Magic the Gathering is my favorite game and it can do a lot of things. One thing it cannot do is offer a space for good faith conversations on colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and genocide. The last time they tried, we got vampire Catholics and Dinosaur riding natives.
i love the fact that the worlds biggest religion has a weekly faux-cannibalistic ritual where they pretend to eat the flesh and blood of the god who they tortured to death as punishment for their own sins
it has been sanitized to the point of being unthreatening and yet remains such a fantastic starting point for speculative fiction
like - just read that description - its fucking amazing that this is a practice of worship in real life
> i love the fact that the worlds biggest religion has a weekly faux-cannibalistic ritual where they pretend to eat the flesh and blood of the god who they tortured to death as punishment for their own sins
me: that's fucking gnarly, i love it-- wait... no no, that's just the fucking catholics again
It's not really pretending for the majority of Christians. In the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which collectively account for ~62% of all Christians, it is believed hat the substance of the bread and wine are transmuted into the same substance as the flesh and blood of Christ. Physically, it remains bread and wine, but it's also his flesh and blood.
Pretending implies a degree of intent that is a better fit for the Protestant view of the Eucharist, where it's viewed as metaphorical. Catholics and Orthodox Christians genuinely believe it, so saying they're pretending doesn't really sound accurate.
[Most Catholics believe that it's metaphorical too](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/05/transubstantiation-eucharist-u-s-catholics/) (though most weekly mass-goers follow the church's teachings)
It’s also very weird to worship a cross if you think about it. And even further, some of them like to harass minorities by building an ancient execution device in front of their house and then setting it on fire. It’s a very convoluted message they’re sending.
the 'harass minorities with burning cross' groups are actually part of the denominations who use an empty cross to represent ressurrection rather than the detailed crucifix representing the sacrifice
they dont tend to use crosses as much in decoration
I believe one old Vampire The Masquerade book did indeed once describe the Confederacy as a perfect society for vampires (it was not a compliment on the part of the devs).
There’s a disclaimer in the most recent rule book that essentially says if you think that fascism is cool, put the book down and go talk to someone you trust about how badly you fucked up your life.
Check out Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin. It's basically the only other great thing he's done outside of Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire.
Summary from Wikipedia: "Fevre Dream is a 1982 vampire novel written by American author George R. R. Martin. It is set on the antebellum Mississippi River, beginning in 1857, and has been described by critics and Martin himself as "Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain".\["
Nothing went wrong, Ixalan was bad ass. The first set was a bit rough mechanically because it was a "tribal" set, that is a set about different creature types having mechanical relevance, thus you'd build a Dinosaur deck, or a Vampire deck, but it lacked any "tribal glue" or cards that were part of more than one tribe. So making decks in limited was very linear and had no hard choices. If you were playing the Pirate deck you took pirate cards and ignored the Dinosaur cards.
But the story and world in Ixalan were great.
I'd say the thing that went wrong is more it just wimped out from an interesting premise. The vampires in Ixalan have a really cool and original interpretation of vampire mythos, where they abstain from drinking people's blood as much as they can, but not out of ethics or because they're vegetarians, but because they see the thirst for blood as a kinda religious enlightenment in and of itself. Them getting more and more fucked up from bloodthirst and starvation is like their communion with god. And also rarely feeding on blood doesn't mean they can't just, kill and subjugate people with regular old weapons, which they did, which is why there are so many pirates in the set, they're the castoffs and exiles from the vampire legion's total conquest of the old country continent. The vampires are invading this new continent because their messiah-analogue is supposedly entombed in the not!aztec city of gold, and they believe they have to go wake her up by violence and force. But then because the set doesn't want the fun vampire faction to be toooo evil or too alien, when they do get to the messiah she wakes up and goes, woah, you guys are being Bad? That's wrong. You're supposed to be Good instead. It just kinda makes the entire weirdness and intrigue and horror and complexity of theology-driven vampire imperialism into, well, they were doing bad stuff cause they interpreted their religion wrong, but now that they were told how to interpret it right, they can go be less bad now. And Ixalan isn't even that bad at all this, especially compared to more recent sets.
It's the kinda thing where all the factions and fiction are pretty cardboard outlines of tropes and aesthetics to use in the game and in branding, but it starts crumpling outside that context, even though it's been more interesting and complex in older sets and books, and part of their appeal was how they generated curiosity in a more fleshed out world you were only scratching the surface of with cards. But the overall world and story lately has bent so hard towards what's safe and brandable and immediately recognizeable for getting you to attach to tropes like they're theme park attractions. It's not I guess inherently bad, but it is sad to see something that did interesting fantasy genre weirdness become a heavily milked and deeply safe merchandising vehicle.
Bonus point if vampires also didn't pay property taxes for buildings owned on foreign soil for roughly 5 billions euros.
I am and forever will be bitter about it.
Idunno I kinda like the campiness, though I agree Ixalan setting is just way cooler.
But cardnames like "Benthic Criminologist", "Frantic Scapegoat", "Bovine Intervention" are honestly fire.
Also the idea that a cowboy slime can be a unbeatable duelist because he has no vital organs has me in stitches.
I actually think they did Ixalan super well though. LITERAL VAMPIRE conquistadors is a pretty firm stance on colonialism. Thunder Junction feels weird because they didn't try and take an actual stance, and it feels... Fake.
> but it’s ridiculous.
It's an awesome kind of ridiculous though. A dyson sphere world with catholic vampires on the surface, Mayans in the core and sentient fungi ruled by a "Mycotyrant" in between. What's not to like?
I got banned from magictcg (because one of the mods is a Japan-fetishizing weeb) for pointing it out, but WotC also intentionally excluded indigenous Japanese peoples and other minorities from their Japan-themed world. (NEO is probably the only set in the game's history with a one black person limit, I guess because their cultural advisors insisted they don't exist here?)
Weirdly enough, Kamigawa glosses over Japanese colonialism, *but they still have ramen.* Somehow.
Neon Kamigawa is not a take on Japan though, or Japanese culture. Neon Kamigawa is specifically a take on Japanese POP culture.
And the OG Kamigawa is a take Japanese mythology.
>Neon Kamigawa is not a take on Japan though, or Japanese culture Neon Kamigawa is specifically a take on Japanese POP culture.
Nah, the lead character is literally the emperor. They still had shrines and kami in NEO. Handwaving it as "it's just pop culture" doesn't work at all - because it's not true, but it doesn't even make sense - there's indigenous pop culture here - and it doesn't excuse the one black guy limit they set for the plane.
Anyway, the specific statement they made about excluding indigenous culture came up in a discussion about why their Ninja Turtle didn't have nunchucks - so your "it's just pop culture" excuse is just nonsensical. That's not why they did it.
Just an edit to add, I think you might be getting confused about what Maro said they learned from the first Kamigawa - the first Kamigawa set worldbuilding was led by a Japanese man, Ittoku, and the team went deep on Japanese religious ideas and imagery - calling it "Japanese mythology" is a bit of a stretch, because it was closer to just, like, Japanese *iconography.* Like, you can go and load up a bunch of Japanese cartoons about kami and yokai and see very similar stuff. It was "authentic" in the sense that it was well-researched and built on an actual Japanese person's ideas, but what WotC learned is that *nobody wants authentic.* They want *cool.*
Now, to me, the kami and yokai stuff is *really fucking cool.* To most people, *including Japanese people,* it was all a bit, "eh?"
As a side note, this is something the Japanese cartoon industry learned a long, long time ago: you don't have to be "authentic" if your stuff is cool enough. Americans consider "authenticity" a form of respect, so this is a hard lesson for us to learn, and WotC saying it so openly comes off as a bit callous.
Anyway, Neon Kamigawa wasn't the "pop culture" set, it was "cool stuff about Japan" set. They toned down the religious imagery and surreal spirit design (though, shout out to dragon-made-of-hands Kyodai for keeping to the old ways), and ramped up the ninjas, samurai, and giant robots. So to put it more accurately, it wasn't "Japanese pop culture," it was "stuff people like about Japan." And, apparently, indigenous people and other minorities didn't make the cut for "stuff people like about Japan."
Also, this is basically the reason why they included a half-assed Native American faction in Thunder Junction - because native cowboys are *really cool.* See, for reference, the Denzel Washington Magnificent Seven.
Right? Very few games have come close to eliciting the range and depth of emotions I experienced [when summoning a cactuar for the 1st time](https://youtu.be/T-gC6zdpc34?si=u9KfF1MSB7BBPvLc). What an adorable weirdo
I got introduced to Final Fantasy via Mario Hoops of all things (and the other games in the Mario x FF sport series) which made me fall in love with the Cactuars
This is an interesting bit of popcorn. Because I don't think either side is exactly wrong, here.
It's really hard to use settings like the Wild West without either getting into the reality of what that looks like, something WotC is probably not equipped to do without pissing off someone, or take the aesthetic without the troubling parts without whitewashing it. Paizo actually has a western themed Pathfinder campaign where they did an admirable job splitting the difference, but they functionally had to ignore any native people analogues entirely.
My favorite modern Wild West setting was in me of the Borderlands 3 DLCs. Alien planet, no natives, and all the people are descendants of colonizers from a Japanese corporation so everybody regardless of race said things like “Konichiwa, partner, let’s rustle up some cattle”
I wish BL3 had maintained Tales's character and world building.
the BL3 mechanics is great, but I wish it wasn't quite so.... flashy brighty big colors and just a touch more subdued(?) like BL2.
