european fantasy cultures and how to fit them

[...You Lost Me]

It's okay, MGuy. I get that your attempt at being snippy failed because the sentence didn't actually include the proper context that explains why Cham and I disagreed, but you don't need to project your bizarre love of strawmanning onto me. I would also appreciate you not lying about me wanting an apology (?), but honestly my standards for you aren't that high so I'm happy to let you scream into the wind if it helps your ego.



EDIT: Instead of just cringing at MGuy, I'll try adding something productive to the conversation that I dropped a bomb on. Specifically I have a 2 of comments / problems regarding imperialistic european cultures:

Reason(s) to be Imperialistic
The first is on the reason for imperialism. One of the things that makes imperialist cultures so... imperialist... is that they have a lot of stuff to conquer. This implies that some nonzero number of other nations exist for imperialist countries to ruin. But in a europe-only fantasy world, this seems pretty tough. How do you give imperialist nations a reason to exist while still keeping the worldmap focused on various Europe knockoffs?

Imperialism is Awful IRL
Imperialism comes with a lot of awful subtext in the same way that other european tropes (like various were-animals) do not. It involves ruining a bunch of peoples' lives in the name of profit. If you play into the historical tropes, it's specifically about ruining the lives of people who are still disenfranchised today. How do you tactfully include imperialism without bringing up that subtext? Do you just lean into it and make imperialists the bad guys (like the vampires at the start of Ixalan)?

I think one way of solving both of these problems is to just not include imperialism. But that doesn't seem like a great solution.

[MGuy]

Erm cool. That's the way to go. You get talked into a corner and you move on. Way to go kiddo. Also I didn't lie.

Hot tip for the future. Even if you say 'believed' your straw argument in order to protect your ego you can easily gauge whether it's time to move on when the person in question makes several posts denying your straw argument as being theirs and laying out their true argument. To respond to Cham's repeated corrections by 1: not reading them then 2: demanding that he further clarify his position (after he did explicitly that multiple times despite you and Frank trying in tandem to force an argument he wasn't making upon him) you exposed your odd desire to win some kind of goycha contest for your own ego's sake and never get around to having a productive argument.

You can instead argue in good faith and try to engage with the overall content of someone's arguments and embarrass yourself less. Just a quick tip.

[Username17]

Can we please stop dignifying Cham and Mguy's disingenuous thread shitting with giant replies? They are thread shitting because they are thread shitters.

The usual dodge for including Imperialism in European fantasy is to have the "savages" to be conquered be Orcs and Lizardfolk. They aren't humans and aren't directly analogous to any Earth ethnicity, so you are at least potentially in the clear. The downside of course, is that if your Orcs do end up coded as Turkish or West African or something, then your fantasy racism has just turned into actual racism and gone up to eleven where you're saying "Black people aren't human and needed to be conquered."

Another thing you can do is just mix time periods. It's a fantasy kitchen sink, so you can include European cultures that did not exist at the same time in Earth history. You can have Revolutionary France conquering Vikings. You can have Imperial Rome conquering Renaissance Venice.

And finally, you aren't required to portray imperialism in a positive light. In your fantasy setting, it's entirely permissible for there to be an Evil Empire.

-Username17

[tussock]

Reason(s) to be Imperialistic ... How do you give imperialist nations a reason to exist while still keeping the worldmap focused on various Europe knockoffs?

Roman Empire, Marovingian Empire, Angevian Empire, the Hun Empire, the Mongolian Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Christendom, the Caliphate, the reformation wars thing, the Spanish Empire, Napoleonic Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, ... not to mention the trade house groups and the banking groups and everything else that covered most of Europe at one point or another.

The British Empire did a different thing, and didn't bother subjugating Europe. All the others totally wanted to conquer Europe, and to a fair extent, did for a while.

Like, yeah, it was all short term, but so was every other empire ever, eventually.

Imperialism is Awful IRL ... How do you tactfully include imperialism without bringing up that subtext?

All medieval life is Awful IRL. All of it. 100%. Trump is kittens napping in sunshine compared to the best people in the medieval world. It all sucked. RPGs skip the sucky bits.

