The Sub-Continent and Culture of India

[SHARK]

Greetings!

In my campaign of Thandor, I have developed a land similar to India. I have a very detailed campaign area that has a fantastic Indian culture, with their own distinct weapons, armor, clothing, food, religion, governments, economy, languages, and so on.

Yaun-Ti

There is a powerful kingdom of Yaun-Ti that have many huge cities, each developed with large zigurats, and vast underground dungeons. The Yaun-Ti are ruled by a powerful Theocracy, and worship a pantheon of wicked, evil gods. The Yaun-Ti enslave humans by the millions, and fortify their dark realm with ancient fortresses located on misty, jungle-mountains. There are vast rivers swollen with barges that cruise from great mining complexes bringing ores and riches from all over the kingdom to the kingdom's cities. The Yaun-Ti have also hacked out an impressive road-system connecting their kingdom over the centuries, and the slaves toil constantly for their inhuman masters. The Yaun-Ti are skilled priests, and have many pacts with various demon lords. In the greatest of temple-cities, the vast towers and palaces are the places where demons walk the lands of mortals.

Targen

The Targen are a race of Tiger-people who have an ancient culture. The Targen have several kingdoms. Most of them are highly disciplined societies devoted to evil and wickedness. These evil Targen kingdoms field large armies of ferocious soldiers, and bands of highly trained Rangers patrol their frontiers, making raids into nearby human and Centaur lands often.

There are some Targen kingdoms that are Good, and these kingdoms champion a sophisticated absolute Monarchy. These Targen make attempts at alliances and peaceful relationships with friendly human and giant realms. These Targen kingdoms are renowned for ancient monasteries of pious, disciplined warrior-monks, as well as mysterious wandering priests.

Meanwhile, there are some independent Targen city-states that have formed sophisticated economic Leagues, where they support large ocean-going fleets of pirate-ships, as well as squadrons of fast raiders full of Targen invaders that sail up the many vast rivers to make raids on enemy lands.

The Targen have cities formed along mountain ridges, and are fashioned from white and green stone. They often have moss-covered towers, and walls manned with Targen archers, who use powerful longbows.

Humans

There are numerous human kingdoms, some are mountainous, while others are situated in more agricultural areas. Many have huge cities, and employ armies of armored war-elephants, and large armies of warriors. Some have stern kings, while others are ruled by queens. There are bizarre religious cults in some, and in others, there are great public human sacrifices. In some kingdoms, they promote and embrace evil gods, and demons abound. In others, there are realms of noble and strong people, who war constantly against the forces of evil. There are semi-barbaric tribes in vast forest areas, and in other kingdoms, there is sophisticated metal-working technology, as well as well-appointed cities with gates, canals, and in-depth agriculture.

Vampire City States

In some mountain areas, there are several vampire city-states. These areas are extremely dangerous, with hundreds of vampires, thousands of zombie and skeleton soldiers, and powerful Necromancer Kings that work to bring dominio to the area. Platoons of savage vampires sometimes descend down out of the mountains into human communities, and the vampire raiders will often slaughter or carry off whole populations. Other times, a whole village will be transformed into vampires, in order to unleash a plague of blood-frenzy upon the lands of man! Adventurers, of course, are in great demand in these areas by righteous and good kingdoms, who struggle against the vampire city states, as well as vampire-cults that lurk and fester within their own communities.

These are just some rough sketches of some areas in my campaign world of Thandor. I suppose I grow a bittired of the commercial focus on Japan so often, it's cool to explore other asian themes. Of interest besides China as well, and Indian, are tribes of cannabal-Halflings that live in Thailand-like regions, and are constantly fighting with human tribes, as well as Hobgoblin tribes and city states.

Have you developed different asian-themes in your campaigns? Something unusual, or a bit different from the perrenial feudal Japan of samurai and ninjas?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Cullain]

I like the idea a lot, and I love the thought of role-playing in a fantasy India. My big problem with doing that is that a few of my players would not be into it at all. They just have no desire to be in a world that doesn't at least strongly resemble 'standard fantasy'. I'd like to do less standard things, and a few of my players are really into it. But there's one or two that just don't like it, so I don't typically do it. *sigh*

Cullain

 

[Piratecat]

Shark, that's so cool! I also have an area similar to India. But I think a lot of people are in the same situation that Cullain is.

I'm not sure I know enough about the caste structure to really do the setting justice, though, despite my readings.

