Your opinion on basing fantasy countries on real world ones

[Tun Kai Poh]

Politics aside, I do think an unintended side effect is going to be an increase in European-derived settings as people try to avoid culturally appropriating from areas they don't have any connection to.

We'll see in 10 years...

Bad assumption. There are a lot more people outside European-descended populations for RPGs to spread to, you know...we do exist.

We make games too, and we're making more and more of them.

It's not that hard to figure out how to play people from a different culture. James Mendez Hodes wrote about it here:

“May I play a character from another race?” — James Mendez Hodes

I get this question more frequently than any other in my professional and gaming life. I get it almost exclusively from white folks, since gaming’s Eurocentrism requires people of color to play outside their race most of the time. My answer is emphatically yes, but please study how to do it. Here’

jamesmendezhodes.com

Mendez has provided consulting on games like Avatar: Legends (you know, the single biggest RPG Kickstarter of all time) so I expect leaps and bounds in popular gaming practices in years to come.

Also, the rise in #RPGSEA games is creating RPG worlds based on our local cultures, for everyone to play in!

The Islands of Sina Una for 5e is up for pre-orders, for a start. The Islands of Sina Una

Balikbayan is written for everyone to play, although it's specifically about Filipino Elementals escaping enslavement in a techno-magical cyberpunk future.

BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home by Rae Nedjadi

A Supernatural-Cyberpunk Revolution

temporalhiccup.itch.io

Gubat Banwa is a deep dive into a fantasy version of the Filipino warring states period (like Viking sea raiding, but with sundangs and arquebuses).

Gubat Banwa First Edition by makapatag

The Martial Epic Fantasy RPG

makapatag.itch.io

And A Thousand Thousand Islands: Reach of the Roach God, a system-agnostic adventure book set in the caverns of Southeast Asia, is doing gangbusters on KS right now!

REACH OF THE ROACH GOD - Part of A Thousand Thousand Islands

A system-neutral tabletop RPG campaign inspired by the vast caves of Southeast Asia.

www.kickstarter.com

I make games too, based on my own Southeast Asian context, and publish them on itch:

ECH0 by Role Over Play Dead

Peace. Kids playing in mech wreckage. A ghost. One last journey to find a final resting place.

roleoverplaydead.itch.io

Zoopolitan Future Blues - Undercover Edition by Role Over Play Dead

Play detectives in the Zoopolitan Finder's Bureau. Find missing critters in the big city.

roleoverplaydead.itch.io

Zoopolitan Skybridge Goons by Role Over Play Dead

Furry freerunning fools. Young, stupid and invincible.

roleoverplaydead.itch.io

 

[Blue Orange]

You got me, Tun Kai Poh.

But you know what? I read that article from Hodes a while ago under another context, and first thing I thought was, "well, you folks can do that, but I stick my foot in my mouth without touching anything controversial, so I just won't dare. Others with better people skills can tackle those things."

Good luck with your games! They sound very creative!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That’s why people hire editors and consultants- to catch things that hide in their blind spots. That can be typos, grammatical goofs, continuity mistakes, or math errors, but also outdated or insulting terminology, stereotypes, and so forth.

 

[MGibster]

It's about respect and relative power. You can't exploit the USA, even if you want to; that's the most dominant culture on the planet. Following that is probably most Western European cultures, and so on.

I can't help but feel the same way about most countries in western Europe, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, and I wouldn't doubt I'm leaving a few others out. It's true they're not the most dominant cultures on the planet, but each of these countries actively exports their culture throughout the world allowing twelve year old me and the Wu Tang Clan to watch movies like The Five Deadly Venoms on television here in the United States. Nobody in Japan or China is being harmed by a game like Legend of the Five Rings or Feng Shui and Pendragon didn't hurt anyone in England or Wales.

The truth is that whatever society I can manage to come up with from scratch is going to resemble something that actually exist or existed at once time. I can put a twist on it, my "not-Germany" dwarf game incorporated 19th century US thoughts on gender roles and 2nd wave feminism, but I'm not exactly re-inventing the wheel when coming up with governments, religious institutions, the economy, etc., etc.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I like "classical stereotypes". They let me more easily picture what I THINK a country is 'like'. That may or may not be realistic...but it doesn't matter. We're talking about a Fantasy setting where the King and Queen of England could be half-angelic Wizards with psychic powers and a stable of unicorn, pegesi and ki-rin. After doing that sort of imaginative creation, "The people are pre-disposed towards deferring to nobility, even if it goes against their own sensibilities" isn't any different.

