Reply To: D&D officially turning Forgotten Realms sights away from Euro inspired campaigns

[greyhunter88 1654xp 0]

@limburger

Ultimately, that’s my whole point in all of this.

By its very nature, a generic “Arabia” or “Asia” sourcebook for Forgotten Realms is not going to really add much to the game beyond a bit of fluff and some new classes or items.

A completely separate setting, like Kara-Tur, would allow them to explore these in more detail, and even integrate mechanical differences into the game itself to help encourage players to think and play differently.

Hence my thesis that these sourcebooks in discussion are likely just token nods at diversity, and are missing the opportunity to really present diversity in an interesting and interactive way.

Adding a samurai to my Pathfinder campaign gives me a 0.1% feeling of diversity. Now there’s official ‘permission’ for my Asian friends to make a character who has the same phenotypes as them, I guess?
Playing a campaign of L5R makes all of us feel like we’re really learning about and living in a completely different world, that is very clearly modeled after real world counterparts. Even the Asians in our group were learning a ton, because their Chinese and Taiwanese backgrounds are different from the mostly-Japanese inspirations that inform so much of L5R.

If you want Africans to feel more included in RPGs, don’t give me a “Cheetah” totem for my Barbarian Class and write up plot hooks for a new capital called Addis Abadar. Give me a setting set based on ancient Ethiopia that fundamentally changes the magic system, the classes, the way adventures are structured, the enemies, etc etc.

That’s just my two cents.