Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Ruin Explorer]

It can also be seen as cultural erasure of any reference to shamans in the core books and whitewashing all non-European shamans to become pseudo-European Celts instead of using some mechanical elements of D&D druids to support shamanic concepts being used in D&D games.

Have "shamanic concepts" which are connected to real-world cultures ever been used in D&D?

For it to be "cultural erasure", that would necessarily have to have been the case.

If I look at various "Shaman" classes through the editions, there's very little consistency. Typically "spirits" are involved, but the actual class/kit/prc etc. can range from anything from basically a berserker to an extremely high-fantasy character who is constantly summoning actual solid spirit-beings which smash people's faces in, to basically just a synonym for another divine or even arcane caster, and their cultural trappings, in my experience, have typically been skin-deep at most.

It's a bit like the Shaman class in World of Warcraft, where it's got some vague trappings which kinda sorta slightly maybe tie it to Native American ideas (sorta kinda) but it's basically just "elemental magic dude", with the most "Shaman" thing it does being putting down "totems" (let's not even get into that).

It's not Druids in D&D past 2E are even vaguely related to even nonsensical New Age takes on what a Druid is, either. They're just Nature Magic Class with bonus Shapeshifting. That shapeshifting itself is un-Druidic is we look at Celtic and other ideas of Druids. There's a lot of shapeshifting in Celtic myth (hell, in virtually all myth, world-wide), but it's not Druids doing it, by and large. If anything Shamans should be the shapeshifters - a lot of cultures who the West has called the holy people/wise people of "Shamans" have strong traditions of shapeshifting associated with those people.

So I kind of question this premise here. If D&D had consistently used real-world stuff in Shamans, or had a consistent idea of what "Shamans" could do, and if 5E Druids didn't actually match what Shamans can do in a lot of myth BETTER than what Druids can do, I think you'd have a better point. Maybe we should just rename Druid to Shaman and call it a day.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not Druids in D&D past 2E are even vaguely related to even nonsensical New Age takes on what a Druid is, either. They're just Nature Magic Class with bonus Shapeshifting. That shapeshifting itself is un-Druidic is we look at Celtic and other ideas of Druids. There's a lot of shapeshifting in Celtic myth (hell, in virtually all myth, world-wide), but it's not Druids doing it, by and large. If anything Shamans should be the shapeshifters - a lot of cultures who the West has called the holy people/wise people of "Shamans" have strong traditions of shapeshifting associated with those people.

So I kind of question this premise here. If D&D had consistently used real-world stuff in Shamans, or had a consistent idea of what "Shamans" could do, and if 5E Druids didn't actually match what Shamans can do in a lot of myth BETTER than what Druids can do, I think you'd have a better point. Maybe we should just rename Druid to Shaman and call it a day.

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. The point about shapeshifting influenced my decision too.

 

[Doug McCrae]

So alignment is a value judgment, but not about human history, and the Druid and Cleric reference human history, but fail to make a value judgment. Your examples don't apply to what Sadras said.

1e PHB: "[Druids] are the only absolute neutrals... viewing good and evil, law and chaos, as balancing forces of nature which are necessary for the continuation of all things."
2e PHB: "Clerics are generally good"

The paladin class is also relevant.

2e PHB: "Throughout legend and history there are many heroes who could be called paladins: Roland and the 12 Peers of Charlemagne, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, and Sir Galahad are all examples of the class... A paladin must be lawful good in alignment"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. The point about shapeshifting influenced my decision too.

Yeah after typing all that I had a horrible feeling that if I read back I'd find that out, sorry lol! But hey nice to know we came to similar conclusions!

 

[SkidAce]

Look this up and see what you think...

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's a bit like the Shaman class in World of Warcraft, where it's got some vague trappings which kinda sorta slightly maybe tie it to Native American ideas (sorta kinda) but it's basically just "elemental magic dude", with the most "Shaman" thing it does being putting down "totems" (let's not even get into that).

The class's powers might not have had strong associations but the only races that could be shamans in Classic WoW - tauren, trolls, orcs - did, especially the first two. Tauren had Native American stylings, trolls were Caribbean. Orcs seemed to be black, though it wasn't as clear-cut.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Look this up and see what you think...

View attachment 124130

I had that book. I remember one of my friends really liking it. I can't say I remember the contents very well.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The class's powers might not have had strong associations but the only races that could be shamans in Classic WoW - tauren, trolls, orcs - did, especially the first two. Tauren had Native American stylings, trolls were Caribbean. Orcs seemed to be black, though it wasn't as clear-cut.

Quite. Orcs in WoW (specifically, less so Warcraft 1-2, 3 it starts to get more complicated) have a certain amount of coding as being black as in specifically African-American (rather than African), particularly Thrall himself, but also have a lot of general Honorable Warrior Race (i.e. Klingon) and some Noble Savage coding (the sheer amout of Noble Savages in WoW is bloody staggering though - it's like hands up who is a "Savage" but not noble in some way? Okay I got Troggs, and I got Quillboars, and even Quillboars are questionable, and I have about two dozen races with their hands down). Whereas yes, Trolls actually had Jamaican-adjacent accents, referenced Reggae songs, and so on, and Tauren were and remain extremely Native American-themed.

There were always Shaman NPCs in-game who weren't just those races, though they strongly tended towards the "non-civilized" races, and they expanded Shamans to Dwarves (who are very civilized, but tightly connected to the elements) in the first expansion - The Burning Crusade, in 2007, and also to the civilized and "spiritual" Draenei.

Once the Goblins got in on the act (who are, if anything, unfortunate Jewish stereotypes, but there's a lot of general stereotypical "New Yorker" in there), with mechanical totems and so on, it was very hard to say there was any particular connection to any actual ideas about Shamanism.

Honestly I feel like WoW is flying under the radar and is kind of a ticking time bomb of eye-popping racial stereotypes, which Blizzard desperately bailed water on with BfA. But that's a whole other discussion.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Honestly I feel like WoW is flying under the radar and is kind of a ticking time bomb of eye-popping racial stereotypes, which Blizzard desperately bailed water on with BfA. But that's a whole other discussion.

WoW has a lot of terrible racist stereotypes. Trolls are pretty damn bad but nothing compared to the fact that they literally included a race of diminutive tribal monsters that speak pseudo-African gibberish and called them 'pygmies.' Yes, their orcs are pretty unproblematic as orcs go, but that probably was just an accident.

 

[Umbran]

You have a valid point, but the prohibition against appropriation even applies to groups higher on the socio-economic ladder.

I think you're focusing a bit on the economic side of the thing. In a social sense, Asians in the US still experience a great deal of marginalization.