Dragons of the Yellow Sea RPG / Dragons of the Yellow Sea RPG

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Dragons of the Yellow Sea RPG

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용 서해

Episode list. All our game sessions.
Upcoming Sessions
Characters
Character Sheets
NPCs A complete list of characters
Geneologies Families are important
Quotes from game play

Overview of the game

The players will be humans and dragons who are part of the peasant rebellion in Korea, on Jeju-do, or Jeju island, at the southern tip of the peninsula. We will play at least 2 characters each. The game world is loosely based on Naomi Novik's Temeraire series of novels and its alternate history; His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War.

General thoughts on game flavor:

In the Temeraire series, Lawrence is a ship captain, not of a tiny ship, but he is also not an admiral; he's of medium importance. However, he has enormous importance in the world story. His dragon turns out to be one of only a handful of Celestial dragons; he saves England, is adopted by the Emperor of China, and so forth.
Also taking a note from the movie ''Blood Rain'', the characters will be similarly larger-than-life.
The game will have long episodes which tell the story of how characters become important.

To reflect this, we will be using a variant of the pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century.

Historical Background

Korea in the 1860s was at a turning point. Political strife in the King's palace was intense. For hundreds of years, agrarian and political reform had improved life for the common people. But in the 1800s excessive taxation, forced labor, and bad years for crops destabilized the country. King Cho'ljong began his rule in 1850.

Locally, the island of Jeju-do has been relatively stable, though there are problems at times with Japanese pirates and corrupt officials.

For more details, see Historical Background.

Fictional Background

Within the Temeraire world, as with most other points, there is a parallel history. Long ago, the native Korean dragons lived beneath the seas, rivers, and lakes. However, they have been bred with Chinese dragons to form other distinctly Korean dragons that both fly and retain an affinity for water.

Details in Fictional Background.

Local Background

The characters all live in a town on the east tip of Jeju-do, Seongsan. There is a good harbor and it's a port town. Nearby there is the tiny island of U-do.

Government & official reading is in Chinese.
Popular stuff, signs, etc in Hangul

In Confucian tradition merchants are below farmers. But that's changing.. .rising middle/merchant class.

Industries of Jeju-do:
*Paper manufacturing ... secrets of (A theme featured in Blood Rain)
*Textiles
*Fishing, deep sea
*Oranges, citrus
*Other farming
*Sturdy excellent ponies (yum!)
*Pearls

Transport - buses! cargo! Dragon-run water ferries and air ferries.
Herding, pastoral, goats - flatlands and mountains
Agriculture - flatlands
Fishing - deep sea fishers, giant tuna, coastal fishing, diving

Mountain dragons - in lakes - wise dragons and bandits
Korean cockatrice - kye-ryong (Chariot-pulling beasts from legend). (Kingdom of Silla)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_dragon | Korean dragons

Rules:

We are using a variant of the pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century. It is changed to include scale to allow for dragon characters, and adding more grit to the conflicts to speed up resolution.

Details in Game system.