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

[Remathilis]

Not a psychologist, so...

But I imagine a vet with PTSD might have a harder time with the film. I imagine playing a shoot-everything game that primarily targets certain ethnicities might have some long term effects on their worldview. Lots of qualified people have done deep-dives on these sorts of things; the latest I am aware of is in my home city, at the Universite de Montreal.

Hmm. Thank you. I wanted to see if the video game was more damaging/worse since the consumer is a participant in the violence (he is the one "pulling the trigger" by pressing the button) Rather than the passive consumption of watching the violence in the movie. Basically, I wanted to see if your stance on active and passive consumption of media would remain consistent.

 

[Haldrik]

No one had a problem with Kingsman, with a Black villian and not a single black good guy or Blade with a black hero and white villian.

Playing such a balancing act limits your creative opportunities and is a tad racist. People are more than just their identity labels.

Blade had prominent white goodguys who helped contextualize the white villain. I am comfortable with Blade. (And loved the movie.)

Maybe more relevant to me. I love the scifi show Black Lightning. Most of the actors are black. The only main white supporting character is extremely important. That white character isnt innocent, but he is heroic. The narrative views him with compassionate eyes, and he is a welcome member of the black community, and is even an adopted family member of the main characters who are black.

If the story decided to treat this white character in a way that was insulting or humiliating, then that would offend me, highly.

I watch movies, where the one or few black characters are treated as flat tokens, or in an insulting way, or humiliating way, or worse killed off, as if they have no right to enjoy a happy ending. It hurts me to see that. If that character were white or gay, that would immediately outrage me.

So yeah. I do have a problem when the villain is some less empowered identity − when there is no attempt to contextualize the identity.

In some situations, the white character is the less empowered identity. The principle applies.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Dont use the names "Samurai" (or "Druid" or "Viking" or "Thunderbird" so on) unless one is making an honest effort to use the reallife name accurately and empathetically.

I don't think "thunderbird" is a good example because it's an umbrella term to refer to multiple deities in a variety of indigenous tribes, not any specific cultural figure.

The Thunderbird: Native American Myths and Legends (Thunder-Birds)

Information and legends about the Native American mythological figure the Thunderbird.

www.native-languages.org

However, "wendigo" would be a great example because it is a specific cultural figure that is commonly depicted horribly inaccurately in Euro-American popular culture and its cultural significance is lost in the process.

In modern Ojibwe culture, the wendigo has become a symbol of Western colonialism and consumption.

Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History: Smallman, Shawn, Dillon, Grace: 9781772030327: Amazon.com: Books

Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History [Smallman, Shawn, Dillon, Grace] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History

www.amazon.com

 

[Mercurius]

There some general rules that seem to work well.
• Dont borrow from an other culture, unless you feel intimate with that culture.
• Absolutely dont use reallife names, unless it is historically/mythologically accurate.

I appreciate the spirit of your post, but think you go a bit too far here. Today's global context with regards to culture is rather unique: we're all mixed together and have access to more cultural ideas than ever before, if in a mostly facile way (media, internet, etc).

We can't possiblly avoid "borrowing from an other culture," and the act of borrowing isn't necessarily aggressive or harmful, depending upon context.

Secondly, one could argue that the only people who are intimate with samurai culture are samurai and academic experts, whether or not they are Japanese. Following your logic, that narrows the field as to who "can" borrow from samurai culture down quite a bit.

Gygax--and every D&D writer after him--borrowed from other cultures, whether "other" geographically, ethnically, or historically speaking. The act of creativity in all fields involves "borrowing." If one could only borrow from one's own culture, in some instances that would generate a very narrow (and depressing) range of options.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

An RPG is about taking on and acting out a (possibly offensive caricature) role. I am not putting in the effort to act out as a harmful stereotype when I do the former; there is danger of doing so in the latter. And I can't understand how people don't see the difference.

There is no danger of you acting out a possibly offensive caricature role if you are playing the character and you know what to modify. If the whole group is ignorant, then no one in that group would be offended. The only case where it might matter is in a group where someone is offended and you don't have to play OA for that to happen. If you are that worried as a DM and don't know your players, use an X-card or similar.

From one of your posts, your home city is Montreal. Mine too (although I live in California now). I run 2 games. One of them has a French Canadian who is a staunch separatist. Somehow me as the DM, who voted No, manages to play week after week with zero issues coming up even though there are plenty of tropes around that are easy entries for such politics to enter the game.

I am not sure how reasonable adults can have the issues that cause offense when actually playing. Not that an AD&D 1e rulebook is that relevant today.

The other night I DM I have 2 black guys in my group. I guessed on one because of the name (we play via voice and VTT) and found out later that 2 of 6 were black. I am careful about stereotypes in general, even though my orcs are evil in my setting, and when that issue flared up, I asked them if I should change anything. They said no, they preferred the standard rules. I knew to ask. I run AL (before covid) at my local store on Sundays. Heavily Asian player base there and lots of minors. Lots of the players are younger girls (or present as girls, I use whatever pronouns I am asked to use). People play whatever and theme whatever. Zero issues.

