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Dark Wizard
Senior Scribe
USA
830 Posts |
 Posted - 23 Feb 2013 : 02:45:09
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Regarding Ming China compared to the European maritime powers, it’s far more complicated than a huge empire being upstaged by a small but ascending kingdoms. Aside from internal problems, probable climate change, currency fluctuations, and attention shifting to their northern border in costly wars, there’s at least one thing the designers and authors of Kara-Tur and the Empires trilogy tried to emulate but never captured. China didn’t care for global reach because to China, it was the world. In the same way the ancients of Europe/Asia Minor had the concept of a Known World, so it was with China and that known world was more or less contained within this one entity and kept it for much of its history, unlike the Roman and later empires that continually fell and rose. Europe didn’t dominate the seas because it out-competed China, it was because China didn’t bother and never saw the situation in those terms. That is a major difference in perspective, a fundamental difference in culture and position.
This skewed perspective is why Kara-Tur seems pretty ill-fitting both with itself and with the Realms/Faerun. The characters of the setting say all the right sounding statements about the empire, but the setting (even if limited to the Eastern Realms) was not designed with that “Shou-centric” perspective in place. So all of that noise rings hollow and seems silly when compared to other areas of the Realms. Compared to the existing Realms, Shou Lung and other polities in Kara-Tur seem shallow, in presentation, in history, and in depth. Things aren’t in the right scale or the same perspective, not even within Kara-Tur itself let along compared to the wider Realms.
Shou Lung theoretically should be the most powerful living nation in the Realms, but it’s not in reality or in presentation despite what the material or novels state. The hype is there (and should be there), but no one believes in the hype, and that attitude is apparent the situations and in the characters even in the Empires trilogy.
This holds true for most Asia flavored sections of traditional fantasy settings. Designers are broadly aware of the archetypes a fantasy Asia should fill, but have not shown they are willing to embrace them completely and without reserve. The closest I’ve seen is L5R, but even it had some sharp streaks of Euro-centrism sneak in. |
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Shou Lung the most powerful kingdom?
