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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RichCMidas" data-source="post: 7823583" data-attributes="member: 7016300">Hi all, Farland's pet author for this project here. Thought I'd drop a couple of cents into this mixture.At worst, probably only Orientalism when it comes to the land of Yrrkune, since I believe the 'original' Orient, so to speak, was the Sino-Japanese portion of Asia; and Yrrkune takes a few pointers from there. This supplement, too, takes a look at nations inspired by far more than just part of our own world - there is a proto-Hellenic touch to the Selfhaven Archipelago, an admittedly outright post-Pharaonic fantasy Egypt in Ishia, a hint of the Vedic mythology in Badala, and more still.So whilst you could certainly argue that calling the land of Yrrkune 'exotic' is Orientalist, you would need to apply a similar argument from Yrrkune to us, if you see what I mean. A player from China or Japan, or Korea or Tibet, would logically find the Europe-inspired lands and cultures of the continent of Farland 'exotic' from their perspective; they would also find Ishia or Badala or Jila to be 'exotic' by the same measure.So too, I think, would a player from India or Bangladesh, for example, consider Cadocia to be an 'exotic' land, or the Selfhaven Archipelago. All this assumes, of course, that 'exotic' is a bad thing. Even if something is commonplace to me, it is not to others who are newly introduced to it. If they consider something about my culture to be 'exotic', well, to them I believe it is!And Farland himself answered your concern about "places influenced by evil" well enough, I think. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> When writing this up, I tried to avoid falling into the trap of 'this place is heavily pressured by the Wintervale, therefore it is uniformly twisted and perverted'. The exent to which I succeeded or not, ultimately, will come down to personal opinion.The artists did do a fantastic job, didn't they?So, regarding 'Asian' in this supplement's context...there are elements drawn from perhaps 30-40% of that vast continent. The agrabhua scorpion-folk are Mesopotamian. There is Arabic influence in the Cen-Cenlan nomads, and a hint of Persian Zoroastrianism in the dualist philosophy of the Sand Dragons. Badala is very much inspired by Indian culture. Cadocia references not just the well-known Inuit people, but also the Aleut and Yupik (who contributed most of the background rules for language and naming).And, yes, Yrrkune is mostly Sino-Japanese; with its established coda of laws drawing heavily from the Tokugawa Shogunate era, and an entire monk tradition based upon the Confucian and Taoist principles that became the Five Traditional Virtues of China. Plus if you play as a Shenzakushan Kunese, you are implicitly allowed to overact and overemote in homage to theatre, manga, and anime; especially if going for a more wuxia-style game.Always, however, I aimed at drawing a veil between the real and the fantasy. Just as, for example, Kelerak and Daven are inspired by the Germanic nations of our world, but should not themselves be considered a perfect fantasy representation, or critique, of them; so too should the nations portrayed in this supplement be seen as drawing inspiration from the real cultures of our world, without being viewed as an actual representation - and CERTAINLY not as either a contemporary or historical critique.African content is a good one too. You can thank Farland for giving me a lot to work with, even just geographically. Other than the obvious Egyptian touch to Ishia, you have a hint of the Bedouin in Cen-Cenla, and the Sutherlanders of Binjala and Forola are very much akin to the Bantu peoples. Many of the words and names relating to the Forolans, for instance, are drawn from the Xhosa language; whilst one exiled celestial in the more northerly Binjalan regions has taken up a name that is entirely isiZulu.There is, I will fully admit, not nearly as much as there could be in terms of African content, no matter how much I will defend the quality of what there is. Some of this is due to the sheer variety of cultures and options we had available to draw from - we could simply never do everything justice, and if we tried, I think what we did have would have suffered from the lack of attention. Some of it is due to, and I hold my hand up here, ignorance: I know so little about the 'source material' that most of the nuances are simply lost on me.I did what I could.I'd also like to formally recognise Farland here, actually, for his work on the new equipment presented in this supplement too. That section is entirely on his side of the creativity board and I refuse to claim any credit for any part of it whatsoever.Uh...do I need to start considering a Forntol continent expansion or something? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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