D&D General (Anecdotal) conversations with Asian gamers on some problems they currently face in the D&D world of RPG gaming

[Haldrik]

I am thinking about the Hobgoblin borrowing heavily from Japanese military gear. But there is something annoying about an Evil nonhuman monster race being the one that displays this.

I want D&D artists to depict Japanese esthetic.

How does one do this right, in a way that is both respectful, and creative, fresh, and playful?

Same goes for other distinctive cultures in Asia, Africa, Americas, and Europe too.

Hopefully there is a rule of thumb when borrowing styles, that works for any culture.

On the one hand, one wants to be as true as possible to the culture. On the other hand, one wants to avoid stereotypes. ... On the third hand, one wants to do something new, surprising, and creative.

It goes without saying, that one must like and admire (and understand) the culture that one is borrowing from.

 

[Aldarc]

A lot of people recently bought it on principle because they were worried it was coming down. I think that is a good thing. People were trying to send a message to WOTC.

So these people get to be people who are sending a positive message without being depicted negatively as a "pressure group"? Don't look now, but your double-standards are showing.

I am thinking about the Hobgoblin borrowing heavily from Japanese military gear. But there is something annoying about an Evil nonhuman monster race being the one that displays this.

That's kinda the weird thing though. The aesthetics of non-Western cultures are more often attached to "monster races" than Western cultures are.

 

[Immeril]

Can we just agree if you ask someone where they are from it isn't offence, but if you then say "No, where are you really/originally from?" it is.

I live in a rural area near a small town of about 3,500, serving as the hub for a greater area of about 15,000 people. "Where are you from?" is a legit conversation topic that will come up in the first 5 minutes of conversations with anybody new, at church, at a game, or anywhere else. It doesn't matter what your skin color is. We have a solid mix of "grew up here," "moved here to escape the big city," and "grew up here, moved away for 20 years, moved back." No social repercussions or anything. It's just small talk and part of getting to know someone. We've found at least 3 people who used to live in the same suburb we moved from 3 years ago.

You're both right. A lot of people don't mean offence when asking this question. But perhaps the question could be less offensive if it is posed in a different way? Just brainstorming here, but how about 'where do you live?' instead of 'where are you from?'.

Not sure when this was - but the original is a 1e book, and 2e came out in 1989. DriveThruRPG lists the book as being listed in 2014. So, it was effectively unavailable for about 25 years. It was not wiped from history in that time, interestingly enough.

As stated before in this thread (not only by me), there is a difference between not keeping a book in print because it isn't profitable (in casu because there was a new edition and DMsGuild didn't exist), and removing a book because someone wants it removed.

What I'm saying is that if WotC, regardless if its the right thing to do or not, decides to take down OA, then they are completely in their right to do so. If people can't call for it to be removed, we can't call for it to be kept up, even if we can express our dissaproval of the action. It is THEIR product.

Isn't that a non sequitur? It is THEIR product, so if vocal minority starts pressuring or even boycotting them, it is THEIR choice to remove it?

I get it... but at what point do 'calling out racist depictions' turns into 'pressure group'? Does it depend on how old the product is?

Age is a factor, because you can't expect that a book written in, for instance 1936, conforms to our current way of thinking. Suppose that I were to write a 5e supplement about hunting, with a mechanic that gives a character some kind of bonus if he eats meat. Now suppose that 100 years from now, all humans are vegetarian and society has decided to abolish hunting and breeding livestock. It could happen, since we don't know how society is going to evolve. Me and my book would probably be villified (and removed from DMsGuild).

So when people pushed to have Zak Smith’s works removed from DriveThruRPG was that also a call from a “pressure group” for censorship?

In one word: yes. Did Apple remove Michael Jackson's albums from iTunes after the release of Finding Neverland? In 1980 John Lennon admitted that he beat his wife on a regular basis, and yet I'm still able to listen to the Beatles. And what about the artists and bands (Iggy Pop, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones, and those are only the ones that I know of) who admitted having groupies 'that looked like 18, but weren't'? Still available.

 

[Cadence]

That's kinda the weird thing though. The aesthetics of non-Western cultures are more often attached to "monster races" than Western cultures are.

As Gygax describes AD&D in the preface to OA, and others have here, it's pretty much Occidental Adventures in all but name. If the heroes are from Europe, and you want to uniquely other the monsters (see recent threads on orcs, etc..), then that kind of narrows down where to look for aesthetics. And even if you didn't want to intentionally call on stereotypes, and just wanted variety, you'd be reaching into the rest of the worlds cultures for the parts the heroes aren't using eventually too.

 

[Haldrik]

Generally when I discuss freedom of speech I am speaking to more than legal codes. I am speaking to the ability to express oneself creatively or intellectually to the public space. Our ability as a society to communicate with each other. The movement towards digital publishing, just in time inventory management, market failures in traditional publishing, social networks, and consolidation of media has pretty much lead to the death of the commons. Our shared spaces are pretty much all owned by private entities.

