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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8661382" data-attributes="member: 7023887">How many of the pseudo-Medieval Eurocentric settings actually depict the Middle Ages in those regions accurately? How many of them have serfs and rampant illiteracy? How many of them have plate armor and rapiers but not firearms even though they existed in the same time period? How many cities are stated to be filled with human and animal feces all the time? Where's all of the colonialization, extreme bigotry, constant warmongering, and terrible plagues? Where are all of the evil theocracies and dozens of different sects of every religion because of minor disagreements? Where's the slavery? It was common in Medieval Europe, too.Last I checked, most of the nations/city-states on the Sword Coast get along quite peacefully (except with the monster races), are inexplicably clean, slave-free, and not theocratic monarchies, and are completely free of gunpowder while also full of plate-armor-clad paladins and rapier-wielding adventurers. There's one country that's more accurate than the others (Cormyr), but that's literally only one out of the dozen or so nations, it still isn't very accurate, and the rest are about as accurate to the medieval time period as Star Wars is.Why should we hold Zakhara and other non-Eurocentric settings to a higher standard than we hold other, more popular settings? Why are you so insistent that a fantasy Arabia setting should have harems, slavery, et cetera but aren't also complaining about the things the Eurocentric settings are getting wrong about Medieval Europe?Yes, there is pressure to represent a culture you are attached to in a positive way. That's true for literally every culture ever. It's not unique to the situation Felice Kuan was talking about. Clearly, a lot of the negative stuff about Medieval Europe was removed from most of the Eurocentric settings. I don't see any reason why a revised version of Zakhara or a new setting tackling the same niche should have to include harems, slavery, and similar material that people tend to associate with the Medieval Middle East other than for exoticism (which is not a good reason to include those things).</blockquote>

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