For the Americas I recently discovered an in-production project called "Mulaka", which I believe takes inspiration from a culture native to Mexico.

I've been waiting for the day that Indian mythology is used for a large scale RPG, although I'm afraid it's a long ways off unfortunately.

I'm not sure that it's what you're looking for, but you might be interested in Unrest--homepage here and GOG page here, I believe.

J.K. Rowling has gotten flak for weaving in a Native American mythos into her worlds.

As I understand it, that would be because her "weaving" was ill-researched and was believed to perpetuate offensive and inaccurate stereotypes, which is contemptible. A better-researched and more considerate portrayal likely wouldn't have gotten the same kind of flack.

When stereotypes are obvious and negative, I'd completely agree with you. This, however, seems like more calculated outrage-mongering similar to the mascot controversies which Native Americans have been found to largely be unconcerned with (http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15608840/native-americans-say-unbothered-redskins-team-name-washington-post-poll). Making people magical in a universe where people fly around on broomsticks seems hardly offensive. However, Rowling seems to have run afoul of the identitarians who wish us all to stay in our own cultural lane, an idea I find laughable (as a human being, the whole of human culture is yours to draw from).

I think it's not so much about the idea of Native Americans being magical that's offensive to them. It's who's telling what story and how that story being told that makes them either celebrate or despise it. They decided that JK Rowling is not the right person to tell their stories. They don't want JK Rowling to be attributing fictional qualities to their ancestries and culture. It has to be someone else, done in different ways.

As I am exposing myself to infamous/popular controversial public figures with foul mouth, the more I can see who can get away with saying what. For example, certain comedians can pull certain jokes on certain race and nobody from that particular race will get offended, but change that person to someone else, with a different skin, face, and accent, it's a whole different story. It could lead to an outrage. And it's not limited to race, this expands to gender identity, politics, culture heritage, and so on. Who you are, how likable you are, the way you speak, and how people perceive you determine which words coming from you are acceptable.

J.K. Rowling has gotten flak for weaving in a Native American mythos into her worlds.

As I understand it, that would be because her "weaving" was ill-researched and was believed to perpetuate offensive and inaccurate stereotypes, which is contemptible. A better-researched and more considerate portrayal likely wouldn't have gotten the same kind of flack.

When stereotypes are obvious and negative, I'd completely agree with you. This, however, seems like more calculated outrage-mongering similar to the mascot controversies which Native Americans have been found to largely be unconcerned with (http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15608840/native-americans-say-unbothered-redskins-team-name-washington-post-poll). Making people magical in a universe where people fly around on broomsticks seems hardly offensive. However, Rowling seems to have run afoul of the identitarians who wish us all to stay in our own cultural lane, an idea I find laughable (as a human being, the whole of human culture is yours to draw from).

It wasn't just that they were made "magical" - it's that she was generalizing one particular group's belief to all of them and there are negative connotations to depicting "magical Native Americans," and especially Europeans depicting such. From the article I linked:

The first issue, says Leanne Howe, a Choctaw Nation citizen and co-editor of Seeing Red—Hollywood's Pixeled Skins, is that Rowling attributes the tradition of skin walkers to all Native Americans of the pre-Columbian era, as though they were a monolithic group with one set of beliefs.

The second problem is that Native American traditions are equated with magic. This is part of a long history of white Americans and Europeans trivializing native beliefs.

Fantasy is an important part of children’s literature, but problems arise when a race of people is constantly portrayed as magical, and therefore fictional. “We are … fighting everyday for the protection of our sacred sites from being destroyed,” scholar Adrienne Keene writes on her blog Native Appropriations. “If Indigenous spirituality becomes conflated with fantasy ‘magic’—how can we expect lawmakers and the public to be allies in the protection of these spaces?”

So yes, I would normally agree that on the face of it, there shouldn't be anything offensive about portraying certain aspects of any particular culture as being magical. It's the history of European and Native American relations that adds the negative connotations. Rowling may not have intended anything negative - and in fact I'm confident that she didn't - but certain depictions of people run afoul of very negative history. For another example of this, consider the "house elves" in the Harry Potter universe - domestic slaves, bred and bound to serve their families as long as they live. Now imagine the shitstorm if Rowling had made house-elves black...

