Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Blue Orange]

I suspect it had a LOT more to do with the fact that many of these stores were stuck with large excess inventories of things like Red Box, which you could find on aging product displays in many places for a number of years after its release. It was pretty plain to see, after the initial rush, that they'd all drastically overstocked. Certainly in the period from 1981 through the mid 80's you could find these Red Boxes ALL OVER THE PLACE, along with some other products that I presume were probably a sort of package deal you got with the whole display stand. Nor did all these stores ditch TSR products entirely, as I recall seeing many copies of things like OA, DSG, WSG, and various 2e books (those softcover brown and green supplements in particular) sitting in various corners of many stores for years. I was in Vermont all through the 80s, basically, so I guess maybe things were different elsewhere, but I'd say it was definitely still possible to buy D&D stuff in B&N or the Mall into the 90's there. In fact I remember picking up various other RPGs in the discount box at B&N. Space 1999 being the one that instantly springs to mind, but several others as well. Obviously it didn't sell super well, lol, but equally obviously buyers were still willing to try stocking a few RPG products. Now, I recall that I started playing M:tG when that came out, and I'd say by around that time you MOSTLY had to go to the FLGS to get both D&D and Magic cards in one place, though the Kaybee in the mall in South Burlington, VT still carried some TSR titles at that time, as well as M:tG.

Bit offtopic but given the location it may be a useful datapoint: Manhattan Barnes and Nobles and Borders were stocking RPG books into the 1990s. Used to be one of my favorite things to sit with a coffee and keep up with the edition changes to White Wolf and D&D. (Yes, I bought them afterwards!)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am not sure how this relates to my post. My point was I am interested in not pushing away people I disagree with (which would be posters like yourself, since we have disagreements over these issue); and that the tendency on both sides of the debate to assume the worst possible reasons for people they disagree with to take the positions they are taking (rather than seeing it more reasonably as simply having a different assessment of the same facts, or doing the mental math of different moral priorities differently), just drives a bigger and bigger wedge in the hobby. I don't think that is good for anyone. Neither side of the argument is going away just because we write them off. They remain. And once you've written people off, their viewpoint is only going to harden and get more extreme in whichever direction (unless they are particularly stubborn ). Clearly there are going to be jerks like I said on either side, because debates like this can bring out the worst in people and can become excuses for being cruel. That is going to happen. But we don't have to assume everyone that disagrees with us has evil motivations.

Honestly, I don't think you have particularly problematic attitudes, and we're mostly saying pretty much the same things. I was more just pointing out that people who are on the boot in the arse end of the various ongoing debates about what should go into RPGs are mostly people NONE OF US wants to side with, so that was all I was pointing out in terms of the 'short end of the stick'. So, one possible point of disagreement we may have is in terms of the "everyone on all sides is good folks" sort of thinking. Yeah, there are obviously people who accidentally step in it and really have no desire to get into a controversy. I don't think there's a big issue with them, unless they become super defensive and start trying to justify ignorance as some kind of right. That happens now and then, but VASTLY more often you see people who have always behaved unacceptably out there trying to argue that they are within their rights, that their bigotry is a right, or "doesn't hurt anyone" etc. I am not going to ever give that crowd a break, they are unwelcome, period. I can be called stubborn, but I will just say that stubbornness in a good cause is no vice.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not weighing in on college admissions or privilege, but I have seen a lot of comments in these discussions that seem to downplay poverty in the US, and it really is probably the single biggest disadvantage a person can have in this country. It isn't a minor inconvenience. It is a matter of putting food on the table, keeping a roof over your head and being able to control your own life.

Wrong. Dark skin is the single biggest disadvantage.

Unless you want to count dark skin and poor.

My heart tells me that disagreement with that reality, or disbelief in it, is the foundation upon which so many of these other disagreements are built.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Wrong. Dark skin is the single biggest disadvantage.

