What is your favorite D&D Japanese variant, AD&D and 3e Oriental Adventures, Ruins & Ronins, etc, and why?

How many such variants, based on D&D, sharing basic compatible d20 mechanics pre and post TSR etc, are out there?

1e Oriental Adventures, but I admit much of that may be due to nostalgia.  When it first came out, I was in love with it.  I loved the martial arts rules, the weapon art layout, and the classes.  To this day, Norlay Nguyen (a ninja/bushi) is still one of my all time favorite PCs

in fact, a while ago I put out a "Warriors of the Orient" expansion for LL on DTRPG.

There was a basic clone called Red Tide, I think. I looked at it once and thought it was interesting, but since lost it.

Bushido is my #1 game of choice for the genre. In D&D specifically, I recall using the characters from Dragon articles when I wanted a ninja or something to make an appearance .

This one.  Really, I think they should go back to this style for the new edition.

I hear Sword World is pretty cool.


...I may have misunderstood the question.

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Quote from: thedungeondelver;752226


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I came here to post that same picture :/

OA is my favorite. The last big AD&D campaign I DMed was a combination of AD&D, OA, and Spelljammer.

OA had a pretty good system overall and covered alot of bases with some interesting approaches.

Was not impressed with the Roukugan d20 book when had a glance through it.

I'm playing an on-again, off-again D&D 3.5e game using the3.0e OA (a.k.a. L5R d20) game. Not the biggest fan of 3.X but it's serviceable enough. Also the Rokugan setting gets on my nerves but that's a different topic.

I think Red Tide takes the right approach – incidentally mirroring Black Vulmea's classic "a katana's just a longsword, you assholes!"nSamurai are just Fighters, ninjas are Assassins, yakuza are Thieves, sohei are Monks, yamabushi are Clerics, Daoist sorcerers are Magic-Users... and so on. I feel less is more and if I was running a D&D game cribbing from Japanese myth and culture,  I'd just use my favorite TSR or OSR ruleset with little or no change.

What I would welcome would be cultural tidbits, NPCs and monsters. And maybe a more refined subsystem for unarmed combat in general because I dig both karate and jujitsu but I'd be just as OK with winging it.

Quote from: The Butcher;752248I'm playing an on-again, off-again D&D 3.5e game using the3.0e OA (a.k.a. L5R d20) game. Not the biggest fan of 3.X but it's serviceable enough. Also the Rokugan setting gets on my nerves but that's a different topic.
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I do the same. One of the things that makes the 3E OA book work so well in my opinion is the plethora of 3E/d20 splat books out there. Normally not too into splat but brought in bits and pieces of the complete books, some relevant mongoose books, etc and it let me cobble together what I wanted.

Mad Monks of Kwantoom just came out for LL/AEC. Don't have it, but the author has a pretty good track record.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;752226


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That is the Japanese version of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. They divided it into three booklets.

There are also some "replay" novels from a Mystara campaign I am told.

Found the Mystara replays. Looks like 5 of them.

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~sj2n-skrb/yas/novels/dd.htm

+1 on 1st Ed Oriental Adventures.
I loved the art and layout as well.

I like 1ed AD&D OA as well. New weapons, rules for personal and family honor, new classes, martial arts and modular armor rules were all nice. The only downside is that low level characters were a wee bit more powerful than you would expect. Poor 1HD creatures didn't stand a chance.