# When Fantasy Meets Africa



## Erechel (Mar 5, 2018)

In Argentina, we have several comics exploring fantasy in different cultural settings. Mazziteli and Alcatena have created several stories and worlds without the "medievalish fantasy" setting in mind, purposefully. _Panteras_ is a series of comics in Timbuba, the Lost World, with a strong african fantasy theme; and _La luna del toro (The Bull's Moon)_, with a strong Goya's Spain theme. Saracino and Olivetti's _Ich _explores fantasy in a south american conquest environment, in mostly the same way that Olivetti and Lucas _Cazador_ did. I'm leaving behind a _lot_ of other explorations, not to mention my own dabblings with Bronze Age themes for D&D in Fralia.
It is good to see other, mainstream worlds, though. The american pop culture is catching up, after all.


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## Erechel (Mar 5, 2018)

As a side note, the AD&D _Red Steel _setting for Mystara is a great source of altenity.


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## talien (Mar 5, 2018)

One of the conclusions I've come to is that a key way to ensure one culture isn't a mishmash of stereotypes is just to have more than one.  I.e., more than one "Asian" culture and more than one "African" culture goes a long way to ensuring more nuance. Most fantasy worlds that started out Eurocentric suffer from this (my own world included!) because that's what the authors were familiar with.  But fantasy RPG universes are now played by people all over the world, so the discrepancy is more noticeable than it might have been in the past.


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## Jester David (Mar 5, 2018)

Othering is totally a problem. A valid issue in the presentation of other cultures, and something to be very aware of when creating fantasy worlds and fantastic analogies to real world places and cultures. 

But... 

But Wakanda's isolation is an odd example of that. Really, that feels like it has more to do with not having history changed. Despite super heroes and mutants being around for generations, the Marvel (and DC) worlds really try hard to present themselves as being identical to our Earth, save with superheroes. History is identical.
Wakanda is isolationist because it can't have gotten involved in WW2 or other modern events, because the world has to be familiar to our world, and no advanced African nation got involved in our world. Just like how nothing Wakanda does to aid the world in _Black Panther 2_ or _Black Panther 3_ will have lasting social consequences, as the Marvel America has to look like our America. 

It's like Latveria in that regard. 
Despite Doctor Doom wanting to take over the world and having advanced robots and technology, he never quite manages to invade the neighbouring European countries, seizing Serbia or Romania, as that would change the map. 
Sure, there's no shortage of Eastern European stereotypes in portrayals of Latvaria, but it's not quite hit with "Othering".


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## Jester David (Mar 5, 2018)

talien said:


> One of the conclusions I've come to is that a key way to ensure one culture isn't a mishmash of stereotypes is just to have more than one.  I.e., more than one "Asian" culture and more than one "African" culture goes a long way to ensuring more nuance. Most fantasy worlds that started out Eurocentric suffer from this (my own world included!) because that's what the authors were familiar with.  But fantasy RPG universes are now played by people all over the world, so the discrepancy is more noticeable than it might have been in the past.



But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation? 

Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?


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## Matchstick (Mar 5, 2018)

I've always liked Sine Nomine's "Spears of the Dawn" as an African based RPG.  It doesn't try to be actual Africa, it's D&D inspired by Africa.


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## thzero (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




Yes we should.   Otherwise you pretty much have nothing to relate to.   Vikings we're a culture to.  So was the various mediaval cultures of Europe.   And the wild west culture.   Or Victorian age England.


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## MechaTarrasque (Mar 5, 2018)

[HI][/HI]







Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




Doesn't not doing that risk demeaning:  there is nothing in those cultures worth appropriating?  It seems like that is a much more insulting line of thought.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Othering is a problem, but Wakanda is the opposite of othering.  

As a matter of pure history, African culture collapsed in the West's middle ages, in part owing to desertification as the Sahara entered into a expansion phase and swallowed the once fertile farmland that supported the African empires.  The result was a hodge-podge of decaying petty kingdoms that never engaged in anything like the miracle of the Northern European renaissance and never produced a large body of literature and exactly zero science.  The sub-Saharan African cultures had themselves never advanced much past early iron age culture, and so were locked in a cultural paradigm roughly 3000 years behind the cultures of Europe and the Middle and Far East.  Besides which, isolated by distance and the Sahara desert, these cultures never truly interacted with any of the big three advanced cultural centers, and were largely known only through limited contact with coastal trading cultures (often through Arabic intermediaries).   As such, the reality of the world was that Africa was largely unknown in Europe, Persia, India, and China and was equally exotic to all of them.  No real African nation was interacting with any of them to any great degree, much less actually exchanging ideas with those cultures in literature, engineering and the sciences.   The same could not be said of those cultures themselves, even when they in fact seemed exotic and strange to each other.   Note for example how European culture serves much the same role in Japanese anime as Eastern culture serves in Western media.  Rome and Han China could be said to be peers, but after the fall of the culturally Phoenician Carthage (itself originally a colonial power) on the extreme northern coast, that could never again be said of any African nation.

Wakanda isn't an attempt to highlight the exotic or unfamiliar nature of Africa.   Wakanda is an attempt to make Africa more familiar and less exotic by making it more European in nature.   Wakanda is an African nation made less problematic by giving it institutions that would be completely familiar to any European.   Wakanda is creating a fictional African peer of the traditional Western nations with technological, scientific, social, and artistic achievements equivalent too or greater than European achievements.   Wakanda is in many ways the Africa that Europeans wish existed and exist within European fantasies about Africa.  It's not othering at all.   It's the yearning for an African peer that would make relating to Africa less uncomfortable.  It's isolationist precisely because only isolation could explain the complete lack of historical impact such a nation would otherwise have on history.   The reality is, no such nation exists.

All the complaints about portrayals of Africa made in the original essay reflect the discomfort of relating to Africa as it actually is and has been, and the general preference people have for a fictional Africa with European governmental norms, European technology, and European prosperity.  It would be much easier if the reality of Africa was Eddie Murphy's 'Zamunda' in 'Coming to America', or Maldonia as portrayed in 'The Princess and the Frog' and African nations were basically wealthy European style monarchies differing only by the skin color of the aristocracy and the fact the king had some animal skin draped over his shoulder.

And we've had threads before where people condemned Nyambe as racist.  I don't think there is a way to win this game.


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## Blue (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




Roleplaying games are explicitly about taking on another role then yourself.  The hobby literally could not survive if you were only allowed to play a character the same race/gender/orientation/etc. as yourself in areas that are familiar.

Should I tell my Polish friend that he's not allowed to play a Viking?  That my Japanese friend he can't run any of the euro-centric settings out there?

The tag "cultural appropriation" gets thrown around a lot, so much that it gets weakened by being applied so broadly.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Blue said:


> The tag "cultural appropriation" gets thrown around a lot, so much that it gets weakened by being applied so broadly.




When I first heard the term, it was the term for a particularly vicious sort of plagiarism, where an artist plagiarized the work of another artist and because that artist was a minority the artist doing the copying felt neither the need to site the original artist or to pay him for his work.

I'm fairly comfortable in stating that there is little or no disagreement that that is wrong, and that such actions today would meet universal condemnation and denouncing them would create little controversy.

But I'm also fairly comfortable in stating that that original concept has been misunderstood or ironically appropriated for a concept that depends not on some absolute and easily agreeable notion of what constitutes theft, but on a very vague concept that depends basically on people's feelings.   And the problem with that, is that in reality minorities actually aren't all identical and two people in the same minority group can have very different feelings about whether a treatment of their culture was appropriate and respectful.   Aside from the fact that there is no such thing as collective ownership of culture and no such thing as a spokesperson for that culture that can authorize the release of ideas from the culture, this leaves you in a situation where no matter how accommodating to other viewpoints you try to be, there can always be someone who said you did it wrong.


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## Gorath99 (Mar 5, 2018)

talien said:


> One of the conclusions I've come to is that a key way to ensure one culture isn't a mishmash of stereotypes is just to have more than one.  I.e., more than one "Asian" culture and more than one "African" culture goes a long way to ensuring more nuance. Most fantasy worlds that started out Eurocentric suffer from this (my own world included!) because that's what the authors were familiar with.  But fantasy RPG universes are now played by people all over the world, so the discrepancy is more noticeable than it might have been in the past.



Even Europe is not safe from this. How often do we get a decent medieval fantasy Greece, Switzerland, or Lithuania? If the Irish and Welsh are represented at all, they are generally lumped together into a single archetype. Ditto for the numerous and varied states in the Holy Roman Empire; the Italian states; the Iberian states; all of Eastern Europe; all of the Nordic people (as Vikings); etc.

Not to say that these regions have it as bad as places outside of Europe when it comes to representation. But it's a general tendency. The further a culture/people is removed from medieval England, the more likely that it gets lumped together with other cultures.

I think you're absolutely right about it being helpful to have more than one of each stereotypical culture, by the way.


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## Dungeonosophy (Mar 5, 2018)

*Nubian Adventures and Kemetic Adventures*

Thanks for this article.

Existing Sub-Saharan African-inspired cultures in the D&D Multiverse:



The Touv in Oerth
Katashaka continent and Jungle of Chult in Forgotten Realms
The Wildlands in Ravenloft (The Crocodile King is an evil version of the Lion King)
In Mystara: Yavdlom (Swahilis), Ulimwengu (Twa "pygmies"), N'jatwaland elf-ogres and Simbasta lion-folk in Davania, Tangor in Skothar, Tanagoro (Proto-Bantu) in Hollow World
In Dark Sun: the Ivory Triangle
By Gary Gygax: the continent of Afrik in Ærth (an alternate Oerth, mentioned in a DRAGON magazine article)

Ancient Egyptian-inspired cultures:



Mulhorand in Forgotten Realms
Erypt of Oerth
Hutaakans and Thothia in Mystara; Nithia in the Hollow World (and the "Emirate of Nithia" in Ylaruam as Arabized Egypt)
Sebua and Har'Akir in Ravenloft--featured in the video game _Ravenloft: Stone Prophet_
By Gary Gygax: the land of Ægypt/Khemit in Ærth, featured in _Necropolis _d20 adventure by Necromancer Games.

In my _Culture Books_ article:, I propose that WotC release an "Oriental Adventures" style book for each of the Real World cultures which has served as inspiration for D&D cultures...so a _Nubian Adventures_ and _Kemetic Adventures_. The existing D&D parallels would be included as "campaign models" within each sourcebook.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Gorath99 said:


> Even Europe is not safe from this.




Europe probably 'suffers' more from it than Africa.   Relatively few authors try to make a 'realistic' Europe with a one to one correspondence between the nations on the fantasy maps and a real world culture or nation.   Instead, the European quasi-medieval nations on the map are almost always a hodge-podge of ideas drawing from as diverse sources as Ancient Greece and Dickensonian England and are imagined not to the end of portraying any sort of realism, but serving whatever purpose they have in the story or setting - such as for example being the "bad guy nation" or "the wealthy nations" or "the scrappy wilderness nation".  The fantasy European nations are rarely more than tropes, and while some of them might be deliberate anachronisms or pastiches - such as "the Vikings" - even then the author feels little need to make them absolutely like the real thing.   For one thing, it's not like "the Vikings" were a single nation or culture.  Quite the opposite, they were the one surviving part of Europe that most resembled the petty kingdoms and ethnic and linguistic diversity in Africa.  We just don't remember all those geats, jutes, frisians and so forth because they were assimilated into larger people groups before our time.  

But, is it really necessary or desirable that every culture get a pastiche?   It's going to get really weird when you have a standard that lets you mix and match European cultures to create new fantasy nations, but every African fantasy nation has to be a pastiche of some real African culture.

Worse, the designers and artistic direction of the people who made the "Black Panther" movie was in every way intended to be respectful to African cultures.   They mixed and matched different African cultures to create a unique fantasy nation in the same way a person in love with Northern European culture and respectful of it might mix and match cultural traditions within the scope of 'Western Civilization' and port them to different environments and historical settings to create a unique cultural tradition - like say Gondor or Rohan.   Now those people are being criticized for not making simplistic pastiches.   Is that really what we want to do?



> I think you're absolutely right about it being helpful to have more than one of each stereotypical culture, by the way.




I like diversity because I'm a fan of 'kitchen sink' settings.   If I was going to detail an 'Africa', I'd try to throw in every single idea I could brainstorm whether pastiche ("Egypt", "Ethiopia", the "East African Nation", "the Congo", the "Zulu") or stereotype ("the Dark Continent", "the Advanced Magical African Nation") or serving some fantasy purpose - "the bad guy nation", "the good guy nation", "the scrappy wilderness nation", "the rich nation", etc.   I seriously doubt this would make me immune to criticism.   Someone would certainly latch on to one thing they didn't like and make this pinhole view of the work suffice to condemn the whole.


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## neobolts (Mar 5, 2018)

1) I found it very confusing to see articles where Black Panther was praised for mix-and-matching the whole of African culture, while Tomb of Annihilation was criticized for doing the same. 

2) I'm not a fan of the way the term "cultural appropriation" is used. It is too often focused on *what* a person did rather than *why* they did it. Intent matters. You cannot promote diversity and inclusiveness in a work if you cannot use cultural references outside of your own culture.


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## Derren (Mar 5, 2018)

Which fantasy nation is actually dynamic? FR just had a 100 year timejump, but nothing really changed. Cormyr is still Cormyr, etc.
And as Celebrim said, its not as if "white cultures" fare any better. Most fantasy nations are just the same mix of generic knights and castle stereotypes which at worst have no relation to history at all or at best were taken from a span of several centuries and mixed together.
Or they are just a exaggerated and cliché version of a existing country like "the merchant republic one" or "the viking one".
Some settings are not even subtle about it like 7th sea or warhammer fantasy.
So its not like non-white cultures are treated any different in fantasy gaming.


