Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[pemerton]

The Lizardfolk have Shamans instead of Druids because that's the the word that was closest to what the designer was trying to convey. Calling that same thing a Druid is different, as you this have all the baggage and expectations of the class, which the Shaman does not have in the entry, inluding different cultural baggage.

I posted about this upthread. Why does druid have to carry cultural baggage?

D&D can have monks who don't have to be East Asian. Who aren't Buddhist or Taoist but rather worship fictional gods like Xan Yae and hang out with characters whose nearest fictional analogues are Sir Lancelot and the Grey Mouser.

So why do druids have to carry any sort of cultural baggage? Especially because, being good shapechangers and not particularly good fortune-tellers, they actually seem to have more in common with shamanic religioius traditions than with the real-world druidic figures from whom they derive their name.

 

[Hussar]

@TheSword, I'm not sure I agree that this is frivolous, but, by the same token, I do agree that there are larger issues in the world and, yes, if nothing were to be changed here, I doubt the world would come to an end.

 

[Fenris-77]

I posted about this upthread. Why does druid have to carry cultural baggage?

D&D can have monks who don't have to be East Asian. Who aren't Buddhist or Taoist but rather worship fictional gods like Xan Yae and hang out with characters whose nearest fictional analogues are Sir Lancelot and the Grey Mouser.

So why do druids have to carry any sort of cultural baggage? Especially because, being good shapechangers and not particularly good fortune-tellers, they actually seem to have more in common with shamic religioius traditions than with the real-world druidic figures from whom they derive their name.

My main complaint there is actually the nature thing. Divorce from history aside, that's key to the Druid thing. In the case at hand it really doesnt match. The spell list does, but the class doesn't.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

@TheSword, I'm not sure I agree that this is frivolous, but, by the same token, I do agree that there are larger issues in the world and, yes, if nothing were to be changed here, I doubt the world would come to an end.

I agree. This is neither frivolous nor the biggest problem on the planet, especially at the current moment. I do, however, believe that these small changes are good and are changes that should be made. Progress is progress, even if it is small progress.

 

[Aldarc]

I have read your post. You’ve not demonstrated at all that use of the term shaman in D&D increases negative opinions of shamans, or causes them to experience any real racism, or that there is any notable group of shamans playing the game that would be reminded of real world racism in the game. Or that removing it would reduce these issues if they even existed before.

You’ve assumed that because real shamans exist that they are being harmed. I’m saying there’s no evidence of this at all.

This is quite different to the example of Orcs where a not insignificant number of people see the way monstrous humanoids are described and treated as reminding them of real world racism they experience. They have come forward and told us this.

Your example is a case of jumping on the bandwagon.

Do you have any evidence that the people understandably concerned about con artists using their cultural traditions to defraud people are also bothered by their use in rpg board and computer games?

Your post here is a good example about failing to critically read text. My primary is issue is less with shamans per se, but with how indigenous cultures have had the term "shaman" misapplied to their spiritual leaders, their cultural desire to resist that imposed label, and the harm that it causes them. My other issue, which is one that actual anthropologists are struggling with in their field, pertains to assumptions around shamanism, how language around it is framed and built in with cultural assumptions and spiritual hierarchies. If anthropologists see actual harm in how they discuss shamanism, do you think that TTRPGs, which borrowed many of these older assumptions, are free of (unintentional) foul play? Or is this a Tertullian argument to the effect of "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?"

From a language use standpoint, sure, whichever is more accurate. From a gaming standpoint no. It's a monster statblock, its not a player class. It uses the Druid spell list, that's it. That doesnt make it a druid, nor make druid a more appropriate term. So your use of the term 'explicitly have Druids' seems problematic, or at the very least quite incorrect.

If you were to make a PC version I might use Druid. The best you can argue from the MM entry though is that the designer thought the Druid spell list was the best match for a 'Shaman', which seems pretty trivially correct to me.

True that my statement "explicitly have druids" is not true. They also essentially wild shape, albeit limited to a crocodile. So if it walks looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and walks like a duck?* Nor does this spell list of druid spells really involve shamanistic activities, dealing with spiritual intermediaries. So what about the lizardfolk shaman makes it a shaman? If lizardfolk had 4e shamans rather than druids, then one definitely could point to a difference.

* It's probably a druid in disguise!

 

[Fenris-77]

Language is a funny thing I agree completely about the wide use of 'shaman' to describe a pretty disparate set of actual rules. However, when it comes to a fantasy race, the generality is a plus, not a minus. It doesnt actually describe any particular cultures religois figures and so serves pretty well as a generic term for world building. The issue the word has in practice dont follow it into fiction unless you also pull along some specific cultural material.

 

[Aldarc]

The assumed harm. Real harm has not been proven.

Considering your dubious stance on proving harm in the orcs/racism and OA thread, I am skeptical that you are arguing in good faith here either. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, however... There is no fruitful conversation to be had ever in engaging this line of argumentation with you.

You say that Shaman don’t exisit in d&d however there are lots of classes that don’t exist yet. In pathfinder and previous editions they do definitely exist and there is no reason why they couldn’t exist in the future.

IIRC they were represented across all sorts of player races and certainly not limited to Monstrous creatures.The Pathfinder shaman iconic is a dwarf I believe.

@Doug McCrae is familiar with shamans in 4e, so maybe you are arguing against a strawman position. Maybe just maybe, Doug, is referring to 5e where no Shaman class exists.

If we’re saying they should be removed from D&D, presumably they should also be removed from other games that do have the name as player class.That shaman don’t exist in the game yet as playable characters is not a reason to remove them from the d&d lexicon. Its a good reason to get them added to the game.