It would be nice to live in a world where well-intended speech couldn't reinforce the more negative consequences of our history, but unfortunately we live in a world where some pretty terrible shit went down and the aftereffects are still being felt. For an example that affects Native Americans in particular, do some reading on Canada's "residential schools" (where Native-Canadians were forcibly integrated into European-Canadian culture). Particularly troubling is that for a long time many Canadians wouldn't even acknowledge that this happened - I don't recall learning about the residential schools until I was in university, and the last residential school closed when I was a toddler. There are people alive today who went through that bullshit.

For the Americas I recently discovered an in-production project called "Mulaka", which I believe takes inspiration from a culture native to Mexico.

I've been waiting for the day that Indian mythology is used for a large scale RPG, although I'm afraid it's a long ways off unfortunately.

I'm not sure that it's what you're looking for, but you might be interested in Unrest--homepage here and GOG page here, I believe.

That's definitely interesting, but not specifically what I had in mind. More along the lines of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana

There are some actual issues/barriers to this happening. Even if the interest/market could be created/found, right-wingers would object (imo for no good reason, as in the past).

Fantasy is the genre that works well with the fact that humans have some instincts unsuited to the real world. Not one human, growing up, would correctly guess that the universe works the way it actually does. Reality is counter-intuitive to humans, and fantasy is what's intuitive instead.

Yaick, why was i cursing?

. here is Chasm the RIft.....

they are not popular any more. they was popular beethwen 1990-2004, then they markets are slowly shrinked to virtually zero.

mmorpg-s are somewhat still popular.

they are not popular any more. they was popular beethwen 1990-2004, then they markets are slowly shrinked to virtually zero.

mmorpg-s are somewhat still popular.

I think you are misunderstanding the question... I think we are talking about "RPGs" as encompassing all subgenres of RPGs here (Maybe even some hack'n'slashers or Action Adventures), instead of "RPGs" as in "Singleplayer RPG".

Besides, fantasy SINGLEPLAYER RPGs are still going strong, at least the ones of western tradition... Dragon Age, Skyrim, and the likes.

The JRPGs are still popular in Asia AFAIK, even though interest in the west has shrunken a bit since the 90's... still, we get a brand spanking new Final Fantasy shortly, as well as a pretty extensive remake of FF7 in Unreal Engine 4.

I'm still planning to work myself through all three parts of FF 13 as soon as I have constructed my console replacement PC, all of them came out in this decade AFAIK.

We lost some of the better JRPGs in the mid of last decade, looking at the last Breath of Fire on the PS2, that is understandable though. They tried to come up with something new, and blew it (at least IMO... having to replay a large portion of the game because you have to use the dragon powers at some point and run out of it, which is permanent is not a "feature"... its called pissing of your players).

I thouroughly enjoyed Chrono Cross, but it seems many didn't. Received only middiling ratings. Given I was mostly wowed by the spectacular graphics for its time, the good soundtrack and the sometimes genious environments created, and hardly remember much about the game itself, most probably I was to busy enjoying the environments to notice that the game wasn't that good. Still, that also explains why there was no Chrono Trigger sequel after that.

Seeing how Seiken Densetsu 2, Or Secret of Mana 2 for us westerners haven't even made it to the US in the 90's (instead we got Secret of Evermore which IMO was actually quite entertaining, if not quite the same as secret of mana), I guess that Secret of Mana 1 must have sold below expectations in the west in the 90's (which is odd given how revolutionary it was at the time, and how everybody was talking about it back then).

Still, while the big JRPG hits from the nineties are mostly dormant at the moment, there are a lot of smaller releases that often get translated and make it to the west thanks to the cheaper digital distribution (thanks steam).

Yes, they are no longer as popular as in the 90's... they are still fairly popular, even if you exclude the MMO's (which themselves seem to struggle more and more. Which has to do with the high cost involved, still I guess we see actually MORE singleplayer fantasy RPGs being released now than fantasy MMORPGs)