WotC Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

[Umbran]

People disagree on pastiche settings but sense is the majority of gamers (and probably the majority of media consumers if we are talking entertainment in general), see nothing wrong with a pastiche setting that mixes culture.

"I don't see a problem... so there is no problem," is the very basis of the basset-hound style racism.

And isn't the problem of racism very much a case of "the majority" over a minority? So, why, indeed, should the majority opinion be our guidepost here?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I know what is to feel really offended by fault of some types of speculative fiction. Sometimes we have to apology because our mistakes have bothered other people, but I am starting to suspect this time isn't really the case. I wonder about there is a secret message in this matter: "you have to allow our controll, our censure, or you will be reported as racism and then not allowed to publish more". This sounds like a hidden blackmail. This means we have to obey the criteria dictated by others, and this may very dangerous.

Let's imagine I want to create a new PC race about orc-like people with pig head, maybe because the anime "Tonde Burin" was cute and funny, or because if pig in China is symbol of fortune and prosperity then to use this "wuanhuan version orcs" as an allegory of evil megacorporations and colonialist empires. I publish my idea in DM Guild, and a couple of months after I am reported. Why? because pigs are the antagonists, the villains, of George Orwell "Animal Farm" and then my creation becomes a symbol and parody of the revolutionary forces. This may be happen if we allow censure by people who don't work in the publisher companies.

We have to be polite and respect the rest of people, those are our rules of coexistence. We agree about this. But I am afraid somebody is trying to force us to obey them, to accept this authority about what is allowed or not, and I trust nobody who tres to fix all with more orders and not explaining the reason something is wrong or right, as the civilitated people do.

The speculative fiction can't be controlled by the censure by certain almost-unknown lobbys, worse when you know some criterias could be injust, whimsical or arbitrary, like the Chinese banning against Winnie the Pooth or Pepa Pig.

Sometimes we need an apology and a disclaimer because today any things aren't pollitically correct now, for example the episode "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" from the serie "the Community", but not always, and sometimes the complains aren't sincere, but pressure to force some criterias of censure to be allowed as "pollitically correct".

Why not to publish their own retroclon showing how a xuanhuan d20 rpg should be?

 

[Sacrosanct]

One.

Well I got bad news for you. If this is the standard, none of us would have role playing games to play. A lot of people were offended by D&D, not just one.

Heck, a lot of people are offended by pirate costumes in Halloween. Or Halloween in general.

 

[FrogReaver]

There's now an article on this at the Huffington Post. Kwan (now) supports a nuanced approach:


Interesting, considering he initially balked at the idea of making them freely available.

On the other hand, Kwan also had this to say about the original work:


OA has many issues, but I don't recall Asians being depicted as "violent and savage" or "uncivilized" or "in need of foreign saviors" among them.

Looks like open public discourse did change his opinion (and without to my knowledge a public cry to end his livelihood.) Very good to see indeed.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

"I don't see a problem... so there is no problem," is the very basis of the basset-hound style racism.

And isn't the problem of racism very much a case of "the majority" over a minority? So, why, indeed, should the majority opinion be our guidepost here?

I think you are missing the point here. There is nothing inherently racist about a pastiche. In food, a fusion restaurant is not evil and racist. I am not even sure we are using the word pastiche correctly In terms of melding different cultures. It is more narrow and usually is a respectful imitation of another work like wrong a new Sherlock Holmes story in the style of Doyle.

The problem is the application of it. As I already pointed out, identifying the pastiche as applying real world Japanese culture explicitly opens the work up to complaints about the skill used. Whereas you can describe the citizens of a city as “preferring to wear a toga” as a general fluff point of the city, it is another thing to say “to play a Japanese character do this”.

So making a settings book where different cultural mores are blended to make a brand new culture which is then painted using a broad brush (stereotypes) is probably not a big deal.

Elves tend to worship X God/ess is a fine statement. Saying if you want to play pretend Japanese in my setting then you must follow these honor rules is another thing completely as you call them out as Japanese so you can infer backwards to actual Japanese. and that is a failing that OA does have.

 

[Bedrockgames]

"I don't see a problem... so there is no problem," is the very basis of the basset-hound style racism.

And isn't the problem of racism very much a case of "the majority" over a minority? So, why, indeed, should the majority opinion be our guidepost here?

Personally i think the most compelling and reasonable argument should win out. Because obviously a majority of people can be wrong. But a majority of people can also be right. So saying by definition the majority thinking a particular way, demonstrates that these things are harmful and bad, just seems like really unusual logic.

