D&D General The Rakshasa and Genie Problem

[Blue Orange]

So here's a related question: if you wanted to use Japanese yokai, what would you do?

Japan has a quite colorful and varied collection of spirit beings, some quite bizarre (there's one that has an eyeball in its butt for instance). Now when it comes to cultural appropriation...does Japan really count as an 'oppressed nation' these days? They have no problem marketing their culture (Japanese anime is really popular these days, even more than Western, and makes money for its creators) and are among the wealthiest nations on the planet. There was persecution of Japanese-Americans in WW2 and before (Manzanar etc.), but the countries are more or less allies now; if they're afraid of anyone it's probably China.

Can you freely sprinkle kappa, tengu, and their relatives through your game?

 

[Blue]

One the the things about Dark Sun and Eberron that makes them an strong settings is how they redefine so many races so they are Eberron XX or Dark Sun XX, not just D&D generic. Which makes it surprising how Eberron left Rakshasa culture as-in, or at least used a lot of terms that feel like they are from that culture. Perhaps because the race was lightly used elsewhere so KB didn't feel a need to update, but that's just speculation.

The granularity for resolution of this is on a setting by setting basis (well, it could be smaller than that but let's not get ahead of ourselves). It seems the choices are:

• Culture X exists. Which is how they are part of that culture. That doesn't even mean it exists on the prime material plane, but there's more representation then just these creatures.
• Culture X does not exist. In which case they can't be part of it, and it's up to the DM/setting creator to work out a culture for them, just like Eberron and Dark Sun do.

An example of the second, in a campaign I am currently running the dwarves had been genocided and the drow were a created race to take their underground and mien the Bone of the Earth. The drow bear no resemblance to the Lolth-worshipping spider obsessed society of cruelty that was the default drow until recently. They are laid back and a bit hedonistic, but otherwise part of the culture of the Imperium that created them.

 

[Umbran]

And of course, my story was certainly full of stereotypes and cultural problems, and I'm sure that I should today be crucified for that horrible cultural (mis-)appropriation (but, thankfully, I'm European ). But don't assume that the people that some might feel righteous about feel that way at all, it was simply not true, it was actually the complete opposite.

Your personal experience doesn't settle the question, what with it being an anecdote, and not data.

And, honestly, a European, visiting Asia, really doesn't speak to what an American publisher predominantly selling into the American market ought to be doing at all.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

So, this is an issue that I've been thinking about lately, which I first thought of in light of some recent threads of similar topic, and I'm not sure what the solution is. It's pretty unique to D&D, but can come from any fantasy work that borrows its creatures from a lot of different cultures, folklore, and mythologies. The problem that I noticed is in a lot of D&D worlds, especially ones that don't have Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of the cultures that the creatures were borrowed from in the first place, tend to basically evolve into those Fantasy Counterpart Cultures. And this can be a problem, and I think one of the most apparent examples is actually from Eberron: the Carrion Tribes of the Demon Wastes, which are largely populated by Rakshasa.

D&D "borrowed" Rakshasa from Hindu and Buddhist mythologies (they're quite different from D&D Rakshasa), which have been major religions in India and surrounding areas for millennia. And I have no problem with borrowing monsters from other cultures. Giants, Dwarves, and Elves come from Norse Mythology, Satyrs, Nymphs, Minotaurs, Harpies, and Centaurs come from Greek Mythology, Fomorians, most Fey, and Banshee come from Celtic Mythology, Griffons and Sphynxes come from Egyptian Mythology, and I could go on and on. Borrowing monsters, fantasy races, and other aspects of other culture's mythologies and folklore is not the problem. The problem is when the monsters become stand-ins for those peoples in the fantasy worlds. I've mostly noticed this happen to Rakshasa and Genies, but I'm sure it's also happened to other creatures.

And on some level, it makes sense that the creatures that came from other cultures would have the same base culture, especially if they're fairly similar to humanoids. The mythologies and folklore that they came from would probably treat fantasy people as their base culture when writing about them. But there's also examples that don't follow this at all (the Courts of the Feywild don't tend to have Irish stereotypes with them from what I've noticed, Dwarves aren't Vikings, etc), so it clearly isn't a rule. D&D Rakshasas could easily just be another anthropomorphic animal character race (well, maybe then they'd be called Rakasta) while Genies could just be magic people that are trapped in bottles/lamps. They don't necessarily have to have the same culture (or a stereotyped version of it) as the culture they were drawn from. I honestly don't know which is better, which is why I'm creating this thread. For me it feels uncomfortable to have Rakshasa and Genies be fantasy-counterpart Middle-Eastern/Indian people, but I also don't know if just taking the monsters out of their cultural context is cultural appropriation. Is it better to just not use the creatures if you don't have a Fantasy-Counterpart in your world of that culture in the first place? Maybe it would be better to just keep them in Al-Qadim and similar areas of certain D&D worlds instead of having them assumed to exist in most D&D worlds (Eberron, for example)? I honestly do not know the answer, and all of these answers seem a bit uncomfortable to me (at least at the moment).

Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts?