 

[daTim]

Dont forget Raksasha's are definatly an Indian creation, and im sure the Marilith had some strong ties to there as well. Just a little helper...

 

[Wolf72]

Mahasarpa

for a little more background try out the OA web enhancement download ... which has an indian theme to it.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/we/we20011019a

 

[kenjib]

Hi Shark,

You are very good at condensing large amounts of evocative information into a small space. I'm going to add some Indian type areas to a setting I'm working on because I want to get a Pulp Fantasy type feel and REHoward used plenty of Indian imagery. Your ideas are inspiring.

Nagas can be another good creature to use, as a kind of theocratic nobility hidden and working behind the scenes.

For the problem people have with players not feeling comfortable and immersed in the setting I have an idea. Try introducing the setting as an exotic, distant location that they travel to from their more standard fantasy homeland. That way they still have the old character archetypes to hold on to, since their characters are Europeans in an Indian world, and plot threads can still involve more standard elements (foreign influences from back home). It also means that they don't have to roleplay familiarity with the cultural differences that they might not want to. Instead, their characters can be surprised, awed, delighted, reviled, etc. by how different everything is just like the players might be.

I think this serves the same purpose as the classic literary tool of having someone from a more ordinary place enter the more extreme fantasy world as a frame that wraps around the story. This occurs in a huge amount of fantasy literature and I think that there is a definite reason that it is so consistently popular and successful: Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Princess Bride, the Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, Prydain chronicles, etc. etc. It's all over the place.

 

[Claude Raines]

After visiting India, I decided that it was one of the best areas history wise in our world for basing a fantasy campaign. Everywhere I went there were old ruined temples. Also it's placement and history makes it very easy to introduce other cultures from a more chinese/asian to western europe, russian, middle-eastern, and african.

 

[der_kluge]

India

I had an idea for doing an Indian supplement. How many people would be interested in that?


Elephant-headed people
3/4-armed people
People with 3 eyes
7-headed snakes.

You know.. the usual stuff.

 

[barsoomcore]

Hey SHARK! Good to see you!

I love Indian history and also have a region that is Indian-themed in my campaign world of Barsoom.

Hinsua

The land of Hinsua is a crowded and energetic place filled with a riot of cultures and ethnicities. There are the northern kingdoms, wild and savage lands that border the fearsome and growing religious empire of Caedmon. These kingdoms are peopled by proud, independent warriors who nonetheless have appealed to the Peacock Throne for help. The Peacock Throne is the legendary center of Hinsua, given to Hammas the boy-king by the Celestial Peacock as a symbol of his right to rule all the land. It sits at the center of the great spiral that forms Luc'Davarionne, the flying city of Barsoom.

Now seated on the Peacock Throne is Alauddin II, the Hammer. He is a fearless and intelligent ruler who sees Hinsuan unity as the secret to resisting the Caedmon threat. He has granted to the northern kingdoms greater rights to raise taxes and train armies, and many of the kings are now taking their new wealth abroad, seeking mercenaries to train their troops in disciplined fighting styles.

In doing so, Alauddin II has deeply offended the Harimat, the priestly oracles of Hinsua. They championed Alauddin's rise to power and assisted him in restoring the Peacock Throne after centuries in which Hinsua was ruled by the corrupt Pulaji, demon-worshippers and all-round bad dudes. They were ousted by a combination of Alauddin's political savvy, the Harimat's authority with the common people, and the muscle of the Mystics.

The Mystics are a loose, wide-spread order of psychic monks (they include psions, psychic warriors and others among their numbers) who serve the Peacock Throne and own no other master. In the years since Alauddin's coronation, they have devoted their efforts to eliminating the remnants of the Pulaji.

Lots of fun.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Here's what I did about my players not feeling comfortable in a nonstandard setting:

I spent two years in the Philppines as a missionary and I loved it there. I wanted to run a Filipino culture-type campaign. So I created the area in my world with a fair amount of detail, then had an adventure that took them there. Their characters spent several months game time in Kimmin, then returned home. Later, for a change of pace, I told the players I wanted to run a campaign based in Kimmin with local characters. Since they were moderately comortable with it already and were interested in seeing some aspects of the land that were only hinted at before, they acceded. We played that campaign for about 8 months real time, then went back to the Western campaign, returning to the Kimmin campaign from time to time. I had a good time, and I think everyone else did too.