Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
'I play a knight whose job is protecting a castle from foreign hordes'
'I play a bard who goes from one village to another to play his lute in taverns'
Or when I do non european medieval fantasy settings(middle eastern, japanese, chinese, indian, etc), people always brings in characters who are westerners travelling to the region, some refuse to play locals.
Are most fantasy fans just stuck on Tolkien-esque middle earth style type of settings?
People find it easier to play something forvwhich they have some cultural anchor point or commonality.
I can tell you this isn't entirely true. If you go to asia (say southeast or south), and you look at the dnd games going on there, it will most likely be a medieval europe setting as well.
I never understood it either. :-)
I started a Carrion Crown campaign, really emphasized the the gothic nature of Ustalav, and everyone except one person wanted to create the Fellowship of the Ring. :-/
I think a lot of the art and game terms reinforce Medieval characteristics and characterizations.
There are elf paladins and dwarf wizards, not hengeyokai samurai and spiritfolk wu jen. At least not in the CRB.
It also varies by group. Some people only play leather-clad ninja ladies. Some groups are very cosmopolitan. It just depends on the group and the campaign setting. My favorite aspect of Planescape was how cosmopolitan it was.
Ah yes, japanese fantasy is certainly the second most popular theme. Perhaps because Anime and Western Cartoons are what most people grow up with, so they draw most of their inspiration from there?
History is something most people get into when they're older, beyond their formative years
I was trying to think of examples that are not from Oriental Adventures, but I couldn't think of any.
I guess I need to brush up on my non-Western mythology!
Let see... Thinking back over the last 10-15 years, our group has done
Japanese/Chinese like campaign
Persian flavored campaign
Egyptian themed campaign
Steampunk like campaign
Sci-Fi like campaign
Planeswalker type of campaign
Norse/Viking flavored campaign
Pirate campaign
Can't explain anyone else but obvious our group is NOT stuck in a medieval europe fantasy mind set. Current campaign is Hell's Rebels so we are back to a medieval europe fantasy style campaign for the first time in ages.
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Are most fantasy fans just stuck on Tolkien-esque middle earth style type of settings?
Dunno, but my group rocks a lot of L5R...and Raveloft was my go-to setting in the old 2E days(and remains my favorite D&D campaign setting).
Depends on the group, but I think "generic western fantasy" is sort of the "vanilla ice cream" on offer, and people often default to it
Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
'I play a knight whose job is protecting a castle from foreign hordes'
'I play a bard who goes from one village to another to play his lute in taverns'
Or when I do non european medieval fantasy settings(middle eastern, japanese, chinese, indian, etc), people always brings in characters who are westerners travelling to the region, some refuse to play locals.
Are most fantasy fans just stuck on Tolkien-esque middle earth style type of settings?
If you're playing Pathfinder, the game has strong roots in the "traditional medieval fantasy" that you speak of.
That's probably part of your problem. No matter what people say, mechanics and settings are pretty strongly connected IMO. Sure you can play Pathfinder and strip off all the setting material. But then barbarians (among other things) feel out of place.
I like a broad range of settings, however horror is not one of my favorite to play in.
Not accusing anyone of anything but I have had too many times where a GM has used "it's a horror setting" to simply be a sadistic *@#! to people.
Otherwise though I'm good.
Alchemist with extra arm, the breath weapon discovery with an axe and pistol makes a fun techmarine (breath weapon is instead the flamethrower off the extra arm).
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My players in a couple of different groups really enjoyed an medieval Eastern European / Russian themed setting I used for some 3.5 campaigns.
Lots of remote villages deep in pine forests, wooden churches with lots of icons, numerous monasteries, barbarian, centaur and orc tribes coming out of the steppes to raid.
The scimitar replaced the longsword as the most commonly found martial weapon, armour had different look and feel but mechanically stayed the same, many people wore big fur coats and hats, sleighs were seen as a means of transport in winter.
No game mechanic changes or house rules were needed at all but it made a refreshingly different flavour from the norm.
What did help was googling some images of old buildings from that area to show as pictures when people visited a monastery / castle etc to help give the right frame of reference and always having a few randomly generated names ready to use in my notebook so that the random NPC they chat to is a Grigori or a Agnieska, not Bob or Sue.
My players in a couple of different groups really enjoyed an medieval Eastern European / Russian themed setting I used for some 3.5 campaigns.
