That feels ironic coming from you.
This is consistent with what I've said in the past, though I have evolved on the issue somewhat since the last time we went on this rodeo.
Since when has this ever mattered? Show me one case where someone who did research 'got a pass'. Show me one case where someone was offended and then was mollified by the big stack of index cards and footnotes that the author produced.
I'll get to this later when we hit the "minefield" paragraph, but it matters a great deal that the OP's audience is "his players" and he's not thinking about publishing. Putting something out for public consumption is a
very different beast altogether. And I don't mean that to say that, if you're only running for your players, that's license to be as racist as you want to be. I mean that, he's running the material for, presumably, people he can trust and, again presumably, people he can expect to get honest and nonjudgmental feedback on. I suppose I am presuming too much, but I tend to think of people who play D&D together as
friends, and friends approach each other on this kind of stuff in a very different way that faceless strangers on the internet do, and it gives you the ability to get genuine, useful feedback before (if ever) subjecting it to the broader audience.
Perhaps we could all stand to take a step back and approach situations like this as if we were speaking to a good friend we know
meant well. I know I certainly could stand to do that more.
There is not, and never really has been, such a thing as a monolithic definition of human. This is particularly true if we start looking at the definitions of human in the pre-modern, pre-cosmopolitan world. To give just one example of many many, one definition of human that has currency to some is, "An animal which has a soul." But this definition is hardly universal and is revered by some and reviled by others.
I suppose I should have been clearer in what I mean by "human": something that includes, at minimum, individuals who have beliefs and motivations that typically align with their culture in many significant ways but also often in certain ways which
do not align with their culture.
But I will extend your assertion this far, you should present every human as human by your own definition of human, even if that means presenting a culture in an inauthentic manner. For example, I personally feel it's impossible to present Pre-Columbian North American culture authentically and abide by this mandate, since the Pre-Columbian North Americans themselves didn't believe every tribe was actually a human being. Each tribe tended to believe either its own mythology where other tribes had a different creation origin, or take for granted that the other tribe new its own origin and since the conception of their own origin differed from that of their neighbors conception, they were in their minds at least wholly different groups of people. This is hardly simple or obvious.
I did not mean that the culture you present as
human has to view all other groups through an egalitarian lens; nor did I say that the main institutions within that culture cannot be
villainous. I'm not saying to whitewash
anyone's history. But if you're going to tell me that
every member of
every one of these cultures believed that
every member of
every other tribe was less than human, I'm going to have to ask for your sources. Of course we have no way of knowing for sure, but the idea that were
no outliers? Not a single member of the community who questioned the way non-members were treated? Not a single person who, maybe while not saying so out loud out of fear of personal safety, harbored doubts about such practices as war or slavery?
I have to doubt that, because in basically every culture we have actual written records from throughout history that has practiced war and slavery has
always had critics of those behaviors, even when nearly universally-practiced religion was used as justification.
I'm not going to argue that it's not a
huge minefield to publish, for public consumption, historically accurate roleplaying material featuring, for instance, indigenous Central/South American cultures. You could be a member of one of those communities and probably face backlash from somebody, somewhere else in the same (or a different, but similar) community. There's just no way to publish anything in today's society without having to face some public criticism. I just don't think that's such a bad thing. When we take other people's viewpoints of our work at face value, we
learn something new about the world we many not previously have been exposed to, and that's great. I do think we, as a culture, are too quick to condemn the people
behind the work. But I also believe that, if you're not willing to hear that criticism, and to take it that criticism as an opportunity to learn and grow as a creator, you may not be ready to produce work for public consumption yet.
And again, I do believe that there is a world of a difference between publishing works for public consumption, and wanting to explore these topics and these cultures with a group of friends in a closed setting in a way that is still humane and respectful.
One caveat I'll add: D&D, a game which definitely leans heavily on combat and killing to resolve problems, may not be the best game to do that in.
Besides that little caveat, the whole point of having things like orcs, elves, dwarves, centaurs and dragons in a setting is that they are not human. Since they are not human, there is no reason that they must be presented as human. It's quite possible that orcs are a monolithic, chaotic, and violent race. There is no reason that a non-human race would necessarily share every quality of humanity. But already this puts us in conflict. I flatly disagree with your claim: "The problem with replacing Mongols with Orcs is how D&D tends to present Orcs as a monolithic, chaotic and violent race."
No, the problem is not that at all. The problem with identifying Mongols with Orcs is that some might infer that you mean that Mongolians are not human whether you mean that or not. But there is nothing wrong with identifying Orcs as non-human. The problem comes with conflating things that aren't human with particular real world cultures. As long as I present Orcs as non-human with a non-human culture, I don't have a problem with that. Yet, you presumably will. So this is a further complexity.
