How faithful should a culture be adapted in an RPG?

[Umbran]

How can you be respectful to a culture when you divide it into good and bad parts based on your personal and own cultural preferences and then hide the things you do not agree with?

Well, given that I didn't say one should call things "good" and "bad" or "hide the bad parts", this seems like a question based in misunderstanding or presumption.

How can we be respectful to a culture? We start with some questions we can ask ourselves:

1) Why am I using a real world culture at all?

2) Why am I using someone else's real-world culture, rather than my own?

3) Do I actually have sufficient expertise in this culture to do it justice?

 

[mythago]

In recent times there has been a increase (as far as I can tell) of having or at least demanding faithful adaptations of cultures into RPGs.
But most of the time those adaptations leave out parts of the culture people find distasteful or evil (and are thus only used for dedicated BBEG cultures). Things like slavery, human sacrifices, ect.

But I wonder how faithful a adaptation of a culture is in the end when you leave out, sometimes quite significant, parts of it. You can't simply remove slavery from ancient Rome and still have a faithful representation of it. Slavery was a central part of how their society worked. Same for human sacrifices and the Aztecs.

What is your stance on this? Do you think a adaptations which leaves out all of the bad aspects are still faithful? Or would you prefer to have both the good and the bad paths when content is supposed to adapt and represent a real world culture?

This sounds like a backhanded dig at people upset that their own history and culture are being used in an embarrassing and stereotypical way?

I'm curious about the assertion that "most of the time", depictions of "cultures" are sanitized of unpleasantness. TBH, that kind of handwaving is fairly normal in traditional FRPGs that leave out uncomfortable facts about 'real' medieval culture, like, how exactly the iron in that +1 chainmail got out of the ground.

 

[Ixal]

This sounds like a backhanded dig at people upset that their own history and culture are being used in an embarrassing and stereotypical way?

I'm curious about the assertion that "most of the time", depictions of "cultures" are sanitized of unpleasantness. TBH, that kind of handwaving is fairly normal in traditional FRPGs that leave out uncomfortable facts about 'real' medieval culture, like, how exactly the iron in that +1 chainmail got out of the ground.

You can for example listen to the interview with Felice Kuan here on Enworld where she talks about the pressure of only showing nice things and that she only dared to include negative things about "her" culture because several writers backed her.

D&D 5E - Adventure Designer Felice Kuan Talks Radiant Citadel!

Todd Kenreck interviewed Felice Kuan, the creator of the Buried Dynasty adventure from the Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel adventure compilation book due in July. It looks like the three main East Asian-inspired settings all have a link connecting them, 3 dragon siblings that founded...

www.enworld.org

Then there is the discussion about Al-Quadim going on, which I admit I am part off, about things that need to be removed from it if there were an update of it.
And in recent times several RPGs came out which marketed themselves as being about specific, noneuropean cultures and yet most of them only used positive parts of their cultures and not the negatives. And I do not see how that would be different than for example the Deadlands Confederation.

Thats where I am coming from. Personally I heavily dislike historic revisionism and whitewashing. What happened, happened. And yet personally I have the impression that this is common practice with a lot of support.
And I see it more of an insult if my culture would would be cut apart and only the nice parts would be used, especially if the product claims to be faithful or respectful, then when all parts, good and bad were used.

 

[Umbran]

Personally I heavily dislike historic revisionism and whitewashing.

I don't think our games are history classes. They are not places to learn what really happened in history, and should make no bones about that.

 

[Voadam]

I don't think our games are history classes. They are not places to learn what really happened in history, and should make no bones about that.

You can acknowledge that RPGs are not history lessons and still heavily dislike the historic revisionism and whitewashing of say the Confederacy in Deadlands.

 

[Ixal]

I don't think our games are history classes. They are not places to learn what really happened in history, and should make no bones about that.

And yet people demand that real world cultures get adopted into D&D, be it a culture from Africa or a not Chinese or Japanese culture when the discussion is about old source material and so on.
And when you specifically add real world cultures to a game, even with the names filed off, then you should add all aspects of said culture and not cherry pick the ones you like.

 

[Greg K]

Thats where I am coming from. Personally I heavily dislike historic revisionism and whitewashing. What happened, happened. And yet personally I have the impression that this is common practice with a lot of support.
And I see it more of an insult if my culture would would be cut apart and only the nice parts would be used, especially if the product claims to be faithful or respectful, then when all parts, good and bad were used.

At the same time, rmore recent examinations of historical "evidence" regarding certain cultures do sometimes raise legitmate questions regarding long held beliefs about certain practices- either with respect to the motivations of original chroniclers, extent that certain practices were common, whether they happened at all, or whether the context of the activity was correctly interpreted.

