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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AdmundfortGeographer" data-source="post: 8329221" data-attributes="member: 4682">This is going to be it. While everything in Mystara has played off of “maybe Earth”, it deliberately uses the hypothetical map of late Jurassic Earth, a non-problematic representation of non-European cultures will be effort.Mystara’s best-loved products were the Gazetteers. Each presented a region of play such that an entire campaign could be contained in that region. Factions of good guys and bad guys of those nations were shown.What was done poorly, three Gazetteers are less kindly looked at. Orcs of Thar, Kingdom of Ierendi, and Atruaghin Clans. Thar was novel in that it was one of the earliest offerings of playable non-humanoids; orcs, goblins, kobolds. But it leaned into over-the-top mocking humor at low intelligence. Ierendi leaned into tropical island resort motifs, and Atruaghin Clans was a very poorly received presentation of Native American peoples that needs extreme sensitivity re-writing.I think the Northern Reaches is one of the more complex representations of a fantasy Scandinavia in D&D, the berserk in the book come from a 2nd level cleric spell cast on self or touched creature.Don’t think there is a M-Israel, Ylaruam is the M-Arabia and I‘m certain could use a sensitivity reader in ensuring it is not presented through an Orientalist’s lens. Looking wider, there is an ancient M-Egypt known as Nithia that only exists in the history of the setting. When the setting added Hollow World, Nithia was placed in Hollow World and fully developed as a high fantasy ancient Egypt. If there is a metaplot of the setting it is the Cold War between two empires. Thyatis (maybe M-Byzantium) vs. Alphatia. Alphatia is hard to pin down, but they are a people who crossed the void of space and colonized and conquered the continent they landed at. They generally seem generic high fantasy tropes but the iconography of their book’s cover showed Mesopotamian lamassu heads, so I imagined Alphatia’s multiple-continent spanning empire’s ruling class was Sumerian/Persian.The BECMI Shaman class (and the Wokan class) were added into the rules to give non-character races a cleric healing class and an arcane magic-user class that we’re both not as good as the player character cleric or magic-user classes. A 5e has no rules mechanic reason to preserve the artifacts of BECMI design choices. But this lost book was migrating the setting out of BECMI and into AD&D 2e. Mystara has no drow, half-orcs, or half-elves, so it would be interesting how the conversion would go.Mystara’s immortals are … different. Many (most?) were once mortals. Once immortality is achieved, they (supposedly) are no longer permitted to directly influence affairs of the world. While each nation/region will have distinct pantheons that are revered, there are 5 factions of immortals that compete. Energy, Time, Matter, Entropy, Thought. The factions cross through all pantheons such that a pantheon might be made up of an immortal from each faction. And characters can get along perfectly fine ignoring immortals all together, some immortals are worshipped, others do not care to be and instead simply want to achieve their goals. It’s different and similar, but I think more flexible than as typically presented in D&D’s gods.</blockquote>

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