OgreBattle wrote:Scrolls of summoning arguably fit better into a Japanese Fantasy setting than medieval Europe.
There's real significant East Asian support for calligraphy based magic. Much more so than in European traditions. But I don't think it's a deal breaker either way. In any particular fantasy setting the magic works however the author says it does, and there is "power word" and "living paintings" in European stories
at all. So if you want
or don't want people to be making Sailor Mars style paper seals to fight demons with, it can justify that whether your fantasy is nominally Eurotrash or Yellowface.
But I happen to think that calligraphy magic is
cool, and I would suggest including it in kitchen sink fantasy. And in Oriental Adventures, you have access to terms like Onmyoji and Miko that genuinely imply that writing and drawing on paper is going to be a big part of magic. So that's cool.
maglag wrote:
Thinking about it, Outlaw Star would also make a nice RPG with a diversified party where each character gets their own distinct abilities/weapons.
Sure. I'm going to invoke the Thundercats principle. There basically isn't any real difference between science fiction and fantasy. Might and Magic has laser guns and technically the whole world is actually a space ship or something. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks has the entire dungeon be a crashed alien spacecraft. The whole Final Fantasy thing where it's "fantasy" but also there are mechs and some of the characters have guns? That's just a thing the genre does. There is absolutely a reason that libraries have a "science fiction / fantasy" section - because the distinction is totally made up.
It's completely reasonable to have guns in your fantasy and still have swords and shit. Many of the things people want in their fantasy stories were actually factually invented well after handheld gunpowder weapons. And I'm not just talking about how the "iron ration" was invented for the Napoleonic Wars. But of course, it's also totally fine to have a fantasy story where no one has guns. People do plenty of that, and it's fine.
I would say that the argument for inclusion of gunpowder weapons is
stronger in East Asian Themed Fantasy. But it's not "must have" or "red line" or whatever.
-Username17