D&D 5E How should be the future Oriental Adventures.

[LuisCarlos17f]

* A Spanish tells about a worker who congratulates his boss for the new car he has just bought, and this answers:

- "Do you see this car? If you work a lot thanks your hard efforts.... I will can buy a better car".

(Maybe the joke isn't fun, but it shows the point of view by lots of Spanish workers).

* I know Puella Magi is not kid-friendly, but I meant a softer/Disney erstaz version.

I will pose again the questions:

- Do the PC races any change or retcon about lore or racial traits, for example adding furry face traits to the hengeyokai to be more kawai (cute)? how should the racial traits of the dokkaebi (korean fae) as PC race?

- What elements from the modern Asian speculative fiction (manga/manwha/manhua + anime/donghua) could or should be added to the xuanhuan D&D to attack new players among the youngest generations?

China Bans Time Travel Films and Shows, Citing Disrespect of History

The order comes during the year of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Beijing Places Sweeping Ban on Shows, Movies Depicting Ancient China

www.theepochtimes.com

Chinese Regime Tightens Censorship on Entertainment and Literature, Targets Spiritual Content

The recent ban by Chinese Authorities of a popular TV drama, which is based on a classical novel, seems to aim at rooting out any and all spiritual content and triggered a wave of criticism on Chinese social media.

www.theepochtimes.com

 

[Count_Zero]

* Why not to produce a game-live show where J-idols play one-shot module based in J-Horror movies or monster from folklore? Or kid-friendly innocent maho shojo (magical girl, like puella magi, sailor moon or pretty cure) who have to "heal" cursed objects what have become tsukumogami.

Short answer - because the actual plays and streams that work the most (Critical Role, Friends at the Table, etc.) are ones done by people with a familiarity to gaming, and who have gamed together before, where the action plays out organically - where the players are comfortable to express themselves as their characters. Despite how the industry is depicted in idol anime, the actual J-Idol industry (and I'm assuming K-idols as well), is intensely controlled - to enough of a point that even if you've got a bunch of tabletop groups going amoung members of, say, AKB48, I don't know if the people who are responsible for promoting the group would be willing to let them do role-play in public.

This is actually why, from what I've heard - I haven't dug into this too much because people aren't subtitling NicoNico videos - the Japanese RPG Actual Play Videos out there tend not to have the players on camera. The players are normally audio only with some degree of voice masking, or they're taking a Replay and having some Vocaloids act out the dialog while animating everything through the Miku Dance software.

I do agree that WotC can do a wuxia campaign setting that is not Kara-Tur - but Kamigawa isn't it, because Kamigawa is feudal Japan. They actually do have a Wuxia setting in Magic the Gathering - Tarkir - that they can work with.

Similarly, they also did the Dragon Fist RPG around the time of the transition between AD&D 2nd edition and D&D 3rd edition. If they still have the rights to that setting, I think bringing some Chinese American writers in and reworking the setting for 5th edition would be a good idea.

That said, if they're doing Wuxia, they'd probably want to do something in the setting book that they haven't done for other settings thus far, which is doing notes on play for several different eras - an era inspired by the Warring States/Romance of the Three Kingdoms when the country is in the middle of civil war, an era inspired by Outlaws of the Water Margin (where the area isn't unified but does have a degree of political stability), and an era that is inspired by the sort of Ming Dynasty period China that serves as the backdrop for most of the classic wuxia films (where you have something of a centralized unified government, but with various corrupt regional governors throwing their weight around - the period where you're most likely to run into a plot masterminded by a Eunuch like in Dragon Inn).

 

[Count_Zero]

- Do the PC races any change or retcon about lore or racial traits, for example adding furry face traits to the hengeyokai to be more kawai (cute)? how should the racial traits of the dokkaebi (korean fae) as PC race?

That's up to the people who write the book, and making those changes isn't going to be what gets someone to change their mind and buy the book.

- What elements from the modern Asian speculative fiction (manga/manwha/manhua + anime/donghua) could or should be added to the xuanhuan D&D to attack new players among the youngest generations?

