Editing Ethnic Fantasy

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'''Ethnic Fantasy''' is a catch-all term for a variety of [[Setting Aesthetic]]s all rooted in the same basic idea: take a specific real world locale, and more specifically its history & mythology, and build a fantasy setting out of their specific trappings and tropes. Essentially, if you're making a setting specifically as "Fantasy [[Egypt]], [[Japan]], [[China]], whatever"? You're making an Ethnic Fantasy Setting. Whilst this can be highly interesting, especially compared to the more generic and kitchen-sink style fantasy you tend to see in games like [[Dungeons & Dragons]], it's also a potential recipe for disaster, because it's hard to think any Setting Aesthetic more inherently [[/pol/]] connected.

==The Problems==
To get the most obvious problem out of the way; Ethnic Fantasy settings are often (but not always) tied to the histories and beliefs of real world people who have often gotten a pretty shitty deal in real-world history. So, understandably, they can get a little touchy if their myths and stories aren't treated with respect. Now, this is obviously a vague line to be crossed, and it depends a lot on the fact people are people wherever you go - for every guy who just wants people to not treat his people like a bad joke, there's a guy who is sincerely interested in sharing his culture and myths to a new and interested audience... and a third guy who wants to shout "racism" because it gives him power.

This doesn't make Ethnic Fantasy settings inherently bad, just that they get much better reception if you put a bit of honest effort into researching things and try to avoid obvious blatant racial stereotypes.

The other major issue with Ethnic Fantasy settings is a phenomenon more associated with [[Dungeons & Dragons]] in particular. This issue is a tendency to become particularly fixated on representing real world history and/or "accurate" portrayals of mystical entities and abilities within that setting - in effect, forcing the setting into a [[Historical Fantasy]] or [[Low Fantasy]] route even, sometimes despite the rest of the world being a full-fledged [[High Fantasy]] or [[Heroic Fantasy]] world, even if the culture in question also had tons myths and story that would make it a great fit with the former! A particularly good example of this is [[Maztica]], where you have an entire continent whose only access to magic are gimped [[Cleric]]s and arcanists who create "Pluma" and "Hishna" magic... whose magic is so minor that they are handled as [[rogue]] [[kits]]! And yet, somehow, these people are living in the same world as non-gimped [[cleric]]s and fully-fledged [[wizard]]s - it's even a plot point in the tie-in novels that the Faerunian invaders effortlessly curbstomp the native Maztican forces because their magic is more powerful and abundant than anything the Mazticans have seen before. This is something that more than one fan has called out as part of the problem when denouncing Maztica as racist.

This problem can be solved by a simple equation: keep the fantasy level "equal" if you're going to have different ethnic fantasy regions side-by-side. If you make the faux-Chinese or the faux-Arabs or whatever have less magic than the faux-Europeans, that's a no-no (especially with the formers had a richer story well of mystic and warrior doing very 20th level character things compared to the conservative feats of medieval Christian stories.)

==Known Ethnic Fantasy Settings==
* [[Maztica]] - Pre-Columbian South America in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]
* [[Kara-tur]] - Medieval China and Japan with a dash of Korea in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]
* [[Mahasarpa]] - Medieval India in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]
* [[The Horde]] - Mongolia under Genghis Khan in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]
* [[Anchorome]] - Pre-Columbian Central/North America in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]
* [[Amonkhet]] - [[Egypt]] in [[Magic: The Gathering]]
* [[Ixalan]] South America in [[Magic: The Gathering]]
* [[Rokugan]] - Fantasy Japan
* Damn near any locale in [[Golarion]]
* Lok - From the ''Saga of the Forgotten Warrior'' books, which actually "sold well" in India, which shows such a setting can absolutely appeal to the culture it's based on.

[[Category: Gamer Slang]]