Orientalist Fantasy Settings

[OgreBattle]

Ancient 'China' area and Vedas/Hindu/Buddhist stuff seems like a good 'common cosmology' to spread across one's fantasy Asia setting

8 protectors of Buddhism:
https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/ ... ushu.shtml

East Asian folk religion with animals, like the fox and crow and weasel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast ... k_religion



Could do something like...

Enshrined beings that are usually humanoid
- Deva, weather and astral phenomena
- Asura, human crafts
- Yasha, nature biomes... maybe village and city gods too?

Ancestor worship... could be "yeah they are now the Yasha of this city..."

Enshrined beings that are usually monstrous
- Dragon, Naga
- Garuda, Phoenix, possibly Yatagarasu
-- Crow could be part of the above or haveTengu as separate
- Hedgehogs, Tanuki... don't know if they're related but they're both chubby with short limbs
- Weasel, Rat

Can have different realms like...

Astral realms: Deva and Asura in various factions, Hell can be one of those realms
Mortal realm: Humans and animals, perhaps the crossroads to the other realms
Unformed Chaos: Yin Yang stuff in between realms

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If Fox shrines are located across the setting then a character can be a devout fox worshiper and get info from the local Fox shrines. Regional differences between different shrines

Dragon Ball Super Broly is cool as a galactic East Asian cosmology setting

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Good resource for weapons of Asia:
http://mandarinmansion.com/antique-vietnamese-arms

[OgreBattle]

Another thing to add in, there's less of a Lord of the Rings phantom hanging over Oriental settings, so warriors that can walk on the wind and slice through stone are part of the lore

[Username17]

Another thing to add in, there's less of a Lord of the Rings phantom hanging over Oriental settings, so warriors that can walk on the wind and slice through stone are part of the lore

Even in Tolkien there are people who can slice rocks and dance so hard that walls fall down and sing trees out of the ground and shit. And there are plenty of East Asian stories where the limits of mundane characters are pretty strictly enforced. And indeed, lots of East Asian stories where Magic Dudes >> You.

But it's true that there's a significant number of people for whom Western Fantasy implies a certain level of LotR cosplay and "gritty realizarm" from people who aren't wizards. And for a lot of those people, a setting change to Arabian Nights or Meso-American or East Asian fantasy is all that it takes for those particular blinders to come off.

It's not really surprising in retrospect that much of the discussion about Tome of Battle was "how anime" it was. Obviously that book wasn't especially anime in any real terms, but it was different from the "gritty realizarm" of Gygaxian Tolkienism.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Or, if you prefer, how Prince of Persia it was.

[maglag]

It's not really surprising in retrospect that much of the discussion about Tome of Battle was "how anime" it was. Obviously that book wasn't especially anime in any real terms, but it was different from the "gritty realizarm" of Gygaxian Tolkienism.

In the other hand, Tolkien wizards can do little more than fireworks magic wise, and when the going gets tough Tolkien wizards just pull swords designed by ancient smiths to stabs their enemies. Sharp implements are the way to go for dealing with most Tolkien threats actually.

Sauron with the One Ring at the peak of his power? No match for a warrior with a broken sword.
The ring wraiths? Invulnerable to everything but ancient swords.
Balor? Sword mightier than the mightiest spellcaster's spells.
Giant fire-breathing dragon that eats dwarven fortresses for breakfast? Sword'd arrow'd.

[Username17]

What magic can do is extremely setting and even system dependent. Gandalf says he "can't burn snow," but no one fucking blinks when nominally much weaker witches use fuelless magical fire in spinoff properties.

