Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Ryltar Thamior 10-30-06, 03:59 AM	Ideas?
HidaAkira 10-30-06, 05:55 AM	Um, a little more information, please? Do you want a published adventure? Do you want us to write one for you? (fat chance) Do you want us ideas for one if so - what flavor of oriental - Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Mongolian, Korean, Thai, vietnamese.... - existing oriental fantasy setting - KaraTur, Rokugan, (Tekumel, maybe) what? You probably can't go far wrong with getting an existing dungeon-crawl adventure, rewrite the flavor text and maybe replace some of the monsters with oriental-flavored ones.
MareltEkiran 10-30-06, 07:00 PM	The entire question is moot. There is no such thing as a dungeon crawl in Oriental adventures. Because... - There are no dungeons in Oriental Adventures. Whenever a building goes into disuse, it is carefully emptied and demolished by the local authorities. - Your lord didn't give you permission to go dungeon crawling. You lose all your class features and must instantly commit ritual suicide, the moment you enter. - All buildings larger than a tatched hut are property of the nobility. If you're a commoner and set foot in one, the Celestial Order will instantly strike you down. - There's nothing inside a dungeon anyway. All valuable properties in the setting are kept in clan holdings. - All your powers do not belong to you, but to your ancestors/spirits/celestial order/your lord and it is dishonourable to use them for dungeon crawling.
narukagami 10-30-06, 07:22 PM	The entire question is moot. There is no such thing as a dungeon crawl in Oriental adventures. Because... Oh this is gonna be good...:rolleyes: - There are no dungeons in Oriental Adventures. Whenever a building goes into disuse, it is carefully emptied and demolished by the local authorities. Oh really? So those lost tombs, forgotten shrines, forgotten hidden catacombs benieth the long-since-demolished castles, caves used to hide away "lost" treasures, ect in my campaign setting don't actually exsist? I'm glad you informed me of this fact before I did something embarrasing.:rolleyes: - Your lord didn't give you permission to go dungeon crawling. You lose all your class features and must instantly commit ritual suicide, the moment you enter. What makes you so sure about that? Are you his DM? - All buildings larger than a tatched hut are property of the nobility. If you're a commoner and set foot in one, the Celestial Order will instantly strike you down. HAHA! Yeah, ok... - There's nothing inside a dungeon anyway. All valuable properties in the setting are kept in clan holdings. Really? Because in most of the L5R fiction a good number of those valuable items were found in ruins and "dungeons" in the first place, with many more ruins and dungeons to explore to find more artifacts. Also, gods know what is lost benieth the Kaiu wall, lost in the Shadowlands, and buried in those vast ruins uncovered by that meteor in Unicorn lands. - All your powers do not belong to you, but to your ancestors/spirits/celestial order/your lord and it is dishonourable to use them for dungeon crawling. Haha, yeah, right. So all those brave samurai who braved the shadowlands to retrieve lost artifacts or decided to explore some random cave and found a lost treasure in L5R canon are dishonorable scoundels. :rolleyes: I think you need to either re-read Oriental Adventures, read some Asian literature, read up on the Rokugan setting, or use your imagination. There are numerous reasons for a dungeon crawl in OA, and numerous reasons for ruins, ESPECIALLY in a fantasy setting. Also, not all OA games are set in Rokugan or a feudal Japan clone.
Kyuketsukiouji 10-30-06, 07:25 PM	I'm going to just hope MareltEkiran was trying to be funny. Anyways, hiding stuff underground is pretty much a universal constant. Whether the stuff is the fingerbones of St. Cuthbert or long-lost Jade Seal of the First Emperor hardly matters, ultimately...
MareltEkiran 10-30-06, 08:13 PM	I'm sorry if I sounded a little bitter, there, but that is really how a former DM of mine ran Rokugan settings. What ended up happening is that 80% of all d20 rolls in the game were diplomacy checks, knowledge (etiquette) checks or knowledge (tea ceremony) checks. Everyone had to play one of the noble classes (Samurai, Shugenja or Courtier)... if you played anything else, you were a commoner, and therefore weren't even permitted to speak or perform any action, unless specifically given permission. And if you strayed even an inch from the DM's prewritten script, you were instantly executed/struck down for dishonourable behaviour. Needless to say, I have ever since kept a fierce hatred of anything Rokugan-related. So I apologize again if I sounded a bit sarcastic.