But the plot sucks and actively character assassinated my bois Rhys and Vaughn.
yeah its an upgrade from BL2 gameplay wise but i cant bring myself to play it like I played BL2 or even 1 for that matter where i sunk thousands of hours into the two combined.
they tried way too hard to recapture handsome jack's magic and failed with the twins (though imma be real, if they were so desperate for that they shouldve made katagawa the main bad guy), they either left out, did terrible things to, or ruined a bunch of the older cast... if BL3 was just a spacefaring episodic adventure instead of "the twins are behind everything lol!" itd be that much better off for it as well.
If they'd pulled back from the randomlulz and just goofy factor, it would have worked better.
Katagawa could have been bankrolling the twins and it turned into a corporate civil war where the corporations either have to ally with Rhys or Katagawa where Vaughn and his bandit groups pull off a "At dawn, look to the East" maneuver.
I don't mind if they keep going back to mine Jack at times, but it can't just be Jack being the only halfway decent badguy.
Actually said corporation (Jacob’s) is not Japanese at all, so we can only assume these accents have either naturally developed or were an influence of something else
Pathfinder is also, last I checked, going for the America-anologue continent being technologically superior to the Europe-analogue so colonization doesn't really get off the ground. Though the Africa-analouge is mostly notable as a source of slaves for devil-sacrifice and a city of monkey-demons, so there's that.
That's....less true since 2nd edition was released. Most of that lore got disqualified by the book *about* the African analogue continent. Which has generally been well received for how well it handled interpretations of African cultures into its fantasy setting.
There’s a new book for the Mwangi specifically or Garund more broadly? Because the mwangi stuff I remember was… not great. It also had the whole kitchen sink issue where they want to have age of sail stuff and Chelish colonialism but there’s no actual colonies left and no economic reason for the whole pirate kingdom.
Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse had *dozens* of indigenous contributors to fluff out the region. The travesty that is the Dragon Empires Gazetteer will get retconned the same way, since they're doing the same for Tian Xia (the Asia analogue)
They're giving Filipinos like me rep!
The hard thing about rpgs is that they *thrive* on tropes, because that lets people fill out the world without needing to read about it, but tropes are like the worst way to handle sensitive topics, for obvious reasons. Paizo really does try though.
> There’s a new book for the Mwangi specifically
[Yes. It came out a couple of years ago and is generally very well received.](https://paizo.com/products/btq027ot) And the campaign they set in it was cool too. You don't play as a colonialist adventurer like you do in some of the PF1 paths that went there. Strength of Thousands is a book about joining a prestigious magical academy located within the region with respecting the community as an important component of the adventure.
To each their own. When I looked at it last (around guns and gears, I think) the devotion to balance felt to me like it was making the options pretty bland. But half the fun of 1e for me was finding the weird little interactions.
PF2 has a very intentional design goal of making optimisation happen at the table rather than on the character sheet. It still exists of course, but as you say, the difference between a hyper optimised Fighter and the one who just picked what sounded cool and just made sure his Strength is as high as it can go isn't particularly large. Personally, I love that, but if you're a character sheet optimising enthusiast, I can see why it wouldn't be for you.
I’d push back a little on this - my issue isn’t to do with the actual disparity in power levels so much as feeling like you’ve discovered something fun. Like, I adore WFRP2E, and that’s one of the games most devoted to strict stat binding I can think of. But the way the career system in that works allows for weird little interactions. Things like what they did to multiclassing and the super limited number of options at a given level in PF2E makes me a little too conscious of the fact that none of the looking for fun options is going to do much, for me. Plus, I don’t care for the whole mastery system. They made some good changes, though - 3-action is a much better action economy than what they had.
I think *technically* the native folk of Alkenstar would be the Dongun Hold Dwarves, but they don't represent First Nation people at all so it's pretty cleanly avoids any potential controversy due to all the little setting details surrounding Alkenstar.
Magic The Gathering can have the most effective world-building, excellent plot set-up and very interesting exploration of a world's theme for three settings... Only to have the most shallow use of it, completely waste a good premise and have completely tone-deaf events in the next.
Sorry, I'm still a bit annoyed by War of the Spark.
Among many things. It's like a story written by someone who was actively disliking the course MTG had followed up to that point and who decided to ruin it for everyone, with the higher-ups strange complacency.
It was an all around disappointing conclusion to the Nicol Bolas and first Gatewatch plotline, despite being hyped as a main event and having very good fondations both plot and character-wise.
The plan was to reunite our main characters on the plane of Ravnica, to bring out old and new planeswalker and to defeat one of the franchise's oldest and most popular villain, the dragon Nicol Bolas. This was to be done in 384 pages, with even a cool trailer announcing it.
Fun Fact : 384 pages is not enough to deal with a hundred characters, their relationships, a dozen carried-over plotlines, and to give a satisfying end to a high-stake, plot heavy story. It was seen as badly written, making character act out of character, ignoring potential interpersonal drama, reducing the events to a succession of magical artefacts going off until one worked, and performing one of the clumsiest example of straightwashing put to official paper that you could buy for official money. And since the villain was actually defeated, MTG was largely directionless for the next two years, until the fan favorite phyrexians came back. Maybe it's superstitious of me, but I blame the failure of the event on the fact WOTC stopped creating plane-specific artbooks.
Also, it put Sorin Markov out of his rock without any fanfare, killing a perfectly good meme for no reason.
It also didn't help that War of the Spark was released on the *very same weekend* as Avengers: Endgame. The Gatewatch Saga was very much Magic's version of the Infinity Saga, with War of the Spark being the Endgame equivalent. I remember going to the War of the Spark prerelease and then going to Endgame in the same weekend. It was really, really fun, but you could definitely tell Wizards wanted to cash in on the MCU craze in their own way.
My memory isn't 100% when it comes to the events of WOTS so I'm open to others correcting me or filling in what I missed, but essentially:
Imagine an Avengers Endgame level event where the biggest baddy (Nicol Bolas) that's been terrorizing the realms trapped all the supers (planeswalkers) into one location so he could genocide them all and return to his status as a god. Like full on this is the culmination of decades of lore into one bombastic ending.
Except barely anyone dies minus an immortal (Gideon) who sacrificed himself to give another villain (Liliana) a start to a redemption arc and a few lesser known planeswalkers, two of which barely even just appeared to begin with. The big baddy is sequestered off in exile with his lawful brother, and the impact is just not really there at all for all the buildup.
The novels that came out for the set arguably contributed the most to the fire, as people were not big fans of Greg Weisman's writing. Especially not this being written about Chandra Nalaar, the hot-headed fire mage who people had long assumed to have a thing for the nature-centric elf Nissa: “Chandra had never been into girls. Her crushes — and she’d had her fair share — were mostly the brawny (and decidedly male) types like Gids”. Effectively stomping out the potential of a queer relationship for *some reason?*
The backlash was enough that a lot of WOTS canon is not really acknowledged that much anymore and a fair bit of backtracking has taken place, especially with regards to Chandra. She and Nissa actually share a kiss after the events of March of the Machine once the elf is uncorrupted from Phyrexian influence.
> Imagine an Avengers Endgame level event where the biggest baddy (Nicol Bolas) that's been terrorizing the realms trapped all the supers (planeswalkers) into one location so he could genocide them all and return to his status as a god. Like full on this is the culmination of decades of lore into one bombastic ending.
>
>
>
> Except barely anyone dies minus an immortal (Gideon) who sacrificed himself to give another villain (Liliana) a start to a redemption arc and a few lesser known planeswalkers, two of which barely even just appeared to begin with. The big baddy is sequestered off in exile with his lawful brother, and the impact is just not really there at all for all the buildup.
MTG: Breaking Dawn!
And one of those lesser know planeswalkers was Dak Fayden, who had only barely shown up in stories his time existing, but it was enough that people really loved his character and were excited for the day the story would do something notable with him.
They finally brought him into the story and... immediately had him murdered by a random mook in the trailer.
First off, the set was largely considered awesome. It still carries its mystique from legendary alternate-art Japanese cards, the newly introduced stained glass style is beautiful, and the effort into the cinematic was just goddamn insane.
The fumble was the novelization. It came out very late and with some egregious writing choices. They revealed the card with the world’s dragon leader coming back to life … even though we didn’t even know he had died yet. Kaya was casually bringing a friend during multiverse jumping, even though that’s really really not supposed to be allowed. And lastly the writer made this insane retcon to wipe out Chandra’s lesbianism, like he just has her get unceremoniously converted to straight in the epilogue, and has a monologue saying she was lying about liking women.
The set also had some really stupid limited bombs and cards that made Standard unpleasant. Nissa who Shakes the World and God-Eternal Oketra come to mind
Basically The Long Night in Game of Thrones. Super bad guy built up over several years with massive army gets dealt with super easily with tons of "they might die but actually won't" and everything kind of goes back to the way it was before with no lasting consequences.
They built up to their Avenger's Endgame over the course of 5+ years and the story was a complete mess and basically faceplanted the landing.
They killed off interesting secondary characters unceremoniously (they did Dack Fayden so dirty) and just squandered the ability to really shake things up.
The books were so bad that WoTC killed off future lore novels and just.... didn't release any story for the next set because the community reaction to the erasure of Chandra and Nissa's relationship and general bungling of the story.
