Do We Still Need "Oriental Adventures"?

Orientalism -- a wide-ranging term originally used to encompass depictions of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian cultures -- has gradually come to represent a more negative term. Should Dungeons & Dragons, known for two well-received books titled "Oriental Adventures," have another edition dedicated to "Eastern" cultures?

View attachment 94898
​

[h=3]A Brief History of Orientalism[/h]For a time, orientalism was a term used by art historians and literary scholars to group "Eastern" cultures together. That changed in 1978 with Edward Said's Orientalism, which argued that treatment of these cultures conflated peoples, times, and places into a narrative of incident and adventure in an exotic land.

It's easy to see why this approach might appeal to role-playing games. Orientalism is one lens to view a non-European culture within the game's context. We previously discussed how "othering" can create a mishmash of cultures, and it can apply to orientalism as well. The challenge is in how to portray a culture with nuance, and often one large region isn't enough to do the topic justice. The concept even applies to the idea of the "East" and the "Orient," which turns all of the Asian regions into one mono-culture. Wikipedia explains the term in that context:

The imperial conquest of "non–white" countries was intellectually justified with the fetishization of the Eastern world, which was effected with cultural generalizations that divided the peoples of the world into the artificial, binary-relationship of "The Eastern World and The Western World", the dichotomy which identified, designated, and subordinated the peoples of the Orient as the Other—as the non–European Self.

​

Game designers -- who were often admitted fans of Asian cultures -- sought to introduce a new kind of fantasy into traditional Western tropes. Viewed through a modern lens, their approach would likely be different today.
[h=3]The "Oriental" Books in D&D[/h]The original Oriental Adventures was published in 1985 by co-creator of D&D Gary Gygax, David "Zeb" Cook and François Marcela-Froideval. It introduced the ninja, kensai, wu-jen, and shukenja as well as new takes on the barbarian and monk. It was also the first supplement to introduce non-weapn proficiencies, the precursor to D&D's skill system. The book was well-received, and was envisioned by Gygax as an opportunity to reinvigorate the line -- ambitions which collapsed when he left the company. The book's hardcover had the following text printed on the back:

…The mysterious and exotic Orient, land of spices and warlords, has at last opened her gates to the West.

​

Aaron Trammell provides a detailed analysis of how problematic this one line of text is. The sum of his argument:

Although Gary Gygax envisioned a campaign setting that brought a multicultural dimension to Dungeons & Dragons, the reality is that by lumping together Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Philippine, and “Southeast Asian” lore he and co-authors David “Zeb” Cook and Francois Marcela-Froideval actually developed a campaign setting that reinforced western culture’s already racist understanding of the “Orient.”

​

The next edition would shift the setting from Kara-Tur (which was later sent in the Forgotten Realms) to Rokugan from the Legend of the Five Rings role-playing game.
[h=3]Controversy of the Five Rings[/h]James Wyatt wrote the revised Oriental Adventures for Third Edition D&D, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2001. It was updated to 3.5 in Dragon Magazine #318.

Legend of the Five Rings, a franchise that extends to card games, is itself not immune to controversy. Quintin Smith got enough comments on his review of the Legend of the Five Rings card game that he included an appendix that looked critically at chanting phrases "banzai!" at conventions and some of the game's art:

Now, I have no idea if this is right or wrong, but I do know that chanting in Japanese at an event exclusively attended by white men and women made me feel a tiny bit weird. My usual headcheck for this is “How would I feel if I brought a Japanese-English friend to the event?” and my answer is “Even more weird.” Personally, I found the game’s cover art to be a little more questionable. I think it’s fantastic to have a fantasy world that draws on Asian conventions instead of Western ones. But in a game that almost exclusively depicts Asian men and women, don’t then put white people on the cover! It’s such a lovely piece of art. I just wish she looked a little bit less like a cosplayer.

​

Perhaps in response to this criticism, Fantasy Flight Games removed the "banzai" chant as a bullet point from its web site. The page also features several pictures of past tournament winners, which provides some context as to who was shouting the chant.
[h=3]Fifth Edition and Diversity[/h]By the time the Fifth Edition of D&D was published, the game's approach to diverse peoples had changed. Indigo Boock on GeekGirlCon explains how:

Diversity is strength. The strongest adventuring party is the most diverse adventuring party. Try thinking about it in terms of classes—you have your healers, fighters, and magic users. Same goes for diversity. Different outlooks on life create more mobility and openness for different situations. Jeremy also explained that it was crucial that the art also reflected diversity, as did Art Director Kate Erwin. With this, they tried to make sure that there was a 50/50 split of people who identify as male and people who identify as female in the illustrations.

