B5 Earth Alliance Factbook - How many people can you offend?

[ddougan]

Just reading the Earth Alliance Fact Book from Mongoose's Babylon 5 RPG Range. And it seems to me like the author, Bruce Graw, has gone out of his way to offend as many people as he can.

Before I go any further, can I just say that the book is very good when it does canon stuff - the history of EA, the spacecraft and vehicle sections are all excellent.

But "The Many Nations of Earth" within the "Life in the EA" chapter appears to have a lot of non-canon material (I may be wrong here, but I've never read any canon material covering what this book does in the entire Agents of Gaming line).

My own opinion is that the author is displaying some of his own beliefs in his work, and in doing so has the capability to offend a lot of people, damage the name of Bablyon 5 product range, Mongoose Publishing, and the RPG genre in general.

He seems to play on stereotypes to the extreme - as if he didn't want to produce any genuine progression on the nations of Earth for the book, and instead has simply exploded current and recent events into national traits.

But what do others think?



Some quotes from the country descriptions... (there's many more - unfortunately)

Ireland
"This came about in part because of Irish and English joint cooperation in fighting off the Middle Eastern terrorist networks that then infested the world. The irony of these two former opposites - terrorists and their victims - working together to defeat another type of terrorism should not be lost of the causal reader"

What I think is lost on the casual writer is that he has just labelled an entire nation as terrorists! Not to mention playing on current sterotypes of Middle East being a hive of terrorist networks.

But not content with this, we go back to the classic:

"The Irish love to fight and love to party. An Irish celebration is a wild, rowdy affair ... ending only when the last of alcohol has been consumed."



Scotland

"Not surprisingly, Scots tend to be physically burly and powerful, although many also overeat to the point of obesity."

"Many people view Scots as belligerent and barbaric, especially if they encounter one in a bar."

Nuff said?



Portugal

Doesn't actually have an entry - its been integrated under Spain. And to make matters worse, the author dismisses this with "Portual ... retains very close ties with Spain and is considered by many to be merely a sub-state of Spain itself. While this view is comfortable enough to Spaniards, the Portugueses imply smile and accept the fact that outsiders don't understand the obvious differences between the two".

I'd put the author down as one of those outsiders.




France

hmmm, where to start The whole description on France seems to be an attack on the nation, its history, and its people.

"They [the French] tend to see their way as the best and everyone else's way as unimportant or just plain wrong. They rarely admit they are mistaken about anything, and even when faced with undeniable proof that they made an error, their response is to shrug it off and change the subject."



Germany

Another instance of the author broad-brushing the entire nation.

"The nation-state known as Germany is one of the most militaristic countries to ever march troops across a border."

Pot. Kettle. Black. (I'm assuming the author is English from his right-wing, anti-European and pro-English statements elsewhere in the book, and the fact Mongoose are a UK based company).

Whilst referring to the Scandinavian League in a later section, the author goes on to say "Germany was already rumbling about sending troops into Denmark..."



Italy

"Bad choices sometimes lead unlucky Italians to a life of crime, where they freuqently buid Mafia-style 'families' based on a single activity such as smuggling or drug trafficking".

Just how many Italians does the author think are in Mafia-style crime syndicates???



Greece and the Balkans

"They tend to be greedy and sanctimonious, seeking wealth in all its forms but rarely hanging onto it long once they achieve it. These traits generally hold true across teh whole of the Balkans..."



Turkey

Not so much an attack on Turkey, but a broad sweep against Islam.

"When the leaders of that organisation [the United Islamic Nations] called upon all of Islam to rise up in a holy jihad against the newly formed Earth Alliance..."

<sarcasm>Damn A-rabs at it again</sarcasm>



I've stopped here with the European nations, but there is also a wealth of examples through the other parts of the world (I can provide if necessary, but think the above is enough for some debate???)

Am I being overly sensitive here to the material in the book? I'm not trying to say that authors cannot have the right to age the current world into the future in order to provide historical background for a future setting. But it seems to me that with the EA Factbook, the author has taken a very dangerous route in terms of racial stereotypes, applying individual events to entire nations etc.

