D&D 5E Honor & Sanity

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

Putting it another way...

Lovecraft's writing includes a great deal of racism. Leiber's includes a great deal of sexism. Whether or not you feel that this is justified by the period and culture in which they were written, one can at least say that those were an accepted part of the period and culture.

They are not, however, an accepted part of culture now. (Of course they still exist. But we recognize them as bad.)

It's still perfectly valid to enjoy Lovecraft and Leiber for what they are. But I sure as heck wouldn't want anyone writing in the genres they shaped to feel they had to be equally as racist/sexist today. In fact, I'd be offended if they were.

That doesn't make today's fantasy lesser. It makes it greater, because it's grown beyond some of its initial faults.

I was searching for a way to explain myself, but Ari the words smith totally beat me to it...

 

[GreenTengu]

I can understand where you are coming from, except when you say it is a racist stereotype. If a white American/European thinks of another ethnic group as 'honorable', even if it is mislabeled, how can you call it racist? It might be a stereotype, but it certainly isn't a racist stereotype.

Look, it starts with claiming that Japanese people are all about honor. And then we see where they run with that....

A) Claims that Japanese reject all things that originate outside of their own nation or culture because "honor".
B) Claims that Japanese people lack any innovative spirit and are incapable of advancing technologically, socially or culturally because "honor".
C) Claims that Japanese people are incapable of using reason or logic and resolve everything from court cases to job interviews through one-on-one sword fights. Best case one can make that one is not guilty or is best qualified for a position is to cleave the other person in half with a sword. And no one will question it. Because "honor".
D) Claims that Japanese people value neither their own lives nor others. They are itching to drive a sword through themselves the first time they perceive they have made any sort of mistake or given into any sort of sin. Because "honor".
E) Claims that Japanese have a feudal system 1000x stricter than anything that ever existed in the west and no one is capable of ever escaping the position they are born into regardless of their actions. Because "honor".
F) Claims that when the land is full of bandits, monsters, zombies, etc. that the Japanese will forcefully disarm 90% of their population at threat of death. Because "honor".
G) Claims that no one ever acts in their self-interest or is willing to swallow their pride or shows any kindness, mercy or reconciliation. Because "honor".

Those are probably the most common negative tropes about Japanese. Other things that dehumanize Japanese people about L5R regarding everyone dressing in matching outfits and only wearing the 2 colors of their tribe at all time, swearing fealty to flags of animals, naming themselves after animals and trying to emulate animals are as offensively false as the above ones, but I think we can say those tropes are limited only to that setting.

 

[Riley37]

Hobgoblin, why are you listing aspects of the Rokugan setting, in a thread specific to the Honor stat *as described in D&D 5E DMG*?

 

[aramis erak]

It's still perfectly valid to enjoy Lovecraft and Leiber for what they are. But I sure as heck wouldn't want anyone writing in the genres they shaped to feel they had to be equally as racist/sexist today. In fact, I'd be offended if they were.

If they aren't writing equally as sexist and/or racist and/or stereotype driven, in many cases, they've left the genre, or at least, become a separate subgenre, from the older works.

 

[Mouseferatu]

If they aren't writing equally as sexist and/or racist and/or stereotype driven, in many cases, they've left the genre, or at least, become a separate subgenre, from the older works.

You're... You're kidding, right?

Lovecraftian horror contains nothing that requires racism. S&S contains nothing--despite what some people would say about rescuing maidens--that absolutely requires sexism. The notion that people who followed in these footsteps aren't writing in the same genre just because they've eliminated those traits is... mind-boggling.

One "leaves" a genre when one stops using fundamental traits of it. Unless you're talking Gor and its ilk, real-world racism and sexism are fundamental to exactly no genres of fantasy.

 

[Anth]

I think "Honor" is a misnomer. I think pride/embarrasment or something similar would be a better name.
Many of us westerners think that the japanese are strange. What many of us miss is that the japanese think us westerners are equally strange.
It's easy to find lists like 10 customs you must know before a trip to Japan
But it's equally easy to find the opposite: 10 Japanese Travel Tips for Visiting America.

We say that the japanese have this strange "lose your face"-thing that we don't have. But that's not true.
We have many ways to lose our face in the western world, but for us such behavior is so unthinkable that we would never, never, never do that.

How would you react if you went to the supermarket and saw a grown up man roll around on the floor, screaming like a five year old kid because there is no milk left?

How would you react if the person in front of you on the train started to take off his/her clothes? And I mean all of it, including underwear.

How do you react when you meet a drunk person before lunch?

In all above cases we are talking about persons losing their honor and face in our eyes.
The only difference between the western world and Japan is that they have another culture and norm.

And if you're not looking at fantasy, but at IRL history, our forefathers had quite different values.
Take a modern girl in summer clothing, like a top and miniskirt, and send her back 200 years in time. How would the 19th century people react?
On the other hand how many of you can think of your parents/grandparents having sex? 200 years ago most families lived together in one big room, so parents obviusly had sex in the same room as their kids.

The reason why we use the word honor is that we try to explain a normal japanese behavior that we think is totally alien.

