Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Bedrockgames]

The PCs are adventurers living in the Free City of Greyhawk. They, together with many other adventurers, are constantly raiding Monstertown, a relatively peaceful underground city inhabited by monsters, which adventurers call a dungeon. The Mayor of Greyhawk reaches an agreement with the Mayor of Monstertown to ban adventurers. In order to get the ban lifted the PCs disguise themselves as monsters and raid Greyhawk.​

Fair enough, but not everything needs to be a commentary on something. I think one danger you run with Satire is the message can overpower the enjoyment, fun and quality of the content. It is sort of like how some shows rely exclusively on messaging, and after a while it can become a matter of liking something simply because you agree with the social message of it (rather than genuinely finding it entertaining). Not saying this example is bad. Just when message becomes the most important thing, I start to lose interest in what people are making (often times the books, movies and games I have enjoyed the most, were ones where I've disagreed with the underlying message)

 

[Maxperson]

Conan would like to have a word... But, again, in 5e, why is a Tribal Warrior the LEAST INTELLIGENT of all the NPC's? Even the Beserker is more intelligent. Least intelligent and, only the Thug, Bandit and Commoner have less Wisdom (and none of them have an actual penalty). Umm, that's pretty much exactly from 19th century concepts and 20th century pulps.

You have a point with the intelligence score, but Commoners being far and away the largest number of humans translates into, "...and, only the vast majority of humans have less Wisdom." That's hardly a compelling complaint.

 

[Sadras]

I do not think I would stat a generic tribesman. A tribe is a way of organizing politically. A tribe is just a collection of kinship groups (clans or lineages) that have loosely joined together. That a society is organized by tribes does not really tell us anything meaningful about how they subsist, what their culture values, skillsets, or belief systems.

I would need to know more before putting stats to paper. I do not consider that sort of overly generic stuff to be worth the paper it is written on.

Bold emphasis mine. Isn't that the DM's work?
The game cannot provide every variation for culture values, skillsets or belief systems.
It provides basic stats for a generic tribe - the rest falls under the work load of the DM.

Just to add this specific avenue of discussion was not really my point with my query to @pemerton.

 

[pemerton]

In World of Greyhawk (1980) it seems that Gary Gygax tries to push back against the racism in the MM tribesman entry when he makes some of the Amedio Jungle "tribes of cannibal savages... purportedly of Suloise extraction or admixture". The 1983 boxed set reveals that "[t]he Suel race is very fair-skinned, some being almost albino. They have light red, yellow, blond, or platinum blonde hair." However "[t]hose bands that migrated into the vast Amedio Jungle and Hepmonaland are so altered as to be no longer typical of the race; they are tan to brown with heavy freckling."

One could interpret World of Greyhawk as saying 'white people are cannibals too' but it could also be interpreted as 'interbreeding with black people has turned white people into cannibals', so the attempted push back (if that's what it is) is not very successful.

Slightly off-topic, but while I've played a lot in GH I've never been into the Vikings and Black people and monastic people of the plateau (ie East Asians) are really Suel. I've just ignored that bit of lore. And then tried also to dial back some of the pulpiness of the tropical forests and the Scarlet Brotherhood.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

londoner is a culture born from within the kingdom of England. It originated from within the kingdom, and never existed outside of it.

Sure, but that doesn't mean as much as you think, in the UK at least. Basically the UK is seen as having five "regions" - England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland (and lots of British people think that shouldn't be in the UK, note), and London.

It doesn't really matter whether something existed 200 years ago or 4000 years ago, because humans don't live that long. Any identity you choose to have is an identity you choose to have. You say Italy is like the EU in that these states pre-existed it, sure, but none of the people pre-existed Italy. Completely unlike the EU. That's a big deal - when no-one alive actually remembers the "before times".

And by that logic, the UK/Britain is "like the EU", because all the nations pre-existed it. But London culture is massively distinct from "English" culture. To the point where a lot of "regionals" as we refer to to other English people, often find it almost alien (especially the older generation). And this happened pretty quickly - this is what I'm saying - these cultural shifts can happen very fast. It doesn't matter what the history of the place is, not really. People successful erase local histories, or they got forgotten, or they aren't relevant to a few generations, then they're all but gone.

