D&D General (Anecdotal) conversations with Asian gamers on some problems they currently face in the D&D world of RPG gaming

[Eric V]

Mod Note:

DON'T MAKE IT PERSONAL. Address your commentary to the content of the post,

Apologies.

 

[Undrave]

People just aren't getting the difference between a manual like OA versus Tom Sawyer or some other book. The latter is a book one simply reads; that's the expected level of engagement with the book. It can contain bigoted aspects, but one needn't personally engage them.

A book like OA for a role-playing game is different. It's an instruction manual, written by white North Americans, on how to pretend to be East Asians in a group of (predominantly) fellow white North Americans. In a fantasy setting, sure, but "fantasy setting" does nothing to address the stereotypes.

Oooh that's a very good point!! I hadn't even thought to put it that way!

 

[Umbran]

Depends on the slopes angle.

Ah, but you see, the "slippery slope" argument relies on not determining the slope. It is an emotional appeal to fear or shame.

I mean, I'm sure it won't stop the sales of every D&D product, but it could lead to more.

You see, right there - "could lead". Yes, we can string together a list of hypothetical things that could happen. But unless you address the likelihood of those steps actually occurring with something more solid than "I think it likely", all you are doing is creating a scary story.

The end result is fearmongering. I am not impressed.

 

[Immeril]

It's baffling to me that people don't see this as problematic. It's hard to come up with an equivalent experience for myself, but I imagine that if someone came up with "Catholic Adventures" and there were rules about the ubiquity of Latin, casting stigmata, and all sorts of other tropes, and I found out that Roman Catholics weren't consulted on such a book...it'd be weird. The idea that there's a book out there giving instruction on how to pretend to be what I am (in this case, Roman Catholic; for East Asians, OA) and nobody with the lived experience was consulted...yeah.

So you would find it weird if you found out that Roman Catholics weren't consulted, regardless of the actual content of the book?

The end result is fearmongering. I am not impressed.

No, the end result is creating a precedent. And common law is all about precedents, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Umbran]

No, the end result is creating a precedent. And common law is all about precedents, if I'm not mistaken.

Don't change my referent on me, please and thank you. Creating a scary story is not creating a precedent.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ah, but you see, the "slippery slope" argument relies on not determining the slope. It is an emotional appeal to fear or shame.

It isn't though. It can be. For example I could appeal to fear by saying "if we allow people to let dogs off their leashes at the beach, then it is only a matter of time before we allow dogs to eat babies at the beach!". That would be an appeal to emotion, with no logical connection from one thing to the next. But if someone says "If we remove thing X, which has qualities A, B, and C" from OBS, then surely that opens the door to removing other books that contain "A, B or C" from OBS because the rational is the same. That isn't an appeal to fear or emotion. Could it be wrong? Absolutely. Maybe there is something unique about OA that people making this argument are missing, and no other RPGs would ever be taken down. But I think most of us can think of at least ten or so TSR books that would be deemed equally problematic using the same logic we are applying to OA. Some people even take issue with the language in the 1E DMG for instance. And the 1E DMG is incredibly popular (especially in the OSR). Again, possible we are wrong here. But this doesn't seem like fear mongering to me when you are making a clear argument about the rationale behind the removal and pointing out what might happen when you apply that rational to other books currently available at OBS.

 

[Remathilis]

Ah, but you see, the "slippery slope" argument relies on not determining the slope. It is an emotional appeal to fear or shame.



You see, right there - "could lead". Yes, we can string together a list of hypothetical things that could happen. But unless you address the likelihood of those steps actually occurring with something more solid than "I think it likely", all you are doing is creating a scary story.

The end result is fearmongering. I am not impressed.

The future is always uncertain. Hence "could".

I think banning OA opens the door to a number of other products likewise going that way: Al-Qadim, Maztica, VRG to Vistani, the Horde, and the Old Empires all share similar issues in that they are fantasy interpretations of real world cultures not written by members of said culture. Because no one has called for thier abolishment yet doesn't mean that it can't or won't happen. And if/when it does, WotC has set the policy for how to handle it with OA.

That's not fearmongering, that's attempting to predict a possible outcome based on prior experience. Yes, it's possible OA is the sole outlier and no other older book elicits an outcry and subsequent reaction from WotC. But it's possible that one does. And another. And another.

These things don't happen all at once, but they do happen quickly when they do. Remember, WotC felt it safe to produce a 2nd book with the exact same title less than 20 years go. A lot changed in a decade.

So I think it's fair to discuss how the treatment of OA might set prescident for other future concerns. I'm personally against leaving gaps in the catalogue, and I am concerned that in the future what is acceptable today is a target for tomorrow.

The past is prologue.

 

[Immeril]

Don't change my referent on me, please and thank you. Creating a scary story is not creating a precedent.

You're right. Removing OA would only enforce the current precedent. People already know that heated discussions on social media have consequences, such as the cancellation of a D&D livestream, or banning people from attending GenCon.

