D&D 5E How should be the future Oriental Adventures.

[Panda-s1]

Apparently not a thing.

no, elaborate, I'd really like to know.

 

[Xenonnonex]

The Chinese live in a totalitarian state run by the same party that a few decades ago tried to violently purge many aspects of traditional Chinese culture from their society, and today carefully curates the information diet of its citizens. I wouldn't assume Chinese game designers would be good sources for Chinese history and myth.

I definitely wouldn't assume that what they came up with would be palatable to Woke Western sensitivity readers.

E.g. Kwan took umbrage with OA mentioning the use of chopsticks as improvised weapons and people in Kara-Tur eating a lot of rice. I wouldn't expect an actual Chinese person to understand why this is offensive.

Do you honestly believe Chinese live only under PRC. Serious are you. Lots of diaspora communities have kept their traditions. And culture.

 

[Kaodi]

I was already given a light warning today to knock it off when talking about the politics of the very same country and you guys would probably be better served by moving away from that aspect of the topic as well.

 

[Panda-s1]

I was already given a light warning today to knock it off when talking about the politics of the very same country and you guys would probably be better served by moving away from that aspect of the topic as well.

yeah, no, it should not be controversial to say "not all people of Chinese heritage live in China", sorry.

 

[FireLance]

E.g. Kwan took umbrage with OA mentioning the use of chopsticks as improvised weapons and people in Kara-Tur eating a lot of rice. I wouldn't expect an actual Chinese person to understand why this is offensive.

Seriously? He did that? I am now even less impressed. Lack of knowledge of D&D is one thing, but this suggests a lack of familiarity with a relatively common trope in the wuxia genre in which two martial arts exponents engage in a contest of skills at a dining table using cups, bowls and yes, chopsticks, or someone is attacked in a restaurant and defends himself using chopsticks. The secondary purpose of such scenes (the primary purpose, of course, being entertainment) is to show off the martial arts skills of the character(s), that they can be effective even with unlikely weapons. One example which many people may be familiar with is the training sequence involving buns between Po and Shifu in Kung Fu Panda.

Not claiming to be some sort of authority, but I did watch several wuxia TV series from Hong Kong growing up as an ethnic Chinese in Singapore.

 

[Panda-s1]

Seriously? He did that? I am now even less impressed. Lack of knowledge of D&D is one thing, but this suggests a lack of familiarity with a relatively common trope in the wuxia genre in which two martial arts exponents engage in a contest of skills at a dining table using cups, bowls and yes, chopsticks, or someone is attacked in a restaurant and defends himself using chopsticks. The secondary purpose of such scenes (the primary purpose, of course, being entertainment) is to show off the martial arts skills of the character(s), that they can be effective even with unlikely weapons. One example which many people may be familiar with is the training sequence involving buns between Po and Shifu in Kung Fu Panda.

Not claiming to be some sort of authority, but I did watch several wuxia TV series from Hong Kong growing up as an ethnic Chinese in Singapore.

yeah, no, Kwan has an educational background in anthropology and Chinese culture, I'm pretty sure he's also well aware of the wuxia trope of people using chopsticks in a fight. maybe you can deal with your lack of familiarity with Kwan before you call out his lack of familiarity of a culture he's studied.

(also I'm not 100% sure on this, but given everything I've gathered about this guy I'm pretty sure he watched wuxia films as an ethnic Chinese in Canada. I've watched wuxia films too, so ¯\(ツ)/¯)

 

[FireLance]

yeah, no, Kwan has an educational background in anthropology and Chinese culture, I'm pretty sure he's also well aware of the wuxia trope of people using chopsticks in a fight. maybe you can deal with your lack of familiarity with Kwan before you call out his lack of familiarity of a culture he's studied.

(also I'm not 100% sure on this, but given everything I've gathered about this guy I'm pretty sure he watched wuxia films as an ethnic Chinese in Canada. I've watched wuxia films too, so ¯\(ツ)/¯)

If he is aware of the trope then it becomes even more mystifying because it then seems less like ignorance and more like oversensitivity, because I do not see how providing game statistics to support a trope used by Chinese creators themselves can be offensive to the Chinese.

 

[Panda-s1]

If he is aware of the trope then it becomes even more mystifying because it then seems less like ignorance and more like oversensitivity, because I do not see how providing game statistics to support a trope used by Chinese creators themselves can be offensive to the Chinese.

idk maybe the way it's presented is bad. maybe OA suggests all "Chinese" people are proficient with this use of chopsticks. maybe the OA presents this as a pan-Asian thing instead of being Chinese specific. you can look it up and discover yourself.

I admit I don't know myself, but given his expertise I feel it's not prudent to be like "trope is in chinese culture, this man is wrong".

 

[FireLance]

idk maybe the way it's presented is bad. maybe OA suggests all "Chinese" people are proficient with this use of chopsticks. maybe the OA presents this as a pan-Asian thing instead of being Chinese specific. you can look it up and discover yourself.

I admit I don't know myself, but given his expertise I feel it's not prudent to be like "trope is in chinese culture, this man is wrong".

If I remember correctly (and I can't find my copy of OA to confirm it), it was a line on the Weapons table, like "longsword" or "mace".

 

[Panda-s1]

If I remember correctly (and I can't find my copy of OA to confirm it), it was a line on the Weapons table, like "longsword" or "mace".

okay, yeah, that's a little weird. it's a little weird to list an eating implement as a weapon. it's also weird given that multiple cultures use chopsticks, but only one of them has this trope of using them as an improvised weapon (also wait doesn't AD&D already have rules for improvised weapons???). it'd be one thing if OA gave monks an option to use improvised weapons, but they took a weird route instead.

"but trope!" yeah okay it's a trope in some American movies for someone to break a beer bottle and use it as a weapon, but I don't see "Bottle, broken" under the list of weapons in the PHB.