The way the rune knight is flavored makes me kinda uncomfortable TBH. Mechanically it's cool, though. I'm very fond of everything else.
— Kikka 🔜 PAX Unplugged (@KikkaVO) November 20, 2019
Can you unpack that at all?
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 20, 2019
It’s a heavily Norse coded subclass that has like… actual Nordic runes as their power, but they took those powers from the creatures that are some of the main antagonistic forces in a lot of Norse mythology? It’s like… if good paladins of Ilmater got their power from demonsLike not exactly but that's the best parallel I can think of offhand.
— Kikka 🔜 PAX Unplugged (@KikkaVO) November 20, 2019
And considering that Norse runes were also their writing system, it’s sort of adds another level of weirdness to it to have them presented in the way they are in the subclass, IMHO Like, I get that giants are cool and stuff, and people have that whole conceptual link between giants and those old Germanic mythology and cultures, but the execution in this case sort of has a very Halloween costume / pop culture understanding of the history and mythology.
— Kikka 🔜 PAX Unplugged (@KikkaVO) November 20, 2019
But that’s just my initial impression, from my own perspective.
I’m German and Norwegian by heritage and have spent some time doing research to try to connect with some sense of ancestral …identity? idk how to word that precisely. Ah, I getcha.
I can say at least as a top-level look at the Rune Knight's concept, in D&D runes as giant magic isn't a new thing, and goes back at least to the 2e Forgotten Realms sourcebook "Giantcraft."
I'll pass your thoughts along as we move forward into feedback. 🙂
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 20, 2019
There's also a list of some giant runes in Storm King's Thunder, along with depictions of the runes themselves. The images of the runes don't pull from real world tradition. pic.twitter.com/2FuGTViWe9
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 20, 2019
Those are all actual Germanic language words listed there… plus “Kong” for king… Right, I was referring to the images of the runes specifically. The names are most definitely for real words.
— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 20, 2019
Legacy stuff from earlier editions of D&D does often run into this sort of problem.
Lots of gods were “borrowed” from real world faiths, but changed substantially or inaccurately represented. The most obvious example is the Mulhorandi pantheon basically being the ancient Egyptian pantheon, but there are others.
Tyr is a kinda weird example, because he’s basically represented as being the actual Norse god from Earth, who faced the crisis of losing followers as the Norse religion fell out of usage, and so decided to seek worshippers on other worlds in the multi-verse. Very much a classic example of the literal “Forgotten Realms” mythos of the D&D universe being our own, or at least an alternate version.
Then there are more obscure examples like the gods and spirits taken from Finnish mythology, often with rather severe changes. Some use original Suomenusko names like Loviatar, Ilmater, Kiputytto, and Mielikki. Others, like Talona, are given new names but are clearly based on certain Finnish gods.
There’s surely more I’m not aware / can’t remember at the moment, but the point is that D&D has been doing some low level cultural appropriation for a long time now, and it’s hard to know exactly how problematic that is.
To be fair, all the religions being borrowed from are long dead, and only exist in the modern day in the form of inherently incomplete “reconstructions”, which in many cases are more like reimaginings and reinterpretations. It’s not quite as problematic to borrow from a dead culture that can’t actually be revived.
But at the same time, it still doesn’t feel 100% non-problematic, and it might be better to not have D&D deities mimic real world ones quite so closely, even if the originals are only remembered as fragments.
The trouble is, what can be done about it? They may not be a massive part of the game lore, but they’re pretty deeply entrenched. You could remove them all, but that would take some major lore restructuring and justification – and we all know how well that sort of thing worked for Fourth Edition.
This post makes me uncomfortable because runes were, in norse mythology, magical in nature. Odin himself sacrificed his eye to uncover them and nearly killed himself trying to uncover them, and he did so in both the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of magic. Would that still be cultural appropriation, and is not all fantasy rooted in cultural appropriation?
I think, personally, people are too quick to determine people are fetishising their ancestral culture. Is a non-japanese person allowed to play a samurai/ninja? Is a non-western european allowed to play a wizard? Is anyone without Celtic heritage allowed to play a druid?
The game is heavily influenced by western european culture and from fantasy novels from the 20th century… Bottom line wotc product or homebrew everything is.influenced by the real world cultures but occurs in a fantasy realm. This isnt blackface and.more akin.to movie like big trouble in little china. Breath…relax or we create real hate by following cancel culture logic.
I love giant lore in game and Norse mythology out of game. However, I like rune magic as a concept bigger than that. I would prefer old runes of power discovered throughout dungeons, lost lore, etc. Ancient form forms of power lost to time has a better feel. From the runes sealing away a wight in his barrow to a word of power deep in the underdark graven into the bones of the earth itself, making it meh giant magic shows a lack of imagination and limits the scope of something that should be whispered of in the research of ancient wizards and sought by liches and bards. This is Dungeons and Dragons. Turn loose your imagination and go for it. Delve deeper, fight harder, peer into mystery, seek the ancient runes, steal immortality. Be greater.
This can’t be cultural appropriation, it’s against white people! Seriously though, everything in fiction is inspired by earlier fictions, even ones people used to believe were true. Read about early Tolkein elves or Vancian magic and tell me anything in dnd is original. I’m Scandinavian-American and while I think most of the new unearthed arcana have been awful this fighter subclass is my most anticipated official release
I feel like this is just someone complaining for the sake of complaining because they cant be happy about anything♀️
I’m not gonna leave a large several paragraph reply like others but, it seems like they’re complaining just to complain, ya’know? Like it’s this is literally nit picking, not exactly a complaint, it’s like the complaint many (poor/bad) DMs have about warlocks “class is bad because I suck as a DM and therefore lack the ability to integrate a class seemlessly, oh and the class is op and needs a Nerf” I have seen this complaint far too much as a warlock main, anyway just my two cents from someone whose largely stopped playing DND in favor of PF2E