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## pming (Mar 5, 2018)

Hiya!



Celebrim said:


> Othering is a problem, but Wakanda is the opposite of othering.
> 
> As a matter of pure history, African culture collapsed in the West's middle ages, in part owing to desertification as the Sahara entered into a expansion phase and swallowed the once fertile farmland that supported the African empires.  The result was a hodge-podge of decaying petty kingdoms that never engaged in anything like the miracle of the Northern European renaissance and never produced a large body of literature and exactly zero science.  The sub-Saharan African cultures had themselves never advanced much past early iron age culture, and so were locked in a cultural paradigm roughly 3000 years behind the cultures of Europe and the Middle and Far East.  Besides which, isolated by distance and the Sahara desert, these cultures never truly interacted with any of the big three advanced cultural centers, and were largely known only through limited contact with coastal trading cultures (often through Arabic intermediaries).   As such, the reality of the world was that Africa was largely unknown in Europe, Persia, India, and China and was equally exotic to all of them.  No real African nation was interacting with any of them to any great degree, much less actually exchanging ideas with those cultures in literature, engineering and the sciences.   The same could not be said of those cultures themselves, even when they in fact seemed exotic and strange to each other.   Note for example how European culture serves much the same role in Japanese anime as Eastern culture serves in Western media.  Rome and Han China could be said to be peers, but after the fall of the culturally Phoenician Carthage (itself originally a colonial power) on the extreme northern coast, that could never again be said of any African nation.
> 
> ...




First, an _excellent _essay on the matter! 

Second, as to your very last sentence, you are incorrect that there isn't a way to win at this game. Because you just did. 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

It's not so much about "winning" or "losing" at any sort of "game"; it's about doing right, both by your audience (whether that's people purchasing your product or just the handful of people at your gaming table) and by the cultures you're turning to as influence (both historically and the modern-day ancestors of such). Note that in this point intent is absolutely irrelevant; whether you mean to do harm or not, if you do harm, that harm is _real_ and you really ought to acknowledge it, regardless of your intentions. The problem is... we live in a world where harm exists, at a fundamental and systemic level, in every facet of our society. Our society has made it basically impossible _not_ to do harm in some form or another, if for no other reason than that's the only way we've ever known to _be._ I don't say that because I think that means we should all be moral relatavists; just that we should do what we can to minimize harm and own up to the harm we do cause when we cause it.

The way to "win", such as it is, then, is to take criticism seriously, listen with empathy, and promise to do better next time. Not perfect, just better. Look, the world is full of diversity; both in the identity/cultural sense, but also diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, diversity of experience. Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth. So if you put out a product that involves any sort of non-European influence, you are going to get people who will enjoy being able to experience other cultures, people who won't enjoy it, people who will think you handled the subject well, and people who think what you did was racist/horrible/whatever. And those opinions are going to as varied as the overall opinions on your work; people are going to love it, people are going to think it sucks. 

And those opinions are all _valid _for each individual; eye of the beholder and all that. It's up to you whether you decide to open yourself up to any criticism at all, and how you address each one you receive.

You don't "win" by not engaging, you "win" by being open to learning from others, growing, and doing better the next time.


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## Lylandra (Mar 5, 2018)

Polyhedral Columbia said:


> Thanks for this article.
> 
> Existing Sub-Saharan African-inspired cultures in the D&D Multiverse:
> 
> ...




I also always thought that pre-spellplague Halruaa was also predominantly inhabited by black wizards and other powerful spallcasters. Might be mistaken though


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## Teemu (Mar 5, 2018)

Lylandra said:


> I also always thought that pre-spellplague Halruaa was also predominantly inhabited by black wizards and other powerful spallcasters. Might be mistaken though




Nah, Halruaans look more or less European, maybe more Mediterranean than Scandinavian. The people of Turmish are supposed to look sub-Saharan African (mahogany skin, flatter features, kinky hair texture). The cover of the 3.5 Complete Arcane book depicts a Turami wizard.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> And those opinions are all _valid _for each individual...




I don't think that opinion is valid.

I'm fairly sure it's not even possible, much less valid.  How for example could my opinion that your opinion is not valid be equally valid with your  conclusion that it is?  One of us has to be wrong.

And the very fact that one of us has to be wrong is rather suggestive of who is right.  



> Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth.




Is that absolutely and objectively true?  And if it isn't, why should I believe it or think the statement applies to me?

And if nothing is absolutely and objectively true, what possible objection could you have to anything I said?


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I don't think that opinion is valid.
> 
> I'm fairly sure it's not even possible, much less valid.  How for example could my opinion that your opinion is not valid be equally valid with your  conclusion that it is?  One of us has to be wrong.
> 
> ...




Here we go.. posting in this only because I'd love to head this line of questioning off before it goes crazy.

From the basics of debating philosophy sanely 101.

1. There are no absolutes within opinionated discussions save the agreed upon fact that there are no absolutes.
2. This argument is only made where objective fact backed by scientific method is not available.
3. Where there is no objective fact based by scientific method (and thus repeatable under the same conditions) then truth is based on the perspective of the individual, and thus becomes their opinion based on whatever their reality is.

So before either of you goes down a rabbit hole, accept that if you can't prove anything with real data that refutes either of your positions, the resulting conversation will likely be a waste of time unless you want to see each others' point of view or annoy yourselves.

Be well
KB


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## Nylanfs (Mar 5, 2018)

I said this on your Patreon, but I'll add it here also.

Wolfgang and Ben did what feels like a good representation in Southlands by Kobold Press. I attended a panel at GenCon where he talked about it and he had been doing quite a bit of research into African lore and history for another game system that they ended up deciding that it wouldn't be a good fit for.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 5, 2018)

.. on the topic of "anglicizing Africa" or "watering down Europe".

When storytelling, It's not necessarily insulting to super impose a culture's norms on another culture if the intent is to make what you're reading accessible to your audience.  That happens all the time and it's fine.

It's insulting (and rather ignorant) when you only super impose negative stereotypes on a culture that make it obviously inferior to another culture or when you completely erase the things that make a culture worthy of being in the story to begin with.

Equality doesn't have one flavor of what's right, but it does have certain markers within a larger society that are entirely open to accepting the flavor of different cultures within the society.  Ex.  Wakanda is strong in all the things that a Western society would value regardless of the color of anyone's skin or the clothes they wear, etc.  This makes sense when the movie is primarily intended for Western or at least industrialized audiences.

If the movie were being targeted at some advanced society beyond what was being depicted in the film then the entire thing would be an insult to the societies being portrayed to some higher order audience (Q Collective, space aliens, whatever)

Be well
KB


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I don't think that opinion is valid.
> 
> I'm fairly sure it's not even possible, much less valid.  How for example could my opinion that your opinion is not valid be equally valid with your  conclusion that it is?  One of us has to be wrong.
> 
> ...




You missed the part where I'm not advocating for moral relativism. Also, the part where I said every opinion/experience is valid _for that person_. See also Kobold Boots' 1st point below. So, you think that your opinions can represent some universal truth; I don't think either of our opinions can represent any kind of universal truth.

This was the mistake that I made, by the way. I said "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth," when I meant "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, universal truth". Even Kobold Boots' mentions of appeals to scientific data should not be taken as absolute universal truth; after all, the "objective" data we gather changes as the time as we get better at observation. So, you're right in a way, I was wrong (or at least misspoke) when I said that "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth."

Why? Because everybody gets a claim on what is absolute, objective truth _for them._ For instance, if you say something that causes to harm to me, that harm is objectively true _for me_ whatever outcome you actually intended. You can choose to ignore or disbelieve me when I say I experienced harm, but you don't get to _invalidate_ me or my experiences.


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## POCGamer (Mar 5, 2018)

*Lack of Knowledge About Pre-Colonial Africa is a Problem*



Celebrim said:


> Othering is a problem, but Wakanda is the opposite of othering.
> 
> As a matter of pure history, African culture collapsed in the West's middle ages, in part owing to desertification as the Sahara entered into a expansion phase and swallowed the once fertile farmland that supported the African empires.  The result was a hodge-podge of decaying petty kingdoms that never engaged in anything like the miracle of the Northern European renaissance and never produced a large body of literature and exactly zero science.  The sub-Saharan African cultures had themselves never advanced much past early iron age culture, and so were locked in a cultural paradigm roughly 3000 years behind the cultures of Europe and the Middle and Far East.  Besides which, isolated by distance and the Sahara desert, these cultures never truly interacted with any of the big three advanced cultural centers, and were largely known only through limited contact with coastal trading cultures (often through Arabic intermediaries).   As such, the reality of the world was that Africa was largely unknown in Europe, Persia, India, and China and was equally exotic to all of them.  No real African nation was interacting with any of them to any great degree, much less actually exchanging ideas with those cultures in literature, engineering and the sciences.   The same could not be said of those cultures themselves, even when they in fact seemed exotic and strange to each other.   Note for example how European culture serves much the same role in Japanese anime as Eastern culture serves in Western media.  Rome and Han China could be said to be peers, but after the fall of the culturally Phoenician Carthage (itself originally a colonial power) on the extreme northern coast, that could never again be said of any African nation.




^^^^^ That right there is a huge reason why Africa has such a rough go and mediocre results as an inspirational source in gaming, and in science fiction and fantasy in general. Aside from being factually and historically inaccurate, it shows how profoundly little people know, and how much they assume, about Africa. I mean, even a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that there were dozens of active kingdoms and empires active and thriving in Sub-Saharan Africa through the middle ages, Renaissance, and into the modern age. All this post really shows is how profoundly grounded in a narrow, colonial POV the concepts of Africa are in the popular imagination. Equally problematic is the adherence to a limited idea of "what" makes a civilization or culture "successful". 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kingdoms_in_pre-colonial_Africa

http://africanhistory.oxfordre.com/...90277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-68

https://aeon.co/essays/yacob-and-amo-africas-precursors-to-locke-hume-and-kant

https://hssonline.org/resources/teaching/teaching_nonwestern/teaching_nonwestern_africa/

https://www.publicmedievalist.com/recovering-medieval-africa/

https://www.publicmedievalist.com/who-built-africa/

http://www.businessinsider.com/mansa-musa-the-richest-person-in-history-2016-2

https://www.publicmedievalist.com/uncovering-african/


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> You missed the part where I'm not advocating for moral relativism. Also, the part where I said every opinion/experience is valid _for that person_. See also Kobold Boots' 1st point below. So, you think that your opinions can represent some universal truth; I don't think either of our opinions can represent any kind of universal truth.
> 
> This was the mistake that I made, by the way. I said "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth," when I meant "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, universal truth". Even Kobold Boots' mentions of appeals to scientific data should not be taken as absolute universal truth; after all, the "objective" data we gather changes as the time as we get better at observation. So, you're right in a way, I was wrong (or at least misspoke) when I said that "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth."
> 
> Why? Because everybody gets a claim on what is absolute, objective truth _for them._ For instance, if you say something that causes to harm to me, that harm is objectively true _for me_ whatever outcome you actually intended. You can choose to ignore or disbelieve me when I say I experienced harm, but you don't get to _invalidate_ me or my experiences.




Just so I'm cited in an appropriate way.

1. I think it's a good idea whenever debating truth to allow yourself some goal posts for sanity's sake as well as to allow for an adequate benchmark for the end of the discussion such that you can get some value out of it.

2. While it is certainly true that measures of observation change all the time and the nature of peer-reviewed absolute truth is by association mutable, it's not a good idea to ignore the current state of science so you can make the argument that there are no absolutes.  You'll never get anything done that way.  The argument is best left in the philosophical space where it's most effective and least likely to be refuted successfully.

The nature of point in time absolute truth based on repeatable scientific measures must exist for there to be the baseline to continually question the data and change the observation point.  Otherwise, again, nothing meaningful ever gets done and you end up with the chaos argument.  "Why accept or do anything if everything is wrong"    Bad precedent.

While Gradine is definitely reading me the right way, I don't want to come off as non-science.

Be well
KB


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## jhallum (Mar 5, 2018)

I'd like to see Paizo with a book exploring more of the Garundian continent at that point.  They've done some good work with the Mwangi expanse, but only hints really so far in the Skull and Shackles book.  There have been some juicy bits with Old Mage Jatembe and Magaambya as well, but a good sourcebook might be a good idea.


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

In my view, respect for human life is a moral absolute and an absolute truth.

Humans create ideologies. No ideology can ever be more important than an other humans life.

Everything else is negotiations.


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## Morrus (Mar 5, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> In my view, respect for human life is a moral absolute and an absolute truth.
> 
> Humans create ideologies. No ideology can ever be more important than an other humans life.
> 
> Everything else is negotiations.




Well, it's very commendable that you value human life. Well done for that. It's impressive - thanks for letting us know!


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> You missed the part where I'm not advocating for moral relativism.




I didn't miss it.  I just noted it as a disclaimer that couldn't be sustained based on the rest of what you said.



> Also, the part where I said every opinion/experience is valid _for that person_.




What does that even mean?  I mean I think we can agree that people have personal experiences unique from anyone else, and that those experiences are real and meaningful to us.  And I think we can agree that there are some experiences that are while perhaps universal are still subjective, such as the experience of pleasure.   But we rob valid of any meaning at all to say that all opinions and experiences are valid, and I don't think the qualifier "for that person" adds any sort of understanding or nuance to the statement. 



> So, you think that your opinions can represent some universal truth; I don't think either of our opinions can represent any kind of universal truth.




No, I think some of my beliefs aren't opinions.  One of those beliefs that is not an opinion is that somethings are absolutely true.



> This was the mistake that I made, by the way. I said "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, objective truth," when I meant "Nobody gets a claim on absolute, universal truth".