(sighs and turns his chair around backwards)

WotC isn't getting the Chinese market. It's not happening. I tap-danced around things to avoid getting into modern politics, but there's no avoiding it when it comes to getting into the Chinese market. You've already mentioned the previous stories about not being able to depict Ancient China, or ghosts and the undead, or time travel, and that sort of thing. However, you've missed the three big ticking timebombs in the middle of the room that WotC will have to contend with when it comes to the Chinese market, and in particular, dealing with Chinese censors.

Hong Kong security law: China passes controversial legislation

Many fear that Beijing's radical new law will end the freedoms Hong Kong has enjoyed since handover.

www.bbc.com

Hong Kong protest leader Nathan Law pledges to fight for democracy in exile after fleeing city

Prominent pro-democracy activist Nathan Law pledged Friday to continue to fight for Hong Kong's democratic future, despite fleeing the city for what he said was his own safety.

www.cnn.com

China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population, report says

A report says China is carrying out a campaign of forced birth control to limit the minority group.

www.bbc.com

In short - the new Chinese security law has a vast scope that can leave people who aren't Chinese citizens subject to incarceration by China if we criticize the Chinese government for things like their crackdown on the Hong Kong Protests, or their treatment of the Uighur population. Are they going to request the US or Spanish or Canadian government extradite us for doing those things? No, not likely. However, if we go through a Chinese airport, or take a trip to China, could they decide to arrest us? Yes. This would apply to the staff members of WotC who would need to go to China in order to get government approval to sell the book there. Even if those staff members themselves had not said anything wrong, if someone else at WotC had been too open in their criticism of the Chinese government, that could open those staff members for retaliatory arrest - and could put the staff at their Chinese publisher at risk for getting disappeared in retaliation as well.

Additionally, this could actually end up conflicting with WotC's efforts to get rid of "evil races" from D&D as well - if the Chinese government objects to, for example, a culture that's a little too close to the Uighur getting depicted respectfully, and the censors ask them to depict them in a more... traditionally Orcish manner, the authors of the book now end up stuck in a bad situation. Similarly, if they just do a different edition in China with the D&D Trade Dress and the bigoted content that the Chinese government wants, that's still something that people outside of China will find out about, and will get upset about.

In short - right now - actively seeking to make a Wuxia setting for the express purpose of attempting to appeal to the Chinese market (as in the market in China) could potentially put WotC in more hot water than Paradox and NuWhiteWolf got in for the section about Chechnya in the Camarilla Sourcebook for Nu-Vampire. Hasbro's staff may not pay full attention to the rest of the RPG industry, but WotC definitely does, and when you have a land mine that clearly marked it would be an act of negligent stupidity, from a business standpoint, and from an ethical standpoint, to go jump on it to see if it goes off.

If WotC were to put a wuxia inspired sourcebook out as part of a new Asian Adventures initiative, the smart option would be to bring a bunch of writers of Chinese ancestry on board from the US, Canada, UK, or wherever, and ask them to write a setting book for wuxia themed campaigns, give important bullet points (what tonally they're looking for, the balance of setting to crunch, etc), and put them in positions of authority on the project, from art selection to writing and editing.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

There should be little to no effort aimed at putting D&D the tabletop RPG in Asia, it's not where the market is or could be worked with. The best thing they could try is a novel or two, or one of the video games which was a lot of resources for localization.

It's like trying to get D&D to the (Sub-Saharan) African market (not counting South Africa which probably has a mostly Afrikaner player base) while ignoring Black D&D players in North America, who actually are more likely to play tabletop D&D then those on the continent.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My opinion is the possible future Wuxia D&D isn't only for the TTRPG but other products, as videogames, toys, comics, novels and media productions. This has been Hasbro's plan since the beggining.

I imagine a future where TTRPG will be played by online videochat with virtual tabletops, and when the players talk the figures also move the lips. Today there is that technology. Let's say they will "storytelling videogames", and some streamers will use this to earn money with its homebred version of Critical Role. Some mangaka aspirants could use these games to introducise in the market and promoting their own webtoons(digital manwhas).

