Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Voadam]

This comeliness debate reminds me of the word "niggardly". Sure, you can argue about the word's etymological roots, but it's still a dumb-@$$ move to use it, especially as a public figure. Similarly, we can argue about how comeliness pre-dated OA, but just the fact that TSR folks didn't think, "You know, rolling this new attribute out on a large scale in this particular book might not be the best idea" shows they weren't aware of the sensitivities involved. It was clueless, but (probably) not evil.

I don't think separating appearance from charisma is particularly problematic of itself, in either a generic sense or in the East Asian context. I don't feel it is something that particularly needs to be statted out in a game and it could potentially lead to problematic issues about beauty, but generally I do not think it is a big deal itself. I don't really have a problem with it as a core stat in White Wolf games, for instance.

The big problem I see with Comeliness the 1e AD&D stat is the mechanics and descriptions. They take away autonomy in reaction to appearance. They direct roleplay to beauty trope scripts. They feed into exaggerated sexualization and toxic relationship dynamics. The codifying of a hostile reaction to rejection by attractive people is particularly problematic in my view.

This is an issue for both men and women but generally much more of an issue for women.

This is fairly consistent with and feeds into problematic sexy dragon lady tropes about Asian women, but also problematic sexualization tropes about blondes, redheads, Black women, Latina women, and many specific ethnicity women sexualization tropes.

I am glad it was not carried forward into 2e and beyond.

 

[FrogReaver]

I do think WotC should not be selling digital copies, not because the government is forcing them to, or the mob is threatening them, but because it's an embarrassment.

I mean, I feel like you're being a bit of a naughty little Thundercat here because it seems like his actual position is:

"If it were up to me, I'd remove it from the catalogue", which I dunno, seems to distinct from "It oughta be banned!" (i.e. directly calling for it). Like I don't think that's just a semantic distinction. There are loads of things which, were it up to me, I'd do, but I'm not actually going around saying "oughta happen" or the like. Calling for something and having an opinion seem different to me.

Like, if it were up to me, I would bring back 4E in a a properly-supported digital way, but equally, I'm not calling for WotC to do that. It's just something I'd like. YMMV.

Imo I think the truth is somewhere in between. It’s more than ‘if it was me I would not sell it.’ But it’s less than ‘Wotc must not sell it’.

I do think WotC should not be selling digital copies, not because the government is forcing them to, or the mob is threatening them, but because it's an embarrassment.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I mean, I feel like you're being a bit of a naughty little Thundercat here because it seems like his actual position is:

He's repeatedly said that "WoTC should stop selling new copies."* Now, if you want say that he is just expressing his opinion, and despite his many posts on the subject, he doesn't really care if they do or not, and wouldn't actually call for them to do it or support his stated opinion, then cool.

I tend to not agree. If someone wants to say that I am of the opinion that WoTC should not remove it, or that I am "calling" on them to keep it, especially to the extent that people are ascribing a position to me vis-a-vis others on this thread, I think that would be fair.

But I'm not you.


*"All I said is that I think WotC should stop selling new copies."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Similar boat here. The males figures in my patriarchal (e.g., Northern English/Ulster-Scots) and matriarchal (i.e., Rhineland German) lineages both have lived in America for 300+ and 280+ years, respectively. My ancestors lived in the same region of Western North Carolina for about 250+ years, both extending before there was even a United States of America. I was born and raised in a region where the people identify predominately as "American" partially because knowledge of our ancestry has faded into a speculative vague awareness and (generally) a more localized sense of "who are your people?" and/or "where are you from?"

And expanding a point that I made earlier:

When it comes to greater trends in TTRPG publishing, that also includes the various peoples of the Americas. The Coyote & Crow RPG made a fairly big splash last year as a sci-fi alternate America written by a team of Native Americans. Similarly, there are several TTRPGs that are written by Appalachian natives that are writing TTRPGs based in Appalachian folklore (e.g., Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse for Savage Worlds, as well as an upcoming Old Gods of Appalachia TTRPG for Cypher System, from the podcast of the same name).

This is not to say that "this is our lane," but, rather, to point that TTRPGs have provided a way to empower various ethnicities, nations of people, and other backgrounds to shape the narrative of their identity in a way that is not necessarily imposed on them by "outsiders," whether that is in a homogenized, pastiche, or deragatory form.

It sure is an amazingly complicated world we live in now...

I think that we should respect people's cultures, and I do think there IS something that can be harmful cultural exploitation, but at the same time nobody really 'owns' culture. Definitely does seem to me that we should try to handle material of any sort respectfully. I would not, for example, try to do some work depicting the religious or ceremonial beliefs/practices of indigenous people, especially when said people are now living on reservations and much of their culture was actively targeted, depicted in a bad way with malice, etc. Heck, I just don't know nearly enough about it. If I were interested in making a gaming product about it, I'd hardly blame people from that culture for being highly critical of my bumbling ineptness and insensitivity! OTOH I think we probably safely incorporate details into a much different depiction that isn't intended to invoke or reference said culture. I mean, if I made a D&D product where the dwarves painted designs on their armor that looked similar to some indigenous art, that MIGHT be OK.

I guess in the end, it never hurts to find someone that might be more knowledgeable than yourself on a topic and see what they say. Seems like even TSR sort of did that way back when, lol.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well.... You actually made an argument. It had a logical form, but the argument itself was nonsensical. I interpreted it as an attempt to discredit ideas that you seemed to disagree with by, at best, poor reasoning, and at worst a highly dubious type of rhetorical technique in which the speaker KNOWS their argument is nonsensical but believes it will inflame the supporters of their point of view and make them feel validated.

