WotC Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

[Fenris-77]

Have you ever heard the phrase
You are generalizing?

I'd say that would be lazy and harmful, and possibly reflect some stubbornness.

Generalizations can be very useful, but they aren't a foolproof tool, which is why there are multiple fallacies related to generalization. Hasty Generalization and Sweeping Generalization are the two most common. Generalization proceeds from inference, which means based on evidence and reasoning. So any instance of a generalization that doesn't proceed from inference will be an example of a faulty generalization. Stereotypes could, in this light, be characterized as improper or illogical generalizations, ones that are not based on evidence and reason. That's a really nice way of saying they're stupid and ignorant.

 

[Sadras]

Part of the disconnect is you said Mexican, not Aztec. Now this is precisely what is offensive, just wanting the windowdressing without caring about the context and significance, and how you can contribute to cultural destruction. The plethora of incorrect and imprecise depictions puts a lot of pressure on the preservation of this cultural heritage.



I won't talk about the Inca, because they aren't my concern, they lived literally on the other extreme of the world. They are not relevant except because they tend to get tangled too in the mess.

We are not talking of dead cultures which no longer exist, this concerns real living people today. Real living people who currently struggle to preserve their culture. Yes, this is both someone's ancestral heritage and someone's living current heritage, and neither of them have easy access to the means to put this into popular culture.

The Maya might not be an empire anymore, but the Maya people is still living to this day. With the Aztecs things are a bit more complex, because what is usually depicted as "Aztec" is actually of Pan-nahua origin -Aztecs were but one Nahua tribe, they weren't even the only tribe in charge, there were also the Alcohua and Tecpanec in charge of the empire that dominated most other Nahua tribes and many post-toltec-chichimec tribes and even surviving tribes from prechichimec times- if not an off-shot of the greater Toltec-Chichimec or Toltec-Teotihuacan traditions that went beyond just the Nahua people. A lot of what is depicted as Aztec is not really Aztec to begin with.

The comparison to the Norse and Roman traditions is also not an accurate one. For one, the nature of the change was abrupt and violent, not to mention quite recent in time. The Norse shed their ancient religion over time as they adapted to the new places they established in and their homeland was Christianized. The Roman traditions however didn't exactly die out, their pantheon was abruptly and forcefully abandoned, and this part is similar though. However notice that the Romans are the ancestors of many peoples today, -including the mixed heritage Mexicans of today- and their institutions and Cultural norms still persist to this day. Not to mention their myths got preserved by first hand accounts, while we are lucky to have some texts written from an European perspective and these things were already bastardized by decades of Aztec domination. Somewhere else I mentioned how the Aztec version of the Nahua-Zapotec-Mixtec pantheon -yes, there's no "Aztec pantheon" but rather a shared transethnic one- shows obvious signs of tampering by the Aztecs as a way to justify their domination-.

What happened in the Ancient Anahuac after the Spanish Conquest was very violent and quite recent -it is still an open wound-. It is a foundational trauma, and something we are still struggling with. On one hand, most of us are of mixed heritage and we carry both the pain of the victim and the guilt of the perpetrator, and at the same time we still long for the cultural baggage that was stripped off us. And this isn't something that happened one time five hundred years ago, this is an ongoing process of cultural destruction that hasn't stopped. This happened in my own family just two or three generations ago.

And, well, these deities aren't exactly dead gods. Their cult subsists to this day in the syncretic practices of many indigenous communities. Specially in the Maya region. The Mayans managed to preserve more of their culture than other ethnic groups, if I had to guess, because of their better writing system and their relative distance and independence from the center. This is also a bigger problem because the cultures of the Anahuac are part of our heritage, but these cultures are still living and ongoing to this day, and they suffer to preserve it -they face a lot of structural disadvantages that cannot be easily overcome while still resisting assimilation-. We making use of it is already morally ambiguous. Someone from the outside doing it is even worse, and more if it is just windowdressing and quite inaccurate.



If you don't want to offend, then do your homework. Be thorough, be accurate, and be respectful -and well, avoid using stereotypes-. I will still be personally angry -because I'm a drama queen and more aware about these issues-, but others love when popular culture gets things right, which does not happen very often. If you don't want to put this effort for your own homegame, that's ok, what happens in the privacy of your own table is nobody's business. But, if you want to publish it, at least get a sensitivity reader or two.

