> Be WotC
> Announce new campaign themed around Kara-Tur
> (Region lock it to Japan for giggles)
> New lore? New locations? NEW MONSTERS!?
> It's set in Phandalin on the Sword fucking Coast

Why does WotC literally hate every other fucking setting?

>>96230230 (OP)
$$$

>>96230230 (OP)
They don't even like the Sword Coast, they just like monkey-see-monkey-do name recognition and money

>have the entirety of faerune to explore.
>all most all official lore is centered on the sword coast.
Why?

>>96230290
> "...entirety of faerune..."

Here it is.

>>96230230 (OP)
My memory of Kara-Tur is that I flipped through a book at the comic shop, decided it was too racist even for a conservative white edgelord teenager in the Bible Belt and put that shit back on the shelf.

Dealt heavily in Asian stereotypes, IIRC. Mind you, this was 20+ years ago when I saw it. All the non-Western D&D settings were always a bit… yikes even to me back then and I wasn’t exactly woke or concerned about offending people.

Kara-Tur was a hamfisted and pretty racist setting that basically read like a 19 year old who’s only knowledge of Asian art was a handful of kung fu movies and samurai flicks wrote a sub-par D&D campaign area. It sucked and people need to move on and stop pretending it didn’t.

It’s possible to write settings based on real world cultures that aren’t tone deaf. Tekumel is a great example. Ars Magicka had an entire book on Kabbalah that’s not just an expertly researched and written RPG supplement, it actually contains some very real and well thought out information on medieval Jewish mysticism. You could certainly make a new fantasy East Asian setting, and I definitely think they should, but KT/OA has way too much baggage associated with the name that they need to just start from scratch. If they want to keep some kind of narrative consistency they could just present it as “oh this is what this place is actually like, the older canon is based on false or poorly researched accounts written by foreigners” which is how Warhammer 40K used to do it.

>>96230354
This...ugh....it was just so problematic. I am a tough and gritty welder down in Arkansas. But when I saw just how stereotypical and problematic that whole settings was...eesh.

Listen, I may just be some white dude, but I know that eurocentric settings are what I should be restricted to. I don't know nothing about the greater cultural complexity behind ninjas and whatnot, I'll just stick with my knights and medieval coffee shops thank you very much.

Plus, I think it better we make room for other people in the hobby, more inclusive spaces could use some Black and Brown Bodies in them. Rather than us dusty ole white boys huh?

>>96230354
>yikes

>>96230354
>>96230384
2/10 for the effort.

>>96230354
They can just retcon the dumb shit, like they've done in every new edition. This new campaign is just lazy bullshit to entice nips.

>>96230354
>>96230384

>>96230354
What a faggot. Warhammer has Araby, Nippon and Cathay all been cartoons of their places and no one hate them. Shit even lizardmen are a meme of mexicans, but no one care because everyone is a meme in that world and they do 180 from becoming racist to becoming cool again.

>>96230426
Eh, the lizardmen were always bland compared to the slann they replaced. And now they're just like star demons or whatever counter to chaos.

>>96230426
That's why Warhammer, as a franchise, sold less than the Space Marine Tactical Squad kit. People strive for cultural authenticity. That's why with The Old World they're correcting their mistakes.

Cathay has BIPOC cultural experts informing the design process and lore rewriting which, lets be honest, was super needed. I mean a "Monkey King", that's like making an American faction and having Mickey Mouse be the leader! Just ridiculous, I'm sure you can agree.

On the topic of tomb Kings and Lizardmen...yikes. Tomb Kings were never popular for this reason and most people look passed the icky stuff with lizardmen, building them without the racist pseudo-aztec details and bits.

>>96230230 (OP)
>around Kara-Tur
>It's set in Phandalin on the Sword fucking Coast
Explain. I don't understand what this means.

>>96230354
It wasn't even the racism. It was more the cringe of the people who were into it. Weebs were just starting to appear and damn were they embarrassing.

>>96230511
kys

>>96230290
>all most all official lore is centered on the sword coast.
That's not true.
There's thousands upon thousands of pages of lore on the other regions. It's just that they haven't had any video games made for them so no one except lore nerds cares about them.

>>96230454
>And now they're just like star demons or whatever counter to chaos.
That is exceptionally based and more fun than frog people, thoughbeit

>>96230565
>It wasn't even the racism. It was more the cringe of the people who were into it. Weebs were just starting to appear and damn were they embarrassing.
As ultimate weeb I fucking despise kara-tur because "tur" isn't a valid syllable in japanese

>>96230633
>thousands upon thousands of pages
No... not really. I've looked. There's some lore for everything but its bare bones compared to the sword coast (WD, NW BG)

>>96230649
Well in the early 90s it was more China than Japan anyhow. "Weeb" didn't become a thing until later. I just don't have a better word for it.

