In the past, we have seen things like Oriental Adventures. We have seen lots of Japan/China themed stuff. There was a time when actual names of martial arts appeared in a printed book.
Classes like the Ninja, Monk, Wujen, and so on, have been addressed, along with Eastern wingless dragons.
But I'm thinking it's about time we throw in the Southeast Asian stuff into our D&D game with more earnest effort. Like the many B Action movies backed by russian oligarchs (i.e. Steven Seagal movies), people want to see places like Thailand in their fiction. They want Thai kickboxing. They want Buddha meditating statues or whatever is equivalent.
The advantage of coupling Southeast and East together is the ability to have a solid link between Ki and Psi. I've thought these two concepts overlapped for a long time. In addition to Thailand, you have places like India, Nepal, Tibet/Shangrila, and Mongol warriors. You have Mulan, and the Great Wall, No Cha and the Jade Emperor. You get tropical pacific martial arts to play with like Kali. You get all sorts of Eastern and Indian deities and Boddhisattvas to play with like Kuan Yin, Visnu, and Shiva.
China/Japan has been done to death in previous supplements, but digging into the other places nearby really opens up a wealth of possibilites, and gives perspective on the China/Japan traditions.
Things like Meditation, Martial Arts, and internal powers are all common themes from the Punjab to Okinawa.
You can call these places whatever you want, and stick them in Grey Hawk or Forgotten Realms, or whatever, but there's a lot more cohesion, and you could seriously create a non darksun campaign world for Psionicists/Psychics for once.
Its always hard to get this type of stuff right. Do you base it on bad B grade movies from Hong Kong or on real life history with a fantasy twist as traditional D&D is faux France and England for the most part.
I am more interested in Persia/Inda than SEA and 2E had equipment from that area in Combat and Tactics. The various Khanates are also interesting to read about as well.
Th eproblem with Ki = psi is that they generally design the monk without much regard for psionics and thus it generally comes out all wrong for a psionic class.
* Psionic = power points.
* Ki. Poses and manveuers with supernatural effects. (See "Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords).
but also ki can be Chakras and points of essentia (Magic of incarnum). Maybe the word could be "mythus".
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Yes, I like the idea of a "Oriental Adventures" 5th Ed and also a "1001 nights".
I would love to see another Oriental Adventures book.
so far everything everybody has said is right. kudos!
but we should at least try to address some of those issues now, and hope any solutions we come up with can be inspirational to the design team.
First, let's look at the geographical mess: West Asia is defined as what politicians today call "the middle east". Basically, Aladdin land. Great place to have a Shiar Djinni summoner type, but not related to this supplement.
South Asia: Srilanka (where Arthur C Clark retired), India (home of Dali Llama), Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, Maldives, and Afghanistan. Some of these border the Middle East. Anyone ever heard of Ehsan Shafiq? (b. 1976, d. 2012), you can see youtube videos of him doing martial arts, it's pretty badass. Origin of Buddhism and Hinduism, with some Persian influences especially along the Border. This is one of the important parts of "Asia" D&D should include.
South East Asia: Includes places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand/Siam (Thai Kickboxing, Elephants, and Peanut Curry), Phillipines (home of Escrima/kali/Arnis martial arts), Vietnam, Burma, and Cambodia (home of Angkor Wat - like one of the biggest tourist sites in the world). Predominantly Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Clearly this is the other missing piece I wanted to Include.
East Asia: China, Mongolia, Tibet (China), Korea, Japan. This is the home of Taoism/Lao Tsu, Confucius, Shintoism, Wushu, Shaolin Monks, Wudang Mountain, Ninja, Samurai, Kensai, Taekwondo, Kuan Yin, Three Kingdoms, and the legendary Monkey King.
Common themes among these different cultures include the Sifu/Sensei/Guru teacher - student relationship, Meditation, Eastern Philosophy, Chakras, and certain symbols or artifacts, like the Vajra/Dorje displayed here:
--> http://www.asianart.com/lieberman/large/vajra.ghanta-dorje.lg.jpg
This image actually appears all over the place in South Asia, East Asia, and South East Asia. It appears in the saga 'Shogun' on the Ninja outfits. You will see all sorts of Buddhist saints depicted holding them. Supposedly it's based on the spinal column of some Hindu diety that was weaponized in a fight between gods. Pretty cool stuff.
I'm thinking since ki points come in tiny numbers, and psionic strength usually comes in large numbers, there could be a ratio, like 10 or 20 to 1, or something like that.
Zardnaar wrote:
I'm all for seeing some non-Western fantasy additions to D&D. While I'm mainly interested in East Asian fantasy, Southeast Asian elements would be great, too (there have been some SEA monsters in D&D since the 1e Fiend Folio—random trivia). South Asian (India, Persia, etc.) would also be appreciate. Then again, so would Arabian (2e's Arabian Adventures was really fun), as well as Sub-Saharan (something rarely touched upon) additions. Hell, let's support it all! Then again, I tend to geek out on history and different cultures.
There is a part of the Forgotten Realms (specifically in Kara-Tur) that emulates Southeast Asia. If I could find my Kara-Tur boxed set, I'd be able to tell you a bit more, but my Passive Perception is apparently too low, and I failed my Investigation check. If you have access to that set, it may be of some interest to you. So, for that set they did merge East and Southeast Asian-inspired countries into one box.
