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

[Marandahir]

Good write-up on the topic by Jester_David on his 5MWD blog:

On Oriental Adventures

On Oriental Adventures A recent conversation has emerged on Twitter and YouTube over the 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons product Oriental Adventures, written by Gary Gygax and David “Zeb” Cook back in 1985. In addition to the dated and offensive […] <a class="more-link"...

www.5mwd.com

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I can get where they are, which is close enough. Here's the top 10 for the last week.

View attachment 123756

So 40% outside the USA for this site.

@Umbran
I live in the USA and am a dual citizen of Canada (born there and left in my mid 20's) and the USA. I lived in China for 5 years and Singapore for 3 years but I am not Asian. Chinese wife and we have a young son. Wife is from Nanjing and has a fairly anti-Japanese viewpoint. Grew up as a minority (English speaking family in Quebec) and there are jokes aimed at Canadians while living in the USA (Canadian or dead ...). Worked in Europe and Asia. Played and visited game stores in those places. OA and offense to Asians (which mainly seems to be Chinese Americans/Canadians so let's just go with Asians). Not part of BLM or that dynamic at all in my opinion. I agree that parts have both not aged well and probably were not great when published. I think the disclaimer was a good answer.

Am I invested enough? I think so and I just don't agree with you.

 

[pemerton]

It would probably strike us unusual if the shoe was on the other foot and a frying pan, spoons, or forks were listed under the weapons table of an Occidental Adventures book that largely existed as our first foray into non-East Asian fantasy.

But are forks and spoons on the weapon charts for Occidental Adventures? Or how about frying pans? Using frying pans as a weapon is a trope that we see in films like Indiana Jones (Marion), Tangled (Rapunzel), and Lord of the Rings (Samwise Gamgee). We can probably even find more uses in media of frying pan as a weapon than chopsticks as a weapon. So does "it's a common trope" argument really explain why an improvised weapon is included in one weapon list but the other isn't?

I can also be sympathetic to the idea that there is a 'chopstick obsession'. I suspect there are some Americans, for example, who think that learning to use/using chopsticks is some sort of badge of honor where they've attained some level of cultural awareness. They are pretty much sadly mistaken, it is just a detail of Chinese/Asian culture. Sure, chopsticks have some symbolism etc. but my wife is perfectly happy to eat with a fork and could care less which I use. I doubt very many Chinese, at this point in history, would think differently. So, OA fixating on chopsticks as a weapon, I see it as possibly an eye-roller, but then again I more blame D&D as just being a klunky system in terms of depicting weapons. Plus Chinese drama does have this weird element of 'anything might be a weapon in the hands of a master' that was probably being picked up on a bit by the author.

In one of these threads I already quoted this, from Classic Traveller (1977, pp 12, 33):

Brawling is a general skill for hand-to-hand fighting. It includes the use of hands, clubs, bottles and the like, as weapons . . . Bottles may be used as clubs (once, they then become crude daggers).​

I think the why on this list but not that list question is not all that productive. LIkewise the why this trope but not that trope question. I don't think its the relation of OA tropes to other D&D books or even other RPG books that is under scrutiny. It's whether it withstands scrutiny on its own terms, given its relationship to broader matters of culture, power, representation etc.

Eg is it per se objectionable to present, as OA does, the trope of a master in whose hands anything might be a weapon? This relates to the following post:

Not every old chinese guy is an antiquities dealer with magic artifacts and mastery of the five-finger death strike technique.

Is this an accurate characterisation of OA? If it were, that would settle the discussion.

 

[pemerton]

@Voadam did find a frying pan stat. I'm not surprised. However, I would say that it wasn't something that Gary Gygax or other writers would have considered for initially presenting a book on Western fantasy.

This opens up a somewhat different line of discussion that I'm surprised hasn't already been done in more detail.

To what extent is core AD&D "Western fantasy" or "Occidental Adventures"?