Lots of remote villages deep in pine forests, wooden churches with lots of icons, numerous monasteries, barbarian, centaur and orc tribes coming out of the steppes to raid.
The scimitar replaced the longsword as the most commonly found martial weapon, armour had different look and feel but mechanically stayed the same, many people wore big fur coats and hats, sleighs were seen as a means of transport in winter.
No game mechanic changes or house rules were needed at all but it made a refreshingly different flavour from the norm.
What did help was googling some images of old buildings from that area to show as pictures when people visited a monastery / castle etc to help give the right frame of reference and always having a few randomly generated names ready to use in my notebook so that the random NPC they chat to is a Grigori or a Agnieska, not Bob or Sue.
This is some very good points. Just changing the name of people or city alone is enough to give a different cultural imagery. Music also helps
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Many years ago a French RPG magazine published some material for DnD that was greatly inspired by North America's native people (before contact with Europeans) and I loved it
I think most DnD players have been RPG-educated within a setting greatly based on Medieval Europe and anything different is outside their greatest comfort zone. A bit like traveling to a foreign country.
The majority of fantasy media in the English language is the Standard Medieval European Fantasy(tm) setting. One of the rules of writing is "write what you know" so it's hard to blame people for sticking with what they know. That's why Japan is the second most popular. Thanks to the Western (especially American) popularity of Anime and Manga, people feel mroe comfortable with its specific tropes.
A good GM can introduce these players to something new but that takes skill and a lot of knowledge. You don't want to turn the setting into a stereotypical joke. And players are going to be uncomfortable if they care about making a non-stereotypical character. If they don't care then you probably shouldn't be playing with them. I know I wouldn't want to play a Sub-Saharan African themed campaign with someone playing a savage cannibal with a bone through the nose or some other racist s&%*.
Mixing characters from different settings in a campaign has to be handled deftly. One of the players in my group is a huge Anime fan and builds his characters' personalities based on Anime tropes. The rest of the group are far more casual Anime fans and don't always see what he's going for and it leads to our characters fighting a lot. This would be fine in a novel or a group of expert roleplayers but in our group it just leads to frustration.
Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
One issue specific to Pathfinder is that the system, itself, does not work well with more "civilized" settings. Remember that Pathfinder is basically some light role-playing bolted onto a fairly detailed miniature-based wargame. If you strip combat out of the Core Rulebook, you lose about half of the pages. If you strip "investigation" out of the the Core Rulebook, you lose maybe a page.
This makes it rather difficult to run Victorian-style gothic horror, because the standard tropes are a) you're not allowed to solve problems by beating on someone or something until the problem goes away, and b) that woudn't work anyway. The same issue applies to most classic and non-classic Chinese fiction (see van Gulik's Judge Dee series for examples), and even a lot of the Brothers Grimm. ("And then Cinderella said 'Eff that, Stepmother, I'm going to the ball anyway! Roll for initiative, b*tch!'")
Basically, if you're not set in a really combat heavy genre, and specifically melee combat, Pathfinder isn't a good choice. So, that works for classic European fantasy, Arthurian romances (as long as you ignore the 'romance' bit; use Pendragon otherwise), Hong Kong action films, Dragonball Z-style anime (not even all anime in general), and some myths from all over the world (Hercules, the Monkey King, Cúchulainn).
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Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
One issue specific to Pathfinder is that the system, itself, does not work well with more "civilized" settings. Remember that Pathfinder is basically some light role-playing bolted onto a fairly detailed miniature-based wargame. If you strip combat out of the Core Rulebook, you lose about half of the pages. If you strip "investigation" out of the the Core Rulebook, you lose maybe a page.
This makes it rather difficult to run Victorian-style gothic horror, because the standard tropes are a) you're not allowed to solve problems by beating on someone or something until the problem goes away, and b) that woudn't work anyway. The same issue applies to most classic and non-classic Chinese fiction (see van Gulik's Judge Dee series for examples), and even a lot of the Brothers Grimm. ("And then Cinderella said 'Eff that, Stepmother, I'm going to the ball anyway! Roll for initiative, b*tch!'")