Ultimately, the balance between different characters is a very complicated matter. And in single author fiction, you can make the story be about whatever you want and any trait at all could loom large or be functionally irrelevant. Willow is about Willow and Willow saves the day with his magic even though his magic is kind of bullshit because the day gets saved by Minor Counterspell and the disappearing pig trick, while the nominally much more competent warriors can't do shit because Bavmorda can turn them all into pigs or telekinetically hurl them into a spike pit if they don't have some kind of counterspells. On the other scale, Aladdin is about Aladdin and Aladdin saves the day by being "moderately sneaky" while the Genie cant do shit with his phenomenal cosmic power because reasons.

With an RPG, you don't have nearly as much control, and you have a much smaller order of infinity ways you could potentially balance things. It's still a lot - you could have mages whose card tricks are no more useful than being really good at trivia games or donkey kong. But whatever abilities you give characters, the players are going to actively find ways to use them, which means that it's much less likely that an incredibly narrow ability like "can identify fish by taste" is going to particularly matter and it's much more likely that things you might call "broad" or "powerful" are going to run away with the game.

Nevertheless, it's important to understand and recognize that there isn't any particular limits to how strong or weak or narrow or broad you make the characters in your setting. It's yours. You can do whatever the fuck you want.

But it's also true that people might call bullshit on whatever you picked. Just because there are an infinite number of powers and potential limitations doesn't mean that there aren't a substantial portion that are super retarded. And I think it's factually true that going outside cultural tropes people are more familiar with gives you more leeway rather than less.

It's essentially the opposite of the "made up words" problem. If you use made-up words, people lose interest, and if you use real worlds in a way they aren't normally used people call bullshit. The advantage then of using Ki-Rin instead of Unicorns is that people in the west mostly don't know the context of the original word and you can do mostly what you want with it.

-Username17

[maglag]

With an RPG, you don't have nearly as much control, and you have a much smaller order of infinity ways you could potentially balance things. It's still a lot - you could have mages whose card tricks are no more useful than being really good at trivia games or donkey kong. But whatever abilities you give characters, the players are going to actively find ways to use them, which means that it's much less likely that an incredibly narrow ability like "can identify fish by taste" is going to particularly matter and it's much more likely that things you might call "broad" or "powerful" are going to run away with the game.

The important bit is to make sure to give proper abilities to everybody.

Like in LotR the high-level warrior can just one-shot the mighty dragon with his own bow and arrow, whereas in 3rd edition D&D the dragon has bloated HP and anti-fighter defenses but relatively crappy spell defenses so the fighter can never one-shot the dragon at range even if they roll max at all the dies while the spellcaster has a reliable chance of doing so. Heck, even if the dragon is so kind to land in 3rd edition, the fighter is still kinda screwed in a direct melee.

Or how the spellcaster can throw rocks pretty effectively with the single spell of telekinesis that has other uses but a warrior that wants to throw rocks effectively will need to dip in splatbooks and sink most of their resources to be a one-trick pony.

Or how a rogue needs to invest limited skill points in open lock that has a failure chance and the wizard can just spend a bit of gold that's a lot more abundant than skill ranks and learn Knock that always succeeds.

Really going "this class only can pick a few limited abilities from a small list" and "this class can pick lots of great abilities from an huge list" should've sounded alarms in somebody's head from the start.

It's essentially the opposite of the "made up words" problem. If you use made-up words, people lose interest, and if you use real worlds in a way they aren't normally used people call bullshit. The advantage then of using Ki-Rin instead of Unicorns is that people in the west mostly don't know the context of the original word and you can do mostly what you want with it.

-Username17

You could do pretty much anything with unicorn too, like they used to be considered fierce beasts that would gore people with their horns, and nowadays they're used for children's cartoons about friendship where nobody gets gored.

An even better example, something like "dragons" can range all the way from "relatively common winged lizards who can breath fire but otherwise don't have powers and are raised to serve humans in bulk" to "super-rare unique beings with godlike magic powers who are in charge of whole dominions" and everything in between and around like dragon maids.

[Username17]

You could do pretty much anything with unicorn too, like they used to be considered fierce beasts that would gore people with their horns, and nowadays they're used for children's cartoons about friendship where nobody gets gored.

