Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Hello
I'm a fan of pseudo-historical settings and novels. I ran a huge 3-year long campaign set in 1150 (half in Anatiolia, ie Turkey, half following the silk roads). There is a long history of this - look at Guy Gavriel Kay's module. Even the dwarves in Tolkien were based, in part, on the history of the Jewish people.
Yet it's become obvious to me that there are a lot of pitfalls associated with this. It's easy to have the culture depicted as a lazy caricature instead of a more faithful depiction. It's certainly not ok to make culture X as a one dimensional villain (there was a somewhat heated discussion about the Mongol replaced by Orcs a few weeks ago...), but even a positive depiction could be problematic - see the "Noble Savage" and all the baggage that has...
A potential cure to that is, well, effort. Do your research. If the Turks are an adversary in your game, have a nuanced depiction of them. But the problem is... how much effort is enough? It's very hard to depict a culture accurately, and in some cases information is scant - or wrong. WotC tried in Tomb of Annihilation and those efforts were not well received by some.
So then a solution might be to not do it. Just avoid the entire issue! Buuuut then that becomes an act of erasure! And that's not cool either
So what's the solution?
I'm a fan of pseudo-historical settings and novels. I ran a huge 3-year long campaign set in 1150 (half in Anatiolia, ie Turkey, half following the silk roads). There is a long history of this - look at Guy Gavriel Kay's module. Even the dwarves in Tolkien were based, in part, on the history of the Jewish people.
Yet it's become obvious to me that there are a lot of pitfalls associated with this. It's easy to have the culture depicted as a lazy caricature instead of a more faithful depiction. It's certainly not ok to make culture X as a one dimensional villain (there was a somewhat heated discussion about the Mongol replaced by Orcs a few weeks ago...), but even a positive depiction could be problematic - see the "Noble Savage" and all the baggage that has...
A potential cure to that is, well, effort. Do your research. If the Turks are an adversary in your game, have a nuanced depiction of them. But the problem is... how much effort is enough? It's very hard to depict a culture accurately, and in some cases information is scant - or wrong. WotC tried in Tomb of Annihilation and those efforts were not well received by some.
So then a solution might be to not do it. Just avoid the entire issue! Buuuut then that becomes an act of erasure! And that's not cool either
So what's the solution?