# Do We Still Need "Oriental Adventures"?



## BMaC (Mar 12, 2018)

Thank you for bringing in Ed Said!  Btw, Tomb of Annihilation's Chult setting is textbook Orientalism.


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## jbear (Mar 12, 2018)

> Although all of these mechanics are presented with an earnest multiculturalist ethic of appreciation, this ethic often surreptitiously produces a problematic and fictitious exotic, Oriental figure.



Yeah! I'm so sick of those gamers making ficticious, exotic figures for their ficticious exotic imaginary worlds without a properly culturally nuanced and propery politically correct vetted culturally appropriate character check! I met this gamer once who made a ninja character based on this movie they'd seen 'Flying Dragon Leaping Tiger' and they hadn't even done any proper research or anything! They said they did it because they thought ninjas were epic! So racist! And that Tomb of Annihilation with its text book Orientalism should basically be thrown onto a politically incorrect bonfire and burned! Jungles are so racist too!


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 12, 2018)

I am waiting for a campaign setting for D&D 5e that reflects the mood of the 1001 nights much better than Al-Qadim did. For example I would like to see the Tales of the Caliphate Nights for D&D 5e.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20418/Tales-of-the-Caliphate-Nights--True-20


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## Christopher Olson (Mar 12, 2018)

I like them and I find hem neat, so yes keep printing them


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## Cergorach (Mar 12, 2018)

What I don't understand is the assumption that RPG want or need culturally accurate representation. You think that Forgotten Realms was anything close to 'Western' culture during the middle ages? Not enough disease, murder, rape, plunder, religious bigotry, racism, sexism, classism, etc. Guess what, that's not politically correct either!

Not only that, but there are quite a few different perspectives in Asian culture that are quite alien to most Western perspectives and vice versa. Current Asian cultures often don't resemble the cultures from a 1000+ years ago. Hell, if I look at my own country, a 1000 years ago it was mostly uninhabitable due to almost half of it being under water and current culture or even 200 years ago, doesn't translate to Frank, Frissian and Saxon culture from a 1000 years ago...

Not only that, but the average European has a very basic (and inaccurate) view of the long term history of their country or continent. The same is true for large swaths of Asia, so if their own people have a very basic view of their long term history and culture, why should we tiptoe around it? Don't we have anything better to do?

It's the same thing as with Science, we get the basics on how atoms work, effectively the children's book version of it. Anyone who has studied the subject in depth can get a little defensive about the subject when trying to explain the nuances to someone who's only had the basics in highschool. Not only are quite a few of our science books in middle/highschool quite basic, they are often also wrong, but still quite workable. Our history books also only write what the current school system tags as 'correct' they don't mention any ambiguities in assumptions or major strife about a certain subject in the historical communities...

So why the heck do you (or anyone else) want an accurate representation of all Asian culture in a Fantasy RPG?

IF you really want to be extra sure that no one takes your oriental fantasy setting as real, add a preface that explains that you've used elements of Asian cultures to create a fantasy world that is not representative of reality... As I don't ever remember reading that for a Western based campaign setting, I seriously wonder why you should even bother...

Settings like Kara-tur, Al-Quadim and Maztica were never about accuracy, but about creating an atmosphere of stories we read, watched or heard. Something 'exotic', yet familiar. Taking 'exotic' to extremes creates 'alien' and that is not something everyone is comfortable with. And this is not a study, it's a form of entertainment.

We, ourselves often consume entertainment that isn't historically accurate, probably the most notorious is "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table". There are a few movies that tried to approach the time period a little bit more accurately, but those were often horribly received in the grand scheme of things. People want knights in shining armor, grand castles, huge battles, etc. Or tales like Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, etc.

Does 5E need another Oriental Adventures, no/yes. No, because I think WotC has released way too little FR content to make another setting at this time. Yes, because there is till a demand for it.

If you want to expose your players to a more accurate representation of a culture, that's your decision and ultimately your players. But also decide if you want to expose them to current culture or ancient culture, there often is a great difference between the two...

I've tried to run a D&D campaign in Scotland/Northern England around the year 1000 AD, the PCs came from another world. Fantastical and mythological creatures roamed the land, invisible to the common man. An elf was a lithe human in their eyes and a dwarf a stout smaller man, Orcs were brigands, Dragons a natural disaster, etc. Even if the 'Veil' was lifted, quite often normal humans went insane, explaining stories of mythological creatures. It was an interesting experiment displaying Scottisch/English culture around the year 1000 AD, but quite short lived, it gives you very little creative outlets as a DM and players wind up finding it bland and depressing after a while...


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 12, 2018)

I am European and I have an Arabic wife. So I have real exepreince that Al-Quadim didn't' reflect the arabic culture neither in accuracy nor in atmosphere. Al-Quadim atmosphere is the same when a tpyical american tourist eat somthing in a hotel that think arabic cuisine. Honestly it is not arabic, because arabic people think you would die if you would eat harissa. So in a hotel they change all food the way they think not dangerous for you. An other example.

If you do not have an arabic relative or friend you will never see the true arabic atmosphere. You will only the the sugarcandy version of arabia that a tourist want to see.

Aniway what do you think how many of the writers or Al-Qudim was a guest of a family in an arabic country ever? My guess is none of them.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Mar 12, 2018)

Disney's Aladin never wanted to show the real Middle East, and thast isn't wrong. If we are going to complain, then I also can say that Umberto Eco's "the Name of the Rose" wasn't the real Christian Middle Age. And the Spagethin Wester movies filmed in Europe weren't the real Northeamerican Far West.

We have to try avoid injust stereotypes and some matters (for example the conflicts in the past among Japan, China and Korea), but we also should remember those exotic settings can be doors to try know more about those adventures. Let's remember lots of western otakus have started to learn Japanese languange because the loved manga comics. 

A 5th Ed of Oriental Adventures would be right, but I admit my own version of "oriental classes"(samurai, ninja, sohei..) with martial maneuvers like the ones from "Tome of Battle: book of nine swords" and "Path of War" by Dreamscarred Press. 

Is possible a "1001 night" for D&D? Yes, in the same way Disney's Aladdin cartoon. (I loved that teleserie).


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 12, 2018)

No. Even the weapons are not accurate. Koumya, jambiya are not pearcing, but slashing weapons. And this is only on example. :-( Wlat Disney Aladin has as same "arabic" atmosphere a Pochantas. I told exactly that I hate americanised sugarcane arabic "atmosphere".

But  Tales of the Caliphate Nights very good setting.


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## Cergorach (Mar 12, 2018)

Antal MolnÃ¡r said:


> I am European and I have an Arabic wife. So I have real exepreince that Al-Quadim didn't' reflect the arabic culture neither in accuracy nor in atmosphere. Al-Quadim atmosphere is the same when a tpyical american tourist eat somthing in a hotel that think arabic cuisine. Honestly it is not arabic, because arabic people think you would die if you would eat harissa. So in a hotel they change all food the way they think not dangerous for you. An other example.
> 
> If you do not have an arabic relative or friend you will never see the true arabic atmosphere. You will only the the sugarcandy version of arabia that a tourist want to see.
> 
> Aniway what do you think how many of the writers or Al-Qudim was a guest of a family in an arabic country ever? My guess is none of them.




There is an Armanian/Turkish dish:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harissa_(dish)

Al-Quadim was never about real Arabic culture, it's about the stories we were told/shown/read in the west. Just like real space travel is a long dangerous exercise that is inconvenient to most sci-fi stories, so reality is changed to fit the stories and the audience. Do you think that most Westerners have much understanding of Arabic culture or any willingness to actually try to understand it? NO! They want the tales of Sinbad, Genies, harems, etc. Again, they want the fantasy Arabia, the Arabia that has much in common with reality as FR has with reality.

As we've said SOooo many times before, if people can't differentiate between fantasy and reality, they have no business playing RPGs! And it doesn't matter that it's a fantasy Europe, Arabia, or Asia...

Orientalism in history books, is an issue, it's sloppy.


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## kenmarable (Mar 12, 2018)

In my opinion, Cergorach is right that we don't really want/need *accurate* cultural representation. What I think people are usually far more interested in but mislabel as "accuracy" is *respectful* cultural representation. For one thing, when you are obviously inspired by real life cultures like in the OA books (or Tomb of Annihilation), but throw those cultures into a blender with a bunch of other junk and pour that slurry into a book - that's certainly not the best way to do it.

Related to that is something that is often more subtle (although sometimes it's outright blatant like again with ToA and that line from Gary), is that these books are often written specifically from the outside about this other exotic place. So, with the Forgotten Realms for example, there’s this feeling of the “real” FR being _over here_, and then these other cultures are _over there_ – Maztica, Kara Tur, Chult, Zakhara, etc. Your core D&D characters can go over there to visit these exotic, different people. Why do these cultures have to be over there, and not just integrated with the world as a whole? (Especially since all of these fantasy D&D worlds are equally foreign to most of us 21st century folk. Ninjas are no more exotic than wizards to our current lives.)

So as much as I loved the earlier OA, I think going forward we really, really do not need a new OA. However, as WotC has already been doing a bit, we really, really need that content mixed in with everything else. There’s no reason core D&D needs to be focused on pseudo-European fantasy realms and then make all of the pseudo-other-people fantasy realms into add-ons. It’s all fantasy and unrealistic and fun! So, for example, preferably no Al-Qadim and no Oriental Adventures, but instead these areas should be treated like core Forgotten Realms.


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 12, 2018)

I understand your point. BUT I will never will accept is as an excuse.

1. It is a max 10 minute research in google that a jambiya is a slashing weapon, not a piercing weapan. In and old school libry it is 30 minutes extra while you drive there.
2. Why can be Tales of the Caliphate Nights or GURPS Arabian Nights or Mythic Constantinople (Christian/Islamic setting) correct?

Sorry, in harissa not a dish, but a hot chili pepper paste in Arabiya. ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harissa


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## kenmarable (Mar 12, 2018)

Cergorach said:


> Al-Quadim was never about real Arabic culture, it's about the stories we were told/shown/read in the west.




I think this hits one of the nails that I was rambling about on the head. Sure, that may have been ok when I was a kid, but this is the 21st century where the world is far more interconnected and these games have matured with that to be no longer aimed at just a very narrow and specific demographic (and even that demographic has matured to have broader interests). Now they can be inspired by the stories people in the Middle East tell themselves, and people in Japan tell themselves, and so on. Rather than Western (and often specifically American) stories about them, many are far more interested in learning about the stories various people told about their own past.

Yeah, it's all make believe and far from accurate, but relying only on classic American tropes about other cultures at this point is, at the very least, lazy writing.


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 12, 2018)

The problem is that Al-Qadim's authors as same superficial about 1001 nights (not about islamic world) as Cergorach in searching  harissa.  A good example for this superficiality. 

"More than a fifth of respondents said Agrabah — the fictional city from  “Aladdin” — is a real part of the Arab world. An even higher proportion —  38 percent — would be happy with a US travel ban on citizens of Agrabah  should they be proven a threat." 

Source: http://www.arabnews.com/node/1093246/middle-east


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## GreyLord (Mar 12, 2018)

Perhaps instead of the older usage, create a game called Japanese Adventures (which is what a Lot of Oriental Adventures was about anyways).  If you want more Japanese heritage in it, ask for an actual individual from Japan, perhaps a professor of Japanese History to help influence and help write it.

I love the period and RPGs based in it, so obviously I'd love to have something like that.  I'd say Japanese Adventures would probably be the most popular in the west currently, but after that you could create other focused RPGs such as something on China Adventures or the Middle Kingdom Adventures (or some other such things).

Same as with the Japanese adventures, get a Chinese Professor of Chinese History to help write it and focus it correctly.

PS: I actually created the 5e Old School and Oriental Adventures on DMs guild.  Little known trivia fact, one of the individuals that helped me put it together is a HUGE fan of AD&D Oriental Adventures...that individual is actually also Japanese.  He absolutely loves OA as one of his favorite AD&D additions.  

He didn't care for the 3e version though, and doesn't play the legend of five rings games...not sure if that's because it's not something he's interested in or any other reason.


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## SMHWorlds (Mar 12, 2018)

The *Journey to *series has been a great project (and its not done! I promise). I have learned a great deal and hopefully others have been interested, The idea is for it to fire imaginations.  They have not been perfect, but I do my best. And I think that we are headed in a better direction as a whole, the hobby and industry and society, than we have but we obviously still have a long way to go. 

Cool article. I personally feel like it is time for a game or setting that visits other cultures in a more authentic way.


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## Cergorach (Mar 12, 2018)

Antal MolnÃ¡r said:


> I understand your point. BUT I will never will accept is as an excuse.
> 
> 1. It is a max 10 minute research in google that a jambiya is a slashing weapon, not a piercing weapan. In and old school libry it is 30 minutes extra while you drive there.
> 2. Why can be Tales of the Caliphate Nights or GURPS Arabian Nights or Mythic Constantinople (Christian/Islamic setting) correct?
> ...




Whoopie, a mistake on a weapon in a D&D book! That's not unique to the jambiya... ;-) Anyone who's wielded a knife before or done something with knifes in self defense classes knows that even a normal knife isn't just a piercing weapon, but often a slashing weapon as well. When you look at the jambiya, you know that the off balance point is going to be a pain to pierce with, it can happen, but not it's primary function. Honestly, no biggy imho. Lazy, sure, but not a biggy.

As for Tales of the Caliphate Nights or GURPS Arabian Nights or Mythic Constantinople... A Christian/Islamic setting has no place in Faerun for one. Second, Gurps often does very good historic fantasy settings, Al-Quadim is NOT a historic fantasy setting, it's a purely fantasy setting with some cultural references... The same goes for the other two.

Why don't I hear outrage that Dwarves and Medusae are tossed together in the same setting like some kind of melting pot!?!? Because one comes from Nordic mythology and the other comes from Greek mythology, completely different cultures... We accept this, we don't make any negative associations with the different cultures from where we pull the fantasy content.

What people seem to forget is that we are different, often the difference with our neighbors can already be large. What about cultures on the other side of the world? The Japanese and Chinese also give their own meaning to western cultures in fantasy (or even reality). Look at westerners in Chinese, Taiwanese or Japanese TV, movies, comics or Anime. And if you watch a lot of Anime, you'll not only notice that there's a huge difference in pacing and story in Chinese and Japanese anime, even if it's dubbed in another language. The same is true for UK vs. Nordic. vs. French storytelling. And when the Dutch are represented in Anime/movie, they are exaggerated in what we are/were. I don't find that offensive, I find that comical.

Now, what I do find offensive is that when you ask an average American where the Netherlands is located, they don't know. When asked where Amsterdam is, some think of New York others only know it as the modern babylon where drugs and prostitution are legal...


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## RotGrub (Mar 12, 2018)

There is already a game for this on the app store, it's called the WP 5000. 

You take a picture of yourself and then, merely by analyzing the color of your skin, it tells you how guilty you are for all problems, across all times and places. You can configure it to monitor your social media accounts, and have it automatically reduce your guilt level each time you virtue signal. And if that isn't enough, there is a chance you can win general absolution for an entire week by writing a blog/ article. 

My hope is that they eventually find a way to read and modify our thoughts automatically. Our brains could then be updated with new word definitions (as prescribed by the PC magisterium) in real time.


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## Deset Gled (Mar 12, 2018)

Feel free to change the name if you must, but the OA setting is fine.  It's a representation of a style of fantasy, not a representation of reality.  I don't get upset when the Caribbean pirate cosplayers shout "huzzah" to the unicorns at the renaissance faire, either.

I would be more concerned if someone could show serious, systematic examples of the OA books being used to promote racist behavior.  If the biggest controversy you can find is that someone was offended by white people shouting "banzai", I'm going to have to consider that the people complaining might be more prejudiced.


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## Deset Gled (Mar 12, 2018)

I couldn't help but notice that after my last post, the thread right below this thread was this one:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?623152-When-Fantasy-meets-Medieval-Europe

Literally, taking the exact map of Medieval Europe and overlaying it with D+D fantasy.  Working in the Dwarf kingdoms alongside real monarchies, deciding how magic relates to the Christian church, and explaining how North America is actually Elven territory.  This is just one way that we deal with "Western" culture.  Everyone has fun, no one is offended, and there's an understanding of what it means to indulge in fantasy.  There's nothing wrong with treating "Eastern" culture the same way.  The amount of actual history in any fantasy setting can vary, but as long as that history is treated respectfully there's no reason to pretend it's so sacred that it can't be played with a little.


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## zeldafan42 (Mar 12, 2018)

I’m going to second what kenmarable said. It’s not about accuracy, it’s about being respectful. It’s about not treating non-European cultures as “exotic wonders” to gape at and repeating the same old offensive tropes.

So the real problem with an “Oriental Adventures” book isn’t that it’s inaccurate. The problem is that it from the start, it mashes together several distinct cultures together as one and very much only focuses on the broad strokes details. The problem is that the term oriental is rooted in a racist and imperialist way of seeing the world.

So what we need isn’t an Oriental Adventures book. If you want samurai and ninja that’s fine, but put them in a product with other material from Japan and only Japan. Or you mix everything together. Just like how the monk is a core class and the samurai is in Xanathar’s, you treat the non-European material as a normal part of the setting blended in with the European stuff. You don’t present your setting as “Here’s the normal European inspired fantasy and over there is the exotic and special other cultures.”


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 12, 2018)

Yes, I agree with you what you wrote about the weapons.

However I don't like Forgotten Realms too much. ;-)
I like only Al-Qadim and Karatur and I never wanted to run a story outside these areas.


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## Dungeonosophy (Mar 12, 2018)

*D&D Cultural Adventures books*

Back when 5E was first announced, I proposed ditching the catch-all "Oriental Adventures" and issuing a series of slimmer "culture books" which depicts key Real World human cultures through the lense of D&D. Split it up into seven books, or seven chapters in a "D&D Asian Adventures" book:


Zipangu/Nippon/Rising Sun/Sengoku/Japanese Adventures
Cathay/Middle Kingdom/Wuxia/Chinese Adventures
Morning Calm/Korean Adventures
Great Khan/Mongolian/Central Asian Adventures
Golden Land/Suvarnabhumi/Southeast Asian Adventures
Roof of the World/Himalayan Adventures (Tibetan and Nepalese)
Jambudvipa/Rose Apple/Subcontinental/Indian/South Asian Adventures

For each culture, leverage all of the quasi-Asian settings of the D&D Multiverse. Present them as "Campaign Models".

Japanese campaign models:


Kozakura and Wa in Toril
In Mystara: Empire of Myoshima on Mystara's invisible moon of Patera; also Yasuko barbarians of the Jungle Coast, and the rakastas of the Yazak Steppes in the Savage Coast
Nippon/Ryuujin of Oerth
Rokushima Taiyoo in Ravenloft

Chinese campaign models:



Shou Lung and T'u Lung in Toril
I'Cath in Ravenloft
Ochalea in Mystara
Celestial Imperium/Shaofeng/Sufang of Oerth

Korean campaign models:


Koryo in Toril
Nippon _Dominion_ in Oerth

Mongolian (and Central Asian) Adventures campaign models:


In Toril: the Horse Plains; also Murghôm (said by Rich Baker to be partly evocative of the Cossacks/Turanians of the Conan stories)
In Mystara: the Ethengar Khanates, Yellow Orcs, and hobgoblins of Hobgobliny; also Jennites (Scythians) of Mystara's Skothar continent and in the Hollow World
In Oerth: Tiger Nomads and Wolf Nomads
In Krynn: The Khanate of Khur in Ansalon; and on the continent of Taladas: the Uigan, Purgi, Pureshk, Kazar (quasi-Kazakh), and Alan-Atu (quasi-Buryat) tribes, and the Tamire Elves

Southeast Asian campaign models:


On the invisible moon of Patera of the World of Mystara: Selimpore (Singapore), Malaycalog (Philippines), Kompor-Thap (Cambodia), Surabayang (Malay)
Malatra, the Island Kingdoms, and other lands in the south of Kara-Tur of the Forgotten Realms

Himalayan campaign models:


Tabot (Tibet) and Ra-Khati (Nepal) in Toril
In Mystara: Lhamsa in the Principalities of Glantri, and the Snow Pardasta catfolk

Indian campaign models:


Sind, Jaibul, and Glantri's principality of Krondahar in Mystara; Rajahstan on the invisible moon of Patera; Shajapur in Hollow World
Utter East of Forgotten Realms
Zindia/Zahind of Oerth
Sri Raji in Ravenloft
3e Mahasarpa campaign

Also include the "D&D Earth" Campaign Models; in other words, those cultures as they exist in the Gothic Earth setting of Masque of the Red Death, and the Earth-based d20 Modern campaign models, such as Urban Arcana, the homeworld of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian pantheons of Toril, of the Averoignians of Mystara, and the place where the Wizards Three visit Ed Greenwood.

If Forgotten Realms "must" be the central focus, then the books could even be titled: "Shou Chiang Adventures" (Chinese), "Han Adventures" (Japanese-Korean), "Malatran Adventures" (S.E. Asian), etc. (As long as the examples from Ravenloft, Oerth, Mystara, etc. aren't left out.)

And do the same for the other Real World cultures which have served as models in the D&D Multiverse. For example:

Arab (and Islamic Persian and Ottoman) campaign models:


In Toril: Zakhara, Calimshan, and the Bedine of the Anauroch Desert
Mystara's Emirates of Ylaruam, the Desert Nomads (quasi-Afghan), the _Great Hagiarchy of Huyule _(quasi-Ottoman Turkish, but the illustration of the Master in the Desert Nomads module appears to be evocative of the Ayatollah), and Huyule's colony of Bogdashkan on the Jungle Coast; also gnolls of Gnollistan, lead by N*i*z*a*m Pasha (N*a*z*i*m Pasha was Chief of Staff of the army of the Ottoman Empire, and “pasha” is an Ottoman title)
Phazaria in the Amber Wastes of Ravenloft
Land of Arir in the stand-alone 1e adventure _I9: Day of Al-Akbar_
Desert of Desolation, stand-alone 1e adventure trilogy, later placed in Faerun's Plains of Purple Dust; Also, GAZ2 suggested placement in Mystara's Ylaruam
Khinasi of Birthright setting
Bakluni peoples of Greyhawk

I broke down the rest of the human cultures here: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/culture-books

As a baby step toward that, I recently saw that _Xanathar's Guide to Everything_ included a list of names for human PCs, broken down into various Real World earth languages or language families. Which is good. Not all jumbled up together.

Human Names:

Arabic
Celtic
Chinese
Egyptian
English
French
German
Greek
Indian
Japanese
Mesoamerican
Niger–Congo
Norse
Polynesian
Roman
Slavic
Spanish


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## Deset Gled (Mar 12, 2018)

I'm going to reorder your post a little here...



zeldafan42 said:


> The problem is that the term oriental is rooted in a racist and imperialist way of seeing the world




I generally agree that this is a problem.  There are a couple of different solutions, but it definitely a problem.



> The problem is that it from the start, it mashes together several distinct cultures together as one and very much only focuses on the broad strokes details.




I don't really think this is a problem.  It pretty much describes all historical fantasy games I've ever played.  Give someone a big sandbox with rough tools, let them fill in the detail work they like.


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## Skepticultist (Mar 12, 2018)

If you're just find with plundering Irish, Scandinavian, Greek, and other European cultures history and myth for fodder for your role-playing games, then why should Asian cultures and history be treated any differently?  This right here is why this entire line of argument just pisses me right off.  It's handwringing nonsense motivated by white guilt.

I'm not Scandinavian, therefore I should not use Vikings in my game, right?  No?  Well, then, why is orientalism an issue, but scandinavianism isn't an issue?  It's dumb.


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## pming (Mar 12, 2018)

Hiya!



zeldafan42 said:


> So the real problem with an “Oriental Adventures” book isn’t that it’s inaccurate. The problem is that it from the start, it mashes together several distinct cultures together as one and very much only focuses on the broad strokes details. The problem is that the term oriental is rooted in a racist and imperialist way of seeing the world.




Er...nope? I mean, maybe to *you* the term oriental is racist/bad...but it's not to me (or probably a lot of other folk). "Oriental" just means "someone from the area of the world categorized as 'The Orient'". How anyone can see this as racist/bad is just...weird. Its the same as calling Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, etc "Westerners". "Westerners" just means "people who live in the West, as related to Europe". Being called a westerner isn't a racial slur.



			
				zeldafan42 said:
			
		

> So what we need isn’t an Oriental Adventures book. If you want samurai and ninja that’s fine, but put them in a product with other material from Japan and only Japan. Or you mix everything together. Just like how the monk is a core class and the samurai is in Xanathar’s, you treat the non-European material as a normal part of the setting blended in with the European stuff. You don’t present your setting as “Here’s the normal European inspired fantasy and over there is the exotic and special other cultures.”




It's not about what "is needed"...it's about "what would be cool to play make-believe in". Give me inaccurate fluff with wildly inaccurate coolness over perfectly accurate information that would suck to play as/in. 

I'd love to see Oriental Adventures 1e translated into 5e terms! One of my most memorable campaigns was in OA 1e...it had self sacrifice, demonic offspring, a gargantuan preying mantis, court intrigue, ninjas, wave men, a deposed daimyo, and a rather large and bold group of barbarians who manage to "steal an _entire town!_" (well, any/all valuables in it anyway). I'd bet that most of that would never have happened if OA was "more respectful of cultures and more historically accurate".  You can keep that type of game...I'll take a supposedly "offensive and racist oriental fantasy setting that is fun as hell" over that any day of the week! 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## arjomanes (Mar 12, 2018)

There's a lot to unpack here, and probably too much for a super constructive conversation. Just for starters we're talking about racism, colonialism, cultural appropriation of myth. Then we bring in the "kitchen sink" approach to setting design that these big publishers always create. How are we supposed to solve all this at once? No one will even agree on what's a problem, let alone a solution. 

My favorite non-western settings are: Qelong and Yoon Sui precisely because they don't attempt to create a kitchen sink setting. I also enjoy the Red Tide book that creates an interesting amalgam of eastern and western tropes in a specific place.


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## Plageman (Mar 12, 2018)

I'm not sure I want to be educated in real world pan-pacifican cultures when playing in a fictional fantasy universe who already trample the real world European countries and cultures for 4 decades now.

I mean how many times have I read misspelled French or German terms ? Have I asked for reparations ? No but I suggested to the authors to submit their work or part of it to native speakers to correct it.

The same goes here. The fictional world of Kara-Tur mashes some cultures but so do other lands in the Forgotten Realms setting or Mystara or Birthright. It shouldn't be an issue unless some content is offensive.

When you play in Conan's Hyboria you know it will follow some stereotype who are very different from real earth.

Even Japanese authors do not respect cultures they draw from. I mean Knights of the Zodiac Greece isn't what Greece was in the 1980s nor is their representation of US government or of European countries. Most of the time they use aspects who work well for their stories.

So while I wouldn't want a 'generic' Oriental Adventures, I would pay for a campaign/setting book dealing with a story set in the Kara-Tur lands and focusing on native characters rather than importing PCs from the Sword Coast.


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## Cergorach (Mar 12, 2018)

Antal MolnÃ¡r said:


> The problem is that Al-Qadim's authors as same superficial about 1001 nights (not about islamic world) as Cergorach in searching  harissa.  A good example for this superficiality.
> 
> "More than a fifth of respondents said Agrabah — the fictional city from  “Aladdin” — is a real part of the Arab world. An even higher proportion —  38 percent — would be happy with a US travel ban on citizens of Agrabah  should they be proven a threat."
> 
> Source: http://www.arabnews.com/node/1093246/middle-east




Give me a bit more credit then that, Harissa is an actual dish people eat (Armenian/Turkish dish). Arabian Nights didn't just happen in current Arabia, it happened in the Persian Empire of antiquity, Armenia was known then as Persian Armenia. So, I don't know how Harissa was referenced, as a dish or as a saus (do you have a publication and page number for me). But I could understand referencing the dish in something like Al-Quadim, the Persian Empire was quite big at it's height:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Empire#/media/File:Map_of_the_Achaemenid_Empire.jpg

Also, Harissa (Saus) contains a component that only became available between 1500-1600 in the Persian Empire, imho a bit after the 1001 Nights setting. But this is just pushing the details around, most people forget or don't know that the potato was actually introduced into Europe AFTER the middle ages... Hell, we had gunpowder before potatoes...

As I understand it, a 1001 Nights is not well viewed in (current) Arabic society. So if people use those tales as a basis for a fantasy setting, I don't know how you can do that without offending someone... But you can't be respectful to everyone all at the same time. That's impossible, too many opposing views!

Kara-tur and Al-Quadim still had that 'something' that made you want to play in them exclusively, sure they weren't perfect for you (or me), but can you understand that most people actually don't want culturally accurate settings? As I said earlier, they want 'exotic', not 'alien'... And that might sound offensive, it isn't. Most people have quite a lot of difficulty placing themselves in someone else's shoes instead of the perceived fantasy of those shoes, this thread is a perfect example of that.

What I don't get is that everyone is the 'perfect' backseat driver and instead of fixing what's wrong, such as writing or commissioning a work that doesn't have the 'flaws', they rather crusade on social media... I'm pretty sure people would be completely open to criticism aimed at their product and it would be an unmitigated financial success...


