Cultural appropriation in gaming

[Flexor the Mighty!]

As 1/8th Cherokee I'm going to give everyone permission to appropriate native American culture as long as its done with style and is cool. Boom problem solved!

Oh crap, you are from Canada. I have no authority there so you are still screwed.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

I could always go the more silly route, like Larry Correira's take on fantasy races in his Monster Hunter books - the bling wearing, sideways hand crossbow shooting G-nome, hillbilly elves, etc!

 

[Derren]

Watching Longmire gave me an interesting idea for an NPC cleric / druid type who would be based on a First Nations type template.

I did a little digging, and made special mention of his spellcasting involving components like smoke, smudging the rest of the group for bless spell, etc. All in all I thought it was a cool idea to flesh out an NPC and make it more interesting than 'He casts Bless on you.'

A few sessions later one the party was recapping an adventure to a new player and mentioned my 'racist' NPC. I was really surprised at that and disappointed as well. I thought I had handled the idea with respect and was trying something different.

The PHB has a whole section on Human Names and Ethnicities, and you don't have to read that closely to see they are at least loosely based on the real world.

Looking at games like Deadlands, Call of Cthulhu, etc you can run the gamut. I don't think there is anything wrong with (in my case) a WASP GM running NPCs from other real world cultures? It would be pretty boring game! No adventures in Chult, that's for sure!

There's clearly a huge difference between mocking another culture and mining others for ideas, as long as they are presented respectfully.

It really doesn't matter how respectfully you represent them, people who use the term "cultural appropriation" are actively searching about things to be offended about and will find something no matter how insane it is.

 

[evileeyore]

I'd respectfully disagree that it's subjective, or at least perhaps less subjective than it used to be.

It's completely subjective. However the culture of taking offense now takes it's self so super seriously that they erroneously believe their subjective views are objective.

I could always go the more silly route, like Larry Correira's take on fantasy races in his Monster Hunter books - the bling wearing, sideways hand crossbow shooting G-nome, hillbilly elves, etc!

As an ex trailer park dweller I actually really hated his oppressive middle class view of trailer park royalty.

Super offensive.

 

[Dualazi]

It really doesn't matter how respectfully you represent them, people who use the term "cultural appropriation" are actively searching about things to be offended about and will find something no matter how insane it is.

This is the correct response, the complaints can and should be dismissed out of hand. It sounds like you did reasonable diligence in researching the culture in question and at least from your anecdote it doesn't seem like the NPC was played in a demeaning way. If these things are true, then what would satisfy the aggrieved player? a 1:1 conversion of existing first nation cultures? Not including anything that could be linked to them at all? It's ultimately a boring, creatively hedging mindset that doesn't make anything better, neither the feelings of those belonging to the culture in question or those trying to create interesting worlds or works.

D&D from its inception has a long history of 'cultural appropriation' anyway; most of the default settings strongly resemble major European civilizations of high-medieval/early renaissance eras, and yet I rarely see people cry about the wholesale ports of those people's cultures. Is the person who complained also going to raise a stink over the feywild/fey societies? Because most of those are taken almost verbatim from European cultural myths, most predominantly from Irish and Scottish sources. Point being is that it's silly to get offended about incredibly benign usage of existing cultures, societies, or legends, and expecting every single creative work or campaign world to have a plethora of civilizations with no real world analogues whatsoever is an unfair and unnecessary bar to hold people to.

 

[Celebrim]

As 1/8th Cherokee I'm going to give everyone permission to appropriate native American culture as long as its done with style and is cool. Boom problem solved!

As 1/256th Cree, I volunteer myself to be a spokesperson for all native peoples. Because, unlike white people (one drop, right?), non-white people have spokespersons that can speak for all members of their social, ethnic, or cultural group - because they are all exactly alike, all have common experiences, and all have the same opinions. Right? And all you have to do is find the authentic spokesperson for that group, right?

When you start looking critically at how the idea of 'cultural appropriation' actually works and what it is actually saying, you realize that it is seriously racist philosophy.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

As 1/256th Cree, I volunteer myself to be a spokesperson for all native peoples. Because, unlike white people (one drop, right?), non-white people have spokespersons that can speak for all members of their social, ethnic, or cultural group - because they are all exactly alike, all have common experiences, and all have the same opinions. Right? And all you have to do is find the authentic spokesperson for that group, right?

When you start looking critically at how the idea of 'cultural appropriation' actually works and what it is actually saying, you realize that it is seriously racist philosophy.

It seems rather plain to me that Flexor was being facetious, but I guess that's subjective

 

[Celebrim]

It seems rather plain to me that Flexor was being facetious, but I guess that's subjective

I hope it was plain I was - in what I hoped was reinforcing his point - being caustically sarcastic, but I do know sarcasm often doesn't come off well in text.

 

[billd91]

The whole issue is a bit of a minefield depending on how much someone wants to take offense. There should be a big gulf between taking stuff in caricature (like the movie Peter Pan's depiction of the Native Americans, the "sexy Indian" Halloween costume, the Atlanta Braves with the tomahawk chop, or naming your football franchise with a racist slur) and portraying (or participating in) some aspect of the culture in good faith with some research, effort, and respect. Unfortunately, for some people, that gulf doesn't exist which tends to undermine the strength of efforts to stop the worst cases of cultural appropriation by diverting the signal with noise.

Like many political topics (though not all), there are extreme positions taken between there's no such thing as cultural appropriation and everything cross-cultural is appropriation. In this case, I'm pretty confident that both extremes are totally wrong. There is such a thing as cultural appropriation but that doesn't describe people honestly putting an effort into understanding and participating in the cultural practice.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

As 1/256th Cree, I volunteer myself to be a spokesperson for all native peoples. Because, unlike white people (one drop, right?), non-white people have spokespersons that can speak for all members of their social, ethnic, or cultural group - because they are all exactly alike, all have common experiences, and all have the same opinions. Right? And all you have to do is find the authentic spokesperson for that group, right?

When you start looking critically at how the idea of 'cultural appropriation' actually works and what it is actually saying, you realize that it is seriously racist philosophy.

Well said.