Thank you for keeping D&D (and TTRPG) history alive on UA-cam, Martin. I appreciate your deep dives into the game and the history of the game we love to play.🤘
Yes, very informative. I'm very happy that people who were around in the 70's and 80's share their knowledge with the internet in a comprehensive format. Must see for DND nerds 😊
For you kids who werent there, its hard to impress how HUGE Kung-Fu was in the 70s and Ninjas were in the 80s. Best i can equate it is superhero movies in the 2010s. There was a reason it was Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles. Also, please just try to understand that for the time, these books and movies were made (mostly) from a place of love. Yes, its cringe and has a fair amount of fetishization from a modern perspective but it was meant as respect and love of the material. Believe it or not, in 30 years your kids will look back and think our current views on certain topics are SOOOOOO outdated. (Insert Grandpa Simpson saying "It will happen to you" GIF here)
Yes, Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris movies!! btw: not sure where the cringe is in OE -- that book is totally fine -- it's all these wanabee social justice diversity warriors that -- make a big deal about the use of the word "exotic" to describe Asia -- give me a break.
Early 50s white dude reply: all of that is true, as long as it's not used as an excuse to shut down criticism of cultural material from the past. I love the movie "Remo Williams," but am not going to tell Asian folks that they shouldn't be offended by Joel Grey playing a Korean martial arts guru. To be honest, I would be embarrassed to recommend the film to anyone of Asian ancestry.
Zeitgeist of the times and spot on with presentism as well. Obviously we should be mindful of what offends now and respect that but both demonize everything that came before 2015.
@noneofyourbusiness4616 old head recognize old head. Definitely should not be used to shut down criticism. I had hoped that is what came across. Mostly meant to point out it was huge and loved but perhaps a bit cliché. We were doing our best and came at it with love. As always, keep all media review in perspective. It's good to look at things with a critical eye but don't let hindsight be your only point of reference. Baba Booey, Baba Booey Howard Stern's balls
Yes, thank you! I looked it up after I recorded the video and there's actually a quick note on screen indicating that it's Malaysian, and I did notice that there are very similar creatures throughout Asian mythology/folk lore. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Wikipedia even mentions the Fiend Folio under the entry for Malasian Penanggalan. "The penanggalan is featured as a monster in the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons rulebook Fiend Folio."
Not the greatest special effect, but there's a penanggalan in the 1981 Indonesian film Mystics in Bali. She's the thrall of a witch, which is kind of a cool concept that I might work into a game sometime.
A couple things: 1. I'm an old school player and I remember well the day I got the Oriental Adventures book - changed the way I play. I'm half Asian so the representation meant so much to me at the time. 2. My wife brought that bottle back for me a few years back after a trip to Europe! I'm mostly and Irish and Scotch drinker but I gave it a try. I've had better for sure but it was fun. Keep it up! Love the history lessons!
My 2nd year in college, 1 of my gaming buddies introduced our group to the Bushido RPG. We played about 4-5 sessions. That was 1985. Later that year, Oriental Adventures came out and we played it a couple times but nothing after that. I pretty much exclusively played monks for the 1980's and 1990's, so I naturally gravitated towards this material. We fumbled with pronunciations, too.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it. I remember seeing a copy of a Bushido book at my local game store in a stack of books, some old/some new (they were notorious for that kind of "organization"). I was aware of it from ads in Dragon magazine and I almost bought it, but I decided not to, as my recollection was that it was originally a boxed set and not a single book. So, I don't have much familiarity with it as a system. Thanks for your support of the channel!
Aftermath!, Bushido, Chivalry & Sorcery are all old favorites of mine. It was Bushido and Oriental Adventures that provided the inspiration for my version of High Elves.
Great video Martin. On the proficiency aspect, i didn't like the min-maxing angle (my PC has blind-fighting, and weapon specialization, etc for all the bonuses), but i do like it for adding character flavor. So i have my group get a free proficiency based on their background (a former butcher gets cooking) and then they get 2-3 others. Kind of helps give them ideas of what non-combat opportunities there might be, but i don't limit them from trying anything even if they lack the proficiency for it.
This is one of your best videos yet, Martin. You handled what could have been a divisive topic with sensitivity, nuance and tact. And as always, you possess an unparalleled wealth of knowledge . Oriental Adventures was the first AD&D product I ever owned (I was a Mentzer Red Box kid), and I remember spending hours pouring over OA, just reading and creating characters. While not everything may have aged well, I think the intentions of the creators was well meaning. It also must have been quite a feat of research pre-Internet. If anyone is looking for a current Asian themed rpg products, I’d recommend the Thousand Thousand Islands zines by Zedeck Siew and Munkao, as well s Yoon Suin, by noisms/David MacGrogan (who runs the Monsters & Manuals) blog. Finally, I wanted to echo the other poster who mentioned how nice it is that you are always noting how supportive your Kate mother and grandmother were of your hobby. I love that you’ve carried on that tradition with your daughter.
I really appreciate this so much. Thank you for watching and then taking the time to write this very nice comment. I was a little concerned how some folks might react to the video, but so far it's been pretty positive. I have Yoon Suin and have used parts of it in the game I run for my daughter and her friends, and I'm familiar with Thousand Thousand Islands but haven't had a chance to get them yet. They do look really good, though. Thank you again very much. Cheers!
again, a very good review. I especially love the fact that you remind people what people are thinking at the time and what they were exposed to. This supplement was not designed with the intent to carry on stereotypes, but to actually expose American culture to a culture they’re not used to, and that I would say makes it exotic. in the truest form of that word. Because to a bunch of Caucasians, who might know about the medieval times a little bit, the orient is a big blank spot. It pretty much defined exotic. Modern audiences might not conceive that as where a lot of that usage came from. I do, especially like the fact that you went into the fact that there was more planned as a new series of books on the subject, but time was running out. I did like the work that Gary did, but I think it would’ve been a lot better if artist was still around and Gary gave a lot more patience. I won’t go into much more because that would take too much time. It is what it is And I do like the fact that they were beginning to research the subject matter a lot better, but ran out of time I still find it funny that a cloister monk from the medieval Europe was often misconstrued as the monk in the advanced D&D book. I remember when I started playing giggling at the idea that the quivering palm might’ve been from studying too much late at night in their tombs of books at the chapel and yeah …. Of course, I know better now where that whole class came from and who really pushed for it and what was the inspiration
So great to hear from you, Kevin. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and I really appreciate your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think I mentioned some details on the Monk class before in one of my videos. But it's late and I might be mis-remembering!
1:17:00 same Rifts gamr... another time I rolled a critical failure on a radio check trying to jam radio transmission in an area. and the character only had radio basic, instead of radio scrambler so we had to make the role at -30 🙂. The character was in like a police surveillance van with a lot of radios, we were doing surveillance on this one character at a restaurant... Same gm, he didn't really know what to do with this failure, so he set off every car alarm in the parking lot for the failure 😊🙂.
Playing as an Asian hero at this time was a progressive move for youngsters. Older AD&D monk players suddenly became OA DMs as well. Great revisit to one of my favorite books of 1985.
Yeah. It would be if it wasn’t for “pigeon holing” or dichotomy of Fighting Men and Fighters can be warriors of any culture (at least in terms of Vikings, Knights, Mercenaries, Arabian adventurer, and peasant levy) but Asians (regardless of region) be Samurai or Monks (this somehow got into 3E OA where I doubt anyone will take Indian Samurai class outside of comedic take or Nodwick…I wish I wasn’t kidding but they had L5R themed Oriental Adventure tied with Mahasarpa and expect to take it as face value). Plus the contemporary character creation of “it’s better to just make Fantasy Samurai with Fighter Class with feats than one suggested by DnD” (at least from giantitp back in 3E era). Just had a feeling that DnD somehow became culturally stagnant on non European setting after 2E (maybe somewhat gerontocratic). Oh apparently, it did suggest using (heavily Japanese inspired) mechanics to "All of asia" as book quoted (3E...I would have agreed with them allowing base DND class without having to resort them as "European", especially Rogue and Fighter, BUT trying to use it as base system for Mahasarpa that would probably look like Draconis Combine's "Indian Samurai").
I love seeing the actual book or supplement or module or whatever actually handled and paged through. I do that all the time with my old rules. From AD&D to 2E WH40K and too many historical wargaming rules to bother you with. It's just legit pen and paper feeling. Keep up the great work! Always enjoy your content.
The O.A. gave us the best Monk, and proficiency slots allowed us the best martial arts system of any RPG game that I've encountered. Loved this video. Keep up the great work.
This was an excellent summation of the Asian influence on western culture and RPGs, I really enjoyed this. And, yes....I remember seeing Shogun when it first aired and loved it so much, that I went out and bought and devoured the book. Clavell's depiction of feudal Japan as seen through Blackthorn's eyes was almost akin to a fantasy setting. I can still remember turning the page and being transported to a very rich, but alien culture. When OA came out, I was more than ready for it! My D&D group, readily took to it as some of my friends were either Chinese or Japanese and we all loved both eastern and western fantasy settings. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada....so this was kind of the norm to us game geeks, back then.
Thank you so much! A few folks have complained that my long introduction was "unnecessary" but a few other fine folks, such as yourself, seemed to enjoy it. So, thank you! I've been to Vancouver a few times over the years, as one of my best friends moved there years ago. I typically visit him once a year and we attend a game convention at the Convention Centre. It's a really fun city!
God bless your Grandmother! I mean it. She has a hand in the work you are doing now, which I have mentioned before I think is very important in a way to establish a true record of the hobby and games.
Yes, she saved you a TON of money by not having to buy books on the secondary market. What an awesome Grandmother! I had my paper route back in the day -- so glad I used a good chunk of my paper route money to buy RPG books.
Thank you so much for saying that. She unfortunately passed away pretty young (just over 70, which was also the age my mom died unfortunately). They both contributed immeasurably to my hobbies and my love of science-fiction and fantasy - I remember my Grandma encouraging me to "bring my little men" (by which she meant my Star Wars figures) to her house over the summer when we visited. I know I mention both of them somewhat frequently here on the channel, but it's my way of trying to remember them and in a way, it gives me a sense of peace to know that that others appreciate their interest in encouraging my hobbies, especially in an era when things like comic books, Star Wars, and Dungeons & Dragons weren't mainstream. I appreciate you watching and commenting. It means a lot. Cheers.
I always used to think that as well, despite having owned both books since they were first published, but no, Non-weapon Proficiencies debuted in Oriental Adventures and are not mentioned at all in Unearthed Arcana, which was published a few months' prior. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Easily my favorite of the orange spine books. My 10 year old self loved this so much, and it is where I learned about Bushido and Yakuza as concepts, and it certainly sparked a life-long fascination (if not study) with eastern medieval culture. My copy also had terrible binding and is full of scotch tape trying to keep the pages in. Thank you for your thoughtful deep dives into this slice of our hobby's history.
OA was definitely one of my favorite books growing up. But as a 2e player, I was a few years late and never even thought that modules or even a boxed set were released! Would love to see deeper dives into the classes, as well as the OA module series and boxed set. Great content as always!
Thanks for the video! Bruce Lee - "His Martial Arts were off the charts!" So true. 😁 I never used OA and my homebrew setting was Dark Ages / Early Middle Ages based in a quasi-Anglo-Saxon England, so I even disallowed assassins and monks while running 1E AD&D (which I mainly run to this day). The Japanese names for Japan (an exonym) are Nihon and Nippon. Thelonious Monk, eh? Clever!
So glad you enjoyed the video! I really appreciate you watching and commenting. You are one of the very few people who got the "Monk" reference in the bonus content! Cheers!
Thanks, another informative and interesting video. I appreciate your commitment to solid research. I owned OA as a kid, and I loved playing a ninja, but I agree this book is deeply flawed for not including first voice contributors situated in the cultural they were trying to depict. However, I accept your thesis that this product was rushed to market in the hope of keeping TSR solvent - we all know how that story ended. I sent you a "thanks" ($10) - I hope you got it)
They did have Asian playtesters. And how do we know they didn't consult any experts on Asian culture -- that's just pure conjecture -- we don't know. You can't claim they did and you can't claim they didn't.
That is down to AEG (not WotC) coming up with the plan to buy TSR. AEG brokered the deal, but didn't have the cash and used WotC's money to buy TSR, before selling both TSR and AEG's roleplaying game business to WotC.
This is one of those books that I poured over constantly, but, aside from one runaway ninja princess, I never used in campaign. Still loved it, though, and I appreciate the deep, deep dive. Also, points for your slyly on-theme record selection.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! Also... bonus points to you for both watching the bonus content and for picking up on "Monk." Well done!
You're the same as many -- it's a book that was well liked for many interesting ideas -- but was never used that much -- I used a few classes out of the book -- that was it, never used the setting which IMO is pretty lame.
