Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Mordhau]

I remember watching the Asians Represent podcast about the Legend of the FIve Rings, and they complained a lot about honour being used as a specifically 'asian' feature of games. It's difficult to summarise exactly what the issue was however, due to the nature of the medium.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, they got a fact wrong there. However, that the mechanic was not made for that purpose does not mean that the mechanic is not problematic in the OA context. There's still a solid argument that, given the stereotype issues, Comeliness should have been left out of OA.

Shouldn't it have been left out of ALL OF D&D? lol. It was kinda OK as used in D&DG as sort of a 'super power' or 'power of horror' for gods. The UA version for PCs is just dumb, painfully dumb. And equally dumb in OA.

 

[Mordhau]

I think a general issue though (I don't remember how it works in OA) with these kinds of systems is honour being treated as a personal characteristic rather than as a social system.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here's the problem; this isn't correct at all. OA didn't invent or introduce comeliness; but it was deliberately included as part of the setting and system, and that is an issue for the reasons they describe.

It can seem like racialized beauty stereotypes aren't that important, but it's actually a pretty big deal for quite a lot of people.

Here's some additional example, mainly from the perspective of black women:
Beauty and Body Image Concerns Among African American College Women

Yeah, and this I have to really agree with. It wasn't invented for OA, and I think the motivating impulse for including it in OA was simply because OA was intended to reflect the 'state of the art' of AD&D at the time it was published. HOWEVER, it sure did plop itself into the middle of a whole raft of problems! First of all THE ENTIRE DEPICTION OF WOMEN IN D&D/RPGS was not exactly healthy (and is arguably still rather problematic) and that is just piling on top of the whole "exoticism thing" that exists WRT any female human of non-European appearance in the US (as well as many who ARE actually European).

I can tell you, this is something to really think about, being an American 'white guy' who first married a black African woman, and then marries a Chinese woman. Hmmm, yeah, not a consciously intended pattern of behavior. Still, check your psyche gentlemen! I've also witnessed a couple of fairly icky examples of this. I ran into 2 'gentlemen' in Beijing International Airport, IIRC who seem to have shown up in China simply because they were under a number of delusions about 'Asian Girls' as they put it. Frankly they were dumbasses, but they sure got their ideas from someplace. It was beyond me to even attempt to put them straight, but I figure 50/50 they made it back home without spending some time in a Chinese jail... lol. So, I find it quite easy to sympathize with complaints of sexualization and exoticization, It very definitely exists!

 

[MGibster]

I remember watching the Asians Represent podcast about the Legend of the FIve Rings, and they complained a lot about honour being used as a specifically 'asian' feature of games. It's difficult to summarise exactly what the issue was however, due to the nature of the medium.

That's a fair criticism I think. Ideas of honor aren't in short supply throughout western history motivating fictional and historical individuals alike but we don't often see it manifested in RPGs. When toying around with the creating a Roman type setting, I came up with Gravitas which was a measure of how seriously people took your character. Someone with a high Gravitas would find that they're generally trusted and their words given a of weight. But at the same time, they'd find themselves somewhat constrained as any perceived bad behavior or failing to live up to one's word might lower their Gravitas.

 

[MGibster]

I think a general issue though (I don't remember how it works in OA) with these kinds of systems is honour being treated as a personal characteristic rather than as a social system.

In L5R, you have Honor and you have Glory. Honor is more personal in that in that most other characters/NPCs aren't going to know what your score is. Glory is more social as its an indication of our social standing and can go up or down depending on your deeds. What I liked most about the Honor system in L5R is that there were both advantages and disadvantages to having a high or low rating. A character with a lower Honor could do all sorts of things without penalty compared to a character with a high Honor. But a high Honor character could use their Honor in place of a stat to make certain rolls.

 

[Mordhau]

The thing I find about such systems is that they tend to apply in situations where social contexts don't really matter.

If I want to secretly murder my enemy in a way that no one would know about I lose honour, but that makes no real sense, because no one will know. Honour is a social thing.

And your honour follows you around when interacting with people who have no idea who you are.

 

[Voadam]

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.

Close.

1e Deities and Demigods has rules on page 7 for expanding Charisma up to 25 and down to -7 with super high and low Charisma having an awe/horror mechanic that was very much based on the divine nature of the being.

Here is the text of the horror mechanic for negative charisma.