You and I simply have a disagreement on how we feel about the way D&D handles non-human but still-mortal creatures. Which, after reading your perspective on Elves and Weapon Proficiencies, does not at all come as a surprise to me. I don't like the way D&D presents some of these races, particularly in the way they tend to blend culture with natural inborn properties. These are different philosophies, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you approach this. As such, I don't find myself disagreeing with basically anything you say above.
Me, I tend to prefer the way Eberron does things; if you're a creature with mortality, you have free will, and thus no inborn alignment (though potentially natural (at least on the ethics scale) and/or cultural inclinations towards one perspective or another, just as PC races commonly have). For unequivocal bad guys to mow through, I prefer the immortal beings; creatures whose very essence is defined by their evil: fiends. Also, especially for the pulpier bits, distinctively evil organizations. Which leads me to...
Maybe. Maybe not. To go full Godwin here because the culture presents itself to be picked on and if I used any other culture it would be "problematic", there are plenty of modern stories that present Nazi's as complex, non-monolithic, nuanced human beings, whether we are talking something like 'Band of Brothers' or 'Saving Private Ryan'. But it's not necessarily wrong to tell a story like 'The Dirty Dozen' or 'Inglorious Bastards' where the Nazis are faceless bad guys to mow through, and no one says when you do, "That's pretty damn problematic" because who wants to defend Nazis. But more than that, there has never been a thing as a monolithically good culture, and in any culture there have been periods and places where the culture as a whole acted with a collective monstrous resolve and did monstrous things. There are going to be times and places where the ugly reality of the situation requires you to present a people in a way that is overwhelmingly monstrous, or at the least that such a decision can be defended both on artistic and moral grounds. It can be good to show that nuance, as for example, Guy Gabriel Kay tries to show in the 'Lions of Al-Rassan'. But it's not necessarily the case that you are required to show that nuance or even cases where showing that nuance could itself be problematic.
Nazis are neither a race or a culture. They are an organization, an institution, and their mission statement is as close to our modern conception of what "evil" is as we are likely to get consensus on, as humanity as a whole. "Band of Brothers" did have that Nazi kid from Oregon, who may or may not have been swept up into circumstances outside of his control (it's been a long time since I've watched it, but I thought I remember him talking about how he moved back to join the German army because family did). I don't necessarily think that the point of these scene (and a lot of that show) was to say "look, there are sympathetic Nazis!", but rather, that war places an immense burden on a generation with little control over how they got there. See also: how much Winter struggles over having to kill that kid (who was a kid by any measure; the previous guy was coded as college-aged) during the invasion of Normandy.
Now, portraying all
Germans from the 1930's-40's as Nazis or sympathizers
is not only problematic but also deeply historically inaccurate; there were many Germans who either deeply critical of the regime or whom actively resisted. Not to mention how many people who were killed or tortured that were, for all intents and purposes,
also Germans.
But do I have problems with portraying
Nazis as faceless bad guys there to get mowed down? Ehhhh. I've been working on concepts of compassion and giving people more of the benefit of the doubt, but... there has to be a line somewhere, right? There's that quote "I can disagree with you about politics and still be friends unless your politics are rooted in my dehumanization", which I can get behind, but Nazis aren't so much about "dehumanization" as they are about
eradication. That has to be the line, right? I mean, I'm always down for the possibility of redemption, but when your baseline belief, the core philosophy that
makes one a Nazi, is "the eradication of all non-straight, non-able-bodied white people"; you have to be at such a point in your life to
end up at that place that I can't begin to imagine the pathway back from that. Certainly not in a way that respects the rights to life of the people the Nazi might seek to harm in the interim. Sure, if they weren't an actual physical threat to anybody, let's try to convert them first, but Nazis who are active combatants? Sure, I'm of the mind that that could be fair game.
To quote Bethesda's PR VP Pete Hines, when asked if their new game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (a game very much marketed as fighting against an oppressive, modern-day nazi regime) was "poking the hornet's nest", he replied: "Maybe a little bit. But the hornet's nest is full of Nazis. So
those guys."
The whole thing is a minefield you aren't acknowledging. Consider a case like 'Dances with Wolves'. Now, 'Dances' is a part of a genre of 'anti-Westerns' where the normal dynamics of a classic Western are reversed. The Native Americans are presented as nuanced and human, where as the whites are presented as almost entirely morally bankrupt, ignorant and evil. But within even this frame work there are all sorts of complexities. It's only the Dakota that are presented as complex. Their neighbors the Pawnee are presented as faceless bad guys to mow through. That decision as to which tribe to present as heroic and which to present as monstrous turns out to be problematically based on which side allied with Europeans - and not in the way you might first expect. It is the Pawnee that historically have been portrayed as ignoble and savage despite and perhaps because they didn't fight back, while the Sioux are generally portrayed as noble even as villains (and rarely as villains) precisely because they fought back. Yet the Pawnee didn't fight the white settlers precisely because the Pawnee were on the losing side of a genocidal war with the Sioux just prior to the white settlers showing up. None of this nuance is captured in the movie. How should we respond to that? Meanwhile, it is also possible to attack 'Dances with Wolves' because it can be fit to a 'white savior narrative' where a white outsider is assimilated into an exotic culture and helps save it from its enemies and I've certainly seen it attacked in that manner. What are we to make of that? Why should the protagonist be white? Why should we see the culture through the eyes of the white character? Why shouldn't the Native Americans tell their own story? Is the depth of 'research' enough to defend it against that, or is that still problematic enough to damn it?