I don't think that the really clarifies anything.  Things are objectively true precisely because they do not depend on a person's individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and experiences.   For that to be true, they must also be universally true, otherwise the individual perspective would matter.

And please don't site things like the elephant and the blind man.  Each of the blind men in that did experience an objective truth that a non-blind observer could in fact validate.  It's just that the truth was more complex than the blind men could perceive.   I'm fully willing to concede many subjects are complex.   I'm not willing to concede that there aren't absolutely true observations about them.



> Why? Because everybody gets a claim on what is absolute, objective truth _for them._




No, they don't.   And again, this isn't even possible, much less valid.   



> For instance, if you say something that causes to harm to me, that harm is objectively true _for me_ whatever outcome you actually intended.




And I can tell you that your experience of harm is subjective and not objective fact.  I can acknowledge your distress without agreeing you have any objective right to be distressed.   No one is under any obligation to respect the claim alone that they have been harmed.  That way lies madness.   It leads to a society where everyone takes pride in their own thin skin, their own desire for vengeance, their own willingness to hold grudges, their own lack of tolerance, and their own venomous and poisonous hatred.   I don't for example have to acknowledge that some angry road raging driver hurling curses, trying to run people off the road, and so forth actually has a valid objective right their anger or that just because they are angry any harm was actually done to them by anyone other than themselves.



> You can choose to ignore or disbelieve me when I say I experienced harm, but you don't get to _invalidate_ me or my experiences.




I have no idea what you mean by that, but I certainly don't have any obligation to validate your experiences either.   I can tell you your claim of harm is utterly invalid, ludicrous, narcissism, and unworkable in a civil and functioning society.  I can even acknowledge that you are under distress, and tell you that it is passive aggressive BS and to get over it.

Moreover, as a matter of practical reality, you can take me to court and they can either affirm your harm is in fact objective, or the judge can through your claims out as baseless and tell you to not only get over it, but that you owe me damages for making a baseless claim of harm that had no basis in objective fact.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Just so I'm cited in an appropriate way.
> 
> 1. I think it's a good idea whenever debating truth to allow yourself some goal posts for sanity's sake as well as to allow for an adequate benchmark for the end of the discussion such that you can get some value out of it.
> 
> ...




There are all fair points. I have a tendency get over-excited in conversations such as these and as a result sometimes misrepresent my points. I definitely agree with you on the value of the current basis of scientific research and study. It's also not entirely relevant to the main conversation.

Philosophically, I've found that the best way to approach life is to take people at face value and accept their experience as valid unless they've given me cause to distrust them, personally, as an individual. There is a tendency to inherently distrust whole swaths of people whose experiences run counter to one's personal or political views, but I feel that that's an entirely unfair position to take, regardless of what point of those spectrums you're coming from.

There's also a tendency to misunderstand the relationship between intent and impact. When I say intent is irrelevant, I mean in relationship to the impact you have on other people. If you accidentally bump into a person and they fall down and hurt themselves, you don't stand there and act defensive and shout "Well I didn't mean so it shouldn't bother you!" at the person; you apologize, even if you didn't intend to hurt them. The difference is that unintentionally hurting people _doesn't make you a bad person._ If you bump into somebody and knock them down and hurt them, you're not a bad person. Now, if you continue to not pay attention to other people and where you're going and the space your body takes up, and you continue to exhibit a pattern of "accidentally" bumping into people and knocking them down, your refusal to change begins to reflect more and more upon your character.

Intentionally doing harm is a different thing; and I would argue that ignoring or disbelieving those who claim you are doing them harm and refusing to make any changes in the you behave/act/speak is a form of intentionality, though I'd classify that more as callous rather than truly directly hateful as some of the more directly intentional forms of harm.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 5, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> In my view, respect for human life is a moral absolute and an absolute truth.
> 
> Humans create ideologies. No ideology can ever be more important than an other humans life.
> 
> Everything else is negotiations.




Agreed, but I feel compelled to reply with "the greatest good for the greatest number of people" allows for the loss of life under specific circumstances where failure to take a life costs a greater number of lives.

Bowing out of this conversation now.  Be well folks
KB


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

I have a right to critique my own cultures, and I have a right to critique other cultures. We are all human.

So, in the context of North Africa, the history of Islamicization saturates with crimes against humanity − from genocide, to slave trafficking, to oppression of women, to tyranny, to oppression of religions, to silencing of dissent, and so on. These crimes are happening today as much as ever.

In the rush to dignify other nations, it would be unethical to turn a blind eye to such crimes.

A sympathetic, albeit critical and reasoned, approach helps most. 

Holding other people responsible for their actions, both positive and negative − that people have free will to choose how they interact with others − is the best dignity that one human can bestow on an other human.


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## Mark Craddock (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




Are only Africans allowed to write about Africa? Are only Swedes allowed to write about Sweden?

It seems that creating fantasy is running the risk of being smashed between two noble concerns.

As a publisher, I have to be aware of how my product is received, but as a DM at my table, if I love Tarzan stories, I might get inspired by them for my DnD game and that's okay, as long as everyone at my table has not objection and no one is offended.

I worry that "cultural appropriation" risks becoming something that can be used for racism.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

Nylanfs said:


> Wolfgang and Ben did what feels like a good representation in Southlands by Kobold Press. I attended a panel at GenCon where he talked about it and he had been doing quite a bit of research into African lore and history for another game system that they ended up deciding that it wouldn't be a good fit for.




While I'm aware of their existence, I'm not terribly familiar with Nyambe or the Southlands. I've heard good things about both, that both have attempted to represent African-based fantasy fairly . . . but I'm curious, does either project have any African or African-American authors on the team?

I don't think an African-inspired project necessarily HAS to have African representation on the writing/development team . . . . and it's no guarantee of accuracy, fairness, or quality . . . . but I would LOVE to see that. Just like Black Panther had heavy African involvement with the writing, and the cast and crew of the movie.

Our hobby is predominately white, but I am 98% certain WotC or another company could find some interested African-American authors to participate in such a project. Maybe even some fantasy authors who don't (yet) have RPG credits.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I don't for example have to acknowledge that some angry road raging driver hurling curses, trying to run people off the road, and so forth actually has a valid objective right their anger or that just because they are angry any harm was actually done to them by anyone other than themselves.




I wasn't going to respond to any specific point of this, but I did want to address this point. There is a difference between somebody's objective experiences and the way to decide to behave as a result of those experiences. What I am saying is valid is that person's anger. What nobody has to validate is somebody's destructive actions as a result of said experiences. If somebody's being an , feel absolutely free to call them out for being an . All I'm saying is that they're probably acting that way for a reason, and that reason is perfectly valid to them, but that maybe there are better, less harmful ways to get what they want and/or need.

Look, it's plainly obvious, as has been established not only here but in multiple other threads on this board, that you and I see absolutely do not see eye to eye at all with regards to the proper and appropriate ways to treat other human beings with respect. Your particular worldview allows you to dismiss as valid the shared experiences of (many, many) others; mine does not. Your particular worldview allows to assume the invalidation of experiences that do not match your own personal experiences or beliefs; mine does not. My worldview requires me to acknowledge the pain and suffering that others insist that they are experiencing, and find ways to deconstruct those experiences and find ways to correct them; yours allows you to dismiss or ignore that pain and suffering if the source does not conform to your own worldview. It is my belief that in your way lies a great deal of unnecessary divisiveness, disrespect, pain, and harm. I happen think that's a horrible way to go through life, though I can imagine why it wouldn't feel that way. It's certainly an easier way to get through life.

In any case, I really don't see any point in either of us rehashing any of this again. It's kind gotten even further off-topic to the original discussion than it started.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

POCGamer said:


> ^^^^^ That right there is a huge reason why Africa has such a rough go and mediocre results as an inspirational source in gaming, and in science fiction and fantasy in general. Aside from being factually and historically inaccurate, it shows how profoundly little people know, and how much they assume, about Africa. I mean, even a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that there were dozens of active kingdoms and empires active and thriving in Sub-Saharan Africa through the middle ages, Renaissance, and into the modern age. All this post really shows is how profoundly grounded in a narrow, colonial POV the concepts of Africa are in the popular imagination. Equally problematic is the adherence to a limited idea of "what" makes a civilization or culture "successful".
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kingdoms_in_pre-colonial_Africa
> 
> ...




I'm going to be charitable and assume that you are really a first time poster that has come out of lurking and wants to make your voice heard, and not sock puppet created by some long time poster that wants to get out of line without consequences.  

My general response to you is that your own links support my narrative more strongly than the do your own.  For example, the link to the oxford African history cite will give you a long treatise that is most notable in its admission to the lack of native narrative and documentary sources for the majority of the African continent, and the fact that the historian is almost entirely indebted to Arabic and Portugese traders for any documentation at all - however sparse - to the politics and history of pre-Colonial Africa.  I would notice also that there isn't a single city in all of sub-Saharan Africa that has been inhabited continuously for as long as Paris, Rome, or London, so that not only is there no historical evidence owing to the lack of widespread literacy but there is virtually no archaeological evidence.   The number of unknowns in the document vastly exceeds what is known, and the comparison of the non-existent texts to the 10's and 100's of thousands that survive in Europe and China from similar periods is instructive.   What you actually present evidence for is a very large number (1500?) of comparatively small linguistically and culturally isolated tribal kingdoms, who traded with their neighbors and they with their neighbors and so forth in what is continental wide trade.  But to imagine that is unusual is to be completely ignorant of the normal behavior of human tribes world wide throughout all of prehistory.

Likewise the link to 'recovering medieval Africa' does nothing of the sort.  It discusses pervasive racism and the presence of non-European cultural traditions, mostly ironically ones outside of Africa.   But it does nothing to really enlarge the readers sense of what native African culture was like, and indeed one of the few mentions it makes of culture within Africa is in terms of the introduction of post-Islamic post-Arab colonialist thought.  Telling us the Moghuls of India or the Safavids of Peria where engaged in civilized pursuits tells us really nothing about Africa.   The whole article sadly ends up discussing things outside of Africa more than Africa, in a sort of 'Europe vs. the World' duality that ironically ends up doing disservice to Africa.

And so forth.

I think you are making a mistake in assuming that I haven't read everything I could get a hold of on the Yoruba people, or Mansu Musa, or Ethiopia or 'Great Zimbabwe' or what not.   I'd be happy to discuss the introduction of a native literary tradition into Ethiopia, or the religious traditions of East Africa, or what is known about Sub-Saharan tribal migration in whatever depth you'd like.


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## Zarithar (Mar 5, 2018)

I think the current iterations of both Chult and the Southlands are excellent representations of Africa-LIKE regions of the fantasy worlds they inhabit. Now... back to playing my fantasy game, with an emphasis on *FANTASY*​.


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

Mark Craddock said:


> Are only Swedes allowed to write about Sweden?




Heh, as a Norwegian who is reasonably familiar with Old Norse traditions, I can confirm, many D&D players (wildly) misunderstand the aboriginal Norse people.

Then again. Many D&D players dont know what a ‘longsword’ is. How on earth could we master all of the social organizations, ideologies, and nuances of a complex ethnic group?


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## LuisCarlos17f (Mar 5, 2018)

If we are going to talk about negative stereotipes, then somebody could complain about the background of Castilla, one of the countries of 7th Sea. 

The Lion King is a classic story for everybody, Aladdin is a classic story loved by people from everywhere, Mulan is a classic story. Julio Verne and Alexandre Dumas' novels are classic, and nobody cares about they were French. The key is to tell good stories to be enjoyed by everybody, not only for English-speakers, Spanish-speakers or French-speakers. If I read a manga, for example, I want a good story, I don't mind where happens the characters' actions, in Japan, USA, Europe, a space station or an alien civilitation. If the cat hunts mice, who cares the color or gender? 

* Do you remember the last teleseries of Tarzan? And that 70's cartoon show, and Disney's hero. And "Orzowei, the son of the sabanah"?

* 3.5 Oriental Adventures had got their own races, nor a oriental version of core races. And I would had liked an "Oriental Adventures II: 1001 Nights".

* It is curious, but Athas(Dark Sun) was, is, a hot weather world, but their people aren't too dark skin.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Look, it's plainly obvious, as has been established not only here but in multiple other threads on this board, that you and I see absolutely do not see eye to eye at all with regards to the proper and appropriate ways to treat other human beings with respect. Your particular worldview allows you to dismiss as valid the shared experiences of (many, many) others; mine does not. Your particular worldview allows to assume the invalidation of experiences that do not match your own personal experiences or beliefs; mine does not. My worldview requires me to acknowledge the pain and suffering that others insist that they are experiencing, and find ways to deconstruct those experiences and find ways to correct them; yours allows you to dismiss or ignore that pain and suffering if the source does not conform to your own worldview. It is my belief that in your way lies a great deal of unnecessary divisiveness, disrespect, pain, and harm. I happen think that's a horrible way to go through life, though I can imagine why it wouldn't feel that way. It's certainly an easier way to get through life.




One thing that can be observed is how much of a paragon of empathy you are.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> One thing that can be observed is how much of a paragon of empathy you are.




If I've misinterpreted you in any way you are certainly free to educate me. I'd be happy to apologize if anything I said about you was wrong.

While I do try to respect and validate people's experiences, I don't happen to be of the belief that every person or position or worldview is deserving of respect or empathy. As I said, I'm not a moral relativist. If someone is not willing to extend respect or empathy to others, why should I feel bound to treat them that way?


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> One thing that can be observed is how much of a paragon of empathy you are.




Regarding empathy. The golden rule of,

• ‘Love your friend as you love yourself’,

implies two axioms.

