Why is Oriental Adventures so bad?

[Zotster]

Based on some evidence, David Cook, Jeff Grubb, and Frank Mentzer all were sort of being groomed as Gary's vassals at TSR

What evidence did you hear of that? From what I saw first-hand, Frank was already Gary's vassal, no grooming needed (so much so that Lorraine pushed him out). Jeff was very much not, IMO, as I saw no contact between him and Gary (aside from what we all had). But Zeb might have had a bit of that. Gary handed off OA to him with only an initial meeting or two. Zeb's task of guiding AD&D from 1e to 2e was given to him by TSR management (Lorraine, Mike Cook), not by Gary.

Not really challenging your statement, just wondering upon what it was based, as my impressions were as given above.

[JRT]

It was his role involved with UA, as well some of Gary's final Sorcerer's Scrolls that reflect that. He mentions their input in the expansion, and IIRC Zeb was mentioned in one of the last articles at Dragon. So I suspect all of them would have been involved in the expansion effort--at the very least they were throwing ideas to each other. I didn't want to imply close friendship or anything like that, I meant Vassal more or less as a sort of "understudy" or the like. Of course, with the whole Williams fight and the OA problem, things got messier after that.

[Tholianweb]

OA is ok for me. I used what made sense to me and that was enough to keep my game flowing...

[Wheggi]

One of my major complaints is the way that OA is rooted so deeply in Japanese culture. I woulod have loved to have seen some Chinese and Indian influences as well. I also am not a fan of "fantasy" versions of real cultures and places (RQ3 did this as well and I felt that was a failure as well). I would have rather seen the OA to have been more based on martial arts films than what they did. I think the OA also suffered from the beginnings of the PC attitude that would dominate 2e, in other words we don't want to offend any Orientals out there by not doing this "true" to life, look at Maztica of the 2e era.

Stoney nails it here: OA needed less Shogun, more Master of the Flying Guillotine.

- Wheggi

[blackprinceofmuncie]

To get the mix, I'd think there would have to be (a) Eastern books by Asian authors that had the same spirit and (b) translations of them being readily available.

The four great classical novels of China readily fill that role. Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, Dream of Red Mansions and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are all readily available in English versions and are what I would call essential reading for anyone writing an RPG treatment of Asian cultures. I don't claim to know if Gary or FMF had ever read them, but I would bet a hefty sum of money that Zeb Cook hasn't (or at least, hadn't at the time the OA was written).

The only thing that could have inspired game designers would have been Wuxia, Asian Martial Arts flicks, and Anime.

No, there are numerous cultures, mythologies, folk legends and literary traditions (cultures, mythologies, folk legends and literary traditions much older, richer and more fantastic than those that form the inspiration for medieval Europe-inspired D&D) by which to be inspired if someone is willing to do more research than going down to their local video store to rent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

[Welleran]

I just won an OA copy as part of an AD&D lot on eBay...blech.

[TRP]

...OA needed less Shogun, more Master of the Flying Guillotine.

Very cool indeed, but for D&D, I'm more partial to an East Meets West adventure rather than a total Eastern Immersion. I just can't see going Full R.. err .. Full Kung Fu. So, there'd be Oriental weapons that were similar in stats to the Occident, a mostly straight conversion of classes (as mentioned previously up thread) and probably some new spells.

Submitted for your approval:

A 6-minute synopsis of Legend of The Seven Golden Vampires set to surprising good dance music (so Metal Maniacs might want to skip this one ), and it comes complete with an adventuring party with hirelings at just past 2 minutes and why you never allow the aging sage to keep a watch.

And, a movie everyone should damn well know. "I've got a very positive attitude about this."

[Badmike]

Coming from someone who primarily plays 2E, I still dislike OA. My main problems are the very inelegantly bolted on system that contains lots which make it a bad fit for 1E (martial arts, proficiencies, oddball spells, honor system, etc), the classes that don't seem to be balanced or playtested (Wu Jen and Ninja especially), focus on Japanese culture instead of a more generic "asian fantasy" type setting, and in general a totally different direction and focus for 1E yet somehow meant to be compatible to 1E. I can safely say I never used this HB for much of anything for any edition of the game I played.

Mike B.

[Benoist]

And, a movie everyone should damn well know. "I've got a very positive attitude about this."

One of the best movies ever. IMO, YMMV etc.

[EOTB]

For me it's two-fold - the problems I had using it when it was relatively new (I started playing AD&D just prior to the 2E books coming out, and how poorly it has aged.

