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

[Aldarc]

The lines that Voadam quoted are not EXAMPLES. Thei're CLAIMS. Without addressing the source material directly (quotation, paraphrases), they are unsupported claims.

I’m getting tired of your lazy reading. I replied to Voadam that there are examples if you look down his Twitter feed. He posts pictures of excerpts from the book, including chopsticks listed as weapons and how asking about eating rice is a greeting. In the future, please learn to do your own work and learn how to do it well.

 

[Sadras]

@Sadras - There is some value judgement in the definition I provided, specifically the part that reads "fixed and oversimplified", especially the 'fixed' part. It means that the stereotype isn't changed by experience or additional information but is uncritically applied in every instance. "All Asians know martial arts" would be a topical example. There's a good reason why people say stereotyping is bad. So to say classes are stereotypes, one is either suggesting that classes are bad in that same way, or that one don't understand what a stereotype is. Classes are not by definition stereotypes btw, not even the Basic edition ones, although they certainly can be based on stereotypes in some cases.

I get the reductive nature of "fixed and oversimplified"
Are you saying classes are generalizations then?
So when someone calls something a stereotype instead of a generalization that may be viewed as subjective right?

EDIT: Obviously some stereotypes we can all agree on.

 

[SkidAce]

Also, why the heck is the asian-ish culture always to the east and the vikingish culture always to the north!? Have a little creativity developers!

And why is the north specifically always called out as frozen? Because I can't think of ANY campaign worlds that are officially supposed to just have one hemisphere and no south pole.

Interestingly enough, my home campaign from the 80s is in the southern hemisphere.

Everyone once in a while it throws a new player off.

I did think there was an official setting that did that though...

 

[ART!]

Also, why the heck is the asian-ish culture always to the east and the vikingish culture always to the north!? Have a little creativity developers!

This, please! Put your vikings in the east, braving monsoons and air dragons! Put your pseudo Japan in a frozen wasteland! Work out the implications, and you might get something original.

 

[Aldarc]

This, please! Put your vikings in the east, braving monsoons and air dragons! Put your pseudo Japan in a frozen wasteland! Work out the implications, and you might get something original.

Ursula K. LeGuin did put her Vikings in the east.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'd say you are generally correct, but the bolded part is the problem.

If you never show anything except the stereotypes, if you never present anything to people that is more nuanced, how are they supposed to know you are taking a shortcut?

There are still people who believe that all Vikings had horned helms, even though we know that is not true, but that was the only depiction they ever came across, so they had no way of knowing it wasn't accurate.

Therein lies the problem.

But at what point is something a generally recognized and incorrect new thing, and at what point is it a terrible stereotype?

Let's take the Vikings example. The single most influential example for the majority of Americans has been, and will continue to be, the Minnesota Vikings. Who have, wait for it ... helmets with horns on them. And mascots and fans with horned helmets. That's ... well, that's a thing. And it continues in all sorts of depictions.

On the other hand, most (not all, but most) modern depictions of Vikings, such as ... the show Vikings does not have it. At this point, there is clearly a divide between the false trope of the horned helmet, and actuality, so much so that it's almost a cliche for someone to always say, "Hey, did you know that Vikings didn't have horns on their helmets? Let me explain that to you while I concurrently explain to you why I don't have a TV, why vaping isn't bad for you, and how bitcoin will solve all of the world's problems." Ahem.

Anyway, there is always room for nuance, but we also have to accept that some things aren't nuanced. Quicksand is neither as prevalent as some 80s media would have you believe, nor does it work that way. Legal cases do not work in the same way that they are portrayed in Suits. It is fairly difficult to knock someone out with one hit. Greek and roman statuary was not white back when it was created. Martial arts do not function in the way that they are portrayed in Western ... or Eastern ... media. The sanitized leprechaun we think of in America is a bit different than the traditional Irish one. And so on.

Life is always more complicated. And no matter how complicated and nuanced you want to make something, I can guarantee you that someone, somewhere, can make it even more complicated and nuanced.

 

[Fenris-77]

I get the reductive nature of "fixed and oversimplified"
Are you saying classes are generalizations then?
So when someone calls something a stereotype instead of a generalization that may be viewed as subjective right?

EDIT: Obviously some stereotypes we can all agree on.