Kyuketsukiouji 10-30-06, 08:25 PM	"Dumb DMs. Ruining D&D since 1974."
Ranger REG 10-31-06, 02:53 AM	I'm sorry if I sounded a little bitter, there, but that is really how a former DM of mine ran Rokugan settings. [snipped] Needless to say, I have ever since kept a fierce hatred of anything Rokugan-related. So I apologize again if I sounded a bit sarcastic. Yeah, I gotta agree with Kyuketsukiouji. :devil:
HidaAkira 10-31-06, 09:19 AM	Don't hate Rokugan because of one idiot GM - hate the GM. Would you hate D&D (or any of its many campaign settings) because of one incompetant GM?
Azzy 10-31-06, 03:55 PM	I'm sorry if I sounded a little bitter, there, but that is really how a former DM of mine ran Rokugan settings. So, because this really begs the question, what stopped you from setting this idiot DM on fire?
Kyuketsukiouji 10-31-06, 04:56 PM	Sadly, while there are laws against setting stupid people on fire, there aren't any against being stupid. For reasons obvious to anyone familiar with Sturgeon's Law.
narukagami 10-31-06, 05:41 PM	there aren't any against being stupid. Because then we'd have to jail most of the lawmakers.:tie: Ah, seriously though. MareltEkiran, you should have mentioned that in the first place, then I wouldn't have been so... snide. And if you must dislike Rokugan (I know alot of people do for their own reasons, like Ranger REG, for example) Don't hate Oriental styled D&D because of one idiot DM. Oh, and that DM didn't seem like he knew anything about the setting he was running. One of the prime indicators of a bad DM.
Dreamstryder 11-01-06, 02:49 AM	Ancient Temple withOUT yuan-ti (Ha! bet you didn't see that coming! ;) ), half-flooded from the holy river nearby. Though the river supports some beneficial nature spirits and tamed crocodilians (pets of ancient clerics?), the dark corridors and flooded halls that escape sunlight are eaten up by terrestrial and aquatic undead...y'know, underwater giant floating heads (advanced/enlarged penanggalan?) and zombie monkeys. Long ago some curse rotted the temple from the inside out and to check its spread, the river goddess flooded it. You have to infiltrate the invading shogun's flying warcastle; he's raining fire arrows & stuff down on resisting cities and all the while approaching your shogun's castletown. What to do? Neutralize the flying fortress! Alternatively, the shogun could be a band of technologically-equipped bandits attacking your monastery. Something is wrong with the holy relic in a shrine. A wizard shrinks the party to explore the relic internally, and in the relic is an entire world, but mazelike and riddled with both good and bad spirits and monsters. You just have to find what's causing the problem.
Kyuketsukiouji 11-01-06, 07:04 AM	Something is wrong with the holy relic in a shrine. A wizard shrinks the party to explore the relic internally, and in the relic is an entire world, but mazelike and riddled with both good and bad spirits and monsters. You just have to find what's causing the problem. Brilliant!
Ryltar Thamior 11-01-06, 08:04 PM	Wow! That's good stuff! It's pretty darn fantastic infact!
Foxhengeyokai 11-03-06, 10:36 AM	Well, for rokugani adventures, this is pretty simple. Look in the kaiu (sp?) wall. For other OA stuff, it's entirely dependant on your setting, and to get some real input, we need data on what you have planned. Although there are some that are kinda universal, I'll try to do some. "Mysterious and rude foreigners, using bizzare weapons and wearing unfamaliar armor have come to town, you have been assigned to meet with them." "A water spirit has been displeased with the people of (Insert village name here) If nothing is done, the village will die." There has been a recent string of murders, only one eyewitness has survived, and he must be escourted to your lord's place of abode. The eyewitness mentions a blind swordsman. (Zatoichi anyone?) A legendary dragon is prophecied to grant a wish to whoever can collect seven artifacts and bring them together... A legendary dragon is prophecied to come to ground soon, anyone who can kill it is said to gain magical powers. A Tun mi lung is causing hurricanes and typhoons. Your superiors demand it stop. You have all been invited to a wedding of a legendary samurai/warrior, he is afraid of attracting the attention of a clan of ninja/thugee cultists. A bunch of children are seen harrasing a turtle.. ((Anyone familiar with the legend of Urashima taro?)) That should do for a while.