​

Trammell points out how these changes are reflected in the art of the core rule books:

First, there are illustrations: an East Asian warlock, a female samurai, an Arabian princess, an Arab warrior, and a Moor in battle, to name a few. Then, there are mechanics: the Monk persists as a class replete with a spiritual connection to another world via the “ki” mechanic. Scimitars and blowguns are commonly available as weapons, and elephants are available for purchase as mounts for only 200 gold. Although all of these mechanics are presented with an earnest multiculturalist ethic of appreciation, this ethic often surreptitiously produces a problematic and fictitious exotic, Oriental figure. At this point, given the embrace of multiculturalism by the franchise, it seems that the system is designed to embrace the construction of Orientalist fictional worlds where the Orient and Occident mix, mingle, and wage war.

​

A good first step is to understand the nuances of a region by exploring more than one culture there. Sean "S.M." Hill's "The Journey to..." series is a great place to start, particularly "Romance of the Three Kingdoms."

D&D has come a long way, but it still has some work to do if it plans to reflect the diversity of its modern player base and their cultures...which is why it seems unlikely we'll get another Oriental Adventures title.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[jbear]

It’s easy. In my house I can put my feet on the furniture, and you can’t. Like in your house, no doubt. This is an article paid for by me, and I decided to relax the rules for it.

Probably unwise, but as you say - you can do what you like.

I'll be checking out of this discussion now and get back to what I actually enjoy talking, reading and discussing on this RPG site.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Yeah, even the name ‘orient’, ‘east’, or ‘Asia’ is inappropriate. That is a reason why I like the approach of Avatar: the Last Air Bender. It is just a cool setting. A regional setting that like looked something this can plug in anywhere in a world.

Who gets to say that the word "orient" is inappropriate, why do they have a right to edit our dictionary and tell us what words are appropriate and what words are not? I grew up when that word was in common use, people who used that word did not hate Asians! What right to people now say its a bad word and we can't use it! What do these young twenty-somethings really know when they tell us older folk what words we can use in our sentences? Are they wiser than us? Just asking.

It has not been explained to me, why the word "Oriental" is negative? People used that word all the time in the 1980s and they didn't hate Asians! I think that word was chosen back then because it didn't make assumptions about where the equivalent of Asians lived in any given campaign world, including home brew ones that players might devise, they might want to use stuff in the book Oriental Adventures. And now the politically correct people want to rob us of this useful word by saying its bad or its racist, they are trying t "Newspeak" the language and rob us of words we can use and force us to make long awkward sentences so we can talk around the words they banned, thus limiting our ability to communicate! There is nothing bad about the word Oriental, it is the counterpart to Occidental which describes European cultures. There are cultural differences between the people of Asia and the people of Europe, it is not racist to admit that. Asia has made great strides in the past two centuries, they are the fastest growing region in the world economically, why would they want to run away from themselves? I am particularly impressed with Japan and how far it has come, it did some terrible things during World War II, but look at the place now! Japan is the bulwark of democracy in the far east, Australia is going to depend in large part on the Japanese Navy to defend against encroaching China's territorial ambitions, these are not small unimportant countries!

 

[pemerton]

Really?? Fantasy fiction is being debated for it's cultural value? Are you kidding?

Because no one ever wrote essays about Wagner, or JRRT, or REH, or Sax Rohmer?

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Add to list of insulting terms, ‘colonialism’ and ‘exploitation’.

If the terms are being weaponized to paint every white person as guilty, for no other reason than their ‘race’ is white, then these terms are racist, by definition, and offensive.



When used honestly, every empire ‘colonized’ and ‘exploited’, including the emperor of China or the kalif of Arabia or Turkey. Today, Turkey oppresses the Kurds, China oppresses the Tibetans, and so on.

It is unacceptable, when persons dishonestly imply that only Europeans can be guilty of colonialism or exploitation.