That's precisely where things get easier by reaching outside of the western fantasy wheelhouse. Yes, the original biblical Unicorn is a garbled folk description of a rhino. But if you put Unicorns in your western fantasy game that look like rhinos, people are going to call bullshit on you. Not because you aren't "correct," but because they have MLP-based expectations about Unicorns specifically and your version won't meet those expectations.

On the other hand, if the monster is a Tlahuelpuchi or a Kamaitachi, the typical western consumer has no expectations, so you aren't offending them no matter how you decide to portray them.

Or to put it another way: Man of Steel was a movie that pissed people off because it had Superman getting all edgelord about whether to try to save people or not. And people had expectations that Pa Fucking Kent wouldn't give weird Randian tirades about how Superman shouldn't try to help people. If it had been a superhero that people had no expectations about such as The Guardian, people wouldn't have been pissed off and just concentrated on the film's poor pacing.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

I know a lot of folklore from a number of different cultures. Off-hand, I don't recognize Tlahuelpuchi or Kamaitachi. The first I would assume is Aztec and the second probably Japanese. I have no other assumptions.

Obviously, I wouldn't be offended based on any description you decided to provide for those monsters. BUT, they also don't offer any advantages over a completely made-up word because I'm seeing them for the first time. As far as I can tell, they are made up words, so the mental cost of absorbing those creatures is exactly the same as if they were made up.

The more obscure your source, the less benefit there is in actually using the name - but the potential pitfall of misrepresenting something in an insulting way remains.

[OgreBattle]

Pokémon are made up based off of real world mythology, they also have really good artwork, pacing in gameplay and so on

[Username17]

I know a lot of folklore from a number of different cultures. Off-hand, I don't recognize Tlahuelpuchi or Kamaitachi. The first I would assume is Aztec and the second probably Japanese. I have no other assumptions.

Obviously, I wouldn't be offended based on any description you decided to provide for those monsters. BUT, they also don't offer any advantages over a completely made-up word because I'm seeing them for the first time. As far as I can tell, they are made up words, so the mental cost of absorbing those creatures is exactly the same as if they were made up.

The more obscure your source, the less benefit there is in actually using the name - but the potential pitfall of misrepresenting something in an insulting way remains.

I disagree entirely.



The first place I ever heard of the Kenku/Tengu was in the AD&D Fiend Folio that I used as a coloring book as a child. And thus for a short period of time there was no particular reason for me to think the Kenku had any more history behind it than the Bullywug did. But the fact that the Kenku were referring to previously existing folk tales meant that the Fiend Folio acted as a gateway to reading about all kinds of other cool stuff. While the Bullywugs… they really just don't.

Every monster is going to be something that someone experiences for the first time at some point. And that's fine. Good even.

-Username17

[maglag]

You could do pretty much anything with unicorn too, like they used to be considered fierce beasts that would gore people with their horns, and nowadays they're used for children's cartoons about friendship where nobody gets gored.

That's precisely where things get easier by reaching outside of the western fantasy wheelhouse. Yes, the original biblical Unicorn is a garbled folk description of a rhino. But if you put Unicorns in your western fantasy game that look like rhinos, people are going to call bullshit on you. Not because you aren't "correct," but because they have MLP-based expectations about Unicorns specifically and your version won't meet those expectations.

On the other hand, if the monster is a Tlahuelpuchi or a Kamaitachi, the typical western consumer has no expectations, so you aren't offending them no matter how you decide to portray them.

Or to put it another way: Man of Steel was a movie that pissed people off because it had Superman getting all edgelord about whether to try to save people or not. And people had expectations that Pa Fucking Kent wouldn't give weird Randian tirades about how Superman shouldn't try to help people. If it had been a superhero that people had no expectations about such as The Guardian, people wouldn't have been pissed off and just concentrated on the film's poor pacing.

