D&D 5E Kara Tur vs Tarkir vs Kamigawa vs Plane of Mountains and Seas vs Ikoria

[LuisCarlos17f]

WotC should be talk with Perfect World Enternaiment, the owners of Cryptic Studios (Newerwinter Online), Tencent (owners of Epic Games) Capcom (Tower of Doom, Shadow over Mystara) and Aurelién Lainé, creator of the Korean-inspired setting "Koryo Hall of the Adventures". It has to be with people of different countries or one culture will be more present than the rest, and the temptation of showing the neighbour culture like the other evil empire (is Fu Leng, the main antagonist of the Legend of the Five Rings an analogy of China?).

My suggestion is to put good and evil factions in all the countries.

Hasbro wishes a good relation with the Chinese market, and the speculative fiction may be a soft tool of diplomace to introduce your own culture to other nations, but after what happeend in the last months, (sorry, off-topic).

My doubt is about if they are plans for a remake of the martial adepts (Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords) because they are perfect for an Asian-inspired setting. I miss those game mechanics.

Sometimes when I see in youtube channel EDM saves my life I wonder: How would be an Oriental Adventures (D&D) by and for Asians?

 

[Orius]

My problem with Kara-Tur is the same problem I have with the Hordelands and Maztica -- they're all terribly, mind-numbingly dull. I couldn't tell you if there's anything in Kara-Tur that's offensive because I can't read more than a page or two without falling asleep. And this is a problem TSR had at the time, the very dry, dull, uninspiring cut and pastes of real world cultures without making them interesting for a fantasy setting. Al-Qadim was better because it researched Arab culture but also made a stronger effort to make things interesting as a fantasy settng.

 

[Voadam]

Is it this one?

So I listened to the two hour discussion to hear what they had to say was problematic about the 1e OA.

For me that critique left a lot to be desired.

More than half of the two hour discussion was dominated by their critique of comeliness as a special stat only for oriental adventures characters and how this tied into stereotypes of ugly asian men and sexy dragon lady archetypes. Only comeliness was a general AD&D stat introduced earlier in the Unearthed Arcana rules book and was not something that did this only to the portrayal of asians. I agree that comeliness was mechanically a bad game element on its own and that the agency removing aspects were terrible but that was a generally applicable problem and not something that targeted asians in particular to make them an other who are the only ones judged primarily by their looks.

Also their critique that nobody would have a comeliness stat now in a game system seems to be unaware of White Wolf game systems' core ability stat appearance from the 90s through the present.

Similarly they were ignorant of AD&D racial and class ability score minimums and maximums, prime requisites providing bonus xp for classes, exceptional strength, and the normal 3-18 score range from the 1e PH. Also the fact that Kara Tur only became part of the Forgotten Realms in supplements after the OA book. The things they kept getting wrong or discovering for the first time and going on and on about was a bit grating.

In reviewing the Table of Contents they had a critique about the focus on violence (Class, Weapons, Spells, Monsters) as what's seen as important to focus on instead of real cultures of Asia.

The violence aspects seem typical for D&D where it is generally all focused to facilitate normal D&D Conan/Mouser Swords and Sorcery type adventures and the materials focusing on Classes, Weapons, Spells, and Monsters. The opening inside art having two armed people fighting does not seem problematic for a D&D book.

The mixing stuff together (lumping in stuff from Japan, China, Mongolia, Korea, etc.) seems typical D&D where minotaurs (from Greek Myths in the ancient world) and fire giants (from Viking Age Scandinavia) stand against knights in plate armor without a second thought.

Not a lot of discussion of problematic cultural appropriation or portrayals of asian materials for gaming.

There is a complaint that it was written by three white guys. I believe there is an assertion that stuff informed by lived experience will always be better.

There is a lot of sighing about how much damage things do and how hurtful they are without actually describing how or why they are damaging.

Some discussion of describing things as like normal X but different in Y ways (Paladin and Sohei) instead of describing them from ground up and leaving the reader to connect dots. This seems more a critique of editorial style choices than problematic issues.

I wanted to hear some substantive discussion of OA specific (as opposed to 1e in general) problematical issues, I'm not sure I have the interest to sit through more of this to actually get to some.

 

[Mecheon]

The things they kept getting wrong or discovering for the first time and going on and on about was a bit grating.

I mean, its a first time readthrough for people who aren't heavily into the AD&D thing which I think does have value. Fresh set of eyes on that mess. We might know it was intended as a Greyhawk thing originally back in the day, but your average layman does not even know Greyhawk exists and only knows KT connected in connection with Faerun.

 

[Stormonu]

My problem with Kara-Tur is the same problem I have with the Hordelands and Maztica -- they're all terribly, mind-numbingly dull. I couldn't tell you if there's anything in Kara-Tur that's offensive because I can't read more than a page or two without falling asleep. And this is a problem TSR had at the time, the very dry, dull, uninspiring cut and pastes of real world cultures without making them interesting for a fantasy setting. Al-Qadim was better because it researched Arab culture but also made a stronger effort to make things interesting as a fantasy settng.

