Old D&D was just as dreadfully unreflective as new D&D. Appendix N is just a fucking list. Clearly nobody involved in the game thought about anything in Appendix N, or – heaven forfend – actually exposed themselves to even semi-professional literary analysis of it in any form.

And that leads to what I want to do with fantasy (and it is what I do with D&D, which is why D&D players don’t like playing D&D with me), which is to make it reflective. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be fun – my Forgotten Realms is essentially all about the trashiest celebrity culture stuff I can find.