You can see this with a lot of regional identities in the UK, which have massively declined over the last couple of centuries.

 

[pemerton]

Is this supported with anything? I always saw it as being more about the divide between rural and city life (especially when you consider REH was an American who grew up in rural Texas).

REH is not rural in any relevant sense. He got the names for Phoenix on the Sword from a copy of Plutarch's Lives (if I'm remembering rightly - I don't have access to Patrice Louinet's essays on the authoring of the Conan stories just at the moment). It hardly gets more "civilised" (ie literate and cosmopolitan) than that!

do we really need to be reading nefarious intentions if someone has a place on their map called French or Arabic?

I don't know, do we? You tell me.

What I posated - and what you quoted, so I assume you read it - was the following:

In the fiction are they speaking English? If not, everything is translated. So what exaactly is gained by translating further eg from Egnlish to the (pseudo-?)Chinese of wu jen? I'm not saying the answer is nothing is gained but I don't think the gains have been clearly articulated yet.​

JRRT had a theory of what was gained. He sets some of it out in Appendix F to LotR, and Shippey elaborates on it in The Road to Middle Earth. Part of his theory was how language, including the choice of which real language to translate imaginary languages into, and how to present the orthography of those imaginary languages, woudl establish a particular "feel".

Maybe a FRPG could do this too, but then if that the case it would be wrong to say - as you have posted in this thread - that other linguistic and related choices, such as those around the description of orcs, are meaningless in relation to the real world.

 

[Bedrockgames]

REH is not rural in any relevant sense. He got the names for Phoenix on the Sword from a copy of Plutarch's Lives (if I'm remembering rightly - I don't have access to Patrice Louinet's essays on the authoring of the Conan stories just at the moment). It hardly gets more "civilised" (ie literate and cosmopolitan) than that!

I

how does borrowing from Plutarch make him not rural. Rural people can read Plutarch. And REH was himself rural. And a running theme of Conan is the protagonists discomfort with city life. Again living in the US, the rural versus city theme seems pretty obvious, particularly given REH’s background

 

[Bedrockgames]

Maybe a FRPG could do this too, but then if that the case it would be wrong to say - as you have posted in this thread - that other linguistic and related choices, such as those around the description of orcs, are meaningless in relation to the real world.

Now you are just blending two points force a conclusion

 

[Bedrockgames]

Pemerton you are kind of an bleeeep

Mod Edit: Profane insult redacted. ~Umbran

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton, how would you describe tribesmen in stat terms? We are talking about human history here.

The game cannot provide every variation for culture values, skillsets or belief systems.
It provides basic stats for a generic tribe - the rest falls under the work load of the DM.

My issue with the example that you quoted is the specificity of the location of where tribesmen exist. They should be found within any environment and perhaps to mix it up - create matriarchies as well as patriarchies.

I don't know what you mean by a "generic tribe". Are you thinking of the Gauls who fought Caesar? The Lakota (and allies) who fought Custer? The Zulu's who fought Chelmsford? Some other people(s)?

I've focused on combat because D&D doesn't use stats for much else (eg it doesn't set out relationships or similar pscyho-social phenomena in stat terms). Ther stats (ability scores and hit points) of all the peoples I've just mentioned are the same as any other generic humans. And their ACs and damage can be worked out from their equipment.

And yet somehow some of us on these forums INSIST on only attributing this sense of tribesman idea to specific parts of the world. People need to get out of that mindset. The Sword Coast is filled with Uthgardt barbarian tribes (black hair, blue eyes). That is hardly 19th century pulp tropes.

Probably at the heart of my point was that AD&D's "geeneric tribesman" is a cannibal who keeps prisoners for food and lives in a grass, bamboo or mud hut. I don't know if that's part of Ed Greenwood's vision of his "Uthgardt barbarians". But my guess would be that they don't. And that their housing is not described as "huts". Given that "Uthgardt" seems like it's intended to evoke Nordic or Germanic peoeples my guess would be that they're not.