So, of course, all that freedom of speech stuff is only marginally relevant - the rights we have are about government control, not about the public marketplace of ideas. Charlaquin is not a government official. He cannot remove your freedom of speech. I can only restrict your access to one very specific platform - I cannot really impinge on your free speech - you can speak on any other platform around. And your rights are not "the right to speak on any platform of my choice."
And, in all of this... folks seem to forget that WotC has a freedom too. And that isn't "freedom to keep all their stuff in print". It is a freedom to print what they want... and not print what they don't want to. There is no fundamental difference in individuals saying "WotC should remove this product" and individuals saying, 'WotC should not remove this product".
Part of the problem with this line of thinking is that Gygax and Arneson and others who helped create the game are no longer around to explain or defend themselves, or to apologize, where appropriate. So Blackmoor or Greyhawk are just the way they are. But Ed Greenwood and Keith Baker and Jeff Grubb and Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss and other setting creators are still around and can explain/defend/apologize/change/fix their creations. Why do we not see any interviews or blog posts or anything from any of them? But seriously, why are they all silent right now? Or am I just missing their comments?
It might be more complete to say they'd make it happen if the money and resources were there. They have a budget, and a set of personnel with particular skills and only 24 hours in a day, and that only goes so far - they have to pick and choose projects.
So, "if the money is there," can be a little bit deceiving. They may know that there's money to be had, but not have the resources to expend on getting it, or it gets beat out by something with a marginally larger expected profit, and so on.
Yes, sure. I'm also not sure what the market is in different countries...i assume they've done their research. Imagine each non-English speaking country has their own likelihood of success.
As an aside, when I lived in India in the early 00s, I had a hard time finding fantasy novels. There were a few in larger bookstores, but not a lot of selection. I don't know whether that has changed or not.
Like historically? Of course it is. It's built on the conflict of Law (i.e., human civilization) vs Chaos (i.e., nature). The "good" guys were on the side of the people going out, kicking out the orcs and goblins and elves and monsters living in the forest, burning down the forests, and building roads, castles, temples, and farms. That's why Rangers did what they did and why the endgame was typically building a stronghold or tower of somekind to create your own fief. Endgame was feudalism. Explicitly.
In contemporary terms? No, that's no longer a theme except in fairly remote terms. A significant portion of the classes are on the side of nature now against the encroaching civilization (any Barbarian, non-Celestial Warlock, Druid, Ranger (which is much more focused on being nature friendly), Scout Rogue, Ancients Paladin, Nature Cleric, Sorcerer), and there are no 5e adventures that I recall that feature feudal lords as good guys or the end game. The "lords" that do exist are presented as just the guy who happens to be in charge. As often as not it's a mayor, or the authority of the "lord" is not related to the adventure at all. He might as well be an elected magistrate, a town councilman, a corporate executive, etc. as easily as a hereditary feudal lord for all the power they wield against the PCs. Sure, he's called Baron so-and-so or Duchess whatzit... but does the feudal aspect actually come up? Or are they just "the political leader for this civilization's region". Do they ever exercise more authority than we'd expect to see from a Governor or President or Prime Minister? Does nobility or even class ever really come up?
5e doesn't say, "Don't question the legitimate authority because how dare you, you filthy peasant?!" It says, "Don't question the legitimate authority because it's not remotely relevant to the plot." If the continent is going to blow up, it doesn't really matter if you're protecting a king or elected arbiter of the communist collective. The game is not about roleplaying Alan Quartermain or Dr. Livingstone anymore, but it's also not about roleplaying Che Guevara, either.
The politics of the land itself often just don't come up in 5e at all. It's always some external force with nebulous ideas of monolithic evil omnipotence. That places the bad guys in the position of being the colonials. They're invading and conquering the land for themselves. You might occasionally have super extreme reactionaries (i.e., kill all humanoids and return the land to nature) but those are extraordinarily rare. The adventures are always about replacing the current social order -- which isn't even described let alone defended -- with armageddon, apocalypse, cataclysm, catastrophe, annihilation, mass extinction, etc.
