I believe the answer is simple. If you want to play an oriental adventure, you play legend of 5 rings (L5R). This is possibly because WotC knows full well they cant beat L5R (not enough resources as they focus on Faerun) or they may have a licence with that L5R company, they will not venture into it. Honestly, for Oriental players, we simply feel a bit off with whatever is going on in Kara Tur. That really doesnt help. They need to stop having a white guy perspective on Kara Tur because they can not appreciate how complex that part of the world is. I feel George Martin in GoT has done a good job describing the dynamics about house, family or clan. However, it is only scratching the surface of what a Japanese Feudal system is like. As such, the way of the samurai is not really translated into DnD. L5R is also scratching the surface in my opinion.
L5R used to be my favourite system. Fifth edition doesn't really resonate so well with me though, and I already prefered 3rd to 4th. Regardless, we're talking about TTRPGs. There's a limit to what the average player is willing to absorb in terms of setting background and culture, and there's certainly a practical limit to how much info you can cram into setting sourcebooks. Some of the people I play other systems with don't enjoy L5R precisely because of the rigid culture. I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day a commercial product has to be marketable to a sufficiently large audience to be successful.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I enjoyed it as well. I'm not seeing the racism, or anything else being problematic with the setting. It was great content, and respectfully done.
And I fail to see the problem with the word "Oriental". The terms "Oriental" and "Occidental" are simply synonyms for "Eastern" and "Western".
Possibly because you're not Asian...
Or, possibly because I try not to be exhausting to the people around me.
Do you want to spend your time having fun and playing the game, or do you want to waste time dickering over who's out there in the Aether being bothered by a word?
I mean, you CAN do that if you want. That's your right. But combing over the minutiae of language on the off-chance that you'll find someone who's offended by it is a terrible way to live your life. I can guarantee you that most Eastern philosophers and mystics would tell you that it's not a path to enlightenment or even basic well-being.
The word "Oriental" is not cut and dry and because of that I do agree that it's best to err on the side of caution. On the other hand there are some great articles by people of Asian descent who remark upon the fact that we live in a society where people like to be offended on behalf of strangers and even like to tell Asians that they should be offended by the word when they are not.
I enjoyed it as well. I'm not seeing the racism, or anything else being problematic with the setting. It was great content, and respectfully done.
And I fail to see the problem with the word "Oriental". The terms "Oriental" and "Occidental" are simply synonyms for "Eastern" and "Western".
Possibly because you're not Asian...
Or, possibly because I try not to be exhausting to the people around me.
Don't worry about being exhausting, worry about being insulting.
I don't accept your premise.
See? I know how this game is played. It has nothing to do with actual harm, and everything to do with a new quasi-religion organized around imaginary grievance.
It's adherents gain status among their peers by pretending to take offense on behalf of entire demographics, and then start laying out blanket accusations of bigotry where it doesn't exist. The accuser gains prestige in the eyes of the tribe, while simultaneously getting a hit of attention. Of course, the high only lasts for a little bit, so the next accusation has to be just a little more grandiose. Of course, after a while, you start running out of obvious things to be offended by, so the accusations become more and more esoteric. (For instance, there was a thread on this forum making the claim that the terms "Dwarf" and "Halfling" are insensitive to actual small people. Fortunately, the moderators shut it down, but not before it resulted in some folks being banned for rightfully pointing out how absurd the notion is on its face.)
The genius of the entire scheme is that you can keep moving the goalposts. No one can really falsify your claims because they're so ephemeral you can't possibly support them. But, then again, you don't need to. When one set of accusations doesn't stick, you just move on to another one, all the while claiming moral superiority over the bigoted masses that you've deigned to grace with your enlightened presence.
It's like a set of Kafka traps buried in an ever-smaller set of nesting dolls.
I recommend you drop whatever you have planned as your response. Bringing in real world issues consistently locks threads and gets people warnings/bans.
The only point I was making was that calling Asians by the term oriental can be insulting. I'm Asian so I know.
I suspect that this being the case, Oriental Adventures will not be produced with that particular name.
The only point I was making was that calling Asians by the term oriental can be insulting. I'm Asian so I know.
