Has anyone given any thought to running the adventure path with an asian flair? the jungle feel suits a campaign based in Thailand as easily as one that starts in Port Royale another option would be off the coast of Madagascar. Just a thought.
Has anyone given any thought to running the adventure path with an asian flair? the jungle feel suits a campaign based in Thailand as easily as one that starts in Port Royale another option would be off the coast of Madagascar. Just a thought.
This makes me think of Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now -- sailing up the river, which eventually becomes an abyssal river flowing from Demogorgon's realm.
No, but cool idea, though. I just got Oriental Adventures a couple of months back, and as an Asian history specialist I'm kind of interested in running such a campaign sometime.
Lots of possibilities, although it wouldn't necessarily fit the Japanese conventions that fill our "Oriental/Asian" stereotypes. I would think of the Isle of Dread as something akin to Chinese or Malay sailors visiting Australia (they are supposed to have done so, although I'm not sure how firm the archaeological evidence is, and I think there's little textual evidence). Anyway, strange animals, primitive natives with strange customs, inhospitable shoreline, etc. Cool.
This is an awesome idea!
Pretty much every adventure I end up running has at least a healthy dose of Asian flavor, but when I do run Savage Tide...that's right Nick is going to run a published adventure!!!...I may do this. Just have to run it by the players. Sounds like rocking good times, especially with Peruhain's awesome input...very nice fellow Asia scholar mac-master! :-)
Cool. The character I played in the Savage Tide adventure James ran for us at Gencon was orignally conceived as very Asian flavor, but being only second level, he was pretty much terrified by some of the things we faced (NO SPOILERS...NOPE!) and ended up a ghoul by the end there anyways (but a ghoul with asian flavor mind you!!!). :-)
I was just glad circumstances forced me to use my western style bastard sword (which I of course was not proficient in...I just wore it for show). Very good times!
Peruhain, how about incorporating the land of Mu into Savage Tide? That seems to be an intriguing concept, methinks.
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Has anyone given any thought to running the adventure path with an asian flair?
I'm planning on it. I've been thinking about using the Isle of Dread as part of a Kara-Tur campaign for some time, with the "Isle" becoming a large, mostly inaccessible plateau in the middle of the Malatran jungle, a la Doyle's Lost World. Since then, ideas have changed around, and I was considering placing it in the Eastern Ocean, between Kara-Tur and Maztica.
With Savage Tide finally pushing me to subscribe (after 24 years of buying individual issues of Dragon and Dungeon), I'll be reconsidering again. Sasserine and Scuttlecove might be almost anywhere, on the eastern coasts of Shou Lung, T'u Lung, Kozakura, or Wa. I'll see what the fit is like once the issues arrive. The Isle itself should require almost no conversion, apart from the settlement.
As a specific point of conversion to Kara-Tur lore, the brother and sister will be members of the Ko merchant clan from OA3 Ochimo, the Spirit Warrior and OA5 Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claw. OA3 shows the family setting up a trading colony on a remote island, so the Isle of Dread colony fits right in with their established pattern.
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As a specific point of conversion to Kara-Tur lore, the Vanderborens will be the Ko merchant clan from OA3 Ochimo, the Spirit Warrior and OA5 Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claw. OA3 shows the family setting up a trading colony on a remote island, so the Isle of Dread colony fits right in with their established pattern.
A couple of other nice things about this: the Lotus Dragons will be a yakuza clan or a Shou criminal tong, and the Crimson Fleet an organization of wako (pirates), and neither one even needs a name change! I mean, "Lotus Dragons"? It's perfect!
Land of Mu? Is that part of Kara-Tur, or some other Asian-flavored setup?
If I run this as an Asian-flavored campaign, it will probably go very nicely into a corner of my homebrew that is filled with ancient Southeast Asian flavor. Will require some deific retooling to fix up all the temples and shrines in Sasserine, though.
Monks are, I think, a great PC choice for shipboard fighting.
