[D&D] Religious & Cultural Diversity in D&D's Middle East
Callan S.:
That's not something anyone can do with rules! It's like trying to have rules that say 'Chicken Vindaloo - TASTY' then saying "it's right there in the rules" when other people at the table say chicken vindaloos taste horrible. 'Bahamut - GOOD'? Same thing. Granted though, everyone can force it that all their characters like chicken vindaloo.
Enough of that from me - only saying this because trying to say something is 'good' because of the rules, to me, is like folding an elbow backwards. It's entirely possible to do - but I don't think the human mind naturally folds that way, so to speak.
Willow:
Let's get some bad guy gods up on the board!
Since Ioun's Burkha clad ladies = ninja assassins for great justice, and Ioun hates Vecna...
Vecna is known as the Old Man of the Mountain. His secret cabals infiltrate other organizations to steal their secrets, pass them onto their dark lord, and destroy the originals. Many of his followers, like Ioun, follow the Avenger class, and wear clothing to hide their features, but it is not out of sexual modesty. Rather, many of them are intentionally disfigured to gain mystic power from their god.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Willow,
I would like to participate in the thead, but I'm having trouble seeing how. You seem to be well embarked on fitting various D&D cosmological entities into place, or assigning them colorful tropes based on that region, and that's great.
If you want the fictional material to reflect real-world history and characterizations of the various religions, then I can help with that, pretty extensively. But if it's a matter of making sure the D&D material is intact when translated into these terms, then I'm not sure what I can directly do, and in that case I'd rather provide answers or views on specific questions that you have.
If I'm reading correctly, you're doing the latter. Therefore, can you formulate more specific questions about what you'd like to know or use? Here are some possibilities that you may or may not find interesting, too (and assuming you're more-or-less focusing on ~1000 CE, just before the Crusades; let me know if that's not right).
Sunni / Shia in Islam
Rome-based Christianity vs. Nova Roma-based Christianity (the latter is known in the west as Byzantium), whose final split was in 1054
Earlier but very prevalent Christianity answering to neither center of power
Jewish life in (or "under") Christian rule vs. Muslim rule
Best, Ron
P.S. A very cool and useful link: Maps of War: Imperial History of the Middle East.
Willow:
Hey Ron-
My extent of knowledge of Middle Eastern culture is essentially limited to having watched Disney's Aladdin as a child. (And reading the Baroque Cycle as an adult.) What I'm really looking for is knowledge of regional subcultures, modern or historic, that can be layered over with D&D trappings, with varying degrees of fidelity to actual culture.
(My standards for fidelity are pretty low- the Europeanish folks in my game ride drakes around, and everyone speaks the same language.)
Like check out the Melora worshipers- river tenders and wanderers in a harsh and dry land. What might those people dress like? What might differentiate them from the other folks in this land? That's the sort of question I need answers, or at least suggestions for.
Kallisti:
As already noted, I looks like you're trying to fit the D&D cosmology to a "real world"
I got some tips about this, I tried roughly the same in 2001. My advise is to either to create a
fairly realistic world or scenario or go for the D&D stuff. If you want to build a middle east influenced scenario,
first of all which time and how mythological or supernatural should it be. Then read books or Wikipedia, browse on the history of old religions, empires and culture. Personally I think the pre islamic era is more interesting, the Sassanide empire, Zoroastrianism and old religions where Baahl was a town god and not a devil.
The other way to go is just to take what influences you already got and mix it up with the D&D core stuff. Don't think to much about if the monsters match the scenario and so on, It's just a "color" of the game. Then focus on the "look and feel". I guess that two factors are important: Who are your players, and what do they expect and want, and the other factor is what makes you happy ;)
A personal opinion on the D&D cosmology is that it's very crude and very American. It has many built in assumptions like "alignments" that there are absolute points of good and evil. It has as noted above a default setup of gods that are very western christian and roman. Specially the "new" D&D from Wizards of the coast got this as default, the elder AD&D I think was a bit more diverse.
The strength in using the stuff that comes with the core rules is that it's easier and and easy to point at if a player asks why =) The weakness is that it's limited.
The strength in researching and building your own cosmos is that it will probably be much more customized and might give your players something new and hopefully deeper. The weakness is that this is harder work and some one can always correct you with "that wasn't the case in the real middle east" :)
Best Regards
Sofia
(I'm from Sweden, Europe, not the Middle East =)
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