Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Crimson Longinus]

Why are people arguing about some ancient AD&D source book? What does it matter now? I am much more concerned about the stuff the currently print.

 

[pemerton]

Why are people arguing about some ancient AD&D source book? What does it matter now? I am much more concerned about the stuff the currently print.

I'm posting about the AD&D MM for two (related) reasons.

(1) It shows us something about the history of the game. This is where the current material was derived from.

(2) As @Hussar posted not too far upthread, unpacking this history shows that the current stuff isn't just "what FRPG material is" - a genre to be taken at face value. It has a history.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I don't think @pemerton and me are arguing about AD&D 1e. I'd say we're in pretty much total agreement!

 

[Doug McCrae]

I talk about 1e because:

1) I find the history of D&D interesting*.
2) Previous editions are probably the most important sources for the current edition. You can't understand it without reference to them.
3) Many posters on ENWorld prefer older editions, including 1e.
4) It's particularly relevant to this thread topic because there are shamans in the 1e core rules (the DMG).

*To give an example of the depth of my madness extent of my interest, this afternoon I've been reading Jerry Todd and the Whispering Mummy (1923) because Gary Gygax really liked it when he was a kid.

 

[Umbran]

Pemerton you are kind of ...

Mod Note:

Bedrockgames you are kind of done in this thread. That's not acceptable.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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.

The Suel are part of the Lost Race genre started by H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, which was based on the racist (and then colonialist) idea that Great Zimbabwe wasn't built by black people but by light-skinned Phoenicians. The Mound Builders Myth in the US was very similar.

Daniel Tangri, Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy (1990):
"Haggard believed that the local Bantu were too primitive to have produced anything monumental, and opted in favor of Mediterranean colonists."
"This message [proposed by Cecil Rhodes and his employees] was simple; Phoenicia had once been a great imperial power in southern Africa, much in the same way as Britain was in the nineteenth century. Britain, then, was legally and morally entitled to colonize the region, as it was the successor of Phoenicia."

President Andrew Jackson, second annual address to Congress (1830):
"In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes."

The World of Greyhawk (1980):
"The humanoid bands of the Pomarj, particularly kobolds, orcs, and gnolls, seem to love this forest [Suss], and many hundreds are known to dwell within its depths... A lost, ruined city of the Old Suloise is said to be hidden somewhere in the Suss forest"

 

[Olrox17]

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.

Well, as I said before, I was aware of the "kingdoms" divide in the UK. I was not aware of the existence of a strong londoner identity, but given you're an actual londoner, I'll obviously trust you on this matter.

And yes, no one alive today in Italy has experienced first hand the several different political and cultural entities that used to exist in our peninsula. Regional cultures are nowhere as pronounced and important as they were 50 years ago, or 100 years ago: radio, TV, and rising literacy among the population all contributed to a gradual homogenization.
But trust me on this: regional cultures here are still alive and well. Slightly more than 150 years of unity under Italy's flag...not enough time to kill them yet.

 

[5atbu]

IMHO this is all a sideshow.
It's about who has the economic power, before long they have all the power.
Or someone seizes it off them.

 

[Hussar]

Again, my issue with this kind of handwringing over details like this, is it seems to me it is only going to lead people to stifle their creativity, and it really produces a humorless approach to gaming and game design, that I don't think is leading us anywhere better or even interesting.

And yet, you cannot even bother to READ what we're talking about. How can you come to conclusions like this without actually bothering to educate yourself about the issue? It seems that you have come to a conclusion first and are now just looking to cherry pick things that support that conclusion.

Because if removing 7 words from the MM is going to "stifle their creativity", well, I'm thinking you've never actually met an editor.

 

[Hussar]

Why are people talking about 1e D&D?

5e D&D tribesmen entry:

Lowest Int of ALL NPC's. Nothing is as stupid as a tribesman.
Only 3 other NPC's have a lower wisdom. Of all the NPC's in the Monster Manual only 3 are less aware of their surroundings than tribesmen.

Umm, no one has a problem with this?

So, Shaman are specifically defined as druids for savage, primitive, evil races. Tribal people are specifically defined as less intelligent THAN AN AVERAGE COMMONER.

And this is all perfectly acceptable?