Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Eye of the Beholder wrote: Looking on it later, it is clear to me that it is the U.S. take on Asian culture a la the eighties. Japan is huge, ninjas are huge, martial arts are huge. Everything else is a poor second. I'm not surprised that it sold gangbusters but had no staying power.

Exactly. In addition to the popular American culture element, Oriental Adventures reads like a first draft from which something substantial is missing, perhaps a deeper context. It may be that the Kara-Tur boxed set eventually provided this, being one of many thinly veiled historical cultures telegraphed onto the Forgotten Realms, but on its own terms Oriental Adventures does not provide sufficient scope for adventure, instead simply piling on alternative and additional rules that are supposed to make things feel oriental. I could quite happily cut out huge swathes of the book with no real effect because there is nothing there that inspires me to create oriental adventures. To judge by the OA series of modules this was probably a feeling shared by staff at TSR. Bottom line, it lacks substance and focus, reading more or less like a superficial cultural transformation of the AD&D PHB without sufficient emphasis on playability as a supplement. The art is not very inspirational or sufficient either. Mind, I am not one who feels that François Marcela-Froideval would have done a better job, or that his fabled manuscript is anything worth reading beyond historical curiosity. I did enjoy the translation of his samurai class, but not because I thought it was very good!

ThirstyStirge wrote: I've only flipped through OA, and have not had the chance to play it. Since I'm more acquainted with Ancient China than Japan, I gravitated toward the RPG called Qin, which seems to be strongly Chinese-oriented and appears to have been nicely researched.

Qin: The Warring States is also very nice to look at!

Stonegiant wrote: Ruins and Ronins has a nice easy flowing feel to it and meshes well with the rest of OD&D/S&W. One thing is that with any game about cultures other than your own the rules have to convey the atmosphere of the culture even when they are cliche. OA just added more rules, classes, weapons & armour, and poorly described monsters to the system but none of these did anything to convey or enhance the cultural feel of the game/supplement. RP brings up an interesting point that OA might have done better if it had been a East meets West supplement rather than an East exclusive.

Indeed, indeed; I would be tempted to say that Mullen's front cover for R&R does more in terms of inspiration than the whole of OA!

Matthew wrote:Mind, I am not one who feels that François Marcela-Froideval would have done a better job, or that his fabled manuscript is anything worth reading beyond historical curiosity.

I feel very similarly. What little I have heard about his OA suggests it would have only been differently bad compared to the one we got.

I did enjoy the translation of his samurai class, but not because I thought it was very good!

Can you point me to where I might find this? You have piqued my curiosity.

James Maliszewski wrote: I feel very similarly. What little I have heard about his OA suggests it would have only been differently bad compared to the one we got.

Agreed.

James Maliszewski wrote: Can you point me to where I might find this? You have piqued my curiosity.

I have a pdf of the original article here. Somebody translated it over on Dragonsfoot, after my faltering French got me a little way into it! Maybe it was Benoist/Odhanan, come to think of it. Anyway, it is not a big pdf, I shall shoot it to you by email and see if I can track down the thread at DF (though I am sure you can read the original much better than I).