Aldarc
Legend
Not in great depth, but yes. I was not terribly impressed with it, and it has mostly faded into obscurity with the onset of more interesting settings in D&D. I enjoy Eberron, for example, because many (but not all) nations avoid being lazily copy-pasted clones of real world nations and it often explores how the magic of D&D impacts culture. I have also voiced my dislike of the 7th Sea setting Theah for being in the "uncanny valley" in its off-brand Europe setting. I have also said before that I don't think that pointing to D&D also having lazy caricatures of European nations works as an argument in favor of either D&D or the representation of Asian cultures in Oriental Adventures.
But is the story about the settings good in OA? And there are a number of East Asian voices from those living in Euro-America who are telling you that it's not a good story because they find that it propagates harmful stereotypes about East Asian cultures and its peoples.
Earlier @Umbran pointed out that there is not a proper symmetry in the power balance between the various actors in this exchange, between East Asian cultures depicting the Euro-America and Euro-America depicted East Asia, as well as noting complexities such as people of East Asian descent living in predominately white Euro-American cultures. In another thread, @Campbell also talked about the difference between "punching up" and "punching down" when it comes to how things are framed, which is also important to keep in mind.
Western Europe is actually fairly small when compared to East Asia. And Western Europe also had some fairly large cultural unifiers, namely the Roman Catholic Church, while also the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne & Co. kinda had a large cultural impact on how nations like France, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, Belelux, Bohemia, and Hungary would develop due to their monarchical connections. Part of why the reason why we can often talk about Medieval Europe with some broad strokes is because of how pervasive the Roman Catholic Church was as an institution throughout Western Europe in the Middle Ages. So even when people spoke different languages and had different cultures, a lot of communication was done via Ecclesiastical Latin.
I do sometimes roll my eyes about how Judeo-Christianity is depicted in Japanese media, but I also do the same with a Western media that has essentially become religiously illiterate. But I don't really have a voice in how Japan depicts Euro-America. I do have a voice in how Euro-America depicts Japan or Euro-America depicts Euro-America. So we are seeing a number of people of East Asian descent living in Euro-America who are giving rise to their own voices about how their fellow Euro-Americans are depicting them in a fantasy elf game.
