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WotC Announces An Impending Announcement: New Setting, Storyline
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7995964" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>That's not the real reason that no-one would do an OA today, though.</p><p></p><p>The real reason is that it would be considered boring, and wouldn't sell well. This is 2020, not 1985. Japanese, Chinese and even to some extent Korean and other culture and mythology is no longer "exotic" and "fantastical", no more so than Western mythology. The same applies to other cultural regions. Those cultures are so much more accessible, so much easier to communicate with, so much a part of the same world now that a book that tried to do "culture-fantasy" is not likely to find a large audience.</p><p></p><p>Ed Greenwood also pointed out a major issue, long, long ago, back in the 1980s, which is part of why these sort of settings have largely faded. That is, they don't fit well with D&D, because they're too focused on emulating specific perceived characteristics of real-world culture, and specific interpretations of real-world mythology, and fail to become part of D&D properly. He was critical of Maztica, because it was so beholden to real-world cultures, in a way that the rest of the FR was not, and that it was focused very much on emulating these specific aspects of their mythologies and so on. I suspect he wasn't the biggest fan of the Moonshaes for similar reasons (it was originally not an FR setting), and I can't think he liked OA much either, because it has the same flaws.</p><p></p><p>What he preferred was very loose inspiration (like Calimshan has from both Spain and the Middle-East, for example), which is actually quite superficial and covering more typical D&D mythology. I'd argue this is actually less like to cause problems re: appropriation, too, oddly enough. Because people can immediately see "Oh well that's the FR, even if they're wearing hats from culture X". </p><p></p><p>Combine these two factors and I think there's no chance we're going to ever see a "culture-fantasy" book from WotC again. We might well see a setting book which has cultures in it which take ideas from various cultures, but in the way OA focused on Japan (specifically, it was very Japan-centric), or Maztica focused on elements of Maya and Aztec cultures? No. Even Al-Qadim might be too narrow/specific. I don't think there's any particular hunger for such settings, either.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 7995964, member: 18"] That's not the real reason that no-one would do an OA today, though. The real reason is that it would be considered boring, and wouldn't sell well. This is 2020, not 1985. Japanese, Chinese and even to some extent Korean and other culture and mythology is no longer "exotic" and "fantastical", no more so than Western mythology. The same applies to other cultural regions. Those cultures are so much more accessible, so much easier to communicate with, so much a part of the same world now that a book that tried to do "culture-fantasy" is not likely to find a large audience. Ed Greenwood also pointed out a major issue, long, long ago, back in the 1980s, which is part of why these sort of settings have largely faded. That is, they don't fit well with D&D, because they're too focused on emulating specific perceived characteristics of real-world culture, and specific interpretations of real-world mythology, and fail to become part of D&D properly. He was critical of Maztica, because it was so beholden to real-world cultures, in a way that the rest of the FR was not, and that it was focused very much on emulating these specific aspects of their mythologies and so on. I suspect he wasn't the biggest fan of the Moonshaes for similar reasons (it was originally not an FR setting), and I can't think he liked OA much either, because it has the same flaws. What he preferred was very loose inspiration (like Calimshan has from both Spain and the Middle-East, for example), which is actually quite superficial and covering more typical D&D mythology. I'd argue this is actually less like to cause problems re: appropriation, too, oddly enough. Because people can immediately see "Oh well that's the FR, even if they're wearing hats from culture X". Combine these two factors and I think there's no chance we're going to ever see a "culture-fantasy" book from WotC again. We might well see a setting book which has cultures in it which take ideas from various cultures, but in the way OA focused on Japan (specifically, it was very Japan-centric), or Maztica focused on elements of Maya and Aztec cultures? No. Even Al-Qadim might be too narrow/specific. I don't think there's any particular hunger for such settings, either. [/QUOTE]
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