Dreamstryder 11-03-06, 07:26 PM	The inside-the-relic adventure is inspired from Disgaea's Item World, but there you're an invading army and most people you meet try to clobber you. OK, jumping off of Urashima Taro...In a dream (at least you all think it's a dream) you awake in the underwater world, where the castles are made of arms of coral, and the forests are branching bulbs of pearl. What a sec! These pearled-over trees look like people from my hometown, and why is the realm's castle feeding the seaweed?! At the base of what was your land, there is a dreaded [8-headed serpent: normal Hydra? Kraken? Something else?] drifting in sleep to the bottom of the sea, pulling your home down with it! You must venture to the base of the land (thru underwater garden caves and a now upside-down, flooded city), where you'll see a giant hook. If you can get the sleeping monster off the hook, maybe your land will float back to the surface & the cursed people will awake ...or maybe you'll just wake up cold and wet.
Ruslanchik 11-05-06, 12:06 AM	If you're using the taint system: the people of X village or town start displaying physical and mental problems--this just happens to coincide with a farmer discovering a huge cave that looks like it leads directly under the town. Adventurers, go find the problem and kill it. (Source of taint could be a huge tainted creature, an evil spirit, or even an asteroid. Monsters are basically highly tainted versions of normal woodland creatures and spirits.)
angryman 11-06-06, 04:17 AM	I got a Japanese one for you: The Horror of the Tokyo Subway Be crushed by non-euclydian masses of people! Get XP for every person that elbows you in the ribs! Be the lucky adventurer who is right next to a jolly group of random businessmen who have just finished drinking vast quantities of beer & sake!
Ryltar Thamior 11-06-06, 06:02 PM	It is so! It is most definately so! Heh. Non-Euclydian... reminds me of that bit about R'lyeh :P
narukagami 11-06-06, 06:04 PM	The Horror of the Tokyo Subway Be crushed by non-euclydian masses of people! Get XP for every person that elbows you in the ribs! Be the lucky adventurer who is right next to a jolly group of random businessmen who have just finished drinking vast quantities of beer & sake! This is situation is vastly more fun when its a group of random University girls who have just finished drinking vast quantities of beer & sake instead of business men. :D
Kyuketsukiouji 11-06-06, 09:44 PM	It is so! It is most definately so! Heh. Non-Euclydian... reminds me of that bit about R'lyeh :P That's right after Tennoji on the Midorisen, right? :P
angryman 11-06-06, 09:56 PM	This is situation is vastly more fun when its a group of random University girls who have just finished drinking vast quantities of beer & sake instead of business men. :D Jolly random, totally smashed businessmen? Haha, give me (non-puking) univ students any day. :D Kyuketsukiouji, no it's every day of my life on the Chuo line going to Shinjuku. *weep*
Kyuketsukiouji 11-07-06, 07:25 AM	Jolly random, totally smashed businessmen? Haha, give me (non-puking) univ students any day. :D Kyuketsukiouji, no it's every day of my life on the Chuo line going to Shinjuku. *weep* Shinjuku? Geez, even Cthulu stays away from that place...
angryman 11-07-06, 10:37 AM	Shinjuku? Geez, even Cthulu stays away from that place... Well thanks, I didn't just mention I have to go there every day. :*(
Ryltar Thamior 11-08-06, 01:55 AM	Cthulhu himself quails in fear at the thought of Japanese businessmen having finished a drinking and karioke session... It really is a very very disturbingthing... especially if they continue the karioke in the subway car..