I find it strange that people are mad about stereotypes like Kung fu that came from movie made by their respective culture and imported to the US. To me that’s like being mad at things like confucianism and Taoism, it’s all part of their myth, history, and what they want to be part of their unique identity. I get that it’s not good to relate kung fu to Japan or samurai to China etc, that is a clear lack of understanding of the difference of cultures. That said western fantasy is exactly the same, a mix and match of very different European cultures, take most people just see as all the same All I can think is that people like that actually want to strip away other cultures contributions and control what you can say and think. People like that should be seen and the real racists because the literally are I saw an oriental adventures and wish I could have spent the $50 to buy it, but couldn’t afford it since I got somthing for my 3 years son instead. As far as your video, another great one. Keep it up.
We used to play Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun published by FGU. It used a version of Chivalry and Sorcery for the base rules. Lee Gold also did GURPS Japan. It was so complicated but as a resource I still use it. It's village and name generation tables are awesome. Bushido also was a popular game here in New Zealand.
She also recently did "Land of the Rising Sun" as a Chivalry & Sorcery supplement in 2021. Yes, recent, 2021. I have a copy as a PDF of the C&S supplement (it's available on DriveThru).
I can't overstate how profoundly the Occupation affected not only Japan but the US as well. Lots of war brides and marrying Japanese women well after the Occupation, not to mention all the American kids who lived on or near the base that were then exposed to Japanese culture through food, toys, TV, comics, movies. I believe these things went a long way develop an interest in Asia, primarily Japan at first, and then South Korea in a much bigger way establish much bigger communities. But a lot of those Japanese and Korean communities would spring around so many bases, that I recall growing up. There would be at least a single Japanese grocery/import store, or a video rental
Another really nice delve into the AD&D hardback manuals. I have this as a PDF now and although I like the asian motif and setting, I have remained rooted in Europe but I think I might use it to draft out a far east part of the world, in my setting the far west! My vote is the book did more to expose people to a new culture and one they had only rather shallow notions of anyway that then sparked the urge to know more and thus did more good than harm for any faults it might have as something not truly scholarly but just a game!
I highly recommend "Bushido". Available in PDF form on Drivethru -- so much better of a work (with such a rich setting) than Oriental Adventures. Although it is only a Japan/Okinawa setting (fantasized) a little -- I learned so much about Feudal Japan by playing Bushido.
@@quantus5875 Yeah, the thing is that part of me had a feeling that OA kinda take cues from Bushido but should have taken more. - Bushido had Bushi as "catch all fighter" but OA had Bushi as lower class and also Samurai that kinda overlap in terms of function (Even for RP wise, it might be beneficial if they had say..."Courtier" class or maybe like Bushi as warrior Samurai and Courtier as social Samurai). - While I understand different culture, OA kinda felt that it must have its own class due to well-meaning but flawed assumption that base classes are European rooted even generic-leaning like Fighter and Thief (maybe like Dororo or street rat type). In fact, only Kensai was overpowered one BUT classes like Yakuza could work with base DND Thief with Yakuza being local terms or background features. I think someone realized that issue by 2E and Kit System might be a response to that realization and 3E OA kinda having base classes with new ones and prestige classes to fill in cultural narratives (like Shaman for animist fantasy and Samurai and ninjas). - Bushido's mechanics and class work due to a singular Japanese focus, but OA had idea of similiar ideas used as "all of Asia", which points back to no.2 on archetypes and classes not covered by Japan or Chinese (at least for Monks) focus even down to magazines and modules that had Chinese-named Samurai or trying to fit with OA mechanics OR Tabot/Tibet having Sohei. This is not counting habit of pigeon holing classes to country analogues (so SE Asian only having barbarians because what is Khmer or Thai, or Chinese characters being Monks because no one wants to be Chi Fu the bureaucrat). I mean I get it's fantasy, BUT I doubt players would be talking about immersion breaking...aside from "eastern classes" in Europe.
@@powerist209 a bureaucrat class who schemes politically, skims from merchants and maybe has a private army or gangs, knows magic or a divine sponsor could be quite playable even at the trope crawl into a dungeon, seeking lost treasure they know of from the archives (treasure map).
@@michaelwest4325 But it would be if it was like Warhammer Fantasy RP, Call of Cthulhu, or games with "Profession" class. In DND context, Samurai as a class had those BUT as I read, it overlap with Bushi in terms of being a fighter. Maybe like a Bard or something. Come to think of it, I even ask my friend who played 1E DND and...there was a belief that having base DND classes are "too western" to fit with OA (as you say it did expose people to it, BUT also reinforced a bizarre mindset that east and west should be treated as culturally different world that had bizarre assumptions even by game standards, began culturally isolated and stagnant while other medium that had similiar "spark of urge" evolve and change...I know 4chan and RPG Horror might be different segment, but I do remember DND and Anime were like contentious in 3E along with Samurai Roleplayers being narrated as morons--like Baka from Goblins comic, OR like one South Park episode where Officer Barbrady learned to read but realized that the book he is studying is garbage situation). Like even around 3E from forums, there were people who think that Ranger is not "oriental" since most of the mindset is Samurai and Kung Fu similar to second point.
To fix the bindings, you just gotta bite the bullet and let a book person take it apart and reglue it. I had to do that with my Legends Lore and Manual of the Planes. Most of the others were fine, so far.
1:17:00 I've always liked the degrees of success and failure option. That reminds me of years ago we were playing Riffs, one of the characters rolls a critical success on a computer programming roll 🙂... The GM is like, I don't know really what to do with that, he thinks for a few seconds and he's like ah... the desktop achieves sentients 😀. Character did such a good job programming the computer, the computer is now alive... It never really went further than a laugh at the table... But sometimes I think somewhere in the wreckage of New York there is a sentient computer running Windows 98 with no internet connection, so it's kind of there talking to itself probably 🙂😃.
We had this book but never used it when I was playing AD&D. When I DMed for 3.5 D&D, one of my players used that edition's version of the samurai to great effect. He used Iajutsu Focus quite a bit (the art of drawing a sword and attacking once for extra damage instead of dealing extra attacks). I thought the Shukenja (wandering monk with divine spells) in both AD&D and 3rd/3.5 editions to be an interesting class and almost played one in a friend's campaign before he said no.
Would be interesting to do a poll. We just used some of the characters in our campaign. Never played it in the Kara Tur setting. I think this usage was common -- I actually don't know anyone who ever used the Kara Tur setting.
Yeah, I read abit and 3.5E had more good application of Iajutsu than AD&D OA (like entire descriptions and rule being too situational while 3.5E had it as “alpha strike” or “full scale initial attack”.
Your Grandma is awesome for paying for your Dragon Magazine sub! My Grandma paid for my Game Informer Magazine Sub and RuneScape sub for over a decade!
That is so fun to hear! Getting that subscription from my Grandma was so cool. I was given issue #76 as a birthday gift a year or so before, and I'd never heard of Dragon before that. I immediately began trying to acquire back issues and my second issue was #72 with the Cavalier, and then I got most issues from #70 - #89, and over the last few decades, I've gotten a few in the late 50's through the 60's. Once I got my subscription, I loved coming home after school to find that a new issue had been delivered. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Came to comment about this myself. Much of our love for these old products are tied to the personal experiences and memories of them. I like these little asides you give.
In the game I am currently running for my teenage players I am incorporating ideas from the highly imaginative world of the Japanese anime One Piece and let me tell you it is a perfect fit with vanilla D&D rules! The Katana wielding Sworsmen are simply Fighters, no need to use fancy specialized classes like Bushi, Samurai, Sohei, etc.. What you might call “Honor” plays highly in the setting, but I handle it completely with my existing D&D mechanics for handling Reputation with different factions and Experience bonuses for quest completion. I use my base D&D rules for unarmed combat to handle martial arts, you improve in this fighting style the same as normal level progression in your class. In short, all the cultural influences are simply flavour over top of my D&D base rules, as I believe it should be.
@@daddyrolleda1 Hats off to you for running a Lovecraftian game with them, this would not at all suit my players. Mine expect their characters to be the driving forces in the world, even from the start of the game! They were very humbled when i started them off as level 1 adventurers with scarcely more hit points than a goblin! Now 3rd level, they purposefully seek out low level fights so they can feel like superheroes, and avoid boss fights for as long as possible, even though they are worth more XP. They certainly would not want to feel small and powerless against unknown cosmic horrors from another reality!
Oriental settings are one of my favourites - sorry for the multiple comments. I was remembering back to the Dragon mag No. 3 Samurai - they had crazy auto critical hit numbers because of the fantastic, but not magical nature of their swords. I am sure this came from the idea that most Japanese swords were these uber-weapons. A +2 Katana auto-crit (and there was a crit table of sorts) like 10% of the time (19-20).
No worries! And yes, I talk about that Samurai from Dragon #3 (although I have it as part of Best of Dragon II). The whole idea of the katana being some kind of pseudo-magical uber-blade is so pervasive in video games, movies, comics, and more! It's so funny. Even the 3E era samurai class was allowed to invest XP into their blade to make it more powerful, as I recall.
The thing about non-weapon proficiencies and min-maxing reminds me of when 4E introduced backgrounds. The idea was to encourage characters to have interesting origins, like being raised by elves, or living in the arctic. They came with a small mechanical bonus, like a language or bonus on a single check. Well, one of the options was Auspicious Birth, which let you choose a stat other than CON for your first-level hit points, which made CON a safe dump stat for any class. Wouldn't you know it, every single character had an auspicious birth. I was thinking about this due to your last video, one of the things I was most excited for was the backgrounds that actually connected PCs to the world in not explicitly-mechanical ways.
over all these years, I never heard there was any controversy over this book. My brother got the book when it first came out, and I did not get it til much later. I always liked the idea of playing in a oriental adventure, but we never used it, mostly because we never felt as teens that we actually knew enough about how to actually run a oriental area. I think the main inspiration was probably Shogun, and possibly Kung Fu (tv show), at least thats how I saw it as a kid.
There is no controversy -- just a few young self-styled wannabee diversity warriors trying to make a mountain out of the use of the word "exotic". Total BS. And like Daddy Rolled a 1 said -- the use of comeliness had nothing to do with OE -- comeliness existed long before OE.
Kung Fu…other than David Carrandine casting and alleged plagiarism from Bruce Lee script, did it had derision from martial arts fan gatekeepers (like say…how anime weebs think about Kappa Mikey as cheap imitation back in the day even if I think that martial arts fandom aren’t as elitist as say anime fandom considering Powerman and Iron Fist homage on Black demographics fandom of said genre).
I won't lie. I have studied and researched a lot for Asian mythology (always found all mythology fascinating, but different Asian countries have different mythologies, some with similar elements, but all with their own twists). The one thing that I have always observed about the "Oriental Adventures" book was that it was mostly Japanese references and mythology (even the different races are those ascribed to Japan and their terminology), so labelling it "Oriental" always seemed a misnomer, even when I was using it in the 90's. Also, one thing to help you with your pronunciations of Japanese themed elements (such as Kirin [keyreen], Korobokuro [cohroh bohkooroh], and Hengeyokai [hengeh yohka-ee]), a nice little thing about the Japanese language is that all Romanized vowels are pronounced the same (A is "ah", like in caught, I is 'ee" like in casino, U is "oo" like in flute, E is "eh" like in fetch, O is "oh" like in home) as well as consonants (K is "k" like kick, G is "g" like gut, S is "s" like sit, T is "t" like tie, D is "d" like dark, R/L is slightly strange since it sounds like an "l" and "r" mixed, H/F if "hf" which is strange because you pronounce it as breathing out an "f" like in a huff rather than a hard "f" like fun, P is "p" like pie, B is "b" like bike, Y is "y" like yawn, W is "w" like well, N is "n" like pen or night). There are lots of other subtle things, but that should cover the basics of reading Japanese Romanized words.
That's why I like the setting in the "Bushido" (1979) TTRPG much more -- it's a fantasy feudal Japan/Okinawa setting, which makes the setting feel much more consistent.
in the late 70 and early 80's nobody new anything about chinese culture, and likely all people new about korea was from washing M*A*S*H. Japanese had that Katana, which has alway been a point of interest and at the time, most people who were exposed to martial arts were taking Karate, with a few taking taeKwanDoo, at least where I lived. the only thing we new about kungfu was from Bruce Lee . Japanese influence was fairly well known in the USA as with all the japanese cultural sites. I think this is one of the main reason why OA primarily dealt with the Japanese culture in the book. Japanese makes for good roleplay, Bowing and honor and such, and the Samurai and the Katana, did I mention the Katana! Chinese at least now days, don't bow and such, my wife is Chinese, and Ive been there. If China had culture, it has all been erased by Mao. Anyways Japanese culture works so I think they did the right thing in OA.