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## Warpiglet (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> If you're just find with plundering Irish, Scandinavian, Greek, and other European cultures history and myth for fodder for your role-playing games, then why should Asian cultures and history be treated any differently?  This right here is why this entire line of argument just pisses me right off.  It's handwringing nonsense motivated by white guilt.
> 
> I'm not Scandinavian, therefore I should not use Vikings in my game, right?  No?  Well, then, why is orientalism an issue, but scandinavianism isn't an issue?  It's dumb.





I had a laugh at this.  Do not expect a reasonable explanation.

The game as originally made is predicated on a fantasy version of primarily medieval Europe.  You can say that its not true, but it is.  Chainmail etc. was warfare in this sphere.

We use European gods, various myths and mash it up.  Don't forget comic books, movies, and Tolkien.  So we decide to include MORE made up stuff from more of the world and suddenly we have to walk on eggshells?  

I am happy if more people from more places want to play D&D.  I would love to play with groups from other countries.  But the self righteous judgmental stuff is absurd and strangely one-sided and applied differently across cultures.  

For sh*t sake, call it Asian adventures if you want and still base it on made up fiction distilled less from a museum than a kung fu flick.  Makes little difference to me but I am not going to do a lot of navel gazing about a game with beholders and pointy eared elves.


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 12, 2018)

These conversations remain unrelenting in their inability to recognize that the cultural climate of the late 80's and early 90's brought forth so much effort at creating interesting new settings in nonwestern environments, and that without that effort it might not have paved the way to a more general and worldly assertion of interest in today's culture. 

Now that today's cultural values and respect is broader and more worldly, effort should indeed be made to revisit the rest of the world, both through a culturally respectful lens and also through the equally important mythology, folklore and fantasy that is what we're all really looking for in that adaptation (in D&D, at least).

I know there's a tendency these days to assume that only people of cultural origins can write about those origins, but we really do need to continue to provide a lens on other cultures, even if it is filtrered through (and acknowledged as such) by outsiders with a keen interest and effort at accuracy, because ultimately it's this continued exposure that makes people more culturally aware. Al Qadim, Kara Tur and other settings did that for me as a kid, and there should be a tradition that continues and expands on it today, to insure that we don't accidentally isolate today's kids from other cultures, history (fantatsical or real), non western fantasy and so forth simply because we think that it's appropriation to have an interest and to express it through games and writing. We all benefit from embracing the broader swathe of cultural fantasticism in gaming, and it makes us better for doing so. But we lose if we decide that it's impossible for us to somehow seek out and learn about other cultures, or to express that interest in writing and gaming.


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

jbear said:


> Yeah! I'm so sick of those gamers making ficticious, exotic figures for their ficticious exotic imaginary worlds without a properly culturally nuanced and propery politically correct vetted culturally appropriate character check! I met this gamer once who made a ninja character based on this movie they'd seen 'Flying Dragon Leaping Tiger' and they hadn't even done any proper research or anything! They said they did it because they thought ninjas were epic! So racist! And that Tomb of Annihilation with its text book Orientalism should basically be thrown onto a politically incorrect bonfire and burned! Jungles are so racist too!




Check the site rules before you post again in this thread, please.


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

A lot of responses appear to be "Yes but what about Y and Z?" as a way to stifle discussion about X. "Oriental? What about the Vikings?" (known as the "Vikings Are People Too" fallacy; I can't take credit for that) -- the simple answer to that is "Sure! Them too. But_ today _we're writing about "Oriental Adventures"; last week it was Africa. We're not going to cover every culture on earth, but we're touching on a couple."

I'd like to reiterate that if seeing an opinion you disagree with throws you into an apoplexy of rage, the internet might not be the safest place for you. Debate *civilly* and *politely*, please. Generally, these threads have gone fairly well until they turn a corner. You don't have to agree, but don't throw a tantrum.


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## Jacob Lewis (Mar 12, 2018)

"Two things I can't stand are racism and the Dutch!" - Michael Caine's character in one of those Austin Powers movies.


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## Cergorach (Mar 12, 2018)

Jacob Lewis said:


> "Two things I can't stand are racism and the Dutch!" - Michael Caine's character in one of those Austin Powers movies.




When you quote a movie, quote it correctly! So that everyone can bake in it's glorious contrariety... ;-)

 [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: The article isn't discussing ANY particular culture, that would be great content! But your doing now what we all don't like saying that Africa or the Orient is a culture, it isn't. It's a collection of cultures. Instead of authors raving against things that are wrong with RPG products, why not show them how it's done?


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 12, 2018)

Cergorach said:


> When you quote a movie, quote it correctly! So that everyone can bake in it's glorious contrariety... ;-)
> 
> [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: The article isn't discussing ANY particular culture, that would be great content! But your doing now what we all don't like saying that Africa or the Orient is a culture, it isn't. It's a collection of cultures. Instead of authors raving against things that are wrong with RPG products, why not show them how it's done?




Imagine if for a moment we all agree that the Oriental Adventures book should go the way of the dodo. Now imagine an elaborate campaign setting based entirely on Korean folklore, mythology and focused through a mytho-historical lens. Or imagine a fantasy setting that is based entirely on contemporary Chinese interests in how to interpret the fantastical (which is often centered on historical recreation with an emphasis on the reality of the mythic elements). 

We have a lot of range here to create highly nuanced and very focused settings that draw from very specific cultures and histories. I think everyone would benefit from this.


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

Cergorach said:


> Instead of authors raving against things that are wrong with RPG products, why not show them how it's done?




What by writing a book? Maybe I will write a regionally themed book for WOIN at some point, but the slate is pretty full right now.


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## stargazera5 (Mar 12, 2018)

> Game designers -- who were often admitted fans of Asian cultures -- sought to introduce a new kind of fantasy into traditional Western tropes. Viewed through a modern lens, their approach would likely be different today. "





Really?  Tell that to John Wick Presents who just had a very successful Kickstarter, 7th Sea Khitai, that did the exact same approach as Oriental Adventures.  From the KS:




> As a Khitai Hero, you might...
> 
> 
> *Save the Daimyo* of the White Fox Clan from assassination!
> ...




Yes, they did add some further expansion books related to specific cultures as stretch goals, but the fact remains that it is based on what is effectively Oriental Adventures for 7th Sea.


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## Celebrim (Mar 12, 2018)

I feel I should note we are unlikely to get an 'Occidental Adventures' with any sort of respectful and earnest treatment of the complexity of Western culture as well.   If you are looking for a respectful treatment of the cultural differences in Scandinavian, Germanic, Sarmatian, Gaelic, and Mediterranean cultures, and how they differed artistically and culturally and developed through the middle ages, don't expect to find those distinctions in any published 5e D&D handbook either.  Instead, what you are going to find is a very loose mish-mash of those cultures thrown together haphazardly with a bunch of other ideas.   

Fortunately, I think most people from say Japan, China, the Philippians, Korea, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Nepal, France or the United States aren't going to be looking to the 5e D&D handbook or anything in it as an accurate and respectful representation of Western culture at any point in time or space.

I can't ever recall feeling any differently about the 1e AD&D rulebook 'Oriental Adventures'.  

One sure fire way to stifle discussion about something is claim that any discussion of it is racist. 

Isn't the fact that we are treating non-Western cultures as different than Western cultures and requiring different standards more literally "othering" than treating them as the same?  That word "othering" is getting kicked around a lot, but if not othering obviously creates a mish-mash of cultures  - elves with katanas hold tea ceremonies, for example, to say nothing of a Dickensonian thieves guild running a town built around a thriving Edwardian castle with a King in early modern Gothic platemail but served by 10th century soldiery - and othering creates a mish-mash of cultures, what doesn't create a mish-mash of cultures and from the mish-mash of cultures how could we work back to know whether othering was the motive or not to know whether to condemn it.

And if both othering and not-othering produces the same result, can't we just apply Occam's razor and use a simpler model that explains the results without appealing to othering at all?


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> One sure fire way to stifle discussion about something is claim that any discussion of it is racist.




Let's hope that nobody does that, then. We're looking safe so far!


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## AriochQ (Mar 12, 2018)

To what extent is it reasonable to expect game setting to accurately reflect the real world material upon which they are based?

In reading the above comments, I was struck by the thought that a European could make many of the same arguments about the original source material.  Celts and Norse could be upset about the interpretation of the barbarian.  French could be disgusted about the implementation of the cavalier. Religious orders are not accurately reflected. The feudal system is lacking many important aspects. etc.

Granted, Oriental Adventures took the blender approach to new levels, but the original settings were also a horrible mishmash of (generally) European cultures that became know as 'fantasy'.  The use of the term 'oriental' is probably in poor taste by current standards, but at the time of publication it didn't have as much as a negative connotation.  Not saying it was right to use it, just that it is far too easy to sit on our 2018 thrones and pass judgement on 1985.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 12, 2018)

Deset Gled said:


> I'm going to reorder your post a little here...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The missed point here, is that European cultures don’t get plugged in as obvious “here’s the Europe guys” with clear correlaries to RL cultures, but presented as one homogenous thing. No one complains about seeing Oni in Waterdeep for the same reason no one complains about Dwarves fighting Gorgons alongside Hobbits. 

The other part of the problem, and another key difference, si that this mismash of “oriental” elements is still presented as the distant and exotic Other.


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## Skepticultist (Mar 12, 2018)

Morrus said:


> A lot of responses appear to be "Yes but what about Y and Z?" as a way to stifle discussion about X. "Oriental? What about the Vikings?" (known as the "Vikings Are People Too" fallacy; I can't take credit for that) -- the simple answer to that is "Sure! Them too. But_ today _we're writing about "Oriental Adventures"; last week it was Africa. We're not going to cover every culture on earth, but we're touching on a couple."




The Vikings Are People Too Fallacy?  There is no such thing.  No such fallacy exists.  What there is however is the principle of moral universalism.

To quote Wikipedia:  "Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism or universal morality) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", *regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature.* Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism." (emphasis added)

And let's be clear:  This is an argument about morality. talien, the OP, suggests -- in a very mealy-mouthed, passive way -- that orientalism is a moral hazard to be avoided.  It's bad, it's wrong, it's something you shouldn't do -- these are all evidence we are dealing with a moral claim.  Essentially talien and those who support his position are asserting a moral claim:  "Orientalism is a moral hazard."

If picking a bunch of random elements from Asian cultures and using them to build a generic Asian setting is a moral hazard, then picking a bunch of random elements from European cultures and using them to build a generic European setting must also be a moral hazard -- unless you are willing to make the claim that Asians and Europeans are of differing moral value, and specifically that Europeans are of _lesser moral worth than Asians_.  Hilariously, it's the people making this extremely racist claim who are running around accusing everyone else of racism.

If _Oriental Adventures_ is problematically racist, then *ALL* of _Dungeons & Dragons_ is problematically racist.  The generic European setting presumed in the base rules of D&D is not different in any meaningful way than the generic Asian setting presumed in the _Oriental Adventures_ rules.

You cannot argue that it is acceptable to raid one broad cultural group (Europeans) for RPG tropes and then turn around and claim it is unacceptable to raid a different broad cultural group (Asian) for RPG tropes without provoking the question: what makes the first group different from the latter group.

Now, the obvious answer would be "colonialism" or "imperialism" or some other trendy buzzword, but there's a HUGE problem there:

Norway has never colonized another country.  Japan and China are both imperialist powers who have either colonized other countries or at least attempted to and failed.

So why is it acceptable for me, an American of Scottish and Italian ancestry, to raid noncolonial, nonimperialist Scandinavian culture, myth and legend for RPG tropes (for example, the Barbarian class with its berserker rage is *clearly* rooted in Scandinavian lore), but not acceptable to do the same thing to China and Japan, both of whom have long histories of colonialism and imperialism?

Clearly, it's not imperialism or colonialism that makes it acceptable or unacceptable.  So what is it then?


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## Warpiglet (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> The Vikings Are People Too Fallacy?  There is no such thing.  No such fallacy exists.  What there is however is the principle of moral universalism.
> 
> To quote Wikipedia:  "Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism or universal morality) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature. Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism."
> 
> ...




Waiting for a response to these points.  Should be entertaining!  

I am all for respect.  I am just a little weirded out by imperatives directed at only one or two continents/regions.

Indeed, we are talking about using greatly distilled and characterized/fictionalized material in the first place!  What's next?  Taking offense because some fair skinned northern European analogue worships Zeus instead of the God of the Bible?!  And then we turn around and blush because we are not being accurate in representing pretend Asian analogues? 

I never took any of these things to map too closely to reality at all.  I assumed we were making our own Conan or our own Elrics or King Arthurs and running with it.  You know, fantasy?


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## Eltab (Mar 12, 2018)

Finding some Japanese / Chinese / Korean / &c professor(s) who want to contribute and review a D&D Far East Sourcebook would be a cool idea - adds authenticity and avoids the really silly inaccurate stuff.  
Plus you get to learn new things.  (Always a good reason to buy the book even if you don't play the game.)

When Green Ronin released _Testament_ (Biblical background D&D), the Christians did NOT lose their heads or automatically think we were being mocked / belittled.

Some of the argument above can be boiled down to this: _*You're not allowed to have any fun!*  Because I can't tell the difference between 'having fun' and 'making fun'!_


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## Warpiglet (Mar 12, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> The missed point here, is that European cultures don’t get plugged in as obvious “here’s the Europe guys” with clear correlaries to RL cultures, but presented as one homogenous thing. No one complains about seeing Oni in Waterdeep for the same reason no one complains about Dwarves fighting Gorgons alongside Hobbits.
> 
> The other part of the problem, and another key difference, si that this mismash of “oriental” elements is still presented as the distant and exotic Other.




Respectfully, I think this is about point of origin.  The game was made in the west and was based on a group of fantasies by primarily western authors.  The designation points out that the content differs from the baseline assumption.

In this respect its like letting you know you are playing dark sun or planescape which also differs from the baseline assumption.  They are not inferior per se, but rather different than the baseline assumption.

In the past, most people thought about D&D as relating to knights and dragons with some offshoots.  If it is really an issue I suppose people can rename supplements or whatever.  I just find it odd that a product should be vilified for having a natural origin.


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## Eltab (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> Norway has never colonized another country.



The Vikings would like to say Hello.
Various islands in the North Atlantic, Iceland, Greenland (colony failed), raids all over Scotland and Ireland with subsequent settlements.  The Danelaw (half of England) was Norwegians and Danes taking over the Angles' and Saxons' territory.

But the important difference is: unlike modern anti-West social critics, the English and French and Sicilians and so on ... got over it.  They went on with life.  They didn't fixate on the tough times when Fate and those Others were regularly kicking them in the shins.  Thomas Sowell discusses this at greater length in _History and Culture_, which I recommend to all.


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## Tranquilis (Mar 12, 2018)

Personally I’d like to thank the authors of Oriental Adventures.  Before I got that book as a teen, I didn’t particularly know a thing about Asian  culture other than the “ninja/martial arts craze” in the US in the 1980s.  Eventually, I took the history of China and history of the Far East (actual names of the courses) in college.

Even before then, I realized while doing my own research spawned by my interest in OA that the book was a hodgepodge of different Asian cultures.  However, without it I may have had no exposure at all.

Too bad these posts (?; they are almost always too biased in one direction to be articles) aren’t more objective.  I mean, the quote above about diversity is about as shallow as it gets, but it’s used to bolster the obvious opinion of the author.


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## Gradine (Mar 12, 2018)

We literally just got another thread shut down about the historical and continued impact on colonization, about how colonized people have had their voice and their stories and their narratives stripped and stolen from them, and how that is why there is a difference between a bunch of ignorant white dudes writing about a cultural pastiche of Africa/Asia they know only from media and stereotypes and a bunch of ignorant white dudes writing about a cultural pastiche of Vikings they know only from media and stereotypes. Vikings never had their ability to tell their own stories taken from them; they simply eventually traded their weapons and (non-horned) helmets in for skis and socialized medicine. 

Yes, ideally we should just "treat everyone the same" but saying that ignores the very basic fact that our world has never and still does not operate that way, and shutting your ears & eyes and pretending that it does only perpetuates inequities and injustices, rather than reversing them.


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## AmerginLiath (Mar 12, 2018)

The problem of using Said as the expert on “Oriental” is that his 1978 work was a Marxist-Postmodernist polemic that 99% of folks arguing against the use of the term in gaming materials has never read, and Said himself is a notorious pan-Arabist and terrorist-apologist anti-Semite and Holocaust-denialist. That doesn’t mean that the use of the word Oriental isn’t problematic, but that the academic defense of Said as the expert on why; his work on the West in that book has been deconstructed and lambasted for nearly forty years as being as poorly rendered as the image of the East that he argues against. I’d suggest writers such as John Dower as better sources on East-West counter-myths.

What we overlook, and what many here have alluded strongly too, is that D&D is itself an “Occidental Adventures” game that takes the Napoleonic and Old West gaming of Chainmail and Boot Hill and adds a veneer of European myth and English/Anglo-American fantasy stories: Tolkien, Howard, Lieber, Anderson, Dunsany, Hammer Horror, Bullfinch, etc. There’s no historical politics or social structure (the wilderness modeling the game is Old West in Armor, not actual feudalism) and the religion at play matches no period in historical Christendom. Yet we somehow accept an illusion of historicity and make arguments about armor weight and the like.

I actually think that the answer isn’t to have an “Oriental Adventures” any more than to call out the artifice of the current Appendix N Greyhawk skin of D&D. Rather, I like how the game throws Kung-fu-style monks in with Hammer Horror vampire-turning clerics and has a samurai fighter next to cavalier fighter (one named for a Japanese model, one named for a French model, both actually modeled on the movies that Americans make about noble warriors across oceans). If we already have elves running around with dwarves and Dragonborn, we can kitchen sink the rest of it.


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> The Vikings Are People Too Fallacy?  There is no such thing.  No such fallacy exists.




Yes. It's a joke.


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## stargazera5 (Mar 12, 2018)

Gradine said:


> We literally just got another thread shut down about the historical and continued impact on colonization, about how colonized people have had their voice and their stories and their narratives stripped and stolen from them, and how that is why there is a difference between a bunch of ignorant white dudes writing about a cultural pastiche of Africa/Asia they know only from media and stereotypes and a bunch of ignorant white dudes writing about a cultural pastiche of Vikings they know only from media and stereotypes. Vikings never had their ability to tell their own stories taken from them; they simply eventually traded their weapons and (non-horned) helmets in for skis and socialized medicine.
> 
> Yes, ideally we should just "treat everyone the same" but saying that ignores the very basic fact that our world has never and still does not operate that way, and shutting your ears & eyes and pretending that it does only perpetuates inequities and injustices, rather than reversing them.




Anybody who has an issue with "...colonized people have had their voice and their stories and the narratives stripped and stolen from them..." should give up speaking English as laterally the vast majority of every syllable, construct, and concept in it was stolen from another culture.  Or give up their hypocrisy about cultural assimilation in merging cultures as they mesh over time.  

Personally I'm tired of hearing that borrowing and assimilating from other cultures is 'disrespecting' them when it's been the human norm and a major way to improve all cultures for 10s of thousands of years.  If anything, we've improved on the template by doing so peacefully.


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## Skepticultist (Mar 12, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Vikings never had their ability to tell their own stories taken from them; they simply eventually traded their weapons and (non-horned) helmets in for skis and socialized medicine.




Okay, see, now this is an utterly ridiculous statement.  Because the clear implication of this statement is that Asians have had their ability to tell their own stories taken from them, but that's such a clearly asinine statement that one wonders if you put literally _any_ thought into what you were saying before you hit Post.  You might have a point if we were talking about African-Americans, but treating Asians in Asia as identical to African-Americans is completely ludicrous.

I mean, quite literally, the main impetus for Asian-themed adventures is *Asian cinema*.  The reason people want to play as Samurai is because of the films of Akira Kurosawa and Japanese manga like _Lone Wolf and Cub_ -- i.e. products of Japanese culture.  Stories about Japan told by Japanese authors.

The notion that the Japanese have been stripped of their ability to tell their own stories is just so completely at odds with *incredibly obvious* facts that it staggers the imagination to wonder how you thought you'd get away with such a completely baseless, nonsensical and surreal argument.     

Likewise, if the Chinese have been denied the ability to tell their own stories, then the only one doing that denying is the Communist Party of China and its various ministries of thought control.  In Hong Kong (hilariously, the part of China that _was_ colonized), where there aren't the same restrictions and limitations, Chinese filmmakers have been telling their own stories for several decades. I mean the Shaw Brothers, who are indeed Chinese, have more or less defined the entire genre of Wuxia.  And that is what people are intrested in playing. 



> Yes, ideally we should just "treat everyone the same" but saying that ignores the very basic fact that our world has never and still does not operate that way, and shutting your ears & eyes and pretending that it does only perpetuates inequities and injustices, rather than reversing them.




Please, do elaborate.  Precisely what "inequities and injustices" are being perpetuated by people engaging in role-playing games that play around with Asian tropes?


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## Gradine (Mar 12, 2018)

stargazera5 said:


> Anybody who has an issue with "...colonized people have had their voice and their stories and the narratives stripped and stolen from them..." should give up speaking English as laterally the vast majority of every syllable, construct, and concept in it was stolen from another culture.  Or give up their hypocrisy about cultural assimilation in merging cultures as they mesh over time.
> 
> Personally I'm tired of hearing that borrowing and assimilating from other cultures is 'disrespecting' them when it's been the human norm and a major way to improve all cultures for 10s of thousands of years.  If anything, we've improved on the template by doing so peacefully.




There is a difference between "merging cultures as they mesh over time" and "deliberately destroying cultures in order to exploit their people and their resources".


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## jbear (Mar 12, 2018)

Pretty sure I'm not allowed to reply to a moderator comment as one of the site rules but not entirely sure which rule I broke with my first comment. Nevertheless I'll try again with more restraint and without the sarcasm. 

In direct response to the article not the mod comment:

I don't believe that the ideological preaching of the recent articles has any place on this site. I find them both misplaced and condescending. I think people should stay away from the high horses and just enjoy playing the fictional imaginary game we all enjoy so much.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Mar 12, 2018)

If I use the Irish mythology to create my fantasy world, would that be "Hibernophobia"? Is racist the ABC/BBC (2000 year) miniserie "Arabian Nights"? Is Hispanophobia a movie adaptation of a Spanish picaresque novel? Has anybody complained about the background of "Legend of the five rings"? 

Don't forget the manga "Dragon Ball" is (freely) inspired in the classic Chinese tale "Journey to the West", and the famous western movie "the magnificent seven" is a "remake" of "seven samurais" by Akira Kurosawa. 

Creating fantasy fiction based in other civilitations isn't worng, but it may be a key to help to know other cultures.  Using any stereotypes isn't worng, only abusing negative stereotypes. 

* What do you think about the racial traits by the shen from 3.5 Oriental Adventures?


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## bmfrosty (Mar 12, 2018)

What needs to not happen is a book full of harmful stereotypes.

A medieval Asian or Middle-eastern themed adventure certainly could be done, but only with much care.

What would be a more interesting book to me would be an Australia themed adventure.  Put it on a large continent already inhabited but being flooded with prisoners from a far land - most of whom are just trying to get along.  Put villains on both side of the story.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Mar 12, 2018)

If I wanted historically accurate books for a role-playing game, I would never play any of the FANTASY role-playing games.

I want to play a fantasy rpg which uses a fantasy setting. And if that setting uses fantasy races and cultures and classes that resemble those of the real world, that is fine with me. The only thing I ask is for the truly negative stereotypes, from all real world cultures and races, to be left out of the fantasy material. This goes as far as applying them to non-human races as well. And keep the real world names to a minimum. The Realms version is Kara-Tur or Al-Qadim or Maztica, not Japan or China or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Mexico.


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## kenmarable (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> The Vikings Are People Too Fallacy?  There is no such thing.  No such fallacy exists.  What there is however is the principle of moral universalism.
> 
> To quote Wikipedia:  "Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism or universal morality) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", *regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature.* Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism." (emphasis added)




Leaving aside all the little rhetorical tricks (e.g. the article is "mealy-mouthed", colonialism is a "trendy buzzword", etc.) and dealing with your actual argument, you raise some very good points, but you leave out some extremely important factors.

For one thing, this is an overly simplistic view of moral universalism. The majority of ethical theories are based on universal equal consideration, NOT universally equal treatment. As a ridiculous example to illustrate the point, I have no right to a mammogram because I am male, nor to hurricane relief because my home state of Michigan doesn’t get hit with hurricanes, etc. Moral universalism would say that IF we were similarly situated, then we deserve equal consideration (the part of the Wikipedia quote you didn’t bold). However, we are not similarly situated, so we do not deserve equal treatment but we are still given equal consideration.

So, the issue here is whether these various cultures and groups of cultures are similarly situated. As Warpiglet pointed out (making a different point, but still accurate here) is that it is about point of origin. From an primarily English-speaking UK/American perspective that these products have been traditionally produced from, no, there are centuries of history as well as a lot of modern events that situated all of these cultures differently with each other.

Sure, centuries of ethics have tried to view humans as these interchangeable rational creatures springing fully formed from the Earth. Thankfully, late 20th century meta-ethics has been trying to rid us of that absurdity. We are embodied and situated with particular histories. If we grew up in China, we would have a vastly different view of Japan. But, at least in the US with our Mickey Rooney-esque treatment of the Japanese, we have a very different relationship to Japan. Our relationship with many African cultures is vastly different than our relationship with many European ones. To pretend otherwise is absurd.

So, yes, moral universalism makes a very good point that *when similarly situated*, we should treat cultures, etc. in similar ways. But it is not as simplistic as just looking at that other culture's history and completely ignoring the one who is looking. The “similarly situated” needs to take into account _how they are situated to each other_, as well.

Now, what I said above just pertains to Americans (and to varying degrees the British, for example), but you'd ask aren’t fans of D&D from more than the US?

You betcha! They will have different perspectives on much of this, as well as similar perspectives on other things. Beyond being a “trendy buzzword” colonialism has been extremely harmful in the history of the world, and some of my South American friends will probably have a very different perspective on it than I do in the ol’ US of A. Doesn’t make it less important to take into consideration. 

Plus this leads directly to the point made in the article, as well as by myself and other commenters, which isn’t that Oriental Adventures is racist and we should avoid all mentions of East Asian fantasy. That is a straw person that many keep beating up on that no one else is actually defending. What many of us are saying is that going forward, we can do better. Like many others, I loved the OA books. But I also know times change, the demographics of the fans change, and even the original fans themselves mature and change. I would hope how we handle most things matures and changes from how it was handled decades ago.

For one thing rather than relegating “Oriental” adventures to its own separate book – recognize that D&D fans come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have a wide variety of interests, therefore incorporate that material in with everything else (as WotC has been doing to some degree). As the article mentions, having artwork that represents that variety of fans is a great step. Not separating out that content into its own separate book is another. (Don’t even get the AL people started on how that impacts PHB+1!) _That_ is what the author was claiming when they said another OA is unlikely.

Maybe that’s a better way, or maybe it would lead to it getting “blandified” and losing its uniqueness and therefore a separate OA (or even Japanese Adventures, Chinese Adventures, etc.) would be preferred. I don’t know. That would be an interesting topic to consider. Instead we get arguments against the strawperson claims that OA is racist, no one can ever publish East Asian-inspired work, and we can never have any fun. No one is claiming all that, yet many keep trying to argue against it.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 12, 2018)

bmfrosty said:


> What needs to not happen is a book full of harmful stereotypes.
> 
> A medieval Asian or Middle-eastern themed adventure certainly could be done, but only with much care.
> 
> What would be a more interesting book to me would be an Australia themed adventure.  Put it on a large continent already inhabited but being flooded with prisoners from a far land - most of whom are just trying to get along.  Put villains on both side of the story.




THIS.

All this yowling that's going on in both directions is just obnoxious.

What people are asking for isn't difficult.  It's asking the developers to take some time out of their day and actually _read_ the myths of the cultures they're basing their fantasy-land on.  To actually learn about how that culture is different than "Western" American culture and figure out how best to present those differences so an audience who is largely ignorant to them.  

That's all we're asking people to do.  Instead of just going in with "Well X culture has a violent history so they must be violent savages and it's all my imagination anyway so who cares!" or "Their traditions are different and weird so we'll make them completely incomprehensible and strange to the players!"  

This stuff isn't hard guys, and the request is a fairly low bar.  Probably lower than most of the papers I had to write for college, and those weren't being published to millions of readers around the world.  I mean, if you can't do the research on par with a college essay to "get it right", you really oughta shut yer yap about it.


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## Tanin Wulf (Mar 12, 2018)

Eltab said:


> When Green Ronin released _Testament_ (Biblical background D&D), the Christians did NOT lose their heads or automatically think we were being mocked / belittled.




That's because we lost our minds with regards to RPG stuff back in the 80s. (But much like being turned into a newt, overall... we got better.)


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## Gradine (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> Okay, see, now this is an utterly ridiculous statement.  Because the clear implication of this statement is that Asians have had their ability to tell their own stories taken from them, but that's such a clearly asinine statement that one wonders if you put literally _any_ thought into what you were saying before you hit Post.  You might have a point if we were talking about African-Americans, but treating Asians in Asia as identical to African-Americans is completely ludicrous.




