Kara-Tur
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Kara-Tur is a fantasy world created by Gary Gygax, David Cook and François Marcela-Froideval detailed in 1985's Oriental Adventures for the First Edition Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Kara-Tur roughly corresponds to ancient East Asia in the real world, and many countries, places and peoples can find common ground with real life examples.
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Versions
Originally a stand alone campaign setting, by 1988 it was combined by TSR with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. In that year TSR released a boxed set with 2 books detailing the campaign setting & maps.
In 1989 a printing of Trail Maps for Kara-Tur appeared.
In 1990 the maps were again included in the Forgotten Realms Atlas. Later that year TSR gave the monsters for Kara-Tur a proper treatment for Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the Monsterous Compendium series.
After 1990 Kara-Tur was a mostly discarded campaign setting. With only a few mentions in cross-over products such as Spelljammer & Ravenloft, plus a few mentions in other Forgotten Realms products and Dragon Magazine articles.
With the release of Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons with new owners, Wizards of the Coast decided to do a proper treatement for Oriental Adventures. All the character classes, monsters, spells, weapons and feats were converted to Third edition format, but this time with the campaign world being Rokugan, the setting for AEG's Legend of the Five Rings.
Modules
The Kara-Tur campaign setting inspired the following 8 adventure modules (in chronological order):
- OA1, Sword of the Daimyo (1986)
- OA2, Night of the Seven Swords (1986)
- OA3, Ochimo the Spirit Warrior (1987)
- OA4, Blood of the Yakuza (1987)
- OA5, Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claw (1988)
- FROA1, Ninja Wars (1990)
- OA6, Ronin Challenge (1990)
- OA7, Test of the Samurai (1990)
Books
There were 3 choose your own adventure style books (one was actually released before the original Oriental Adventures book):
- Blade of the Young Samurai - Endless Quest 23 (1984)
- Test of the Ninja - AD&D Adventure Gamebook 5 (1985)
- Warlords - 1 on 1 Book 7 (1986)
External links
- Wizards of the Coast Oriental Adventures Page (http://www.wizards.com/catalog/product.asp?wtc12015)
- James Wyatt, Author 3E Oriental Adventures (http://www.aquela.com/roleplaying/OA/)
- The Oriental Adventures Project (http://www.geocities.com/phillipriley/)
- Wizards of the Coast free downloads - including OA5, OA6, and OA7 (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/downloads)