I don't think I am some magic DM, that is the same for all the other DMs in the store. Including my 2 daughters. Why the internet assumes all the DMs and book writers are evil trolls out to eat people I will never get.

 

[Eric V]

Hmm. Thank you. I wanted to see if the video game was more damaging/worse since the consumer is a participant in the violence (he is the one "pulling the trigger" by pressing the button) Rather than the passive consumption of watching the violence in the movie. Basically, I wanted to see if your stance on active and passive consumption of media would remain consistent.

Not sure what you're thanking me for...both my examples were really specific, and I have a hard time seeing them applicable broadly (a non-combatant watching SPR would likely not have the same experience as the vet with PTSD).

In general, I would say, based on brain plasticity, that active participation (playing the game) is more likely to have an effect than a more passive participation (merely reading).

 

[Remathilis]

Not sure what you're thanking me for..

Just entertaining my question. That's all.

 

[Mercurius]

As an aside, one form of treatment for PTSD is "exposure therapy" where a vet, for instance, would play a simulation of a traumatic situation to rewire his or her response, re-process it, if you will (or listen to a recording of a specific experience, again and again). Trauma largely being the result of not fully processing an experience. Of course this is done, and should be done, in a therapeutic (supportive/safe) environment.

 

[Eric V]

There is no danger of you acting out a possibly offensive caricature role if you are playing the character and you know what to modify. If the whole group in ignorant, then no one in that group would be offended.
Why the internet assumes all the DMs are book writers are evil trolls out to eat people I will never get.

That last statement can't possibly be true, but whatever.

As for the rest of the post, I don't know what to tell you; I bolded the parts that are problematic. 1) DOES someone necessarily know what to modify? Would it not be better if the product was more sensitively written and didn't need to be modified? 2) The group is not the world at large. I just don't think that repeated engagement with ethnic stereotypes would somehow remain confined to the game room. That's not how the brain works.

 

[Panda-s1]

old Doctor Who episodess have a lot of cultural and racist baggage and we should probably seriously assess the necessity of BBC selling these episodes for a profit.

old Superman comics have a lot of cultural and racist baggage and we should probably seriously assess the necessity of DC selling these comics for a profit.

old Rolling Stones albums have a lot of cultural and racist baggage and we should probably seriously assess the necessity of Universal Media selling these albums for a profit.

...

yes, to all of these lol

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.

why are you equating this to "banning". if OA were "banned" it would be because DriveThruRPG or it's host removed it from their website. nobody's asking for that, we're asking for WotC to make the conscious decision to remove their own book from sale.

and again, why is it that OA is so trivial that I shouldn't be offended by it, but so important that its "banning" is the worst possible thing WotC could ever do? someone like me saying "hey this book is full of outdated stereotypes about people like me maybe you shouldn't sell it?" is not outweighed by the want of being able to buy a decades old book in digital form that is readily available elsewhere.

"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" yeah we should assess all of these things. these are rulebooks, they have rules, I'm not saying we should automatically drop them because they are without merit, but we should go through the D&D back catalog and really think about what is something worth keeping and what's just a weird cultural artifact that's mostly fluff with fluff specific rules.

this could very well mean nothing gets removed from the shop. it might mean some things do. at the very least they need to do better than just copy and pasting a (likely plagarized) blurb on every D&D product like that solves the issue at hand. if they can put a lengthy history blurb on every legacy product (sometimes with newly revealed information) they can take the time to put an additional blurb talking about why specific (not every) titles might be problematic and haven't aged well.

and before someone says something about speaking with their wallet, right now OA sits as the 4th best selling official D&D title on drivethruRPG, so y'know y'all who want to keep OA are definitely winning on that front.

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.

yeah and by the 90's "Oriental" was being largely dropped in favor of "Asian". I'm pretty sure 20 years ago some people thought that was a huge faux pas as well.

(inb4 "but it won an ENnie Award!" so?)

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.

closest I can think of is the Crusades book from the Historical Reference series. the description...doesn't seem promising, it makes mention of Europeans looking to the holy land, and Islam raising jihad against them, even as a supplement from a pre-9/11 time I'm like "oh no".

What I find the most surreal part? Pseudo-European GameLit/LitRPG is very well-represented in Japanese anime. In many cases these use obvious underpinnings of Taoism or other Eastern schools of thought (e.g. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is clearly D&D-derived but uses the concept of "magicules" which is obviously based on qi).

yeah dungeon crawls and dungeons are actually a pretty common theme in fantasy anime and manga these days, which I find crazy, and a little weird given that they're not the paradigm for video game RPGs coming out of Japan.

also I haven't watched That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, but idk ""magicules" which is obviously based on qi" just reminds me of magic points or mana (oh hey that's another can of worms lol).

I personally don't know if we need all those Asian themed classes anymore in the modern game as the main classes can easily cover them. I have noted that a leading Japanese TRPG (Sword World) does not have them.

what does Sword World being the leading Japanese RPG have to do with anything? I'm pretty sure there's at least a few RPGs from Japan that have things like samurai and ninja as playable characters. also the default setting for Sword World is a typical JRPG setting, which is basically a highly fantastical version of your typical renaissance European setting, the omission of Asian themed classes isn't notable?