As it presents itself, not at all. The DMG has noble title charts that include Asian (or Asian-derived) words. The PHB includes bo sticks and jo sticks and scimitars and tulwars. The monk class is pretty clearly not inspired by European folk tales. In the MM there are rocs; djinni with their "vizers, beys, emirs, sheiks, sherrifs, and maliks"; and efreeti with their Sultan and their "pashas, deys,
amirs, valis, and maliks". Hobgoblins dress in Japanese-stye armour; the Latin name of Gold Dragons is Draco Orientalis Sino Dux; we have Japanese Ogres (ogre magi); we are told that Rakshasa were "[k[nown first in India"; and there are Sumatran rats. The MM also has "tribesmen" who, we are told, "are typically found in tropical jungles or on islands" and whose settlements have "a 50% chance that there will be 2-12 captives (food!) held in a pen."

I think the contrast in this respect with OA is striking, in two sense. Unlike core D&D, OA does not draw primarily upon pulp tropes in its depiction of the world beyond western Europe and its settler colonies. And unlike core D&D, OA does not present its game structures and associated story elements - classes, races, monsters and other setting elements, its whole apparatus for estblishing the shared fiction of a RPG - as universal. It self-consciosusly circumscribes it by geographical and cultural location. (This contrast reveals itself even in such relative trivialities still found in D&D as the use of the French-derived and hardly common English word glaive rather than the Japanese word naginata to desribe a one-edged-blade-on-a-stick: one is taken to connote universality, the other particularity.)

These points of contrast tell us something about where racism is primarily to be found in D&D, although I don't think we all agree on exactly what that is.

 

[Mercurius]

Here's the rub: historical domination and cultural exploitation is a thing, and its effects and impacts still carry through to today. We don't get to pretend it doesn't exist just because we don't want it to. We have to do the work to actively unpack and untangle it. It's hard, and it's messy, and there's a price to be paid, but it's one we owe, rather than resting on the laurels our ancestors built through genocide and slaughter.

So yeah, cultural appropriation is a one-way street. No, that isn't fair. Neither is white privilege. There's a price to be paid. Deal with it.

I think this highlights a major element of the disagreements. I fully agree with your first paragraph, and also want to find solutions. But...

"Cultural appropriation" and related approaches are one avenue of solutions, and one that I think is over-used and misapplied, often to rather harmful effect.

In other words, recognizing the truth of your first paragraph doesn't automatically mean that cultural appropriation is the best way to approach solving the problem. It is one possible solution, and one I find creates a lot of problems.

Where I think confusion comes is that people fuse your first two paragraphs and erroneously think that people who don't automatically adhere to "cultural appropriation theory" aren't cognizant of the truth of the first paragraph. I have tried to explain this again and again, and many cycle back on some variation of this misunderstanding.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In one of these threads I already quoted this, from Classic Traveller (1977, pp 12, 33):

Brawling is a general skill for hand-to-hand fighting. It includes the use of hands, clubs, bottles and the like, as weapons . . . Bottles may be used as clubs (once, they then become crude daggers).​

I think the why on this list but not that list question is not all that productive. LIkewise the why this trope but not that trope question. I don't think its the relation of OA tropes to other D&D books or even other RPG books that is under scrutiny. It's whether it withstands scrutiny on its own terms, given its relationship to broader matters of culture, power, representation etc.

Eg is it per se objectionable to present, as OA does, the trope of a master in whose hands anything might be a weapon? This relates to the following post:

Is this an accurate characterisation of OA? If it were, that would settle the discussion.

