Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

Status
Not open for further replies.
And in its worst aspect? Slavery and oppression. So, yeah, there's that.
[...]
So, the devil is in that "without any bad consequences".

Absolutes (like "without ANY....") are rather extreme statements. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and we haven't haven't seen even ordinary proof on this.

I'm not making absolute statements. I'm making reasonable statements.

Is it your position that because tradition has good and bad instances, we should never follow tradition ? I'm preaching for following good traditions, if what those traditions are bringing to our life are to our liking and our collective improvement.

Or do you adhere only to good and untarnished concepts in the human experience ? Because nothing is all good or all bad. To desire only good and pure concepts is a fool's errand.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

You're conflating Elvis singing the blues with the racism of the era. His songs weren't what were keeping those black artists off of the air.



Again, your conflating individuals with the general racism of the era. They weren't personally keeping minorities out of business. Stephen King published his first book in 1974. Katherine Kurtz published hers in 1970, and Anne McCaffery published hers in 1974. Robert Howard started writing and publishing in 1936. Mary Shelley started hers in 1818.
When people are reseeding the ideas from these sources, the question becomes "how much fidelity is acceptable for new work?"

From a business standpoint, the answer is "Whatever sells best."

If you test market in liberal-dominant areas, you get liberal-dominant views. If you test market in conservative-dominant areas, you get conservative-dominant views.

WotC's test market is known to start with Seattle, where they are based, in the more liberal side of it, as well... Which puts it right about on par with much of Europe, but way out of sync with large portions of their largest market share - the US market.

They didn't transplant those ideas intact. D&D isn't a couple of steps removed from Lovecraft. It's about half a mile.
Yes and no, on Lovecraft... while it's true that D&D shows a stronger correlation to Moorcock's Eternal Champion series (plural), AD&D especially shows an influx of things ripped out of Lovecraft. The most obvious, the Illithids. But also the nature and goals of lower-planar entities are constantly reseeded with lovcraftian elements over the years.

AD&D 1E Appendix N also cites Lovecraft, and several other authors who are known to have been inspired by him. It's fairer to say that Lovecraft's stories are not intended to be replicated, but the horror elements HPL created are intended to be available for use in all editions, especially as some are now more known in their D&D flavor than in the HPL flavor.

I don't think ANY of HPL's ideas about race, gender, or government are meant to be in current editions, and I think Gygax really didn't think about those elements in his inclusions back in the day, either. He was, however, clearly a fan of the purple prose, in as much as he tries to emulate its style in the AD&D 1E rules...

So Lovecraft's influence is subtle but pervasive.
 

I'd be curious to see how many people posting in this thread actually know not just where the work shaman comes from, but how it entered our general lexicon, and how it came to apply to cultural examples well beyond the initial source. Without looking it up on Google first. :p
 

Yoinked and altered. They didn't transplant those ideas intact. D&D isn't a couple of steps removed from Lovecraft. It's about half a mile.
AD&D is hardly devoid of Lovecraftianisms. @Doug McCrae is the best documentor of this. Some examples that occur readily to me: cannibalistic tribesmen; the reference to half-orcs as "mongrels" and associated tropes of racial purity vs degeearation; kuo-toans are Lovecraftian fishmen who are in a state of racial degeneration suffering a tendency to "insanity"; of course body-horror and brain/mind-oriented tropes like aboleths, mind flayers etc.
 


I'd be curious to see how many people posting in this thread actually know not just where the work shaman comes from, but how it entered our general lexicon, and how it came to apply to cultural examples well beyond the initial source. Without looking it up on Google first. :p
"One Who Knows"

It's an old Manchurian word, I believe. And I didn't Google it, either. I knew quite a few practicing druids and Wiccans in my youth :P
 

If Shaman apply to any race of any alignment, then, why is that not reflected in the Monster manual or in any of the text regarding shaman?

Why are there no 5e elven shaman? Someone above mentioned orc and goblin shaman. Orcs are tribal, yet, their religious figures are clerics - complete with cleric spell list. And no mention of shaman whatsoever in the orc writeup. Goblins do not mention religious figures at all in the Monster Manual. Perhaps in Volo's?

Instead, shaman are limited to violent, primitive, and, yes, while they might not be given evil alignment, evil monsters. @Doug McCrae has very clearly outlined why these creatures would be called evil.

So, no, DRUIDS can be any alignment. The NPC writeup for druids says that some druids can serve as shaman, but, give no actual information beyond that. The only concrete examples of shaman in 5e (note, I'm specifying 5e D&D here yet again so that we don't hare off down the rabbit hole of dragging in other games) is directly connected to violent, primitive, evil races.

Hell, ok, take out evil. It doesn't really matter. People seem to think that if one minor point is "disproved" then nothing is right. Sure, we can keep the blinders on and only look at one thing at a time without bothering with things like context, but, that just leads to more rabbit holes. We have to maintain a broader view here - how are shaman presented in ALL OF 5e. Not just this paragraph or that line.
 