>>96230511
>that's like making an American faction and having Mickey Mouse be the leader!
That would be epic actually

>>96230637
>generic demons but good
Nah.

>>96230511
>People responding to this like it isn't obvious trolling
lol

>>96230354
>Tekumel is a great example
lmao spoken as someone whose never read a bit of Tekumel.
Yeah, i'm sure all those indians would like to be known for human sacrifice and ignorance of what goes on around them.

>>96230354
You're baiting and typing like a huge fag and yet you know you're right deep down.
Oriental Adventures is fucking cringe as shit as a weeb and would fucking make any Asian they're trying to appeal to puke. Even Japs back in the 80's who would import RPG books in English knew it. It's the most burger shit ever.

>>96231076
/tg/ responds to every easy strawman to make themselves feel smarter

Reminder that it's entirely the work of Zeb Cook who ignored Froideval and Gygax's outline, arguably due to a short deadline.

>>96230354
>>96230384
>>96230511
Why are you posting?

>>96230230 (OP)
>Region lock it to Japan for giggles
When are they gonna learn that Japan just wants to play custom CoC where every player is a schoolgirl hunting eldritch horrors?

>>96230354
I love bait like this.

>>96231400
Nah go read it. Honestly it gets pretty cringe pretty fast.

>>96231400
>there actually is a white black panther in the comics, he's T'challa's son

>>96231400
This used to be my trooncord profile picture for a year. The hilarious thing about my bait is that I literally just copypasted it all from Reddit comments.

>>96230354
>Tekumel is a great example
The setting made by an actual neo-nazi?

>>96230354
>All the non-Western D&D settings were always a You're a faggot.

>>96230633
> It's just that they haven't had any video games made for them so no one except lore nerds cares about them.

That's bullshit because WotC still doesn't know Baldur's Gate exists besides the time those people made a game about it.

>>96231682
>a literal nazi was better at making non-insulting games based on other cultures than the woke crowd
Pottery.

>>96231682
Surprisingly it seems he was just an anti-semite, because Tekumel pretty respectful and is also a setting with explicitly no whites at all

>>96230633
Work on your art

>>96230384
>I am a tough and gritty welder down in Arkansas
>I know eurocentric settings
No.

>>96232968
I'm pretty sure the controversy was that he was revealed as a contributer to a whige supremacist / neo-nazi magazine after his death.

Perhaps he was the kind who genuinely felt like other cultures did have worth, they just needed to be distinct and separate?

But yes, endlessly funny that his setting is a thousand times better than anything the woke crowd has made in the last 10 years.

>>96230290
What kills me is that Sword Cost sucks ass. It has literally no character. Its the most basic setting you could cook up and its only advantage is that every campaign without big worldbuilding could be shoved into it.

>>96233180
I think he just hates Jews in specific. Like Timothy McVeigh who was into a book by the very same publisher, but cared about being anti government more than having strong opinions on race.
Don't get me wrong, they still hung out with neonazis and were fine with it, that says enough. But I think both were motivated by their own pet issues.
Also Tekumel is a mishmash of multiple cultures for the sake of exoticism, I don't know if it's the best example. Same could be said Glorantha I guess but that's the 70s setting I jerk off more to.

>>96233449
>hates
*hated
The man is dead

>>96230354
Absolutely. Kara-Tur is textbook Orientalism: a mashup of surface-level clichés cooked up by white dudes who watched Shogun, Big Trouble in Little China, and maybe a Shaw Brothers marathon, then decided they could distill all of East Asia into “samurai vs. kung fu vs. mystics with funny hats.” It’s not even just “a product of its time”—it was already regressive when it was published, and even back then you had Asian fans going, “What the hell is this caricature?”

The real issue is that it didn’t engage with the cultures it was drawing from—it strip-mined aesthetics while ignoring context, history, or even basic respect. It was like someone binge-watched anime and then tried to write an encyclopedia entry on Confucianism. Hell, even the naming conventions are just garbled nonsense. It’s cosplay-level writing pretending to be worldbuilding.

And yeah, you hit the nail on the head: Tekumel’s a perfect counterexample. Not flawless, but at least Barker actually studied cultures and languages deeply and tried to build something coherent and respectful. Same with Ars Magica—when it touches on real-world traditions, it doesn’t treat them like exotic flavor text. There’s depth, nuance, care.