Like, Napolean's empire murdered all the kings and emperors who resisted, implemented universal rule of law for all, democratic representation in government, forced open trade across Europe, introduced pre-modern social programs, standardised weights and measures, paid his army with money instead of looting rights, and wasn't particularly extractive. Then a mega-volcano went off in SE Asia, all the crops failed, people starved, his army froze to death in Russia before it could grab the Tzar, and everyone blamed him and that was that. Note, I've ignored the bad bits there.

Imperialism can be whatever the hell you want. Extractive ones are longer lasting as an empire and induce far more suffering, but screw that, Goblin Empires can do that. But most of our planet now is still with the legal systems, basic government systems, open trade principles, and totally the weights and measures that Napolean forced on Europe at gunpoint. Everyone in the French Empire had French citizenship, for instance, and lots of people moved to France to enjoy the new less-horrid form of tyranny where they killed the rich and the poor alike for offending the emperor. Just skip that last bit.

[Chamomile]

I wrote my request for clarifications because I attempted to read your comment, saw the either/or among the sea of examples, and did not think that it was an actual either/or because it didn't seem to gel with all your other comments about cliches being literally impossible to use.

So you saw me claiming that players do one of two contradictory things, and your immediate assumption was that I must secretly mean that they are actually doing both of them. That because I listed examples of different players engaging in two mutually exclusive behaviors and said "players do either one or the other" I must have meant that actually all players do both. Why would you assume this?

But, fuck it, whatever. Let's just back up here and clarify: Do you agree, then, that DrPraetor's suggestion of tying classes to specific cultures is dumb, and that Frank's subsequent endorsement of that position is dumb?

[...You Lost Me]

@Cham, I saw you write about how players use class-based prompts. I then went back to re-read your comment about how players will not use prompts no matter how little effort is involved, and I assumed that I had missed something. Instead of secretly assuming anything about your position, I tried to clarify what your comment meant out loud, just like I did the last time I wasn't clear on your position. Just like I will do the next time I'm not clear on your position.

To your other point, I think that DrPraetor could be implying that each culture has a monopoly on a class, which is bad. But instead of claiming that, I would ask him first. Frank's take that "European fantasy kitchen sink cultures are going to want to present at least two classes each", is a perfectly good take. Of course, I don't feel the need to argue that with you, because apparently the vast majority of your tenure as a DM involves people giving you the middle finger every time you hand them setting material, an interaction that I have experienced maybe twice in my entire life. I'm going to keep contributing to KSF settings that have historically worked great for me, and you are free to tell me that I'm a dumbass for it.

Moving on.

I definitely like the idea of an imperialist country conquering the Vikings, or at least attempting to.

The mention of Venice got me thinking of something else. Some of those cultures can get muddled, especially with pop culture. I'm thinking of 15th century Venice specifically, but there are probably others:

• There's a 15th century Venice that involves an empire that's constantly trying to expand, known for finance (invention of accounting).
• There's a 15th century "Venice" which involves Leonardo da Vinci helping an assassin's guild fight templars.
• There's the city of Venice, which is just 1 city, but it's probably what most people think of when they hear the name.

Those are all similar in aesthetics, but they can play out in a bunch of different ways. Like, is it better for not-Venice to be considered a political / economic empire, or a single city where Ezio Auditore runs around?

EDIT: After a brief assessment of my social circle, only 1 person associates with trade-related stuff, and 5+ people associate it with assassins creed. Instead of labeling not-Venice as "15th century Venice" or "Renaissance Italy", would it be better to just call it "Assassins Creed"? I don't feel great about the idea of ignoring actual European history in this thought experiment, but maybe that's just how it goes.

[OgreBattle]

Greeks or Roman Empire would suit orcs great, all about slavery and making statues about muscular dudes

Zeus as it is exactly as we know it is already a perfect God of Orcs yeah?

[Chamomile]

I think that DrPraetor could be implying that each culture has a monopoly on a class, which is bad.