The honor mechanic in the Land of the Rising Sun game got my attention. I am curious what the first "karma" tracking system was? Who made it part of the game instead of a "guideline?" My only exposure to tracking this is with CRPGs like Ultima IV and then later Fallout
20+ years living and working over here in South Korea - and a house in Thailand. Never, has any locals here, viewed the term “oriental” as offensive. It’s an uncommon term here, used on some businesses. Only seemingly viewed as offensive to asians living in the west. Maybe because in the west, we grew up with a negative connotation attacked to the word, while in the east (and south east) - that negativity never surfaced?
I chalked it to experience and language barrier. Like Asian in the west seeing it as term to apply it as “exotic and foreign weird place that (white) people can’t comprehend and totally not made in a narrative that made west as normal” to justify discrimination (or trying to soften by displaying surface level of it for PR). Also I think reading Thai, Korea, and other nations as “same” might have issue since Thai didn’t suffer much European colonialism (Korean did but under Japanese inspired from it). But I doubt other counties in Asia, save for counter culture using western culture as “sticking it to nationalist elites” (King and I for example since anti monarchist Thai would have same context as Asian Americans annoyed with “weeaboo but more Asian fetish”) would see it as universally good thing (especially India and Burma on British, Indochina on France, and Indonesia on Dutch…the more it is “place to get natural resources” and less “given infrastructure and government apparatus that integrate the locals” being the worse would be their opinion). That and maybe annoyance with Tourists, majority of which (save for scholars and well educated ones) aren’t known for “respecting the locals” (and even almost any country, both east and west, who had to deal with them can agree with their shenanigans even of they bring profit). So unless you are saying otherwise, just making a short essay to describe the comment to supplement that statement.
The term oriental for a piece of furniture, or your medicine practice or decorating style isn't offensive. Calling a group or person Oriental is. It's been used enough to me and my friends as a general slur.
My Dad was a swing jazz fan. He could appreciate Bird, but by the time you get to Monk you'd lost him. I am a pretty big Bop fan and I love Monk, although I never got into most 70s fusion.
I can see that. I was not a fan of 70's fusion for the longest time, and Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" was something that I could not connect with for the longest time. But after years of listening, I've finally learned to appreciate it, and it then opened me up to a lot of other jazz-fusion stuff, like Larry Coryell, whom I really like. My dad, also, is mostly into swing. But, because of me, he's learned to appreciate stuff like "Kind of Blue." He still prefers Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, though.
I got to meet Matt Wagner once at my local comics shop and get a few comics and a poster signed by him! Thanks for watching and commenting. I really appreciate it. Cheers!
Two things you asked for commentary about: 1 - History of American interest and learning about the cultures covered - kind of missed the missionary work and reporting back from that and the trade that started (for the US at least) when Japan was opened up after China opened up (both somewhat involuntarily by the west) and the occupation of parts of the eastern parts of the region like the Philippines after 1900 etc and is definitely biased through the lens of the speaker. Kind of hard to get through the long intro given that as kid in the 70's and through adulthood I've also read up on the topics involved there and have a very different view of how much of it is post facto politicized and re-politicized ad nauseam. As a whole in my opinion the long intro could be cut as a detraction from the main topic which doesn't really add much to the material presented later on. 2 - The proficiencies being introduced in this particular publication. Tea ceremony and caligraphy (arts etc) versus blind fighting and combat useful stuff. It's a thing where some of these are more useful in a roleplaying versus tactical combat moment and the min-maxing mentioned conflicting kind of hits on a topic of where D&D came from versus what it was evolving into over the early to mid 1980's. Add to that the inclusion of Honor as a system - I don't think it was meant to be a stereotyping of culture* as much as a mechanic that affects the character in the game. In more modern terms it can be looked at like faction standing in an MMORPG where your reputation affects how the npc's react to you because f what you've done, not because of your personal intent. The whole concept of Honor is cross-cultural and like you said something that could be added to any campaign especially if it is a dynamic world that moves on it's own versus a one shot adventure setting. *although yes it could be given the influx of anime and other media and an over attention to Samurai and other warrior culture aspects etc etc. Both things mentioned here and a lot of the rest of the video can be deep rabbit holes by themselves.
I really want to thank you so much for watching (and a detailed watch, not just "background") and commenting. It really means a lot! Your comments are very insightful and I can definitely see your point about the intro being too long (which I have a tendency to do a lot of times) and perhaps even unnecessary. I was just trying to show some context as to why these particular concepts might have been included in the book but it may have gotten a bit away from me. I appreciate your insights. Totally agree that many of the topics in this video could be excuses to go to the rabbit hole! Thanks again, and also for your support in subscribing to the channel. I truly appreciate it.
I watch a lot of Daddy Rolled the 1 videos -- many of them are good videos -- but I've learned what to skip -- to make it more of a 40 min affair 😂-- and yeah skipped that entire section -- was IMO completely irrelevant to the discussion. I also skipped about half of the latter discussion of the book itself.
Well, I would like to agree but the Honor part isn't like faction standing (mostly entire book insist that you have to turn over your character sheet no matter what RULE AS WRITTEN*) and the one in OA is more of a play on "RP as Asian characters" even if honor is as you say "cross-cultural concept". Like in base DND, one you described is up to DM and even players--save for malicious ones--would know that shit talking to an important figure or going on murder spree would get them in trouble. BUT in OA, well, it would work if it was social RP but some modules kinda make it as important in dungeoneering (which might be rather difficult and not sure if many would be good at social RP). *Yes, RAW is a thing back then and not everyone would be culturally informed to make a homebrew a "rogue or outlaw" (again this also fit into stereotyping since it implied that characters have commited seppuku due to shame and entire mechanic being forcing to RP as someone who must abide but rigid social structures...even Barbarian and Wu Jen who were written as "living off the grid". By contrast, base DND doesn't have that mechanics save for homebrews and Unearthed Arcana ideas that very few would use. Oh and it's more based on Bushido assumption, so your Chinese Kung Fu monk must abide by it).
I can't believe you're a philistine! No Tea Ceremonies in the dungeon!? Weirdo. That would actually be a cool RP thing for a player to make an orc chieftain feel respected.
Ha! That sounds EXACTLY like what the players in my daughter's campaign would totally try! They once parleyed with an orc chief in the middle of a battle after they'd killed his pet mutant dog (in fairness to them, it was self-defense; the thing was rabid). I could see them trying this! Thanks for the idea, and for watching and commenting. Cheers!
Love your channel. WW2 Japan doesn't necessarily get a huge amount of sympathy in modern America, but it's frustrating how a typical 20 year old college student knows exactly 2 or 3 things about them: atomic bomb, US internment camps, and (maybe) Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile Japan's wartime atrocities literally exceeded Germany's and there is nearly complete ignorance on this topic. One video for those interested: ua-cam.com/video/kpVgDgKpQS8/v-deo.html
Depends on which "typical 20 year old college students" since many had issue with Japanese ultranationalists along with "cultural appropriation" in west (even if it's annoying term...even you have to agree with weebaboo/Japanophile white guy--or "Mall katana"--also fit into what you hate). Depending on your age, maybe Gen X who would be seeing Japan as "new trend" in campus circle. Aside from sone segments who had genuine anti-war views but ill-informed on geopolitics that condemning a foreign aggressor is bad or any topics that isn't "common sense say supporting it is bad thing", Millenials and Gen Z tend to be more mixed bag (like geopolitics students, anime students, and so on have different take).
Oriental Adventures was basically a LOVE LETTER to China, Japan and to a smaller extent, Korea. Yes, it was fantastical, but so is anything for knights and princesses, and honestly anything european has far more abuse in it than the nearly zero amount in this book.
I am pretty much skeptical about love letter part. Even Korean part might be just form of Martial Arts and analogue in Eastern Realms would be there years after the main book release (judging by map published in main OA book that is really different from Kara-Tur book, I doubt that they thought about having Korea/Koryo at first point.) And the comparison you made wouldn’t work since base DnD didn’t mechanize the class into being trapped in the role as a knight bound to the lord and follow chivalry to the letter via score system where losing it is essentially “game over”. Just giving another insight that you should think about,
@@jamesonstalanthasyu I'm not understanding your connection with a 2024 movie about broken ungrateful people has to do with a campaign setting lifting all the most exciting elements from eastern society to introduce it lovingly to a western audience.
Well, Paladin example wouldn’t work since 1. It does stray abit from real life version-either Palitini of Charlemagne or Crusaders-since serving to a higher power and also based on Three Hearts and Three Lions. Though Cavalier is closer to pop culture knight. 2. It is class specific, OA version is Bushido inspired code that it’s supposed to be taken by all class (even Wu Jen who are hermits, Barbarians who are supposed to be periphery and “foreign”, and ninjas who aren’t bound by it even in text). And this goes for Paladin as a concept in all editions.
The Ä in Säntis you pronounce just right. In german language it's the way americans pronounce the A all the time. Without the dots it would be pronounced like an "Ah" or "Ar" or "Uh"
We moved around but the area I was talking about in that part of the video was Modesto. I lived there for about four years while I was in elementary school. Thanks for watching and commenting and for your support of the channel!
I think Comeliness was an awkward attempt to remove appearance from CHA which was intended as leadership not looks. It flopped because CHA was already a dump stat and Comeliness more so.
Jamed Bond RPG (1983) handles "attractiveness" really well -- it has a pro that it made your seduction attempts much easier -- but the con was it made you more recognizable by the bad guys. DRa1 is right -- not a new concept it was done before. Too lazy to go look -- but I'm pretty sure "DragonQuest" (1979) had an explicit stat for attractiveness. And even modern games -- occasionally try to explicitly represent attractiveness in some way. It's not rare. I've always thought that as a player you should be able to just choose your attractiveness (and it should have nothing to do with your CHA or any skills. Low CHA could be an attractive character with poor social skills) -- this is a fantasy game after all -- if you want to play an attractive character - why not?
Oh, does it? I didn't know that - I've briefly looked at Hackmaster from time-to-time but don't own it and have never played it. Thanks! And, thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it!
My recollection is that Flying Swordsmen is based on the 2E era "Dragon Fist" game by Chris Pramas (of Green Ronin fame) that was intended for bigger publication but never released commercially and instead given away for free by WotC on their website once 3E came out. I have both and they are fun.
Your videos are always interesting. I think your assessment of the book in the context of the time was very fair. I don't know - maybe we have gone too far the other way regarding sensitivities. And I think that sonetimes the people making the retrospective criticisms of of a historical product are more interested in virtue signalling rather than truly being interested in another culture. I am an occasional "anime" fan, and I love it when My Hero Academia gets western culture totally wrong, because I know the writer has a real love for american superhero comics. And by the way, I love the bonus content. I am yet to disagree with your taste!
It has definitely gone too far in the other direction. So many are complaining to get clout amongst their plaintive peers. It's become a contest among them.
Yep - you go back far enough and everything has problems if you use a "modern" lens to look at things. They re-wrote the "Hardy Boys" starting in the 50s to get rid of foreign accents, portrayals of villians, ... Go back into the 20s and probably hard to find a book that doesn't have problems if you don your virtue signaling rosy tinted glasses.
Thank you for pointing out the "othering". Althugh you in no way intended it, but it exposed the ridiculousness of labels. It is just a short word to address a geographic location, not racial issues, but it was the kung fu movies, and books like this that even got the western world even interested in dialog with them. It was until then, a mysterious other world where men learned to kill men with their bare hands...at least, that is what we thought.
I’m not aware of Oriental Adventures causing problems - only accusations given without evidence. Indeed, on the contrary, Oriental Adventures enabled (& still enables) people to play characters who aren’t merely European-style characters & to play characters in a setting that isn’t European. Furthermore, it educates people about Asian history & mythology.
(Apologies for long comment. Just wanted to give my point on contexts behind some “accusations without contexts” and questions that you might need to assess besides “fantasy is subjective”.)
Agreed!! Only problems OE has caused are people who never played OE in 1985, going back, 30 years later, and looking at the book and trying to find problems. And yes, just general accusations with no examples.
I mean even if many of the examples they used are either questionable or just outside of your awareness, I doubt it’s made without example. Maybe instead of treating it as such, maybe try reading them (especially constructive ones) and learn their perspective (maybe reassess what you know about OA rather than seeing it as “no problem”). Just that I do hang out with people who played OA as well. Don’t take it as insult or smear, just giving some opinions and different approach. I mean you can still admit that it had flaws and like the book. Plus homebrew is still a thing and even OA playerbase formed discussion board on them.