I think though what people are doing is they are taking disagreements over whether something is a problem, how much of a problem it is, and what should be done about it (which is going to have a wide range of views from different people), and saying anyone who falls on the side of not seeing it as a problem, seeing it as a minor problem, seeing it as an issue understanding the context of the period it was made, or either seeing it is a problem and thinking the book shouldn't be removed, or not seeing it as a problem and thinking the book shouldn't be removed, as supporting racism or ignoring. That to me, seems like a profoundly disingenuous argument. And I don't think you can just say well, only the opinions of group X matter. But further, you also shouldn't pretend that all or most of group X is in agreement.

This is why I brought up the godfather earlier (and gangster books, movies and shows in general). To us a more modern example, there were Italian Americans who vocally labelled the Sopranos as stereotyping. And they were the loudest voices, but it was pretty obvious to me traveling in Italian American circles and having lots of Italian American relatives most enjoyed the Sopranos, or were even a little proud of it. And most still enjoyed gangster movies and shows even if they were not made by Italian Americans (though obviously there is a level of authenticity that can bring to the subject matter). Similar here I think you are going to have a wide range of opinions. We are not all going to agree. But if you keep labeling the people who have honest disagreements with the criticisms, as racist, or as supporting racist, this conversation is not going to get anywhere.

There are two things troubling me most about this conversation. One is the demand for a book to actually not be sold. But the other is this idea that we can't even disagree with the critiques themselves. I fully support their right to criticize the game. I think some of their criticisms are sound. But a lot of the criticisms I've seen, I think are not. And that is going to happen if we are having an open discussion where people don't give up their right to think for themselves because of some notion that we can't speak outside anything we've directly lived ourselves. I've just never been able to buy into the idea that I should automatically accept a person's opinion on something because of their identity. It certainly can matter. But it shouldn't be a conversation stopper.

Edit: The logical 'strangeness' that is bothering me about this is, I now realize, you are equivocating on my use of the the term 'majority'. I meant it as 'majority of [all] gamers', which includes people of different races, from different countries, of different ethnicities and religions, etc. But you shifted the meaning to refer to the ethnic majority of the country. That wasn't my meaning at all.

 

[FrogReaver]

That depends on what you call, "racism." Was it a willfully demeaning act? Probably not. But that's not the only form of racism out there. As noted before (or maybe in a different one of these threads), willful racism is like going out at 3 AM to stomp on your neighbor's petunias. But there's other racism that's more like going out to walk your basset hound, and being too concerned with tweets to realize that your dog is relieving itself all over the petunias and killing them. That fact that you didn't mean it doesn't mean the petunias don't die, or that you aren't responsible.



I hope you don't mean that literally. No, it is not literally against the law, but that's an incredibly low bar of treatment for your fellow humans. I mean, there's no law that says you can't go out to a party, get drunk, and vomit on people, but most folks agree that's still not something you should do. Right?

Since you are bringing it up I assume I am good to reply and discuss the different definitions of racism here in this thread? I'd like clarification before I continue as in my view it seems to be a bit of a gray area rules-wise.

 

[Haldrik]

Personally i think the most compelling and reasonable argument should win out. Because obviously a majority of people can be wrong. But a majority of people can also be right. So saying by definition the majority thinking a particular way, demonstrates that these things are harmful and bad, just seems like really unusual logic.

I think though what people are doing is they are taking disagreements over whether something is a problem, how much of a problem it is, and what should be done about it (which is going to have a wide range of views from different people), and saying anyone who falls on the side of not seeing it as a problem, seeing it as a minor problem, seeing it as an issue understanding the context of the period it was made, or either seeing it is a problem and thinking the book shouldn't be removed, or not seeing it as a problem and thinking the book shouldn't be removed, as supporting racism or ignoring. That to me, seems like a profoundly disingenuous argument. And I don't think you can just say well, only the opinions of group X matter. But further, you also shouldn't pretend that all or most of group X is in agreement.

This is why I brought up the godfather earlier (and gangster books, movies and shows in general). To us a more modern example, there were Italian Americans who vocally labelled the Sopranos as stereotyping. And they were the loudest voices, but it was pretty obvious to me traveling in Italian American circles and having lots of Italian American relatives most enjoyed the Sopranos, or were even a little proud of it. And most still enjoyed gangster movies and shows even if they were not made by Italian Americans (though obviously there is a level of authenticity that can bring to the subject matter). Similar here I think you are going to have a wide range of opinions. We are not all going to agree. But if you keep labeling the people who have honest disagreements with the criticisms, as racist, or as supporting racist, this conversation is not going to get anywhere.

