Cultures in D&D/roleplaying: damned if you do, damned if you don't

Gradine said:

A lot of people have blood on their hands, which is rather their point. You've caught me in a bit of a hypocrisy, and one I'm not sure I can fully square. Partially because I'm human, and mostly because "Nazis". Does history have comparable or even worse villains? Maybe? And who knows, maybe in 800 years we'll be talking about the Nazis in the exact same breath as Pol Pot and Stalin and other horrific and targeted atrocities. That may just be a cultural norm, to equate "Nazi" as "Faceless Villain", that I need to break away from. I tell you though, the recent resurgence in Neo-Nazism sure isn't making that any easier.

So yeah, I can see how "It's okay to mow down Nazis with reckless abandon but not the Turks" can seem like a head-scratcher. What can I say? I'm a work in progress. We all have our biases, and maybe I'm not ready to shed that bias of "Nazis" yet. Maybe I need to be.

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I remember being on a panel, years (decades) ago now, where a majority were describing some particular neo-Nazi marchers as having been "oppressed" by the counter-marchers who shouted them down and disrupted their march. I and one other panel member were saying, "Hang on, they're Nazis."

I'm hesitant to talk about Turks as a type, given that that seems to be one way of doing what this thread is about avoiding - but carrying on in any event, I'll say this: there's no reason I know of to think that being a National Socialist is a genuinely viable form of human life; whereas being Turkish is. We might say that inhuman things are, in a sense, inherent to Nazism; whereas (to pick one example) the Armenian Genocide is not inherent to being Turkish - hence a Turkish patriot could, I think, affirm this patriotism while repudiating the genocide; whereas if you repudiate the hateful ideas and deeds of Nazism, what is there left to affirm (that is distinctively National Socialist)?

I think the bigger challenge in this neighbourhood is actually for member of "settler" colony states, and particularly those who identify (culturally, by history, etc) with the principal colonists - because it's a bit harder in this context to affirm one's national identify while repudiating the conquest/genocide on which it rests. (The Australian historian John Hirst - not a Nazi, but perhaps not particularly left wing either - wrote a provocative but I think important essay on this topic called "How Sorry Can We Be?" Another Australian historian, Inga Clendinnen, included an insightful response in her essay "The History Question".)

The RPG version of this might be a recurrent tendency to present non-European worldviews and cultural practices through the lens of European observers rather than on their own terms. I don't agree that this is "damned if you do/damned if you don't" - as the OP puts it - but I don't think it's simple, either. But there's no reason why it should be simple. Why would we expect RPG authorship to be any less fraught or challenging than other modes of cultural production?

Ancalagon said:

A potential cure to that is, well, effort. Do your research. If the Turks are an adversary in your game, have a nuanced depiction of them. But the problem is... how much effort is enough? It's very hard to depict a culture accurately, and in some cases information is scant - or wrong. WotC tried in Tomb of Annihilation and those efforts were not well received by some.

So then a solution might be to not do it. Just avoid the entire issue! Buuuut then that becomes an act of erasure! And that's not cool either

So what's the solution?

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In general, avoid shallow, monolithic depictions of in-game cultures. If you want to draw upon real world cultures, be reflective of why you are drawing on particular cultures and what in particular are you drawing from them. Be conscientious about what and how you are incorporating cultures, and how you are portraying those cultures in the wider context of the in-game world.

I am a fan of how Eberron built its cultures. Though there are some real world cultural parallels, many of the cultures on Khorvaire avoid obvious comparisons, as the cultures are built from in-world conceits. But one of the best and most basic things that it does is that it does not typically assign one culture per race/species/bioform. There are multiple cultures of orcs. The orcs of the Mror Holds are not the orcs of the Shadow Marches. Elves have multiple cultures that amount to more than simply wood elf, high elf, and drow. There are multiple cultures of drow on Xen'drik. The other elves have numerous cultures: Aerenal elves, Valaes Tairn elves, elves that have adopted the cultures of the Five Nations, the Dragonmarked elves, the Blood of Vol sect of elves, etc.

Another setting that does culture well - almost to a degree far more intimidating than Tolkien could conceive - is M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel / Empire of the Rose Throne. It unquestionably draws from a range of non-European cultures: Sino-Tibetan, Mesoamerican, South Asian, etc. But it does so in a manner that you get the source inspiration but it is blended so elegantly into its own unique thing. (And yes, just like with wine, there are good blends and there are bad blends.)

Let me try to do this again, because I clearly made a mistake here.

The answer to the question of how to adapt inspiration from real-life cultures into your home game is deceptively simple.
1) Do your homework
2) Portray the individuals of these cultures as fundamentally human

The work for doing that, however, is not so simple. It can be difficult and complex work. It's easy to limit your "research" to skimming a Wikipedia article and calling it a day. That's not doing your homework, however. It can also, depending on the culture you're looking at, be easy confine your research to outsider accounts, which will always introduce at least some bias (and often a lot of bias). It a lot of cases outsider accounts are all that really exist, in which case you have to actively find and account for that bias, which can be damn near impossible.

