I'm working on a pseudo Earth setting set somewhere within this timeframe (not sure when precisely). It's basically a East meets west storyline not dissimilar to the Last Samurai. I want to show a clash of cultures but the trick here is that the setting is only loosely earth-like. In other words you'll be able to think, "aha, I think this is his 'mythical India', and this must be his 'mythical Japan'". I guess the closest game would be something like the world of Rokugan and the Legend of the 5 rings.
While the geography will change and the names of the countries will change, it has to have some recognizable metaphoric anchors to our own world. I definitely want to evoke two central themes for the campaign. The first is the upheaval of western modernization and its concurrent materialistic and dualistic paradigms inflicted on the intuitive and idealistic cultures of the east. The second theme I want to get across is, though highly controversial and my main motivation to do it in the first place, is the contrast of religious and spiritual ideals.
I'm already fairly knowledgeable about eastern religions (I'm a Chan Buddhist myself) though I could always learn more about Advaitic Hinduism, Shintoism and Taoism (of which I know some of all of them but it never hurts to have more info). Hell, I might even throw in some mystic Sufis too in case the adventuring goes off into the Middle East (along maybe with some Kabbalahist and Gnostic mystics too). Hmm, now that I think about, having a campaign set where the characters come across Sir Gordon as he holds in Khartoum with some Sufi mystics would be pretty cool.
What I'm more interested in is technology of the time period. References about how industrialism was changing western society would be nice. Anything on any of the following wars would be great too:
Sepoy Rebellion
The Opium Wars
Meiji Restoration
Any of the American Indian wars
The Boxer Rebellion
Filipino Insurrection
Russo-Japanese War
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