Ditto, I find both the Maztica and Karu-Tur box sets exceptionally boring, and I am the sort of person who is keen to have a world based on the likes of Aztecs/Mayans and Three Kingdoms era China. Overall, I absolutely love Rokugan, but I couldn't stand the 3E treatment of the setting.

I would like to see WotC revisit both Maztica and Karu-Tur, but I want it much more engaging and immersive that the 2E versions were. The books felt unstructured, uninteresting and dry - like old history texts. They lacked a spark to draw me in and want me to learn more and felt like cardboard copies of their real world counterparts instead of engaging worlds like Dark Sun, Jakandor or as engaging as the Rokugan RPG books (I think the story of Ginawa in the 1st version of the L5R game was a big part of what drew me into the world).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The violence aspects seem typical for D&D where it is generally all focused to facilitate normal D&D Conan/Mouser Swords and Sorcery type adventures and the materials focusing on Classes, Weapons, Spells, and Monsters. The opening inside art having two armed people fighting does not seem problematic for a D&D book.

I thought this at first - violence is an essential part of a D&D setting. However, if you look at some of the cultures allegedly represented, thy pride themselves on being peaceful and well ordered countries, so being portrayed as violent can be seen as a direct attack on national pride. It's like accusing the British of having bad manners, or Americans of not valuing personal freedom.

The mixing stuff together (lumping in stuff from Japan, China, Mongolia, Korea, etc.) seems typical D&D where minotaurs (from Greek Myths in the ancient world) and fire giants (from Viking Age Scandinavia) stand against knights in plate armor without a second thought.

I think the difference here is Greeks and Vikings don't get accused of "all looking the same" on a regular basis. Nor have they fought each other in a war in living memory.

I think, to an extent a lot of the points are difficult to understand for an outsider, and they appear to be speaking to other SE asians, not a non-asian audience.

 

[Voadam]

I thought this at first - violence is an essential part of a D&D setting. However, if you look at some of the cultures allegedly represented, thy pride themselves on being peaceful and well ordered countries, so being portrayed as violent can be seen as a direct attack on national pride. It's like accusing the British of having bad manners, or Americans of not valuing personal freedom.

Are you talking about post WWII Japanese taking offense to Samurai and Ninja media stuff as portraying Japanese as violent? Something else?

I think the difference here is Greeks and Vikings don't get accused of "all looking the same" on a regular basis. Nor have they fought each other in a war in living memory.

"All looking the same" is a point that I can see merit in exploring. The war in living memory however, are you talking about Japan fighting China and Korea in WWII? Switch Greeks and Vikings to Germans and French/English and you get white Europeans fighting a war against white Europeans at the same living history time period.

I think, to an extent a lot of the points are difficult to understand for an outsider, and they appear to be speaking to other SE asians, not a non-asian audience.

From Aldarc's post I had gone in thinking they would talk about what makes OA problematic. For a lot of it the points were simply asserting that it was problematic without talking about what makes it problematic. If you are not already part of the choir, and it does not seem self-evident, simple assertion does not convey understanding.

they do reading through AD&D Oriental Adventures and talk about what makes it so terrible and offensive.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

From Aldarc's post I had gone in thinking they would talk about what makes OA problematic.

They go in to discuss them generally - they aren't looking to rip them to shreds, or address just Asian issues - hence the discussion of sexualisation, a much more general issue.

simple assertion does not convey understanding.

Conveying understanding to Westerners is not the purpose. Not everything is made for the benefit of Westerners.

Switch Greeks and Vikings to Germans and French/English

Greeks and Vikings are not French and English.

The confusion of British and English is something that seriously annoys Scots, Irish, and Welsh though, all of whom have been oppressed by the English at various points in history.

 

[Aldarc]

From Aldarc's post I had gone in thinking they would talk about what makes OA problematic. For a lot of it the points were simply asserting that it was problematic without talking about what makes it problematic. If you are not already part of the choir, and it does not seem self-evident, simple assertion does not convey understanding.

What you and a few others seem to miss - resulting in your critique of their critique being left a lot less to be desired - is that this is an on-going multi-part video series. Video 1, which was posted earlier in this thread, serves as the Introduction and it only covers their impressions of the first 10 pages of the book as well as introducing some key ideas, such as Edward Said's work on "orientalism." Ten pages. I don't even think that the Twitter thread where I first saw this was even about Video 1, since Video 1 was posted about a month ago, and people were talking about a recent video in this series a week ago.

 

[Voadam]

Conveying understanding to Westerners is not the purpose. Not everything is made for the benefit of Westerners.

Obviously.

However it was specifically pointed to in this thread as a discussion of what makes OA problematic. I was disappointed because I was specifically looking for such a discussion of reasons that OA is problematic and this 2-hour discussion about problematic aspects of OA did not provide such reasons.