1:26:16 I think having skills relates a little bit more to real life. Everyone has varying degrees of skills in different subject matters. I like to think i'm as a pretty well skilled IT professional (my day job), and an amateur level skilled road bicycle racer (one of my hobbies). I make a living in IT, I cannot make a living racing bicycles 😎. I have no skills for driving semis, so you're not going to want me to drive a semi without taking training for it 🙂.
runequest did ninjas box too monk class to OA book its a rise of popularity of martial arts which actually overlapped with 80s gaming lots in 70s ppl dreamed of martial arts in 80s everybody did it marvel and dc turned many characters into ninjas
Anyone who thinks this book is racist is an idiot. THIS book is the precursor to Legend of the Five Rings. I know, because I was there. Oriental Adventure was a self contained RPG book that only used the Advanced D and D line of rules as a line of reference. Kara-Tur was the setting, which put you right into the Samurai setting. Had nothing to do with WW2, had nothing to do with disparaging eastern Asian Cultures. You can use this book, a players manual, and the DM guide, and you put yourself right into the middle of the Shogun wars. I learned more about Asian studies by playing three campaigns of this set in 10th grade then I did in 3 years of college. Had a Ninja/ assassin, a Ronin, and later a Samurai in the old school Kurosawa theme. One of the best additions to D and D ever made. I dove headfirst into LOT5R because of Oriental Adventures. What a great game!!!
A rather important piece from WW2 is Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series, which included a rather long film on the Battle of China. It is as negative as you can possibly imagine on the Japanese (and given some of the things they did in China, it is, frankly, understandable...), and very favorable towards the Chinese, although they conveniently cut the Communist Chinese entirely out of the picture....
I have two copies - got a mint one the other week that has been stored for the best part of 30 years in a dust/moisture/uv/acid resistant storage bag. A rare find here in New Zealand. And it did not cost me my pension.
@@daddyrolleda1 I have not done it personally but i have looked into it. Not sure how well the cover integrity could be reinforced but it would look great after its done. It would not look the exact same afterword, but it would be stronger.
The Martial Arts system was grossly underutilized and with some expansion with Len Carpenter's material from Dragon it could have been its own source book good enough to rival the Hero's systems tome published a few years later. Rolled a 1 spends to make time apologizing for cultural typecasting in the book. People should know not to take the social and cultural knowledge from a gaming work.
I am always bemused about complaints in regards to Oriental Adventures being a 'disrespectful mish mash of cultures' its the dumbest critique of the book. I have to point out for those sort of people, 'My brother in Gygax, all of D&D does this to western culture'. Huge swaths of eras, cultures, times and places all over the western world thrown together with no regard but for fun. Greek myths, renaissance weapons and armor, norse myths, middle eastern myths, celtic and cristian concepts, all mushed together. It is literally equal treatment. Some people just want virtue signal using Asian people as a prop for it. Never mind that there are asian players who tested and by all accounts give the whole thing a thumbs up. Also, I can't help but watch how 'respectfully' Asian cultures treat Western Cultures... i.e. about the same if not worse. People should just relax.
The difference between an Asian nation doing a bad portrayal of Western cultures and America doing it is that there are a lot of Asian people who live here in America and they are affected by shitty portrayals of the cultures their immigrant families came from. Your "everybody should just relax" advice can easily be turned back on you: how about relaxing and letting people voice their own opinions about this stuff without accusing them of "virtue signalling" because it rubs you the wrong way that someone dared criticize something you like?
The disingenuous part of the criticisms of OA is that it does NOT represent any of the cultures of Asia- it represents the fictional culture of a far away land called Kara-tur. That culture amalgamated ideas from several real-world Asian cultures but it is not actually any of them.
@@VespoLiveGaming Yes, great point -- none of these cultures is trying to replicate the culture of any specific country -- these are fictional cultures in a fictional continent. Yes -- this is not a game trying to model a real world -- this is a fantasy game.
I had that bushido game up until recently. I remember loving that skills system. But I'm afraid I had to stop watching at the statement roughly 40 minutes in. We are only a hair from apologizing that our ancestors were hetero. It has to stop.
A small correction to your video on dates. Bushido was the first Asian genre RPG, not "Land of the Rising Sun". Bushido was first published in 1979 by Tyr Games and then Lee Gold's "Land of the Rising Sun" came out in 1980 (published by FGU), and Bushido was re-published by Pheonix in 1980 and again by FGU in 1981. Yes -- these two games came out fairly close and I think why many people get this fact wrong. But Bushido was clearly first. I played Bushido back in 1980/81 and I can say it is by far the best of these three efforts, especially the "setting" - the setting is so rich and so well done. Not sure if it was Charrette or Hume, but not pop culture knowledge one of these two was an "expert" in Japanese feudal history/culture -- the Bushido setting was done by someone with extremely deep knowledge of feudal Japan -- this is not some guy who watched a few Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris movies. 😂 Also, another reason that I think Bushido is better than OE because it only tackles Japanese/Okinawan culture -- one of my opinions is that Oriental Adventures tries to do it all with Asian cultures -- which really IMO waters it down.
To my ears, most of your Japanese words were generally pretty good! Japanese pronunciation is pretty regular which is a blessing to anglophones. Chinese, especially with the old system, is very hard for the English native tongue... For my money, you were definitely not too preachy. I think you can make the argument that for its context, you would expect OA to be more orientalist than it ended up -- that it was independently researched at all is already beating most of its contemporaries. But, you know. 1985 Wisconsin. I would love to hear those japanese-american playtersters' thoughts on the matter, if they could be found. Theirs is a uniquely important perspective that has gone undocumented. I always cringe when I see deities statblocks -- we talk about how it creates a gameplay problem, but not the disrespect angle. Amaterasu Ōmikami being killable with 400 hitpoints is just deeply disrespectful to a living religion (one that was in deep crisis from the one-two punch of State Shinto making the Emperor's surrender into a theological nightmare and then money becoming the new god of Japan). I think that's indicative of the dangers in the "steal everything" ttrpg mindset. If you don't unpack and think about what you're making by taking the shortcut of simply lifting things, you are begging to run into a blindspot -- especially under a deadline. Could you imagine the outrage if TSR had published "The Christian Mythos" and gave God 400 HP? Someone would've tried to burn the building down!
What I always find interesting is that a bunch of people who complain about deity stat blocks actually own a copy of Deities & Demigods or Legends and Lore. Just surprised they bought the book if they have a problem with them. On my end I've never used deity stat blocks ever -- don't have a problem with deity stat blocks at all -- just for me all the gods are all powerful compared to the characters -- the characters should never have even the slightest chance of defeating a god.
The term 'Asian Culture' is nonsense anyway. You might as well say European culture. The book isnt controversial at all unless you are deranged and don't care about intentions. The intention is clearly to make a fun gaming supplement, not a history book or academic tome.
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 its not an opinion. You have mental derangement if you believe the authors intent was to offend or mock Chinese, Japanese and Korean history and culture.
@@nedleeds908 If I'm driving and didn't intend to run over a child, I guess anyone who criticizes me for accidentally doing that is "deranged," according to your logic. Intention is all that matters!
Excellent review, just please don't dance around "cultural sensitivity". Just omit any discussion on it. It's so much worse for European ones even now, that highlighting "potential problems" in others just becomes insulting. Why are we even focusing on this? Cherry picked critique seems to become a social weapon for politics. It's much more interesting to focus on what was awesome about these things. You did a lot of that, thank you. And (aside from the binding) there was a ton of awesome from the OA book.
All the snowflaking over OA guaranteed that Asia would be completely ignored in all future editions of the game. Congratulations on marginalizing your cultures!
Thank you so much for the support, as always! I hope you are not disappointed. I touch briefly on it and I correct one thing that I've heard used as a "problem" with this book, but for the most part, I discuss the American cultural background from the post-WW2 period up until 1985 which provides the context for understanding how and why this book was made, and then I go into the legacy of the book in terms of its mechanics and how that affected future editions of D&D as well as the legacy of the book as a whole. I felt like perhaps I'm not qualified to discuss some of the negative things people say about this book. I did talk to a wide variety of friends here in the San Gabriel Valley (you can look that up to see the demographics), both gamers and non-gamers, about the book and they all suggested I might not want to address it.
Why bother? It's not like there isn't "controversial" aspects in all of fantasy if you want to nitpick everything. The entire mythologies of slaying dragons and invading "uncivilized" areas to loot them could be ripped to shreds in a second. Stemming from earlier myths of civilization like gilgamesh or the slaying of tiamat (aka chaos) by marduk. It's fantasy. It's bullshit. It's roleplay. real brains will parse out what they want from these books and play a game. small brains will get mired in the swamp of politics hoping they can find some Perfect Position of sensitivity. Hell, most of you live in a house built on indigenous cultures/corpses and you're worried if some dumb 40 year old D&D book is controversial. You can't even do anything in your own life without some type of hypocrisy if someone wanted to nitpick it. Play your own game.
Now part of me wonder if 2E kit might be result of developers and players realizing “hey, isn’t Bushi and Yakuza kinda too close to Fighter and Thief. Maybe we could have used base DnD classes but include variants like Samurai, Spellblade, and what not. That way we won’t have some smartass questioning why Shi Fu the Chinese bureaucrat gets to be a Bushi rather than…courtier type.” I mean even in Fantasy context, people would be asking if trying to plug base DnD classes to replace or supplement OA classes. Even the “base DnD classes is rooted in European mythology” would have its own packages since classes like Fighter and Thief tends to have more versatile in roleplaying ideas and mechanics.
Also another nitpick being instead of Samurai class, maybe have a courtier class with Bushi should have had more generalized narrative for “fight focus Samurai” with Courtier being “social dandy Samurai”. Might need to look at OA BUT part of me feel that OA take on Bushi and Samurai kinda overlap. Also since entire book tend to claim it wants to be “all of Asia” despite its Japanese language use and mechanics rooted mostly in that sphere, it could add more leeway like Courtier allowing Chinese bureaucrats, diplomats, court officials, and even viziers. Like L5R rpg (both recent 5E and older rpg lines) had those two distinctions. Just my two cents, but would have worked better.
I've enjoyed a great many of your history expositions, however i must add the the idea we need cultural appropriations for a game of make believe is just ridiculous. Sadly that is why our beloved game is going down the toilet. Hopefully you can continue to provide some amazing content that can be enjoyed, but steers away from current politics.
Thank you for keeping D&D (and TTRPG) history alive on UA-cam, Martin. I appreciate your deep dives into the game and the history of the game we love to play.🤘
Thank you so very much for your generosity! I truly appreciate it, and I'm so glad you found, and enjoy, the channel.
Cheers to you!
Yes, very informative. I'm very happy that people who were around in the 70's and 80's share their knowledge with the internet in a comprehensive format. Must see for DND nerds 😊
For you kids who werent there, its hard to impress how HUGE Kung-Fu was in the 70s and Ninjas were in the 80s. Best i can equate it is superhero movies in the 2010s. There was a reason it was Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles.
Also, please just try to understand that for the time, these books and movies were made (mostly) from a place of love. Yes, its cringe and has a fair amount of fetishization from a modern perspective but it was meant as respect and love of the material.
Believe it or not, in 30 years your kids will look back and think our current views on certain topics are SOOOOOO outdated.
(Insert Grandpa Simpson saying "It will happen to you" GIF here)
Yes, Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris movies!! btw: not sure where the cringe is in OE -- that book is totally fine -- it's all these wanabee social justice diversity warriors that -- make a big deal about the use of the word "exotic" to describe Asia -- give me a break.
Early 50s white dude reply: all of that is true, as long as it's not used as an excuse to shut down criticism of cultural material from the past. I love the movie "Remo Williams," but am not going to tell Asian folks that they shouldn't be offended by Joel Grey playing a Korean martial arts guru. To be honest, I would be embarrassed to recommend the film to anyone of Asian ancestry.
Zeitgeist of the times and spot on with presentism as well. Obviously we should be mindful of what offends now and respect that but both demonize everything that came before 2015.
@noneofyourbusiness4616 old head recognize old head.
Definitely should not be used to shut down criticism. I had hoped that is what came across. Mostly meant to point out it was huge and loved but perhaps a bit cliché. We were doing our best and came at it with love.
As always, keep all media review in perspective. It's good to look at things with a critical eye but don't let hindsight be your only point of reference.
Baba Booey, Baba Booey Howard Stern's balls
Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting...
The penanggalan is Malaysian, but it should be noted that the there are a ton of similar creatures in asian folk lore
Yes, thank you! I looked it up after I recorded the video and there's actually a quick note on screen indicating that it's Malaysian, and I did notice that there are very similar creatures throughout Asian mythology/folk lore.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
A similar one is the manananggal from the Philippines.
Wikipedia even mentions the Fiend Folio under the entry for Malasian Penanggalan. "The penanggalan is featured as a monster in the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons rulebook Fiend Folio."
I married one 😂
Just kidding, dearest..
Not the greatest special effect, but there's a penanggalan in the 1981 Indonesian film Mystics in Bali. She's the thrall of a witch, which is kind of a cool concept that I might work into a game sometime.
Shogun sparked my love of Asian culture, art and history.
Yes! I talk about that in the video and I also wrote a blog post about it around a decade ago. Chees!
In the UK everyone could speak Japanese….😂….. it was a force of nature that show.
You should watch C-dramas from China.
