When Fantasy Meets Africa

The roaring success of the recent Black Panther film is another sign that fantasy worlds are changing. The fictional African country of Wakanda as portrayed in Marvel comic books has been isolated and stagnant, a common problem with "Othering" of non-white cultures. The plot of the film addresses its isolationist past and in doing so, blazes a trail for other fantasy universes in how they portray African-like nations.

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[h=3]Marvel Deals With its "Other"[/h]Othering is a process in which other cultures are viewed through a biased lens of exoticism and isolationism. These cultures are not integrated into the world but are rather static, often amalgamating a region's various cultures into one homogeneous mass. The culture may be portrayed as never having advanced beyond what defines it as exotic.

Any world creation will likely be influence by the beliefs of the time, and many fantasy worlds -- Marvel's superhero universe included -- paint different cultures with broad strokes for white audiences as a form of shorthand. This is how we got Wakanda as a technologically-advanced culture that never fully engaged with the horrors of war that have rocked the world at large. As Nate Jones puts it:

It refuses to trade with other nations, though as one line in the movie makes clear, Wakandans are still able to consume American memes. As we see in a Western television broadcast in the movie, Wakanda is able to get away with this by masquerading as an impoverished third-world country, and since the country’s leadership refuses to take international aid, the rest of the world doesn’t ask too many questions.

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The plot of Black Panther addresses this isolationism -- a byproduct of "othering" Wakanda as a a fictional nation in Africa -- head on, and makes it clear that the Marvel Cinematic Universe plans to integrate Wakanda into its narrative like any other nation. It's a bold choice that will likely change the static nature of Wakanda forever. Role-playing games face a similar dilemma.
[h=3]RPGs and Africa[/h]There hasn't been a great track record in nuanced representation of African nations in tabletop role-playing games. G.A. Barber uses Rifts Africa by Palladium as an example:

...with a decided lack of POC in the art, and the entire continent serves as a place for non-Africans to adventure in. There are 67 interior pictures in Rifts Africa, of which 54 depict non-Africans or landscape, and 13 depict Africans. The first picture with Africans in it has them acting as porters for a white game hunter. Four of the pictures (just under 25% of the pictures depicting Africans) depict Africans as monsters. None of the pictures show Africans using modern or futuristic technology or weapons, none of them are of Africans fighting monsters or “looking cool”. In a single book, ostensibly about Africa, only 19% of the pictures show Africans (omission), and the few depictions of them make it clear they are there as set dressing and nothing more (stereotypes and limited roles).

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Dungeons & Dragons has slowly, steadily, been addressing this issue. Fifth Edition has made efforts to be more inclusive, and that reflects in the diversity of character art. The lead image for the human race in the Player's Handbook is of a black woman. And yet, D&D still struggles with its broad strokes representation of African nations, as the controversy over the depiction of Chult demonstrates in Tomb of Annihilation:

Its point of inspiration is a campaign setting that, for years, has been written off as tone-deaf. The new adventure draws on D&D co-creator Gary Gygax’s adventure Tomb of Horrors and combines that with source material detailing Chult, a jungle peninsula first conceived of in a 1992 novel called The Ring of Winter, in which an adventurer travels to Chult’s dinosaur-filled wilderness seeking the eponymous artifact...The canonical Chultan peninsula finally congealed in a 1993 campaign setting as a dinosaur-infested jungle where heat wiped out even the strongest adventurers and insects carried fatal diseases. Reptilian races and undead skeletons dominate the land and humans live in tribal clusters and clans. Its major city, Mezro, “rivals some of the most ‘civilized’ population centers in Faerun,” the setting reads. Slavery is mentioned about 40 times. In D&D’s 3rd edition, it’s written that Chultan priest-kings worship “strange deities” in the city of Mezro. In D&D’s 4th edition, Chult is located on what’s called the “Savage Coast.” It’s said there that the city of Port Nyanzaru is controlled by foreign traders who often must defend against pirates. Mezro has collapsed. It just sank into the abyss. What remains is this: “Human civilization is virtually nonexistent here, though an Amnian colony and a port sponsored by Baldur’s Gate cling to the northern coasts, and a few tribes—some noble savages, others depraved cannibals—roam the interior.”