I agree that a direct 1:1 comparison was not apt, but to deny that Asians have been exploited by colonial powers is to ignore history. This is especially true when you consider the ways in which Asian-Americans were exploited and dehumanized here in the U.S, between the Age of Railroads and Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese Internment. And yes, there is difference between Asian-Americans and the history of Asians in Asia. But they share a history and a culture, and it's that history and culture that are being exploited and mangled, primarily in the U.S., by such products as "Oriental Adventures" (btw, literally every person of Asian descent I have ever met has considered the term "Oriental" to be a slur).



> I mean, quite literally, the main impetus for Asian-themed adventures is *Asian cinema*.  The reason people want to play as Samurai is because of the films of Akira Kurosawa and Japanese manga like _Lone Wolf and Cub_ -- i.e. products of Japanese culture.  Stories about Japan told by Japanese authors.
> 
> The notion that the Japanese have been stripped of their ability to tell their own stories is just so completely at odds with *incredibly obvious* facts that it staggers the imagination to wonder how you thought you'd get away with such a completely baseless, nonsensical and surreal argument.




Yes, Japan has engaged in a great deal of imperial colonization and subjugation of its own, particularly in China and Korea. And yes, they've had better luck than most in the region of avoiding the ill impacts on colonization on them themselves. And yet, they are the only nation to suffer the impacts of nuclear warfare. And Japanese-Americans are the only non-native population forcefully rounded up, stripped of their possessions and forced into work camps by order of the federal government of the freedom-loving Democracy of the United States since the end of legal slavery.



> Likewise, if the Chinese have been denied the ability to tell their own stories, then the only one doing that denying is the Communist Party of China and its various ministries of thought control.




See above. Also, I take it you have not heard of the Opium Wars.



> Please, do elaborate.  Precisely what "inequities and injustices" are being perpetuated by people engaging in role-playing games that play around with Asian tropes?




Speaking of the swath of Asian-inspired (not Asian-produced) popular culture: conscious and unconscious stereotypes and biases about actual Asian people, who are as diverse between and among themselves as any other group; the complete erasure of non-Eastern Asian cultures from being considered within the category of "Asian", including South-East Asia, Indo-China, and the Near East; the tendency to ridicule the syllables found among a wide variety of Asian languages for comedic effect; Breakfast at Tiffany's; etc.

I'm not saying that non-white people can't engage with or enjoy Asian-produced cultural artifacts; I've done so myself on multiple occasions. But uncritical and ignorant "Asian-inspired" pop culture can absolutely contribute to advancing stereotypes and biases about Asian people. 

Somebody upthread already hit the nail on the head: it's not about being accurate, it's about being respectful. It seems obvious to me that the most respectful thing to do would be to let Asian people write the book on Asian-inspired fantasy and roleplaying.


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## jbear (Mar 12, 2018)

bmfrosty said:


> What needs to not happen is a book full of harmful stereotypes.
> 
> A medieval Asian or Middle-eastern themed adventure certainly could be done, but only with much care.
> 
> What would be a more interesting book to me would be an Australia themed adventure.  Put it on a large continent already inhabited but being flooded with prisoners from a far land - most of whom are just trying to get along.  Put villains on both side of the story.



This comment is actualy kind of hilarious. So you would like an Australian themed adventure that's not full of harmful stereo types ... where the land is being flooded with prisoners who were sent to the island from a far land ... but 'most of whom are just trying to get along'? Umm ... sure, I guess if you want something purely fictional you can do whatever you want. But aren't you at the same time kind of saying that you want more historical accuracy with the 'no harmful stereotypes' part of your comment? 

You are aware of the massive genocide (and all the injustives that went with it) that the australian aborigines have suffered at the hands of the island's colonists, right? 'Cos I'm pretty sure those that arrived were not 'mostly just trying to get along'. 

Maybe I misuderstood something you were trying to say? Because it comes off as though you are virtue signalling on the one hand and then showing your own ignorance on the other.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 12, 2018)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> If I wanted historically accurate books for a role-playing game, I would never play any of the FANTASY role-playing games.
> 
> I want to play a fantasy rpg which uses a fantasy setting. And if that setting uses fantasy races and cultures and classes that resemble those of the real world, that is fine with me. The only thing I ask is for the truly negative stereotypes, from all real world cultures and races, to be left out of the fantasy material. This goes as far as applying them to non-human races as well. And keep the real world names to a minimum. The Realms version is Kara-Tur or Al-Qadim or Maztica, not Japan or China or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Mexico.




I’m only seeing his idea of historical accuracy from people trying to dismiss concerns about the books in question. 

It’s weird. 

The rest of us are trying to have a completely different discussion, that in no way assumes any sort of historical accuracy. 

Of course, when we get into the details, there will always be such debates, whether we’re discussing long words or kusari-gama, but the reason that OA is problematic has nothing to do with historical accuracy. 

Again, no one minds Dwarves and Hobbits given a mission by a disguised Oni tricked into fighting a gorgon in Waterdeep. 

But Waterdeep also isn’t a pastiche of any real world culture, nor is it mixing obvious pastiches into a meaningless hodgepodge with no attempt to build a genuinely new world. 

I don’t understand what is so hard to see about the difference.


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## Cergorach (Mar 12, 2018)

Doctor Futurity said:


> Imagine if for a moment we all agree that the Oriental Adventures book should go the way of the dodo. Now imagine an elaborate campaign setting based entirely on Korean folklore, mythology and focused through a mytho-historical lens. Or imagine a fantasy setting that is based entirely on contemporary Chinese interests in how to interpret the fantastical (which is often centered on historical recreation with an emphasis on the reality of the mythic elements).
> 
> We have a lot of range here to create highly nuanced and very focused settings that draw from very specific cultures and histories. I think everyone would benefit from this.




Yeah, everyone, but the publisher who makes it... Imagine how many copies of Oriental Adventures WotC would sell and how many of a specific Korean based setting of the same size... Yeah, that's why generic books sell much better, a larger audience. Remember that WotC worked on a Wuxia book? They had to give it away and it still didn't reach as large an audience as OA... How many high volume Asian based RPGs and or settings are there, not many. One is L5R and that is a well loved target of the people that wield the 'orientalism' katana.... Most are either a single book or a very small range of low volume items.


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## BMaC (Mar 12, 2018)

Here's a clear documentary that explains Said's work (it's a bit dated but still quite good):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVC8EYd_Z_g


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## Sunseeker (Mar 12, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> The rest of us are trying to have a completely different discussion, that in no way assumes any sort of historical accuracy.




Maybe we should refer to it as "verisimilitude".  I'm curious how many people want granular role-playing rules for medieval knights give two slots about how much "verisimilitude" is in their non-Western games.

Which kinda demonstrates the problem.


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 12, 2018)

Cergorach said:


> Yeah, everyone, but the publisher who makes it... Imagine how many copies of Oriental Adventures WotC would sell and how many of a specific Korean based setting of the same size... Yeah, that's why generic books sell much better, a larger audience. Remember that WotC worked on a Wuxia book? They had to give it away and it still didn't reach as large an audience as OA... How many high volume Asian based RPGs and or settings are there, not many. One is L5R and that is a well loved target of the people that wield the 'orientalism' katana.... Most are either a single book or a very small range of low volume items.




Welcome to RPG publishing in the modern era. I'm not sure if you're arguing a point (which we all agree on) or think it's relevant, but yeah, I happen to thing that the cottage industry of indie, OSR and small press would handle this quite well, and even relish it. So I agree, except I think that's a good thing and your post reads like you might not think so. But if such a sourcebook came up from a 3PP on rpgnow or dmsguild.com, I think it would be well received by those interested in it.

Nothing in my prior post was arguing anything about profitability for WotC. We're way past that right now; WotC provides the core experience, and the rest of us provide the nuanced expression of personal tastes we all want to divulge in or share. That is literally our hobby these days, and that's totally fine.


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## stargazera5 (Mar 12, 2018)

Gradine said:


> There is a difference between "merging cultures as they mesh over time" and "deliberately destroying cultures in order to exploit their people and their resources".




Please.  There is a solid argument that my Irish ancestors were intentionally starved out of their lands by the British.  But guess what, I'm friends and co-workers with British today and consider the UK one of the US's best and most important allies.  Why, because it happened so many generations ago that it is irrelevant to today.  

But if you really want to go on about "deliberately destroying cultures in order to exploit their people and their resources" we could talk about the 'Oriental' Mongol hordes that swept across Asia and into Eastern Europe for a bit of pillage, rape, and looting.  Or the Persians of Asia-Minor.  Or maybe discuss the Islamic Caliphates that sought to invade Europe and convert the populous by the sword (kind of a a cultural change there) only to be stopped at the Gates of Vienna and the Spanish Reconquista.  The point is that many peoples have destroyed cultures. exploited people, and their resources.  Focusing on colonialism, or even what the West has done, is ignoring 90% of world history, and in many cases far worse actions.  In the end though, history is just that, history.  Focusing too much on the past and the crimes of the past  is narrow  minded and ultimately results in keeping wounds open rather than healing them.


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## Skepticultist (Mar 12, 2018)

Gradine said:


> I agree that a direct 1:1 comparison was not apt, but to deny that Asians have been exploited by colonial powers is to ignore history. This is especially true when you consider the ways in which Asian-Americans were exploited and dehumanized here in the U.S, between the Age of Railroads and Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese Internment. And yes, there is difference between Asian-Americans and the history of Asians in Asia. But they share a history and a culture, and it's that history and culture that are being exploited and mangled, primarily in the U.S., by such products as "Oriental Adventures"




This is just white guilt handwringing.  It's utterly irrelevant.  You're just using accusatory language -- "exploited and mangled" -- to make it sound like the authors of "Oriental Adventures" are guilty of  some crime, but that's total nonsense.

Look, this is all pure virtue-signalling.  It's lazy slacktivism.  There are real problems in the world, and if you want to address them, go ahead.  But this is not a real problem.  This is some  nonsense that you can inflate into a problem, then pretend you are addressing the problem by whinging pointlessly on the internet.

But you know what?  This isn't going to make the world a better place.  It isn't going to achieve anything.  It's just a way for you to strike a self-righteous pose, hold your nose up in the air and delude yourself into thinking you're morally superior...because you've turned Asians into the pathetic wretches of history, poor perpetual victims.

*Completely inappropriate, and breaking several rules all in one go. Using coded insulting terms like "virtue signalling", profanity, general name calling. Don't post in this thread again, please. - Morrus*


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 12, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Maybe we should refer to it as "verisimilitude".  I'm curious how many people want granular role-playing rules for medieval knights give two slots about how much "verisimilitude" is in their non-Western games.
> 
> Which kinda demonstrates the problem.




This is a tricky gray area because some people do want that extra level of historical detail, but I think most people just want cool, interesting and exotic....so long as it's also reasonably accurate. For some of us, it's enough that we don't see a sourcebook modeled on "Not China" featuring samurai warriors and the dude from American Ninja. For others, there's a desire for something more substantive. RPGs have an outlet for this with historical-themed sourcebooks (See decades of GURPS, Mythras, BRP games, every book published by Alephtar, the Historical resources of 90's TSR, etc.) but only recently has the discussion got confused by people who mistake writing cool game books set in various cultures or emulations/cyphers for said cultures as being cultural appropriation (and also, who mistake a lot of stuff for appropriation that isn't, or who think all appropriation as bad; more topics to discuss), when in fact this is a different phenomena, and not a bad one necessarily. When a book sucks because it's riddled with tropes and stereotypes it sucks because of those reasons, and not necessarily because it is disrespectful to its source; it's bad no matter what. But D&D is not a great venue for realism, and as a result, this is a hard target to hit. But not impossible, and I'd love to see people try this, for both western and non-western sources of inspiration. And the fact that most publishing output is online and not for real profit makes weird ventures like accurate depictions of specific Asian cultures or actual efforts to integrate medieval chivalry with D&D entirely possible. (But no, WotC with the goal it has should not even bother, imo, unless they take the time to make it relevant --and work-- for the contemporary audience, no matter how annoying that might be to the old guard).


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## Afrodyte (Mar 12, 2018)

To respond to the OP's question, I think I'd be far less interested in an Oriental Adventures setting than, say, Wuxia Adventures. A random hodge-podge of vaguely Pan-Asian elements is far less interesting to me as a player than digging into a different genre of storytelling that alters or upends a lot of the defaults of contemporary high or epic fantasy. This is fairly consistent with my tastes. I'm less interested in standard D&D settings that draw from a bunch of different media with a hollow core than I am in games with a clear thematic and aesthetic focus.


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

jbear said:


> Because it comes off as though you are virtue signalling on the one hand and then showing your own ignorance on the other.




There are some codewords which raise red flags. Like using "Social Justice Warrior" as a pejorative, we're not going to be using insulting, dismissive terms like "virtue signalling" in the same way.


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## Gradine (Mar 12, 2018)

I'm not going to get into this again; especially if it's going to be with people who have already decided what history and the current world are like and aren't interested in having that worldview challenged with actual facts or knowledge.

I've gone into all this in much greater detail in the Africa thread, chase those down if you're interested in hearing what I have to say in response to this nonsense, because I'm not interested in retyping it.


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## stargazera5 (Mar 12, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I’m only seeing his idea of historical accuracy from people trying to dismiss concerns about the books in question.
> 
> It’s weird.
> 
> ...




Because much of the Fantasy Genre is ultimately based on a pastiche of European tropes and historical medieval European culture.  In many ways it's almost a caricature of it as it ignores the wide cultural variety that the basic formula was expressed.  So when you talk about Waterdeep, it most certainly has a lineage that goes back through the genre to mythological pan-European culture, in the same way OA goes to a mythological pan-Asian culture.  To complain about one without complaining about the other is rather mind-blowing to be honest.


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## Mercurius (Mar 12, 2018)

Antal MolnÃ¡r said:


> I am waiting for a campaign setting for D&D 5e that reflects the mood of the 1001 nights much better than Al-Qadim did. For example I would like to see the Tales of the Caliphate Nights for D&D 5e.
> 
> http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20418/Tales-of-the-Caliphate-Nights--True-20




Ask [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], the author of that book. Maybe he has a 5E conversion in the works.


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## Aldeon (Mar 12, 2018)

The term "Oriental Adventures" sounds dumb to me, I've always disliked the title. Honestly I refuse to play in any "asian-styled campaigns" simply for the fact that it breeds stereotypes and limits roleplaying potential. Every time there's an opening for an asian-style campaign at my local store, the (usually white, sometimes black) DM throws in houserules or variant rules based on the Honor System and really pigeonholes what we can do as characters as if honor is some special asian cultural cornerstone. It's really not that important. Our cultures are typically more polite but honorable? Not anymore than other cultures. European cultures have the concept of honor built into their society but it isn't shoehorned into every european-styled campaign. Honor systems should be for campaigns which feature royalty or knights or something in which honor actually matters. Just being an asian-styled setting shouldn't necessitate honor rules.


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## Mercurius (Mar 12, 2018)

I think several people above nailed the fact that standard vanilla-esque fantasy settings are already amalgams of European cultures to various degrees, so an amalgamated "Oriental" setting isn't inherently a bad thing.

Furthermore, the reason the Orient is still the "exotic Other" is that the vast majority of game designers are Westerners. Again, not inherently a bad or racist thing. 

Now how we treat the "Other" is another matter. If an Oriental book peddled in FuManchuism, that would be problematic and disrespectful. But ninjas and mixing up Japanese, Korean and Chinese culture (etc) isn't inherently disrespectful - no more than mixing up English, Irish, French, etc.

In other words, let's all be friends


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

Skepticultist said:


> This is just white guilt handwringing.  It's utterly irrelevant.  You're just using accusatory language -- "exploited and mangled" -- to make it sound like the authors of "Oriental Adventures" are guilty of  some crime, but that's total nonsense.
> 
> Look, this is all pure virtue-signalling.  It's lazy slacktivism.  There are real problems in the world, and if you want to address them, go ahead.  But this is not a real problem.  This is some  nonsense that you can inflate into a problem, then pretend you are addressing the problem by whinging pointlessly on the internet.
> 
> But you know what?  This isn't going to make the world a better place.  It isn't going to achieve anything.  It's just a way for you to strike a self-righteous pose, hold your nose up in the air and delude yourself into thinking you're morally superior...because you've turned Asians into the pathetic wretches of history, poor perpetual victims.




Completely inappropriate, and breaking several rules all in one go. Using coded insulting terms like "virtue signalling", profanity, general name calling. Don't post in this thread again, please.


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## Skepticultist (Mar 12, 2018)

Gradine said:


> I'm not going to get into this again; especially if it's going to be with people who have already decided what history and the current world are like and aren't interested in having that worldview challenged with actual facts or knowledge.




Nice bit of passive-aggression there.  What exactly makes you an authority?  Why is that you are in a position to educate us, but we aren't in a position to educate you?  Why do you assume that you are automatically right, and everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant?

I think one of the reasons these arguments become so hostile is because the people who start them, whether you call them "social justice warriors" or "progressives" (a term I hate, as these sort of shallow, intellectual void identity politics has nothing to do with progressive politics) start from the position that you are smarter, more knowledgeable, and morally superior to all of us plebian ignoramuses.  It's extremely self-righteous and condescending, and it makes it extremely easy to hate people like you.

For example, you asked if I had ever heard of The Opium Wars, as if I'm some kind of idiot.  Except you asked that as if somehow supported your claim that Asians have been stripped of their ability to tell their own stories.  Which is, again, clearly nonsense.  It's a completely inane argument that doesn't even begin to support your claim.  How does a war that ended 158 years ago prevent the Chinese from telling their own stories!?!  In what universe does this make any kind of sense?

Let me ask you a question:  Have you ever seen _The Opium War_?  It's a 1997 historical epic directed by Xie Jin, produced in China.  So much for the Chinese not being able to tell their own stories.

EDIT: Posted this before I received the notice to not post in this thread again.


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## arjomanes (Mar 12, 2018)

Somewhat tangential, but not as tangential as you'd expect:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/ente...ltural-appropriation-reaction-trnd/index.html

edit: just so you know it's not spam or phishing, it's a CNN article titled "​After Bruno Mars is accused of cultural appropriation, black celebrities come to his defense."


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

The Asian continent can divide up roughly by at least four.
*
East Asia:* Japan, China, Korea, Mongolia 
*South Asia:* India, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Pakistan, Nepal, add, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia
*West Asia:* Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudia, Yemen, Iraq, add, Iran, Afghanistan
*North Asia:* shamanism, horseback nomads, Poland to Mongolia, north of Black/Caspian Sea, add Sámi

Use these four clusters for fantasy inspirations.



Note, horseback nomads include: ancient Scythians, Amazon warrior women (reallife horseback archers, women graves in Poland and Ukraine), Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and so on.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 12, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Maybe we should refer to it as "verisimilitude".  I'm curious how many people want granular role-playing rules for medieval knights give two slots about how much "verisimilitude" is in their non-Western games.
> 
> Which kinda demonstrates the problem.




Maybe. My only horse in this race is that I want diverse material for dnd without having to sift through the (generally horribly unbalanced) sea of 3pp stuff, and I won’t spend my money on Orientalism. 

But it’s not about accuracy or any of that. It’s literally just about not lumping all things “Oriental” into an exotic far off realm for white characters to be tourists in. The message for wotc is simple; Hire the diversity you want to see in the world, and either don’t use direct pastiches of real world specific cultures, or do so respectfully with the input and writing of Asian writers, to present distinct cultures. 

I mean, look at the Avatar cartoons. I’ve never seen anyone complain about them in this context, because they do an excellent job of creating a new world that has respectful, non-stereotyped, elements of diverse Asian cultures used as inspiration.


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

It is vital to eliminate polytheism for recognizable monotheistic and animistic/shamanic cultures of Asia.


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## Mercurius (Mar 12, 2018)

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], I see that terms like "virtue signalling" (a new one to me) and SJW are not allowed on this forum, but is the same true of terms like "white privilege" and similar?


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## Morrus (Mar 12, 2018)

Mercurius said:


> @_*Morrus*_, I see that terms like "virtue signalling" (a new one to me) and SJW are not allowed on this forum, but is the same true of terms like "white privilege" and similar?




If you want to discuss moderation rules, please take it to the Meta forum rather than derailing this thread. Thanks!


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## mangamuscle (Mar 12, 2018)

kenmarable said:


> In my opinion, Cergorach is right that we don't really want/need *accurate* cultural representation. What I think people are usually far more interested in but mislabel as "accuracy" is *respectful* cultural representation.




Since AFAIK D&D 5th edition is not being translated into chinese, hindi, russian, farsi or arabic, I think it is an overstatement that it needs to be respectful. Heck, hollywood has been disrespectful of other cultures for decades and they profit quite a bit selling their movies and merchandise outside the anglosphere (unlike 5th).

IMO what is needed is some stratification. One Oriental Adventures can't cover ALL of the "orient". Have one for japan (maybe add korea also), have another for china (maybe include mongolia), another for india (maybe include the tibet), another for non european russia and one for the middle east. Dunno if southeast asia has a distinctive "flavor" of it's own.


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

If exploring Arab or Muslim cultures, please avoid erasing Israel or Jewish cultures.


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## arjomanes (Mar 12, 2018)

mangamuscle said:


> Since AFAIK D&D 5th edition is not being translated into chinese, hindi, russian, farsi or arabic, I think it is an overstatement that it needs to be respectful. Heck, hollywood has been disrespectful of other cultures for decades and they profit quite a bit selling their movies and merchandise outside the anglosphere (unlike 5th).






			
				dnd.wizards.com said:
			
		

> Today, we’re announcing an exciting step in making sure other D&D fans around the world can enjoy fifth edition as well. Wizards of the Coast has partnered with Gale Force Nine to localize Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition tabletop RPG content into multiple languages. They will start with the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual, and the D&D Starter Set, as well as accessories created by Gale Force Nine (such as spell cards and Dungeon Master’s screens). The first translations will be French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese, with more to follow.




WOTC lists the first languages it will translate, but that doesn't mean there will be no attempt to translate into Russian, Chinese, or any of the languages mentioned.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/localization


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

I prefer to avoid politics in this thread. Especially polemics of blame.


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

Asia has an amazing array of cultures.

I want to appreciate the diversity of worldviews, and find the interesting and fun stuff.


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## mangamuscle (Mar 12, 2018)

arjomanes said:


> WOTC lists the first languages it will translate, but that doesn't mean there will be no attempt to translate into Russian, Chinese, or any of the languages mentioned.
> 
> http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/localization




By the same token, it has already been a year since said announcement and still no release of a japanese version of the game (all I can see in amazon japan is the english version of the books), so you should not believe said announcement is meant to be believed a 100%

Not that the japanese are going to get mad if an oriental adventures (japan) gets some facts wrong, because *they will* even in the 21st century google has limits if you only search about other cultures without knowing their language.


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## epithet (Mar 12, 2018)

bmfrosty said:


> What needs to not happen is a book full of harmful stereotypes.
> 
> ...



Harmful to whom, exactly?

While there are certainly groups in the Orient that are vulnerable, they're threatened by their neighbors and not by stereotypes. And what kind of stereotypes are we talking about, anyway? The idea that everyone who grows up East of the Urals knows kung-fu? I think that asian media has penetrated and saturated the Occidental world enough to think that those cultures are pretty secure.

The only potentially "harmful stereotype" I can see coming from an Oriental Adventures book would be pertaining to middle eastern cultures, since we are still dealing with some ignorance and fear related to that entire region. I think now is really not the time for an Arabic or Persian themed adventure path or setting, but then maybe that's backwards... I suppose a good argument could be made that now is exactly the time for a positive iteration of an Arabian Nights influenced manual.

Anyway, it has been my observation that people who are from the cultures that are fictionalized in these game products find the books laughable, silly, and sometimes entertaining, but rarely offensive. What seems to be prevalent is home-grown angst mongers being very sensitive on their behalf, and wringing their hands about the need to be respectful of other cultures and bewailing the horrible imminent threat of treating them as "the other." The irony of singling out these "threatened" cultures for delicate treatment seems to be lost in the haze of sanctimony.


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## kenmarable (Mar 12, 2018)

mangamuscle said:


> Since AFAIK D&D 5th edition is not being translated into chinese, hindi, russian, farsi or arabic, I think it is an overstatement that it needs to be respectful. Heck, hollywood has been disrespectful of other cultures for decades and they profit quite a bit selling their movies and merchandise outside the anglosphere (unlike 5th).
> 
> IMO what is needed is some stratification. One Oriental Adventures can't cover ALL of the "orient". Have one for japan (maybe add korea also), have another for china (maybe include mongolia), another for india (maybe include the tibet), another for non european russia and one for the middle east. Dunno if southeast asia has a distinctive "flavor" of it's own.




Although I like your second point, I gotta disagree with the first for a few reasons. 1) “They probably won’t read it.” is not a very good reason to be less concerned about respect, in my mind. 2) A LOT of people from those areas read English perfectly fine and/or now live in English-speaking places like the US and UK and are D&D fans. 3) As we have seen in recent years, and obviously with Black Panther, Hollywood can often make a heck of a lot more money being respectful to a wider audience (whether it’s race, sex, etc.) than by disrespecting and alienating large numbers of potential customers. I’m not saying a 5e OA in the same style as older ones wouldn’t sell well or be high quality, but I know they could do better now and would possibly sell even better to a larger audience because of it.


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

The main thing that annoys about D&D orientalism, is superfluous duplication. Dont add a samurai, if a fighter represents it well enough. (The 5e samurai fighter derives inspiration from modern samurai genre movies. Which I see as fine, in that it adds something salient and new.)

If a ‘daoist’ ‘alchemist’ can be reasonably approximated by the druid class or the wizard class, then just use this class for it. Dont duplicate classes without substantial reason. Add a couple of extra spells, if certain effects sound interesting. Sometimes create a subclass, depending.

For a positive example. I like how the 5e monk class includes a shadow monk (aka ninja), described in a way that can be used to either represent a mythologically accurate ninja, or a class that is suitable for a euro-esque setting. The standard 5e rogue class represents well a historical ninja.



Another annoyance concerns psionics. Some fans seem to orientalize − exoticize − psionics. Psionics is a virtually universal human concept because all humans have minds, and various cultures report phenomena that are equivalent to psychic phenomena. There are places in Asia where psionics can make sense − shamanic animism, Chinese/Japanese chi/ki, Hindu gurus, Jewish mysticism, or so on. But avoid reducing psionics to orientalism (or to far realms).


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## Rygar (Mar 12, 2018)

I'm very confused.  I thought ENWorld had a policy against political posts, but this is the second political article in a week.  Is it ENWorld's policy that politics is a forbidden topic here?


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## kenmarable (Mar 12, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Maybe. My only horse in this race is that I want diverse material for dnd without having to sift through the (generally horribly unbalanced) sea of 3pp stuff, and I won’t spend my money on Orientalism.
> 
> But it’s not about accuracy or any of that. It’s literally just about not lumping all things “Oriental” into an exotic far off realm for white characters to be tourists in. The message for wotc is simple; Hire the diversity you want to see in the world, and either don’t use direct pastiches of real world specific cultures, or do so respectfully with the input and writing of Asian writers, to present distinct cultures.
> 
> I mean, look at the Avatar cartoons. I’ve never seen anyone complain about them in this context, because they do an excellent job of creating a new world that has respectful, non-stereotyped, elements of diverse Asian cultures used as inspiration.




Avatar (the cartoon) is an excellent example! I believe a big part of it was doing their research and hiring experts. (I remember seeing all of the thought that went into just designing their bending moves and styles! Amazing stuff!)


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## Yaarel (Mar 12, 2018)

To me, the katana is a versatile one-or-two-handed finesse weapon, and brings something new to the table.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Mar 12, 2018)

kenmarable said:


> Although I like your second point, I gotta disagree with the first for a few reasons. 1) “They probably won’t read it.” is not a very good reason to be less concerned about respect, in my mind. 2) A LOT of people from those areas read English perfectly fine and/or now live in English-speaking places like the US and UK and are D&D fans. 3) As we have seen in recent years, and obviously with Black Panther, Hollywood can often make a heck of a lot more money being respectful to a wider audience (whether it’s race, sex, etc.) than by disrespecting and alienating large numbers of potential customers. I’m not saying a 5e OA in the same style as older ones wouldn’t sell well or be high quality, but I know they could do better now and would possibly sell even better to a larger audience because of it.




Profit does not equal Right, no matter how much the fans of uncontrolled Capitalism may claim.

But yes, media can be done right and be profitable, like with the Black Panther movie example, also with the Moana and Coco movie examples.


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## bmfrosty (Mar 12, 2018)

jbear said:


> This comment is actualy kind of hilarious. So you would like an Australian themed adventure that's not full of harmful stereo types ... where the land is being flooded with prisoners who were sent to the island from a far land ... but 'most of whom are just trying to get along'? Umm ... sure, I guess if you want something purely fictional you can do whatever you want. But aren't you at the same time kind of saying that you want more historical accuracy with the 'no harmful stereotypes' part of your comment?
> 
> You are aware of the massive genocide (and all the injustives that went with it) that the australian aborigines have suffered at the hands of the island's colonists, right? 'Cos I'm pretty sure those that arrived were not 'mostly just trying to get along'.
> 
> Maybe I misuderstood something you were trying to say? Because it comes off as though you are virtue signalling on the one hand and then showing your own ignorance on the other.




I don't know what virtue signalling is.  I know what type of people I normally hear the term from.

Frankly I know jack about Australian history.  I know that Britain(?) used it as a dumping ground for people.  I know that their descendants make up the majority in Australia.  I know that there are Aborigines.

