D&D General In Heaven the Cooks are French... (Setting Thoughts)

[payn]

The window dressing is nice and all, but honestly at this point im ready to stick a fork in the tropes because they are done. I care less about who smokes pipeweed, or who lives in tree huts, etc.. I am more concerned with sociopolitical situations and conflicts. The types of things that are rife with obstacles and complications to adventures. I also mean specific regional things that are not general. No "all dorfs hate orcs" type of stuff. More like a city where relations between elves and halflings are cold because of a century old conflict nobody remembers, yet stays hot in the general discourse all the same. That kinda thing.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The window dressing is nice and all, but honestly at this point im ready to stick a fork in the tropes because they are done. I care less about who smokes pipeweed, or who lives in tree huts, etc.. I am more concerned with sociopolitical situations and conflicts. The types of things that are rife with obstacles and complications to adventures. I also mean specific regional things that are not general. No "all dorfs hate orcs" type of stuff. More like a city where relations between elves and halflings are cold because of a century old conflict nobody remembers, yet stays hot in the general discourse all the same. That kinda thing.

who lives in tree huts and who smokes pipe weed can affect sociopolitical situations very fast as those are economic things which tent to effect people often

 

[payn]

who lives in tree huts and who smokes pipe weed can affect sociopolitical situations very fast as those are economic things which tent to effect people often

Ok, but what are the specifics? Does it have to be tree huts and pipeweed? Can we just forgo them, or include them and not care if its trope representation? Im just not interested in shuffling the tropes, or subverting them.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Ok, but what are the specifics? Does it have to be tree huts and pipeweed? Can we just forgo them, or include them and not care if its trope representation? Im just not interested in shuffling the tropes, or subverting them.

specifics depend on plot and what you want or players want or need to deal with.

sooner or later you will end up shuffling or subverting tropes by pure probability.
I personally seek to make better definitive versions of some options and create new icons

 

[Steampunkette]

The Pipeweed thing was more about how incredibly global and historically bizarre most campaign settings are (I.E. written as if they're 1200s Europe with goods from all over the world and from time periods ranging from 2500BCE to 1920CE) and yet how they're treated as deeply eurocentric and white AF.

'Cause the second you add in a black person (first known example sometime around 300kBCE) or a trans person (first known example 2500BCE) it's "Unrealistic".

To kinda highlight how jumbled and, frankly, -weird- D&D settings tend to be, even before you get into magic and monsters.

 

[Baron Opal II]

There's something I remember Robert Jordan saying in an interview, but may be apocryphal. It was something like 'I find it hard to design a world without any prejudices, but I really didn't want frank racism. Instead, people's dress, language, and customs formed a culture, and other cultures could admire, ignore, or hold in disdain that culture. It didn't matter what your skin or hair looked like.'

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I always intentionally mix and match aspects of different cultures and time periods when worldbuilding. It makes for more unique worlds and allows for in-world people groups that are less stand-ins for a real group and more a confluence of interesting concepts from a variety of them. I don’t want a stereotypical Arabian Nights region for my homebrew setting. I want a matriarchal society of geocentric Aztecs ruled by Caliphs that claim to be descended from the prophetess of the Earth Mother, who use elemental earth magic to terraform their environment and create great monuments to their ancient empire. And their ziggurats have Roman arches, Arabian domes, Japanese pagodas, and stained-glass windows.

In my current setting, the warmongering expansionist empire based on the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe are Aasimar, and they are mainly inspired by the Scythians, but their religion is a mix of Cahokian, Egyptian, Greek, and Scythian influences (they have a bird-headed Sky Father god, chthonic sinister Earth Mother goddess, golden sun lioness hunting goddess, etc). They put the mummies of dead kings in grand kurgans dedicated to their accomplishments. They regularly raid poorly defended cities, monasteries, and caravans. Enemy skulls are taken as trophies and turned into goblets. The monarchs claim descent from the gods and their royal symbol is the gryphon. They also have magic items that can control the weather through nature priests. Their current warrior-queen owns Blackrazor, which she believes gives her the right to conquer the world (based on Attila the Hun and Scythian Sword-Ares).