RavenGraygem 01-31-07, 07:18 PM	Cthulhu himself quails in fear at the thought of Japanese businessmen having finished a drinking and karioke session... It really is a very very disturbingthing... especially if they continue the karioke in the subway car.. And thus the secret weakness of the squidy Elder God is revealed and the world is saved from his mind-rending presence by getting Japanese businessmen tanked up in karioke bars around the world.
Hochiu 01-31-07, 08:58 PM	Cthulhu himself quails in fear at the thought of Japanese businessmen having finished a drinking and karioke session... It really is a very very disturbingthing... especially if they continue the karioke in the subway car.. It is little known that Nyarlthotep himself created the karaoke machine in order to usher in nuclear armageddon and is always there to prompt the drunken Japanese businessmen to sing during the most inopportune times.
angryman 02-06-07, 09:34 PM	It is little known that Nyarlthotep himself created the karaoke machine in order to usher in nuclear armageddon and is always there to prompt the drunken Japanese businessmen to sing during the most inopportune times. Like outside my shoebox, er, apartment a 3am this morning. And then puking.
Lord Gwydion 02-07-07, 12:12 AM	Feel sorry for ya! BTW, wanna get some gaming in before the big move?
Count Arioch the 28th 02-07-07, 05:40 PM	A shirokinukatsukami appears before the party. It tells them "The Emperor has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the Emperor?"
Darth Sephiroth 02-10-07, 09:22 PM	The mountain shrine of <Insert Hero/Mythical Figure Here> has been desicrated by monsters, you're assigned to clear it out and recover the ancient relics within before they can become tainted by the forces of evil.
PuppyKhan 02-27-07, 12:26 PM	The mountain shrine of <Insert Hero/Mythical Figure Here> has been desicrated by monsters, you're assigned to clear it out and recover the ancient relics within before they can become tainted by the forces of evil. Or make it a cave temple that also served as a way station in a remote mountain pass of a trade route (a la Silk Road) making it unsafe for travellers, scaring off merchants, and hurting the local economy of the nearest frontier town. PCs can be sent by other members of the temple's order, the local ruler, merchants, happen to travel through... Make it a temple with a powerful secret deep in the mountain overrun by something more powerful and you can have a serious dungeon crawl.
Darth Sephiroth 02-27-07, 05:09 PM	Or make it a cave temple that also served as a way station in a remote mountain pass of a trade route (a la Silk Road) making it unsafe for travellers, scaring off merchants, and hurting the local economy of the nearest frontier town. PCs can be sent by other members of the temple's order, the local ruler, merchants, happen to travel through... Make it a temple with a powerful secret deep in the mountain overrun by something more powerful and you can have a serious dungeon crawl. Swipe the Guild Wars: Factions thing with the infection of evil turning people into horrible monsters
Rogue Shadows 02-27-07, 05:19 PM	"Dumb DMs. Ruining D&D since 1974." Just touching on this. It's funny 'cause D&D has only been around since 1975.
narukagami 02-27-07, 05:23 PM	Just touching on this. It's funny 'cause D&D has only been around since 1975. TIME PARADOX!
Rogue Shadows 02-27-07, 05:35 PM	At its most literal, the easiest way to do a dungeon crawl is to have the PCs imprisoned (wrongly) in a dungeon somewhere. Perhaps a bunch of shinobi captured them. Or maybe a rival Lord. They have to escape. Simple and straightforward. Another way to do it would be to disguise that it's even a dungeon in the first place. Perhaps some bakemono or other evil creatures have laired in the local cave. There are too many for the ashigeru to take care of, so the local Lord hires adventurers/tells his retaining bushi to take care of the problem. This is actually how 9/10ths of all dungeon crawls are in real D&D...but for some reason it fools players every time. A third option is to have the ruins be recent. Have the PCs, who are on a journey, enter a town around noon that is in physical shambles. They look around and can find no evidence of any heimin or hinin, until they enter a local house looking for any clue as to what happen. They see a young girl crouched in the corner, back to them. One of them goes up to see what's wrong...she turns around, and she's a ZOMBIE, and had been chewing on a leg. Combat begins. Did that myself. The entire town had been slaughtered by a shikage no oni and then raised to serve it. (Does shikage no oni actually mean anything in Japanese? Probably, but it's also almost certainly grammatically incorrect (I was going for "demon of shadow"). However...who cares? Unless your players speak Japanese, they sure as Heck don't) Not precisely the same thing as a dungeon crawl, but the end result is the same: players now may freely take any valuable items they want, since the town is dead and any one of those items could be the difference between survival and undeath. A la Resident Evil, I suppose. But it works.