Here's what you're missing. "Oriental Adventures" refers to adventures taking place IN THE ORIENT of the Forgotten Realms.
It was not calling the fictitious inhabitants of these land "Orientals". It's a region, not a group of people. Will that detail keep anyone from taking on the offense and claiming personal harm if they're bound and determined to do it? Not on your life.
I guess since you're Asian, you're the designated spokesperson for the entire demographic? I'm going to go with a hard "NO" here, since you don't actually get to speak for anyone but yourself.
Until you can present well-documented large-sample studies making the case that the title "Oriental Adventures" is somehow damaging to Asian people in real-live 2020, you're providing your own anecdote, and nothing more. And well all know that anecdotes are no substitute for robust population-level analysis.
So, until you can produce something that appears like evidence (that's not a blog or a podcast with some sharing an opinion) the rest of us are under ZERO obligation to take you seriously.
I should know better than to post in this thread...
First off I get why it is easy to get offended by Oriental Adventures. I watched part of the Asians Represent thing (I’m half Asian and my mom is an immigrant). But in the end I couldn’t watch too much of it. The biggest problem they had with it seemed that it was leaning hard into a bunch of western tropes and misrepresenting a ton of things.
However understand the same is true with all the western stuff they put in the game. You had dudes in Wisconsin looking at all these old legends and bogey men and coopting names and such, giving them stats, and cramming them into a game system and butchered it all. But the goal wasn’t to be accurate or to pass on a cultural heritage It was to create something players wanted to adventure in.
The same is true for when they created Oriental Adventures. It’s full of tropes and a western perspective, dives deep in the whole ‘’mystical east’ etc. etc. But at the end of the day we are just using dice to say “let’s play pretend”. And it’s all just a pseudo mashup world that is made up just like Faerun is a pseudo mashup that throws every single trope it can cram in. So after watching the Asians Represent video for a bit I couldn’t help but think, “I am not really offended by any of this...” and switched it off.
I personally would like to get the equivalent of the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide to Karatur and region and maybe a few campaigns set there. Hopefully Wizards can navigate a way to bring that about...
This is verging a little too much into "real world" discussion, however I realise that is part of the topic.
Please be mindful and respect others.
Also, before this thread goes further, please note that it is not acceptable to tell anyone that their lived experience is not a valid perspective - if we see any further posts in this thread taking that approach, we shall remove them.
If you wish to debate -present positive discussion around your opinions - attacking other users, or their perspective is not ok.
We can move the game of Dungeons & Dragons forward, including content that people love, without perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
This is verging a little too much into "real world" discussion, however I realise that is part of the topic.
Please be mindful and respect others.
Also, before this thread goes further, please note that it is not acceptable to tell anyone that their lived experience is not a valid perspective - if we see any further posts in this thread taking that approach, we shall remove them.
If you wish to debate -present positive discussion around your opinions - attacking other users, or their perspective is not ok.
We can move the game of Dungeons & Dragons forward, including content that people love, without perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
With respect, Stormknight. "Lived experience" isn't a "get out of jail free" card.
If someone decides that they want to accuse the game developers, the players, the content, or the forums in general of some sort of overt or subtle bigotry, they're going to need to provide evidence of said claims.
As a gay man myself, I don't get to claim homophobia unless I'm willing to provide evidence to support my claims. That's what debate is. It's not someone saying "X, Y, Z is a fact, and I don't have to support my claim because I belong to a certain demographic". And contesting those claims is not proof within itself of bigotry. That's where the debate lies.
As a member of an oppressed minority, I'm saying we're not sacred, and we don't get to claim privileged status for our ideas because of it.
Thank you for hearing me out. Much love to everyone!
I'm running an Oriental Adventures AD&D 1e campaign now, and looking at the materials for Oriental Adventures, from the book to the modules and the supporting materials, the most problematic statements about the "exotic East" appear on the back cover and sometimes in the foreword of these works. These statements might have been created by publicists at Random House as opposed to the actual authors.
But, looking at the actual content of Oriental Adventures, I am struck actually about how respectful the authors were of East Asian culture. There are no odd caricatures of "oriental" people and cultures. Instead, the Oriental Adventures reveals that the authors did quite a lot of research on the topic (and I say that as someone with a PhD in premodern Japanese history).