As a kid, when I thought of Colonialism I thought of this:

So when I heard people describe "American Colonialism" I assumed that Americans were going to foreign countries, dressing up like these folk and playing the fife and drum. Oh what a terrible thing to be doing that! But I guess those people had a different definition of colonialism than what I was thinking. The kind of colonialism that happened in the 13 original American colonies where British subjects settled on America's east coast and became Americans, is not the sort of colonialism they were talking about, but it is the history I grew up with, I only learned about the other sort of colonialism later.

 

[pemerton]

it was clear from your comment that you are ignorant of Australian history.

<snip>

The aboriginal people who lived there before it was used as 'Britain's dumping ground', as you say, were obviously far from being a 'western culture'. They were brutally massacred and mistreated almost to the point of complete genocide. Their lands were appropriated and their culture was for many years surpressed. The mistreatment of aborigines actually continued until fairly recently in historic terms (1960's). Australia really only seems to be coming to terms with its brutal past very recently.

Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).

But if we reverse the idea of "villains on both sides" to "well-intentioned people on both side", Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing With Strangers could be a starting point. It also shows that you don't have to be aiming to commit massacres to contribute to the deaths of many thousands of people, and cultural devastation.

The personal moral character of Arthur Phillip is of only modest relevance in assessing the significance and moral standing of the colonisation process.

What needs to not happen is a book full of harmful stereotypes.

A medieval Asian or Middle-eastern themed adventure certainly could be done, but only with much care.

What would be a more interesting book to me would be an Australia themed adventure. Put it on a large continent already inhabited but being flooded with prisoners from a far land - most of whom are just trying to get along. Put villains on both side of the story.

Frankly I know jack about Australian history. I know that Britain(?) used it as a dumping ground for people. I know that their descendants make up the majority in Australia. I know that there are Aborigines.

I had thought I was just coming up with an example of something that would be familiar, but not Asian or Middle-Eastern in stereotype.

I'm an Australian and I teach some aspects of the colonisation of Australia at a university level. I think any adventure that deals with colonisation (whether along British Australian or some other lines) has the potential to be tricky, just as would - say - an adventure that tried to deal with other sorts of wrongdoing whose meaning and consequences still resonate in contemporary life. (I'm hesitant to give examples, but I'm sure you can think of some.)

That's not a reason not to do it. It just means you have to recognise that what you do might be controversial.

There is a reason to try and avoid casual racism, and to avoid treating events that are of great significance to some people in a trivial or frivolous fashion. But while sincerity helps here, it's not self-validating. I know some people who are participants in various social liberation movements who love the X-Men. But I'm sure there are others out there who think the X-Men comics and movies trivialise their struggles.

One way to go wrong is to project yourself in some fashion onto the other person/culture/history/experience you're trying to describe and engage with. "Orientalism" is a type of projection. Framing "the Orient" as "exotic" is one manifstation of the projection.

There would be similar sorts of things to be avoided in your hypothetical Australia adventure. (Unfortunately the standard D&D mechanics may not make it easy to avoid them, because they are designed around certain technologies - eg the use of steel weapons and armour - as the norm. That's not an issue in itself, but it can make it hard to smoothly integrate alternative technologies into the gameworld. The monk's wisdom bonus to AC lives in the margins of this issue.)

"Oriental," while not politically correct in some circles, at least clearly indicates that it is a Western/Occidental view on Asia.

Furthermore, the reason the Orient is still the "exotic Other" is that the vast majority of game designers are Westerners. Again, not inherently a bad or racist thing.

This is part of the problem.

There is a difference between something being foreign and something being "exoticised" in the fashion discussed in the OP. Exoticisation, in this context, is a type of projection. If it wasn't, then it wouldn't be a "Western/Occidental view" of anything - it would just be an account of that thing.

It's the projection that makes it racist.

 

[Celebrim]

I wonder if we will also see an lenghty article about how D&D is disrespecting European culture.
Or is that considered to be ok?

On the contrary, as the controversy around Kingdom Come: Deliverance shows, it's actually considered not ok to respect European culture. Even though the developers were Czechs in Prague, and making a story set in medieval Bohemia, which so far as I know is a culture that has never really had any or any significant representation in games before, they were still lambasted for refusing to represent their characters as "racially diverse". Presumably they didn't mean Huns and Moravians.

