Anyone else think Southeast Asia is underrated as a setting?

There's also fucking Vimanas and tons awesome pseudohistory (like ancient nuclear wars) behind them.

The weird mix of Islam with Hinduism and native animism in Austronesia can be pretty interesting. Like the Sultans of Mataram, the most powerful Muslim rulers of Java, spirituality marrying a shapeshifting mermaid goddess since the 17th century.

I'm actually GMing a game rn themed on South Asian culture and Hinduism right now. It takes place in a huge empire with a strange, extremely convoluted system of theocratic democracy. We're having a lot of fun; tiger demon possessions, wicked sorcerers, corrupt priest-knightly orders, and divine avatars gone rogue. We're having fun.

well, feel free to talk it about it more in this thread. what's a "theocratic democracy"?

POO

IN

LOO

>retard doesn't even know which countries we're talking about
how long must the /pol/int/tard infestation continue

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Yeah, I always get a stiffy when someone is trekking through a dense jungle and emerges on the edge of a cliff with a giant 200-foot-tall face carved into the mountain. Shit's like crack for me.

Don't reply to trolls, dummy.

bump

I think, actually, it would be better described as a 'representative theocracy.'

One of the main ideas of Hindu mythology which factors into the Epics is the idea that as the universe ages, it progressively degrades further and further, until it is so corrupt and full of sin that Shiva, the 'destroyer' component of the Trimurti (including Brahma the 'creator' and Vishnu the 'preserver') decides to wipe it out so that Brahma can start it again with a clean slate. This factors into my idea for a Hindu representative theocracy because it is a popular idea that the empire, called Devatva, was once a magical land where the Gods roamed in pure form and blessed humans every day with their presence. However, as the universe has degraded, the gods eventually retreated back to Heaven, Svarga, to live out the rest of the universe in their eternally beautiful homes. While they now reside in pure form in Svarga, the gods, possessed of both great powers and great love for the human race, still condescend to take on earthly form in the form of Avatars to bless the lower beings with their divine grace and receive their love and devotion directly.

However, besides witnessing the manifestation of divine powers (which aren't too uncommon themselves in Devatva) you can't really know who is or isn't a god. Therefore, the task of figuring out who the Avatar of a god is falls to the priests, who are of course the most knowledgeable about religious and divine matters and the best at interpreting the will of the gods. And of course, if the gods and their laws are meant to rule humanity, and humanity has been organized in the form of the state, then the gods and their best interpreters should be the ones who run the state.

This idea has created a sort of ranking of priests into a vast political system, where priests attempt to rise through the ranks of the various governing bodies, which take the form of councils, courts, and other public bureaus (knightly orders, temple masons, road builders, etc.) in order to be considered for election to be Avatars. The idea is that a politician (or judge or general or whatever) will be successful only if he acts in accordance with the will of the gods, particularly the god he personally serves. Therefore, if a politician is successful, he is clearly favored by the gods, and the more he rises through the ranks, the more favored he is believed to be. If a politician is favored a lot, he might even be a god himself, and may be elected Avatar of his patron god. There must be an Avatar present in the earthly realm at all times, so once one dies, another is elected from the highest ranking politicians below the Avatars (which are the Archons.)

The inciting incident of the campaign I'm currently running was the election of an Avatar of Parvati who some, including a then-Archon within the Sisterhood of Parvati, believed to be illegitimate, and put into her position only due to the machinations of the Avatar of Lakshmi. The aforementioned Archon then claimed that she was the true Avatar of Parvati and that the current Council was no more than a wicked sham until the false avatar was removed from office (and preferably executed for witchcraft.) She then fled and is hiding out somewhere in the jungle with her loyal cult of followers. Even more scandalously, the Avatar of Kartikeya, the god of knights, honor, and chivalry, who is considered (along with Ganesh) to be the son of Parvati, believes this, and fled the Capital and the Council of Avatars with her, and took much of his knightly order with him. They now terrorize the province where the players live in the name of justice, and even as the Council of Avatars rebukes them and the Avatar of Kartikeya, the diffuse nature of the regulatory power of the state through various orders has proven their condemnations worthless. Even scarier still, this rogue Avatar seems to be manifesting greater and greater powers by the day.

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No it wasn't, Mahound, Nestorians got there centuries earlier

>not mentioning obscure puppet dramas

DESU i love this PILI thing. toonami fucked up bringing it on for 2 episodes.

South China/Indochina was my turf in grad school (worked on Hmong-Mien historical linguistics). I have long wanted to do some kind of SE Asian campaign.

Like, I did a Saigon based Shadowrun campaign for a little while with a bit of a Quiet American flavor, but I've thought a lot about sometime doing a horror-fantasy game with a SE Asian bent, sort of a Hmong/Thai Ravenloft, if you will. Shapeshifting tigers and angry ghosts, you know?

forgot pic.