Let me put it another way, if the above views where to have been expressed on the B5 TV show, what do you think the reaction would have been???

 

[Ayrk]

My own opinion is that the author is displaying some very right wing personal opinions in his work, and in doing so has the capability to offend a lot of people, damage the name of Bablyon 5 product range, Mongoose Publishing, and the RPG genre in general.

While I agree with the rest of your post, you might want to edit out the "right wing" part in your note. It basically makes it sound like you are making the same mistake the author did. Most "right wing" people do not think that the entire country of Ireland consists of terrorists, etc.

It is just the personal opinion of the author, not the "right wing" personal opinion.

Otherwise, I wondered if anyone else had the same thoughts as I about that country list. Man, it reads like someone had a deadline to meet.

 

[swrushing]

I don't have the book, and probably wont be buying it since i don't need a B5 sourcebook. But i do have a question.

The chapter you are quoting... are they stylistically in the book as if being presented from an external source, such as an alien's-eye-view or as an entry into an encyclopedia galactica?

The passages you cite would read wonderfully well as an example of an alien report which is mostly getting the classical stereotypes. I can also see writing it this way for humors sake, after all, the average gamer doesn't need info on normal world history, so brief snippets showing how the alien cultures know us and their misconceptions would be USEFUL. I can see including that.

If this is the case, it what is being presented are examples of alien viewpoints and misconceptions, then its likely they are not Bruce's feelings and thoughts but rather "in character" speech, so to speak.

 

[ddougan]

The chapter you are quoting... are they stylistically in the book as if being presented from an external source, such as an alien's-eye-view or as an entry into an encyclopedia galactica?

I take your point - but unfortunately they are not

The section "The Many Nations of Earth" is part of the "Life in the EA" chapter and is written in a informative manor, not via a 3rd party "alien viewpoint" type approach.

 

[ddougan]

While I agree with the rest of your post, you might want to edit out the "right wing" part in your note. It basically makes it sound like you are making the same mistake the author did. Most "right wing" people do not think that the entire country of Ireland consists of terrorists, etc.

It is just the personal opinion of the author, not the "right wing" personal opinion.

Otherwise, I wondered if anyone else had the same thoughts as I about that country list. Man, it reads like someone had a deadline to meet.

Ayrk - I understand what you are saying, and I don't want to tar all right-wing thinking individuals to be aligned with the view of the author. I'll therefore edit the post to read "his right wing" opinions. Thanks for that.

Just to clarify - I have no issue with people holding centre, left, right or extreme left/right opinoins (I may not agree with them, some of them may make me angry, but I don't oppose their right to hold an opinion).

However, the end result is that these are one man's (the author's) right wing views which are being put into an RPG product that is subsequently being sold to the masses. My issue is nto that the author may have right wing views - but that they are being sold to the customers in material that has been tainted with them.

I had another think about this (well, my actual question about whether I was being too sensitive), and I'm a little more annoyed and concerned than I was originally.

Many of the offending quotes are direct from the "Roleplaying Suggestions" bullet point of each country's descriptive text. Thus the author is actively promoting the offending stereotypes as good role playing. Players who are not wise enough, old enough or well-travelled enough to realise they do not reflect the world as it is may take them as good roleplaying. GMs may reward this "good" roleplaying with experience. Worse case scenario is that players can base opinions of other people solely on the contents of this book.

 

[Razuur]

Good God. I am so tired of this issue, and for the life of me, am astounded at how much flak this took.

In the show, character nationalities were very archetypical from a nationality standpoint. Ivanova was always sullen and pessimistic. "Very russian" she said on many an occasion. Are all Russians hard and pessimistic? No, of course not.

Garibaldi was always eating Italian food.... why? Well he was Italian, and he followed a archetype that Italians love to eat italian food...

The background feats are just a little bonus that plays on certain archetypes of certain cultures, much like the show did.

You can house rule it to be that those personality feats are available to anyone. Or if you want to make an archetypical character fromt he show from a diverse background, you can give them a feat that supports it.

I really liked the book. As with all gaming products, rule one applies. Keep what you like, dump what you don't.