So far as I know, the Czechs aren't exactly global colonizers or the great political movers and players in Europe. They spent most of their history getting conquered and vassalized by some larger neighbor or the other. They weren't exactly involved in a big way in the African slave trade, certainly far less than say Arabs or other Africans. The usual vague idea that somehow a guy in the Czech Republic owes something to say some Indian IT developer because his ancestors may have done something to someone that might have been the Indian IT developers ancestors and so he has unearned economic advantages over "colonized peoples", which is dumb in general, is even dumber when implied here. Instead, what you are seeing is big useless generalizations like "white people" justifying the usual double standards, and this idea that "diversity" is some sort of moral touchstone in and of itself regardless of context.

It's those sorts of double standards, and defending those sorts of double standards as reasonable, that only results in multiplying hate, justifying hatred, and making it impossible to actually redress any real injustices. You cannot drive out racism with racism. No matter how many times you turn the argument inside out and no matter how much Newspeak you create to disguise it, you can't make judging people by the color of their skin or their ethnic background moral. It's still racism. It's still racism. It's still racism.

 

[Warpiglet]

But, that's the point. The classes in the base game are used to represent a broad swath of different cultural inspirations. Even the barbarian has left behind it's 3e trappings to a large degree. I mean, sure, you have Frenzy barbarians, true, but, the Totem barbarians are quite different. Should all barbarians have rage? Eh, maybe not.

Maybe we should rename Fighters in 5e to janissaries. After all, we only need to represent one single culture in order to have the game right? We can completely exclude all other cultures and make sure that all fighters in D&D are represented by one single concept.

That's fine right? Oh, wait... we don't do that. We have classes that are broad archetypes (with varying degrees of broadness) drawing inspiration from European (largely) myth and history that can be used to represent a thousand different concepts. But, as soon as we have "Oriental Adventures", then we get Samurai and Ninja's.



Totally, totally agree with this. There is more to East Asia than Japan. Good grief, I've been to Angkor Wat. That was a city of over a million people when Edo was little more than a hilltop village.

I like the fact you can map what you want onto most classes if you try a little.

However, I cannot get too upset that a product of a particular culture reflects its culture.

How much rage would there be if a game product from an Asian country skewed toward references it is more familiar with and later added a book which included more traditionally western archetypes?

That is so beyond silly! I could care less and cannot fathom why anyone else would care either. The game has become broader in its influences but look over the inspirational reading from Gygax in the 1st DMG. Look at his medieval miniatures rules. Look at the movies that have basis in these fantasy tropes.

The world has gone mad when it is a sin to be influenced by things more prominent in your own home culture as if it is taboo.

For various marketing reasons Kentucky Fried Chicken has embraced 'KFC.' But I suppose it is a moral imperative that they drop 'Kentucky' from the name lest someone from another place feel 'othered.'

The noble motivation of including and valuing others has "jumped the shark" when it means a particular cultural origin is taboo when it produces art, food or entertainment.

Its almost as if people are wanting to erase the fact that the game is based on what it is in fact based on. I find it particularly amusing to consider that a game created in another place which features its home culture's myths/archetypes more prominently would never prompt these sorts of concerns.

A game produced in Asia with more Asian myth/archetype would never prompt worry that European culture had been overlooked or misrepresented. On some level I am starting to think the very fact we are discussing this suggests a bias against 'Western' culture and history.

 

[Mercule]

My only suggestion is that if and when D&D comes up with an Asian-themed supplement, maybe it would be best to remove the cliche of the land located in "the East." How about the land being situated in another compass point instead?

As someone who has created several worlds from scratch -- with an attempt at following at least some natural laws -- there's a reason the East is generally in the east. Culture is shaped by climate and geography, and the Himalayas that help to isolate the East, as do the northern steppes, which are made possible, in part, by the broad continent and the way the rains fall. Not saying you couldn't put the East in the west, but it almost requires flipping the weather patterns. You could put the East in the south (or north), but agriculture tends to spread along even latitudes, which would also change the nature of the culture. This is one of the factors in the way the New World cultures evolved, especially in the south (i.e. technologically lagging).

At a certain point, though, putting the East in the west (or wherever) can appear as a "just because" move -- you do it only because you don't want it to be like the real world and it doesn't actually do anything. Having the larger continent in the southern hemisphere could do this, though.

Really, though, the best reason not to bother with moving the East out of the east is because of symbolism. Japan makes a pretty cool "land of the rising sun" whereas England, not so much. YMMV.

