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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8328975" data-attributes="member: 58172">I am guessing the main potential problem would be cultural appropriation and misrepresentation.Especially if the Mystara setting was intentionally designed around stereotypes, this kind of humor or playfulness was appreciated as ironic in an earlier era to combat and objectify reallife prejudices, but seems less appreciated today.I assume a 5e update of Mystara can easily avoid "chainmail bikini" illustrations, as well as place women and LGBTQ in prominent leadership roles. Probably, out of every ten couples, one should be a male couple and one should be a female couple. It is important to illustrate that LGBTQ exist.(Also I feel it is important to have some illustrations of "sexy" characters. The number of images of goodlooking women needs to have the same number of images of goodlooking men. And the number of monstrous men should have the same number of monstrous women.)So back to the cultures.The obvious problems happen when one culture has a higher Intelligence than an other culture, and so on, when one culture is more human and beautiful while an other culture is less human and monstrous, when one culture is Good while an other culture is Evil. I dont know if Mystara has these problematics.But beyond the obvious, there are cultural sensitivities. There are several cultures that I am sensitive to in reallife, and I might personally feel uncomfortable. For example, if the "viking" culture looked more like Conan polytheism and less like the reallife or mythologically accurate Norse animistic peoples, that barbarification can become objectionable. (Berserkar did exist as a kind of shamanic warrior, but they were specific and often feared by other Norse.) Likewise, I want positive and reasonably accurate portrayals of Jewish Israel and the Mideast generally.I also noticed from the intro video, that some monstrous cultures have "shamans", as if reallife animistic peoples are primitive and Evil. This barbarification − and dehumanization − is problematic.Possibly other aspects of religion might be less problematic, if the "objectively existing" immortals are high level adventurers. I hope they are not objects of worship which would make them gods, by definition. But rather, I hope these are political leaders, who the people of the world can choose to support or not.</blockquote>

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