Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Blocked it out have you? I sympathize. The human mind's ability to erase trauma is pretty enormous.

I don't know what makes people dislike the best kind of pizza.

Also, in the 18th century, if they saw how much pineapple we had access too, they would be in awe. Back then, a pineapple could cost around $8,000-$10,000 US dollars in todays money.

Their question would not be "why do you put pineapple on pizza" it would be "WHY DON'T YOU PUT IT ON EVERYTHING!?!?"

 

[Fenris-77]

I vastly prefer pineapple puree cooked into the sauce than actual chunks of pineapple. I don't know where that leaves on the barbarism scale though.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In a world where cod pizza exists how on earth is pineapple pizza the most despised ?

 

[Fenris-77]

In a world where cod pizza exists how on earth is pineapple pizza the most despised ?

It's the same world where we find amusement in spending 65+ pages arguing about our personal takes on alignment. Carpe diem!

 

[Maxperson]

I'm just going to fix that for you.

Make our humanoids less based on real world cultures, or if we do base it on cultures from Earth, do it respectfully and in an inoffensive way.

Removing offensive/problematic depictions of real world people does not make them less human.

Now, do you "got it"?

Great news! Already fixed! None of them are based on real world cultures at all. Any resemblance is purely coincidental and it's the coincidence that has people upset.

Make our humanoids more human by the removal of inherently evil, less intellectual, and other offensive stuff.

I don't play D&D to encounter 50 varieties of human. I want to encounter non-human humanoids.

 

[Shandy]

Well I have read far to much of these posts, and yes I would like a turn to wallow in the mud.

First of all you're my people, I don't know how I didn't find you all sooner but all this intellectual grandstanding is intoxicating. It makes me think "this is what an opium den must feel like."

Second appropriation has to do with your perspective, for instance if you take a dying language and write such a compelling novel in said language you gain fortune and fame who is the victim? Even if your novels content has no acknowledgment of the cultures significance who is harmed? Appropriation has at its heart guilt and it is usually a projection that a consumer of information likes to use as a indictment to compel someone to conform to their standards. I for one think that all the best things are appropriated. Take for instance every food that ever existed, appropriation is delicious.

Third I don't know if you guys are aware but D&D is a game of imagination, imposing your standards on my fantasy is a farce. You don't like how shamanic traditions are depicted? Guess what your game can address this discrepancy. In fact you have inspired me, now my game has a sophisticated shamanic dark skinned group that lords their superiority over white skinned clerics who are clearly bred from inferior stock. After all your argumentation is at the end of the day an attempt at persuasion that means make an attempt to inspire your audience.

Forth and final point is in my experience you have to use fire to kill trolls, otherwise they regenerate.

 

[Hussar]

Make our humanoids less human by the removal of cultural trappings (Japanese hairdo + armour + shamanism).
Make our humanoids more human by the removal of inherently evil, less intellectual + other offensive stuff.

Got it.

Or, I dunn, maybe PICK ONE!

 

[pemerton]

Whether a cultural component is a PC class or a monster, whether it's in the PHB or the MM, is, I think, the most important factor. Alignment is the second most important.

The big problem with D&D is that, with some exceptions like the monk, the PHB = Europe and the MM = not Europe.

Stuff like frost giants are consistent with this. Frost giants aren't vikings, they were mostly the enemies of the Norse gods in the myths of the vikings. To present them as monsters is to agree with the vikings. A number of the MM monsters are connected with real world peoples, not their myths*.

EDIT: *Or we could say, the myths Europeans told about those peoples.

I think one of the more striking illustrations of your point, which I haven't seen discussed in the recent threads except by me and one reply from you (caveat: I'm still catching up on this one), is the Tribesman entry in the AD&D MM. These are a sub-entry of Cavesman, which is not a good start. Then it just gets worse:

Tribesman: Primitive tribesmen are typically found in tropical jungles or on islands. They use large shields. Their leaders conform to those of cavemen [ie higher level fighters at varioous ratios], but they have the following additional figures:

1 - 4th level cleric for every 10 tribesmen
1 - 6th level cleric for every 30 tribesmen
1 - 8th level head cleric (witchdoctor)

Tribesman clerics will be druidical in nature.

These men dwell in villages of grass, bamboo or mud huts. There is a 50% chance that the village lair will be protected by a log palisade. The village will contain females and young equal to 100% of the males encountered. There is a 75% chance that there will be 20-50 slaves. There is a 50% chance thot there will be 2-12 captives (food!) held in a pen.​

There could hardly be a claarer instance of the replication of 19th century ideas filtered through late 19th century and first half ot the 20th century pulp tropes.

 

[Hussar]

Appropriation has at its heart guilt and it is usually a projection that a consumer of information likes to use as a indictment to compel someone to conform to their standards.

I think I largely agree with that. And it should. You SHOULD feel guilty for taking a dying language, writing a novel in that language, that in no way acknowledges the culture that language was taken from and then profit (somehow) from it? Yeah, that's pretty despicable. That's bottom feeding.

If I write a novel entirely in Ainu language, and yet completely ignore the genocide of the Ainu people over the past century, and somehow, probably because I'm white and have enough privilege to market such a book in such a way that it makes money, then, yeah, I'm a bottom feeder.

When, over the course of history of most of our nations, we have perpetrated incredible crimes against these people, profiting from their culture by yanking from it and pretending that what I'm doing is original and not related to that culture, is morally bankrupt.

It's the Nazi themed restaurant opened in Seoul, owned by Koreans, and catering to the prurient. It's pretending that only Japanese culture matters in Asia and all other cultures are secondary. It's using language to justify why we can kill this monster (note, this language is not repeated anywhere else in the game) that word for word mirrors the language real world people used to murder real world minorities, in the twentieth century.

On and on. Is it about guilt? Well, yes. We have every reason to feel guilty. If you look back at history and feel no guilt, there is seriously something lacking somewhere in that equation.

 

[pemerton]

We are influenced by the media we partake in, usually in small subtle ways. Games are art and like all other art forms they can move us. Fiction is not real, but it says stuff about real stuff even when it is not trying to.

I find it bizarre that this even needs saying;. This thread is replete with reference to culture and yet a good chunk of the posters, who casually throw around that term, don't even seem to understand what social artefacts and social proceses it refers to!