I think a lot of people are not comprehending how difficult it is to be poor (and what it means for your quality of life). I am sorry but I just don't see how you can honestly believe this is the case in the US. I can see arguments for there being disadvantages to being dark-skinned, but someone with dark skin and a good income is far, far, far better off, and taken far, far, far more seriously than someone who is whatever skin color and poor. Your job, the car you drive, your zip code are much more important. And if you are poor enough that you are struggling to put food on the table: there is no question that is the single biggest disadvantage you can have. You can pile other disadvantages onto that for sure, and some would certainly compound the situation (for example someone who is disabled, especially in the US with its healthcare system and its lack social programs) is going to have a much harder time than most others getting out of poverty.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it's inevitable that people are going to be reluctant to explore other cultures in the current climate. It's not just the need to do research and be resepectful, but the mere fact that one's identity can immediately make one's attempts to explore cultures not one's own suspect.

Yes one should do one's research and be respectful, but critics aren't always very well informed and often come from a place of poor understanding of good critique, and abundant confirmation bias, themselves.

Instead of declarations of what is 'inevitable' or 'must be so', it is vastly better if someone actually crunches some numbers. Is the rate of publication of such material decreasing? Even as a percentage of RPG material? Basically I work on the basis of data, that's kind of built into the sort of work I do. Opinions and 'gut feelings' are basically worthless, they have proven time and time again across all sorts of fields to be basically less than useless. Is it really happening?

 

[Dire Bare]

Not weighing in on college admissions or privilege, but I have seen a lot of comments in these discussions that seem to downplay poverty in the US, and it really is probably the single biggest disadvantage a person can have in this country. It isn't a minor inconvenience. It is a matter of putting food on the table, keeping a roof over your head and being able to control your own life.

I think a lot of people are not comprehending how difficult it is to be poor (and what it means for your quality of life). I am sorry but I just don't see how you can honestly believe this is the case in the US. I can see arguments for there being disadvantages to being dark-skinned, but someone with dark skin and a good income is far, far, far better off, and taken far, far, far more seriously than someone who is whatever skin color and poor. Your job, the car you drive, your zip code are much more important. And if you are poor enough that you are struggling to put food on the table: there is no question that is the single biggest disadvantage you can have. You can pile other disadvantages onto that for sure, and some would certainly compound the situation (for example someone who is disabled, especially in the US with its healthcare system and its lack social programs) is going to have a much harder time than most others getting out of poverty.

Poverty sucks, there is no doubt. I work as a teacher, and I see the effects of poverty first hand on my students every day. Still doesn't erase white privilege. I'd rather be white and poor than black and poor.

Perhaps it is our respective lenses in which we are viewing conversations on ENWorld, but I don't see a lot of folks downplaying the impacts of poverty. Certainly not in this thread. I certainly didn't.

I think it could be a good, if off-topic, discussion about which is worse, being poor or being an ethnic minority. Both have severe challenges, and for many, they go hand-in-hand.

 

[MGibster]

In fact I remember picking up various other RPGs in the discount box at B&N.

We got our first B&N around 1996 or 1997 and I was surprised to see that they carried D&D. And, oh my, God, what a magical place B&N seemed at the time. I was also surprised to learn a few years later that Starbucks was an independent coffee chain rather than the name of B&N's coffee shop.

 

[Hussar]

I think it's inevitable that people are going to be reluctant to explore other cultures in the current climate. It's not just the need to do research and be resepectful, but the mere fact that one's identity can immediately make one's attempts to explore cultures not one's own suspect.

Yes one should do one's research and be respectful, but critics aren't always very well informed and often come from a place of poor understanding of good critique, and abundant confirmation bias, themselves.

Again, where is the evidence for this?

We've had twenty years of people talking about these issues. Heck, if you want to include women's issues here, we've had a lot longer.

Yet, MORE genre material is being published, year on year, every single year. The number of SF and Fantasy novels printed since 2000 absolutely dwarfs everything printed in the previous century.