The authors did not always get things right. For instance, the landholding system described for Kozakura is a bit of a mishmash of different time periods in premodern Japanese history, although it's still workable. Players also can learn about Japanese arts and culture, from flower arrangement to the masked noh theater. I'm sure that this sort of exposure can prompt some to want to learn more and develop a greater understanding of East Asian culture, in the same way that watching a Kurosawa film or play Ghost of Tsushima might.
I would encourage anyone to look deeper at the materials themselves. The spells and class abilities have lots of distinct aspects, and I for one don't see anything similar in other editions or settings.
And, perhaps one day all this might be updated so that others can enjoy and learn from it. I hope so.
Way of Shadows are pretty obvious ninja analogs. If you want a more flexible Naruto-style "I basically do magic" type then an Arcane Trickster blends skill use, weapons combat with trick moves and minimal armor, and having a suite of fantastic effects at your disposal. Or there's more vanilla Rogues like the Thief or Assassin.
Keep in mind though, that the fandom wiki for FR tries to stay up to date with whatever edition of D&D is current so most of the info on the wiki will be stated in terms of 4th & 5th Ed. with notes on earlier editions.
Late last year one of my friends who Gave me Adventures in Rokugan By edge studios it was printed using the 5e SRD and should be compatible with 2014 5e Not so much with 2024
Now I can't imagine the future D&D "isekai & jianghu" without the martial adepts and the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords" but the reload of the crusader should be simpler, maybe because I liked some videos in youtube of donghua AMV with those "cultivators" jumping on the roofs like in "Tiger & Dragon" movie.
White guy speaking, so grain of salt clause, but...
I can see trying to avoid some of this for past racism and trying to avoid future ones. If not because its the right thing to do than because its less of a PR nightmare. That said, its not like we still don't do it. The Monk class still exists as a kung fu fighter, one of its subclasses is nicknamed in text as Ninja, and the entire visual motif of Orcs now being South Western if not Strait up Mexican coded. Kenku look like they might have some Tengu influence. Several other monsters also come from parts of the word that are not European, with many coming from areas not usually from a Western European influence. Yuanti have some Latin American influence with the pyramids, and I think Tabaxi as well in their homeland. A phylactery in fantasy usually involves Litches; but in the real world is a box with some scripture that is important to the person that put it in, and is then worn as they pray. There is other things that could count as Cultural appropriation, some more flattering than others.
I am not saying Hasbro hasn't tried, nor that its not commendable, but any attempt to mitigate one group still leaves alot to pick apart (and I'm an idiot when it comes to race stuff and I can pick this amount).
Pathfinder 2e probably has probably handled this the best. When they did books going over different areas, they included things like parts of the African stand in and the different elvs, human, and lizardman, and dwarven groups that live there. At the same time they tried to be as diverse and respectful for the real world influences as they could, long before Woke was part of the common lexacon.
I think if its going to be incorporated, it needs to be handled with care. Yes, there will be stereotypes, but that is a starting off point not a be all end all. If they go with a Chinese inspired nation, which dynasty would they pick to have the most fun with? Same with a Japanese stand in as not everything is Warring States. Or different South Asian influences. I would love to see this, if nothing else, to expand my own world views and be able to think outside of a very small box. BUT it has to be handled like with care, like a newborn baby.
Even with the honest intentions always there is some risk. Two brothers could have opposite points of view about their own nation, a member of their family living in other country could show a different opinion and a foreign living in that country could tell a different story. They can't agree but they try to be honest.
Today Japan has got the greatest "soft power" thanks manga and anime but China and South Korea are earning. I warn they don't like each other. Hasbro and WotC has got some experience with the Chinese market and the possible troubles about censorship. I suspect there are some things we unknow or we aren't allowed to know.
I guess WotC will not want to use words from no-English languange because they would rather the crunch could be used in all the settings.
I have seen the vampires from Ixalan (Magic: the Gathering) in the second set they were practically cancelled (and I admit I may be partially responsible because my complains) but this is one of the clearest examples about the offensive stereotipes we should avoid. The plane Kaladesh has been renamed Avishkar because "Kala" has got some pejorative sense.
