Some of the criticism has struck me as, well, maybe enthusiastic, especially some of the more academic criticisms. There was a link
provided earlier that was a essentially a long Orientalist critique of OA. A part of that was an extended diatribe about how the Comeliness stat reinforces the stereotype of the feminine Asian male. That argument might hold water if Comeliness has been introduced in OA, but it wasn't, it was introduced in Unearthed Arcana earlier that same year, and based on that is pretty obviously just where the studio was at from a design standpoint.
The lengthy critique of Non-Weapon proficiencies I find entirely unconvincing, from an academic standpoint, as while it is explanatory, I don't think it manages to overcome comparatively less outre explanations for why, for example, some of the more 'interesting' NWPs end up in the 'court skills' list (like that many of the skills in question are actually traditional 'Samurai' class skills, roughly). It's telling that the best the author can manage here is that it's classist, which, while possibly true as far as that goes, doesn't make it inaccurate, or orientalist, or racist. Somehow, the label of 'classist', fuzzy at it is in this case, is apparently enough to carry the argument forward to label the application of NWP Orientalist. I wouldn't agree.
In general, while the article does raise some important points about OA, it doesn't hold together all that well. One, because too much relies on the shaky arguments about Comeliness and NWPs and, unfortunately, the argument in the article needs those bits to move it successfully into the finale about reductionist approaches to game design. Second, I have a certain amount of academic distaste for 'readings' like this Orientalist reading, that present themselves as definitive fact. 'Can be read' is very different than 'is', and in cases of can be read, I think there needs to be a pretty minimal amount of contortion involved before it starts to sound forced, and this article seems forced to me.
This isn't to hand-wave some of the legitimate issues with OA, but I think people need to be careful when reading stuff that presents as academic. Some people seem to look at the vocabulary as assume based on that that it's a devastating critique. It isn't in this case.
Thanks for pointing me to that essay. It reinforces my own view, asserted upthread, that we are talking here about an intellectual critique that is amenable to analysis, reasoned response and the like.
That essay does not point solely to OA. It also critques the 5e PHB, the 3E weapons chart (though I thinkt it mislabels that as coming from OA) and Gygax's treatment of alignment in pre-OA works.
Here are some of the claims that stood out for me in particular:
This structure, the encyclopedic, although derived through practices of appreciation becomes ultimately an exercise in producing an authoritative source in what does and does fit into the imaginary of the game’s world. . . .
It is by learning the Orientalist texts listed in the Oriental Adventures bibliography that Bunnell felt able to authentically role-play characters in a non-western feudal society. Simply put: by cultivating a sense of cultural appreciation, Bunnell was able to authoritatively produce a feudal Japanese world for himself and his players.
The whole of the Bibliography of OA is framd as Orientalist. I don't believe that is on the basis of a thorough reading of all those works. Some of those works have authors whose names suggest East Asian identiy and/or descent. So this criticism has to be suspect.
But it is the bolded sentence which is fundamental, because it goes to the heart of the tension between (i) engaging in the activity of RPGIng and (ii) accepting these strong claims about cultural appropriation. The essay quotes Bunnell saying "Now, after a great deal of reading, I am ready to try to role-play in a totally different feudal culture. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly understand the Japanese culture, but I will certainly enjoy myself while learning." That is not a claim to have authoritatively produced a feudal Japanese world. It is a claim to be trying to run a non-European-oriented game based on an attempt to understand Japanese culture. If that is objectionable, then the discussion is over.
The game makes clear the comparison between Oriental honor and the Christian ethic. Western honor, epitomized by the paladin, maps cleanly onto the values that we associate with good or evil in Dungeons & Dragons alignment system. Good players are grounded through the dogma of the Judeo-Christian imagination, which associates good deeds with the good and honorable life. By proposing a system to govern honor that operates independent from the traditional politics of alignment, Oriental Adventures re-forms and contorts the Oriental family to co-exist as secular within a Judeo-Christian alignment table.
The claim of "reforming" and "contorting" is not made out, because no theory of what the Oriental family would look like without such reforming and contorting is offered.
What might have been picked up on, but is not, is that the default Buddhist religious character - the shukenja class - are (i) necessarily good, and (ii) largely indifferent to honour. What that tells us is that, through the prism of the OA structure, there is a tension between doing good and being loyal/honouable. This is reinforced when we notice that classes who value hnour highly - samurai, kensai, sohei and yakuza - must be lawful. (Ninja are an exception here that arguably is incoherent.) This suggests that lawfulness and honour are tighly connected, which is a departure from the presentation of alignment in the PHB and DMG, not a reinforcement of it (in those works
truth is assocated with the good, not the lawful) but is picked up in the OA alignmenth descriptions and reinforced in the 3E alignment descriptions.
So in fact OA drives a rethinking of the alignment framework. And the presentation of tensions between doing good and being honourable is hardly unique to OA. It's a theme of The Seven Sanurai. Hero. Ashes of Time. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Tai Chi Master. It's a theme that can be fond in non-East Asian culture also, but I mention those works in particular because they might be the sorts of works one is hoping to emulated playing a OA game.
Because many role-playing games seek to enfold non-weapon skills within the logics of combat and acquisition (Cooking helps to restore wealth, Etiquette may help to gain economic favor in the court or to prevent combat, Crafting is often a way to develop better weapons and armor) they participate symbolically in colonialism’s modern legacy. They reduce the richness of non-western culture to a set of “non-weapon proficiencies” which can be developed and exploited to further the Western war effort.
This claim has no bearing on OA, which does not use NWPs primarily to reinforce martial prowess but treats them as an intereseting field of endeavour in their own right. But it also shows that the essay is not a critique of OA in any distnctive way. If one accepted the arguments made in the essay, OA would not be at the top of the D&D books to be condemned.