The key about this matter is how to create the right world.

Has anybody complained about the children cartoons Xiaolin Showdown, Yin Yang Yo or Samurai Jack?

Magic: the Gathering has got cards about Chinese culture, and also some troubles about censorship in China.

Shenmeng

Shenmeng (Chinese: 蜃梦), the Plane of Mountains and Seas (Chinese: 山海時空), is the plane featured in the Global Series: Jiang Yanggu & Mu Yanling set and March of the Machine Commander. It is inspired by the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas, a compilation of mythic geography and myth. It is...

mtg.gamepedia.com

No Skeletons in China: Why Magic had to have alternate card art in China for over a decade - Magic Untapped

Did you know that 'Magic' cards with skeletons in the art at one time needed alternate artwork in China?

magicuntapped.com

Magic: The Gathering accused of ‘queerbaiting,’ bowing to China censorship - NewsBreak

The Magic: The Gathering developers have been accused of “queerbaiting” following a recent conclusion to a romantic storyline featuring an LGBTQ+ planeswalker named Chandra. What’s more, Wizards of the Coast has apologized about the way it has handled this storyline, but the apology post is...

www.newsbreak.com

Wuxia - TV Tropes

One of the oldest genres in Chinese literature, wÇxiá (æ¦ä¿ /æ¦ä¾ , literally "martial-arts chivalry" or "martial arts heroes", and pronounced …

tvtropes.org

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Edited to mention Akuma, a Spanish anime-themed RPG (I am afair not translated into English yet), and Wayward, other urban fantasy by Image Comics set in Japan.

 

[Count_Zero]

There should be little to no effort aimed at putting D&D the tabletop RPG in Asia, it's not where the market is or could be worked with. The best thing they could try is a novel or two, or one of the video games which was a lot of resources for localization.

This point I disagree on - just because D&D isn't going to be #1 in Japan doesn't mean it shouldn't be there. Japan has a thriving tabletop RPG scene, and it's clear that in Japan as in the US, there are plenty of designers of CRPGs who also play tabletop games. If you don't believe me - look at the Souls games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1-3), and then look at Dave Sutherland's "A Paladin In Hell." It's clear someone at From Software picked up the AD&D 1E PHB, looked at that art, and had their imagination captured the same way so many of ours have been.

It's just you don't get that market by making a book that's designed to be "Supa-kawaii" and aggressively pandering to whatever anime trope a western publisher thinks will appeal to a Japanese market. That reeks of fakery and desperation, and your audience can tell. From what I've found, TSR before, and presumably WotC now have partnered with Japanese publishers to localize D&D for the Japanese market (historically it was Group SNE, not sure if that's the case now) - so they're not needing to dedicate their own resources for translation and localization - domestic publishers are handling the same thing for the English versions of Japanese tabletop RPGs like Ryuutama, Maid, and Tenra Bansho Zero.

Those publishers have a better understanding of what the Japanese market is looking for, with the question then being why, and that requires information we don't have access to (market research data, the terms of WotC's contract, and information on what happened in various private meetings we weren't in).

 

[Nytmare]

My opinion is maybe a mash-up mixing all the different Asian cultures would be more pollitically correct to be ideologically neuter, precisally to avoid the analogies with real nations, because this could cause controversies.

You do see how this is practically indistinguishable from what the original OA was, and why it, along with so many other "Eastern Themed" products are problematic?

If you're making a series of recognizable generalizations and stereotypes about hundreds of different cultures that have been lumped together by Western civilization for two hundred years and classified as "the mystical and exotic Orient", doing that same exact thing but just trying to find a way to describe it that doesn't use anything off a list of dirty words isn't solving the problem.

 

[Count_Zero]

Has anybody complained about the children cartoons Xiaolin Showdown, Yin Yang Yo or Samurai Jack?