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Tomb of Annihilation works hard to create a more comprehensive African culture in Chult, but it may suffer from not enough nuance:

While many players I talked to enjoyed how the history and political structures of Chult were expanded in Tomb of Annihilation (and enjoyed the adventure’s plot generally), they were still unimpressed by its execution. Its setting is an amalgamation of African cultures, a trope frequent in 20th century media that flattens the dimensionality of human experiences on the continent, which contains hundreds of ethnic groups. There are nods to West African voodoo, Southern African click-based Khoisan languages, East African attire (like Kenyan kofia hats) and the jungle climate of Central Africa. Its fantasy setting dissolves “Africa” into an all-in-one cultural stew that comes off as a little detached, sources I interviewed said.

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Is it possible to depict a more nuanced fantasy Africa? Nyambe: African Adventures for 3.5 D&D, by Christopher Dolunt, offers some hope:

My motivation for creating Nyambe was simple. Africa was a major part of the Earth that has little or no representation in fantasy literature, let alone RPGs. When it does appear, it usually follows the pulp fiction model: steaming jungles, bloodthirsty cannibals, and dark gods long forgotten by the civilized races. Of course, historical Africa was nothing like that, so my goal for Nyambe was to create a fantasy version of Africa based on the actual history and mythology of Africa, rather than previous fantasy depictions. So, I went about taking snippets of history or myth, and twisting them, adding fantasy elements or changing specifics to make them fit into an OGL world.

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[h=3]Now What?[/h]Wizards of the Coast made considerable strides in increasing D&D's diverse representation and transitioning Chult from conquered land to fantasy nation, but there's still work to do. As more people of color play D&D, the game will need to change to accommodate its players' diverse views. With Black Panther leading the way, here's hoping future game designers will take note.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[Celebrim]

I guess the empire of Mali & kingdom of Ghana weren't a thing either... smh.

LOL. Ok, let's do this. Drop all the names you want.

Sure, Mali and Awkar were "a thing" if you like. Mali and Ghana arose in the after math of the introduction of the camel to the Western Sahara in large numbers as a result of Roman era trade and relative security through Northern Africa, but they were actually founded by Islamic colonial tribes (possibly Berbers) in the 7th and 8th centuries again as the result of the flourishing of trade and relative security through Northern Africa. This resulted in a very brief golden age in the western Sahara owing to the ability to now take advantage of the lucrative trade markets along the Mediterranean coast.

We only know about them through second hand reports from their Islamic trading partners. They left nothing that lasted. They lasted so brief a time that even archaeological research into the empires is difficult owing to a scarcity of data. We know virtually nothing about them. They collapsed by the end of the European middle ages, a good 500 years before the European colonists would show up. We can only speculate why they collapsed, but the most obvious problem is that same European warm period that allowed for the High Middle Ages extreme prosperity and allowed temporary flourishing European colonies as far North as Greenland led to a massive (and continuing) period of desert expansion in the Western Sahara swallowing up the farmland that is needed for a thriving civilization. The other problem is that they were gold based economies, the problem of which is that gold is not itself a capital good. Once they'd traded the gold away for all those trade goods, they had no infrastructure themselves. Their ability to produce gold over the long term wasn't large enough to maintain the economic structure they created.

About the only thing that lasted is that Timbuktu maintained something like a university afterwards as Mali sleepily lingered on. But unlike the universities of Europe (or Baghdad) it wasn't churning out books. It simply was a repository of books, the vessel into which Islamic culture could be poured but which was no longer itself exchanging ideas in the way we'd expect a culture that was advancing and flourishing would do. The obvious proof of this is the best sources of primary information about Mali remain external trading partners, most of whom visited during the 13th and 14th centuries when Mali was at its brief height and fame.

 

[Yaarel]

Do you think that there are many Norwegians that would be offended by inaccurate portrayals of the Vikings? Their aren't any actual Vikings that would be offended by getting their history wrong, and if their were, they'd probably just laugh at it. Norway is doing okay for a country its size, they have a high standard of living, and if someone gets their Viking history wrong, they would just have a laugh tell jokes about it and move on. Perhaps a small minority of Norwegians would be offended by Marvel comics making Thor a woman, but most Norwegians these days are Christians not pagans, there is some cultural aspect to Viking mythology, but Norway is not a poor or oppressed country, they would simply point out the errors, but they wouldn't, for the most part, be offended by a man wearing a horned helmet and pretending to be a Viking. Compare the lifestyle of Norway to any African country, and you see the Norwegians don't have all that much to complain about.