 

[Umbran]

And yet people demand that real world cultures get adopted into D&D, be it a culture from Africa or a not Chinese or Japanese culture when the discussion is about old source material and so on.

Not quite. People do not demand that the actual real-world cultures are adopted. They want representation, which isn't at all the same thing.

The big D&D settings have used a very European style - mounted knights in armor, European names for nobility, and so on. It is European themed, but not detailed European history. You say, "Well, actual Rome had slaves..." but actual Rome is not presented in the Forgotten Realms. No actual European country or culture is presented with any fidelity at all.

So, the other cultures don't need to be presented as they really were, any more than European ones are. They ought to be presented with similar level of theme and style, not detail of history.

 

[Guest 7034872]

I don't think our games are history classes. They are not places to learn what really happened in history, and should make no bones about that.

It's funny--I agree with both Umbran and Ixal in this: I am not wildly concerned with historical accuracy when borrowing from real cultures and epochs to design a campaign, but I also balk at the notion of lionizing the cultures and epochs from which I borrow when making my efforts to maintain cultural sensitivity and avoid stereotyping. The way I figure this, lionizing is a species of stereotyping, just a congratulatory one instead of a demeaning one.

I'm pretty sure one of my two next campaigns will be in Al-Qadim because I've so fallen in love with that material (the other will be a riff on Brân the Blessed). So on one hand, in the interest of cultural sensitivity and and avoiding stereotyping, I've decided to eliminate all references to honor killings. Not because they don't or didn't happen (that's daft--in some places they did and do), but because as best I can see it, there just is no way of including this in my fictional setting without it being completely incendiary and insensitive in the real world. I don't think my players would appreciate having to deal with it and neither would I. I'm here to give my players an adventure they'll relish and remember, not to throw any cultural hand grenades into the room just for the malicious fun of "being controversial." So I'll happily give up something on accuracy here.

On the other hand, I've also decided to remove all references to Islam because (1) the world of Forgotten Realms is explicitly and robustly polytheistic, which entails that Islamic references simply don't fit here, (2) many of the myths and legends I'm borrowing pre-date Islam and therefore are quite independent of it (like honor killings), so there isn't even any potential justification for it in terms of historical accuracy, and (3) as Faolyn pointed out in the Al-Qadim thread, why do that??? I'm building an adventure, not making any back-handed digs at existing or past cultures. So that part's out, too, but this time because including it would be inaccurate and it serves no valuable story purpose that would trump accuracy concerns. Had it sufficiently served such concerns, I might well have kept it, but it just doesn't.

But now on a third hand (imaginary non-human super-brained insectoid PC at the moment, so I can do that), I'm also keeping the phenomena of jingoistic tribalism and slavery because both of those make for some really good tension between competing nations, between players and whatever NPC villains I create, and even within players' own consciences. In some chapter, suppose, they readily can achieve their ultimate goals, but doing so would require them to cut a deal with some very morally unsavory non-villain NPCs. Achieving those goals without those NPCs would be be a much harder task and hold much lower odds of eventual success. So now they have to choose and thereby decide what they really believe in more: their current mission or the moral scruples of which they had been so certain? I like giving my players moral dilemmas that don't have any easy, obvious, "correct" answers (and my group likes them, too). Will my use of these two elements be historically accurate? Almost certainly not, and I'm fine with that. So long as it (1) makes for a better, more exciting, engaging, and challenging adventure, and (2) doesn't completely take a literary dump on someone's real-world culture, that's all I need. Also, I figure because this imagined society into which I'll throw my players is a highly tribal one, it would be narratively inconsistent for me to remove unpleasant consequences of that tribalism. These warts I will include, but not from any "warts and all" philosophy; it's because they fit. They fit the setting and my narrative goals, so they're in.

In the end, I will cherry-pick the cultural elements I like, but "liking" here ≠ • ⊅ "approving of." It only means "using those elements that'll fit the larger setting and make for some really cool adventures." Campaign-writing is an art and I have chosen to uphold the maxim, "art for art's sake." Within some basic limits regarding moral decency of the DM towards the players (foremost) and the larger gaming community (secondary), my rule will be that if something improves the adventure for my players, I'll do it and if it doesn't, I won't.

 

[MGibster]

About as real as AC and armor being historically accurate, HP depicting how much damage you can take and refresh by taking a nap, and how 6 attributes go to define who you are fully. Throw in magic that can do anything and you are now drifting far away from historical.

I remember reading about good King Harold being reduced to zero hitpoints being dismebered by the Duke of Wellington and a few other knights. Poor guy rolled a 1 on one of his death saves.