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

[Guest 85555]

The folks at the Asians Represent podcast are NOT fans of Legends of the 5 Rings, for similar reasons to why they are not fans of Oriental Adventures. And one frequent guest on the podcast has even written for L5R . . . .

They have a lot fewer issues with L5R though, particularly with the more recent material.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I've tried to stay out of this, but, what the heck, here's my 2 cp.

OA is problematic, for me, because it does such a poor job of being what it claims to be - a sourcebook for "Oriental" adventures. If it claimed to be "Adventures in Fantasy Japan" or something like that, I'd have no problems. But, it doesn't. It claims to cover a much broader area.

I don't disagree, but I do think it's worth remembering that this work was published in the 1980s. In the 80s, China was only marginally more open to the outside world than North Korea is today. Further, the world was much larger then, without the easy access to expertise and resources that the Internet brings with it.

Oriental Adventures' China stuff includes stuff from the Shaw Brothers movies, the Kung Fu TV series, Big Trouble in Little China, James Clavell novels, etc. While I'm not opposed to people being offended by it and I'm in favor of content warnings, I find it really difficult to condemn the American authors who were writing an American book so that other Americans could play an American game that used the elements of American pop/nerd culture that were popular in America because that's the part of Chinese culture that reached them from China (or, well, from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taiwan). The culture presented in Oriental Adventures is the culture that China was exporting at the time as well as how Asian Americans capitalized on their own culture in the US. Everything from romanticized ideas about martial artists and Shaolin, mysticizing Chinese culture with magical Asian tropes, opening fortune cookies after a meal, etc. OA is not a special case for the treatment of Chinese culture in the US. It's a product of the Chinese culture actually exported to the US.

Imagine if the baseline PHB was written so that all the classes were given French names, the equipment list was in French, 90% of the monsters and playable races were from French mythology, then devoted about 10% of the material to the rest of Europe, completely ignoring, say, Vikings and English mythology, and then claimed to be "European Medieval Fantasy Adventures". People would lose their collective minds. The book would be absolutely pilloried.

I mean, D&D includes Paladins with only a very cursory similarity to palatial Roman guards or the knights of the Holy Roman Empire. Instead, it cribs more from Three Hearts Three Lions (along with Law vs Chaos alignment and Swanmays) than it does from Song of Roland. Because the authors were more interested in mimicking pop culture from contemporary fantasy novels than it ever was of mimicking history. Rangers were a thing in historic England, but the ones present in the PHB have more in common with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett than a Sheriff of the King's Forests, to say nothing of the influence of Aragorn and Lord of the Rings. Barbarians don't come from historically representing less developed cultures; they come from Robert E Howard. Wizards come to us by way of Jack Vance. Clerics refusing to use edged weapons is not historical. Druids are at least as ahistoric as Monks are. Studded leather armor and banded mail are not historical. The orcs, elves, dwarves, goblins, dragons, etc., in D&D don't come from European historic folklore. They come from Tolkien and other contemporary fantasy novels.

In the 1970s and 1980s, D&D was the equivalent of Ready Player One: The RPG. It comes from a time when you could play Ultima I which had a sequence where you, a medieval warrior, flew a starship into space and fought actual TIE fighters. Pretty sure that ain't historic. D&D was a total mix of everything in American nerd pop culture. Yes, that was part of the white, male culture dominant in the US at the time... but that's who the authors were and that's who they imagined their audience to be. Right or wrong, it was designed and written in a [perceived] monoculture to be for members of that monoculture.

D&D was never intended to represent historic anything! It's always been about taking from nerd culture or pop culture or pop fantasy and mimicking that. Oriental Adventures isn't what Asian cultures are. It's a book about how to inject 1980s Asian-themed American nerd culture into your American nerd culture game. That was it's design and intent, and that design and intent was not unique to OA as a game supplement.

And, moving into the present day, that's, for me anyway, the biggest issue with OA. That it's "Oriental Adventures" as seen through the lens of American writers funneled through Japanese history and culture. It's very culturally chauvinistic.

All culture is chauvinistic. Every single one of them in all of recorded history. Every culture in the future will be, too. If a culture ever doesn't think that it's the best, it will adopt the ideas it thinks it's lacking until it thinks it's the best again. That's what culture does. Our modern culture is chauvinistic, too; that's why we think our opinion about Oriental Adventures is better!