Given WotC's current method of product (given what little we know in that regard), this would be an excellent choice for one of their adventure tomes (complete with a players' companion) because an adventure would allow the showcasing of the cultures and locales rather than being a straight, dry list of game mechanics (though a player's companion can add some of that, as requiredmaybe we'd get a psionic monk subclass). And it could be further supported by articles in Dragon+, giving more fluff on the cultures and locations (with some evocative pictures).
Mecheon wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
You may want to keep an eye on the Alderac Entertainment Group. More specifically their Legend of Five Rings line. They only have two products announced this year. This is less than normal. I am wondering if they are planning a D&D 5E adaptation of their campaign world.
It is a pretty rich world with plenty of history. They have a bunch of older edition stuff on DriveThruRPG (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/22/Alderac-Entertainment-Group ) with a bunch of fluff on the campaign setting. They have published it for D&D 3E (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/22/Alderac-Entertainment-Group/subcategory/90_6122/Legend-of-the-Five-Rings-OGL---d20 ) so there is a good chance they will do it for 5E if licensing is available.
If they don’t, you could adapt the OGL stuff to 5E if you were so inclined.
Their main site is here http://www.l5r.com/ . They have a news feed as well here http://www.l5r.com/feed/ . I believe they have worked with WotC in the past, so I would not be surprised if they were working with them now.
Well, the Monk has ki points this time around, and psionics often/usually have some kind of point economy, so it certianly could work in 5e to have psionics use ki points.
That aside, I would love to see support for all of those places, the Mongols, Persians, various African cultural elements, Pacific Islands, Arabic lore and culture...pretty much every region of the world has DnD worthy lore. I think online material is a perfect place for a lot of it, but I'd also love to see books that do related groups in one book, like all of Asia in one big hardcover, for instance. If necessary, I'd be ok with using regions in existing settings, like Kara-tur and the psuedo Andalusian region that used to be part of FR.
But I'd also love to see a new DnD setting, just in general, and I wouldn't mind if it featured both Medieval Europe analogues and Medieval Abbasid Caliphate style regions, and various other regions inspired by cultures at one or more points where they were flourishing or otherwise inspiring. One of the coolest things about the "known world" in, say, 1000 CE is that neighboring regions had widly varying levels of technological, scientific, and cultural advancement, sometimes even when comparing cultures with strong trade ties, like the Scandinavians and the Abbasids. I mean, I can't think of many places and times more fastinatingly diverse than Medieval Constantinople.
Shasarak wrote:
Lasagabaster wrote:
Mecheon wrote:
Bluenose wrote:
There are numerous ways to approach title.
D&D: Pacific Rim
D&D: Silk Road
and then if you open with a preface, titled "Occidental vs. Oriental" and discuss what the Occident is,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
then you can avoid the misconception that "oriental" is attempting to be derogatory. Occidens means West/Sunset,
and Orient just means "East". In France it even meant the countries of North Africa, so that whole Middle Eastern thing applies;
Ki vs. Psi
Having Psionicists use Ki points is fine, although the granulation of points needed might make Monks and other Ki users really Jealous and feel lop sided, if you gave them something like 100+ ki points by level 20. 40-60 ki points by level 20 isn't enough to offset it, but would line up well with a variant of the 1/2 class spell caster combined table rules. Like when you have A Druid/Ranger, or a Wizard/Eldrich Knight, they use a combined spell table in the multiclassing rules, using 100% levels from Wizard or Druid, and 50% rounded down levels from Ranger or Eldritch Knight.
The Psionicist/Monk could be analogous to this for Ki or Psi, so that the Psionicist would have the equivalent of say 40-60 ki points compared with the Monk's 20, and then you would add 100% Psionicist levels to 50% Monk levels for the "combined table". In terms of granularity, Spell Points for example were set at 133 units for wizards. Psionicists traditionally were more granular than Wizards because they had to spend tiny amounts - like 1 point - to maintain initiated powers, or effect specific weights, etc. So something like 1 ki = 5 psi, then giving 20th level psionicists something like 40-50+Wisdom bonus, would yield a max of 50-60 ki, have a table for combined classes that treats Wisdom bonus as a separate class feature, and yield 200-300 Psionic Energy. A Monk of 20th level would have like 100 Psionic energy, following that logic. High powered psionic abilities would cost 20-30+ psi, which would be like 4-6 ki. Maintaining something for 10 rounds/1minute might cost 10 psi, or 2 ki. Maintenance would be in round, minute, hour, and day durations.
Common Oriental Adventure type Psi/Ki stuff would include Holding Breath for long periods of time, Balancing/Walking on Soft Surfaces like Snow, Quicksand, and Water, Fasting for Several Days, Levitation, Blind Fighting Techniques, and similar popular schticks. Chi, Ki, Qi, and Prana could be roughly analogous, with Psi/PP/PSPs etc. being the discretionary units. The problem with big fat ki units is you only get to do like a couple of things and then you are done for the day. That's a lot like Vancian magic at low levels and wouldn't sit well with some folks.
shintashi wrote: