D&D General The Rakshasa and Genie Problem

[Justice and Rule]

You may disagree, and that is fine. But I don't think it is a yarn at all. you see this on this very forum, on twitter, on social media, in posts and articles about gaming and in products themselves. It is definitely getting harder and more uncomfortable for people to engage cultural elements outside their own in gaming. Maybe you are enjoying the new parameters enough and understand them well enough, that it doesn't bother you, that you feel it elevates your creativity. I found myself wanting to do certain things for artistic and creative reasons that made sense to me, and that I thought were good, but refraining from doing so because I knew they would be misunderstood or misread because of my own identity. At a certain point I stopped heeding these discussion precisely because of that, and I feel creative again. But I do think the ideas being advanced in these discussions are having a real effect on peoples' ability to be truly creative and express themselves in the hobby. You disagree. Fair enough. But I don't think it is a fantasy at all (in fact I know it isn't because I have felt it and seen it).

You should do them and let people critique them. It's what I do. You'll have blindspots, it's letting people help find them that gets you past this fear. That fear is the problem. It's the creativity-killer, the little writer's block that brings total nothingness.

 

[Voadam]

Also, changing a genie's clothes isnt going to make anyone think you're not using a genie, or prevent people from thinking about what culture genies come from. You're still going to have to deal with expectations, and make a point of not using them.

I think if I said the party meets

and they see him doing wish granting magic they are not going to think genie even if that is the stat block I am using.

 

[Irlo]

If a DM wants to do this for their own game, great. I encourage it. But do you really think that WotC will put fantasy counterpart cultures in all their settings just so they're allowed to use their own monsters without this outcry? No, never going to happen.

I don’t think WotC will. And I don’t think they should.

If you think this conversation qualifies as “outcry,” well, I am baffled. I really don’t understand.

 

[Argyle King]

How would people feel about djinn being given a different culture?

Perhaps Redneck Djinn...
They were cursed into servitude after stealing a recipe (gin) from the god/goddess of liquor and bootlegging it into the mortal world.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm calling it concern trolling because I can't think of examples where it actually happens. It is just a "concern", hence "concern trolling". Like, are people stopping projects because people want them to be more culturally sensitive? Is it causing people to stop making things?

Again, I am not interested in specifically holding up examples, because I don't want to attract negative attention to people or publishers on either side of this discussion (and I think doing so would do that). But we all know of projects that were canceled or completely revised because of the cultural sensitivity complaints. And it is pretty obvious that people are changing what they put in books to avoid getting called out in forums like this and on twitter by gamers who agree with the ideas being advanced here. So it isn't concern trolling at all. And even if you ere to take the position that I was in error, that my concern was misplaced. That wouldn't make me a concern troll, because I am expressing a sincere concern and a sincere point of view. Again, we can't have a productive conversation is you just dismiss me as trolling.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean, of all the sentiments I get this one the most. It's something I had to move past. A lot of it is dealing with the idea that you may have been wrong in the past, and we are taught that being wrong is bad. But the only way to move forward it to recognize it and try to be better. So I don't really fear being wrong, because I will be at some point. It's natural. What I fear is not getting better.

I am always open to having been wrong in the past. That isn't what this is about.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I think what is happening is it leads to a simplification of content, where content equals message in peoples mind (i.e. if there is a European style werewolf in the setting, and the European style werewolf does bad things, then that must be a commentary about the evils of Erupean people). Like I said, it isn't necessarily propaganda, much of it is just overly didactic or reductive. But it can easily slide into propaganda. And while propaganda usually misleads because of its bias, its primary feature is it is ideologically driven and trying to persuade people to share its ideology. And there is definitely an ideology undermining things like sensitivity readers, removing 'problematic' content and seeing things in a fantasy game in terms of power dynamics between real life groups of people. Those things aren't bad on their own. It might be good to consider what content is problematic in a game. I am not trying to establish walls around those ideas. What I am saying is we have moved to a place culturally in the hobby, where you have to always be in lockstep agreement with this approach or use this approach, or be considered morally bad. I don't think the morality of it is that simple at all.

That comparison makes no sense: werewolves coming from Europe and doing bad things wouldn't make them a commentary on the evils of Europeans. If they actually reflected stereotypes of Europeans, then maybe that would hold, but I don't even know what that would look like. The point of the critique of Efreets is that they reflect a bunch of outdated and bad stereotypes of Arab culture. That's not propaganda, that's being able to observe reality.

 

[Remathilis]

I mean, unironically this would rock. I would totally be interested in an Indian sub-continent setting that was written by people who actually had knowledge of the subject would be huge.

I mean, D&D is already balkenized into a bunch of different settings, I don't see why this would be controversial. D&D has dipped it's toes into other cultures, with middling success. Imagine Al-qadim done correctly. Or Kara-Tur or Rokugan redone with proper cultural sensitivity. Magic has dozens of similar "fantasy x" settings to borrow from: Kamigawa, Kaladesh, Amonket, Theros, Kaldheim, etc. And your kitchen sink settings based on ye old Tolkien tropes could still exist, but pruned to remove the things that didn't fit that was stuffed in there willy-nilly.

Omg you're breaking up the core books! Yeah, that IS what people have wanted, a D&D with a tighter focus and lots of expansion. Modular in the truest sense. Add what you want.

 

[TheSword]

Yes, how could we ever survive losing the sole cultural representation of real people as evil demons that want to take over the world.
That's the height of creativity really

With due respect, the original criticism used Eberron as an example. I find it difficult to watch anyone accuse Keith Baker of lacking creativity.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Again, I am not interested in specifically holding up examples, because I don't want to attract negative attention to people or publishers on either side of this discussion (and I think doing so would do that). But we all know of projects that were canceled or completely revised because of the cultural sensitivity complaints. And it is pretty obvious that people are changing what they put in books to avoid getting called out in forums like this and on twitter by gamers who agree with the ideas being advanced here. So it isn't concern trolling at all. And even if you ere to take the position that I was in error, that my concern was misplaced. That wouldn't make me a concern troll, because I am expressing a sincere concern and a sincere point of view. Again, we can't have a productive conversation is you just dismiss me as trolling.

If you can't give me an example, it kind of is? Again, it's a concern, not something we've actually observed.

I am always open to having been wrong in the past. That isn't what this is about.

I mean, it kind of is and that's not bad. It's something hard to shake. But if you're afraid of how your work is going to be looked at, you're afraid because you think someone is going to say that you made something bad. And how you get around that is to have other people look at it, edit it, and stuff like that. It's a frightening process, but it's one that I thought really helped me.

I mean, D&D is already balkenized into a bunch of different settings, I don't see why this would be controversial. D&D has dipped it's toes into other cultures, with middling success. Imagine Al-qadim done correctly. Or Kara-Tur or Rokugan redone with proper cultural sensitivity. Magic has dozens of similar "fantasy x" settings to borrow from: Kamigawa, Kaladesh, Amonket, Theros, Kaldheim, etc. And your kitchen sink settings based on ye old Tolkien tropes could still exist, but pruned to remove the things that didn't fit that was stuffed in there willy-nilly.

Omg you're breaking up the core books! Yeah, that IS what people have wanted, a D&D with a tighter focus and lots of expansion. Modular in the truest sense. Add what you want.

I mean, I'd love it if the core books were more generic and could draw from different settings for example. Like, it'd be so much nicer than just relying on the Forgotten Realms.