Lantakas, brass armor, maritime networks, raiding to provide the ancestrals, stick maps, jumping on a whale's back and stabing it to death, fishes which impale themselves on your heart... What's not to love? This fa/tg/uy sold me on the idea:

hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/03/building-southeast-asian-settings-part-i.html

hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/04/on-southeast-asian-settings-part-ii.html

hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/05/highland-southeast-asia-for-your.html

He has a lot of material.

i heard you like puppets

I think most of asia in general is underutilized as a setting. People often just use it as a vague 'foreign' area, or at best have something based on traditional Japanese mythology and culture. It's rare to see the rest of Asian culture really used for fantasy settings to it's fullest extent.

But yeah, south east asian culture is really really cool, and there's a lot of great potential there that almost never gets used.

This is fucking dope. You should write a novel or something because I would buy that in a heart beat. At least create a setting book so other people can enjoy this.

I think the main problem would be in explaining Hinduism to people.
It's... kind of confusing and convoluted.

I agree, but why do you need to explain Hinduism to the players? It's way too complex and the results would be minimal when it comes to immersion. Instead, a the game could be played as a light hearted high fantasy setting, with wonderous adventures and odd monster/demon encounters. Hindu mythology has plenty of those

Right so like I'm looking to make a mage bloodline who claim to be descended from some sort of Indian mythological being in this modern fantasy game I am making and I have to ask; are Asura evil?

I'm on the wiki and it seems like the real problem are the regular gods who just hate them for some reason. Right like some are evil assholes but there are the occasional good Asura who get's tricked into behaving badly and being destroyed by Shiva or whoever.

Thank you user! I fear some people might be offended by it - in fact, I know people would be - so I feel like I'd have to change the gods' names away from being their actual names, among some other things, which would be a lot of work. Despite that, I have considered making a setting book and just putting in the work, but it would be a lot. I really appreciate your interest though user!

Yes, they are evil, their name means "not a god" or "foe of gods".There are some accounts of Asuras that are ascetic and generally kind hearted but they are described as rare

Asuras are considered to be mighty & powerful, but inherently wicked with evil tendencies. Some resist their nature to do good, but not many.

you don't even need Hinduism in your campaign at all, thats why the setting is pretty versatile

indonesian mythology is pretty crazy, from stories about horrifying demons of dead fetuses who steal your babies skin, flying head monsters with their entrails hanging out, to their version of the "golden goose" where a farmer finds an orphan who literally shits gold and money, until the local villagers become jealous and bury her alive after which she promptly becomes a goddess

I read Life of Pi recently and the description of the ideas of Hinduism is fascinating, surreal even.

asuras are kinda like a different race like dwarfs. Some are pretty alright but most of them are bad by human perspectives.

False. Originally there was no demonization of asuras. In fact, Zoroastrianism has the roles of asuras and devas switched as the three good ahuras and the evil divs.

>different race
Yeah that's why I'm thinking having this mage family claim to be their descendants. Whether or not that is true is a whole other matter, but they believe it, and expect to be treated as such by other supernatural things....

yep, happens all the time in my family.
We claim descent from one of the celestial sages, specifically this guy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashyapa

The concept of what an asura is varies by religion. In Buddhism asuras aren't evil but they can be because they are creatures that are swallowed by earthly and carnal attractions, as opposed to the devas, who seek enlightenment and detachment from material possessions.

>devatas have full on party palaces with bimbos that can SUCC like hosepipes.
devtas in later hindu traditions were faggot partyguys who got beaten up by the asuras and ran to vishnu to save their asses.

I'm using some stuff to spice up a Lovecraftian campaign: some adventurers travel to the orient and encounter the native reptile people whom worship the outer gods as a hindu-esque pantheon.

Their society is based around Indian and SEA caste system but based on inheritable physical attributes. For example: the Dalit, "the untouchables", caste are individuals with a mutation that causes their skin to secrete toxins (they are literally untouchable). As such they are associated with occupations regarded as ritually impure, such as leatherwork, or removal of rubbish, animal carcasses and fecal waste. The party finds one that operates a street-side apothecary selling potions and poisons made from her own sweat.

Did someone say South-East Asia?

It's definitely an underrated setting.

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Angrezi Raj?

my dudes, have you heard of tekumel

>tekumel
Nope.

What's it about?

No, because I don't know anything about it, and don't feel like digging through multiple cultures to find what I'd need.

you must be fun at parties

Are you serious?

The setting I'm planning is heavily inspired by both peninsular and archipelagic South-East Asia. It's going to mix Dutch East Indies history with Burmese and Siamese political and economic dynamics, and I'll throw in a not-Madagascar with not-Betsileo Dwarves for good measure too.

The region has a lot of potential for roleplaying by virtue of the many different influences it received, and by having some areas that are fairly advanced and well-structured, and others that are largely untouched wilderness with just some primitives dwelling there.

Even if you just take IRL SEA as a setting, you could involve PCs in Khmer (the Poland of SEA) court intrigue, have them explore mysterious ruins or legends of a mythical creature on some Indonesian island, or play pirates and rob Siamese junks or Dutch trading vessels. Place it in Burma and there's even a high (sub-50%, but still) chance your character would be able to read!

