michaeljpatrick
First Post
Probably best to name it anything other than "Oriental Adventures". Not sure why some folks are hung up on that. It's just a name. The word "oriental" is offensive to some people. It's that simple. Sure you can argue all day about why it shouldn't be offensive to some people ("It's just another word for 'East'", "Asia would include India and Russia as well", "My friend is Chinese and he doesn't care"). In the long run you or I don't get to decide what other people are offended by. And since WotC is a company that likes to make money they will be wise to try not to offend potential customers. Like I said, it's just a name, not even a really good one.
Can an American company full of mostly white guys make an Asian-themed setting without it being embarrassing? Probably. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who made "Avatar: the Last Airbender" were white and it was a great example of Asian influence without being offensive. Just don't mention the movie...
I suppose it couldn't hurt to hire actual Asian writers and artists for such a project. But diversity in publishing in general is a good idea. For the record I'm not calling out WotC for a lack of diversity in their staff. I really don't know how diverse their staff is or isn't and am too lazy to check. But if they decide to make an Asian themed supplement it would probably be wise to not have everyone on the team be white.
As for the supplement itself, I think it would be light on crunch and heavy on fluff. Maybe some new backgrounds, magic items, monsters and a subclass or two would be all that is needed. Wizards has already made their stance on Asian style weapons for this edition (basically that they are the same as Western equivalents).
Probably the best thing to do would be to create a setting and/or an adventure. Probably not a whole continent, but a good solid region that can be developed and built upon.
Can an American company full of mostly white guys make an Asian-themed setting without it being embarrassing? Probably. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who made "Avatar: the Last Airbender" were white and it was a great example of Asian influence without being offensive. Just don't mention the movie...
I suppose it couldn't hurt to hire actual Asian writers and artists for such a project. But diversity in publishing in general is a good idea. For the record I'm not calling out WotC for a lack of diversity in their staff. I really don't know how diverse their staff is or isn't and am too lazy to check. But if they decide to make an Asian themed supplement it would probably be wise to not have everyone on the team be white.
As for the supplement itself, I think it would be light on crunch and heavy on fluff. Maybe some new backgrounds, magic items, monsters and a subclass or two would be all that is needed. Wizards has already made their stance on Asian style weapons for this edition (basically that they are the same as Western equivalents).
Probably the best thing to do would be to create a setting and/or an adventure. Probably not a whole continent, but a good solid region that can be developed and built upon.