Southeast Asia Dungeon Fantasy?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Anyway, China and Japan have settings and adventures for dungeon delving but places like Siam and Bali do not have much.

South East Asia is most certainly its own place. I think the difficulty here is that We in the west have a harder time getting a good feel for what the different countries there are like, and what sorts of epic tales they have.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Failing that, can anyone recommend non-RPG works that would be helpful/inspirational from the angle of campaigning in either medieval-to-early-modern Southeast Asia or fictional settings that take flavor therefrom?

I grew up in East and Southeast Asia (China, Thailand, and Singapore) and have spent a fair amount of time in Indonesia and Malaysia. For years I've been noodling around with a setting inspired by the geography and mythology of that region. Haven't got much more than notes and ideas, but I have found some decent books on the subject (many of them picked up overseas long ago). Here's a selection, some of which can be found on-line or via academic databases like JSTOR:

• Koentjaraningrat. (1985). Javanese Culture. Oxford University Press.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw. (1932). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. George Routledge and Sons.
• Price, Cheryl Blake. (2013). Vegetable Monsters: Man-Eating Trees in "Fin-de-Siècle" Fiction. Victorian Literature and Culture, 41(2), 311–327. — for the reference to the Upas Tree (a mythical Javanese tree that poisons the air for miles around).
• Qaritch Wales, H. G. (1983). Divination in Thailand: The Hopes and Fears of a Southeast Asian People. Curzon Press.
• Reid, Anthony. (1988). Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680: Volume One: The Lands Below the Winds. Yale University.
• van Groenendael, Victoria M. Clara. (1992). Is There an Eastern Wayang Tradition? Some Dramatis Personae of the Murwakala Myth of the 'Eastern' Tradition. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 148(2), 309–315.
• Valtrová, Jana. (2010). Beyond the Horizons of Legends: Traditional Imagery and Direct Experience in Medieval Accounts of Asia. Numen, 57(2), 154–185.
• van Hien, H. A. (1896). The Javanese Spirit World.
• Wessing, Robert. (2006). A Community of Spirits: People, Ancestors, and Nature Spirits in Java. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 18(1), 11–111.

[Bobcloclimar]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Failing that, can anyone recommend ... fictional settings that take flavor therefrom?

The later Black Company novels (the Books of the South arc, starting with Shadow Games) by Glen Cook definitely had a Southeast Asian bent to them. Green Ronin created a Black Company campaign setting sourcebook (for d20, naturally) which includes material from that half of the series. It appears to be out of print, though.

[DarkPumpkin]

I'd love to see such a mini-line. To happen it would need someone to step forward and just do it, a la Gaming Ballistic. But to any potential creators out there, a SE Asian flavored setting or adventure would get my attention quicker than another Euro-based one (much as I love traditional fantasy, let's have some variety).

[dcarson]

Project Gutenberg has Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos During the Years 1858, 1859, and 1860 (2 volumes) by Henri Mouhot

The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe, by Ernest Young

The Mission to Siam, and Hué the Capital of Cochin China, in the Years 1821-2, by George Finlayson

and a number of others. Full of 1800s biases but should be lots usable for gaming.

[b-dog]

In the Ayutthaya period of Thailand there were muy Thai fighters that used curved swords but could quickly us hand to hand combat if they needed to, that seems like an interesting class of both martial artist and samurai. Also a mahout or elephant rider could be an interesting class too.

[Dalin]

While not specifically for Dungeon Fantasy, it looks like we're in store for a solid historical supplement focused on Southeast Asia:

Call for Playtesters: GURPS Hot Spots: Srivijaya

[Pragmatic]

While it's not exactly what you wanted, there was a Wizards.com web enhancement for Oriental Adventures that adapted it to India, and also gave stats on the Wind Dukes (of the Rod of Seven Parts, Queen of Chaos, and Miska the Wolf Spider story line).

Huh, my Google-fu was up to snuff.

Link to download page for the web enhancement I described above.