Like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"
The new Shogun on FX/Hulu is really great
A couple things:
1. I'm an old school player and I remember well the day I got the Oriental Adventures book - changed the way I play. I'm half Asian so the representation meant so much to me at the time.
2. My wife brought that bottle back for me a few years back after a trip to Europe! I'm mostly and Irish and Scotch drinker but I gave it a try. I've had better for sure but it was fun.
Keep it up! Love the history lessons!
Great video as always my friend!
You are the best! Thank you so much!
My 2nd year in college, 1 of my gaming buddies introduced our group to the Bushido RPG. We played about 4-5 sessions. That was 1985. Later that year, Oriental Adventures came out and we played it a couple times but nothing after that. I pretty much exclusively played monks for the 1980's and 1990's, so I naturally gravitated towards this material. We fumbled with pronunciations, too.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it.
I remember seeing a copy of a Bushido book at my local game store in a stack of books, some old/some new (they were notorious for that kind of "organization"). I was aware of it from ads in Dragon magazine and I almost bought it, but I decided not to, as my recollection was that it was originally a boxed set and not a single book. So, I don't have much familiarity with it as a system.
Thanks for your support of the channel!
Aftermath!, Bushido, Chivalry & Sorcery are all old favorites of mine.
It was Bushido and Oriental Adventures that provided the inspiration for my version of High Elves.
Great video Martin. On the proficiency aspect, i didn't like the min-maxing angle (my PC has blind-fighting, and weapon specialization, etc for all the bonuses), but i do like it for adding character flavor. So i have my group get a free proficiency based on their background (a former butcher gets cooking) and then they get 2-3 others. Kind of helps give them ideas of what non-combat opportunities there might be, but i don't limit them from trying anything even if they lack the proficiency for it.
This is one of your best videos yet, Martin. You handled what could have been a divisive topic with sensitivity, nuance and tact. And as always, you possess an unparalleled wealth of knowledge .
Oriental Adventures was the first AD&D product I ever owned (I was a Mentzer Red Box kid), and I remember spending hours pouring over OA, just reading and creating characters.
While not everything may have aged well, I think the intentions of the creators was well meaning. It also must have been quite a feat of research pre-Internet.
If anyone is looking for a current Asian themed rpg products, I’d recommend the Thousand Thousand Islands zines by Zedeck Siew and Munkao, as well s Yoon Suin, by noisms/David MacGrogan (who runs the Monsters & Manuals) blog.
Finally, I wanted to echo the other poster who mentioned how nice it is that you are always noting how supportive your Kate mother and grandmother were of your hobby. I love that you’ve carried on that tradition with your daughter.
I really appreciate this so much. Thank you for watching and then taking the time to write this very nice comment. I was a little concerned how some folks might react to the video, but so far it's been pretty positive.
I have Yoon Suin and have used parts of it in the game I run for my daughter and her friends, and I'm familiar with Thousand Thousand Islands but haven't had a chance to get them yet. They do look really good, though.
Thank you again very much. Cheers!
Always happy to hear MASH mentioned since it also was a huge boost to my home town, via Klinger.
Your format is perfect don't ever go to scripting. You have a perfect niche in the industry and your fans dig it.
I really appreciate that! Thank you so much for taking time to watch and then to let me know. It means a lot. Cheers to you!
again, a very good review. I especially love the fact that you remind people what people are thinking at the time and what they were exposed to. This supplement was not designed with the intent to carry on stereotypes, but to actually expose American culture to a culture they’re not used to, and that I would say makes it exotic. in the truest form of that word.
Because to a bunch of Caucasians, who might know about the medieval times a little bit, the orient is a big blank spot. It pretty much defined exotic.
Modern audiences might not conceive that as where a lot of that usage came from.
I do, especially like the fact that you went into the fact that there was more planned as a new series of books on the subject, but time was running out.
I did like the work that Gary did, but I think it would’ve been a lot better if artist was still around and Gary gave a lot more patience. I won’t go into much more because that would take too much time.
It is what it is
And I do like the fact that they were beginning to research the subject matter a lot better, but ran out of time
I still find it funny that a cloister monk from the medieval Europe was often misconstrued as the monk in the advanced D&D book.
I remember when I started playing giggling at the idea that the quivering palm might’ve been from studying too much late at night in their tombs of books at the chapel and yeah ….
Of course, I know better now where that whole class came from and who really pushed for it and what was the inspiration
So great to hear from you, Kevin. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and I really appreciate your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think I mentioned some details on the Monk class before in one of my videos. But it's late and I might be mis-remembering!
1:17:00 same Rifts gamr... another time I rolled a critical failure on a radio check trying to jam radio transmission in an area. and the character only had radio basic, instead of radio scrambler so we had to make the role at -30 🙂. The character was in like a police surveillance van with a lot of radios, we were doing surveillance on this one character at a restaurant... Same gm, he didn't really know what to do with this failure, so he set off every car alarm in the parking lot for the failure 😊🙂.
I also still have my copy of advanced dungeons and dragons oriental adventures.😊
Hopefully in good shape. Like Daddy Rolled a 1 said this was one poorly made book. My copy has a few loose pages and I barely used it. 😂
Playing as an Asian hero at this time was a progressive move for youngsters. Older AD&D monk players suddenly became OA DMs as well.
Great revisit to one of my favorite books of 1985.
Yeah. It would be if it wasn’t for “pigeon holing” or dichotomy of Fighting Men and Fighters can be warriors of any culture (at least in terms of Vikings, Knights, Mercenaries, Arabian adventurer, and peasant levy) but Asians (regardless of region) be Samurai or Monks (this somehow got into 3E OA where I doubt anyone will take Indian Samurai class outside of comedic take or Nodwick…I wish I wasn’t kidding but they had L5R themed Oriental Adventure tied with Mahasarpa and expect to take it as face value). Plus the contemporary character creation of “it’s better to just make Fantasy Samurai with Fighter Class with feats than one suggested by DnD” (at least from giantitp back in 3E era).
Just had a feeling that DnD somehow became culturally stagnant on non European setting after 2E (maybe somewhat gerontocratic). Oh apparently, it did suggest using (heavily Japanese inspired) mechanics to "All of asia" as book quoted (3E...I would have agreed with them allowing base DND class without having to resort them as "European", especially Rogue and Fighter, BUT trying to use it as base system for Mahasarpa that would probably look like Draconis Combine's "Indian Samurai").
I love seeing the actual book or supplement or module or whatever actually handled and paged through. I do that all the time with my old rules. From AD&D to 2E WH40K and too many historical wargaming rules to bother you with. It's just legit pen and paper feeling. Keep up the great work! Always enjoy your content.
Thank you so much! I recognize you've been a fan of the channel for quite a while, and I truly appreciate it. Cheers!
The O.A. gave us the best Monk, and proficiency slots allowed us the best martial arts system of any RPG game that I've encountered. Loved this video. Keep up the great work.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate you watching and commenting, and for your compliement. Cheers!
This was an excellent summation of the Asian influence on western culture and RPGs, I really enjoyed this. And, yes....I remember seeing Shogun when it first aired and loved it so much, that I went out and bought and devoured the book. Clavell's depiction of feudal Japan as seen through Blackthorn's eyes was almost akin to a fantasy setting. I can still remember turning the page and being transported to a very rich, but alien culture. When OA came out, I was more than ready for it! My D&D group, readily took to it as some of my friends were either Chinese or Japanese and we all loved both eastern and western fantasy settings. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada....so this was kind of the norm to us game geeks, back then.
Thank you so much! A few folks have complained that my long introduction was "unnecessary" but a few other fine folks, such as yourself, seemed to enjoy it. So, thank you!
I've been to Vancouver a few times over the years, as one of my best friends moved there years ago. I typically visit him once a year and we attend a game convention at the Convention Centre. It's a really fun city!
God bless your Grandmother! I mean it. She has a hand in the work you are doing now, which I have mentioned before I think is very important in a way to establish a true record of the hobby and games.
Yes, she saved you a TON of money by not having to buy books on the secondary market. What an awesome Grandmother! I had my paper route back in the day -- so glad I used a good chunk of my paper route money to buy RPG books.
Thank you so much for saying that. She unfortunately passed away pretty young (just over 70, which was also the age my mom died unfortunately). They both contributed immeasurably to my hobbies and my love of science-fiction and fantasy - I remember my Grandma encouraging me to "bring my little men" (by which she meant my Star Wars figures) to her house over the summer when we visited.
I know I mention both of them somewhat frequently here on the channel, but it's my way of trying to remember them and in a way, it gives me a sense of peace to know that that others appreciate their interest in encouraging my hobbies, especially in an era when things like comic books, Star Wars, and Dungeons & Dragons weren't mainstream.
I appreciate you watching and commenting. It means a lot. Cheers.
I loved it and the Japanese American kid who lived down the street sure seemed to as well.
Great video! Very detailed, ty. Weren't Non Weapon Proficiencies in UA?
I always used to think that as well, despite having owned both books since they were first published, but no, Non-weapon Proficiencies debuted in Oriental Adventures and are not mentioned at all in Unearthed Arcana, which was published a few months' prior.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Easily my favorite of the orange spine books. My 10 year old self loved this so much, and it is where I learned about Bushido and Yakuza as concepts, and it certainly sparked a life-long fascination (if not study) with eastern medieval culture. My copy also had terrible binding and is full of scotch tape trying to keep the pages in. Thank you for your thoughtful deep dives into this slice of our hobby's history.
OA was definitely one of my favorite books growing up. But as a 2e player, I was a few years late and never even thought that modules or even a boxed set were released!
Would love to see deeper dives into the classes, as well as the OA module series and boxed set. Great content as always!
Funny that you mentioned You Only Live Twice the same episode as Monk, when just 4 years after that movie, Putter Smith plays a Bond villain.
Thanks for the video! Bruce Lee - "His Martial Arts were off the charts!" So true. 😁 I never used OA and my homebrew setting was Dark Ages / Early Middle Ages based in a quasi-Anglo-Saxon England, so I even disallowed assassins and monks while running 1E AD&D (which I mainly run to this day). The Japanese names for Japan (an exonym) are Nihon and Nippon. Thelonious Monk, eh? Clever!
So glad you enjoyed the video! I really appreciate you watching and commenting.
You are one of the very few people who got the "Monk" reference in the bonus content! Cheers!
@@daddyrolleda1 Sometimes you can be quite Rye.
Ha! Well done!
We owe your grandma a debt of gratitude.
That is such a nice thing to say. I really appreciate it. Thanks!
Thanks, another informative and interesting video. I appreciate your commitment to solid research. I owned OA as a kid, and I loved playing a ninja, but I agree this book is deeply flawed for not including first voice contributors situated in the cultural they were trying to depict. However, I accept your thesis that this product was rushed to market in the hope of keeping TSR solvent - we all know how that story ended.
I sent you a "thanks" ($10) - I hope you got it)
They did have Asian playtesters. And how do we know they didn't consult any experts on Asian culture -- that's just pure conjecture -- we don't know. You can't claim they did and you can't claim they didn't.
Back in those days- EVERYONE was a Ninja!
So true!
Later in the Wotc era of DnD, they published the L5R setting with both RTK and D20 3.5 rules. And now, there is a L5R book for 5th edition.
That is down to AEG (not WotC) coming up with the plan to buy TSR. AEG brokered the deal, but didn't have the cash and used WotC's money to buy TSR, before selling both TSR and AEG's roleplaying game business to WotC.
This is one of those books that I poured over constantly, but, aside from one runaway ninja princess, I never used in campaign. Still loved it, though, and I appreciate the deep, deep dive. Also, points for your slyly on-theme record selection.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
Also... bonus points to you for both watching the bonus content and for picking up on "Monk." Well done!
You're the same as many -- it's a book that was well liked for many interesting ideas -- but was never used that much -- I used a few classes out of the book -- that was it, never used the setting which IMO is pretty lame.
I grew up with Shaw Brothers movies in the 70's and 80's!
A lot of bad bindings with Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures!
The bindings are one of the most common complaints!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
I find it strange that people are mad about stereotypes like Kung fu that came from movie made by their respective culture and imported to the US. To me that’s like being mad at things like confucianism and Taoism, it’s all part of their myth, history, and what they want to be part of their unique identity.
I get that it’s not good to relate kung fu to Japan or samurai to China etc, that is a clear lack of understanding of the difference of cultures. That said western fantasy is exactly the same, a mix and match of very different European cultures, take most people just see as all the same
All I can think is that people like that actually want to strip away other cultures contributions and control what you can say and think. People like that should be seen and the real racists because the literally are
I saw an oriental adventures and wish I could have spent the $50 to buy it, but couldn’t afford it since I got somthing for my 3 years son instead.
As far as your video, another great one. Keep it up.
We used to play Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun published by FGU. It used a version of Chivalry and Sorcery for the base rules. Lee Gold also did GURPS Japan. It was so complicated but as a resource I still use it. It's village and name generation tables are awesome. Bushido also was a popular game here in New Zealand.
