WotC Can we salvage Toril?

[Henadic Theologian]

I actually don't think it's possible anymore.

There was discussion elsewhere that settings that lack certain cultural representation shouldn't use monsters as stand-ins for that culture (IE. If your setting lacks an Arabia analog, you shouldn't use genies or at least don't use them as the stand-in for that culture). In short, D&D settings good and proper cultural representation to avoid issues of appropriation or stereotyping.

Faerun is a notable example of a world with analogues to many different Earth cultures: Asia, Arabia, South American, African, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Norse, etc. All of it a stone's throw from their current Cash-Cow, the Sword Coast. They have a setting where they could release regional sourcebooks, done by cultural experts with proper sensitivity reading, they could be doing a regional sourcebook/MM/mini-adventure annually, filling out Faerun, adding new cultural representation, and making it all interchangeable so that a Kara-Tur Samurai and a Zakharan Sha'ir could go wander over to Baldur's Gate and fight Zariel in the latest AP module. It's a structure that serves Golarion and Pathfinder well.

But they did Tomb of Annihilation. Badly. And they got raked over the coals for having done it badly. And after that, they pretty much retreated from going beyond the Sword Coast, and increasingly seem more interested in doing "one book settings" than doing anything from Forgotten Realms. (Last year was the first year none of the hardback books featured Faerun in any meaningful way). They seem to have gained a lot of interest into settings that stand in for one particular genre (such as Ravenloft = horror, Theros = Greek myth, or Strixhaven = magical school) rather than large all-encompassing monosettings.

So right now, I wager WotC feels it's safer and more profitable for them to either leverage MTG properties (such as Kamigawa), or other properties (such as Rokugan) or even create something totally new rather than attempt to fix Kara-Tur and dredge up ghosts of OAs past. I just don't see WotC having the appetite to fix old problems if they can create something new instead.

We heard about the revisit in 2020, last heard it was going well last year at D&D celebration. 4.5 to 5 years more then enough time to drown the realms in cultural Consultants/Devs. Kamigawa MtG set had what 2 or 3 years of that.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

In my experience the criticisms come from multiple directions, sometimes ones that contradict each other.

The word Oriental in the title.

It is Japan focused and not all East Asia.

It applies Japanese stuff to other East Asian fantasy analogues.

It is not historically and culturally accurate enough.

It is too historically and culturally focused and not fantasy enough.

It focuses on tropes from old samurai and kung fu movies.

It feeds into tropes about East Asians.

It exoticizes Asians.

It is not integrated into normal D&D but is a separate elsewhere/other in both setting and mechanics.

It shoehorns D&Disms onto Asian fantasy concepts.

It is not a broad toolkit but has specific assumptions.

It is cultural appropriation.

It does not provide enough cultural representation.

It is cultural misrepresentation.

Among others.

It's almost like WotC should ignore Twitter and focus on making the fans of the setting and regular new players happy. Twitter distorts reality and warps it, it doesn't reflect it.

 

[Weiley31]

I think at this rate, it's too much of a headache.

Just pick your fave edition of Toril, book/pdf wise, and roll with that.

 

[Remathilis]

In my experience the criticisms come from multiple directions, sometimes ones that contradict each other.

The word Oriental in the title.

A term that has only recently fallen from the social lexicon when describing that region of the world. It was still considered appropriate in the 1980s and only had mild pushback in the early 2000s. Regardless, WotC hasn't been keen on reusing any names of previous books save the Core, so I'd wager any new book is safe from that term.

It is Japan focused and not all East Asia.

It applies Japanese stuff to other East Asian fantasy analogues.

This is like saying "D&D is focused on Medieval England but has elements of other European cultures". Yes, the original OA leaned a little heavy on Japan, but at the time Japan had far more cultural exchange with the west than China, Korea and the like: the "War on Communism" was happening in the 80's and Japan was viewed as a good little capitalist ally. By the time 3e came around, they specifically used a popular Japanese-inspired setting with support for legacy OA elements.

It is not historically and culturally accurate enough.

It is too historically and culturally focused and not fantasy enough.

D&D isn't a history lesson. D&D assumes a world that is vaguely Medieval, but features Rennaissance-level technology, Age of Exploration-level social movement, and pre-Christian Paganism. It assumed a gladiator, a Caribbean pirate, a Celtic Druid and a Viking Berserker can all form an adventuring party.

