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

[MoonSong]

Regarding the rest, I admit I'm a bit puzzled. I don't get the references to actual political and social situation of the country. I, honestly, don't care about it at all in this context. I'm neither trying to make an essay on real world contemporary Mexico nor writing a modern Narcos RPG setting. What I was interested in im my thought exercisa was just a pre colombian Aztec (ish) backdrop.

Part of the disconnect is you said Mexican, not Aztec. Now this is precisely what is offensive, just wanting the windowdressing without caring about the context and significance, and how you can contribute to cultural destruction. The plethora of incorrect and imprecise depictions puts a lot of pressure on the preservation of this cultural heritage.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I didn't see that much offensive material there. Trite, oversimplified, boring or unimaginative, sure. But "plain offensive"? I fail to get it. Maybe because in my mind Aztec, Maya and Inca are dead empires? Could be. The pre Colombian empires have disappeared so long ago that I can't relate to them as "real" just as I do with medieval Europe. It's a thing of the past. Surely most of the tropes there are wildly historically inaccurate, but there's a hint of truth in there. Human sacrifices were practiced, even if not that much as pulp fiction wants us to believe, and designing a mythology around Quetzalcoatl wrong? is it an issue? Are there living worshippers of the Aztec pantheon? Is it worse than the Norse Gods depiction in Marvel comics?

I won't talk about the Inca, because they aren't my concern, they lived literally on the other extreme of the world. They are not relevant except because they tend to get tangled too in the mess.

We are not talking of dead cultures which no longer exist, this concerns real living people today. Real living people who currently struggle to preserve their culture. Yes, this is both someone's ancestral heritage and someone's living current heritage, and neither of them have easy access to the means to put this into popular culture.

The Maya might not be an empire anymore, but the Maya people is still living to this day. With the Aztecs things are a bit more complex, because what is usually depicted as "Aztec" is actually of Pan-nahua origin -Aztecs were but one Nahua tribe, they weren't even the only tribe in charge, there were also the Alcohua and Tecpanec in charge of the empire that dominated most other Nahua tribes and many post-toltec-chichimec tribes and even surviving tribes from prechichimec times- if not an off-shot of the greater Toltec-Chichimec or Toltec-Teotihuacan traditions that went beyond just the Nahua people. A lot of what is depicted as Aztec is not really Aztec to begin with.

The comparison to the Norse and Roman traditions is also not an accurate one. For one, the nature of the change was abrupt and violent, not to mention quite recent in time. The Norse shed their ancient religion over time as they adapted to the new places they established in and their homeland was Christianized. The Roman traditions however didn't exactly die out, their pantheon was abruptly and forcefully abandoned, and this part is similar though. However notice that the Romans are the ancestors of many peoples today, -including the mixed heritage Mexicans of today- and their institutions and Cultural norms still persist to this day. Not to mention their myths got preserved by first hand accounts, while we are lucky to have some texts written from an European perspective and these things were already bastardized by decades of Aztec domination. Somewhere else I mentioned how the Aztec version of the Nahua-Zapotec-Mixtec pantheon -yes, there's no "Aztec pantheon" but rather a shared transethnic one- shows obvious signs of tampering by the Aztecs as a way to justify their domination-.

What happened in the Ancient Anahuac after the Spanish Conquest was very violent and quite recent -it is still an open wound-. It is a foundational trauma, and something we are still struggling with. On one hand, most of us are of mixed heritage and we carry both the pain of the victim and the guilt of the perpetrator, and at the same time we still long for the cultural baggage that was stripped off us. And this isn't something that happened one time five hundred years ago, this is an ongoing process of cultural destruction that hasn't stopped. This happened in my own family just two or three generations ago.

And, well, these deities aren't exactly dead gods. Their cult subsists to this day in the syncretic practices of many indigenous communities. Specially in the Maya region. The Mayans managed to preserve more of their culture than other ethnic groups, if I had to guess, because of their better writing system and their relative distance and independence from the center. This is also a bigger problem because the cultures of the Anahuac are part of our heritage, but these cultures are still living and ongoing to this day, and they suffer to preserve it -they face a lot of structural disadvantages that cannot be easily overcome while still resisting assimilation-. We making use of it is already morally ambiguous. Someone from the outside doing it is even worse, and more if it is just windowdressing and quite inaccurate.

These are the things that startle me. I see people that just seem to WANT to get angry for the slightest thing. Sure, our REAL world give many reasons to get angry, and racism is one of the worst. But I prefer when angriness is directed at real world issues, not fantasy literature, if there's no direct intent of offense.

If you don't want to offend, then do your homework. Be thorough, be accurate, and be respectful -and well, avoid using stereotypes-. I will still be personally angry -because I'm a drama queen and more aware about these issues-, but others love when popular culture gets things right, which does not happen very often. If you don't want to put this effort for your own homegame, that's ok, what happens in the privacy of your own table is nobody's business. But, if you want to publish it, at least get a sensitivity reader or two.

 

[MoonSong]

Plus, he acts as if this sort of thing is only done with asian cultures.

For instance. I'm Italian American, do you know how many games have badguys that are based on either the mafia or ancient Rome. There's a ton of them. But I don't care.mI don't care. Fallout New Vegas somehow has both and it's one of my favorite games ever

Ancient Rome isn't the monopoly of just their Italian descendants, you know. There is a reason there's a "Latin" in Latinoamerica...

 

[Bohandas]

Ancient Rome isn't the monopoly of just their Italian descendants, you know. There is a reason there's a "Latin" in Latinoamerica...

