D&D 5E Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Would Like To Explore Kara-Tur

According to Reddit poster bwrusso, who was in a small group investor meeting with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks last week, Hasbro's CEO (who was previously President of Wizards of the Coast before being promoted to his current position) currently plays in a Kara-Tur campaign and would personally like to see that setting explored further.

Kara-Tur is part of the Forgotten Realms, and is inspired by real-world East and Southeast Asia cultures, including China, Japan, Mongolia, and other regions. It was originally published in the 1985 book Oriental Adventures, and has since appeared in other formats including a boxed set in 1988. Eight adventure modules for the setting were published in the late 80s. In 2015's Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Kara-Tur is briefly described.

Cocks also touched on Spanish-language translations of D&D books in Latin America, and indicated that there were distribution issues with former licensing agreements in that region.

 

[Reynard]

in the US a lot of folks are unhappy with the own national culture, so they turn to Asian cultural instutions to fill the gap, with great encouragement by Asian nations I'll add.

We don't have "a" national culture. There are about 7, depending on how you count.

Anyway, I am not sure that explains the interest in ninjas and stuff.

 

[Yaarel]

@CleverNickName

It occurs to me, the D&D alignment system is somewhat like an innocence/guilt system.

In this case, quantifying alignment with mechanics turns out to be a huge headache.

The same is probably true for any attempt to quantify honor with mechanics.

Things related to honor might work better with narrative, while ignoring mechanics?


I use a fame mechanic corresponding to level. The higher the level, the more people will have heard of the character and recognize the character. As a rule of thumb, this recognizability is:

Fame (recognizability among a number of people) ≈ 10 ^ (level+1)/2

So, at level 3, about a 100 strangers notice who the character is.

At level 5, about a thousand strangers notice who the character is. About a small town.

At level 11, about a million strangers recognize the character. A major city or a small nation.

And so on.


Honor would relate to the social encounter Attitude (Friendly, Indifferent, Hostile) of someone who is aware of the reputation. It might grant Advantage or Disadvantage to an Influence Action, Charisma check? Of course, the context would matter (or not matter at all in some contexts).

 

[Kobold Avenger]

in the US a lot of folks are unhappy with the own national culture, so they turn to Asian cultural instutions to fill the gap, with great encouragement by Asian nations I'll add.

On the other hand there happens to be "Japanese Cholos (and Cholas)" in Japan, there actually are a bunch of Japanese citizens who really like Chicano culture and started wearing plaid shirts, baggy shorts, and driving around in lowriders.

 

[Reynard]

On the other hand there happens to be "Japanese Cholos (and Cholas)" in Japan, there actually are a bunch of Japanese citizens really like Chicano culture and started wearing plaid shirts, baggy shorts, and driving around in lowriders.

Ladies and gentlemen, the very weird line between appreciation and appropriation!

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

The real question is: Why make this?
What attracts you to the setting? Is it the cultures that inspired the tropes or is it the tropes?

Because the original version of Kara-Tur was flawed, culturally insensitive in a lot of ways, and explicitly an incongruous low-magic subsetting within the VERY high magic Forgotten Realms, yet hasn't been updated in three (or is it four?) editions despite still being actively acknowledged as a canonical part of Toril - they may not have covered Kara-Tur directly in a long while, but they're certainly not hiding the fact that Shou migrants and traders exist.

So it's well past time that they put in the work and create a version of Kara-Tur that modern fans of FR can be proud of, and that can, if not necessarily set a new standard for what a D&D East Asia setting can look like, at least bring the one we have out of the '80s and give the people and cultures it draws inspiration from the respect and deference they deserve.

Whether WotC currently has the room in their production pipeline or the will to make the attempt is another matter.

 

[CleverNickName]

How do you feel that is different than putting a sticker on it that claims that people consulted about the project were ethnic-enough to count?

...is anyone actually doing that?

I'm saying that the blame isn't the problem. Poor-quality content is the problem, whether it comes from people or from an algorithm. Or to put it more bluntly: the goal isn't to insulate oneself from being called "racist," the goal is to not be racist to begin with. AI can't help you with that, especially if it's trained on older material.

 

[FoolishFrost]

Just to mention, keep in mind, "culture" in RPGs is never actual culture. It's a flavoring for the environment, characters, and story. A combination of social expectations and guidelines that offer a channel and worldview.

And RPG players rarely, if ever, have the option to fully understand a new culture in full, part of why we keep gravitating back to well-known cultural themes: The old west, medieval Europe, Victorian England. We 'know' those better than we know the infinite number of cultures surrounding them and have a baseline to understand them.

As an off topic, those didn't survive entering the RPG world either. Not a one of them is represented accurately.

No, I'm not saying we should not try, nor am I saying that cultural deep-dives are not fun and should not be a part of RPGs. I'm just saying it's not really been a thing unless it was the focus of the setting design. It's very hard to summarize a several hundred or thousand year old culture into a few pages of gaming book.

For example, try to write an RPG book about a region like North America. You have the USA, but that's not even close to the core of it. What about Canada? Mexico? Going deeper, subcultures within each of those? What does "Bless your heart!" mean in the Southern USA vs. the northern and western sections?

Still, no excuse for exploiting negative stereotypes...

 

[Scribe]

Sort of tangentially: what is the obsession with East Asian fantasy in the context of D&D anyway? Is it just a trickle down effect of pulp orientalism? If so, maybe we shouldn't be doing it at all? There is no doubt that American popular culture really loves its martial artists, but is that enough to explain it?

Yeah.

I mean amusingly look at my (AI generated) avatar.

There is a segment of the North American population that went through the "Japan is going to take over the world." time period, that loves the tropes, that loves martial arts, the 'mystical arts' (Dr. Strange is playing in the same space) Ninjas, Samurai, big monsters.

I mean I've only back a few kickstarters, and one of them is Ryoko's.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dndshorts/ryokos-guide-to-the-yokai-realms-a-5e-tome

Then look at what MTG did with their Kamigawa sets, look at Anime's place in geek culture now.

Yes, the tropes are enough to explain it.

 

[Oofta]

We don't have "a" national culture. There are about 7, depending on how you count.

Anyway, I am not sure that explains the interest in ninjas and stuff.

Ninjas are a very common trope in all sorts of western media.

 

[Reynard]

Ninjas are a very common trope in all sorts of western media.

Now, they are, but they came to prominence during the 70s.