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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6697379" data-attributes="member: 177">A few other thoughts on accuracy...This is not an accurate description of the Dreamspeakers - they are not "cohesive and coherent" as presented in the game.  They are presented as (at best) a loose agglomeration of diverse people banded together for mutual representation among more organized, cohesive and coherent power blocks."Euthanatos" is misspelled.  The tradition tends to explain its approach to magic using concepts from Indian religion, rather more specific than "southern Asia".Waheed is misleading.  The focus on western culture carries the implication that this is really a characteristic of Western Culture. In this, he is incorrect, and likely (and ironically) engaging in a variation of the "noble savage" archetype - the Westerners, they're all bad, and the others, they're all good.Instead, throughout history, when cultures have met, they have borrowed from one another.  Sometimes the power was balanced, but often not.  Imperial China gives us excellent examples of cultural appropriations - we, who are somewhat ignorant, sometimes think of "China" as one place, one people, one culture.  Nothing could be farther from the truth - that seeming is due to the imposition and flagrant cultural appropriation of the various Imperial dynasties as they conquered areas of what is now a unified nation.  There are indeed few examples of cultures who have *not* engaged in such practices.  To suggest otherwise is a whitewash.  It is a *human* behavior, not a Western one.  You haven't established that we generally think we are granting agency, so that disabusing us of that notion is useful. Nor have you established that failing to grant agency in our play in our own homes is problematic.  The implication is that there's some badwrongfun in here, but it is applied via vague emotional appeal, rather than direct analysis of what behaviors in our play cause what harm, and to whom.A white guy in Wisconsin sitting at a table of other Wisconsinites playing a samurai character is not granting agency to anyone, no.  But, he's not granting agency when he tries his hand at making a curry, either.  So what?  Is he not supposed to cook new foods that he didn't grow up eating?  Why not? Sorry for the sarcastic tone, but, *duh*!  We are pretending to be elves running around throwing fireballs, and barely-armored swordsmen that take down 50' long, fire-breathing dragons with nothing but a sword and mighty thews.  If there's a problem with power fantasy, we need to toss the entire hobby in the trash, including EN World and your video blogs about the hobby.Before you can reasonably ask that question, you need to accept that cultural borrowing is *human*.  Then, you can discuss the cases where following your normal human behaviors is okay, and when it isn't.  Any suggestion that takes the form, "You may *never* engage in this normal human behavior," is pretty much a non-starter, from a practical standpoint.</blockquote>

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