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Cultures in D&D/roleplaying: damned if you do, damned if you don't
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7398973" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>Let me try to do this again, because I clearly made a mistake here.</p><p></p><p>The <em>answer to the question</em> of how to adapt inspiration from real-life cultures into your home game is deceptively simple.</p><p>1) Do your homework</p><p>2) Portray the individuals of these cultures as fundamentally <em>human</em></p><p></p><p>The <em>work</em> for doing that, however, is not so simple. It can be difficult and complex work. It's easy to limit your "research" to skimming a Wikipedia article and calling it a day. That's not doing your homework, however. It can also, depending on the culture you're looking at, be easy confine your research to outsider accounts, which will always introduce at least some bias (and often a <em>lot</em> of bias). It a lot of cases outsider accounts are all that really exist, in which case you have to actively find and account for that bias, which can be damn near impossible.</p><p></p><p>And the work, care, and sensitivity you'll have to put into increases <em>exponentially</em> the larger your prospective audience gets, to the point where, yeah, it's probably not worth it if it's something you're putting out for public consumption. At the very least, you'll want to look to the examples @<em><strong><u><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=5142" target="_blank">Aldarc</a></u></strong></em> mentions on how not to fall into the traps of direct cultural emulation. And if you're worried about people drawing direct parallels... the <em>very least</em> you could is to workshop it with actual living members/ancestors of those cultures as sensitivity readers. That'd at least put you a leg up on <em>Tomb of Annihilation.</em></p><p></p><p>But if it's just you and your group, and you happen to be all (or mostly) white dudes but also super interested in the history of Egypt or the Ottoman Empire or what have you, and you put together a really well-researched campaign that treats its subjects with humanity and respect... I mean, I can certainly think of a lot worse things to do with your time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 7398973, member: 57112"] Let me try to do this again, because I clearly made a mistake here. The [I]answer to the question[/I] of how to adapt inspiration from real-life cultures into your home game is deceptively simple. 1) Do your homework 2) Portray the individuals of these cultures as fundamentally [I]human[/I] The [I]work[/I] for doing that, however, is not so simple. It can be difficult and complex work. It's easy to limit your "research" to skimming a Wikipedia article and calling it a day. That's not doing your homework, however. It can also, depending on the culture you're looking at, be easy confine your research to outsider accounts, which will always introduce at least some bias (and often a [I]lot[/I] of bias). It a lot of cases outsider accounts are all that really exist, in which case you have to actively find and account for that bias, which can be damn near impossible. And the work, care, and sensitivity you'll have to put into increases [I]exponentially[/I] the larger your prospective audience gets, to the point where, yeah, it's probably not worth it if it's something you're putting out for public consumption. At the very least, you'll want to look to the examples @[I][B][U][URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=5142"]Aldarc[/URL][/U][/B][/I] mentions on how not to fall into the traps of direct cultural emulation. And if you're worried about people drawing direct parallels... the [I]very least[/I] you could is to workshop it with actual living members/ancestors of those cultures as sensitivity readers. That'd at least put you a leg up on [I]Tomb of Annihilation.[/I] But if it's just you and your group, and you happen to be all (or mostly) white dudes but also super interested in the history of Egypt or the Ottoman Empire or what have you, and you put together a really well-researched campaign that treats its subjects with humanity and respect... I mean, I can certainly think of a lot worse things to do with your time. [/QUOTE]
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