At this point, trying to salvage Kara-Tur is like trying to make Birth of a Nation into an inspirational civil rights film. It’s not worth it. Burn it down, learn from the failure, and build something better. Start from scratch with actual consultation from Asian writers, historians, mythographers, etc. And yeah, totally agree—if you must acknowledge the old stuff, treat it in-universe as biased, colonial misrepresentation. That’s not only smarter narratively, it’s more honest.

Frankly, we should be pushing for more non-Western settings—but they need to be authored with authentic voices, not just re-skinned Eurofantasy with cherry blossoms slapped on top.

>>96233488
LMAO imagine getting this bent out of shape over a fantasy setting from 1985. Kara-Tur triggered the Reddit thought so hard he wrote an essay longer than his student loan debt about problematic samurai lore. Newsflash, champ: nobody back then gave a damn if the rice farmers in “Shou Lung” weren’t 100% ethnographically accurate to the Tang Dynasty. It was ninja magic and bamboo forests, not an East Asian studies thesis.

You whine about “Orientalism” like it’s 2002 and you just read Edward Said for the first time and now you think you’re the wokest white guy in the room. Bro. It’s elves and ogres with topknots. That’s it. People didn’t play Kara-Tur to contemplate cultural hegemony—they played it to roll d20s and kill oni with a katana that glows. Cope and seethe.

Also hilarious how “fantasy Europe with dragons = cool,” but “fantasy Asia with dragons = cancel it, it’s racist.” You people bend over backwards to defend everything as long as it’s not made by a white guy who had the audacity to watch a Kurosawa film. Meanwhile you're out here simping for Tekumel—a setting with literal slavery and brain worms controlling people—but it's okay because “it’s academically informed”? Get the hell out.

And that “let’s pretend old lore is just colonial lies” cope? That’s not clever, it’s retcon fanfic for people who cry over Harry Potter books now. Imagine being so fragile you need in-universe apologies for things you weren’t even alive to be offended by.

Go touch grass, install some testosterone, and maybe—just maybe—play a game without writing a term paper about it. Or don’t. More room at the table for people who actually came to have fun.

>>96233488
You're making the original sound great for gaming to be honest.
No one cares if it isn't historically correct so long as it doesn't claim that.
Orientalism is good btw. Edward Said was a butthurt prog American expat who didn't like that middle-easterners were enjoying and being influenced by the western takes on their cultures for political reasons. (like the French one thousand and one nights)

That fag is baiting hard with literal reddit copypasta but there is a tiny bit of truth to it. I never wanted to run eastern settings that were actually based on Japan or China because it felt jarring and because I never really knew the difference. I'm also extremely racist against Chinese and Japanese, first thing I learned about them was the Bataan death march. So yeah that kinda colored my opinion of em. Only the past 5 years have I become interested in Chinese history. It is really cool. I still hate chang for the most part but at the same time it's be awkward to run a setting full of "cultural appropriation" because generic chingchong orientalist settings feel weird to me.

Personally I'd keep ninjas and wu jen and samurai but I would completely change the language style and make it nothing like existing Asian languages. I'd make it like Essos from ASOIAF, where the Dothraki are basically mongols but their language doesn't sound much similar. Maybe I'd make them Asian looking, idk. I don't get offended by any of this shit it just feels weird and I don't get the same thing when I have Arab themed rakshasa kingdoms (even though rakshasas are Hindu mythology but whatever) so idk what's my deal is.

>>96233513
This. So much this.

My problem with oriental places in kitchen sink settings isn't the "cultural appropriation", but that more often than not they're literally just China or Japan. Okay so we have the Necromancer Empire, the Griffon Palatinates, the Hobgoblin Chiefdoms, the elusive Realms of the Fae-Folk, and...Chy'nah and Nip'pon that were just isekai'd straight from our world, sometimes with barely renamed places or concepts. Jarring as fuck, and why even play D&D then when there's L5R, Legend of Wulin or historical games set in those places? At least do the work of breaking Chy'nah and Ja'pan into setpieces and mashing them together like you do with the rest of your inspirations, so it feels more fantastical.

>>96233488
>a mashup of surface-level clichés
>it strip-mined aesthetics while ignoring context, history, or even basic respect.
This can be applied to any setting. Except change Asia for Europe.

