Mature themes

Don't be fooled by the title of this post. I'm not referring specifically to sexual topics. I'm going to be talking about anything that might be considered 'adult-oriented,' including violence, advanced social issues, and the like.

Before I go on, I want to mention something very quickly: I have noticed a continuation in the trend. My Board Game Review entries are still getting, by far, the most traffic. This week, the majority of my traffic seems to be coming from Russia. Fascinating...

Anyway, I'm going to talk about that more next week, but this week, I wanted to talk about something that I noticed whilst watching the latest episode of Wil Wheaton's Tabletop. The latest episode is about the game Five Tribes. The game is set in the world of 1,001 Arabian Nights, and so contains viziers, camels, palaces, assassins, djinns, and slaves.

Mr Wheaton started out the episode with a little speech, in which he points out that some people have an ethical objection to the concept of slavery being included in the game, and that the publishers chose to include it because, moral or not, it was part of the culture being depicted in the game, and they felt it was important to portray the setting accurately. But as Wil Wheaton personally objects to the concept of owning another human being, he was going to refer to the slave cards as 'assistants' throughout the game.

Kingdoms of the Kithain

Ok, I know I'm three months overdue for an update (for which I apologise). The last update was supposed to be a map of the continent, but I'm having trouble getting that finished. Maybe I'll accomplish that task one day, but for now, I think it's best to move on to other topics.

So I would like some input on an issue that has bugged me in the past. I was looking through the old image files I created to develop a complete set of maps for the kingdoms in Changeling: the Dreaming. And I remembered a point of contention; the four kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula.

Here's the only thing that it says in any canonical release from White Wolf Studios:

Spain and Portugal -- Sometimes the allies of Neustria, four kingdoms comprise these lands of the Iberian Peninsula: Navarre along the Pyrennees, Aragon in the east, Leone in the Northeast, and Castille in the central and southern regions. Commoners, whether in service to a noble or not, are always welcomed; eshu and boggans are an integral part of the society.