Oriental type characters

[Tangleroot]

Nordic countries include Finland, but Scandinavia, strictly speaking, does not..

.. try to put us in the same bunch as Swedes. Sacrilege..

[Deider]

Okay, so I went to see Last Samurai this weekend and it was ace. It has resulted in a severe interest in playing a samurai style character in Avlis. I searched the boards and this was the last word on samurai I could find. The last post here was 6 months or so ago.

What's the latest word? Can we make samurai/ronin from Khanjar Kuro?

Cheers!

From what Orl posted way back, it would seem you'd need to 1) play a human, and 2) have a very good backstory explaining why how exactly your PC got to southern Avlis and what he is doing there.

Alternately, you could perhaps play something akin to Tom Cruise's character in the movie, a native to southern Avlis who somehow met someone from Khanjar Kuro and trained under him. There is limited contact between the continents, as Orl said - I assume that's why you can buy katana in Mikona and other places. But this would require just as inventive a backstory.

In a nutshell, the answer is: 47

[Fifty]

I would suggest it should not be allowed until Khanjar Kuro is at least started and we start using some of the truly awesome haks that are available.

I had a look at a bunch myself before I decided I have nowhere near enough time to make my own worls and they are fantastic

[Vanor]

In all likely hood, there would be no such thing as Samuri on Avlis. Unless the people in that part of Avlis spoke Japinese...

There however could be a group of warriors devoted to some sort of code of conduct, that is simular to Bushido, this code of conduct or something simluar could develop on the part of Avlis that included M'Chek, T'Nanshi, Deglos, ect...

One of the major differences between the D&D version of Samuri and Paladins, is Samuri aren't devoted to a God, and are more likely to be LN.

I guess a lot of it depends on what you have in mind when you create a "Samuri". If you mean a warrior who follows a code of conduct, you could do that, could even join a monk's order if you felt such a thing was fitting. If you mean to create a warrior from the 'orential' area, I wouldn't do such a thing without permision first from a Sr DM.

[Fifty]

And if anyone ever gets permission to do it they should have to pass a test first to prove they actually know the first thing about samurai and won't be an embarassment to the very idea of bushido.

[Vanor]

On a side note... I'm surprised Nob hasn't posted here yet... There's someone who's forgotten more about the truth of Samuri then most of us ever knew.

[Fuzz]

On a side note... I'm surprised Nob hasn't posted here yet... There's someone who's forgotten more about the truth of Samuri then most of us ever knew.

So true.

[Nighthawk4]

A ronin is still a samurai.

A ronin is a lordless samurai.

A non-samurai without a lord would just be a bandit/mercenary or whatever.

In general you could not become a ronin without first having been a samurai.

So where do the Kenshi fit in? i.e. someone with a Katana (Maybe not the wachizachi) but no legal reason to have one (i.e. never had a lord)?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I understood that only Samurai were allowed to own a Katana. The long and short swords (Dai and Sho iirc) were the badge of office of a Samurai.

Secondly, a Ronin was a Samurai who was without a Lord. Usually they were required to commit seppuku, but some did not and thus became Ronin - a sort of 'rogue' Samurai. Vaguely like the 'Knight Errant' in Europe (although I don't think the latter had any negative connotation, unlike the Ronin).

Thirdly, I doubt very much that there were ever any Korean Samurai - the Japanese hated the Koreans.

Lastly, when I was at school (many years ago), Scandinavia meant Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Add Finland and you had Fenno-Scandia (might not be spelled correctly). Add Iceland as well to get the Nordic Countries. Not sure if Greenland and the Faeroes count as part of the Nordic Countries - I think they do. Comments please from our Nordic members?

[Fifty]

wrt Korean Samurai

In the area I lived, there had been, many hundreds of years earlier, a Korean exiled noble or something who came and for some reason settled in Japan with his followers. They built up a small fiefdom and became pretty well assimilated. They took on Japanese customs and the people around them took on a few Korean customs. That was well before 1500 though IIRC.

I wish I could remember more.

[Nob]

I intended to stay out of this conversation, since I've always been a little intolerant of the whole "samurai were godly devoted things of lore" crap that seems to prevade a lot of the 'net(Van knows this well, he's heard me rant on this subject all of uh...was it 367,126 times? Something like that.)

I think what you have to filter out a bit is the classical definition of samurai(feudal retainer, essentially a soldier. All things considered not all that different from a mounted knight in medieval times), bushi(quite literally "one who fights.") and the further specialized "kenkaku/kenshi" swordsman.

I think a classical image of a "samurai" in the west is someone like Musashi Miyamoto, a man who pretty much put his life to the sword, yet was therefore so sound of the mind and body that he was also a superbly talented poet and artist.

The concept of a sword being one's soul and of wandering swordsmen really predates the full blown Tokugawa concept of samurai. The most romantic period of the swordsman(IMO) was during Musashi/Kojiro's period and a bit before during Yagyuu Sekishusai's peak. It was a period of war, where the sword was slowly being phased out by the musket, yet because of that duelling became much more popular as a way of proving one's PERSONAL worth rather than something in a battlefield.(This is paralleled in Europe to a certain extent, and the change really happened almost simultaneously if you trace the origins of fencing/duelling)

The other extreme image of samurai basically is the "suicidal dedicated loyal fighter." An example is the Forty-Seven Ronin(search on this yourself. ) In general the most extreme form of this "samurai" can be found in the regulations of Shinsen Gumi, which was essentially a group made by commoners who WANTED to be bushi and therefore drew up a zealotry based form of what they espoused to be "bushido."

I think I've lost my train of thought, but in general, I don't think anything as a "samurai" would exist as something as a simple "knight" exists in D&D. Sure there's various classes that fit that description(and yes I'm aware of the Cavalier PrC), but there's no one real mold.

If you really were to make something it'd be something like a fighter, or even a paladin without the godly aspects. A Toranite in fact is probably a good example of a Tokugawa era idealized samurai.

[Tangleroot]

Lastly, when I was at school (many years ago), Scandinavia meant Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Add Finland and you had Fenno-Scandia (might not be spelled correctly). Add Iceland as well to get the Nordic Countries. Not sure if Greenland and the Faeroes count as part of the Nordic Countries - I think they do. Comments please from our Nordic members?

*cough* That sounds about right. It's been a while since I've needed those definitions, so can't be sure. At least if we talk about Nordic Countries in Finnish, they consist of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Scandinavia is basically only Norway and Sweden. I don't think Greenland is really associated with Nordic Countries in everyday speech.