Cultural appropriation in gaming

[pemerton]

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?

Well, here's one way of looking at it: who gets to judge what's demeaning?

 

[ccs]

The worst one that I remember was when they cast Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham in Enders Game. Nothing like an English actor using a South African accent to portray a Maori. You could tell he was a Maori because of the tattoos, right?

Never having read the book(s), I just thought he was a tattood English guy.

 

[Eltab]

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.

HE owes YOU an apology, not the other way around. Throwing around the most demeaning and inflammatory insult available, is not what friends (or "friends"?) do to each other.

 

[Eltab]

So if I start an E sports team, you all would be fine with me calling it the Neckbeards?

Sure - where else is a beard to be found, but in front of your neck?

 

[billd91]

Well, here's one way of looking at it: who gets to judge what's demeaning?

Well, there's the rub. Is it a player at the table sitting in judgment on behalf of someone else (or some other group) or for himself? Are his judgments well- or ill-informed, based on good information or bad information? Are the judgments generally in line with a broader community or are they outliers?

 

[Gradine]

I mean... if it made the player uncomfortable then... maybe respect that it made them uncomfortable? Is the social contract really that controversial? Or is it really okay to throw that basic tenant out the window when personal politics get involved?

I'm going to probably shock a few and agree with Celebrim... at least partially. I've got a broader definition of cultural appropriation than he does, but I can also agree that broader questions of what it means doesn't really factor into the OP's situation at all. Again, I think this would be a different conversation if the OP were selling an adventure or something on DMs Guild that features smudging and smoke rituals and obvious First Nations parallel NPCs. But that isn't the actual situation here.

The only thing that matters here is the social contract. Without players you don't have a game. So it's important to make sure that your players are comfortable with what's happening at your table. Whether that means making changes to your game to help your players feel more comfortable, or your player finding a new table (and you finding a new player); we can't really make those determinations for either of you. But having a conversation with your player should be your first step.

With regards to your actual dilemma, everything else that's been happening in this thread, on both sides, is just noise.

 

[MoonSong]

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.

Sadly this stuff is fraught with peril. This is a heated issue were you can't just win. As much as I love to preach that it doesn't matter, that if you do it out of admiration and respectful love it is always fine. Then I happen upon something that just makes me want to scream. I can be quite hypocritical at times and such is human nature. We are quite irrational. -And yes, by we I mean me- I would only advice be careful about who do you play with and don't even think of it if you live in America. That's a Deathwish. People will eat you alive and ruin your life.

 

[billd91]

I mean... if it made the player uncomfortable then... maybe respect that it made them uncomfortable? Is the social contract really that controversial? Or is it really okay to throw that basic tenant out the window when personal politics get involved?

It may be an open question, from our understanding, who actually broke the social contract. Was it HawaiiSteveO with his PC? Or was the (apparently?) offended other player who maybe said nothing at the time only to blindside the OP in a comment that implied he was racist to a new player? Because if the latter is the case, then that's some supremely passive-aggressive BS.

Ultimately, we weren't there and can only go by HawaiiSteveO's recounting of the situation, but having a functional social contract requires communication in both directions. If a PC comes off as a racist portrayal, it's incumbent on the other players who believe that's the case to speak up rather than sit there stewing in their own juices or taking an unexpected potshot later.

 

[Gradine]

It may be an open question, from our understanding, who actually broke the social contract. Was it HawaiiSteveO with his PC? Or was the (apparently?) offended other player who maybe said nothing at the time only to blindside the OP in a comment that implied he was racist to a new player? Because if the latter is the case, then that's some supremely passive-aggressive BS.

Ultimately, we weren't there and can only go by HawaiiSteveO's recounting of the situation, but having a functional social contract requires communication in both directions. If a PC comes off as a racist portrayal, it's incumbent on the other players who believe that's the case to speak up rather than sit there stewing in their own juices or taking an unexpected potshot later.

That's a fair point; communication is a two-way street and, from what we're being told, this was very much not the best way for the player to indicate their discomfort. That said... let they who have never wrongly acted in a passive-aggressive manner with their friends at one point in their lives or another throw the first stones.

Unfortunately we're not in a position to give said player advice on how to better communicate their discomfort with their DM. The best advice we can give to the OP is to talk with their player one-on-one, figure out what the issues are, and work towards finding the best possible solution for those issues. Everything else is a conversation with far more relevance to our hobby as a whole than to the OP's dilemma in specific.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

I know it's the internet (insert your favorite joke here) but when did people get so sensitive (in general, not on these boards)?

I totally agree with much that's been said about how boring the game would be if all the NPC's were like me! Sadly, more often than not they are, but I'm tryin..!

The player reaction has been overblown, it's not like we were rolling around on the floor, hitting each other with folding chairs and so on. I was merely surprised at the remark after I presented what I thought was a careful (albeit loosely inspired) interpretation of a generic 'native' type druid NPC.

Our group is generally really fun, and I'm certain no one thought much of it afterwards, excluding me. I thought it was a cool idea to base races in game on real life folks who don't usually show up much in my normally very WASPY games

As long as I'm not intentionally rude or insulting people should just have fun and roll with it. If I do something on purpose that I know is going to irritate another person I'm just being a jerk!

Taking all that into consideration, when / where / how did dwarves become Scots? Gahhhh!!