Throughout high school, college and the army, my best friend was Bob Tsia. He was Chinese, born in Taiwan and came over to America very young along with his brother Richard and Dio. This was back when someone that immigrated to America was given an American sounding name. Anyway, through my friendship with Bob, I learned quite a bit about China. The Asian culture has always held a special place in my heart. Elves in my world are highly based upon the feudal Japanese society. I wanted to portray the elves as an ancient society highly based upon traditions, laws and very caste structured. This is why in the game players do not stumble upon that many elves in the game. Elves are also notoriously xenophobic. They feel their culture is highly refined and that other cultures are below them. This is shown by their interactions with other races, which can be anywhere from aloof and belittling, to outright hostile and insulting. Shackled City is reaching the half way point. That is good thing, we are now reaching a point a point where the characters are becoming highly known, they are all ascending to a point of being a force to reckoned with. By the time the current chapter ends, the characters will be 8th level. The big showdown takes place when the characters are 20th level. Most of the following next chapters are designed that the players will go up 2 levels for each chapter. The next adventure after Shackled City will be based on the eastern part of the continent or on Knaki. I have not decided if the next campaign will take a Scattered Sun turn and we will introduce a Psionic based society to the game, or we go over to Knaki and play in a setting that takes place during the 5 Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms of China. As we get closer, I will ask for input and start basing the it off of such. On last thing, it was not for a deep respect of Gary Gygax, I would probally not have Monks as they are written in the current campaign world. They are a staple core class, but they just do not fit into the western setting of the game. But, they have been a staple character since 1st edition, so they stay. Other classes such as the Wu-Jen, Ninja, Kinsei, Roninn, Samurai and other highly Asian themed characters will only be used in Asian themed countries and campaigns. Hence, the reason why I want to explore an Asian themed game setting, to play out all of those wonderful classes.
