American RPGs

[Celebrim]

You know how many goths and cheerleaders you probably just insulted?

If I answered, 'all of them', it would be an actual insult. I presume that there are some goths and cheerleaders smart enough to have figured this out on their own.

 

[Celebrim]

I am not sure what your point really is here.

Hmmm... ok, my point is that at the depth that the things are considered in the subcultures that they are no more than superficial tokens, and that both subcultures ultimately engaged in the same game of judging their superiority over other subcultures or judging the fitness of members within the subculture by the superficial tokens.

For example, in my comparison of the Goths to the Cheerleaders, I was highlighting that ultimately both groups judged themselves and others by superficial aesthetic standards whose origin was ultimately selfish (eg. "I'm beautiful because I'm blond and tan." vs. "I'm beautiful because I'm black haired and pale.") People wanting acceptance into both groups are tempted to alter their appearance (dying hair, wearing makeup) in order to change themselves superficially to fit the groups standard of acceptable appearance. And so forth. The parallels run pretty deep.

Is black the same as white?

Not at all. Black and white are very different, but in this case the uses to which they were employed were the same, to the extent that they don't carry much meaning.

If I am allowed to be perfectly frank about it, someone pipped up and said what I thought amounted to, "My setting is much better than their setting." implicitly slamming other games and lifting up Midnight as being somehow better, and being the sort of irrascible contrarian I am, I slammed that statement back - throwing out the claim that Midnight used its 'anti-tropes' just as superficially as other settings used their standard tropes.

But the Goth subculture is not defined by being "anti-Cheerleader"...

Actually, I very much think that it is. I could go into some very long discussion of Goth cultural icons and point out that this defining oneself as an anti-cheerleader runs really deeply, but rather than digging up all that research I'll just point to some obvious cross cultural examples. The original Adams family is based on the works of Edward Gorey, whose works are very much deliberately intended to be satirical looks like at Victorian children's literature, which is arguably the culture that informs the 1950's archetypal cheerleader and resulting culture. In the movie Adams Family II: Family Values, one of the major conflicts is between Wednesday Adams representing the Goth Culture and evil representatives of the 'cheerleader' culture (there sterotyped as intollerant, racist, etc. in order to increase our empathy for the Wednesday). The contrasts are more than coincidental. Similarly, the character of Lydia from Beetlejuice (another early popularization of Goth) is defined by rebellion and contrarianism.

I'm not sure that if we went back the original 19th century Goths, that the behavior would be defined any less as rebellion from the cultural norm, but on that subject I'm not quite as well informed as I wasn't alive then to observe it.

 

[Wik]

You know how many goths and cheerleaders you probably just insulted?

Yeah, all the cheerleaders who come to this site are going to be heartbroken.

***

Onto the topic at hand, I noticed this with a lot of books about Canada, which are almost always written by American audiences. RIFTS CANADA, for example, is all about arctic exploration. And a lot of modern games suggest that the second you cross the border, even in august, you better don a parka.

(This, by the way, amuses me in other venues, too. Like the people in Seattle I was talkign to in a Poker chatroom who assumed, in september, that I was covered in snow in Victoria... which is, um, within viewing distance of a part of Seattle. I said to them "hey, how is the rain down there? Because, you know, I'm under the same cloud as you.")

***

There are going to be cultural biases in any game, and I think a lot of them we won't notice, as we belong to (more or less) the same culture. The freedom to choose religion is a big one in the fantasy games - it makes sense from a play standpoint, but we come from a culture where that makes obvious sense. Would it happen if the game were originally released in a fundamentalist state? Or medieval Europe? Probably not. That game would just assume PCs belonged to the "right" religion, and perhaps create an evil religion the PCs oppose.

Wealth and Magic Items are another example. Not every culture sees wealth in the same way as the west. I can think of many cultures where the acquisition of material wealth would not be seen as a good thing to emphasize (i.e., yeah, you want it, but you don't want people to know that you want it, so playing a game that is centred around it would be a bad thing).

Hell, the way these games are marketed speak to very Western conceit - RPGs are pure capitalism, and always have been.