Most importantly, you must love yourself. Otherwise, there is no love to begin with, to share with others.

Secondly, they have to be a friend. While the goal is too achieve friendship with all humans, until then, one treats friends who cooperate with you, differently from enemies who harm you.



While negotiating with the identities of the ‘other’, make sure one is standing up for ones own identity too.


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> If I've misinterpreted you in any way you are certainly free to educate me. I'd be happy to apologize if anything I said about you was wrong.




I'm not going to sit here and get in a contest with you over which of us spends more of our income on the poor, or which of us risks more to reach out to people who are suffering.  I'm simply going to say you've already made it abundantly clear you can't imagine who I am, because you can't imagine anyone not sharing your own narrow view of the world.



> While I do try to respect and validate people's experiences, I don't happen to be of the belief that every person or position or worldview is deserving of respect or empathy.




No, you don't.  You don't even have enough introspection to realize that.   On the other hand, that's a good thing.  If in fact you believed that every position or worldview was deserving of respect or empathy, you'd be a monster. 



> If someone is not willing to extend respect or empathy to others, why should I feel bound to treat them that way?




Because you are a moral relativist?  Only a moral relativist thinks you extend respect and empathy to someone because they deserve it.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Mar 5, 2018)

LuisCarlos17f said:


> * It is curious, but Athas(Dark Sun) was, is, a hot weather world, but their people aren't too dark skin.




It depends on how many centuries or millennia it was that way. How many hundreds or thousands of years did it take for early humans to evolve from dark-skinned to light-skinned after migrating out of Africa and into Europe? Or the change of skin color in those who migrated into Asia?


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## Derren (Mar 5, 2018)

LuisCarlos17f said:


> If we are going to talk about negative stereotipes, then somebody could complain about the background of Castilla, one of the countries of 7th Sea.
> .




When it comes to stereotypes 7th Sea is probably one of the worst settings out there. And that is not only contained to Castilla, but is valid for pretty much all flimsily disguised European nations in there. Heck they even managed to add a Napoleon like figure to their "not France" nation.

Warhammer fantasy has the same concept of having a renamed Europe as setting, but I find their execution a lot better than what 7th Sea did, although it can't really put a finger on why. Probably because the German names in 7th sea sound so horrible to German speakers.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> One thing that can be observed is how much of a paragon of empathy you are.




Not a mod, but be careful.  Snark doesn't play well without tone.  [MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION], it's understood that not everyone is going to get along.  It may have been best to just say something like "we don't see eye to eye, that's ok".

No one on the forum is going to convince anyone of anything or choose to learn something if conflict is the first option.

Peace
KB


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> It depends on how many centuries or millennia it was that way. How many hundreds or thousands of years did it take for early humans to evolve from dark-skinned to light-skinned after migrating out of Africa and into Europe? Or the change of skin color in those who migrated into Asia?




Actually, skin color is superficial, and genetically insignificant. Skin color is a human response to ultraviolet radiation. Where the sun is strong, pigmentation increases thus surviving skin cancer. Oppositely, where the sun is weak, pigmentation decreases thus producing sufficient amounts of vitamin D. It takes as few as about 10 generations to dramatically affect the overall complexion of populations who migrate north or south.



Regarding Dark Sun, perhaps the ‘dark’ sun emits less ultraviolet light, thus a planet with lighter complexion.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not going to sit here and get in a contest with you over which of us spends more of our income on the poor, or which of us risks more to reach out to people who are suffering.  I'm simply going to say you've already made it abundantly clear you can't imagine who I am, because you can't imagine anyone not sharing your own narrow view of the world.
> 
> No, you don't.  You don't even have enough introspection to realize that.   On the other hand, that's a good thing.  If in fact you believed that every position or worldview was deserving of respect or empathy, you'd be a monster.
> 
> Because you are a moral relativist?  Only a moral relativist thinks you extend respect and empathy to someone because they deserve it.




You're absolutely right; I've said some things I regret, and I apologize for that. Sincerely.

One thing I'm learning is that my own worldview is malleable and I don't always have the best handle on it moment to moment, especially in the middle of a heated exchange. I'm always growing, and I make mistakes. I made some here. So again, I am sorry to you for that.

One thing I will say, however, is that you and others on this forum have demonstrated a consistent dismissal of the experiences of those who face racism, sexism, heterosexism, and/or other forms of oppression, ie; anything that could be lumped into the broad category of "political correctness". These, at least I hope, are not facts you are willing to dispute; it's possible I'm mixing you up with others. There's obviously a reason you do so, and I'm sure it's a perfectly valid reason for you based on the sum total of your life experiences that have shaped your own worldview. And I was wrong to so callously dismiss that.

But I believe, quite strongly, that the worldview you possess is wrong-headed and harmful, and I'd really like to get you, and others who share that worldview to change, to adapt a more peaceful, respectful, and empathetic worldview. And maybe even that's an unfair characterization, but it's what I truly believe, so I'm sticking with it. It's vitally important to me, in fact, that that change occur. As it should be obvious to everyone, _I don't know how to do that,_ and in fact nobody really knows for sure. Otherwise these internet arguments wouldn't be such a huge waste of time. But I'd like to learn.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Not a mod, but be careful.  Snark doesn't play well without tone.  [MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION], it's understood that not everyone is going to get along.  It may have been best to just say something like "we don't see eye to eye, that's ok".
> 
> No one on the forum is going to convince anyone of anything or choose to learn something if conflict is the first option.
> 
> ...




Thanks for your comments, and for reigning me in. I needed it.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

Erechel said:


> As a side note, the AD&D _Red Steel _setting for Mystara is a great source of altenity.




Red Steel is different, but not in the way we're talking here. The "Savage Coast" is more Euro-fantasy mish-mash than anything else, although it ranges farther afield a bit if you go all the way to the Arm of the Immortals. But the core of the setting is pseudo-Spain, France, England, with some Slavic city-states in there . . .

Which, is not a criticism, I love Red Steel!


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> You're absolutely right; I've said some things I regret, and I apologize for that. Sincerely.
> 
> One thing I'm learning is that my own worldview is malleable and I don't always have the best handle on it moment to moment, especially in the middle of a heated exchange. I'm always growing, and I make mistakes. I made some here. So again, I am sorry to you for that.




Fairly said.  One of the bravest things anyone can do on the internet is admit that they have things to learn.



> One thing I will say, however, is that you and others on this forum have demonstrated a consistent dismissal of the experiences of those who face racism, sexism, heterosexism, and/or other forms of oppression




That's not how I see it.  I can dismiss a specific language used to describe those experiences without dismissing the experiences themselves.  Look, as a person, I've been spit on, stoned, stabbed, punched bloody, kicked, mocked, and scorned.   I've had jobs denied me because of my skin color, and I've been impoverished and told that on account of my skin color I couldn't attend a job fair.  I sympathize with anyone that has suffered, regardless of why they have.   I don't however have to agree to your conclusions or your language describing those experiences, or too your remedies or to anything else you want to claim out of the "authority" of having been persecuted.



> ie; anything that could be lumped into the broad category of "political correctness".




For example, I don't have to agree that "political correctness" is anything but racism and hatred, to believe that racism is a problem.



> But I believe, quite strongly, that the worldview you possess is wrong-headed and harmful, and I'd really like to get you, and others who share that worldview to change, to adapt a more peaceful, respectful, and empathetic worldview.




Ahh, yes.  Ditto.  That's the reason I bother responding to you at all.   If I didn't think your heart was in the right place, I'd just ignore you.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Fairly said.  One of the bravest things anyone can do on the internet is admit that they have things to learn.
> 
> That's not how I see it.  I can dismiss a specific language used to describe those experiences without dismissing the experiences themselves.  Look, as a person, I've been spit on, stoned, stabbed, punched bloody, kicked, mocked, and scorned.   I've had jobs denied me because of my skin color, and I've been impoverished and told that on account of my skin color I couldn't attend a job fair.  I sympathize with anyone that has suffered, regardless of why they have.   I don't however have to agree to your conclusions or your language describing those experiences, or too your remedies or to anything else you want to claim out of the "authority" of having been persecuted.
> 
> ...




I appreciate your candor. I do in fact feel like I understand you a little better and where you might be coming from (as much as it's possible for anyone to). I would, in fact, be very interested in continuing this conversation with you at some point in the future, in a more appropriate forum. 

The thing I regret the most are the personal attacks I've made against you. I don't necessarily agree with you, and I have a better sense on where I believe you're wrong about quite a few things, but I have also recognize that your heart, too, is in the right place, and I apologize for aspersions I've cast on your character to the opposite.


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## Mallus (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?



Should the Wu-Tang Clan give all that Shaolin stuff back to Hong Kong? 

And before you answer, remember that Wu-Tang ain't nuttin' to fu... what was I thinking? I can't say that here!


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

Gradine said:


> It's vitally important to me, in fact, that that change occur.




If you honestly want the world to change for the better, you must first respect the free will of other people.

Using coercion to impose ones own ideology is the definition of supremacism, tyranny, imperialism, and so on. It doesnt matter how ‘right’ one thinks one is.

One has to be patient. Either one believes in humanity or one doesnt. If one doesnt trust humans to be able to reach the ‘right’ conclusions, then dont bother trying to change the world − it will only make the world worse than the initial difficulty.

Respecting each others free will, mutually, is the way.



By the way, personally, I am post-postmodern. The postmodern critique (including deconstructionism) was interesting. But it has reached the limits of what it is able to contribute to the conversation. In my eyes, the students of the postmodern philosophers have allied themselves with N*zis (Nietzsche, Heidegger) and Islamist imperialists (Foucault), and these moral failures of the philosophy to prevent such crimes, shows the philosophy to be ethically bankrupt.

Dont get me wrong, I love Foucault, albeit despise Nietzsche. (Nietzsche failed to understand the existential significance of a ‘community’ of free persons with a communal identity of being free. Worse, Nietzsche thought the ‘enlightened’ self-actualizing humans had a right to coerce and oppress other humans.) In any case, today, postmodernism is failing us ethically.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> Othering is totally a problem. A valid issue in the presentation of other cultures, and something to be very aware of when creating fantasy worlds and fantastic analogies to real world places and cultures.
> 
> But...
> 
> ...




Wakanda, and other fake countries in both the Marvel and DC universe do suffer from this static portrayal for the reasons you mention . . . but Wakanda ALSO suffers from "othering" at the same time. I think they addressed this "in-universe" pretty well in the movie, giving reasons why Wakanda was isolated in the past, and that perhaps that was not the wisest choice for Wakanda, or for Africa at-large.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




In my view, cultural appropriation has taken on an unfair negative connotation. There are certainly plenty of negative examples of cultural appropriation, but it isn't all bad. Quite the opposite rather. Humans have been appropriating other humans cultures since the beginning of culture! It's a very normal process in how cultures grow, adapt, and evolve. There is nothing wrong, at heart, with encountering another culture and deciding that some element is super cool and you want to start doing it!

It's HOW you do the appropriation that can be damaging, especially when you have a dominant culture taking elements from a minority culture, often out of context, and making them into something trivial or "exotic" in your own culture. It's not cut-and-dried and difficult to judge, like everything we like to argue about!

Being a white gamer with weak ties even to the culture of my European ancestors . . . there's nothing wrong with me creating Asian-inspired, Middle-Eastern-inspired, African-inspired elements to my campaign, either for home use or publication. But I can do so with careful thought and respect to the culture I'm borrowing from, or I can do it thoughtlessly and carelessly, possibly furthering cultural stereotypes and misunderstandings.


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## Mallus (Mar 5, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> ... and Islamist imperialists (Foucault)...



Foucault? You sure you aren't thinking of the novelist Michel Houellebecq?  

(apologies if this is way too much of a tangent in a thread about fantasy Africa)


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

Gorath99 said:


> Even Europe is not safe from this. How often do we get a decent medieval fantasy Greece, Switzerland, or Lithuania? If the Irish and Welsh are represented at all, they are generally lumped together into a single archetype. Ditto for the numerous and varied states in the Holy Roman Empire; the Italian states; the Iberian states; all of Eastern Europe; all of the Nordic people (as Vikings); etc.
> 
> Not to say that these regions have it as bad as places outside of Europe when it comes to representation. But it's a general tendency. The further a culture/people is removed from medieval England, the more likely that it gets lumped together with other cultures.
> 
> I think you're absolutely right about it being helpful to have more than one of each stereotypical culture, by the way.




My first thought when I heard complaints of Chult being a mish-mash of African influences, was, "Hey, the Realms at-large, and most D&D campaigns, are a mish-mash of European influences, that's how D&D works!"

But there is a difference. Standard D&D pulls from a "mish-mash" of Western European mythic, historic, and literary sources . . . for folks largely descended from Western European cultures (white folks). This European Union of D&D pulls from a dominant grouping of cultures for an audience of the dominant culture in America. When dealing with more "exotic" sources (exotic for us white folks), more care should be taken. Especially since our pulp and comic literary traditions have a long history of "othering", demeaning, and just plain getting wrong African, Asian, Middle-Eastern, and other regions of the world.

I don't think the 5E version of Chult is awful or bad, but it certainly could have been better. And considering how long African culture has been sidelined in Western art and media, WotC should have been wiser and worked harder on the latest version of Chult. But, I'm not ready to bring out torches-and-pitchforks, just hoping they will do better next time.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

neobolts said:


> 1) I found it very confusing to see articles where Black Panther was praised for mix-and-matching the whole of African culture, while Tomb of Annihilation was criticized for doing the same.




Tomb of Annihilation took a variety of African cultural elements and put them into the blender, making a smooth, easily digested smoothie for it's primarily white audience.