I had thought I was just coming up with an example of something that would be familiar, but not Asian or Middle-Eastern in stereotype.


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## arjomanes (Mar 12, 2018)

Morrus said:


> A lot of responses appear to be "Yes but what about Y and Z?" as a way to stifle discussion about X. "Oriental? What about the Vikings?" (known as the "Vikings Are People Too" fallacy; I can't take credit for that) -- the simple answer to that is "Sure! Them too. But_ today _we're writing about "Oriental Adventures"; last week it was Africa. We're not going to cover every culture on earth, but we're touching on a couple."




From the title pages of the new _Frostbitten and Mutilated_ book: 



			
				FrostbittenandMutilated said:
			
		

> Note on the appropriation of traditional Nordic cultures
> This book woefully misrepresents Norse culture. I mean—probably it does, it has monsters I made up in it—I don’t know I’m Jewish. Anyway, enjoy.




So there's the Vikings appropriation everyone has been pointing to. That Zak, always upending apple carts.


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## ZeshinX (Mar 12, 2018)

Really??  Fantasy fiction is being debated for it's cultural value?  Are you kidding?

It's friggin' fantasy.  Not reality.  Sure, it takes a little flavor from reality, but only the tiniest fraction of its surface.  Anyone expecting works of this nature to show some kind of altruistic reverence to what inspired it is ludicrous.  AT BEST, it can spark a curiosity in someone to find out what inspired specific elements, learn about the real world culture/nation that may have contributed to that inspiration...and learn a little something for themselves.  Expecting it to do that is laughably naive.

If one finds something offensive/disagreeable/disliked in a work of fantasy fiction....great.  That means you're just like (mostly) everyone else.  If you take umbrage with it...take your money elsewhere.  Simple really.  At best, you turn your nose up from the stink you caught a whiff of and move on.  At worst, you cry 'Racism!  Sexism!  I-don't-like-this-so-no-one-should-enjoy-it-ism!'

I'm not advocating anything that promotes bald-faced 'isms, but good gawd learn to recognize the whole fantasy vs reality thing.


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## Tranquilis (Mar 12, 2018)

bmfrosty said:


> I don't know what virtue signalling is.




 You’re in good company.


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

I've seen so many japanese video-game companies doing "orientalism" against themselves...

Mixing up cultures? We do that ALL THE TIME.
European culture. Do you think it's just one big same thing? No. There are significant cultural differences between European ethnicities that lumping everything together would be extremely offensive to this standands. No one complains.
Specific examples:
The Cleric. It's brutally representative of Christianity, from it's magic  to the fighting prowess of medieval knighthoods like Templars, and yet it's always anything But monotheism. We use this cultural reference in the way we want.
What about Druids? Is this class offensive against the historical Celtic people, or the neo-paganists we have now?
Barbarians. A nice way to group every non-city-based culture in the entire world. This would be extremely offensive.

This is just non-sense. Going back to japanese video-games: they practice "orientalism" against themselves, against Europe, and pretty much anyone else. So do all other countries with fantasy fiction.
Why? Because there's nothing wrong in having a Samurai class who comes from a different, distant land. In no way one culture is explicitly thought to be inferior to others. This "otherness" does NOT justify any possible abuses against them.

In the end, it's a *fantasy game*. We absolutely pick reality, change and adapt as our chaotic heart likes, and use them in the way we want. And there is nothing wrong with that.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

The term ‘Asian’ is neutral, but problematic. When I say ‘Asian’, I often connote ‘West Asians’ (relating to Asia Minor). When Americans say ‘Asian’ they tend to mean ‘East Asians’. And when Brits say ‘Asian’ they tend to mean ‘South Asians’.

Many seem to forget about North Asians, even tho shamans are highly relevant for D&D fantasy.



‘Westerner’ includes ‘Japan’, a member of the technologically advanced and democratic societies of the Western World.


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## mangamuscle (Mar 13, 2018)

kenmarable said:


> Although I like your second point, I gotta disagree with the first for a few reasons. 1) “They probably won’t read it.” is not a very good reason to be less concerned about respect, in my mind.




I do not mean they should be actively disrespectful. 



> 2) A LOT of people from those areas read English perfectly fine and/or now live in English-speaking places like the US and UK and are D&D fans.




But if you are going to have to double check every single sentence out of fear somebody is going to cry foul, chances are you are not going to publish anything since there will someone that dislikes it for whatever reason, time is money.



> 3) As we have seen in recent years, and obviously with Black Panther, Hollywood can often make a heck of a lot more money being respectful to a wider audience (whether it’s race, sex, etc.) than by disrespecting and alienating large numbers of potential customers.




Taking that example, was black panther portrayal of Africa realistic? Did it use real life locations to portray the beauty of the land? Of course no, the thing is that it was cool and that IMO is what OA (whatever it covers) should attempt, not to try to be some kind of textbook, Someone in this thread mention how many people thought Agrabah was a real city, that is no reason to make fiction be complaint with reality. 

What I am trying to say is that the original Oriental Adventures was no trying to be disrespectful (I read it and never got the vibe of "look at this inferior culture"), now I know it is not based directly on local folktales but imo anyone offended by it is just being a white knight looking for a damsel that has not asked to be rescued.

Someone in this thread has said how gurps (and other more game systems) takes no "artistic license" with these settings, then why not play said game system to start with?


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

mangamuscle said:


> I do not mean they should be actively disrespectful.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Indeed. Actualy,  a table-top RPG designer has so much things to think at the same time, without many PhD experts on the subject to help him/her, that keeping complete accuracy over every culture it portrays Is asking too much. At least for most designers.


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## cbwjm (Mar 13, 2018)

I'd love a 5e Oriental Adventures book but I'm not really sure what would go in it now. I guess a few subclasses, not sure many would be needed. Classic races and monsters from earlier editions would be a good fit, setting information for Karatur would probably be good so that we have an example setting location and cosmology. Also spells. 

Call it oriental adventures or Karatur adventures, either way it would be pretty rad.


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## Cergorach (Mar 13, 2018)

shidaku said:


> "Western" American culture



I am offended! I'm not part of "Western" American culture, I'm not even part of "Western" European culture, I'm Dutch! And certainly NOT proud of it! Especially in light of poor fake bond villains hating on the Dutch! I'm an Amsterdammer! The only other thing as vicious as us is the Rotterdammer, whom never would admit at having anything in common with an Amsterdammer!
-- A quote by Cergorach (Currently residing in Zeewolde: Je kan de Amsterdammer uit Amsterdam halen, maar Amsterdam niet uit de Amsterdammer!)

;-)

Again, RPGs are about telling stories and we prefer them in a fantasy setting. We often find it comfortable to have some sort of reference and those are the stories, we've seen and read, the stuff we've grown up with. And those might very well be Orientalism, but they are still stories and if people think that stories (books, comics, TV, movies, toys, games) have anything but incidental similarities with reality is either very stupid or very naive. We're not all morons that need to be told not to put a baby in the microwave... Oh... Wait... Americans... ;-)

When I'm told a story I don't really care if it's historically accurate. When I'm told about history, I still won't say it's the 100% way things happened, even after referencing two dozen different sources. These are two very different things, fantastical entertainment vs. real world research. That's not to say that I can't appreciate a fantastical story based in a (semi) accurate representation of the real world, I do. Hell, I even sometimes tell stories based on real world research...

The problem is that a lot of that 'real world research' is and has been biased for decades or even centuries and that is a problem. The same is true of the news, it's biased, sometimes by politics and/or religion. That's where Orientalism roars it's head. Read some translated works from the middle East and/or Asia, watch some subtitled television from those regions, read some blogs or news from those regions. I had friends who were either born or had parents that were born in Marokko, Turkey, Suriname, Dutch Antilles, Indonesian, and Hong Kong. When you didn't understand something, you asked and quite often parents were more then willing to explain. I gote me some 紅包... The man that I knew as my grandfather was Indonesian, you see art, you ate some actual Indonesian food, again you asked some questions... And the more painful subjects you researched discretely.

When you want to know something for certain, instead of relying on a book that might very well be biased, ask a person that was born there! Even better, ask more unrelated people who were born there... Now, in this thread, how many people in this thread were born and raised in the Middle East or Asia? Most here are white guys complaining... About things they've learned from those same biased books...

And when you ask someone, ask the person that was born/grown up there, not the Westerner crusader spouse they married. That is asking for inaccurate information and probably a rant or two...

As for Green Ronin "Testament": They, and I'm quoting here, "We're taking great pains to be only as controversial as we need to be in order to make it a great gameable setting.". I suspect that they spend a ridiculous amount of time on it and if evaluated by religious scholars, it still wouldn't pass muster... The problem though with Christianity is not the religious scholars, it's the bigoted masses, and if you pay lipservices to them, chances are that your left alone...

 [MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION]: The 'West' is thoroughly responsible for the Red China mess, although if the 'West' wouldn't have interfered it still might have ended in a mess, just a different mess. People should take a look at the Boxer Rebellion (and what preceded and followed it). Still, a LOT of the stories and history is still there.

 [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION]: I would say that Waterdeep (The City of Slendors) was inspired by the great cities of Europe at the height of the Renaissance (Bruges, Lyon, Lisbon, Seville, Venice, Florence, Pisa).

 [MENTION=10738]Doctor Futurity[/MENTION]: We're talking about OA, a WotC product. Then we're talking about replacing OA with a very specific setting that will have a very small interested audience, so low sales numbers. So that's not something WotC is interested in. And possibly a lot of Indies either, because they also need to pay the bills. Now, you could produce a small book, with high quality illustration, layout, editing and writing. But it would either price itself out of the market OR it wouldn't pay for itself, and especially indies can't operate that way. You could source cheap illustration, layout, editing and writing, but that often shows low quality and low appeal... I'm curious how well this 11 page GR product sold on East Asia ($3.95): https://greenroninstore.com/collect...e/products/atlas-of-earth-prime-east-asia-pdf

Now people have done better and will certainly will do better again, but to date those haven't been that successful. Those are passion projects. Often not benefiting from good art, layout and editing...

Someone posted the Youtube video that mentioned that with Orientalism that people from the Middle East were depicted as different and dangerous. People from the Middle East ARE different, but often not more or less dangerous then anyone else. Keeping on insisting that people aren't different is just being dishonest, different isn't bad, it's just who we are. You don't go streaking through Iran as a (fe)male, but on the other hand you get crucified in the US if you show nipple on television... The more things change, the more they stay the same...

As for the translation thing... I was thinking about that, what would an Eskimo or a Chinese person that has no affinity with Western culture see in a Western based campaign. How would a 'Western' person write a setting and/or adventure for such a group of players. Could you use the same setting? My conclusion would be, definitely not. We could probably provide a rules set, but a native speaker should do the translation and make the setting/adventures. It's not just the accuracy and the 'respect' it's also the values and cultural perspective we're missing. If 'Record of Lodoss War' is based on a D&D campaign, it's significantly different from most Western campaigns, but still inspired by a Western setting with knights, dwarves and elves... And Japan has been very heavily influenced in the last 70 years by the West. Far more then China for example, you see far less interest in 'Western' settings for stories and if you do, it has it's own interpretation of how such a story plays out. But there are a lot of stories about Heroes in China, from Journey to the West to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but the stories told, the lessons and values are quite different (if you don't read/watch the Westernized version)...

Let people make their own settings/adventures based on their own culture/society, we're not a one size fits all society!


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 13, 2018)

So many words... 

Will we see an "Oriental Adventures" equivalent?  If there is a Kara-Tur or some other Eastern culture then we'll likely see a sourcebook eventually.  We can call it Tim, and it won't offend anyone.

Goes to note that my Asian friends weren't offended by the book when we used it back in the 80s. Don't know how they'd feel about it now.

Side note: I really do appreciate the non-stop social commentary that these articles generate because it's better to get things off people's chests in order to focus on things that are important, but I think we should really space these out more.  I don't really want to see a new rehash of the same arguments with a new flavor every week.

If others do, that's cool.  It's just not what I come here for.  Beyond this, some may say if you don't want to read it don't click on it.  Problem with that argument is that other threads suffer from the spill over to some degree so you can't get away from it entirely.

Thanks
KB


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## Mike Myler (Mar 13, 2018)

Missed this thread until today and when I've got more time tonight I'll parse through the many replies, but as the creator of a 5e eastern fantasy campaign setting I wanted to chime in. When making the book we made sure that 1) we included traditional myth and folklore in a respectful fashion and 2) we had some people living in Japan (an American teacher and his class of students) review the material before it went to print in the event we'd gone astray somewhere (we didn't). Projects like that can and should be done with that kind of oversight in mind. It's really not that hard.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 13, 2018)

kenmarable said:


> Leaving aside all the little rhetorical tricks (e.g. the article is "mealy-mouthed", colonialism is a "trendy buzzword", etc.) and dealing with your actual argument, you raise some very good points, but you leave out some extremely important factors.
> 
> For one thing, this is an overly simplistic view of moral universalism. The majority of ethical theories are based on universal equal consideration, NOT universally equal treatment. As a ridiculous example to illustrate the point, I have no right to a mammogram because I am male, nor to hurricane relief because my home state of Michigan doesn’t get hit with hurricanes, etc. Moral universalism would say that IF we were similarly situated, then we deserve equal consideration (the part of the Wikipedia quote you didn’t bold). However, we are not similarly situated, so we do not deserve equal treatment but we are still given equal consideration.
> 
> ...




This thread has been painful for me to read with the very determined willful ignorance all over the place. But your post was simply beautiful, and has calmed my SJW rage. Thanks for your well-written and well-informed oasis of a post!

_Edit: After posting, I noticed the mod post on using terms like "Social Justice Warrior" or SJW . . . I'm using the term (or trying to) in a positive way, and totally wearing that badge. No sarcasm in this post, 100% heartfelt._


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## Mallus (Mar 13, 2018)

Absolute first response to this:

Nuanced? Respectful? Ever see Stephen Chow’s _Journey to the West_?


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

Respectful fashion? Sure, I get that. But that doesn't necessarily means "100% accurate" because limiting us to use only unaltered real-world myth is to... well... limiting.
Honestly, I cannot see how a book like Oriental Adventures is disrespectful,  especially when such kinds of works always talk about how they changed some things and it's not meant to directly  represent a real-world culture.
However, I must say I actualy like works more accurate than D&D's economy compared to real-world medieval economy.
Which books did you publish? I don't like 5e, but I could check out ^^
But, are you sure you have made no changes to fit into D&D? That seems hard to do.


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## Mercule (Mar 13, 2018)

Yes. We should have a 5E Oriental Adventures. I don't really care if it's called that, but it should be roughly as accurate to the area to the east and north of the Indian subcontinent (non-inclusive) between the years 800-1400 as the default assumptions of D&D are to the area roughly equating to the broadest expanse of the western Roman Empire was in the same time period (800-1400). Which is to say "not particularly accurate, but cool for stories vaguely influenced by the stories about the stories from there and then".


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## Dire Bare (Mar 13, 2018)

Afrodyte said:


> To respond to the OP's question, I think I'd be far less interested in an Oriental Adventures setting than, say, Wuxia Adventures. A random hodge-podge of vaguely Pan-Asian elements is far less interesting to me as a player than digging into a different genre of storytelling that alters or upends a lot of the defaults of contemporary high or epic fantasy. This is fairly consistent with my tastes. I'm less interested in standard D&D settings that draw from a bunch of different media with a hollow core than I am in games with a clear thematic and aesthetic focus.




I like this! An approach based on genre rather than arbitrary Western derived cultural regions. A well-done "Wuxia Adventures" would be awesome!


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## Dire Bare (Mar 13, 2018)

Mercurius said:


> [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], I see that terms like "virtue signalling" (a new one to me) and SJW are not allowed on this forum, but is the same true of terms like "white privilege" and similar?




White privilege is a real thing, and not an offensive term at all when used correctly. The others you mention, not so much.


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## TrippyHippy (Mar 13, 2018)

We don't need Oriental Adventures as such. 

We just need Dwarven Samurai and Halfling Ninjas.


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## Shasarak (Mar 13, 2018)

talien said:


> Now, I have no idea if this is right or wrong, but I do know that chanting in Japanese at an event exclusively attended by white men and women made me feel a tiny bit weird. My usual headcheck for this is “How would I feel if I brought a Japanese-English friend to the event?” and my answer is “Even more weird.” Personally, I found the game’s cover art to be a little more questionable. I think it’s fantastic to have a fantasy world that draws on Asian conventions instead of Western ones. But in a game that almost exclusively depicts Asian men and women, don’t then put white people on the cover! It’s such a lovely piece of art. I just wish she looked a _little bit_ less like a cosplayer.
> ​




This bit is funny.  A white guy worrying about how he might feel if he actually had a Japanese friend.  Maybe he should tell us what his imaginary Japanese friend might think of white people shouting Banzai?


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## Sunseeker (Mar 13, 2018)

Mike Myler said:


> Missed this thread until today and when I've got more time tonight I'll parse through the many replies, but as the creator of a 5e eastern fantasy campaign setting I wanted to chime in. When making the book we made sure that 1) we included traditional myth and folklore in a respectful fashion and 2) we had some people living in Japan (an American teacher and his class of students) review the material before it went to print in the event we'd gone astray somewhere (we didn't). Projects like that can and should be done with that kind of oversight in mind. It's really not that hard.




This must have been terribly burdensome for you to be respectful and get in-culture advice on your material.

If only you could have made up whatever you wanted and told your potential buyers to suck eggs.

/sarcasm

Seriously to good on you.


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## Celebrim (Mar 13, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Goes to note that my Asian friends weren't offended by the book when we used it back in the 80s. Don't know how they'd feel about it now.




I always get the impression that the people who are finding the most stuff to be offended about, only know of people different than themselves in a theoretical manner through textbooks, history books, other media, and statistics.  It's a magazine level relationship.   And the problem I have with it, is I've never met any of the people described in those magazine articles.  The real people I've met were complicated, unexpected, unique and didn't have these average consensus opinions or feelings or preferences that they were supposed to have based on someone's survey data and image 'Arab' or 'African' or 'Asian' or whatever label they are supposed to have conjures up.  Offended by Oriental Adventures?  Maybe.  I've never heard that opinion, but it's probably out there somewhere.  But probably for some less than they were offended when A New Hope was changed so that Han wasn't the only one doing the shooting, or when the content in World of Warcraft was 'dumbed down' to be more accessible.  

For me, I see questions like, "Do we still need Oriental Adventures?", and I think to myself - twenty years ago, that was a racist question.  Twenty years ago, the idea that we wouldn't publish content reflecting all sorts of diverse settings and cultures and not just Western Fantasy, would have been seen as a really crappy opinion to have.  Back then, the sacred progressive opinion people would have been proud to have was that D&D was not just for Western Fantasy, and people saying that they didn't want Monks or other Eastern things in their D&D because D&D was some sort of Western cultural artifact and therefore should be uniquely Western would have been the marginal shunned opinions.   And to be honest, I would have thought that's a fairly natural ordering.  No one had to have monks in their game, but bravo for having Oriental Adventures if you wanted them.

Now, all the sudden the "woke" thing is to question whether we should even have Oriental Adventures?

Is this some sort of trick played by the groups 20 years back?  Is it like one of those cartoons where the two characters are saying back and forth, "No, it isn't" and "Yes, it is." so long that when one of them switches sides, the other side switches too and now the trickster gets his opponent to agree with him? 

Respect doesn't change.  But the codification in some ivory tower of what respect looks like seems to change with every breeze.  Some day this article will be problematic again, I suspect.   I wonder what people will be saying then.


----------



## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Respect doesn't change.  But the codification in some ivory tower of what respect looks like seems to change with every breeze.  Some day this article will be problematic again, I suspect.   I wonder what people will be saying then.




Nice, poetic, comment.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

One of the things I find most problematic, is a normal D&Dism: the misuse of reallife names.

Especially when dealing with unfamiliar cultures, misusing slides into misrepresenting, and disrespecting.

If an author is going to use a reallife name − whether ninja or oni − research the reallife meaning of the word, to be familiar with its historical accuracy or mythological accuracy. If there is no interest in reallife, maybe avoid using the reallife name.

For a fictive creation that romps thru a culture for loose inspiration, consider a synonym, or neologism, or even a compound noun, to signal that the creation is distinct from reallife.

The simple rule of using real names in real ways avoids faux pas.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

For me, even the name ‘Mazteca’ ( = Mexico + Aztec) seems a bit too reallife. As a recognizably reallife name, its authors would need to be highly knowledgeable about Mexico today and Aztec civilization.


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## mangamuscle (Mar 13, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Is this some sort of trick played by the groups 20 years back?  Is it like one of those cartoons where the two characters are saying back and forth, "No, it isn't" and "Yes, it is." so long that when one of them switches sides, the other side switches too and now the trickster gets his opponent to agree with him?




I can't resist, here is the link to said cartoon clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kwekOnxiko


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## Celebrim (Mar 13, 2018)

mangamuscle said:


> I can't resist, here is the link to said cartoon clip:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kwekOnxiko




Funny in any language.


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## Deset Gled (Mar 13, 2018)

Could someone give actual examples of things from the previous editions of OA that are offensive?  Beyond vague summaries or the fact that its existence may be offensive to some.  Are there any specific game mechanics that show an overt racial bias, offensive stereotypes in example characters, or perhaps racist caricatures in the art?  Unless I've missed part of this thread (quite possible), the only thing that seems to fit the bill is the use of the word "oriental".

This is a serious question; I'm not trying to pose a hypothetical.  Over the course of this thread, one common recurring concept is that a new version of OA must be done respectfully.  And when I think back to me 3e OA book, I think it was.  However, I will admit that my glasses may be rose colored; it's been over a decade since that book got out of it's box in the basement.  And I never owned the earlier version.  So, I would really like to hear if there are specific things people found offensive beyond the initial concept.  

When we want a new version of OA to be respectful, do we mean that WotC needs to keep doing it the way that it is, that they need to modernize it to brush off traces that were considered acceptable before but aren't now, or that they need to re-examine the product from the ground up?


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> One of the things I find most problematic, is a normal D&Dism: the misuse of reallife names.
> 
> Especially when dealing with unfamiliar cultures, misusing slides into misrepresenting, and disrespecting.
> 
> ...



Thing is, we do that, all the time. With everyone. Most classes and monsters with names from real-world mythos and folklore are *heavily* changed and adapted. No one complains about how devils and demons (or titans, or fairies.. ) in a setting are different from their real-world roots, even if the concept usually is completely different.
He, there are some cases where we don't even Know if it's accurate or not.
This doesn't mean lack of respect. If the fictional Orient was seen as inherently evil compared to the good West, for example, then you may have a point.
I tell you this because people use my culture and my religion in the exact same way and I have the same standards I'm telling you here.


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## unknowable (Mar 13, 2018)

The euro cultures are all kinda chopped up and mashed together in D&D, I think it is fine and should be setting dependent.

Arguably not leaning too heavily on any one culture from the real world or making "all asians are one people and look the same" is a bigger issue. 
If it is divided up amongst different fictional cultures in the same way D&D handles the traditional western / european ones I am fine.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

Avatar: the Last Air Bender, is the ideal I want D&D to strive for.

It is simply a cool setting. Those who know, know and appreciate the thoughtful reallife inspirations from diverse Asian cultures. But for everyone else, it is simply awesome.

Personally I like the fact that it mostly uses English names for place names (Northern Air Temple, Earth Kingdom City, Serpent Pass), as well as a few select flavorful names (Kyoshi Island, Si Wong Desert). When it uses reallife names like ‘avatar’, it does so with reasonable accuracy (a powerful spirit that incarnates as a human).

That is what I want D&D exploration of Asia to look like. Simply a cool setting.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> For me, even the name ‘Mazteca’ ( = Mexico + Aztec) seems a bit too reallife. As a recognizably reallife name, its authors would need to be highly knowledgeable about Mexico today and Aztec civilization.




We are talking about playing fantasy versions of places and cultures as they were 700-1000 years ago, not the modern versions of them. A lot of modern countries did not even exist then as they do now. And many countries and cultures and religions have lived and died in the hundreds of years that have passed since the general time period that people want to play the fantasy version of. Now if you were talking about fantasy/steampunk versions of the real world where you were only looking back 100-150 years, that would be different.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

Igwilly said:


> Thing is, we do that, all the time. With everyone. Most classes and monsters with names from real-world mythos and folklore are *heavily* changed and adapted. No one complains about how devils and demons (or titans, or fairies.. ) in a setting are different from their real-world roots, even if the concept usually is completely different.
> He, there are some cases where we don't even Know if it's accurate or not.
> This doesn't mean lack of respect. If the fictional Orient was seen as inherently evil compared to the good West, for example, then you may have a point.
> I tell you this because people use my culture and my religion in the exact same way and I have the same standards I'm telling you here.




Yes, it is a D&Dism to abuse reallife names, pioneered by Gygax himself. (Heh, but so was sexist chainmail bikinies a D&Dism to some degree.)

Yet from longswords that are exceptionally long, to what the name ‘warlord’ actually means, to elves that are charismatic, to religions that lack polytheism, to what a ‘witch’ class might look like, players refer to reallife traditions to various degrees.

The 5e bard is a nod toward a mythologically accurate bard, according Welsh and wider Celtic traditions. Various players voiced concern about the bard. Now the bard is one of my favorite classes. I appreciate WotC revisited the reallife contexts. It created a compelling product.



There is no need to limit imagination to the ancient world or to other cultures. But using reallife terms in thoughtful ways, helps.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

If WotC wants to see Muslims playing D&D, then it must be easy to opt out of polytheism.


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 13, 2018)

Mercurius said:


> I think several people above nailed the fact that standard vanilla-esque fantasy settings are already amalgams of European cultures to various degrees, so an amalgamated "Oriental" setting isn't inherently a bad thing.
> 
> Furthermore, the reason the Orient is still the "exotic Other" is that the vast majority of game designers are Westerners. Again, not inherently a bad or racist thing.
> 
> ...




Wise post.


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 13, 2018)

Cergorach said:


> [MENTION=10738]Doctor Futurity[/MENTION]: We're talking about OA, a WotC product. Then we're talking about replacing OA with a very specific setting that will have a very small interested audience, so low sales numbers. So that's not something WotC is interested in. And possibly a lot of Indies either, because they also need to pay the bills. Now, you could produce a small book, with high quality illustration, layout, editing and writing. But it would either price itself out of the market OR it wouldn't pay for itself, and especially indies can't operate that way. You could source cheap illustration, layout, editing and writing, but that often shows low quality and low appeal... I'm curious how well this 11 page GR product sold on East Asia ($3.95): https://greenroninstore.com/collect...e/products/atlas-of-earth-prime-east-asia-pdf
> 
> Now people have done better and will certainly will do better again, but to date those haven't been that successful. Those are passion projects. Often not benefiting from good art, layout and editing...




Your point?

Speaking as someone who's been active in indie publishing (in gaming) since 1984, and active in the OSR publishing front since it's mid 00's inception I must politely disagree. You might not be aware of just how many current projects out there are all labors of love (often and including the pretty games, not just the ones that slap OSR on the cover as an art apology) and any financial gain is just a happy coincidence. I'd argue it's 90% of the hobby's publishing right now that fits this criteria. 

And like I said, this is not a project for WotC for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is they need to keep their focus lightning rod on the three products a year that they actually release. Hell, see DMsGuild as we write and debate for examples of 5E Oriental Adventures books that are well received and pretty useful.


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## Doctor Futurity (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> If WotC wants to see Muslims playing D&D, then it must be easy to opt out of polytheism.




Also, Mormons! In the late 80's my group was 80% Mormon (4 Mormon guys and me). I thought it was fascinating that their clerics would choose to be "polytheistic atheists."


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## mangamuscle (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> If WotC wants to see Muslims playing D&D, then it must be easy to opt out of polytheism.




I do not think that is how it works. Polytheism is part of D&D. Same as devils/demons. TSR tried to remove/rename devils/demons and there was not a huge increase in players to warrant such an action. This is just like violent video games, if you do not like the violence, there are *other* video games that do not have it, I do not like or play Medal of Honor but I would never ask the publisher to tone down the violence, to each their own.


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## Mike Myler (Mar 13, 2018)

Whew! Long thread! Before I kick into it proper I'm going to talk about a few things.

*The original Oriental Adventures book.*
Obviously I was a fan. I read through it I don't know how many times, I played plenty of samurai, and I routinely begged for a game set there instead of FR (no luck). Now that I'm older I kind of understand the GM's recalcitrance a bit better because while I still enjoy it, it's not terribly nuanced. What to my teen eyes was _awesome_ doesn't get read the same way now and the idea of a bunch of animal-based samurai traditions--practically all of those presented in the book--is hokey. As a community I think we can and should do better (and we can #DoBetterThanDrow too but that's a _whole different conversation_).

*There's a lot of mentioning colonization in the previous posts. *
We included colonization in my eastern fantasy setting right off in the first chapter, and the world itself is colored by a recently-upended 150 year occupation by said colonists (brilliantly called "Ceramians"). I'm not sure how I could've felt morally proper making an eastern fantasy setting on its own without that element because it's an acknowledgement of the fact that I'm looking at this entire thing through a cultural lens that doesn't _prohibit_ a more authentic approach, but definitely makes it harder to achieve. So we embraced it, put it where it can't get ignored, and then encourage adventurer's to whomp the remaining rogue colonial generals while going about their business. 

