Kara Tur

Kara-Tur is a fantasy world created by David Cook in the Oriental Adventures rulebook for the First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game in 1986. Kara-Tur's cultures and peoples are fantasy analogues of medieval China, Korea, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Tibet, and other regions of East Asia. In 1987, Kara-Tur was officially relocated to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

The fantasy setting known as Kara-Tur was described in the original 1985 Oriental Adventures book. A reviewer for White Dwarf called the long background section of Kara-Tur in the book, a "bonus". Kara-Tur is described in the "Province Book" from the 1986 Swords of the Daimyo module. The 1987 Forgotten Realms Campaign Set left the eastern half of its continent reserved for the future publication of Kara-Tur. According to Jim Bambra, "While primarily drawing on Japan for inspiration, [Kara-Tur] also contains elements of medieval China and Korea."

Originally intended as a western part of the continent of Oerik, the first description of Kara-Tur, in the Oriental Adventures rulebook, made no attempt to link it with another D&D game-world. The first map of Kara-Tur appeared in the adventure module OA1: Swords of the Daimyo, where the setting was still world-neutral. In 1987, when TSR published the first Forgotten Realms boxed set, Kara-Tur was briefly described as the easternmost end of the continent of Faerûn. In 1988, TSR released a boxed set, Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms, describing the region in greater detail, with two 96-page books and maps.

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