D&D General The Rakshasa and Genie Problem

[Bedrockgames]

From what I can tell, your position is "you overreacted by thinking about this, so I don't think this thread should exist, and will talk about how I don't think it will exist to try and make sure that the discussion asked for in the OP doesn't happen". Care to correct me on that? Because that's really how you're coming across right now to multiple people.

That isn’t my position. And like I said, I am interested in what your position is because at times I am addressing the OP and was looking for correction here. But there are other posters in this thread and other positions are emerging so many of my posts are responses to those. That is why I was distinguishing between the point I thought you were trying to (which to me seemed much more specific), and the general as l critique the poster was making in the post I responded to

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I mean, yeah, few people care about a European culture being demonized by people of European descent.

Not that demonising European cultures really bothers me regardless of who does it, but it still low-key bugs me when Americans think European culture and mythology belongs to them. Write games about the Wild West, Paul Bunyan and Bigfoots if you want base things on your own mythology.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Precisely. It’s a cosmopolitan and progressive setting. At yet its somehow criticized in this thread for cultural insensitivity.

The person calling out Eberron was someone explicitly calling out Eberron because it's been the poster setting for doing orcs well so they can imply some sort of hypocrisy.

I love Eberron. It's quite possibly my favorite official D&D setting (ehh, maybe Spelljammer or Exandria could beat it, but it's a close race). I love how it approaches the races, cultures, planes of existence, and most of the monsters in the setting.

I called it out because I'm familiar with it. It's one of the settings I'm most familiar with (beaten only by the Forgotten Realms), and so I used it as an example of what I am/was having an issue with.

However, take note that I never said that it was culturally insensitive to use India/Middle-Eastern themed cultures and attach them to monsters that come from those cultures in D&D worlds. (Unless you were referring to someone else calling Eberron insensitive.)

I just think that there's a discussion to be had about which is the better way to approach things. That making always-evil monsters be the only stand-in for that culture in the setting is quite possibly an issue. I'm familiar with Eberron, so I pulled an example from the setting that I'm familiar with. I acknowledge that one of my favorite settings is imperfect, and I'm okay with that. That's kinda why I made this thread.

 

[Cadence]

Not that demonising European cultures really bothers me regardless of who does it, but it still low-key bugs me when Americans think European culture and mythology belongs to them. Write games about the Wild West, Paul Bunyan and Bigfoots if you want base things on your own mythology.

How many generations would you give folks before they only get to claim their new country of residence?

(Wondering in my own ancestry about the Germans who lived en masse in the Volga river valley for a few generations. Would they count as Russian?)

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I just think that there's a discussion to be had about which is the better way to approach things. That making always-evil monsters be the only stand-in for that culture in the setting is quite possibly an issue.

I think this could be complicated by a reluctance to feature non-European inspired settings for fear of criticism, like the kind that came up following Tomb of Annihilation.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I love Eberron. It's quite possibly my favorite official D&D setting (ehh, maybe Spelljammer or Exandria could beat it, but it's a close race). I love how it approaches the races, cultures, planes of existence, and most of the monsters in the setting.

I called it out because I'm familiar with it. It's one of the settings I'm most familiar with (beaten only by the Forgotten Realms), and so I used it as an example of what I am/was having an issue with.

FWIW, I didn't see you mentioning Eberron, just someone else using it for the purposes I mentioned.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I am sure plenty aren't. And I am sure plenty of people, whether they are from a place or not, are also not as familiar with the history or cultural question as they might believe. That is a whole other issue. But I don't think it ought to be a requirement to have full or deep knowledge of a culture to borrow an aesthetic. There is certainly room for say for RPG books that authentically capture a particular culture. And if that is what the designer is going for, it pays to be receptive to people who know about that culture when you are getting feedback. I've done that myself when I needed to know something in greater detail. I think where we go wrong is this notion that it has to be this way, and if people raise concerns or criticisms, the thing needs to go away or be redone until it is in acceptable form. Not all works are going to be authentic deep dives into a culture, some are just fun pastiches or light emulations of schlocky genres.

My issue isn't with creators wanting to make a well researched, authentic game, that explores a culture accurately. That is fine. There is plenty of good in that. The problem is with placing all this stuff as the only priority, I think we are moving away from other ways to creatively engage culture in a fun way in the design landscape. What it feels like to me is we are developing almost like a priest class, that approves what is allowable.

Again, on the issue of criticism, harassment, and propaganda, I think we disagree. I am not sure how to bridge that disagreement. We are looking at the same hobby landscape and seeing two very different things. All I can do is tell you what this looks like to me. And to be clear I am not saying it is all propaganda. I am saying these things do seem to slide into propaganda for a particular ideology at times (and I don't think I am the only one sensing this).