*Utilizing existing mythology and folklore.*
This is something _we should be doing_. Myths carry a metric ton of cultural information and they persist because they have great value on a number of levels. My main thrust here is more about suspension of disbelief though--one of the best ways to bridge the gap between the believable and the impossible (which a fantasy tabletop RPG does all the time) is to have some basis in the real world. I don't honestly think that most people believe in Sun Wukong, but incorporating that character into a setting still creates this connection between what you're doing and reality which in turns makes the game feel more real. I'm all for being original and you should be original, but that doesn't prohibit also building on existing real world folklore.



kenmarable said:


> In my opinion, Cergorach is right that we don't really want/need accurate cultural representation. What I think people are usually far more interested in but mislabel as "accuracy" is respectful cultural representation. For one thing, when you are obviously inspired by real life cultures like in the OA books (or Tomb of Annihilation), but throw those cultures into a blender with a bunch of other junk and pour that slurry into a book - that's certainly not the best way to do it.
> 
> Related to that is something that is often more subtle (although sometimes it's outright blatant like again with ToA and that line from Gary), is that these books are often written specifically from the outside about this other exotic place. So, with the Forgotten Realms for example, there’s this feeling of the “real” FR being over here, and then these other cultures are over there – Maztica, Kara Tur, Chult, Zakhara, etc. Your core D&D characters can go over there to visit these exotic, different people. Why do these cultures have to be over there, and not just integrated with the world as a whole? (Especially since all of these fantasy D&D worlds are equally foreign to most of us 21st century folk. Ninjas are no more exotic than wizards to our current lives.)
> 
> So as much as I loved the earlier OA, I think going forward we really, really do not need a new OA. However, as WotC has already been doing a bit, we really, really need that content mixed in with everything else. There’s no reason core D&D needs to be focused on pseudo-European fantasy realms and then make all of the pseudo-other-people fantasy realms into add-ons. It’s all fantasy and unrealistic and fun! So, for example, preferably no Al-Qadim and no Oriental Adventures, but instead these areas should be treated like core Forgotten Realms.




I love _Musui's Story_ but it's a very narrow avenue for roleplay so on the point of *respectful* cultural representation I'm with you, although I caution throwing out multiculturalism. Anything thrown into a blender is going to be a mess but I've only gotten compliments about including monsters from all over eastern culture (albeit in a world predominantly modeled on Japan).  
Also I'll add there's totally a class you can take to become ninja (proper wizard classes are harder to come by). 



Deset Gled said:


> Feel free to change the name if you must, but the OA setting is fine. It's a representation of a style of fantasy, not a representation of reality. I don't get upset when the Caribbean pirate cosplayers shout "huzzah" to the unicorns at the renaissance faire, either.
> 
> I would be more concerned if someone could show serious, systematic examples of the OA books being used to promote racist behavior. If the biggest controversy you can find is that someone was offended by white people shouting "banzai", I'm going to have to consider that the people complaining might be more prejudiced.




Pointing to Pirates of the Carribean in relation to this is a great allusion and isolates what I mention above. It's a little bit "saturday morning cartoon" but that's not exactly a bad thing? I just think that if it's meant to be the prominent representation of eastern fantasy in the world's most popular fantasy tabletop game that maybe it's not the ideal choice.



zeldafan42 said:


> I’m going to second what kenmarable said. It’s not about accuracy, it’s about being respectful. It’s about not treating non-European cultures as “exotic wonders” to gape at and repeating the same old offensive tropes.
> 
> So the real problem with an “Oriental Adventures” book isn’t that it’s inaccurate. The problem is that it from the start, it mashes together several distinct cultures together as one and very much only focuses on the broad strokes details. The problem is that the term oriental is rooted in a racist and imperialist way of seeing the world.
> 
> So what we need isn’t an Oriental Adventures book. If you want samurai and ninja that’s fine, but put them in a product with other material from Japan and only Japan. Or you mix everything together. Just like how the monk is a core class and the samurai is in Xanathar’s, you treat the non-European material as a normal part of the setting blended in with the European stuff. You don’t present your setting as “Here’s the normal European inspired fantasy and over there is the exotic and special other cultures.”




Again I warn against throwing out the bath with the bathwater. Part of what makes Forgotten Realms or Golarion rich and vibrant settings is the existence of many cultures simultaneously and while there's absolutely a predication therein for Western Fantasy, including other elements (albeit maybe in amounts that should be larger) gives contrast, meaning, and depth to the rest of the setting. Monocultural books and settings can definitely be cool but I maintain that a healthy dose of multiculturalism can be a good thing.




Skepticultist said:


> If you're just find with plundering Irish, Scandinavian, Greek, and other European cultures history and myth for fodder for your role-playing games, then why should Asian cultures and history be treated any differently? This right here is why this entire line of argument just pisses me right off. It's handwringing nonsense motivated by white guilt.
> 
> I'm not Scandinavian, therefore I should not use Vikings in my game, right? No? Well, then, why is orientalism an issue, but scandinavianism isn't an issue? It's dumb.




Part of the issue is that (I reckon) Scandinavian hasn't been used in modern times as a pejorative term or in more extreme cases a legal classification (in obviously discriminatory laws, which is a sign of normalization, and ultimately a culture wholesale abandoning a swathe of people based on their ethnicity). We should embrace discussions like these to bring to light that aye--it is absolutely silly, ridiculous, and hypocritical not to engage eastern fantasy with the same fervor that we do western fantasy (and all the sources contained in both) and it should get as much attention by all parties. It's a pity it doesn't get more!



Doctor Futurity said:


> These conversations remain unrelenting in their inability to recognize that the cultural climate of the late 80's and early 90's brought forth so much effort at creating interesting new settings in nonwestern environments, and that without that effort it might not have paved the way to a more general and worldly assertion of interest in today's culture.
> 
> Now that today's cultural values and respect is broader and more worldly, effort should indeed be made to revisit the rest of the world, both through a culturally respectful lens and also through the equally important mythology, folklore and fantasy that is what we're all really looking for in that adaptation (in D&D, at least).
> 
> I know there's a tendency these days to assume that only people of cultural origins can write about those origins, but we really do need to continue to provide a lens on other cultures, even if it is filtrered through (and acknowledged as such) by outsiders with a keen interest and effort at accuracy, because ultimately it's this continued exposure that makes people more culturally aware. Al Qadim, Kara Tur and other settings did that for me as a kid, and there should be a tradition that continues and expands on it today, to insure that we don't accidentally isolate today's kids from other cultures, history (fantatsical or real), non western fantasy and so forth simply because we think that it's appropriation to have an interest and to express it through games and writing. We all benefit from embracing the broader swathe of cultural fantasticism in gaming, and it makes us better for doing so. But we lose if we decide that it's impossible for us to somehow seek out and learn about other cultures, or to express that interest in writing and gaming.




Requoting the Doc here to make sure other people see it. Well said.



Eltab said:


> Finding some Japanese / Chinese / Korean / &c professor(s) who want to contribute and review a D&D Far East Sourcebook would be a cool idea - adds authenticity and avoids the really silly inaccurate stuff.
> Plus you get to learn new things. (Always a good reason to buy the book even if you don't play the game.)
> 
> When Green Ronin released Testament (Biblical background D&D), the Christians did NOT lose their heads or automatically think we were being mocked / belittled.
> ...




Professors are woefully busy until they hit tenure but if you find any that play D&D and have an interest in something like that, please point them at me.



Doctor Futurity said:


> Cergorach said:
> 
> 
> > Yeah, everyone, but the publisher who makes it... Imagine how many copies of Oriental Adventures WotC would sell and how many of a specific Korean based setting of the same size... Yeah, that's why generic books sell much better, a larger audience. Remember that WotC worked on a Wuxia book? They had to give it away and it still didn't reach as large an audience as OA... How many high volume Asian based RPGs and or settings are there, not many. One is L5R and that is a well loved target of the people that wield the 'orientalism' katana.... Most are either a single book or a very small range of low volume items.
> ...




Yo over here.



Aldeon said:


> The term "Oriental Adventures" sounds dumb to me, I've always disliked the title. Honestly I refuse to play in any "asian-styled campaigns" simply for the fact that it breeds stereotypes and limits roleplaying potential. Every time there's an opening for an asian-style campaign at my local store, the (usually white, sometimes black) DM throws in houserules or variant rules based on the Honor System and really pigeonholes what we can do as characters as if honor is some special asian cultural cornerstone. It's really not that important. Our cultures are typically more polite but honorable? Not anymore than other cultures. European cultures have the concept of honor built into their society but it isn't shoehorned into every european-styled campaign. Honor systems should be for campaigns which feature royalty or knights or something in which honor actually matters. Just being an asian-styled setting shouldn't necessitate honor rules.




My setting uses Dignity and ties it off against a word we don't have a complete English translation for that essentially means "fall from virtue" (Haitoku) and the major threat of the setting (mists raise your Haitoku, gets too high = transformed into a monster). We did realize that not everybody is going to want to engage in that though, so several race options are immune to the transformation (and thus don't really have to care about their Dignity). Want to be honorable? Great go for it. Don't care? Also great. Want to be the not-caring race and still be honorable, because of course? Also viable (and something I've GM'd over at least three times now).
The reason this concept is in my setting and why you see Honor systems in eastern fantasy is that eastern cultures (most notably Japan) have a stronger tendency towards shame rather than guilt. There's a solid wiki about the concept here. It notes that this is a widely criticized concept so keep that in mind, but it identifies some of the chief differences between traditionally western and eastern cultures in how psyches are shaped and communities treat one another. 

Also going to take a quick second here to once again plug _Musui's Story_ because while I <3 samurai, the romanticizing of them is insaaaaaaaaaaaane.



Yaarel said:


> To me, the katana is a versatile one-or-two-handed finesse weapon, and brings something new to the table.



We have it so you lose the finesse bit while wielding it two-handed. 



cbwjm said:


> I'd love a 5e Oriental Adventures book but I'm not really sure what would go in it now. I guess a few subclasses, not sure many would be needed. Classic races and monsters from earlier editions would be a good fit, setting information for Karatur would probably be good so that we have an example setting location and cosmology. Also spells.
> 
> Call it oriental adventures or Karatur adventures, either way it would be pretty rad.




There's a _lot of very cool stuff you can do_. Plenty of fun design space. *_beats inner-salesman to death_*



Mike Myler said:


> Missed this thread until today and when I've got more time tonight I'll parse through the many replies, but as the creator of a 5e eastern fantasy campaign setting I wanted to chime in. When making the book we made sure that 1) we included traditional myth and folklore in a respectful fashion and 2) we had some people living in Japan (an American teacher and his class of students) review the material before it went to print in the event we'd gone astray somewhere (we didn't). Projects like that can and should be done with that kind of oversight in mind. It's really not that hard.



You fool! What have you gotten yourself into?!



shidaku said:


> This must have been terribly burdensome for you to be respectful and get in-culture advice on your material.
> 
> If only you could have made up whatever you wanted and told your potential buyers to suck eggs.
> 
> ...




Potential backers! (It was originally a Kickstarter.) Thank you. 



Yaarel said:


> One of the things I find most problematic, is a normal D&Dism: the misuse of reallife names.
> 
> Especially when dealing with unfamiliar cultures, misusing slides into misrepresenting, and disrespecting.
> 
> ...




I'm only halfway in the boat with you on this one. We _almost_ named a major city (with a map and everything) "Chikan" until somebody pointed out the more popular definition of the term than what I thought it meant--this is what prompted the review by folks in Japan because we have a lot of things named using the Japanese language. That was twofold: on one hand it doesn't sound weird in practice (making up names on the fly may work okay for two dozen things, but when you're looking at naming hundreds of things it's going to fall apart) and there's a mnemonic element to language that's difficult to replicate with improvised naming. For example, in the _Tip of the Tongue_ EN Publishing adventure everything is named on or on something like "memory" or "recollection" or "idea" translated into another language (albeit clumsily). The end effect--and I've checked on this with other books and several people--is a weird undertone of togetherness. I'm still working out if that's based on root words or what (I generally don't use roman language for this purpose so not sure on that), but I'm sure it's definitely a thing.
*The takeaway:* Use real life names responsibly or you might name a major city "old men that grab girls on the subway".



Deset Gled said:


> Could someone give actual examples of things from the previous editions of OA that are offensive? Beyond vague summaries or the fact that its existence may be offensive to some. Are there any specific game mechanics that show an overt racial bias, offensive stereotypes in example characters, or perhaps racist caricatures in the art? Unless I've missed part of this thread (quite possible), the only thing that seems to fit the bill is the use of the word "oriental".
> 
> This is a serious question; I'm not trying to pose a hypothetical. Over the course of this thread, one common recurring concept is that a new version of OA must be done respectfully. And when I think back to me 3e OA book, I think it was. However, I will admit that my glasses may be rose colored; it's been over a decade since that book got out of it's box in the basement. And I never owned the earlier version. So, I would really like to hear if there are specific things people found offensive beyond the initial concept.
> 
> When we want a new version of OA to be respectful, do we mean that WotC needs to keep doing it the way that it is, that they need to modernize it to brush off traces that were considered acceptable before but aren't now, or that they need to re-examine the product from the ground up?




I touch on it in the start of this voluminous post but essentially the fetishization of clans around the animals didn't have a lot of nuance and felt hokey. I liked it as a teenager and it's not essentially _terrible_ but it has a hokey feel to it. I'm not saying that having animals prominently related to noble clans and so on shouldn't be done (that'd be hypocritical in my case), but the way it was done in Oriental Adventures is kind of a little bit offensive. Not blaring out of the stereo offensive mind you, but I'm trying to think of how I'd defend against it being a little offensive and coming up short. 


Whew. Back to work.


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## Afrodyte (Mar 13, 2018)

Deset Gled said:


> Could someone give actual examples of things from the previous editions of OA that are offensive?  Beyond vague summaries or the fact that its existence may be offensive to some.  Are there any specific game mechanics that show an overt racial bias, offensive stereotypes in example characters, or perhaps racist caricatures in the art?  Unless I've missed part of this thread (quite possible), the only thing that seems to fit the bill is the use of the word "oriental".
> 
> This is a serious question; I'm not trying to pose a hypothetical.  Over the course of this thread, one common recurring concept is that a new version of OA must be done respectfully.  And when I think back to me 3e OA book, I think it was.  However, I will admit that my glasses may be rose colored; it's been over a decade since that book got out of it's box in the basement.  And I never owned the earlier version.  So, I would really like to hear if there are specific things people found offensive beyond the initial concept.
> 
> When we want a new version of OA to be respectful, do we mean that WotC needs to keep doing it the way that it is, that they need to modernize it to brush off traces that were considered acceptable before but aren't now, or that they need to re-examine the product from the ground up?




It's been a while since I cracked open the book, but it just felt...off in a way that standard D&D doesn't. I'm not Asian, so I can't really point to a list of items that are badwrongawful, but when I compare it to Oriental Adventures to, say, Avatar: The Last Airbender, it's very noticeable how different it feels when I interact with it.


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## neobolts (Mar 13, 2018)

New name needed, but yes please. Would love a 5e book drawn from various Asian mythologies and cultural heroic archetypes.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

Doctor Futurity said:


> Imagine if for a moment we all agree that the Oriental Adventures book should go the way of the dodo. Now imagine an elaborate campaign setting based entirely on Korean folklore, mythology and focused through a mytho-historical lens. Or imagine a fantasy setting that is based entirely on contemporary Chinese interests in how to interpret the fantastical (which is often centered on historical recreation with an emphasis on the reality of the mythic elements).
> 
> We have a lot of range here to create highly nuanced and very focused settings that draw from very specific cultures and histories. I think everyone would benefit from this.




For my taste, I probably wouldnt get an entire campaign setting set in Korea.

But if more like the Disney Epcot Center?

If D&D 5e came out with a *city* and its surrounding region, that looked authentically like a Korean city and a rural farming community in Korea, I would love that.

Even if it didnt say ‘Korea’, but was a rich cultural vignette, I would find it playable.

So, I guess, I find a local setting best to represent a culture, rather than a global setting.



In some ways, D&D 5e is off to a good start. Sword Coast is a regional setting. Tho I would probably want a local setting that was even narrower. (More like 1e City of Greyhawk as a local setting, a specific place, or 4e Menzoberranzan as a specific local setting of Drow.)

In other ways, D&D 5e is off to a bad start, because its polytheistic gods are objectively true, are everywhere in the entire world (even potentially everywhere in the entire multiverse), and suffocate the possibility of presenting other cultures with completely different worldviews.


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## Yaarel (Mar 13, 2018)

mangamuscle said:


> I do not think that is how it works. Polytheism is part of D&D. Same as devils/demons. TSR tried to remove/rename devils/demons and there was not a huge increase in players to warrant such an action. This is just like violent video games, if you do not like the violence, there are *other* video games that do not have it, I do not like or play Medal of Honor but I would never ask the publisher to tone down the violence, to each their own.




Ok. But then WotC cant pretend to care about what Muslims think.

If anyone cares about Muslim cultures, make it easy to opt out of polytheism.



There are MANY reasons to make *spiritual diversity* with different cosmologies from different cultures, a D&D thing.


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## neobolts (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> If WotC wants to see Muslims playing D&D, then it must be easy to opt out of polytheism.




Everything is optional. That's the beauty of RPGs.

 Also, I don't think catering fictional settings to real world religious demands is viable or good for the brand. More fundamental branches of any faith are going to find any fictional depictions of gods, monsters, and spells threatening. Every faith has their Jack Chicks and we shouldn't pay them any mind.


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## neobolts (Mar 13, 2018)

My own long running homebrew setting has its own "oriental" region with nations inspired by Thailand (muay Thai martial arts and sacred elephants), Mongolia (Genghis Khan), China (Three Kingdoms era, Wuxia), and Japan (ninja mythology, classic Japanese yokai, Warring States era shogun/samurai).

I think a lot of what is lost on the naysayers in the thread is that western RPG authors are not selfishly grabbing history and perverting it somehow, we are drawing from well traveled pop culture touchstones that are not handled with any sort of consistent reverence within the cultures themselves.


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## Maxperson (Mar 13, 2018)

Yes, an Oriental Adventures would be nice.  Let's leave PC out of gaming as it has already ruined enough things in life.


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## MichaelSomething (Mar 13, 2018)

Thanks to globalization, we can buy Asian style RPGs from Asians themselves.

Tenra Bansho Zero does to Japanese myth what D&D does to European myth
http://tenra-rpg.com/
Golden Sky Stories is from Japan and there's a Kickstarter happening for it RIGHT NOW!!!  for spalt though
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nekoewen/golden-sky-stories-twilight-tales?ref=profile_created
The Maid RPG also exists!  It's the first RPG ever to be translated from Japanese to English!
http://maidrpg.com/
There's also Double Cross, which is  made by Japanese people but isn't about ninjas and stuff like that...
http://ver-blue-amusement.com/index.html


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## Plageman (Mar 13, 2018)

The 2001 OA was 'bad' in the sense that it really was trying too hard to push the rokugan setting that WotC had recently acquired instead of offering just mechanisms to add more character options in the game.

The main issue we have here is that D&D books are mostly written and published by North American authors who have been influenced by decades of pulp and post WW2 fiction works. Just look at appendix N and you will understand the reason of why we are here now.

Again it's not an issue but some legacy DNA of the hobby. If you're offended by OA content just look at Shadowrun's depiction of the Japanese or European countries. And what to say of Pinnacle's Deadlands who used stereotypical Asian and native Americans ?

So do we need another OA on 5E ? No because WotC has demonstrated that with this edition they moved away from that type of products. Maybe we'll get a Sword Coast guide equivalent or a Tomb of Annihilation type campaign focused on some aspect of it. And that would be enough for the official publisher.

Now the market had changed enough with PDF, POD and Kickstarter to allow those who want to offer a different type of 'asian' setting to sell it. Just don't expect that WotC team will do it.


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## Shasarak (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> To me, the katana is a versatile one-or-two-handed finesse weapon, and brings something new to the table.




Something new like being able to cut through a tank!

Yeah, baby!


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## Jhaelen (Mar 13, 2018)

At the time I rather liked 'Oriental Adventures'. It was a fresh take on standard fantasy settings. To be honest I never cared if it was an accurate portrayal of asian culture and myth or not. This is still D&D after all!
I liked the system based on honor better than the standard alignment system. I also felt that the concept of spirits was more interesting than standard D&D's 'ghosts'. 
But there were also aspects I didn't like:
I wasn't all that fond of the Wu-Jen with its new way of aligning spells with the five elements. I also felt that the Oriental dragons were too odd to make good monsters.

When third edition arrived, though, I already failed to see the appeal of the Oriental classes. They felt no longer fresh, but artificial. They didn't really fit in with the rest of the classes and often were mechanically weak.

Today, I don't see any reason why we would need any of this. For me, it's sufficient to re-theme existing classes, spells, and monsters, if you want to give them an oriental flair. There's no need for new mechanics, at all. Just like alignments, honor is best modeled as a set of personality traits. It's little different from the Paladin's codex, anyway. And that doesn't have any rules system attached, either.


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## Hussar (Mar 13, 2018)

My personal beef with Oriental adventures stems from the mish mash.  Hang on, let me explain.

Yes, D&D mashes together all sorts of European cultural concepts.  Absolutely.  But, it does so in in a very broad way.  Fighters aren't Frankish Knights or Jannisaries, they are all of those things.  You can take the fighter class and make pretty much whatever you like.  You want your character to be inspired by Roman legionnaires?  Cool, no problem.  Pick the right equipment, take a Fighter class and off you go.  Every culture in Europe had "fighters".

But, let's look at OA.  We don't get knights, we get Samurai.  But, samurai aren't a broad concept that apply to all cultures.  They were a very distinct cultural artifact from one specific culture - namely the Japanese.  Here's a quote from the 3e OA book:



			
				3e Oriental Adventures Page 20 said:
			
		

> Samurai learn their combat techniques and the principles of bushido... Samurai consider themselves the pinnacle of the Celestial Order




What?  The Chinese and Koreans and all the other cultures don't have anything equivalent to knights?  We have to tie the knight class to one specific culture and force that culture on the entire setting?  Never minding Sohei or Kensai or Yakuza.  Seriously?  The Katana is a better sword than anything anyone else can make?  

And there's my problem.  It's not that it's a mish mash of cultures.  That's groovy.  But, it's pretty obviously placing certain cultures on the top of the heap.  We don't call Paladins, Knights Templar for a very good reason.  It's too restricting.  

Oriental Adventures might as well be called Japanese Adventures with a bit of all these other cultures tacked on for window dressing.  

To me, that's the disrespectful part of OA.  Unlike baseline D&D which, really, doesn't try to present any one culture as better than another, OA pretty much ignores anything south of Hong Kong and laser beam focuses on Japan.


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## Lylandra (Mar 13, 2018)

Jhaelen said:


> But there were also aspects I didn't like:
> I wasn't all that fond of the Wu-Jen with its new way of aligning spells with the five elements. I also felt that the Oriental dragons were too odd to make good monsters.
> 
> When third edition arrived, though, I already failed to see the appeal of the Oriental classes. They felt no longer fresh, but artificial. They didn't really fit in with the rest of the classes and often were mechanically weak.




I've been trying to wrap my head around the OA for quite a while and I believe it is at least partly a varint of your statement. I've never been too fond of D&Ds Oriental Adventures, even when I was younger and didn't see the problematic aspects of orientalism in it. It just didn't feel right to me, despite having been a western otaku in my teen days and being generally interested in foreign cultures and myths.  

Now I think it might be because D&D was, in its very core, designed as a pseudo-medieval european fantasy system. I don't think that D&D (at least earlier versions) and its ruleset are as generic as some people would claim. Your example with the Wu-Jen and spells is a good example. Asian myths use wholly different spells and examples of magic than western myths. So in order to "get it right", such a book or setting would need its own magic, its own creatures, its own myths which would be a mixture of actual myths, traditional fantasy plus additional filler that nevertheless fits the themes. 

And you'd need to be brave enough to cut away "western" classes. If there is no analogue for a druid or a paladin then cut them and replace them with something equivalent, but not too similar. 

Also, honor. Ugh. As someone mentioned earlier, generally speaking, there would be no reason at all to implement a honor system in OA, but not a medieval ruleset. Just because the concept of honor isn't too relevant in western societies today it doesn't mean that medieval nobles didn't care for it. I also wouldn't confuse honor with alignment or any intrinsic statistic. It isn't universal either. Honor is granted (extrinsically), which makes it dependent on who you're interacting with. It is also something that can be felt (intrinsically), but this is more relevant for your own characteristic, belief and behavior, not for how others see you. 
It it were me, I'd scrap the concept alltogether. 

Earlier in this thread someone said that the Avatar show is based on various asian cultures and doesn't get Flak for orientalism while being highly popular and I agree. But this is because 1) these guys did their research and combined existing cultural techniques with their own fantasy and 2) There is no othering in this world, because there are no "western" people who represent "our" culture in this setting at all.


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

Yeah, thing is:
1) Paladins were loosely based on the legends (myths) of the 12 Paladins of Charlemagne (a Christian emperor) and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round, also Christian legends. And why shall I not say, Catholic legends? It has been a time since I had an History class...
2) Clerics were explicitly based on medieval Christian knighthoods like the Templars and the Hospitalers. And quite frankly, they still are much better as warrior priests of a "Crystal Dragon Jesus" (it's a trope) religion than being true priests of anything else.
3) Druids are loosely based on the scarce information we have on Celtic druids, on neo-paganism movements and our own imagination. Nothing else. They are still pretty much the "other" priest.
4) Some of these creatures vary a lot between religions, but we all know where we got our devils, demons, and angels. 
5) And the Bard... originally a Celtic based class, it has pretty much engolfed every single musician out there under its shadow, while still being a "magic musician" more than anything else.
6) The Monk... pretty much every known RPG draws the monk from the specific lineage of the Shaolin temple, while ignoring every other monk in existence. And they still are different from their supposed inspiration.
7) The Barbarian. A nice short way of grouping every "primitive" culture into one pot, while giving them Rage abilities and calling them "Barbarian", which usually has a negative tone. Still pretty much the "other".
8) The popular concept about the Samurai and the Ninja have extended beyond their original, historical functions. The very Japanese people do this! And give them ki-based powers, even though Qi is from China.
9) The concept of a distant land with an exotic people is an idea far too deep in your minds to just get rid of it. "Exotic" here has never meant "inferior" or "evil", just a plain different culture. And the cultures in question are different, but that's ok: everyone is still human, after all; same dignity.
And we have the Sha'ir, Theurge, the *Wizard*...

The point is, there's nothing wrong in adapting stuff to fit into a classic Fantasy Kitchen Sink, that has very different needs from a solely asian/wuxia-based setting. 
I speak all of that as someone who LOVES fantasy material close from real-world mythos instead of just making up everything. Yet, this is my *taste*. In no way I imply it to be morally superior. The problem is, when you tie in such delirious stuff to real-world problems such as racism, you kinda are bringing this to table and saying "this is morally wrong to do". People will react to this.

So, Ok. The original OA had far too many Japanese classes then from other cultures. But that's just a design mistake; if that is the problem, we could fix it. Also, we did get to see more China with Foo creatures, the Celestial Bureaucracy and stuff.
And the honor stuff? They had to put it *somewhere*, and the core books were already published.
Is the book's title the problem? Just change it, but what lies inside doesn't need to change.

Really, do not relativize and banalize such serious real-world issues by linking it to pretty much innocent fan stuff. I absolutely Hate when people banalize serious problems by talking about trivial oddities...


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

MichaelSomething said:


> Thanks to globalization, we can buy Asian style RPGs from Asians themselves.
> 
> Tenra Bansho Zero does to Japanese myth what D&D does to European myth
> http://tenra-rpg.com/
> ...




Thank you.







Shasarak said:


> Something new like being able to cut through a tank!
> 
> Yeah, baby!



Only if you master both Ki and Kenjutsu, my pupil.


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## Maxperson (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> If WotC wants to see Muslims playing D&D, then it must be easy to opt out of polytheism.




That has been easy since 1e.


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## Maxperson (Mar 13, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Something new like being able to cut through a tank!
> 
> Yeah, baby!




You buy it in Wakanda or something?


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## Drew Melbourne (Mar 13, 2018)

I don’t think the problem is the mish-mashiness. As other folks have pointed out, most fantasy is a mish-mash. The real problems are:

1) the name; it’s like putting out a game called “Colored People Adventures”
2) the lack of involvement of Asians or Asian-Americans in crafting the material
3) the ham-fistedness of the mish-mash (largely because of 2) in which certain historical/real world elements are brought in too literally, are based on offensive stereotypes, or are fetishized
4) as a stand-alone setting marketed primarily to white people, the dynamic is “buy this setting so you can pretend to be Asian” as opposed to “we want everyone to play our game and everyone can be anything”

I think the thing to stress is: It’s possible for things to be problematic without being intentionally racist. Criticizing things is not the same as condemning them or the people who like them. Take other people’s concerns seriously, particularly when you’re operating off of positions you’ve held without questioning for years or decades. And if you’re telling someone that the thing they like is racist or awful, maybe back off slightly, examine your word choice and intentions and figure out if there’s a more nuanced way to make your point that will help everybody find common ground.

In the end, there will still be disagreements and that’s okay too. No group, whether we’re talking Asian-Americans or D&D Players or Asian-American D&D Players, is a monolith.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 13, 2018)

Maxperson said:


> That has been easy since 1e.