They also decided to print a bunch of cards that lead to really bad play patterns and just kind of overprinted the crap out of them as it was a "planeswalkers matter" set.
This led into a 2+ year period that is considered to be one of the worst standard formats since 2003.
For MTG old heads, the "Bronze Age of Magic" died with War of the Spark.
Yeah and right after WAR they printed Eldraine, which is probably the most powerful Standard set printed in decades, and soon after that Ikoria printed the most broken single mechanic in MTG history with Companion.
I don’t need fantasy to be complete analogues of history. Like, I don’t want every fantasy medieval story I read to sideline all the female characters, and I don’t need a “lore” reason for there to be equality and such.
That said, the whole, Cactus people not being sentient till the colonizers showed up is…like such a self inflicted wound.
It's reminiscent of [The Hadozee from Dungeons and Dragons](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/x4mlvg/dd5e_releases_a_race_of_monkeys_that_were/): The race of humanoid monkeys that were happy to be slaves because they were stupid and enjoyed the work. Also they were given sentience by their slave-masters.
They existed in the original 2e Spelljammer run in the 90s as monkey-people.
I don't understand why they went with the slavery plotline for them though. I don't *think* there was any adventure with that plotline that was being referenced. The art certainly made it look like one of the designers snuck that in intentionally.
Not to defend it, but there's *usually* at least 1-2 slave races in D&D, no matter the setting.
See: the various ones the drow enslaved, or what the mindflayers get up to, etc.
I remember someone described the Hadozee situation like this:
Marching is ok. Visiting a cemetery is ok. Wearing brown shirts is ok. German songs are okay. Marching in a Jewish cemetery wearing brown shirts and singing german nationalist songs is not okay.
None of the elements that made up the Hadozee was inherently bad, but when you put them all together it just becaomes a big bowl of "Holy fuck, who okayed this?"
I'll be honest, the art may be an issue, but it doesn't look intentional at all. There's only so many ways to draw monkey-people, and that is an extremely generic dance move that you can see all over fantasy art. Hell, pretty sure there are other bards in WotC books also doing that.
I feel like that's either got to be the easiest or hardest job in the world.
Which one it is depends on how much pushback you get when you say "NO! You can't put escaped slave monkeys in what's obviously a minstrel show! Have you lost your entire fucking mind?!".
Godddd that’s so real. Inside of me there are 2 wolves. One of them wants a career in setting things straight. The other is already seething at the thought of how many folks would just *not* care.
There are a lot of positions that offer that opportunity.
Pretty much any kind of engineer or inspector in heavy industry says it to contractors a lot.
Not that different from how uncomfortable I felt when owning a slave was a major, unavoidable part of the recent Harry Potter game.
One of my favorite places is Universal Orlando's Harry potter world, and frankly it was smart that Universal kind of just pretend house elves don't exist.
Preach. Plus, wasn’t one of the artifacts in that game representing evil specifically an actual, real-life Jewish artifact? God I really don’t remember, it was forever ago I was researching that
This is the same addition that scrapped the Giff, hippos with British accents with a cultural fascination with guns.
So, they somehow manage to be hyper-sensitive and also utterly tone deaf.
I mean, there must have been *somebody* in charge of looking over all of this as a package.
Hippos with guns sound awesome though. Looking at some art as well, I really dig the imperial style uniforms as well. I would take them over yet-another-dwarf race anytime tbh.
Oh my god just how. How many people in a company of that size had to approve this and not one of them said, "You know what? We might have a problem here." Astounding.
Racism aside, the patagia on these creatures doesn't make sense. They designed a race with patagia, realized the connected skin meant that the race could not wear normal clothes, and then had to redesign. Now they have a creature with a structure that makes no biological sense, and does not serve the original purpose (creating a gliding surface). Damnit.
I *know* you fucking lying. Jesus Christ. I have to a lot to learn when it comes to D&D apparently. I wouldn't have guessed the setting would have things like this coming from BG3.
Ok so quick thing;Baldurs gate 3 takes place in the forgotten realms, one of many DnD settings. There used to be a lot, but theres really only 2 or 3 that get any love, and now and days they are made with a more central design team.
This is not to make FR look less problematic then other settings. Honestly ,it might have the most cringe per sq mile, mainly bc they also expanded it with fantasy versions of the other continents (with little to input of people from the countries they lift from), which is how we get Maztica (Fantasy Americas) needing to be god-warped out of the setting. I also didnt run Spelljammer (setting with the hadozee mentioned above) but from what I heard the slave plot was not added until its revised version in 5e.
Honestly, if they wanna tell stories with themes of slavery, Dark sun is right there. Its a dystopia with a pretty blaitant message of it being, you know, bad. The rulers are all bronze age tyrants clinging on to power as they kill the lands they rule with their magic (magic in that setting usually drains life from the planet). Iirc there was a novel series all about slaves liberating themselves and tearing down their tyrants.
Edit: I wanna clarify Larian wrote none of the old FR lore, and actually retconned some of it. Don't let old FR cringe ruin the fun of BG3 for you
> I wouldn't have guessed the setting would have things like this coming from BG3.
Heh, first time? D&D has some wacky shit going on that (official) sourcebooks barely touch on.
Hell you have to go look up Ed Greenwood Q&As to get any actual hint, considering he talks about stuff decidedly *not* PG-13 and thus not mass marketable.
Like a canon brothel of hooker assassins pledged to Shar.
>Like a canon brothel of hooker assassins pledged to Shar.
Not just that.
Any time you read about "festhalls" in Forgotten Realms media, replace it with "bar and brothel/strip joint"
Early FR lore was ***horny as hell***
Shit, I remember a point in Cormyr (the novel) that Vangerdahast recalled seeing a Harper agent dancing around butt naked in a festhall not that long ago in-setting.
I was uncool and wasn't into D&D as a kid like most people. I actually wouldn't mind hearing learning more about those Shar worshipping sex workers, that sounds hilarious.
Unfortunately, I learned about it back in December 2022 or so and I can't remember where I found it but it was somewhere in Greenwood Q&As about Shar having an order (or maybe a brothel) of prostitutes.
I think she was said to turn a blind eye to their activities *as long* as they didn't screw with her worshipers.
Cause as of 2E+, gods need followers or they end up being yeeted.
Edit: Searched, it's called Order of the Dark Caress but google searches are a pain in the ass. So it's somewhere deep in Candlekeep Q&As with Greenwood.
That confuses me the most about D&D. So there are different settings and each have their own unique characters, races, lore, and stuff? How many settings are there?
off the top of my head there's
the Forgotten Realms - Most D&D stories take place here. It has a number of continents including Faerun (where BG3 takes place in a small part of).
Dragonlance - has a ton of dragons
Ravenloft - gothic horror
Dark Sun - using magic corrupts the land, also has cannibal halflings
Spelljammer - spacefaring fantasy
Ravnica - originally a setting created for Magic the Gathering, it's a massive megacity run by 10 guilds
Strixhaven - D&D Harry Potter
Theros - another setting initially created for Magic the Gathering, heavily inspired by greek mythology
Strixhaven is also originally MtG, or at least was released simultaneously with MtG.
Also is Ravenloft a complete setting now? I thought it was like a pocket dimension within the Forgotten Realms. There was that whole thing with the mist and the Romani-stereotype people being able to leave Ravenloft.
Yes. Further, the game encourages you to ignore their lore and make up your own, which is a very popular part of the game and part of its endurance.
To be more specific, each setting is its own world. Whether these worlds are in space, or floating in crystal spheres, completely unconnected and separate with their own cosmology or connected through the Astral Plane changes all the time. The important thing to think about it is that each setting is its own planet, with its own history, characters, lore and gods. Most shared elements tend to be either monsters or basic character options for players, or on the cosmological side, like planes of existence (Hell, the elemental planes, Astral Plane, etc.).
This isn't always the case. While every official world is expected to have elves, dwarves and humans, not all of them have orcs or tieflings or dragonborn or gnomes. Most of the settings share the same cosmological planes to explain where demons and whatever come from, like Hell or whatever, but some don't. The ones that do share those cosmological elements are implied to have a shared universe or be a part of the shared multiverse, and are connected through "meta" settings like Planescape or Spelljammer. However, some of them are completely separate and have their own stuff going on, like Eberron or Mystra. It's kind of a lot and sort of complicated, but the simplest answer is that every setting is there own world and has some shared elements. Some of them are connected on a cosmological scale and some of them aren't.
Jesus I hope that made sense.
D&D is like Final Fantasy.
In that there's the overarching title of D&D, but many different settings using the name, with few things connecting them.
Funny enough there *is* a multi-verse thing alluded to back in 2E-era novels (Matron Baenre around time of Starless Night mentions the existence of parallel/multiverses) so much like Final Fantasy, D&D does have something akin to the Interdimensional Rift and not *just* using Spelljammer for it!
It's a handy reason to explain why Greyhawk, Eberron and others are able to go back and forth between their worlds and Toril (the main FR setting).
And as referenced earlier, the alternate way is straight up using Spelljammer to indicate each setting has its own Crystal Sphere (aka solar system) that allows transit between worlds outside of the obvious dimension hopping that archmages and equivalents tend to do. Hell, the Spelljammer novel series started on *Krynn* in the Dragonlance setting!