What else would "you want at least enough flavors of white people to have all your PHB classes in fantasy Europe" mean? If every culture should potentially have members of every class in it - and it does - then the number of flavors of white people needed to have all your PHB classes in fantasy Europe is one. And Frank was explicitly agreeing with specifically that assertion - that was the thesis statement he quoted.

Of course, I don't feel the need to argue that with you,

He said, after arguing it with me for several pages.

because apparently the vast majority of your tenure as a DM involves people giving you the middle finger every time you hand them setting material, an interaction that I have experienced maybe twice in my entire life.

Explain to me what exactly these two experiences of "players giving you the middle finger" when you handed them setting material were. I'm gonna register an advance prediction that they are far more extreme than "players created a character concept independently of your setting, then either left exact culture of origin completely ambiguous or picked a culture based purely on what matched their pre-existing idea, regardless of how many elements didn't fit and without changing any elements which didn't fit." Particularly since you expressly stated that you consider it perfectly typical for a player to come to you with a pre-existing character and that you then have to point to the map to tell them where they could be from, which necessarily means that they already had the character created when they came to you, which means your KSF setting contributed exactly dick to their character.

You could've achieved an identical result by having an empty white void surrounding the campaign map and plopping down whatever homeland was necessary to accommodate their character right next to it. Better, actually, in that the odds that the homeland you assign a character is not likely to be even remotely close to the place where the story begins, which means a level 1 not-Greek is for some reason in the middle of not-Ireland where the adventure begins - you wouldn't have this problem if you didn't have a continent-spanning map whose only purpose is to try in vain to serve as an exhaustive list of potential PC homelands.

Greeks or Roman Empire would suit orcs great, all about slavery and making statues about muscular dudes

The Greeks were prone to incessant internecine warfare between relatively tiny citystates, only banded together to face external threats, and eventually produced a warlord who conquered most of the known world. Sparta in particular is bang-on for orcs, what with the refusal to build walls because they defend their homelands with their spears, and how the military upper class have a manhood ritual that involves hunting down and killing a random member of the slave caste. The other Greek city-states weren't that different. Athens was a naval power rather than a land power, and was also a center of art and philosophy, but they were also cruel overlords who exploited de facto vassal states to feed their golden age culture. You could do a lot worse than having an orc homeland that revolved around these two constantly beating up on each other right up until someone else sticks their nose in, then turning around and beating up the outsider, before going back to beating up on each other end.

Rome is more solidly hobgoblin than orc, but if the idea of orcs in lorica just really appeals to you, there's a few trappings of Roman culture you can spotlight to make things super orc. Gladiator fights are the obvious first place to start, but (early) Rome's insane dedication to winning wars no matter the cost is also pretty orcish (and hobgoblin). In the Punic Wars, the Romans lost a massive army and the Carthiginians expected that they would throw in the towel after such heavy losses, but the Romans just raised another army. There weren't even morale problems. After being utterly thrashed on the field, the Romans weren't scared, they just wanted revenge. That kind of suicidal devotion to victory can pretty easily be played as an orc thing.

You could also mix and match if you want a Greco-Roman region. Have three different city-states of not-Athens, not-Sparta, and not-Rome, or have not-Rome serve as your evil empire but toss in the Spartan tradition of all warrior caste men (or all warrior caste adults, if you don't have anything in particular to say about iron age gender roles and thus don't want to include them even for your villains) killing someone from the slave caste as a rite of passage for extra evil.

The Romans also had auxiliary troops drawn from all across the empire, who fought in the style of their homeland, which is fantastic for the main villain of a long-running campaign, because it gives you a built-in excuse for lots of enemy variety while still fighting the same foe.

'Course, Greeks and Romans alike fought in fairly disciplined formations, not scattered hordes like your standard depiction of orcs. The Greek phalanx and the Roman legion are iconic images of their respective cultures. Probably people will be able to pick up pretty quickly that these orcs march in formation, though - Sauron's orcs did that, so it's not like it's even completely unprecedented.

