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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2994583" data-attributes="member: 32740">Most campaigns simply do not cover an entire WORLD.  IME, and IMO they generally get limited to a an area... about the size of Europe.  Thus, the cultures presented tend not to be dramatically diverse.This is not in and of itself a bad thing.  A successful campaign does not need cultural diversity to provide multi-national events and strife if such should be desired.  Most campaigns do also include plenty of RACIAL diversity even if they do not borrow from outside European cultures since D&D has Halflings, Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves, and Half-Orcs.  Fit all those into a mix with a few European human cultures and you don't exactly have a lot of room left to start cramming in the rich and varied Oriental, African, South- and Central-American cultures to further "diversify" their campaign worlds.  It gets to be WAY too much very quickly.  Accordingly, if you START with a pseudo-European cultural base you then tend not to go overboard with sharply contrasting cultures from far outside European norms - such as the Orient.The "norm" for fantasy settings is, like it or not, a pseudo-European model.  It isn't really a matter of some kind of bias AGAINST other world cultures so much as it is a tradition of the genre that the cultures remain very predominantly European.Having said all that, the single most likely culture to be introduced to a fantasy RPG that already has a European base is an Oriental one.  Regarding the monk, if I understand it correctly, Gygax's original intent was that the monk WASN'T meant to be intrinsic to settings such as Greyhawk on a large scale, but was presented to be an itinerant outsider.  Mostly that's how I've always used them - mostly.  <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=":)" />I don't have a problem with people who say that monks are underpowered or problematic in some mechanical way.  I don't have a problem with people who simply, and politely, say that the monk has no place in their campaign world because there is no cultural basis for it.  I DO have a problem with anyone who goes on about how a class with an Oriental... orientation doesn't BELONG in a D&D setting.  Not in YOUR setting - okay.  Not in D&D AT ALL, I strongly disagree for any number of reasons.  "It's Fantasy," being #1 and rather unassailable to begin with.</blockquote>

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