Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 4154920" data-attributes="member: 2205">I don't think a highly organized (and successful, and civilized!) hobgoblin empire is represented anywhere in Tolkien or in most D&D settings I've seen either.  Eberron kinda sorta did it with Darguun, but even then it's a squalid, pitiful kinda place that's way behind the "modern" nations of Khorvaire, not a vibrant, powerful culture that's clearly on the rise.  Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but I'm talking about portraying goblinoid culture in a way that I've never really seen.  Usually, their squalid chumps who occasionally boil up in some kind of revolt and need to be kept back down, or more lately orcs and goblins are kinda given a "noble savage" vibe.  I'm not thinking of doing either; I'm having them be more like a foreign and unusal—yet powerful and arguably at least as civilized as the "good" nations.  I think of it more as Sassanid Persia, or the Ottoman empires in their heyday in terms of their relationship with the rest of the "Eurocentric" world, blended with a bit of Nazi Germany for flavor.Speaking of Eurocentric; plenty of fantasy is non-Eurocentric, but it doesn't seem to be very successful at capturing the market, with the exception of some Japanese or Chinese flavored stuff here and there that does OK.  That's not surprising, since the majority of the audience comes from a European or European-derived culture, though.  My main concession to that as something to modify is to look more at Western interpretations of the Arabian Nights type stories from the 19th century.  But frankly, a lot of the early Sword & Sorcery authors did exactly that too; most Conan stories could be seen as fantasy Arabian Nights stories.</blockquote>

Verification