Basically, if you're not set in a really combat heavy genre, and specifically melee combat, Pathfinder isn't a good choice. So, that works for classic European fantasy, Arthurian romances (as long as you ignore the 'romance' bit; use Pendragon otherwise), Hong Kong action films, Dragonball Z-style anime (not even all anime in general), and some myths from all over the world (Hercules, the Monkey King, Cúchulainn).
I heavily disagree with this. I think pathfinder is a very flexible and diverse system meant for many different settings.
that's why you have classes like the investigator or archetypes focused on social situations. There really is no wrong way to play pathfinder as long as the players enjoy it.
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Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
One issue specific to Pathfinder is that the system, itself, does not work well with more "civilized" settings. Remember that Pathfinder is basically some light role-playing bolted onto a fairly detailed miniature-based wargame. If you strip combat out of the Core Rulebook, you lose about half of the pages. If you strip "investigation" out of the the Core Rulebook, you lose maybe a page.
This makes it rather difficult to run Victorian-style gothic horror, because the standard tropes are a) you're not allowed to solve problems by beating on someone or something until the problem goes away, and b) that woudn't work anyway. The same issue applies to most classic and non-classic Chinese fiction (see van Gulik's Judge Dee series for examples), and even a lot of the Brothers Grimm. ("And then Cinderella said 'Eff that, Stepmother, I'm going to the ball anyway! Roll for initiative, b*tch!'")
Basically, if you're not set in a really combat heavy genre, and specifically melee combat, Pathfinder isn't a good choice. So, that works for classic European fantasy, Arthurian romances (as long as you ignore the 'romance' bit; use Pendragon otherwise), Hong Kong action films, Dragonball Z-style anime (not even all anime in general), and some myths from all over the world (Hercules, the Monkey King, Cúchulainn).
I heavily disagree with this. I think pathfinder is a very flexible and diverse system meant for many different settings.
that's why you have classes like the investigator or archetypes focused on social situations. There really is no wrong way to play pathfinder as long...
Id say PF is somewhat flexible. However, there comes a point when cramming the PF square peg into a triangle hole is just too damn much work. I am perfectly ok with that, because I don't believe in the one game system to rule them all philosophy. YMMV.
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I think pathfinder is a very flexible and diverse system meant for many different settings.
that's why you have classes like the investigator or archetypes focused on social situations. There really is no wrong way to play pathfinder...
Pointing out that a given ruleset doesn't give much support for activity X is not the same as saying that using that ruleset for activity X is a "wrong way to play". Similarly, the fact that you can have fun doing activity X with a given game does not mean that the game itself really supports activity X.
It is a verifiable fact that Pathfinder contains a lot more support for combat-oriented gameplay than for just about any other endeavor. It's pretty silly to get offended at the observation of this fact, especially when you consider the implications about your ability to have fun with various gameplay elements in spite of the lack of support from the system. You should be flattered at the observation that your fun is mostly of your own making (since Pathfinder's not helping much), not getting all huffy about it.
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It's pretty silly to get offended at the observation of this fact, especially when you consider the implications about your ability to have fun with various gameplay elements in spite of the lack of support from the system. You should be flattered at the observation that your fun is mostly of your own making (since Pathfinder's not helping much), not getting all huffy about it.
Ah, yes, there's nothing people like more than being told that something is a compliment while simultaneously dismissing their feelings!
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It's pretty silly to get offended at the observation of this fact, especially when you consider the implications about your ability to have fun with various gameplay elements in spite of the lack of support from the system. You should be flattered at the observation that your fun is mostly of your own making (since Pathfinder's not helping much), not getting all huffy about it.Ah, yes, there's nothing people like more than being told that something is a compliment while simultaneously dismissing their feelings!
Yeah, perhaps "it's silly to get offended at X" was an insensitive way to express myself. I'm open to suggestions on better ways to communicate the same content, though the one-hour edit window has closed, so all I can do is take advice for the future.
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If I may offer some advice, stick to why you disagree with the points that someone else made. I know your quite capable of examining and replying to actual assertions.
Telling people what they should feel, however, is rather unproductive. Things like telling people not to be offended, or that they're being "huffy", are especially dismissive. It's reasonable to discuss how you or someone else feels about a subject, but try to approach it like any other discussion. You seem to feel this way, is that correct? What about your experience is causing that, since I don't feel the same way? Etc.
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I agree that the way I presented my own ideas was carelessly disrespectful.
