I was listening to a Wizard and the Bruiser podcast episode discussing Cowboy Bebop and they mentioned director Shinichirō Watanabe had another anime series Samurai Champloo. Once I started watching, I had the urge to play in an ancient East Asia inspired D&D campaign with a mish mash of aesthetics and folklore from the Tang Dynasty time period. I know there is some lore around Kara-Tur in the Forgotten Realms, but nothing I'm aware of adventure-wise for 5e. I found the 1e Kara-Tur Oriental Adventures, but I'm not looking for new races, classes or monsters and don't know how much it would contain for actual adventures. My creative resources so far are limited to general mythology, history, Mists of Pandaria and Kung-Fu Panda. So, I'm looking for some help and ideas for a 5e campaign.
What creative resources are available or would be helpful?
Are there any existing 5e adventures you're aware of?
What 5e campaign would be easiest to re-skin in this setting?
What ideas do you have to re-skin spells, monsters, aesthetics or stories?
My thoughts are running wild re-skinning monsters, like quasit as pesky minor demons and dire beasts as Chinese guardian lions. Also, picturing the party preparing to fight a long dragon protecting its horde. I can also imagine artificer technology being more alchemy (blasting powders) focused and binding spirits to weaponry with runes or inscription with calligraphy tools.
There’s Legend of the Five Rings, which is not D&D and uses a whole different game system, but is an rpg. There’s also an Avatar The Last Airbender rpg. Again, a whole different system from D&D.
Either of those might give you some ideas.
And Radiant Citadel, which is an official WotC product, had several adventures set in Asian-inspired settings, each with a small gazetteer about the setting. Seems like you could smash them together as neighboring countries.
Hey, I too have been running an East Asian themed campaign (based around the 3 Kingdoms era). Here a few things I found helpful.
The I'Cath Domain of Dread from Van Richten's Guide is Chinese themed. It's obviously laid out as a horror campaign but is very easily retooled as more mystical. The book also includes stats for the Chinese vampire/zombie JiangShi.
As Xalthu mentioned above, 5 Rings could be good if you are merging with Japanese elements. I found the supplemental 'Courts of Stone' particularly useful for building up my cities and their inhabitants.
Books like the Tome of Beasts and the Creature Codex (from Kobold Press) have a lot more Chinese and other Asian monsters and beasts than the Monster Manual, to save you reskinning or personally homebrewing.
'Trials of the Burning Tiger' was a 3.5E encounter that has been updated by a 3rd party and recalls the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu movies of the 70s and 80s.
There's a great evil(?) monk idea from Dragon+ magazine called 'Feast of the Nightwalker', includes hooks, adventure ideas and some really cool NPCs. It's not specifically Asian, but with a monastery in the mountains, it's not really a stretch.
'Ghosts of Saltmarsh' can easily be reskinned as centered around a Chinese fishing town. I swapped the Dwarven elements to Kobold who have more of a presence in my campaign.
The DMs Guild also has a ton of Asian themed character builds, etc. Many 'pay what you want'.
You can google this stuff as well as anyone else, but Tang Dynasty isn’t going to look aesthetically like Samurai Champloo. Hou Hsiao-hsien directed a movie called The Assassin that was super dull but gorgeous. Shaolin Temple is a classic, House of Flying Daggers, the Judge Dee movies. Mulan was a bit earlier, but the aesthetics are probably close enough. I think Journey to the West is set in this period.
Mulan and JttW are two campaign ideas right there.
Thank you all for the helpful suggestions! Plenty of resources to draw inspiration from. Ghosts of Saltmarsh might be the perfect campaign to reskin. With some more digging I was able to find some resources on the dmsguild. And, I found out the Legends of the Five Rings setting has a new 5e compatible book Adventures in Rokugan that I’ll check out.
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I was listening to a Wizard and the Bruiser podcast episode discussing Cowboy Bebop and they mentioned director Shinichirō Watanabe had another anime series Samurai Champloo. Once I started watching, I had the urge to play in an ancient East Asia inspired D&D campaign with a mish mash of aesthetics and folklore from the Tang Dynasty time period. I know there is some lore around Kara-Tur in the Forgotten Realms, but nothing I'm aware of adventure-wise for 5e. I found the 1e Kara-Tur Oriental Adventures, but I'm not looking for new races, classes or monsters and don't know how much it would contain for actual adventures. My creative resources so far are limited to general mythology, history, Mists of Pandaria and Kung-Fu Panda. So, I'm looking for some help and ideas for a 5e campaign.
My thoughts are running wild re-skinning monsters, like quasit as pesky minor demons and dire beasts as Chinese guardian lions. Also, picturing the party preparing to fight a long dragon protecting its horde. I can also imagine artificer technology being more alchemy (blasting powders) focused and binding spirits to weaponry with runes or inscription with calligraphy tools.
There’s Legend of the Five Rings, which is not D&D and uses a whole different game system, but is an rpg. There’s also an Avatar The Last Airbender rpg. Again, a whole different system from D&D.
Either of those might give you some ideas.
And Radiant Citadel, which is an official WotC product, had several adventures set in Asian-inspired settings, each with a small gazetteer about the setting. Seems like you could smash them together as neighboring countries.
Hey, I too have been running an East Asian themed campaign (based around the 3 Kingdoms era). Here a few things I found helpful.
The I'Cath Domain of Dread from Van Richten's Guide is Chinese themed. It's obviously laid out as a horror campaign but is very easily retooled as more mystical. The book also includes stats for the Chinese vampire/zombie JiangShi.
As Xalthu mentioned above, 5 Rings could be good if you are merging with Japanese elements. I found the supplemental 'Courts of Stone' particularly useful for building up my cities and their inhabitants.
Books like the Tome of Beasts and the Creature Codex (from Kobold Press) have a lot more Chinese and other Asian monsters and beasts than the Monster Manual, to save you reskinning or personally homebrewing.
'Trials of the Burning Tiger' was a 3.5E encounter that has been updated by a 3rd party and recalls the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu movies of the 70s and 80s.
There's a great evil(?) monk idea from Dragon+ magazine called 'Feast of the Nightwalker', includes hooks, adventure ideas and some really cool NPCs. It's not specifically Asian, but with a monastery in the mountains, it's not really a stretch.
'Ghosts of Saltmarsh' can easily be reskinned as centered around a Chinese fishing town. I swapped the Dwarven elements to Kobold who have more of a presence in my campaign.
The DMs Guild also has a ton of Asian themed character builds, etc. Many 'pay what you want'.
Hope you find these useful.
The dungeon masters guide has a section on how to add wuxia elements to a campaign on page 41, might be worth a look for inspiration.
You can google this stuff as well as anyone else, but Tang Dynasty isn’t going to look aesthetically like Samurai Champloo. Hou Hsiao-hsien directed a movie called The Assassin that was super dull but gorgeous. Shaolin Temple is a classic, House of Flying Daggers, the Judge Dee movies. Mulan was a bit earlier, but the aesthetics are probably close enough. I think Journey to the West is set in this period.
Mulan and JttW are two campaign ideas right there.
Thank you all for the helpful suggestions! Plenty of resources to draw inspiration from. Ghosts of Saltmarsh might be the perfect campaign to reskin. With some more digging I was able to find some resources on the dmsguild. And, I found out the Legends of the Five Rings setting has a new 5e compatible book Adventures in Rokugan that I’ll check out.