The thread on
Oriental Adventures made me think some about how I prefer to handle Asian-themed fantasy. I find that my approach to Asian fantasy is different from how some approach it. So I thought I'd talk about ways that I prefer to do things in a positive sense.
1) I use genre references to a mix of genres, not just martial arts or other popular purely Asian genres.I've run two main Asian campaigns - a pulp game (using Spirit of the Century) set in an alternate 1860s Korea, and an ongoing Amber Diceless game set in a variant Chinese-themed version of the Amber universe. Both of these referred some to Asian sources, but they also had a lot of genre plot points from Western genres like pulp and Amber. Having different genre references can mix up the stereotypes and expectations some. I love martial arts films, but they're a very narrow window to view things - and Asian films themselves have a mix of genre influences - like how Kurosawa was strongly influenced by American Westerns, and vice-versa.
I'll still refer to period material. Like for the 1860s game we watched the Korean film "Blood Rain", and Amber Diceless has a lot of wuxia references. But there's also a lot of other genre references.
2) I concentrate more on fun characters and action, rather than pretending to be authentic.A number of Asian fantasy games have a lot of material about how to get into the mindset of another culture. But - with due respect to the few fantasy games that try to be medieval authentic - most fantasy RPGs are not about trying to really understand and be true to 12th century Italian culture or whatever. They're about killing monsters and being heroes. Thus, for example, I wouldn't consider a system for collecting honor points, which doesn't strike me as either particularly fun or authentic.
3) I used English rather than borrowed terms.For example, I would refer to a long sword as a long sword rather than a gum, jian, or katana. I'll refer to figures as knights rather than xia or samurai, and casters as sorcerers or shamans rather than shugenja and such. First of all, this is more consistent. I don't use terms like spada or chevaliere in a European fantasy game - I'll just say sword and knight. More significantly, people have a tendency to get weird about these things. Some are just completely stupid about katanas, for example - when it's just a fucking sword. But even if they aren't completely stupid, there is still a tendency to treat them as weirdly different when they're just fucking swords. Likewise for other terms.
4) I avoid accents or stylized speech.So, just "Greetings, Lord Fong, we've brought the assassins." rather than "Honorable Fong-san, these wretched ninja in chains we give to you."
There's probably more, but these are the points that come to mind for me. I'd be curious about if others do anything similar, or alternate approaches.