D&D General The Rakshasa and Genie Problem

[bedir than]

I think there should be no requirement to insert a culture wholesale into a setting just because you want to use an element of it. As has been said, this severely stifles creativity and worrying overmuch about it leads to dry, tasteless games.

Yes, how could we ever survive losing the sole cultural representation of real people as evil demons that want to take over the world.
That's the height of creativity really

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, how could we ever survive losing the sole cultural representation of real people as evil demons that want to take over the world.
That's the height of creativity really

Genies are cool, and they're not all evil. This is just another argument for removing content.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes, how could we ever survive losing the sole cultural representation of real people as evil demons that want to take over the world.
That's the height of creativity really

Which is why raksashas will be in the Indian-inspired supplement that has many other Indian cultural elements, written by Indian cultural experts with care and respect. It will be part of a whole package that covers the good, the bad, and everything else in it's proper and original context.

No more cheap buffet knockoffs , only authentic recipes from now on.

 

[Irlo]

Genies are cool, and they're not all evil. This is just another argument for removing content.

Or an argument for adding content. Content that puts genies into context of cultures represented in the fantasy world.

 

[Justice and Rule]

No, it's absolutely about the fact that there are actually very few real problems in D&D, but that some people absolutely want to create some, and are largely trying to concern-troll people into what should be non-problems for reasons of personal agendas.

Moreover, as pointed out, these non-problems are suspiciously orientated, towards Rakshasa and Genies and not towards Vampires or Medusae, for example.

It's almost like they are oriented to non-European monsters that may not be used well? I dunno, just a thought.

Exactly, except that it's more precisely "make D&D look bad", which has happened in the past, and is happening again in particular places.

In the past people were conflating D&D with Satanism. It had no evidence and it was easy to debunk. This is obviously not the case, given that the people who have problems are often coming from within the community themselves. Instead it's the defenders that are being knee-jerk in their defenses.

D&D can make mistakes and absolutely has in the past (both distant and recent). The problem is that it is hard to correct these things when everyone is ridiculously sensitive to questioning the product.

And again, which issue is that ? Just look right below.

And that should be the end of the story, not dragging the whole game into discussions about culture or, much worse, about some specific cultures.

This cuts both ways. Like, if you have such problems with the changes and discussions, just ignore them and don't use the new versions. If you don't like that Orcs are no longer absolutely evil, then what stops you from making it that way?

I think there is close proximity to some of the positions becoming the norm in these conversations and people who wanted, or want, to ban violence from video games. It seems very much rooted in the same understanding and belief about what media does and what media ought to be. I think it looks at media less as art and more as an instructional tool, or more as a shaper of culture.

I think this completely misunderstands the critique and the forces behind the critique. Also yes, media can be instructional and it absolutely shapes culture. I don't even know how one would argue it doesn't.

I am not concern trolling. I am expressing an opinion about trends in the hobby which are pretty obvious to most people I think. Some think they are good trends. And fair enough. But I think the trends are well intentioned, but ultimately more harmful than good (for the reasons I have given).

You are concern-trolling. When you ask "How far do we go?", that's a concern troll. Your whole point of "What if it stifles creativity?" doesn't really have any example, it's just a very vague "What if?", and your conception of how to be culturally aware is such hyperbole to come off as a complete bad-faith argument.

I specified what I meant by propaganda. And I alluded to the types of products I meant, but I am not going to call out a specific product or game, because I don't think that would be fair to designers who aren't even engaged in this thread. My aim isn't to put up a game as an example so that it might be more heavily critiques or attacked (even though I dislike some trends in RPGs, I don't want to draw that kind of attention to anyone). My point is to disagree with the trend, which I think is visible and real. But if you disagree fine. Also, my point about propaganda was that this can lead to art becoming proganda or more like it, when you make an ideological or moral point, the main focus of the conversation. If that is what critics, reviews and people on social media are focusing on, then that is what is going to be at the center of an RPGs selling point. And I think while it doesn't necessarily mean it will all be pure propaganda, I do think it gets into the very heavy handed didactic type of material you saw a lot of in the 80s and in the victorian era.

I think it is propaganda for a range of things, but fundamentally for a view of the world that prioritizes a very specific view about race, identity, power and art (one I think is well-intentioned but reductionist and misguided).

Yeah, I just don't see it. Propaganda, by its nature, is misleading. What's being misled in this discussion? This comes off as trying to poison an argument by giving it a bad name, not actually making an argument against it. Given that you think that taking cultural context means you have to paralyze your creative process, I'd say this is a pattern.

