D&D 1E About the Asian contributors to Oriental Adventures, or Who even were these guys?

[Myrdin Potter]

And, by the way, just for general information (ie, I'm not directing this personally at you, Panda-s1), 5e was released in Japan about 2 years ago (PH at the end of 2017) and the other books are being translated and released (Baldur's Gate:Avernus was just released so they are close to catching up). I've never lived in a big city here and have never directly met a Japanese person who plays but somebody is buying the books.

Have they caught up with all the adventure books now? Last time I was in a game store there looking just the core 3 were out. The guy behind the counter told me that they are a steady seller but that Sword World sells a lot more books. The older Japanese gamers I talked to all said they started with AD&D (a ton of that material was translated I think) but slowly others gained popularity locally with Sword World being one. I find it amusing that Sword World does not have Japanese character classes even though the art is obviously Japanese.

 

[Panda-s1]

Cautiously raises hand

Does writing a couple of Class Acts articles for Dragon magazine count?

bruh. I brought up the idea of Japanese players giving material to a Japanese magazine and having it translated for English release, of course that counts, put your hand down, jesus.

Just curious, but why do you think that only one of them has a name you might call "typical" in Japanese? I live in Japan and I have met/known Japanese guys with every one of these first names and surnames (not in the same combination, though, and of course I don't actually know any of the actual listed contributors themselves). My point is, they are all pretty typical Japanese names.

that's fair, maybe "common" might have been a better way of saying it. case in point, if you google Akira Saito ("Akira" being the common name here) you get a wikipedia article (ironically with no Japanese translation) that even has a disambiguation page because there was an actress with the same name. all the other names don't get that, just those databases I mentioned and pages that coincidentally happen to have both parts of their name on them.

And, by the way, just for general information (ie, I'm not directing this personally at you, Panda-s1), 5e was released in Japan about 2 years ago (PH at the end of 2017) and the other books are being translated and released (Baldur's Gate:Avernus was just released so they are close to catching up). I've never lived in a big city here and have never directly met a Japanese person who plays but somebody is buying the books.

I do have an American friend working in Japan who brought up playing D&D a few times, but it wasn't clear if she was playing the Japanese version of D&D or just playing the English version with her English speaking friends. probably the latter. I do know a lot RPGs have spawned out of Japan in the meantime, some of which look really cool and I'm sad some of them still don't have official English translations.

Also, maybe it's neither here nor there, but the company that financed my car loan is one of the biggest consumer credit companies in Japan, its official name is "Orient Corporation" based in Osaka with a Japanese CEO and all Japanese board. I'm guessing Japanese people living in Japan might possibly have no problem with the "Oriental Adventures" name.

and the company that owns Tokyo Disneyland is The Oriental Land Company. believe me, I know, a lot of people do. but you said it yourself, Japanese people in Japan don't care. most (not all) people in Japan never have to deal with some sort of systemic discrimination. more to the point, "Oriental" comes from English and unless they live and interact in a western society they might not understand how and why this term was used in the West and why we really don't use it anymore. I'd imagine there are consultants for companies who want to name something with English (despite what I'm sure is evidence to the contrary), and I'm sure they'd tell people today to steer clear of "Oriental".

Isn't that what a "sensitivity reader" (to use the current term) is supposed to do?

isn't that what an editor is supposed to do? isn't that what a script polisher supposed to do? isn't that what a playtester is supposed to do?

 

[Panda-s1]

@Panda-s1 - I'm not positive, but you seem to be in some doubt about whether I think there are some harmful stereotypes in OA. Of course there are. Is it dated? Of course it is, the book is 35 years old. You'll get no argument from me on either count.

My judgement of the bibliography was solely based on it's date and provenance. OA came out in 85, which means it was probably being worked on, conservatively, from at least 82 or 83, although Gary Gygax alludes to a longer process in his intro. Using a resource from 1951 isn't really that odd in that context. Survey books of that sort have a longer academic shelf life than more specific works, generally speaking. I agree that a source from 1951 from our perspective in 2020 would obviously seem ripe to contain some objectionable material, but it's a perfectly reasonable source to be using to write an RPG book in 1985.

I hope you understand that up until relatively recently a lot of western academics had.... interesting views on Asian subjects, and if that's the viewpoint the writers were going by it could very well skew this book a certain way.

less personally I look up the book and it's from...1951. yeah I'm not exactly expecting any sort of fair or unproblematic views if I'm honest

As to the authorship of the survey works, I suspect that this is a product of what was available in 1985, not any kind of selection bias towards western authors on the part of the OA design team. The skew toward Japanese material is also perfectly understandable based on the actual material in OA. which is, as you say, primarily Japanese. Hypothetically, If I were considering a reboot, I would definitely aim for just Japan of course, rather than the clumsy pastiche of OA, but that's a 2020 design decision, isn't? You start to see the two very different lenses at work here.

and yeah, I realize that might very well be the only source they had, but that's part of the problem here. today I don't even need to leave my home if I want to find resources on Korean culture, but that wasn't the case back then and yet they still made an entry about it.