There are two things troubling me most about this conversation. One is the demand for a book to actually not be sold. But the other is this idea that we can't even disagree with the critiques themselves. I fully support their right to criticize the game. I think some of their criticisms are sound. But a lot of the criticisms I've seen, I think are not. And that is going to happen if we are having an open discussion where people don't give up their right to think for themselves because of some notion that we can't speak outside anything we've directly lived ourselves. I've just never been able to buy into the idea that I should automatically accept a person's opinion on something because of their identity. It certainly can matter. But it shouldn't be a conversation stopper.

With regard to Italian Americans and Sopranos, much of it is created by Italian Americans themselves. The tropes tend to be grounded in events from reallife history and have realistic context.

Also, stories about Italian American crime families never assume that every Italian American is a criminal. There are invariably examples of admirable Italian Americans, even in the same family, as well as the community at large. The goodguy Italian Americans are both informative, and a narrative contrast to heighten the strangeness of the criminality.

Perhaps a few shows are objectionable. But generally, the approach seems somewhat ideal, for how to go about exploring a darkside of a subculture.

 

[Aldarc]

Looks like open public discourse did change his opinion (and without to my knowledge a public cry to end his livelihood.) Very good to see indeed.

Maybe not so much here on ENWorld; however, on Twitter and elsewhere...

 

[Bedrockgames]

With regard to Italian Americans and Sopranos, much of it is created by Italian Americans themselves. The tropes tend to be grounded in events from reallife history and have realistic context.

Also, stories about Italian American crime families never assume that every Italian American is a criminal. There are invariably examples of admirable Italian Americans, even in the same family, as well as the community at large. The goodguy Italian Americans are both informative, and a narrative contrast to heighten the strangeness of the criminality.

Perhaps a few shows are objectionable. But generally, the approach seems somewhat ideal, for how to go about exploring a darkside of a subculture.

I don't think you are accurately describing gangster movies.

1) Before the godfather a lot of media about the mafia wasn't made by or even starred Italian people. And there were plenty of mob movies after the Godfather, where the writers or the stars were not Italian (even in the Sopranos, some of the actors playing Italian mafioso are Jewish for example). And even in the Godfather a large bulk of the cast isn't Italian (including Brando himself who played the title role, and James Caan, who played Sonny).

2) A lot of negative tropes are grounded in real life events. That doesn't make associating Italian people with the mafia any potentially less negative (which is why there is a reliable minority of italian americans who decry Sopranos and games about the mafia).

3) I think your point that "stories about Italian American crime families never assume that every Italian American is a criminal", has a number of problems. For starters media featuring asian characters doesn't do this sort of thing either, but in both instances the genre tends to focus on the stereotype. But still, if you watch a movie like Goodfellas (which is my favorite of the lot), pretty much all the Italian characters in that film are involved in crime, associated with the mafia in some way, or benefiting from it). If one used movies like Goodfellas and The Godfather to form their understand of Italian Americans, it wouldn't be good. I think the position most of the pro-gangster film folk would take is that the Godfather and Goodfellas are not the problem, the problem is people thinking that a movie should form their understanding of something like that, or people who just think what they see in the movies is a model for real life.

This: "The goodguy Italian Americans are both informative, and a narrative contrast to heighten the strangeness of the criminality" simply isn't true. That is a trope from older gangster movies (you see it way more in films made by non-Italians where the gangsters needed to get their just deserts in the end for their bad behavior, or where the moral message of the film needed to be crystal clear. By the 70s though, you have a lot more moral gray. Who are the Italian good guys in the Godfather? Their people like Vito Corleone, who is still a mobster, still kills people, but just doesn't traffic narcotics (the bad Italians in that movie are trying to bring in the drug trade), and Michael Corleone, who kills his own brother in part 2. The first movie, and the book, basically just appropriates the war in heaven and Satan's fall, and brings it to a mobster landscape. But the 'good guys' are not at all your traditional good guys. And the same goes for a film like Goodfellas. Henry Hill is just the least sociopathic of the gangsters in that movie. The best thing we can say about him is he never actually kills anyone. But if you watch the movie enough, you also realize that he is an unreliable narrator and probably has in fact killed people (that is my reading at least at this point). And in the Sopranos even the good Italians are caught up in the criminal life of Tony and his crew. Artie Bucco isn't exactly someone to look up to (he is mostly depicted as a powerless and pathetic). The respectable Italians, like Tony's golfing buddies, are all snobs who find entertainment in things like mafia hits (which is why they even want to interact with Tony in the first place). When you are watching a gangster movie, you are there to get a glimpse into this strange and interesting underworld of criminals, and escape from the monotony of a more stable life. But you are not there to root for the good guys, and few viewers need the guy Italians in there to contrast with the bad ones.