Lord Gwydion 02-27-07, 07:04 PM	Well, the next adventure I'm planning for my group is going to be a small dungeon crawl. They'll be going up to the capital to be feasted for their part in stopping a peasant rebellion (plot blatantly stolen from the Yellow Scarves Rebellion in Three Kingdoms). After the feasting, while hitting the local dancer bars (which I know they will...) they'll encounter a pair of apparently drunk figures in tattered and old fashioned clothes who seem to be even more drunk than the PCs...until they get close, and realize they're under attack by Hopping Vampires! After defeating them and dealing with the Curse of Vampirism, they'll learn that the vamps were from a few centuries ago, and be sent to investigate the tomb where they should have been buried. Commence dungeon crawl.
Lord Gwydion 02-27-07, 07:06 PM	TIME PARADOX! Off topic, but wasn't the original woodgrain box released in '74? The white box came out in '75.
Rogue Shadows 02-27-07, 07:29 PM	I use Wikipedia for all things, and Wikipedia told me that D&D was released in 1975. Wikipedia tells all. Wikipedia lies, sometimes, but only when lies are better then truth. Usually, though, Wikipedia tells the truth.
Darth Sephiroth 02-27-07, 08:55 PM	A group of bandits raided a merchant who was carrying weapons and armor for the Lords Samurai. They seemed more like animals than men and vanished into the hills when reinforcements for th escort arrived. Investigation reveals that these bandits had been villagers near a mountain shrine that had been broken into after a lack of food the past winter had the desperate men and women looking for money and food.They were cursed by the spirit within and are controlled by an unknown demon that was also contained within. Now these transformed peasents hide in the caverns beneath the monestary by day and they hunt by night in bouts of insanity and savagery while the Oni Lord grows in power daily and its influence spreads through the countryside around the mountain turning man to beast and driving those who aproach slowly to madness. The mystics and advisors have suggested that terminating the demon would end this plague and thus the call was put out...
Orion Polaris 03-26-07, 12:10 AM	You will get flamed for making this topic.
Darth Sephiroth 03-27-07, 08:49 PM	You will get flamed for making this topic. Did you even bother to read the posts, it's become more of a group of ideas for Oriental style dungeons
Count Arioch the 28th 03-27-07, 10:09 PM	You will get flamed for making this topic. No one has flamed anyone at this point, I doubt anyone will start.
Darth Sephiroth 03-28-07, 04:47 PM	One idea is to have a relic stored deep within a laberinth near a monestary or sacred site, the relic must be touched in order to gain access to the place, unfortunately for the party the place is not just a maze, but filled with monsters and they were ordered to ask a question to the head of the monestary by their lord, or the daughter of the lord is sick and must have water from the fountain within.
