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Message: <blockquote data-quote="see" data-source="post: 8213906" data-attributes="member: 10531">Oh, no.The problem with "culturally accurate" is that it quickly becomes orientalist "look at how these people are exotically different". Zakhara having (for example) a cultural taboo on people touching unrelated persons of the opposite sex (so, sorry, the paladin can't heal you with their lay on hands power). Maztica's dominant society using human sacrifice to worship the gods. Et cetera.Even much of the "generic East Asian" problem in 1e Kara-Tur was a side-effect of replacing standard D&D classes with ones rooted in specific East Asian cultures, then having the problem that you needed Japanese yakuza in faux-China and wu jen (based on Chinese wūshī)  in faux-Japan because you didn't have generic thief and wizard classes to fill the party niches.The other problem was too much "cultural accuracy" in the sense of excessive use of real-world history. That made 1e Kara-Tur a slog to read and hard to use for actual gaming. That drove having Maztica not having ironworking and (in order to keep conquistador supremacy) wizardry. The result was places that were just less fantastic than Faerun, and thus less attractive to game in.No, what a rewrite needs is cool fantasy that's respectful, not any attempt at accuracy. Which is partly why I think a good idea is to have writers who are closely associated with the real-world analogs, because they'll have the moral position where they can toss out accuracy in the name of cool.</blockquote>

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