(I don't want to mark this thread as a (+) thread, because debating the different options and discussing which would be best is the point of this thread, but I do want to keep the spirit. Please, don't threadcrap or troll. Please be sincere in your questioning and not adverse to the base premise. If you don't think these kinds of discussions are necessary or important, just don't participate.)

You over thinking things, they aren't stand ins, they simply borrow a few cultural elements, but far from all.

 

[Lyxen]

Your personal experience doesn't settle the question, what with it being an anecdote, and not data.

And I happen to think that at least, it IS data rather than just personal feelings. At least, I know what I'm speaking about when speaking about rakshasa and some of the concerned people's feelings.

And, honestly, a European, visiting Asia, really doesn't speak to what an American publisher predominantly selling into the American market ought to be doing at all.

And here I thought that we were all citizens of the world united by playing D&D, just to find that it's an American game made for Americans. How inclusive, maybe it should be somewhere in the site's policy ? Nonetheless, I feel that is quite a bit of discrimination.

 

[Lyxen]

Nope. Never saw a dwarf speak with a scottish accent before... Warcraft! And it got even more ingrained with World of Warcraft. Personally, before Warcraft and WoW, my dwarves usually had a deep bariton voice. I think it fits them a lot more. (Even their women have deep bariton voices by the way. That is just how I see them).

You're right, I had forgotten about Warcraft, still, see here:

• One particular influence on D&D was Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), which featured the dwarf Hugi that spoke with a distinct Scottish accent
• Early D&D and Warhammer Fantasy conceptions tended to lean more towards mythical Norse trappings, possibly in relation to dwarves as smiths in popolar depictions of Norse mythology; the AD&D 2nd ed. Monstrous Manual (1993) for example depicts one of them with a horned helmet, which was fairly common in that edition. It should be emphasized that even at that point, D&D had a number of different settings, each with their own often distinct approach to dwarves and dwarven culture - and D&D wasn't the only fantasy game with dwarves. For example, Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition (1987) included in addition to the Tolkienesque Dwarfs both Norse Dwarfs (who were explicitly based on Scandinavian cultures), and Chaos Dwarfs (mutants) - in 4th edition (1994) the Chaos Dwarfs were reimagined with a pseudo-Sumerian culture and trappings.

These were my memories for the "viking dwarves".

 

[Helldritch]

Your personal experience doesn't settle the question, what with it being an anecdote, and not data.

And, honestly, a European, visiting Asia, really doesn't speak to what an American publisher predominantly selling into the American market ought to be doing at all.

Strange how the anecdotal aspect you criticize happened to one of my friend for the exact same reasons in his travel. The only Indian I knew felt the same (I was at the university back then) and he was surprised that I knew quite a bit about his culture because of D&D and he started to play with me for his last year in Canada. He was studying engineering and he went back to India shortly afterward.

And I got the same reactions from Muslims (Maroc and Tunis). I do think people are actually happy when their culture is incorporated with respect in our game. It helps us understand them better. It might not be perfect, but perfection is not of this world and most people are much more tolerant than what a lot of people actually think.

 

[Helldritch]

You're right, I had forgotten about Warcraft, still, see here:

• One particular influence on D&D was Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), which featured the dwarf Hugi that spoke with a distinct Scottish accent
• Early D&D and Warhammer Fantasy conceptions tended to lean more towards mythical Norse trappings, possibly in relation to dwarves as smiths in popolar depictions of Norse mythology; the AD&D 2nd ed. Monstrous Manual (1993) for example depicts one of them with a horned helmet, which was fairly common in that edition. It should be emphasized that even at that point, D&D had a number of different settings, each with their own often distinct approach to dwarves and dwarven culture - and D&D wasn't the only fantasy game with dwarves. For example, Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition (1987) included in addition to the Tolkienesque Dwarfs both Norse Dwarfs (who were explicitly based on Scandinavian cultures), and Chaos Dwarfs (mutants) - in 4th edition (1994) the Chaos Dwarfs were reimagined with a pseudo-Sumerian culture and trappings.

These were my memories for the "viking dwarves".

Thank you for these. I never read Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. I'll try to get my hands on a copy ASAP.
As for Warhammer, I did play it a bit but I much more prefered the 40K dystopian universe. I played the Space Hulks boardgame with friends and it was a blast. The RPG aspect of these games were not really my cup of tea but it was an interesting read in the 80's though I never read the 2nd edition.

 

[Irlo]

You over thinking things, they aren't stand ins, they simply borrow a few cultural elements, but far from all.

I think the OP has a good point. If in a campaign the only place those few cultural elements appear are in association with a particular monster, then it's a stand-in (and a two-dimensional stand-in at that). The questions at hand are 1) how and when to put those cultural elements into context; and 2) should we divorce those cultural elements from the creatures entirely?

 

[Krachek]

The thread open a kind of pandora box.
And even then, my first sentence refer to a culture that’s not mine!
For now I don’t think Wotc will take the path of cleaning the MM of all cultural references.
Maybe they will be forced to in the future, expectations are changing rapidly on the subject.