[quote=Jig]
Frankly, I don't remember the last RP I saw that was based on real-life earth that was set even anywhere in Europe. When I recently started an RP (tl;dr version - vampires in the Netherlands), I got some feedback appreciating that the RP was set somewhere a bit different. I don't think it has much to do with 'fear' of Arabian culture or settings, but simply no interest in them, fuelled by a lack of cultural imports. I'm not American, but I'm guessing most of their media is home-grown, and then the biggest import is Japanese. With bags of material rooted in those cultural references and a fat lot of nothing else, it's no surprise that most RPs are America-and-Japan centric.I can't name a single Arab television show. The absence of Arabian cultural imports is probably the main reason.
[/quote]

[quote=Dervish]
Most big fantasy settings are set in medieval European inspired settings, so it's what people are familiar with. Knights, kingdoms, and dragons and the lot are easy to conjure up in the mind compared to say Mamluks, Caliphates, and sphinxes for a lot of people. Usually when people read the word fantasy as a descriptor, Westeros, Middle Earth, Tamriel, and countless others come to mind, most with heavy European slants. Sure, a lot have Middle Eastern inspired places (Dorne in ASoIaF, Hammerfell in The Elder Scrolls, for instance) but we seldom see much of those places so they aren't immediately what come to mind. People like to roleplay what they're familiar with, so it doesn't surprise me that Arabian inspired settings aren't very common. I'm sure if you looked at an Arabic roleplaying site, their fantasy games would probably have a lot more settings reflecting Sinbad the Sailor, among others. It isn't that people are "afraid" of Arabs as much as it's not something people are familiar with. it's also the reason you don't really see anything having to do with Chinese mythology in the vein of Jade Empire, that excellent BioWare RPG, because people really don't know much about that kind of setting.
[/quote]

These.

Being perfectly honest the lack of Arabic RPs is not due to any racism or fear like people may claim.

American & European Culture is dominant because that's what most people are used to/grew up around.
Asian Cultures tend to be next because they're probably the next biggest culture to mix in, while a lot of Arabic countries are well known to more isolate themselves.

Plus speaking from pure personal opinion, I do not find much of Arabic culture interesting. Maybe I just wasn't shown much of it's good parts (I completely note the influence they had on ancient science though mind you) but culture wise it just looks like people behind the times who still have barbaric sexist practices. While Asia has stuff like anime, ninjas and samurai to take ideas from Arabic tends to draw a blank.

*Disclaimer* Before anyone replies going "I'm Arabic and I'm not like that!", I never did say you were so stop right now before putting words in my mouth. Arabic people are still human beings and just as likely to be good people as everyone else. I am strictly saying when I look at Arabic [u]culture[/u] there isn't much of interest, if anything I simply see backwards practices.