Yes! I actually talk about "Land of the Rising Sun" and Bushido both in this video, and I talk about Lee Gold writing LotRS as well!
@@daddyrolleda1 My copy of LotRS is a different cover than the one you showed. It is black and white but with a traditional red rising sun.
She also recently did "Land of the Rising Sun" as a Chivalry & Sorcery supplement in 2021. Yes, recent, 2021. I have a copy as a PDF of the C&S supplement (it's available on DriveThru).
I can't overstate how profoundly the Occupation affected not only Japan but the US as well. Lots of war brides and marrying Japanese women well after the Occupation, not to mention all the American kids who lived on or near the base that were then exposed to Japanese culture through food, toys, TV, comics, movies. I believe these things went a long way develop an interest in Asia, primarily Japan at first, and then South Korea in a much bigger way establish much bigger communities.
But a lot of those Japanese and Korean communities would spring around so many bases, that I recall growing up. There would be at least a single Japanese grocery/import store, or a video rental
Another really nice delve into the AD&D hardback manuals. I have this as a PDF now and although I like the asian motif and setting, I have remained rooted in Europe but I think I might use it to draft out a far east part of the world, in my setting the far west!
My vote is the book did more to expose people to a new culture and one they had only rather shallow notions of anyway that then sparked the urge to know more and thus did more good than harm for any faults it might have as something not truly scholarly but just a game!
I highly recommend "Bushido". Available in PDF form on Drivethru -- so much better of a work (with such a rich setting) than Oriental Adventures. Although it is only a Japan/Okinawa setting (fantasized) a little -- I learned so much about Feudal Japan by playing Bushido.
@@quantus5875 Yeah, the thing is that part of me had a feeling that OA kinda take cues from Bushido but should have taken more.
- Bushido had Bushi as "catch all fighter" but OA had Bushi as lower class and also Samurai that kinda overlap in terms of function (Even for RP wise, it might be beneficial if they had say..."Courtier" class or maybe like Bushi as warrior Samurai and Courtier as social Samurai).
- While I understand different culture, OA kinda felt that it must have its own class due to well-meaning but flawed assumption that base classes are European rooted even generic-leaning like Fighter and Thief (maybe like Dororo or street rat type). In fact, only Kensai was overpowered one BUT classes like Yakuza could work with base DND Thief with Yakuza being local terms or background features. I think someone realized that issue by 2E and Kit System might be a response to that realization and 3E OA kinda having base classes with new ones and prestige classes to fill in cultural narratives (like Shaman for animist fantasy and Samurai and ninjas).
- Bushido's mechanics and class work due to a singular Japanese focus, but OA had idea of similiar ideas used as "all of Asia", which points back to no.2 on archetypes and classes not covered by Japan or Chinese (at least for Monks) focus even down to magazines and modules that had Chinese-named Samurai or trying to fit with OA mechanics OR Tabot/Tibet having Sohei. This is not counting habit of pigeon holing classes to country analogues (so SE Asian only having barbarians because what is Khmer or Thai, or Chinese characters being Monks because no one wants to be Chi Fu the bureaucrat). I mean I get it's fantasy, BUT I doubt players would be talking about immersion breaking...aside from "eastern classes" in Europe.
@@quantus5875 thank you. I will, feudal Japan seems such an ideal fantasy D&D setting yet real!
@@powerist209 a bureaucrat class who schemes politically, skims from merchants and maybe has a private army or gangs, knows magic or a divine sponsor could be quite playable even at the trope crawl into a dungeon, seeking lost treasure they know of from the archives (treasure map).
@@michaelwest4325 But it would be if it was like Warhammer Fantasy RP, Call of Cthulhu, or games with "Profession" class.
In DND context, Samurai as a class had those BUT as I read, it overlap with Bushi in terms of being a fighter. Maybe like a Bard or something.
Come to think of it, I even ask my friend who played 1E DND and...there was a belief that having base DND classes are "too western" to fit with OA (as you say it did expose people to it, BUT also reinforced a bizarre mindset that east and west should be treated as culturally different world that had bizarre assumptions even by game standards, began culturally isolated and stagnant while other medium that had similiar "spark of urge" evolve and change...I know 4chan and RPG Horror might be different segment, but I do remember DND and Anime were like contentious in 3E along with Samurai Roleplayers being narrated as morons--like Baka from Goblins comic, OR like one South Park episode where Officer Barbrady learned to read but realized that the book he is studying is garbage situation). Like even around 3E from forums, there were people who think that Ranger is not "oriental" since most of the mindset is Samurai and Kung Fu similar to second point.
To fix the bindings, you just gotta bite the bullet and let a book person take it apart and reglue it. I had to do that with my Legends Lore and Manual of the Planes. Most of the others were fine, so far.
1:17:00 I've always liked the degrees of success and failure option. That reminds me of years ago we were playing Riffs, one of the characters rolls a critical success on a computer programming roll 🙂... The GM is like, I don't know really what to do with that, he thinks for a few seconds and he's like ah... the desktop achieves sentients 😀. Character did such a good job programming the computer, the computer is now alive... It never really went further than a laugh at the table... But sometimes I think somewhere in the wreckage of New York there is a sentient computer running Windows 98 with no internet connection, so it's kind of there talking to itself probably 🙂😃.
Digging through wreckage when you hear the buzzing, crackling, and whirling of a mid-90s desktop… “You’ve got mail!” 😅
We had this book but never used it when I was playing AD&D. When I DMed for 3.5 D&D, one of my players used that edition's version of the samurai to great effect. He used Iajutsu Focus quite a bit (the art of drawing a sword and attacking once for extra damage instead of dealing extra attacks). I thought the Shukenja (wandering monk with divine spells) in both AD&D and 3rd/3.5 editions to be an interesting class and almost played one in a friend's campaign before he said no.
Would be interesting to do a poll. We just used some of the characters in our campaign. Never played it in the Kara Tur setting. I think this usage was common -- I actually don't know anyone who ever used the Kara Tur setting.
@@quantus5875 I know we didn’t. My friend’s samurai came from there, but the campaign was set in Tethyr.
Yeah, I read abit and 3.5E had more good application of Iajutsu than AD&D OA (like entire descriptions and rule being too situational while 3.5E had it as “alpha strike” or “full scale initial attack”.
Your Grandma is awesome for paying for your Dragon Magazine sub! My Grandma paid for my Game Informer Magazine Sub and RuneScape sub for over a decade!
That is so fun to hear! Getting that subscription from my Grandma was so cool. I was given issue #76 as a birthday gift a year or so before, and I'd never heard of Dragon before that. I immediately began trying to acquire back issues and my second issue was #72 with the Cavalier, and then I got most issues from #70 - #89, and over the last few decades, I've gotten a few in the late 50's through the 60's. Once I got my subscription, I loved coming home after school to find that a new issue had been delivered.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Came to comment about this myself. Much of our love for these old products are tied to the personal experiences and memories of them. I like these little asides you give.
@libertyavalanche Thank you so much! I really appreciate it and I'm glad you enjoy the channel.
In the game I am currently running for my teenage players I am incorporating ideas from the highly imaginative world of the Japanese anime One Piece and let me tell you it is a perfect fit with vanilla D&D rules! The Katana wielding Sworsmen are simply Fighters, no need to use fancy specialized classes like Bushi, Samurai, Sohei, etc.. What you might call “Honor” plays highly in the setting, but I handle it completely with my existing D&D mechanics for handling Reputation with different factions and Experience bonuses for quest completion. I use my base D&D rules for unarmed combat to handle martial arts, you improve in this fighting style the same as normal level progression in your class. In short, all the cultural influences are simply flavour over top of my D&D base rules, as I believe it should be.
I love hearing that you're also running a game for teenagers, like I am! Cheers to you for doing that!
@@daddyrolleda1 Hats off to you for running a Lovecraftian game with them, this would not at all suit my players. Mine expect their characters to be the driving forces in the world, even from the start of the game! They were very humbled when i started them off as level 1 adventurers with scarcely more hit points than a goblin! Now 3rd level, they purposefully seek out low level fights so they can feel like superheroes, and avoid boss fights for as long as possible, even though they are worth more XP. They certainly would not want to feel small and powerless against unknown cosmic horrors from another reality!
Oriental settings are one of my favourites - sorry for the multiple comments. I was remembering back to the Dragon mag No. 3 Samurai - they had crazy auto critical hit numbers because of the fantastic, but not magical nature of their swords. I am sure this came from the idea that most Japanese swords were these uber-weapons. A +2 Katana auto-crit (and there was a crit table of sorts) like 10% of the time (19-20).
No worries! And yes, I talk about that Samurai from Dragon #3 (although I have it as part of Best of Dragon II). The whole idea of the katana being some kind of pseudo-magical uber-blade is so pervasive in video games, movies, comics, and more! It's so funny. Even the 3E era samurai class was allowed to invest XP into their blade to make it more powerful, as I recall.
I would love a break down in the classes. I used to love the Yakuza class, and it would ve neat to aee your insite into it.
I will add it to the list of potential future videos. Thanks!
The thing about non-weapon proficiencies and min-maxing reminds me of when 4E introduced backgrounds. The idea was to encourage characters to have interesting origins, like being raised by elves, or living in the arctic. They came with a small mechanical bonus, like a language or bonus on a single check.
Well, one of the options was Auspicious Birth, which let you choose a stat other than CON for your first-level hit points, which made CON a safe dump stat for any class. Wouldn't you know it, every single character had an auspicious birth.
I was thinking about this due to your last video, one of the things I was most excited for was the backgrounds that actually connected PCs to the world in not explicitly-mechanical ways.
over all these years, I never heard there was any controversy over this book. My brother got the book when it first came out, and I did not get it til much later. I always liked the idea of playing in a oriental adventure, but we never used it, mostly because we never felt as teens that we actually knew enough about how to actually run a oriental area. I think the main inspiration was probably Shogun, and possibly Kung Fu (tv show), at least thats how I saw it as a kid.
There is no controversy -- just a few young self-styled wannabee diversity warriors trying to make a mountain out of the use of the word "exotic". Total BS. And like Daddy Rolled a 1 said -- the use of comeliness had nothing to do with OE -- comeliness existed long before OE.
Kung Fu…other than David Carrandine casting and alleged plagiarism from Bruce Lee script, did it had derision from martial arts fan gatekeepers (like say…how anime weebs think about Kappa Mikey as cheap imitation back in the day even if I think that martial arts fandom aren’t as elitist as say anime fandom considering Powerman and Iron Fist homage on Black demographics fandom of said genre).
I won't lie. I have studied and researched a lot for Asian mythology (always found all mythology fascinating, but different Asian countries have different mythologies, some with similar elements, but all with their own twists). The one thing that I have always observed about the "Oriental Adventures" book was that it was mostly Japanese references and mythology (even the different races are those ascribed to Japan and their terminology), so labelling it "Oriental" always seemed a misnomer, even when I was using it in the 90's.
Also, one thing to help you with your pronunciations of Japanese themed elements (such as Kirin [keyreen], Korobokuro [cohroh bohkooroh], and Hengeyokai [hengeh yohka-ee]), a nice little thing about the Japanese language is that all Romanized vowels are pronounced the same (A is "ah", like in caught, I is 'ee" like in casino, U is "oo" like in flute, E is "eh" like in fetch, O is "oh" like in home) as well as consonants (K is "k" like kick, G is "g" like gut, S is "s" like sit, T is "t" like tie, D is "d" like dark, R/L is slightly strange since it sounds like an "l" and "r" mixed, H/F if "hf" which is strange because you pronounce it as breathing out an "f" like in a huff rather than a hard "f" like fun, P is "p" like pie, B is "b" like bike, Y is "y" like yawn, W is "w" like well, N is "n" like pen or night). There are lots of other subtle things, but that should cover the basics of reading Japanese Romanized words.
That's why I like the setting in the "Bushido" (1979) TTRPG much more -- it's a fantasy feudal Japan/Okinawa setting, which makes the setting feel much more consistent.
in the late 70 and early 80's nobody new anything about chinese culture, and likely all people new about korea was from washing M*A*S*H. Japanese had that Katana, which has alway been a point of interest and at the time, most people who were exposed to martial arts were taking Karate, with a few taking taeKwanDoo, at least where I lived. the only thing we new about kungfu was from Bruce Lee . Japanese influence was fairly well known in the USA as with all the japanese cultural sites. I think this is one of the main reason why OA primarily dealt with the Japanese culture in the book. Japanese makes for good roleplay, Bowing and honor and such, and the Samurai and the Katana, did I mention the Katana! Chinese at least now days, don't bow and such, my wife is Chinese, and Ive been there. If China had culture, it has all been erased by Mao. Anyways Japanese culture works so I think they did the right thing in OA.
Wish they would do a 5e update of this book for the forgotten realms
Thanks
Thank you so very much for your generous support! I truly appreciate it!
