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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8506403" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If the concern is representation, I do not think the best course of action is to make these borrowed things less like the context they were borrowed from. I think the better--and, I admit, much more difficult--choice is to give better representation of those cultures.Because that's really the sticking point, isn't it? It's not that Genies or Rakshasa or bean sí (banshee) take, or don't take, inspiration from their source cultures. It's that when they do, typically speaking, these things are the only thing taken from their source cultures. You don't have anyone that's got an Arabia-inspired culture unless they're a genie. You don't have anyone that's got an Indian Subcontinent-inspired culture unless they're a Rakshasa. Etc.So...don't do that. Do some research on what life was like for citizens of the Timurid Empire, or the Sassanid Empire, or what it was like to live in Al-Andalus during its golden age. Make some cultures that give reasonably authentic and respectful representation to the cultures that these myths come from. Then it doesn't matter whether these supernatural beings are or aren't drawing on a particular historical humanoid culture; you've already got good examples of human beings who represent those things.That was part of the challenge I set for myself when I started up my Jewel of the Desert Dungeon World game for my friends. I wanted to make a setting that blended cool and beautiful things from the fiction I grew up with (like the stories of Sinbad and Scheherazade), common experiences my friends and I had had (some cultures that appear in games we play), and the actual histories of both pre- and post-Islamic Arabia, the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, and the Indian subcontinent. I did research, as much as I was able without ready access to a proper academic library. I sought out advice and direction from people I respected, in particular some who carry the ethnic and cultural legacies of those places. I read up on how other games had done it (particularly D&D's Al Qadim setting), and immersed myself in diverse TTRPG products with such an implied setting.It was both enlightening and very fun to do, and overall has given me a wonderful foundation to build the game upon--and, more importantly, it meant that there was no issue with including a variety of things even more specific than genies, like nasnas or qarin or were-hyenas. Because yes, many of these things come with an Arabian cultural flavor or background...but so does almost everyone in this setting. (There are also a few people of Polynesian-like and East Asian-like cultural background, but they're all foreigners to some extent and thus intentionally a little less well-known.)The "lost qarin" in particular were very fun, for me anyway (the players didn't like fighting them, that's for sure!) In their traditional form, qarin (also spelled "qareen" and a few other transliterations) are jinn-like beings that are matched to each person, and may try to tempt mortals to sin. The Quran references them as such (though the reading is somewhat ambiguous and is a subject of some hadith, AIUI.) My "lost qarin" were the echoes of lives that were never lived--eliminated by time travel or twists of fate, or potential never realized. They hungered for realization and physicality, and took offense at the intrusion of living mortals into their domain. Had some time-manipulation shenanigans and other tricksy things. The party cleared them out just fine but it was definitely a rough fight for a bit.</blockquote>

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