And Forgotten Realms? There's been so much war and conquering and back and forth over thousands of years that every city is built on the ruins of another empire's ruins. And that ruin was built on another empire's ruins before that. Is there still colonialism really in this campaign setting? Is civilization really pushing against nature in FR still? There's far less colonialism in FR than there is on Earth, and FR has far more absolute monarchies! It's got actual chattel slavery in some parts of the world!
The adventure antagonists are almost always presented against evil cults, fiends, cosmic horrors, or undead. There's Storm King's Thunder where the giants just up and start attacking, but they're doing it because
their god disappeared and their social order is thrown into total chaos so they start invading and attacking
.
Like which 5e adventure features nobility and feudal politics as a central plot point? Are there any 4e modules that you can think of? Any 3e modules? I certainly haven't played everything, but I'm struggling to think of a module where the guys trying to be feudal weren't the equivalent of Arthurian Nazis. That is, authoritarian fascist dictators. About all I can think of is Pathfinder's Kingmaker adventure path, which was held out as an unusual path meaning it's basically the exception proving the rule. There's like half a dozen APs that are focused around deposing a tyrant (I'm sure they're still restoring a different feudal lord, but... do the APs even discuss the politics of the "good" order?).
Sure, sure, "they don't ever question the status quo so they must defend it". Yeah, but they never describe the status quo, either. There are peasants (who behave more like we imagine American farmers from the 19th century) and courts and law officers (who behave more like American frontier sherrifs) and there are kings and lords (who behave more like town councils and mayors from American frontier towns). Hmm. Honestly, D&D campaign settings feel to me like they're set in the American Old West. The PCs are guns for hire. The wilderness isn't something for the PCs to fight against so much as something that's actively hostile and dangerous.
And, yeah, the Old West is still colonial -- that's why the translation works so easily -- but quite frankly you'll have to go back about 100,000 years to find something human related that isn't colonial in any way. Feudal Japan or warring states China is not less colonial, they're just less European and less Christian. There's always been war and conquering. There are no magical civilizations that never did anything wrong and treated everyone nearby with perfect kindness. There's no anachronistic utopia. Until literally 100 years ago, the purpose of surplus production for a nation was considered to be best used in warfare for conquering your neighbors or projecting your military power (which, of course, is still the core of modern American foreign policy). That was a ubiquitous idea because in order to expand you have to take something away from your neighbor. People were brutal and selfish because the world is a terrible place to live. Not being colonial is actually an absurd level of privilege and luxury. Yes, western colonialism was horrific and it will take a thousand years to fix the harm it did to the planet and the human race. But we can't just look at everything that refers to the past and police how people use culture.
Yes, Oriental Adventures should absolutely have a content warning. People today will want to know that it's contents are based on American pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s. It's got more to do with Big Trouble in Little China, The Golden Child, The Last Dragon, American Ninja, Kung Fu, Ran, Shogun, Fist of Fury, Five Element Ninjas, Shogun Assassin, the Five Deadly Venoms, and the Shaw Brothers than ancient Japan, ancient China, or any other ancient or classic Asian civilization. The original authors did not intend harm or malice towards Asia or Asians, and the authors were exited to emulate the things they knew from their contemporary popular culture and the very limited access they had to historical works. They had their local library and that's it. They were not historians and were not pretending to be. You can be offended by their ignorance, but being angry at the past because it didn't know what you do is going to be exhausting. If it offends you, don't buy it. Give it a bad review citing specific points to inform other shoppers and move on. And if you can't review it because you didn't buy it, how are you criticizing it at all?
