Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Bedrockgames]

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).

In the 90s I remember a lot of people using comeliness as a kind of optional rule (don't think it was in the 2E PHB---though that did have a ton of optional rules in it). Personally I was never a big fan of it because I felt CHR elegantly folded in many different characteristics that could make a person appealing (and in real life charisma has a potency that a concept like comeliness doesn't). But I don't think anything was meant by its inclusion in OA other than it being a recently devised stat they felt might meet some kind of demand.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

Don’t know that I’d have any idea how. I also wouldn’t have any idea how to explain to someone what I like about chocolate cake.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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."

I have to agree with you on this. I mean in any other arena if you say "I think X should stop doing Y" or "I would like to see X stop doing Y", you are calling for them to stop doing Y. This doesn't seem like an issue where you can have it both ways. Maybe he does mean something else by it. Sometimes we post things and paint ourselves into a corner, staking out territory we don't really care to defend (but the trial of posts in a conversation leads us there). Fair enough f that is the case. But if someone is maintaining they would like WOTC to take down the book, that is a pretty concrete position on the issue in my view.

 

[billd91]

The problem is there isn't really such a 'frame of reference'. What am I 'supposed' to write about? I'm an American of European descent. OVER 300 years ago my 14th times great grandfather immigrated to America (long before there was a US) from Germany (which actually didn't even exist as a nation at that time, and is an agglomeration of several distinct, though related, cultures to start with). What can I write about? lol. What is 'my lane'??? I mean, I'm not actually complaining, and it isn't nearly as problematic for me as it is for some.

Still, am I forbidden to touch on American cultural elements which were introduced by non-Europeans? How about Frenchmen, but not Germans? lol. The whole CONCEPT is gravely flawed. I know you're not advocating for anything like this, I just felt it needed to be pointed out and your comment touched on it. Anyway, I think there are valid questions about racial bias, certainly. I think there are valid questions about cultural exploitation too. OTOH culture mostly is a constant process of adopting things from other places, adapting them, smooshing them together with other things from other traditions, etc. It is both problematic to say that a clearly dominant (in several respects) Euro-American society is perfectly OK to just heedlessly incorporate anything we feel like from people's who are seriously harmed by our attitudes and actions, AND problematic to say that some group 'owns the right' to be gatekeepers of something. This is of course even beyond the questions of whom it is who has any right to claim to speak for a culture.

I think there isn't an answer here, there never was, never will be. We can however safely say that when other people get hurt, we should pay attention. This is simply being a good human being. Do the right thing, and to hell with theories and whatever. The past is done (but not dead, no no) and we can't revisit it, so we are simply bound to all try to be considerate people, eh?

This is a particularly current problem right now considering how issues of identity politics have flooded the zeitgeist of the last few decades and seem to be increasing in tempo - and right now as a culture, we're still not very adept at it at using it consistently and constructively. There are some really extreme viewpoints out there as well as really shallow critics who aren't very good at in-depth analysis or self-reflection. I expect things will swing back and forth between push, counter push, reaction, counter reaction for a while. And that's not necessarily a comfortable place to be.
As far as what people can do now who want to put their ideas out there, best you can do is to be as considerate as you can, master as thoroughly as you can, set appropriate expectations, use appropriate informants (live or textual), and be prepared to weather the storm of criticism hoping that your care and effort will win most reasonable critics over. And, yeah, that's a potentially huge undertaking that not everyone is up to, particular that last one. It may keep people with great ideas and good knowledge from putting out their work. That's a shame, but it's also the reality we've got.

 

[Mannahnin]

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.

Yup. As I wrote.

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.

Sure, but I think it's clear that the honor systems were imposed in an attempt to emulate conduct rules consonant with the genres being simulated. Pendragon gives the PCs all Honor scores as OA does. It appears to be based on the fiction, not on ethnicity. OA implements it for every PC in Kara-Tur because that's what Zeb (following Bob Charette and Paul Hume, and Lee Gold) understood to be its importance in the genre via pop culture and fiction.

