Hi there - i am a noob to RPOL, but when i was looking at how to set up a game, the wizard said i should shout up if a genre was missing.  There is.  A big one.

Oriental genre games may be a small niche in rollplaying, but for over thirty years or so, they have existed in Western Society - The cover of the AD&D DM guide showed an Arabian scene in first edition (or so i recall - i wasn't alive then)...

Legend of the Five Rings (and more recently Legend of the Burning Sands) have maintained a high standard in the genre (even when butchered by WOTC)...

All i am saying  is, is that there needs to be an oriental genre option to create games with...

thanks...

You'll probably find that you'll be told to file it under fantasy, historical or something similar.

There are a bunch of systems that could fall under the genre - L5R, Qin, and Bushido spring immediately to mind.

I guess the question that needs to be asked is what do you consider the tropes covered by 'Oriental'?

I think you mean Aisan, something L5R, Qin and those mentioned call fall into easy, but most of those games are already in fantasy or historical.

I would say 'oriental' is a setting, not a genre.

We also don't have specific genres for Egypt, Australia, or the Americas ("Western" is more a historical period and style than a location).

Not sure why Asia should be any different.

If a game is classed as Historical Fantasy, for example, it's still historical fantasy, whether it's set in Ancient Rome or Ancient China.

I'd then assume BBR that for Asia would be Eastern mayhaps? and yeah, pretty much any game taking place in such times are classed and taken care of already. As to period and style Eastern could mean anything from japan to Arabia with China and southern Russia added in along with India, but like you say it is already covered under historical fantasy. But it gives good thought

Un... no... because we don't see movies, books, TV shows, etc, classed as "Easterns", we do see them classified as "Westerns".

Apart from a loose geographical connection there is nothing to connect a modern Yakuza based game set in Tokyo with a game set in 14th century Peking.  One is Contemporary, the other is Historical.  They do not have enough in common to justify both being labelled as "Oriental", any more than a game about the mafia in modern New York and one about cowboys in 19th Century Arizona have enough in common to justify them being tagged with the same genre.

To create a tag for "Oriental" basically says that there is no real difference between cultures/settings across the whole breadth of Asia, or throughout history.  The only differences would be described in the remaining two genre tags, making "Oriental" no more than a filler.

When some one says "western movies" to me I automatically think John Wayne films. But when staying in Baoding for several days to a week or so, when people there say "western movies" they mean here, American made films, or British films and the like. That's why I said eastern, meaning over there, not here in America or Britian. Eastern meaning Arabia, China, Idnia, Korea, Japan, to people on the western side of the Earth (for example, the East cost is consdiered to be the West,, the midwest, and the west to those in other side of the world, so for us the East (Japan/China/Korea) Middle east (Iraq and such) and east (England and there abouts)) That's mainly why I said Eastern, meaning thatp art of the world.

But I guess it differs to where people live as whole. Not many people in the west have seen much, if any, Aasian or middle eastern made things. Unless from hollywood, which is why they are classed as western movies... I think. its been a while since i was last looking this stuff up

I think Oriental is a legitimate genre, defined by widespread martial arts, oriental mysticism and so forth, just as Western is a genre defined by sixguns, cowboys etc. It's not as simple as a setting or a defined historical period.

There is no point adding excessive genres to the list. As it is, it's only as good as the GMs are at appropriately categorising their games, and if you give too much choice it gets in the way of finding a good game. But then there are some genres that are ridiculously broad. Fantasy, for example could apply to virtually anything. When twinned with one of the other genres it narrows it down a bit (historical fantasy, scifi fantasy, fantasy horror, and so on) but there are tropes out there that might not be adequately covered.

L5R is a good example. It comes under historical fantasy, sure, but so could a Conan game, and the two have nothing in common, beyond being pretech and involving (decidedly different) myth and magic.

I would ask how many unique tropes a genre should have before being accepted.

I was alive then - and still have my copy of the DMG,  I even use it occasionally :)  On the cover it has a giant red demon/devil fighting a classicaly dressed European knight/fighter  with heater shield, some sort of plate mail and wielding a long sword.  He is supported by a traditional mage, with stars all over his robe, casting a spell  and a scantily dressed female thief  :)

There were Oriental and Arabian settings across the early versions BUT - they were  settings rather than anything else.  In  some of our games, the characters moved between those different settings.

We had a long running campaign with 3 different GMs running the same characters -  one DM ran Oriental, one DM ran a published setting and I ran a homebrew  *shrug*  Another game had Arabian, western and spell jammer rules all rolled into one - It was great fun and made one mega-fantasy game.   :)