Norwegians are conscious that they are the Norse of today, and know about the Viking Era. They try to preserve the valuable aspects of viking era society − like courage, democracy, high status of women, reverence of nature − while leaving the less valuable aspects behind − like violence.

When they see things like horned helmets, they know it is absurd, and just treat it as silly fun.



On a more serious note, Norwegians are still coping with the trauma of World War 2, when N*zis invaded and occupied Norway. These German N*zis and their Norwegian collaborators under Quisling, ‘culturally appropriated’ Norse and viking symbols as emblems of the N*zi party, to mask nonsense racial theories and supremacism. The racism was especially nonsense since H*tler himself was neither Norse nor serious about racism − honoring N*zis who were Arab as ‘honorary Aryans’. H*tler was a psychopath who was a master manipulator of idiots. H*tler mainly hated and murdered Jews. Other targets were moreso out of convenience toward manipulating others.

The N*zi abuse of Norse cultural heritage was disgusting and horrifying and embarrassing. It scarred Norwegians. The N*zis polluted and defiled a noble Norse cultural heritage. Somehow how we need to wash away the trauma caused by foreign German imperialists.

To see the word ‘Germanic’ being used to obliterate ‘Norse’, makes me vomit.

Even today Norwegians are shy about celebrating their own ethnic heritage. But there is a yearning to do so. The Norse cultural heritage is cool, and something to be proud of, and valuable to transmit to future generations.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I guess the empire of Mali & kingdom of Ghana weren't a thing either... smh.

Yeah, but my post was the one treating the continent as a homogeny. Somehow “Africa had all this stuff just like other continents” =Africa is all the same? Even though it actual is a statement of African diversity, but oh well.

Hell, I was even accused of employing the “noble savage” trope by referencing real world African cultures with no interest in westernizing, and then they went on to broadly paint all non westernized African cultures as impoverished and disease-ridden!

It’s an astounding degree is dishonesty in rhetoric.

Anyway, Wakanda is interesting to me for entirely different reasons, though Killmonger in the film delves into some of them pretty well. His points are great and insightful, but like all sympathetic villains, it’s his conclusions and methods that set him firmly against the heroes of the story. The question remains, though. How can Wakanda be presented as heroic, AND isolationist, even to the point of historically ignoring the violent colonization of their neighbors? I love that BP addresses that, instead of ignoring it.

As for African Fantasy, I really do think that is what is needed is for a big RPG companies to hire African voices, or at least African American voices who are expert in African cultures, languages, etc when looking to move beyond Europe for fantasy inspiration. I certainly plan on doing so for my game, tho I’m a bit more obligated to because my game takes place in an actual alternate earth.

 

[Kobold Boots]

LOL. Ok, let's do this. Drop all the names you want.

Sure, Mali and Awkar were "a thing" if you like. Mali and Ghana arose in the after math of the introduction of the camel to the Western Sahara in large numbers as a result of Roman era trade and relative security through Northern Africa, but they were actually founded by Islamic colonial tribes (possibly Berbers) in the 7th and 8th centuries again as the result of the flourishing of trade and relative security through Northern Africa. This resulted in a very brief golden age in the western Sahara owing to the ability to now take advantage of the lucrative trade markets along the Mediterranean coast.

We only know about them through second hand reports from their Islamic trading partners. They left nothing that lasted. They lasted so brief a time that even archaeological research into the empires is difficult owing to a scarcity of data. We know virtually nothing about them. They collapsed by the end of the European middle ages, a good 500 years before the European colonists would show up. We can only speculate why they collapsed, but the most obvious problem is that same European warm period that allowed for the High Middle Ages extreme prosperity and allowed temporary flourishing European colonies as far North as Greenland led to a massive (and continuing) period of desert expansion in the Western Sahara swallowing up the farmland that is needed for a thriving civilization. The other problem is that they were gold based economies, the problem of which is that gold is not itself a capital good. Once they'd traded the gold away for all those trade goods, they had no infrastructure themselves. Their ability to produce gold over the long term wasn't large enough to maintain the economic structure they created.