But if we're gonna go with simple "American Centric" as opposed to "western centric", I honestly don't know. The imperial system is a good starting point. I think the idea of melting pot cities (where elves, dwarves, humans, and halflings happily congregate) would be a good starting place, since Americans often think of their nation as a global melting pot (not entirely true these days, or at least, no more so than most western nations). I used to think the town of Solace from Dragonlance was a miniature United States, in a way, for that reason. Also, the idea of "hive mind" meaning "bad guys" is a classic americanism that was probably stolen from the sci-fi of the time, since "hive mind" would be an analog to eastern communism (which americans, until a little over twenty years ago now, supposedly opposed).

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

(This, by the way, amuses me in other venues, too. Like the people in Seattle I was talkign to in a Poker chatroom who assumed, in september, that I was covered in snow in Victoria... which is, um, within viewing distance of a part of Seattle. I said to them "hey, how is the rain down there? Because, you know, I'm under the same cloud as you.")

I've known folks from London say that Americans have asked them in what state (of the U.S.) England is.

Now that I think of it, though, I wonder if sense of scale might be American. A lot of game worlds tend to depict large continents for adventuring. My French teacher in high school told us a story about friends from France who came to visit her in Boston, MA. When asked what they wanted to see while they were here, they replied, "Disney World," not realizing that Orlando is more than 1,300 miles from Boston.

Wealth and Magic Items are another example. Not every culture sees wealth in the same way as the west. I can think of many cultures where the acquisition of material wealth would not be seen as a good thing to emphasize (i.e., yeah, you want it, but you don't want people to know that you want it, so playing a game that is centred around it would be a bad thing).

I think most real cultures are against the idea of killing folks and taking their stuff. D&D is a little warped in that regard even by American standards. Having said that, I don't really dispute the point you made.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

As an American who's been gaming in Berlin for the past 6 years (various games) I can say that it really does vary. I think the time the bias comes to the forefront is when you get "City" books written by American about a foreign city. There are still folks royally pissed about the WW's "Berlin by Night" because, as far as I understand it, they pretty much said Nazi Vampires rule everything.

I knew a Pole who was very unhappy with Mongoose's B5 Earth Alliance Fact Book, but then there was a lot of complaining about that. Specifically, she didn't like: "Poles seek out comfortable, familiar surroundings and do not do well in changing environments. Faced with the choice of a well-paying, dull job or an exciting but risky opportunity to make tremendous wealth, the typical Pole will always choose the one that offers the best job security."

Canadians were described as: "Canadians tend to be hardy and can swim, hike, and hunt for extended periods of time. They speak English with a noticeable French accent and a few of their own special pronunciations."

The research for said book was apparently done in a Warner Brothers cartoon archive from the 1940s.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I think it might not be so much "Americanisms" in DnD as it is that the assumed world is generally one that is Capitalistic with modern(21st century) values. Of course, that has already been said.

 

[Ariosto]

It's a typical trope of fantasy that when the BBEG is on the rise, the weather goes bad, disease spreads, there is a famine, etc.

I think that stems from the roots of fantasy in mythology.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've known folks from London say that Americans have asked them in what state (of the U.S.) England is.

Now that I think of it, though, I wonder if sense of scale might be American. A lot of game worlds tend to depict large continents for adventuring. My French teacher in high school told us a story about friends from France who came to visit her in Boston, MA. When asked what they wanted to see while they were here, they replied, "Disney World," not realizing that Orlando is more than 1,300 miles from Boston.

IME, some Americans tend to grossly underestimate the depth of history, and are generally clueless about geography outside of our country. Sometimes they are clueless about the geography within the country- there is a reason license plates of our 47th state reads "New Mexico USA." (emphasis mine)

In comparison, some Europeans tend to grossly underestimate the size of the USA. Like your teacher, I've had European buddies show up for a 2 week road trip expecting to see the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful and the Golden Gate Bridge. Unless your car can go lightspeed, that ain't gonna happen.

 

[Ariosto]

Here's one!

The D&D Gazetteer GAZ 10 The Orcs of Thar featured a subterranean city called "Trollhattan". I think it was intended as a pun on Manhattan, site of New York City. However, there is an actual city of Trollhättan in Sweden.

 

[Pseudonym]

Has anybody ever run into players who, if somebody doesn't understand common, just starts speaking more slowly and more loudly?

Our party in our 4E game a few months ago encountered a lizardman village where no one spoke Common, and we had to rely on our dragonborn fighter to translate Draconic for the rest of us. Being conscious of the trope, several of us played up the talk slowly and loudly in Common trick.

I think in our next session, my character is going to speak slowly and loudly in Elvish to every NPC we encounter. You've inspired me.