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Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Would Like To Explore Kara-Tur
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<blockquote data-quote="FoolishFrost" data-source="post: 9355486" data-attributes="member: 24319"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>As an off topic, those didn't survive entering the RPG world either. Not a one of them is represented accurately.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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?</p><p></p><p>Still, no excuse for exploiting negative stereotypes...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FoolishFrost, post: 9355486, member: 24319"] 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... [/QUOTE]
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