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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 1695778" data-attributes="member: 18832">Most fantasy - even Tolkien, to a large extent - relies upon a simplified version of real-world mythology. Even Tolkien, with his Silmarillion, used a shallow take on historical folklore and myths as a foundation upon which to erect his own tale.The Legend of the Five Rings setting uses a mishmash of historical Japanese eras, Asian religions (Shinto, Buddhism, et cetera), and various other bits and pieces of folklore and history - but what most characterises Rokugan is the setting-specific elements which were built upon these inspirations. Most of the setting detail is original, in presentation if not in content. In Rokugan it's more important, for instance, that the original seven Great Clans were founded by divine kami from Heaven than that the concepts of clan, daimyo, and so on are loosely drawn from Japanese history.My meaning may be confused by the late hour, but in essence what I'm trying to communicate is that any fantasy setting, whether created for fiction or for gaming, is more about itself than it is about the historical or literary material which may have inspired it.In general, this even applies to game settings (or literary universes) which are intended to replicate existing worlds. That's what makes historical games so difficult to write well, and why games inspired by fiction - even those literally intended as adaptations - often deviate in significant ways from the original. Unless you play a Lord of the Rings campaign as the Fellowship, for instance, the likelihood of any game capturing the same feel as the novels is very small - the Fellowship's quest happens once, and the individuals involved are special in (fairly) unique ways. It takes a very creative GM to run a story in that setting which can replicate even part of the magic of the original stories.In a similar vein, the Extruded Fantasy Product that makes up the bulk of the doorstop fantasy novels available today is pretty terrible because it offers the reader only a shadow of the great stories it imitates - typically, to harp upon a theme, The Lord of the Rings (which I don't even like, personally, but I recognise the phenomenon of its imitation exists). Even the best stories written in imitation of Tolkien's work - or in reaction to it - don't offer the reader the same thing (which I think is a good thing no matter what your opinion of Tolkien). On the contrary - no matter the similarities, they are always essentially superficial, and the story succeeds or fails based on its own merits.Now, all this longwinded blather comes back to Eberron thusly: For all the promotional chatter about Indiana Jones movies and postwar analogues in Khorvaire, what makes Eberron interesting (in theory, if not in practice for everyone) is the original elements. Lacking obvious analogues to postwar Europe beyond a general tone, the setting's story becomes about how Breland and Thrane and the other nations interact. In fact, at the risk of injecting postmodernism into this discussion, it becomes about how the countries and peoples of Khorvaire interact in each individual campaign, and that will be potentially ver different for each one.In the matter of race, the same conditions prevail. The fact that the humans of Argonessen look vaguely similar to some real-world African peoples does not mean that they are Africans. If the people of Aundair are light-skinned and fair-haired, it doesn't make them Scandinavian (and, in fact, I can't find any indication in the book of what the various nationalities typically look like at all).Even the artwork is just one reaction to the world - one interpretation. I agree that it's regrettable that there seems to be a surfeit of European-looking people (human or no; the adventurers on p. 43 all appear "white", except for the warforged), but what's in the books is only a small part of what the setting's really like, because that's determined anew in every single individual campaign.Just like Tolkien took a simplified version of northern European mythology and built a memorable and creative world upon it, every group of players takes a campaign setting and makes their own version of it throughout their games.Unless they're slavish canon-freaks, but those guys suck anyway. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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