So, where is the evidence that "staying in your lane" is a thing?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it is fair to debate what the impact of the satanic panic was in terms of bottom line for D&D, but the satanic panic itself wasn't a joke and it wasn't limited to fringe. It was playing out regularly on the news, it was part of an overall panic in the country and led to a lot of very bad things for many people. It wasn't started by a fear of satanic imagery in stuff like D&D, it started over a panic about ritual satanic abuse (and things like D&D and heavy metal easily got folded into that panic). America is a very religious county, and at the time was even more religious, so it wasn't like this was only affecting a small portion of the population. Now obviously geography and local culture mattered too. But if you were in the orbit of a religious community there was a good chance you experienced some direct contact with it, and even if you weren't the fear extended beyond belief in the supernatural (because you don't have to believe in Satan or God, or magic, to believe there are people engaging in ritual satanic abuse; and you see this kind of thinking was playing out in other related areas: concern over the impact of media on people psychologically, concerns about subliminal messages, worries that people who played RPGs would have breaks from reality----it was a new medium and a lot of people didn't know what to make of it). What I found was, in the north east, it was a lot less prevalent. But I lived on both coasts at the time and out west its impact was palpable.

In Vermont it was basically non-existent, you'd have been laughed out of ever showing your face again, even amongst the more religious fraction of the population (they may be a bit less prevalent there, but as you say, its a religious country). I also attended college in rural Missouri for 4 years from 82 through 85. I heard some talk. It was mentioned as a thing. Never encountered anyone who was in any sense really affected by it. I think the closest was I had one friend who eloped with a girl from ORU and apparently this was like the LAST STRAW with them, but these were some seriously crazed people. The girl just told them to pound sand, and I'm pretty sure it would have gone 100% the same regardless of him being a gamer or not. There were a few other things like that. I recall some discussion I had with the President of the College, he was also the Physics Professor and a very devout and conservative man. It was regarding the kid that ran off into the steam tunnels etc. Even he could only shake his head about the whole thing. I actually showed him some D&D books, and explained how we played and that monsters like devils were just 'bad guys' you fought. I think he'd have preferred a more Christian themed game perhaps, but he certainly voiced the opinion that nobody in their right mind would think it was hurting anyone.

Not to say that the crazies didn't exist, but overall my impression of things was there were some politicians and businesses who decided that they better give their clientele some satisfaction, regardless of insanity. There were also a few here and there, mostly local, that thought they could ride it, but that seems to have proven to have been a rather vain hope. After a couple years people were all basically back to bickering about taxes and defense spending, and the appalling level of corruption in the Reagan Administration (another set of idiots) and that was that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Poverty sucks, there is no doubt. I work as a teacher, and I see the effects of poverty first hand on my students every day. Still doesn't erase white privilege. I'd rather be white and poor than black and poor.

Perhaps it is our respective lenses in which we are viewing conversations on ENWorld, but I don't see a lot of folks downplaying the impacts of poverty. Certainly not in this thread. I certainly didn't.

I think it could be a good, if off-topic, discussion about which is worse, being poor or being an ethnic minority. Both have severe challenges, and for many, they go hand-in-hand.

I honestly have trouble not reading this as downplaying. Poverty doesn’t just suck. It can be a matter of life and death. It can be the threat of becoming homeless in the near future). It can mean having to choose between food and heat. It can mean struggling with things like mental illness. It can mean closer proximity to crime. It can mean tremendous difficulty receiving much needed medication and healthcare. Struggling to get by in this country is everything. It puts you at 0. I am not saying there aren’t other disadvantages, and that those disadvantages can’t feed into poverty but in the US I don’t think anything cones close (except perhaps a terminal illness or homelessness—which has a strong correlation with poverty anyways) to the disadvantage poverty imposed on a person. It really can be a struggle to survive if you are impoverished in the US.