Kamikaze Midget said:
Replace "oriental fantasy" with "non-Medieval Western fantasy" and I think you'll be closer to the truth of it. Ancient Greek, Ancient Rome, the Near East (Arabia, The Holy Land, Byzantium), The Inca, the Aztec, the Maya, African kingdoms, Ancient Egypt, Ancient India, Ancient China, Polynesia, "Stone-Age"/Tribal settings....all deserve to be represented, IMO.
I really have to say, though, unless those were amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing and had much stronger "fantasy" than "rip-off of real-world culture" elements, there's just no chance I'd buy any of those books. I know about all of those cultures already (seriously), and shovelling D&D shiz all over them will not "improve" them.
I know that there is a certain part of the market that is all about "culture fans" who will buy anything that's "quasi-japanese" "demi-chinese" or whatever, though. So I guess there's profit to be had, even if it makes more so bored I think playing RIFTS is a good idea.
The Ubbergeek - Why must a black culture be "based on Africa"? Because white cultures tend to be based on Europe? That seems like shoddy reasoning. Human civilization develops in certain patterns, which are followed pretty much regardless of locale (though influenced by food, climate, etc. of course). Why not have really nice "medieval fantasy" setting, with cities and so on, but with very dark-skinned people as the default race, and with different cultural ideals/traditions to say, medieval Europe. They'd still probably have a warrior caste (knights/samurai), a peasant caste, a nobility and so on, but it's be really nice if it was only DISTANTLY derived from a SPECIFIC real world culture instead of a stone cold rip-off.
Again, too, I've got to say that it would be nice to have fantasy set in a society that is basically kind of unpleasant, where, instead of there being clearly "good" nations and "bad" nations, there are just nations, and where the players actually might want to, y'know, OVERTHROW many of the rulers, without having a clear "good guy" realm for them to very safely come from and so on.
This would be nice particularly for fans of Sword and Sorcery like myself, where whilst some nations are "mostly bad", there are certainly none which are "good" in any but the most relative sense.
Edit - Strikes me that Dark Sun did precisely that, what with the unpleasant setting and the bad leaders, and is certainly very positively remembered.