1:17:00 same Rifts gamr... another time I rolled a critical failure on a radio check trying to jam radio transmission in an area. and the character only had radio basic, instead of radio scrambler so we had to make the role at -30 🙂. The character was in like a police surveillance van with a lot of radios, we were doing surveillance on this one character at a restaurant... Same gm, he didn't really know what to do with this failure, so he set off every car alarm in the parking lot for the failure 😊🙂.

1:17:00 I've always liked the degrees of success and failure option. That reminds me of years ago we were playing Riffs, one of the characters rolls a critical success on a computer programming roll 🙂... The GM is like, I don't know really what to do with that, he thinks for a few seconds and he's like ah... the desktop achieves sentients 😀. Character did such a good job programming the computer, the computer is now alive... It never really went further than a laugh at the table... But sometimes I think somewhere in the wreckage of New York there is a sentient computer running Windows 98 with no internet connection, so it's kind of there talking to itself probably 🙂😃.

For you kids who werent there, its hard to impress how HUGE Kung-Fu was in the 70s and Ninjas were in the 80s. Best i can equate it is superhero movies in the 2010s. There was a reason it was Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles. Also, please just try to understand that for the time, these books and movies were made (mostly) from a place of love. Yes, its cringe and has a fair amount of fetishization from a modern perspective but it was meant as respect and love of the material. Believe it or not, in 30 years your kids will look back and think our current views on certain topics are SOOOOOO outdated. (Insert Grandpa Simpson saying "It will happen to you" GIF here)

I've enjoyed a great many of your history expositions, however i must add the the idea we need cultural appropriations for a game of make believe is just ridiculous. Sadly that is why our beloved game is going down the toilet. Hopefully you can continue to provide some amazing content that can be enjoyed, but steers away from current politics.

Great video Martin. On the proficiency aspect, i didn't like the min-maxing angle (my PC has blind-fighting, and weapon specialization, etc for all the bonuses), but i do like it for adding character flavor. So i have my group get a free proficiency based on their background (a former butcher gets cooking) and then they get 2-3 others. Kind of helps give them ideas of what non-combat opportunities there might be, but i don't limit them from trying anything even if they lack the proficiency for it.

The term 'Asian Culture' is nonsense anyway. You might as well say European culture. The book isnt controversial at all unless you are deranged and don't care about intentions. The intention is clearly to make a fun gaming supplement, not a history book or academic tome.

FGU had some of Matt Wagner, of Grendel/Mage fame first professional artwork in Flashing Blades.

Your videos are always interesting. I think your assessment of the book in the context of the time was very fair. I don't know - maybe we have gone too far the other way regarding sensitivities. And I think that sonetimes the people making the retrospective criticisms of of a historical product are more interested in virtue signalling rather than truly being interested in another culture. I am an occasional "anime" fan, and I love it when My Hero Academia gets western culture totally wrong, because I know the writer has a real love for american superhero comics. And by the way, I love the bonus content. I am yet to disagree with your taste!

We had this book but never used it when I was playing AD&D. When I DMed for 3.5 D&D, one of my players used that edition's version of the samurai to great effect. He used Iajutsu Focus quite a bit (the art of drawing a sword and attacking once for extra damage instead of dealing extra attacks). I thought the Shukenja (wandering monk with divine spells) in both AD&D and 3rd/3.5 editions to be an interesting class and almost played one in a friend's campaign before he said no.

My 2nd year in college, 1 of my gaming buddies introduced our group to the Bushido RPG. We played about 4-5 sessions. That was 1985. Later that year, Oriental Adventures came out and we played it a couple times but nothing after that. I pretty much exclusively played monks for the 1980's and 1990's, so I naturally gravitated towards this material. We fumbled with pronunciations, too.

Great video as always my friend!

I can't believe you're a philistine! No Tea Ceremonies in the dungeon!? Weirdo. That would actually be a cool RP thing for a player to make an orc chieftain feel respected.

Two things you asked for commentary about: 1 - History of American interest and learning about the cultures covered - kind of missed the missionary work and reporting back from that and the trade that started (for the US at least) when Japan was opened up after China opened up (both somewhat involuntarily by the west) and the occupation of parts of the eastern parts of the region like the Philippines after 1900 etc and is definitely biased through the lens of the speaker. Kind of hard to get through the long intro given that as kid in the 70's and through adulthood I've also read up on the topics involved there and have a very different view of how much of it is post facto politicized and re-politicized ad nauseam. As a whole in my opinion the long intro could be cut as a detraction from the main topic which doesn't really add much to the material presented later on. 2 - The proficiencies being introduced in this particular publication. Tea ceremony and caligraphy (arts etc) versus blind fighting and combat useful stuff. It's a thing where some of these are more useful in a roleplaying versus tactical combat moment and the min-maxing mentioned conflicting kind of hits on a topic of where D&D came from versus what it was evolving into over the early to mid 1980's. Add to that the inclusion of Honor as a system - I don't think it was meant to be a stereotyping of culture* as much as a mechanic that affects the character in the game. In more modern terms it can be looked at like faction standing in an MMORPG where your reputation affects how the npc's react to you because f what you've done, not because of your personal intent. The whole concept of Honor is cross-cultural and like you said something that could be added to any campaign especially if it is a dynamic world that moves on it's own versus a one shot adventure setting. *although yes it could be given the influx of anime and other media and an over attention to Samurai and other warrior culture aspects etc etc. Both things mentioned here and a lot of the rest of the video can be deep rabbit holes by themselves.

