D&D General Al-Qadim, Campaign Guide: Zakhara, and Cultural Sensitivity

[LuisCarlos17f]

* The term of "female main character with several boyfriends/pretenders" is "reverse harem".

Have you seen the list of al-Qadim titles? A monster compedium, some player's handbook with crunch, some gazetteper and some adventures without links to any comple intrigue in the palace, more "explore dungeons to search threasures", "defeat the evil warlock" or "rescue the princess". And the "cosmopolitan" cities with lots of traders from different points are more used to visitors with different costumes.

The compilation of adventures "Dozen and one adventures" could be published.

* Any new PC race based in near east folklore?

Qurac - TV Tropes

A Fictional Country in North Africa, the Middle East, or South or Central Asia, typically Arab, Turkic, or Indo-Iranian, named for the fictional country that causes so much trouble in The DCU. There are three (often overlapping) versions: The …

tvtropes.org

 

[Ondath]

* The term of "female main character with several boyfriends/pretenders" is "reverse harem".

That term originates from romance anime and is based on a fairly reductive understanding of what a harem is, though.

 

[Umbran]

Right. And what's more, the book was first put together by a Frenchman.

The first European translation was by Antoine Galland, a Frenchman, between 1704 and 1717. But, the first reference to the Arabic version under its full title The One Thousand and One Nights appears in Cairo in the 12th century. There's fragments of collections on which that was likely based going back to the 9th century.

And, the basic idea of a wise woman who saves herself from danger by telling stories is seen back in Indian legends, translated into Persian around 570 CE, and then into Arabic around 750.

 

[Umbran]

That I doubt. Grimms was compiled in the 19th century

An early reference to Rumpelstiltskin appears in Roman texts in the 1st century.

Cinderella is basically the Greek story of Rhodopis, first recorded in in the 1st century BCE, and likely traces back to the the 6th century BCE.

These stories weren't new when the Brothers Grimm got to them. Basically, any European story that has reference to fae folk or supernatural beings has its roots in pre-Christian stories.

 

[Faolyn]

Perhaps I was misunderstanding what you meant. I thought you were saying that this meant the churches, as complete hegemonic entities, could not actually be "good" even if they wished to be, because of the possibility (or, more likely, past fact) of doing evil in the name of good things/beings/ideas. Would it be more accurate to say that you're saying any religion in D&D fiction is simply too big to be hegemonically good or evil? That is, a good church can have evil branches, and that while it's unlikely, it's at least theoretically possible for an evil church to have good branches? That is, the evil is objectively evil, but that doesn't make the whole church evil, nor does the overall church being good absolve the deeds of specific branches or of past members thereof.

In my opinion, "ish."

Let's say you have a church, and there are two branches to it. One is the branch that goes forth and feeds and heals people, defends the weak, and other good things. The other branch contains the bureaucratic side that includes an inquisition that tortures people until they confess to their crimes, then likely kills them messily. (There are likely more branches than this; we're dealing with these two). The first branch is almost certainly Good. The second branch is almost certainly Evil.

The reason I'm saying "almost certainly" here is depends entirely on what the crime is and who knows about the torture. If the crime is not going to church every week, or associating with haflings because the church has declared Small races to be unholy, or stuff like that, then this branch is pretty Evil. They're hurting people for things that are only crimes because the church has said so, not because the actions are actually harmful.

If the crime is "consorting with demons of disease and misfortune in order to gain powers to hurt people you don't like," then the branch is evil (for using torture) but not necessarily Evil, in the grand alignment sense. However, they probably also wouldn't be good, either. They'd be more Neutral--they're doing some awful things for the greater good. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. It would also depend on how much non-torture investigation they did before hand, of course. Grabbing people because their neighbors turned them in would be more Evil, while doing careful research in order to make sure that they only get the actual guilty parties would be more Good.

But, if the crimes (of viewing Small races as anathema, etc.) were edicts handed down from on high--by the literal gods--then I would view the entire religion as being Not Good. The church might be Neutral or Evil, but with a Good branch that heals and feeds the needy. Especially if that Good branch also helps out Small races on the qt. (This is where schisms appear)

If the prohibition about Small races was due to some high priest's personal dislikes that just got codified into not-actually-canon law, or because there once was a war with some Small races and anti-Small sentiment got brought into the church, or the halfling-hating ruler of the land demanded their dislike be made into law, under pain of having the church dismantled and the priests gruesomely murdered, then the church isn't necessarily Evil, because it was outside interference that corrupted them. They could well be on their way to becoming Evil, though, if the corruption isn't stopped before it becomes endemic.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The question is when does this place stop being a representation of middle eastern culture and just become a disney park with orient theme?