 

[Warpiglet]

On the contrary, as the controversy around Kingdom Come: Deliverance shows, it's actually considered not ok to respect European culture. Even though the developers were Czechs in Prague, and making a story set in medieval Bohemia, which so far as I know is a culture that has never really had any or any significant representation in games before, they were still lambasted for refusing to represent their characters as "racially diverse". Presumably they didn't mean Huns and Moravians.

So far as I know, the Czechs aren't exactly global colonizers or the great political movers and players in Europe. They spent most of their history getting conquered and vassalized by some larger neighbor or the other. They weren't exactly involved in a big way in the African slave trade, certainly far less than say Arabs or other Africans. The usual vague idea that somehow a guy in the Czech Republic owes something to say some Indian IT developer because his ancestors may have done something to someone that might have been the Indian IT developers ancestors and so he has unearned economic advantages over "colonized peoples", which is dumb in general, is even dumber when implied here. Instead, what you are seeing is big useless generalizations like "white people" justifying the usual double standards, and this idea that "diversity" is some sort of moral touchstone in and of itself regardless of context.

It's those sorts of double standards, and defending those sorts of double standards as reasonable, that only results in multiplying hate, justifying hatred, and making it impossible to actually redress any real injustices. You cannot drive out racism with racism. No matter how many times you turn the argument inside out and no matter how much Newspeak you create to disguise it, you can't make judging people by the color of their skin or their ethnic background moral. It's still racism. It's still racism. It's still racism.

Unfortunately, it is starting to get clearer that this whole thing is permeated with some sort of guilt from something in the real world, applied haphazardly. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or participate in some sort of angst ridden soul searching about games I play. I will leave both of these tasks to others.

 

[Warpiglet]

Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).

But if we reverse the idea of "villains on both sides" to "well-intentioned people on both side", Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing With Strangers could be a starting point. It also shows that you don't have to be aiming to commit massacres to contribute to the deaths of many thousands of people, and cultural devastation.

The personal moral character of Arthur Phillip is of only modest relevance in assessing the significance and moral standing of the colonisation process.


I'm an Australian and I teach some aspects of the colonisation of Australia at a university level. I think any adventure that deals with colonisation (whether along British Australian or some other lines) has the potential to be tricky, just as would - say - an adventure that tried to deal with other sorts of wrongdoing whose meaning and consequences still resonate in contemporary life. (I'm hesitant to give examples, but I'm sure you can think of some.)

That's not a reason not to do it. It just means you have to recognise that what you do might be controversial.

There is a reason to try and avoid casual racism, and to avoid treating events that are of great significance to some people in a trivial or frivolous fashion. But while sincerity helps here, it's not self-validating. I know some people who are participants in various social liberation movements who love the X-Men. But I'm sure there are others out there who think the X-Men comics and movies trivialise their struggles.

One way to go wrong is to project yourself in some fashion onto the other person/culture/history/experience you're trying to describe and engage with. "Orientalism" is a type of projection. Framing "the Orient" as "exotic" is one manifstation of the projection.

There would be similar sorts of things to be avoided in your hypothetical Australia adventure. (Unfortunately the standard D&D mechanics may not make it easy to avoid them, because they are designed around certain technologies - eg the use of steel weapons and armour - as the norm. That's not an issue in itself, but it can make it hard to smoothly integrate alternative technologies into the gameworld. The monk's wisdom bonus to AC lives in the margins of this issue.)


This is part of the problem.

There is a difference between something being foreign and something being "exoticised" in the fashion discussed in the OP. Exoticisation, in this context, is a type of projection. If it wasn't, then it wouldn't be a "Western/Occidental view" of anything - it would just be an account of that thing.

It's the projection that makes it racist.

Frankly, that an entertainment product developed in the west by westerners would reflect a western perspective seems pretty natural to me. Having a voice and a perspective (even sitting in the west and looking to the east) is not inherently disparaging of another culture or people. In fact, there is nothing about this that inherently suggests the superiority of one culture over another.

Every culture has a right to be and see things through its own lens, whether western, eastern or whatever. To say otherwise makes no sense.

That someone in the east (culture A) would be offended by me having a western perspective (culture B) is as justified as me thinking someone with an eastern perspective is a bigot. And I say 'bigot' since you said 'racist.'

So while on the topic, I have to go do a spot check of some Anime from Asia. Some of it might not accurately depict western culture (while depicting western characters); such racism cannot be tolerated