Retrospective: Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms

I remember being very excited about the imminent release of the Oriental Adventures in 1985. Aside from the obvious reason – the introduction of playable ninja and samurai into Advanced D&D – I was quite keen to see "the Oriental lands of Oerth," as promised in the "Coming Attractions" section of Dragon #102. However, when OA was released in November of that year, there was no real evidence in that book that Kara-Tur, as its setting was called, had any connection whatsoever to the World of Greyhawk. This fact was further demonstrated when the first adventure module for use with Oriental Adventures, Swords of the Daimyo , came out the next year. Though it included a gazetteer of part of the land of Kozakura, there was once again no evidence that it had any connection to Gary Gygax's campaign setting.
None of this really mattered, of course. Though I was a big fan of the World of Greyhawk, the connection (or not) between it and Kara-Tur had no impact whatsoever on my ability to use the rules of OA or my enjoyment of Kara-Tur. Even so, when TSR finally got around to releasing a boxed dedicated to detailing this vast continent and its peoples, I was more than a little baffled to see it had suddenly – and definitively – been placed in the Forgotten Realms setting. In retrospect, this made sense. In the aftermath of Gygax's ouster from the company, TSR had turned the Realms into the setting for AD&D. Everything that could be (and quite a few things that couldn't) were jammed into Ed Greenwood's brainchild, often to its detriment. 

That didn't stop me from buying it, of course. Even in 1988, I was still very much a fanboy of TSR. Plus, I have always been something of a collector of campaign settings. Consequently, there was pretty much no chance that I wouldn't buy Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms when it was released. Furthermore, it truly was an impressive product, consisting of two 96-page books and four double-sided, color maps of the region, all for $15 (about $40 in today's debased currency) – a steal! In addition, the books were amply illustrated by the late, great Jim Holloway, along with cover art by Jeff Easley. All in all, a terrific package and I'd have been foolish not to have picked it up.
The two integral books are unusual in that they're essentially a single book split into two volumes, right down to sharing page numbers. Volume I covers the lands of Shou Lung and T'u Lung – analogs of China during centralized and Warring States periods respectively – as well as Tabot (Tibet – ugh!), the Plain of Horses (Mongolia), and the Northern Wastes (Siberia). Volume II covers the lands of Wa and Kozakura – analogs of Japan during the Edo and Sengoku periods respectively – along with Koryo (Korea – ugh!), the Jungle Lands (Indochina), and the Island Kingdoms (Indonesia and the Philippines). It's an impressive amount of material, covering nearly every aspect of these lands that you can imagine, from geography and history to religion and politics. In addition, each realm gets NPCs, monsters, adventure ideas, and sometimes even new spells and magic items. 
What's interesting is that Kara-Tur has no single author. Instead, different authors cover different lands, with the whole thing "coordinated" by David Cook, primary author of Oriental Adventures. The authors are a diverse bunch of people, most of whom were not employees of TSR at the time: Jay Batista, Deborah Christian, John Nephew, Michael Pondsmith, and Rick Swan. I'm not sure how common such a practice would have been at the time, but it strikes me as unusual, at least compared to many similar projects, which were usually the work of a single author. Consequently, Kara-Tur has a somewhat uneven feel to it, as if each author had a slightly different vision of what he had in mind while writing. 
This unevenness comes through most clearly when you look at certain lands, whose histories, societies, cultures, and names(!) are lifted almost entirely from the real world, while others are a bit more fantastical. That's probably my biggest problem with Kara-Tur as a setting: it leans to heavily on the real world, particularly when compared to the larger Forgotten Realms, which is largely unmoored from any specific real world inspirations. Some of that, I suspect, has to do with the relative unfamiliarity of Asian history – and fantasy – in late 1980s America. It was probably much easier to look to the real world, file the serial numbers off, add some wizards, and be done with it. Unfortunately, the results are often quite mediocre, not to mention at odds with the overall tenor and feel of the Realms of which Kara-Tur was supposed to be the eastern half. 
It's for this reason that, while I proudly bought and owned Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, I never really liked it. Compared to many of TSR's other campaign settings, this one seemed to me to be lacking in imagination. That's a great shame, because I feel like the cultures of Asia offer great fodder for the fantasy roleplaying games. Maybe that was a goal that was more difficult to realize almost four decades ago than it would be today, I don't know. Regardless, Kara-Tur falls well far of the mark of what I would have liked back in the day and even more so now. Alas!