Racially diverse artwork in D&D...does it influence you?

[Dannyalcatraz]

But black people? Man, that just ruins the illusion for me."

Is is wrong for a black gamer to love this quote?

 

[Barastrondo]

Wow, you totally missed the point. We all know they're the same "under the hood", but the superficial differences are very, very important to westerns being westerns and samurai movies being samurai movies.

If you have Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Chinese characters in the Old West, with heroes shooting six-guns, it's a western. If you have Japanese characters in feudal Japan, with heroes swinging katana, it's a samurai movie.

Sure. The thing is, deciding that D&D is more of a samurai movie than a Western is really in the eye of the beholder, not an artifact of the basic premise of D&D-brand fantasy. A D&D setting can be inspired by Yojimbo. It can also be inspired by Afro Samurai. And just as the existence of Afro Samurai isn't a slap in the face™ to Akira Kurosawa, having non-white people in a setting with castles and plate armor isn't a slap in the face to those settings that have castles and plate armor but leave out all the melanin.

Can I imagine a red-headed Nordic samurai in a fantasy world? Um, sure, but what's the point? To make it feel as inauthentic as possible?

I would rather have a red-headed Nordic samurai than Tom Cruise with a katana, letmetellyou.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

But what I find the most striking about this whole conversation is the number of people who can say "Okay, I can believe that there are goblins, and Dragons, and that there are men who can shoot fireballs from their fingertips and fight the gods themselves... but black people? Man, that just ruins the illusion for me."

This.

I've been saying the same thing for YEARS. It's good to know that I'm not alone.

You sir are full of RAWK.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I would rather have a red-headed Nordic samurai than Tom Cruise with a katana, letmetellyou.

Once again someone beat me to the punch.

I get the impression from some of these posters that a black d00d in medieval japan would be scoffed at, but a white d00d? AWESOME!!!

 

[MrApothecary]

I've always been annoyed by a diverse bunch of European cultures, and then one culture that blends all of the Middle East, all of East Asia, all of Africa, all of which are just as diverse as Europe, if not more.

 

[mmadsen]

I would rather have a red-headed Nordic samurai than Tom Cruise with a katana, letmetellyou.

Are you just joking that you hate Tom Cruise? Because he was obviously playing an American who traveled to Japan after the US Navy opened the country up to American trade. It's not like he was the one white guy who owned a farm in the middle of Japan, passed down from his white father and grandfather.

The fact that he was taken in and trained as a samurai is implausible, but it was the focus of the story. Again, it's not like he was just another samurai who happened to be white, because Diversity is good.

 

[mmadsen]

I get the impression from some of these posters that a black d00d in medieval japan would be scoffed at, but a white d00d? AWESOME!!!

Which posters would those be, ShinHakkaider? Because that looks like a straw man you've constructed.

 

[hong]

Wow, you totally missed the point. We all know they're the same "under the hood", but the superficial differences are very, very important to westerns being westerns and samurai movies being samurai movies.

One might say that under the hood is more important than superficialities.

 

[Snoweel]

Once again someone beat me to the punch.

I get the impression from some of these posters that a black d00d in medieval japan would be scoffed at, but a white d00d? AWESOME!!!

I dunno man. The token black is a staple of popular culture (of which I consider fantasy to be a part). The token white belongs solely in the realm of comedy.

 

[Barastrondo]

Are you just joking that you hate Tom Cruise? Because he was obviously playing an American who traveled to Japan after the US Navy opened the country up to American trade. It's not like he was the one white guy who owned a farm in the middle of Japan, passed down from his white father and grandfather.

I didn't care much for the movie, but my real point was in the less throwaway-humor part of the post. I have zero problems with non-Japanese samurai in a fantasy setting that is not actually attempting to model a pseudo-historical Japan — such as a fantasy setting based on a fusion of samurai and blaxploitation movies, like Afro Samurai — and I don't think that the presence of katanas in a fantasy setting implies a mandatory need to model historical Japanese ethnic distribution, any more than I think the presence of longswords implies a need to model medieval Europe's ethnic distribution.

The idea of mixed ethnicities in a setting largely inspired by Asian, African or South American tropes just doesn't bug me. Naruto is about a blond Caucasian ninja kid with a Japanese name. Gentlemen of the Road is all over the place ethnically. You can use the trappings of a given culture without actually trying to replicate its real-world demographics (or in some cases, just the common perception of same). Some people prefer to do both, but why would anyone assume you can't plausibly have the former without the latter in the fantasy genre?