I’m a kid in the 1980s. I’ve got a fever, and the only cure is Ninjas.
Good thing in the 80's, there was plenty of "cure" around! 😀
The honor mechanic in the Land of the Rising Sun game got my attention. I am curious what the first "karma" tracking system was? Who made it part of the game instead of a "guideline?" My only exposure to tracking this is with CRPGs like Ultima IV and then later Fallout
Got all the Dragon & Dungeon mags (only upto the end of 2nd edition) as PDF's
Please do a video going into detail on the classes 🙏
20+ years living and working over here in South Korea - and a house in Thailand. Never, has any locals here, viewed the term “oriental” as offensive.
It’s an uncommon term here, used on some businesses. Only seemingly viewed as offensive to asians living in the west.
Maybe because in the west, we grew up with a negative connotation attacked to the word, while in the east (and south east) - that negativity never surfaced?
I chalked it to experience and language barrier. Like Asian in the west seeing it as term to apply it as “exotic and foreign weird place that (white) people can’t comprehend and totally not made in a narrative that made west as normal” to justify discrimination (or trying to soften by displaying surface level of it for PR).
Also I think reading Thai, Korea, and other nations as “same” might have issue since Thai didn’t suffer much European colonialism (Korean did but under Japanese inspired from it). But I doubt other counties in Asia, save for counter culture using western culture as “sticking it to nationalist elites” (King and I for example since anti monarchist Thai would have same context as Asian Americans annoyed with “weeaboo but more Asian fetish”) would see it as universally good thing (especially India and Burma on British, Indochina on France, and Indonesia on Dutch…the more it is “place to get natural resources” and less “given infrastructure and government apparatus that integrate the locals” being the worse would be their opinion). That and maybe annoyance with Tourists, majority of which (save for scholars and well educated ones) aren’t known for “respecting the locals” (and even almost any country, both east and west, who had to deal with them can agree with their shenanigans even of they bring profit).
So unless you are saying otherwise, just making a short essay to describe the comment to supplement that statement.
The term oriental for a piece of furniture, or your medicine practice or decorating style isn't offensive. Calling a group or person Oriental is. It's been used enough to me and my friends as a general slur.
Aye glad you got the video up bro
My Dad was a swing jazz fan. He could appreciate Bird, but by the time you get to Monk you'd lost him. I am a pretty big Bop fan and I love Monk, although I never got into most 70s fusion.
I can see that. I was not a fan of 70's fusion for the longest time, and Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" was something that I could not connect with for the longest time. But after years of listening, I've finally learned to appreciate it, and it then opened me up to a lot of other jazz-fusion stuff, like Larry Coryell, whom I really like.
My dad, also, is mostly into swing. But, because of me, he's learned to appreciate stuff like "Kind of Blue." He still prefers Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, though.
@@daddyrolleda1 I got my Dad the Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall album, and he could get into that.
FGU had some of Matt Wagner, of Grendel/Mage fame first professional artwork in Flashing Blades.
I got to meet Matt Wagner once at my local comics shop and get a few comics and a poster signed by him!
Thanks for watching and commenting. I really appreciate it. Cheers!
@@daddyrolleda1 Neat guy, talked to him at his Booth at Comic-Con in 2014 and have an original Shadow full color sketch by him.
I remember that book!
damn i never realized that the old sitcom trope of "honey, the Japanese investors are coming over for dinner!" is a byproduct of WW2.
Waiting on my MM 1 & 2 too arrive as a POD!
Two things you asked for commentary about:
1 - History of American interest and learning about the cultures covered - kind of missed the missionary work and reporting back from that and the trade that started (for the US at least) when Japan was opened up after China opened up (both somewhat involuntarily by the west) and the occupation of parts of the eastern parts of the region like the Philippines after 1900 etc and is definitely biased through the lens of the speaker. Kind of hard to get through the long intro given that as kid in the 70's and through adulthood I've also read up on the topics involved there and have a very different view of how much of it is post facto politicized and re-politicized ad nauseam. As a whole in my opinion the long intro could be cut as a detraction from the main topic which doesn't really add much to the material presented later on.
2 - The proficiencies being introduced in this particular publication. Tea ceremony and caligraphy (arts etc) versus blind fighting and combat useful stuff. It's a thing where some of these are more useful in a roleplaying versus tactical combat moment and the min-maxing mentioned conflicting kind of hits on a topic of where D&D came from versus what it was evolving into over the early to mid 1980's. Add to that the inclusion of Honor as a system - I don't think it was meant to be a stereotyping of culture* as much as a mechanic that affects the character in the game. In more modern terms it can be looked at like faction standing in an MMORPG where your reputation affects how the npc's react to you because f what you've done, not because of your personal intent. The whole concept of Honor is cross-cultural and like you said something that could be added to any campaign especially if it is a dynamic world that moves on it's own versus a one shot adventure setting.
*although yes it could be given the influx of anime and other media and an over attention to Samurai and other warrior culture aspects etc etc. Both things mentioned here and a lot of the rest of the video can be deep rabbit holes by themselves.
I really want to thank you so much for watching (and a detailed watch, not just "background") and commenting. It really means a lot!
Your comments are very insightful and I can definitely see your point about the intro being too long (which I have a tendency to do a lot of times) and perhaps even unnecessary. I was just trying to show some context as to why these particular concepts might have been included in the book but it may have gotten a bit away from me. I appreciate your insights.
Totally agree that many of the topics in this video could be excuses to go to the rabbit hole!
Thanks again, and also for your support in subscribing to the channel. I truly appreciate it.
I watch a lot of Daddy Rolled the 1 videos -- many of them are good videos -- but I've learned what to skip -- to make it more of a 40 min affair 😂-- and yeah skipped that entire section -- was IMO completely irrelevant to the discussion. I also skipped about half of the latter discussion of the book itself.
Well, I would like to agree but the Honor part isn't like faction standing (mostly entire book insist that you have to turn over your character sheet no matter what RULE AS WRITTEN*) and the one in OA is more of a play on "RP as Asian characters" even if honor is as you say "cross-cultural concept". Like in base DND, one you described is up to DM and even players--save for malicious ones--would know that shit talking to an important figure or going on murder spree would get them in trouble. BUT in OA, well, it would work if it was social RP but some modules kinda make it as important in dungeoneering (which might be rather difficult and not sure if many would be good at social RP).
*Yes, RAW is a thing back then and not everyone would be culturally informed to make a homebrew a "rogue or outlaw" (again this also fit into stereotyping since it implied that characters have commited seppuku due to shame and entire mechanic being forcing to RP as someone who must abide but rigid social structures...even Barbarian and Wu Jen who were written as "living off the grid". By contrast, base DND doesn't have that mechanics save for homebrews and Unearthed Arcana ideas that very few would use. Oh and it's more based on Bushido assumption, so your Chinese Kung Fu monk must abide by it).
I can't believe you're a philistine! No Tea Ceremonies in the dungeon!? Weirdo. That would actually be a cool RP thing for a player to make an orc chieftain feel respected.
Ha! That sounds EXACTLY like what the players in my daughter's campaign would totally try! They once parleyed with an orc chief in the middle of a battle after they'd killed his pet mutant dog (in fairness to them, it was self-defense; the thing was rabid). I could see them trying this!
Thanks for the idea, and for watching and commenting. Cheers!
There was an Oriental Adventures made for 3.5 edition.
Love your channel. WW2 Japan doesn't necessarily get a huge amount of sympathy in modern America, but it's frustrating how a typical 20 year old college student knows exactly 2 or 3 things about them: atomic bomb, US internment camps, and (maybe) Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile Japan's wartime atrocities literally exceeded Germany's and there is nearly complete ignorance on this topic. One video for those interested: ua-cam.com/video/kpVgDgKpQS8/v-deo.html
Depends on which "typical 20 year old college students" since many had issue with Japanese ultranationalists along with "cultural appropriation" in west (even if it's annoying term...even you have to agree with weebaboo/Japanophile white guy--or "Mall katana"--also fit into what you hate).
Depending on your age, maybe Gen X who would be seeing Japan as "new trend" in campus circle. Aside from sone segments who had genuine anti-war views but ill-informed on geopolitics that condemning a foreign aggressor is bad or any topics that isn't "common sense say supporting it is bad thing", Millenials and Gen Z tend to be more mixed bag (like geopolitics students, anime students, and so on have different take).
Not too preachy. I think your take is solid.
I really appreciate that - thank you so much for taking a bit of time to let me know. Cheers, and thanks for watching and commenting!
Oriental Adventures was basically a LOVE LETTER to China, Japan and to a smaller extent, Korea. Yes, it was fantastical, but so is anything for knights and princesses, and honestly anything european has far more abuse in it than the nearly zero amount in this book.
I am pretty much skeptical about love letter part. Even Korean part might be just form of Martial Arts and analogue in Eastern Realms would be there years after the main book release (judging by map published in main OA book that is really different from Kara-Tur book, I doubt that they thought about having Korea/Koryo at first point.)
And the comparison you made wouldn’t work since base DnD didn’t mechanize the class into being trapped in the role as a knight bound to the lord and follow chivalry to the letter via score system where losing it is essentially “game over”.
Just giving another insight that you should think about,
It's as much a love letter to China, Japan, and Korea as "It Ends With Us" is a romantic comedy to sport your florals going to it.
@@powerist209 It's almost like you haven't read the paladin class and think it actually mirrors precisely what was really in history.
@@jamesonstalanthasyu I'm not understanding your connection with a 2024 movie about broken ungrateful people has to do with a campaign setting lifting all the most exciting elements from eastern society to introduce it lovingly to a western audience.
Well, Paladin example wouldn’t work since 1. It does stray abit from real life version-either Palitini of Charlemagne or Crusaders-since serving to a higher power and also based on Three Hearts and Three Lions. Though Cavalier is closer to pop culture knight. 2. It is class specific, OA version is Bushido inspired code that it’s supposed to be taken by all class (even Wu Jen who are hermits, Barbarians who are supposed to be periphery and “foreign”, and ninjas who aren’t bound by it even in text). And this goes for Paladin as a concept in all editions.
Hey, honestly I’d love to see what were the specific differences and distinctions these Ortiental Adventure classes had compared with the PHB ones.
The Ä in Säntis you pronounce just right. In german language it's the way americans pronounce the A all the time. Without the dots it would be pronounced like an "Ah" or "Ar" or "Uh"
Where in central CA did you grow up, Martin? I used to live on the central coast.
We moved around but the area I was talking about in that part of the video was Modesto. I lived there for about four years while I was in elementary school.
Thanks for watching and commenting and for your support of the channel!
You didn't really talk about the martial arts.
FYI, the martial arts were updated for 2e in The Complete Ninja's Handbook.
I have a board game called shogun/samurai swords. Very fun.
I think Comeliness was an awkward attempt to remove appearance from CHA which was intended as leadership not looks. It flopped because CHA was already a dump stat and Comeliness more so.
Jamed Bond RPG (1983) handles "attractiveness" really well -- it has a pro that it made your seduction attempts much easier -- but the con was it made you more recognizable by the bad guys.
DRa1 is right -- not a new concept it was done before. Too lazy to go look -- but I'm pretty sure "DragonQuest" (1979) had an explicit stat for attractiveness. And even modern games -- occasionally try to explicitly represent attractiveness in some way. It's not rare.
I've always thought that as a player you should be able to just choose your attractiveness (and it should have nothing to do with your CHA or any skills. Low CHA could be an attractive character with poor social skills) -- this is a fantasy game after all -- if you want to play an attractive character - why not?
Hackmaster also used comeliness
Oh, does it? I didn't know that - I've briefly looked at Hackmaster from time-to-time but don't own it and have never played it. Thanks!
And, thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it!
The OSR has Flying Swordsman which is very playable
My recollection is that Flying Swordsmen is based on the 2E era "Dragon Fist" game by Chris Pramas (of Green Ronin fame) that was intended for bigger publication but never released commercially and instead given away for free by WotC on their website once 3E came out. I have both and they are fun.
Your videos are always interesting. I think your assessment of the book in the context of the time was very fair. I don't know - maybe we have gone too far the other way regarding sensitivities. And I think that sonetimes the people making the retrospective criticisms of of a historical product are more interested in virtue signalling rather than truly being interested in another culture. I am an occasional "anime" fan, and I love it when My Hero Academia gets western culture totally wrong, because I know the writer has a real love for american superhero comics.
And by the way, I love the bonus content. I am yet to disagree with your taste!
It has definitely gone too far in the other direction. So many are complaining to get clout amongst their plaintive peers. It's become a contest among them.
Yep - you go back far enough and everything has problems if you use a "modern" lens to look at things. They re-wrote the "Hardy Boys" starting in the 50s to get rid of foreign accents, portrayals of villians, ... Go back into the 20s and probably hard to find a book that doesn't have problems if you don your virtue signaling rosy tinted glasses.
