WotC Can we salvage Toril?

[Henadic Theologian]

If I had to do something with Kara-Tur, I'd play around with some of the basic stuff from the whole Hordelands idea.

It's been over a century, so maybe the Tuigan (pseudo Mongol) empire has survived in some form and it's at roughly the stage where it was under Kublai Khan, fragmenting but the Tuigan have basically established a dynasty in Shou Lung, (The Northern of the Two Chinas), and are planning to conquer the southern of the two Chinas, which I would rewrite to be more like the Southern Song which had been separate from Northern China, since the conquest of the North by an earlier group of horse-raiders.

There's quite a lot of advantages to this set-up. The Mongol empire led to a renaissance of silk road trade due to the peace they enforced, (Pax Mongolica) so this would see greater contact between Kara-Tur and the west; you'd have Red Wizards all over the place (as I said earlier in the thread if you look at the map Thay is closer to Shou Lung than it is to the Sword Coast. ) This also allows lot more cosmopolitanism. If people are travelling all over the place it's a lot easier to justify a range of characters. You also have lots of clear potential conflicts. The Tuigan in Shou Lung want to invade the southern China analogue, there may be a native uprising in China against the Tuigan inspired by the later rise of the Ming Dynasty. While in the Hordelands, the potential for fragments of the old empire to descend into war is rife, and one of the warlords might decide he wants to reunite the old empire and start a war with his rivals. (Since Semphar is vaguely Persian I'd probably have a Tuigan style horde there inspired by Tamerlane's court in Samarkand).

I'm not sure exactly what I'd do about the two japans, but one of them badly needs to be going through some kind of encounter with an outside force. Given the hundred years since Maztica, you could have trade ships coming from Maztica with silver which would lay a foundation for introducing something like the Wokou. Although if the parallels with colonialism are two uncomfortable, it could be something entirely different. Seeing as Forgotten Realms doesn't really have an Indian analogue you could have an island further to the west broadly inspired by Chola India or something like that (or make up a new culture based off one of the non-human species), just enough of a foreign presence to shake up the stereoptyical Japan and make it something more interesting.

There's also two buddhist Tibets for some reason. I'd rewrite one of them to be more based off the pre-buddhist Tibetan empire that fought against the Tang dynasty.

That's just a starting point, without bringing in more overt fantastic elements, (much more integration of non-human species is needed to make it fit realms better) but I think at least that much would be laying better foundations.

Actually the Forgotten Realms does have fantasy India, in Faerun, a few nations in the Shining South, like Durpar. The Koung Kingdom hints at a possible Kara Tur India (or rather a Sri Lanka which the writers never got to).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The funny thing is is WotC IS doing an Asia setting this year, Kamigawa and it's generally expected that it's a when not an if when Tarkir hits, so I don't think WotC shares the view that Kara Tur is untouchable as some in this thread do.

I believe Kamigawa is Japan, not "Asia". Trying to lump the whole continent into a monoculture was where Kara-Tur went wrong in the first place. It's not impossible for WotC to revisit Kara-Tur, but it would be very different, possibly including the name.

 

[DEFCON 1]

WotC said from the very beginning they were only going to update parts of Faerun when they had a product that would make use of it. They weren't going to spend their time, money, and energy creating completely new information out of whole cloth for places like Turmish just on the off-chance there were a few players out there who felt like they wanted to read two pages worth of a modern Turmish almanac. Especially considering an even smaller percentage of those people would actually do anything with that information once they read it. The time of writing those world history books just for the sake of writing them has long gone.

So if that means anyone thinks the Realms can't be salvaged? Great! It gives even more of a reason for WotC to not have to re-write the entire campaign setting for those people (not that I think they were ever going to do that anyway.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The funny thing is is WotC IS doing an Asia setting this year, Kamigawa and it's generally expected that it's a when not an if when Tarkir hits, so I don't think WotC shares the view that Kara Tur is untouchable as some in this thread do.

Kamigawa and Kara-Tur are very, very different things in the details and execution.

Kara-Tur is pretty much exemplary of the laziest and least effective kind of "Asia-themed" setting, in which it's a big morass of poorly-researched takes on "Asian" in a bland and broad way, with a lot of stuff jammed together. It's not "hateful", but it's just... crap and representative of an unfortunate take on "Asian" culture that was once common.

Whereas Kamigawa is a fairly tight and specific thing, focused on Japanese culture and mythology (specifically) and with a cyberpunk theme.

It's a serious mistake to see them as similar. It is possible that WotC could redo Kara-Tur to be less, well, bad and lazy, but the question is, would it be worth it? Would it be more successful and popular than a Kamigawa setting-book? I suspect not, because Kamigawa could add a whole bunch of cyberpunk stuff to D&D for those who wanted it.

On Toril in general, I think there are really only two ways from the FR to go forwards from where it is:

1) The cautious option, where there is maybe a broader FR book than now in terms of the "core realms", but Maztica, Zakhara, Kara-Tur etc. are still not detailed in any meaningful way. This would probably be the safest thing to do, but even that isn't without risk, because people will ask questions about why they aren't covered. I'm not sure it would achieve much but I suspect it would be popular and it could update SCAG mechanical material to the DND2024 standard (Tieflings etc).