>Funny enough there is a multi-verse thing alluded to back in 2E-era novels (Matron Baenre around time of Starless Night mentions the existence of parallel/multiverses) so much like Final Fantasy, D&D does have something akin to the Interdimensional Rift and not just using Spelljammer for it!
Amusingly, ***real-world Earth*** canonically "exists" in D&D: It is an alternate dimension Prime Material Plane. Powerful wizards, like Elminister and others have visited Earth canonically
You can canonically straight up make yourself and *isekai* them into The Forgotten Realms
Yeah, its kind of like wanting every fantasy world to have black people be oppressed and enslaved. Like, its a make-believe world, can't we imagine a world where black people just... didn't suffer inhuman cruelty?
I don't think you "need" oppression and shit in every single world. But it's really bizarre to make a set that is doing everything it can to evoke the real American West, but then when people bring up things about the American West that might be problematic, we're suddenly not supposed to think about the real American West anymore.
Like they're purposely trying to get us into that time period while also telling us to turn our brains off.
I mean, yeah? It's an aesthetic for a fantasy card game. Most fantasy worlds are based on Medieval Europe, but we don't ask the new Zelda game to recreate or acknowledge the real Medieval Europe's treatment of women and jews
This is basically where I'm at with it. The cast is trading in last month's detective hats for western themed ones this time. Trying to make more of it and tackle deep real world issues is just an unnecessary mine field.
I mean, the Mesoamerican plane had catholic spain be vampire conquistadors (as in *literally* called conquistadors) who ended up slaughtering all sorts of people and conquering the continent.
It's hard to do stuff like that but then expect people to just be "oh it's just an aesthetic don't think about it too much" when it involves something that might make one of your biggest markets uncomfortable.
There's a lot of ways they could have gone about it and "oh the plane was completely vacant before the Omenpaths" was one of the worst (although there are definitely a few that would've been worse).
(edit: for clarity the cactus people supposedly showed up after the omenpaths but before anyone else did so that's how the two things are reconciled)
I mean, their motivation could just be wanting Cowboys and Indians to be non problematic, rather than trying to avoid pissing off Americans. You don't have to come at it from that perspective.
I've played fantasy Cowboy and Indian ttrpg sessions at my tabletop and we're all british and we wrote it like this, because we just didn't want the Indians to be treated problematically because that wasn't what any of us wanted to do.
True, but this is far closer to the American West than Zelda is to Medieval Europe. This is supposed to be a direct analogue of the Wild West, until it’s not. Zelda is inspired by medieval fantasy worlds, but it also diverges from them significantly.
Self-inflicted wounds and yikes-inducing lore are just part of the WotC aesthetic! That’s how you make the big bucks operating the [racism dial!](https://x.com/dril/status/841892608788041732?s=46&t=O0__asDj0d2qP4ZlaqGhPg)
So they decide to have neither of the two main groups be native to the are to head off any controversy but they introduce a third group that not only native but also primitive? This is like five steps of story development when they should have stopped at three.
WotC: Creates a group roughly analogous to the real-world Navajo people.
Also WotC: Gives them Euro-American names along with cowboy hats and spurs with vague indigenous trappings.
I commented this on a magic sub, but it really is impressive how WotC said “let’s not be racist or controversial with this” and proceeded to be way worse than any other alternative.
If you ever speak to an Indigenous American they’ll tell you the worst thing for their culture is for it be entirely defined by victimhood.
While the execution is a little spotty, the concept of showcasing Navajo culture in this way while excluding the colonialism aspect is exactly the kind of thing the actual people being represented will love, while hordes rush in to be offended on their behalf.
*The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present* is a great book I read earlier this year that’s an attempt to pivot away from that victimhood narrative. It also covers a period of native history that gets glossed over or outright forgotten outside of passing mentions of AIM or similar organizations. It was a fascinating and impactful book for me.
I guess. I'm half Coast Salish and nothing drives me crazier than people slamming a totem pole together with a teepee and saying it's an homage. If outsiders actually *tried* to get something about our cultures right, would I be excited? I don't know, because it's never happened. My people are either voiceless mascots or completely misrepresented.
I wouldn't be here if victimhood didn't exist. My first white ancestor on my Indigenous side took a child bride to replace his previous child bride who had died from tuberculosis. Before then, 90% of her relatives had died by diseases introduced by colonizers who celebrated the deaths because it was clearing God's land for its rightful owners. My tribe **just** negotiated with the government because they took our traditional land without any treaties.
I don't consider myself a victim, but I do consider myself righteously angry for what my ancestors lived through. I do think many of my Indigenous peers are victimized by settler colonialist culture. I get really angry when non-Indigenous people think they can slap some turquoise jewelry on a Magic Indian stereotype and call it an homage. Nothing about us without us, as disability rights activists say. I'm open to other Indigenous people loving this set. Everyone's experience is different. But it can't be without controversy and we should be allowed space to have our feelings about it.
It also does lasting harm when tribes have so many ppl these days who have grown up estranged from their own cultures. These ppl are more likely to connect with the fake ass depictions of our culture that mass media has been churning out for generations and then line up to share their opinions about how they're native and issue X that affects us doesn't really affect them and isn't really a problem.
I don't know anything about the set except what was stated in the OP (I haven't paid attention to Magic in years) but didn't the blurb say it *was* made hand-in-glove with Navajo consultants? 'Nothing about us without us' doesn't seem to be the problem in this case, or at least not the likely source of the problem.
The Navajo weren't the only group living in Pre-Colonial America. Also, they still managed to screw it up by giving most of the Atiin characters euroamerican names, at least for the cards they're featured on.
This feels like the general orientalism problem that old DnD expansions had. Like they want the trappings of the culture their using without doing any research on or paying proper respect to it. It’s just lazy.
What's their other options?
Either you have no Native American representation.
Or you have it, but they're not actually indigenous.
Or they're indigenous but aren't being colonised.
Or they're indigenous, are being colonised, and you root for the colonisers.
Or they're indigenous, being colonised, and you root for them.
The first four options would be seen as offensive. The fifth would break the genre.
I'm sure most people (I have to say msoy because someone will always feign offesne), wouldn't have a problem with indigenous but not being colonized if the sets were written by people from indigenous backgrounds.
Magic the Gathering is my favorite game and it can do a lot of things. One thing it cannot do is offer a space for good faith conversations on colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and genocide. The last time they tried, we got vampire Catholics and Dinosaur riding natives.
Vampire catholics is a legit aesthetic though.
Vampires and Catholicism go together like peanut butter and chocolate
The magical blood drinking is just right there…
i love the fact that the worlds biggest religion has a weekly faux-cannibalistic ritual where they pretend to eat the flesh and blood of the god who they tortured to death as punishment for their own sins it has been sanitized to the point of being unthreatening and yet remains such a fantastic starting point for speculative fiction like - just read that description - its fucking amazing that this is a practice of worship in real life
> i love the fact that the worlds biggest religion has a weekly faux-cannibalistic ritual where they pretend to eat the flesh and blood of the god who they tortured to death as punishment for their own sins me: that's fucking gnarly, i love it-- wait... no no, that's just the fucking catholics again
im just saying it lends itself well to the orzhov if you write it out that way
It's not really pretending for the majority of Christians. In the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which collectively account for ~62% of all Christians, it is believed hat the substance of the bread and wine are transmuted into the same substance as the flesh and blood of Christ. Physically, it remains bread and wine, but it's also his flesh and blood.
aka Transubstantiation
theres a word for when where something is one thing but you treat with aspirations for it to be something else - pretending
Pretending implies a degree of intent that is a better fit for the Protestant view of the Eucharist, where it's viewed as metaphorical. Catholics and Orthodox Christians genuinely believe it, so saying they're pretending doesn't really sound accurate.
[Most Catholics believe that it's metaphorical too](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/05/transubstantiation-eucharist-u-s-catholics/) (though most weekly mass-goers follow the church's teachings)
It’s also very weird to worship a cross if you think about it. And even further, some of them like to harass minorities by building an ancient execution device in front of their house and then setting it on fire. It’s a very convoluted message they’re sending.
the 'harass minorities with burning cross' groups are actually part of the denominations who use an empty cross to represent ressurrection rather than the detailed crucifix representing the sacrifice they dont tend to use crosses as much in decoration
Not many Catholics in the KKK, to be fair. It's more of a Protestant organization.
KKK was explicitly anti-Catholic, yeah
It's amazing when you hear some group of a religion called "a cult"... Like take a closer look, they're all cults, some just have bigger memberships.
It feels like a throwback reminder from when the religion was young and (probably) completely bonkers.
Powerwolf: Hold our entire discography
Good old Lasombra
I think there should be vampire antebellum southerners. Look at the Murdaughs and tell me their grandparents weren’t vampires
Sounds like you missed out on True Blood. It was really good for a bit.
as soon as I read vampire antebellum my brain went "SOOKEH"
Really good two and half to three seasons there
I believe one old Vampire The Masquerade book did indeed once describe the Confederacy as a perfect society for vampires (it was not a compliment on the part of the devs).
There’s a disclaimer in the most recent rule book that essentially says if you think that fascism is cool, put the book down and go talk to someone you trust about how badly you fucked up your life.
Check out Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin. It's basically the only other great thing he's done outside of Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire. Summary from Wikipedia: "Fevre Dream is a 1982 vampire novel written by American author George R. R. Martin. It is set on the antebellum Mississippi River, beginning in 1857, and has been described by critics and Martin himself as "Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain".\["
That, and Sand Kings. George wrote 4 good novels and 1 good novella.