About the only thing that lasted is that Timbuktu maintained something like a university afterwards as Mali sleepily lingered on. But unlike the universities of Europe (or Baghdad) it wasn't churning out books. It simply was a repository of books, the vessel into which Islamic culture could be poured but which was no longer itself exchanging ideas in the way we'd expect a culture that was advancing and flourishing would do. The obvious proof of this is the best sources of primary information about Mali remain external trading partners, most of whom visited during the 13th and 14th centuries when Mali was at its brief height and fame.

Please take this reply as being just a general "meh" and not at all intended to offset the intellects or insult anyone.

Exhibiting enhanced knowledge of something after a gauntlet has been thrown on a forum community doesn't mean much because anyone can use Wikipedia or look up a few things after someone gets snarky.

Forums require someone to take a step back and put their best foot forward on every post such that you don't end up being in a position to have to defend yourself. It's also not the best place to debate that which is debatable for the same reason, others will suddenly become experts in whatever it is you're wrong about, even if you're not wrong at the time.

Anyhoo, carry on. I just hate seeing for tat as it never paints anyone in a good light.

Be well
KB

 

[Gradine]

Please take this reply as being just a general "meh" and not at all intended to offset the intellects or insult anyone.

Exhibiting enhanced knowledge of something after a gauntlet has been thrown on a forum community doesn't mean much because anyone can use Wikipedia or look up a few things after someone gets snarky.

Forums require someone to take a step back and put their best foot forward on every post such that you don't end up being in a position to have to defend yourself. It's also not the best place to debate that which is debatable for the same reason, others will suddenly become experts in whatever it is you're wrong about, even if you're not wrong at the time.

Anyhoo, carry on. I just hate seeing for tat as it never paints anyone in a good light.

Be well
KB

Excellent points, as always. Plus, I just learned about a word being on the censor list I had realized!

Educational all around.

In any case, I can add in a few points from the narrative-prose on "cultural appropriation", at least in case anybody is doing gaming in modern or real world settings:

The general consensus is that diversity among your characters is not only appreciated but probably necessary, depending on how realistic or historical you need to be given your setting (fun fact: if your genre is fantasy and your setting is not Earth, the answer to that is never, not at all, at any point). The important thing is to do your research. Where cultural appropriation comes in, at all, is when you try to tell stories that do not belong to you. For instance, you can and should have black female characters, and there's nothing really stopping you from even having a black female antagonist, but if the story is about the specific trials and tribulations of being a black woman in <insert your setting here>, you should probably leave that story to be told by a black woman.

As for fantasy cultures in TTRPG's inspired by real world cultures in any sense (such as Africa, this being the topic of the thread), again the important thing is to do your homework and show your work. In light of research, your "inspiration" is likely only to be drawn from commonly understood stereotypes, which are typically a) false and b) negative, especially when the cultures in question were subject to colonization.

When in doubt, always remember that sensitivity readers are a thing. Share your work with people you know who you think will both a) have a better idea than you of whether you've crossed a line or perpetuated a negative stereotype and b) are willing to be frank and honest with you with their critique.

The proper answer is not to simply throw your hands up and give up for fear of criticism. Anything you do is going to be subject to criticism. The most important thing is to listen to it with empathy and respect. Always be learning.

 

[Celebrim]

Where cultural appropriation comes in, at all, is when you try to tell stories that do not belong to you. For instance, you can and should have black female characters, and there's nothing really stopping you from even having a black female antagonist, but if the story is about the specific trials and tribulations of being a black woman in <insert your setting here>, you should probably leave that story to be told by a black woman.

But if I'm free to make the story also about being a "white man" this leaves all the black female characters in the story relegated to shallow personalities and shallow roles in the story. They'll become mere tokens in the story, placed there to give a veneer of diversity and appease concerns but without any real respect for them as persons or characters.