Xaolin Showdown was created by a first-generation Chinese immigrant, Christy Hui. Also, it only lasted a single season from what I can tell attempts to do follow-up series have failed. That could be due to complaints about cultural insensitivity with some of the episodes that Hui had less involvement with, or it could be other issues - I can't find clear information at this time

Yin Yang Yo was solidly critically panned and pretty much buried to enough of a degree that I never heard of it until your post.

Samurai Jack's setting is more post-apocalyptic than Japanese in the specific or Asian in general - in part because the fundamental premise is that Jack was whisked from feudal Japan into the distant post-apocalyptic future, and the "Jack" in his name is a something he is dubbed by the people of the time, not his actual historical name. There are references to works of Anime & Manga to be sure (including a Lone Wolf and Cub riff), but they are not pervasive, and certainly not at the level of the original OA sourcebook, or what you've put forward as a setting.

In short, Samurai Jack is closer to Gamma World than to Oriental Adventures.

 

[ZeshinX]

Through all the various discussions related to this, I wonder where the measure of personal responsibility in interpreting the work lies.

I recognize removing elements of language that perpetuates or draws upon historically "-ist" and "-ism" based speech and thought is a good thing. I recognize ensuring an open vision of various aspects of the game to foster a more welcoming environment is absolutely a move in the right direction.

Specific to OA, I haven't, for the life of me, found any written words to remotely suggest "This is meant to be a representation of Culture X." I've seen plenty of words to the effect of 'these various things have their inspiration in/from and draw upon many ideas from Culture X'.

I wonder where imagination or a work of fiction is allowed to supplant the sentiment of "We don't want anyone to feel bad/marginalized about or by this." Where or when does the recognition of a work of fiction become required of the consumer of said work? Does a measure of responsibility not lie upon the consumer to recognize that not all works of fiction (or even non-fiction) will align with their own sense of what is acceptable? I certainly see a sense of responsibility in condemning quite a bit of the language and presentation, which is excellent. That's some damn fine engagement by the consumer. I see little in the way of personal responsibility of managing one's level of offence taken though. By all means, feel what you feel and how you feel it, speak your mind, share it if you so choose...but I see little acknowledgement that one is not owed protection from how they may feel. It is not the responsibility of any other to manage how an individual (or group) feels about anything. Respect their feelings, most definitely...acknowledge those feelings, certainly...act if you feel there is need (or your help is being asked for)...but dealing with those feelings is, ultimately, a matter for that individual and no one else.

I'm still sifting through all my thoughts on this debate, and I fully agree certain changes need to be made, but I am also concerned about what will be lost in this. Not the loss of "-ists" and "-isms" as they currently appear in the written works, those need to go and will not be missed. I'm concerned that imagination will be severely curtailed by the fear of offence. That inspiration will be generally frowned upon. That both imagination and inspiration must adhere to a generally accepted ideological channel and that straying will be met with the fiercest rebuke in the court of public opinion.

I don't know that limiting these things is the best course. I'm not even certain that is what's happening to be honest, but it sure seems like it. I just can't help but wonder, "When did we surrender our responsibility for our feelings to others?"

 

[Count_Zero]

I'm still sifting through all my thoughts on this debate, and I fully agree certain changes need to be made, but I am also concerned about what will be lost in this. Not the loss of "-ists" and "-isms" as they currently appear in the written works, those need to go and will not be missed. I'm concerned that imagination will be severely curtailed by the fear of offence. That inspiration will be generally frowned upon. That both imagination and inspiration must adhere to a generally accepted ideological channel and that straying will be met with the fiercest rebuke in the court of public opinion.

As I mentioned earlier when I did my multi-book "Asian Adventures" pitch - bringing more people of different cultural backgrounds onboard in positions of leadership and authority for the writing of setting material that takes inspiration from their cultural background can only be a net positive, because their knowledge and background will allow the book to avoid pitfalls that an author from outside that culture will miss, and just as importantly, will be able to guide the book to incorporate material that an author from outside that culture wouldn't know that it existed. That is a net gain.