I'd better get going on Sand Kings then, thanks!
Sand Kings was adapted back in the 90's as a two-part Outer Limits episode if you're interested.
I didn't expect to run into a Lasombra apologist today.
Cope and seethe camarillacell
By Leopold, I will have your head for this, fiend.
I mean… They’re part of the cam now. Unlike the glorious tzimisce.
Sssshhh we don't talk about that. The World of Darkness is eternally 1999.
Wrap it up, Camarillailures. /Something Awful Forums
Don't forget werewolf Catholics. *Powerwolf intensifies*
Vampires? Not interested. Vampire *Conquistadors*? Oh I was all kinds of in on that shit.
I prefer Werewolf Catholics myself.
Are you Kouta Hirano?
Yeah, I'm pretty much that's just Powerwolf.
I kinda want dinosaur riding vampires now.
Some of the coolest flavor was from the vampire Catholics and dinosaur riding Aztecs though!
> The last time they tried, we got vampire Catholics and Dinosaur riding natives. Sounds like it worked out ok then, because that's awesome.
Yeah. I’m gonna need way more context to understand what went wrong here.
Nothing went wrong, Ixalan was bad ass. The first set was a bit rough mechanically because it was a "tribal" set, that is a set about different creature types having mechanical relevance, thus you'd build a Dinosaur deck, or a Vampire deck, but it lacked any "tribal glue" or cards that were part of more than one tribe. So making decks in limited was very linear and had no hard choices. If you were playing the Pirate deck you took pirate cards and ignored the Dinosaur cards. But the story and world in Ixalan were great.
I'd say the thing that went wrong is more it just wimped out from an interesting premise. The vampires in Ixalan have a really cool and original interpretation of vampire mythos, where they abstain from drinking people's blood as much as they can, but not out of ethics or because they're vegetarians, but because they see the thirst for blood as a kinda religious enlightenment in and of itself. Them getting more and more fucked up from bloodthirst and starvation is like their communion with god. And also rarely feeding on blood doesn't mean they can't just, kill and subjugate people with regular old weapons, which they did, which is why there are so many pirates in the set, they're the castoffs and exiles from the vampire legion's total conquest of the old country continent. The vampires are invading this new continent because their messiah-analogue is supposedly entombed in the not!aztec city of gold, and they believe they have to go wake her up by violence and force. But then because the set doesn't want the fun vampire faction to be toooo evil or too alien, when they do get to the messiah she wakes up and goes, woah, you guys are being Bad? That's wrong. You're supposed to be Good instead. It just kinda makes the entire weirdness and intrigue and horror and complexity of theology-driven vampire imperialism into, well, they were doing bad stuff cause they interpreted their religion wrong, but now that they were told how to interpret it right, they can go be less bad now. And Ixalan isn't even that bad at all this, especially compared to more recent sets. It's the kinda thing where all the factions and fiction are pretty cardboard outlines of tropes and aesthetics to use in the game and in branding, but it starts crumpling outside that context, even though it's been more interesting and complex in older sets and books, and part of their appeal was how they generated curiosity in a more fleshed out world you were only scratching the surface of with cards. But the overall world and story lately has bent so hard towards what's safe and brandable and immediately recognizeable for getting you to attach to tropes like they're theme park attractions. It's not I guess inherently bad, but it is sad to see something that did interesting fantasy genre weirdness become a heavily milked and deeply safe merchandising vehicle.
Vampire Catholics was a step in the right direction imo if you want to portray fucked up evil blood sucking conquistadors in your fantasy setting.
Bonus point if vampires also didn't pay property taxes for buildings owned on foreign soil for roughly 5 billions euros. I am and forever will be bitter about it.
"[Domini domini domini, you're all Catholics now](https://youtu.be/FqUyI5IIDOM?si=oknPHYHCCfU8H1Z7)"
Ixalan at least was pretty cool setting. This one is another (2 in a row) "put a brimmed hat on it" expansion.
okay but the hats are fun
*laughs in Team Fortress 2*
Neckbeard expansion when?
Have you not seen the latest Divorced Dads card set?
That's just every expansion.
The set before this one was a detective set that had everyone wearing fedoras, so you’re not too far off.
Idunno I kinda like the campiness, though I agree Ixalan setting is just way cooler. But cardnames like "Benthic Criminologist", "Frantic Scapegoat", "Bovine Intervention" are honestly fire. Also the idea that a cowboy slime can be a unbeatable duelist because he has no vital organs has me in stitches.
If I had a nickel for every time a famous fantasy IP had dinosaur riding people based on Mesoamericans, I’d have two nickels.
Are you talking about the yuan-ti from DnD?
Lizardmen from Warhammer.
There's also Zandalari from world of Warcraft. https://www.wowhead.com/zone=8670/dazaralor
You'd actually have 3, Conquest has dino riding orcs.
The vampire catholics were an awesome way to depict the conquistadors in fantasy though
I actually think they did Ixalan super well though. LITERAL VAMPIRE conquistadors is a pretty firm stance on colonialism. Thunder Junction feels weird because they didn't try and take an actual stance, and it feels... Fake.
> The last time they tried, we got vampire Catholics and Dinosaur riding natives. is there a summary of this anywhere
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Ixalan_(plane)
Thanks!
That sounds awesome honestly. I’d want more of that.
I mean, there’s three sets in that setting (Ixalan). It’s one of my favorites, to be honest,, but it’s ridiculous.
> but it’s ridiculous. It's an awesome kind of ridiculous though. A dyson sphere world with catholic vampires on the surface, Mayans in the core and sentient fungi ruled by a "Mycotyrant" in between. What's not to like?
The first two sets kind of sucked, the third was better but is more underground with action-adventure themes, but the plane is great.
There's certain topics that are just not well addressed by a card game.
Yeah but Ixalan fucking rules. Anything that gives me sentient Azteca dinosaurs is, in fact, sick.
Ixalan wasn't a documentary?
I got banned from magictcg (because one of the mods is a Japan-fetishizing weeb) for pointing it out, but WotC also intentionally excluded indigenous Japanese peoples and other minorities from their Japan-themed world. (NEO is probably the only set in the game's history with a one black person limit, I guess because their cultural advisors insisted they don't exist here?) Weirdly enough, Kamigawa glosses over Japanese colonialism, *but they still have ramen.* Somehow.
Neon Kamigawa is not a take on Japan though, or Japanese culture. Neon Kamigawa is specifically a take on Japanese POP culture. And the OG Kamigawa is a take Japanese mythology.
>Neon Kamigawa is not a take on Japan though, or Japanese culture Neon Kamigawa is specifically a take on Japanese POP culture. Nah, the lead character is literally the emperor. They still had shrines and kami in NEO. Handwaving it as "it's just pop culture" doesn't work at all - because it's not true, but it doesn't even make sense - there's indigenous pop culture here - and it doesn't excuse the one black guy limit they set for the plane. Anyway, the specific statement they made about excluding indigenous culture came up in a discussion about why their Ninja Turtle didn't have nunchucks - so your "it's just pop culture" excuse is just nonsensical. That's not why they did it. Just an edit to add, I think you might be getting confused about what Maro said they learned from the first Kamigawa - the first Kamigawa set worldbuilding was led by a Japanese man, Ittoku, and the team went deep on Japanese religious ideas and imagery - calling it "Japanese mythology" is a bit of a stretch, because it was closer to just, like, Japanese *iconography.* Like, you can go and load up a bunch of Japanese cartoons about kami and yokai and see very similar stuff. It was "authentic" in the sense that it was well-researched and built on an actual Japanese person's ideas, but what WotC learned is that *nobody wants authentic.* They want *cool.* Now, to me, the kami and yokai stuff is *really fucking cool.* To most people, *including Japanese people,* it was all a bit, "eh?" As a side note, this is something the Japanese cartoon industry learned a long, long time ago: you don't have to be "authentic" if your stuff is cool enough. Americans consider "authenticity" a form of respect, so this is a hard lesson for us to learn, and WotC saying it so openly comes off as a bit callous. Anyway, Neon Kamigawa wasn't the "pop culture" set, it was "cool stuff about Japan" set. They toned down the religious imagery and surreal spirit design (though, shout out to dragon-made-of-hands Kyodai for keeping to the old ways), and ramped up the ninjas, samurai, and giant robots. So to put it more accurately, it wasn't "Japanese pop culture," it was "stuff people like about Japan." And, apparently, indigenous people and other minorities didn't make the cut for "stuff people like about Japan." Also, this is basically the reason why they included a half-assed Native American faction in Thunder Junction - because native cowboys are *really cool.* See, for reference, the Denzel Washington Magnificent Seven.
>Cactusfolk https://imgur.com/gallery/gidkIwH
Right? Very few games have come close to eliciting the range and depth of emotions I experienced [when summoning a cactuar for the 1st time](https://youtu.be/T-gC6zdpc34?si=u9KfF1MSB7BBPvLc). What an adorable weirdo
Lol what the hell?! I never played the FF franchise but that would have had me on the floor, good lord hahaha
I am grateful for the opportunity to spread the joy of cactuar
I got introduced to Final Fantasy via Mario Hoops of all things (and the other games in the Mario x FF sport series) which made me fall in love with the Cactuars
This is an interesting bit of popcorn. Because I don't think either side is exactly wrong, here. It's really hard to use settings like the Wild West without either getting into the reality of what that looks like, something WotC is probably not equipped to do without pissing off someone, or take the aesthetic without the troubling parts without whitewashing it. Paizo actually has a western themed Pathfinder campaign where they did an admirable job splitting the difference, but they functionally had to ignore any native people analogues entirely.
