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

[Fenris-77]

By dismissing Kwan's commentary (or parts of it) because he isn't a historical expert on early D&D, we are trying to prevent his criticism from being heard or seen as relevant and legitimate. Yes, gatekeeping. Only D&D super-nerds immersed in the esoterica of the game have any right to level complaints.

Kwan is reacting to the perfect storm of NWPs, the honor system, the Comeliness stat, orientalist language, and bad stereotypes as an Asian American gamer encountering Oriental Adventures.

To go all "well, actually . . ." after specific points like NWPs, honor, and Comeliness being developed in the pages of Dragon Magazine and/or appearing in Unearthed Arcana before being included in Oriental Adventures misses the point and tries to diminish his experience and offense.

It's certainly a fact that these three mechanical elements of the game were developed before the publication of Oriental Adventures and can be (and have been) applied to cultures other than Asian. It also is irrelevant to Kwan's experience reading through the book, it also doesn't change the highly problematic nature of the work.

Blargh. Seriously? I, for one, specifically made space for his very legitimate criticism even though I have criticisms of parts of it. Specifically did so. The perfect storm argument is nonsense btw, you don't get to say its all or nothing. That's just cover for he didn't know what he was talking about in spots when he got really upset and now doesn't want to take back his hot take. I'm not preventing, silencing, obviating, diminishing or any other -ing his right to speak or critique. What I am doing is calling shenanigans on the part that is patently, obviously, and indisputably shenanigans. It doesn't matter to me a whit that you're invested enough to continue to ride to his defense here. You're just casting baseless aspersions and completely ignoring any and all attempts at nuance and discourse in an attempt to salvage the discourse without modification. Perhaps you should be as concerned with legitimate critique generally. Just a thought.

 

[Lanefan]

As a Fantasy Canada exclusive rule? Yes, that would be stereotyping and uncool

Then I suppose I'm an uncool stereotyper...

Bob and Doug McKenzie (if you ain't seen these guys, a quick youtube search will find them) took Canadian "culture" and poked wonderful fun at it by taking the stereotypes and dialling them up beyond eleven.

Herclues-Xena take ancient Greek culture and mythos (and in passing they also hit a bunch of other historical cultures) and completely send them up.

Those are the sort of takes I'd rather have in the game every single time, if the choice is between that and bland historical accuracy.

What I don't understand is how asking for the book to be removed is censorship, but boycotting it by not buying it is not.

And, if both are censorship, why are posters okay with the second, but appalled by the first?

Simple, and really quite clear.

A boycott or even a simple choice not to purchase is a decision I make on my own, and doesn't impact anyone else in making that same decision. Not censorship.

Asking to remove the book, if successful in the request, means I don't get to make that choice any more, and nor does anybody else*. Censorship.

* - for these purposes I'm ignoring secondhand and pirate options.

 

[Lanefan]

Since when is Unearthed Arcana, first edition, a book of options to expand the base game? The Introduction to the book says "In the time since the publication of the Dungeon Masters Guide in 1979, the AD&D game has not stood still. In DRAGON Magazine, Gary Gygax has continued to expand the frontiers of the game, offering new ideas, experiments, and rules. In this book those ideas are made concrete. The experiments are completed. The suggested rules are now official and final." It seems clear to me that the changes introduced in Unearthed Arcana were intended as permanent changes to the game and thus were included in OA as such.

This is but one more instance where what Gygax intended to happen and what actually took place are nowhere near the same.

Most DMs with any long-term interest in developing their games through the early 1980s were examining the various proposed options* piecemeal as they were published in Dragon and either adopting them, amending them, or discarding them at that point. Thus, by the time UA came out a fair bit of it wasn't new any more; and though Gygax may have intended for all of it to become official canon most DMs had long since made their own decisions as to which bits would appear in their games and which would not; and saw the book as just a handy compilation of those options.

* - including those that didn't make it into UA, there were many.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Folks, it’s getting a mite testy in here. If we want the discussion to continue, people need to dial back the personal attacks and aspersions casting. This means everyone.

That includes NOT announcing you’re going to ignore another poster. Do it or don’t, that’s cool. But announcements like that just add kindling to people’s stack of resentment firewood.

