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Dunno about "fear of offending" . . . I think of it more in positive terms --- a desire to include. And from a storytelling standpoint, it's just good to be open to these different perspectives and different influences, because it's all new ingredients to throw in the pot, right?

My point is just that I think that in the year 2020, conditions are right to do better fantasy versions of non-Western cultures than have been previously done in the history of RPGs, and I think that, when done right, this sort of thing can really benefit the game.

Well, not to get political, but isn't colonization / empire-building usually justified by some variation on that? These guys aren't quite human, we're the good guys, gotta protect the innocent? And I only bring it up because Maztica tried to do something with real-world parallels to...

And if this is just "Sword Coast II: Everything to the Immediate East of the Last One," that's still probably a good book.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing --- D&D is largely about outsiders going to exotic (for them) places and having grand adventures and then moving on. It's just that when those places are based on real-world cultures, the killing and looting can take on a different tone. I'd be fine...

Take into account that WOTC has admitted that they maybe dropped the ball recently with "Fantasy Africa," and vowed to do better in the future when dealing with non-Western cultures. I kinda like a "Wakanda" approach to these lands . . . just because the real-world equivalents got colonized /...

I'll guess it's a grand tour of the Realms, where we get our first official visit in many years to Kara-Tur, Al-Quadim, Maztica, and maybe some new lands (Fantasy India? Fantasy Stone Age?). Almost certainly a bunch of linked adventures rather than a pure gazetteer.

Didn't have enough modrons, did it?

And the barbarian works better unarmored, which seems to fit better that having a punchy guy in full plate.

Maybe I'm getting hung up on the word "hidden." Let's think . . . Unseen Attackers and Targets Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness. When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the...

Thinking this blind swordsman idea through a little better . . . Blinded A blinded creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage. Blind Fighting Being unable...

So the Aim Rogue could be, f'rinstance, a scout who uses his exceptional mobility to get to a safe spot, and then drops some enemies with long-range sneak attacks. Nice. Fighter's Unarmed Fighting style would be a lot more appealing if his unarmed strikes were also considered weapon attacks...

Also a baller build: thrown weapons fighter. Like James Coburn. Feels like you maybe multiclass with rogue?

Blindfighting! I always thought that playing a blind swordsman would be an interesting roleplaying challenge. But the real baller combo is Oath of Heroism (from a couple months back) + Unarmed Fighting. Just run around punching and wrassling and being mighty, like Kevin Sorbo in the 1990s.

I wonder if the Universal Speech feature should include the ability to understand the targets, instead of just having the targets understand the bard? I suppose there are spells which could supplement Universal Speech if you wanna understand the other side, but I don't like the idea of always...

Oath of the Common Man. Well, file that one away for the hopepunk campaign. Didn't Chainmail have Communist dwarves? So the Oration Bard . . . lotta different archetypes you could do with that. Attorney. Con artist. Roman politician. Greek philosopher. Warrior-poet. Oooooor . . ...

"Bloodline." It's got that "blood" in there.

But y'know, this discussion about the genre as a whole may be a little unfair to the creators of the product, who did nice work and provide all the tools to play anything from a more traditional take on the genre to something a bit more PC. For my taste, I would've dialed the nipples down a...

Oh, I'm no Puritan. For my part, I don't think that approaching swords & sorcery from a different gender/racial/social perspective necessarily means "watering it down" . . . I read your post and think, well, what if that wholesome barbarian was an African instead of a Celt or a Norseman? What...

That's who I've been thinking about, too. Always like the idea of a character who's kind of walking around in a different movie than everyone else, and this type of character can damn near bend reality and drag everyone within his gravitational pull into a whole different genre.