Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Snarf Zagyg]

But just as many posters seem to feel that using the language of imperialism to describe orcs couldn't possible have any negative consequences in the real world, I just can't imagine that a publisher deciding to stop publishing 37 year old niche content is going to have any kind chilling effect on creativity.

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact demand.

And you have also compared this to other issues such as "orcs" and "chainmail bikinis." Now, as someone who is pretty well-versed in historical D&D, I can assure of the following ...

There is something problematic in almost every ... single ... thing ... published before 1990 ... and probably up to and including now.

Every thing? Maybe not. But whether it's cheesecake art (your "chainmail bikins") or Dragon Magazine articles referring to Africa as "the Darkest Continent," or the "Good Wife" and "Random Harlot" tables in the 1e DMG or the Elmore art that appropriated iconography of Native Americans (American Indians) or the poor phrasing in the Monster Manuals and other books ... or whatever, there's something that someone can complain about.

And seeing as it took a lot of effort to get WoTC to even make their back catalog available, I am not a big fan of people trying to restrict it now. Why?

Because the people like you who want it restricted don't use it at all. So you're right when you keep saying it's no big deal ... to you. Whereas the people like me and others who do use it (either parts of the mechanics for older games, or because we research the history of gaming) will lose out. That's the thing about speech suppression- the people calling for it never use it, so it's no big deal for them, right?

Anyway, I doubt that this particular thing will have that much of a chilling effect; but the discourse certainly does. How many people have we seen mention the whole, "Stay in your lane" in this thread? That you'll be fine if you stay in that lane? That's ... yeah, that's the definition of chilling speech.

Again, I understand what you're saying, but I disagree with you. Not because I like "racist speech," but because I uphold the principle even when it is speech I don't like, simply because I have used it to defend the speech I do like. YMMV.

 

[Aldarc]

The problem is there isn't really such a 'frame of reference'. What am I 'supposed' to write about? I'm an American of European descent. OVER 300 years ago my 14th times great grandfather immigrated to America (long before there was a US) from Germany (which actually didn't even exist as a nation at that time, and is an agglomeration of several distinct, though related, cultures to start with). What can I write about? lol. What is 'my lane'??? I mean, I'm not actually complaining, and it isn't nearly as problematic for me as it is for some.

Similar boat here. The males figures in my patriarchal (e.g., Northern English/Ulster-Scots) and matriarchal (i.e., Rhineland German) lineages both have lived in America for 300+ and 280+ years, respectively. My ancestors lived in the same region of Western North Carolina for about 250+ years, both extending before there was even a United States of America. I was born and raised in a region where the people identify predominately as "American" partially because knowledge of our ancestry has faded into a speculative vague awareness and (generally) a more localized sense of "who are your people?" and/or "where are you from?"

And expanding a point that I made earlier:

I can't say that I agree. There has been pushback against lumping Aztecs, Mayans, Incans, etc. all together into a mash: such an approach is essentially a Euro-American colonialist enterprise. I recall pushback against that here by a poster from (I believe) Mexico.

Moreover, the quiet trend over the past ten to twenty years in European TTRPGs has been pushing back against the American homogenized-approach to European fantasy. There have been a lot more native European TTRPG publishers who are publishing their own vision for European fantasy, often focused on their own country/region's fantasy folklore or fantastical sensibilities.

When it comes to greater trends in TTRPG publishing, that also includes the various peoples of the Americas. The Coyote & Crow RPG made a fairly big splash last year as a sci-fi alternate America written by a team of Native Americans. Similarly, there are several TTRPGs that are written by Appalachian natives that are writing TTRPGs based in Appalachian folklore (e.g., Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse for Savage Worlds, as well as an upcoming Old Gods of Appalachia TTRPG for Cypher System, from the podcast of the same name).

This is not to say that "this is our lane," but, rather, to point that TTRPGs have provided a way to empower various ethnicities, nations of people, and other backgrounds to shape the narrative of their identity in a way that is not necessarily imposed on them by "outsiders," whether that is in a homogenized, pastiche, or deragatory form.

 

[Mannahnin]

I remember watching the Asians Represent podcast about the Legend of the FIve Rings, and they complained a lot about honour being used as a specifically 'asian' feature of games. It's difficult to summarise exactly what the issue was however, due to the nature of the medium.

That's a fair criticism I think. Ideas of honor aren't in short supply throughout western history motivating fictional and historical individuals alike but we don't often see it manifested in RPGs.

The Honor score is a pretty important mechanic in Pendragon. It's fairly central to PCs, and while the mechanic is less complex than what I remember of OA's Honor score (or On, from FGU's Bushido, which preceded it by several years), it's definitely part of genre emulation there. I can't remember if Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun also published by FGU, included an honor "score" per se, but it definitely had rules for honor.