I keep thinking about Ray Bradbury's Coda from Fahrenheit 451. Stop tearing down things you hate, and start building better things you love. DM's Guild exists. The OGL exists. You can build the better OA you dream of and call it whatever you want. Fixing the future by erasing the past is such flawed reasoning. Stop asking creators to bend over backwards apologizing and correcting mistakes from 40 years ago. Oriental Adventures is not used by anyone anymore for essentially anything. It's a terrible hill to die on because it's not worth anything. It's a $5 PDF for 1e AD&D that almost nobody used when it was printed and nobody has been interested in until now. It's already dead; you don't need to kill it again. The 1 person who buys it a year is not going to erode the past 40 years of social progress because of a TTRPG. The past is done. The past is written. The book is finished. If you don't like the story it told, make a better one. You're not winning anything by getting WotC to take it down. I can't possibly imagine a less hollow victory than getting WotC to take down a $5 PDF that almost certainly already doesn't sell. Wow! So brave! What progress! GG WotC! What an impact on their bottom line!
They still have the Orion Black scandal.
They still have the Zaiem Beg scandal.
They still have the #FireMikeMearls scandal.
They still have the ProJared / AtelierHeidi scandal.
They still have the Lizbeth Eden scandal.
They still have the Terese Nielson / Autumn Burchett scandal.
They still have the Noah Bradley scandal.
They still have to deal with "orcs are always evil and they kinda seem to be de-humanized in ways that minorities have historically been de-humanized".
They still have to deal with "alignment isn't absolute".
They still have to deal with "we should've called them ancestries and not races and we shouldn't have modifiers that make races physically predetermined".
And that's just stuff new within the past year.
But, nope! Let's stop and deal with stupid 1e Oriental Adventures! Can the community come up with a lower bar? An easier target? A less relevant issue? A scandal less likely to actually impact the future of the hobby? Some aspect of the game that fewer people know and care about and are outraged by? Probably not. Oh, wait. We could complain about the orange Palace of the Silver Princess again.
It took me awhile to figure it out, but this is what actually infuriates me. There are massive systemic issues at WotC and major issues with the current edition of the rules in print right now that WotC is using to attract new players to the hobby that need attention. And you want them to stop and deal with a 1e book that just doesn't matter anymore. You want to fight over the name of a public building or a book from 40 years ago. That's as symbolic and toothless as you can possibly make your progress. Fight over the murder of a black woman by police who still haven't been arrested. Fight over the fact that there are daily protest marches in every city that aren't covered by the media. Fight over the systemic racial and gender discrimination problems at the company producing your current and future content. Aim for maximum change instead of exhausting the momentum with minutiae that won't actually move the needle.
And, yeah, I'm sure to Asian players it does feel like a big issue and they genuinely do find it very offensive. But, I'm sorry, it's really not a huge problem right now. You could've been complaining and pushing about this for years, and you probably have been but nobody was listening. Instead it's just coming up now when it feels like it's just not that critical because the books haven't been relevant in so very long and the number of bigger scandals coming out is just ridiculous.
But, nope! Let's stop and deal with stupid 1e Oriental Adventures! Can the community come up with a lower bar? An easier target? A less relevant issue? A scandal less likely to actually impact the future of the hobby? Some aspect of the game that fewer people know and care about and are outraged by? Probably not. Oh, wait. We could complain about the orange Palace of the Silver Princess again.
It took me awhile to figure it out, but this is what actually infuriates me. There are massive systemic issues at WotC and major issues with the current edition of the rules in print right now that WotC is using to attract new players to the hobby that need attention. And you want them to stop and deal with a 1e book that just doesn't matter anymore. You want to fight over the name of a public building or a book from 40 years ago. That's as symbolic and toothless as you can possibly make your progress. Fight over the murder of a black woman by police who still haven't been arrested. Fight over the fact that there are daily protest marches in every city that aren't covered by the media. Fight over the systemic racial and gender discrimination problems at the company producing your current and future content. Aim for maximum change instead of exhausting the momentum with minutiae that won't actually move the needle.
...........................................you do realize it's entirely possible to be concerned about this and other WotC related issues right? dealing with OA is just part of a larger issue.
