A book which is really heavy on the text and light on the pictures (a characteristic of Gygax penned volumes, him being a man who never saw a word he didn’t like), Oriental Adventures marks an important moment in the history of AD&D for a number of reasons.

In the first place, this is the first setting and set of rules not based on the Western European fantasy imaginary, drawing its inspiration from East Asia, particularly Japan but with elements of China and Korea thrown in, this also brings new mechanics to the game some of which (non-weapon proficiencies) would become staples of the game, while others (the honor system) would be pretty specific to this setting.

In second place, this volume gives birth to Kara-Tur, a campaign setting originally imagined as being part of Greyhawk, but which was published here as an independent setting, making it the fourth official original AD&D setting after Greyhawk, Ravenloft and Dragonlance (there were some non-original settings already such as Conan and Lankhmar and a semi-official one in Imagine magazine’s Pelinore). Kara-Tur wouldn’t last through the end of the decade as a stand-alone setting, eventually becoming part of the Forgotten Realms, later in the decade. A really interesting volume!