And yes, Nic--you'll like this one--there will be lots of Hadozee. (Think about the opening part of Journey to the West, where Sun Wukong is the bad-ass monkey king talking smack to the gods and kicking everybody's butt that gets sent to his island to take him down a peg). Maybe I'll put them on the Isle of Dread in place of Phanatons and Rakasta.
I was going to run it in Greyhawk, but now I've almost changed my mind! Very cool.
You could have a nutzo cult to the false Monkey King...Demogorgon.
There ya go...Neat possibilities there.
Peruhain, the Land of Mu (also referred to as Lemuria) was a mythological lost continent in the Pacific, much like Atlantis in the Atlantic. You can read more about it at this site.
I'm not planning on running this campaign, though I may subscribe so I have it to run in the future. Along the lines of the "Asian" setting and the earlier talk of Thailand and Madagascar, how do you think converting it to a D20 Past setting might work out?
*rolls 1 on bardic knowledge check*
Thanks, Lilith. Guess I had a major hole in my knowledge of mythical geography. I'm now enlightened.
I'm not planning on running this campaign, though I may subscribe so I have it to run in the future. Along the lines of the "Asian" setting and the earlier talk of Thailand and Madagascar, how do you think converting it to a D20 Past setting might work out?
I haven't played D20 Past system--I take it it's a historical counterpart to D20 modern?
Assuming it's a somewhat low magic system, the challenge becomes retooling the high-level end of the campaign or equipping the characters so they can succeed. Giving it a 17th century "Age of Pirates" feel would be kind of cool, though, and one could certainly incorporate lots of less flashy magic, the kind that many people believed in in those days. No evocations, but lots of other kinds of magic. It might make for an interesting, challenging campaign.
You could even have a "melting pot" of various exotic cultures. The ancient Chinese sailed all over and have a long tradition on the high seas. Not all of those people would be noble explorers. Some would be pirates. The old Disney Swiss Family Robinson movie had the fantastic Sessue Hayakawa as the pirate captain with an "asian" crew. The Mutiny on the Bounty happened because many of the sailors had gone "native" and taken Tahitian brides. And even literature like Moby Dick has its Queequeg.
I can picture a campaign where many sailors could be tattooed Olman or Suel throwing bones on the deck and whispering of angry gods and bad omens. And working along side them could be Touv sailors with their own traditions. It wouldn't be so strange to see others of the Far East as well. I'm sure there's a Kara-Tur equivalent on Oerth.
The last 3rd of the campaign is in the Abyss.
So... I don't know how well d20 Past could model that.
That fact that I know nothing about d20 Past at all, save for its name, could have something to do with this.
How about d20 Past + the Elder Gods of Cthulhu?
"Shadow Over Innsmouth" has all those fish creatures from the deep, and there's another story with a island coming up from the sea floor covered in ancient monuments. "Dagon" maybe? I forget.
The last 3rd of the campaign is in the Abyss.
So... I don't know how well d20 Past could model that.
That fact that I know nothing about d20 Past at all, save for its name, could have something to do with this.
To answer Perhuain as well as comment on your post, D20 Past is the "Past" equivalent of D20 Modern. Its lower powered and incorporates the age of exploration, pirate times, victorian times, frontier times, and early 1900's for a "pulp" feel. The fantasy aspect hinges on the incursion of *insert any D&D world here* into our known world via the Plane of Shadow. Magic, monsters, and humanoid races slip through Shadow into our world but there's no known way to get into any of the other "Shadow" worlds. This, however is open to DM discretion depending on what kind of interaction with other planes the DM wants for his campaign. Travelling to the Abyss might be a bit of a stretch for the setting, but we gamers are nothing if not creative. It may be far too much work, but I thought it sounded intriguing.