Agreed.  The conflict between monotheism and polytheism has been part of my own campaigns for years.


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## Mercule (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> If WotC wants to see Muslims playing D&D, then it must be easy to opt out of polytheism.



The same could be said for strong (conservative? orthodox?) Christians. There just isn't much room for other gods -- or truly benevolent spiritual beings representing themselves as gods -- in the Christian world view. I imagine that most Christians do what I do which is either wall it off as telling stories that may have "liberties" or assuming there's a layer of abstraction in there where there is some doctrine that points to a higher God, but can be ignored during play the same way John McClane's church attendance was irrelevant to his time in LA.

For anyone who cared enough, though, it's been pretty simple to do home brew that allowed for true monotheism -- in either the Christian or Muslim vein -- since 1E. The stay-at-home priests are NPCs. The Clerics are adventurers and can easily be "front line" priests of either religion. Paladins are more born than made. Even in 5E, the different domains could be seen as different focuses, like you'd find in Templars vs Hospitaliers -- I'm pretty sure there are similar sub-groups in Islam, but I won't try to name them and expose my ignorance. For the most part, both "conservative" groups run into the same issue: the default assumptions are pretty polytheistic.

For the ultra-conservative/fundamental branches, the simple existence of magic is probably a non-starter and the entire argument is moot and always will be. Just like reading Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

Mercule said:


> The same could be said for strong (conservative? orthodox?) Christians. There just isn't much room for other gods -- or truly benevolent spiritual beings representing themselves as gods -- in the Christian world view. I imagine that most Christians do what I do which is either wall it off as telling stories that may have "liberties" or assuming there's a layer of abstraction in there where there is some doctrine that points to a higher God, but can be ignored during play the same way John McClane's church attendance was irrelevant to his time in LA.
> 
> For anyone who cared enough, though, it's been pretty simple to do home brew that allowed for true monotheism -- in either the Christian or Muslim vein -- since 1E. The stay-at-home priests are NPCs. The Clerics are adventurers and can easily be "front line" priests of either religion. Paladins are more born than made. Even in 5E, the different domains could be seen as different focuses, like you'd find in Templars vs Hospitaliers -- I'm pretty sure there are similar sub-groups in Islam, but I won't try to name them and expose my ignorance. For the most part, both "conservative" groups run into the same issue: the default assumptions are pretty polytheistic.
> 
> For the ultra-conservative/fundamental branches, the simple existence of magic is probably a non-starter and the entire argument is moot and always will be. Just like reading Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.




Well, it's a make-believe world. "Liberties" are pretty acceptable. And yes, it is pretty easy to make monotheistic religious systems; just like any kind of religious system, really.

However, for some reason, no matter which religion you are part of, armor and maces are a mandatory part of the spiritual training hahahahahahahahahahahaha XD

Edit: Actually, as a strong and conservative? (depends on what you mean by that word) Christian, I'm pretty cool with most uses about my religion. Honestly, if you flat out say that you changed things and this is not meant as a precise depiction of it, you pretty much gave yourself liberty to do a lot of stuff.
Alas, anyway, if I don't like it, I just ignore it. A fellow poster once said: "apathy kills faster than hate".


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## Eltab (Mar 13, 2018)

Mercule said:


> The same could be said for strong (conservative? orthodox?) Christians. There just isn't much room for other gods -- or truly benevolent spiritual beings representing themselves as gods -- in the Christian world view.



When I have felt the need to use D&D as an intro to delivering myself of a lecture on Apologetics,* I point out how the attributes of the most-talked-about Good Gods match up very well with the attributes of Jehovah.  (The converse is also true: Evil Gods are not like Jehovah.)

* which has not happened often, fortunately for my (captive) audience


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## Celebrim (Mar 13, 2018)

Mercule said:


> The same could be said for strong (conservative? orthodox?) Christians.




It is for some of us.  For myself though, when I was wrestling with this in sixth grade, I actually decided that a polytheistic pantheon of completely made up deities was by far the spiritually safest path.

These are the options:
a) Have monotheism, either with a being that explicitly represents God or is an analogy for God.  The problem with this is that having to represent yourself as God in a story represents a serious moral hazard in and of itself.  And indeed, almost any representation of God which is fictional risks blasphemy.   Any fiction you create that has God in it risks misleading people about the character of God.  Tolkien wrestled with this as a very serious question, and he's a far better author than I am.
b) Have an explicitly non-spiritual, a-religious world.   This is hardly any better in terms of moral hazards.  Excising spirituality from a setting sets the tone that you don't believe any of that is important or worthy of consideration, and frankly creates a setting where the inhabitants aren't even believably human, since few things are more evident than that humans have a spiritual yearning which they will channel into something of some sort.  Even the new atheists are marked more by their attempts to transform of atheism into a spiritually rewarding belief system than their rejection of materiality - witness the language of someone like Sagan explicitly borrowed from the evangelical sermons of his youth, or essays like Darwin's More Stately Mansion.   
c) Create a religious system that is believable within the imagined world, but so utterly unlike any belief regarding reality that it cannot be mistaken for anything but vain imaginations with no attempt at analogy with respect to the real world.

My sixth grade self decided 'c' was the least morally hazardous course.

Not all my evangelical friends are happy with that.  I think many would prefer 'b', so as to avoid any appearance of even pretending to worship.  I'm largely OK with that, and most players - religious or irreligious - tend not to be interested in philosophical or religious questions in their play anyway.  As a DM and world builder though that thinks of RP as a literary artform, I don't think I could avoid addressing that.   Indeed, my present campaign actually was borne from a series of religious questions I put to myself about my campaign world.

The "walling off" of the game world from reality is something you do have to do, whether you believe that there is more to this world than can be observed or not.  It's just a particularly acute problem for religious people, because they tend to be very self-aware of their internal mental life and the meaning it may have.  For my part, I use my little imagined world as a sort of mirror, to contrast it with what I believe about this one.



> For the ultra-conservative/fundamental branches, the simple existence of magic is probably a non-starter and the entire argument is moot and always will be. Just like reading Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.




For the people who won't risk any contamination of their inner mental life with vanities, there is in fact a strong overlap between people who would resist any fantasy religion of any sort and people who resist anything that smacks of superstition or the occult of any sort.   Naturally, these people don't play D&D in the first place, and I'm fine with that decision as long as it in itself doesn't promote superstitious belief (see the Chick tracts).

I can't really speak for how RP is perceived in the Moslem community.  I suppose I should ask one of my pious colleagues at lunch at some point.  There is a ton of different cultural heritage there, in part because Islam formally recognizes the existence of supernatural beings like genies in a way that Christianity doesn't.  This puts even a modern Islamic potentially in a situation much more similar to the writer of Beowulf than a modern Christian of any sort.  Interesting topic actually.


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## Warpiglet (Mar 13, 2018)

There are two groups of myths, archetypes and tropes from fiction.  A and B.

'A' uses a mishmash pseudo historical group of ideas with tons of newer made up stuff in more modern fiction.  Its not very exact and glosses over a ton.  In the end, it looks a lot like a movie or comic book in "accuracy."  (the game was developed with this group in mind).

'B' uses a mishmash pseudo historical group of ideas with tons of newer made up stuff in more modern fiction.  Its not very exact and glosses over a ton.  In the end, it looks a lot like a movie or comic book in "accuracy."

People get upset about 'B' and not 'A.'  

One is not inferior.  Either can be the bad ass protagonist.  But we really need to worry about  inaccuracy with 'B.'

Talk about 'othering!'  Oh the irony!  Meanwhile, there is probably a game in another part of the world where 'B' is the baseline assumption and a supplement based on 'A' doesn't mean squat to anyone more familiar with it.

Why the angst?  D&D was a product of the part of the world in which 'A' was more accessible.  So what?!


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## Celebrim (Mar 13, 2018)

Igwilly said:


> 7) The Barbarian. A nice short way of grouping every "primitive" culture into one pot, while giving them Rage abilities and calling them "Barbarian", which usually has a negative tone. Still pretty much the "other".




It's if anything worse than that.  The original 'Barbarian' class was intended to be basically Conan, but it could be if you squinted considered an archetype for any more technologically primate warrior.  The worst thing about the class in my opinion was its assumption that 'primitive' automatically implied 'chaotic'.  But in the process of moving to 3e, it got worse.   It kept the worst thing about the class - primitive still implied chaotic - but outright removed the class as a generic warrior from the wilderness.   The class became representative of one thing and one thing only, the Norse Berserker.   As a simple proof of that, consider using the 3e Barbarian class to represent one of its traditional roles in 1e or 2e - the horseman of the steppes.   Raging is pretty darn useless to a horse archer, and there is nothing about the class that makes it particularly fit in that role.

Barbarian was so tied to its Northern European baggage, that I had to rewrite it to use it in my not particularly Western European homebrew setting.  The same is true of 'Druid'.  It's not a generic class for any animistic priest.   It's a class tied by name and baggage to Northern European animistic priests and the legends and stories (and gameplay mechanics) that have grown up around that conception.

There is nothing wrong with that, as the game was originally Northern European in conception and if that's where you focus your play, I'm fine with the pastiche.  But it's pretty darn useless if you are trying to build a world with its own culture divorced from any explicit region of the world, or if you are playing a game that strongly references some non-Northern European culture.


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## Gradine (Mar 13, 2018)

Dire Bare said:


> This thread has been painful for me to read with the very determined willful ignorance all over the place. But your post was simply beautiful, and has calmed my SJW rage. Thanks for your well-written and well-informed oasis of a post!
> 
> _Edit: After posting, I noticed the mod post on using terms like "Social Justice Warrior" or SJW . . . I'm using the term (or trying to) in a positive way, and totally wearing that badge. No sarcasm in this post, 100% heartfelt._




You would think that after all this time some of us would have diversified the party a bit. We need some more Social Justice Clerics and Rogues in here.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 13, 2018)

Gradine said:


> You would think that after all this time some of us would have diversified the party a bit. We need some more Social Justice Clerics and Rogues in here.




I usually play social justice elven warrior-wizards, I started out with BECMI D&D after all . . . .


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## Zarithar (Mar 13, 2018)

These games aren't based on actual history... so there's that. To answer the question though, no I don't think we need a new "Oriental Adventures" as the term is problematic now. It's fine to take elements of the cultures presented therein however and use them in game. Samurai, are already canon in 5e, and many creatures from various Asian mythologies can be found in the Monster Manual. I would like to see a Kara-Tur sourcebook however (as it is part of the Realms). It's fine to have a pseudo-Asian influenced area of the world just as it is fine to have a pseudo-European influenced area of the world. Just remember, this is not actual history.


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## MidwayHaven (Mar 13, 2018)

*I'm Asian.*

"Kara-Tur" was beautiful, and I could see that the writers did a lot of respectful research when describing Kara-Tur's geography. I especially loved the details put into the island kingdoms of Bertan (the Forgotten Realms equivalent of where I live); even if they're described as places where head hunting is commonplace, it didn't really bother me.

I'm part of an indigenous people over here who have had a history of headhunting. The Bertan description of it being populated by savage headhunters is okay with me. In fact, I kinda like it; the fact that it was put in a D&D supplement made it all the more fun. A fictional analog of my people can actually be played as either heroes or villains, and that's perfectly fine with me and the other gamers who share my ethnicity (or at least those who I've interacted with regarding this).

My only suggestion is that if and when D&D comes up with an Asian-themed supplement, maybe it would be best to remove the cliche of the land located in "the East." How about the land being situated in another compass point instead? 

(And I'd definitely buy a new "Kara-Tur Adventurer's Guide" if it were given a go. It'll fit in well on the shelf with my L5R RPG books.)


----------



## Eltab (Mar 13, 2018)

Gradine said:


> You would think that after all this time some of us would have diversified the party a bit. We need some more Social Justice Clerics and Rogues in here.



Not if the plot for the evening's session is "sneak around behind the local tyrant's back", we don't - Social Justice classes (is that a _non sequitur_?) have this feature: *Deliver Anti-Establishment Speech*.  They draw the cops' attention like a magnet - especially in an oppressive despotic tyranny!


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## Gradine (Mar 13, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Not if the plot for the evening's session is "sneak around behind the local tyrant's back", we don't - Social Justice classes (is that a _non sequitur_?) have this feature: *Deliver Anti-Establishment Speech*.  They draw the cops' attention like a magnet - especially in an oppressive despotic tyranny!




Didn't you know; that last phrase is redundant. If there's cops around, that automatically makes it an oppressive despotic tyranny!


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## Eltab (Mar 13, 2018)

MidwayHaven said:


> ...maybe it would be best to remove the cliche of not-Asia* being from "the East." How about the land being situated in another compass point instead?



Geography says that the best way to indicate "unimaginably far away", is to use either East or West. (There is a limit on how far South / North you can go: the Poles!  Somebody will figure out how to calculate the distance to them, eventually - maybe even travel there (or try to) themselves.)

Since both of the remaining options are equally good, shall we flip a coin?


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## Eltab (Mar 13, 2018)

Gradine said:


> If there's cops around, that automatically makes it an oppressive despotic tyranny!



Right up until the Crime Lord BBEG sends his henchmen after the PCs, and they decide to hang out near the police station (or the favorite donut&coffee shoppe) for protection.


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## jasper (Mar 13, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Geography says that the best way to indicate "unimaginably far away", is to use either East or West. (There is a limit on how far South / North you can go: the Poles!  Somebody will figure out how to calculate the distance to them, eventually - maybe even travel there (or try to) themselves.)
> 
> Since both of the remaining options are equally good, shall we flip a coin?



We hear down south say "Over Yonder Then a Fur piece more. "


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## Aaron L (Mar 13, 2018)

D&D is such a culturally accurate portrayal of Europe that I am astounded Oriental Adventures was inaccurate!

Seriously, D&D is a hodge-podge of European myths and fantasy (is it England?  Germany?  France?) that an Asian themed setting should be the same.

The name could change, but please, _not_ by calling it *Asian Adventures.*  No matter what setting you use the material for, I will guarantee you there is no Asia on that planet.  Oriental just means Eastern, so Eastern Adventures would be fine.


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## Mercurius (Mar 13, 2018)

I actually think "Asian Adventures" would be even more problematic, because it would imply that they're trying to be accurate to actual Asian cultures. We don't have "European Adventures." "Oriental," while not politically correct in some circles, at least clearly indicates that it is a Western/Occidental view on Asia.


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## Igwilly (Mar 13, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Geography says that the best way to indicate "unimaginably far away", is to use either East or West. (There is a limit on how far South / North you can go: the Poles!  Somebody will figure out how to calculate the distance to them, eventually - maybe even travel there (or try to) themselves.)
> 
> Since both of the remaining options are equally good, shall we flip a coin?



That wrongly assumes the fantasy Earth is necessarily round. We all know planets in D&D can be any shape they want. Flat disks over a giant turtle? That's almost a common variety...
Also, RPG players don't flip a coin: they roll a d2.


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## Warpiglet (Mar 13, 2018)

Mercurius said:


> I actually think "Asian Adventures" would be even more problematic, because it would imply that they're trying to be accurate to actual Asian cultures. We don't have "European Adventures." "Oriental," while not politically correct in some circles, at least clearly indicates that it is a Western/Occidental view on Asia.




I think you are correct.  by trying to be extra careful and map this more accurately onto the real world, we actually do something more offensive.

I have an idea: how about to avoid "othering" we just stick to good old fashioned D&D?  Knights, dragons, orcs, and western (can I say that?!) flavor.

That would be more inclusive, right?    Oh right, basing a creation on something a creator is more familiar with is really rude.  Can't do that either.  Maybe we cannot have any made up cultures based on anything in the real world.  Then we can all be sure to not offend!

But what still gets my goat is the fact that people are playing barbarians that have a tiny bit of inspiration from people groups I descend from.  I am utterly horrified!  How would descendants of goths, visigoths, celts and various Germanic tribes feel?!  Its almost like Gygax doesn't care about us!


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## jbear (Mar 13, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> I prefer to avoid politics in this thread.




Likely impossible. The article is ideologically and hence politically charged. Which is my biggest issue with it actually. I was of the understanding that politics/ideological view points were not proper topics for the enworld forum which is exclusively dedicated to RPG related topics. Maybe I misuderstand on the ideological front and that is actually permitted. Could totally be wrong on that front, nevertheless I think it is a very fine line that is being walked.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 13, 2018)

jbear said:


> Likely impossible. The article is ideologically and hence politically charged. Which is my biggest issue with it actually. I was of the understanding that politics/ideological view points were not proper topics for the enworld forum which is exclusively dedicated to RPG related topics. Maybe I misuderstand on the ideological front and that is actually permitted. Could totally be wrong on that front, nevertheless I think it is a very fine line that is being walked.




Two thoughts.

1. If the problem is calling something "Oriental Adventures" then simply present the content in a setting book and name the book after the setting information.  Put a strong foreward in the book that states "this is useful information about a variety of cultures within the context of the setting, use it as you see fit for your table.

2. Politics and Religion on the forums.  It's a general no no if you're being offensive.  It's ok to discuss if the conversation is moving forward in a progressive, fair, and generally respectful way regardless of whether it's of a conservative or liberal bent.  Rules are for people who need to be enforced, not the general community at large, though they are community rules.

point 1 is common sense.  point 2 is my opinion based on how I've seen things enforced.


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## Shasarak (Mar 13, 2018)

Hussar said:


> My personal beef with Oriental adventures stems from the mish mash.  Hang on, let me explain.
> 
> Yes, D&D mashes together all sorts of European cultural concepts.  Absolutely.  But, it does so in in a very broad way.  Fighters aren't Frankish Knights or Jannisaries, they are all of those things.  You can take the fighter class and make pretty much whatever you like.  You want your character to be inspired by Roman legionnaires?  Cool, no problem.  Pick the right equipment, take a Fighter class and off you go.  Every culture in Europe had "fighters".
> 
> ...




My main concern with this desire to roll everything into the one "Fighter" class is because a Samurai is not a Knight is not a Roman Legionary is not a Chinese Warrior.  So why would the "Fighter" class be able to emulate any of those except in the very loosest handwaving just call your longsword a katana way possible.

Because the facts are that you just can not give a bunch of dudes some Samurai armour and some Katanas and suddenly have Samurai except in DnD where everyone is a "Fighter".


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## Shasarak (Mar 13, 2018)

Maxperson said:


> You buy it in Wakanda or something?




Either there or the land of the Monkeys


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## jbear (Mar 13, 2018)

bmfrosty said:


> I don't know what virtue signalling is.  I know what type of people I normally hear the term from.



Morrus asked everyone to refrain from using that term. Please follow his guidelines. Also your follow up comment seems coded. Please refrain from making coded messages towards me that are evidently meant to be insulting. 


> Frankly I know jack about Australian history.  I know that Britain(?) used it as a dumping ground for people.  I know that their descendants make up the majority in Australia.  I know that there are Aborigines.
> 
> I had thought I was just coming up with an example of something that would be familiar, but not Asian or Middle-Eastern in stereotype.



Yes, it was clear from your comment that you are ignorant of Australian history. It was that which pretty much contradicted what your first comment suggested should happen. The aboriginal people who lived there before it was used as 'Britain's dumping ground', as you say, were obviously far from being a 'western culture'. They were brutally massacred and mistreated almost to the point of complete genocide. Their lands were appropriated and their culture was for many years surpressed. The mistreatment of aborigines actually continued until fairly recently in historic terms (1960's). Australia really only seems to be coming to terms with its brutal past very recently. 

Nevertheless the aboriginal culture is full of rich and interesting points of view. They have some beautiful stories and details of how they sing their journeys to accurately cross thousands of miles of hostile desert is absolutely fascinating. 

Your own card board cut out statement with regards to what you know about Australia seems very much in line with what you are criticising at the same time. Hence my comment.


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## Morrus (Mar 13, 2018)

jbear said:


> Likely impossible. The article is ideologically and hence politically charged. Which is my biggest issue with it actually. I was of the understanding that politics/ideological view points were not proper topics for the enworld forum which is exclusively dedicated to RPG related topics. Maybe I misuderstand on the ideological front and that is actually permitted. Could totally be wrong on that front, nevertheless I think it is a very fine line that is being walked.




It’s easy. In my house I can put my feet on the furniture, and you can’t. Like in your house, no doubt. This is an article paid for by me, and I decided to relax the rules for it.


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## Shasarak (Mar 13, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Geography says that the best way to indicate "unimaginably far away", is to use either East or West. (There is a limit on how far South / North you can go: the Poles!  Somebody will figure out how to calculate the distance to them, eventually - maybe even travel there (or try to) themselves.)




Thats true, once you get to the Poles you can not go any further.


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## Mercurius (Mar 13, 2018)

Dire Bare said:


> White privilege is a real thing, and not an offensive term at all when used correctly. The others you mention, not so much.




I agree in part, but "white privilege" can be and often is weaponized, or used as a kind of logical fallacy akin to circular reasoning, so I would emphasize the _when used correctly_ part. We may also differ on what "correctly" means and to what degree or in what way it is a "real thing." The other terms--Those That Shall Not Be Mentioned--are often used pejoratively, but not always (as you yourself say). They are descriptors of the "woke mentality" that confuses its own perspective for some kind of absolute truth - not unlike other forms of fundamentalism. My biggest concern about this mentality is that it doesn't reflect on itself or question itself, and adherents tend to be hyper-defensive and attacking of anyone who questions any part of it, even people--like myself--who are overall "allies" to the underlying concerns (e.g. diversity, social justice, racial and gender equality, etc).

This is a much larger conversation that probably doesn't need to be part of this thread.


----------



## bmfrosty (Mar 13, 2018)

jbear said:


> Morrus asked everyone to refrain from using that term. Please follow his guidelines. Also your follow up comment seems coded. Please refrain from making coded messages towards me that are evidently meant to be insulting.
> Yes, it was clear from your comment that you are ignorant of Australian history. It was that which pretty much contradicted what your first comment suggested should happen. The aboriginal people who lived there before it was used as 'Britain's dumping ground', as you say, were obviously far from being a 'western culture'. They were brutally massacred and mistreated almost to the point of complete genocide. Their lands were appropriated and their culture was for many years surpressed. The mistreatment of aborigines actually continued until fairly recently in historic terms (1960's). Australia really only seems to be coming to terms with its brutal past very recently.
> 
> Nevertheless the aboriginal culture is full of rich and interesting points of view. They have some beautiful stories and details of how they sing their journeys to accurately cross thousands of miles of hostile desert is absolutely fascinating.
> ...




What?  You're the one using coded messages, I think.

Please stop attacking me.


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## Zarithar (Mar 14, 2018)

Aaron L said:


> The name could change, but please, _not_ by calling it *Asian Adventures.*  No matter what setting you use the material for, I will guarantee you there is no Asia on that planet.  Oriental just means Eastern, so Eastern Adventures would be fine.




Since any official supplement would likely be set in the Forgotten Realms, why not just call it Kara-Tur? I don't see how this is any more problematic than Chult (with its African influences).  

Honestly though, threads like this frustrate me because every fantasy RPG I know of borrows cultural, mythological, etc aspects from a variety of cultures around the world. Is a time going to come when we can no longer have a hobby for fear of offending someone from one of those cultures?


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 14, 2018)

bmfrosty said:


> What?  You're the one using coded messages, I think.
> 
> Please stop attacking me.




With respect to you both, please use either the report post button, the ignore feature or both before the mods get involved and close this.

Thank you and be well
KB


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## Eltab (Mar 14, 2018)

Igwilly said:


> RPG players don't flip a coin: they roll a d2.



What on OEarth DO you use a GP for - money?


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## Eltab (Mar 14, 2018)

Zarithar said:


> Is a time going to come when we can no longer have a hobby for fear of offending someone from one of those cultures?



I'm more worried about people who claim to be 'defending' those cultures (from non-existent attacks) chasing / scaring people away from the hobby.

And, as I noted above, there is a strong flavor of _"You're not allowed to have any fun!"_ in the scolds.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 14, 2018)

Eltab said:


> I'm more worried about people who claim to be 'defending' those cultures (from non-existent attacks) chasing / scaring people away from the hobby.
> 
> And, as I noted above, there is a strong flavor of _"You're not allowed to have any fun!"_ in the scolds.




Oh yes I'm _suuuure_ that's your concern.  Not that we don't have community members who have been chasing women away from the hobbies for decades, no, it's that people attempting to defend a fair representation of another culture who are gonna scare everyone off!!  Oh noes!  Because what they must _really_ be doing is telling people they can't have fun!  Not that their fun should be respectful, or that their fun should be tasteful, or that their fun should have some historical knowledge to it.

Every once in a while I think it might be "fun" to play a very tropey, stereotypical character...and then I usually think better of myself because tropes and stereotypes tend to get boring quickly and are generally no "fun" to play long-term.  If it's a character I'm going to put energy into for a long time, it's a character I'm going to put effort into treating like a real person, not some joke.  And ya know what?  It tends to turn out being a lot more "fun" to play a character I put a lot of heart into making into a not-joke character than the opposite.

So tell your fear-mongering to take a seat.  We're not telling people they can't have fun.  We're telling people there are better ways to have fun.  

You can apply this to all the arguments of "But D&D is founded in tropey gameplay!" yes, and we've found a better way.
"But D&D is supposed to be fun and silly!" and being respectful doesn't preclude fun and silliness.  Unless your definition of "fun" is "being a disrespectful".  And frankly, there are people for whom that IS their definition of fun.  We all know them.  The people who just can't _not_ make sexist, racist, insulting and derogatory jokes about other people.  They tend to be the same people who _can't take the heat_ when someone makes a joke about a group they occupy.

And quite frankly, if we're "scaring off" those people, then nothing of value is lost.  Sheer numbers is always inferior to quality.  I'll take a smaller hobby group over a higher population with a larger number of jerks.


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## Shasarak (Mar 14, 2018)

shidaku said:


> So tell your fear-mongering to take a seat.  We're not telling people they can't have fun.  We're telling people there are better ways to have fun.




How do we have better fun?  I am tired of the normal mass market fun I have previously been having and would enjoy some quality fun for a change.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 14, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> How do we have better fun?  I am tired of the normal mass market fun I have previously been having and would enjoy some quality fun for a change.




I believe I just wrote a couple paragraphs on the subject.  Perhaps reading them would enlighten you?


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## Zarithar (Mar 14, 2018)

shidaku said:


> people attempting to defend a fair representation of another culture




Kara Tur was briefly detailed in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, and of course we have Chult in ToA. Do you feel that those are fair representations? I would love to see Kara Tur given the treatment that Chult was (minus the death curse) in ToA and see the setting updated for 5e.


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## Shasarak (Mar 14, 2018)

shidaku said:


> I believe I just wrote a couple paragraphs on the subject.  Perhaps reading them would enlighten you?




Oh ok, so step one treat my character like it is a real person, dont play DnD in a fun and silly manner, look down on games with large numbers of players aka jerks?

Sounds doable.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 14, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Oh ok, so step one treat my character like it is a real person, dont play DnD in a fun and silly manner, look down on games with large numbers of players aka jerks?
> 
> Sounds doable.




If your goal with these posts is to be reported for trolling, you are doing a fine job.

You can also consider this my last response to you ever.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 14, 2018)

Zarithar said:


> Kara Tur was briefly detailed in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, and of course we have Chult in ToA. Do you feel that those are fair representations? I would love to see Kara Tur given the treatment that Chult was (minus the death curse) in ToA and see the setting updated for 5e.




I am not intimately familiar with either setting, as I'm not a terrible fan of Forgotten Realms the setting.  I know old tidbits about Chult from discussions about when the new ToA came out, but it sounds like it had some problems and they made an effort to fix those problems in the update, not perfect, up effort was made and some improvement was accomplished.  

Most material from the 70's and 80's has a fair number of problems with it, it is a product of its time.  We are no longer in the that time.  We know better, we can do better.  We _have_ done better, and there's no reason for us not to continue to do better.

I could probably assume Kara-Tur had it's problems.  So if it were updated to help clean up those problems, I think that'd be great.


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## Zarithar (Mar 14, 2018)

I owned the original book back in the 80s, and it was largely responsible for awakening my interest in Japanese history and mythology in particular. Although it did contain references to several Asian cultures... my memory of it was that it skewed very heavily in the direction of Japan and Japanese mythology and folklore. What I would like to see is a treatment that is a little more diverse, drawing inspiration from not only Japan, but also China, India, Thailand, The Philippines, and other cultures and civilizations. Heck, just a book of monsters influenced by said cultures would be amazing. There are some truly terrifying mythological creatures from places like The Philippines for example which get almost no exposure in fantasy RPGs.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 14, 2018)

talien said:


> Orientalism -- a wide-ranging term originally used to encompass depictions of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian cultures -- has gradually come to represent a more negative term.  Should _Dungeons & Dragons, _known for two well-received books titled "Oriental Adventures," have another edition dedicated to "Eastern" cultures?
> 
> View attachment 94898​[h=3]*A Brief History of Orientalism*[/h]For a time, orientalism was a term used by art historians and literary scholars to group "Eastern" cultures together.  That changed in 1978 with Edward Said's _Orientalism_, which argued that treatment of these cultures conflated peoples, times, and places into a narrative of incident and adventure in an exotic land.
> 
> ...