And the work, care, and sensitivity you'll have to put into increases exponentially the larger your prospective audience gets, to the point where, yeah, it's probably not worth it if it's something you're putting out for public consumption. At the very least, you'll want to look to the examples @Aldarc mentions on how not to fall into the traps of direct cultural emulation. And if you're worried about people drawing direct parallels... the very least you could is to workshop it with actual living members/ancestors of those cultures as sensitivity readers. That'd at least put you a leg up on Tomb of Annihilation.

But if it's just you and your group, and you happen to be all (or mostly) white dudes but also super interested in the history of Egypt or the Ottoman Empire or what have you, and you put together a really well-researched campaign that treats its subjects with humanity and respect... I mean, I can certainly think of a lot worse things to do with your time.

Not Ottoman, that came later. Instead, the Seljuk Empire (with a number of semi independent leaders). And Egypt, and the Byzantine Empire, the crusader states, the Ismali, the Yazidi, the Armenian of Cicilia....

Ancalagon said:

Not Ottoman, that came later. Instead, the Seljuk Empire (with a number of semi independent leaders). And Egypt, and the Byzantine Empire, the crusader states, the Ismali, the Yazidi, the Armenian of Cicilia....

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Not gonna lie, but if you do end up pulling this off well (and I have no reason to doubt that you will) I'm going to be super jealous of your players. That's an incredibly interesting and highly under-utilized period of history.

gamerprinter said:

Actually the founding of Kaidan was based on real world events - the Genpei War (1180 - 1185 AD) was a fight between two legitimate emperors to the throne - one the former emperor who was facing a possible coup de grace, was suggested by his father-in-law, Taira no Kiyomori (last name first) to abdicate the throne.

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Sounds great! I'll have to check it out. Amusingly enough, when I ran a GURPS Japan game years ago, I used the prelude to the Genpei War as my setting, with the players eventually getting drawn into the conflict. It was very much about a mythical version of Japan, of course, where the party had to do things like escort eccentric Tea Masters to perform for Oni, deal with kappa, stay at haunted inns and help the ghosts trapped there and so on. This sounds like a very creative take.

WizarDru said:

Sounds great! I'll have to check it out. Amusingly enough, when I ran a GURPS Japan game years ago, I used the prelude to the Genpei War as my setting, with the players eventually getting drawn into the conflict. It was very much about a mythical version of Japan, of course, where the party had to do things like escort eccentric Tea Masters to perform for Oni, deal with kappa, stay at haunted inns and help the ghosts trapped there and so on. This sounds like a very creative take.

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Thanks, I wrote a one-shot horror module for it, called Haiku of Horror: Autumn Moon Bath House, that was a haunted bath house/inn with a ghost and curse inspired by The Grudge. Also the first module of the Curse of the Golden Spear intro trilogy of modules for Kaidan featured a ryokan - or country inn (a converted farmhouse) into a very haunted and creepy location filled with haunts and a ghost.

Ancalagon said:

Yet it's become obvious to me that there are a lot of pitfalls associated with this. It's easy to have the culture depicted as a lazy caricature instead of a more faithful depiction. It's certainly not ok to make culture X as a one dimensional villain (there was a somewhat heated discussion about the Mongol replaced by Orcs a few weeks ago...), but even a positive depiction could be problematic - see the "Noble Savage" and all the baggage that has...

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Actually, yes. It is totally OK to do that.

Gradine said:

Not gonna lie, but if you do end up pulling this off well (and I have no reason to doubt that you will) I'm going to be super jealous of your players. That's an incredibly interesting and highly under-utilized period of history.

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This is a reference to a game I've already done - a two part campaign that lasted over 3 years. The above was the first part. The second the party traveled along the silk road on a long quest, ended up in western China then traveled north to Siberia, stopping at the Denisova caves along the way. Honestly I think that the second part was not as good because it was, alas, a bit railroadish.

Both the players and myself were very happy with the first one. One of the adventures in the campaign involved going to Aleppo to try to sneak in the Citadel under Nur ad-Din's nose to grab an artifact from a temple of Hadad (the ancient Storm God)buried beneath... I had obtained a comprehensive guide to the citadel that I used as a resource. This was before the Syrian civil war mind you. I had dreamed of seeing the Citadel in person, and now, well

I'm asking because I'm looking forward. I enjoy this type of historical gaming. The next one - and this may not be for a while, I'm running a 5e game right now in Yoon-Suin (highly recommended) - will probably be set in Dubrovnik, although now I'm a bit peeved/amused that Gavriel Kay beat me to the punch. I guess what's why he's a well known author and I'm a nerd on EN World...

pemerton said:

I'm hesitant to talk about Turks as a type, given that that seems to be one way of doing what this thread is about avoiding - but carrying on in any event, I'll say this: there's no reason I know of to think that being a National Socialist is a genuinely viable form of human life; whereas being Turkish is. We might say that inhuman things are, in a sense, inherent to Nazism; whereas (to pick one example) the Armenian Genocide is not inherent to being Turkish - hence a Turkish patriot could, I think, affirm this patriotism while repudiating the genocide; whereas if you repudiate the hateful ideas and deeds of Nazism, what is there left to affirm (that is distinctively National Socialist)?

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1. You're blinded by your own idealism.
2. Being a Nazi is an ideology. Being Turkish is a nationality. Apples and oranges.