As for your suggestions, mechaPoet, some of your advice reads as though you have an underlying belief that all feelings, categorically, are valid and immune to critique. It's as though your complaint with my post is not only with how I talked about his feeling of offense not being valid, but the very fact that I did so at all. Am I understanding you correctly?
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Well, it depends what you mean by "valid." You can't tell people not to feel the things they've already felt. I think often there's also not enough credence given to "feelings," if and when they are considered a separate thing not bound up in the intermingling of opinion, argument, and fact.
I'm not saying feelings are immune to critique. I am saying that dismissing people's feelings is not necessarily a critique. I read your critique as "I think it's admirable that you find a flexibility and a variety of ways to play Pathfinder, but I think that's a product of your own play style rather than the game system." But that's not quite what you said. I'm not even saying that you would make a better argument by not dismissing people, I just think it's rude and unnecessarily hostile in this kind of discussion (and I'm glad you were open to criticism and offered an apology - thanks!).
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I read your critique as "I think it's admirable that you find a flexibility and a variety of ways to play Pathfinder, but I think that's a product of your own play style rather than the game system."
Well, that's part of it. The other part was "Getting upset isn't really a valid response to someone merely describing the reality of what types of endeavors Pathfinder does and does not have robust support for." Clearly I was careless in my delivery and instead produced something rude. What's a means of expressing the above point that you think wouldn't be rude or otherwise objectionable? Would more detail (such as examples of the internal mechanisms that could be busted in order to produce the inappropriate feelings) have been helpful?
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First of all, I don't think that godfang seemed particularly upset? They just said they strongly disagree.
Secondly: "Getting upset isn't really a valid response to someone merely describing the reality of what types of endeavors Pathfinder does and does not have robust support for." Why? It seems to me that if someone says that a system I like isn't good at supporting the things that I thought it was good at (or - and here's the tricky thing - that I do find it robust enough to support), it's fine to be upset about that. Even people who can handle criticism well generally don't like when people criticize things they admire. Just because I realize that Pathfinder isn't as good at delivering the kind of game I like as other games doesn't mean that I wasn't kind of bummed out when the shine came off the apple, so to speak. And if I were someone who found Pathfinder to be exactly the right kind of game system for me, then pointing out that it's not good enough at certain things is actually an untrue statement.
So, to answer your question more directly: I don't think there is a good way to say "don't be upset when I tell you you're wrong about your own experiences with an RPG system." Maybe that's kind of harsh, but is it a fair assessment/summary of what you're saying?
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First of all, I don't think that godfang seemed particularly upset? They just said they strongly disagree.
I didn't intend to make any assertion as to the degree of the offense. If I did, I apologize for the confusion.
Secondly: "Getting upset isn't really a valid response to someone merely describing the reality of what types of endeavors Pathfinder does and does not have robust support for." Why? It seems to me that if someone says that a system I like isn't good at supporting the things that I thought it was good at (or - and here's the tricky thing - that I do find it robust enough to support), it's fine to be upset about that.
We're not talking about someone saying "it can't support X" (which of course would elicit a response when the listener finds it sufficiently supportive). We're talking about someone saying "it supports X less than it supports Y".
And if I were someone who found Pathfinder to be exactly the right kind of game system for me, then pointing out that it's not good enough at certain things is actually an untrue statement.
It's also not the statement being made. Again, not "can't do X" or "isn't good enough at X", just "less X than Y".
So, to answer your question more directly: I don't think there is a good way to say "don't be upset when I tell you you're wrong about your own experiences with an RPG system."
And again, that's not what was said. Nobody said anyone was wrong what their experiences playing Pathfinder had been. The upsetting comment was a mere statement of relativity: Pathfinder contains more rules for X than Y.
Interestingly, your repeated misidentification of the triggering stimulus is part of why it's important to recognize the potential invalidity of feelings: if someone's feeling in response to a given stimulus is inappropriate/unhealthy, that can be a clue that something's out of whack. Perhaps there was a miscommunication (such as seeing "less X than Y" and instead internalizing "not enough X"), or perhaps the listener puts too much of their identity into their idea of what Pathfinder is like, or any number of other things. If nobody can point out when a feeling is invalid, those things are a lot harder to find and remedy.
Does that make sense?