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can fully understand how people who are part of cultures which have been systematically devalued and casually trod upon can be sensitive. I don't think they should just shut up and assume everyone else has good intentions. They SHOULD speak up, and others should listen to them. At the same time, respectful reference is not stealing. It is simply how human culture works and it should be celebrated and participated in, not shouted down. Both assume and expect the best of other people, this will lead you to the best life.

That is the big word there, the big flashing neon sign.

Respectful.

That is literally all that is being asked. Don't go and mash-up things and pretend like they are all one thing. Don't go and make fun of them.

Not every old chinese guy is an antiquities dealer with magic artifacts and mastery of the five-finger death strike technique. Chinese, Japanesem Korean and Vietnamese people are not all the same culture.

That is literally it. That is all people are asking for. Respect.

I mean, I disagree. Two of the most salient aspects of toxic masculinity are rape culture and the madonna/whore dichotomy, and those very directly and quite severely oppress women.

However, you're just nit picking. "Technically it's not oppression it's only indirect impact," is missing the point of the statement entirely in order to argue semantics. I'm merely stating that both "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy" are problems for both genders. It's not just men who can express toxic masculinity. Any time a woman tells a boy to "man up" she's engaging in it. And older women are almost stereotypical enforcers of the madonna/whore dichotomy on young women. However, like terms like "firemen", the fact that "toxic masculinity" is a gendered term makes us think these are problems only men have and that men alone have to solve them. It's difficult for me to think of something that would be more instantly antagonizing than telling a group of people that because you have a problem with their culture that they need to change. Even if you agree with the problem you're likely to be dissuaded by that approach. It sets the whole thing up as us vs them. It's about as poor a job of framing your argument as you can make, especially when misandrist feminists do actually exist (although they're much more rare than the myths about them claim... there's very, very little political lesbianism).

I see where you are coming from, but again, I think this is missing the point that the toxicity is aimed at men, and may fall under a larger umbrella, but talking about the overarching problem can miss the details of the subset of problems.

If your only point is that Toxic MAsculinity is a sub-set of toxic gender norms... well, yes, obviously. But it is a sub-set that is useful to divide out as it presents different issues to be discussed and different ways to address them.

 

[Haldrik]

I am Christian. Was raised Christian. I don't feel like non-Christians, especially non-Christian artists, should feel beholden to our taboos about Jesus. Why should this be above artistic license and above critique? There may be important art to be made that uses Christian symbols and a Christian would find offensive. In fact, somewhat related to this topic, the Chinese movie the Blade (1995), which is a kind of weird remake of One Armed Swordsman but set in a period of unpheaval and chaos, has an odd scene where a character buys a cross or sees a cross in a market. And, if I recall it correctly, handles it in a way that a devout Christian would likely find offensive, but it fits with the theme of the movie and is an interesting moment, that makes you think (because the movie doesn't always clearly explain what it is trying to say). I wouldn't want them to have to take that scene out for American audiences (especially since i am an American and it would bother me that other Americans getting mad would make it impossible for me to see what the director originally intended).

EDIT: Another good example is the "christian priest" in the Snake in the Eagles Shadow Movie. It turns out later (spoilers) he is a Russian fighter in disguise, but early on when we first see him is on the periphery of a fight delicately rebuking the fighters to love one another like Jesus commanded. And it is all done in a way that is clearly mocking Christian sentimentality. That scene isn't something I would want taken out of that movie because it offends a number of Christians.

I am not Christian. But I feel compassion and some admiration for Christian communities. I suspect Christians are more tolerant of hostile appropriation of Christian symbols because of tropes that are sacred to many Christian communities. For example, when a Christian sees the "Piss Christ", they can interpret it as, Jesus being crucified all over again, and the appropriate response is that each Christian is to also carry ones own cross and to turn the other cheek with regard to nondeadly offensiveness.

By the way, I understand Piss Christ to involve links between religious self-mortification and sexual bondage and playful self-humiliation. This seems interesting. So even tho I find Piss Christ to be concerning, I detect some intimacy and maybe even respectful critique for both the religious communities and the sexual communities.

That said, just because we can be abusive toward Christian communities with less blowback from them, doesnt mean we should.

ESPECIALLY when we are criticizing a person or a group, we must be compassionate and knowledgeable toward that person or group.

 

[TheSword]

They have a lot fewer issues with L5R though, particularly with the more recent material.

Is this just because the language and art has changed? Because it seems to me the honour system, the melange of cultures, the portrayal of samurai and monks, and on and on are largely the same.

As in, isn’t one of the largest criticism of OA one of style. The way things are phrased... exotic, mystical etc rather than the core components - ancestor worship, samurai, shugenja, katana etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is the big word there, the big flashing neon sign.