All regions of the World were less diverse in the Middle Ages. People in Europe in 1100 AD for instance rarely ever saw a black man or a person from China, for instance. There is also a reason why Christopher Columbus called the first native Americans he saw, "Indians" Christopher Columbus never saw a real Indian, he read the works of Marco Polo as his guide, but he never actually been to the places Marco Polo described in his diary. Travel in the Middle Ages was very uncommon. People usually never went more than a dozen miles from where they were born, and it was common for Europeans only to meet other Europeans, and for Asians to meet only Asians, and for blacks to see only blacks. that is the way things were back them. It is not realistic for a middle age society to reflect the diversity of modern society because middle age societies were not as diverse, travel was expensive and few people did it. If a black person ever appeared in a Medieval European village, he would receive stares, as most people in that village had never seen a black man before. 

A player may play any race he wants, he just has to understand that I his character is of another race from a different continent, he is going to receive a lot of curiosity from the local villagers when he goes to buy some equipment. If he goes into a tavern, to check on the local gossip, its realistic to expect a hush when he steps through the door, as no one there has ever seen his kind before, to them he is exotic.

Today we live in a world of jet age travel, people travel all throughout the world, I meet people from China, and from Africa, and from the Middle East all the time, this is normal for me, an it is not exotic, but back in the middle ages it was, and we just have to understand that. the past was different from today, is it wrong to portray that difference. Should every village the PCs travel to reflect a polyglot of cultures from all around the World? How realistic is that? It is politically correct to portray villages that way, but it is not realistic, any more than going to a peasant's house and finding a bathroom inside with a flush toilet would be.


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## billd91 (Mar 14, 2018)

Mercurius said:


> I actually think "Asian Adventures" would be even more problematic, because it would imply that they're trying to be accurate to actual Asian cultures. We don't have "European Adventures." "Oriental," while not politically correct in some circles, at least clearly indicates that it is a Western/Occidental view on Asia.




Yes, "Asian Adventures" would be substantially more problematic than "Oriental Adventures". I appreciated some game publications' use of the word Mythic or Mystic such as "Mythic Europe" for an Ars Magica supplement and "Mystic China" from Palladium. They highlighted the source while also highlighting the fantasy interpretation.


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## billd91 (Mar 14, 2018)

Warpiglet said:


> I have an idea: how about to avoid "othering" we just stick to good old fashioned D&D?  Knights, dragons, orcs, and western (can I say that?!) flavor.




It's kind of funny. OA gets accused of "Othering" when its goal was pretty much the opposite - to bring in that which had previously been excluded. Returning to exclusion would be about as othering as you could get.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 14, 2018)

What if the "Orient" was in the West of a particular campaign world, then calling it "Eastern Adventures" would be inappropriate. "Oriental Adventures" takes into account the possibility that the equivalent of Asia in a campaign world may be located in some other direction other than east, I think it is more accurate than to make assumptions about the campaign's geography, or to assume that they continent where those cultures are found would be Asia. For example, what if there was a campaign world where the equivalent of European cultures was in the northern hemisphere and the equivalent of Asian cultures was in the Southern hemisphere? Oriental is a more useful word to describe it, than calling it "Eastern" when its actually not in the east, for example. To give up an example, there is Dragonlance, where the European continent is actually in the Southern Hemisphere, so where is Krynn's "Orient?" It could be anywhere or nowhere.


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## Mercurius (Mar 14, 2018)

billd91 said:


> Yes, "Asian Adventures" would be substantially more problematic than "Oriental Adventures". I appreciated some game publications' use of the word Mythic or Mystic such as "Mythic Europe" for an Ars Magica supplement and "Mystic China" from Palladium. They highlighted the source while also highlighting the fantasy interpretation.




Yes, agreed, although also remember that Faerun is not “Mythic Europe;” it is an imaginary setting which takes premodern Europe as a major source of inspiration. Ars Magica’s Mythic Europe is actually fantasized version of Europe. 

Kara-Tur is not Mythic Asia any more than Farrun is Mythic Europe. Well, maybe it is more closely analogous, but not like Ars Magica.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> What if the "Orient" was in the West of a particular campaign world, then calling it "Eastern Adventures" would be inappropriate. "Oriental Adventures" takes into account the possibility that the equivalent of Asia in a campaign world may be located in some other direction other than east, I think it is more accurate than to make assumptions about the campaign's geography, or to assume that they continent where those cultures are found would be Asia. For example, what if there was a campaign world where the equivalent of European cultures was in the northern hemisphere and the equivalent of Asian cultures was in the Southern hemisphere? Oriental is a more useful word to describe it, than calling it "Eastern" when its actually not in the east, for example. To give up an example, there is Dragonlance, where the European continent is actually in the Southern Hemisphere, so where is Krynn's "Orient?" It could be anywhere or nowhere.




Yeah, even the name ‘orient’, ‘east’, or ‘Asia’ is inappropriate. That is a reason why I like the approach of Avatar: the Last Air Bender. It is just a cool setting. A regional setting that like looked something this can plug in anywhere in a world.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

Mercurius said:


> I agree in part, but "white privilege" can be and often is weaponized, or used as a kind of logical fallacy akin to circular reasoning, so I would emphasize the _when used correctly_ part. We may also differ on what "correctly" means and to what degree or in what way it is a "real thing." The other terms--Those That Shall Not Be Mentioned--are often used pejoratively, but not always (as you yourself say). They are descriptors of the "woke mentality" that confuses its own perspective for some kind of absolute truth - not unlike other forms of fundamentalism. My biggest concern about this mentality is that it doesn't reflect on itself or question itself, and adherents tend to be hyper-defensive and attacking of anyone who questions any part of it, even people--like myself--who are overall "allies" to the underlying concerns (e.g. diversity, social justice, racial and gender equality, etc).
> 
> This is a much larger conversation that probably doesn't need to be part of this thread.




Add to list of insulting terms, ‘colonialism’ and ‘exploitation’.

If the terms are being weaponized to paint every white person as guilty, for no other reason than their ‘race’ is white, then these terms are racist, by definition, and offensive.



When used honestly, every empire ‘colonized’ and ‘exploited’, including the emperor of China or the kalif of Arabia or Turkey. Today, Turkey oppresses the Kurds, China oppresses the Tibetans, and so on.

It is unacceptable, when persons dishonestly imply that only Europeans can be guilty of colonialism or exploitation.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

Avoid the name, ‘Asia’. Because it requires more attention to reallife, than many fantasy settings want.

Avoid the name, ‘Oriental’ or ‘East’, because the region might not be in the east.

Avoid the name, ‘Kara-Tur’, because that is too setting specific. And who knows what it means? Im a D&D player, not a Fantasy Realms player, and I was unsure what Kara-Tur was. It lacks name recognition.

So, what name for the setting then?

Maybe something stylistic. Some Asian feature that is appealing and suggestive.

Like ‘avatar’ the ‘air bender’.



I dont know. Maybe the ‘Five Motions’. It refers to the five elements of Daoism: fire, water, tree/air, metal/crystal, and soil/space. These are five different ways of moving − unlike the Hellenistic elements that are five different kinds of substances. The setting can divide into five themes, and evocatively so.

The best name requires no familiarity with reallife, but at the same time derives from reallife Asia. Asians in a given locale would likely recognize it immediately.


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## Hussar (Mar 14, 2018)

Warpiglet said:


> I think you are correct.  by trying to be extra careful and map this more accurately onto the real world, we actually do something more offensive.
> 
> I have an idea: how about to avoid "othering" we just stick to good old fashioned D&D?  Knights, dragons, orcs, and western (can I say that?!) flavor.
> 
> ...




But, that's the point.  The classes in the base game are used to represent a broad swath of different cultural inspirations.  Even the barbarian has left behind it's 3e trappings to a large degree.  I mean, sure, you have Frenzy barbarians, true, but, the Totem barbarians are quite different.  Should all barbarians have rage?  Eh, maybe not.  

Maybe we should rename Fighters in 5e to janissaries. After all, we only need to represent one single culture in order to have the game right?  We can completely exclude all other cultures and make sure that all fighters in D&D are represented by one single concept.

That's fine right?  Oh, wait... we don't do that.  We have classes that are broad archetypes (with varying degrees of broadness) drawing inspiration from European (largely) myth and history that can be used to represent a thousand different concepts.  But, as soon as we have "Oriental Adventures", then we get Samurai and Ninja's.  



Zarithar said:


> I owned the original book back in the 80s, and it was largely responsible for awakening my interest in Japanese history and mythology in particular. Although it did contain references to several Asian cultures... my memory of it was that it skewed very heavily in the direction of Japan and Japanese mythology and folklore. What I would like to see is a treatment that is a little more diverse, drawing inspiration from not only Japan, but also China, India, Thailand, The Philippines, and other cultures and civilizations. Heck, just a book of monsters influenced by said cultures would be amazing. There are some truly terrifying mythological creatures from places like The Philippines for example which get almost no exposure in fantasy RPGs.




Totally, totally agree with this.  There is more to East Asia than Japan.  Good grief, I've been to Angkor Wat.  That was a city of over a million people when Edo was little more than a hilltop village.


----------



## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

D&D often focuses on the less flattering.

Even the name, ‘dungeons’, even the religious connotation of ‘dragons’.

Classes like ‘sorcerer’, ‘warlock’, ‘warlord’, ‘thief’, ‘assassin’, ‘oath of tyranny’, ‘oath of conquest’, scholar of ‘necromancy’ ... heh, and these are the good guys.



I doubt any culture can come thru D&D unscathed. It focuses on the dangerous, for the sake of entertainment.


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## MichaelSomething (Mar 14, 2018)

Looks like two can play the cultural appropriation game...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08dHXfIprYE


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## Hussar (Mar 14, 2018)

billd91 said:


> It's kind of funny. OA gets accused of "Othering" when its goal was pretty much the opposite - to bring in that which had previously been excluded. Returning to exclusion would be about as othering as you could get.




I'd argue that you're missing a fair degree of nuance though.

Why does Oriental Adventures=(mostly) Japan?  

Well, grounded in the 1980's, as far as the US was concerned, Japan was pretty much the only country that mattered.  It ties into the whole Hollywood thing where Asia (outside of the Vietnam war, which was pretty much only told from an American perspective) equalled Japan.  Back in the day, Japan was THE thing.  A bajillion ninja movies, the Karate Kid, so on and so forth.  Spackle on some Chinese Hong Kong action film stuff and you're good to go.

It's othering in the sense that what is being used for inspiration is solely what mainstream views of Asia were at the time.  The heavy use of Japanese language, cultural ideas, and whatnot to the exclusion of pretty much everyone else.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I can't really speak for how RP is perceived in the Moslem community.




Exactly. But I have lived among Muslims when studying abroad.

At least where as I was, to have a game about polytheism is unthinkable. A nonstarter. For pretty much any Muslim.



For me personally, the turn-off from D&D polytheism is the lack of spiritual diversity. Each culture needs to have its own unique belief system, or else it almost fails to be a culture.

Plus, I homebrew settings, and use different settings, and want Player Handbook rules descriptions to at least try accommodate the D&D tradition of building your own world of imagination.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

If WotC wants Muslims to play D&D, it means absence of polytheism.


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## Hussar (Mar 14, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Exactly. But I have lived among Muslims when studying abroad.
> 
> At least where as I was, to have a game about polytheism is unthinkable. A nonstarter. For pretty much any Muslim.
> 
> ...




Let's not lump all Muslims together though.  Sure, there might be some that have a serious issue with polytheism, but, OTOH, I've enough Malaysian Muslim friends that haven't had an issue with it.

And, [MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION], let's be honest here, this is a drum you've been beating for a while without getting a whole lot of traction.  I'm not sure this is really going to go anywhere.  But, in any case, shouldn't an "Oriental Adventures" draw on Muslim mythology?  I mean, 1001 Arabian Nights has stories set in China after all.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

@_*Hussar*_,

There are positive developments. Xanthars Guide, in its cleric class section has a sidebar that explicates − to the player! − that a cleric can instead revere a ‘philosophy’ (such as some traditions of Buddhism!) or an abstract ‘force’ (such as some traditions of Daoism!).

These official clarifications about the absence of polytheism are useful for many Asia-esque settings.



This clarification concerning the spiritual diversity of the cleric class needs to be core, and integrated into the Players Handbook from the get-go.

If an update to the 5e SRD includes this explicit reference to the cleric class representing a diversity of spiritual worldviews, especially clerics with nonpolytheistic views, I would relax a bit more on this issue.



4e and worse 5e have become too heavy handed about imposing polytheism as the setting assumptions in the rules descriptions. The motive is corporate, out of desire to use D&D gods as trademark branding, relating to novels, movie rights, and so on. I am deeply uncomfortable with this situation of polytheism.


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## Zak S (Mar 14, 2018)

arjomanes said:


> From the title pages of the new _Frostbitten and Mutilated_ book:
> 
> 
> > Note on the appropriation of traditional Nordic cultures
> ...






> So there's the Vikings appropriation everyone has been pointing to. That Zak, always upending apple carts.




Only a day out and already Frostbitten & Mutilated is contributing to The Dialogue. I feel like a proud dad.


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## Hussar (Mar 14, 2018)

Let's not forget the actual text of what we're talking about.  If you look at the 1e OA, it's pretty much 100% Japanese.  The class names are all Japanese,virtually all of the art (what little art there is) most of the monsters are Japanese and even the culture of Kara-Tur is couched in Japanese.  From the OA:



			
				Oriental Adventures said:
			
		

> The people of Kara-Tur, it is noticed by gaijin, are extraordinarily polite as a rule.




Yeah, this isn't "Oriental Adventures".  This is Hollywood Japan in D&D.


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## Derren (Mar 14, 2018)

I wonder if we will also see an lenghty article about how D&D is disrespecting European culture.
Or is that considered to be ok?


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## Cergorach (Mar 14, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, this isn't "Oriental Adventures".  This is Hollywood Japan in D&D.



As opposed to the Sword Coast, which is a faithful representation of Europe...
Everything in FR is a 'movie' representation of the real world! Most D&D worlds are cheesy as hell.


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## Antal MolnÃ¡r (Mar 14, 2018)

Plageman said:


> Also, Harissa (Saus) contains a component that only became available between 1500-1600 in the Persian Empire, imho a bit after the 1001 Nights setting. But this is just pushing the details around, most people forget or don't know that the potato was actually introduced into Europe AFTER the middle ages... Hell, we had gunpowder before potatoes...




Mr. Superficial !!!

Would you be so kind to read my post carefully !!!!!

I never told that harrisa part of 1001 nights. I just wrote harissa  as  en exapmle. An example about that an American tourist never had a chance to eat in a hotel in an Arabic country, because the arabic people are present to you that you want to see, the Hollywood Arabiya. Tourism is not a business of truth but exchanging your money for beautiful lies. You want stereotypes, so you get it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxXIBDcSqSA

I ignore anything other you wrote and will write because it is a shame how much superficial you are.


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## Plageman (Mar 14, 2018)

> 4e and worse 5e have become too heavy handed about imposing polytheism as the setting assumptions in the rules descriptions. The motive is corporate, out of desire to use D&D gods as trademark branding, relating to novels, movie rights, and so on. I am deeply uncomfortable with this situation of polytheism.




D&D has tied itself to a setting since 3e with the inclusion of Greyhawk references.

On top of that the mechanics introduced in AD&D 2e for the specialty priests permitted more character variation and opened the the way for products like Legends & Lore and Faiths and Avatars.

So yes D&D pushed polytheism forward in its game both for mechanical reasons and setting wise.

If this bothers you just don't use these mechanics in your game and play in your homebrew world. If you don't want to use the D&D system there's plenty of setting neutral OSR products that you can use.

And if you need a setting more grounded in your belief system maybe check other RPGs who offer that type of Fantasy Earth.

Now on the subject of OA, I'm perfectly okay with not having a hodge-podge book mixing different cultures. But the question is what should we wait for ? Simply a setting with a cultures flavor ? New mechanics for PCs ? Monsters ?

One of the main attraction of the original OA is that beyond the setting it introduced new classes in a game that had only few PC oriented books.

When I look at the market it is clear the PCs are still the principal selling demographic target and that anything that will permit character differentiation is highly appreciated.

So what would make a Samurai different from a Chivalrous Knight or a Roman legionnaire ? Armor ? Weapons ? skill ? All these can be modeled with a fighter, it's just flavor. But still we want a specific class for each of them. In the AD&D 2e PHB there was a section about creating a new class. The author suggested that if there wasn't enough variation with an existing class then it shouldn't exist (Viking vs standard Fighter).

Again it is truly 3e that started the multiplication of Classes that we know of today. In 2e there were kits but they added only a couple of abilities not whole 1-20 progression. Some classes were introduced later in the game cycle like Barbarians, Ninja, Psionics, Necromancer and the setting specific Sha'ir and Gladiator.

In the PHB there was no OA content, the game was geared around generic Western fantasy.

It changed with 3e and the monk as a core class and the return of OA style stuff in the first splatbook Sword and Fist.


----------



## JudgeDeadd (Mar 14, 2018)

> With this, they tried to make sure that there was a 50/50 split of people who identify as male and people who identify as female in the illustrations.



...And just how do you depict something like this in an illustration? Do you have them wearing nametags with their preferred pronouns or something? I swear the 5th edition of D&D sounds dumber and dumber with every new thing I hear about it. 

Then again, come to think of it, that's actually mighty convenient! You don't need to actually bother with that pesky "equal representation" thing -- in case anyone complains that you've got too many men in your illustrations, you can claim that some of them are actually women (on the inside.)


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## jbear (Mar 14, 2018)

Morrus said:


> It’s easy. In my house I can put my feet on the furniture, and you can’t. Like in your house, no doubt. This is an article paid for by me, and I decided to relax the rules for it.



Probably unwise, but as you say - you can do what you like. 

I'll be checking out of this discussion now and get back to what I actually enjoy talking, reading and discussing on this RPG site.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 14, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Yeah, even the name ‘orient’, ‘east’, or ‘Asia’ is inappropriate. That is a reason why I like the approach of Avatar: the Last Air Bender. It is just a cool setting. A regional setting that like looked something this can plug in anywhere in a world.




Who gets to say that the word "orient" is inappropriate, why do they have a right to edit our dictionary and tell us what words are appropriate and what words are not? I grew up when that word was in common use, people who used that word did not hate Asians! What right to people now say its a bad word and we can't use it! What do these young twenty-somethings really know when they tell us older folk what words we can use in our sentences? Are they wiser than us? Just asking.

It has not been explained to me, why the word "Oriental" is negative? People used that word all the time in the 1980s and they didn't hate Asians! I think that word was chosen back then because it didn't make assumptions about where the equivalent of Asians lived in any given campaign world, including home brew ones that players might devise, they might want to use stuff in the book Oriental Adventures. And now the politically correct people want to rob us of this useful word by saying its bad or its racist, they are trying t "Newspeak" the language and rob us of words we can use and force us to make long awkward sentences so we can talk around the words they banned, thus limiting our ability to communicate! There is nothing bad about the word Oriental, it is the counterpart to Occidental which describes European cultures. There are cultural differences between the people of Asia and the people of Europe, it is not racist to admit that. Asia has made great strides in the past two centuries, they are the fastest growing region in the world economically, why would they want to run away from themselves? I am particularly impressed with Japan and how far it has come, it did some terrible things during World War II, but look at the place now! Japan is the bulwark of democracy in the far east, Australia is going to depend in large part on the Japanese Navy to defend against encroaching China's territorial ambitions, these are not small unimportant countries!


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## pemerton (Mar 14, 2018)

ZeshinX said:


> Really??  Fantasy fiction is being debated for it's cultural value?  Are you kidding?



Because no one ever wrote essays about Wagner, or JRRT, or REH, or Sax Rohmer?


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 14, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Add to list of insulting terms, ‘colonialism’ and ‘exploitation’.
> 
> If the terms are being weaponized to paint every white person as guilty, for no other reason than their ‘race’ is white, then these terms are racist, by definition, and offensive.
> 
> ...



As a kid, when I thought of Colonialism I thought of this:





So when I heard people describe "American Colonialism" I assumed that Americans were going to foreign countries, dressing up like these folk and playing the fife and drum. Oh what a terrible thing to be doing that! But I guess those people had a different definition of colonialism than what I was thinking. The kind of colonialism that happened in the 13 original American colonies where British subjects settled on America's east coast and became Americans, is not the sort of colonialism they were talking about, but it is the history I grew up with, I only learned about the other sort of colonialism later.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 14, 2018)

jbear said:


> it was clear from your comment that you are ignorant of Australian history.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The aboriginal people who lived there before it was used as 'Britain's dumping ground', as you say, were obviously far from being a 'western culture'. They were brutally massacred and mistreated almost to the point of complete genocide. Their lands were appropriated and their culture was for many years surpressed. The mistreatment of aborigines actually continued until fairly recently in historic terms (1960's). Australia really only seems to be coming to terms with its brutal past very recently.



Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).

But if we reverse the idea of "villains on both sides" to "well-intentioned people on both side", Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing With Strangers could be a starting point. It also shows that you don't have to be aiming to commit massacres to contribute to the deaths of many thousands of people, and cultural devastation.

The personal moral character of Arthur Phillip is of only modest relevance in assessing the significance and moral standing of the colonisation process.



bmfrosty said:


> What needs to not happen is a book full of harmful stereotypes.
> 
> A medieval Asian or Middle-eastern themed adventure certainly could be done, but only with much care.
> 
> What would be a more interesting book to me would be an Australia themed adventure.  Put it on a large continent already inhabited but being flooded with prisoners from a far land - most of whom are just trying to get along.  Put villains on both side of the story.





bmfrosty said:


> Frankly I know jack about Australian history.  I know that Britain(?) used it as a dumping ground for people.  I know that their descendants make up the majority in Australia.  I know that there are Aborigines.
> 
> I had thought I was just coming up with an example of something that would be familiar, but not Asian or Middle-Eastern in stereotype.



I'm an Australian and I teach some aspects of the colonisation of Australia at a university level. I think any adventure that deals with colonisation (whether along British Australian or some other lines) has the potential to be tricky, just as would - say - an adventure that tried to deal with other sorts of wrongdoing whose meaning and consequences still resonate in contemporary life. (I'm hesitant to give examples, but I'm sure you can think of some.)

That's not a reason not to do it. It just means you have to recognise that what you do might be controversial.

There is a reason to try and avoid casual racism, and to avoid treating events that are of great significance to some people in a trivial or frivolous fashion. But while sincerity helps here, it's not self-validating. I know some people who are participants in various social liberation movements who love the X-Men. But I'm sure there are others out there who think the X-Men comics and movies trivialise their struggles.

One way to go wrong is to project yourself in some fashion onto the other person/culture/history/experience you're trying to describe and engage with. "Orientalism" is a type of projection. Framing "the Orient" as "exotic" is one manifstation of the projection.

There would be similar sorts of things to be avoided in your hypothetical Australia adventure. (Unfortunately the standard D&D mechanics may not make it easy to avoid them, because they are designed around certain technologies - eg the use of steel weapons and armour - as the norm. That's not an issue in itself, but it can make it hard to smoothly integrate alternative technologies into the gameworld. The monk's wisdom bonus to AC lives in the margins of this issue.)



Mercurius said:


> "Oriental," while not politically correct in some circles, at least clearly indicates that it is a Western/Occidental view on Asia.





Mercurius said:


> Furthermore, the reason the Orient is still the "exotic Other" is that the vast majority of game designers are Westerners. Again, not inherently a bad or racist thing.



This is part of the problem.

There is a difference between something being foreign and something being "exoticised" in the fashion discussed in the OP. Exoticisation, in this context, is a type of projection. If it wasn't, then it wouldn't be a "Western/Occidental view" of anything - it would just be an account of that thing.

It's the projection that makes it racist.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Derren said:


> I wonder if we will also see an lenghty article about how D&D is disrespecting European culture.
> Or is that considered to be ok?




On the contrary, as the controversy around Kingdom Come: Deliverance shows, it's actually considered not ok to respect European culture.   Even though the developers were Czechs in Prague, and making a story set in medieval Bohemia, which so far as I know is a culture that has never really had any or any significant representation in games before, they were still lambasted for refusing to represent their characters as "racially diverse".   Presumably they didn't mean Huns and Moravians. 

So far as I know, the Czechs aren't exactly global colonizers or the great political movers and players in Europe.  They spent most of their history getting conquered and vassalized by some larger neighbor or the other.  They weren't exactly involved in a big way in the African slave trade, certainly far less than say Arabs or other Africans.  The usual vague idea that somehow a guy in the Czech Republic owes something to say some Indian IT developer because his ancestors may have done something to someone that might have been the Indian IT developers ancestors and so he has unearned economic advantages over "colonized peoples", which is dumb in general, is even dumber when implied here.  Instead, what you are seeing is big useless generalizations like "white people" justifying the usual double standards, and this idea that "diversity" is some sort of moral touchstone in and of itself regardless of context.

It's those sorts of double standards, and defending those sorts of double standards as reasonable, that only results in multiplying hate, justifying hatred, and making it impossible to actually redress any real injustices.  You cannot drive out racism with racism.   No matter how many times you turn the argument inside out and no matter how much Newspeak you create to disguise it, you can't make judging people by the color of their skin or their ethnic background moral.  It's still racism.   It's still racism.   It's still racism.


----------



## Warpiglet (Mar 14, 2018)

Hussar said:


> But, that's the point.  The classes in the base game are used to represent a broad swath of different cultural inspirations.  Even the barbarian has left behind it's 3e trappings to a large degree.  I mean, sure, you have Frenzy barbarians, true, but, the Totem barbarians are quite different.  Should all barbarians have rage?  Eh, maybe not.
> 
> Maybe we should rename Fighters in 5e to janissaries. After all, we only need to represent one single culture in order to have the game right?  We can completely exclude all other cultures and make sure that all fighters in D&D are represented by one single concept.
> 
> ...




I like the fact you can map what you want onto most classes if you try a little.

However, I cannot get too upset that a product of a particular culture reflects its culture.

How much rage would there be if a game product from an Asian country skewed toward references it is more familiar with and later added a book which included more traditionally western archetypes?

That is so beyond silly!  I could care less and cannot fathom why anyone else would care either.  The game has become broader in its influences but look over the inspirational reading from Gygax in the 1st DMG.  Look at his medieval miniatures rules.  Look at the movies that have basis in these fantasy tropes.

The world has gone mad when it is a sin to be influenced by things more prominent in your own home culture as if it is taboo.  

For various marketing reasons Kentucky Fried Chicken has embraced 'KFC.'  But I suppose it is a moral imperative that they drop 'Kentucky' from the name lest someone from another place feel 'othered.'  

The noble motivation of including and valuing others has "jumped the shark" when it means a particular cultural origin is taboo when it produces art, food or entertainment.  

Its almost as if people are wanting to erase the fact that the game is based on what it is in fact based on.  I find it particularly amusing to consider that a game created in another place which features its home culture's myths/archetypes more prominently would never prompt these sorts of concerns.  

A game produced in Asia with more Asian myth/archetype would never prompt worry that European culture had been overlooked or misrepresented.  On some level I am starting to think the very fact we are discussing this suggests a bias against 'Western' culture and history.


----------



## Mercule (Mar 14, 2018)

MidwayHaven said:


> My only suggestion is that if and when D&D comes up with an Asian-themed supplement, maybe it would be best to remove the cliche of the land located in "the East." How about the land being situated in another compass point instead?



As someone who has created several worlds from scratch -- with an attempt at following at least some natural laws -- there's a reason the East is generally in the east. Culture is shaped by climate and geography, and the Himalayas that help to isolate the East, as do the northern steppes, which are made possible, in part, by the broad continent and the way the rains fall. Not saying you couldn't put the East in the west, but it almost requires flipping the weather patterns. You could put the East in the south (or north), but agriculture tends to spread along even latitudes, which would also change the nature of the culture. This is one of the factors in the way the New World cultures evolved, especially in the south (i.e. technologically lagging).

At a certain point, though, putting the East in the west (or wherever) can appear as a "just because" move -- you do it only because you don't want it to be like the real world and it doesn't actually do anything. Having the larger continent in the southern hemisphere could do this, though.

Really, though, the best reason not to bother with moving the East out of the east is because of symbolism. Japan makes a pretty cool "land of the rising sun" whereas England, not so much. YMMV.


----------



## Warpiglet (Mar 14, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> On the contrary, as the controversy around Kingdom Come: Deliverance shows, it's actually considered not ok to respect European culture.   Even though the developers were Czechs in Prague, and making a story set in medieval Bohemia, which so far as I know is a culture that has never really had any or any significant representation in games before, they were still lambasted for refusing to represent their characters as "racially diverse".   Presumably they didn't mean Huns and Moravians.
> 
> So far as I know, the Czechs aren't exactly global colonizers or the great political movers and players in Europe.  They spent most of their history getting conquered and vassalized by some larger neighbor or the other.  They weren't exactly involved in a big way in the African slave trade, certainly far less than say Arabs or other Africans.  The usual vague idea that somehow a guy in the Czech Republic owes something to say some Indian IT developer because his ancestors may have done something to someone that might have been the Indian IT developers ancestors and so he has unearned economic advantages over "colonized peoples", which is dumb in general, is even dumber when implied here.  Instead, what you are seeing is big useless generalizations like "white people" justifying the usual double standards, and this idea that "diversity" is some sort of moral touchstone in and of itself regardless of context.
> 
> It's those sorts of double standards, and defending those sorts of double standards as reasonable, that only results in multiplying hate, justifying hatred, and making it impossible to actually redress any real injustices.  You cannot drive out racism with racism.   No matter how many times you turn the argument inside out and no matter how much Newspeak you create to disguise it, you can't make judging people by the color of their skin or their ethnic background moral.  It's still racism.   It's still racism.   It's still racism.