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The next campaign I'm running is taking place in a stereotypical "Victorian London steampunk city" that just happens to be on top of a giant beanstalk that is growing out of a lake in the middle of a floating continent covered in jungles, plains, and glaciers. The city was colonized about 700 years ago, but almost 200 years ago, they had to raise it up on the beanstalk to save it from being drowned by the machinations of aberration-worshiping cultists. The native folks will be a combination of barely Bronze Age cities and temples and Stone Age tribes combining a bunch of Aztec, Egyptian, Chinese, SE Asian, South Asian, and Native American influences.
A good chunk of our pop cultural touchstones, from TV to movies to literature, are based on some variation of Medieval Europe. It's there to a much lesser extant for East Asia and the Classical World. But yeah, there is not a whole lot of sources for inspiration outside of those area.
So it's very easy for people to default Fantasy to "Medieval Europe analogs"
Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
'I play a knight whose job is protecting a castle from foreign hordes'
'I play a bard who goes from one village to another to play his lute in taverns'
Or when I do non european medieval fantasy settings(middle eastern, japanese, chinese, indian, etc), people always brings in characters who are westerners travelling to the region, some refuse to play locals.
Are most fantasy fans just stuck on Tolkien-esque middle earth style type of settings?
Pick a trope and you'll find someone stuck to it. It's the nature of the thing. This also applies to someone who insists on playing the samurai in a world where they do not exist.
Part of it is due to the fact that people don't know the cultures and don't want to run them badly.
Are they just less popular?
I run games in my homebrew setting which is a gothic horror victorian era-esque world and it baffles me how many players seem to find it confusing.Most of the character applications seem more suited for traditional fantasy
examples:
'my character is a barbarian working as a mercenary to whatever king hires him'
'I play a knight whose job is protecting a castle from foreign hordes'
'I play a bard who goes from one village to another to play his lute in taverns'
Or when I do non european medieval fantasy settings(middle eastern, japanese, chinese, indian, etc), people always brings in characters who are westerners travelling to the region, some refuse to play locals.
Are most fantasy fans just stuck on Tolkien-esque middle earth style type of settings?
Pick a trope and you'll find someone stuck to it. It's the nature of the thing. This also applies to someone who insists on playing the samurai in a world where they do not exist.
Part of it is due to the fact that people don't know the cultures and don't want to run them badly.
Oh, man. This is very true. I am currently doing a campaign based on the crusade era middle east and someone asked if he can play a half-western-half-japanese wandering samurai named 'James Lee'
I thought he was joking, but uh, turns out he was playing it serious.
I also had a player (who was chinese) and in every game no matter the setting, he insists on playing an Arian with a german name. Middle eastern, Feudal Japan, you name it
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Cool thread!
If you're looking for a Pathfinder campaign setting about Eqypt, Africa, and Arabian-like lands, be sure to check out The Southlands Campaign Setting from Kobold Press.
Southlands was chosen as one of the Top 10 of 2016 by Endzeitgeist and it's been nominated for a couple Ennies this year too (Best Setting and Best Cartography)!
There's also the awesome, full color Southlands Bestiary
A good chunk of our pop cultural touchstones, from TV to movies to literature, are based on some variation of Medieval Europe. It's there to a much lesser extant for East Asia and the Classical World. But yeah, there is not a whole lot of sources for inspiration outside of those area.
So it's very easy for people to default Fantasy to "Medieval Europe analogs"
This is why I pivoted towards post-colonial North America for all my Pathfinder work I'm in California, and I'm from here. When I say "It like Art Deco Cold War America under Teddy Roosevelt with magic as part of daily life, and we're hyperviolent FBI types who kill dangerous magical beasts and handle the worst mage criminals", there's plenty of pop cultural and historical touchstones to use. We all grew up on American media, after all, and places like Vendalia are close enough to California to understand the character one is making. Yes, it's an anachronistic historical mashup, but that's not a bad thing.
Also, as an immigrant nation, foreign characters are very easily incorporated. If a player really wants to be Japanese, there are Japanese people in America, and some of them work for the American government. Same with any other ethnicity. A samurai wouldn't fit, but that's an issue of time period, not ethnicity.
Also, one of the big pieces of inspiration I took from Dragon Age and The Witcher (my favorite Medieval European fantasies by far) is the high level of racial strife and systemic bigotry. Two things that fit into an American setting all too well.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the concept of fantasy counterpart cultures in general, no matter what the medium. (I'm new enough to the hobby that most of my experience with this issue comes from non-RPG media, but I have such an aversion to the phenomenon in novels that I've been turned off certain books for this reason alone.)
