Count_Zero
Adventurer
Yeah, I ended up stumbling across a used copy of Creative Campaigning at Powell's, and later got it signed by Janelle Jaquays at PRGE (I couldn't find my copy of Quake 2)
D&D General Not the Wicked Witch: Revisiting the Legacy of Lorraine Williams
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
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The Soloist
Adventurer
Yes, at one point TSR was putting out so much stuff, that I decided to specialize and went for the D&D Gazetteers, Dragon Dice and the two magazines. I couldn't follow the pace because I didn't have enough hobby money even if I worked full time. 4e reminded me of that time.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
No, it was popular -- or at least, more or less in keeping with many of their other lines, as I recall -- but if the idea behind doing a limited run was to finally exercise some fiscal restraint "let's keep making more" was throwing that right out the window.
(Now, for all that it was seen as progressive for its time, Al-Qadim probably wouldn't be written the same way today, much as Kara-Tur is clearly a Western look at a huge region in an era before the World Wide Web and without real input from people from the region about their own cultures and myths.)
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I remember starting to watch a Youtube video with some people of Middle-Eastern descent (and maybe Asian as well, because I think they had done similar videos earlier about Oriental Adventures) going through Arabian Adventures and criticizing it. Not too long into the video they went off on the book had a "Mad Berber" kit, saying it was super disrespectful against real-life Berbers. Except, the book does not have a "Mad Berber" kit. It does have a "Mad Barber" kit. At that point, I turned it off.
That said, and I'm saying this as a white dude from North Europe so it's really not my fight to take or not, but I figure that as long as you keep in mind that it's not meant to be historically accurate, Al-Qadim is fine. Not excellent, but fine. It's meant to be a fantasy version of the medieval Middle-East in the same way Faerûn is meant to be part fantasy medieval Europe, and part fantasy Western.
I remember "barber," but I don't remember "Mad" in front of it.
It was like a rogue who could also kinda heal.
I think it is important to be attentive to changing attitudes, and while I really liked Al Qadim, I can also see that it would need to be updated were they to revisit it.
That said, I get annoyed when people (often for more views on the youtube) make videos "exposing" issues, and in their desire to condemn things make basic factual errors. When the OA issue came up before, I noted several factual problems with what was being said- for example, there was a lot of talk about how the introduction of comeliness and applying it to Asian characters was a terrible thing, but that was not true- comeliness was a stupid idea TSR was trying to make happen in D&D which was also being pushed in Unearthed Arcana at the same time. That didn't mean that (from the viewpoint of today) there weren't issues with OA- there certainly are. But accurate criticism requires, um, accuracy.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to discuss specific issues like that because people will line up into competing camps- either you're for or against something. But facts should matter. The reason I revisited the issue in the OP is because it was the historical facts that made me rethink my own vilification of Williams.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Also, one person’s or even group of individual’s sloppiness and/or over eagerness in doing this kind of work doesn’t mean the issues they are trying to engage with about representation and orientalism don’t have merit.
As someone whose scholarly work often dealt with issues of identity in popular culture, I know you don’t have to make things up or stretch what you find to make your case, there is always plenty.
As someone whose scholarly work often dealt with issues of identity in popular culture, I know you don’t have to make things up or stretch what you find to make your case, there is always plenty.
Bayushi_seikuro
Hero
When I read that, in my mind, for various reasons, I equated Uncle Gary with GRRM, who appears to be out glad-handing everyone instead of wrapping up his GoT stuff, he's out making new HBO stuff. But, I agree with you.
<Off-topic rant incoming.>
I used to have a lot of sympathy for GRRM.
"Song of Ice and Fire" currently stands at 1.7 million words. Outside of epic fantasy with its tolerance for giant doorstoppers, a typical novel runs about 100,000 -- ASoIaF is already the length of 17 normal-sized novels! And the dude has been working on it since the early 1990s ("A Game of Thrones" was published in 1996, and he was surely working on it for at least a couple years before that). It's been thirty years! If I were in his shoes, I would be so incredibly burned out on that story.
However, I have now heard a lot of people talk about how they never start a series until they know it's been finished. Which of course is a great way to ensure that it never gets finished -- if the first book flops, the publisher isn't going to plug gamely ahead, they'll drop it and so much for that. At the same time, I can hardly blame the folks taking this attitude, after getting burned by stuff like ASoIaF. On top of that, GRRM keeps milking the popularity of the setting with things like House of the Dragon, and if he's going to do that, I don't think it's unfair to demand that the original story that put Westeros on the map gets finished!
He doesn't have to do it all himself. That's clearly not going to happen anyway -- just look at an actuarial table. But if he isn't going to, he should take on an apprentice (or two, or three) and prepare them to take the story to a conclusion, the way Robert Jordan did when he realized he wouldn't live to finish the Wheel of Time.
(Or he could just convince Stephen King to do it, and it'd be knocked out in a couple of months.)
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Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
You joke, but King would probably really love writing in that world. Misery is almost a dry run for the long torture of Theon Greyjoy, for instance. And King's existing fantasy novels are pretty good and show a clear love of the genre.
And lord knows he loves characters with miserable backstories, which is 99% of Westeros.
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