WotC Can we salvage Toril?

[Maxperson]

Firstly, that sounds like a fluff version of the Oberoni fallacy.

It's not even close, but okay.

Yes I can do that, but not having to do your own work is one reason to buy an established setting in the first place

Um, picking from their work isn't you doing work.

Secondly, one of the attractions of FR is that it is a rich, developed and popular setting and some people want to use the official version

Using what official changes they make does that.

Thirdly, the Realms have had shakeups before, every edition change in fact, but I don't think they involved radical timeskips or geography changes

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.

 

[Dire Bare]

Here is the thing. Someone did redo Matztica in a sensitive way here:

MZC1 The Maztica Campaign Guide - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

MZC1 The Maztica Campaign Guide - Welcome to the True World! This campaign sourcebook, along with the 5th edition core rulebooks, is all you need to beg

www.dmsguild.com

But even with that, first comment is

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basically you will never succeed unless the region is razed and rebuilt. And for that we need a F.R. task force to work with Ed Greenwood under permission from WOTC.

There is nothing stopping Ed Greenwood from publishing his own version of the Realms through the DMs Guild website. Other than time, desire, and perceived demand. No special permission from WotC necessary.

Should WotC spearhead such an effort? While a small group of fans might enjoy the result of that, it would not be worth WotC's time.

 

[Mordhau]

When I ran my silk road game, I considered using Kara Tur, but after reading through it I lost interest.

There was so much more gaming potential that seemed to leap out of the real world history of China, the descriptions of Tang Dynasty Chang'an (a much more cosmopolitan city than anything equivalent in the Forgotten Realms' Shou Lung), the routes around the Taklamakan desert, the pre-buddhist Tibetan empire.

Whereas the point of Kara Tur is really to be a big mashup of the kind of elements that people expect from an East Asian setting, before they read much real history. The more specific history I read, the more that Kara-Tur seemed like a big missed opportunity.

 

[Yora]

I was looking up what I could find about the Tuigan Horde and if there's something about it that you could turn into something more than Yellow Menace.
But it really seems to be not so much "fantasy inspired by the Mongols", and really just straight up "it's totally the Mongols", with nothing indicating that anything original was added to that.

 

[Mordhau]

I was looking up what I could find about the Tuigan Horde and if there's something about it that you could turn into something more than Yellow Menace.
But it really seems to be not so much "fantasy inspired by the Mongols", and really just straight up "it's totally the Mongols", with nothing indicating that anything original was added to that.

This is basically the issue with quite a lot of the real world equivalent cultures - Kara Tur and the Hordelands both feel in many ways like they belong to a different lower magical setting with a closer historical analogue than the western Forgotten Realms. (Although in the case of the Hordelands the geography is completely messed up by being pushed up against the eastern parts of the Western Realms)

 

[Greggy C]

When I ran my silk road game, I considered using Kara Tur, but after reading through it I lost interest.

There was so much more gaming potential that seemed to leap out of the real world history of China, the descriptions of Tang Dynasty Chang'an (a much more cosmopolitan city than anything equivalent in the Forgotten Realms' Shou Lung), the routes around the Taklamakan desert, the pre-buddhist Tibetan empire.

Whereas the point of Kara Tur is really to be a big mashup of the kind of elements that people expect from an East Asian setting, before they read much real history. The more specific history I read, the more that Kara-Tur seemed like a big missed opportunity.

Putting China into the realms is what creates all the problem. idk how you make a continent in the F.Realms that chinese people would like to play in. I don't think they are able to play D&D in china because their internet is restricted, they can't get to dnd.wizards.com but IF they did it would have to be something that is FANTASY not HISTORY but still felt like some point in history that they loved, maybe its several thousand years ago.

I did consider getting the basic rules translated and making it available in China, but thats when I found out they can't access my website.

 

[Demetrios1453]

This is basically the issue with quite a lot of the real world equivalent cultures - Kara Tur and the Hordelands both feel in many ways like they belong to a different lower magical setting with a closer historical analogue than the western Forgotten Realms. (Although in the case of the Hordelands the geography is completely messed up by being pushed up against the eastern parts of the Western Realms)

Actually not, as the Hordelands abut the Realms rough equivalents of Russia and the Middle East (and random evil magocracy).

 

[Mordhau]

Putting China into the realms is what creates all the problem. idk how you make a continent in the F.Realms that chinese people would like to play in. I don't think they are able to play D&D in china because their internet is restricted, they can't get to dnd.wizards.com but IF they did it would have to be something that is FANTASY not HISTORY but still felt like some point in history that they loved, maybe its several thousand years ago.

I did consider getting the basic rules translated and making it available in China, but thats when I found out they can't access my website.

The audience for a Chinese influenced part of the realms is not solely Chinese people (and lot's of people of Chinese descent don't live in China of course).

And I'm not arguing that you should make it more historical, just that you miss big opportunities if you don't start with history. My game had Terracotta warforged, and Kenku, a bureau of Chinese Imperial wizards, and a viking who'd travelled all the way down the silk road to recover his folding ship which an official had stolen in order to present to the Emperor as a gift. I

Just to take one example: in early Chinese history while it was silk that went west, what the Chinese most wanted was horses, particularly the horses of the Ferghana valley that legend said were gold, sweated blood and descended from Dragons. That's just one of the cool opportunities for fantasy you miss if don't dig into the history.

You would also I think, be far less likely to trip over yourself, if you choose a particular era of history as your starting point, rather than Chinese History in general. That whole idea of timelessness is one that leads to all kinds of orientalist generalisations.

 

[Greggy C]

The audience for a Chinese influenced part of the realms is not solely Chinese people (and lot's of people of Chinese descent don't live in China of course).

And I'm not arguing that you should make it more historical, just that you miss big opportunities if you don't start with history. My game had Terracotta warforged, and Kenku, a bureau of Chinese Imperial wizards, and a viking who'd travelled all the way down the silk road to recover his folding ship which an official had stolen in order to present to the Emperor as a gift. I

Just to take one example: in early Chinese history while it was silk that went west, what the Chinese most wanted was horses, particularly the horses of the Ferghana valley that legend said were gold, sweated blood and descended from Dragons. That's just one of the cool opportunities for fantasy you miss if don't dig into the history.

You would also I think, be far less likely to trip over yourself, if you choose a particular era of history as your starting point, rathern than Chinese History in general. That whole idea of timelessness is one that leads to all kinds of orientalist generalisations.

Fair enough, not my area of expertise, I would like to get D&D into their hands, but its hard to do it.

 

[Mordhau]

Actually not, as the Hordelands abut the Realms rough equivalents of Russia and the Middle East (and random evil magocracy).

In a kind of vague sense (Semphar I thought was particularly poor). But I was more thinking about the how the Hordelands is really too small - Shou Lung is actually closer to Thay, than Thay is to Waterdeep (Central Asia is vast) - and kind of blocked off by mountain ranges in all directions (and also a thick forest). A big part of the whole history of steppe empires is related to that vast contiguous Steppe from the border of China to the Ukraine, with a little add on bit on the Hungarian plain.