If you had to pick one of those two words then generalization would be the one, but even then it's not particularly apt. Classes are a set of rules and guidelines to produce an avatar for a TTRPG. A class could work off of a stereo type, and is in some ways working off of a generalization about a certain sort of fictional person in a fictional setting, but not quite. In a game with only a single class, that might be more accurate, but what we have in most TTRPGs is a whole set of classes that when taken together serve to deliminate the boundaries of a subset of the rules for player avatars. If you want to talk about stereotypes, you'd either be talking about the material a class is based on, and/or the expected output in terms of specific characters. Oriental Adventures falls down in both places.

The 'subjectiveness' of a stereotype sounds to me like a dodge so people can use them and them say no one should be upset. I don't think it's particularly controversial to decide whether a particular characterization meets the definition of stereotype or not. There's not a lot of room for Ben Kenobi's "from a certain point of view" argument.

 

[Remathilis]

Thanks my follow-up post to @Fenris-77 describes my train of thought with this question.

That's fair. I thought it was an interesting question in it's own regards.

D&D uses archetype quite liberally to define itself. The rules have enforced this to varying degrees. It's a part of the fact the game uses races and classes to define PC abilities. Stereotypes will occur due to this.

If all stereotypes are bad, as ART suggested, then the whole system is inherently flawed. You can't have a system based on archetype and not have resulting stereotypes. They might be more "innocent" than racial stereotypes about orcs, but the horny-bard is still one.

What that starts leading towards is the notion that classes could be viewed as problematic in certain regards. Esp classes that lean into cultural or religious archetypes like a samurai, witch, or dervish. It's might be a potential sore spot depending on how it is handled.

I think 5e has taken good care to avoid pigeon-holing classes to much, but I also felt they handled race and alignment well, so what do I know?

 

[Danzauker]

Snipped a lot here, but you are misunderstanding the point.

These works don't say "this is only a single caricatured way to view this culture" They say "look at this exotic and strange culture"

To the point where it is a documented phenomena that people are likely to assume that any person from China, Korea, Vietnam, or Japan knows martial arts. I actually remember a friend in elementary school getting asked what kind of martial arts he knew. We were like, seven. He was American, yet the pervasiveness of these stereotypes meant that people just assumed that of course he knew martial arts.

Yes, people mash cultures all the time, but when they are doing it to European cultures we can at least tell they are over-simplifying. I don't need a degree in cultural studies to know that not all people from England have Butlers, snarky maids, or would stop a fist-fight midway through for "a spot of tea". But that is because there are plenty of other depictions of England and it's culture for me to understand that.

But places like Korea or Vietnam? I literally don't have a clue. I can't even tell you which depictions have a grain of truth and which are just China yet again. And that is part of the problem. We've only ever shown the stereotypes, to the point where there are large groups of people who don't even realize those stereotypes aren't true. That is what he is saying there.

I'd agree with you fully if this were a book on actual Asia. But it's not. It's a book on a fantasy stereotyped movie Asia

It's not art's or entertainment's job to educate people. It's school. If at school you did not learn enough after primary school to know that not all Asians have long thin moustaches and leap from tree to tree fighting, then it's due to improve the school system, not to rely on a comics, movies or a RPG supplement to learn things.

 

[Danzauker]

I’m getting tired of your lazy reading. I replied to Voadam that there are examples if you look down his Twitter feed. He posts pictures of excerpts from the book, including chopsticks listed as weapons and how asking about eating rice is a greeting. In the future, please learn to do your own work and learn how to do it well.

Fine enough. I can't use twitter. Never did and never will. I thought I could find the info in the link. Thanks for helping.

I read the excerpts. Yes, they are heavily stereotyped. Really heavily stereotyped. On the line I'd say, though, than any similarly themed product made in the '80s.

But still, call me dense, I don't see it as harmful. It's as inaccurate and over simplified as any Far West cowboy sourcebook, Victorian London sourcebook, or yes, Italian sourcebook. I just scoff and smirk. I'm happy that way.

Of course I'm happy that things change and are no longer done the way they were, be assured by this. i keep seeing a battle over a fictional product made 35 years ago a hollow battle. A wrong battle, maybe, when a virtuous one is to encourage new material that will of course be more fit to the modern world.

BTW. There is a character in Ranma that fights with chopsticks IIRC.