Real-world references
Crawl is implied to take place in a universe different from ours, in which none of our real human civilizations ever existed, but there are some very similar ones. Technology is implied to be similar to that during the late Middle Ages (with plenty of anachronisms but let's not worry about that for now). A lot of monsters and items draw from real-world mythologies, from disparate sources. One of the keys to this theme is that Crawl's universe doesn't know about ours. Duvessa doesn't talk about how badly she wants to stab Tony Abbott. The Elven Halls are called "the Elven Halls", not "Iceland". Harold doesn't say "But I was about to leave for my vacation to the Bahamas..." when he dies. Any direct reference is done as a pop culture joke (Killer Klowns, Beogh and the good gods, Singing Sword songs, etc.) and never tries to sell itself as an important part of the Crawl universe.
This suggests that material in Crawl should be agnostic to its source. Just because something is foreign or exotic to the devs doesn't mean it should be painted as foreign or exotic in-game.
This rule is getting broken a little too often, and with an obvious pattern.
The first worrying element for me was katanas and lajatangs. Both described as rare "imported weapons". In the case of katanas, devs eventually recognized this for what it is (embarrassing Oriental mysticism) and got rid of them...but autumn katana came back and is literally described as "exotic", and lajatangs, while fictional, are clearly a stand-in for those exotic, mystical Oriental weapons, complete with a fake "foreign" name.
When katanas are explicitly exotic and Western weapons are commonplace, there is only one extremely obvious conclusion for the player to come to: Crawl takes place in The West, even though that concept shouldn't exist in the Crawl universe!
This case has a really easy fix: rename and re-describe lajatangs. You don't need to remove them or change the tile or the stats, just get rid of the stupid name. At least remove "exotic" from the autumn katana's description, though having only one katana in the game still carries the implication...
I think Wucad Mu is less of a problem since it's the name of a person, and while it's a fictional one it's at least theoretically correct pinyin, unlike "Ieoh" (which I'm sure the devteam has heard enough about from me already).
The next piece of needless exoticification is the selection of untranslated names. "Katana" has been used in English often enough that it's the best word for the object. There is no common English equivalent of "rakshasa". I cannot say the same of "fustibalus" or "lindwurm" (German spelling with English pluralization, just...what???). "Bultungin" is the newest offender.
I also find it jarring when Crawl takes a name from mythology and only the name. Artistic license is fine - Crawl's minotaurs and rakshasas diverge pretty heavily from their sources but they still have recognizable elements; minotaurs have bull heads and rakshasas have illusions and raiju are lightning dogs. I cannot say the same of Crawl's daevas, eidola, or Tzitzimeh, which are pretty much unrecognizable - it seems like the names were chosen specifically to tie the game further into real-world religions. Also yes I know Crawl's interpretations of Asmodeus, Ereshkigal, Tiamat, and Dispater were copied from Dungeons & Dragons (fixing that would be a lot of work I guess).
The worst offenders: direct references to real-world locations or gods without a hint of irony. Majin-Bo has the excuse of being a pun, but not Bow of Krishna "Sharnga" or Ring of Shaolin.
Oh and something I'll mention here because it doesn't fit anywhere else: "Imperial myrmidon" doesn't even make sense!
Gods
There are two god names that aren't meaningless gibberish: The Shining One, and Wu Jian Council.
Wu Jian sticks out more than TSO because it's conspicuously untranslated in a game where nearly everything is in English. I assume this is intentional. No matter how you look at this, it's better than "Ieoh Jian" since Wu Jian is at least correct pinyin, but it's still conspicuous among all the other god names.
TSO, Zin, and Beogh are filled with blatant references to Abrahamic religions. The rest of the gods aside from Wu Jian, are so far abstracted from any real-world religion or culture as to be unrecognizable (possibly Qazlal's name is a bad attempt at sounding like an Aztec deity but whatever). So you've got this weird division where Jesus gets a big ingame presence but Buddhism and Hinduism and everything else get a monster or unrandart name at "best". I realize TSO, Zin, and Beogh's themes are all intended as jokes but jokes that are too out of place or pervasive can do some real damage to the theme of the game. If you want to make the game more even-handed with where it draws its mythology from, dialing back the references here would be a great place to start.
Short version
Trying to diversify the game's source material is good but if you treat some sources as conspicuously exotic, you're making the game more Eurocentric, not less.
- For this message the author duvessa has received thanks: 16
- Brannock, ereinion, Floodkiller, Lasty, Moanerette, nago, Shard1697, Sprucery, TeshiAlair, ZipZipskins and 6 more users