Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Doug McCrae]

Whether Celtic culture still exists is open to argument. What's not open to argument is that that culture no longer has magico-religious specialists called druids.

 

[Sadras]

Whether Celtic culture still exists is open to argument. What's not open to argument is that that culture no longer has magico-religious specialists called druids.

And the Japanese no longer have Samurais.
Also speaking of dead cultures - MANY already dead cultures had shamans. What is to say D&D cannot borrow the shaman from one of them and not the ones that are currently active?

 

[Aldarc]

Probably most of the Celtic-descended peoples would identify their religion as Christian or non-religious. It was thoroughly Romanized and then Christianized.

 

[Fenris-77]

The Japanese no longer have an armor-wearing, katana-wielding warrior caste, but that's not the point. The connections between the samurai and modern japanese culture are direct and clear. The connections between the Celtic culture that contained the Druids and modern cultures that identify as 'Celtic' are not. If someone wants to be offended that I think they aren't 'Celtic' the same way the Japanese are still Japanese I'm fine with that. The differences between the two examples at hand are obvious enough that I don't think it's controversial.

 

[HorusArisen]

Sorry, having a little trouble parsing that. Can you clean up the grammar a bit because I'm not really sure what this says.

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It's funny though. If WotC had just quietly replaced the word "shaman" in the books with "druid", no one would have noticed, it wouldn't have been a problem, and it would have resolved all of this.

Sorry, but, we don't have to worry about cultural appropriation from dead people. The copyright on culture expires when the culture does. So, using druid is pretty much perfectly fine, since, well, there aren't any druids anymore. Yes, there are modern people who are trying to recreate druidic beliefs, I'm sure. But, again, they have no more right to the culture than anyone else.

You'd think we were advocating massive changes. 9 words. Out of all the books in 5e, 9 words need to be changed. And, that's apparently a problem. Good grief.

I’m a Celt and maybe I’m offended you’re fantasy pissing all over my ancestors?

Or maybe I’m a grown up and realise it’s a game.

 

[Maxperson]

It also answers @Voadam's point about the neutrality of stone giants, lizardfolk, and quaggoths - all of them have the wrong alignment by the 5e PHB definition. Even if we accept their alignments, stone giants and lizardfolk have very strange belief systems that permit actions we'd consider to be immoral. The shamanic religious practices of lizardfolk and quaggoths also involve immoral actions - devouring and sacrificing sentient beings, and the ritual slaughter of a failed leader followed by cannibalism.

What about all the good Elven, Dwarven, Halfling, Human, Dragonborn, Tiefling, Half-Orc, Gnome and Half-Elf shamans who are not primitive and do not engage in the above activities? Do they not count?

 

[Campbell]

When it comes to the way we portray shamanism in games I think there is a fundamental difference from how we portray Druids - our modern understanding of indigenous cultures is shaped by that portrayal. The way we view Irish people or Scots (speaking as one) is not shaped by portrayals of Druids in a meaningful way. Also while being wildly historically inaccurate D&D Druids do not reinforce any negative stereotypes about Scots.

 

[Maxperson]

Sorry, but, we don't have to worry about cultural appropriation from dead people. The copyright on culture expires when the culture does. So, using druid is pretty much perfectly fine, since, well, there aren't any druids anymore. Yes, there are modern people who are trying to recreate druidic beliefs, I'm sure. But, again, they have no more right to the culture than anyone else.

So a culture that loses something of itself can't go back and regain it? Once it's gone it's up for grabs by anyone who comes along?

 

[Maxperson]

When it comes to the way we portray shamanism in games I think there is a fundamental difference from how we portray Druids - our modern understanding of indigenous cultures is shaped by that portrayal. The way we view Irish people or Scots (speaking as one) is not shaped by portrayals of Druids in a meaningful way. Also while being wildly historically inaccurate D&D Druids do not reinforce any negative stereotypes about Scots.

The way we view any peoples with Shamans and Samurai is also not shaped in any meaningful way by D&D. Rational people don't take a fantasy game and then try to apply it to the real world.

 

[Fenris-77]

So a culture that loses something of itself can't go back and regain it? Once it's gone it's up for grabs by anyone who comes along?

When you say 'culture', what exactly do you mean? One the one hand you have the Japanese example, and on the other you have the Celtic example. At what level of remove are you happy saying that two cultures are still contiguous enough to make this argument? That's really the heart of the disagreement here IMO.