Now, trying to play a HISTORIC game with some fantasy elements set in the 'real world, but with magic' (e.g., kinda like Dangerous Journey's was with their Aerth default setting)...that's when it can get a bit 'touchy'. But if it's a normal fantasy world with "fantasy Vikings, fantasy Samurai and Fantasy Tong"...go for it. I quite enjoy stereotypes.... good, bad or ugly (yes, even when they make "me and my countries" look bad or have a negative connotation).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Ancalagon]

I try to have "inspired by" be my rule rather than "changed from".

There is a part of my campaign world that I would like to be inspired by Ancient India. That would make it different from the most commonly traversed area, and I'm enjoying getting into Indian history at the moment. So I look at the climate; this part is hot/wet, this part hot/dry summer, this part humid / warm winter. How did people in India at the time in question dress in these climates? How did they build? What environmentally did they worry about? Then, I adapt that to any changes that I think a different environment, resources, and magic would bring.

It's involved and takes some time. There is some check and adjust with it too. I tend to copy really old names of places that don't truly exist anymore and use that for inspiration to develop new names. Hopefully they're not just syllable-salad.

Or you could get Yoon-Suin (a campaign setting vaguely inspired by India, Nepal and Tibet)

 

[Baron Opal II]

In fact I have. It's been very useful!

 

[Hussar]

Just to offer a counter opinion here, the problem with incorporating entire cultures into a fantasy setting is that most of the time, when you do this, it makes zero sense. The boards here are rife with examples, recently one talking about how wheat farming would be problematic in a D&D setting. On and on.

Cultures are a product of their history. When you radically change the context of those cultures - such as adding magic and monsters - then what should be produced won't actually look very much like real world cultures.

Naomi Novik's Tremeraire series is an excellent example of this. It starts out with late Napoleonic history with dragons and then veers totally away from history. Africa is a major power because they've spent centuries nurturing their dragons and have a freaking huge army of dragons that dwarfs anything in Europe. Eastern countries like China likewise are not even remotely colonizable by Europeans. It's a pretty decent shot at it.

But, IMO, if you're going to make a D&D world, it needs to start with at least one eye on the magic system and how that impacts culture and one eye on the Monster Manual as well. The whole "fantasy Ren-Faire Europe" trope that you generally get in D&D doesn't survive even a cursory examination. Every single aspect of culture would be affected by the twin pillars of the magic system and the Monster Manual.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

Nobody in Japan or China is being harmed by a game like Legend of the Five Rings or Feng Shui and Pendragon didn't hurt anyone in England or Wales.

You are forgetting about disapora populations in, say, the US, where such games are consumed.

Asian-Americans have been negatively affected by harmful stereotypes perpetuated by media such as movies and games (especially in the case of earlier L5R editions - I still remember how easy it is to get a high-Honour Lion samurai trapped into ridiculous conflicts of duty in the 1st edition) as well as harmful stereotypes injected into popular culture from the complicated history of countries like Japan (such as the toxic bushido culture encouraged by the early 20th century Japanese Empire, which gets weirdly fetishized in unhealthy ways by fans of said culture, both in the West and in Japan). And people who live in Western countries, like half my extended family, have to deal with the fallout of those stereotypes, not the people back in Asia.

It's not easy to recognize, but sometimes the harmful stereotypes come not just from Western authors but even from Asian countries as well...so it pays to be careful and thoughtful about these stereotypes, do some research and get some sensitivity readers. People who actually come from those foreign and 'othered' backgrounds who read your game will appreciate this. Especially if they live side by side with you in the same regions.

It's true that RPGs are a niche thing, but their influence is growing thanks to Actual Play shows, which are consumed all over the world. I don't want the first Asian-influenced fantasy RPG that gets turned into a big breakout Netflix show to be filled with harmful stereotypes.

 

[MGibster]

You are forgetting about disapora populations in, say, the US, where such games are consumed.

Not quite. Appropriation and what's appropriate is a very complicated topic and there are times when I find myself in agreement with others and times when I am not. While I think it's okay to be inspired by and borrow elements from China, that doesn't mean I think every instance of such borrowing is okay. I recognize that populations from various diasporas exist and they do matter.