[OgreBattle]

All the times Zeus gives birth also works for the 'orcs spore, no cooties involved' angle where orcs sprout out of the ground dickless

Then some humans adopted the orc gods and made up stories of "oh the goddess of kunnin' sprung out of his headache"

[Chamomile]

So far as I recall, Zeus only ever gave birth to Athena asexually, and he had a lot of demigod children through regular sexual reproduction with mortals.

Barely related: The fluff for orc reproduction I always liked best was the idea that they would burst spontaneously from the churned mud of corpse-strewn battlefields, a tiny incarnation of war itself. Not only is this way cooler than being forehead aliens with regular sexual reproduction, this also gives them a built-in reason to want to be at war as often as possible.

[OgreBattle]

There's a story where Dionysus was birthed from Zeus after Zeus accidentally fried him:

---
"During her pregnancy, Semele rejoiced in the knowledge that her son would be divine. She dressed herself in garlands of flowers and wreathes of ivy, and would run barefoot to the meadows and forests to frolic whenever she heard music. Hera became envious, and feared that Zeus would replace her with Semele as queen of Olympus. He went to Semele in the guise of an old woman who had been Cadmus' wet nurse. She made Semele jealous of the attention Zeus' gave to Hera, compared with their own brief liaison, and provoked her to request Zeus to appear before her in his full godhood. Semele prayed to Zeus that he show himself. Zeus answered her prayers, but warned her than no other mortals had ever seen him as he held his lightening bolts. Semele reached out to touch them, and was burnt to ash. (Dionysiaca 8).[173] But the infant Dionysus survived, and Zeus rescued him from the flames, sewing him into his thigh.


"So the rounded thigh in labour became female, and the boy too soon born was brought forth, but not in a mother’s way, having passed from a mother’s womb to a father’s."

(Dionysiaca 9). At his birth, he had a pair of horns shaped like a crescent moon. The Seasons crowned him with ivy and flowers, and wrapped horned snakes around his own horns.[174]
---

[MGuy]

Greeks or Roman Empire would suit orcs great, all about slavery and making statues about muscular dudes

Zeus as it is exactly as we know it is already a perfect God of Orcs yeah?

Both had whole pantheons right? So how do the other gods fit into your new orc pantheon?

[OgreBattle]

Greeks or Roman Empire would suit orcs great, all about slavery and making statues about muscular dudes

Zeus as it is exactly as we know it is already a perfect God of Orcs yeah?

Both had whole pantheons right? So how do the other gods fit into your new orc pantheon?

Hmmmm

Uranus stuff- primordial chaos
Cronus, krumped the boss he sprung from

Zeus- Krumped the boss he sprung from, king of gods good at throwing
Hera- god of watching people who don't suspect it, god of getting people who step out of line in trouble, revenge and stuff

AphroAres- God of beautiful muscles
Apollo- God of going fast with lots of fire spewing out the chariot

Not much changes, a good archtype can stand a change in aesthetic (talking in cocknees or whatever warhams orks talk in, green instead of fleshtone)

[deaddmwalking]

But, fuck it, whatever. Let's just back up here and clarify: Do you agree, then, that DrPraetor's suggestion of tying classes to specific cultures is dumb, and that Frank's subsequent endorsement of that position is dumb?

Different areas should have different concentrations of classes. Different areas should have 'variant classes' that are not everywhere.

For example, 'Not-England' and 'Not-Japan' are both going to have martial warriors. It wouldn't be wrong to say they both have knights, but you're also going to notice that those knights are different. If you want a samurai, you'll want to be from Not-Japan. That may not be the ONLY source of samurai, but it certainly would be where MOST are from.

In some of your fantasy Europe areas, you might have a bard that is based on a Celtic skald. You might also have a bard that is based on troubadours that spread the ideal of romantic love. In so much as those classes might differ, you'd expect to find one in fantasy not-Ireland and the other in fantasy not-France.

Where this really tends to get clear-cut is with various flavors of wizard. When you're differentiating dwarves and elves, you often assign stone magic to dwarves and tree magic to elves. It isn't to say that elves can't do stone magic, but they clearly do a lot MORE tree magic. One type is rare in their communities; the other is common. Distinguishing European style fantasy equivalents requires the same consideration. In addition to art, architecture, dress, cuisine, and political structure, having variations in mystic arts is helpful.