>>96230230 (OP)
Forgotten realms was always trash. The MO of JotC since at least 2003 was to attempt to exploit nostalgia for this trash and pretend to have always had something to do with D&D even though they're just the corporate jews who bought the property and make shitty versions to sell more books like every other corporation.

>>96233488
You're selling me more and more on the OG Kara-Tur setting. The worst aspect of any fantasy setting is trying to be too "realistic". lmao

>>96231465
T'challa's son with a black woman.

So he got surgery or magic to make himself white just because he hates his dad that much.

>>96237621
No it was explained in the most recent issue that T'Challa's son died in childbirth and he adopted the son of Everett Ross who's wife died in "The Race War" and ross was undercover at the time and didn't even know he had a son

>>96230354
>Tekumel is a great example.
>written by a literal neo-Nazi
nice b8

>>96240616
>written by a literal neo-Nazi
Good.
Sieg fucking Heil, bunkertranny.

>>96240663
Islam fuck yeah

>>96240663
>Seething nazi
lol

>>96239669
Oh that's boring someone being transracial as a "Fuck you dad" is great.

>>96242900
fuck yo fat mudda
>>96241154
inshallah

>>96230633
I think he forgot the qualifier of "since 2014"

>>96230680
OA is mid-80s however.

>>96230981
X-Crawl does it.

>>96233574
Its funny to see them bitch about authenticity when 80s D&D was about dudes in horned viking helmets and scalemail breaking into 12th century English castles to rescue 10th century serfs.

>>96233488
>The real issue is that it didn’t engage with the cultures it was drawing from—it strip-mined aesthetics while ignoring context, history, or even basic respect.
and what the fuck is wrong with that
why can't the authors just have fun instead of consulting with the cultural sensitivity board

>>96235221
>>96248205
These.
Nothing wrong with a setting using medieval Japan stereotypes taken from anime, tokusatsu or Akira Kurosawa movies, or medieval China taken from Hong Kong movies.

Back in 2e, if you wanted more historical stuff, there were Dragon article and the Historical Reference books. If you didn't care, well, just keep playing Tolkien elves fighting greek myth monsters in dungeons or whatever, that's cool too.

>>96248387
>why can't the authors just have fun instead of consulting with the cultural sensitivity board
Zeb Cook did, however, and those 80s Asians thought his Chinapan mashup was fun and cool.

>>96230649
Kara-Tur is Asia in general, though, it's got like two Japn kingdoms, two Chinas, some South Eastern Asia and I think even an India into the mix.

I want Kara-Tur back, and since we're on the subject anyway I want Kuei-jin back to VtM as well! I want to see Big Trouble in Little China adapted into an adventure! I want to see word "Oriental" on big bold letters at the cover! Fuck Edward Said!

>>96230633
Most FR setting books were fucking useless. Just collections of random meaningless data like what food they farm or that there's a dude named Johnny Maklevikur living in a hut (as referenced in the books about his second nephew on the mother's side!). The ones that had plot hooks had no cohesive setting lore and could had been set in Greyhawk (which was probably intentional)

>>96230981
Umerica, the magic post-apocaliptic US, has Disneyland turned into ancient ruins with cultists adhoring their forgotten gods and wearing their faces. Fort Knox is a museum dedicated to collecting that worthless green paper lying around, they believe something will happen once it's all in one place.

It's a fun book.

>>96232968
I don't know about this particular case, but nazis were fine with iranians and other brown people. The idea that it's all about white vs black is forcing US white supremacism (that came way before fascism) into european bullshit.

>>96232968
No, he was actually a neo-Nazi type.

Wrote "Serpent's Walk" under a pseudonym, where the hero joins the secret undercover SS to take over the world:

>Serpent's Walk is a neo-Nazi science fiction novel written by M. A. R. Barker, published under the pseudonym Randolph D. Calverhall. It was published in 1991 by National Vanguard Books, the book publishing division of the neo-Nazi group the National Alliance. The book features an alternate history where SS soldiers begin an underground resistance after the end of WWII; the protagonist, Alan Lessing, eventually becomes the Führer and worldwide dictator of the Fourth Reich, following a pandemic that eliminates millions. The book espouses a belief in an international Jewish conspiracy and extensively quotes Mein Kampf.

Also worked at a holocaust denial journal:

>Between 1990 and 2002, he was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Journal of Historical Review, which advocated Holocaust denial.

IIRC he just had some weird stuff about South Asians being okay or whatever. I think his wife is of Indian descent. Some things never change. Also converted to Islam.