That movie was pretty cool, it was a kind of El Alamo for the Thais. Sweet combat and very vanilla patriotic themes. I love the Dhas in there too and the cow cavalry made me kek.

If I recall well, those temples were raised mostly be corrupt gov members or even the dictator of turn to "grease" Kharma/whatever. Like medieval nobles.

Would Buddhism be able to create religious classes like Clerics and Paladins like other religions could?

South-East Asian history also has a lot of meme potential.

Every time a new dynasty comes into power in China, they try to invade Vietnam and are driven back at most a few years later, even while Vietnam may be at war with itself or in a state of total disarray. Though Vietnamese elites remained staunch Chinaboos all the same.

Every time a new dynasty comes into power in Burma, they go full Napoleon-Hitler and conquer everything around them, just to spectacularly collapse form over-expansion a generation later (after which they consolidate and everything returns to business as usual).

Then there's the Khmer who, after the decline of Angkor, became the Poland of South-East Asia, constantly manipulated, invaded, and divided by Siam and the Nguyen dynasty—until they went full retard and coined the term “autogenocide”.

Of course, Shaolin monks and run of the mill Monks. The Shinto monks of Nipland had a kind of exorcist and a fuckload of natives cultures had shamans and the like (some were/are tranys).

That's a picture of Pagan, the first solid Burmese polity. Rulers (both greater and lesser) at the time donated a lot of land to monasteries to bolster their karma, yes. Monasteries were also very effective at land reclamation and building infrastructure, so it benefited population growth and territorial expansion.

Alas, monasteries didn't have to pay taxes; and since every individual ruler wanted some merit and thus would donate land, over the generations the monkhood came into the possession of quite a lot of holdings, to the point where the rulers deprived themselves of their tax and manpower base.
As a result (together with Shan incursions and climate change), Pagan collapsed. Successor states at Ava and Toungoo learned the lesson, expropriated monastic lands, and eventually limited donations to money only.

A religious order of monks, wizards, thieves or whatever classes isn't the same as clerics and paladins, which generally have some sort of divine favor.

Not really. Mostly because not even Christianity created anything like those classes: those classes are moronic inventions of the Dn'D system driven by utter lack of understanding of real-world religions, history, and the need for differenciated pragmatic function of the classes to produce variety of play and cross-class synergy.

They have virtually no fucking real-world equivalence even in western world. So you can't expect to see anything like them in the east.

Well, the Monk class IS based on Shaolin monks, but those are not actually in any way close to "clerics" or "paladins". Shinto does not HAVE monks (they don't have monasteries or monastic orders) and as the name suggests, they are Shito, not Buddhism. ENTIRELY different religion, which has about as much in common with Buddhism as Egyptian pantheon has with Mormons.

>(some were/are tranys)
Modern concepts of transexuality has fuck all to do with those (not common) cases of agendered/third-gender roles of shamans.

Isn't there some crossover between Shinto and Buddhism.

Japanese often practice both religions, the even share the same space in temples (you'll find Shinto shrines on premises of major Buddhist temples, for example, though the reverse is less common): the two are not seen as mutually exclusive sets of beliefs (which is hard to imagine for us). But on terms of basic practice and actual teaching: no. They are two entirely different religions that co-exist within the same space and society, but they really don't blend on a theological level.

Isn't it cognate with Norse Aesir?

Shinto isn't a philosophical or scriptual religion, it's just hyped up primitive animist folk beliefs.

As everywhere in Asia, when Buddhism arrived it may have absorbed parochial deities into its local pantheon and otherwise accommodated pre-existing beliefs a little, but nothing substantial.

>it's just hyped up primitive animist folk beliefs.
Essentially true, but I have to point out that Shinto is pretty fucking awesome, because it's actually one of the very few cases (perhaps the only case) of a primitive animistic polytheism surviving and evolving into a religion that can remain relevant within a industrial and post-industrial society. It's hardly unique in its foundations (religions like Shinto used to be bloody dime a dozen across the world), but it has found itself in a rather unique situation now. It's quite worth studying for a bit.

>the carving in that stonework

holy FUCK do I love the aesthetic of that region

my campaign has notes for an Indo-Iranian-Malay superpower imperial state, but i've yet to fully flesh it out

I think that setting/aesthetic is already decently represented for dungeons, just because their ruins and statues and tombs and treasure adn stuff are so cool looking, but their setting isnt' really used for a general campaign setting, which makes them quite similar to the mesoamerican setting, even down to the climate.

The reasons are probably

1. we barely know any details about their civilization, whereas we know plenty about feudal europe (or even ancient europe) to design an RPG setting around

2. it's missing the mythology/fantasy. dwarves and elves and golbins and shit would feel weird in a southeast asian setting, what do you fill the void with? Although I'm not opposed to just having humans + magic and shit

Nagas and vanaras, for starters