You are missing what I am saying. I am saying if you want to do this, fine. I don't object. I think it is great. But it isn't the only way to borrow cultural elements in art, and I think we do art a disservice when we don't give artists the freedom to play with culture in different ways, or when we assume it is automatically bad, because it isn't as deep a dive as you would want. I definitely think we are in a situation where it has gone too far in the direction of always being on the look out for potential problems (and I think you are seeing the result in how guarded people are with their language and their books----there is a discernible lack of freedom of expression is a lot of content). To an extent that makes sense, we live in the internet age. That changes a lot of things. But it also has, I think reached a point, where people who indulge this kind of thinking, feel like the world is looking over their shoulder when they create art (and I don't think that is a good thing).

I'm not missing anything, I just think your entire argument to be a bad fantasy. No one is saying you can't borrow elements from another culture, but just that you should be aware of what you borrow and the context for it. Instead you spin a yarn about how this creates a creative stagnation and paralysis because you have to consider other cultures. That's just nonsensical. No one is infringing on your Freedom of Expression, they are just asking you to think about what you do. If that suddenly causes you to completely freeze, I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't do that to me.

This is certainly subjective. But I find the more attention I paid to these sorts of conversations, and the more I tried to incorporate this kind of advice into design, the more I realized I was walking on eggshells and the more it was putting me in a mindset of creative fear than anything else. Ultimately, I also think that does put up barriers between people. If you disagree, that is fair. But I think a lot of people have this sense with recent gaming trends, and I think it is especially the case if you are not fully caught up on the latest discourse or don't have the educational background of some of the people advocating for this kind of approach

I mean, of all the sentiments I get this one the most. It's something I had to move past. A lot of it is dealing with the idea that you may have been wrong in the past, and we are taught that being wrong is bad. But the only way to move forward it to recognize it and try to be better. So I don't really fear being wrong, because I will be at some point. It's natural. What I fear is not getting better.

If you are going to have these discussions, then people who disagree with the premise behind the discussions, and who are concerned about the impact the discussions are having on the hobby, are going to weigh in. No one is stopping the discussion from having. We are just making it a two-sided discussion because there remains multiple points of view on this topic. I don't think it is fair to characterize people who take a contrary position to you in a conversation as obstructing the conversation itself (we are participating in it). What we are pushing back against are some of the ideas being advanced in the conversation (which is what happens in threads on boards like this, whether that topic is cultural sensitivity or character optimization).

I mean, we are literally stopping the discussion from happening by saying whether we should even have the discussion. Moreover, I find the reasons why to be not convincing and often times disingenuous; after the 3rd time you've seen someone play the slippery slope, it gets tiresome, let alone the 30th.

I think this is the part I don't quite agree with. When I think this through with European or Christian culture for example, it doesn't quite pan out. For instance suppose you have a setting that is all China or all Aztec, and for whatever reason, decide to include biblical demons in your campaign. There are no Europeans or Middle Easterners in the game, but if the demons appeared vaguely European or Middle Eastern culturally, I would just see that as remnants of the tropes origin, not commentary on Christians, middle eastern people or Europeans. Or take a werewolf. Suppose you had a campaign world that was just Asian. And granted those would have shapeshifting humanoids like werewolves themselves, but say you decided to use a European style werewolf. And the werewolf was vaguely Euoprean in look and culture. That would be a little odd (since Europeans don't exist in the setting). But I would understand the reason the GM or the game did that, was not because it was a commentary on Europeans but because it just grabbed the trope with its familiar trappings and used it. And probably there is at least a way to do that and not make it incongruous (such as have werewolves have their own culture within the setting and it just happens to resemble medieval Europe---again I wouldn't see that as commentary on Europeans, just a product of the monster having a source in real world folklore, and the GM trying to make them recognizable)

This would make more sense if werewolves or demons were seen as imitating and making a commentary on Europeans. With Efreets, it's hard to see them as anything but a collection of very old and bad cultural stereotypes.

Which is why raksashas will be in the Indian-inspired supplement that has many other Indian cultural elements, written by Indian cultural experts with care and respect. It will be part of a whole package that covers the good, the bad, and everything else in it's proper and original context.

No more cheap buffet knockoffs , only authentic recipes from now on.

I mean, unironically this would rock. I would totally be interested in an Indian sub-continent setting that was written by people who actually had knowledge of the subject would be huge.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Or an argument for adding content. Content that puts genies into context of cultures represented in the fantasy world.

