D&D 5E What’s So Great About Medieval Europe?

Oofta said:

So if you had to choose another culture to mine for a book similar to Oriental Adventures or the new Greek-themed book, what would it be and why?

Click to expand...

Son of the Serpent said:

Ill assume you meant "empathizing"

Empathy is not purely related to knowledge at all. Its also not necessary to be of a culture to empathize with it. Also, understanding a culture's general psychology? I believe we call the skillsets psychology and sociology. Which are things that can be learned the slow and inefficient way (living there) or the far superior way (books). Way faster. Way more information too. Generally better understanding (with a few noteworthy exceptions).

Ps, oh yeah. Anthropology too.

Click to expand...

PsyzhranV2 said:

Bruh wut

You actually think engaging in primary research is a waste of time? That just studying secondary sources is enough?

Attempts at doing ethnography and/or social analysis from this quite frankly ethnocentric perspective is pretty much guaranteed to result in a skewed interpretation. The below describes one theory as to why; it's not the end-all be-all of sociology, but I believe that in this specific instance it is a useful framework.

Satoshi Ishii in his 1997 paper Tasks for intercultural communication in the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century, published in the Dokkyo International Review, proposed a three layer model of culture: mental, behavioural, and material. The material layer -- the artifacts (food, clothing, art, etc.) a culture creates -- is the most overt, the most readily seen. What a culture creates is informed by how they act which in turn is informed by what they believe.
View attachment 121521

The material and behavioural layers of a culture are readily visible. The mental layer is not, and thus is harder for outsiders to perceive. But in Ishii's model, the mental layer holds the first place. If you really want to understand a culture, you need to understand their mental worldview, what they believe about how humans relate to one another, to the natural world, and to whatever concept of the supernatural they believe in.

It's really hard to learn this from a book, especially if the book's author didn't take this into account. It's a lot easier to learn it through dialogue with people who have that lived experience, and see firsthand how that mental worldview shapes the rest of their culture.

Yoshitaka Miike in a 2012 commentary on Ishii's work draws the distinction between "learning about" a culture -- failing to take that deep mental structure into account, and instead trying to understand a culture through our existing mental framework -- and "learning from" them -- making the effort to understand the values and beliefs of the people and culture we are working with. It betrays a certain degree of arrogance to believe that one can fully understand a culture by just "learning about" them in the sense that Miike describes. This mode of analysis, "cultural centrism" as Miike calls it, easily falls into the trap of "cultural critique" over "cultural learning". The outsider tries to study a culture they are not part of without fully understanding it, and thus comes away with a distorted analysis of their subject of research warped by their existing assumptions about humanity and the world.

Consider the picture below:

View attachment 121520

"When we consciously or unconsciously presume that independence, individualism, and freedoma r ebetter than interdependence, communalism, and obligation without reference to the African worldview, we are attempted to view African and European cultures in hierarchy, not alongside, and fail to acknowledge the ubuntu-bsed humanity in the African context (see Kamwangamalu, 2008). Indeed, we relate only to African cultures in a hierarchical way" (Miike, 2012). Substitute in East Asian, Middle Eastern, Indigenous American, Oceanic, whatever culture you prefer; the model still holds.

This leads to the problem with appropriating elements of different cultures without care or respect for their sources. A game designer in "the West", who believes that they can learn everything there is to know about the world through a book, may certainly try to create a game system or setting that draws elements from other cultures in the world. But if they abandon that frame of thought, if don't put in the due diligence to learn from instead of learn about the cultures they are drawing inspiration from, and if they fail to consult with members of those cultures who have the lived experience in that culture -- and thus understanding of that culture's mental deep structure, they are pretty much doomed to end up with a hodgepodge of stereotypes and misconceptions as their final product. All because they didn't fully examine their existing Eurocentrism (I'm using Eurocentrism here because the thread is on D&D, a game produced by an English-speaking company that primarily markets to the "Western" demographic, both in Europe and in the Americas).

This is the danger of cultural appropriation: taking behaviours and artifacts of different cultures without understanding their context in the mental worldview of their source, and thus creating a distorted image of them that in no way represents or celebrates the cultures that they are supposedly representing, and perhaps even perpetuating Eurocentric stereotypes about the "other". It's why people of East Asian descent -- such as myself -- get jittery when Internet people start talking about reviving Oriental Adventures, or the Kara-Tur setting, without putting in the effort to update and reimagine them so that they rely less on tired tropes and stereotypes about us, and instead create and facilitate a world in which we feel that we actually belong in.

Click to expand...

Son of the Serpent said:

Bruh. Primary research is PART of academic learning. No. I dont think you shoukd cast primary research aside. I also KNOW that it doesnt require being OF a culture. This is pretty much consistantly what ive been saying the whole time. Im basically just restating it here. Again. head desk

Click to expand...

Son of the Serpent said:

Yeah...i think im gonna keep parodying anyone and everyone anytime i feel like it. I am not buying this puritan argument. From anyone.

Click to expand...

imagineGod said:

I notice all those advocating for being within a culture have conveniently ignored the problem with anthropomorphism in role playing games. What academic studies can help guide us playing sentient dogs with a culture that is not just humans in dog-face?

Click to expand...

Jester David said:

Society.
It was written by society.

Just like the rules that you don't fart or pick your nose in public. Swear in front of five-year-olds. Descriptively talk about your last sexual conquest on the bus. Or any of the million other unwritten rules and mores we have to make life livable.

Click to expand...