You say that you understand the argument is not about removing shamans, and yet you repeat this error of argumentation. Why? Baffling.

The issue is not so much regarding the absence or removal of the shamans in D&D, but, rather, with how shamans are framed by the game world fiction. I agree with both @pemerton and @Doug McCrae that the larger issue is about untangling the racist, colonial baggage that came with D&D's adoption of pulp tropes and outdated academic modes of thinking.

I do think that 4e did a better job of it. Sure it's "primal," but it deals with intermediary spirits of the material world, with their powers being called "evocations" because they evoked the spirits. 4e shamans did a better job of showing different depictions of their shamans. While there are a number of depictions of "primitive" shamans in 4e, there were also depictions of non-primitive ones too. This picture, for example, is of a deva shaman in 4e:

It's within the realm of "add, but don't subtract" regarding the depiction of shamans that others have mentioned before in this thread. 5e D&D, in many respects, also felt like it made several large steps backwards.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No one has sugested this.

What I have suggested - and I'm followng @Hussar's lead here, and drawing on @Doug McCrae's careful textual analyses - is reducing the reliance on pulp tropes.

Queen of the Black Coast is widely regarded as one of the best of REH's Conan stories. Maybe it is, But it's not an account of "real lie cutural practices" unless the cultural practice you have in mind is the racism of many of the pulp authors, and their use of racist tropes which have spread throughout the fantasy genre.

If someone wants to present a sympathetic account of lizardfolk religon, family life and so on, and include shamnic religous leaders as an element of that, that could be pretty interesting. But this is not what I understand the 5e MM to offer.

I don't really want to reopen the whole OA debate in this thread. But as @Aldard is certainly aware of, my opinion of OA is that it is a sincere and relatively respectful (not completely respectful and not completely successful even when respect is attempted) presentation of elements of East Asian folk stories and pseudo-historical tropes for FRPGing purposes.

The difference, for me, between OA and the discussion in this thread is that the former presents the non-European history and culture largely on its own terms, Whereas in this thread I am responding to aspecs of D&D and FRPGing more broadly that present non-European history and culture as "primitive" and "different" and objects of curiosity for an essentially European/contemporary North American perspecive.

Just as I don't think OA is all one-way traffic, nor is contemporary D&D - eg there's the monk PC sitting there in the core of the game. But I'm nevertheless satsfied that there is a meaningful difference between the two cases.

Yeah, sure, I agree with you. And with 'purging' I was referring to Hussar wanting to find-and-replace instances of word 'shaman' in the MM. But yeah, the solution is to have more respectful and positive mentions of shamanism (which is not necessarily the same as 'historically accurate,' nothing in D&D is.) And I don't think it needs some shaman class or subclass as an excuse to do so, this is lore we are talking about.

 

[TheSword]

Considering your dubious stance on proving harm in the orcs/racism and OA thread, I am skeptical that you are arguing in good faith here either. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, however... There is no fruitful conversation to be had ever in engaging this line of argumentation with you.

@Doug McCrae is familiar with shamans in 4e, so maybe you are arguing against a strawman position. Maybe just maybe, Doug, is referring to 5e where no Shaman class exists.

You say that you understand the argument is not about removing shamans, and yet you repeat this error of argumentation. Why? Baffling.

The issue is not so much regarding the absence or removal of the shamans in D&D, but, rather, with how shamans are framed by the game world fiction. I agree with both @pemerton and @Doug McCrae that the larger issue is about untangling the racist, colonial baggage that came with D&D's adoption of pulp tropes and outdated academic modes of thinking.

I do think that 4e did a better job of it. Sure it's "primal," but it deals with intermediary spirits of the material world, with their powers being called "evocations" because they evoked the spirits. 4e shamans did a better job of showing different depictions of their shamans. While there are a number of depictions of "primitive" shamans in 4e, there were also depictions of non-primitive ones too. This picture, for example, is of a deva shaman in 4e:

It's within the realm of "add, but don't subtract" regarding the depiction of shamans that others have mentioned before in this thread. 5e D&D, in many respects, also felt like it made several large steps backwards.

There may have been confusion. I have no challenge at all with people adding more versions of these Issues. Just with the suggestion of removing widely used terms from d&d.

A lot of the arguments I’ve seen are along the lines of ‘shaman’ are only ever monstrous races and it’s great to expand that beyond that. I fully subscribe that shaman can be a title though in game terms rather than a class.

 

[Aldarc]

A lot of the arguments I’ve seen are along the lines of ‘shaman’ are only ever monstrous races and it’s great to expand that beyond that. I fully subscribe that shaman can be a title though in game terms rather than a class.

I would not mind "shaman" being an in-game title if it better reflected what shamanism as a term is meant to describe rather than being synonymous with "Primitive Priest/Cleric" or "Half-baked Druid." Again, I think that 4e established a consistent tone with the Primal source as being derived from spirits. Druids, Shamans, Barbarians, and Wardens alike were shamanistic in that their powers derived from the spirits of the Material Plane. This was a mythic cosmology closer in affinity to the likes of RuneQuest, which also treats animism well.

Looking closer at the Lizardfolk spiritual practices, there is not really a sense that the shamans are not so much dealing with spirits, but, rather, with their deity Semaunya:

Victims are either cooked and eaten by the tribe, or are sacrificed to Semuanya, the lizardfolk god.

Lizardfolk respect and fear magic with a religious awe. Lizardfolk shamans lead their tribes, overseeing rites and ceremonies performed to honor Semuanya.

So is the term "shaman" actually meant to be a substitute for "primitive cleric" here rather than druids?