Last post, I was bemoaning the process involved in adding a new ethnic group of humans to my fantasy game world (of multiple decades and rules editions). Some of this is rooted in long ago, conscious choices about my game world because I wanted a cosmopolitan, realistic setting that was recognizable to players without them having to do a bunch of work to understand things (lol, the typical misalignment of a DM’s knowledge base and that of the typical player).

• That my main campaign area was a fantasy analog for Europe (really England, Ireland, France, and Spain), with additional expansion areas to match the Middle East, Scandanavia, and even Asia/China. Some nods to a jungle area (Africa-ish) and an arctic area.

• That, ala, the Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz, I’d just use “real world” religion instead of an imaginary religion(s). This meant that I could just use the old Deities and Demigods as is, and place pantheons with their respective analog placeholders.

• Deal with the comically long list of evil humanoids (and good demi-humans) that somehow where supposed to be coexisting with humanity on this world and competing for resources. The idea of Faerie for the elves (which also then evolved into the separate Shadowlands for my not-Drow), came out of that, as did collapsing many of the evil humanoids into the goblins (Goblins, Hobgoblins/Redcaps/Border Goblins, and Bugbears/Black Goblins) and moving many of the “evil humanoids” into versions of humanity that are either cults or ethnicities rather than somehow distinct species.

The problem is that over time (and research) I came to the (not surprising in hindsight and education) conclusion that things like geography and climate and history and the interaction of people and cultures play much more into the development of cultures and religion than was at first apparent to my 15-ish year-old self.

And so, my world evolved and changed – many times as way of thought experiment. But also, long before it was “fashionable” (or “woke”) it changed because I learned more about this culture or that ethnicity, it was quite apparent that it was depressingly easy to take all of the negative, Hollywood stereotypes associated and miss the positives or any sort of richness or nuance.

To be clear, that’s something I still struggle with – not with the desire to do, just the attempt to do things justice and not be ridiculously offensive. So in addition to my 15-year old “Xul Tribesmen” version of indigenous African culture (under the domination of the Ithian Serpent Folk, an admittedly ham-handed way of talking about slavery), I ended up adding the Free Nubians in one area and the City-States of Kush in another so that players wanting a non “primitive tribesman” African-coded character could have one. It also reflected my own research and understanding of various rich cultures across the history of the African continent.

I also realized that I really needed to drop the “real world” religion thing, that was probably the first to go as I created drastically re-imagined things as much I could. The next to go was the idea the central adventure area was “analog fantasy Europe” and instead changed into “generic Western fantasy setting” known as the Heartlands – and took various vague cultural touchstones that would resonate with players (and myself). A distant Atlan/Atlantis (being vaguely Greco-Roman), the Hill Folk (Celtic in flavor) as the original inhabitants before a wave of colonization (by Atlan in the distant past), the Society of Light instead of Christianity (and drawing from early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic culture along with Sikh influences) being a stigmatized minority culture in the Heartlands while being the majority religion elsewhere (and which is itself a colonizing power in some places).

So rather than analogies, the regions of my world have real-world touchstones that provide players (and myself) a starting point to inform role-playing – within the other constraints of the game world and the things that we know have changed.

I think the biggest thing I did was utterly abandon the idea that my game world is, well, a “world” – it’s not a planet, it’s “the prime material plane” (actually, in my game, “the Mortal Realm”) and the various continents and regions are anchored in a great endless sea. I’m not anchored anymore by the restrictions of real-world climate or geography or size so I always have conceptual room to add new campaign areas – the existence of magic means that travel is not entirely restricted to land and sea.

Not that I do, for 40 years my players have all pretty much been keen on staying in generic Western fantasy, with only very occasional and very short interludes elsewhere – a long ago trip to the Silver Waste (sort of an anti-Eden), a very short trip to the Ith and the Xul Jungles, a short jaunt to the Shadowlands (goth Faerie), a couple of jaunts into the Maelstrom (the Ethereal), and that’s pretty much it – other than occasional weird little pocket realms like Castle Amber or the current expedition into Barovia.

In any case, in the aftermath of my last post, I did come up with a handful of new ethnicities, the Bharatese (touchstone the Indian subcontinent), the Malatese (touchstone being the Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and the Khasar (touchstone Mongolia and the Caucuses) – all because as I have been fleshing out my Warrior-Monks (for one of my players), which somewhat naturally leads to Khitan (the China/Japan touchstone) I ended up thinking about the influence China has had on Asia and how that might also look in my not-Asia.

Plus, random thoughts about knife culture as mentioned before.

Which leads to Bharayatt, my not-India, and the notion that it was colonized – not by Islam, but by Society of Light (from my not-Arabia, Khem) – with their own Tribal Folk who are the remnant of the original indigenous people (corresponding to the Dalit or Adivasi in actual India) and who maintain their own customs, religions, and identity. From there I just went with it and realized that should at least “what if” a bit about Mongols and Indonesia/ Malaysia – and now I at least have a couple of placeholders if nothing else. But the idea of Bharayatt and a relatively oppressive Society of Light provides a good counterpoint to their minority status in the Heartlands and their rather enlightened rule of Khem.

Ok, not really, but I had decided that I wanted to add in another ethnic group of humans to my world (as I have a series of very rough analogies to real-world ethnicities) and when I added one I realized that I needed to add another one if I was “going to be fair”, which led me to one more because I have a section of my world that has people there that I’ve never really done anything with…

Which now led to a rather heavy sigh because I have to re-examine human languages (because those ethnic groups each need their own language.

All of which happened because I was having fun thinking about cultural customs (specifically the wearing of knives and daggers) which led to some cogitating about a handful of weapons that exist in this world but had not in my game world and what those might look like – things like the urumi and the katar.

But re-examining language at this level means I have to at chart out language families again, consider linguistic drift, and the like – and all of my notes from the last time I did this are long gone.

Time to make the donuts…