Unfortunately, it is starting to get clearer that this whole thing is permeated with some sort of guilt from something in the real world, applied haphazardly.  I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or participate in some sort of angst ridden soul searching about games I play.  I will leave both of these tasks to others.


----------



## Warpiglet (Mar 14, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).
> 
> But if we reverse the idea of "villains on both sides" to "well-intentioned people on both side", Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing With Strangers could be a starting point. It also shows that you don't have to be aiming to commit massacres to contribute to the deaths of many thousands of people, and cultural devastation.
> 
> ...




Frankly, that an entertainment product developed in the west by westerners would reflect a western perspective seems pretty natural to me.  Having a voice and a perspective (even sitting in the west and looking to the east) is not inherently disparaging of another culture or people.  In fact, there is nothing about this that inherently suggests the superiority of one culture over another.  

Every culture has a right to be and see things through its own lens, whether western, eastern or whatever.  To say otherwise makes no sense.  

That someone in the east (culture A) would be offended by me having a western perspective (culture B) is as justified as me thinking someone with an eastern perspective is a bigot.  And I say 'bigot' since you said 'racist.'  

So while on the topic, I have to go do a spot check of some Anime from Asia.  Some of it might not accurately depict western culture (while depicting western characters); such racism cannot be tolerated


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Warpiglet said:


> Unfortunately, it is starting to get clearer that this whole thing is permeated with some sort of guilt from something in the real world, applied haphazardly.




Honestly, I don't really care.  I don't think it likely that there is any one single motivation behind it.  I'm not a big fan of blanket statements about groups period, and I am certainly not altogether on either side in this debate because neither side is altogether on my side.  There are some things however I'm altogether against, and the idea that it's more important to treat people like members of some statistically derived average than it is to treat them like people is one of them.


----------



## Thomas Bowman (Mar 14, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).
> 
> But if we reverse the idea of "villains on both sides" to "well-intentioned people on both side", Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing With Strangers could be a starting point. It also shows that you don't have to be aiming to commit massacres to contribute to the deaths of many thousands of people, and cultural devastation.
> 
> ...




Word Police! Do you have a good substitute for the word "Oriental"?

I don't. Asian is no good because it is World specific, our World. Eastern is no good because it implies that the World creator puts the Oriental cultures in the Eastern end of the map or in the far east, but some people draw maps where those cultures are in some other part of the World other than the east. Now I don't mean to be derogatory, but you just robbed us of a very useful word by labeling it "bad" or "racist". I could use a sentence such as _"Adventures in a fantasy setting about cultures similar to Asian countries on the planet Earth"_ instead of using a title such as _"Oriental Adventures"_ but that's awkward, don't you agree. Now just because some people have certain stereotypes that are associated with the use of the word "Oriental" does that mean you get to take away that word from everyone else, so they have to form awkward sentences to describe what they mean instead of that useful word?


----------



## Thomas Bowman (Mar 14, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Honestly, I don't really care.  I don't think it likely that there is any one single motivation behind it.  I'm not a big fan of blanket statements about groups period, and I am certainly not altogether on either side in this debate because neither side is altogether on my side.  There are some things however I'm altogether against, and the idea that it's more important to treat people like members of some statistically derived average than it is to treat them like people is one of them.



That's not the point, the point is we're are getting robbed of a very useful word to describe Asian cultures that is not World-specific or Region Specific. You think if we use the term "Eastern Adventures" you are assuming that every D&D World is going to have such cultures in the Eastern portion of their world map. Last I checked, Australia is also in the Far East, but it is a western culture, not an Eastern Culture. The Word Oriental is more exact and it doesn't mean places like Australia or New Zealand, those aren't Oriental Cultures.


----------



## Plageman (Mar 14, 2018)

There's an aspect of this discussion that makes me wonder about how much background we bring in.

As a French RPG GM and player my cultural background is very different from the one of my fellow German, UK, Italian, Spanish, US RPG player. And we share the Western stereotype. So imagine how exciting and different the Eastern typed class and background seems to me. Would they look 'exotic' to me ? You can bet. Do I mean that to be racist or disrespectful ? Certainly not.


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## Eltab (Mar 14, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Oh yes I'm _suuuure_ that's your concern. -clip-



The problem with mounting a moral 'high horse' the height of a California Redwood is, you are so far away from the people you look down on that you can't really see anything about them.

The stereotypes and insults you casually threw at me ... defy description.


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## Eltab (Mar 14, 2018)

Warpiglet said:


> On some level I am starting to think the very fact we are discussing this suggests a bias against 'Western' culture and history.



Welcome to the club.


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## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> That's not the point...




It's certainly a point.

As far as the impoverishing of language goes, you've heard me use the word "newspeak" several times in this thread.  I'm totally on board the fact that too often these debates revolve around someone describing something in terms of a very slippery word with no obvious meaning and coloring the debate in those terms, or else repurposing a word that did have a specific meaning to some other sort of meaning in order to shock and provoke rather than clarify.  There are a ton of terms out there that are more or less useless because in the mouths of those that use them, they mean only what they want the word to mean in that situation.   In other words, we are often having this argument:



> "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
> Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
> "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
> "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
> ...



 - Alice in Wonderland

The first person I blocked at EnWorld I blocked because they only ever engaged in Humpty Dumpty arguments, and always preferred slippery hard to define words often invented for the context over any sort of plain speaking.  But this sort of problem is widespread, and occurs with all sorts of political words and politically correct words like "conservative", "liberal", "socialist", "capitalist", "fascist", "privilege", "identity", "rights" and so forth were the speaker will use the same word to mean both something and also the opposite of that thing, often in the same argument.  Both sides do this, often with their own tribal version of the word and tribal sets of definitions.  So sure, we are being robbed of all sorts of useful words all the time, often I think maliciously.

But in the case of "Orient" and "Oriental", I find your statements a little weird because "Orient" is mostly just a fancy word for "East".  That's what it means, so it's not that different from using "Eastern".   I do agree we don't have a better term, and I also think telling us that we can't use an umbrella term is stupid - especially from people who have no shame about saying things like "white male" or "colonized peoples".   I sort of agree with you that it's a useful word because when people use the word "Orient" they tend to specifically think about the cultures of East Asia, and say not Australia, although honestly I'm not sure this is always helpful either.  (Should we include or exclude Singapore, and if so why?)  When people think of "Africa" they tend to first thing of "Sub-Saharan Africa", and that can be problematic.  But then I also suspect that the word is the sort of word that will get bounced around to multiple meanings within the same argument, being redefined along the way to whatever reference is useful at the moment, and that process of robbing the word of utility began long before this discussion.  I don't however think anyone is coming up with a better term, precisely because I don't think speaking more accurately or being understood more easily is the goal of inventing these slippery terms or redefining these terms.  

All that is interesting to me, and I'd love if people stopped misusing language.  Certainly the OP in both of these threads wildly misused the term "othering", and in doing so created much of the controversy that has plagued both of these threads.  But I don't think it's the main problem here.  I could deal with the slippery imprecise language if it wasn't being used for such a dastardly purpose.


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## Eltab (Mar 14, 2018)

Sometimes, reading (and participating in) this discussion, I get the sensation I had when reading the original _Frankenstein_: the characters' emotions were front-and-center, but their thinking happened in between when you turn the page to begin a new chapter.

How much baggage is being loaded on a pair of words from Latin:
"Orient" - of / from the east
"Occident" - of / from the west

Did you know that Classical Arabic maps were drawn "upside down" to modern eyes?  Their first cartographer had heard the phrase "the Nile flows down to the sea" and liked it, so he decided to orient his map in that manner: north was towards the bottom.  West European tradition usually draws maps with north towards the top.
Which one is more / less moral than the other?  Who can / should / can't / shouldn't draw their maps one way or the other?   Or do morality questions not really apply to this subject?


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## Aldeon (Mar 14, 2018)

Mike Myler said:


> My setting uses Dignity and ties it off against a word we don't have a complete English translation for that essentially means "fall from virtue" (Haitoku) and the major threat of the setting (mists raise your Haitoku, gets too high = transformed into a monster). We did realize that not everybody is going to want to engage in that though, so several race options are immune to the transformation (and thus don't really have to care about their Dignity). Want to be honorable? Great go for it. Don't care? Also great. Want to be the not-caring race and still be honorable, because of course? Also viable (and something I've GM'd over at least three times now).
> The reason this concept is in my setting and why you see Honor systems in eastern fantasy is that eastern cultures (most notably Japan) have a stronger tendency towards shame rather than guilt. There's a solid wiki about the concept here. It notes that this is a widely criticized concept so keep that in mind, but it identifies some of the chief differences between traditionally western and eastern cultures in how psyches are shaped and communities treat one another.




I mean this is exactly what I mean when I say I don't like playing in asian-styled settings ran by palefaces. I understand the concept of shame vs guilt cultures and was already aware of it, I am just tired of it having it being a reason to include one of these types of houserules in the game. The existence of a cultural difference doesn't necessitate special rules in order to make a setting more "asian-y". It generates stereotypes because any cultural differences will be exaggerated to an unrealistic degree when in most cases it's a minor difference unless it's in the purview of nobles or clans. I hate it exactly because peckerwoods like you want to reinforce your  understandings of our cultures and think that justifying it with some flimsy Anthropology-101 terminology means you're right.


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## Afrodyte (Mar 14, 2018)

This could have been a really interesting discussion about how to approach portraying a mythic version of non-Western cultures in a respectful way, but predictably, that discussion got usurped by people who want to debate the merits of respectful yet mythic portrayals of non-Western cultures. There could have been some cool, fresh ideas for classes, monsters, mechanics, etc. brainstormed by insiders in those non-Western cultures that people outside those cultures would never have come up with on their own because they didn't spend a lifetime in those cultures. 

We could have had something different, interesting and more meaningful than what we've had before, but that didn't happen because the same dominant perspectives and voices are unsatisfied with being dominant in real life. They have to be dominant in imagination too.

It makes me sad.


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## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Afrodyte said:


> This could have been a really interesting discussion about how to approach portraying a mythic version of non-Western cultures in a respectful way, but predictably, that discussion got usurped by people who want to debate the merits of respectful yet mythic portrayals of non-Western cultures. There could have been some cool, fresh ideas for classes, monsters, mechanics, etc. brainstormed by insiders in those non-Western cultures that people outside those cultures would never have come up with on their own because they didn't spend a lifetime in those cultures.




I would love that too.  But my impression was that right from the start we were being told that there was no way for a Western culture to respectfully portray non-Western cultures, and that even the title of the thread questioned whether or not we would in fact we should do so.   

In both threads, I've always suggested that rather than debating what the thread debates, show people how.   Rather than debating this crap, because it is crap, start posting those fresh ideas, cool mechanics, awesome monsters and so forth.  If you do that, you might not escape controversy completely, but at least you'll be being productive.  Because we do need "Oriental Adventures".



> We could have had something different, interesting and more meaningful than what we've had before, but that didn't happen because the same dominant perspectives and voices are unsatisfied with being dominant in real life. They have to be dominant in imagination too.




Well, that's one way to interpret this conversation.  However, again, the OP didn't exactly invite people to do what you and I would both want.  Rather, the terms of the debate began by the OP only chill interest in doing those things.



> It makes me sad.




Me too.


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## Mike Myler (Mar 14, 2018)

Aldeon said:


> I mean this is exactly what I mean when I say I don't like playing in asian-styled settings ran by palefaces. I understand the concept of shame vs guilt cultures and was already aware of it, I am just tired of it having it being a reason to include one of these types of houserules in the game. The existence of a cultural difference doesn't necessitate special rules in order to make a setting more "asian-y". It generates stereotypes because any cultural differences will be exaggerated to an unrealistic degree when in most cases it's a minor difference unless it's in the purview of nobles or clans. I hate it exactly because peckerwoods like you want to reinforce your  understandings of our cultures and think that justifying it with some flimsy Anthropology-101 terminology means you're right.




That's kind of the point of the Mists--without the supernatural magic thing going on there is no Dignity or Haitoku score so I'm confused about why that's upsetting to you. 
Is it not refreshing to see a setting that _doesn't_ rely on the traditional treatment of Honor systems in eastern fantasy settings and exacerbates it with an inverse parody? 
Does the fact that you can easily ditch this part of the setting (as a player or the GM) matter? 
What about half of this aspect just not having an English word and being a Japanese concept? 

I'm genuinely interested in how I could have reinforced the functional difference in culture (which is _definitely_ present in more than just nobles and clans, modern day or before globalization) while being a paleface, and I'm really not sold on "you can make a world that's eastern fantasy without acknowledging the cultural divisions between your own and eastern cultures".


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## Afrodyte (Mar 14, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I would love that too.  But my impression was that right from the start we were being told that there was no way for a Western culture to respectfully portray non-Western cultures, and that even the title of the thread questioned whether or not we would in fact we should do so.
> 
> In both threads, I've always suggested that rather than debating what the thread debates, show people how.   Rather than debating this crap, because it is crap, start posting those fresh ideas, cool mechanics, awesome monsters and so forth.  If you do that, you might not escape controversy completely, but at least you'll be being productive.  Because we do need "Oriental Adventures".
> 
> ...




I'm sure your intentions were good, but everything you've posed in both threads seem to have been a major contributor to the fact that this possibility we both say we want didn't happen.


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## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Afrodyte said:


> I'm sure your intentions were good, but everything you've posed in both threads seem to have been a major contributor to the fact that this possibility we both say we want didn't happen.




I don't see how that logically follows, but feel free to explain yourself and in particular to use quotes of what I've said to explain that observation to me.

In both threads, I have been I think adamant about the fact that terms like "cultural appropriation" are not useful, and that they are not useful precisely because (among other things) they inhibit the free sharing of ideas between cultures and shut down dialogues between people of two culture groups.   I have repeatedly stated that the problems in both threads is that they offer criticism, but no solution to the perceived problem because they can't define an objective standard.   I have repeatedly said that the great tragedy of such discussions is that they will only convince publishers that publishing things based on non-European cultures is so problematic that it is best to just be avoided.

Just a few posts above this, someone just unleashed a huge torrent of overtly racist slurs at a publisher who did everything he could to celebrate a culture not his own, including having the game vetted by members of the culture he was trying to portray.   Yet this does nothing to immunize him against the racist venom in directed at him.   So why would you think that any publisher reading these threads would want to risk negative publicity by publishing such a setting and exposing themselves to the possibility of censure, protests, and so forth no matter how well intentioned that they had been?

Is it me that is inhibiting the publication of what we both want, or is it the sort of people unloading all those racial slurs against anyone that disagrees with them?   Is it me that is inhibiting the publication of what we both want, or is that poster that said it was racially motivated colonialism for a European publisher to even profit from the publication of a supplement that had non-European themes?


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## Gradine (Mar 14, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I have repeatedly said that the great tragedy of such discussions is that they will only *convince publishers* that publishing things based on non-European cultures is so problematic that it is best to just be avoided.




...convince [white] publishers...



> Is it me that is inhibiting the publication of what we both want, or is that poster that said it was racially motivated colonialism for a European publisher to even profit from the publication of a supplement that had non-European themes?




I believe the words I used was "ethically gray at best", but I suppose getting that stretched to "racially motivated colonialism" isn't the most egregious mischaracterization of my arguments in these threads.

Again, you seem to be conflating "white publishers" with "all publishers", and are ignoring the repeated attempts by many, many people to argue that the best and most appropriate way to get excellent material inspired by non-western cultures is to encourage and support _members of those cultures_ who are doing that work.


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## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Gradine said:


> ...convince [white] publishers...




First, once again your insertion of skin color into everything you think about.



> I believe the words I used was "ethically gray at best"...




I wasn't even thinking of you when I wrote the above post.  I'd have to go back and search out which poster argued that the profits of a publication about Africa had to primarily go to Africans, but I agree it wasn't you.   You were the one that said that whites publishing a story about non-whites no matter how sensitive the presentation was "ethically gray at best", which I agree is not the same thing, but does rather fit into what I'm talking about.



> Again, you seem to be conflating "white publishers" with "all publishers", and are ignoring the repeated attempts by many, many people to argue that the best and most appropriate way to get excellent material inspired by non-western cultures is to encourage and support _members of those cultures_ who are doing that work.




If you want material from non-white publishers, it's out there for you to purchase.  In the mean time, you just excluded the majority of the thread on the grounds of their skin color.


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## Plageman (Mar 14, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Again, you seem to be conflating "white publishers" with "all publishers", and are ignoring the repeated attempts by many, many people to argue that the best and most appropriate way to get excellent material inspired by non-western cultures is to encourage and support _members of those cultures_ who are doing that work.




Please then do submit some of this content you talk about. In this day and age you can do it via POD like Lulu, mount a Kickstarter, self-publishing on DrivethruRPG Adventurer's League.

If you wait for WotC to publish a book that will throw out all the 40+ content they for the sake of "correcting mistakes of the past" you may wait for a long time.

What you need/want is a fresh start, the D&D legacy is too heavy in the existing settings to change it the way you want.

I'm all for some non-Westerner settings but keep in mind that by being a westerner I won't have all the cultural background you may have about your own country. Heck I'm no even sure to have the cultural background about the folks living 50 km from me in Germany or from the southern Regions even if it's my country of birth.

You ask for better content by  making the cultural content be read/developed by some natives. That's a good idea but it has never been done properly simply because of logistics and return of investment. I could give you multiple game lines that had names, distances,  concepts wrongly done about France which were corrected in the translated versions of the book but never in the original american-english version. Stereotypes that I see in every anime or american Cartoons that reduce the multicultural diversity of France to a single city (Paris) and a handful of Tropes. I suspect it's the same for German, East-European, English or Italian cultures. they are systematically reduced to a fragment of their complexity by both the US developed properties or 'eastern' authors.

This discussion is very complex because it derailed from a very simple question into a debate a guilt and cultural representation. You can't argue that the products for D&D are developed by a US-based company with a very small staff mostly for an english-speaking crowd. Other countries may translate the game but there is no obligation to do so if deemed offensive as the OGL permit the reuse of the game engine to attach it to a whole new setting.

If you wonder if this setting could be brought back to the mass I'd point you to some other European publishers who used Kickstarter to help translate their game lines in English bringing it to a wider audience.

Again instead of just complaining and adding some oil on the fire try to show the example and produce something that will show us how you want it to be done.


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## Afrodyte (Mar 14, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I don't see how that logically follows, but feel free to explain yourself and in particular to use quotes of what I've said to explain that observation to me.




There is literally not enough time in the day. I'm not saying "literally" as a means of emphasis. I mean that factually. I do not have the time to rehash and debate everything you've said that contributed to the downward spiral of both of these threads.


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## Mercurius (Mar 14, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This is part of the problem.
> 
> There is a difference between something being foreign and something being "exoticised" in the fashion discussed in the OP. Exoticisation, in this context, is a type of projection. If it wasn't, then it wouldn't be a "Western/Occidental view" of anything - it would just be an account of that thing.
> 
> It's the projection that makes it racist.




Only if the point is to try to be accurate, which is only vaguely the cased in OA, which is meant to be more _inspired by_ and _draw from_ Asian cultures, just as numerous settings are inspired by or drawn from premodern European settings.  
And what is wrong with exoticization? That's sort of the halfway point between realism and fantasy. Remember, we're talking about RPG settings, not an anthropological dissertation.

You seem to be applying academic (and the accompanying sociological) standards 
to RPG settings, which to me is a bit misplaced. And I don't see anyone up in arms about how the Sword Coast is an exoticized mockery of premodern northern Europe.


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## Mercurius (Mar 14, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> This clarification concerning the spiritual diversity of the cleric class needs to be core, and integrated into the Players Handbook from the get-go.
> 
> If an update to the 5e SRD includes this explicit reference to the cleric class representing a diversity of spiritual worldviews, especially clerics with nonpolytheistic views, I would relax a bit more on this issue.
> 
> 4e and worse 5e have become too heavy handed about imposing polytheism as the setting assumptions in the rules descriptions. The motive is corporate, out of desire to use D&D gods as trademark branding, relating to novels, movie rights, and so on. I am deeply uncomfortable with this situation of polytheism.




THis is an interesting issue. I personally am not uncomfortable with polytheism as a default, but aesthetically and creatively D&D's approach is just sloppy. In my own settings, each culture has their own religious and spiritual viewpoint, some polytheism, some monotheistic, some more philosophical, and everything in-between...just as in our world.

That said, I also play with the idea that there is only one pantheon of gods, but different cultures have their versions, names, and degrees of emphasis. For instance in our world, we could say that Zeus and Thor are the same god, but whereas the Greeks see Zeus as the head honcho, the Nordic people see Thor as kind of the warrior god who plays second fiddle to Odin. But regardless, each are the cultural version of a more archetypal being.

Furthermore, these different systems aren't inherently opposing or anthithetical to each other. Buddhism is both nontheistic and polytheistic. Ultimately there is only Buddhamind, the Dharmakaya, and the "gods" are illusory forms that are impermanent, but have apparent and relative reality. Just as in the Hindu traditions (which are wide and diverse), the One being Brahman manifests as Trimurti--Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer--and then there are countless lesser gods who are in a sense variations of these gods. And then we have human beings, who are also "Brahman in disguise."

It is only in the more concrete and literalist view of religion that we get either/or thinking.


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## Warpiglet (Mar 14, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).
> 
> But if we reverse the idea of "villains on both sides" to "well-intentioned people on both side", Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing With Strangers could be a starting point. It also shows that you don't have to be aiming to commit massacres to contribute to the deaths of many thousands of people, and cultural devastation.
> 
> ...






Afrodyte said:


> This could have been a really interesting discussion about how to approach portraying a mythic version of non-Western cultures in a respectful way, but predictably, that discussion got usurped by people who want to debate the merits of respectful yet mythic portrayals of non-Western cultures. There could have been some cool, fresh ideas for classes, monsters, mechanics, etc. brainstormed by insiders in those non-Western cultures that people outside those cultures would never have come up with on their own because they didn't spend a lifetime in those cultures.
> 
> We could have had something different, interesting and more meaningful than what we've had before, but that didn't happen because the same dominant perspectives and voices are unsatisfied with being dominant in real life. They have to be dominant in imagination too.
> 
> It makes me sad.




Unfortunately, it seems that there was an attempt to make heroes from "distant lands" viable and cool going back a long way. They were treated with apparently the same amount of care as their western counterparts were...or even more so.

It appears that some people without "fresh" perspective take issue with being vilified for something natural--referencing their own myths and shared stories.  

I think that is the issue here.  Its as if something produced in the west should take pains not to overemphasize underpinnings of western culture.  Again: someone actually used the term "racist" earlier in the thread presumably because the poster in question assumes dungeons and dragons is often about knights and dragons.   

Would someone making a game in Asia based more heavily on Asian myth/archetype be insensitive?  Would someone (from and initially more interested in) Egyptian and African Myth be racist for making a game that features those archetypes and myths more prominently than pseudo European ones ?  What if their depiction of Western/European myth and culture was based primarily on Hollywood?

No one would care a bit.  It seems to be fairly unidirectional.  And its weird.  And I think that is what is bewildering to some of the previous posters.

But I may be misreading the concerns some have voiced...that is my take.


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## Celebrim (Mar 14, 2018)

Afrodyte said:


> There is literally not enough time in the day. I'm not saying "literally" as a means of emphasis. I mean that factually. I do not have the time to rehash and debate everything you've said that contributed to the downward spiral of both of these threads.




Oh, OK.  Well, I guess you have a right to complain and not offer up any remedy, and you also have a right to an opinion without explaining why you hold it.

But since you literally don't have enough time to do either, it's hardly fair to expect me to treat your opinion as reasonable or deeply reasoned or your complaints as fair or justified.  

If you ever do want to have a discussion though, I'm completely open to that discussion.  

By my suspicion is that you literally do not want a discussion or a debate, and that is why there is not enough time in the day for it.  You do not want a dialogue.   You don't want to hear me out.   You don't want to have to address arguments.  You don't want to hear multiple viewpoints.  I suspect you are willing to check out of this discussion content with your stereotype of who I am, or what I know, or what I've experienced, or where I'm coming from, or what I believe - and what I've actually said or more importantly who I actually am isn't important and can't be allowed to harm that cherished viewpoint.  I suspect that that, not the amount of time you have in your day, is actually the reason you literally don't want to engage with what I've said.

And perhaps I'm being unfair about that, but the reason for that suspicion is the take away you had from this thread was: "but that didn't happen because the same dominant perspectives and voices are unsatisfied with being dominant in real life. They have to be dominant in imagination too."   I think that's one of those observations that tells me a lot more about where you are coming from than where I am coming from.  I don't care what color the skin is of someone who writes something.  I've got a signed copy of Samuel R. Delany's "Babel-17" that I went out of my way to acquire.  The color of his skin or any other identity of the man did not enter into my decision.   Is my voice somehow more dominant than his?  I've got a signed copy of Peter Mansoor's "Baghdad at Sunrise".   The color of the author's skin had no role in why I purchased the book and got it signed.  Is my voice somehow more dominant than his?  And so on and so forth concerning author's I've sought out.  For the most part, I'm a consumer of voices, and not a voice myself.  I can't scream and be heard.  I don't have any dominance over anyone.  

Now, honestly, does the color of the author's skin matter to you?  Do you judge a work by the color of the skin of the person that wrote it?   I'm not going to judge you for that.  I have some understanding why you might, and some sympathy for that feeling, even as I long for the day when we can all grow beyond it.  But I do ask you to not judge me for not caring a whit about what the color of an author's skin is.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

My ethical concern is simple to understand.

• Welcome other cultures? Yes.
• Demonize European cultures? No.



If we can treat European cultures with the same respect, sensitivity, and compassion that we want for other cultures, then the D&D game will be better for it.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 14, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> My ethical concern is simple to understand.
> 
> • Welcome other cultures? Yes.
> • Demonize European cultures? No.
> ...




Literally noone is advocating that second thing here.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 14, 2018)

Eltab said:


> The problem with mounting a moral 'high horse' the height of a California Redwood is, you are so far away from the people you look down on that you can't really see anything about them.
> 
> The stereotypes and insults you casually threw at me ... defy description.




The problem with concern trolling is that most people see it for what it is.  Trolling.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

The 5e samurai. This seems ok to me. The fighter is a cross cultural class. The samurai is a specific archetype within this class. The designers made a sincere effort to focus on tropes about the samurai that modern Japanese film makers often emphasize. The product is integrated within other fighter archetypes, and is not an ‘other’.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Literally noone is advocating that second thing here.




Implying that only European cultures can be guilty of ‘colonialism’ raises red flags because this demonization of Europeans is a form of hostile, generalized, racism against Europeans.


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## Yaarel (Mar 14, 2018)

European ethnic groups are today surging in nationalism. Even to the point of the Scottish ethnicity asserting its distinctiveness from the English ethnicity.

The appreciation of ethnic identity is good and healthy. It transmits vibrant cultures for future generations to inherit.

To treat other European ethnicities with respect, is part of treating all ethnicities with respect.

We can love other ethnic groups as much as we love our own ethnic groups. We need to make an effort to appreciate and love our own ethnic group − some times are less easy than other times. Stand up and courageously be our selves.

There is enough love for everyone.


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## Shasarak (Mar 14, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Many people, especially many Indigenous Australians, would say that "mistreatment" continues (eg incarceration rates, child removal rates, mortality and morbidity, just to pick up on some fairly straightforward indicators).




I wonder how the current mortality rates compare to traditional mortality rates?


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## Shasarak (Mar 14, 2018)

Warpiglet said:


> For various marketing reasons Kentucky Fried Chicken has embraced 'KFC.'  But I suppose it is a moral imperative that they drop 'Kentucky' from the name lest someone from another place feel 'othered.'




I never considered that Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded to KFC because of the "Kentucky" part of the name.  I always imagined that it was because of the unhealthy "Fried" part.


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## Plageman (Mar 14, 2018)

But still, D&D is a game in fantasy world different from ours.

We may draw -inspiration- from our world's cultures but in the end they should be foreign for us. The cultural parallels exist only for us human being to be comfortable with these other worlds.

So if we return back to the subject of the OA books, we can imagine having the "eastern classes" and monster split in multiple books that would have no connection whatsoever to a setting and then have specific adventure paths/gazetteers presenting an in-world situation of a focused land with a definite theme.

For those who wonder if it would work, just look at what Paizo did with the PF1 having the Monk in the PHB, the Samurai and Ninja in Ultimate Combat and theme the Jade Regent Adventure Path supported by the Dragon Empire gazetteer.

As for the geographical placement of the "realms"  TSR's own Mystara had the japan-like empire in one of the moon and the  Indian inspired empire of Sind is located westward from the "traditional" lands like Karameikos.


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## Shasarak (Mar 14, 2018)

shidaku said:


> You can also consider this my last response to you ever




Alas now I will miss out on the Elite Role Playing fun stuck forever playing with the unwashed masses.


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## Morrus (Mar 14, 2018)

I see no good behaviour in this thread. Time to close it. I think in future we’ll turn off comments for any article like this.


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