Quote from: Nerag;1127013I think I have that issue somewhere...

I have mixed feelings about it. Not that I don't stand by the work, but that the editing process *reeeeaaallly* broke my back starting with this feature going forward and ultimately ended my run as a "go to" feature writer for Dragon... and my descending dislike for 3.x...

Quote from: Nerag;1127009I've been doing some research (ok on Wikipedia but this isn't something I'm going to publish or send to a university) and the origins are quite fascinating and contradictory because every ethnic group has their own variants. The one I quite like is the Assyrian version that makes the Jinn like the Shedim, who were said to be spirits who were descended from an angel and a demon. This makes the Jinn a bit like the Grigori (giants) descended from the Nephilim and mortal women in certain apocryphal biblical texts. This makes me think that my idea of linking the Giants and the Jinn as part of the same heritage was a good idea.

So in my 5E version of al-qadim all giants, djinni, marid, efreet and dao are Jinn and they are all inter-related. They would all have the ability to travel to the elemental worlds and maybe have etherealness as well. To balance this they should have a vulnerability to being commanded and bound. Maybe anyone with an arcane background should be able to command or bind them using the cleric's rules for turning and destroying undead.

I'm doing something similar in one of my campaign setting concepts. See, typical kitchen sink fantasy throws in creatures from world mythology without any attempt at a cohesive cosmology. My idea was to create a cohesive cosmology with creatures inspired by world mythologies, using comparative mythology as the bridge. My campaign setting is based primarily on Indo-European mythology, but does take inspirations from Middle Eastern and East Asian sources. The genies, fairies, etc are just different names for the same concepts. They generally fall into two broad groupings based on their nature and behavior: gods/demons/spirits and hidden folk.

The gods/demons/spirits are the personifications of agency ascribed to impersonal natural forces like weather, land, moonlight, disease, and abstract concepts by the animist philosophy that underlies all religious thought. The divinities and cthonic demons of Greek myth, the fair folk of post-Christian Europe, and the yokai of Japan are examples. They aren't people.

By contrast, the hidden folk live similar lives to humans, though hidden from humans. They may live in other worlds, possess great powers, and have other oddities, but otherwise they are basically comparable to humans. They live, eat, reproduce, die, etc. They are people.

The genies, when imagined as a race between mortal and divine, fit into the latter category.

Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish the two. For example, gods/demons/spirits may be able to sire demigod offspring onto mortals.

Quote from: Shasarak;1127017I would have hired Lawie McLawface myself.

I based him on a real guy I know. Last name Law, is a lawyer by profession. Court staff call him the lawman. With a name like that you expect to see some badass fusion of cowboy and lawyer.... alas he's like 0% cowboy.

Quote from: tenbones;1127052I have mixed feelings about it. Not that I don't stand by the work, but that the editing process *reeeeaaallly* broke my back starting with this feature going forward and ultimately ended my run as a "go to" feature writer for Dragon... and my descending dislike for 3.x...

Do you have your original work? If so, what about adapting it for 5e and publishing it via DM's Guild?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1127099Do you have your original work? If so, what about adapting it for 5e and publishing it via DM's Guild?

I have it all on one of my archived backup drives. Conversion from 3.x to 5e would probably take more effort than simply doing a whole new re-write. And honestly, 5e's sensibilities are no more friendly to my current ideas on how I'd do "D&D" than 3.x was. I have different ideas on what D&D "should be" in play, and frankly it's not worth my effort since I don't run 5e. When I was running 5e, my campaign was set in Calimshan and I think I started doing a conversion for Djinn-pact Warlocks WAAAY early on as well as the "Sha'ir" class. I'd have to look around in my archive, it's probably horribly out of date by current standards.

It also probably doesn't help that I personally have no desire to contribute to DM's Guild or WotC.

How about an OSR not-Qadim game instead?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1127191How about an OSR not-Qadim game instead?

Any suggestions?

I might post my Mythras Al Qadim conversion a bit later, if people are interested.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1124664The following post gets a bit rambling, so excuse that.

Even the faux medieval "European" settings bear no resemblance to any real European culture in any historical period. When was the last time you saw a faux European fantasy setting with believable countries distinguished by cultures, languages, fashions, etc?

Dark Albion.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1127560Dark Albion.

I stand corrected. How common would you say settings with that depth of world building are?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1127580I stand corrected. How common would you say settings with that depth of world building are?

Extremely rare. You need to have settings that are based on the real world for that.