And, yeah, I'm sure to Asian players it does feel like a big issue and they genuinely do find it very offensive. But, I'm sorry, it's really not a huge problem right now. You could've been complaining and pushing about this for years, and you probably have been but nobody was listening. Instead it's just coming up now when it feels like it's just not that critical because the books haven't been relevant in so very long and the number of bigger scandals coming out is just ridiculous.
nope, you don't get to decide whether or not people like me think it's a problem. I highly doubt this is the first time anyone brought this issue up either, just because it wasn't brought to your own attention doesn't mean it only became an issue yesterday.
Like historically? Of course it is. It's built on the conflict of Law (i.e., human civilization) vs Chaos (i.e., nature). The "good" guys were on the side of the people going out, kicking out the orcs and goblins and elves and monsters living in the forest, burning down the forests, and building roads, castles, temples, and farms. That's why Rangers did what they did and why the endgame was typically building a stronghold or tower of somekind to create your own fief. Endgame was feudalism. Explicitly.
In contemporary terms? No, that's no longer a theme except in fairly remote terms. A significant portion of the classes are on the side of nature now against the encroaching civilization (any Barbarian, non-Celestial Warlock, Druid, Ranger (which is much more focused on being nature friendly), Scout Rogue, Ancients Paladin, Nature Cleric, Sorcerer), and there are no 5e adventures that I recall that feature feudal lords as good guys or the end game. The "lords" that do exist are presented as just the guy who happens to be in charge. As often as not it's a mayor, or the authority of the "lord" is not related to the adventure at all. He might as well be an elected magistrate, a town councilman, a corporate executive, etc. as easily as a hereditary feudal lord for all the power they wield against the PCs. Sure, he's called Baron so-and-so or Duchess whatzit... but does the feudal aspect actually come up? Or are they just "the political leader for this civilization's region". Do they ever exercise more authority than we'd expect to see from a Governor or President or Prime Minister? Does nobility or even class ever really come up?
5e doesn't say, "Don't question the legitimate authority because how dare you, you filthy peasant?!" It says, "Don't question the legitimate authority because it's not remotely relevant to the plot." If the continent is going to blow up, it doesn't really matter if you're protecting a king or elected arbiter of the communist collective. The game is not about roleplaying Alan Quartermain or Dr. Livingstone anymore, but it's also not about roleplaying Che Guevara, either.
The politics of the land itself often just don't come up in 5e at all. It's always some external force with nebulous ideas of monolithic evil omnipotence. That places the bad guys in the position of being the colonials. They're invading and conquering the land for themselves. You might occasionally have super extreme reactionaries (i.e., kill all humanoids and return the land to nature) but those are extraordinarily rare. The adventures are always about replacing the current social order -- which isn't even described let alone defended -- with armageddon, apocalypse, cataclysm, catastrophe, annihilation, mass extinction, etc.
And Forgotten Realms? There's been so much war and conquering and back and forth over thousands of years that every city is built on the ruins of another empire's ruins. And that ruin was built on another empire's ruins before that. Is there still colonialism really in this campaign setting? Is civilization really pushing against nature in FR still? There's far less colonialism in FR than there is on Earth, and FR has far more absolute monarchies! It's got actual chattel slavery in some parts of the world!
The adventure antagonists are almost always presented against evil cults, fiends, cosmic horrors, or undead. There's Storm King's Thunder where the giants just up and start attacking, but they're doing it because
their god disappeared and their social order is thrown into total chaos so they start invading and attacking
.
Like which 5e adventure features nobility and feudal politics as a central plot point? Are there any 4e modules that you can think of? Any 3e modules? I certainly haven't played everything, but I'm struggling to think of a module where the guys trying to be feudal weren't the equivalent of Arthurian Nazis. That is, authoritarian fascist dictators. About all I can think of is Pathfinder's Kingmaker adventure path, which was held out as an unusual path meaning it's basically the exception proving the rule. There's like half a dozen APs that are focused around deposing a tyrant (I'm sure they're still restoring a different feudal lord, but... do the APs even discuss the politics of the "good" order?).