Respectful.

That is literally all that is being asked. Don't go and mash-up things and pretend like they are all one thing. Don't go and make fun of them.

Not every old chinese guy is an antiquities dealer with magic artifacts and mastery of the five-finger death strike technique. Chinese, Japanesem Korean and Vietnamese people are not all the same culture.

That is literally it. That is all people are asking for. Respect.

I don't know if there is a way to reference the post directly above yours, but @Bacon Bits does make a pretty good point. OA was not aimed at anyone except vintage early 80's D&Ders. Clearly since TSR had 5 Japanese people playtest it, they thought that part of their audience would be especially appreciative, or at least better equipped to critique. Still, it was a supplement about how to take 'Kung Fu' and 'Samurai' as portrayed in pop American culture, and play it in D&D.

Now, I was 22 when this book came out. So I had SOME level of adult sophistication, and I recall being wise enough to take anything that was in D&D with a HUGE grain of salt. So I never thought OA was in any sense a comprehensive, or accurate, reference to anything. In fact I recall comparing it to how things were depicted in the game 'Bushido', which a particularly oddball guy in our group ran religiously (he'd lived for a good while in Japan, but he wasn't Japanese, only THOUGHT he was). I didn't think that was super authentic either perhaps, but it was (at least as he presented it) probably much more so than OA. I was actually a bit let down by OA and its obvious mechanical and stylistic quirks even then. Still, it seemed like a worthwhile attempt. I'm not sure it really should be lambasted too much even now. Its geeky and awkward, and CLASSICALLY TSR. I bet if we could go back to TSR's HQ c. 1985 we would find it to be a giant nerd palace. That's what we're seeing here, TSR nerd culture translating Hollywood Japan/China. Yes, it is silly awkward and even slightly painful, but nobody should get mad about it. Laughter is by far the best response, and a realization that time marches on and we seem ever more cosmopolitan.

 

[Umbran]

I don't get the whole dominant culture argument. China and Japan are global powers and their culture is everywhere.

Context matters. Bits of Chinese culture are seen everywhere, but it is not dominant everywhere. There are places where China deals minorities a really harsh deal. In the US, we also give minorities a harsh deal, but it is different minorities.

We are arguing on arguably the biggest D&D discussion board around that is not run by an American...

Hey, @Morrus, do you happen to know the national breakdown of forum users? Is that data you can get at?

so the whole "American Game aimed at just Americans" rings even more hollow.

I'm still of the understanding that vast majority of D&D sales are in the US.

These discussion came about because of US civil unrest due to US racism, and how companies based in the US decided to respond to it, presumably because the US share of their market is far too large to ignore. If that's not relevant to you... maybe this discussion isn't valuable to you.

 

[Morrus]

Hey, @Morrus, do you happen to know the national breakdown of forum users? Is that data you can get at?

I can get where they are, which is close enough. Here's the top 10 for the last week.

 

[Guest 85555]

I am not Christian. But I feel compassion and some admiration for Christian communities. I suspect Christians are more tolerant of hostile appropriation of Christian symbols because of tropes that are sacred to many Christian communities. For example, when a Christian sees the "Piss Christ", they can interpret it as, Jesus being crucified all over again, and the appropriate response is that each Christian is to also carry ones own cross and to turn the other cheek with regard to nondeadly offensiveness.

By the way, I understand Piss Christ to involve links between religious self-mortification and sexual bondage and playful self-humiliation. This seems interesting. So even tho I find Piss Christ to be concerning, I detect some intimacy and maybe even respectful critique for both the religious communities and the sexual communities.

That said, just because we can be abusive toward Christian communities with less blowback from them, doesnt mean we should.

ESPECIALLY when we are criticizing a person or a group, we must be compassionate and knowledgeable toward that person or group.

The artist has been very vague about its meaning (and I think he has contradicted his intentions a number of times). When it came out, it was scandalous, and I think a lot of Christians were deeply offended by it. Still I think it would have been a mistake to say it shouldn't be seen or that prints shouldn't be sold, or that Andres Serrano shouldn't profit from it. Even if it were made by a non-Christian I wouldn't want to stop art, especially art that might just be understood. I think this idea ties well with the Starship Troopers example earlier. And points to why we shouldn't just take the word of individuals who happen to belong to a particular group when interpreting art, when deciding if art ought to be deemed offensive or out of bounds. A lot of art offends, but is misunderstood by the people taking offense.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

Folks, real-world religion? Really? Cut that out, please and thank you.