More India Thoughts

Conceptually, A Magical Society: India should be very different than A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. Many of us have played distinctively quasi-European games for most of our lives. These games were more based upon literary, movie, and comic book sources than on real history, but they still featured knights in plate traversing lands looking not that dissimilar to Britain, France, or Germany while eating cheese, meat, milk, and crusty breads. Surely, there were jaunts into jungles and deserts, but those were not the standard terrain, they were the spice on a relatively Western European game.

India's significantly different. Size-wise, it's about 3/4th the size of the European area when you include Pakistan and Bangladesh, and in terms of cultural diversity, it's similar, if perhaps not greater. Compared to what most gamers are familiar with, food is different, politics is different, and religion is massively different - but actually more similar to what the bog-standard game assumes in terms of multiple deities.

What this means is that more time is going to be needed covering the basics, as the basics are less familiar to the average reader than the basics of a medieval Britain or France. Some things not directly covered in MMS;WE (such as food) need to be covered in MS:I. The overall view of the work will be a bit skewed from the prior one, but I think in a way more appropriate to subject and the reader.

Oh, and because I can, if one think's India's a big subject, try Africa. I know I should probably split India into parts, but I'm not going to for ease of use. Africa, on the other hand, I feel like I do with Asia - it's too big for one book. Hell, technically, Europe's just an Asian peninsula, but don't tell the Europeans. :)