 

[prosfilaes]

By dismissing Kwan's commentary (or parts of it) because he isn't a historical expert on early D&D, we are trying to prevent his criticism from being heard or seen as relevant and legitimate. Yes, gatekeeping. Only D&D super-nerds immersed in the esoterica of the game have any right to level complaints.

There is a mountain in Nevada named after Jefferson Davis. I don't challenge anyone's right to get offended about that. But if someone starts to complain that it's part of a pattern of Confederate monuments in Union states, they're wrong; it was named after the Secretary of State in 1855, before the Civil War. Sometimes things don't mean what you think they do.

For another example, I've read complaints that the OED2 (1989) only had horribly outdated quotations for various Hong Kong English words, making them look like they were unused. Well, the OED2 only added new words and senses to the OED1 (1884-1928), meaning these entries hadn't been touched in between 60 and 100 years. The OED2 was problematic in that sense for a host of English words, not just any one culture's.

(* Well, was; it was apparently renamed in 2019.)

Kwan is reacting to the perfect storm of NWPs, the honor system, the Comeliness stat, orientalist language, and bad stereotypes as an Asian American gamer encountering Oriental Adventures.

Again, would you treat a complaint about Wisdom the same as the complaint about Comeliness? The only reason I can see for Comeliness being picked on and not Wisdom is the knowledge that Wisdom predates OA. Given that, it seems quite relevant the context of Comeliness being added.

If you're critiquing a historic work, especially if you're demanding it be removed from a site that makes available basically as a historical artifact, I expect you to know the context. If you don't care about the context, feel free to read stuff printed for D&D 5 or Pathfinder 2, and let the past bury itself.

 

[prosfilaes]

Most DMs with any long-term interest in developing their games through the early 1980s were examining the various proposed options* piecemeal as they were published in Dragon and either adopting them, amending them, or discarding them at that point. Thus, by the time UA came out a fair bit of it wasn't new any more; and though Gygax may have intended for all of it to become official canon most DMs had long since made their own decisions as to which bits would appear in their games and which would not; and saw the book as just a handy compilation of those options.

I don't see DM practice as relevant here. Gygax and TSR saw UA as the new base system, so they used it as the basis for OA.

 

[Cadence]

Gygax and TSR saw UA as the new base system, so they used it as the basis for OA.

They were both on process at the same time, but is it correct that OA hit the shelves two months before UA?

 

[prosfilaes]

Well, good thing that DMs Guild isn't a library and is instead a private marketplace.

Libraries are public spaces staffed for public information. Where books are free too. Libraries are not book stores that sell material. That seems to be a massive difference.

A classic library and bookstore are purely complementary; one you can borrow books from, and the other you can buy books from. The limitations on each were purely pragmatic, space and printing costs.

And it's not true that libraries are free public spaces; there are a lot of libraries available only by paying a membership fee or an entrance fee. The Harvard library, for example, is not open to the public.

In the Internet age, DMs Guild is claiming the exclusive right to distribute electronic copies of OA. Neither electronic libraries or DMs Guild are practically bound by limitations on the number of books they can carry, and I would happily donate my legal PDF copy of OA to the Internet Archive for them to check it out, if only I could. The only limit on the electronic library is the legal claims of WotC.

The lines between the library and the marketplace are blurred in the modern world, when complete historical archives of a publisher are online for a fairly nominal fee, and legally unavailable from electronic libraries. (As for nominal fee, I'm pretty sure you could get the entirety of AD&D 1 from DMs Guild for the $750 borrowing privileges would cost an unaffiliated academic from Harvard.)

 

[JEB]

They were both on process at the same time, but is it correct that OA hit the shelves two months before UA?

Looks like UA was released in June 1985, and OA was released in October 1985. (I thought it was the opposite order as well.)

FWIW, Comeliness was first introduced as a D&D mechanic in a Gary Gygax article in Dragon #67, November 1982. So Gygax had probably been hoping to add it to the core rules for a while (hence dual appearances in both of the year's major rulebooks).

 

[Voadam]

They were both on process at the same time, but is it correct that OA hit the shelves two months before UA?

According to the history notes on drivethru Unearthed Arcana was published June 1985 and Oriental Adventures was October 1985.