Lord Gwydion 04-12-07, 10:20 PM	Well, my dungeon crawl went well. As I mentioned above, it started when the PCs got attacked by a pair of hopping vampires that were traced back to the tomb of the Queen's family (in the kingdom of my homebrew setting we're using, only commoners get cremated, aristocrats and nobles get burried). They were sent in to investigate, and see if the Queen's ancestor (the Lady Chao) was resting peacefully or not. Inside were some Gaki (4 Jiki-niku and 1 Shiki), 2 more Hopping Vampires, 1 Gelatinous Cube, and a simple puzzle to solve to get to the Lady Chao's sarcophogus. As there are six level 5 characters (Wu Jen, Samurai, Monk, Ranger, "Ninja"* and Sohei) with a heavy melee focus, and I'm using a variant of class defense stacking with armor (minus ACP) and action points, it was actually a pretty easy go for them. Good initiative meant that a fireball and some fast attacking from the meleers took out the Jiki-niku gaki in one round, and the Shiki went invisible and flying until its fast healing could work, using passwall as a trap to divide the party and attack again (inflicting disease on the Wu Jen) but died thanks to a flurry of blows by the Sohei. The party then managed to meet up, and fought the vampires (very easy battle), explored a bit more, found out there was something in the water of the flooded areas of the tomb (the G. cube), went downstairs and used acid and iaijutsu strikes to weaken the wall to drain the water (the simple puzzle), fought the Gelatinous cube mostly with ranged weapons (and good saving throws by the Monk and Sohei kept them from being enveloped). They secured the tomb, made sure the Lady Chao was resting peacefully (she was), and then headed back to the palace to report. Next adventure is another dungeon crawl, using a modified version of the free on the main page "Ministry of Wind" adventure as they investigate who it was that desecrated the queen's family tomb. *the "ninja" just uses the Rogue class
narukagami 04-12-07, 10:33 PM	1 Gelatinous Cube Even in the Far East, no dungeon is complete without the CUBE! :gel:
Rogue Shadows 04-14-07, 10:24 AM	Even in the Far East, no dungeon is complete without the CUBE! "Gygax clearly had some sort of ooze fixation. He populated his little world with a goobery panapoly of spores, molds, and fungi, at least one variety of which has psychic powers. Huh. At any rate, closely edging out green slime for "Best Performance by a Nickelodeon Game Show Prop" is the gelatinous cube, a transparent, hallway-shaped, flesh-dissolving, uh. Cube. The sheer ridiculousness of it is impressive. Here we have yet another monster with no reason to exist in a dungeon-free ecosystem. It's genetically adapted to graph paper, for God's sake! Plus it conveniently fails to either digest or excrete metal, giving an adventurers a reason to kill it and scoop coins from its corpse. It's like some sort of living, deadly, mall fountain. A." The Book of Ratings (http://www.bookofratings.com/dndmonsters2.html)
Roxlimn 04-14-07, 10:36 AM	What exactly would differentiate an "oriental" dungeon from a regular one? Practically any idea for a dungeon would work equally well for an occidental setting as well as an oriental setting.
Lord Gwydion 04-14-07, 10:07 PM	What exactly would differentiate an "oriental" dungeon from a regular one? Practically any idea for a dungeon would work equally well for an occidental setting as well as an oriental setting. That seems to be the theme of mine around here in the past month or two. We're playing OA, but it's still D&D. Adapting an adventure to OA isn't really any different from adapting it from the setting it was designed for (or genericness) into another campaign setting. Just as you need to make a few adjustments to a Greyhawk module to play it in Eberron or a homebrew setting, making similar adjustments to fit OA is no harder. I completed my adjustments to The Ministry of Winds (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20010720a) adventure. Here's what I changed: 1. Adventure hooks--rather than "Oh, hey, there's a weird tower, let's loot it" it's "The people we suspect despoiled the Queen's family tomb are based in this weird pagoda." 2. Background/Motivation--rather than "insane essences of ancient wizards want to take over world by posessing mortals" it's "reincarnations of insane wizards who were enemies of the Queen's family have resurfaced" 3. NPCs/Monsters-- Xill changed to Common Oni (a bit tougher encounter, but not necessary to fight him to complete the adventure) Sorcerer renamed, slight adjustment to tactics. Cleric renamed, slight adjustment to spells, left as a cleric even though that's not a class open to the PCs, not changed to shaman as that would be more trouble than it's worth Minotaur changed to Wang Liang (magic greataxe changed to magic halberd, feats changed from TWF to Combat Expertise/Imp. Trip) Barghest changed to Yuki-Onna 4. Flavor--changed the 4 Winds to 3 Storms (similar to Big Trouble in Little China or Storm Riders) plus bodyguard Now it's a perfectly good OA adventure. :tie:
Ranger REG 04-15-07, 02:28 AM	Try an OA twist of the Keep on the Borderland.