NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RichCMidas" data-source="post: 7831998" data-attributes="member: 7016300">Hey that reminds me - anyone else remember when "The Last Samurai" came out, with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe? America was relatively subdued about the film (perhaps being in the early phases of seeing it as another example of whitewashing) and saw the characters as fairly uninspired and archetypal...but Japan loved it with a notable exception: they felt Watanabe's character was not believable as a samurai, because as far as they were concerned, the samurai were little more than imperially-sanctioned thugs who could do whatever they liked to the general populace and get away with it. That Watanabe's character was the absolute ideal Western concept of a samurai jarred with their actual experiences.In fact, if I recall the article...here: <a href="https://www.international.ucla.edu/apc/article/6157" target="_blank">a few interesting comments</a>.<><>That aside however, there is a cultural advantage in myself being the primary author of the material. I'm not US-of-American. I'm a mixed-race dual national who, for about the first fifteen years of my life, was too light to be called black and too dark to be called white (though it turns out I'm closer to white after a decade in bleak sunless England). You cannot reasonably, or accurately, accuse me of even incidental Western or white imperialism.If ever I ride roughshod over something, it is purely accidental, not that this makes it any better, and I treat EVERY culture and nation the same. Every aspect of every culture is equal opportunity open season as far as I am concerned. I will take the good and the bad, and praise or criticise without prejudice. What I always regret, however, is never having enough time or space to do everything justice*.I still try my best.Should I fail, then hopefully others will be sufficiently inspired (or perhaps incensed) to perform their own labours in correcting my own failings - even if it's just for a homebrew campaign.At the end of the day, I'm a one-man band of a physically mature boy (mental maturity almost absent according to my partner) who is playing a very elaborate game of make-believe and typing up a bunch of personal home rules for others to use in similar games if they want to. That I was able to speak to anyone regarding some of the cultures who inspired this work is, considering the resources and time available to me, something of a personal miracle.And as Yaarel mentioned, to the best of my recollection, we abided by that very core principle of "do not misrepresent". Inspiration drawn from a culture, yes; calling what resulted from that inspiration to be an aspect of said culture, no.*Which does bring to mind the brief touching-upon of the World of Farland's pantheon in the nation of Badala - there was nowhere nearly enough on the deities there in their local forms as opposed to their setting-standard. Pure oversight on my part. I intend to release a companion piece rectifying that for the website.</blockquote>

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