Of course the honor code for Cavaliers in 1E AD&D's Unearthed Arcana was famously restrictive and severe, though rather than giving Cavalier characters an honor score, as I recall, it was a code like Paladins had, but larger, more restrictive, and more likely to result in intra-party conflict or the death of the Cavalier character. And the mechanical consequences for not observing it were loss of the class. It seems to me that OA was designed in reference to and following UA with Comeliness, and perhaps so with Honor, as well, perhaps Zeb Cook thinking that it was a more broadly applicable concept within that setting than for just two classes in regular AD&D, but also correspondingly thinking that it had to be more flexible to allow different characters to operate differently in regards to societal honor. As opposed to Paladins and Cavaliers (and to a lesser extent Rangers, Clerics, and Monks) just getting "follow these rules or lose your cool abilities".

The Code of Bushido itself having detailed tenets and rules was something which clearly appealed to wargamers and roleplaying gamers interested in feudal Japan, and it seems like they latched onto it as something which could be mechanically represented to help emulate the genre, as Greg Stafford did with Arthurian romances' chivalric honor in Pendragon.

So in context, we have at least three or four strong prior examples of honor mechanics in other games/supplements, designed for genre emulation. All for knightly/chivalric type characters and societies. Knights, Cavaliers, and Samurai for the most part. In that context, honor mechanics are not an asian feature of games, though they ARE one that consistently was used in asian games, which were designed to emulate popular fiction and dramatized history about samurai.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact demand.

"Demand"?

Please quote my post where I am making such a demand.

I think WotC should pull it. If I were in charge at WotC that's what I would do. That's an opinion, not a demand.

I mean, for $%@#'s sake, if I were making "demands" do you think I'd be posting them in a thread on Enworld?

Oh...wait...this is the "chilling effect" you were talking about at work, right? Sneaky.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Maybe. But, you seem to be discarding how context matters. It can be worse in some situations than others.

Imagine you have a recipe for... strawberry spaghetti. It is kind of nasty. However, it is even worse if you are serving it to someone you know is allergic to strawberries.

Actually, I agree with you, context does matter. My comment was intended in a very literal sense, just that it shouldn't have ever existed as a stat (and even in 1985 I thought so, for the same reasons it is objected to today). So, yeah, doubly bad in OA, but should never have existed at all. I guess I could have elaborated that point. Thx.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

"Demand"?

Please quote my post where I am making such a demand.

I think WotC should pull it. If I were in charge at WotC that's what I would do. That's an opinion, not a demand.

I mean, for $%@#'s sake, if I were making "demands" do you think I'd be posting them in a thread on Enworld?

Oh...wait...this is the "chilling effect" you were talking about at work, right? Sneaky.

If you want to engage in semantics, that is your prerogative.

Here's what I said-

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact demand.

I will edit it for you-

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact repeated call that WoTC make it no longer available.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If you want to engage in semantics, that is your prerogative.

Here's what I said-

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact demand.

I will edit it for you-

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact repeated call that WoTC make it no longer available.

I mean, I feel like you're being a bit of a naughty little Thundercat here because it seems like his actual position is:

"If it were up to me, I'd remove it from the catalogue", which I dunno, seems to distinct from "It oughta be banned!" (i.e. directly calling for it). Like I don't think that's just a semantic distinction. There are loads of things which, were it up to me, I'd do, but I'm not actually going around saying "oughta happen" or the like. Calling for something and having an opinion seem different to me.

Like, if it were up to me, I would bring back 4E in a a properly-supported digital way, but equally, I'm not calling for WotC to do that. It's just something I'd like. YMMV.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If you want to engage in semantics, that is your prerogative.

Here's what I said-

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact demand.

I will edit it for you-

Not to belabor the obvious, but when people here keep saying, "But no one is calling for it to no longer be available," you are, in fact, one of the very few people making that exact repeated call that WoTC make it no longer available.

You just did it again!

Yes, I'm "engaging in semantics" because I'm talking about the meaning of a word, which is what semantics is. But you're trying to use the phrase "engaging in semantics" to dismiss my argument as sophistry.

You are hyperbolizing my opinion, by trying to turn it into a "demand" or a "call", and I don't believe what I have written meets either of those definitions. But both carry a connotation that furthers a story many people are pushing, that the mob is trying to pressure WotC into pulling content.

Maybe you'd like to suggest specific phrasing I could use in the future, that would enable me to express my opinion without crossing the line into "demands" or "calls"?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Like, if it were up to me, I would bring back 4E in a a properly-supported digital way,

What's the opposite of censorship?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nope.


IMO. Not all observations must say something profound.

Well.... You actually made an argument. It had a logical form, but the argument itself was nonsensical. I interpreted it as an attempt to discredit ideas that you seemed to disagree with by, at best, poor reasoning, and at worst a highly dubious type of rhetorical technique in which the speaker KNOWS their argument is nonsensical but believes it will inflame the supporters of their point of view and make them feel validated.

I mean, I'm not in a position to say more than it was illogical. It is, to restate, IMHO at least, perfectly logical to say that a depiction of Orcs which labels them as 'evil' and various other negative stereotypes AND depicts them in a way that evokes a set of physical traits held to be typical of certain ethnicities is a case where making the depiction LESS like some genre tropes/fiction which it was drawn from would be positive. In the case of say OA Samurai as a stereotype of certain Japanese value systems, it would instead be better if the material was MORE accurate. Clearly these are not mutually inconsistent statements, nor inconsistent views, and holding both of them does not make either of them less valid.