I get it, OTOH is it just so 'out there' that it is hard to credit? Or is it actually maybe a trope that was REALLY taken from the source material?
As I said, I have been perusing some of these xiahua/wuxia style TV dramas. This trope, the "master of any style", which usually is some jianghu (Martial Arts World) master who is operating inside normal society for some reason, who can, and does, do things like kill people by flicking pebbles at them, use pretty much anything as a weapon, etc. is ALL OVER THE PLACE in this genre. And this is an ancient genre too, there are examples going back far into the Spring and Autumn period of literature in basically this style. I understand you will repeat again it is about 'triggering', but when you're triggered by something, something thematically central, from the actual culture you are decrying a misrepresentation of, then I think you are complaining about the wrong thing!

And no, I don't think this is an accurate characterization of OA in the sense that it is a fantasy world, so, yes, anyone could be a 'wizard' or something. That is as equally true about general D&D as it is about OA. I guess something maybe isn't automatically 'fine' just because it is in ALL of D&D, but D&D does depict magical worlds. Its hard to see how you could expect D&D Fantasy Asia to be any different. It may be triggering in some fashion, but I'd be hard pressed to see how "things are magical" could have been left out. In fact, in a fairly recent (within the last year or two) WIR of OA it was noted that, in many respects, the depictions in OA seem overly mundane! I'm not sure I quite agreed with that, but OA really did present a very different model of adventuring when compared with normal D&D. It is much more centered on social and political elements, which really have fallen by the wayside in standard D&D. Even in the early days standard D&D never provided any overt mechanism to integrate characters into society as a whole, while this is a strong theme in OA. I'm not sure if this is 'good' or 'bad', but it is a difference, and if you read the modules it seems to be one that adventure designers really had a tough time figuring out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This opens up a somewhat different line of discussion that I'm surprised hasn't already been done in more detail.

To what extent is core AD&D "Western fantasy" or "Occidental Adventures"?

As it presents itself, not at all. The DMG has noble title charts that include Asian (or Asian-derived) words. The PHB includes bo sticks and jo sticks and scimitars and tulwars. The monk class is pretty clearly not inspired by European folk tales. In the MM there are rocs; djinni with their "vizers, beys, emirs, sheiks, sherrifs, and maliks"; and efreeti with their Sultan and their "pashas, deys,
amirs, valis, and maliks". Hobgoblins dress in Japanese-stye armour; the Latin name of Gold Dragons is Draco Orientalis Sino Dux; we have Japanese Ogres (ogre magi); we are told that Rakshasa were "[k[nown first in India"; and there are Sumatran rats. The MM also has "tribesmen" who, we are told, "are typically found in tropical jungles or on islands" and whose settlements have "a 50% chance that there will be 2-12 captives (food!) held in a pen."

I think the contrast in this respect with OA is striking, in two sense. Unlike core D&D, OA does not draw primarily upon pulp tropes in its depiction of the world beyond western Europe and its settler colonies. And unlike core D&D, OA does not present its game structures and associated story elements - classes, races, monsters and other setting elements, its whole apparatus for estblishing the shared fiction of a RPG - as universal. It self-consciosusly circumscribes it by geographical and cultural location. (This contrast reveals itself even in such relative trivialities still found in D&D as the use of the French-derived and hardly common English word glaive rather than the Japanese word naginata to desribe a one-edged-blade-on-a-stick: one is taken to connote universality, the other particularity.)

These points of contrast tell us something about where racism is primarily to be found in D&D, although I don't think we all agree on exactly what that is.

Yeah, I touched on this difference, more in terms of the actual nuts and bolts of it vs its significance, in a couple of posts. General core AD&D is a fairly universalist system. It has 4 basic 'universal archetype' classes, plus a few extras that fill in some common niches (and then the Monk). As you point out, it also has a couple of Eastern weapon names (I think they are both Japanese-ish). And then oddly OA takes a completely different tack, ALL the classes are quite specialized and outright replace the core ones, at least that is the presentation. Plus they have a bit different power levels, so you would have to do a bit of tweaking, and then some rationalization, to meld the two class presentations into a seamless whole, if you wanted to do that. Its odd, and it does point out a difference in goals.

