HawaiiSteveO
Blistering Barnacles!
Watching Longmire gave me an interesting idea for an NPC cleric / druid type who would be based on a First Nations type template.
I did a little digging, and made special mention of his spellcasting involving components like smoke, smudging the rest of the group for bless spell, etc. All in all I thought it was a cool idea to flesh out an NPC and make it more interesting than 'He casts Bless on you.'
A few sessions later one the party was recapping an adventure to a new player and mentioned my 'racist' NPC. I was really surprised at that and disappointed as well. I thought I had handled the idea with respect and was trying something different.
The PHB has a whole section on Human Names and Ethnicities, and you don't have to read that closely to see they are at least loosely based on the real world.
Looking at games like Deadlands, Call of Cthulhu, etc you can run the gamut. I don't think there is anything wrong with (in my case) a WASP GM running NPCs from other real world cultures? It would be pretty boring game! No adventures in Chult, that's for sure!
There's clearly a huge difference between mocking another culture and mining others for ideas, as long as they are presented respectfully.
I did a little digging, and made special mention of his spellcasting involving components like smoke, smudging the rest of the group for bless spell, etc. All in all I thought it was a cool idea to flesh out an NPC and make it more interesting than 'He casts Bless on you.'
A few sessions later one the party was recapping an adventure to a new player and mentioned my 'racist' NPC. I was really surprised at that and disappointed as well. I thought I had handled the idea with respect and was trying something different.
The PHB has a whole section on Human Names and Ethnicities, and you don't have to read that closely to see they are at least loosely based on the real world.
Looking at games like Deadlands, Call of Cthulhu, etc you can run the gamut. I don't think there is anything wrong with (in my case) a WASP GM running NPCs from other real world cultures? It would be pretty boring game! No adventures in Chult, that's for sure!
There's clearly a huge difference between mocking another culture and mining others for ideas, as long as they are presented respectfully.