I'm running Tomb of Annihilation but to add my own sort of flavor by adding some NPCs that are actually Disney Princesses and such. Many of them are easy to find a forgotten realms equivalent to most (ei. Jasmine- Calishite and Mulan- Shou) but I am having trouble finding an equivalent for say Maori or French. Perhaps I'm not well enough read to recognize or they may just be from an older edition.
TLDR' what are the real world equivalent to races in forgotten realms?
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Eat cake, suck a lolipop, and sell goods and services.
I always thought Middle Earth races corresponded to various cultures from a European Perspective of around 1700s. The Elves would be the orient. The Dwarves would be the Scots and Irish. Orcs would be the Slavic nations. I don't have an idea for Vikings, Greeks, Middle Easterners, Africans, or India, but there probably is a race intended to be something like this.
I would make the argument that Tolkien’s dwarves clearly have both Hebrew and Norse elements, but not Scottish (that came from adaptations and imitators). And I’d say more about the others (Hobbits are probably English, the Rohirrim are like Danes, the Gondorians are roughly Norman), but to be honest much of Tolkien’s ideas were uniquely his. In any case, theorizing about Tolkien is a dangerous business, as everyone has their own opinion!
And that’s getting a bit off topic: I think the OP was asking where analogues of different human ethnicities are found in the Forgotten Realms.
Seconded. As far as depicting Disney characters, while Disney often pays lip service to certain cultures, a large part of what they do is taking fairy tales and myths from various cultures and disney-fy them to fit their distinct artistic and storytelling style, which is why you might watch Beauty and the Beast and aside from the odd French accent here or there, there's nothing distinctly French about it as much as it is distinctly Disney.
For that reason, I don't think you should worry much about connecting in-game ethnicities to real world counterparts beyond a few vague pieces of cultural shorthand. If done wrong (and it's real easy to do wrong), it can be downright offensive, and if done well then people likely won't even notice.
Instead I would just relate the NPC's back to the works from which they are based, and people should get the picture from the cultural shorthand used in the original works. Instead of working out what the in-game equivalent of their cultures would be, you'll have a better time just going like "I come from a far off kingdom to the east on the brink of war with invaders" or "i come from a land covered in snow year round" or "my people dwell on the islands to the west..." that kind of thing.
I am having trouble finding an equivalent for say Maori or French.
Cormyr/Dragon Coast is often considered analogous with France. Also, the "Lady of Poison" FR novel contains a tattooed soldier named Gunggari Ulmarra that hails from the Osse area (which is analogous to Australia). Further ideas might be found here or here.
I never bothered to look too closely at the PHB's human ethnicities. I mean who knows what humanity would really look like in a world where "human genesis" may have occurred in a different environments than earth human origins and that world's original human population patterns moved over an entirely different geography? It's always seemed to me whenever the ethnicities are evoked it's usually used as a way to port over the IRL "culture" that ethnicity "looks like" and usually not in any sort of depth providing way, actually shallower than Disney. I wish they had focused diversity in skin and other physical traits in the artwork and left the ethnic definitions out.
Anyway, seeing how most of the responses here seem to be missing the question and answering via other humanoid races rather than varieties of human, I'm guessing most players paid as much attention to those pages of the human description as I did. Let's remember this question was asked almost two years ago,
I'm running Tomb of Annihilation but to add my own sort of flavor by adding some NPCs that are actually Disney Princesses and such. Many of them are easy to find a forgotten realms equivalent to most (ei. Jasmine- Calishite and Mulan- Shou) but I am having trouble finding an equivalent for say Maori or French. Perhaps I'm not well enough read to recognize or they may just be from an older edition.
TLDR' what are the real world equivalent to races in forgotten realms?
Eat cake, suck a lolipop, and sell goods and services.
Proceed with caution :)
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I always thought Middle Earth races corresponded to various cultures from a European Perspective of around 1700s. The Elves would be the orient. The Dwarves would be the Scots and Irish. Orcs would be the Slavic nations. I don't have an idea for Vikings, Greeks, Middle Easterners, Africans, or India, but there probably is a race intended to be something like this.
Tolkien use Slavic people as inspiration for Hobbits. And history.
I would make the argument that Tolkien’s dwarves clearly have both Hebrew and Norse elements, but not Scottish (that came from adaptations and imitators). And I’d say more about the others (Hobbits are probably English, the Rohirrim are like Danes, the Gondorians are roughly Norman), but to be honest much of Tolkien’s ideas were uniquely his. In any case, theorizing about Tolkien is a dangerous business, as everyone has their own opinion!
And that’s getting a bit off topic: I think the OP was asking where analogues of different human ethnicities are found in the Forgotten Realms.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Seconded. As far as depicting Disney characters, while Disney often pays lip service to certain cultures, a large part of what they do is taking fairy tales and myths from various cultures and disney-fy them to fit their distinct artistic and storytelling style, which is why you might watch Beauty and the Beast and aside from the odd French accent here or there, there's nothing distinctly French about it as much as it is distinctly Disney.
For that reason, I don't think you should worry much about connecting in-game ethnicities to real world counterparts beyond a few vague pieces of cultural shorthand. If done wrong (and it's real easy to do wrong), it can be downright offensive, and if done well then people likely won't even notice.
Instead I would just relate the NPC's back to the works from which they are based, and people should get the picture from the cultural shorthand used in the original works. Instead of working out what the in-game equivalent of their cultures would be, you'll have a better time just going like "I come from a far off kingdom to the east on the brink of war with invaders" or "i come from a land covered in snow year round" or "my people dwell on the islands to the west..." that kind of thing.
Cormyr/Dragon Coast is often considered analogous with France. Also, the "Lady of Poison" FR novel contains a tattooed soldier named Gunggari Ulmarra that hails from the Osse area (which is analogous to Australia). Further ideas might be found here or here.
I never bothered to look too closely at the PHB's human ethnicities. I mean who knows what humanity would really look like in a world where "human genesis" may have occurred in a different environments than earth human origins and that world's original human population patterns moved over an entirely different geography? It's always seemed to me whenever the ethnicities are evoked it's usually used as a way to port over the IRL "culture" that ethnicity "looks like" and usually not in any sort of depth providing way, actually shallower than Disney. I wish they had focused diversity in skin and other physical traits in the artwork and left the ethnic definitions out.
Anyway, seeing how most of the responses here seem to be missing the question and answering via other humanoid races rather than varieties of human, I'm guessing most players paid as much attention to those pages of the human description as I did. Let's remember this question was asked almost two years ago,
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.