Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Bedrockgames]

5e uses the word "primitive" six times in the core rules. Five usages are negative, one is neutral. Emphasis mine.

PHB:
"In these yellowed pages were tales of bold heroes, strange and fierce animals, mighty primitive gods, and a magic that was part and fabric of that distant land." (This is the neutral one.)
"[T]he Dark Six are the primitive, bloody, and cruel gods who offer a dissenting voice."

MM:
"Primitive. Hill giants" congregate in "steadings built of rough timber or in clusters of well-defended mud-and-wattle huts... Their weapons are uprooted trees and rocks pulled from the earth". They wear "crude animal skins... poorly stitched together with hair and leather thongs."
"Whether these tall, gaunt creatures [the ancestors of githyanki and githzerai] were peaceful or savage, cultured or primitive before the mind flayers enslaved and changed them, none can say."
"Lizardfolk are primitive reptilian humanoids that lurk in the swamps and jungles of the world."
"Primitive Wanderers. Ogres clothe themselves in animal pelts and uproot trees for use as crude tools and weapons."

Hill giants have INT 5 and are chaotic evil. They are "raging bullies", "selfish, dimwitted brutes" whose "laziness and dullness would long ago have spelled their end if not for their formidable size and strength".
Lizardfolk have INT 7. They eat other humanoids and also sacrifice them to their god.
Ogres have INT 5 and are chaotic evil. They possess "Legendary Stupidity. Few ogres can count to ten, even with their fingers in front of them." They are "lazy of mind", "greedy" (in the sense of avaricious), "gluttons", and have "furious tempers".

Whether it is being used negatively or positively, it seems useful here. I understand instantly what is meant by lizard folks being primitive or hill giants being primitive.

 

[Umbran]

“Making it personal” or not....

Mod Note:

sigh. Dude. You explicitly note that it is against what was asked, and you do it anyway? You kind of force me to block you from the thread.

 

[Blue]

Languages are living. These words mean now what they mean now. It is on etymological interest where they came from, but the meaning has shifted since then. It is self-deception at best to try to claim that a word that has entered the modern lexicon can only mean what it once did and that it is inappropriate to have it's current usage.

 

[pemerton]

@Doug McCrae

Your textual analyses are thorough.

Thinking about system and gameplay, in my view one of the problems D&D faces is ambiguity over the relationship between clerics, druids and MUs.

This post isn't going to unpack every aspect of the issue, but will try and set out what I see as the basic problem.

Clerics are, at their core, heavily armed and armoured religious warriors who work channel the power of the divine to work miracles of healing, divining, turning sticks into snakes, dispelling evil spirits, and sometimes calling down doom upon their enemies. They are not allowed to be true neutral: they are proselytising and they establish fortresses from which they rule the land, extracting taxes and tithes. We know from the paladin class entry in the AD&D PHB (p 24) that clerics can be nobles.

In summary, clerics are a mix of Biblical trope with the mediaeval military orders and warrior bishops. In terms of the divide/contrast I posited upthread, they are urban/cosmopolitan.

Druids use lighter armour (leather, wooden shields) and spears and knives and "exotic" weapons like scimitars and (in UA) the khopesh. According to the AD&D PHB (p 21) "They hold trees (particularly oak and ash), the sun, and the moon as deities." They must be true neutral, which is (per the DMG p 23) is a "naturalistic ethos" that sees each element of the world as part of the whole, provided that (per the PHB p 33) things do not" become unbalanced due to the work of unnatural forces - such as human and other intelligent creatures interfering with what is meant to be." There magic deals extensively with plants, animals, weather and the elements. They can change shape and pass without trace through the woodlands.

Druids are clearly on the rural side of my contrast. Their outlook and abilities are identifiable as broadly animistic/shamanic. They do not build great temples. They are not proselytisers.

This cleric/druid relationship starts to break down as soon as clerics - beginning in the PBH but moreso with DDG - are shoved into the polytheistic context without any mechanical or flavour change. In 5e this comes up in the question of the relationship between nature clerics and druids. In 4e it is the problem of the relationship of clerics of Melora to druids.

In AD&D, if there are clerics of Ehlonna - who are, in virtue of that, presumably bearers of truth about nature - then what is the role of druids and the "old faith"? They must be wrong!

MUs only further complicate the matter, because while their core tropes (robes, books, alembics) suggest late mediaveal/early modern alchemist types, their magic also overlaps heavily with druids, because they also play the "witch"/pagan role in the gameworld which, in part, is a way of looking at the rural aspects of religion and spirituality through the urban/cosmopolitan lens. Subsequent developments in the game take this further - eg in OA wu jen are a MU subclass but many of their spells and their focus on elements overlaps with druids; in 4e we have witch as a subclass of wizard; etc.