If I may, your entire argument for being sensitive/cautious/other to popularising the native culture of latinamerica rests on:
1) It is not a dead culture, old/ancient practises are still being practised, including those related to the deities;
2) The people exist today do not have the means to popularise their own culture (literally the basis of @PsyzhranV2's argument for Asian cultural appropriation); and
3) Nature of change from polytheism to monotheism was recent and violent, memory is fresh.

How do you think Greeks feel when they see the pop-culture machine produce RPG setting after RPG setting, movie after movie, series after series, MM after MM, ...etc - capitalising on Greek culture, mythology and history, which Greece cannot possibly hope to accomplish? Greece is but one country Latinamerica is more than a continent, and yet the former's wealth has been mined like NO OTHER.

And yet you eagerly feast day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year, decade-after-decade on the Hellenistic products of the pop-culture machine, not caring one iota of the trauma/wounds of Greeks while rising to offense at the slightest (like these long-winded and unforgiving youtubers) when one pokes in the direction of your ancestors (and to be clear, for a fantasy game). The level of hypocrisy that exists by those taking offense with their modern fancy terms like cultural-appropriation is truly mind blowing!!!

Finally, I think a lot of people on the one side forget the major positive in all this:

Without the pop-culture machine we would know much less about each other.
The gamers that are drawn to OA, Mystara and other strongly-earth inspired settings/books are those that are interested and likely to do further research beyond fantasy game books, that appreciate and respect these cultures and will likely draw others into their gaming tables to learn and love the way they do.

 

[Sadras]

Generalizations can be very useful, but they aren't a foolproof tool, which is why there are multiple fallacies related to generalization. Hasty Generalization and Sweeping Generalization are the two most common. Generalization proceeds from inference, which means based on evidence and reasoning. So any instance of a generalization that doesn't proceed from inference will be an example of a faulty generalization. Stereotypes could, in this light, be characterized as improper or illogical generalizations, ones that are not based on evidence and reason. That's a really nice way of saying they're stupid and ignorant.

I do not disagree on any of what you said here.
From my perspective, I see classes as an archetype for a sweeping number of generalisations/stereotypes. i.e. The bard classes encompasses the romantic poet, the multi-talented musician, the storyteller, [insert bard kit]...etc.
When we adopt to play these classes and subclasses, we thus take on these stereotypes (players LOVE stereotypes, hence you have others who also enjoy playing against type) and the game mechanics sometimes assist with this stereotyping.

Now of course when we have classes like the samurai, dervish and others it taps into their inspired earth culture merely by their name - nevermind the rest of the description that follows. Again these classes would encompass a broad range of stereotypes. So the Samurai may have - the disgraced ronin, the vengeful samurai, the learned samurai, the samurai of the old ways...etc (to be fair my knowledge of Japanese culture is minuscule - so these samurai stereotypes are guess work on my part).

Now the way I have used and identified stereotyping above - I do not see it at a negative, hence my issue with @ART!'s perspective of the word as solely negative.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Sadras - What you have in a class is a general archetype that contains the flexibility to accommodate a significant number of more specific archetypes. Stereotypes need not apply. That said there certainly are stereotypes of certain classes and races, and players do love to play against them, and that's great. You can explain everything about the class system in D&D without any need to use the word stereotype though. Those exist, no doubt, but they aren't a product of the class system or rules, but rather a product of generalizations on the part of players based on the experiences of those players, both in games and online in forums like this one, about what kinds of builds happen within a given class.

 

[Bohandas]

Without the pop-culture machine we would know much less about each other.
uThe gamers that are drawn to OA, Mystara and other strongly-earth inspired settings/books are those that are interested and likely to do further research beyond fantasy game books, that appreciate and respect these cultures and will likely draw others into their gaming tables to learn and love the way they do.

This. It may be a little oversimplified, but it isn't really reasonable to expect someone to go directly into knowing the full nuances of ANY subject.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Telling the host of a party that you do not like a song they are playing and then expecting them to literally stop the music for everybody no questions asked does not seem a reasonable expectation.

It comes across as an entitled and self-centered expectation.

Really? I think he makes a decent point. If I was running a jukebox at my house, and a song came on that someone went "ugh, that song." I'd probably offer to change it. Maybe if it was a song I liked I'd ask "what's wrong with this song?" but I wouldn't be resistant to changing it. It is probably one of hundreds on tracks, what do I care if we skip this one for something else?

If I may, your entire argument for being sensitive/cautious/other to popularising the native culture of latinamerica rests on:
1) It is not a dead culture, old/ancient practises are still being practised, including those related to the deities;
2) The people exist today do not have the means to popularise their own culture (literally the basis of @PsyzhranV2's argument for Asian cultural appropriation); and
3) Nature of change from polytheism to monotheism was recent and violent, memory is fresh.

