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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8329314" data-attributes="member: 82106">I like the idea too. It has been used in a considerable number of places in D&D, such as the 'Demonomicon of Igwilv' and whatnot. I think D&D has always written its MMs as being purely accurate (or at least proposed) information intended for the GM, but there's no reason that MUST be true.As an aside: I am not so sure about racial prejudice in the Middle Ages. I'm certainly no expert, but Shakespeare wrote 'Otello' in the early 17th Century, and there was no connotation there of racial prejudice that I'm aware of. Otello is certainly ABOUT that, nor does it seem to factor into the story at all. Clearly 17th Century Londoners weren't expected to make the kinds of associations many modern audiences would! By that time Europeans had already been deeply enmeshed in the slave trade for at least 100 years. I'm sure that racial prejudices existed, certainly Europeans of the Middle Ages feared 'Huns' and then 'Mongols' (after the 13th Century). They were certainly hostile to practitioners of Al Islam, and we know the history of medieval suspicion of Jews as well. I suspect that these sorts of ideas were more localized and particularized. After all, medieval society was much less open and ideas circulated far less freely than they do today. People tended to be more concerned with whatever was down the road as opposed to what was 100's or 1000's of miles away.The same might well be true in a fantasy world. There is no universal attitude towards Orcs. There may be considerable hostility and prejudice in one region, indifference in another, peaceful coexistence in a third, and outright interspecies warfare in yet another. The same could well be true of the so-called 'demi-human' races, which was always a classic element of D&D (IE dwarves and elves are not generally friendly, but they CAN band together to oppose their mutual enemies, and might even become relatively friendly in some times and places). You could certainly extrapolate this kind of mosaic of cultures and attitudes. I think it would also be cool to portray some cultures as fairly species-specific (maybe even having some biological basis) and others as being more multi-racial (I think a lot of D&D cities are depicted this way where there are dwarves in one quarter, elves in another, etc.).</blockquote>

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