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Based on...? I think you're still be overly essentialist. Think of it this way. In an American game, if you have a frontier, how can it not be informed by the long history of stories of the American frontier? It doesn't matter why you have it. Even if it's a structural necessty it has to be...

I'm pretty sure the Barbarian class was quite different between those two books. It was the Oriental Adventures one that was Eastern focused. The UA one, I think, was just Conan. I don't think there was ever any intention that the D&D Barbarian, in general, was from the East.

We need to be less essentialist about this. Orcs are Orcs, they don't resemble Native Americans (or any other ethnicity) all the time. In fact, because of what they are, they might resemble different ethnicities as different times and in different uses. As I said earlier, the issue here is...

"therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.". I don't see how it can be a misreading unless there's a mistranslation. I'm not sure how otherwise you can read it as saying anything other than some people may believe that slavery is unjust.

I think it's a little more complex than that. I think D&D orcs are first defined by the desire to tell the kind of stories that a lot of writers grew up with, i.e Western ones with cowboys and indians and the like. That doesn't mean that Orcs were based on Indigenous Americans, but rather they...

It never is of course. Another example would the the frequently repeated claim that there were no athiests in the middle ages.

Yes. Although Aristotle in the Politics writes: " others however maintain that for one man to be another man's master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it...

One thing I just noticed - if they're going with the books interpretation of the three oaths and Moirane has been stilled, then she can now lie, and was in fact lying to Rand when she said she couldn't.

I don't think anyone really knows what the major issues were with 4e. Many of the things that were supposedly dealbreakers barely raise an eyebrow in 5e. Most likely it was a whole lot of things combined that caused the backlash. I'd be wary of saying things shouldn't be done because of 4e...

The thread does say 'with book spoilers".

Well I remember that "Tabot" was recognisably Tibetan, while the Tuigan were very recognisably Mongolian. The idea that all asian cultures are treated as completely indistinct is obviously not true. (It may be true for Oriental Adventures itself, I read it once years ago, and I didn't bother...

As compared to....? You mentioned Warhammer earlier. How are Tilea and Brettonia and and the Spanish place different other than via the indication that they are based on different historical European regions? Or all those setting that have 'here be vikings' in them. How much depth and...

But in the Forgotten Realms we have two Japans, Two Chinas, Two Tibets and we have Mongols that are clearly very strongly based on real world Mongols. In fact one of the problems with these is that they are too blatantly based on their origins. They use basically the same gods and the same...

I wonder what settings people are referring to when they talk about all these different Medieval European cultures treated respectfully anyway. Forgotten Realms? Not really clearly based on anything much except a vague ren-faire style of surface detail probably closest to Tudor England* with a...

I think we need to think about the original context here. The average level people play at has drifted higher since the early days of the game, and the kind of basic dungeon exploration has similarly reduced. We elso tend to have a bit more fous on the players as players of individual...

I think the only way to satisfactorily address the issue is to decide at which point martials need to have transmundane powers and build in some kind of fictional justification for that. People will always complain that it's not necessary due to some kind of twisted logic (as if logic is...

Yech! I think I'd mostly blocked out that particular aspect of the books.

The theory is that by hiring cultural consultants they can avoid this. I'm somewhat sceptical because there's no guarantee that two different people from the same minority group will actively agree about content. I've read accounts of journalists getting into trouble for articles and people...

When it's costing them nothing to do so? I think at the very least it's a good thing to do so. As I said earlier, this is not analogous to keeping a book in print. There's no production involved and no cost. I tend to think that if they are going to claim exclusive rights to digital...

I would say there's a big difference between putting out a new edition of something to correct errors, or include updated information etc, and going back and editing material from 30 years ago. I personally feel it's unethical to muddy the waters of history. There's gradiation here. If they...