To answer Perhuain as well as comment on your post, D20 Past is the "Past" equivalent of D20 Modern. Its lower powered and incorporates the age of exploration, pirate times, victorian times, frontier times, and early 1900's for a "pulp" feel. The fantasy aspect hinges on the incursion of *insert any D&D world here* into our known world via the Plane of Shadow. Magic, monsters, and humanoid races slip through Shadow into our world but there's no known way to get into any of the other "Shadow" worlds. This, however is open to DM discretion depending on what kind of interaction with other planes the DM wants for his campaign. Travelling to the Abyss might be a bit of a stretch for the setting, but we gamers are nothing if not creative. It may be far too much work, but I thought it sounded intriguing.The last 3rd of the campaign is in the Abyss.
So... I don't know how well d20 Past could model that.
That fact that I know nothing about d20 Past at all, save for its name, could have something to do with this.
Hmmmm. maybe a Bermuda triangle like effect a fog rises, the sea turns blood red- a large rock scrapes the side of the ship- fog clears to reveal hell- with a bunch of ship wrecked earth ships ( maybe a plane or 2) scattered about the rocky perches.
Hmmmm. maybe a Bermuda triangle like effect a fog rises, the sea turns blood red- a large rock scrapes the side of the ship- fog clears to reveal hell- with a bunch of ship wrecked earth ships ( maybe a plane or 2) scattered about the rocky perches.
Yeah, that's the stuff. That really sounds cool. Of course I doubt you'd have planes if this was set in the age of Pirates or a bit earlier. Wow...I'm liking this more and more. Perhaps this is the excuse I needed to buy the D20 Past expansion and the first STAP issue of Dungeon...
Hmmmm. maybe a Bermuda triangle like effect a fog rises, the sea turns blood red- a large rock scrapes the side of the ship- fog clears to reveal hell- with a bunch of ship wrecked earth ships ( maybe a plane or 2) scattered about the rocky perches.
I'd take a page from Palladium's Rifts RPG. The triangle (along with several other locations) are dimensional "hotspots" - the chances of a planar rift opening up randomly are about three to four times greater than they are anywhere else. I believe there's a "hotspot" located off of Madagascar, but don't quote me on that - it would be great for a d20 Past campaign.
Of course, in the Palladium Rifts world, when the Fall happened, Atlantis rose out of the depths in the Bermuda Triangle and many many nasty things came out of it as well.
)(*&)(*%&*%*%)(*)_! Damn system ate my long post and I forgot to save it on the clipboard. Grrrr!
OK, well I just outlined a bunch of ideas about how to run Savage Tide not exactly as an Asian campaign, but in a location that allows some "Oriental Adventures" classes and races. I'm too annoyed right now to reproduce the whole post, but the gist of it was to set Sasserine in a tropical, exotic entrepot where East and West meet. Zanzibar or Malacca or Calicut in the 14th or 15th century would do quite nicely, allowing the DM to borrow elements of African, Arab, Persian, Indian, Malay, Javanese, Cham, Khmer, Chinese, or Japanese culture for various groups of inhabitants, and maybe include a few interesting and exotic races like Hengeyokai, Vanaras, Hadozee, as well as modified standard races (Jungle Dwarves!).
The deities would have to be changed. In my homebrew I already have some substitutes, and some real-world mythology inspirations for some more. Here's a rough list of substitutes:
Azure Temple trio = Mazu (Tianhou), Chinese goddess of mariners and traders, "The Lady who Calms the Waves"
Kord = use any war god like Indian Indra or Shiva or Chinese Guan Gong
Fharlanghn = use Japanese Hachiman or Chinese Cai Shen (both gods of wealth widely worshipped by merchants)
Olidammara/ "St. Worgul" = use the Monkey King (Sun Wukong) from Chinese legend
Wee Jas = use some variant on the Hindu goddess Kali or the Tibetan Buddhist tantric patron Tara
St. Cuthbert = this one is hard, but probably some very serious and militant monastic sect, dedicated to a war-oriented deity, perhaps the Tibetan war-deity version of the boddhisattva Avalokitesvara. The watch here is perhaps staffed with Sohei (Oriental Adventures).
Pelor = ? perhaps Vishnu, or the Maitreya or Amitabha buddhas, or Guanyin (the Chinese feminine version of Avalokitesvara, often called the Goddess of Mercy). This one depends on what kind of flavor you want for the Sunrise district.
