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Totally with you.I think orientalism and exoticism are very deeply engrained in the hobby because of the Appendix N foundational literature. Anything that help maintain a sense of wonder but alleviates that sort of cultural bias is a net good IMO.
EXACTLY. This is one of the big points the Critical Read podcasters brought up, and I have been especially pleased to see the Zakhara setting book remove material about Islam and just focus on all those fantastic and fantastical Arab, Persian, North African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern myths and legends. Seriously--they've got tons and tons of stuff in there to work with.That said, I don't really think a setting based on Arab mythology needs Islam any more than vaguely-Eurpoean settings need Christianity.
If someone wants to bring extant religions into their game, that is surely their business and none of mine, but like you, I don't really see the point of it. To my mind, D&D is about (1) bringing mythologies and legends of all kinds to life as a way of re-enchanting this world of ours, and (2) running away from scary slaadi until you're high-level enough to face them. It isn't and shouldn't be about pooping on other people's religions and/or cultures.
A-yup.Most of the underlying myths that power the fantasy of D&D are pre-Christian, and the same should be true of Arab and Persian myths (or various African or East Asian cultures and mythologies). Not that you CAN'T touch on modern religions in your elf games, but it seems mostly unnecessary.
The one main element from the new setting book that I (tentatively) prefer not to adopt is its broad cosmopolitanism, where racism hardly exists in Zakhara. Especially if these myths and legends are taken from a deeply tribal set of histories, I have trouble seeing how the tribal biases and hostilities that stem from them can be so easily avoided. Mind you, this is not to say that I do not find their avoidance morally desirable in real life--I do. It's just that if I'm going to work with a setting that is ordered around very tightly-knit tribes, then I figure the warts of tribalism ought to be in there, too.
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