Kara-Tur

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cover to the Kara-Tur Boxed Set.

Kara-Tur is a fantasy world created by Gary Gygax, David Cook and François Marcela-Froideval detailed in 1985's Oriental Adventures for the First Edition Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Kara-Tur roughly corresponds to ancient East Asia in the real world, and many countries, places and peoples can find common ground with real life examples. It was later placed on the planet Toril, the planet of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and lies east of Faerûn.

Various countries described in the set include:

Malatra, a jungle country, Indian- or Malaysian-like.
Shou Lung, modeled after Imperial China, arguably the most powerful nation on Toril. Places of interest includes the port of Karatin, capital of the Hai Yuan, or Maritime provinces and Kao Shan province with the semi-independent city of Kai Shan. The main criminal organisation in the country is the Tsui Tong. The most massive mountain range of the known world is Wu Pi Te Shao (equivalent of Himalaya)
T'u Lung, a splinter faction of Shou Lung
Kozakura, an island kingdom modeled after Japan
Wa, another Japanese-influenced kingdom

The campaign area is separated from the rest of Faerun by an analogue of the Chinese Wall and Mongol-type steppe areas.

1 Versions
2 Official Material
3 Specific prestige classes
4 Novels and Modules
5 External links

[edit] Versions

Originally a stand-alone campaign setting, by 1988 it was combined by TSR with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. In that year TSR released a boxed set with two books detailing the campaign setting and maps.

In 1989 a printing of Trail Maps for Kara-Tur appeared.

In 1990 the maps were again included in the Forgotten Realms Atlas. Later that year TSR gave the monsters for Kara-Tur a proper treatment for Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the Monstrous Compendium series.

After 1990 Kara-Tur was a mostly discarded campaign setting. With only a few mentions in cross-over products such as Spelljammer and Ravenloft, plus a few mentions in other Forgotten Realms products and Dragon Magazine articles.

With the release of Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons with new owners, Wizards of the Coast decided to do a proper treatment for Oriental Adventures. All the character classes, monsters, spells, weapons and feats were converted to Third edition format, but this time with the campaign world being Rokugan, the setting for AEG's Legend of the Five Rings.

The setting of Kara-Tur still exists on Toril and is often mentioned. Characters and artifacts from Kara-Tur sometimes show up in Faerûn, but beyond that there is little interaction between the continents.