I have been working on a total rebuild
of AD&D's Oriental Adventures book for a while now, just to fix
the parts I thought were broken. I play-tested the rebuilt classes
for the first time with my regular group recently.
First, a little background: my goal was
to make the game more compatible with “classic” 1st
edition AD&D, and that as I played it back in the day and still
play it; which is to say with a lot more OD&D via Holmes Basic
and a healthy dose of Moldvay/Cook B/X. I have also spent the better
part of a decade tracking down other Asian inspired RPGs and reading
through them to see what the best bits were, mining for inspiration
you might say. The best were Bushido, Sengoku and Legend of the Five
Rings (which already has a D&D conversion, albeit 3e). Clearly
then, my OA project (which I should give at least a working title) is
mostly inspired by Japan; I have, in fact, removed non-Japanese
elements from the game where I found them.
Second, some of the character class
design concepts were still in fluctuation in my head right up until
the players started rolling up ability scores. I knew I wanted the
characters in my OA game to be able to fit into anybody's standard
AD&D game and NOT be over-powered compared to their occidental
cousins. Ki powers are gone from every class. I also ditched all
non-weapon proficiencies; my thinking on that was that any character
should pretty much know how to do the stuff that makes sense for his
Character Class, Birth Rank and background, failing that a player
should be able to come up with a plausible reason why their character
might know how to do something with the DM using his judgment as to
what constitutes plausible.
On to the Character Classes-
What's gone? The Barbarian, the Wu Jen,
the Yakuza and the Ninja. The Barbarian didn't make the cut based on
me deciding that I was homogenizing the rules set to Japanese. The Wu
Jen mostly got the axe for the same reason, he's just a funky
Magic-User named in Chinese. The elemental aspects of Asian magic
were rudimentary at best. The Yakuza was just a guild Thief with some
annoying and usually hard to play special abilities, they make good
NPCs, lousy PCs; I replaced them with the Thief from AD&D.
Thieves are universal, they don't all need to be gangster thugs in a
feudal Japanese fantasy setting. I'll probably change the name if I
ever learn the Japanese word for “Thief”. The Ninja I replaced
with my Shinobi, which, now that I have a copy of the AD&D 2nd
edition Complete Ninja Handbook is close enough to their Ninja that I
want to go back in time and sue TSR.
The Bushi is pretty much a straight
port over of the Fighter, I may change this up some for flavor, but
no one wanted to play a straight Bushi, so it didn't come up.
The Samurai are about the power level
of an AD&D Paladin, only less holy (which is to say not really at
all holy) and more combat oriented. Maybe a Ranger? I made them super
melee fighters by giving them the 3e feat “Cleave” as a class
ability, it seemed pretty Samurai like. They also get to specialize
with weapons, yes, I kept weapon specialization from OA/UA. Although
now it occurs to me that I may have to create a separate Samurai
Archer type class because this class is so melee oriented. Anyway,
requires a STR 9 WIS 14 and one other special I'll mention later.
Kensei means “Sword-Saint” or
“Sword Master”, so I am tempted to make them solely a sword based
class, but discussions with my gaming buddies tell me that it
probably would be even less popular a choice for players if I did. I
changed their ridiculous XP advancement back down to something
reasonable and toned down their powers. A lot of the class abilities
require that the player role-play, or at least announce they are
practicing whenever possible. While I encourage role-playing, I can't
see the stiff penalties for failing to practice, using a magic weapon
or using a weapon other than your chosen weapon for instance; they're
already the only Fighter Sub-Class that can NOT wear armor. Nobody
chose to play a Kensei though, so I guess it's still in flux until
someone does. I guess an Archer Kensei would make up for the
Samurai's melee focus though. Still not happy about the no armor
thing, but I am listing to several arguments for and against, so I am
open minded on this point.
Shugenja, this is a big one. I never
really liked the Wu Jen or the original Shukenja so I basically
started back-porting the 3e OA Shugenja to 1st edition
AD&D, essentially making a Cleric/Wizard mix for the game. I
realize this is something of a cop-out, but creating something that's
pretty much what I want anyway, when it's already been done by
somebody else and it works (theoretically) seems like a waste of my
time. No one wanted to play one though, so it's unfinished.
Sohei got a major rework from me. I
bring them more in line with OD&D or B/X Clerics only without
weapon restrictions and give them the d8 Hit Die. So, pretty much an
AD&D Cleric with no spell at first level and all weapons
available. Waiting until 5th level for spells was BS.
The Monk also saw major reworking. I
looked at various edition's versions of the Monk Class and mostly
mixed and matched what powers/level I liked while dropping the
over-all power level, but increasing lower level survivability. They
get d8 Hit Dice and fight as Clerics and can use their Monk special
attacks with martial arts weapons. No one wanted to play a Monk
though, so it hasn't been tested.
Originally OA had one extra Ability
Score- Comeliness, which I hated and ignored. Hidden within the game
is another one though. One that I brought out and replaced the loser
stat Comeliness with- Birth Rank. I changed it from a roll after you
pick your Character Class, with Class based modifiers to a straight
3d6 roll. Now it's a prerequisite for becoming a Samurai (13+) and,
when combined with Ancestry and Birth Right rolls can seriously
affect your starting money. It will not affect any OA characters
leaving their “home” setting, but it strongly affects reaction
rolls. I actually don't see why this couldn't be ported over into any
OSR game setting, I mean in non-AD&D you roll 3d6 for starting
gold, that's pretty much the same thing- a 13+ would indicate your
character was a member of the warrior aristocracy (or merchant elite)
an 18 would indicate noble birth.
In the end my players chose to be a
pair of Samurai, a Thief and a Sohei. I retained the Ancestry, and
Family rolls from the original OA book, because they weren't broken
(mostly, what is will be fixed soon) and used them to tie the
player's characters together much tighter than any standard AD&D
party would have been. Because of my liberal AD&D policy of
rolling 4d6 arrange as you like, and the fact that the players are
all veterans of at least one OA campaign, they all chose to put a
decent stat score into Birth Rank, which meant I could make them all
really interconnected like the aristocracy of a small province really
would be. They are all related to at least one other character by
either blood or marriage and one is the Daimyo's sister-in-law. OA,
the only flavor of D&D where you might start off married with
children.
New Years resolution- Finish this beast
of a project.
Happy New Year everyone!