When I first got the book, I was excited. Everybody wanted to play an OA campaign. The problems came almost immediately. First, everyone wanted to play a ninja or a samurai. Second, I had problems conceptualizing adventures because TSR decided to release the book with no pictures. I had my own ideas about what an ogre, or troll, or even a flesh golem were before ever picking up an AD&D product. I had no idea what a P'oh was. The description says they look like a 2-3 foot tall humanoid - but what does that mean, really? I couldn't convey an encounter with 90% of OA creatures to my players with any of the detail that makes it more than a set of stats to be killed. So by default we ended up basically using OA characters in a western campaign - where they so thoroughly outshone the regular characters that all replacements ended up being OA. It just didn't work, and eventually the campaign fizzled out. I got my hands on a couple of OA modules later, but the taste in my mouth was so bad I never used them.

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.

I really think we would have used the product as intended, though, if it would have come with pictures for the monsters. I needed something to bridge my unfamiliarity with the cultures, myths and legends, but OA left me stranded.

[geneweigel]

Heh, as you know I've made plenty of colorful posts on this just look here and elsewhere for "oriental" AND "weigel", I'm sure you'll find something.

If you don't I'll list some of my feelings after trying for years and getting burned. BTW, I bought everything with the name Oriental Adventures when the ink was still wet until experiencing the Rokugan fusion of the early 2000's at first thinking (hey, give it a chance and then falling flat on my face with more junk books).

1) The Osprey and Palladium (yes, I sometimes forget to reiterate that Palladium have good illustrations even Siembieda isn't that bad artwise so the historical ones excel in this manner) books on strict orient (ninjas, etc) are probably your best bet instead of anything with the name D&D attached.

2) Zeb Cook was/is a dweeb at heart so if they had more anime back then he would have injected it however that was not necessarily true at the time. I love oriental culture (fuck, I even love Middle Eastern culture!) but not when its viewed from the view of Lawrence of Arabian type "YOU don't understand THEM like WE do" crap/19th century upper class Victorian "loveliness"/National Geographic "exo-pretensious" /, etc. Some examples of this are "martial arts" are from Asia and added to the combat system instead of being sublimated in the normal combat options.

3) No fantasy like Europe. No "rust monsters" or full fledged fantasism of concept. An example of this latter in my campaign is that the ninjas are a huge class of monsters akin to giant class. Its sounds hard to wrap your head around at first but thats how ORIENTAL should have been. Not a straight up gazetteer of Earth but the mythical fear of the ninja as monsters first and false impersonators second.

[Geoffrey]

The four great classical novels of China readily fill that role. Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, Dream of Red Mansions and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are all readily available in English versions and are what I would call essential reading for anyone writing an RPG treatment of Asian cultures. I don't claim to know if Gary or FMF had ever read them, but I would bet a hefty sum of money that Zeb Cook hasn't (or at least, hadn't at the time the OA was written).

Journey to the West: 2,346 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Chinese-C ... 489&sr=1-1

Outlaws of the Marsh: 2,149 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-Chinese-C ... pd_sim_b_1

Dream of Red Mansions: 1,887 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mansions-Chinese- ... pd_sim_b_3

Three Kingdoms: 2,340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Kingdoms-Chinese- ... pd_sim_b_3

Total page count: 8,722 pages

Anyone who has intelligently read those nearly 9,000 pages has my awed respect.

[blackprinceofmuncie]

Anyone who has intelligently read those nearly 9,000 pages has my awed respect.

Well, I read the first three when I was still in high school, so I don't know about the "intelligently" part, but I have read and enjoyed all four (especially Outlaws of the Marsh, which is the Oriental equivalent of the Robin Hood legend and worth every page of reading). The two-year Bushido campaign I played in was heavily inspired by Outlaws of the Marsh and Journey to the West and run by a very good friend of mine who immigrated to the US as a graduate student from China. Suffice it to say that the experience of that campaign heavily colored my view of OA and its usefulness as a game aid.

[Bard]

Anyone who has intelligently read those nearly 9,000 pages has my awed respect.

I read the first two in hungarian translation, and they are great and fun reads. I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in "oriental" fantasy literature and not just movies. But they are both chinese and not japanese by the way...

I started with 2nd edition but the UA and OA books were around, so we played ninjas and kensais and samurais in our 2e games. These classes were powerful...

But when someone wanted to start an oriental campaign, it was always a trainwreck. There was this social class system, and it just didn't work with free adventurer type players... We tried a Menzoberranzan drow campaign, but realized the same problem. I was smart to create a drow priestess, but the male mages/fighters realized pretty quickly that this game is just not fun...

There are things that just don't work.

Maybe we were immature 16 year old players, but I still think that these aproaches are not what D&D is to me. Maybe the concept of the "martial arts underworld" setting of the wuxia movies are more AD&D...

[Geoffrey]

Anyone who has intelligently read those nearly 9,000 pages has my awed respect.

Well, I read the first three when I was still in high school, so I don't know about the "intelligently" part, but I have read and enjoyed all four...

You have my respect. Seriously.

High schoolers can certainly read books intelligently. An example of an UNintelligent reading is some wiseacre breezily skimming through one of those 2,000-page books over a weekend and then saying he "read" it.