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

[Danzauker]

Lived in cultural experiences is different to "scientific" theories.
Cultural experiences also have historical context. So can be looked at in that way. As well as looked at in current context.

Flat earthers fly in the face of all of that.

If someone is racist. Then deems that material inoffensive but the material is offensive should not have worthy weight. Or weight at all in this. Cultural consultants need to address these. Not just random opinions who did not grow up within the culture.

That's why I pointed out "research". Research is a scientific term. Science is science. Science has the same value regardless of who the scientist is. if the research is solid, the fact the researcher is white, black or whatever MUST not be important.

Now, if you say that a term or behavior is more or less offensive depending on culture or experience, that's an entirely different matter and there can be discussion around it. I remember having the OA books and never giving a thought that they could be racist, even if i admit i haven't read them in a long while.

Full of stereotypes? Sure, but like all role play gaming material. Even the base classes are stereotypes. All cultural representations in all D&D material i have owned is ripe with stereotypes, even "europoid" nations like the Principalities of Glantri in good old D&D Basic supplements.

It does not NEED a warning to tell people that those are the "artist impressions" of the common tropes of Spain, Italy, Germany and all European nations around the Middle-Age/Renaissance. Though a warning does not hurt, either. Surely, removing or censoring is bad.

 

[(un)reason]

Ah, this again. The joys of the euphemism treadmill, trying to make certain words unnacceptable. It's a clever trick that plays right into the bigot's hands as it actually promotes erasure rather than diversity, by making it harder to talk about the thing at all, while doing nothing to fix actual structural and societal inequalities. Don't fall for it.

Open a dialogue this should.
A warning should be on there. Regardless.

Why are you writing in Yoda grammar?

 

[John R Davis]

Are you supposed to use an accent when playing a Far East character?
No. It is offensive and racist
Yes. Otherwise you are white-washing

Are you in fact allowed to play a Far East character in the first place if you are white European? Do I now need to go on a training course to ensure I can play a Trans-Samurai correctly?

If you just squeeze what is deemed as 'the right and only way to do things' you just kill the game.

 

[ccs]

They should issue a statement that they'll look into it.

And then do nothing.

If asked again? Repeat that they're looking into and have yet to come to a decision on the issue. Repeat occasionally as needed until the current hysteria dies down.

They should not deface the work with any kind of statement or apology.
They definitely should not donate any proceeds to charity.

 

[Li Shenron]

With WotC's recent statement on making the game more inclusive in regards to racial issues, I should have predicted this would happen next.

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

The 1st Edition "Oriental Adventures" is probably one of the worst titles in the back catalog for its treatment of race and culture, but it is far from the only problematic title. Should WotC remove the 1E "Oriental Adventures" rulebook from the DriveThruRPG.com marketplace? How about the 3E version? Other products that built on Oriental Adventures? What other titles?

Personally, I don't feel that the book should be removed entirely, but something does need to be done to acknowledge the problematic aspects of the title. I'd take a page from the HBO Max streaming service. HBO Max temporarily removed the movie "Gone with the Wind" recently due to the world's current focus on racial issues. However, they have restored the film to the catalog with an introductory disclaimer basically saying the film is important in a historical context but, yeah, pretty racist.

I would like to see WotC do something similar with "Oriental Adventures" and other problematic titles. Add a disclaimer at the beginning of the digital book explaining explicitly the problematic elements of the book. I would also have all profits from the book's sales go to a charity, preferably some charity dealing with Asian American racial issues.

What do you think?

Well unfortunately I do not have either the AD&D Oriental Adventures book, nor the time to go through their whole 26 hours commentary/criticism on it, at least not at the moment but I can try eventually watch at least part of it. So far I watched only an hour or so between the first episode and the 3rd edition Oriental Adventures artwork commentary, too little for a meaningful opinion but at least I can share my first impressions.

The group's criticism seems to be particularly focused of the facts that Oriental Adventures is:

• far from a realistic depiction of asian people, histories and cultures
• a jumbled mish-mash of different unrelated asian cultures

I don't know if they realize that these 2 are, and have always been, characteristics of D&D as a whole and certainly not limited to Oriental Adventures.

