Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8967415" data-attributes="member: 6790260">While this is certainly a possible (I'd even say likely) factor, there's also another. What's the point of completely rewriting it? It will likely alienate at least some of the people who liked it before, while being a big risk of some kind of boneheaded maneuver or the like. Asian, Middle Eastern, and North African cultures have often been depicted very poorly in the West, without even dipping into the really, really bad stuff. "Orientalism" tends to make infantile, undeveloped caricatures that can be expressed in extremely simple terms, despite covering (at this point) billions of humans who belong to dozens of distinct cultures.Have you heard of "punching down"? Usually, drawing on your own source culture(s) isn't punching down. Partly because...well, you know it at least a little. Norse and Greek and Celtic are known to us, because they're used in our stories today all the time. We know the nuances, or at least know to look for the nuances. We wouldn't depict a Roman Senator calling down Thor's wrath, nor a Celt praying to Hercules for strength, nor a Norseman swearing a vow on the river Styx. Unfortunately, a LOT of works inspired by Asia do basically that, blending thousands of years and millions of square miles into a single Frankensteinian mishmash.Being completely on the outside looking in though, it's incredibly easy to punch down. Even when you don't mean to. Misinformation is everywhere, and many sources in English (or other non-Asian languages) are riddled with "Orientalism"--exoticizing and infantilizing Asian cultures. The twin faults of racist or fetishized depiction loom large here. Don't forget, people were still doing outright yellowface as recently as the late 70s (e.g. the Doctor Who serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang, which is a very fun story but pretty obviously flawed in how it depicts Chinese culture and, y'know, the White guy in makeup pretending to be Chinese.)So, yes, it's generally okay (not always, but generally) to throw a lot of those things into the blender, because (a) here Norse/Greek/etc. culture predominates, making it harder to punch down; (b) most religions involved here are long dead, so being cavalier with them is less likely to hurt someone; and (c) it's easy for us to get sources, in our mother tongues, that can explain details and context about these things. But that doesn't mean you can't go wrong. Rick Riordan got a rude surprise when he learned that Modern Hellenism exists, and he (appropriately) apologized to them.The term for this is a "sensitivity reader/editor." Someone with expertise (and, hopefully, lived experience) to find bonehead errors and help fix them. And 9 times out of 10, if the story was worth telling to begin with, the insensitive errors will be easily fixed...IF you can see them and know why they're errors. Hence, get an expert. Nobody can know everything, and it's impossible to create a work of fiction that cannot ever hurt anyone at all--but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do the best we can. Precisely. Working with anything that is still practiced, especially if it is widely practiced, is tricky. Even Odin and Thor aren't as clear-cut as you might think--there are modern Heathen groups striving to reconstruct their ancestors' beliefs too. Yet we still get works like God of War: Ragnarok, which have a subversion (IMO a brilliant one) of the Ragnarok myth by depicting the Aesir as the villains of the tale, and Odin as a cruel, manipulative, megalomaniacal tyrant, and Loki (Kratos' son, aka Atreus) as a troubled but compassionate and heroic character.[SPOILER="LONG digression about my own game"]For my own "work," if you can call "the game I run for my friends" work, I built off of ideas from Al-Qadim, actual books I had read from Islamic luminaries (especially those of the Golden Age of Islam), and advice from people with (literal and figurative) skin in the game, particularly a North African person with a deep (academic) interest in the history and ancient traditions of his ancestors. Something I have taken pains to illustrate is that the Safiqi priesthood, the primary religion of the region where most adventures have played out, is: (a) overwhelmingly made up of genuine, earnest believers striving to do good in a world that is often fraught and full of temptation, (b) diverse in their beliefs and goals, (c) still quite human, and thus liable to both profoundly high moral character and profound depravity, and (d) not clearly true or false, but necessarily subject to debate and each individual person having to decide for themselves what they believe.There are certain parallels. For example, I took inspiration from the many diverse names of Allah, and adapted it into a supremely useful characteristic. That is, the One is understood to be infinite and transcendental, making it impossible for only one single depiction to truly capture Their fullness, even though They are (in a philosophical sense) "perfectly simple." This means the Safiqi come to gain understanding of the One by focusing on Their infinitely many "aspects" or "facets"....which provide a perfect excuse for how different Safiqi priests can have different Domains. Some revere the Soothing Flame, an aspect representing the healing, loving-kindness, and charity of the One; others revere the Unknown Knower, those who value both uncovering secrets and keeping things (themselves or knowledge) hidden. The one aspect almost everyone gives at least some attention to is the Great Architect (enough so that "the Great Architect" is sometimes used interchangably with "the One" in general), because the Great Architect represents the One as creator, sustainer, visionary, and law-giver; this makes the Great Architect something of a "first among equals." Some aspects have even been forgotten: the party has found evidence of some kind of "weaver" and some kind of agriculture-related aspect, both of which are unknown to modern-day adherents (though who knows what's kept in the secret archives?)All that said...I don't have any Muslim players. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the only religious person in the group, and I'm Christian. However, by having listened to people who have actual, first-hand experience, and having read celebrated works written by luminaries of the time I want to evoke, and having worked with my players whenever anything comes up  that doesn't sit right, I'm fairly sure I have done a decent job of making something that draws inspiration from a real religion, without making a gross parody of that religion. I certainly take the depiction seriously, and have included complications (heresies, the occasional corrupt or at least money-focused leader, etc.) and sincere expressions of faith from various characters. It is, as the rest of the world, what I call chiaroscuro: light-and-shadow, neither an unrelentingly bright thing where shadows are weak and easily banished, nor an oppressively dark thing where lights are feeble aberrations soon extinguished. There is good and bad, and ultimately the pragmatic and diplomatic approach tends to win out, because that's what succeeds the most.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

Verification