-Username17

That movie was simply bad overall. If you replaced supes with some other random superhero brick it would've been a bad movie all the same.

There are many examples of classic names getting a fresh coat of paint and being successful. Like unicorns. Somebody at some point went "hey let's make unicorns cute child-friendy magic mascots instead of brutal rhinos" and it just worked. If somebody came up with another cool interpretation for unicorns that's different from MLP, people would buy that too.

The first place I ever heard of the Kenku/Tengu was in the AD&D Fiend Folio that I used as a coloring book as a child. And thus for a short period of time there was no particular reason for me to think the Kenku had any more history behind it than the Bullywug did. But the fact that the Kenku were referring to previously existing folk tales meant that the Fiend Folio acted as a gateway to reading about all kinds of other cool stuff. While the Bullywugs… they really just don't.

Every monster is going to be something that someone experiences for the first time at some point. And that's fine. Good even.

-Username17

I seriously doubt that anybody anywhere ever went "omg this is so cool and helped me to connect with so many things" for Bullywugs. That I know of there's no bullywug novels, no bullywug movies, no bullywug cartoons, no bullywug comics, I never heard of people wanting to play or cosplaying bullywugs or even saw bullywugs being used as thrown-away mooks in D&D-based video games, whereas Tengus are actually inherently cool that with being angels flying bird people and have plenty of other cool material for one to latch on.

So again names are less important than actually presenting a cool concept.

Like Ogrebattle pointed out pokemon is a franchise that bases its monsters off mythologies everywhere but gives them completely new names, neither western nor eastern, and still became stupidly popular just because the monsters themselves are cool.

[K]

I know a lot of folklore from a number of different cultures. Off-hand, I don't recognize Tlahuelpuchi or Kamaitachi. The first I would assume is Aztec and the second probably Japanese. I have no other assumptions.

Obviously, I wouldn't be offended based on any description you decided to provide for those monsters. BUT, they also don't offer any advantages over a completely made-up word because I'm seeing them for the first time. As far as I can tell, they are made up words, so the mental cost of absorbing those creatures is exactly the same as if they were made up.

The more obscure your source, the less benefit there is in actually using the name - but the potential pitfall of misrepresenting something in an insulting way remains.

I disagree entirely.



The first place I ever heard of the Kenku/Tengu was in the AD&D Fiend Folio that I used as a coloring book as a child. And thus for a short period of time there was no particular reason for me to think the Kenku had any more history behind it than the Bullywug did. But the fact that the Kenku were referring to previously existing folk tales meant that the Fiend Folio acted as a gateway to reading about all kinds of other cool stuff. While the Bullywugs… they really just don't.

Every monster is going to be something that someone experiences for the first time at some point. And that's fine. Good even.

-Username17

Is this the time to mention that kenku is a made-up word created for DnD for a monster loosely based on the tengu? And that no one really cares? And that anyone researching the Kenku will find the Tengu and get their gateway without anyone being able to claim that you misrepresented something from their culture?

Is this the time?

[OgreBattle]

I didn't make the connection between kenku and tengu 'cause DnD's were little halfling crow people that do hanfling things, and not the image of 6 limbed tengu swordsmen I was used to



I also figured spiritfolk were suppose to be like... something related to the crane bride or finding a baby in a bamboo stalk, but the artwork and stats were not evocative to me

[OgreBattle]

Central Asia is often written out, or relegated to being orcs/barely not an orc that are ignored for the more China/Japan city and bamboo forests stuff.

Hayao Miyazaki loves drawing from Central Asian inspirations, and historic very important dynasties like the Tang had a ton of interactions with central Asian cultures influencing their artwork, weaponry, armor and so on.

So for me I'd want a Tang dynasty era central asia and a Ming dynasty era coast/Southeast Asian islands

[Username17]

Is this the time to mention that kenku is a made-up word created for DnD for a monster loosely based on the tengu?

