D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Hussar]

/snip Do Asian Americans own how the rest of us exchange culture with Japan?

Yes. Yes they do. To a FAR greater degree anyway. Because, frankly, they're the ones who have to wear the poop that comes with the rest of us exchanging "culture" with Japan.

This I agree with. Unfortunately, for the last few years at least, I've rarely heard cultural appropriation used in anything other than a negative context.


I think we can simultaneously acknowledge the flaws in OA while recognizing what a great book it was. The book has problems and that's quite clear. However, it has an important place in the history of AD&D and I think it's legacy is more positive than negative.

There's no such thing as "more positive than negative". That's just an after the fact justification. Again, no one is removing OA from the body of D&D works. No one is advocating banning the book or anything like that. However, moving forward, when the idea was floated of a 5e OA, recognizing the mistakes of the 1e-3e OA is very important. We saw all sorts of arguments claiming that there was nothing wrong with OA. We STILL see arguments floated that the OA is perfectly fine. Heck, we still see arguments against the legacy disclaimer that WOTC has placed on legacy products.

I agree that we need to distinguish the good from the bad. The newer Lovecraft Mythos material we see coming out is exactly the result of sifting the gold from the dross. Tweeze out the really cool ideas, while still recognizing that the original material is problematic. Thing is, as seen in this very thread, getting folks to even admit that the material is problematic is ... errr... well... problematic.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I worked on a book where one of the cultures was an allegory of the Aztecs. One of the artists that was providing background on the different bits of fantasy lore from the setting was highly critical of them to the point of we had to ask him why. Turns out that he was from a tribe in North Central Mexico and viewed the Spanish as liberators rather than conquerors.

Imperial cultures--and that's what the Aztecs were--never tend to make positive impression on cultures they overtake. The only reason the Romans have at least a mixed view is that their culture had pretty much completely supplanted the local in many cases by the time they left.

Basically, people don't like other people who oppress them, news at 11.

 

[Hussar]

In some respects the Aztecs suffer from the same problem as pre-Roman Britons; the people who moved in on them got to tell the story, and there isn't much neutral information to tell you how it actually was.

So, did the Aztecs and the Britons practice human sacrifice? Pretty near certainty, given other data. Was it as common as depicted? Ehhhh...

The best you can say is that their neighbors didn't seem to think too well of them, but even that's muddied.

I was under the understanding that the Aztec imperial culture was relatively benign. They allowed most of their conquered peoples to retain pretty much all of their culture, so long as they accepted Aztec rule.

 

[Hussar]

I worked on a book where one of the cultures was an allegory of the Aztecs. One of the artists that was providing background on the different bits of fantasy lore from the setting was highly critical of them to the point of we had to ask him why. Turns out that he was from a tribe in North Central Mexico and viewed the Spanish as liberators rather than conquerors.

Yeah, I'm kinda thinking that anyone who viewed the Spanish as anything other than one of the worst monsters of history is probably working from a fairly skewed point of view.

But, I do think this goes rather hand in hand with @Ruin Explorer's point - that the history tends to get viewed through a very strong lens of the victor.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was under the understanding that the Aztec imperial culture was relatively benign. They allowed most of their conquered peoples to retain pretty much all of their culture, so long as they accepted Aztec rule.

You can get very different views of this from surviving peoples descended from those. That's what I meant about it being muddled.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I'm kinda thinking that anyone who viewed the Spanish as anything other than one of the worst monsters of history is probably working from a fairly skewed point of view.

Either that or "the better devils". Its entirely possible to recognize a group sucks and still think they're less sucky than the people they conquered. And it gets even more complicated if the second group treated you relatively well (even though they treated a lot of other groups terribly) while the first didn't.

 

[Hussar]

You can get very different views of this from surviving peoples descended from those. That's what I meant about it being muddled.

See, that's the point that @Ruin Explorer is making. The descendants we're talking about are centuries removed from events. And, likely, completely lacking in any primary source information. It's all passed down stories that would have been really, really seriously shaped by the fact that the Spanish largely destroyed virtually anything Aztec they could.

Let's be honest here, seeing the Spanish as "liberators" is a point of view that is not held very widely.

Just to add a point here. We don't have evidence of the Aztecs spending a century or so exterminating/torturing/enslaving pretty much every single warm body they could. We DO have lots of evidence that that's precisely what the Spanish did. Any narrative that paints the Spanish colonials in a positive light is pretty suspect. It sounds a lot more like, "well, at least the trains run on time" sort of thing.

 

[The Glen]

More along the lines of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. According to his tribe's history the Spanish arrived and with the help of his people over through the Aztecs and later conquered all of their rival tribes the area. You could imagine that his tribe was called lackeys by the other tribes that they help conquer, but for them the view is always better from the top.

 

[Thomas Shey]

See, that's the point that @Ruin Explorer is making. The descendants we're talking about are centuries removed from events. And, likely, completely lacking in any primary source information. It's all passed down stories that would have been really, really seriously shaped by the fact that the Spanish largely destroyed virtually anything Aztec they could.

Let's be honest here, seeing the Spanish as "liberators" is a point of view that is not held very widely.

As I noted, that's also often because they interacted with people who weren't under the thumbs of someone they viewed as worse. The Aztecs weren't sitting on everybody, after all, and presumably some of them got along with them more than others.

I understand your point, but I also think it can be overly apologist to the Aztecs to think that any of the modern attitudes toward them by native groups is entirely because they're so distant in times. People can have very long cultural memories.

Just to add a point here. We don't have evidence of the Aztecs spending a century or so exterminating/torturing/enslaving pretty much every single warm body they could. We DO have lots of evidence that that's precisely what the Spanish did. Any narrative that paints the Spanish colonials in a positive light is pretty suspect. It sounds a lot more like, "well, at least the trains run on time" sort of thing.

This pretty much says "Everyone who was an ass more recently were the only ones that were", though. That's--a take, certainly.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hiya!

Erasing, yes. But adding on, manipulating and using for inspiration to create a unique fantasy "culture", all with a base-line of some single culture (Inca, in this example) ...no. Nothing I see wrong with that at all. That's how pretty much everything creative is made; take ideas, thoughts, visuals, 'feelings', etc from all sorts of input...then filter it through an artistic lens and voila! Something new.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

You’re ignoring the end of that sentence, as well as points made elsewhere.

OA’s “sin“ is not that it was “adding on, manipulating and using for inspiration“ to create a fantasy setting. It is that it did so with a straight lift of terminology, aesthetics and the like from one of their oldest rivals. One they’ve warred with repeatedly as invader or invaded over centuries, as recently as 80 years ago, and still battle with economically and culturally with to this very day.

That’s never going to play well in certain circles.