D&D 5E Kara Tur vs Tarkir vs Kamigawa vs Plane of Mountains and Seas vs Ikoria

gyor said:

James Wyatt who did Rokagun D&D conversion for 3e admits that using Rokagun instead of Kara Tur was a mistake and a bad idea that came from the suits.

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Also what was his reasoning given? It seems extremely unlikely that anyone who could actually be called a "suit" would have ever heard of Rokugan, too. Either someone at WotC who was more directly involved with games presented that idea to "the suits" and they approved it, or the people making those decisions were no more "suits" than Mike Mearls is a "suit".

Was this something actually related to competition between CCGs or something?

Aldarc said:

But is it really an Asian-themed D&D setting if it's just part of the Realms setting?

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Yes.

Just like the real world has Asia as a whole different continent.

You don't need to go off and put something in a whole different world for it to be a different setting. You don't need an entire separate pseudo-Asian "World" just for there to be a separate D&D setting for it.

Part of the awesomeness of the Forgotten Realms is that diversity, that it has several continents, filling a broad spectrum of styles and themes, both pastiches of a vast spectrum of real-world cultures and examples of all the common fantasy tropes.

One big reason that Forgotten Realms has been one of, if not THE most popular D&D setting over the last 30 years or so has been that you can run a LOT of different styles of games and themes depending on where you play.

It has meant that if someone wanted to play a ninja or a samurai in a traditional D&D game, a handy excuse that they were from Kozakura or Wa was available. If a DM wanted to run an adventure or a plotline where the PC's visit an Arabian-themed area, without starting a new campaign, Calimshan or Zakhara was available. If you just wanted a more traditional, stereotypical fantasy game rooted in Western European themes, Cormyr and the Dalelands were right there.

The real world has a huge variety of cultures crammed into it, there's no reason a fantasy world can't have as many.

Ruin Explorer said:

I don't even know where to start with this. Good grief.

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I potentially would start how every FR country listed was a loose analog of a European country as imagined by a white Euro-American, and how that differs when it comes to an East Asian setting imagined by a white Euro-American in the '80s.

Aldarc said:

I potentially would start how every FR country listed was a loose analog of a European country as imagined by a white Euro-American, and how that differs when it comes to an East Asian setting imagined by a white Euro-American in the '80s.

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I don't see how the race/ethnicity of the author is in any way relevant.

Forced political correctness is abhorrent, and trying claim that a "white Euro-American" as you describe it can't write an Asian-themed setting is laughably absurd.

This is a map of Kara-tur.

I'm going to say it frankly; this completely lacks imagination. This is pretty obvious;y China/Mongolia/Japan, throw some Asian-sounding words in and change the coasts a bit.

This isn't a setting; it's a location. TSR needed a place where they could write a bunch of adventures where you could be a samurai, or a ninja, and this is what they made. There is little love here in it's creation, compared the work done by Greenwood for the Sword Coast, or even Gygax for Greyhawk, or Brommels for Dark Sun.

This isn't a problem unique to TSR; RPGs in the 80-90s are famous for having a unique European-inspired setting, and then adding a "Oh that's just China way in the East!" I mean, Tolkien himself started that tradition (Khand). And Warhammer Fantasy called theirs Cathay!

Compare this to a modern example; I've been reading a book called Monstress, within its own heavily-Asian inspired setting, and having an Asian writer and illustrator. Look at its map;



You can see the inspirations of course; the wall is obvious. But overall, this is a much more original world, and has a purpose for storytelling.

I'm not saying this would make a better D&D setting; I am saying, that if we want a better setting for an Asian audience, we should just recreate these old ones. Kara-tur could be used, but I'd like the IP handed to Asian writers, with the freedom to recreate that place from top-to-bottom, including the map itself (it's post Sundering, who cares).

But if we are just setting out to recreate Oriental Adventures, I'm not interested.

And if you want a world that has both a Western and Eastern setting in the same world, reacting to each other, check out the book Priory of the Orange Tree. Truly great read, enjoying it more than the first Game of Thrones book.

I'll add that white writers writing Asian fantasy is not racist, just as an Asian writer writing a European fantasy isn't (Berserk, Dark Souls). But if we really want an original world that is going to inspire players successfully for many editions (Eberron nailed this), we are going to require something with a lot more love.

Kara-Tur was originally planned to be a part of Greyhawk. It was built by a bunch of people that had different ideas on racial sensitivity than we have today. Honestly, anything built more than 5 years ago tends to have more issues of racial sensitivity than we'd like to see.

To me, the answer is not A, B, C, D or E... it is something new. I'd like to see them do a large 'world book' for the FR that works with gamers with social sciences skills to create racially respectful settings that represent the historical cultures of areas outside of Europe. While you might be able to update some of these properties to meet this goal, I think you'll just tick people off by trying to shoehorn in historic problematic elements rather than discard them in favor of more respectful alternatives. Yes, there will be people that are angry to 'lose' things from a setting mostly untouched for decades, but better to anger a few bitter old fogies than to have a massive offended younger audience.

Ruin Explorer said:

Also what was his reasoning given? It seems extremely unlikely that anyone who could actually be called a "suit" would have ever heard of Rokugan, too. Either someone at WotC who was more directly involved with games presented that idea to "the suits" and they approved it, or the people making those decisions were no more "suits" than Mike Mearls is a "suit".

Was this something actually related to competition between CCGs or something?

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Would you consider Ryan Dancey a suit? That's certainly where the directive came from.

Ruin Explorer said:

Also what was his reasoning given? It seems extremely unlikely that anyone who could actually be called a "suit" would have ever heard of Rokugan, too. Either someone at WotC who was more directly involved with games presented that idea to "the suits" and they approved it, or the people making those decisions were no more "suits" than Mike Mearls is a "suit".

Was this something actually related to competition between CCGs or something?

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I was paraphrasing, going off memory. I'll have to look up the details later.

jgsugden said:

Kara-Tur was originally planned to be a part of Greyhawk. It was built by a bunch of people that had different ideas on racial sensitivity than we have today. Honestly, anything built more than 5 years ago tends to have more issues of racial sensitivity than we'd like to see.

To me, the answer is not A, B, C, D or E... it is something new. I'd like to see them do a large 'world book' for the FR that works with gamers with social sciences skills to create racially respectful settings that represent the historical cultures of areas outside of Europe. While you might be able to update some of these properties to meet this goal, I think you'll just tick people off by trying to shoehorn in historic problematic elements rather than discard them in favor of more respectful alternatives. Yes, there will be people that are angry to 'lose' things from a setting mostly untouched for decades, but better to anger a few bitter old fogies than to have a massive offended younger audience.

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Who is we? I don't think you point of view is as representive as you think it is, it's really more a view representing a narrow educated class then regular folks, even among young folks.

And again there is absolutely nothing offense about Kara Tur, no one has pointed out a single racist thing to me, even oriental adventures in not an in character/in setting term. Just vague "racial insensitively" complaints back up by absolutely nothing.

Btw unless I missed something, all the people here making that complaint are white, I have never seen single Asian EVER complain about Kara Tur.

And the folks that created Kara Tur did so with a great love of Asian cultures and they undertook the task with compleat seriousness.