More specifically, the transliteration of Asian words was a lot more fluid in the past, even the quite recent past like the late 70s/ early 80s. Recall that we still call the country "Japan" despite the actual residents calling it "Nihon." Words that come into English in the days of the internet get a lot more double-checking and peer review before being transliterated, and you have a lot less "accepted spellings."

In 1981 "Kenku" was simply one of many ways you could spell "Tengu," and now that our society has pretty much settled on there being a "correct" English transliteration, Wizards of the Coast has elected to keep the "wrong" spelling for copyright purposes. Which is weird, but the kind of thing companies do to individualize their IP. See: Games Workshop's insistence on putting incorrect Latin names on every organization.

But remember that the ISO didn't declare that Hanyu-Pinyin was the "correct" system of transliterating Chinese characters until 1982. Before that, it was the wild fucking west. British nerds writing monster entries in 1980 and working with books of folk lore from the 70s, 60s, or before could have three or four differently written words that are really the same word and have no way at all to determine which was most correct. The Fiend Folio also calls the Lion Dragon the "Li Lung" while Google now helpfully tells us that the "correct" written form is "Shi Long". But at publishing time in 1981, "Li Lung" was simply one written form of many.

Central Asia is often written out, or relegated to being orcs/barely not an orc that are ignored for the more China/Japan city and bamboo forests stuff.

I agree that the Central Asian stuff is really interesting and deserves to get a lot more interest than it gets. One of the things that I think holds it back is that Central Asia is also adjacent to Europe and the Middle East, so it contains a lot of elements that strike people as being "out of place" for an Orientalist setting. The bad guys from Mulan are literally Hungarians - the Europeans who live between Romania and Austria. And one of the dominant religions of the region is Islam.

The Islam situation is itself really complicated. You wouldn't want to use actual Islam in your fantasy setting for the same reason you wouldn't want to use actual Christianity or actual Buddhism. But at the same time, there are movements to erase the Rohinga and the Uighur peoples right now, and that's a delicate line to walk.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Central Asia being the world's crossroads is extremely helpful to globe-spanning fantasyland, which makes it doubly tragic that it's so underutilized. Central Asia being adjacent to both Orientalist, Middle-Eastern, and European pastiche makes it a great place to start a campaign that plans on interacting with all three of those, and it's pretty damn common for a campaign world to include all three of those. Alas, it is very much uncommon for a campaign world to include Central Asia as an actual PC land where you can start a campaign rather than just as a horde of orcs who menace your campaign.

[maglag]

Is this the time to mention that kenku is a made-up word created for DnD for a monster loosely based on the tengu?

More specifically, the transliteration of Asian words was a lot more fluid in the past, even the quite recent past like the late 70s/ early 80s. Recall that we still call the country "Japan" despite the actual residents calling it "Nihon." Words that come into English in the days of the internet get a lot more double-checking and peer review before being transliterated, and you have a lot less "accepted spellings."

Chinese call the USA as 美国 (MeiGuo) and call most other countries (something)国, with 国(Guo) being the character for kingdom/country.

[OgreBattle]

The "steppes connect to Abrahemic lands" part can be waved by "the steppes are gigantic and there are multiple mutually hostile nomad empires that keep travel broken up"



Tolkien had Easterlings from far away but there was Mordor and vast stretches of plains between wherever they came from and Middle Earth, Warhammer did the same thing with more orcs and ogres between the not-Holy Roman Empire and not-Dynastic Chinese. So you could do that that but in reverse.

You can also keep the far West as Pantheon Land, so the Holy Roman Empire worships a thunder deity and the desert lands have Egyptian deities.

....

You can also make the fantasy steppes give way to a fantasy 'sand sea'




Breath of Fire IV was fantasy steppes/China proper borderlands

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Naming conventions...

Naruto has "Leaf village, Fire Country", real life Bhutan has "Thunder Dragon King" as what they call their king, with Bhutan in their own language called "Druk Yul" which means "Dragon Land". So an English language RPG in fantasy Asia can use English nouns for various proper nouns.