 

[Cadence]

mmm, I have been thinking about it, and I really don't think calling AD&D core books "Occidental Adventures" makes any sense. yes, D&D was meant to be medieval European by default, that much is obvious, but it's still meant to be setting agnostic. Oriental Adventures is a book where real world Asian cultures are presented "exotic and mystical" settings for your adventures. the theoretical Occidental Adventures would actually be a guide to specific European cultures and and presented as exotic and mystical settings for you to use, and the fact that this counterpart doesn't exist does speak to part of why OA is problematic.

RE: Oriental Adventures vs. Occidental Adventures(!?)

I haven't flipped through OA in quite a while. Reading your comment (and one of the lines in Gygax's OA preface), I was expecting the book to relate various things explicitly to specific real world cultures in a way that the rest of AD&D didn't (as opposed to being broadly about the Orient vs. broadly about Europe).

While the names of the races, classes, and weapons are obviously from the real world, I didn't see any mention of how they matched particular nationalities or cultures from the real world after the preface and introduction. The "Korobokuru are a race of Oriental dwarves". The barbarians live in three generic territories, steppeland, forest, and jungle. The section on equipment talks about the exchange rate between "gajin world to Kara Tur and vice versa". We today, know, if nothing else via google, where the different weapons and classes originated. But someone reading the text isn't told where the Samurai or Wu Jen are based from in the real world. The weapons are just in a big list with no real world site of origin listed. Like the PhB does for Europe, it feels like a mish-mash of the entire region (more below). Similarly, in the "Overview of Kara-Tur" section it isn't stated which real world countries the Kara-Tur ones line up with, even if it's easy to guess in some cases. This feels similar to me to some things in Greyhawk or Faerun in those specific products. The difference being that Greyhawk and Faerun had their own books and weren't at the back of the PhB or MM.

In the "Daily Life in Kara-Tur" section it does note:

The world of Kara-Tur and the real lands that provide its inspiration are not necessarily those familiar to most DMs and players. There are many differences in dress, food, customs, and behavior - differences that are small in themselves, but when added together make a culture and style of life foreign to most players. This section of Oriental Adventures describes some of these differences, aiding the DM and players in capturing the feel and color of the world. DMs especially should note that this section does not and cannot describe all the variety and richness of a land so different from those of the west. It is strongly suggested that further reading be done. The bibliography at the back of this book lists many titles that give more information and detail. The DM is strongly encouraged to read one or more of these titles.

The customs and ways of life described in this section are not absolutes. Just because it is stated here does not mean this is the only choice. The Orient covers a vast number of different types of cultures, even more so when the different time periods are considered. What may be true in one part of the Orient may be entirely different in another part. Also, since this is a fantasy world, the DM should freely change or alter aspects of the world as he wishes.

I'm not sure if this helps your how that impacts your argument. Kara-Tur seems clearly aiming to be a mishmash of the east like Greyhawk and Faerun (and the AD&D default) are a mishmash of the west - backing up a parallel between Oriental and Occidental. But it also recognizes that clearly this one book is leaving things out by necessity and that DMs are advised to look deeper into the source material - does this indicate some cultural respect on the authors part?

As for the pre-OA AD&D, it followed D&D which followed CHAINMAIL in relying on "medieval European history, and mythos, and myth most commonly available to the authors." (Gygax, OA Preface). In the PhB, two of the classes do have specifically noted real world connection. For the cleric, "[T]his class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times." and "Druids can be visualized as medieval cousins of what the ancient Celtic sect of Druids would have become had it survived the Roman conquest." OA doesn't give the origin of Samurai or language the weapon names are from, and the PhB doesn't tell us a Paladin was originally one of those serving Charlemagne (although, as judged by the show "Have Gun Will Travel", the term had wider usage) or where Fauchard or Guisarme come from. The DMG does explicitly give an example it claims makes it "easy to see how pointless it is to blindly plug in a set of 'birth tables' based on some form of hereditary quasi-European nobility". The paragraph on "Peasants, Serfs, and Slaves" and similar topics seem clearly based on Europe although it doesn't reference it specifically. I don't have a copy of the MM to check what it does.

As you note, the setting of AD&D was clearly Europe by default. With only the Monk in the PhB and a table of corresponding Asian royal and noble titles (with Sultan, Padishah, Maharaja, Kha-Kahan, and Tarkhan at the top of the various lists) in the DMG, and a few monsters that seem to go beyond it. This generality feels to me like that's what they were aiming at with OA and the far east.

Is a problem that the names in OA are too obviously tied to that part of the world? But is part of the reason that doesn't stand out in AD&D that England and the parts of Europe the English interacted with make up a big part of the stereotypical picture of medieval Europe? Is using the names Samurai and Ninja very different from using Druid and Paladin? Would it have helped if they had called Kensai "Weapon Saints" as a class name? Is calling a Katana a Katana different than calling a Fauchard a Fauchard (instead of a curved blade pole-arm)? I feel like I should look up how druid, paladin, long sword, broad sword, glaive, and fauchard are translated in modern Japanese RPGs, and how both those and the eastern weapons and class names are translated into something like French.