As to the second, I cannot take seriously that either OA isn't fantasy enough.

It focuses on tropes from old samurai and kung fu movies.

It feeds into tropes about East Asians.

Yup. That was what was popular in 1980. Kurosawa and Bruce Lee was what Westerners expected of an Asian setting. Come 3e, things had move to incorporate more elements imported from Eastern culture like Anime and Wuxia.
But guess what? D&D focuses on tropes from western pop culture. Eberron is built around pulp and noir, Ravenloft gothic horror. Part of genre is genre tropes.

It is not integrated into normal D&D but is a separate elsewhere/other in both setting and mechanics.

It shoehorns D&Disms onto Asian fantasy concepts.

1e OA attempted to create an "alternative" D&D that was separate but compatible. By 3e, they learned thier lesson and nearly all the mechanics for it were in line with the d20 norms. As for separation, it IS a different region of the world, not just a kingdom you dump anywhere. Regardless, Kara-Tur was firmly established in Faerun and can be accessed by foot, steed, or spell, while Rokugan was a separate setting akin to Theros and Ravnica.

As for shoehorning D&Disms, ITS $#@&ing D&D! Of course it's going shoehorn the game into the setting. This is like getting upset that Ravenloft "shoehorns D&Dism into horror concepts" It's for playing D&D with horror tropes or playing D&D in an Asian setting.

By this logic, the only way to play different genres is to create whole new game systems to accommodate them.

It is not a broad toolkit but has specific assumptions.

So, it's a setting, like how AD&D 1e assumed specific assumptions based around the Greyhawk setting. 3e OA specifically WAS a toolkit however, presenting Rokugan as the default assumption but providing lots of things that weren't based out of Legend of the Five Rings and even gave a quick "1 page" description of how you could assemble parts of it to create a SE Asian-inspired setting. 3e OA gives you two unique examples and plenty of parts to make your own.

But sure, it wasn't a toolkit.

It is cultural appropriation.

It does not provide enough cultural representation.

It is cultural misrepresentation.

D&D has co-opted the Celtic druid and banshee, Norse giants, dozens of Greek monsters, Egyptian mummies, Romanian vampires, the whole pantheons of the Celts, Norse, Egyptian and Greek myths, Arabian genies, Japanese oni, Indian raksasha, and the Shaolin monk and crammed all of that into a boiling soup of a setting called "Core D&D". D&D doesn't appropriate culture, it mugs cultures in dark allys and roots through their pockets for spare mythology. It frequently has gotten things wrong (Hello Druids) and let that fester for decades. It's what D&D does.

1e OA made some mistakes. 3e was an improvement but could do better. But many of these criticisms strike the core of what a setting in D&D is, and they could equally be applied to most any setting or genre book.

EDIT: I want to make clear this isn't directly aimed at Voadam, but at the criticisms that were levied at OA.

 

[Mordhau]

This is like saying "D&D is focused on Medieval England but has elements of other European cultures". Yes, the original OA leaned a little heavy on Japan, but at the time Japan had far more cultural exchange with the west than China, Korea and the like: the "War on Communism" was happening in the 80's and Japan was viewed as a good little capitalist ally. By the time 3e came around, they specifically used a popular Japanese-inspired setting with support for legacy OA elements.

A big part of the issue is it just didn't make sense. The class structure was built around feudal concepts from the Sengoku and Shogunate period in Japan but assumed to apply to what was also a clear Imperial China Expy.

It's a bit like having a Knight class for a game that was meant to encompass not just medieval western Europe but also say Viking age Scandinavia.

Whereas with Rokugan at least the huge empire is explicitly a Japanese style empire.

 

[Remathilis]

A big part of the issue is it just didn't make sense. The class structure was built around feudal concepts from the Sengoku and Shogunate period in Japan but assumed to apply to what was also a clear Imperial China Expy.

It's a bit like having a Knight class for a game that was meant to encompass not just medieval western Europe but also say Viking age Scandinavia.

Whereas with Rokugan at least the huge empire is explicitly a Japanese style empire.

You mean, like the 3e knight class. Or the Cavalier if you want to back to AD&D roots. Or even the Paladin. Or having a Knight-Templar serving as a priest of Thor. It's like D&D is an amalgam of Rule of Cool and tropes with no clear thought as to how those elements go together culturally, historically, or thematically.