AD&D didn't already have honor/conduct mechanics for all PCs because most PCs are supposed to be rogues and picaros. Paladins, Cavaliers, Rangers, and to some extent Clerics and Monks, do have conduct rules and requirements. (Hmm. Although the GM is required to judge alignment adherence and conduct for all PCs for advancement purposes, come to think of it.) They just hadn't implemented Honor as a concept in the same mechanical way. "Hmm, I'm making a game based primarily on samurai and ninja fiction. It needs some new interesting mechanics. Martial arts, definitely! What else comes up all the time in that fiction? Hmm...."

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.

Absolutely. As I listen to asian voices I'm going to do my best to take on board observations of things I miss that I didn't have a cultural reference for. Sometimes folks outside the culture being discussed miss subtleties like that. Similarly, I'm also going to necessarily note when they are missing context and off base. With Comeliness they were totally off base. With Honor there's some validity to the concerns.

 

[Dire Bare]

With Comeliness they were totally off base. With Honor there's some validity to the concerns.

The AR podcast were under the impression that Comeliness was introduced with Oriental Adventures. This is technically not correct, but it isn't a major faux-pas in the slightest. And their reactions that the inclusion of a Comeliness mechanic, not present in core D&D, in an Asian supplement, was honest and legit.

It is problematic. Not by intent, but by effect.

Likewise with honor systems. The AR crew pushes back on the idea that all Asian people live guided by honor, any more or less than peoples in other parts of the world. Honor for ALL Asian characters, but honor for only SOME Western characters, by profession, is the issue.

Cook was trying to emulate his experience with the genre, there was no ill intent. But again, it's problematic for many Asian-descent gamers.

That Honor systems exist in other games isn't directly relevant. It's problematic in some of those RPGs for similar reasons, and in others it is less so, or even not at all. Depends on the focus of the game, and the implementation of "honor".

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm sure the OA has a lot of problematic stuff in it, especially by modern standards. That of course don't mean that some of the critique couldn't be mistaken. In any case, the book is ancient history, so I'm not sure why it terribly matters now. Sure, it is important to endeavour to do better in the future, and I'm sure they will. When depicting a culture, it of course is important to listen and respect the views of the people whose culture it is. But that also means people actually from outside of North America. It often feels that these discussions are rather America-centric, and cultures outside America are merely used as props for internal American dialogue.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I have to agree with you on this. I mean in any other arena if you say "I think X should stop doing Y" or "I would like to see X stop doing Y", you are calling for them to stop doing Y.

Naw, that's just false. Certainly if I'm hiking in the woods with my dog, and say, "I think so-and-so should stop posting on Enworld" I am not calling on that person to do anything. You're only "calling on somebody to do something" if you think that somebody is monitoring (and caring) what you say, which I don't believe is the case here.

But, I'm curious: in a public arena, do you think there is any way to express the sentiment "I don't think (entity) should (verb)" and have it be an opinion, not a call or demand? What would that language look like? Does it require explicit disclaimers?

 

[Einlanzer0]

Racism is a term that has become dramatically overused to try to smear people that have no ill intent. There's nothing more inherently racist about Oriental Adventures than there is about all of the Western tropes included in many generic fantasy settings. It's far more racist to infantalize huge groups of people by culturally monolithing them and then pandering to what you perceive as their justified sensitivity as though they were children.

Eventually we'll get out of this paradigm and return to some semblance of normalcy where terms like racism and sexism actually mean something as opposed to just being mindless ways of projecting your own prejudice, poisoning wells, and/or shouting down views that threaten your sense of identity.

Also, ugh, Umbran strikes again.

 

[Bill Zebub]

By the way, I don't deny there's a such thing as chilling effect. I've swung way around over the last few decades on my views about a lot of these issues, but one thing I haven't bought into is the taboo against "cultural appropriation" and I think when activists attack an author for writing about an experience which isn't their own...not just for getting it wrong, but for daring to even do so...it dissuades other authors (which is the goal) and stifles creativity.

But just like I think the anti-cultural-appropriation point of view is taking things to an extreme, I also don't think things should be taken to the extreme the other way, i.e. "no content should ever be discontinued for any reason because of the chilling effect"....which feels like the argument being presented here.