[Thaluikhain]

I don't have a simple answer to that. It's a persistent wicked problem. But it is also true that hurtful stereotypes of privileged European groups do not exist. Not because there aren't negative stereotypes available, but because those negative stereotypes do not have the power to hurt people who are in positions of privilege the way they have the power to hurt those who are not. Just yesterday we were having a laugh about Italians being philanderers and thieves with my Italian co-workers and it was hilarious and not hurtful - while if we had made the same jokes about our Sudanese co-workers it would have been a big no-no all around. Because Sudanese people have legit problems in real life from these kinds of stereotypes being circulated and white guys just don't.

Oh, absolutely, yes. Sorta by definition of "privileged".

Reason(s) to be Imperialistic
The first is on the reason for imperialism. One of the things that makes imperialist cultures so... imperialist... is that they have a lot of stuff to conquer. This implies that some nonzero number of other nations exist for imperialist countries to ruin. But in a europe-only fantasy world, this seems pretty tough. How do you give imperialist nations a reason to exist while still keeping the worldmap focused on various Europe knockoffs?

Imperialism is Awful IRL
Imperialism comes with a lot of awful subtext in the same way that other european tropes (like various were-animals) do not. It involves ruining a bunch of peoples' lives in the name of profit. If you play into the historical tropes, it's specifically about ruining the lives of people who are still disenfranchised today. How do you tactfully include imperialism without bringing up that subtext? Do you just lean into it and make imperialists the bad guys (like the vampires at the start of Ixalan)?

I think one way of solving both of these problems is to just not include imperialism. But that doesn't seem like a great solution.

Well, I also don't see any reason why European nations can't try to conquer each other. But yeah, that's generally seen as a bad thing, and you don't have much of a just war there.

Possibly it's after the apocalypse (or a local apocalypse) and you are rebuilding by absorbing bits of lawless wasteland full of surviving groups.

Or alternatively, some nation has long standing and semi-legitimate grievances against multiple others, and is now powerful enough not to lose.

[...You Lost Me]

Cham, this logic is bordering on trolling. If there is a set of n classes in a setting, a given nation can have between 2 and n of those classes. Thus multiple nations can represent the full set of n classes without any one nation being wholly representative of those n classes. And since having more nations is a good thing (a fact that I, again, feel no desire to argue about), you obviously do not need just 1 race of white people to represent every class. And for the love of god, arguing about 1 specific topic does not mean I want to argue about another specific topic. To quote: "Don't pretend that context doesn't matter, you disingenuous fuckwit".

Orcs and Greece
One of the first associations people will make with ancient Greece is philosophers, and I don't think Orcs are going to fill that niche particularly well. I would personally prefer to see high elves as ancient Greeks. Naked statues, philosophy, and battlefield tactics all fit within their relevant tropes. Musculature & olympic trials don't fit perfectly, but I can picture that in a way that I can't picture orc philosophers.

I think one problem with Orcs in a setting like this is that a lot of these cultures are going to be defined by different non-combat-related tropes, since they're based off real life. But Orcs are meant to be good at fighting to the exclusion of other things. That leans them heavily towards being a "savage" race, which gets uncomfortable real quick.

[Username17]

Much of D&D is based on the "adventurer" literature of the late 19th century, which in turn makes a lot of the underlying assumptions heavily weighted towards an Imperialist and Colonialist worldview. The basic concept of the Dungeon Crawl is that you are exploring a region that is already inhabited for the purpose of killing some of the occupants and looting their treasures.

The basic adventure of Descent into the Depths of the Earth (D1-D3) is basically a retelling of the war between Cortez and Montezuma with the player characters obliged to play the role of Cortez. And of course, the framing of this adventure is unquestioningly positive in its portrayal of the position of Cortez and unquestioningly negative in its portrayal of the position of Montezuma.

And while that's kind of fucked up, it's something that you can work with. I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this but consider the point raised by Tussock: actual history is pretty much all terrible and full of human rights abuses. The idea of a "good conquistador" is not inherently more ridiculous or ahistorical than the idea of a "good king." If you can imagine feudalism run by good people for good ends in your fantasy, there's nothing stopping you from imagining good imperialists or good colonialists.