It's possible for OA to both contain harmful stereotypes and also be a pretty respectful and well-researched product for it's time. I don't think you need to go deep looking for objectionable material either - it's all pretty out in the open by 2020 standards. Those are two very different interpretive lenses. Judging OA as a historical artifact is one thing, while judging it as a current gaming resource by 2020 standards of acceptability is something else entirely. It's obviously the latter lens that's the current issue, but I've noticed that a lot of verbiage from non-asian commentators seems to focus on the former by way of apology. Conflating those interpretive lenses is, IMO, pretty dishonest.

I hope you understand why this book might be seen as dated and potentially harmful, especially now that I know the haphazard nature of its creation. if this book was just "Japanese Adventures!" I doubt we'd be talking about it the same way we are now, but that's not the case. the book skews heavily Japanese but they still called it "Oriental Adventures", and they're serving real world cultures as exotic and mysterious settings under the thin veneer of fictionalized countries, especially at a time when academic resources may have been less than stellar.

 

[jayoungr]

isn't that what an editor is supposed to do? isn't that what a script polisher supposed to do? isn't that what a playtester is supposed to do?

Depends--were they reading the manuscript specifically to critique and improve the cultural elements? I assumed that was the reason why they were specifically consulted, because they could provide feedback that an editor in Wisconsin couldn't.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Considering the nearby major universities and the annual GenCon, there is a good chance these guys were just a group they found locally who played the game together and had them read through the manuscript, or maybe playtest it a little bit before publication. They may not have even been a gaming group together, but maybe TSR just put notices up on the bulletin boards at the universities looking to recruit free help to test the material. But whoever they were, I highly doubt they were professionals in the field, current or professional, or there would be something else out there with their names attached to it.

And a side note to all this, Gygax was not even in Wisconsin while this book was being put together and published. He was busy in Hollywood running TSR Entertainment and trying to get D&D into movies and tv.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Panda-s1 - Replying to my post with your previous post seems very circular. You do you though. There are obvious issues with OA that need to be remedied, there is no question about that, and I'm not denying it. You know what isn't helpful though? Going deep into the rabbit hole speculating about the whys and wherefores from 1985. The moral relativism necessary is unhelpful. Sure, you can read the worst of intents into Gygax and co, you can assume all manner of things about why they chose source X, or whatever, but it's all speculation. It doesn't change what it is right now.

I'm not in a position to speak with authority about what should be done about OA, only to agree that something should be done. You know what I am in a position to speak authoritatively about though? Sourcing for research papers. If you don't like my professional opinion that's fine, but if you expect anyone to take you seriously when you say "this is mine to speak about" I would think you'd be very careful to extend that same respect and courtesy to others.

 

[Panda-s1]

Depends--were they reading the manuscript specifically to critique and improve the cultural elements? I assumed that was the reason why they were specifically consulted, because they could provide feedback that an editor in Wisconsin couldn't.

we don't really know that, and that's the problem.

personally, given how the book is and the fact they did provide a bibliography, I'm inclined to believe if they were hired to do such a thing then their credit would have said something like

To the Japanese players—Masataka Ohta, Akira Saito, Hiroyasu Kurose, Takafumi Sakurai, and Yuka Tate-ishi—for critiquing the manuscript with their valuable cultural insight on short notice.

instead.

this also doesn't address the fact they're still just a Japanese group of players. as everyone has said before "Asian people aren't a monolith!". I know it sounds cynical, but while this group may have had a decent to surprisingly amazing level of expertise on Japanese history I don't expect the same level of expertise for other Asian cultures.

 

[jayoungr]

we don't really know that, and that's the problem.

I just can't picture the folks at TSR going out of their way to mail a manuscript to Japan in the pre-internet days unless they were looking for cultural insight. If all they wanted was playtesters or editors, surely there were plenty of those available without the expense and hassle of sending international packages.

 

[MGibster]

I know it sounds cynical, but while this group may have had a decent to surprisingly amazing level of expertise on Japanese history I don't expect the same level of expertise for other Asian cultures.

They probably didn't have the same level of expertise for other Asian cultures, in fact, being Japanese is no guarantee that they were even experts on Japanese history or culture any more than your average American is an expert on their history and culture. Oriental Adventures was produced for entertainment purposes and wasn't designed to stand up to any sort of academic rigor.

So why does it matter whether or not they were experts? And what is the minimum standard to be considered an expert in this context?

 

[Cadence]

I know it sounds cynical, but while this group may have had a decent to surprisingly amazing level of expertise on Japanese history I don't expect the same level of expertise for other Asian cultures.

Cook's forward to OA does a bit to address why so much of the focus was on Japan, and why some others didn't get as much. In part it was the sources available apparently, and in part it was how interesting he could make them seem for a game given the sources. (The intro by Gygax also seemed interesting.) WotC - Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

In a pre-internet age, for a company the size of TSR, it doesn't feel reasonable to me to expect them to have gathered a bunch of expert opinions on all of the different cultures. Maybe other game publishers were doing far more in the early 1980s, but it feels like they did quite a bit more than would have been expected as far as being aware and sensitive about the issues for the time.

Of course, even if true, having done more at the time than expected doesn't make a book useful or appropriate by today's standards.