How do you think Greeks feel when they see the pop-culture machine produce RPG setting after RPG setting, movie after movie, series after series, MM after MM, ...etc - capitalising on Greek culture, mythology and history, which Greece cannot possibly hope to accomplish? Greece is but one country Latinamerica is more than a continent, and yet the former's wealth has been mined like NO OTHER.

And yet you eagerly feast day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year, decade-after-decade on the Hellenistic products of the pop-culture machine, not caring one iota of the trauma/wounds of Greeks while rising to offense at the slightest (like these long-winded and unforgiving youtubers) when one pokes in the direction of your ancestors (and to be clear, for a fantasy game). The level of hypocrisy that exists by those taking offense with their modern fancy terms like cultural-appropriation is truly mind blowing!!!

I think you are missing a rather salient point that Moonsong made, if you don't mind me pointing it out.

The Greek and Hellenistic period you are talking about came to an end around 2,300 years ago.

The wounds Moonsong is talking about regarding Spanish colonialism, that period of history came to an end about 200 years ago.

You are comparing a literal order of magnitude, a difference of over two thousand years. And during that two thousand years, greek thought, history, government was studied and preserved in depth. We can talk with confidence about the differences between Athenian thought and culture, Spartant thought and culture, and Thebian thought and culture across centuries of history.

Meanwhile, I didn't even know that the Aztec weren't the ruling tribe, and that there were even other groups of tribes from the same time period. Let alone their names. And I barely know anything about their beliefs or myths.

For example, I bet you can recognize the figure of Helen of Troy easily, right? Echo? Arachne? Atalanta? I learned about some of those in school.

If it wasn't for an amazing book I own by Jason Porath, I would have no clue about the Mesoamerican Myth of Xtabay (which is amazing) or the Brazilian legend of Iara.

That is a big difference in how the culture is treated, respected and known.

Finally, I think a lot of people on the one side forget the major positive in all this:

Without the pop-culture machine we would know much less about each other.
The gamers that are drawn to OA, Mystara and other strongly-earth inspired settings/books are those that are interested and likely to do further research beyond fantasy game books, that appreciate and respect these cultures and will likely draw others into their gaming tables to learn and love the way they do.

Great, so they should be the loudest voices in agreeing with us that we should respect these cultures, to treat them well, and not just slapdash some vague, innacurate stereotypes on top of them and act like it doesn't matter if we trample all over the actual substance of their culture.


No one is saying we should never published another book on Fantasy Japan or Fantasy China. That would be a travesty. But, instead of having western writers just pull out some 70's wuxia film, lets do some actual research, lets involve the game writers from that culture and make sure we aren't saying something stupid and offensive or making a dumb mistake.

Let's have our gaming books able to be looked to as doing a good job, instead of shrugging and saying that the quality of the writing doesn't matter, because it does.

 

[Zardnaar]

Really? I think he makes a decent point. If I was running a jukebox at my house, and a song came on that someone went "ugh, that song." I'd probably offer to change it. Maybe if it was a song I liked I'd ask "what's wrong with this song?" but I wouldn't be resistant to changing it. It is probably one of hundreds on tracks, what do I care if we skip this one for something else?




I think you are missing a rather salient point that Moonsong made, if you don't mind me pointing it out.

The Greek and Hellenistic period you are talking about came to an end around 2,300 years ago.

The wounds Moonsong is talking about regarding Spanish colonialism, that period of history came to an end about 200 years ago.

You are comparing a literal order of magnitude, a difference of over two thousand years. And during that two thousand years, greek thought, history, government was studied and preserved in depth. We can talk with confidence about the differences between Athenian thought and culture, Spartant thought and culture, and Thebian thought and culture across centuries of history.

Meanwhile, I didn't even know that the Aztec weren't the ruling tribe, and that there were even other groups of tribes from the same time period. Let alone their names. And I barely know anything about their beliefs or myths.

For example, I bet you can recognize the figure of Helen of Troy easily, right? Echo? Arachne? Atalanta? I learned about some of those in school.

If it wasn't for an amazing book I own by Jason Porath, I would have no clue about the Mesoamerican Myth of Xtabay (which is amazing) or the Brazilian legend of Iara.

That is a big difference in how the culture is treated, respected and known.




Great, so they should be the loudest voices in agreeing with us that we should respect these cultures, to treat them well, and not just slapdash some vague, innacurate stereotypes on top of them and act like it doesn't matter if we trample all over the actual substance of their culture.


