Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="genshou" data-source="post: 2992057" data-attributes="member: 13164">In my homebrew, the world has been split up into innumerable smaller islands for the most part (much like Earthsea).  Cultures tend to be isolated to specific islands or groups of islands as far as their major influence goes, but with sea trade on the rise, there is a great deal of mixing going on.Of the islands I've detailed so far, I've included English, Celtic, Roman, Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, and ancient south African tidbits here and there, sometimes mixed, sometimes not.  It makes perfect sense in my setting for a samurai to be adventuring with a Zulu witch doctor, an Egyptian warrior-priest, and a Spanish swashbucker.  I can see how this would be more difficult in worlds where horse-drawn caravans are still the primary means of trade.Excellent!  'Bout time Europe got that treatment at least once.  There's just so much else in the world that works just fine as a cultural influence for D&D.This is, I think, where our opinions are going to seriously differ.  The technology available in standard D&D is more evocative of the Middle Ages rather than the Bronze Age or the Dark Ages.  Of course, what kind of culture develops and such is dependent on the setting but I just can't imagine crossbows, Welsh longbows, and full plate in a world with a "Bronze Age feel".  And don't forget the siege technology of the standard D&D world, either.The modern idea of "planet=world" is mostly due to the fact that there are no longer "edges" on our maps–the world has been explored now, and there's nowhere left to unknown regions.  I've delved into determining the availability and accessability of magic in standard D&D possibly more than anyone else on this forum, and I do understand that even with teleportation magic available, it's not going to cause the cultures to mix as much as simple things like sailing technology did in our own world.  But that cross-cultural bleed of ideas is still going to occur to a noteworthy extent.With D&D the way that it is, I don't imagine "Circle-T" maps in the way that they existed in the real world.  When the king's royal advisor can use divination and scrying to help fill in the blank areas on the map, I imagine a world more like Faerûn, where adventurers in the Dalelands are fairly likely to have heard of Calimshan, can get more information about it from a bard travelling through Ashabenford, and can realistically plan to go there someday.I posted this with multiple intents.  I wanted to draw out some of the vehement Oriental-hating crowd (such as Turanil and Numion) and get a feel for why they react that way, as well as figuring out if this creates cultural elitism in their world-building, or if it just means that they don't include Oriental flavour, but do still have multicultural worlds.  I'm a bit surprised by this, though:Making a katana inferior to a longsword is driving hatred past the point of any degree of rational thought.  Deliberately and blatantly ignoring intelligent design and proper game mechanics modeling of real-world physics because of cultural dislike is, to me, equivalent to racism.  I've seen the katana vs. bastard sword debates numerous times, and I've stayed more or less on the fence in them.  This kind of viewpoint, though, is enough to make me disgusted.  The "cool" emoticon just makes it worse.  I read it as "I'm biased and I think that makes me awesome."  Those aren't the kinds of posts I want in this thread, but rather informative responses as to why people feel that way.If the mummy can be divorced from its cultural origins; and the sphynx, genies, golems, etc. can too; why not samurai?There's more to the OA Samurai class than just Iaijutsu Focus.  They get several other skills as class skills that are appropriate to a Samurai, but not a Fighter.  They also get more skill points.  A straight up soldier is going to have a lot more to offer in battle than a Samurai (Fighters get more bonus feats), but a Samurai is going to be a lot better off when dealing with nobility.  If a proper culture exists for them, Samurai have just as much place alongside the Fighter as a Barbarian or Ranger does.Yes, I'm guilty of bringing it up first, in the OP. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" />I certainly don't think that every American is this way, of course.  I've seen plenty of eastern Europeans and even some Asians with the same viewpoint.  But in my experience it's a lot more widespread in the US.What, genshou and Nyaricus disagreeing on something?  I knew it was too good to last <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" />You certainly have a point there, and quite a valid one, in fact.  I would like to point out a few things that make me disagree, however.  First of all, the Benedictine monks can easily exist in a D&D setting.  They would have the Expert NPC class.  Second, while the core rules do force you to include a monastery or two in your kingdom, remember that Monk is a PC class, and therefore there are very few of them in the kingdom, and very few monasteries need to exist for a PC class when new members of PC classes spring up so rarely, right?  You could possibly even get away with not having any monasteries in a given kingdom, and have the monks living in that kingdom travel from elsewhere and settle there for whatever reason.Magic has everything to do with it!  The dissemination of ideas is the one thing that would be most heavily influenced by the alterations standard D&D would make to a culture.  There are those in every society who seek out a life of peaceful contemplation, as well as training in the martial arts.  Just look at all the yoga and/or self-defense classes people in the US take (not sure how widespread these things are in other cultures; I'd appreciate some chiming in).  Through the influence of magic and the existence of Monks in a foreign culture to begin with, possessing so many abilities that would aid them in long journeys, I don't see it difficult at all to swallow some of them travelling to a Euro-centric region of the world and wanting to set up a monastery to enlighten their fellow men.  Psion aids me in explaining:It really isn't much of a stretch at all.Well, there's something to chew on for a bit, folks.  Have at thee!</blockquote>

Verification