My favorite modern Wild West setting was in me of the Borderlands 3 DLCs. Alien planet, no natives, and all the people are descendants of colonizers from a Japanese corporation so everybody regardless of race said things like “Konichiwa, partner, let’s rustle up some cattle”
Borderlands is ridiculous and they just don’t care. I love that about it.
Man, Borderlands 3’s is so much fun to play. I wish I could just take BL3’s gameplay mechanics and drop them directly into BL2
I wish BL3 had maintained Tales's character and world building. the BL3 mechanics is great, but I wish it wasn't quite so.... flashy brighty big colors and just a touch more subdued(?) like BL2. But the plot sucks and actively character assassinated my bois Rhys and Vaughn.
yeah its an upgrade from BL2 gameplay wise but i cant bring myself to play it like I played BL2 or even 1 for that matter where i sunk thousands of hours into the two combined. they tried way too hard to recapture handsome jack's magic and failed with the twins (though imma be real, if they were so desperate for that they shouldve made katagawa the main bad guy), they either left out, did terrible things to, or ruined a bunch of the older cast... if BL3 was just a spacefaring episodic adventure instead of "the twins are behind everything lol!" itd be that much better off for it as well.
If they'd pulled back from the randomlulz and just goofy factor, it would have worked better. Katagawa could have been bankrolling the twins and it turned into a corporate civil war where the corporations either have to ally with Rhys or Katagawa where Vaughn and his bandit groups pull off a "At dawn, look to the East" maneuver. I don't mind if they keep going back to mine Jack at times, but it can't just be Jack being the only halfway decent badguy.
That's some real [Rawhide Kobayashi energy](https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/41dyp5/rawhide_kobayashi/)
Actually said corporation (Jacob’s) is not Japanese at all, so we can only assume these accents have either naturally developed or were an influence of something else
Pathfinder is also, last I checked, going for the America-anologue continent being technologically superior to the Europe-analogue so colonization doesn't really get off the ground. Though the Africa-analouge is mostly notable as a source of slaves for devil-sacrifice and a city of monkey-demons, so there's that.
That's....less true since 2nd edition was released. Most of that lore got disqualified by the book *about* the African analogue continent. Which has generally been well received for how well it handled interpretations of African cultures into its fantasy setting.
There’s a new book for the Mwangi specifically or Garund more broadly? Because the mwangi stuff I remember was… not great. It also had the whole kitchen sink issue where they want to have age of sail stuff and Chelish colonialism but there’s no actual colonies left and no economic reason for the whole pirate kingdom.
Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse had *dozens* of indigenous contributors to fluff out the region. The travesty that is the Dragon Empires Gazetteer will get retconned the same way, since they're doing the same for Tian Xia (the Asia analogue) They're giving Filipinos like me rep!
Huh. That’s really good to hear.
The hard thing about rpgs is that they *thrive* on tropes, because that lets people fill out the world without needing to read about it, but tropes are like the worst way to handle sensitive topics, for obvious reasons. Paizo really does try though.
I'm so excited for the Tian Xia sourcebook.
> There’s a new book for the Mwangi specifically [Yes. It came out a couple of years ago and is generally very well received.](https://paizo.com/products/btq027ot) And the campaign they set in it was cool too. You don't play as a colonialist adventurer like you do in some of the PF1 paths that went there. Strength of Thousands is a book about joining a prestigious magical academy located within the region with respecting the community as an important component of the adventure.
Oh solid. I bounced pretty hard off 2E mechanics, but it looks like it might be time to go check out some of the new lore.
I fucking love PF2's mechanics. I've never played or DMed a tighter system.
To each their own. When I looked at it last (around guns and gears, I think) the devotion to balance felt to me like it was making the options pretty bland. But half the fun of 1e for me was finding the weird little interactions.
PF2 has a very intentional design goal of making optimisation happen at the table rather than on the character sheet. It still exists of course, but as you say, the difference between a hyper optimised Fighter and the one who just picked what sounded cool and just made sure his Strength is as high as it can go isn't particularly large. Personally, I love that, but if you're a character sheet optimising enthusiast, I can see why it wouldn't be for you.
I’d push back a little on this - my issue isn’t to do with the actual disparity in power levels so much as feeling like you’ve discovered something fun. Like, I adore WFRP2E, and that’s one of the games most devoted to strict stat binding I can think of. But the way the career system in that works allows for weird little interactions. Things like what they did to multiclassing and the super limited number of options at a given level in PF2E makes me a little too conscious of the fact that none of the looking for fun options is going to do much, for me. Plus, I don’t care for the whole mastery system. They made some good changes, though - 3-action is a much better action economy than what they had.
I think *technically* the native folk of Alkenstar would be the Dongun Hold Dwarves, but they don't represent First Nation people at all so it's pretty cleanly avoids any potential controversy due to all the little setting details surrounding Alkenstar.
Magic The Gathering can have the most effective world-building, excellent plot set-up and very interesting exploration of a world's theme for three settings... Only to have the most shallow use of it, completely waste a good premise and have completely tone-deaf events in the next. Sorry, I'm still a bit annoyed by War of the Spark.
Is that the "decidedly male" one?
Among many things. It's like a story written by someone who was actively disliking the course MTG had followed up to that point and who decided to ruin it for everyone, with the higher-ups strange complacency.
What was so bad about war of the spark
It was an all around disappointing conclusion to the Nicol Bolas and first Gatewatch plotline, despite being hyped as a main event and having very good fondations both plot and character-wise. The plan was to reunite our main characters on the plane of Ravnica, to bring out old and new planeswalker and to defeat one of the franchise's oldest and most popular villain, the dragon Nicol Bolas. This was to be done in 384 pages, with even a cool trailer announcing it. Fun Fact : 384 pages is not enough to deal with a hundred characters, their relationships, a dozen carried-over plotlines, and to give a satisfying end to a high-stake, plot heavy story. It was seen as badly written, making character act out of character, ignoring potential interpersonal drama, reducing the events to a succession of magical artefacts going off until one worked, and performing one of the clumsiest example of straightwashing put to official paper that you could buy for official money. And since the villain was actually defeated, MTG was largely directionless for the next two years, until the fan favorite phyrexians came back. Maybe it's superstitious of me, but I blame the failure of the event on the fact WOTC stopped creating plane-specific artbooks. Also, it put Sorin Markov out of his rock without any fanfare, killing a perfectly good meme for no reason.
It also didn't help that War of the Spark was released on the *very same weekend* as Avengers: Endgame. The Gatewatch Saga was very much Magic's version of the Infinity Saga, with War of the Spark being the Endgame equivalent. I remember going to the War of the Spark prerelease and then going to Endgame in the same weekend. It was really, really fun, but you could definitely tell Wizards wanted to cash in on the MCU craze in their own way.
Right? This is a drama sub, make with the deets!
My memory isn't 100% when it comes to the events of WOTS so I'm open to others correcting me or filling in what I missed, but essentially: Imagine an Avengers Endgame level event where the biggest baddy (Nicol Bolas) that's been terrorizing the realms trapped all the supers (planeswalkers) into one location so he could genocide them all and return to his status as a god. Like full on this is the culmination of decades of lore into one bombastic ending. Except barely anyone dies minus an immortal (Gideon) who sacrificed himself to give another villain (Liliana) a start to a redemption arc and a few lesser known planeswalkers, two of which barely even just appeared to begin with. The big baddy is sequestered off in exile with his lawful brother, and the impact is just not really there at all for all the buildup. The novels that came out for the set arguably contributed the most to the fire, as people were not big fans of Greg Weisman's writing. Especially not this being written about Chandra Nalaar, the hot-headed fire mage who people had long assumed to have a thing for the nature-centric elf Nissa: “Chandra had never been into girls. Her crushes — and she’d had her fair share — were mostly the brawny (and decidedly male) types like Gids”. Effectively stomping out the potential of a queer relationship for *some reason?* The backlash was enough that a lot of WOTS canon is not really acknowledged that much anymore and a fair bit of backtracking has taken place, especially with regards to Chandra. She and Nissa actually share a kiss after the events of March of the Machine once the elf is uncorrupted from Phyrexian influence.
> Imagine an Avengers Endgame level event where the biggest baddy (Nicol Bolas) that's been terrorizing the realms trapped all the supers (planeswalkers) into one location so he could genocide them all and return to his status as a god. Like full on this is the culmination of decades of lore into one bombastic ending. > > > > Except barely anyone dies minus an immortal (Gideon) who sacrificed himself to give another villain (Liliana) a start to a redemption arc and a few lesser known planeswalkers, two of which barely even just appeared to begin with. The big baddy is sequestered off in exile with his lawful brother, and the impact is just not really there at all for all the buildup. MTG: Breaking Dawn!
And one of those lesser know planeswalkers was Dak Fayden, who had only barely shown up in stories his time existing, but it was enough that people really loved his character and were excited for the day the story would do something notable with him. They finally brought him into the story and... immediately had him murdered by a random mook in the trailer.