* We have the option of a sourcebook style Moderkainen's Monsters of Multiverse, mainly monsters and some PC species. maybe some faction also. I guess here the risk should be minimal but we could need some playtesting and feedback about the PC species.
Some times there are some possible offenses but they are accidentl or intentional. For example a story where the bad guys are the formians, or the celestial empire in the middle of a war between the formians and the rastipedes (an ant centaur-like specie from Spelljammer focused to trade), somebody could believe it is a satire about the Cold War (and maybe he is right).
Now I'm off to go down the rabbit hole to find any updated Al-Qadim guides!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
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L5R used to be my favourite system. Fifth edition doesn't really resonate so well with me though, and I already prefered 3rd to 4th. Regardless, we're talking about TTRPGs. There's a limit to what the average player is willing to absorb in terms of setting background and culture, and there's certainly a practical limit to how much info you can cram into setting sourcebooks. Some of the people I play other systems with don't enjoy L5R precisely because of the rigid culture. I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day a commercial product has to be marketable to a sufficiently large audience to be successful.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Or, possibly because I try not to be exhausting to the people around me.
Do you want to spend your time having fun and playing the game, or do you want to waste time dickering over who's out there in the Aether being bothered by a word?
I mean, you CAN do that if you want. That's your right. But combing over the minutiae of language on the off-chance that you'll find someone who's offended by it is a terrible way to live your life. I can guarantee you that most Eastern philosophers and mystics would tell you that it's not a path to enlightenment or even basic well-being.
The word "Oriental" is not cut and dry and because of that I do agree that it's best to err on the side of caution. On the other hand there are some great articles by people of Asian descent who remark upon the fact that we live in a society where people like to be offended on behalf of strangers and even like to tell Asians that they should be offended by the word when they are not.
Don't worry about being exhausting, worry about being insulting.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I don't accept your premise.
See? I know how this game is played. It has nothing to do with actual harm, and everything to do with a new quasi-religion organized around imaginary grievance.
It's adherents gain status among their peers by pretending to take offense on behalf of entire demographics, and then start laying out blanket accusations of bigotry where it doesn't exist. The accuser gains prestige in the eyes of the tribe, while simultaneously getting a hit of attention. Of course, the high only lasts for a little bit, so the next accusation has to be just a little more grandiose. Of course, after a while, you start running out of obvious things to be offended by, so the accusations become more and more esoteric. (For instance, there was a thread on this forum making the claim that the terms "Dwarf" and "Halfling" are insensitive to actual small people. Fortunately, the moderators shut it down, but not before it resulted in some folks being banned for rightfully pointing out how absurd the notion is on its face.)
The genius of the entire scheme is that you can keep moving the goalposts. No one can really falsify your claims because they're so ephemeral you can't possibly support them. But, then again, you don't need to. When one set of accusations doesn't stick, you just move on to another one, all the while claiming moral superiority over the bigoted masses that you've deigned to grace with your enlightened presence.
It's like a set of Kafka traps buried in an ever-smaller set of nesting dolls.
I recommend you drop whatever you have planned as your response. Bringing in real world issues consistently locks threads and gets people warnings/bans.
The only point I was making was that calling Asians by the term oriental can be insulting. I'm Asian so I know.
I suspect that this being the case, Oriental Adventures will not be produced with that particular name.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Here's what you're missing. "Oriental Adventures" refers to adventures taking place IN THE ORIENT of the Forgotten Realms.
It was not calling the fictitious inhabitants of these land "Orientals". It's a region, not a group of people. Will that detail keep anyone from taking on the offense and claiming personal harm if they're bound and determined to do it? Not on your life.
I guess since you're Asian, you're the designated spokesperson for the entire demographic? I'm going to go with a hard "NO" here, since you don't actually get to speak for anyone but yourself.
Until you can present well-documented large-sample studies making the case that the title "Oriental Adventures" is somehow damaging to Asian people in real-live 2020, you're providing your own anecdote, and nothing more. And well all know that anecdotes are no substitute for robust population-level analysis.