Please stop assuming bad faith.
Please stop assuming I'm making a point I never made.

I mean, I'm not in a position to say more than it was illogical. It is, to restate, IMHO at least, perfectly logical to say that a depiction of Orcs which labels them as 'evil' and various other negative stereotypes AND depicts them in a way that evokes a set of physical traits held to be typical of certain ethnicities is a case where making the depiction LESS like some genre tropes/fiction which it was drawn from would be positive. In the case of say OA Samurai as a stereotype of certain Japanese value systems, it would instead be better if the material was MORE accurate. Clearly these are not mutually inconsistent statements, nor inconsistent views, and holding both of them does not make either of them less valid.

IMO, and I don't mean this to be personal as it's something i think we all do. When we see someone disagreeing and making points that we disagree with, we have a tendency to think that everything they post must somehow relate toward that topic in a way we disagree with. So, we conclude that a particular post must be making a point we disagree with so we 'fill in the gaps' so that in our minds it actually does. I've done this many times and I'm sure I will again in the future. I mean go back and read my post - there was no conclusion in my post. I didn't say it was bad or inconsistent or hypocritical that this was happening.

And just to go on record - I totally agree that those are not mutually inconsistent statements or inconsistent ones. I can still find them being juxtaposed beside each other to be interesting... or maybe I can't?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Please stop assuming bad faith.
Please stop assuming I'm making a point I never made.


IMO, and I don't mean this to be personal as it's something i think we all do. When we see someone disagreeing and making points that we disagree with, we have a tendency to think that everything they post must somehow relate toward that topic in a way we disagree with. So, we conclude that a particular post must be making a point we disagree with so we 'fill in the gaps' so that in our minds it actually does. I've done this many times and I'm sure I will again in the future. I mean go back and read my post - there was no conclusion in my post. I didn't say it was bad or inconsistent or hypocritical that this was happening.

And just to go on record - I totally agree that those are not mutually inconsistent statements or inconsistent ones. I can still find them being juxtaposed beside each other to be interesting... or maybe I can't?

Cool. It just seemed like an odd thing to juxtapose without there being an implicit argument there. But lets agree to agree

 

[Mannahnin]

And just to go on record - I totally agree that those are not mutually inconsistent statements or inconsistent ones. I can still find them being juxtaposed beside each other to be interesting... or maybe I can't?

You certainly can, but there did seem to be a logical implication. If you find the contrast interesting for another reason than thinking them contradictory, it's probably worth spelling out your line of thought.

 

[Dire Bare]

The Honor score is a pretty important mechanic in Pendragon. It's fairly central to PCs, and while the mechanic is less complex than what I remember of OA's Honor score (or On, from FGU's Bushido, which preceded it by several years), it's definitely part of genre emulation there. I can't remember if Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun also published by FGU, included an honor "score" per se, but it definitely had rules for honor.

Of course the honor code for Cavaliers in 1E AD&D's Unearthed Arcana was famously restrictive and severe, though rather than giving Cavalier characters an honor score, as I recall, it was a code like Paladins had, but larger, more restrictive, and more likely to result in intra-party conflict or the death of the Cavalier character. And the mechanical consequences for not observing it were loss of the class.

The Code of Bushido itself having detailed tenets and rules was something which clearly appealed to wargamers and roleplaying gamers interested in feudal Japan, and it seems like they latched onto it as something which could be mechanically represented to help emulate the genre, as Greg Stafford did with Arthurian romances' chivalric honor in Pendragon.

So in context, we have at least three or four strong prior examples of honor mechanics in other games/supplements, designed for genre emulation. All for knightly/chivalric type characters and societies. Knights, Cavaliers, and Samurai for the most part. In that context, honor mechanics are not an asian feature of games, though they ARE one that consistently was used in asian games, which were designed to emulate popular fiction and dramatized history about samurai.

Honor systems in role-playing games are not unique to Asian-inspired games or supplements . . . true. But almost every Asian-inspired game book does include an honor system, they are more common than in non-Asian game books. And the critique of the honor system in Oriental Adventures is more in context of D&D. At the time, there was not an honor system for the core European-inspired characters, OA introduced it in the context of something you'll need with Asian-inspired characters. Yes, there was the chivalric codes for the cavalier and paladin, but those are limited by class, not by fantasy ethnicity.

Again, this was not done with racist intent. But it is problematic in the context of the D&D game. Listen to the Asian voices telling you their reactions to this game element.

Are all honor systems bad choices in Asian-inspired games? Not necessarily, but I think you'd want to tread carefully if writing or designing such a game.

 

[FrogReaver]

Cool. It just seemed like an odd thing to juxtapose without there being an implicit argument there. But lets agree to agree

Lol maybe so. I blame all weirdness on it being 1:30 am when I was posting. I’m lucky to have typed actual sentences together.

 

[Alzrius]

I am glad it was not carried forward into 2e and beyond.

Fun fact: Comeliness did survive into AD&D 2E as part of the RPGA. However, it was overhauled quite a bit.

You can see this in Polyhedron #89, as an addendum to the adventure "The Ugly Stick." There, Comeliness has a description consisting of three paragraphs and a table, wherein it explicitly says that it's not like how it was in AD&D 1E. Instead, all it does is provide modifiers to reaction adjustments (with the values mirroring those of the reaction adjustments for Charisma).