Legendary Games announced a new Pathfinder 2e product this week called Asian Spell Compendium.
Jason Nelson quickly apologised, asked retailers to delist the book, so it is no longer available and done so for the entire Far East product line. The forthcoming Asian Monsters Kickstarter has been delayed, and more information will be made available later.
How Asian culture inspired RPGs and supplements is a matter of on-going concern in the gaming community. As Legendary Games explains in their apology, the timing here was especially awkward.
In the States, there have been murders with Asian Americans targeted. Jason writes;
Xenophobia and anti-Asian racism is nothing new. My former father-in-law and his entire family were rounded up and sent to the concentration camp at Tule Lake, California, surrounded by barbed wire and machine gun nests, for the simple crime of being Japanese-American, and even after their release could not return to their former home for years. Even in the 1970s, he had his phone wiretapped by the FBI for “potential anti-American activity.” Anti-Asian racism, violence, and discrimination are pervasive in the USA, from the federal government on down to individuals, from the 1800s right down to today.
The Asian Spell Compendium was, as the name suggests, a collection of 100+ spells for Pathfinder inspired by “the mysteries of the Orient”.
Legendary Games buyers were quick to raise concerns.
Jason Nelson, who worked on the book himself, was equally quick to react with the apology and delisting request coming within the day.
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