This world’s equivalent of the Roman Empire is more inspired by the Carthage, the Mandaeans, and modern America, but with a very Sethian Gnostic religion (but with Ahriman, karma, reincarnation, boddhisattvas, afterlife soul pilgrimages, and so on). One of the empire’s successor city states is a semi-theocratic feudal kingdom with Nazi Aasimar extremist groups and Ptolemaic Sorcerer-Kings.

I’ve also got more ideas floating in my head that I haven’t fully developed yet, like an expansionist, colonial Dragon Empire based on Rome, Persia, and Han China. Yuan-Ti Mesopotamian river Vikings. Or the Gnomish Dutch-Venetian-Tenochtitlan merchant republic. Also, Tibetan-Inca Dwarves and Greek-Canaanite angelic Goliaths.

Also this seems relevant:

 

[Tonguez]

The Pipeweed thing was more about how incredibly global and historically bizarre most campaign settings are (I.E. written as if they're 1200s Europe with goods from all over the world and from time periods ranging from 2500BCE to 1920CE) and yet how they're treated as deeply eurocentric and white AF.

'Cause the second you add in a black person (first known example sometime around 300kBCE) or a trans person (first known example 2500BCE) it's "Unrealistic".

To kinda highlight how jumbled and, frankly, -weird- D&D settings tend to be, even before you get into magic and monsters.

Urusla Le Guin criticized the Earthsea Miniseries as having ruined her books and in particular the whitewashing of the characters in the lead roles. She said it was a deliberate choice to make most of the peoples of Earthsea darkskinned - Ged is red-brown and Vetch black (both roles were played by white actors), ironically the only 'white-skinned' character Tenar was played by half-chinese Kristin Kreuk.

On the issue of Pipeweed and Potatoes however I'm not sure its really as bizarre as you imply, the worlds of fantasy are not Earth and so we arent constrained by historic species distributions. Having a herb growing in Europe-analogue that can be smoked as a recreational relaxant is just decoration not cultural anachronism specifically because Fantasy-world isnt a historically accurate recreation of Europe - just an inspired simulation. This discussion reminds me of the Fantasy Spectacles debate from last year or earlier debates about Wheelchairs, Pirate Ships and Rapiers.

Issues of representation - racial, gender, disability and cultural appropriation are important but I'm not so certain that kitchen sink design of DnD Fantasy-world is a molehill worth dying on

to quote Le Guin "I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism—...In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That’s the beauty of science fiction and fantasy—freedom of invention. But with all freedom comes responsibility"

 

[Remathilis]

Ok, the door-to-door proselytizing Drow got me.

I once ran a dwarf cleric who was a proselytizing preacher of Moradin. He would often ask people (many of them non-dwarves) if "they have considered a close, personal commitment to Moradin?" And provided flyers. One player described him as "a Jehovah's Witness with a Warhammer". He was a blast to play.

 

[Remathilis]

On topic: I think a lot of the generic panache comes from a desire to replicate the tone of different types of stories rather than actual setting implications. For example, swashbuckling fantasy to most people is The Three Musketeers or various pirate tales, so of course adventures themed around that are going to have rapiers and galleons and flintlock pistols, while gothic horror is going to resemble the 18th and 19th century with detectives and mad scientists and seances. And it makes no sense they are next to 14th century Camelot with knights and jousts and stuff. Except that people like variety and going from fighting pirates to investigating a vampire's castle to thwarting an evil knight because it is fun.

Which is why I cannot be upset anymore about versimillitude anymore. D&D is where Lancelot, Conan, Harry Potter and Ang all go beat up Court Dracula and his army of Uruk-hai. If you're not crossing several streams, what are you even doing?