Thank you for pointing out the "othering".
Althugh you in no way intended it, but it exposed the ridiculousness of labels. It is just a short word to address a geographic location, not racial issues, but it was the kung fu movies, and books like this that even got the western world even interested in dialog with them. It was until then, a mysterious other world where men learned to kill men with their bare hands...at least, that is what we thought.
I’m not aware of Oriental Adventures causing problems - only accusations given without evidence.
Indeed, on the contrary, Oriental Adventures enabled (& still enables) people to play characters who aren’t merely European-style characters & to play characters in a setting that isn’t European. Furthermore, it educates people about Asian history & mythology.
(Apologies for long comment. Just wanted to give my point on contexts behind some “accusations without contexts” and questions that you might need to assess besides “fantasy is subjective”.)
Agreed!! Only problems OE has caused are people who never played OE in 1985, going back, 30 years later, and looking at the book and trying to find problems. And yes, just general accusations with no examples.
I mean even if many of the examples they used are either questionable or just outside of your awareness, I doubt it’s made without example.
Maybe instead of treating it as such, maybe try reading them (especially constructive ones) and learn their perspective (maybe reassess what you know about OA rather than seeing it as “no problem”).
Just that I do hang out with people who played OA as well. Don’t take it as insult or smear, just giving some opinions and different approach.
I mean you can still admit that it had flaws and like the book. Plus homebrew is still a thing and even OA playerbase formed discussion board on them.
Everyone should watch Asian media.
C-dramas, Japanese movies, Vietnamese media, etc.
1:26:16 I think having skills relates a little bit more to real life. Everyone has varying degrees of skills in different subject matters. I like to think i'm as a pretty well skilled IT professional (my day job), and an amateur level skilled road bicycle racer (one of my hobbies). I make a living in IT, I cannot make a living racing bicycles 😎. I have no skills for driving semis, so you're not going to want me to drive a semi without taking training for it 🙂.
Do you think Tekumel had any influence on OA?
I think the Japanese are pretty cool
runequest did ninjas box too
monk class to OA book
its a rise of popularity of martial arts which actually overlapped with 80s gaming lots
in 70s ppl dreamed of martial arts in 80s everybody did it
marvel and dc turned many characters into ninjas
Oh, very cool - I didn't realize that about Runequest. I do recall lots of ninjas showing up in DC and Marvel comics, for sure.
Anyone who thinks this book is racist is an idiot. THIS book is the precursor to Legend of the Five Rings. I know, because I was there.
Oriental Adventure was a self contained RPG book that only used the Advanced D and D line of rules as a line of reference. Kara-Tur was the setting, which put you right into the Samurai setting. Had nothing to do with WW2, had nothing to do with disparaging eastern Asian Cultures. You can use this book, a players manual, and the DM guide, and you put yourself right into the middle of the Shogun wars.
I learned more about Asian studies by playing three campaigns of this set in 10th grade then I did in 3 years of college. Had a Ninja/ assassin, a Ronin, and later a Samurai in the old school Kurosawa theme. One of the best additions to D and D ever made.
I dove headfirst into LOT5R because of Oriental Adventures. What a great game!!!
A rather important piece from WW2 is Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series, which included a rather long film on the Battle of China. It is as negative as you can possibly imagine on the Japanese (and given some of the things they did in China, it is, frankly, understandable...), and very favorable towards the Chinese, although they conveniently cut the Communist Chinese entirely out of the picture....
the only thing you can really do is invest in rebinding it
Thanks! Have you ever done that before? Were you happy with the results?
I have two copies - got a mint one the other week that has been stored for the best part of 30 years in a dust/moisture/uv/acid resistant storage bag. A rare find here in New Zealand. And it did not cost me my pension.
@@daddyrolleda1 I have not done it personally but i have looked into it. Not sure how well the cover integrity could be reinforced but it would look great after its done. It would not look the exact same afterword, but it would be stronger.
The Martial Arts system was grossly underutilized and with some expansion with Len Carpenter's material from Dragon it could have been its own source book good enough to rival the Hero's systems tome published a few years later. Rolled a 1 spends to make time apologizing for cultural typecasting in the book. People should know not to take the social and cultural knowledge from a gaming work.
I am always bemused about complaints in regards to Oriental Adventures being a 'disrespectful mish mash of cultures' its the dumbest critique of the book. I have to point out for those sort of people, 'My brother in Gygax, all of D&D does this to western culture'. Huge swaths of eras, cultures, times and places all over the western world thrown together with no regard but for fun. Greek myths, renaissance weapons and armor, norse myths, middle eastern myths, celtic and cristian concepts, all mushed together.
It is literally equal treatment.
Some people just want virtue signal using Asian people as a prop for it.
Never mind that there are asian players who tested and by all accounts give the whole thing a thumbs up.
Also, I can't help but watch how 'respectfully' Asian cultures treat Western Cultures... i.e. about the same if not worse. People should just relax.
Well Said!!
The difference between an Asian nation doing a bad portrayal of Western cultures and America doing it is that there are a lot of Asian people who live here in America and they are affected by shitty portrayals of the cultures their immigrant families came from. Your "everybody should just relax" advice can easily be turned back on you: how about relaxing and letting people voice their own opinions about this stuff without accusing them of "virtue signalling" because it rubs you the wrong way that someone dared criticize something you like?
The disingenuous part of the criticisms of OA is that it does NOT represent any of the cultures of Asia- it represents the fictional culture of a far away land called Kara-tur. That culture amalgamated ideas from several real-world Asian cultures but it is not actually any of them.
@@VespoLiveGaming Yes, great point -- none of these cultures is trying to replicate the culture of any specific country -- these are fictional cultures in a fictional continent. Yes -- this is not a game trying to model a real world -- this is a fantasy game.
I had that bushido game up until recently. I remember loving that skills system.
But I'm afraid I had to stop watching at the statement roughly 40 minutes in.
We are only a hair from apologizing that our ancestors were hetero. It has to stop.
A small correction to your video on dates. Bushido was the first Asian genre RPG, not "Land of the Rising Sun". Bushido was first published in 1979 by Tyr Games and then Lee Gold's "Land of the Rising Sun" came out in 1980 (published by FGU), and Bushido was re-published by Pheonix in 1980 and again by FGU in 1981. Yes -- these two games came out fairly close and I think why many people get this fact wrong. But Bushido was clearly first.
I played Bushido back in 1980/81 and I can say it is by far the best of these three efforts, especially the "setting" - the setting is so rich and so well done. Not sure if it was Charrette or Hume, but not pop culture knowledge one of these two was an "expert" in Japanese feudal history/culture -- the Bushido setting was done by someone with extremely deep knowledge of feudal Japan -- this is not some guy who watched a few Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris movies. 😂
Also, another reason that I think Bushido is better than OE because it only tackles Japanese/Okinawan culture -- one of my opinions is that Oriental Adventures tries to do it all with Asian cultures -- which really IMO waters it down.
To my ears, most of your Japanese words were generally pretty good! Japanese pronunciation is pretty regular which is a blessing to anglophones. Chinese, especially with the old system, is very hard for the English native tongue...
For my money, you were definitely not too preachy. I think you can make the argument that for its context, you would expect OA to be more orientalist than it ended up -- that it was independently researched at all is already beating most of its contemporaries. But, you know. 1985 Wisconsin. I would love to hear those japanese-american playtersters' thoughts on the matter, if they could be found. Theirs is a uniquely important perspective that has gone undocumented.
I always cringe when I see deities statblocks -- we talk about how it creates a gameplay problem, but not the disrespect angle. Amaterasu Ōmikami being killable with 400 hitpoints is just deeply disrespectful to a living religion (one that was in deep crisis from the one-two punch of State Shinto making the Emperor's surrender into a theological nightmare and then money becoming the new god of Japan). I think that's indicative of the dangers in the "steal everything" ttrpg mindset. If you don't unpack and think about what you're making by taking the shortcut of simply lifting things, you are begging to run into a blindspot -- especially under a deadline. Could you imagine the outrage if TSR had published "The Christian Mythos" and gave God 400 HP? Someone would've tried to burn the building down!
What I always find interesting is that a bunch of people who complain about deity stat blocks actually own a copy of Deities & Demigods or Legends and Lore. Just surprised they bought the book if they have a problem with them.
On my end I've never used deity stat blocks ever -- don't have a problem with deity stat blocks at all -- just for me all the gods are all powerful compared to the characters -- the characters should never have even the slightest chance of defeating a god.
The term 'Asian Culture' is nonsense anyway. You might as well say European culture. The book isnt controversial at all unless you are deranged and don't care about intentions. The intention is clearly to make a fun gaming supplement, not a history book or academic tome.
Accusing people of being "deranged" for having a different opinion doesn't sound defensive at all...
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 its not an opinion. You have mental derangement if you believe the authors intent was to offend or mock Chinese, Japanese and Korean history and culture.
@@nedleeds908 If I'm driving and didn't intend to run over a child, I guess anyone who criticizes me for accidentally doing that is "deranged," according to your logic. Intention is all that matters!
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 if you're comparing Oriental Adventures post 38 year lack of sensitivity to running over a child you're also deranged.
Othering... lol
Excellent review, just please don't dance around "cultural sensitivity". Just omit any discussion on it. It's so much worse for European ones even now, that highlighting "potential problems" in others just becomes insulting. Why are we even focusing on this?
Cherry picked critique seems to become a social weapon for politics.
It's much more interesting to focus on what was awesome about these things. You did a lot of that, thank you. And (aside from the binding) there was a ton of awesome from the OA book.
It is definitely a complicated topic! I appreciate you watching and commenting. Thanks!
All the snowflaking over OA guaranteed that Asia would be completely ignored in all future editions of the game. Congratulations on marginalizing your cultures!
I’m interested to see how/if you address the more controversial aspects of this book. Can’t wait to watch this one!
Thank you so much for the support, as always!
I hope you are not disappointed. I touch briefly on it and I correct one thing that I've heard used as a "problem" with this book, but for the most part, I discuss the American cultural background from the post-WW2 period up until 1985 which provides the context for understanding how and why this book was made, and then I go into the legacy of the book in terms of its mechanics and how that affected future editions of D&D as well as the legacy of the book as a whole.
I felt like perhaps I'm not qualified to discuss some of the negative things people say about this book. I did talk to a wide variety of friends here in the San Gabriel Valley (you can look that up to see the demographics), both gamers and non-gamers, about the book and they all suggested I might not want to address it.
These guys looked like they thought it was alright. Masataka Ohta, Akira Saito, Hiroyasu Kurose, Takafumi Sakurai, and Yuka Tate-ishi.
Yes, definitely something I probably should have highlighted - the Japanese playtesters for the book.
I don’t watch videos like this for spilled tea.
Why bother? It's not like there isn't "controversial" aspects in all of fantasy if you want to nitpick everything.
The entire mythologies of slaying dragons and invading "uncivilized" areas to loot them could be ripped to shreds in a second. Stemming from earlier myths of civilization like gilgamesh or the slaying of tiamat (aka chaos) by marduk.
It's fantasy. It's bullshit. It's roleplay. real brains will parse out what they want from these books and play a game. small brains will get mired in the swamp of politics hoping they can find some Perfect Position of sensitivity.
Hell, most of you live in a house built on indigenous cultures/corpses and you're worried if some dumb 40 year old D&D book is controversial. You can't even do anything in your own life without some type of hypocrisy if someone wanted to nitpick it.
Play your own game.
Now part of me wonder if 2E kit might be result of developers and players realizing “hey, isn’t Bushi and Yakuza kinda too close to Fighter and Thief. Maybe we could have used base DnD classes but include variants like Samurai, Spellblade, and what not. That way we won’t have some smartass questioning why Shi Fu the Chinese bureaucrat gets to be a Bushi rather than…courtier type.”
I mean even in Fantasy context, people would be asking if trying to plug base DnD classes to replace or supplement OA classes. Even the “base DnD classes is rooted in European mythology” would have its own packages since classes like Fighter and Thief tends to have more versatile in roleplaying ideas and mechanics.
Also another nitpick being instead of Samurai class, maybe have a courtier class with Bushi should have had more generalized narrative for “fight focus Samurai” with Courtier being “social dandy Samurai”.
Might need to look at OA BUT part of me feel that OA take on Bushi and Samurai kinda overlap. Also since entire book tend to claim it wants to be “all of Asia” despite its Japanese language use and mechanics rooted mostly in that sphere, it could add more leeway like Courtier allowing Chinese bureaucrats, diplomats, court officials, and even viziers.
Like L5R rpg (both recent 5E and older rpg lines) had those two distinctions. Just my two cents, but would have worked better.
I've enjoyed a great many of your history expositions, however i must add the the idea we need cultural appropriations for a game of make believe is just ridiculous. Sadly that is why our beloved game is going down the toilet. Hopefully you can continue to provide some amazing content that can be enjoyed, but steers away from current politics.