I respect your opinion to not like it, I just think the furor over this is highly overblown.

Razuur

 

[jezter6]

not relevant anymore

 

[ddougan]

Good God. I am so tired of this issue, and for the life of me, am astounded at how much flak this took.

In the show, character nationalities were very archetypical from a nationality standpoint. Ivanova was always sullen and pessimistic. "Very russian" she said on many an occasion. Are all Russians hard and pessimistic? No, of course not.

Garibaldi was always eating Italian food.... why? Well he was Italian, and he followed a archetype that Italians love to eat italian food...

Razuur, This to me highlights the difference between the show and the book.

The show may have played a stereotype feature on a given character, but the book stereotypes (and in rather unpleasant ways) entire nations.

The show had Garibaldi craving Italian food. One man with one individual character trait. It didn't have all Italians on B5 racing their fast cars to the docks for their next shipment of Goodfellas pizza and then demanding insurance payments from the local Drazi.

Never once watching the show did I think "hmmm, that's a bit extreme". But that EA Fact Book section was pretty much extreme to dozens of nationalities.

I really liked the book. As with all gaming products, rule one applies. Keep what you like, dump what you don't.

Normally, a damn good rule of thumb. The problem here is that the book is presenting these offending stereotypes as fact. Its even suggesting thats how people should role play them out.

As I said above, some groups who do not have players old enough, or wise enough or who have travelled the world and met other nationalities may take whats in the book and play it out. And be actively rewarded for it by their GM. Thats dangerous, and our hobby deserves much better.

Where exactly do we draw the line? What if Spycraft's Hand of Glory had been written by a neo-Nazi - should we be happy to see that kind of material creep into the game with players being encouraged to racially abuse foreign nationals?

(If neo-Nazi's want to use role-playing games to play out their desires then that's fine by me - in fact I'd prefer if they did that instead of taking their hatred to the streets - but I really don't want to have any level of pro neo-Nazi material being included in my games as the norm for the players to behave by.)

I respect your opinion to not like it, I just think the furor over this is highly overblown.

Razuur

I don't want the whole book to sound bad - yes the section on Life in the EA was terrible and offending, but as I said, the sections on starships and vehicles were excellent. (Though I'd not recommed the book on the grounds of how offensive the material in Chapter 5 is).

And even though I've read various EA History before from AoG products, I enjoyed reading the History chapter too.

I just don't understand why the Life in the EA section had to be written the way it was - as I said before, I think we have one individual's views tainting the product line, and the show would never have displayed such a level of contempt for so many people, so I don't see why we as gamers should accept it (especially since the TV show is a one-way broadcast, whereas an RPG is an interactive game, capable of playing on the material).

You may consider it to be highly overblown, but as an Irishman, I was disgusted by the suggestion that all Irish people are terrorists. As a gamer, I found the offensive quotes against the other countries to be totally unsuitable for a gaming product. As a B5 fan, I found the book tarnished the good name of the product line.

Finally, lets not forgot what the B5 station stood for ... something the author of the book may have failed to realise.

 

[ddougan]

regardless of using "right wing" or "his right wing", it is highly inappropriate, and a poor attempt to put the author down for having political opinions.

While the excerpts you posted from his work is bad enough, your protest to those should go above his level, and not stoop to your own usage of political stereotypes.

Jetzer6, I have to disagree with you here.

I have tried to make it clear that I don't have a problem with him having opinions. I just don't want them clouding a gaming book.

The fact remains that many of his opinions are associated with what is called the right wing in political terminology. It could have been read that I was painting all right-wing minded people that way.

(I originally had the following text in the message:
"My own opinion is that the author is displaying some very right wing personal opinions in his work..." but in response to Ayrk I changed it to highlight the personal aspect before the right wing).

I don't mind seeing political ideology in RPG books where it is appropriate (for example, in governmental backgrounds etc). But in this case the author has portrayed racist and offensive remarks into a product, and is actively promoting uptake of them (and subsequent reward for roleplaying) around the gaming table.

 

[jezter6]

edited - I feel better now