It might not be perfect but I think labeling pre-OA AD&D as Occidental Adventures definitely makes some sense.

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RE: Exoticism and Accuracy

As far as exoticism, it feels like Gygax expects that to go both ways in the preface:

It will be possible for adventurers to roam the whole world, those from the Occident marveling over the mysteries of the East, while brave characters from the Orient journey to the West to learn about the strange and incredible lore which that land holds.

I'm not sure how it impacts the argument, but it feels worth noting that he also suggests removing the Monk from the base AD&D setting and putting it in the OA part of the world, because that's where it belongs.

Cook in his introduction does talk about the Orient being mysterious and exciting - because one can explore and discover entirely different cultures. As far as reflecting them accurately:

In preparing Oriental Adventures, there were many goals to meet. Foremost of these was the interesting but conflicting demands of historical accuracy and fantastic imagination. There is very little point in doing a book about Oriental culture if the material is not accurate. But accuracy can often be unplayable or just unacceptable. Accuracy here would mean stricter class structure, less chance for player advancement and less adventure. It would mean more fiddlely rules for little details that would get in the way of play. And rules that might apply to a Japanese culture would certainly be incorrect in a strict Chinese culture! Furthermore, the world presented had to be what people think the Orient is, not necessarily what it actually is. Thus, reference works and sources of ideas went beyond books and included popular Japanese movies about samurai and ninja, the whole family of Hong Kong kung-fu movies, comics, and even those endearing monster epics of giant reptiles and funny dinosaurs.

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RE: So what?

OA is certainly a product of it's time (and let's face it, what has been a good time in America for the dominant culture to be sensitive to anyone else) and I would be great with slapping a label on it for just the name and back cover-blurb alone. And I am great with respecting when people are disturbed by things that are in a book that I didn't realize were sensitive - that I didn't realize because I'm about as privileged as anyone can be.

But when I go to look so I can understand, it's odd when there are multiple things that are supposed to be there that aren't. Are two-thirds of the argument Trammell's uses in "How Dungeon's and Dragon's Appropriated the Orient" (about comeliness and non-weapon proficiencies) that are used by others too, simply false given those mechanics' history. A history that isn't even hard to check? Is OA full of direct calls to the orient with a goal of exoticism, or is that mostly conveyed in the title and cover blurb? Were the authors negligent in not using sources and getting a culturally informed opinion, or did they use quite a few available sources, get more outside opinion, and display more cultural sensitivity than would be expected for the time (which, granted, wasn't much of an expectation)?

Is there an actual argument that pulling the book down is somewhere close enough to the censorship/book-burning family that it should be done with caution (even though I've posted it is really freaking different than government censorship or book burning)? If there is, then how much needs to be on the pull it down side to justify doing so? Is there a line, or is it all just slippery slope-ism worry?

I have a life devoid of microaggressions or let alone worrying about anything worse. OA is a relatively unimportant book from four editions ago, that historians of the game would still presumably be able to get a copy of from WotC even if it was pulled down from sale. And I'll assume slippery slopeism is as silly a concern as it's supposed to be. If it seems unacceptable to continue having it available (with a #%!* better warning than the one they put on it and indiscriminately everything else), then the little bit of me that wants it out there for nostalgia doesn't particularly feel like much when weighed against another metaphorical weight on your and others' shoulders.

 

[Bagpuss]

A book like OA for a role-playing game is different. It's an instruction manual, written by white North Americans,

Not an issue writers shouldn't be limited to their own lived experience.

on how to pretend to be East Asians in a group of (predominantly) fellow white North Americans.

Again not an issue, the whole point of roleplaying is to pretend to be a character you are not and be something outside your own lived experience.

It's baffling to me that people don't see this as problematic.

It's baffling to me that people think writers be limited to certain subjects, and that roleplayers not be allowed to play different characters.

It's hard to come up with an equivalent experience for myself, but I imagine that if someone came up with "Catholic Adventures" and there were rules about the ubiquity of Latin, casting stigmata, and all sorts of other tropes, and I found out that Roman Catholics weren't consulted on such a book...it'd be weird. The idea that there's a book out there giving instruction on how to pretend to be what I am (in this case, Roman Catholic; for East Asians, OA) and nobody with the lived experience was consulted...yeah.

Yeah so would I. However if you actually bothered to look at the Bibliography there are plenty of people with lived experience that were consulted via the books they have written on the subject. The Special Thanks section calls out a group of Japanese players who critiqued and lead to changes in the document.

David "Zeb" Cook forward makes it clear as well that while they tried to keep material accurate, if that got in the way of playability or fun then that won out, and also it was about what people thought the Orient was like from popular culture not necessarily what it actually is.

It would be a bit like you complaining about Netflix's Warrior Nun as a Catholic, that it doesn't show true Catholic culture and what the faith is really about. Well of course it doesn't and nobody expects it too. You didn't pick up OA as a scholarly work on the cultures of the Far East, you bought it as a fun supplement to a game and a chance to play as the Ninjas and Samurai you saw in the popular movies of the time.