Sure, sure, "they don't ever question the status quo so they must defend it". Yeah, but they never describe the status quo, either. There are peasants (who behave more like we imagine American farmers from the 19th century) and courts and law officers (who behave more like American frontier sherrifs) and there are kings and lords (who behave more like town councils and mayors from American frontier towns). Hmm. Honestly, D&D campaign settings feel to me like they're set in the American Old West. The PCs are guns for hire. The wilderness isn't something for the PCs to fight against so much as something that's actively hostile and dangerous.
And, yeah, the Old West is still colonial -- that's why the translation works so easily -- but quite frankly you'll have to go back about 100,000 years to find something human related that isn't colonial in any way. Feudal Japan or warring states China is not less colonial, they're just less European and less Christian. There's always been war and conquering. There are no magical civilizations that never did anything wrong and treated everyone nearby with perfect kindness. There's no anachronistic utopia. Until literally 100 years ago, the purpose of surplus production for a nation was considered to be best used in warfare for conquering your neighbors or projecting your military power (which, of course, is still the core of modern American foreign policy). That was a ubiquitous idea because in order to expand you have to take something away from your neighbor. People were brutal and selfish because the world is a terrible place to live. Not being colonial is actually an absurd level of privilege and luxury. Yes, western colonialism was horrific and it will take a thousand years to fix the harm it did to the planet and the human race. But we can't just look at everything that refers to the past and police how people use culture.
Yes, Oriental Adventures should absolutely have a content warning. People today will want to know that it's contents are based on American pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s. It's got more to do with Big Trouble in Little China, The Golden Child, The Last Dragon, American Ninja, Kung Fu, Ran, Shogun, Fist of Fury, Five Element Ninjas, Shogun Assassin, the Five Deadly Venoms, and the Shaw Brothers than ancient Japan, ancient China, or any other ancient or classic Asian civilization. The original authors did not intend harm or malice towards Asia or Asians, and the authors were exited to emulate the things they knew from their contemporary popular culture and the very limited access they had to historical works. They had their local library and that's it. They were not historians and were not pretending to be. You can be offended by their ignorance, but being angry at the past because it didn't know what you do is going to be exhausting. If it offends you, don't buy it. Give it a bad review citing specific points to inform other shoppers and move on. And if you can't review it because you didn't buy it, how are you criticizing it at all?
I keep thinking about Ray Bradbury's Coda from Fahrenheit 451. Stop tearing down things you hate, and start building better things you love. DM's Guild exists. The OGL exists. You can build the better OA you dream of and call it whatever you want. Fixing the future by erasing the past is such flawed reasoning. Stop asking creators to bend over backwards apologizing and correcting mistakes from 40 years ago. Oriental Adventures is not used by anyone anymore for essentially anything. It's a terrible hill to die on because it's not worth anything. It's a $5 PDF for 1e AD&D that almost nobody used when it was printed and nobody has been interested in until now. It's already dead; you don't need to kill it again. The 1 person who buys it a year is not going to erode the past 40 years of social progress because of a TTRPG. The past is done. The past is written. The book is finished. If you don't like the story it told, make a better one. You're not winning anything by getting WotC to take it down. I can't possibly imagine a less hollow victory than getting WotC to take down a $5 PDF that almost certainly already doesn't sell. Wow! So brave! What progress! GG WotC! What an impact on their bottom line!
They still have the Orion Black scandal.
They still have the Zaiem Beg scandal.
They still have the #FireMikeMearls scandal.
They still have the ProJared / AtelierHeidi scandal.
They still have the Lizbeth Eden scandal.
They still have the Terese Nielson / Autumn Burchett scandal.
They still have the Noah Bradley scandal.
They still have to deal with "orcs are always evil and they kinda seem to be de-humanized in ways that minorities have historically been de-humanized".
They still have to deal with "alignment isn't absolute".
They still have to deal with "we should've called them ancestries and not races and we shouldn't have modifiers that make races physically predetermined".
And that's just stuff new within the past year.
