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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9067481" data-attributes="member: 18">Ok. But you've presented no examples or argument beyond &quot;All classes in D&amp;D except Monks are European-coded because Americans wrote them&quot;, which I have to say, is not overwhelmingly persuasive without more specific examples. Especially when we look at say, Japanese videogames, which are, by and large, very much by Japanese designers for Japanese audiences, but where the coding of classes, regions in those games, and so on varies pretty widely, and a significant proportion of it isn't meaningfully coded to anything real-world at all, but is sort of &quot;fantasy-coded&quot;, or to be more precise coded to certain tropes/ideas in fantasy, which are often largely disconnected from any real cultural context. Yet others can be anywhere from lightly to heavily coded to specific cultures. It's not like stuff isn't often European-coded, either - loads of stuff is, and it tends to be fairly obvious.To be clear, here's no doubt most classes in D&amp;D (esp. Cleric, Paladin, Druid) started off at least vaguely to severely &quot;European-coded&quot;, but it was skin-deep in most cases and long since rubbed off, both as a result of wear and tear and intentional de-coding (which has been going on since 2E - 2E is very interesting here because you see both some really appalling coding - c.f. The Barbarian's Handbook, or rather don't, it's awful - and also early attempts to make it so classes aren't coded to specific cultures - instead the &quot;coding&quot; stuff tended to be moved increasingly to kits rather than classes).The Monk is distinct from much of that because it has particularly weird &quot;throwback&quot; design that hasn't changed as much precisely because it is tightly coded to martial arts movie (particularly HK movie) Shaolin Monks specifically. It's not that we need to be red-pilled by your or something, dear Morpheus. We are aware this isn't air we're breathing, as it were. But the Monk is weird nonetheless.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9067481, member: 18"] Ok. But you've presented no examples or argument beyond "All classes in D&D except Monks are European-coded because Americans wrote them", which I have to say, is not overwhelmingly persuasive without more specific examples. Especially when we look at say, Japanese videogames, which are, by and large, very much by Japanese designers for Japanese audiences, but where the coding of classes, regions in those games, and so on varies pretty widely, and a significant proportion of it isn't meaningfully coded to anything real-world at all, but is sort of "fantasy-coded", or to be more precise coded to certain tropes/ideas in fantasy, which are often largely disconnected from any real cultural context. Yet others can be anywhere from lightly to heavily coded to specific cultures. It's not like stuff isn't often European-coded, either - loads of stuff is, and it tends to be fairly obvious. To be clear, here's no doubt most classes in D&D (esp. Cleric, Paladin, Druid) started off at least vaguely to severely "European-coded", but it was skin-deep in most cases and long since rubbed off, both as a result of wear and tear and intentional de-coding (which has been going on since 2E - 2E is very interesting here because you see both some really appalling coding - c.f. The Barbarian's Handbook, or rather don't, it's awful - and also early attempts to make it so classes aren't coded to specific cultures - instead the "coding" stuff tended to be moved increasingly to kits rather than classes). The Monk is distinct from much of that because it has particularly weird "throwback" design that hasn't changed as much precisely because it is tightly coded to martial arts movie (particularly HK movie) Shaolin Monks specifically. It's not that we need to be red-pilled by your or something, dear Morpheus. We are aware this isn't air we're breathing, as it were. But the Monk is weird nonetheless. [/QUOTE]

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