In certain instances, some divinities are so loathsome and repellent as to actually have negative charisma. This applies only to the truly ghastly divine beings. The horror which their appearance and presence inspires causes creatures in the hit dice or level range noted below to be stunned with fear and detestation until the being is no longer in sight. While in this condition a creature can do nothing but defend itself physically against attacks. As with awe power, even if a person were to be given negative charisma through some terrible curse or change, he or she would not acquire the horror ability. The reaction of the average creature to a hypothetical non-divine being with a negative charisma would be a desire to kill it immediately.
Charisma Score Reaction Adjustment Horror
-1 -40% Up to 1 HD/level
-2 45 Up to 2 HD/levels
-3 50 Up to 4 HD/levels
-4 55 Up to 6 HD/levels
-5 69 Up lo 8 HD/leveIs
-6 65 Up to 10 HD/levels
-7 70 Up to 12 HD/levels

This is a bit different in description and mechanics from comeliness.

In Dragon 67 (I have the CD archive so it is easy to pull out) the article called Loyal Readers is on page 67 and is Gygax responding to readers' letters and then discussing comeliness.

Here is the beginning of the Comeliness discussion.

A BEAUTIFUL IDEA
Frank Mentzer and Francois Marcela-Froideval are already hard at work, and I am being flooded with suggestions and ideas from these Good Gentlemen. Francois uses a “Beauty” attribute for his characters, and I have come to the conclusion that you might also like to use such a rating. Here are my thoughts:
Comeliness is my word for the attribute. Beauty is too specific, as it calls to mind a positive state of good looks. “Comeliness” has a more neutral connotation; i.e., a character with a 3 attribute score for Beauty would be a non-beauty, but a 3 in Comeliness implies ugliness.
Comeliness is not charisma. Charisma, however, can affect comeliness. After the six attributes of a character are determined, his or her looks must be determined. Is the character ugly, homely, plain, or pretty? This characteristic is determined by the comeliness roll. 3d6 are rolled and totalled. The resulting number, between 3 and 18 inclusive, is modified:

It then discusses a -25 to 30 range of scores. I have not compared it side by side with the WOG, UA, OA charts to compare specifics but high charisma has a charm effect and then if you reject someone their reaction becomes as if the comeliness was negative but half the score.

 

[Mordhau]

I remember watching the Asians Represent podcast about the Legend of the FIve Rings, and they complained a lot about honour being used as a specifically 'asian' feature of games. It's difficult to summarise exactly what the issue was however, due to the nature of the medium.

Actually, from what I remember they link honour to the general sense of exoticism. Western characters don't need honour scores, but eastern characters have their actions constrained in all kinds of weird ways as a means of emphasising their exotic differences.

Which I think, is fair to a point, but I think they push it to far, with their point that people are just people. One thing I always try to keep in mind when studying history is that people from other times and places are always both unbelievably familiar and utterly strange at the same time. I don;t think it's wrong to pull that sense of strangeness to the front, as long as we don't forget to root it in the familiar.

The problem with most western fantasy is that it isn't attempting to explore unfamiliar cultures at all - not even the unfamiliar cultures of its own historical periods.

Of course I may be mischaractersing what they said, but that's going to happen because it's a podcast - if it was written down I would go and check my interpration was correct.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it was modeled after the similar system (on?) in Busido, which was published a few years before that.

But yeah, having an "honor system" for OA, but not for feudal knights and Paladins? Definitely sus.

Ehhhhhh, I would argue that the system for Paladins, at least, is MUCH STRICTER. What is considered 'honorable' in each system is a bit different, and I think the OA system is intended to be a bit more nuanced (and consider this within the context of all the debates about alignment). I mean, I agree that no system of honor, or alignment, etc. is ever going to capture 1/10th of the subtlety of actual human thought and belief, nor the intricacies of culture and tradition. Not even to say anything about how each individual expresses them in a unique way. (I haven't gone back to UA to see what it says about Cavaliers but whatever it is I'm sure it can be criticized in basically the same ways).

I liked how 4e handled it in their articles on Oriental PCs (basically a 4e take on OA, it was just a couple of Dragon articles so it didn't get into a lot of depth). There is a general discussion of how you could implement honor, but it isn't hard and fast rules, and IIRC it did note that there's no reason why it should only be associated with certain types of characters (the 4e 'OA' PCs don't have their own unique classes). So, while it is linked to the other elements of these 'themes', it isn't required to use them, nor limited to them.