Black Panther made each Wakandan tribe culturally unique from the others, influenced by real-world tribal cultures. The intent was to highlight the diversity of African culture, not blend it into a homogeneous African-blend that really doesn't do the continent justice.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 5, 2018)

Mark Craddock said:


> Are only Africans allowed to write about Africa? Are only Swedes allowed to write about Sweden?
> 
> It seems that creating fantasy is running the risk of being smashed between two noble concerns.
> 
> ...




Can white folks create art based on non-European influences? Can they? Should they? Yes to both! But, when borrowing or being influence by cultures not your own, do it carefully and respectfully. And, yes, poorly-done cultural appropriation can very much be racist. But not all cultural appropriation is racist.

What you do at your table is your business, of course. But I would argue that not worrying about these sorts of issues at home is OK. It's not. We should all be striving to be better people in every aspect of our lives, including how we interact with family and friends, even when they are all from the same culture. If your gaming buddy says something racist or sexist at the game table, should you call them on their behavior? Yes. If you find that your gaming creation is unintentionally racist, should you change it? Yes. At least, that's the enlightened view I like to take.


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## Aldarc (Mar 5, 2018)

Culturally Inappropriate Pop Culture Question: When anyone else reads this thread, do they also hear the drums echoing tonight but (for some unstated reason) she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation?


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## Celebrim (Mar 5, 2018)

Mallus said:


> (apologies if this is way too much of a tangent in a thread about fantasy Africa)




I'd much rather get back to Fantasy Africa, but the fact that the discussion of Fantasy Africa included terms like "Othering" before anyone in the thread had othered anyone, and indeed accused of all things the movie "Black Panther" of "othering" suggests that the thread was doomed in the first place.

Can we just discuss legal systems that depend on public shaming and fear of spiritual reprisal, or passive aggressive law enforcement, or religious systems where you worship the immediate environment because the gods themselves went off and abandoned you, or what Tolkien might have created were he an African rather than a transplant, or really anything at all cool rather than stupid modern politics and its word salad of incoherence?


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## kenmarable (Mar 5, 2018)

Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




Not to zero in on you since this is something that happens A LOT in these sorts of discussions, so I honestly want to make this point generically not at you specifically, but your wording hits the point exactly:
Referring to RPG writers writing about "other people's cultures" assumes the RPG writers are not from those cultures. In every single discussion on this sort of topic, I have seen it just assumed that some specific "we" are writing about "other people's cultures" when that assumption does not have to be true at all.

One easy but often overlooked way to help avoid cultural appropriation and many potential problems of writing about "other people's cultures" is to _actually involve people from those cultures in the process_. Seems really obvious in hindsight, but is very rarely ever considered!


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Mar 5, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Actually, skin color is superficial, and genetically insignificant. Skin color is a human response to ultraviolet radiation. Where the sun is strong, pigmentation increases thus surviving skin cancer. Oppositely, where the sun is weak, pigmentation decreases thus producing sufficient amounts of vitamin D. It takes as few as about 10 generations to dramatically affect the overall complexion of populations who migrate north or south.




So 500-1000 years, plus however many years it took for humans to slowly spread out from Africa to Sweden and then for the pigmentation to slowly lighten?

And since I know nothing of the history of Athas, that does not help me understand why a desert world is not primarily populated by darker-skinned peoples.


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## Gradine (Mar 5, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I'd much rather get back to Fantasy Africa, but the fact that the discussion of Fantasy Africa included terms like "Othering" before anyone in the thread had othered anyone, and indeed accused of all things the movie "Black Panther" of "othering" suggests that the thread was doomed in the first place.
> 
> Can we just discuss legal systems that depend on public shaming and fear of spiritual reprisal, or passive aggressive law enforcement, or religious systems where you worship the immediate environment because the gods themselves went off and abandoned you, or what Tolkien might have created were he an African rather than a transplant, or really anything at all cool rather than stupid modern politics and its word salad of incoherence?




Like it or not, those things are entirely relevant to the OP and main topic at hand, no matter how much you may personally dislike or disbelieve in their relevance or validity.


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## Yaarel (Mar 5, 2018)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> So 500-1000 years, plus however many years it took for humans to slowly spread out from Africa to Sweden and then for the pigmentation to slowly lighten?
> 
> And since I know nothing of the history of Athas, that does not help me understand why a desert world is not primarily populated by darker-skinned peoples.




Actually, say a generation is roughly 25 years, the complexion can shift in less than 300 years. Compare many African communities in the US are significantly lighter than parent communities in Africa. Some of it is admixture, but much of it is simply adapting to the weaker sunlight. Oppositely, there are ‘Indoeuropean’ communities who migrated south into India, and are as dark as Subsaharan Africans.

Skin color − like uniforms and clothing − affects how we construct identities psychologically. But biologically, skin color is transient and irrelevant. Skin color is almost as ephemeral as changing clothes when going from the office to a night club.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 6, 2018)

> So, in the context of North Africa, the history of Islamicization saturates with crimes against humanity − from genocide, to slave trafficking, to oppression of women, to tyranny, to oppression of religions, to silencing of dissent, and so on. These crimes are happening today as much as ever.




 Nobody’s culture or faith has clean hands.  If you think otherwise, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.   There are Buddhists currently committing atrocities against muslims; Christians and Jews have been targeted by Hindus and other Eastern faith traditions; atheists & Mormons alike have commuted genocidal acts, etc.  Jewish people committed genocides in the name of their faith too- check the Old Testament.  Then there was the Inquisition.

In many cases, the faith- be it Islam, Judaism, Christianity, whatevs- just supplied the religious justification for cultural conflicts that predated the adoption of the new faith. 

Don’t blame the faith, blame the faithful...or more accurately, the radical despots & zealots  within those faiths and cultures.


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## default_entry (Mar 6, 2018)

neobolts said:


> 1) I found it very confusing to see articles where Black Panther was praised for mix-and-matching the whole of African culture, while Tomb of Annihilation was criticized for doing the same.
> 
> 2) I'm not a fan of the way the term "cultural appropriation" is used. It is too often focused on *what* a person did rather than *why* they did it. Intent matters. You cannot promote diversity and inclusiveness in a work if you cannot use cultural references outside of your own culture.




Its also about tone - Wakanda was presented as a real and relatable and ALIVE. Chult is a place of horrible, withering death with african-ish names slapped on everything.


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## Yaarel (Mar 6, 2018)

> Nobody’s culture or faith has clean hands.




That kind of mindless moral relativism is precisely why postmodernism is ethically bankrupt, and even historically monstrous at times.

Saying no cultures is perfect, is true. Saying all cultures are equally bad, is false.

Just like a family can be dysfunctional, so a culture can be dysfunctional.


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## Erdric Dragin (Mar 6, 2018)

Wait, what about the nation of Turmish in the Forgotten Realms? The Turmics are a mahogany-skinned race of humans with a culture vastly different than the stereotypical Chultan one?


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## Erechel (Mar 6, 2018)

Dire Bare said:


> Red Steel is different, but not in the way we're talking here. The "Savage Coast" is more Euro-fantasy mish-mash than anything else, although it ranges farther afield a bit if you go all the way to the Arm of the Immortals. But the core of the setting is pseudo-Spain, France, England, with some Slavic city-states in there . . .
> 
> Which, is not a criticism, I love Red Steel!




They have gauchos. In AD&D. VERY argentinian theme  and that's why I'm quoting it. If you don't know what a gaucho is and you only think that is a Steely Dan album, here it is an image. It is Martín Fierro, the most famous fictional gaucho ever.

View attachment 94800


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## Erechel (Mar 6, 2018)

Dire Bare said:


> Can white folks create art based on non-European influences? Can they? Should they? Yes to both! But, when borrowing or being influence by cultures not your own, do it carefully and respectfully. And, yes, poorly-done cultural appropriation can very much be racist. But not all cultural appropriation is racist.
> 
> What you do at your table is your business, of course. But I would argue that not worrying about these sorts of issues at home is OK. It's not. We should all be striving to be better people in every aspect of our lives, including how we interact with family and friends, even when they are all from the same culture. If your gaming buddy says something racist or sexist at the game table, should you call them on their behavior? Yes. If you find that your gaming creation is unintentionally racist, should you change it? Yes. At least, that's the enlightened view I like to take.




I'm risking to be crucified by this but... this is kind of a double standard. Ok, let's be clear: a north (or south) American isn't a European person. Is North (or South) American, and neither have anything to do with knights in shinning armors, dragons, and such. At best it is an European _descendant _in another land, living a different culture. 

We are a mish-mash of different influences (native, european, african, middle east, asian, you name it), and as such we have our own (much younger and mixed) heritage. Saying that a North (or South) American can't write of subsaharan Africa is almost the same than saying you can't write about knights and European culture. The difference is that European culture has become somewhat universal to the point of Japanese making series about King Arthur. The cultural appropriation is _everywhere, _but somewhat we forget that knights in shinning armor, feudalism and kings are part of a _very tiny_ part of the world, during a very short span (less than a millenia). I'm a Mapuche descendant; that means that I can't write about cowboys? Or samurai? Or legionaries?

The worst part of colonization is naturalization of certain cultural specificites and pose them as universal. They aren't universal.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 6, 2018)

Erechel said:


> They have gauchos. In AD&D. VERY argentinian theme  and that's why I'm quoting it. If you don't know what a gaucho is and you only think that is a Steely Dan album, here it is an image. It is Martín Fierro, the most famous fictional gaucho ever.
> 
> View attachment 94800




Learn something new everyday! I had always assumed that the Savage Baronies of the Red Steel setting were a mish-mash of Spanish and Latin American cultural elements, I didn't know the gaucho was very South American! That's pretty cool to learn, as the gaucho "class" (kit or whatever) was one of the more interesting aspects of the setting. I almost wish that in every D&D book, TSR (and later WotC) had sidebars or appendices listing where certain elements were drawn from.


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## Dire Bare (Mar 6, 2018)

Erechel said:


> I'm risking to be crucified by this but... this is kind of a double standard. Ok, let's be clear: a north (or south) American isn't a European person. Is North (or South) American, and neither have anything to do with knights in shinning armors, dragons, and such. At best it is an European _descendant _in another land, living a different culture.
> 
> We are a mish-mash of different influences (native, european, african, middle east, asian, you name it), and as such we have our own (much younger and mixed) heritage. Saying that a North (or South) American can't write of subsaharan Africa is almost the same than saying you can't write about knights and European culture. The difference is that European culture has become somewhat universal to the point of Japanese making series about King Arthur. The cultural appropriation is _everywhere, _but somewhat we forget that knights in shinning armor, feudalism and kings are part of a _very tiny_ part of the world, during a very short span (less than a millenia). I'm a Mapuche descendant; that means that I can't write about cowboys? Or samurai? Or legionaries?
> 
> The worst part of colonization is naturalization of certain cultural specificites and pose them as universal. They aren't universal.




I'm not sure if we are disagreeing or agreeing!  My point is that you do not have to be from a specific culture to write about that culture. 

I'm a white North American with a healthily mixed up blend of European ancestry. I'm only slightly more connected to the various European cultures in my background than I am to Asian, African, or any other culture outside of U.S. American. If I ever start writing narrative fiction, game design, screenplays, or what-have-you . . . I will most certainly write about characters, places, and cultural elements from whatever corner of the globe or period of history that strikes my fancy. I'm pretty well versed in the Euro-blend style of fantasy that is D&D's bedrock, but if I ever stray to a fantasy Africa or somewhere else a bit further afield . . . I will strive to do so fairly, accurately, and without furthering negative stereotypes and without any guilt. Will I pull it off? Heh, that's something else entirely, although it's certainly possible.

If I ever try to publish something with strong elements of a culture different from my own, I'll be doing a lot of research first, and then be looking for folks from that culture to proof-read and help catch any errors in judgement I might make.


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## Erechel (Mar 6, 2018)

Dire Bare said:


> I'm not sure if we are disagreeing or agreeing!  My point is that you do not have to be from a specific culture to write about that culture.
> 
> I'm a white North American with a healthily mixed up blend of European ancestry. I'm only slightly more connected to the various European cultures in my background than I am to Asian, African, or any other culture outside of U.S. American. If I ever start writing narrative fiction, game design, screenplays, or what-have-you . . . I will most certainly write about characters, places, and cultural elements from whatever corner of the globe or period of history that strikes my fancy. I'm pretty well versed in the Euro-blend style of fantasy that is D&D's bedrock, but if I ever stray to a fantasy Africa or somewhere else a bit further afield . . . I will strive to do so fairly, accurately, and without furthering negative stereotypes and without any guilt. Will I pull it off? Heh, that's something else entirely, although it's certainly possible.
> 
> If I ever try to publish something with strong elements of a culture different from my own, I'll be doing a lot of research first, and then be looking for folks from that culture to proof-read and help catch any errors in judgement I might make.




I think that we agree on most points. But the fact is that you have (like I do, after all my surname is French) European _ancestry_, but you belong to an entirely different culture, so do I (that's where we disagree a little bit). And you and I belong to different cultures, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't write about one or another culture... with proper research. And as for fantasy world, we have way more leeway. We could be respectful, and as long as we don't create unidimensional settings that only enforce prejudice (like _Latin Land_ or _Darkest Africa_) it will be good.

Also, if you have ever listened rock&roll, hip-hop, folk or jazz, you have more African influence than you think. Most of the popular musical genres are based on African structures.


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## Yaztromo (Mar 6, 2018)

Jester David said:


> But doesn't that run the risk of cultural appropriation?
> 
> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




I think using common references as part of RPGs is a way to keep the descriptions short _-a dragon! a goblin! a damsel in distress! a dark forest! a revenge! a kidnap! a barbarian!-_ while still communicating a lot of information, as you don't need to add much to it.
If you had to describe every time a situation, a creature, a landscape etc. completely alien from the players' experience the game would become much clunkier. You can introduce only so much in a game without slowing down the pace due to communication (and memory) issues.
For this reason, perhaps, Greyhawk is more popular than Tékumel. Perhaps.