As I've stated above, there's no amount of research that is going to be enough to shield anyone from criticism, but not getting criticism shouldn't be the point. As you say, nuance is the key. I kind of thought that was assumed in "treating people and cultures in a humane and respectful way" but perhaps I should have been clearer. We can talk all day about "Dances With Wolves" and how it tackles some issues with nuance and others with a particularly callous lack of the same, or how "white savior" narratives are problematic even as the need to inspire white allies to action is always urgent (interestingly, the early press of that Great Wall movie released recently got a lot of flack for being another "white savior" movie because of the way Matt Damon was put front and center to put butts in seats, but every plot synopsis I've read of the film (I've admittedly not watched it yet) made it seem like Damon's character was more of a clueless outsider and a sidekick to Chinese heroes in a Chinese story told by Chinese filmmakers, which is
probably actually the best way to go about such a narrative. "Big Trouble in Little China" is a valiant effort of this sort of dynamic but still centers too much of the story on its white characters, even though Jack Burton is the
living definition of "clueless sidekick in way over his head". Also... well, we'll get there later.) This is all besides the point however.
I was once in a workshop with a ton of white people and very few people of color, and we were talking about race, and the white people were hemming and hawing and taking up a lot of space and time to fumble their way to basically, sort of, in a round about way, say they didn't speak much in discussions about race because they were too afraid of saying the wrong thing (but not too afraid to take up basically all of the meeting to really uncomfortably get to that point, but that's neither here nor there.) By the time I had an opportunity to speak, we were just about out of time, so I was asked to encapsulate what I had to say within ten seconds. I said: "We all stay stupid crap all the time; that shouldn't stop us from having a conversation."
Now, I'm certain that that isn't an appropriate framework for
every possible space, but I think it's a great one for a lot of them, and that includes discussions of "problematic" pop cultural artifacts. I think it's important for content creators to
make the effort to try to do the right thing, which includes,
at bare minimum, not only just doing the research, but also hiring consultants with actual first-hand experience and knowledge (i.e; members of a culture if the main subject is different from your own) to help you better introduce that necessary nuance into the narrative. And people will object, because as you so astutely point out, there is no such thing as a "universal human", and because of that there is no universal personal story, and so there will always be people whose personal story will not be represented well (if at all) in the stories they feel should have done so. Do you think there's anywhere close to a kind of consensus within black liberation movements about the collective works of Spike Lee? Because I can assure you there is not.
The point is, putting content out for consumption should start a conversation, the results of which everyone involved in can learn something from. But when content makers don't put that effort or energy in to do any kind of research or reach out to members of the affected community for consultation, they kind of deserve the condemnation they get. And yes, one side of that is often too quick to condemn what they should instead be critiquing. On the flipside, I think that many content makers are too quick to get defensive, to ignore even thoughtful and measured critique as nothing but dismissive condemnation.
And yet on the other hand, if the story was through the eyes of Native Americans, wouldn't some people have objected if the story had been created and told by a white person? Wouldn't some of said that that was a morally gray area at best?
Yes, and yes. Talented people with the power and influence to create broad-reaching content about cultures not their own should instead be using that talent, power, and influence to help support works from
within the culture and bring those works to broader audiences. We call this in the business "signal boosting" and it is
significantly preferable than cashing in on stories that aren't yours to tell, which is another reason why "Big Trouble in Little China" doesn't work nearly as well as a piece about white allies as "The Great Wall", for instance, or why "Dances with Wolves" was kind of destined to run into the kinds of issues it ultimately ran into. To make a profit off of another culture's oppression is shady as hell; to do so with the intention of actually helping their cause definitely trends into a moral middle; while "signal boosting" is definitely the way to go. Note that James Cameron tried to skirt around this issue when he made "Avatar"; how well he did so is in the eye of the beholder but there are people I love and whose opinions I value on both sides of that fence.
Answer those questions in an objective and non-subjective manner if this is simple. And if the answer is, "Well, of course it is subjective.", then it can't be simple, because there are simply too many different voices and viewpoints that could be brought into any conversation.
Except they are simple, because in the case of the OP, there aren't "too many different voices and viewpoints", there are roughly six, and they've all already presumably entered into a social contract (deliberately or unconsciously) which involves a certain amount of trust.
Publishing for public consumption, as I've stated several times in this post, is a whole different ballgame and certainly much more complicated and much more subjective of a subject.