However, I think I'd feel more comfortable playing in a "medieval European" setting than something that's supposed to be a representation of some other real-world culture. Maybe because "medieval European fantasy" is a known thing in the pop culture I grew up with, while "ancient Egyptian fantasy" (or whatever) is not. Cultural appropriation considerations probably play a role as well.
My group plays in a kind of vague homebrew setting, so I've never played in Golarion, but I suspect I wouldn't like it so much, with its "Alain the cavalier from Totally Not France". (This may be an unfair characterization. I hope it is.)
I don't know what this all means about what established RPG settings I would like the most. Maybe Eberron? I don't know much about it, but I've always thought it sounds intriguing (and pretty different from everything else).
Also, the fact that these are my preferences doesn't mean that I'll refuse to play in a setting that doesn't satisfy them. My tastes are pretty idiosyncratic, after all. My group's last campaign ended up incorporating some sort of Planescape stuff (I think?), which contained my absolute least favorite thing to have in a fantasy setting (namely RL religion), but I still enjoyed the campaign because I like my group.
Personally I really enjoy non-traditional fantasy and sci-fi settings. One of my favorite fantasy settings is from the Earthdawn RPG. One of my fave sci-fi settings is Rifts. The weirder the setting, the more I enjoy it.
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Personally, I'm not a fan of the concept of fantasy counterpart cultures in general, no matter what the medium. (I'm new enough to the hobby that most of my experience with this issue comes from non-RPG media, but I have such an aversion to the phenomenon in novels that I've been turned off certain books for this reason alone.)
However, I think I'd feel more comfortable playing in a "medieval European" setting than something that's supposed to be a representation of some other real-world culture. Maybe because "medieval European fantasy" is a known thing in the pop culture I grew up with, while "ancient Egyptian fantasy" (or whatever) is not. Cultural appropriation considerations probably play a role as well.
One issue to consider is that people will generally give you less crap if you do medieval European badly than if you do something else badly. The social-justice-warrior types love to give people hell for "cultural appropriation" example 1 example 2 example 3 et cetera, et cetera, world without end, selah.
The effect is that if I want my rogue to be wearing 11th century leather armor and carrying a 16th century French rapier on his way to slay a 19th century Balkan vampire in a British opera cloak, that's fine, but heavens help the person who wants to run something based on the legends of Coyote Trickster who wasn't born and raised in a Cherokee-speaking community. (I'm just waiting for someone to point out that the Cherokee didn't actually have Coyote Trickster legends. Which is true; the trickster figure in Cherokee legend was a rabbit. Goodness me, how horrible a person am I for not distinguishing between the Navajo and the Cherokee?)
Similarly, the standard Pathfinder wereshark lycanthrope completely misrepresents the Polynesian tales of shark-men, blending them with the more traditional western European werewolf. (And even the Pathfinder werewolf itself is an amalgamation of a lot of different traditions of a wolf-man, but since this amalgamation happened long before Paizo was founded, few people know or care.)
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In all honesty I prefer pre-industrial kitchen sink fantasy to medieval Europe fantasy. That way valiant knights rescuing damsels and samurai warriors fighting for honor can exist alongside each other and a gunslinger can show up every now and then with their experimental weapon.
That said as long as I can go around as a half-elf with a sword and healing magic and not get arrested for having a weapon (barring fantasy racism) because there's monsters and s++~ on the road I'll be fine...unless we're playing magical girls or that Pokemon tabletop, then I'm fine with a modern setting, or a sci-fi setting where we're playing with mechs.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the concept of fantasy counterpart cultures in general, no matter what the medium. (I'm new enough to the hobby that most of my experience with this issue comes from non-RPG media, but I have such an aversion to the phenomenon in novels that I've been turned off certain books for this reason alone.)
However, I think I'd feel more comfortable playing in a "medieval European" setting than something that's supposed to be a representation of some other real-world culture. Maybe because "medieval European fantasy" is a known thing in the pop culture I grew up with, while "ancient Egyptian fantasy" (or whatever) is not. Cultural appropriation considerations probably play a role as well.