What you want to avoid is coding the people of the villages and nations that your heroes are conquering and colonizing as being actual historically oppressed people. Because then you're justifying real world atrocities and that's bad.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Orcs just need to be your enemies, all philosophies and beliefs can be lampooned to orc levels


Say in this... I think it's made in mainland China and Singapore collaboration, comic, the dutch are savage orcs in uniform


The innocent ignorant aboriginal Taiwanese are not orcs, but garden of eden like primitives

[MGuy]

I'd listened to someone talking about 300 and the use of propaganda by Sparta to get everyone to believe that they had the very best warriors. History is written by fallable people and its not at all weird if your setting's orcs make big claims about their inherent superiority both philosophically as well as militarily.

[Chamomile]

Cham, this logic is bordering on trolling. If there is a set of n classes in a setting, a given nation can have between 2 and n of those classes. Thus multiple nations can represent the full set of n classes without any one nation being wholly representative of those n classes.

Here is the statement under discussion:

In a kitchen sink setting, you want at least enough flavors of white people to have all the PHB classes in your fantasy Europe.

Emphasis from the original. Do you not understand what the words "at least" mean?

And since having more nations is a good thing (a fact that I, again, feel no desire to argue about)

What exactly do you think the argument has been about? Was the YLM who tried at length to convince me of the utility KSF settings some kind of evil impostor?

Uranus stuff- primordial chaos
Cronus, krumped the boss he sprung from

Zeus- Krumped the boss he sprung from, king of gods good at throwing
Hera- god of watching people who don't suspect it, god of getting people who step out of line in trouble, revenge and stuff

AphroAres- God of beautiful muscles
Apollo- God of going fast with lots of fire spewing out the chariot

You're leaning real strong on Warhammer 40k orks specifically (but also with an emphasis on beautiful muscles, which is not really an ork thing but does fit in perfectly well with them, so whatever), which is a weird choice to pair with Greeks or, indeed, any human civilization. You can stick generic fantasy orcs in formations and give them sculptors and people will swallow that break from the norm (I point again to Sauron's orcs, many tribes of which were quite well organized in war), but at the point when you've got a bunch of football hooligans with green skin, extreme impulse control problems, and a suicidal disregard for their well-being, grand temples hosting polished marble statues (even if painted garishly bright colors) are a really weird thing for that culture to be producing. And also you've distorted many of the Greek deities to the point where they're barely recognizable. Apollo is a god of prophecy and healing who drives the sun across the sky (except when that's Helios) in a very predictable manner, not a speed freek, and it's not clear how you'd fit Athena into a 40k-style ork pantheon at all.

You can have a thing where 40k-style orks have looted Greek culture, painted the statues green, and reinterpreted the deities to suit their taste, but if you want to use Greek culture as-is, you really can't do the 40k route for your orcs. Greeks were prone to lots of internecine conflict, but they also built gleaming marble cities with fora and pantheons and stuff. Ancient Sparta looks like this:



You can imagine some variety of orcs marching in a military parade past a bunch of sculpted columns while bystanders celebrate their victory, but if you want those to be 40k orks then it means someone else had to have built the city they're walking through, because it isn't nearly ramshackle enough to be ork architecture.

[Username17]

Orcs just need to be your enemies, all philosophies and beliefs can be lampooned to orc levels


Say in this... I think it's made in mainland China and Singapore collaboration, comic, the dutch are savage orcs in uniform


The innocent ignorant aboriginal Taiwanese are not orcs, but garden of eden like primitives

Firstly, those image links do not work and I have no idea what you're talking about.

More generally, the question of whether Orcs exist only to be killed is a complex one. Different portrayals of Orcs range from being "basically people" for whom genocide is therefore an unacceptable direction to take things and "basically killer robots" for whom "genocide" isn't even an appropriate term for their mass elimination. Basically it's OK to kill Nazis, Zombies, Demons, and Robots, but it's not OK to mass murder Tutsis, Rohingya, or Jews.