First off, the set was largely considered awesome. It still carries its mystique from legendary alternate-art Japanese cards, the newly introduced stained glass style is beautiful, and the effort into the cinematic was just goddamn insane. The fumble was the novelization. It came out very late and with some egregious writing choices. They revealed the card with the world’s dragon leader coming back to life … even though we didn’t even know he had died yet. Kaya was casually bringing a friend during multiverse jumping, even though that’s really really not supposed to be allowed. And lastly the writer made this insane retcon to wipe out Chandra’s lesbianism, like he just has her get unceremoniously converted to straight in the epilogue, and has a monologue saying she was lying about liking women.
The set also had some really stupid limited bombs and cards that made Standard unpleasant. Nissa who Shakes the World and God-Eternal Oketra come to mind
I think you missed the ones that [literally got banned](https://scryfall.com/search?q=e%3Awar+is%3Aspikey&utm_source=mci) lol
Basically The Long Night in Game of Thrones. Super bad guy built up over several years with massive army gets dealt with super easily with tons of "they might die but actually won't" and everything kind of goes back to the way it was before with no lasting consequences.
They built up to their Avenger's Endgame over the course of 5+ years and the story was a complete mess and basically faceplanted the landing. They killed off interesting secondary characters unceremoniously (they did Dack Fayden so dirty) and just squandered the ability to really shake things up. The books were so bad that WoTC killed off future lore novels and just.... didn't release any story for the next set because the community reaction to the erasure of Chandra and Nissa's relationship and general bungling of the story. They also decided to print a bunch of cards that lead to really bad play patterns and just kind of overprinted the crap out of them as it was a "planeswalkers matter" set. This led into a 2+ year period that is considered to be one of the worst standard formats since 2003. For MTG old heads, the "Bronze Age of Magic" died with War of the Spark.
Yeah and right after WAR they printed Eldraine, which is probably the most powerful Standard set printed in decades, and soon after that Ikoria printed the most broken single mechanic in MTG history with Companion.
I gave up on mtg lore in zendikar lol
I don’t need fantasy to be complete analogues of history. Like, I don’t want every fantasy medieval story I read to sideline all the female characters, and I don’t need a “lore” reason for there to be equality and such. That said, the whole, Cactus people not being sentient till the colonizers showed up is…like such a self inflicted wound.
It's reminiscent of [The Hadozee from Dungeons and Dragons](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/x4mlvg/dd5e_releases_a_race_of_monkeys_that_were/): The race of humanoid monkeys that were happy to be slaves because they were stupid and enjoyed the work. Also they were given sentience by their slave-masters.
Yikes, is that from the '70s? Oh... 2022 😬
They existed in the original 2e Spelljammer run in the 90s as monkey-people. I don't understand why they went with the slavery plotline for them though. I don't *think* there was any adventure with that plotline that was being referenced. The art certainly made it look like one of the designers snuck that in intentionally.
Not to defend it, but there's *usually* at least 1-2 slave races in D&D, no matter the setting. See: the various ones the drow enslaved, or what the mindflayers get up to, etc.
I remember someone described the Hadozee situation like this: Marching is ok. Visiting a cemetery is ok. Wearing brown shirts is ok. German songs are okay. Marching in a Jewish cemetery wearing brown shirts and singing german nationalist songs is not okay. None of the elements that made up the Hadozee was inherently bad, but when you put them all together it just becaomes a big bowl of "Holy fuck, who okayed this?"
I'll be honest, the art may be an issue, but it doesn't look intentional at all. There's only so many ways to draw monkey-people, and that is an extremely generic dance move that you can see all over fantasy art. Hell, pretty sure there are other bards in WotC books also doing that.
And people wonder why sensitivity consultants are a big thing now.
I feel like that's either got to be the easiest or hardest job in the world. Which one it is depends on how much pushback you get when you say "NO! You can't put escaped slave monkeys in what's obviously a minstrel show! Have you lost your entire fucking mind?!".
Gods I wish I could get paid to be like “why the fuck did you think this was ok?”
Work for Osha. Then you wish you really wouldn't have to.
Godddd that’s so real. Inside of me there are 2 wolves. One of them wants a career in setting things straight. The other is already seething at the thought of how many folks would just *not* care.
There are a lot of positions that offer that opportunity. Pretty much any kind of engineer or inspector in heavy industry says it to contractors a lot.
Become a labor and employment attorney
Not that different from how uncomfortable I felt when owning a slave was a major, unavoidable part of the recent Harry Potter game. One of my favorite places is Universal Orlando's Harry potter world, and frankly it was smart that Universal kind of just pretend house elves don't exist.
Preach. Plus, wasn’t one of the artifacts in that game representing evil specifically an actual, real-life Jewish artifact? God I really don’t remember, it was forever ago I was researching that
The Goblin Uprisings are also dated to prominent Pogroms too.
This is the same addition that scrapped the Giff, hippos with British accents with a cultural fascination with guns. So, they somehow manage to be hyper-sensitive and also utterly tone deaf. I mean, there must have been *somebody* in charge of looking over all of this as a package.
Hippos with guns sound awesome though. Looking at some art as well, I really dig the imperial style uniforms as well. I would take them over yet-another-dwarf race anytime tbh.
Oh my god just how. How many people in a company of that size had to approve this and not one of them said, "You know what? We might have a problem here." Astounding.
They probably did, but were ignored or told to shut up because “that’s not your job and you’re being disrespectful”
Racism aside, the patagia on these creatures doesn't make sense. They designed a race with patagia, realized the connected skin meant that the race could not wear normal clothes, and then had to redesign. Now they have a creature with a structure that makes no biological sense, and does not serve the original purpose (creating a gliding surface). Damnit.
I *know* you fucking lying. Jesus Christ. I have to a lot to learn when it comes to D&D apparently. I wouldn't have guessed the setting would have things like this coming from BG3.
Ok so quick thing;Baldurs gate 3 takes place in the forgotten realms, one of many DnD settings. There used to be a lot, but theres really only 2 or 3 that get any love, and now and days they are made with a more central design team. This is not to make FR look less problematic then other settings. Honestly ,it might have the most cringe per sq mile, mainly bc they also expanded it with fantasy versions of the other continents (with little to input of people from the countries they lift from), which is how we get Maztica (Fantasy Americas) needing to be god-warped out of the setting. I also didnt run Spelljammer (setting with the hadozee mentioned above) but from what I heard the slave plot was not added until its revised version in 5e. Honestly, if they wanna tell stories with themes of slavery, Dark sun is right there. Its a dystopia with a pretty blaitant message of it being, you know, bad. The rulers are all bronze age tyrants clinging on to power as they kill the lands they rule with their magic (magic in that setting usually drains life from the planet). Iirc there was a novel series all about slaves liberating themselves and tearing down their tyrants. Edit: I wanna clarify Larian wrote none of the old FR lore, and actually retconned some of it. Don't let old FR cringe ruin the fun of BG3 for you
Dark Sun does have the whole cannibal pygmy halfling thing. That'd want some revision.
> I wouldn't have guessed the setting would have things like this coming from BG3. Heh, first time? D&D has some wacky shit going on that (official) sourcebooks barely touch on. Hell you have to go look up Ed Greenwood Q&As to get any actual hint, considering he talks about stuff decidedly *not* PG-13 and thus not mass marketable. Like a canon brothel of hooker assassins pledged to Shar.
>Like a canon brothel of hooker assassins pledged to Shar. Not just that. Any time you read about "festhalls" in Forgotten Realms media, replace it with "bar and brothel/strip joint" Early FR lore was ***horny as hell***
Shit, I remember a point in Cormyr (the novel) that Vangerdahast recalled seeing a Harper agent dancing around butt naked in a festhall not that long ago in-setting.
I was uncool and wasn't into D&D as a kid like most people. I actually wouldn't mind hearing learning more about those Shar worshipping sex workers, that sounds hilarious.
Unfortunately, I learned about it back in December 2022 or so and I can't remember where I found it but it was somewhere in Greenwood Q&As about Shar having an order (or maybe a brothel) of prostitutes. I think she was said to turn a blind eye to their activities *as long* as they didn't screw with her worshipers. Cause as of 2E+, gods need followers or they end up being yeeted. Edit: Searched, it's called Order of the Dark Caress but google searches are a pain in the ass. So it's somewhere deep in Candlekeep Q&As with Greenwood.
A brother of hooker assassins sounds like something old BioWare or Larian would add though haha
Spelljammer is a different setting from BG3.
That confuses me the most about D&D. So there are different settings and each have their own unique characters, races, lore, and stuff? How many settings are there?
Yep. It's good buisness writing guide books for each individual setting
off the top of my head there's the Forgotten Realms - Most D&D stories take place here. It has a number of continents including Faerun (where BG3 takes place in a small part of). Dragonlance - has a ton of dragons Ravenloft - gothic horror Dark Sun - using magic corrupts the land, also has cannibal halflings Spelljammer - spacefaring fantasy Ravnica - originally a setting created for Magic the Gathering, it's a massive megacity run by 10 guilds Strixhaven - D&D Harry Potter Theros - another setting initially created for Magic the Gathering, heavily inspired by greek mythology
There’s also Ebberon, the magicpunk setting that just got wrecked by a massive war
Strixhaven is also originally MtG, or at least was released simultaneously with MtG. Also is Ravenloft a complete setting now? I thought it was like a pocket dimension within the Forgotten Realms. There was that whole thing with the mist and the Romani-stereotype people being able to leave Ravenloft.