But, nope! Let's stop and deal with stupid 1e Oriental Adventures! Can the community come up with a lower bar? An easier target? A less relevant issue? A scandal less likely to actually impact the future of the hobby? Some aspect of the game that fewer people know and care about and are outraged by? Probably not. Oh, wait. We could complain about the orange Palace of the Silver Princess again.
It took me awhile to figure it out, but this is what actually infuriates me. There are massive systemic issues at WotC and major issues with the current edition of the rules in print right now that WotC is using to attract new players to the hobby that need attention. And you want them to stop and deal with a 1e book that just doesn't matter anymore. You want to fight over the name of a public building or a book from 40 years ago. That's as symbolic and toothless as you can possibly make your progress. Fight over the murder of a black woman by police who still haven't been arrested. Fight over the fact that there are daily protest marches in every city that aren't covered by the media. Fight over the systemic racial and gender discrimination problems at the company producing your current and future content. Aim for maximum change instead of exhausting the momentum with minutiae that won't actually move the needle.
And, yeah, I'm sure to Asian players it does feel like a big issue and they genuinely do find it very offensive. But, I'm sorry, it's really not a huge problem right now. You could've been complaining and pushing about this for years, and you probably have been but nobody was listening. Instead it's just coming up now when it feels like it's just not that critical because the books haven't been relevant in so very long and the number of bigger scandals coming out is just ridiculous.
You make a LOT of really good points and have a lot of good analysis in your post.
But at the end, you are dismissing the opinions of Asian Americans who DO feel that this is a problem worth discussing, both on it's own and in the larger context of racial/cultural issues being given attention right now.
The folks who find Oriental Adventures a problem that needs a solution are NOT arguing that this is the only problem worth discussing, nor that this is a larger problem than the others you list. Why can't we discuss the problematic elements and solutions for OA and also at the same time discuss the other very real issues you list?
We can address it all, we don't have to prioritize and label some problems as "minor" and put them on the back burner.
You should also note that most voices who agree that OA is a problem, are not in favor of removing the book from digital sales. But are rather in favor of adding a disclaimer to the digital book.
You should also note that most voices who agree that OA is a problem, are not in favor of removing the book from digital sales. But are rather in favor of adding a disclaimer to the digital book.
idk at this point I'm all for removing it from the store. not like a pdf is hard to obtain otherwise.
I will say though, I find it funny how OA is both so trivial that I shouldn't worry about it being sold, but also so important that if WotC removed it from the store it'd be the worst decision they'd ever made.
I actually have it. Haven't been able to talk myself into reading it, though, since I no longer teach World History. I still keep it, though, since teachers never truly know what their assignment will be the next year, at least not in my district.
The folks who find Oriental Adventures a problem that needs a solution are NOT arguing that this is the only problem worth discussing, nor that this is a larger problem than the others you list. Why can't we discuss the problematic elements and solutions for OA and also at the same time discuss the other very real issues you list?
We can address it all, we don't have to prioritize and label some problems as "minor" and put them on the back burner.
IMHO, I get the cynical sense that the call to focus on bigger issues is really a convoluted plea to leave those issues alone in D&D without any reflection on how D&D and the wider tabletop hobby may be (likely unintentionally) complicit in those larger real issues. People can continue pretending there is no problem of racism in D&D as long as people focus on the bigger issues, which will be more difficult to immediately solve. People don't like having their nostalgic paraphernalia criticized, as it feels like an indirect attack on their own person as their identities are tied in the liking of said paraphernalia.
It's also notable that if one were to work on those bigger issues of racism and the like, as per the call to action, there would be just as many people who would likewise say that those people should focus on larger issues still. The message is clear. There's never a good time to evaluate or resolve the problem.
Especially if fixing the 'minor problem' is super easy, there is no excuse not to fix it as quickly as possible. If OA is so irrelevant that it really doesn't matter if it remains online or not, then just take it down since you'll please a group that is too often silenced.
We shouldn't silence the concerns and feelings of marginalized groups just because we find them inconvenient to our nostalgia, or that people from the same group don't automatically share those feelings.