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

If they aren't writing equally as sexist and/or racist and/or stereotype driven, in many cases, they've left the genre, or at least, become a separate subgenre, from the older works.

ok, please explain why me playing a knight who happens to be a woman who does to slay the evil dragon who demanded a sacrifice and got the cute boy isn't fantasy?

or better yet, what about me playing a member of delta green? why is me being equal not cthulue mythos?

 

[GreenTengu]

Hobgoblin, why are you listing aspects of the Rokugan setting, in a thread specific to the Honor stat *as described in D&D 5E DMG*?

Because that is what was described as the reason to even use the "honor" attribute. "To make it like L5R" as if that were a thing to aspire to.
And while L5R is certainly the most prominent example of this, or perhaps because of it, whenever someone speaks about playing a samurai or describes the culture of a race "like samurai" (i.e. "the elves of my world are like samurai!") they generally presume that at least half, if not all, of those things I listed are ACTUALLY TRUE!! As though that is an accurate portrayal of Japanese, or even all of Northeastern Asian culture.

And certainly I see those same presumptions popping up in all sorts of pop media that deal with Japanese people-- even in modern times no less!!

So saying that an "honor" attribute should exist solely for the purposes of emulating an Asian culture, at its base suggesting that any setting that utilizes Asia should be as ignorantly racists as L5R, is a terrible thing to say. The biological and cultural differences between Europe and Asia are not nearly so much as to DEMAND the inclusion of an additional attribute. "Honor" in its various aspects has always been valued and respected in the Europe and America as it has in Asia.

In fact, the idea that it would only be applicable to Knights in the west is particularly telling when it is similarly posited that it should be the enforcing principle of all of Asian culture. For any actual reflection on this point ought to allow one to come to the realization-- the only people in Asia who remotely cared about "honor" as much as European Knights were.... Asian Knights!! In short-- once again-- because the differences are not so god damn stark, you aren't playing with black and white, Asian people are NOT god damn aliens with alien mentalities and alien characteristics that can be narrowly but fully defined as one might a High Elf or a Mountain Dwarf.

If one cannot justify the existence of an "honor" attribute outside of a European setting, then it is in fact racist to presume or encourage its existence in an Asian setting. PARTICULARLY if your overall goal is to make the setting anything remotely approaching Rokugan and its insulting dehumanization of the people whose culture it coops.

 

[halfling rogue]

Stereotypes handed down from a time and place that were themselves sexist and racist. Like change or not, like deconstruction or not, it's vital to remember that these things weren't perfect even when they were created, and a flaw's age doesn't make it any less a flaw.

Fantasy hasn't lost a thing. It's expanded. New isn't innately better, but it's not innately worse, either. Nor is it any less legitimate.

If it involves the impossible, it is fantasy. Everything else is detail or semantics.

I'll grant you your argument. I actually agree with you in certain respects. If something truly is sexist or racist (I'm thinking of some Conan stories) then we should call it what it is, as you mentioned with your Lovecraft example. What I'm talking about is the modern tendency to take something that isn't sexist/racist and claim that it is, and then usually change it and justify the change based on said perceived sexism/racism/whateverism.

I mentioned a knight rescuing a damsel in distress. Modern people think this is sexist. I was called a sexist on this thread because I had the audacity to defend it as a good stereotype.

This does not mean that women cannot be heroes or that all women are in distress. As I mentioned, Merida in the movie Brave is a phenomenal example. The creators of Brave didn't take an old story and PC it up. They made a new story, created a new stereotype/symbol that contained their own unspoken values and it succeeds overwhelmingly as Fantasy.

Elves create beautiful things. Orcs create nothing. They can only desecrate. They take the old and beautiful and twist it for their own purposes. In Fantasy, when a good stereotype/symbol is turned on its ear for the purposes of being politically correct, you have orc mischief.

Real sexism/racism is wrong and should be fought against, no matter what time or place it is derived (btw, when and where exactly was it when time and place became enlightened and no longer were racist or sexist in and of themselves?). But we have the Perceived -Ism's Police running about following up on everyone's hurt feelings and it's muddied the waters.

Point is, when Political Correctness invades Fantasy, far from it being expanded, Fantasy has actually lost ground to the real world.

 

[Beleriphon]

If one cannot justify the existence of an "honor" attribute outside of a European setting, then it is in fact racist to presume or encourage its existence in an Asian setting. PARTICULARLY if your overall goal is to make the setting anything remotely approaching Rokugan and its insulting dehumanization of the people whose culture it coops.

Despite the fact that Rokugan is obviously not an accurate portrayal of Japan during the 15th and 16th centuries the honor stat is the least of the problems in that regard. The stat, score, whatever is meant to represent a code of behaviour that is pretty different than what a western audience is typically used to, and more than that is encompasses things that people don't think about because we don't consider the same codes of behaviour as relevant. For example: plopping into a bath without washing one's self first. Its immensely insulting to do so, especially if you know you aren't supposed to do it at all. If that sort of thing (whatever the fauz paus might be) is important to a game, and there's a game mechanical aspect to work on an "honour" stat isn't a bad choice. The fact that one of the most obvious examples happens to rely on poorly executed sterotypes of Murochachi Period Japan is a separate issue completely.