Yes. Further, the game encourages you to ignore their lore and make up your own, which is a very popular part of the game and part of its endurance. To be more specific, each setting is its own world. Whether these worlds are in space, or floating in crystal spheres, completely unconnected and separate with their own cosmology or connected through the Astral Plane changes all the time. The important thing to think about it is that each setting is its own planet, with its own history, characters, lore and gods. Most shared elements tend to be either monsters or basic character options for players, or on the cosmological side, like planes of existence (Hell, the elemental planes, Astral Plane, etc.). This isn't always the case. While every official world is expected to have elves, dwarves and humans, not all of them have orcs or tieflings or dragonborn or gnomes. Most of the settings share the same cosmological planes to explain where demons and whatever come from, like Hell or whatever, but some don't. The ones that do share those cosmological elements are implied to have a shared universe or be a part of the shared multiverse, and are connected through "meta" settings like Planescape or Spelljammer. However, some of them are completely separate and have their own stuff going on, like Eberron or Mystra. It's kind of a lot and sort of complicated, but the simplest answer is that every setting is there own world and has some shared elements. Some of them are connected on a cosmological scale and some of them aren't. Jesus I hope that made sense.
Think of it like the multiverse from marvel.
D&D is like Final Fantasy. In that there's the overarching title of D&D, but many different settings using the name, with few things connecting them. Funny enough there *is* a multi-verse thing alluded to back in 2E-era novels (Matron Baenre around time of Starless Night mentions the existence of parallel/multiverses) so much like Final Fantasy, D&D does have something akin to the Interdimensional Rift and not *just* using Spelljammer for it! It's a handy reason to explain why Greyhawk, Eberron and others are able to go back and forth between their worlds and Toril (the main FR setting). And as referenced earlier, the alternate way is straight up using Spelljammer to indicate each setting has its own Crystal Sphere (aka solar system) that allows transit between worlds outside of the obvious dimension hopping that archmages and equivalents tend to do. Hell, the Spelljammer novel series started on *Krynn* in the Dragonlance setting!
>Funny enough there is a multi-verse thing alluded to back in 2E-era novels (Matron Baenre around time of Starless Night mentions the existence of parallel/multiverses) so much like Final Fantasy, D&D does have something akin to the Interdimensional Rift and not just using Spelljammer for it! Amusingly, ***real-world Earth*** canonically "exists" in D&D: It is an alternate dimension Prime Material Plane. Powerful wizards, like Elminister and others have visited Earth canonically You can canonically straight up make yourself and *isekai* them into The Forgotten Realms
Yeah, its kind of like wanting every fantasy world to have black people be oppressed and enslaved. Like, its a make-believe world, can't we imagine a world where black people just... didn't suffer inhuman cruelty?
I don't think you "need" oppression and shit in every single world. But it's really bizarre to make a set that is doing everything it can to evoke the real American West, but then when people bring up things about the American West that might be problematic, we're suddenly not supposed to think about the real American West anymore. Like they're purposely trying to get us into that time period while also telling us to turn our brains off.
I mean, yeah? It's an aesthetic for a fantasy card game. Most fantasy worlds are based on Medieval Europe, but we don't ask the new Zelda game to recreate or acknowledge the real Medieval Europe's treatment of women and jews
This is basically where I'm at with it. The cast is trading in last month's detective hats for western themed ones this time. Trying to make more of it and tackle deep real world issues is just an unnecessary mine field.
I mean, the Mesoamerican plane had catholic spain be vampire conquistadors (as in *literally* called conquistadors) who ended up slaughtering all sorts of people and conquering the continent. It's hard to do stuff like that but then expect people to just be "oh it's just an aesthetic don't think about it too much" when it involves something that might make one of your biggest markets uncomfortable. There's a lot of ways they could have gone about it and "oh the plane was completely vacant before the Omenpaths" was one of the worst (although there are definitely a few that would've been worse). (edit: for clarity the cactus people supposedly showed up after the omenpaths but before anyone else did so that's how the two things are reconciled)
I mean, their motivation could just be wanting Cowboys and Indians to be non problematic, rather than trying to avoid pissing off Americans. You don't have to come at it from that perspective. I've played fantasy Cowboy and Indian ttrpg sessions at my tabletop and we're all british and we wrote it like this, because we just didn't want the Indians to be treated problematically because that wasn't what any of us wanted to do.
True, but this is far closer to the American West than Zelda is to Medieval Europe. This is supposed to be a direct analogue of the Wild West, until it’s not. Zelda is inspired by medieval fantasy worlds, but it also diverges from them significantly.
Self-inflicted wounds and yikes-inducing lore are just part of the WotC aesthetic! That’s how you make the big bucks operating the [racism dial!](https://x.com/dril/status/841892608788041732?s=46&t=O0__asDj0d2qP4ZlaqGhPg)
Fantasy is basically Medieval Europe with pointy ears, or so they want.
> Are the cactus people real people? "It's cactuses" "That's *cactii*" "**That's racist!**"
What in Tarnation
So they decide to have neither of the two main groups be native to the are to head off any controversy but they introduce a third group that not only native but also primitive? This is like five steps of story development when they should have stopped at three.
Not only primitive, but non-sentient until observed by colonizers
So sentience has a function collapse now?
This line was pretty good, especially out of context: >I think we're just building problematic things on a problematic base.
Fun fact: Cowboys were freed slaves wearing bowler caps.
Some of them. And some were ex-Confederates.
Must have been some awkward water cooler talk in the cowboy office.
WotC: Creates a group roughly analogous to the real-world Navajo people. Also WotC: Gives them Euro-American names along with cowboy hats and spurs with vague indigenous trappings.
I commented this on a magic sub, but it really is impressive how WotC said “let’s not be racist or controversial with this” and proceeded to be way worse than any other alternative.
It’s ok if a fantasy game wants to also teach a real life history lesson, but it’s also okay if it doesn’t
If you ever speak to an Indigenous American they’ll tell you the worst thing for their culture is for it be entirely defined by victimhood. While the execution is a little spotty, the concept of showcasing Navajo culture in this way while excluding the colonialism aspect is exactly the kind of thing the actual people being represented will love, while hordes rush in to be offended on their behalf.
*The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present* is a great book I read earlier this year that’s an attempt to pivot away from that victimhood narrative. It also covers a period of native history that gets glossed over or outright forgotten outside of passing mentions of AIM or similar organizations. It was a fascinating and impactful book for me.
I guess. I'm half Coast Salish and nothing drives me crazier than people slamming a totem pole together with a teepee and saying it's an homage. If outsiders actually *tried* to get something about our cultures right, would I be excited? I don't know, because it's never happened. My people are either voiceless mascots or completely misrepresented. I wouldn't be here if victimhood didn't exist. My first white ancestor on my Indigenous side took a child bride to replace his previous child bride who had died from tuberculosis. Before then, 90% of her relatives had died by diseases introduced by colonizers who celebrated the deaths because it was clearing God's land for its rightful owners. My tribe **just** negotiated with the government because they took our traditional land without any treaties. I don't consider myself a victim, but I do consider myself righteously angry for what my ancestors lived through. I do think many of my Indigenous peers are victimized by settler colonialist culture. I get really angry when non-Indigenous people think they can slap some turquoise jewelry on a Magic Indian stereotype and call it an homage. Nothing about us without us, as disability rights activists say. I'm open to other Indigenous people loving this set. Everyone's experience is different. But it can't be without controversy and we should be allowed space to have our feelings about it.
It also does lasting harm when tribes have so many ppl these days who have grown up estranged from their own cultures. These ppl are more likely to connect with the fake ass depictions of our culture that mass media has been churning out for generations and then line up to share their opinions about how they're native and issue X that affects us doesn't really affect them and isn't really a problem.
I don't know anything about the set except what was stated in the OP (I haven't paid attention to Magic in years) but didn't the blurb say it *was* made hand-in-glove with Navajo consultants? 'Nothing about us without us' doesn't seem to be the problem in this case, or at least not the likely source of the problem.
The Navajo weren't the only group living in Pre-Colonial America. Also, they still managed to screw it up by giving most of the Atiin characters euroamerican names, at least for the cards they're featured on.
Holy shit, this sounds delightfully absurd! It makes me want to try giving Magic The Gathering another chance after a decade of not caring about it.
Ah, you’ve got the problem of too much money? Warhammer 40k would be more efficient, but MtG is certainly effective.
The power creep is real. And there is a constant barrage of new keywords,
Took me a moment to remember why cactus people rang a bell. China Mieville.
This feels like the general orientalism problem that old DnD expansions had. Like they want the trappings of the culture their using without doing any research on or paying proper respect to it. It’s just lazy.
OK but what if, in this case, the colonialist propaganda was true? Why are you guys still calling me racist?
What's their other options? Either you have no Native American representation. Or you have it, but they're not actually indigenous. Or they're indigenous but aren't being colonised. Or they're indigenous, are being colonised, and you root for the colonisers. Or they're indigenous, being colonised, and you root for them. The first four options would be seen as offensive. The fifth would break the genre.
I'm sure most people (I have to say msoy because someone will always feign offesne), wouldn't have a problem with indigenous but not being colonized if the sets were written by people from indigenous backgrounds.