So, until you can produce something that appears like evidence (that's not a blog or a podcast with some sharing an opinion) the rest of us are under ZERO obligation to take you seriously.
I should know better than to post in this thread...
First off I get why it is easy to get offended by Oriental Adventures. I watched part of the Asians Represent thing (I’m half Asian and my mom is an immigrant). But in the end I couldn’t watch too much of it. The biggest problem they had with it seemed that it was leaning hard into a bunch of western tropes and misrepresenting a ton of things.
However understand the same is true with all the western stuff they put in the game. You had dudes in Wisconsin looking at all these old legends and bogey men and coopting names and such, giving them stats, and cramming them into a game system and butchered it all. But the goal wasn’t to be accurate or to pass on a cultural heritage It was to create something players wanted to adventure in.
The same is true for when they created Oriental Adventures. It’s full of tropes and a western perspective, dives deep in the whole ‘’mystical east’ etc. etc. But at the end of the day we are just using dice to say “let’s play pretend”. And it’s all just a pseudo mashup world that is made up just like Faerun is a pseudo mashup that throws every single trope it can cram in. So after watching the Asians Represent video for a bit I couldn’t help but think, “I am not really offended by any of this...” and switched it off.
I personally would like to get the equivalent of the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide to Karatur and region and maybe a few campaigns set there. Hopefully Wizards can navigate a way to bring that about...
Hey everyone,
This is verging a little too much into "real world" discussion, however I realise that is part of the topic.
Please be mindful and respect others.
Also, before this thread goes further, please note that it is not acceptable to tell anyone that their lived experience is not a valid perspective - if we see any further posts in this thread taking that approach, we shall remove them.
If you wish to debate -present positive discussion around your opinions - attacking other users, or their perspective is not ok.
We can move the game of Dungeons & Dragons forward, including content that people love, without perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
With respect, Stormknight. "Lived experience" isn't a "get out of jail free" card.
If someone decides that they want to accuse the game developers, the players, the content, or the forums in general of some sort of overt or subtle bigotry, they're going to need to provide evidence of said claims.
As a gay man myself, I don't get to claim homophobia unless I'm willing to provide evidence to support my claims. That's what debate is. It's not someone saying "X, Y, Z is a fact, and I don't have to support my claim because I belong to a certain demographic". And contesting those claims is not proof within itself of bigotry. That's where the debate lies.
As a member of an oppressed minority, I'm saying we're not sacred, and we don't get to claim privileged status for our ideas because of it.
Thank you for hearing me out. Much love to everyone!
I'm running an Oriental Adventures AD&D 1e campaign now, and looking at the materials for Oriental Adventures, from the book to the modules and the supporting materials, the most problematic statements about the "exotic East" appear on the back cover and sometimes in the foreword of these works. These statements might have been created by publicists at Random House as opposed to the actual authors.
But, looking at the actual content of Oriental Adventures, I am struck actually about how respectful the authors were of East Asian culture. There are no odd caricatures of "oriental" people and cultures. Instead, the Oriental Adventures reveals that the authors did quite a lot of research on the topic (and I say that as someone with a PhD in premodern Japanese history).
The authors did not always get things right. For instance, the landholding system described for Kozakura is a bit of a mishmash of different time periods in premodern Japanese history, although it's still workable. Players also can learn about Japanese arts and culture, from flower arrangement to the masked noh theater. I'm sure that this sort of exposure can prompt some to want to learn more and develop a greater understanding of East Asian culture, in the same way that watching a Kurosawa film or play Ghost of Tsushima might.
I would encourage anyone to look deeper at the materials themselves. The spells and class abilities have lots of distinct aspects, and I for one don't see anything similar in other editions or settings.
And, perhaps one day all this might be updated so that others can enjoy and learn from it. I hope so.
Hope they bring back the ninja.
Monks, Rogues, and Rangers of certain types can be called ninja. Then you just have to reflavor your equipment to match.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Way of Shadows are pretty obvious ninja analogs. If you want a more flexible Naruto-style "I basically do magic" type then an Arcane Trickster blends skill use, weapons combat with trick moves and minimal armor, and having a suite of fantastic effects at your disposal. Or there's more vanilla Rogues like the Thief or Assassin.