One issue to consider is that people will generally give you less crap if you do medieval European badly than if you do something else badly. The social-justice-warrior types love to give people hell for "cultural appropriation" example 1 example 2 example 3 et cetera, et cetera, world without end, selah.
The effect is that if I want my rogue to be wearing 11th century leather armor and carrying a 16th century French rapier on his way to slay a 19th century Balkan vampire in a British opera cloak, that's fine, but heavens help the person who wants to run something based on the legends of Coyote Trickster who wasn't born and raised in a Cherokee-speaking community. (I'm just waiting for someone to point out that the Cherokee didn't actually have Coyote Trickster legends. Which is true; the trickster figure in Cherokee legend was a rabbit. Goodness me, how horrible a person am I for not distinguishing between the Navajo and the Cherokee?)
Similarly, the standard Pathfinder...
It's sad, but you might be right, especially when playing with randoms. RPGs used to be about letting your imagination run wild and playing whatever comes to mind. Now, it's like you have to match the gender/race of whatever you're playing or someone will jump all over you for being "insensitive". With that in mind, generic "white dude" medieval fantasy seems the safe bet.
Years ago, I played a Native American shaman in a Werewolf game. I studied several books about Native American history, culture, mythology, etc, so that I could be as accurate as possible. Everyone in my group loved that. Nowadays, no way would I be able to do that without being called a racist.
Playing the generic white dude is the only way to not offend somebody these days, so it doesn't surprise me that rpgs tend to fixate on medieval Europe.
It's sad, but you might be right, especially when playing with randoms. RPGs used to be about letting your imagination run wild and playing whatever comes to mind. Now, it's like you have to match the gender/race of whatever you're playing or someone will jump all over you for being "insensitive". With that in mind, generic "white dude" medieval fantasy seems the safe bet.Personally, I'm not a fan of the concept of fantasy counterpart cultures in general, no matter what the medium. (I'm new enough to the hobby that most of my experience with this issue comes from non-RPG media, but I have such an aversion to the phenomenon in novels that I've been turned off certain books for this reason alone.)
However, I think I'd feel more comfortable playing in a "medieval European" setting than something that's supposed to be a representation of some other real-world culture. Maybe because "medieval European fantasy" is a known thing in the pop culture I grew up with, while "ancient Egyptian fantasy" (or whatever) is not. Cultural appropriation considerations probably play a role as well.
One issue to consider is that people will generally give you less crap if you do medieval European badly than if you do something else badly. The social-justice-warrior types love to give people hell for "cultural appropriation" example 1 example 2 example 3 et cetera, et cetera, world without end, selah.
... except, of course, if I want to play something bizarre in a generic-European fantasy setting, whether it fits there or not. Playing a kitsune barbarian of the opposite sex with tribal scars who wields an arquebus is perfectly fine in a generic-European setting like Golarion, but Ghu-help-me if I want to actually play an Indonesian hemisemidemigod descended from Batara Guru.
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Let me see if I understand your argument; RPing someone of a different race than yourself is "perpetuating racist stereotypes"?? Do you even realize your argument that everyone should "stick to their own race" is the very DEFINITION of racism?
I'm of middle eastern descent, so according to you that means I can only rp middle eastern males?? Should I "stick to my own kind" when I roleplay? We're playing Pathfinder, I'd love to play an Ulfen badass, but since I'm Middle Eastern, I guess I have to play someone from Qadira.
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Let me see if I understand your argument; RPing someone of a different race than yourself is "perpetuating racist stereotypes"?? Do you even realize your argument that everyone should "stick to their own race" is the very DEFINITION of racism?
I'm of middle eastern descent, so according to you that means I can only rp middle eastern males?? Should I "stick to my own kind" when I roleplay? We're playing Pathfinder, I'd love to play an Ulfen badass, but since I'm Middle Eastern, I guess I have to play someone from Qadira.
Nowadays, no way would I be able to do that without being called a racist.
The only thing I'm saying is that you seem concerned about being called a racist without voicing any concern that what you're doing could be racist.
Why do you think that someone would call you a racist for these things? Is it because someone has called you racist for your character portrayals? Have you taken into account what people of that race have to say about the ways they see themselves presented? And in this specific case, are you using "Native American" as a shorthand for a specific tribe or First Nation people that you based your character on, or did you just kind of go with an amalgam of different cultures?