If a DM wants to do this for their own game, great. I encourage it. But do you really think that WotC will put fantasy counterpart cultures in all their settings just so they're allowed to use their own monsters without this outcry? No, never going to happen.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You are concern-trolling. When you ask "How far do we go?", that's a concern troll. Your whole point of "What if it stifles creativity?" doesn't really have any example, it's just a very vague "What if?", and your conception of how to be culturally aware is such hyperbole to come off as a complete bad-faith argument.

No it isn't and no I am not. My point about it stifling creativity is something I can see in the hobby since this attitude emerged, something I have felt as a designer myself, and something I have heard from a lot of designers and game masters in the hobby either putting material out in published form or for consumption on gaming forums. Expressing concern about how an idea logically plays out, and its impact is no more concern trolling than expressing concern, as you are, about the impact of media on culture. Dismissing what I am saying as concern trolling isn't going to enable us to have a productive conversation. You expressed concern about shutting the conversation down on my part, and I clarified that so it was clear I wasn't trying to stop you from expressing an opinion. But here you are shutting down an entire point of view by labeling it concern trolling.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not missing anything, I just think your entire argument to be a bad fantasy. No one is saying you can't borrow elements from another culture, but just that you should be aware of what you borrow and the context for it. Instead you spin a yarn about how this creates a creative stagnation and paralysis because you have to consider other cultures. That's just nonsensical. No one is infringing on your Freedom of Expression, they are just asking you to think about what you do. If that suddenly causes you to completely freeze, I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't do that to me.

You may disagree, and that is fine. But I don't think it is a yarn at all. you see this on this very forum, on twitter, on social media, in posts and articles about gaming and in products themselves. It is definitely getting harder and more uncomfortable for people to engage cultural elements outside their own in gaming. Maybe you are enjoying the new parameters enough and understand them well enough, that it doesn't bother you, that you feel it elevates your creativity. I found myself wanting to do certain things for artistic and creative reasons that made sense to me, and that I thought were good, but refraining from doing so because I knew they would be misunderstood or misread because of my own identity. At a certain point I stopped heeding these discussion precisely because of that, and I feel creative again. But I do think the ideas being advanced in these discussions are having a real effect on peoples' ability to be truly creative and express themselves in the hobby. You disagree. Fair enough. But I don't think it is a fantasy at all (in fact I know it isn't because I have felt it and seen it).

 

[Justice and Rule]

No it isn't and no I am not. My point about it stifling creativity is something I can see in the hobby since this attitude emerged, something I have felt as a designer myself, and something I have heard from a lot of designers and game masters in the hobby either putting material out in published form or for consumption on gaming forums. Expressing concern about how an idea logically plays out, and its impact is no more concern trolling than expressing concern, as you are, about the impact of media on culture. Dismissing what I am saying as concern trolling isn't going to enable us to have a productive conversation. You expressed concern about shutting the conversation down on my part, and I clarified that so it was clear I wasn't trying to stop you from expressing an opinion. But here you are shutting down an entire point of view by labeling it concern trolling.

I'm calling it concern trolling because I can't think of examples where it actually happens. It is just a "concern", hence "concern trolling". Like, are people stopping projects because people want them to be more culturally sensitive? Is it causing people to stop making things?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I just don't see it. Propaganda, by its nature, is misleading. What's being misled in this discussion? This comes off as trying to poison an argument by giving it a bad name, not actually making an argument against it. Given that you think that taking cultural context means you have to paralyze your creative process, I'd say this is a pattern.

I think what is happening is it leads to a simplification of content, where content equals message in peoples mind (i.e. if there is a European style werewolf in the setting, and the European style werewolf does bad things, then that must be a commentary about the evils of Erupean people). Like I said, it isn't necessarily propaganda, much of it is just overly didactic or reductive. But it can easily slide into propaganda. And while propaganda usually misleads because of its bias, its primary feature is it is ideologically driven and trying to persuade people to share its ideology. And there is definitely an ideology undermining things like sensitivity readers, removing 'problematic' content and seeing things in a fantasy game in terms of power dynamics between real life groups of people. Those things aren't bad on their own. It might be good to consider what content is problematic in a game. I am not trying to establish walls around those ideas. What I am saying is we have moved to a place culturally in the hobby, where you have to always be in lockstep agreement with this approach or use this approach, or be considered morally bad. I don't think the morality of it is that simple at all.