 

[Mordhau]

You mean, like the 3e knight class. Or the Cavalier if you want to back to AD&D roots. Or even the Paladin. Or having a Knight-Templar serving as a priest of Thor. It's like D&D is an amalgam of Rule of Cool and tropes with no clear thought as to how those elements go together culturally, historically, or thematically.

The context of Oriental Adventures was clearly different though. It presented a setting much more closely rooted in historical parallels than typical D&D, and it presented new classes with the express purpose of them being more appropriate to the setting.

If we follow the logic of what you're saying here they should never have needed to make new classes at all should they? If a Samurai is fine in Imperial China expy then why not a Paladin or a Cavalier?

The game was telling us two things at once: Paladins and Cavaliers and Rangers were not appropriate for your China game, but Samurai are!

 

[Remathilis]

The context of Oriental Adventures was clearly different though. It presented a setting much more closely rooted in historical parallels than typical D&D, and it presented new classes with the express purpose of them being more appropriate to the setting.

If we follow the logic of what you're saying here they should never have needed to make new classes at all should they? If a Samurai is fine in Imperial China expy then why not a Paladin or a Cavalier?

The game was telling us two things at once: Paladins and Cavaliers and Rangers were not appropriate for your China game, but Samurai are!

Theros is a setting rooted in Ancient Greek myths, including analogs to Athens and Sparta. It also contains monks, druids, paladins, full plate, crossbows and rapiers.

Historical accuracy and D&D are so far apart from one another they might as well be on opposite ends of the multiverse.

 

[Mordhau]

Theros is a setting rooted in Ancient Greek myths, including analogs to Athens and Sparta. It also contains monks, druids, paladins, full plate, crossbows and rapiers.

Historical accuracy and D&D are so far apart from one another they might as well be on opposite ends of the multiverse.

Whose talking about historical accuracy?
We were talking about whether a specifically Japanese class set (not a generic set pulled from a whole range of cultures) was appropriate for the entire East.

I take it that as you are trying to shift the discussion to something else you are conceding that it's not.

 

[Remathilis]

Whose talking about historical accuracy?
We were talking about whether a specifically Japanese class set (not a generic set pulled from a whole range of cultures) was appropriate for the entire East.

I take it that as you are trying to shift the discussion to something else you are conceding that it's not.

I'm pointing out that samurai in OA are as appropriate as druids are in Theros. It's a cultural outlier that is fine because it's not trying to be historically or culturally accurate, but an amalgam of different tropes and myth smashed together.

If there is any problem, its not that samurai exist, but that other Asian myths beyond Japanese didn't get codified into classes like bard, druid or ranger did. A larger collection to pick from or toss into the collective soup pot.

It's moot now though, samurai is a generic subclass of fighter in Xanathar, as available on Theros as it is in Kara-Tur.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Remathilis is so winning this debate it's not even funny or close, Remathilis is crushing it.

I think at this rate, it's too much of a headache.

Just pick your fave edition of Toril, book/pdf wise, and roll with that.

The Forgotten Realms is a living setting that has experienced a huge setting distruptive event that was poor explored and detailed, the Sundering, that radically changed the setting, not doing a new setting book is not an option.

It's not a headache, it's an opportunity with challenges.

It's the Flagship setting, they can't put off dealing with the settings issue, you can't bury the Forgotten Realms when it's the setting the generates most of your revenue for D&D.

And it's clearly happening anyways.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Kamigawa is a setting that is much straight up adaption of Japan as Wa is in Kara Tur, and yet WotC has no problem with massively updating it for the upcoming MtG set.

So clearly WotC has no problem with doing Asian analog settings. Look to Kamigawa: Neodynasty, minus the Cyberpunk elements to get an idea on how they would do a Kara Tur setting book, but with a broader array of cultural experts.

Both Kamigawa and Kara Tur have experienced large time jumps and had radical events happen in the intervening time.

Look at how radically Kamigawa has and yet hasn't changed, that the level of creative freedom they have with Kara Tur.

If they do Kara Tur (and there is a good chance for now they will just do Faerun, but Kara Tur is still a possiblity) I would hope to see it better intergrated with the rest of the Forgotten Realms and it's history and races. I would like the 5.5e Kara Tur to feel less Xenophobic to none human races.

 

[Ace]

1e OA made some mistakes. 3e was an improvement but could do better. But many of these criticisms strike the core of what a setting in D&D is, and they could equally be applied to most any setting or genre book.

