How faithful should a culture be adapted in an RPG?

[Ixal]

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?

 

[Professor Murder]

So the first question is, are you creating a game that is a historical or semi-historical recreation or are you engaged in pastiche?
Example: A game inspired by the Vikings is likely to include the act that they are named for, namely raiding other communities, which would historically involve theft, murder and rape, often of unarmed enemies. But if the game is a pastiche, you are instead playing a made up culture that just takes cultural cues from the Vikings, but can pick and choose what elements to emphasize or even include.

 

[billd91]

Pretty much any adaptation of a real culture into RPG-landia is going to be "appropriatey" to some degree, even if you have the best of intentions of being respectful and trying to avoid stereotypes. The question is - how appropriatey do you want to be? And to what end are you putting that appropriateyness? What are you including, why are you including it, what are you deliberately omitting, why are you omitting it? And does it make sense to think it's more faithful or objectively better to include a culture's particular warts when you're almost certainly missing thousands of other details?

For me, if I was doing a Roman-based culture - yes, I would include some element of slavery. I'd be up front about it and if a player didn't want that, we'd probably play a different campaign entirely. These kinds of social structures are just too ubiquitous in certain kinds of historical settings for me to simple elide over them and feel like I'm doing a good job of leveraging the historical basis - which is part of the point of playing with them. I'd rather just punt to a different setting entirely.

 

[prabe]

I think the answer is somewhere between "ish" and "it depends."

 

[Yora]

If a setting is based on Earth with added magic, the depicted cultures should be attempted to be portrayed as accurate as can be managed.
If a setting isn't Earth, then I think Earth cultures shouldn't be used at all. Use clothing, architecture, design elements, weaponry, and ships that look similar to real historic styles to make the world seem believable, but don't copy cultures. I find the results always to be awkward.

 

[MGibster]

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.

I'm not sure I've seen demands that adaptations are more faithful, so much as I've seen demands that members of said culture are represented among the creators of the game. But I've got to ask, what exactly does it mean to be faithful to the culture that's influenced a game setting? Who's version should we be faithful to?

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.

This is true, because a lot of people don't want to deal with those issues while they're having fun. Especially for fantasy games, most players want to be the good guys.

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.

For me, the adaptation needs to be enough to where the players can buy into the setting and want to play. Could I play a character who owned slaves and didn't give much thought as to the morality of doing so? In the context of playing a Roman or a warlord in Hyperborea, sure. Could I play a slaveowner in a game set in the United States circa 1848? Oh, no, I'd be very uncomfortable with that. I could get invested in a Roman setting, but couldn't get invested in an Antebellum South where my character owned people. One hits closer to home.

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?

I don't think faithful adaptations are important for most games. For my all dwarf campaign, I borrowed a lot from Bavarians but was it a faith adaption? Well, no. I lived in Munich for many years and not a single one of them lived underground. In my Call of Cthlhu games set in the 1920s/30s here in the United States, I don't entirely ignore the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., etc., but I tone it down because who the hell is going to find a lot of that fun? I wouldn't call my games faithful to the era.

Ultiamtely, the answer is that it depends. For high adventure games, I typically leave out the most unpleasant aspects. For a more "realistic" game, I might include more unpleasantness with the caveat that I tone things down to ensure the game is playable.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well I did publish the Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG), with the goal of more authenticity than previously published Japan analogs. But my development of the setting focused on specific cultural aspects and taking a deep dive into each subject, shooting for verisimilitude. At the same time, I didn't shoot for every aspect of Japanese society. Completionist was not the goal, rather a focus on the aspects I've chosen and only those. So there were lots of aspects of Japan that aren't included, as I felt they were unnecessary, and if I were to be faithful to every aspect of Japan, done with the nuanced detail I achieved, instead of a 240 page Gamemaster's Guide, it would have been a 30 volume set. So you can be true to a given culture, and not require covering every possible thing - only the things that matter enough to convey the intended theme. I've been told that I did Kaidan well, by more than a few...

 

[Umbran]

Our RPGs are not history courses. We are not bound to be "faithful" in the sense of matching every cultural detail. The overwhelming majority of the folks at home don't have the educational background to be completely faithful. Faithfulness is not a goal we can generally meet in practice.

We are, I think, more bound to being respectful in our depictions, which is not the same as faithful.

 

[delericho]

If your setting is the real world, or a fantasy version thereof, you should be as faithful as you can be - and you probably shouldn't attempt to depict a culture with which you're not intimately familiar.

If your setting is a fantasy world, you don't need to worry as much, but you're probably better off not doing an analogue with any real world culture anyway.

 

[Tonguez]

The important thing about real world cultures isnt being Accurate in detailing everything, rather its about being authentic in the depictions of the things you do include and knowing why you’ve chosen to include them

authenticity and Knowing “Why?” Is the key to cultural appropriateness