If your Orcs have names, classes, and cultures, it kinda sounds like they are more like Rohingya and less like robots, which means that it's a much harder pitch to explain why killing them is remotely OK. Remember that the Warhammer Orcs basically aren't OK and the only reason people outside the UK put up with that shit is that no one outside the UK can even understand the complicated web of regional and class related accents that are being insulted. Seriously, an accent in England is represented by six people and a dog, so the fact that insults are being made barely registers.

-Username17

[...You Lost Me]

Yeah Cham, if you're going to repeatedly ignore the words that I wrote (and also bolded, and also numbered) in favor of pretending that I just argued about the utility of KSFs, then I'm gonna have to stop humoring you. I'm sorry I worked you up like this, and when you calm down I'm happy to continue the rest of our conversation.

Orcs just need to be your enemies, all philosophies and beliefs can be lampooned to orc levels

The images are on one of Quora's CDNs. If anyone can't see them:

1. Rehost of the first image
2. Rehost of the second image

Ogre, I'm not sure if you want to have "orcs = enemies" as a theme alongside the Ancient Greece theme, but if you do then I want to voice my disagreement. Ancient Greece is a cool trope, and I think a good proportion of players will want to use it as the prompt for their philosopher-wizards or hercules knockoffs. If you use orcs as enemies and as ancient greek standins, then you are discouraging some very cool player options.

[Chamomile]

Yeah Cham, if you're going to repeatedly ignore the words that I wrote (and also bolded, and also numbered) in favor of pretending that I just argued about the utility of KSFs,

You wrote, bolded, and numbered my concerns about KSFs. I stated reasons why KSFs do not have the beneficial side effect people claimed they do, and you disputed those reasons - that is an argument about KSFs, and only the most hair-splitting of semantics could possibly claim otherwise. Considering that in this conversation alone you have:

-Failed to understand an "either/or" statement,
-Failed to understand that "even if not-France does in fact have Fighters" is mutually exclusive to the claim that not-France does not have Fighters,
-And failed to understand that the words "at least" indicate a minimum,

You may wish to consider the possibility that the reason you are constantly confused as to what the connection between my statements and yours might be is potentially a problem on your end.

[OgreBattle]

If you use orcs as enemies and as ancient greek standins, then you are discouraging some very cool player options.

That's cool, I'm purposefully trying to push setting expectations to see where some folks may find it's gone to far or others find it's a fresh angle.

Say Roman empire is quite Greek influenced, so the greeks can still be cultured then the roman orcs conquer them and adapt elements of their culture while still being invading slavers who keep on sending armies even if you wipe them out.

[Thaluikhain]

Orcs and Greece
One of the first associations people will make with ancient Greece is philosophers, and I don't think Orcs are going to fill that niche particularly well. I would personally prefer to see high elves as ancient Greeks. Naked statues, philosophy, and battlefield tactics all fit within their relevant tropes. Musculature & olympic trials don't fit perfectly, but I can picture that in a way that I can't picture orc philosophers.

I think one problem with Orcs in a setting like this is that a lot of these cultures are going to be defined by different non-combat-related tropes, since they're based off real life. But Orcs are meant to be good at fighting to the exclusion of other things. That leans them heavily towards being a "savage" race, which gets uncomfortable real quick.

Elves work as Classical Greeks, yeah, sure that's been done more than once before.

As for orcs...Classical Greece was a mountainous area with no central control, so you got a lot of little independent places fighting and enslaving each other who favoured heavy infantry. Though, don't know how "most players" or "average players" would go with that.

Additionally, FrankTrollman has mentioned a couple of times that you don't want to equate the savage races/body count people with oppressed groups, and that is, of course, perfectly true.

I would expand that a little bit, though, some races are more "human" than others, elves are more human than orcs, for example. Even if your orcs aren't savages, and they are people just the same as your elves are, you don't really want to make your culture the elves and foreigners the orcs. Especially if that's a group that has historically or currently been seen as less human than yours.

(And don't give the savage races working class accents. Gah!)