Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Justice and Rule" data-source="post: 8508634" data-attributes="member: 6778210">I mean, to start move away from the whole "They're all genies". I think the Djinn are good enough and we can move Efreets and Marids to unaligned malevolent spirits, which probably in-keeps better with their origin and is, arguably, a more interesting place than "A different kind of genie". They can still have some sort of relation with Djinn (Are Efreets and Marids exiles? Lost tribes? Distant cousins?), but let it be less set in stone as to how it is.Make Djinn broader overall and have there be no set alignment for them; without the whole elemental theme, you don't need them and suddenly you can intrigue and strife in the Citadel of Ice and Steel. You can have evil Djinn, Djinn that form from sand, smoke, wind, etc... having diversity inside of a creature set instead of creating whole new ones to occupy different spaces. Now there are reasons to go to this fantastic falling orb in an endless sky, and it doesn't have to share time with the City of Brass.For the Plane of Fire, move away from the City of Brass. I think going to something closer to the original tale is actually a better idea, so I would create smaller city-states on the Plane of Fire and go with my Elemental Hansa idea. For the other planes, I'd have to think about it: I'd love to see different kinds of elemental creatures with interesting cultures, given that Marids obviously didn't get as much focus and Daos are straight-up brand new.I mean, I don't know what to tell you other than these tropes absolutely get overused in trying to depict Arab culture badly. Again, you can have an evil nation that happens to be Arab, but when it plays into the most obvious stereotypes of Arabs, it should be called out.And I can't speak to your debates, but I've absolutely seen it all over being used as a bludgeon to attack Arab culture as well as to distract from the horrors of our own slave past. It's not hard to find these online and when you create races that are obviously coded Arab and play into these tropes, it's just bad. I mean, we can talk about the Efreet, but it's worth noting that all genies have slaves in 5E, even the canonically good-aligned ones. So it's not just a "these guys are evil" thing.</blockquote>

Verification