Hi,
are there stats and descriptions of critters typical of asia, and western china in particular?
As far as I know there are no canon-critters from that regions (except for maybe a few in the Critters book that are very good at hiding from my search). What about player-written material?

tbd

You would be generally correct. The only Cannon Asian parinormal critter that I'm aware of is the Fox Shapeshifter, which is native to the Japanese Islands and Eastern China.

You may have to make things up as you go along, or at least base them off of other critters already published.

Just think of Essence draining Panda's, Dual Natures Siberian Tigers, and Plus size Yaks... The possibilities are endless...

look in T:AL, T:W and I think maybe smuggler havens. As I recall, the baba yaga and a couple of other REALLY nasty critters like it in the east, and there are a few in those books. The trouble is, most of the Chinese/Japanese legends of critters and spirits are explained by, well, spirits (obviosuly) dragons and metahumans. They don't really have that much in the way of supernatural critters that don't fall into one of those categories - at least, that's the impression I get from what little I know of their folklore.

I might be wrong on those books. I'll have a look and post back later.

There's a ton of good little monsters and critters in Asian myth. Unfortunately, most of them are basically spirits of some sort or another, or in the case of Oni were turned into a playable race. Weren't there stats for the Kappa in some book? That's a Japanese monster...

The Abstruse One

those insanely fast horses would make a good critter to find in the mongolian plains, given the mongol's cavalry tradition. i forget the name of the critter, but i think it's in T:W--something like 7 Qui, x6 running multiplier, plus the Movement power. i'll take that over a crotch rocket.

In case you're interested, you can look here:
http://mapage.noos.fr/thehelix/magic/japcritters.htm

But do so quickly, because my provider will erase the site very soon (I ended my contract almost 2 years ago, but they were still hosting my pages, until last week, I got a mail telling me that those pages will be deleted soon, so I should move them before...
Anyway, enjoy as long as it lasts.

One word.

Godzilla.

Thanks for the praise.

I have the website on my HD.
And mfb already offered to host it.
This community is always amazing me how fast it can respond to each others
Anyway, The Helix has been un-updated since quite a long time now, and I'm not sure it will soon... Well, better put those pages (and the interviews) somewhere safe for everyone.

Hmmm, Asian critters huh? Nothing really along the lines of the Paranormal Animals Of... sourcebooks covered Asia, South America or Africa. The closest mentions of canon critters would be:

Yeti - a Himalayan version of the Sasquatch or Wendigo (briefly mentioned in one of the old books somewhere, but no stats).

Shapeshifters - notably the Fox and Tiger variants.

Spirits of all kinds - just modify their powers and appearances to fit the folklore. PS> No Kappa stats ever published canon as far as I can remember, but they sound pretty much like water spirits in manifest form to me. unless you want a load of ninja turtle adepts running about the 6th World that is...

Target: Smuggler Havens had a bunch of Siberian critters and touched on those native to northern Asia. IE; Mammoths, Baba Yaga, Sabre-tooth tigers, Siberian Bees etc. Most of these were stuck into the revised Critters booklet along with the 3rd Ed GM screen.

Target: Wastelands, I believe, had a mention of the Aleuit nasty spirit-monsters, which you could use for the tribespeople across the polar circle.

Target: Awakened Lands has a load of Critters native to Oz, some of which you could use in the islands scattered across SE Asia/Pacifica. Many of which were originally covered in greater detail in Paranormal Animals of North America.

As for other critters, there were a few mentioned in the various issues of Shadowland released by Sword of the Knight Publications, several years ago. I distinctly remember the Yuki no Onna, a Japanese mountain spirit.

A GM who's running a campaign with locales in the southeast Asian tropics has so far introduced three new paranormals for her campaign, an awakened version of the Lawyer Vine(actually a palm family plant), a gigantic awakened fruit bat with Animal Control(normal fruitbats) that is apparently sentient, and larger than average metallic-blue army ants with either corrosive secretions or innate spell(acid stream).

The Awakened Lawyer Vine is particularly nasty. It attacks as a number of opponents equal to the number of vines that feed into the same root structure, has +2 reach, and Strength varying from 7 for the 2-3 vine variants to 12+ for the 8-vine variants. Nothing quite like being attacked by a 8 opponents with 5-6 skill, 10-12 strength, and +2 reach.

Of course, after one attacked a female adept PC, we started calling them "hentai plants".

Vampires that have to hop everywhere.

For a SE Asian campaign, why not include awakened Durian? These evil trees attempt to murder players by dropping thier spikey fruit pods on players' heads (several people die every year here in the 5th world because of an-awakened durian "attacks"). Supposing the tree misses, or the player survives, the stench which emminates from the breached durian pod is enough to topple even the stoutest troll (innate spell: stink).

Oddly enough, the SE Asians of 2064 still think of the awakened durian as a delicacy, and yes, Singapore still bans them on the underground....