Hackmaster also used comeliness

Excellent review, just please don't dance around "cultural sensitivity". Just omit any discussion on it. It's so much worse for European ones even now, that highlighting "potential problems" in others just becomes insulting. Why are we even focusing on this? Cherry picked critique seems to become a social weapon for politics. It's much more interesting to focus on what was awesome about these things. You did a lot of that, thank you. And (aside from the binding) there was a ton of awesome from the OA book.

Shogun sparked my love of Asian culture, art and history.

Where in central CA did you grow up, Martin? I used to live on the central coast.

the only thing you can really do is invest in rebinding it

The penanggalan is Malaysian, but it should be noted that the there are a ton of similar creatures in asian folk lore

Oriental Adventures was basically a LOVE LETTER to China, Japan and to a smaller extent, Korea. Yes, it was fantastical, but so is anything for knights and princesses, and honestly anything european has far more abuse in it than the nearly zero amount in this book.

Oriental settings are one of my favourites - sorry for the multiple comments. I was remembering back to the Dragon mag No. 3 Samurai - they had crazy auto critical hit numbers because of the fantastic, but not magical nature of their swords. I am sure this came from the idea that most Japanese swords were these uber-weapons. A +2 Katana auto-crit (and there was a crit table of sorts) like 10% of the time (19-20).

The OSR has Flying Swordsman which is very playable

We used to play Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun published by FGU. It used a version of Chivalry and Sorcery for the base rules. Lee Gold also did GURPS Japan. It was so complicated but as a resource I still use it. It's village and name generation tables are awesome. Bushido also was a popular game here in New Zealand.

I’m interested to see how/if you address the more controversial aspects of this book. Can’t wait to watch this one!

Always happy to hear more about Moldvay. He contributed an insane amount to the hobby. My girlfriend and I were once able to track down a second photo of him, in a newspaper covering a gaming event he ran in Ohio. Wish there was more info about him available to the public.

Oi!

Very informative. Thanks for the share!!

Thanks for the video! My first PC was a Fighting-Man in (O)D&D though the sheet and most of the memories are gone and faded. It's ironic that Gary preferred warriors but the exhibit at the Geneva Lake Museum dedicated to him is called The Wizard of Lake Geneva. That bourbon mix is something I never knew existed. Happy belated anniversary, in any event!

Without rules, we live with the animals...

Thanks for the share!!

Too bad thief skills weren’t implemented like the Cleric’s turn undead ability. Need to pick a pocket? Roll 2d6 and consult the chart referencing thief level to the target’s level. High level characters would be impossible to pick pocket while low level characters will eventually be automatic. Same with picking locks or finding and removing traps. Or use a progression similar to (or the same as) saving throws. I can see some of the skills working this way as well, especially hide in shadows or move silently. Perhaps if the thief’s abilities used those mechanics instead of the seemingly random % chance they wouldn’t have seemed so out of place.

Dragon lance destroyed d&d

It's not real dnd.

JG Inferno would be neat. JS.

Gama World? Boot Hill? Yes, please!

Like you, I loved the B/X known world and was a fan of Conan the Barbarian -- reading the books, collecting the comics and the original movie. At the time Warhammer became known to me we were playing a Dragonlance campaign and I remember it being extremely high fantasy and that I found Kenders extremely annoying, at least how my friends played them. Warhammer FRP was just the antidote! Huge fan of real-world based inspiration as it just lends itself to a certain immersive verisimilitude. Another great video!

Advanced is where I started as I was only a year old when DnD came out in 1974.

I have done the same thing with incorporating ideas from Warhammer into D&D, like the Road Warden which becomes a multi-class Ranger/Fighter instead of just a normal fighter and they have police authority. The idea of Stevedores helps to enrich the activities along the waterfront, etc.

GW stole every idea they ever printed. NEXT!

So interesting how videos games like Final Fantasy 1, which has such obvious inspiration from DnD, has VERY clear Sci Fi stuff, flying ships and Space stations etc, are more accurate to DnD than the strictly medieval fantasy games. Even Zelda 1 with them considering the "Dark world" to be a futuristic sci fi Hyrule, and now with Tears of the Kingdom we finally really got that

17:14 - I heard that Harold Johnson was also important early on in the conceptualization of the serie of adventures. I remember listening to an interview where he explain the seasons (alluded in the novel titles) and that each month, similar to the main 12 adventures, could have a dragon in it (5 Chromatic+ 5 metallic + Tiamat + Bahamut). How much the DL series maintained that concept, I don't know - But it seems like a cool idea! Thank you for the video!

Sounds more like WFB than D&D? Very cool. Thanks for the share!!

OSR stands for "Oh shit! Run!"

1st: Everyone talks about how perfect the Rules Cyclopedia is - with everything you ever need to play forever contained in one book - but no one ever mentions the OG all in one book, WHFRP 1st Edition! I have 4 copies of WHFRP including a hardback, but I can never get anyone to play it. I don't think I've played a game of WHFRP since the early 90's. :( 2nd: I'm not a gaming historian. All of my "knowledge" is based on stuff I've heard over the many years I've been in the hobby, and I've bothered to verify very little of it. But, I thought I had heard once that the AD&D Fiend Folio started as a Warhammer project? Or, was related in some similar way? Can you expand on or clarify that? 3rd: I would KILL for a copy of the UK cover Basic book. I've never seen or heard of that before!