Literal names of european places sound all fantasyish too: https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wildli ... es-uk-map/

[Username17]

Committing yourself to having an Arabian Nights subsetting requires actually making an Arabian Nights setting, which is not actually less work than making a new setting by itself because that is in fact exactly what you are doing. It's fractal. If you want your setting to interact with other settings, you also have to produce those other settings in order to interact with.

Or to put it another way, Legend of the Five Rings is kind of a garbage fire, and people have serious discussions about whether it's better to burn it with fire and start over from scratch. And I personally am of that camp, that I'd rather just have a new Orientalist setting with new clans and different setting assumptions that promoted the creation of cooperative storytelling games instead of shitting on the players. But people do have these discussions. No one has these discussions about Legend of the Burning Sands. It's just proper dead and no one gives a shit.

I don't know who has the intellectual property rights to make a new edition of the Legend of the Burning Sands RPG, but I doubt it's going to happen and I wouldn't care enough to read it if for some reason it did.

That being said, while it would be a tremendous amount of work, having a fantasy setting where it was basically fantasy Afghanistan and you had interactions with fantasy Persia and fantasy China and fantasy India and fantasy Eastern Europe could potentially be really cool.

-Username17

[K]

It might just be easier to list a lot of things that work in the various settings and go from there.

For example, L5R’s animal-named clans with specialties works. Exalted’s Yozi design as a pantheon of evil works. WoT’s heron marked swords works.

[Username17]

It might just be easier to list a lot of things that work in the various settings and go from there.

For example, L5R’s animal-named clans with specialties works. Exalted’s Yozi design as a pantheon of evil works. WoT’s heron marked swords works.

I will grant like one of those. The L5R thing of having animal clans with color coded outfits does work. It works well enough that they did it in Man With The Iron Fists, which in turn was basically the Wu Tang movie.

The Heron Marked Swords was a total failure. Until you posted a link to a reproduction, it had honestly not occurred to me that they were supposed to be katanas. I thought all the ranting about steel processes and the association with pseudo Arabs made me think they were Damascus Steel. I legit thought they were infantry sabres or scimitars and so did a lot of other people who actually make reproduction weapons!

As for the Yozi, they are hit and miss. I just did a two person review of a book that was mostly about the Yozi and I think I can actually tell you what three of them do. And one of those is the silent wind that I can remember just because of how angry I was that they were so very uninteresting. I can also remember the name of 'She Who Lives In Her Name' because that's a cool name. But I have already forgotten what she's supposed to do.

-Username17

[K]

It might just be easier to list a lot of things that work in the various settings and go from there.

For example, L5R’s animal-named clans with specialties works. Exalted’s Yozi design as a pantheon of evil works. WoT’s heron marked swords works.

I will grant like one of those. The L5R thing of having animal clans with color coded outfits does work. It works well enough that they did it in Man With The Iron Fists, which in turn was basically the Wu Tang movie.

The Heron Marked Swords was a total failure. Until you posted a link to a reproduction, it had honestly not occurred to me that they were supposed to be katanas. I thought all the ranting about steel processes and the association with pseudo Arabs made me think they were Damascus Steel. I legit thought they were infantry sabres or scimitars and so did a lot of other people who actually make reproduction weapons!

As for the Yozi, they are hit and miss. I just did a two person review of a book that was mostly about the Yozi and I think I can actually tell you what three of them do. And one of those is the silent wind that I can remember just because of how angry I was that they were so very uninteresting. I can also remember the name of 'She Who Lives In Her Name' because that's a cool name. But I have already forgotten what she's supposed to do.

-Username17

You've made a mistake. I'm not asking you to shit on things, but to contribute things you think worked.

