Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

[Doug McCrae]

Some further thoughts about intent:

The minds of others are ultimately unknowable so calls to consider intent are really calls to examine a wider range of texts or other media before determining meaning. These media - personal diaries, internet message board posts, interviews with the author - are probably going to be much less accessible than rpgs and popular novels.

If we need to consider intent before judging a text to be racist do we also need to do so before judging it to be anti-racist? For example, ignoring intent allows me to easily say that Gary Gygax's Scarlet Brotherhood - an evil organisation of white supremacists from the World of Greyhawk - is an anti-racist creation. I don't need to try to figure out what was going on in the creator's head.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Bedrockgames]

No because what matters is what I've put out into the world. The text is accessible to others. My mind is not. The text is racist, purely because of the associations of ideas it contains. When I say ideas I'm not talking about ideas in the head of the author. The ideas are in the words, because words have meaning. What gives them meaning is not the author, or the reader, but the wider community of language users.

Intent sometimes matters. We may want to try to understand what is in the author's head for a number of reasons. But it doesn't matter when deciding whether or not a text is racist.

But we are always trying to decipher intent. We don’t just leap to conclusions. We say to ourselves ‘was he saying something about black people with this?’

 

[billd91]

But the DMG table isn't in the voice of a character. It's a recommendation or a procedure for the creation of our own fictions, which (presumably) we want to be proud of rather than need to explain away in embarrassment. So why does it include advice about including Wanton Wenches in our fiction?

1) It's kind of humorous - that there is a table of random people involved in the prostitution biz - and a little humorous aside in a rulebook is entirely reasonable
2) While injecting that bit of humor - a belabored list of random people in the sex industry - it nevertheless uses a rich vocabulary to succinctly evoke different characters rather than just having a "prostitute" entry on the random table. This is why the random prostitute table is such a fun find in the DMG.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[GrahamWills]

A concrete example: I was re-reading the Iliad a little while ago. Women are being taken as booty, divided up (as spoils) among the Acheans, etc. How would I teach this to a contemporary literature class - which, in my country at least, will be more than 50% women in their late teens or early 20s (ie examples of the very spoils at issue in the story).

One suggestion would be to pair it with the representation of another culture. For example, the Tain (1st century Irish saga) which is all matriarchy. The most powerful character is the queen, Medb, who raises an army to attack the men of the north. The opposing army is cursed so that all the men will feel the pain of childbirth for several months.

The main hero, Cuchalainn, is male, but he was trained by warrior women, aided by the war goddess Morrigan, and is very clearly not a leader. The society is strongly matriarchal. Medb is very much the top dog.

 

[billd91]

That said, they did reflect the heavy-metal, fantasy, misogynistic 1970s, especially with regards to the art. There's a reason that the efreet on the cover of the DMG is holding a scantily clad female.

True - but at least that painting doesn't qualify as a worst offender. She may be scantily clad and in trouble, but she's not a passive, shrinking violet either. She's armed and still fighting to that puts it a few steps ahead of some of the other art around in those days. I got really turned off by other art in use by TSR because of passivity added on to cheesecake. Cheesecake may exploit but passivity subjugates.

 

[S'mon]

All I remmember about Halls at the moment is the mirrors and the Guan-Deeko (sp?). I'll have to check it for luridness (are you also working from BoWD scenarios v1?).

Yup, though I have the original WDs too. If you doubt there is luridness in Tizun Thane then look at the BoWD cover, which depicts the ogre & slave girl encounter.

On reflection I spent a lot of time running Tizun Thane in Labyrinth Lord, so will prob leave that out for now, but I do want to run the Lichway. It will need some editing eg to change Xvarts to Tcho-Tco. And I'll need to consider how to approach the implied-rape scene.

 

[pemerton]

1) It's kind of humorous - that there is a table of random people involved in the prostitution biz - and a little humorous aside in a rulebook is entirely reasonable
2) While injecting that bit of humor - a belabored list of random people in the sex industry - it nevertheless uses a rich vocabulary to succinctly evoke different characters rather than just having a "prostitute" entry on the random table. This is why the random prostitute table is such a fun find in the DMG.

I first read the DMG as a 12 year old boy. Is the random harlot table really going to be a "fun find" for my 12 year old daughter? I'm not sure about that.

 

[S'mon]

I first read the DMG as a 12 year old boy. Is the random harlot table really going to be a "fun find" for my 12 year old daughter? I'm not sure about that.

How many 12 year old girls read the 1e DMG in 1978? Probably just EGG's daughter.