In re: "Asians Represent" - if their complaint is grounded in total ignorance, it damages their credibility overall.
Legend of the Five Rings does this weird thing where it wants to keep the Japanese diet centred around sea food, (and goes even stricter by putting prohibitions on meat) but in a China like empire.
It really doesn't make sense for people hundreds of kilometres inland to forgo meat for a diet of fish.
L5R only has the samurai and Noble castes being fish and fowl; the other castes eat red meats. From what histories I have read, that's fairly accurate, even in the highlands.
L5R also makes itself clear: Rokugan isn't Japan. D&D3.5 OA wasn't Rokugan, but included things needed for Rokugan, and for Kara Tur, and for several other things, but only clearly indicated the Rokugan elements. Half of OA isn't suitable for L5R.
It's also worth noting that Edge Studios (from Spain, IIRC) have announced they are doing a new D&D5E L5R setting book.
3.5 OA was bad as L5R, bad as D&D, bad as Kara Tur, and just not a good thing for anyone.
And it's very well done too.
But, yeah, the issue of Asia=Japan has a lot of historical reasons. Pop culture being a huge one. Hollywood bought into the whole ninja/samurai schtick for a very long time. Power Rangers and Sailor Moon. Going all the way back to Godzilla and Gatchaman. Most of us who grew up watching American TV, saw "Fantasy Japan" on TV far more than "Fantasy China" or "Fantasy India". Never minding places like Korea or the Phillipines. Outside of MASH, has anything referenced Korea?
Granted, now, we're seeing a HUGE explosion of K-pop and other Korean culture stuff being exported. My Netflix cue is full of stuff out of Korea. Some of it pretty damn good. I mean, Squid Game was pretty darn cool.
Rolling that back into the 80's or even the late 90's/early Oughts when the original OA and the 3e OA were being written, and it's not really all that surprising to see "Fantasy Asia=Fantasy Japan". Doesn't excuse it, mind you, but, it's not exactly shocking either.
True, but the Chop Sockey genre was almost entirely Taiwaneese...
Most of the crime dramas were using Chinatown and Chinese theming instead of Japanese.
Japanese was being imported as a set of specific subgenres and Chinese was being filtered through the Westerns, the police procedurals, and the American Immigrant experience. Only one show comes to mind showing both the clash of immigrant values and home-nation values, and doing so with any sensitivity at all, in the 70's and 80's: Hawai'i Five-O. It also touched on Native Issues. In the 1960's, 1970's, and early 1980's.
The reasons why some groups want to censor Maus, and others are simply pointing out problematic elements of Oriental Adventures . . . . completely opposite sides of the spectrum.
Maus is excellent. But it's not suitable for elementary schools. There is, however, a noted sociopolitical stripe within the US that are holocaust deniers, amongst other things... So Maus is a problematic issue, because some of the voices for it think it's all lies; some thing
Nobody is telling people they cannot play OA and arresting them if they show it to their friends (or even play it in a class in school).
Sure feels like it.
I think its a bit dangerous to compare acts of outright censorship and equate them to criticism. That is not even noting the rather large differences in subject matter between the two things, and thus the reasons WHY one might not like it.
When the critics are advocating for censorship, things get less cut and dried. I've seen critics calling for censorship
IN THIS THREAD! One posted feels that the original and 3.5 OA shouldn't be available in PDF.
And, because of the factual issues brought up with the Asians Represent analysis of the Comeliness stat, as criticism goes, they've lost enough credibility that I won't be listening to anything they're saying. It indicates either a lack of research (it's easy to check that Comliness predates OA), or a desire to be offended, or perhaps even intellectual dishonesty. I don't know which, and don't care which.
Was OA a problem back in the day? Yes, but IMO, not for the racism. It was bad mostly because it was cumbersome to use in play. The Honor system was a bookkeeping nightmare. As was the Face system. AD&D Non-Weapon Proficiencies were an option in AD&D1, but strongly encouraged after UA, and almost mandatory in OA. This annoyed a lot of DMs. The book was mechanically divisive BITD; that the setting was insensitive? Most were. Most still are.
Fundamentally, if your game incorporates any culture other than the present day of your places of residence and/or upbringing, you're going to be using tropes and stereotypes. RPGs are not a cure for systemic racism; they're not even big enough a market for anyone to really pay attention to outside the RPG market. D&D is maskable in a rounding error for HasBro, even if D&D is a significant minority of WotC's income. And they are, at best, schematic and/or trophic in their coverage of any culture.
I make no bones about it: I love several cultural appropriation games: L5R, Feng Shui, Warhammer FRP, Blood & Honor, Elf Quest, Pendragon...
I don't think any were done with intent to offend; I do know that some find them offensive.
If Nyambe had used a better engine, I'd have given it a shot... but it stayed too stock D&D 3.x...