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

[Guest 7034872]

Well, remember that The Facto's Manifesto was published in 1995, and it wasn't designed to be a stand-in for any then-contemporary debates. What I'm saying is if a 2e-era paladin was knowingly allowing people under his charge to harass and murder other people solely because of their (non-evil, non-violent) philosophical ideologies, then he should not be Lawful Good in 5e.

Oh, no--I don't at all disagree with anything you wrote: quite the contrary. Sorry if I worded my point in a way that suggested otherwise.

No, my complaint is with treating the Al-Qadim setting or its update as a stand-in for Islam and contemporary geopolitics: that strikes me as unfair on multiple levels. Unfair to Islam, to the deep and importantly-textured differences between the various cultures in which Islam is prevalent, unfair to the actual history of these myths, many of which predate Islam by a good bit, and frankly unfair to the setting writers, who never intended any such geopolitical parallels or messaging in their work.

Ditto for Planescape and treating the Anarchists as if they are stand-ins for Antifa: they just aren't.

 

[Faolyn]

And then somewhat less importantly there are also matters of taste. When playing in fictional world I don't necessarily want to deal with all the horrible facets of human history, but then again, fantasy worlds where the culture and social norms are just those of a modern western world with some fantasy trappings thrown in for flavour seems rather bland to me as well. And of course injustices existing in the world are good fodder for character motivations and conflict that creates interesting situations.

This is all true. But OTOH, I like being able to play female adventurers without having to justify why she's not at home popping out kids or locked away in a convent somewhere.

You want to have a sexist BBEG or a sexist race or even a sexist nation or whatever, fine. But if the sexism is presented as the status quo rather than a wrong that can be righted, then, well, I don't find that cool. Especially in a fantasy game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is all true. But OTOH, I like being able to play female adventurers without having to justify why she's not at home popping out kids or locked away in a convent somewhere.

You want to have a sexist BBEG or a sexist race or even a sexist nation or whatever, fine. But if the sexism is presented as the status quo rather than a wrong that can be righted, then, well, I don't find that cool. Especially in a fantasy game.

Yeah, fully agreed. And it is a balancing act. On the one hand fighting against injustice may be empowering and cool to some, but on the other hand to some the mere presence of that injustice might be unfun.

 

[Faolyn]

I've actually thought about that. We wouldn't get too excited about differences between human subgroups if we had orcs to gang up against, right? Historically one of the best ways to unite group A and B is against group C. And of course orcs are more different from any group of humans than those groups of humans are from each other.

One other thing, though, is that we might actually have fewer reasons to fight a group that's very different, because there would be fewer conflicts over resources. Fish-people can't live on land, we can't live underwater, so we'd have little conflict over territory with fish-people. Elves, though? They like their forests, and we like the wood.

Yep. Either deals have to be struck between humans or elves, or woodcutting becomes a high-risk and heavily-guarded job. Or both, because tree-poaching becomes a thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is all true. But OTOH, I like being able to play female adventurers without having to justify why she's not at home popping out kids or locked away in a convent somewhere.

You want to have a sexist BBEG or a sexist race or even a sexist nation or whatever, fine. But if the sexism is presented as the status quo rather than a wrong that can be righted, then, well, I don't find that cool. Especially in a fantasy game.

I can definitely see a game involving PCs wanting to overturn the status quo, however.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I've actually thought about that. We wouldn't get too excited about differences between human subgroups if we had orcs to gang up against, right? Historically one of the best ways to unite group A and B is against group C. And of course orcs are more different from any group of humans than those groups of humans are from each other.

One other thing, though, is that we might actually have fewer reasons to fight a group that's very different, because there would be fewer conflicts over resources. Fish-people can't live on land, we can't live underwater, so we'd have little conflict over territory with fish-people. Elves, though? They like their forests, and we like the wood.

Unless they're amphibious, like the Tritons and (to a smaller extent) Sahuagin. In that case, there'd definitely be conflict between the land-dwellers and ocean-dwellers.

But overall, yeah, I agree. Elves, Treants, Dryads, and other forest-dwelling creatures? Yeah, they're going to get in the way of the humans and their need for lumber.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

A lot of folks today seem to think that there is no difference between accident and intent. We're basically living in a minefield.

I don't think people believe there is no difference between accident and intent. I just think more people are realizing that if you accidentally do harm it still is as harmful as someone intentionally doing harm. Sure, murder is obviously worse than manslaughter, but it still hurts the people affected about the same amount either way.

I think people are trying to prevent harm whether or not it's intentional. "I didn't mean harm" is becoming less and less of a valid excuse, because, to some extent, it's still your fault if you hurt someone.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

At least in my experience, "theme park" is a description of the style of game, not the depth or accuracy of it historical lore. A theme park is an open world full of railroads (rollercoasters).

I’ve only really seen it to mean a shallow world without much thought given to making a sensible world.

My point was that there is an existing meaning to the term "theme park" when discussing game settings, and so it can be a little confusing to use the term discussing settings but not use its broadly accepted meaning. Shared language helps us have productive discussions.

Shared language cannot be assumed. Clarification is just always going to be needed on a regular basis, including on terms you think are commonly understood how you understand them.

Sure. But would those changes always remove the less savory aspects of authentic human existence? Fantasy racism is still a thing, for example.

“Always”? No, nor would they always result in “fantasy racism replaces human ethno-racism”, nor any other outcome.

But a world where that is the result is no less believable or sensible than the world where having Dragonborn around results in fantasy racism.

Hell, I’d say that the still racist world is less sensible, because these races live in the same places, make and do things that are useful to eachother, and often have shared objectively-real deities.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Unless they're amphibious, like the Tritons and (to a smaller extent) Sahuagin. In that case, there'd definitely be conflict between the land-dwellers and ocean-dwellers.

But overall, yeah, I agree. Elves, Treants, Dryads, and other forest-dwelling creatures? Yeah, they're going to get in the way of the humans and their need for lumber.

Why wouldn’t they just grow lumber for the humans, and why wouldn’t the humans expand and develop differently from RL history?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Why wouldn’t they just grow lumber for the humans, and why wouldn’t the humans expand and develop differently from RL history?

Since when did the actions of humans and nature spirits make sense? Humans are extremely territorial and often choose violence instead of basic diplomacy. And Treants are shown to be extremely overprotective of their forests, because they can slowly convert them into more Treants.