I personally don't think that there are trials and tribulations that aren't universal to the human race. The particular time, place, and circumstances of that suffering might change, and might be more or less common and have a particular character for a plurality of persons belonging to some broader class, but the actual trials of alienation, scorn, violence, and so forth are something everyone experiences to some degree or the other. The world is awfully impoverished if we can only write about ourselves, and specifically an RPG is impoverished if we can only play ourselves. Could someone play a female elf better than me? Possibly so, but that doesn't mean I give up the right to play female elves.

As for fantasy cultures in TTRPG's inspired by real world cultures in any sense (such as Africa, this being the topic of the thread), again the important thing is to do your homework and show your work. In light of research, your "inspiration" is likely only to be drawn from commonly understood stereotypes, which are typically a) false and b) negative, especially when the cultures in question were subject to colonization.

I detest stereotypes as lazy if nothing else, whether they are false or negative or not. The whole issue of stereotypes in narrative and in gaming narrative in particular is too big even for this topic. But as it relates to Sub-Saharan Africa, the big issue I see is that if you do your homework and show your work, you are going to end up with a lot of presentations based on reality that overlap the stereotype in ways that are going to be very uncomfortable. To keep picking on the example, I can do the homework and show the work that people wearing leopard skins and putting claws on their hands and killing and eating their victims were so widespread that they had significant political influence in portions of Africa. And from a fantasy perspective, the natural way to treat that is to in some way deal with leopard shape-shifters or lycanthropy or some other sort of "the magic is real" consideration. Yet the reality of this I also concede has been used and cited in works that are less than empathetic, and even embraced by earlier racist narratives to deal with the discomfort that is the example of Africa. Indeed, I challenge everyone in the thread with this - the more you research Africa, the more you are going to realize that the reality of Africa - the stuff you can do your work on and show your homework for by documentary evidence, including written accounts, archaeological evidence, photographic evidence, and survival of cultural ideas into the present day - the more you are going to be uncomfortable presenting Africa as it actually was rather than the way it looks in an article in The Atlantic. (And if you are made uncomfortable by my negative attitude, understand that I was friends for several years with a young man from Nigeria who thought I held a far too optimistic view of Africa. Of course, I'm also related to a Kenyan who is prone to accept Afro-Centrocism, and who thinks therefore I'm vastly to critical. But that's the reality when you stop treating 'Africans' as a group and start treating them as individuals with their own opinions. Perhaps both critics have their points, but it doesn't stop me from being rather confident in my challenge.)

You can white-wash Africa as "Wakanda", or you can be realistic. You can make a pastiche Africa as you might want it to have been and accept the shallowness that will result from that and that it will therefore be less of a place than your pastiche Europe in all its ugly and beautiful complexity. Or you can make fantasy Africa as real of a place as your fantasy Europe understanding that it's not going to very often be pretty or comfortable to look at. Pretending however that the problem is always and only that Africa is presented in a way that you are uncomfortable with simply because someone hasn't dug deeply enough and is relying on simplistic narratives about Africa is pure ignorance.

When in doubt, always remember that sensitivity readers are a thing. Share your work with people you know who you think will both a) have a better idea than you of whether you've crossed a line or perpetuated a negative stereotype and b) are willing to be frank and honest with you with their critique.

This is always good advice. My caveat is that if I share something with you, and you make criticism. I will listen to your criticism and I may make adjustments. I may even make adjustments when technically, from a standpoint of realism, I don't need to make adjustments, just as Dickens adjusted his story drawn from life to address the concerns raised by this Jewish friends that his characters could be perceived as negative stereotypes (even when his character was in fact well-researched).

But I'm also not obligated to do more than listen and consider the concerns seriously. I'm not obligated to agree.

The proper answer is not to simply throw your hands up and give up for fear of criticism. Anything you do is going to be subject to criticism. The most important thing is to listen to it with empathy and respect. Always be learning.

Yep.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@Celebrim no one, anywhere, is saying that you can’t tell stories that are about a black woman if you’re a white guy. They’re saying that you do not have the relevant experience to tell a story that is about the specific experience of being a black woman in America, for instance, when you are a white dude.

As for the idea that there are no struggles that aren’t common to “the human experience”...that is literally just blatant nonsense.

 

[Imaro]

LOL. Ok, let's do this. Drop all the names you want.