I think if druids had been treated as a version of MU rather than as a deviant or less form of cleric; if lizardmen and gnolls had druidic religious/cultural leaders rather than the second-tier "shamans" and "witchdoctors"; if 4e had not drawn a sharp distinction between primal and arcane power sources (eg wizards could be "primal" + literacty); then at least this aspect of D&D might have fewer problems.

 

[Hussar]

Whether it is being used negatively or positively, it seems useful here. I understand instantly what is meant by lizard folks being primitive or hill giants being primitive.

But, do you not see the issue?

When the term is being borrowed (which is fine) and ONLY applied in negative light, then it becomes a problem.

Do people really not understand this? There is nothing wrong with borrowing a word into a language. Cognates happen all the time. Heck, Katana is a cognate and there's nothing wrong with using the word Katana to describe a type of sword. However, if you present a Katana as the ultimate in swordcraft, produced by the epitome of human culture to which all other cultures, particularly neighboring cultures, fall far behind in place in terms of culture and civilization and only a proper, civilized culture could produce a katana and a samurai, then, well, there's some problems here.

In the same way, D&D presents shaman as only coming from EVIL, SAVAGE, primitive cultures filled with BELOW INTELLIGENCE beings that ravage and pillage, then there is a problem. The "primitive" part isn't the problem. The fact that @Sacrosanct had to misquote me and cut off the important bits in order to try to show that I was being racist kinda proves my point.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

When the term is being borrowed (which is fine) and ONLY applied in negative light, then it becomes a problem.

I have been thinking about saying something like that too. You have language A and language B. The speakers of language B take word or phrase and add it to their language in a way that the addition enriches it. That is a good thing. But the opposite, where a word or phrase is taken by speakers of language B and then used as a caricature or stereotype or slur of the speakers of language A, is very bad. English has done both for hundreds of years and American English is even more of a melting pot language.

 

[ccs]

5e uses the word "primitive" six times in the core rules. Five usages are negative, one is neutral. Emphasis mine.

PHB:
"In these yellowed pages were tales of bold heroes, strange and fierce animals, mighty primitive gods, and a magic that was part and fabric of that distant land."* (This is the neutral one.)
"[T]he Dark Six are the primitive, bloody, and cruel gods who offer a dissenting voice."

MM:
"Primitive. Hill giants" congregate in "steadings built of rough timber or in clusters of well-defended mud-and-wattle huts... Their weapons are uprooted trees and rocks pulled from the earth". They wear "crude animal skins... poorly stitched together with hair and leather thongs."
"Whether these tall, gaunt creatures [the ancestors of githyanki and githzerai] were peaceful or savage, cultured or primitive before the mind flayers enslaved and changed them, none can say."
"Lizardfolk are primitive reptilian humanoids that lurk in the swamps and jungles of the world."
"Primitive Wanderers. Ogres clothe themselves in animal pelts and uproot trees for use as crude tools and weapons."

Hill giants have INT 5 and are chaotic evil. They are "raging bullies", "selfish, dimwitted brutes" whose "laziness and dullness would long ago have spelled their end if not for their formidable size and strength".
Lizardfolk have INT 7. They eat other humanoids and also sacrifice them to their god.
Ogres have INT 5 and are chaotic evil. They possess "Legendary Stupidity. Few ogres can count to ten, even with their fingers in front of them." They are "lazy of mind", "greedy" (in the sense of avaricious), "gluttons", and have "furious tempers".

EDIT: *This is a quotation from Elaine Cunningham's Forgotten Realms novel, Daughter of the Drow, which may explain the different usage.

So you're arguing that I shouldn't describe some fictional thing/being as being primitive? Because???

 

[Hussar]

So you're arguing that I shouldn't describe some fictional thing/being as being primitive? Because???

NO.

You shouldn't describe only evil, savage, stupid things as primitive.

See the difference?

Why do people insist on cherry picking and not seeing the whole?

For S&G, show me three races in the Monster Manual that are Good, peaceful, and highly intelligent that are described as primitive.

 

[Aldarc]

Why do people insist on cherry picking and not seeing the whole?

It’s easier to score a rhetorical slam dunk on a weaker, faked position than it is to critically engage the real one.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, sheesh, someone in this thread has already blocked me apparently, for a position I never even remotely took, and even after several other people pointed out that I never took that position, I've yet to see any back pedaling or retraction.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with the word shaman. There's nothing wrong with the word primitive. You can't pull things out of context and then pretend that there is no issue.