Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Dire Bare]

This kind of rings hollow for me. It's like hearing from the Tennessee school board that they're not censoring Maus they're just removing it from the curriculum. It's true in a technical sense I guess but somehow not a satisfactory conclusion.

The reasons why some groups want to censor Maus, and others are simply pointing out problematic elements of Oriental Adventures . . . . completely opposite sides of the spectrum.

 

[MGibster]

I'm curious, let's say that Wizards of the Coast did produce something in the past that everyone agreed was racist. What do you think the right thing for WotC to do would be?

Put a disclaimer on it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This kind of rings hollow for me. It's like hearing from the Tennessee school board that they're not censoring Maus they're just removing it from the curriculum. It's true in a technical sense I guess but somehow not a satisfactory conclusion.

Nobody is telling people they cannot play OA and arresting them if they show it to their friends (or even play it in a class in school). I think its a bit dangerous to compare acts of outright censorship and equate them to criticism. That is not even noting the rather large differences in subject matter between the two things, and thus the reasons WHY one might not like it.

 

[Mordhau]

I don't think it is the same thing... Japanese culture grew up in the shadow of China. They got their writing system (one of the main ones anyway, and the first one) from China. They got one of their major religions from China. They got a lot of stories, traditions, and attitudes from China as well. So, when you look at elements in Japanese fantasy, or even some myths/legends, a lot of it is heavily influenced by Chinese elements. Consider the whole thing with 'Fantasy Martial Arts' (which covers a lot of what makes up 'superhero' equivalents in both Japanese and Chinese lore and fiction) and the associated teaching traditions and attitudes about how and why you pass on knowledge, its all very clearly got a pretty common source.

The point is, if you see something in a Japanese Manga or whatnot, just because it evokes something that is typical of Chinese stories or culture, doesn't mean it isn't very much a traditional part of Japanese culture. Same with Korea, which has a very strong tradition of getting things from Chinese culture as well. Its a lot like European cultures, actually. King Arthur and the whole Arthurian cycle as it is generally known to us today (IE Mallory as the primary source) is a mashup of Welsh, Irish, British, and Medieval French which is mashed in on top of that, and then transmitted BACK to England. That doesn't make it not a British legend though. You can see the elements that came from various places, but they do all kind of just belong together. It is kind of the same with Tolkien. He was drawing MOSTLY from Old English mythology, to a degree, but when he mashes in something that might be referencing Finnish myths, its hard to say where one starts and another one ends.

So, I think Japanese Manga and such are pretty uniquely Japanese, they aren't appropriating stuff from someone else, its just that their culture drew a lot of influences from another one.

IMHO, as others have stated, this is a lot of the issue with OA, it just doesn't seem to understand. They take a uniquely Japanese (and rather historically narrow and anachronistic one at that) and then view all of Chinese culture as if it was basically the same. Actually a lot of it COULD work, but not without a lot more subtle presentation. Like, Chinese ideas of honor maybe do sound a good bit like Bushido, but you cannot just lump it all under this one term and not do a lot of violence to the whole thing. OA's 'not-China' does not read much like China at all in many ways (though in other ways maybe it does capture some of the general concept). Anyway, I'm not really qualified to say a whole lot on that subject, as I probably know no more than Zeb Cook, lol! (not to knock the guy, he seems rather cool).

Bushido itself is actually pretty much a 19th century invention. It would be a bit squicky imposing it on China due to the part it played in the rise of Japanese Nationalism.

But to my mind that's not the real issue. The issue is that what people want from Fantasy Japan is Japanese Feudalism and imposing that kind of social structure on China is a real distortion.

 

[Mordhau]

Nobody is telling people they cannot play OA and arresting them if they show it to their friends (or even play it in a class in school). I think its a bit dangerous to compare acts of outright censorship and equate them to criticism. That is not even noting the rather large differences in subject matter between the two things, and thus the reasons WHY one might not like it.

Censorship was called for, however.

No one seems to be asking for it now, which is good, but it is part of the context of the discussion.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Put a disclaimer on it.

Do you feel like they would have an.obligation to keep selling it?

 

[MGibster]

Do you feel like they would have an.obligation to keep selling it?

No, I don't think they have an obligation to keep selling it any more than someone has an obligation to purchase it. If WotC decides tomorrow they'd rather not sell it that's certainly within their rights.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Which is why we shouldn't rely on corporations to always make things available into perpetuity and maintain strong archives freely accessible to everyone.

/librarian

 

[Bill Zebub]

This kind of rings hollow for me. It's like hearing from the Tennessee school board that they're not censoring Maus they're just removing it from the curriculum. It's true in a technical sense I guess but somehow not a satisfactory conclusion.

I meant censorship in the technically accurate sense, not in the hysterical, sky-is-falling sense used by people who say (inaccurately) that Twitter is infringing on their First Amendment rights.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I watched the whole 2 hour first episode of the Asians Represent series of reading 1e OA. The factually inaccurate 1 hour discussion of comeliness mechanics as being created for OA to play up sexualized stereotypes of sexy dragon lady Asian women and unattractive or desexualized Asian men was very offputting. The comeliness mechanics can feed into those stereotypes, but it was factually not created for OA to sexualize and otherize Asians by being only applicable to Asian characters.

Comeliness was a terrible sexualized mechanic but prior to OA it was developed and published for generic 1e AD&D in Dragon Magazine issue 67 (November '82), The World of Greyhawk Campaign Setting Boxed Set (October '83) and Unearthed Arcana (June '85) all before Oriental Adventures (October '85). OA was a full player's handbook type book with all the player rules for a complete 1e game using the new OA classes and such and so included comeliness as part of that.

I had heard Asians represent was a good explanation of criticisms of OA. It was mostly not an explanation, I found it was mostly looking at things and then shaking their heads about how things were self-evidently problematic.

I did not find their criticisms or discussion persuasive or informative. I did not watch any more episodes.

Comeliness was developed for use in the book Deities & Demigods AFAIK. That was definitely the first place it appeared in print in a D&D book. At least at the time I assumed it was intended to help portray elements of these mythical creatures that the basic stats didn't cover well (at least in the author's opinions). I don't believe it was described there as a general 7th ability score to be applied to PCs. That depiction came later in UA, which came out about the same time as OA (as you point out). I haven't gone and dug for Dragon 67, its packed away in my garage, lol, so not sure if it was just an article about gods of WoG or if it discussed PCs. Anyway, I have to totally agree with you and Snarf, Comeliness was NOT developed for OA, it was definitely first dreamed up by Gary around 1980/81 and then he seems to have intended it to be rolled into the standard rules as it appears in WoG (though not in reference to PCs especially) and then UA/OA, only to vanish (along with most references to UA stuff) soon after. I'd note that the only innovation of that time period that really 'stuck' was NWPs, which UA/OA/DSG/WSG, and then 2e ALL implement (and not always consistently).

Really the only uniquely OA subsystems are the one related to honor, and then Martial Arts. I don't know what Asian people of various ilks think of honor, though I would note that I've watched a LOT of those Chinese-made pseudo-historical fantasy/romance series (even Netflix has a couple of them, though there are actually 100s in China if you can find them online, sadly only a few have translations). In pretty much all those series a conception of what I would call 'family honor' that is very similar to what is presented in OA is usually a central plot element. Now, maybe there are finer points I'm missing, but my wife (who is Chinese) certainly thinks the SHOWS have got it right. She doesn't really care about RPGs, so I haven't been able to get her to comment on the text of OA...