Also, as I touched on in my last post, the whole thrust of the two systems in terms of the type of adventuring and its parameters are quite different. Standard D&D, as typically played at least, depicts a wandering, virtually rootless, band of adventurers, of questionable motives. They might at best aspire to heroics, but no rules are given to tie them to the setting at all. There are, at best, rules for henchmen and hirelings, and some rules for higher level play where they can START to integrate with society, as significant movers and shakers. There's nothing about family, ties to the local polity, nothing. In OA this is all central to the character. Your character can literally cease to exist (as a PC at least) if it fails to live up to a specific code! Core chargen rules govern your family, initial honor, etc. A clear subsystem which contains explicit social skills rules exists, which all implies that the game is much more centered around social concerns. The text elaborately supports this too.

It isn't up to me to say if any of those differences are problematic or not. They certainly point out, at the very least, a difference in game design goals between core AD&D (fundamentally a procedural dungeon crawl game with town/wilderness adventures grafted on) and OA. Charitably I might point out that the 1985 release of OA could be seen in terms of an evolution of the whole concept of D&D which continues in 2e where it is stated that story (and thus perhaps some of the concerns OA takes up) are more central. 2e includes the skill system from OA (basically, with some tweaks). It doesn't go into families, honor, etc. but it does at least indicate that different PCs have different goals and might earn XP in different ways. So, OA might presage 2e in some respects. Still, maybe its emphasis is distressing to some people. I certainly feel that it does reflect some stereotypes about 'Asian' culture, which are probably fairly dubious.

 

[Cadence]

This opens up a somewhat different line of discussion that I'm surprised hasn't already been done in more detail.

To what extent is core AD&D "Western fantasy" or "Occidental Adventures"?

And then oddly OA takes a completely different tack, ALL the classes are quite specialized and outright replace the core ones, at least that is the presentation. Plus they have a bit different power levels, so you would have to do a bit of tweaking, and then some rationalization, to meld the two class presentations into a seamless whole, if you wanted to do that. Its odd, and it does point out a difference in goals.

Does Gygax address a lot of that his preface to OA (including that he wouldn't leave the Monk in the PhB version of AD&D):

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

I originally read this as an attempt to obscure the sexual violence implicit in the older half-orc lore, rather than to emphasize it more strongly. Mainly due to "crossbreed," which doesn't necessarily imply force. Not discounting your take; just an alternate perspective. That said, I'm of the...

www.enworld.org

I have some additional thoughts on how Occidental it is at:

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

Slippery slope arguments are not compelling. Depends on the slopes angle. I mean, I'm sure it won't stop the sales of every D&D product, but it could lead to more. OA is not the only potentially problematic title in the catalogue, and if Wizards removes OA due to public pressure, it would be...

www.enworld.org

In any case, it feels a lot more "Occidental Adventures" to me than in the PhB and DMG than it does to you.
Nothing about the thoughts that went into it's creation excuses anything content-wise that is problematic in a reading today of OA though.

 

[Cadence]

I am kind of curious how many other folks in the US had never heard the word Monk in a non-Christian setting before they encountered them in the PhB, and were wondering why someone like Friar Tuck in Robin Hood would have gotten a set of abilities like the 1e PhB monk had...

 

[Lanefan]

It comes to this - the big kid in the schoolyard should not treat the little kids badly, but still expect to play with the little kids' toys. And yes, the big kid will be upset if someone enforces this, and will argue how it is unfair, and only make the big kid more bad.

And that's when we get into the language of abuse - "Let me have what I want, or I'll be EVEN WORSE." Sorry, no. Eventually, someone needs to tell the big kid that they've lost some of their privileges.

If you don't like this situation, maybe you should focus less on how you aren't allowed to use the toys, and more on fixing how the little kids are treated badly? Just my opinion there.

To take this analogy one step further, if the little kids are allowed to play with the big kid's toys yet the big kid isn't allowed to play with the little kids' toys, isn't that only going to make the big kid resentful?