Yeah, I just don't get this. People are expressing problems with people who likely aren't familiar with the cultures they are trying to take cues from and pointing out problems. That you see a lot of it going on is because people are more comfortable to try and express this compared to other years.

And I don't know how to bridge the disagreement, either, because I find that the situations you talk about are so different in scale and severity from what I talk about. Talking about how creators feel worried about how their works on minorities might be perceived is just such a different thing than watching minorities get yelled at online because they think D&D has some problems.

I think part of the problem here is we are importing Said and Zinn wholesale into RPG design as guiding principles. I was a history major. I don't have an advanced degree, but I do have a BA in history, and I studied mostly the Mediterranean and my language was Arabic. So I had to read Said's Orientalism as part of my education. But I also had to read criticisms of Orientalism as well. Same with Zinn. Both have their critics. I think this is an overly academic topic for us to really be addressing here, and I am by no means the most well suited to addressing it. But I know enough about it, to understand that we shouldn't just be uncritically bringing these as measures of whether a game is morally okay. I remember Nikki Keddie for example had some very compelling criticisms of Said. I think especially when you get into ideas like decolonizing the arts, you start hitting an extreme that feels more akin to a cultural revolution than something that is genuinely going to help people who feel marginalized. And Zinn, who I am more familiar with, is I think an even bigger problem because he tended to simply accept the narrative of whoever had the least power in the dynamic in question. And you can see that mindset at work in many of these discussions. I understand his rational was that to that point, he felt those in power always had control of the narrative. But there is a sound argument to be made that his approach just reversed the problems and that he exaggerated how much primacy was given to the narrative of those in power (and to be clear I am not saying those in power didn't also have power over historical narrative, just that history changed a lot in that respect and it isn't so black and white by the time you get to A Peoples History).

Again, I think this is very complicated stuff to expect people to get into in order to design games or make art. And I think when that stuff leaves academia and finds its way onto gaming forums or twitter, it gets incredibly simplified and used as a bludgeon.

I'm not a fan of Zinn, but I disagree with you on decolonizing. When you talk about a "cultural revolution" from the arts, I feel like you lose me because so much of decolonization in stuff like D&D is more about moving away from the exotic and creating something that other people beyond myself can feel comfortable in. There are plenty of easy-to-find articles online from people within the community on the subject, and it largely centers around moving away from badly-coded language and away from standard tropes that have been used to demonize indigenous peoples and minorities alike. I suppose that's revolutionary in a sense, but comparing it to Mao feels inappropriate.

Not that demonising European cultures really bothers me regardless of who does it, but it still low-key bugs me when Americans think European culture and mythology belongs to them. It really doesn't. Write games about the Wild West, Paul Bunyan and Bigfoots if you want base things on your own mythology.

We do, but I'm also an American who kickstarted a Wild West game made by Swedes, so...

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not that demonising European cultures really bothers me regardless of who does it, but it still low-key bugs me when Americans think European culture and mythology belongs to them. Write games about the Wild West, Paul Bunyan and Bigfoots if you want base things on your own mythology.

I don't think you get it: clearly everything belongs to us.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That isn’t my position.

Then what is? Because I presented the main positions that I came up with earlier in this thread (in this post). You haven't seemed to have taken a stance on them, and seem mostly to be trying to derail the thread and act like it shouldn't exist. Can you not see that if it doesn't appear that you support any presented position and are almost solely criticizing the existence of the thread/discussion that it would appear that that's your position?

And like I said, I am interested in what your position is because at times I am addressing the OP and was looking for correction here.

Did you read the OP? Because I made it clear that I don't really have a position yet. I'm leaning towards some of the options I presented (I think that opening up the monsters in their cultural presentation in certain worlds could be interesting and a positive addition to them), but I still see the flaws in all of the positions.

But there are other posters in this thread and other positions are emerging so many of my posts are responses to those. That is why I was distinguishing between the point I thought you were trying to (which to me seemed much more specific), and the general as l critique the poster was making in the post I responded to

The post you're responding to now only quoted you in posts where you had quoted (and directly responded to) me.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I think this could be complicated by a reluctance to feature non-European inspired settings for fear of criticism, like the kind that came up following Tomb of Annihilation.

I mean, they could also just reflect on the critiques. We're half a year removed from the release of The Mwangi Expanse, which got pretty universal praise. It's a fantastic sourcebook on the region with a lot of interesting cultures and hooks to it. You can totally do this sort of thing, you just have to put some effort into it. ToA didn't really put much into Chult, and it got called out for that. The response should not be to back away, but to actually do better the next time.