To me? One good example is that it becomes a Disney park with an Orient theme the second you include a harem without going into a deep dive of what harems actually were. If you are actually going into the social dynamics of historical harems then you might have avoided turning the place into a Disney park. But the Western conception of a harem was created, as mentioned by people who had never been there and with a lot of the equivalent of one-handed typing. If you aren't explicitly avoiding the Western conceptions of harems you might as well stick a pair of Mickey Mouse ears on the cover and a log flume and haunted house into the setting.

 

[Faolyn]

People like Ondath who mentioned above he is ok with harems, including the warts? Who owns century or even millennia old islamic culture?

It's not a question of who "owns. what" It's a question of accuracy. Middle Eastern harems are not filled with nubile women dressed in gauze, and that is an image created by western writers who wanted to sexy up a non-western idea and then continued by Hollywood and similar places, who also wanted to show something sexy and different. So having a game show a western image of a harem is, in fact, not a good idea.

Why is it so important that official books have harems?

 

[Malmuria]

Disney's Aladdin is also a heavily orientalist film. And the 19th c. versions of 1001 nights were stories for children, despite the frame narrative driven by patriarchal violence. Both are western fantasies of what middle eastern cultures are/were like. In other words, more violence does not automatically mean more "authentic."

 

[Dire Bare]

It's a little more complicated than that, right? The Fleur-de-lis is strongly associated with France, though it's used in other European nations, but I've never heard anyone complain when Americans or others appropriate it. The Sisters of Battle, a faction of women wearing fetish nun gear in space, from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k uses the Fleur-de-lis as their symbol, and I can't recall anyone ever complaining about it. I could liberally "borrow" elements from Finnish, German, English, Welsh, and Irish culturally or you could borrow from American culture and it's unlikely anyone would decry it as cultural appropriation. So there must be something more to it than just using something invented by another culture and misusing it.

I think in many caes it has more to do with the relationship between the culture that borrowed, or appropriated, the cultural artifact versus the culture that it was borrowed from. Borrowing from France is fine because the French, they're wealthy, and and they have a long history of exporting its culture to the four corners of the Earth which is also true of the United States.

I don't mean to imply that the idea of cultural (mis)appropriation isn't real. But it's kind of like pornography in that I can't always define it clearly, but I know it when I see it.

Good points. We like easy answers, but rarely does life offer them. When is appropriating a cultural element okay or not okay? It's complicated, folks don't always agree where to draw the line, there are lots of factors at play, and even over time attitudes towards appropriation change (on both sides of the appropriation).

One of my favorite stories like this is the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie that cast Scarlett Johansen in the main role, which in the source material, was a Japanese woman. Lots of cries of white-washing in the West, the Asian-American community was rightly frustrated with the casting choice. But the creator of the original manga went on record that he felt the casting was PERFECT. There was much less drama over in Japan than in the US. Not that this made the casting choice a good one, it wasn't. But it highlighted how differently the Japanese and Asian-Americans looked at this example of appropriation. Was casting Johansen the "right" thing to do? Complicated. Although ultimately as a movie made by and for Western audiences, adapting a Japanese anime . . . the producers should have been more mindful of how the Asian-American community would have reacted. The movie, IMO, was actually pretty good (including ScarJo's performance), but was ultimately marred by the insensitive white-washing of the main character.

 

[Faolyn]

You missed the part where I acknowledged that, but if only it were so simple. A few years back, the OP of a thread here pointed to various games including Legend of the Five Rings as cultural appropriation and therefore hate speech. But why? Do you think Japanese people would view L5R as a misuse of their culture and take offense? I'm guessing the answer is no, at least not any more offended than I am about the cultural appropriation of the American cowboy in Cowboy BeBop. Like the United States, Japan is a wealthy country that isn't being exploited and they willingly profit from the culture they export worldwide. i.e. The Japanese and the United States are willing participants in cultural exchange.

But it's more complicated than that because we're not just talking about Japan. We've also got to include Japanese Americans and even Asian Americans in general. Are either of those groups an oppressed people here in the United States? There's certainly a history of oppression so I'll say yes, especially in recent years as violence has increased against Asian Americans during the COVID pandemic. But it does raise a question, what group had their culture appropriated by the creators of L5R? Did they appropriate Asian Americans or Asians? Is there a difference?

I literally don't know if the Japanese (or Asians and people from other countries of Asian decent) would view L5R as a misappropriation, but I would guess not. I mean, there are pokemon with samurai imagery, or using imagery of various yokai and other Japanese cultural elements.

Now, it's been a long time since I looked at any L5R stuff, and then it was in 3e's "Oriental Adventures" that used L5R as a base. As I recall, it was fairly straightforward and didn't really exocitize much of anything. At least not in the same way that the Western idea of a harem was a deliberate sexed-up misinterpretation of the real thing.