6th Level starting players.

You're right, I didn't think about how this would work for 1st Level characters.

It would be up to the DM, I suppose. I guess the package could be "stepped". You could be locked into the path and get certain abilities as you gain actual feat points from levels.

 

[d20books]

The Orient should be a strange place against DnD

Historical accuracy was never a big concern of mine, but neither is super-intensive roleplaying (which is not to suggest the two are related...it's just an example). I'm more curious to find out what other people would like from an asian sourcebook.

It doesn't have to be Historically accurate. It simply needs to be culturally accurate. I don't think that Oriental Adventures should be DnD with different armor, feats, and spells.

Oriental Adventures should be alien. It is a different culture with a different development path than that of the west. This is what is truly missing.

The armor and feats and weapons that I outlined before makes a difference in adding that cultural difference to the game. A Gatana is not an oriental Bastard Sword. It has much more extreme cultural ramifications than even what Oriental Adventures provides. There is total neglect of the mere mention of a Tachi, and the differences between a Tachi and Gatana are culturally vast, even though they are mechanically identical.

The Armor is a very cultural thing too. It has a great deal of significance and so does the type and coloration. When the armor was made speaks volumes in style, prestige, and actual combat effectiveness (newer mostly meaning ornamental versus actual protection).

You have to look at the Chinese development of weapons too. Until Japan went into self imposed exile, there was much trade between the two cultures where they shared an alphabet and all Japanese armor and weapons up to around 1200AD was influenced greatly by Chinese development.

I've been looking far and wide trying to label why I dislike the present Oriental Adventures and the main jist will be that it does not reflect any severe cultural difference compared to regular DnD. I ask everyone to pick up a copy of Shogun and read it. The cultural differences between Europe and Asia were VAST.

So, in a nutshell, I don't really want an historical setting. I want one that is really directed at the culture and mindset of Asia.

 

[Ranger REG]

Re: The Orient should be a strange place against DnD

Oriental Adventures should be alien. It is a different culture with a different development path than that of the west. This is what is truly missing.

Unfortunately, only learned gamers would be willing to purchase such a book over Rokugan, which I observed a lot of Western gamers can relate to that setting.

Personally, it should be written much like the Sengoku book (by Gold Rush Games), which gives a primer of the many Asian cultures.