The publication of Unearthed Arcana (1985) began a (desperate) expansion of the AD&D rules (to save TSR from dire financial straits), which created a sort of 1.5 Edition (you’ll see this pattern repeat many times across D&D’s history). Oriental Adventures was the second installment.

Despite Gary Gygax’s name on the cover, this was entirely written by Zeb Cook (I haven’t the space here to get into the particulars of that rather stupid saga). The books is sort of a new Player’s Handbook, for D&D with Asian trappings. There are all new classes and quite a lot of space is given over to the campaign setting (in a way that would inform the later Dragonlance and Greyhawk Adventures books). The main mechanical contribution to D&D comes from the introduction of non-weapon proficiencies (which would be revamped in ‘86 by Douglad Niles – see tomorrow’s post – then revamped again by Cook himself for 2E).

This material was meant to form a second continent in the world of Greyhawk, but after Gygax’s exit from TSR, the plan changed, making Oriental Adventures the foundation of Kara-Tur, which wound up in Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms a few years later.

By all accounts, Oriental Adventures was wildly popular, probably fueled in part by America’s pop cultural preoccupation with all things Asian in the 80s (there are a number of other Asian-themed RPGs of the period, including Phoenix Games’ Bushido). I never got into ninja-mania, though, and Oriental Adventures left me cold as a kid. Nowadays, I am pretty uncomfortable saying the book’s title out loud. Worth pointing out: there do not appear to be any Asian folks in the book’s credits.