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.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Maybe we could get an Asian inspired setting that isn't actually trying to present fantasy China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc... Maybe we could create something new that doesn't have the inherent potential to land badly (to give the generous prediction).

Make. Something. New.

Yeah, much better would be to drill down on one nation and get it right, rather than create a gumbo that decides "close enough; all Asian people are all alike," which is a disservice to everyone, including the customers.

The Concord Worlds of the Radiant Citadel have several Asian-inspired settings. Grab one or more of those and revisit them and expand on them. (And separately, level 1-20 campaign set in San Citlan, please.)

 

[Argyle King]

...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.

It's not unusual for companies* in the US to claim a product has some special connection to a group if doing so helps to sell more of a product.

You make a valid point about content quality.

I suppose, for me, that leads back to a question I had earlier: does the same content remain objectionable if a consultant/writer/whatever of a particular background produces it?

That question isn't one I am posing specifically to you; it's more of a thought prompted by some of the ethical pretzels presented in similar conversations.

Additionally, if a consultant has a mixed background, are they able to consult on a wider range of products?

*edit: my predictive text was too overzealous

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If they do this and it's not completely awful, I wonder what the appetite would be to explore other parts of the Realms that have so far been left out of 5E. I'm looking at you, Maztica and Al-Qadim.

Maztica would need a huge rewrite, to the extent that it'd probably be better to say it got lost during the 4E world-shifting shenanigans and got replaced with the Latin American-inspired nations from the Radiant Citadel (two of which even share a linguistic heritage, which could possibly be the result of them being on the same planet, rather than their ancestors having cultural exchanges through the Radiant Citadel).

 

[Yaarel]

Maztica would need a huge rewrite, to the extent that it'd probably be better to say it got lost during the 4E world-shifting shenanigans and got replaced with the Latin American-inspired nations from the Radiant Citadel (two of which even share a linguistic heritage, which could possibly be the result of them being on the same planet, rather than their ancestors having cultural exchanges through the Radiant Citadel).

Utilizing the Radiant Citadel regions for Forgotten Realms regions sounds like a solid idea.

I am less familiar with the Maztica setting.

 

[WarlockkingNelzul]

Volo's guide to the world beyond Faerun.

Speaking of l5r I use the adventures in rokugan book as a stand in for kara-tur so in my current game Vecna is also teaming up with Fu Leng.

 

[Professor Murder]

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.

Right, but why Kara Tur is basically my question. Plenty of games in the space are taking swings at non-Euro settings for 5e. The real catch here is it worth the effort to rehab a setting which was made by at best well meaning enthusiasts for Asia through a western lens tropes? Given how DnDBeyond has started adding 3rd party content directly into the D&D ecosystem, the much cleaner solution would be to draw in a 3rd party work that doesn't have the heaps of baggage.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Right, but why Kara Tur is basically my question. Plenty of games in the space are taking swings at non-Euro settings for 5e. The real catch here is it worth the effort to rehab a setting which was made by at best well meaning enthusiasts for Asia through a western lens tropes? Given how DnDBeyond has started adding 3rd party content directly into the D&D ecosystem, the much cleaner solution would be to draw in a 3rd party work that doesn't have the heaps of baggage.

Pulling in something 3rd party is all fine and good - I'm all for having multiple varied takes on the same general set of themes and cultural influences - but it still leaves the Forgotten Realms with an enormous East Asia analog that hasn't been touched in decades yet is still a canonical part of the setting they occasionally reference. They can only acknowledge characters of Shou ancestry for so long before people start to wonder where they come from, and once they start looking, the only thing they have to find are the old OA/Kara-Tur boxsets. Not exactly the best impression to make on people who are interested in learning more about Toril's far east.

WotC's options are to update it (as previously mentioned) to fix its various design and cultural sensitivity issues, formally excise Kara-Tur from the setting and replace it with something new (which begs the question why even attach the new thing to the Forgotten Realms at all?), or preserve the status quo and ignore it as they've done for multiple editions now.

Of the three, I'd prefer they either breathe new life into Kara-Tur (helping to re-expand the Forgotten Realms setting beyond the Sword Coast in the process) or create an Asia-inspired setting that has nothing to do with FR whatsoever, and I do not consider those options to be mutually exclusive.

 

[Stormonu]

Y'know, I think the Sundering would be a great option to divorce Kara-Tur from FR and put it on its own world, and then update Kara-Tur to meet modern sensitivities. Same with Maztica. (And we can go back to ignoring Horde?)

Anyone asks, WotC can say they used to be connected to FR, but that is no longer the case and anything left behind on FR is just a dead-end legacy.

 

[BB Shockwave]

Bringing back an asian-inspired setting from the 80s?

I predict they will have to issue at least two apologies after they release that book.

Not that the idea of non-eurpean settings is a bad one. If anything, they would be a breath of freash air.

Why? Did the director of Shogun apologize to Japan as a whole for using their history for a setting for a show?
History of a country ain't exactly copyrighted or reserved to only be used by said country/people, you know.
If it was, we would not have all that anime using european or american historical settings, either.

 

[Nymrod]

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?

The aesthetics are unique and there are prominent archetypes that are under-served in existing D&D. I don't think we need to look for depth in what people enjoy. My experience with players is that playing an archetype is their chief motivation. Which is why Kara Tur would have to be changed a lot cause it tried to transplant simulacra of those cultures into Faerun without properly adapting them for D&D but also at a time when the market interested in them did not have a clear idea of what they want to play; now with the far more intense media exchange those ideas are quite more clear.
And yeah it would also be about representation but that's a lot more complex and imo secondary (since the segment of the primary market that wants this representation is immigrants removed from that culture for long enough that their perception of it is likely skewed)