As players are learning more and more about other cultures (making a reference to a samurai or even to a ronin nowadays rings a bell in most heads, but in the '80s perhaps it didn't, for example) it becomes more and more practical (and fun) making refrences to them as well.

I don't see it as cultural appropriation, or at least it is on par with using a damsel in distress in your game or whatever other reference pointing to (European) fairytales or folk lore topics.
Personally, if somebody from a very different culture decides to put a Mermaid in their game (or a damsel in distress, or a barbarian, a hydra, a Vinking, a cyclops etc.) I don't feel upset at all.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 6, 2018)

Jester David said:


> Should we be using other people's cultures to flavour our roleplaying games?




I just want to latch on to this for a second.

It is largely only "other people's culture" because the hobby is dominated by white players.  In areas where the majority of players are not white, then they wouldn't be using "other people's cultures", they would be using _their_ cultures.  Okay well that's all fine and dandy if we operate in a setting where like 99.9% of people in the group in question are of the same culture.  But how do we then handle mixed groups?  Are we then allowed to bring all their cultures to the table?  Lets move that idea into game design: if we get diverse groups of game designers now is it "okay" to include their cultures?  But wait a sec!  Race=/=culture.  That group of game developers you just got together are more likely to all be _American _in culture than they are to be anything else, regardless of their ethnicity.

The trick to cultural appropriation has been, and always will be, a matter of respect.  Which is why it's generally a good idea to get the input of members of a culture in question to determine what is and isn't respectful use.  More than that, cultural appropriation has a lot of deal with _adopting_ of cultural norms, stripping them of their historical and cultural significance and pooling them into the "generic culture of Western Europeans".  It is typically disrespectful in any culture to take something without asking, but you can't really ask a "culture".  So the next best step is to, if you must, use things respectfully and in their correct usage.

A little research into the subject you want to write about never killed anyone.


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## Hussar (Mar 6, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Actually, skin color is superficial, and genetically insignificant. Skin color is a human response to ultraviolet radiation. Where the sun is strong, pigmentation increases thus surviving skin cancer. Oppositely, where the sun is weak, pigmentation decreases thus producing sufficient amounts of vitamin D. It takes as few as about 10 generations to dramatically affect the overall complexion of populations who migrate north or south.
> 
> 
> 
> Regarding Dark Sun, perhaps the ‘dark’ sun emits less ultraviolet light, thus a planet with lighter complexion.




IMO, the simpler explanation here would be, Dark Sun was published in the early 90's and EVERYONE was white in RPG books in that time.  There was virtually no representation to be found in RPG's at all.  Not intention, I believe, but, more just the fact that the artists never actually bothered with anything like representation at the time.  More casual racism than any sort of intentioned message.  

Sure, we could try to spackle over that by inventing some sort of in game reason, but, why?  Why not simply admit what was going on and then do better in the future?



Derren said:


> Which fantasy nation is actually dynamic? FR just had a 100 year timejump, but nothing really changed. Cormyr is still Cormyr, etc.
> And as Celebrim said, its not as if "white cultures" fare any better. Most fantasy nations are just the same mix of generic knights and castle stereotypes which at worst have no relation to history at all or at best were taken from a span of several centuries and mixed together.
> Or they are just a exaggerated and cliché version of a existing country like "the merchant republic one" or "the viking one".
> Some settings are not even subtle about it like 7th sea or warhammer fantasy.
> So its not like non-white cultures are treated any different in fantasy gaming.




Yes and no though.  "White cultures" are given a very diverse treatment with some being good, bad or somewhere in between.  OTOH, every single representation in RPG's for the past 50 years or so of any sort of "African" society is basically pulled straight from the pulps - savage lands with cannibals and jungles.  Sure, we get the cliche societies, fair enough.  But, again, even in the cliche societies, you get a variety of different ones.  

That's where the problem really lies.  Using cliches isn't the issue.  Using only one cliche every single time is.


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## Aldarc (Mar 6, 2018)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Jewish people committed genocides in the name of their faith too- check the Old Testament.



Though I largely agree with your point regarding the blood on everyone's hands, I don't think that this particular assertion is a solid claim to make. There are two primary points of contention with this claim. 1) The emergence and point of origin for "Judaism" is the subject of fierce scholarly debate, and 2) in the Tanakh/Old Testament you are dealing with historiographic texts of dubious historical veracity.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 6, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> Though I largely agree with your point regarding the blood on everyone's hands, I don't think that this particular assertion is a solid claim to make. There are two primary points of contention with this claim. 1) The emergence and point of origin for "Judaism" is the subject of fierce scholarly debate, and 2) in the Tanakh/Old Testament you are dealing with historiographic texts of dubious historical veracity.




I take your point, but several are listed, relatively deeply into the OT.  The destruction of Amalek is mentioned in Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Numbers.  This is well after what most would recognize as Judaism had formed.  _Moses_ gets involved.

There is also the concept that “a statement against interest” has the hallmarks of truthfulness.  Regardless of whether God told them to do what they did, they essentially admitted to doing it.  Could they have been bragging to build their “street cred” among their contemporary tribal rivals?  Sure!  But absent other evidence, the “confession” stands.  

Whether or not the tribes of Israel actually committed genocide, they were proud enough of the concept that they might have that they recorded it for posterity...and didn’t excise it from their own texts.  They added context- in the Talmud and commentary, Amalek comes across as the first coming of the Nazis, and their complete destruction a form of divine retribution.

Of course, paraphrasing James Kirk, why does God need help wiping out anyone?  The tales of the Flood, the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah- ahistorical thought they may be, God _clearly_ didn’t need help wiping people out in those narratives.  So why would He need His Chosen People to bloody their hands by taking out their tormentors?  Character building?

Rings a bit hollow, IMHO.

So, I’ll stand by my assertion: all faiths, all cultures have atrocities as part of their history.  Calling evil out is good, but only insofar as we all recognize that nobody can claim the high ground of true innocence.

(And to be clear, I’m NOT saying all atrocities are equivalent.  Some are _clearly_ worse than others.)


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## Doug McCrae (Mar 6, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> That kind of mindless moral relativism is precisely why postmodernism is ethically bankrupt, and even historically monstrous at times.



Moral relativism usually means that moral judgements are subjective. Postmodernism attacks claims to know, for example a postmodernist would regard Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as literature rather than as something that could be true.

If someone says that Germans were primarily responsible for the Holocaust, therefore German culture is inferior, and someone else responds by saying that the Allied strategic bombing campaign during WWII was also a moral crime, the second claim is neither moral relativism nor postmodernist. It's not moral relativism because it's attempting to make an objective moral judgement, and it's not postmodernist because it regards WWII and the bombing campaign as historical facts that can be known.


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## Morrus (Mar 6, 2018)

Guys, a thread which is discussing the Bible, and the Holocaust is going waaaay too far into the "no religion/politics" territory. I've given this thread a little leeway, as it's a tough subject to discuss without touching a little on the real world, but it's going full bore at top speed into a full-fledged discussion of religion, which isn't going to happen here.


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## Doug McCrae (Mar 6, 2018)

A typical treatment of fantasy Africa in a typical D&D game in 2018 would look like something like this:

The PCs are mostly, but not entirely, a bunch of white boys living in fantasy Western Europe. Once they reach sufficient level they go on one or more trips to exotic places, like fantasy Viking land, fantasy Arabia, fantasy China or fantasy Africa. Mostly they are just places to fight terrain appropriate monsters and take in a bit of local colour. The PCs visit fantasy Africa looking for a treasure rumoured to be in a ruined temple. Soon after getting off the ship they meet a potentially friendly tribe of dark-skinned human natives who live in a village and can provide aid in the form of information, a guide or (if the game is particularly old school) bearers. The village will have a shaman.

The PCs head off into the jungle encountering carnivorous apes, man-eating plants, wereleopards, and frogpeople. The frog people will be part man, part poison arrow frog, even though poison arrow frogs are only found in the Americas. In the temple, which won't resemble any real world African architecture, the PCs will fight Yuan-Ti, even though their name sounds East Asian. The climax of the adventure will be a fight with a giant ape.

This is all basically fine, the treatment of the villagers won't be racist or anything. The only problematic aspect imo is the wereleopard and how much that's played up. Like there might be a whole evil tribe of wereleopards who are in conflict with the good tribe. It's a problem because of the idea that black people are closer to nature, particularly the savage, animalistic aspects of nature, than non-black people. One can see that idea in relatively benign form in the superhero Storm, for example.


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## Aldarc (Mar 6, 2018)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I take your point, but several are listed, relatively deeply into the OT.  The destruction of Amalek is mentioned in Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Numbers. *This is well after what most would recognize as Judaism had formed. * _Moses_ gets involved.



Suffice to say, that's nowhere close to true, which is the point that I was trying to make earlier. I will not engage in further discussion on the matter here, but if you would like, I would be more than willing to continue this particular topic in PM.


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## Over the Hill Gamer (Mar 6, 2018)

The mere act of exploration -- one of the pillars of DnD -- is in itself a sort of "othering" of a culture. Explorers from afar visit a strange, new land or roam the streets of an exotic city. All of the people, sights, and sounds of this new place are not strange to themselves. They are quite normal in their own view. It is the visitor who finds this "other" culture to be exotic. DnD takes as its baseline culture a kind of fantasy medieval European world.  When characters from this world go visit and tame wild places it can smack of the worst aspects of the European age of exploration or exploitive colonialism. I don't think WoTC should be too badly criticized for marrying an Africa-like continent with dinosaurs and tribal societies. It's only been done in a gazillion books, comics, movies, and RPGs. In the future, they would be well advised to think it through more carefully when treading on issue areas that, when mishandled, many people could find hurtful and insulting.


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## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2018)

Doug McCrae said:


> This is all basically fine, the treatment of the villagers won't be racist or anything. The only problematic aspect imo is the wereleopard and how much that's played up. Like there might be a whole evil tribe of wereleopards who are in conflict with the good tribe. It's a problem because of the idea that black people are closer to nature, particularly the savage, animalistic aspects of nature, than non-black people.




Because tribes of werewolves, wererats, wereboars, were-seals(!), and even weresharks(!!) never occur in areas with non-African themes?  

Not only is your example highly implausible it's probably much less likely than a portrayal of pseudo-Norse being literally and explicitly closer to nature, particularly to the savage animalistic aspects of nature (berserkers anyone? shape-changing into bears?) than non-Norse people.   

One of my flags for racism is whether the person had double standards.  Is the speaker literally two minded with respect to his behavior toward people so that there are whole different trains of thought and behaviors that happen when you change the skin color of the person.  

And this is the reason why Africa can't get good stuff.   Because no sane publisher that wanted to stay in business is going to publish anything in Africa if everyone is going to apply a double standard to his work so that no matter what he does, he can't meet the standard.   It's always "problematic", not because of any intention or lack of attention on his part, but because of what is in the heart of the viewer.  So instead of a campaign in Africa, it's going to be in fantasy Northern Europe, and it will look like this:

"The PCs are mostly, but not entirely, a bunch of white boys living in fantasy Western Europe. Once they reach sufficient level they go on one or more trips to exotic places, like fantasy Viking land.  Mostly they are just places to fight terrain appropriate monsters and take in a bit of local colour. The PCs visit fantasy Norway looking for a treasure rumored to be in a ruined temple.  Soon after getting off the ship they meet a potentially friendly tribe of white-skinned human natives who live in a village and can provide aid in the form of information, a guide or (if the game is particularly old school) bearers.  The village will have a shaman who wears a bear skin.  The PC's will be invited to drinking contests, feats of strength, and axe throwing contests by a bunch of guys that look and talk like Arnold Shwarzenegger, even though he's Austrian, because the DM can't do a Norse accent.  The PCs head off into the moors encountering carnivorous apes (Yeti and Taur), man-eating plants (peat monsters), werewolves, and frogpeople (bullywogs).  The temple, which won't resemble any real world norse architecture will look like a cross between a Greek temple and a Gothic cathedral, even though those things are 1000 years removed from the setting in either direction.  The PC's will fight Yuan-Ti, even though their name sounds East Asian.  The climax of the adventure will be a fight with a Wendigo, even though that is a North American myth."

And all the reviewers will be like, "This is all basically fine.  The only problematic aspect IMO is how everything has been whitewashed.   One would think that in 2018 we'd be more inclusive." 

A double standard isn't a standard at all.  It's just an excuse to gripe and complain and pretend in doing so you are being deeply thoughtful and intellectual.  You can't have a standard that complains about the use of stereotypical pastiches and at the same time is going to complain if the pastiche is subverted by the inclusion of multiple unexpected elements.   If neither pastiche Africa nor non-pastiche Africa is going to make the reviewers happy, the best solution is not to have Africa at all.  If you got to be extra respectful to Africa but you can safely portray any non-English European ethnic group as a bunch of drunks that love to fight, guess which group is going to be your "ethnic color"?   If some extra wheel starts spinning in your head when you see pictures of people with different skin color than you that causes you to treat that presentation differently, that ought to be a great big huge warning flag about something other than what you are looking at.  That extra wheel doesn't help the industry become "more inclusive".   It just is a big red flag to avoid any sort of controversy (sort of like what this thread might be with respect to publishing articles about Africa).


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## talien (Mar 6, 2018)

My next article is about a similar discussion around Asian cultures, so clearly I haven't learned my lesson.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 6, 2018)

talien said:


> My next article is about a similar discussion around Asian cultures, so clearly I haven't learned my lesson.




