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

[pemerton]

Can we avoid the racist jargon "oriental"?

Absolutely. Is that in dispute?

EDIT: My point is that the word "caucasian" is meaningful - in this context - only within the discredited framework of 19th century scientific racism.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Absolutely. Is that in dispute?

Good. By some people. Yes.

 

[pemerton]

double post

 

[pemerton]

Good. By some people. Yes.

And now how about actually acknowledging my request.

 

[Xenonnonex]

And now how about actually acknowledging my request.

Who says I have not.
I am descended from that region. But I am mixed. So I do not get to belong to any group. This has been made clear many times.

 

[pemerton]

Who says I have not.
I am descended from that region. But I am mixed. So I do not get to belong to any group. This has been made clear many times.

Which region? The Caucasus?

When you used the word "Caucasian" upthread you seemed to be using it to mean white:

Writing of the other things have been from Caucasians. Written by Caucasians.
Other matters have been traditionally written by Caucasians. Writing for other cultures. This is not balanced.
Involvement of cultural consultants would be a start.

I don't think Caucasian here means "person from the Caucasus mountains or neighbouring regions".

 

[Xenonnonex]

I ask because when it comes to racist presentations of theme and history omission and disregard can be important considerations.

Depends on what perspective it is written from. Victory clouds history. Even defeat clouds history.
Profound impacts of this are not even taught. Or written about. Actively omitted and denied it is.

 

[R_J_K75]

It should be called, "ORIENTAL ADVENTURES"!

 

[Panda-s1]

I think the real complaint against OA is more along the lines of cultural appropriation, a lack of proper curation, etc. Which is a complaint about racist processes of cultural production but - even if sound - doesn't in itself establish that the work itself is racist.

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

Isn't FR still the best-selling setting for FRPGing? And it is chock-full of real world cultures.

Kara-Tur was made part of FR, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant Faerun. you can't say "where's France?" and have me point at a specific nation in Faerun. that's definitely not the case in Kara-Tur, you can say "where's Korea?" and someone can point at the exact nation in Kara-Tur that is the Korea analogue.

Not every depiction of tropes from folk tales and popular culture is a racist stereotype.

this is certainly true, and OA is a horrible example of this.

I am not particularly concerned if WotC stops selling OA or does not. That's basically a commercial decision. I don't think OA is a work of race hatred. Nor do I think it is a valuable cultural artefact that needs to be available to everyone for posterity. In that way I don't think the comparison to important American novels really works.

it doesn't matter whether or not if something is hateful, it's still based in some very dated and sometimes awful stereotypes. this misses the point, too, Kwan's big issue is WotC claims they will be more culturally sensitive and yet still make money off a culturally insensitive book. WotC should stop selling it. it's not like he's calling for a book burning. hell if preservation is an issue (and it definitely is an issue) WotC can just start giving it away for free. just give it away for free, no profit off of that, and everyone can still download it for the sake of archiving.

 

[humble minion]

WotC should stop selling it. it's not like he's calling for a book burning. hell if preservation is an issue (and it definitely is an issue) WotC can just start giving it away for free. just give it away for free, no profit off of that, and everyone can still download it for the sake of archiving.

There's certainly something in that, though giving a product away for free is generally seen as something you do when you want to PROMOTE that product, which is probably not the message WotC wants to send about the old OA books right now.

TBH, if WotC wants to defuse the festering OA issue, then the most effective way to do that would be to promptly announce and release a brand new set of Asian themed (and Asian-written) 5e books that avoided the cultural landmines that OA stepped on.

Cos being serious for a minute, when was the last time anyone in this thread actually ran a campaign set in Kara-tur? Or with the 2e OA rules? Or even a 3e Rokugan game? I strongly, strongly suspect the number of people actually doing that is absolutely tiny. I understand the grognard/oldskool FR-er completist urge, and hell, I've read the Kara-Tur books entirely for that reason myself, but if the demographic of D&D players who actually use this stuff right now in live games reaches half a percent of the total D&D player base, I'd be staggered.

But the bad smell around the old books lingers, because the Kara-Tur line and the 3e OA book is the most recent coverage of this sort of thing under the D&D banner. To make the (entirely legit) controversy go away, and to demonstrate they've genuinely changed how they address cultures like this, WotC need to actually bring out a product that makes these old books obsolete. Hell, the 5e playerbase dwarfs all other editions put together I strongly suspect (with the possible exclusion of Pathfinder), so a 5e treatment would become the touchstone for 'WotC does Asian-inspired fantasy' almost immediately, and once it does, nobody will be talking about the 2e OA any more other than 'jeez, I'm glad we've moved on from the bad old days' terms.