WotC Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

[SkidAce]

When China becomes the only superpower, and northern Europeans are barely scraping by cleaning their toilets, and most RPGs are written and played in China, and this is rationalized with a stereotype of northern Europeans as howling, illiterate savages....then we can complain about the portrayal of Vikings.

Probably to about the same reception as seen in this thread.

No, if someone portrays someone's culture inappropriately, then it is wrong and their grievances should be heard.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Nope. But I think it's worth pointing out when things are offensive and inappropriate. Despite some hyperbolic postings earlier in the thread, no one is advocating for a book burning.

If you were defending the virulent racism in Howard or Lovecraft, I'd point that out too, even though those are two of the most influential genre writers of their age. OA isn't especially good or influential or culturally important. It isn't anywhere near the earliest RPG take on its subject, nor the best.

I don't defend Lovecraft. Quite the opposite.

But I would feel the exact same way about someone saying that HP Lovecraft could no longer be available.

I do not want other people to be the arbiters of what is or isn't "good or influential or culturally important" and limiting availability of past material based on those determinations, or (even worse) trying to make up some sort of calculation based on "offense v. importance."

It was released in a different time, and it reflects (mostly for the worse) the time it was released.

 

[Guest 6801328]

How often will you hire a sensitivity reader when he finds nothing? No, in order to ensure future employment he has to find something to show that you need sensitivity reader.

I’ll agree that’s a definite possibility. As I said in another thread, I’ve never paid a lawyer to review a contract and had him/her say, “Looks great!”

But the certainty with which you express this prediction does nothing to bolster an impression of objectivity.

 

[Seramus]

I don't advocate erasing history in any capacity. But I would certainly put an advisory warning on it.

 

[SkidAce]

Good luck finding OA in a library.

Library of Congress

LC Catalog - No Connections Available

catalog.loc.gov

 

[ART!]

Do you want me to use "it"?

Yes, I want you to use "it", because I'm an idiot.

"They" has been the appropriate pronoun to use when you don't know the gender of a person for a very long time. Using "he" indicates an assumption that the person would male, and propagating such biases make equality very difficult for everyone.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think the benchmark for whether something should be 'available' need to be whole lot higher than that it offends some people somehow. That isn't a particular defense of OA, but rather a tip of the cap to what @Snarf Zagyg has identified as an important issue. If I were, for example, writing a satire of Fundamentalist Christianity, I would be heartbroken if it didn't offend a whole bunch of people. Offense shouldn't be a benchmark for anything, as some people take offense at nothing.

 

[Bagpuss]

Lived in cultural experiences is different to "scientific" theories.

Lived cultural experiences? A modern Asian has about as much lived cultural experience of the stuff in Oriental Adventures as I do as a European of the stuff in the King Arthur Pendragon RPG.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A QA guy who never finds bugs will eventually be replaced for one who does find them.

A person who makes up a problem to get a job isn't hired as a Quality Assurance worker.

Your first post didn't imply never finding issues. It inferred always finding issues. There is a very valuable middle ground here:

Said QA being actually involved in the design process, providing feedback early, reviewing code before it made it to the test environment, and helping solve bugs before they happened. And then finding bugs only as necessary.

The idea that a consultant would always purposefully find issues in order to perpetuate work is laughable in any field but government work.

As a product owner with a background in QA testing over the past 17 years, this isn't how QA testing works. Acererak is pretty close though.

QA doesn't get involved in code development. Or they shouldn't. It can color biases and create blind spots. The client works with the PM/PO to create requirements of what they want. These are brought to the DEV team to develop the code. Then the QA team goes in and validates that the code is working as designed. Not working as they hope, or how they want, or anything else. But traced directly to the requirement. If it's not, then you need to find out why? Ambiguous requirement? Bad code? client made a mistake in what they wanted? Etc. But QA does not get involved in developing code to telling the client how they would draft requirements. They most certainly don't review code before it hits the test environment or try to find bugs early. In fact, it's better if the QA person doesn't know how to code. Remember, a QA person is doing their testing from 2 perspectives: functional, and user acceptance. I.e., they want to make sure the system is working, and from a user's perspective. They don't need to know code for that. One of the fastest ways to get into trouble is when QA starts making assumptions about how something should work. Test to the requirement. The requirement is your bible.

That being said, a QA person will either find bugs, or they won't. It's entirely based on testing. No QA person goes in trying to intentionally find bugs or to not find bugs. They simply think of every possible workflow scenario, and test to make sure all of those work.

 

[Voadam]

Library of Congress

LC Catalog - No Connections Available

catalog.loc.gov

The 1 copy for the country.

I actually work there and thought of it specifically as probably the nearest library copy but even with my LOC card I cannot currently access it. LOC access closed for the pandemic.

I don't personally need to access that copy, I have my own hard copy on my shelf and the PDF I got (I think from Paizo, but maybe from WotC's old online store).