There's absolutely nothing wrong with the topic.  However, it's been in vogue for quite some time to chat about social inequality or injustice and given the mix of ages, education levels and backgrounds of people in the community no topic that focuses on culture is going to avoid the discussion of stereotypes and such.

All we can hope for is that each discussion furthers the common good and doesn't repeat itself too much.

Good stuff talien.
KB


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## Doug McCrae (Mar 6, 2018)

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]

Looking back on content I've created in the past I would say that I have fallen into the trap of associating black people with animals. For example in a superhero scenario that had about 40 characters there was one black NPC and I made her a Tigra type. On another occasion I used the wereleopard bit as the main antagonists when the PCs visited West Africa. In thinking about this and interrogating my choices I certainly don't think I'm being "deeply thoughtful and intellectual" but I do, quite strongly, feel that it's the right thing to do.

Regarding treating fantasy Viking land in the same way, the big difference is that today in Western society people of Scandinavian heritage are not subject to discrimination due to beliefs about their lack of intelligence and propensity to violence that are rooted in 19th century scientific racism and people of sub-Saharan African heritage are. I don't see awareness of a double standard as itself being a double standard. If it is then it's a positive one.


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## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2018)

Over the Hill Gamer said:


> The mere act of exploration -- one of the pillars of DnD -- is in itself a sort of "othering" of a culture.




*face palm*

The height of intellectual attainment is not inventing a label and finding boxes to slap it on.   I mean, two can play this game:

"The mere act of eating in an ethnic restaurant or visiting a foreign location - one of the pillars of woke society - is in itself a sort of "othering" of a culture.  Explorers from afar visit a strange, new land or roam the streets of an exotic city. All of the people, sights, and sounds of this new place are not strange to themselves. They are quite normal in their own view. It is the visitor who finds this "other" culture to be exotic."

Yay, I can spew Sokal word salad too!


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## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2018)

Doug McCrae said:


> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]
> 
> Looking back on content I've created in the past I would say that I have fallen into the trap of associating black people with animals.




Then perhaps you should be careful about projecting to much of yourself into things.  And maybe you should have led with your confession rather than led with generic accusations.

The smartest man I ever met was a Haitian mathematician.   I'd suggest I was projecting him into every dark skinned character I had, except that since I grew up in the Caribbean I've known too many dark skinned people to have any single archetype for how dark skinned people are.  Whether that's true of you I wouldn't know, but once again to the point how you are viewing this tells me a lot more about you than it tells me about the content creator, and just maybe people ought to lead with that sort of introspection rather than thinking they are being positive by finding racism in everything they view.

When I run a game, I don't have the slightest interest in your real world prejudices.  I've no intention of addressing them directly or by analogy in any of my games.   I do want you to understand why the Tumessi hate the Har and the Har hate the Tumessi, and why the sea people have a legitimate gripe against the Concheeri and I don't want you to see any direct commentary on any real world ethnic group because I'm not trying to create a mindless pastiche.   I might be making commentary on holding grudges, hatred, and racism, but I'm sure as heck not making commentary on Irish, Africans, or English colonialism because none of that history has any bearing on my imagined world and if you are bring that into my game you are missing the freaking point and the problem is in you, not me.  If I have a story about some marginalized character, I'm probably not making a commentary on black/white relations.  I'm probably making commentary about how we as humans find any excuse to hate and marginalize people using whatever convenient differences are to hand, so that picking on a kid with glasses is at it's root exactly the same behavior as genocidal acts against an entire ethnic group, and the only real functional differences is how aware we may be of our hatred in one case or the other because socially we've ranked hatred as more or less acceptable depending on who we target it at.   I'm probably making commentary on the fact that a person living today who ranks hatred on the basis of skin color as the worst sort of hatred, feels self-satisfied in critiquing people living in the past as more hateful than he is back when hatred on the basis of skin color was treated as lesser sort of hatred, and pays no attention to his own behavior toward other people now that the scales have been shuffled temporarily.


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## Mallus (Mar 6, 2018)

talien said:


> My next article is about a similar discussion around Asian cultures, so clearly I haven't learned my lesson.



Go for it! If nothing else, I'll be on somewhat more solid ground when I chime in. 

(Well, not really - my proper-shaped eyes notwithstanding, _culturally_ I'm from New Jersey. Perhaps your next next article could discuss shopping malls and Bruce Springsteen?)


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## LuisCarlos17f (Mar 6, 2018)

Fantasy can be a softer way to show wrong things what need to be fixed, but also to show our true potential to do fabulous things if we propose it and we work hard for that. We can use fiction to show a better future where we have learnt from past mistakes, to forgive, trust each other again, reconcile and to get the right balance between self-cricitism and faith in oneself.  

We agree we have to take care to try avoid false stereotipes to make a fool like that sad example of the scene in Sevilla(Spain) from "Impossible Mission II".

If you want to talk about horrible things in the History and past ages, you should remember this: they key is the respect for the human dignity, without this, reporting machismo(male chauvinism), racism or homophobia isn't enough. If we don't respect human dignity then we will be like the characters from "Games of Thrones" (Joffrey Baratheon* with a crossbow killing Ros or Sansa Stark sending his "wives" to devour her "ex-husband" Ramsay Bolton). If you try write fiction to report religious fanatism from previous ages, you may find somebody who complains you never report atheists have killed more in shorter times (1793-94 French Terror or Mao's cultural revolution, for example). If you talk about Torquemada, but you don't use internet to try help Asia Bibi (do you know who is her?) then you are a hypocrite. 

About racism I dare to say something, and I hope to be enough polite and politically correct: Thousands years ago the Latins were the supreme power, and the blue-eyed and blond-haired from North Europe the "third world". (Life takes many turns) Once I read Jew community in the first Century was until the 10% of the population of the Roman Empire (the gentiles were suffering a brutal demographic crisis). After the fall of the Roman empire, the Visigoths arrived to Spain, my land, "without green cards", and the relation with Hispanolatins wasn't good. Both communities had got differen legal codes, and mixed marriage was forbiden, but step by step this last one started to be more allowed, and after Hispanogoths and Hispanolatins become one folk, the Spanish. Who cares now about Normands vs Saxons in the Robin Hood's age? In Coria del Rio, a Spanish town near Sevilla there is a surname, Japon, by Christian Japanese ancestors who came here in the XVII century. If we are self-critical then we may be exigent with the others, but with a right assertive tone, without showing contempt nor hostility. And we would save a lot of troubles if we start to see the rest of people like the future ancestors of your descendent's "consuegros" (parents in law of your children). If you want to criticice, do it like they were members of your own family, to correct, not to humilliate.

 And if you really want to convice then do remember you can't if the other doesn't trust you because you are too agresive, you don't listen(making an effort to understand his point of view) and disrespected him. Don't try to force them to give you the reason. If you want use the fiction to report the wrong things in the real life, then be enough polite and subtle. Don't "scare away customers" or they will not keep listening you. 

* The character Joffrey Baratheon from "Game of Thrones" is maybe one of the best examples to explain Voltaire's words "I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be deeply engraved in people's minds" .


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## Mallus (Mar 6, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I'd much rather get back to Fantasy Africa, but the fact that the discussion of Fantasy Africa included terms like "Othering" before anyone in the thread had othered anyone, and indeed accused of all things the movie "Black Panther" of "othering" suggests that the thread was doomed in the first place.



Yeah, "othering" is one of those terms that orignally came from academic writing (it dates back to Edward Said, right?), but its journey to popular usage has been a long and arduous one, and having spent a decade or so wandering through the wilderness of online culture(s) any useful meaning it had has been pretty thoroughly bleached out.

That said, this thread is going fairly well for the subject matter. 

So, Wakanda... I think it could offer a useful blueprint of sorts for the treatment of non-Western cultures in gaming. Wakanda was created in the 1960s by two Jewish guys from New York City and reinterpreted in 2018 by Black American artists employing (mostly) a global Black cast, whose resulting film has become a monster worldwide success. The creative team behind Black Panther didn't bury or excise the original work by the two White nerdy guys, they built out of it, made it their own, offered a dazzling, more personal, vision of futuristic Blackness to proudly stand beside all the other dizzying futures that wear much paler faces.  

Not a bad thing for future D&D materials to try an emulate. Find some more diverse artists to add to the foundation provided by Gygax and Tolkien and Howard (hell, and Lovecraft) et al.


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## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2018)

Mallus said:


> Yeah, "othering" is one of those terms that orignally came from academic writing (it dates back to Edward Said, right?), but its journey to popular usage has been a long and arduous one, and having spent a decade or so wandering through the wilderness of online culture(s) any useful meaning it had has been pretty thoroughly bleached out.




Even if I concede it had useful meaning at the beginning.  I understand there might be some value at calling out some pattern of behavior, but the problem with any label is that quite soon it simplifies away all the individuality and particulars of the thing it labels.   Worse, it simplifies the operation of the mind, so that soon you are impoverished by the labels and slapping them on things that they don't fit.

Wakanda isn't an example of "othering".  There might be a pattern there to tease out, but it isn't the pattern of "othering".   It might be possible for exploration in an RPG to act as "othering", but it isn't inherently othering to explore other cultures or to borrow ideas and images from them.  If it is, we are rather doomed, since everything we do will be racism - which I suppose some have their own reasons for wanting to claim.



> So, Wakanda... I think it could offer a useful blueprint of sorts for the treatment of non-Western cultures in gaming.




Sure. A blueprint.  Not the only blueprint but a useful one.  First it requires us to not be looking for a flaw in it and notice the value it could have.  We could just as easily write outraged essays about how it is just Blaxploitation, and that the Black Panther is a white guys version of black hero that has created a simplified narrative for looking at race relations and so and so forth.   Those things are true, but so what?  We could write endless things about division and hate and if we weren't careful, all we'd do is multiply division and hatred.   Or we could just decide nothing is ever going to be perfect and a comic book or an RPG can't possibly heal all the harms of the past or address them, but coming together is a whole lot better than finding reasons to be angry or hateful.

Someone needs a hero that looks like them.   Fine, I'm good with that.   I think it's a good first step.   I would like that we learn to identify ourselves with something less superficial than looks, but I realize that we have a lot of biology to overcome and that's not easy.   I would like that we learn that if you are white, you aren't actually especially closer to earning the honor of Beethoven, Emanuel Kant, or Isaac Newton than you would be if you were black, because you in fact didn't do any of those things and you can't claim especial honor on account of someone long dead and any puffed up pride you have on account of that is a vice and ridiculous.  I'd like that we learn that if your skin is dark you are no less the heir of a bunch of dead white guys than you would be with a different color, and that you don't need to look back at history trying to find someone black to take pride because you didn't do those things either, and it's just the mirror of the same vanity that puffs up some slacker in a basement that his skin happens to be the same color as Thomas Edison even though he blew off the algebra homework.  And I'd like that we define ourselves and say "who we are" as you just did, not by some false past that you aren't a part of, but by what's around us now and what you plan to do about it.

But that's asking a lot, I know.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 6, 2018)

talien said:


> One of the conclusions I've come to is that a key way to ensure one culture isn't a mishmash of stereotypes is just to have more than one.  I.e., more than one "Asian" culture and more than one "African" culture goes a long way to ensuring more nuance. Most fantasy worlds that started out Eurocentric suffer from this (my own world included!) because that's what the authors were familiar with.  But fantasy RPG universes are now played by people all over the world, so the discrepancy is more noticeable than it might have been in the past.




 Does the Forgotten Realms adequately portray all the cultures of Europe? The Red Wizards of Thay don't depict Poland or Russia, Comyr isn't Germany. I suppose Waterdeep would be the equivalent to Paris? What do you think? What if I wanted to transpose the Adventure Storm King's Thunder to a fantasy version of Europe. Lets say this map of Europe:





This is a hex map of Europe showing various terrain types, and cities with their names in native languages. One flaw is the hex numbers aren't very clear, also the scale is 50 kilometers to a hex, a big problem since they didn't have kilometers in the 12th. How do I know its the 12th century? The label says "ADMC" AD stands for Anno Domini, meaning "The Year of our Lord" in Latin, and "MC" is a roman numeral 'M' means 1000 and 'C' after it means you add 100 to get the year 1100 AD. I am somewhat familiar with the political situation in Europe at around 1100 AD, this is 34 years after William conquered Britain. This period is what's known as the Early Renaissance. the question is where to you put the non-human races. Dwarves can live in the Carpathian Mountains. Elves can live in the Black Forest of Germany and the Ardens, Perhaps Finland would be a good home for them. Gnomes live in a forest. Halflings, I'm not so sure. Orcs can come from the mountains or Norway. Each addition changes Europe somewhat. What you refer to as Africa is sub-Saharan Africa, the northern part is an Arab culture, I think they did a good job of depicting Eastern cultures such as China and Japan.


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## Celebrim (Mar 6, 2018)

Personally, I'm not a fan of pastiche.  I find pastiche more likely to insult and much more grossly limiting than the practice of mythopoeia.  I do not want to see a France, England, Korea, and Japan on a fantasy map.  If I see an Africa on a map, I don't want to see strictly a pastiche of each and every real world tribe and linguistic group having a history that oddly manages to mirror that of our own world despite not only different "rolls of the dice", but hugely different histories, physical laws, and governing principles.  

If you want to see what I think doing it wrong looks like, look at Maztica.  I saw that not because I find the work especially immoral or racist or anything, but because I find it especially uncreative.  I don't want to see a 'new world' in a universe with teleportation and a hundred active deities.   If I see an Incan Empire on the map, I want to see it as it might have been in a whole other world - the good and the bad - and not tied to our stereotypes regarding a region past or present.  I don't even want to see it done 'realistically'.  I don't want to hear about how the Incans didn't have metalworking any more than I want to hear how potatoes weren't known in England in the middle ages, because my world isn't meant to have that one to one and onto relation to this reality but to be something I imagined as if in a dream.   