Keep in mind though, that the fandom wiki for FR tries to stay up to date with whatever edition of D&D is current so most of the info on the wiki will be stated in terms of 4th & 5th Ed. with notes on earlier editions.
Late last year one of my friends who Gave me Adventures in Rokugan By edge studios it was printed using the 5e SRD and should be compatible with 2014 5e Not so much with 2024
Now I can't imagine the future D&D "isekai & jianghu" without the martial adepts and the martial maneuvers from "Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords" but the reload of the crusader should be simpler, maybe because I liked some videos in youtube of donghua AMV with those "cultivators" jumping on the roofs like in "Tiger & Dragon" movie.
White guy speaking, so grain of salt clause, but...
I can see trying to avoid some of this for past racism and trying to avoid future ones. If not because its the right thing to do than because its less of a PR nightmare. That said, its not like we still don't do it. The Monk class still exists as a kung fu fighter, one of its subclasses is nicknamed in text as Ninja, and the entire visual motif of Orcs now being South Western if not Strait up Mexican coded. Kenku look like they might have some Tengu influence. Several other monsters also come from parts of the word that are not European, with many coming from areas not usually from a Western European influence. Yuanti have some Latin American influence with the pyramids, and I think Tabaxi as well in their homeland. A phylactery in fantasy usually involves Litches; but in the real world is a box with some scripture that is important to the person that put it in, and is then worn as they pray. There is other things that could count as Cultural appropriation, some more flattering than others.
I am not saying Hasbro hasn't tried, nor that its not commendable, but any attempt to mitigate one group still leaves alot to pick apart (and I'm an idiot when it comes to race stuff and I can pick this amount).
Pathfinder 2e probably has probably handled this the best. When they did books going over different areas, they included things like parts of the African stand in and the different elvs, human, and lizardman, and dwarven groups that live there. At the same time they tried to be as diverse and respectful for the real world influences as they could, long before Woke was part of the common lexacon.
I think if its going to be incorporated, it needs to be handled with care. Yes, there will be stereotypes, but that is a starting off point not a be all end all. If they go with a Chinese inspired nation, which dynasty would they pick to have the most fun with? Same with a Japanese stand in as not everything is Warring States. Or different South Asian influences. I would love to see this, if nothing else, to expand my own world views and be able to think outside of a very small box. BUT it has to be handled like with care, like a newborn baby.
Even with the honest intentions always there is some risk. Two brothers could have opposite points of view about their own nation, a member of their family living in other country could show a different opinion and a foreign living in that country could tell a different story. They can't agree but they try to be honest.
Today Japan has got the greatest "soft power" thanks manga and anime but China and South Korea are earning. I warn they don't like each other. Hasbro and WotC has got some experience with the Chinese market and the possible troubles about censorship. I suspect there are some things we unknow or we aren't allowed to know.
I guess WotC will not want to use words from no-English languange because they would rather the crunch could be used in all the settings.
I have seen the vampires from Ixalan (Magic: the Gathering) in the second set they were practically cancelled (and I admit I may be partially responsible because my complains) but this is one of the clearest examples about the offensive stereotipes we should avoid. The plane Kaladesh has been renamed Avishkar because "Kala" has got some pejorative sense.
* We have the option of a sourcebook style Moderkainen's Monsters of Multiverse, mainly monsters and some PC species. maybe some faction also. I guess here the risk should be minimal but we could need some playtesting and feedback about the PC species.
Some times there are some possible offenses but they are accidentl or intentional. For example a story where the bad guys are the formians, or the celestial empire in the middle of a war between the formians and the rastipedes (an ant centaur-like specie from Spelljammer focused to trade), somebody could believe it is a satire about the Cold War (and maybe he is right).
I absolutely loved this setting back in the day. Researching it recently I came across two items that might be helpful:
1) The Kamon setting for 5e: Kamon - original Feudal Japanese Fantasy Setting for 5E
2) Oriental Adventures Reference for 5e (available on DMs Guild): Oriental Adventures 5e - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild
Now I'm off to go down the rabbit hole to find any updated Al-Qadim guides!
#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."