2) The "new edition, new FR" option. WotC have already expressed the opinion that they are not bound by previous canon, and honestly, they could go with a new FR book that was more "full-on", and "rebooted" Maztica, Zakhara, and Kara-Tur. Maztica must be rebooted to be used. You cannot light-touch retcon your way out of the what the original Maztica books did. That just has to go - I think if you did go retcon instead of just pretending it never happened, you'd want to say something which amounted to "Oh the 2E stuff was nonsense written by an invader", and go from there, not even using that material. Zakhara isn't in that bad a state, imho, so it could be more light-touch and just putting a solidly positive spin on it. Kara-Tur needs a rewrite for somewhat different reasons to Maztica. You'd need a pretty big book to be even mildly respectful of them though.

I suspect the first is a lot more likely than the second. If it wasn't for the multimedia strategy I'd kind of suspect they were going to move away from the FR generally, but given we have a movie, possibly one or more TV shows, BG3 (i.e. a pretty big-deal AAA CRPG), and likely other games on the way, likely landing in 2022 and 2023, so just before the 2024 new edition, I don't think a move away from the FR is terribly likely. I do think they're going to update it though. Especially as they have the excuse of the new edition.

As a total aside, on a certain level, the Moonshae Isles (i.e. The British Isles and Scandinavia - or rather just the "colourful" bits of those to a 1980s American eye) are almost as bad as Kara-Tur (not Maztica though, that's a whole other level of "yikes"). They're an example of a very similar cultural phenomenon (Celtomania instead of Orientalism), but they were at least done by people who have a background with those countries/cultures, and whilst kinda gross, at least can't really be said to be racist, just incredibly dumb (they're also more forgivable because they're a much smaller part of the world). If I was passing through I'd probably get rid of the word Ffolk though, esp. as it's a Germanic-derived word given a hilariously idiotic cod-Welsh spin (is there even a quasi-Germany in the FR btw? I actually can't think of one of the top of my head).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

WotC said from the very beginning they were only going to update parts of Faerun when they had a product that would make use of it.

They did, but I think expecting WotC to be bound by stuff they said in like 2014/2015 now, especially with DND2024 coming up, is pretty silly imho. They said a whole lot of things that they've since reversed on, including the pace of production of sourcebooks, which they made a whole song and dance about back then. Don't get me wrong - that doesn't mean they "definitely will" change their mind on that - but equally it's not really sensible to expect them to hold to it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As a total aside, on a certain level, the Moonshae Isles (i.e. The British Isles and Scandinavia - or rather just the "colourful" bits of those to a 1980s American eye) are almost as bad as Kara-Tur (not Maztica though, that's a whole other level of "yikes"). They're an example of a very similar cultural phenomenon (Celtomania instead of Orientalism), but they were at least done by people who have a background with those countries/cultures, and whilst kinda gross, at least can't really be said to be racist, just incredibly dumb (they're also more forgivable because they're a much smaller part of the world). If I was passing through I'd probably get rid of the word Ffolk though, esp. as it's a Germanic-derived word given a hilariously idiotic cod-Welsh spin (is there even a quasi-Germany in the FR btw? I actually can't think of one of the top of my head).

The difference is, the British don't feel got at by the Americans, so we just shuffle embarrassedly, like watching a "British" character on an American sitcom.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The difference is, the British don't feel got at by the Americans, so we just shuffle embarrassedly, like watching a "British" character on an American sitcom.

There's some truth in this, plus Americans perceiving themselves to be of British Isles descent tended to be the people pushing Celtomania in the first place (that's part of why England isn't really on the Moonshaes, it's more like a weird mashup of Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, and Scotland, plus the Vikings for flavour - Cormyr is fairly England-adjacent though, back on the mainland - I'd argue it's more like "What if New England was medieval", but that's a separate discussion!). Also, frankly, no-one cares about the Moonshae Isles because Celtomania has been dead for, what, coming up on 30 years (after the late '80s, early '90s revival it got - which impacted games beyond D&D, note, WoD got a bit of it, for example), and they've never been presented well as an exciting place to adventure in.

I mean, that could change, oddly enough, with the whole "Goblins = Fey" deal. An expanded FR which was willing to just ride roughshod over old canon (which I'd be fine with, despite the groaning weight of FR products on the shelf behind me) could make Fey Goblinkind major players in the Moonshaes and generally shake the place up.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

is there even a quasi-Germany in the FR btw?

There's Sembia, which kinda looks like the German principalities era, with their merchant-princes and whatnot.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There's Sembia, which kinda looks like the German principalities era, with their merchant-princes and whatnot.

Given that the Sembians are usually portrayed as villains, it might be a good thing not many people have spotted that...

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Given that the Sembians are usually portrayed as villains, it might be a good thing not many people have spotted that...

yeah, the evil, shady-dealing, aggressively pro-merchant country messing the good France/England feudal kingdom full of noble knights and glorious kings is a little iffy.

Sembian are pretty much the evil-nazy-guy-with-fake-german-accent from Indiana Jones movies.

Was there ever a good guy that came from Sembia in FR lore?