The main themes of D&D – heroic fantasy, Good vs Evil, zero to hero, flashy magic – are not Lovecraftian. But, to add to what @pemerton said, there are a number of Lovecraftian elements in the 5e D&D core rules:

The "Great Old One" warlock patron, the Far Realm, Tharizdun, cultists, ghouls, and amorphous tentacled monsters such as the gibbering mouther and yochlol demon. The roper comes directly from the TV show Space: 1999 but I don’t think it could’ve existed without Lovecraft.

The Yuan-ti probably derive partly from the Lovecraft story The Curse of Yig. This curse turns human beings into snakes. Yig is worshipped by Native Americans. The human ancestors of the Yuan-ti "worshiped serpents as totem animals" (5e MM). They live in Mesoamerican-style step pyramids. Robert E Howard’s serpent people and their almost human descendants in The Children of the Night and People of the Dark were likely also a source.

The Points of Light setting somewhat resembles Lovecraft’s cosmic horror but on a smaller scale. Most of the default 5e D&D world is monster-infested wilderness. "Wild regions abound. City-states, confederacies, and kingdoms of various sizes dot the landscape, but beyond their borders the wilds crowd in. People know the area they live in well... but few know what lies beyond the mountains or in the depths of the great forest" (5e DMG).

Likewise in Lovecraft's Mythos stories the distant past, the far future, space, other dimensions, the sea deeps, and parts of rural New England, among other places, are all the realm of monsters. "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." (The Call of Cthulhu). In D&D otoh the PCs are meant to voyage far - that's the game!

5e PHB (emphasis mine):

THE GREAT OLD ONE​
Your patron is a mysterious entity whose nature is utterly foreign to the fabric of reality. It might come from the Far Realm, the space beyond reality, or it could be one of the elder gods known only in legends. Its motives are incomprehensible to mortals, and its knowledge so immense and ancient that even the greatest libraries pale in comparison to the vast secrets it holds. The Great Old One might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you, but the secrets you have learned allow you to draw your magic from it.​
Entities of this type include Ghaunadar, called That Which Lurks; Tharizdun, the Chained God; Dendar, the Night Serpent; Zargon, the Returner; Great Cthulhu; and other unfathomable beings.​

5e DMG:

THE FAR REALM​
The Far Realm is outside the known multiverse. In fact, it might be an entirely separate universe with its own physical and magical laws. Where stray energies from the Far Realm leak onto another plane, matter is warped into alien shapes that defy understandable geometry and biology. Aberrations such as mind flayers and beholders are either from this plane or shaped by its strange influence.​
The entities that abide in the Far Realm itself are too alien for a normal mind to accept without strain. Titanic creatures swim through nothingness there, and unspeakable things whisper awful truths to those who dare listen. For mortals, knowledge of the Far Realm is a struggle of the mind to overcome the boundaries of matter, space, and sanity. Some warlocks embrace this struggle by forming pacts with entities there. Anyone who has seen the Far Realm mutters about eyes, tentacles, and horror.​
 
Last edited:

"One Who Knows"

It's an old Manchurian word, I believe. And I didn't Google it, either. I knew quite a few practicing druids and Wiccans in my youth :p
It's a cognate of the Tungus verb saman, meaning 'to know'. So you're close. That was only half the question though. :p
 

Yes and no, on Lovecraft... while it's true that D&D shows a stronger correlation to Moorcock's Eternal Champion series (plural), AD&D especially shows an influx of things ripped out of Lovecraft. The most obvious, the Illithids. But also the nature and goals of lower-planar entities are constantly reseeded with lovcraftian elements over the years.

AD&D 1E Appendix N also cites Lovecraft, and several other authors who are known to have been inspired by him. It's fairer to say that Lovecraft's stories are not intended to be replicated, but the horror elements HPL created are intended to be available for use in all editions, especially as some are now more known in their D&D flavor than in the HPL flavor.

I don't think ANY of HPL's ideas about race, gender, or government are meant to be in current editions, and I think Gygax really didn't think about those elements in his inclusions back in the day, either. He was, however, clearly a fan of the purple prose, in as much as he tries to emulate its style in the AD&D 1E rules...

So Lovecraft's influence is subtle but pervasive.

Inspiration is different from pulling straight from Lovecraft's books without making changes. While There are things that are superficially Lovecraftian, like Mind Flayers, they don't have anything like the kind of horror feel of Lovecraft's writings. WotC has actually put much more of Lovecraft into the game with their Old Ones and outsider stuff, which they introduced in 3e than Gygax had. Just look at the Alienist from the Complete Arcane.


AD&D is hardly devoid of Lovecraftianisms. @Doug McCrae is the best documentor of this. Some examples that occur readily to me: cannibalistic tribesmen; the reference to half-orcs as "mongrels" and associated tropes of racial purity vs degeearation; kuo-toans are Lovecraftian fishmen who are in a state of racial degeneration suffering a tendency to "insanity"; of course body-horror and brain/mind-oriented tropes like aboleths, mind flayers etc.

Or maybe cannibalistic tribesman were inspired by tribesmen from the Amazon. Mongrels from dogs where it meant mixed breed. Degenerate beings are not purely Lovecraftian, either. The humans in the future from the book The Time Machine were degenerate. Did Lovecraft have some influence? Absolutely. It's not as strong as you guys want to make it out to be, though.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.
Remove ads

Top