I agree though 1E OA actually went to the trouble of hiring Japanese scholars from Japan as consultants. That was very unusual for the time and lead within limits of expectations to a better book.

Still the culture ethnography and expectations of the US in the 1980's were so different that it might as well another country Assuming that any of the current political and or social concerns would have made a lick of sense to the vast majority of players who just wanted a way to do Hong Kong Kung Fu movies Kurosowa Films and Ninja's in their D&D is absurd.

No matter you do, someone will be offended so unless you are prepared to make the next D&D book a bank sheet of paper, played by one person in a white room the best thing to do is market research. Find out what the people who actually buy your stuff want , not the Twitter and Reddit anger mobs but actual customers and give it to them. Its a balancing act to be sure , civility goes a long way as does mutual respect for all groups but without tradition, you also fail.

This suggest while Courtly Warrior is probably better name for the subclass than Samurai or Knight , maybe its OK to use one of these even if it does borrow a bit from one culture or another. Done respectfully and not to denigrate cultural appropriation heck cultural pilfering can make for good gaming and maybe even spur an interest in history or other topics.

 

[Mecheon]

not doing a new setting book is not an option

I mean, it honestly is an option to just go "Do whatever you want with the setting, we're just focusing on these particular parts"

Just, throw the rest of it to the wilds and let folks do what they want with it. Which seems to be the way they've gone with it so far, just side mentions of stuff rather than delving hard into it. Especially when the reward for going too hardcore into it is... NMot necessarily worth the cost of doing it.

Kamigawa is a setting that is much straight up adaption of Japan as Wa is in Kara Tur, and yet WotC has no problem with massively updating it for the upcoming MtG set.

Kamigawa was also infamously not very well received and notoriously low on the ol' Rabiah Scale.

 

[Mordhau]

I'm pointing out that samurai in OA are as appropriate as druids are in Theros. It's a cultural outlier that is fine because it's not trying to be historically or culturally accurate, but an amalgam of different tropes and myth smashed together.

If there is any problem, its not that samurai exist, but that other Asian myths beyond Japanese didn't get codified into classes like bard, druid or ranger did. A larger collection to pick from or toss into the collective soup pot.

It's moot now though, samurai is a generic subclass of fighter in Xanathar, as available on Theros as it is in Kara-Tur.

This is my new setting book for the whole of Africa.

These are the new classes especially appropriate to the African context. (Regular classes not appropriate because Africa is different).

Priest of RA.
Body Guard of the Pharoah
Alexandrian Astrologer Mage
Nile river sailor.

 

[Remathilis]

This is my new setting book for the whole of Africa.

These are the new classes especially appropriate to the African context. (Regular classes not appropriate because Africa is different).

Priest of RA.
Body Guard of the Pharoah
Alexandrian Astrologer Mage
Nile river sailor.

Cute, but I believe I said...

If there is any problem, its not that samurai exist, but that other Asian myths beyond Japanese didn't get codified into classes like bard, druid or ranger did. A larger collection to pick from or toss into the collective soup pot.

So, your four classes are fine, and ideally should have additional classes to represent the myths of the Congo, the Sahara, etc.

(and as of 3e, fighter, rogue, barbarian, sorcerer, and ranger were considered generic enough to pass in OA, as was psion and psychic warrior if you used such rules. But we apparently have collective amnesia about the 3e version of OA).

If you're trying to play gotcha because the original OA was Japan-centric, I'll concede the notion. If your argument is that Samurai don't belong in a hypothetical 5e East Asia setting because they don't fit in China, I reject the argument for the same reason you can play a druid in Theros.

 

[Mordhau]

Cute, but I believe I said...

So, your four classes are fine, and ideally should have additional classes to represent the myths of the Congo, the Sahara, etc.

But there aren't. That's central to the whole problem. You want to set your game in Subsaharan Africa you're given specifcally Egyptian classes to work with. And if you look at setting material for fantasy Botswana the king is a 12th level Bodyguard of Ra.

(and as of 3e, fighter, rogue, barbarian, sorcerer, and ranger were considered generic enough to pass in OA, as was psion and psychic warrior if you used such rules. But we apparently have collective amnesia about the 3e version of OA).

But we weren't talking about 3rd edition. 3rd edition was specifically focused on Rokugan as the default setting, and as I said, if Rokugan is your focus you don't have the same issue.