No one is saying we should never published another book on Fantasy Japan or Fantasy China. That would be a travesty. But, instead of having western writers just pull out some 70's wuxia film, lets do some actual research, lets involve the game writers from that culture and make sure we aren't saying something stupid and offensive or making a dumb mistake.

Let's have our gaming books able to be looked to as doing a good job, instead of shrugging and saying that the quality of the writing doesn't matter, because it does.

Greek and Roman period is reasonably well documented.

There's like 3 Aztec or Maya books left total.

Might not be 100% correct but there's very few sources from themselves.

Spanish destroyed the books/scrolls and no hot dry desert to preserve much else.

Very little cultural diffusion. This alphabet? Inherited from Romans.

 

[MoonSong]

If I may, your entire argument for being sensitive/cautious/other to popularising the native culture of latinamerica rests on:

My arguments were about prehispanic Mexico and current day Mexico. And even by reducing it that much I'm covering a huge and diverse collection of cultures and ethnic groups. I'm not going to insult the people of Southamerica by pretending I know what they care about or what their situation is, nor by assuming we are the same. As for Centroamerica, well they decided to leave Mexico and thus I don't need to care.

Now, what I also told, is that not only modern day Italians are Roman descendants, and they aren't the sole heir to the Roman legacy. For example, in Latinoamerica we speak a romance language, we are partially descended from people who spoke Latin, we have Roman style institutions, we have Roman descended Civil Law, and many other Roman descended cultural institutions. The same for Western and Southern Europe.

How do you think Greeks feel when they see the pop-culture machine produce RPG setting after RPG setting, movie after movie, series after series, MM after MM, ...etc - capitalising on Greek culture, mythology and history, which Greece cannot possibly hope to accomplish? Greece is but one country Latinamerica is more than a continent, and yet the former's wealth has been mined like NO OTHER.

And yet you eagerly feast day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year, decade-after-decade on the Hellenistic products of the pop-culture machine, not caring one iota of the trauma/wounds of Greeks while rising to offense at the slightest (like these long-winded and unforgiving youtubers) when one pokes in the direction of your ancestors (and to be clear, for a fantasy game). The level of hypocrisy that exists by those taking offense with their modern fancy terms like cultural-appropriation is truly mind blowing!!!

One, the Greeks were huge exporters of Culture, by both trade and military conquest. For the longest time Greek was the Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean. Ancient Greeks were eager to share their culture. Very different case from the Mayans, Nahuas, Zapotecs, Mixtecs and all other inhabitants of the Precolumbian Anahuac, they didn't ask nor choose to share. They were conquered, basically enslaved and then deprived of their own cultural practices. To this day they still struggle to keep their own cultures alive. It is an apples to oranges comparison.

But you know, you are kind of right. After all there were Greek advisors for Theros. If they got them, there is no reason our indigenas shouldn't be allowed the same respect

Without the pop-culture machine we would know much less about each other.
The gamers that are drawn to OA, Mystara and other strongly-earth inspired settings/books are those that are interested and likely to do further research beyond fantasy game books, that appreciate and respect these cultures and will likely draw others into their gaming tables to learn and love the way they do.

Which is why it has to be right and not full of factually wrong if not entirely made up cultural content?

 

[Azzy]

I'm not gonna hate on Elvis just because Black artists were doing rock and roll before him.

I do take issue with him being called the "King of Rock and Roll", though—he doesn't desrve that. Heck, he didn't even write his own songs. He deserves a lot of credit for introducing rock to a non-black audience (though he's not the only one) and for popularising and making it acceptable (with some push-back from bigots) to a wider audience. If anyone, Chuck Berry should be called the King of Rock and Roll, and that is a hill I will die on as a fan of rock and roll past and present.

 

[Azzy]

No. That's capitalism.

This is so banal it is a truism. But removing the slightly more loaded terms, here is what you just said-

"In this scenario, game designers at big companies -- can be more successful selling products ... than game designers at smaller studios -- can hope to do, that's (CAPITALISM)"

This may be good, or bad (that's a separate conversation), but it's hardly a novel observation that the roots of "colonialism" or "racism" or a lot of other "isms" spring from capitalism.

Exploitation of (the working class, people of color, the "originator culture") is a feature, not a bug, of the underlying system.

Big companies will be more successful at selling products than small companies; to the extent that the small company is more successful, it will become a big company.

You're not making a good case for capitalism.