Affiliations:
Scarlet Brotherhood could be a secret society of ninjas with some kind of nefarious agenda
Lotus Dragons could have kind of a yakuza flavor
Not quite sure what to do with the Church of the Whirling Fury, but they probably ought to have a Youxia (Knight-errant) flavor to them, like the Outlaws of the Marsh (famous Chinese Robin-Hood types) or the three heroes who take the Peach Garden Oath at the beginning of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or Jing Ke (the assassin-hero in "The Emperor and the Assassin" and "Hero").
The other affiliations don't need much modification, with possible exception of the Witch Wardens. Maybe they are a secretive cabal of Wu-jen.
One might try adapting the OA "taint" mechanic to the savage tides caused by the big pearls, but I don't think it's really necessary. Anyhow, we'll have to wait until next month to see the details on how a savage tide works.
The pirates would have the feel of Chinese or Malay pirates, maybe modeled on the Orang Laut or Bugis of the Malay archipelago, or on the historical figure Zheng Chenggong (Coxinga), who terrorized the Chinese coastline from his base on Taiwan. But then, pirates are pretty much pirates any way you slice 'em.
Any other substantive ideas to add or modify this?
Has anyone given any thought to running the adventure path with an asian flair? the jungle feel suits a campaign based in Thailand as easily as one that starts in Port Royale another option would be off the coast of Madagascar. Just a thought.
Madagascar or New Guinea might make good substitutes for the Isle of Dread if you're running a d20 Historical campaign.
Has anyone thought of running this along the lines of a Call of Cthulhu campaign? Demogorgon and savagery fit nicely into a sort of pulp fiction theme. Call of Cthulhu meets 1930s Shanghai in Sasserine, Isle of Dread is New Guinea or Madagascar or some other mysterious isle of the South Seas, complete with isolated valleys where dinosaurs and gigantic apes still roam (a la Jurassic Park or King Kong). Scuttlecove? A small island in the Spratlies (the South China Sea's equivalent to the Bermuda Triangle) where the navigation is really dodgy because of all the coral reefs, run by heroin-smuggling Yakuza. And all along everyone thinks Demogorgon is just some superstitious mumbo-jumbo invented by the natives, until they're chasing pirates in a speed boat and suddenly they find themselves in a strange, creepy place . . .
OK, just a crazy idea.
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Peruhain, your post on adding Asian flavor got my brain churning.
I can't find my Japanese Ghosts and Demons book right now, so I don't recall his name, but there was a character in there that figured in a lot of Japanese woodblocks--the demon queller. He was depicted dressed as a Chinese scholar, with a Chinese sword, and a wild beard. He liked wrestling oni and quelling demons. He'd be a good archetype to slide in for an anti-Demogorgon game.
Palladium had a class for Demon Queller in the Rifts Japan book.
(edit)Shoki the Demon Queller. That's what he was called.
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Maybe some flores men from Flores Island in I think Indonesia.
They were recently discovered fossil remains of pygmified 3' tall homo erectus, and lovingly dubbed "hobbits" by the archaeologists.
This really happened, it isn't some mad Call of C'thulhu brainstorming. Truth stranger than fiction, yet again.
Flores men = Korobokuru from OA
Demon Queller = Witch Hunter PrC from OA
Maybe some flores men from Flores Island in I think Indonesia.
They were recently discovered fossil remains of pygmified 3' tall homo erectus, and lovingly dubbed "hobbits" by the archaeologists.
This really happened, it isn't some mad Call of C'thulhu brainstorming. Truth stranger than fiction, yet again.
And those little "hobbits" (Homo floresiensis) battled BIG arsed rats with their tiny spears!
The BBC website says: Homo floresiensis shared its island with a golden retriever-sized rat, giant tortoises and huge lizards - including Komodo dragons - and a pony-sized dwarf elephant called Stegodon which the Hobbits probably hunted.
Aint earth cool! ;)