If you're trying to play gotcha because the original OA was Japan-centric, I'll concede the notion. If your argument is that Samurai don't belong in a hypothetical 5e East Asia setting because they don't fit in China, I reject the argument for the same reason you can play a druid in Theros.

I'm not trying to play gotcha here. I'm trying to get you to understand the basic point and stop distorting it.

I'm not saying you can't have a Samurai class. I'm saying that you can't take away the Fighter and Paladin because they're not appropriate and then give the Samurai as a replacement for a game set in China.

 

[Remathilis]

But there aren't. That's central to the whole problem. You want to set your game in Subsaharan Africa you're given specifcally Egyptian classes to work with. And if you look at setting material for fantasy Botswana the king is a 12th level Bodyguard of Ra.

But we weren't talking about 3rd edition.

I'm not trying to play gotcha here. I'm trying to get you to understand the basic point.

If your looking to set your game in early Medieval Scandinavia, your going to have a hard time making the D&D fit that too. D&D sucks at emulating specific cultures. Could OA have pulled more from other Asian cultures? Sure. It was written in during of the Cold War in pre-Internet days by a bunch of guys in Wisconsin using correspondence from the people who lived in another country, plus whatever nuggets of myth or lore they could find. To say it's incomplete and wrong in places is a given, it's almost a surprise it manages to get right whatever it does gets right.

And I understand you don't want to talk about 3e OA, it doesn't fit the narrative of D&D as a culturally insensitive ogre (oni?) Who can't learn from it's mistakes 20 years prior and produce a superior (but not perfect) version.

Anyway, I'm going to assume unless you want to continue trying to convince me that a 30+ year product is why WotC can't be trusted to ever do an Asian-themed setting again, this conversation is over.

 

[Mordhau]

If your looking to set your game in early Medieval Scandinavia, your going to have a hard time making the D&D fit that too. D&D sucks at emulating specific cultures. Could OA have pulled more from other Asian cultures? Sure. It was written in during of the Cold War in pre-Internet days by a bunch of guys in Wisconsin using correspondence from the people who lived in another country, plus whatever nuggets of myth or lore they could find. To say it's incomplete and wrong in places is a given, it's almost a surprise it manages to get right whatever it does gets right.

And I understand you don't want to talk about 3e OA, it doesn't fit the narrative of D&D as a culturally insensitive ogre (oni?) Who can't learn from it's mistakes 20 years prior and produce a superior (but not perfect) version.

Anyway, I'm going to assume unless you want to continue trying to convince me that a 30+ year product is why WotC can't be trusted to ever do an Asian-themed setting again, this conversation is over.

I have no idea why you are trying to find an agenda in my posts over and above what I have written.

If I have a point I want to make, believe me I won't leave it to you to figure out.

 

[Voadam]

EDIT: I want to make clear this isn't directly aimed at Voadam, but at the criticisms that were levied at OA.

No problem.

I am a fan of 1e OA, I thought it had the best martial arts systems throughout D&D editions.

I was really not a fan of the honor system in 1e OA but most of the rest I thought was overall very good stuff.

I had a bunch of the OA modules but never ran any of them. Mostly I knew of Kara Tur as the OA setting where a bunch of modules were set that fleshed out different regions, a series of regions that got placed in the East of Forgotten Realms, the Fantasy China Shou Lung was featured heavily in the early Hordes novel trilogy, and Shou Lung was a cool faction in Spelljammer. Kara Tur itself featured very lightly in the OA book itself, being fleshed out in the modules and then the setting boxed set later (which I only got long after my AD&D era).

The criticisms of OA that got under my skin were factually incorrect and making false inferences based on ignorance.

I watched a two and a half hour video (the first of a series of over 20) of two guys reviewing 1e OA in depth that went on for over an hour about how OA sexually fetishized and exoticized east Asians through the introduction of the comeliness mechanics and how it fed into the stereotypes of the sexy Dragon Lady and the unattractive Asian man. The fact that comeliness was developed specifically for OA and only applied to Asians was a big point.

1e comeliness mechanics were terrible and based on fairly terrible attractiveness tropes, but they factually were not designed to apply only to Asians and did not originate in 1e OA. They were reprinted from the earlier printed generic 1e AD&D Unearthed Arcana where they applied to all D&D characters, and the earlier printed 1e World of Greyhawk boxed set as a new god stat, and they originally showed up as a Dragon Magazine article.

It was just factually incorrect to say Comeliness was created specifically to fetishize Asians.

I did not watch the follow up videos.