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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8244459" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>I think it wasnt intentional to disconnect race and culture in Valachan. I suspect it was a happy accident. But I don't; see why the lack of that kind of forward thinking elsewhere in the setting, would mean we ought to jettison the forward thinking in Valachan. I can only speak for myself, but I can testify that, even though Valachan was never my top domain, there was always something I found interesting about it, and when they made the inhabitants black with long hair (which was clearly intended to reflect the panther domain lord as @<a href="https://www.enworld.org/members/faolyn.6915329/" target="_blank">Faolyn</a> pointed out), that very much opened my eyes to the fact that in a fantasy setting race and culture don't need to be tethered together (which matched my view of the real world, but it just wasn't something I had remembered really seeing much of in a fantasy culture). So sure, maybe there wasn't a domain based on a non-white society, that had white people; but it still, even if it wasn't intentional, made a point. It impacted my thinking about it enough that I fully embraced that concept as a GM (making lots of worlds where race and culture weren't connected, where ethnic and cultural connections were accidental and just due to history). </p><p></p><p>Maybe some people find the whole connection between the lord and the skin tone insensitive as you say (personally I don't see it as insensitive and i don't think many people thought it was insensitive when it first emerged). It wasn't like it was how the domain was originally presented either, so this was something that was an evolution over time. My memory, which admittedly could be wrong, was there was an adventure in Dungeon where they described the inhabitants as black (but my chronology here could be wrong). But I just distinctly remember how interesting that struck me, that the domain clearly was based on German, yet skin tone didn't matter at all (and given that blood and soil is so strongly associated with Germany, I couldn't help but see this as a rejection of that concept when I read it: again I don't know the intentions of the writers, I suspect it may have been accidental, but that connection leapt out at me at the time). Again, I just this is is a lot more forward thinking than the black domain needing to be African. There is no reason why in a fantasy world you can't have for example, a place modeled after England but that is inhabited entirely by people that look Thai or look Italian. I get why it might be useful to associate the culture with the real world race that culture tends to be. I am just saying it is a little backwards to have a domain that clearly disconnects these two things, with a German-like culture (or at least German like names) and say "No this needs to be African because inhabitants are black). That is the part that seems to me, deeply, deeply regressive.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 8244459, member: 85555"] I think it wasnt intentional to disconnect race and culture in Valachan. I suspect it was a happy accident. But I don't; see why the lack of that kind of forward thinking elsewhere in the setting, would mean we ought to jettison the forward thinking in Valachan. I can only speak for myself, but I can testify that, even though Valachan was never my top domain, there was always something I found interesting about it, and when they made the inhabitants black with long hair (which was clearly intended to reflect the panther domain lord as @[URL='https://www.enworld.org/members/faolyn.6915329/']Faolyn[/URL] pointed out), that very much opened my eyes to the fact that in a fantasy setting race and culture don't need to be tethered together (which matched my view of the real world, but it just wasn't something I had remembered really seeing much of in a fantasy culture). So sure, maybe there wasn't a domain based on a non-white society, that had white people; but it still, even if it wasn't intentional, made a point. It impacted my thinking about it enough that I fully embraced that concept as a GM (making lots of worlds where race and culture weren't connected, where ethnic and cultural connections were accidental and just due to history). Maybe some people find the whole connection between the lord and the skin tone insensitive as you say (personally I don't see it as insensitive and i don't think many people thought it was insensitive when it first emerged). It wasn't like it was how the domain was originally presented either, so this was something that was an evolution over time. My memory, which admittedly could be wrong, was there was an adventure in Dungeon where they described the inhabitants as black (but my chronology here could be wrong). But I just distinctly remember how interesting that struck me, that the domain clearly was based on German, yet skin tone didn't matter at all (and given that blood and soil is so strongly associated with Germany, I couldn't help but see this as a rejection of that concept when I read it: again I don't know the intentions of the writers, I suspect it may have been accidental, but that connection leapt out at me at the time). Again, I just this is is a lot more forward thinking than the black domain needing to be African. There is no reason why in a fantasy world you can't have for example, a place modeled after England but that is inhabited entirely by people that look Thai or look Italian. I get why it might be useful to associate the culture with the real world race that culture tends to be. I am just saying it is a little backwards to have a domain that clearly disconnects these two things, with a German-like culture (or at least German like names) and say "No this needs to be African because inhabitants are black). That is the part that seems to me, deeply, deeply regressive. [/QUOTE]
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