D&D Clerics are nothing about western religious clergy. Paladins are utterly terrible if taken as a representation of crusaders, templars or whatever someone might think they were originally inspired by. Warlocks are not realistic example of historical witchcraft. Bards? Druids? Barbarians? Many weapons and armors of the game are not really realistic. The economy, demographics, ecology of the game are bordering the miseducational, if a kid ever tries to think about learning something about "european life in the middle ages" from D&D, they will seriously mess up their school results. It would be nice to sometimes play a more historically realistic RPG, but D&D has never been it, it's a fantasy inspired by popular tales and folklore rather than history.

As for the mish-mash, again D&D is a blatant kitchen sink of everything they could think about... not even folklore from different countries but even from different millennia. There's monsters from greek mythology to celtic tales to 20th century horror. We also know some weapons and armors are from different historical periods.

Both of these characteristics can bother a lot of people, it's a very legitimate criticism, but they are not about Oriental Adventures exclusively.

Now where the group is definitely right, is in the fact that Oriental Adventures was clearly designed for a US/European audience. Perhaps TSR wasn't even thinking at that time that they would have sold the book in China or Japan or Korea. That is why the book emphasises so much the "elsewhere", already in the preface talking of taking the players to "exotic" places, and failing to acknowledge that already at that time of the publication there were lots of people in the US with chinese/korean/etc. origin by the way. Now times are different, and I can totally support the idea of RPG books being (re)written for a truly global audience, not just for the prototypical white american straight male, but that certainly doesn't mean it must abide to historical realism.

 

[Flamestrike]

So I was poking around and looking for the connection between Oriental and Orientalism and did not ever realize they refer to the Middle East just as much as they do Asia. When I hear Oriental, I have never thought of Persia or Turkey, only Japan or China or other east Asian countries. It also appears the terms did not really start having serious negative connotations until Edward Said, a professor and political activist, included it in a negative way in his books, including one titled Orientalism, published in 1978. Reading all that makes me wonder how the original release was called Oriental Adventures in the first place, seeing as it was published only 7 years later. Though with no internet to check on things like that, it is understandable that no one at TSR would have even known.

In Australia we dont generally refer to the inhabitants of India and its immediate neighbours (Pakistan, Bangladesh etc) as being Asian. That term is generally used to refer to East Asian and SE Asian peoples (everyone east and south of Myanmar).

When I moved to the UK that changed, with people from India being referred to (and self referring as) Asian in the UK context.

I dont know if people of Indian or Pakistani background in the US refer to themselves as Asian, so maybe its just Australians that are doing it wrong. Beats me.

I personally just roll with whatever a people want to be called. If members of an ethnic group asked to be called a certain thing, I'll run with it. If they find something offensive, I wont call them that.

It does get a bit difficult with context though. Some things that are racial slurs somewhere, are not elsewhere, and acceptable names in one place, are not somewhere else.

 

[Mirtek]

Can someone elighten me?

The term 'Oriental' maybe doesnt have the same connotations here in Australia than elsewhere.

Whats wrong with the title?

Seems to be a US thing. In continental europe theres also little to no issue with the term

 

[John R Davis]

In the UK Asian referred to the IPBS countries, and IME they aren't offended. What is odd is the we say Afro-Caribean as a group, when they are a wholly different background/heritage

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The next step will be to report all those old pirates movies where Spanish conquerors was the evil empire who stopped human sacrifices in the new world and the English corsairs the noble heroes who traficked slaves. If the famous pirate Barbarossa was Otoman, can't be the antagonist? If the Spanish caliph Miramamolin was blonde and blue-eyed, can't he be the antagonist in a movie about the batle of Navas of Tolosa?

And after to ban all TTRPGs modules where the antagonist is a priest, bishop or cardinal? for example the cyberpapacy from TORG (and why not the cybercaliphate?)

Why it to be banned and not only with a previous disclaimer? In a future when Captain Marvel kick-ass any skrull-invader will we need a disclaimer "sorry if some Democrat senator has felt unconfortable with this scene"?

OA is a mash-up of Asian cultures, of course, but that is neither racism nor xenophoby, only a lost opportunity to build a bridge between Asian and Western culture.

My rule is don't trust anybody who tries to fix all with new rules, regulations and protocols because he doesn't trust the free citizin to make the right choose when you explain the reasons. If we really want to fight the racism, then we have to defend the respect of the human dignity, the basis of our rights as people.

 

[jasper]

If you are upset about the title of the book/pdf. Do not buy it. My 1E copy is on my bookshelf. I think I used two things from it while playing 1E. Most my gamers at the time thought was a hot mess of bad rules.