What this means from a practical standpoint is that publishers have for more control over access to their content than under a traditional publishing model. You can lose the ability to purchase content or even lose content that has already been purchased sometimes. It might even be revised without forewarning. Traditionally publishers had to put their stuff out there to the commons and it was out in the wild. They could release new editions or stop printing old editions, but there was a lot more out there in the wild.

This is not me defending Oriental Adventures. I do not have access to the text nor do I care to purchase it. I am sympathetic to the issues people are raising. I am not just not sure I want Wizards of the Coast to have the power to decide if it should be available or not. Just like I am not crazy about recent social media account purges.

I do very much want a more socially conscious Dungeons and Dragons and am willing to vote with my wallet to make that a reality. I think effective social pressure is the cornerstone of democracy. I just wish we could find our way back to a public commons where we can be protected by the First Amendment.

I view hatespeech as the precise opposite of freespeech.

Hatespeech seeks to silence the other.

It is ethically sound to silence the silencers. (Same principle as imprisoning muggers.)



It is possible to have both freespeech and the "purging" of hatespeech. Indeed, freespeech requires self-defense to defend and perpetuate freespeech.



That said, I agree with the need for a public space that is actually owned by the public, that private interests cannot tyrannize.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

That's kinda the weird thing though. The aesthetics of non-Western cultures are more often attached to "monster races" than Western cultures are.

And when they are attached to non-monsters, they are decried as well as the discussion on OA shows.

There are not many humanoid monster races that are clearly non-Western. Hobgoblins are associated with the Japanese in armor style of earlier books, but are much more Roman in the latest. Orcs are savage tribesmen which could be Picts, Vikings, Celts, Visgoths, Germans of various ages, etc.

I honestly cannot come up with all that many non-European ones, actually.

 

[Haldrik]

That's kinda the weird thing though. The aesthetics of non-Western cultures are more often attached to "monster races" than Western cultures are.

Appropriation and misuse of a Western culture can get annoying too.



What if?

When borrowing from a specific culture, have one faction be true and admiring toward that culture. Then, there is more freedom to explore more playfully within a different faction.

Actually, this principle is similar to elsewhere. If one is making a movie where the villain is black, make sure there is also a prominent good guy who is also black. The same goes for any identity.

 

[Aldarc]

I honestly cannot come up with all that many non-European ones, actually.

Yuan-ti and lizardfolk came to my mind almost immediately.

 

[Panda-s1]

As Gygax describes AD&D in the preface to OA, and others have here, it's pretty much Occidental Adventures in all but name. If the heroes are from Europe, and you want to uniquely other the monsters (see recent threads on orcs, etc..), then that kind of narrows down where to look for aesthetics. And even if you didn't want to intentionally call on stereotypes, and just wanted variety, you'd be reaching into the rest of the worlds cultures for the parts the heroes aren't using eventually too.

mmm, I have been thinking about it, and I really don't think calling AD&D core books "Occidental Adventures" makes any sense. yes, D&D was meant to be medieval European by default, that much is obvious, but it's still meant to be setting agnostic. Oriental Adventures is a book where real world Asian cultures are presented "exotic and mystical" settings for your adventures. the theoretical Occidental Adventures would actually be a guide to specific European cultures and and presented as exotic and mystical settings for you to use, and the fact that this counterpart doesn't exist does speak to part of why OA is problematic.

p.s. before someone jumps down my throat, yes I know about the Historical Reference series, and no it's not the same they're all specifically in-depth and written from a very western perspective, and are also likely problematic in their own ways (the description of the crusades book doesn't make it sound promising, yes I know about the planned book covering the Arabs, no it doesn't make it better).

 

[Immeril]

And, quite frankly, this flies in the face of that whole "freedom of expression for the creator" stuff. This "moral consideration" has been brought up several times in these discussions, in different forms. What it really amounts to is a statement that the public is entitled to the work (on some moral grounds), once published. That you have a right to someone's speech, even if they don't want to speak!

Yep, exactly. There's the entitlement, right there. Why are people entitled to the work?

You said that they should have access to it. Why should they? How are people entitled to purchase it from WotC?

No one is saying that they are entitled to OA. I'm saying that no one should be entitled to forbid WotC to sell me the book.

Or entitled to it for cheap, considering the complaint that the original printing are going up in price on eBay while the Pdf is only 5$...

You're twisting arguments. No one says they're entitled to it for cheap.
I REALLY want a first edition of Dracula. That ain't cheap, but I still have the option to read it online, legally, for free. As for OA, I might not have the option to have a digital copy because you and others are proponents for removing it.

Thanks for your concern, but me and the other college profs who chose this book as our discussion topic have engaged with it just fine. You using it here in the conversation around OA is simply a bad fit.

You discussed a book. I assume you read it. Now, if you were to discuss a book and ban it afterwards, then I wouldn't be able to refute or amend the opinions of your discussion group.

...involving a fantasy elf game.

Explain to me why banning a 'fantasy elf game' is less of a problem than banning Harry Potter.

So these people get to be people who are sending a positive message without being depicted negatively as a "pressure group"? Don't look now, but your double-standards are showing.

The people buying OA right now are part of a pressure group (although I'm uncertain if it's actually organised). And what is the motivation of this group? To counter the original pressure group.