My understanding was that that was originally a reference to the latin mass of the Roman Catholic Church, as that is the majority religion in many of those countries, and until a few decades ago the catholic mass was usually said in latin regardless of location

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

My understanding was that that was originally a reference to the latin mass of the Roman Catholic Church, as that is the majority religion in many of those countries, and until a few decades ago the catholic mass was usually said in latin regardless of location

It's from the shared Latinate (aka Romance) languages. Amerique latine.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I posted this link before in the thread, but it kind of got lost in the boise, and after giving it another read, I feel that it's a lot more relevant to this discussion than simply just as a footnote. So have it again:

How to Change Your Conversations About Cultural Appropriation — James Mendez Hodes

This article discusses cultural appropriation. More precisely, it discusses discussions about cultural appropriation, which stress me out more than any other cultural consulting topic. The question of whether a given expression is or is not cultural appropriation, and the corollary question of wheth

jamesmendezhodes.com

In particular, note the distinction between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation:

Cultural exchange is one culture’s adoption of cultural practices or expressions originating with another culture. Throughout this article, we’ll call the former culture the adopters, the latter the originators.

Cultural appropriation is an instance of cultural exchange which aggravates, entrenches, trivializes, or mocks a power imbalance between an enfranchised adopter and a systemically oppressed originator. An instance of cultural appropriation may also have positive or benign effects—for the originator, the adopter, or third parties—which exist in parallel to the appropriative dynamic.

It's the presence of this power imbalance that separates exchange from appropriation. When cultural expressions are respectfully exchanged and syncretized between two groups of relatively equal sociocultural standing, that's completely fine, something to be celebrated even. It's the introduction of a sociocultural power imbalance that starts making the exchange questionable, and thus appropriation.

Four examples of specific power dynamics are put forward:

• Law and Violence: if an adopter can freely perform a cultural expression while its originator faces legal persecution for doing so, that's appropriation
• Ceremony and Sanctity: if an adopter uses a cultural expression in a way that would be considered profane by its originator, that's appropriation
• Choice and Necessity: if an adopter doesn't understand the history behind the cultural expression they're performing, that's appropriation
• Money and Exposure: if an adopter can make more money or earn more fame off of a cultural expression than an originator can due to social privilege and better connections in society, that's appropriation

I'd say that Number 4 is the big one when it comes to discussing cultural exchange and appropriation in print media, including tabletop RPGs. This Oriental Adventures kerfuffle is but one example of this. When an adopter -- in this scenario, White American game designers at big companies -- can be more successful selling products that borrow another culture's expression than a creator of that originator culture -- in this scenario, BIPOC game designers at smaller studios -- can hope to do, that's cultural appropriation.

It's a problem, but it's not a big problem if the creators are respectful of the roots of their work, and give credit where credit is due. I'm not gonna hate on Elvis just because Black artists were doing rock and roll before him. But if that respect and appreciation isn't being given, and instead the appropriative work is mocking or profaning that oppressed originator, then we have a big problem.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'd say that Number 4 is the big one when it comes to discussing cultural exchange and appropriation in print media, including tabletop RPGs. This Oriental Adventures kerfuffle is but one example of this. When an adopter -- in this scenario, White American game designers at big companies -- can be more successful selling products that borrow another culture's expression than a creator of that originator culture -- in this scenario, BIPOC game designers at smaller studios -- can hope to do, that's cultural appropriation.

No. That's capitalism.

This is so banal it is a truism. But removing the slightly more loaded terms, here is what you just said-

"In this scenario, game designers at big companies -- can be more successful selling products ... than game designers at smaller studios -- can hope to do, that's (CAPITALISM)"

This may be good, or bad (that's a separate conversation), but it's hardly a novel observation that the roots of "colonialism" or "racism" or a lot of other "isms" spring from capitalism.

Exploitation of (the working class, people of color, the "originator culture") is a feature, not a bug, of the underlying system.

Big companies will be more successful at selling products than small companies; to the extent that the small company is more successful, it will become a big company.

 

[Aldarc]

No. That's capitalism.

It can be both.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

By the time he defeats the villain he is literally no longer white.

He's still white, in the weird Avatar body. I don't really want to get in a minutiae argument here though, because even without this I just don't like this movie much anyway.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

No. That's capitalism.

This is so banal it is a truism. But removing the slightly more loaded terms, here is what you just said-

"In this scenario, game designers at big companies -- can be more successful selling products ... than game designers at smaller studios -- can hope to do, that's (CAPITALISM)"

This may be good, or bad (that's a separate conversation), but it's hardly a novel observation that the roots of "colonialism" or "racism" or a lot of other "isms" spring from capitalism.

Exploitation of (the working class, people of color, the "originator culture") is a feature, not a bug, of the underlying system.

Big companies will be more successful at selling products than small companies; to the extent that the small company is more successful, it will become a big company.

What Aldarc said. You're right that it's capitalism, it's just not only capitalism. A lot of these issues are intersectional -- they tangle up with each other in one giant web.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Ancient Rome isn't the monopoly of just their Italian descendants, you know. There is a reason there's a "Latin" in Latinoamerica...

The term "Latinoamerica" was created by the French who tried to rule those some regions, but the right term is Hispanoamerica or Iberoamerica. If Canada speaks French, then it would be also "Latinoamerica".

If the fairy tales by the Grimm brothers are from German folklore, wouldn't be cultural appropiation by the English-speakers? Is cultural appropiation to read "1001 nights"? The famous manga Dragon Ball is a mash-up of the Chinese classic tale "Journey to the West". Cultural appropiation by a Japanese mangaka?