Shitting on things based on personal taste is easy enough to be useless from a design standpoint and ultimately just personal. Just because you skimmed over Exalted and Wheel of Time doesn't mean that they didn't work for people (for example, I asked three friends this week and they told me that heron-marked swords were "obviously katanas", but that's a small sample size and proves no overall rule, only that it worked on at least four people I know).

So what do you think actually worked in some setting?

I'll do another and show you what I mean:

The Last Airbender's magic system worked. It's light Taoist elementalism with a spattering of Hindu reincarnation for the chosen one. The thing where each element has sub-elements for advanced users and each element is aligned to a monster type AND loosely aligned to a national culture was an interesting take.

[souran]

I agree that the Central Asian stuff is really interesting and deserves to get a lot more interest than it gets. One of the things that I think holds it back is that Central Asia is also adjacent to Europe and the Middle East, so it contains a lot of elements that strike people as being "out of place" for an Orientalist setting. The bad guys from Mulan are literally Hungarians - the Europeans who live between Romania and Austria. And one of the dominant religions of the region is Islam.

Uhh... citation desperately needed. The Xiongnu and the Huns are probably not the same peoples. Their are some interesting connections/similarities, but the scholarship does not currently think that they are the same.

Also, Hungarians are not Huns. The Magyars claimed decent from the the huns (and Attila specifically), but this is no more historical than the claims that Rome was descended from Troy via Anneas.

Finally, by the time there was something resembling a nation-state of Hungarians it was a thousand years after the Huns. Calling Hungarians Huns is about like calling Israeli's Israelites.

[Omegonthesane]

It might just be easier to list a lot of things that work in the various settings and go from there.

For example, L5R’s animal-named clans with specialties works. Exalted’s Yozi design as a pantheon of evil works. WoT’s heron marked swords works.

I will grant like one of those. The L5R thing of having animal clans with color coded outfits does work. It works well enough that they did it in Man With The Iron Fists, which in turn was basically the Wu Tang movie.

The Heron Marked Swords was a total failure. Until you posted a link to a reproduction, it had honestly not occurred to me that they were supposed to be katanas. I thought all the ranting about steel processes and the association with pseudo Arabs made me think they were Damascus Steel. I legit thought they were infantry sabres or scimitars and so did a lot of other people who actually make reproduction weapons!

As for the Yozi, they are hit and miss. I just did a two person review of a book that was mostly about the Yozi and I think I can actually tell you what three of them do. And one of those is the silent wind that I can remember just because of how angry I was that they were so very uninteresting. I can also remember the name of 'She Who Lives In Her Name' because that's a cool name. But I have already forgotten what she's supposed to do.

-Username17

You've made a mistake. I'm not asking you to shit on things, but to contribute things you think worked.

Shitting on things based on personal taste is easy enough to be useless from a design standpoint and ultimately just personal. Just because you skimmed over Exalted and Wheel of Time doesn't mean that they didn't work for people (for example, I asked three friends this week and they told me that heron-marked swords were "obviously katanas", but that's a small sample size and proves no overall rule, only that it worked on at least four people I know).

If you're asking for ideas that worked, then evaluating whether or not they, well, *worked* is obviously a valid side topic.

The kind of fans who make reproduction swords don't unanimously agree that heron-marked swords were katanas. Are you accusing literally every single one of them of "skimming"?

Besides, even if I were to concede that heron-marked swords are obviously and undeniably katanas - which I don't, I remind you, but even if I did - saying they "worked" only applies if you think dancing around your cultural appropriation so that it is not even representation is a desirable goal. I can't speak for Frank but I for one consider that an actively contemptible goal. If you're going to use a thing from another culture, nut up and use the thing, dancing around the name is erasure not respect.

You also initially failed to spell out why you thought the animal clans and Yozi worked (gving you a pass on the heron swords since you explained your reasoning earlier). The multi-level Yozi structure with the core being that has an eldritch goal might well be a decent starting point, that is not the same as saying the concept as a whole worked as actually implemented.