Cleaning Up the Cruft #10 What Are the Themes

More philosophical than rules related cruft. No game world can really encompass everything no matter how much we Judges want it to. So what I needed to do was cut it down to the thematic elements that actually get used, rather than the ones I think ought to be there.

Main Elements are

Sword + Sorcery and Faerie Tales

Minor Elements include

Weird Tales, Epic Fantasy in the Tolkien mode , Romantic Fantasy, Pulp, Western, Historical Pastiche, Anime for its pacing and social structures (or so my players say) Gothic Action and Horror, Swashbuckling, the Cold War and Fantasy Police Procedurals and Gor.

In a essence Midrea is an purposefully American kind of fantasy with some Europe thrown in for good measure. Because of that the biggest expected element that I think gamers will find missing is Orientalism in its Middle Eastern and Asian forms.

While there are monks and martial arts, most of the Japanese and Chinese elements are explicitly unimportant. There certainly are Asian descended peoples on Midrea but they are so well blended into the dominent cultures that there is little in the way of Asian cultures left

There is no analog to any of the nations in Asia and while many martial arts weapons are known, they are as likley to be wielded by a burly Viking or a Swashbuckler as a reed slender Japanese Samurai.

Also no "Africa" "Native American" or "Middle East" really exist either.