In a dungeon and dragon style RPG, I wanted to add more color and flavor than having boring Elves and ruthless Orc with the same common arsenal of equipement (long sword, chain mail, etc).
An idea I like was to use India, and neighboring countries (china, persia, etc) as a source of inspiration for a medieval fantasy world. India equipment looks much more similar to european culture than China and japan for example.
The Hindi mythology can give me access to more interesting races like Naga and Rakshasa. It also makes more sense with the game as reincarnation, which is present in Hindi culture, is a thing in my game.
Now my problem is that my game will be mainly text based preventing me from illustrating stuff. Also many things does not necessarily have an equivalent in Western culture. My questions is do I use the original Hindi names, or do I rename stuff according to western culture.
For example, swords exist in both indian and western culture. But in india, swords includes : Talwar, Shamsher, Dhup, Khanda, Sirohi, Pata, Gupti (Source Wikipedia). The average player will have no clue that all this stuff are different type of swords.
One the other hand, Chakram, which are throw-able blade disk, have no equivalent in Western culture. So should I keep the Hindi name in this case because it's unique? Or because it's already used and known in gaming?
The game is still a fantasy world, so I can do whatever I want, I do not need to ensure historical accuracy. Still, would you like to play a game with tons of obscure Hindi names?
Another option could be to have mandatory illustrations or simple icons which should be easier to draw and re-use.
Thanks for the feedback.
As a comparison, as a fan of Japanese culture, I generally used Japanese words to represent objects like katana, shuriken, kimono, etc. Maybe it's because japanse culture is more popular in these days than it used to be making it more accessible the outside world. So following the same logic, I should be doing the same with indian culture.
As for not being culturally offensive, I am not sure I can perfectly do that. The goal is to have a different flavor to classic fantasy genre. I though of going for renaissance or antiquity to give a different feel, but it did not really work. But for India, the fit is better.
Just to give you an an idea, the objective would be to systematically replace the whole classic fantasy genre with indian culture. So for example, the equipment will be replaced with indian equipment. The playable races will be replaced with indian mythical creatures. Indian mythology will also be used to build up the bestiary. Classes would also be inspired on indian culture.
I could also borrow from adjacent countries. For example, I wanted chinese style battle monk. In that case, the word "monk" does not have the same connotation than in a european setting. Many classes like the samurai, ninja and monk, now renamed Swordsman, assassin, monk, makes more sense in an indian setting. I'll have to search a bit for replacing the berserker and the druid that are very european centric.
Also, the fact that the game will be rogue-like allowing to reincarnate dead characters, would make sense with indian mythology that has reincarnation.
So it a bit what I am trying to do. It is still a fantasy world, so I have more flexibility.