Sure, Mali and Awkar were "a thing" if you like. Mali and Ghana arose in the after math of the introduction of the camel to the Western Sahara in large numbers as a result of Roman era trade and relative security through Northern Africa, but they were actually founded by Islamic colonial tribes (possibly Berbers) in the 7th and 8th centuries again as the result of the flourishing of trade and relative security through Northern Africa. This resulted in a very brief golden age in the western Sahara owing to the ability to now take advantage of the lucrative trade markets along the Mediterranean coast.

We only know about them through second hand reports from their Islamic trading partners. They left nothing that lasted. They lasted so brief a time that even archaeological research into the empires is difficult owing to a scarcity of data. We know virtually nothing about them. They collapsed by the end of the European middle ages, a good 500 years before the European colonists would show up. We can only speculate why they collapsed, but the most obvious problem is that same European warm period that allowed for the High Middle Ages extreme prosperity and allowed temporary flourishing European colonies as far North as Greenland led to a massive (and continuing) period of desert expansion in the Western Sahara swallowing up the farmland that is needed for a thriving civilization. The other problem is that they were gold based economies, the problem of which is that gold is not itself a capital good. Once they'd traded the gold away for all those trade goods, they had no infrastructure themselves. Their ability to produce gold over the long term wasn't large enough to maintain the economic structure they created.

About the only thing that lasted is that Timbuktu maintained something like a university afterwards as Mali sleepily lingered on. But unlike the universities of Europe (or Baghdad) it wasn't churning out books. It simply was a repository of books, the vessel into which Islamic culture could be poured but which was no longer itself exchanging ideas in the way we'd expect a culture that was advancing and flourishing would do. The obvious proof of this is the best sources of primary information about Mali remain external trading partners, most of whom visited during the 13th and 14th centuries when Mali was at its brief height and fame.

The Wikipedia is strong in this post...

I'm not going to get into a big back and forth about Mali and Ghana, but... perhaps you should consult other sources as they may give a different perspective on many of the things you seem to be stating as fact in this post about a subject you claim to have... studied extensively.

 

[Sunseeker]

@Celebrim no one, anywhere, is saying that you can’t tell stories that are about a black woman if you’re a white guy. They’re saying that you do not have the relevant experience to tell a story that is about the specific experience of being a black woman in America, for instance, when you are a white dude.

As for the idea that there are no struggles that aren’t common to “the human experience”...that is literally just blatant nonsense.

This. And it's important to recognize that the fantasy trials of Fantasy Black Woman in FantasyLand don't need to line up to real life, she may have some that are similar, she may have none, she may have lived a privileged life of royalty. That's all fine and dandy for FantasyLand.

But if I (a white, middle-class male) were to want to write a story about the real trials of Real Black Woman IRL, I would be well out of my league, because I have experienced nothing in my life that would even remotely mirror the experiences of an IRL minority woman, or even a white woman! But if I wanted my character to resonate with the audience, I would need to know those experiences, at least second-hand from someone who has studied them, or at ideally lived them, or both!

Sure, we may have common experiences: difficulty finding a job, trouble with bad landlords, that one waiter who was a jerk. But these "shared experiences" are so generic as to be essentially meaningless. Nobody wants to read a story about "all those things everybody does". They want to read a story about someone who has unique struggles and challenges to overcome. That's why there are movies about lone-wolf cops with nothing to lose, and there aren't movies about Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling. We just assume that this person we're reading about has normal problems too, but we don't need to read about it.

 

[ngenius]

Something to think about for everyone, especially the self-confessed "African allies" in this whole discussion, which, while very informative, is also blatant evidence of the privilege being paraded online that is not afforded to a significant majority of African children, who live in rural African villages across many countries in Africa (especially Sub-Saharan Africa) and, thus, unable to access all these wonderful books you discussed (both the bad stereotypes and the good respectful ones).


In fact, I can almost bet a winning hand that the vast majority of those participating in this thread do not come from a rural African background (but I will not get into the politics of why many African nations despite years after Independence are worse off than relatively newer formed nations in some other parts of the world).


So while we debate the merits and demerits of cultural appropriation or even authentic representation, almost all of us here, are debating from positions of privilege that are just not available to the millions of children in rural Africa.


Just think about this point of view while you consider other replies.