>>96248387
>>96235221
>>96234609
>>96233574
>>96233513
Guys, you're talking to ChatGPT.

>It’s not even just “a product of its time”—it was already regressive when it was published

>it didn’t engage with the cultures it was drawing from—it strip-mined aesthetics while ignoring context, history, or even basic respect

I love lists of three things. I love em-dashes. I love "It's not X, it's Y" construction.

>>96230354
>>96230384
>>96230511
This is what ALL you libtrooners sound like btw.

>>96249149
>you guys ALL sound like these obvious baitposts
Maybe if your IQ is below room temperature.

>>96249149
>write factual and informational post
>chud: Y-YOU ARE TRANS!

>>96230426
>>96230511
>>96233488
>>96233513
>>96234567
>You have Paizo releasing the Tian Xia world guide and character guide last year with multiple Asian cultural consultants and sensitivity readers that worked on these books.

>Games Workshop this year releases a brand new army in over 20 years for their previously dead and now revived Warhammer The Old World setting that's Chinese inspired with more armies to come in the future.

Why couldn't the world's biggest and most popular tabletop RPG release something similar with their already established Asia setting?

>>96251345
WotC doesn't publish many books any more, and even fewer setting books; additionally, they maximize for avoiding flak, even without the SJW stuff involved. For example, a casual reading of the 5e DMG will find the word "might" used approximately 18 billion times, as in "you might do X, you might do Y," which makes a newbie learning to DM harder for no benefit to anyone, but does prevent a grognard from getting mad at a WotC writer for daring to tell people to play differently from how the grog plays.

Combined, these mean no Kara-Tur or Rokugan or anything of the sort.

>>96251345
Because WOTC is incredibly racist and fascist-adjacent

>>96230354
Is this a copypasta?

>>96251345
Here's the south asian version of the asian style campaign settings released by me right now conceived of at this very second.

>>96251345
The Takir set for MtG this year was very Chinese-inspired this time, compared to the original set, which was more Central asian or Tibetan-inspired

>>96230290
Slipped my mind

>>96252571
Topical

>>96252605
Should title it with that Gandalf movie quote
>I have no memory of this place

>>96230354
I like how this is blatant bait but there's a couple people agreeing with it because the point that Kara-Tur is a lame and lazily constructed campaign setting is even more blatant.

>>96252605
I think it was in the Tyranny of Dragons modules that briefly visiting Thay was written in.

>>96230981
>>96248808
Their totally inability to create an effective strawman will never fail to amuse me.

>>96252487
It's just some comments I found on Reddit strung together when I Googled Kara-Tur.

>>96249149
Try taking the dicks out of your ears, retard.

>>96230230 (OP)
>Why does WotC literally hate every other fucking setting?
Authorship.

They only fully own Greyhawk, because Gygax sold full ownership of everything to TSR when he left also he's dead in the ground and can't object, which is why it's been the one with the most support ever since writers started getting huffy about not being consulted when WotC made more books set in their IP.

HOWEVER, Ed Greenwood's contract says they MUST give him two books a year in his setting, or they lose all rights. BUT it doesn't say it has to be english language or released in the US, because that was just assumed at the time the contract was written since TSR was a US game publisher with an exclusively english writing staff.

This is the most maliciously compliant option they could imagine at giving Greenwood his due, while simultaneously trying to break into a new TTRPG market since they kind of burnt bridges with the western one.

>>96260289
And it's funny, because Ed "Dare you enter my magical realm, drow titty milk tastes like cinnamon and truffles" Greenwood is probably the author they singularly most would like to disassociate with. He's markedly more cooperative than the others they've been shoving aside, but he simply cannot keep his fetishes under wraps, which is family friendly image poison. By all rights, the obvious answer should be to just break the contract, give up FR as an IP and stop printing him books.

But the setting's relative popularity, heavy video game usage, and most of all their heavily reduced publication speed from the TSR days (2 books a year was once a pittance. now they only release like 4, so their the lion's share of their books are FR such that D&D 5e and FR are almost synonymous) have them buried deep in sunk cost fallacy.

They tried to backtrack it a little with MPMM and the 2024 PHB being more setting agnostic. But it's still one of the first things people think of, to the point that I don't know if especially green players even know they're not synonymous.

>>96230230 (OP)
>ITT:
Tho the bot is correct. Kara-Tur sucked ass

>>96260289
>>96260343
Didn't Ed Greenwood disavow Kara-Tur? It wasn't part of his original vision for the setting and it was TSR staff decision to integrate Kara-Tur, not his own choice.