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

[SkidAce]

In my setting it goes like this

Anguis Imperium (Evil Government) = practices slavery.
Yuan-ti Kingdom = practices slavery and harvests humanoids as food.
Varencian Empire (Good government) = no slavery. (some indentured servitude, pay off apprenticeships etc, benign)

Other Various areas: no slavery. might have indentured servitude or community service for crimes.
Djin races: varies based on alignment.


It becomes apparent that the Anguis Imperium, Yuan-ti, and some djinn, are the bad guys. Players don't play the bad guys.

Players raid pirate raiders and set slaves free. Players subvert the Anguis Imperium whenever they can. They support those of the general populace living under the evil leadership to change things for the better.

Why do I need to remove slavery (as a background element) from my campaign setting?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Every single Crusade failed at its intended mission. Starting wars for basically no good reason is ingrained in human nature.

That’s both reductive and beside the point.

And why are you even arguing against this? Would you do this at a table where it's a plot hook for a campaign? Argue against the minutia of why this conflict is happening in the first place?

I’m engaging in the discussion happening in the thread. What a strange thing to challenge like this.

The contention has been made ITT that humans would inevitably be at war with, eg elves and treants and such. I have argued that this is far from inevitable, and that humans are quite capable of bending to the pressure of pragmatic benefit to their in group, and following the path of least resistance.

History is actually more trade than war, it just doesn’t seem that way because wars are more interesting to write about.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That’s both reductive and beside the point.

The point? The point was that it's okay to have a part of the world hinge on humans acting stupidly. Humans as a species are stupid and in history have done similar nonsensical things. That was the point.

I’m engaging in the discussion happening in the thread. What a strange thing to challenge like this.

The contention has been made ITT that humans would inevitably be at war with, eg elves and treants and such. I have argued that this is far from inevitable, and that humans are quite capable of bending to the pressure of pragmatic benefit to their in group, and following the path of least resistance.

History is actually more trade than war, it just doesn’t seem that way because wars are more interesting to write about.

I don't think anyone was saying that scenario would be inevitable. Just that it could happen given humanity's history for being greedy, territorial, and often inclined to do stupid things like this.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The point? The point was that it's okay to have a part of the world hinge on humans acting stupidly. Humans as a species are stupid and in history have done similar nonsensical things. That was the point.

Whose point, and why, when no one ever said otherwise?

I don't think anyone was saying that scenario would be inevitable. Just that it could happen given humanity's history for being greedy, territorial, and often inclined to do stupid things like this.

Literally no one ever said it couldn’t happen.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Whose point, and why, when no one ever said otherwise?

My point and you did.

Literally no one ever said it couldn’t happen.

You were arguing that it shouldn't happen because that would be dumb of the humans.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My point and you did.

That doesn’t say what you claim it says.

You were arguing that it shouldn't happen because that would be dumb of the humans.

No, I wasn’t. I argued that humans behaving in a useful and reasonable manner was just as believable as any other outcome.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The key is the plot can show evil characters doing horrible actions, but the author has to worry about to promote the respect of the human dignity. If the screenwritter use the story for an "Overton window", for the audence get too used to immoral actions. I remember when once in the comic shop I was taking a look over a D&D comic and, sorry for this little spoiler, and evil necromancer had created his little squad of zombies with.... orphan children! But this was not only this, but when the good guys were fighting against them one the characters said something about "Don't regret, they are orphans, nobody will miss them!". I can buy a book where there are slavery in the evil empire, but I don't want to spend my money with an author who has forgotten the respect for the human dignity.

Let's rembember Star Wars Ep 1: the Phantom Menace Anakin Skywalker and his mother were slaves, and SW is a relatively family-friendly franchise.

Slave Liberation - TV Tropes

Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil, so let's liberate the slaves! There are three ways to do this: Rescue someone else's slaves, usually by force. Free some slaves you already own or buy some slaves specifically to free them. Or have the slaves …

tvtropes.org

Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil - TV Tropes

Wikipedia defines slavery as a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. It's not just bad: it's literally treating them as less than a person — and barely better than cattle — …

tvtropes.org

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The X-Men 90's cartoon was about the fictional racism against the mutants, and it was a cartoon for children.

Maybe in a fantasy world with deities the mortals have learnt to say no to male chauvisnim and racism, but there are other type of prejudices.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, all possible in the same world, even.

Climate change isn’t the result of individual humans all being idiots, it’s the result of stratification of power favoring the foolish and selfish rise to power and the masses having little ability to do anything about it, combined with at least a century of devestating pollution that the average person didn’t know what dangerous to the planet, and many generations of people growing up in a world where disasterous behavior is normalized.

None of that has anything to do with the kind of foolishness displayed when a hypothetical human says “screw it, let’s suicide run the entire forest because we don’t want to compromise with the current inhabitants.”

This is what I said that you first replied to.

Every single Crusade failed at its intended mission. Starting wars for basically no good reason is ingrained in human nature.

And why are you even arguing against this? Would you do this at a table where it's a plot hook for a campaign? Argue against the minutia of why this conflict is happening in the first place?

This is the beginning of our interaction. You replied to me in a post where I explicitly say that all manner of outcomes are entirely possible, even in a single given world.

You then berated me (again, very strange thing to do) for…checks notes…participating in the ongoing discussion.

 

[Raduin711]

So, I keep thinking back to a board game review I watched from a channel called Shut Up and Sit Down on a game called Istanbul. During the review he takes a break to talk to his friend at university with a PHD in Sociology about Orientalism that I think might be useful here.


(At the 11 minute mark... it should start at the section in question.)

Orientalism initially emerges from British and French colonization, and it's the definition of Middle Eastern, North African, and Asian cultures in the terms of the colonizers. Basically, it's a lens through which we view the world, where instead of seeing the similarities between the peoples of Europe and the Orient or the East, we see the differences and we exaggerate them. So if a book or a movie or a board game trades on how strange and beautiful the Middle East or India is, representing the people living in those places as being all the same while denying their individuality outside of those stereotypes, that's an Orientalist attitude. These people become simpler, lesser human beings than ourselves.

He goes on to talk about his thoughts about the Istanbul board game, and finds it largely unproblematic, save the Kebab Shop card, which depicts a Kebab Shop that would have been out of place in Istanbul, but resembled modern kebab shops that a westerner might frequent early in the morning after a night at the pub.

He also praised the game for having no harems, opium dens, or jinns in sight, but he doesn't elaborate further on those specific items.

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So with that in mind...

The differences are a big reason why we might choose a setting like Al-Qadim for our games. We want to explore middle-eastern myths, folklore, history, culture, etc. And I think it's natural to be drawn to what's new and different. But I think when we over-emphasize those aspects we lose sight of similarities and create stereotypes. Whether those things we over-emphasized were positive or negative doesn't matter- the end result flattens and dehumanizes the people depicted.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I really want a D&D setting based on Saladin Ahmed’s stories.