I'm shameless about mish-mashing everything.   All that I ask is you see in any that resembles the real world the passionate way I collect facts and history and artifacts of culture, and delight in it all with a childish glee and wonder.   I won't drop France on the map unless I can also squeeze India into it, and I would not say whether Venice, Portugal or England more informs a maritime power.   I'm trying to have fun.  The last thing I need is someone saying, "But that's not how you prepare paella!"  I probably know that.   I mean no insult by having it done differently in some mish-mash of Azerbaijan and Argentina, with Rakshas and cowboys and whatever else I threw in on a whim.


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## Yaarel (Mar 6, 2018)

Doug McCrae said:


> It's a problem because of the idea that black people are closer to nature, particularly the savage, animalistic aspects of nature, than non-black people.




Animistic cultures are *closer* to nature. Pay more attention to nature. Revere nature. Respect nature as fellow neighbors who are sometimes friendly and sometimes difficult.

Norse animists are closer to nature − and sometimes more animalistic − for exactly the same reason that African animists are closer to nature.

Compare aboriginal Norse and Sami animists, Australian aborigine animists, North American Native animists, and African Animists. These are sophisticated belief systems that view the entire universe as an interrelationship of egalitarian living beings.

The friendship and reverence of animism is especially wise today, when we moderns are realizing the value of holistic approaches to the world, egalitarianism, and see ecology as an interconnected living organism.


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## Over the Hill Gamer (Mar 6, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> "The mere act of eating in an ethnic restaurant...




Good analogy. Here, an Indian restaurant might be considered an ethnic restaurant.  In India, it's just a restaurant.


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## Yaarel (Mar 6, 2018)

I havent seen Black Panther yet. But my impression from this thread is, Wakanda is essentially a European colony. That is, a Western culture enclave located in Africa.

If something isnt understood, then it is ‘other’. If something is understood, then it is ‘empirical’.

We need a new model. Egalitarian. Where ethnic groups respect each others collective free will, via individual freedom of choice, and personal choice of communal identities.


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## Yaarel (Mar 6, 2018)

I noticed one useful ‘sensitivity’ trick, in shows with a gay character in it.

If the story has a villain that is gay, make sure the story also has a good guy that is gay.

(And please, authors, stop killing the gay characters. Even tho it is sometimes intended to evoke pathos for the character, it seems unhelpful because it recapitulates a culture that hates and murders gay people. It reminds of older action movies where the token black character is the first one to get killed by the monster.)


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## LuisCarlos17f (Mar 6, 2018)

If the story is good, it can be used in different settins (oriental wuxia, middle age, far west, sci-fi, post-apocalipse..). The good stories are created to be universald, to be liked by people from everywhere. If we watch Disney's Tarzan or the lion guard, we don't mind where happens, only the story has to be fun. We love Disney's  lamp genie because he is one of funniest characters from fiction, and we don't mind his blue skin. 

* Stick and carrot. If you want use fiction to report about problems from real world, anytimes the reader or viewer doesn't want to keep listening you. Sometimes you have to show a "carrot", a reward, a positive stimulus, for example a vision of the future with more hope, explaining how troubles were fixed. 

* In the real life the animism isn't so cool. In the XXI century Africa there are true "witch burning" and some albinos are killed by "witchdoctors" for their body parts. In Europe some African (illegal inmigran) sex-slaves were forced with menaces of vodoo curses. Those superstitions are killing Rhinos to get their horns for aphrodisiac, and we can't forget the FGM (female "circumcision"). We can't miss those "old traditions".  

* Not all stereotypes are bad for fiction. Speedy Gonzalez from Warner cartoons is a character with a stereotyped imagen, but he is very popular and loved among Mexicans and other Spanish-speaker people.  Vega, from "Street Fighters" videogames is very tipically Spanish stereotype, but to be a secondary villain, he is enough cool. (But the true Barcelona isn't really like you could have seen in that episode of the Simpsons).


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 6, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> I havent seen Black Panther yet. But my impression from this thread is, Wakanda is essentially a European colony. That is, a Western culture enclave located in Africa.
> 
> If something isnt understood, then it is ‘other’. If something is understood, then it is ‘empirical’.
> 
> We need a new model. Egalitarian. Where ethnic groups respect each others collective free will, via individual freedom of choice, and personal choice of communal identities.




The intention of Wakanda was to present an African power that was never subject to western colonial influence due to its ability to keep itself off the colonial radar.  Its advantage now is that it's far superior to the rest of the modern world in terms of technology while maintaining its customs.

That said, every person is going to interpret what they wish from the narrative and how they perceive it's presented.  Certainly at the time the character was created in the sixties it was never intended to be part of race politics, Marvel actually changed Black Panther's name to Black Leopard for a book or two as the Black Panther movement in America rose shortly after the Black Panther character was introduced ( by complete coincidence.)

Be well
KB


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 6, 2018)

POCGamer said:


> ^^^^^ That right there is a huge reason why Africa has such a rough go and mediocre results as an inspirational source in gaming, and in science fiction and fantasy in general. Aside from being factually and historically inaccurate, it shows how profoundly little people know, and how much they assume, about Africa. I mean, even a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that there were dozens of active kingdoms and empires active and thriving in Sub-Saharan Africa through the middle ages, Renaissance, and into the modern age. All this post really shows is how profoundly grounded in a narrow, colonial POV the concepts of Africa are in the popular imagination. Equally problematic is the adherence to a limited idea of "what" makes a civilization or culture "successful". ...



Ever see the movie "White Man's Burden"?





Makes you think doesn't it?


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## Yaarel (Mar 6, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> The intention of Wakanda was to present an African power that was never subject to western colonial influence due to its ability to keep itself off the colonial radar.  Its advantage now is that it's far superior to the rest of the modern world in terms of technology while maintaining its customs.




I can see that.

I was semi-serious, it does seem somewhat like a Western style ‘colony’. But I was also being facetious in the sense of, you cant win. Heh, haters are gonna hate.

Fundamentally, Black Panther works because it is sympathetic about an African culture. Even if it got some things wrong, who cares, really?

It also seems to use the ‘trick’. If the story has black animistic nomads hunting in the jungle, make sure the story also has black technologically sophisticated characters.



Finally, Wakanda reminds me of a modern reinvention of ancient Egypt. Egypt is fundamentally an African culture. (I was surprised at how unlike Egypt was from nearby Asian cultures.) But relative to its neighbors, it was technologically advanced and wealthy. (Much of the things we credit the Greeks for, actually comes from Egypt, like alchemy, math, and so on.) It is neat to see how a cultures can develop in different ways in the context of accelerating technology.  If the Wakanda culture is comprehensive and unlike Western cultures, I will probably find the thought experiment interesting.


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 6, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> I can see that.
> 
> I was semi-serious, it does seem somewhat like a Western style ‘colony’. But I was also being facetious in the sense of, you cant win. Heh, haters are gonna hate.
> 
> ...




I think you'll likely find the movie interesting when you see it.

1. The animism is rooted in the setup of the story.  Regardless of the use of tech or not, all sides draw on it.
2. I did have some minor issue with the mountain tribe if only because of the gorilla animism.  It was so lightly done I didn't realize it until the end of the movie and only after someone else mentioned it to me.
3. Agreed with the statement on Egypt, far more tied to Ethopia and the rest of Africa than Persia or Europe.

Non-related statement, the loss of Alexandria and the stupidity of putting all the accumulated texts there to begin with is my historical pet peeve.

Best
KB


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## Yaarel (Mar 6, 2018)

LuisCarlos17f said:


> * In the real life the animism isn't so cool. In the XXI century Africa there are true "witch burning" and some albinos are killed by "witchdoctors" for their body parts. In Europe some African (illegal inmigran) sex-slaves were forced with menaces of vodoo curses. Those superstitions are killing Rhinos to get their horns for aphrodisiac, and we can't forget the FGM (female "circumcision"). We can't miss those "old traditions".




In reallife, animism is cool. But we must always be ethically critical of any culture, including animistic cultures.

For all the qualities that I love about Norse animism, they seem existentially to have weak respect for human life. People dueling for honor. People betting their own lives in a gambling game. These are extremes, of course, but it seems to have happened. There is a particular story of a viking who goes to war against a rival town. In the battle, the man kills a family in front of a woman, then forces this woman to become his wife, and makes her swear an oath of marriage to him. Later in her new unwilling home, she gets revenge by killing him. The thing is, the story thinks she is the villain because she broke her oath.

So, you can love a culture, and still try to improve it. Especially, ethically. Normally, the people within a culture are able to correct the culture from within its own worldview. So the correction stays authentic to the identity.

For example. Chinese cultures are cool. But their political totalitarianism is horrible. Antihuman. But one can imagine an authentic humanism that stays true to the Chinese way. For example, a political system that strives to maintain a harmonious balance between the personal freedoms of Yin and the social cooperation of Yang. This political Dao might work out to be a highly successful system that preserves human rights and personal freedoms.



So, animism too can be awesome, figuring out ways to revere the human nature spirits.


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## SMHWorlds (Mar 6, 2018)

Do not know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but this is another game that may be of interest to some people. https://www.amazon.com/Khanga-Sword-Soul-Role-Playing/dp/0996016759


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## Hussar (Mar 6, 2018)

Doug McCrae said:


> A typical treatment of fantasy Africa in a typical D&D game in 2018 would look like something like this:
> 
> The PCs are mostly, but not entirely, a bunch of white boys living in fantasy Western Europe. Once they reach sufficient level they go on one or more trips to exotic places, like fantasy Viking land, fantasy Arabia, fantasy China or fantasy Africa. Mostly they are just places to fight terrain appropriate monsters and take in a bit of local colour. The PCs visit fantasy Africa looking for a treasure rumoured to be in a ruined temple. Soon after getting off the ship they meet a potentially friendly tribe of dark-skinned human natives who live in a village and can provide aid in the form of information, a guide or (if the game is particularly old school) bearers. The village will have a shaman.
> 
> ...




Wow, that's pretty much Paizo's Savage Tide Adventure path to a T.  Including were leopards.  



Celebrim said:


> Because tribes of werewolves, wererats, wereboars, were-seals(!), and even weresharks(!!) never occur in areas with non-African themes?
> 
> Not only is your example highly implausible it's probably much less likely than a portrayal of pseudo-Norse being literally and explicitly closer to nature, particularly to the savage animalistic aspects of nature (berserkers anyone? shape-changing into bears?) than non-Norse people.
> 
> ...




This is total bull.  There are any number of norse inspired modules that don't look like this.  Heck, bullywugs?  Seriously?  And, we've even got historically (semi) accurate D&D supplements like the 2e Viking supplement which at least tries to be somewhat grounded in history.  IOW, no, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], you are absolutely wrong here.  Sure, there might be double standard modules like you describe, but, there are also ones that aren't.  

Which isn't true in D&D of anything African inspired.  

Which is the whole point.


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## Hussar (Mar 6, 2018)

Just in case people think I'm blowing smoke here, here's a link to a currently funded Norse inspired module:  https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ey-to-ragnarok-a-norse-mythology-adventure-fo

To give an idea about how RPG's have handled this sort of thing, look at the TSR Historical Reference Series HR1-HR7.  7 historical reference campaign setting books - Vikings, Charlemagne, Celts, Late Renaissance Europe, Rome, Greece, and the Crusaders handbook.

Notice anything?

Let's not try to pretend that every culture out there gets an even handed treatment.  You or I might no like, say, the Maztica setting, for example, because of its treatment of Central American Native themes, but, again, there are other options out there.  I'm pretty sure there are modules or setting guides inspired by Aztec or various other Central and South American concepts for you to find, both good and bad.  "Sons of Azca" for the Hollow World setting for example.  I'm sure there are others.


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## Aldarc (Mar 7, 2018)

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], regarding your last paragraph: Tekumel.


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## Hussar (Mar 7, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], regarding your last paragraph: Tekumel.




Heh.  That did occur to me after I hit send.    And, heck, Tekumel is one of the oldest RPG settings out there.

But, the point I'm trying to make is that sure, there are bad takes on every society out there.  Poorly researched pastiches that mash together half understood cliches in order to build a setting.  Fair enough.  But, there are ALSO numerous settings that place a high value on authenticity for every European fantasy culture out there.  Even outside of Europe, say Mezzo-America or East Asia have numerous settings and supplements that at least strive for authenticity (with varying degrees of success).

In 50 years of RPG supplements, the entire sub-Saharan continent has gotten short shrift.  Pretending that there's any sort of parity because there are poorly made European inspired supplements just completely misses the point.

I had a discussion with a buddy a while ago (and if this is trending too close to the no-politics board rules, I'm sorry and I'll come back and edit this if needed) about the notion of changing the ethnicity of established characters.  We were specifically talking about Spider-Man Homecoming at the time.  He argued that he only really supported changing ethnicities if it made sense for the character.  So, Black Panther is black, because, well, what else would he be?

But, to me, this is akin to the discussion here about otherness.  It's tone deaf.  WHY is Peter Parker, for example, white?  Young man growing up in New York in the 60's, there's no particular reason for Parker to be white.  He's white, because, well, in the 1960's, you would never publish a non-white superhero.

In fact, there are very few super-heroes with an in-world reason to be white.  Off the top of my head, I'd say Captain America, simply because an American Army officer in the second world war cannot be anything other than white.  Thor, ok, fair enough, Norse god of thunder, white dude, sure.  I'd be a bit taken aback if they got Jet Li to play Thor.  

But, outside of that?  There's virtually no in-world reason for these characters to be white.  They could be white or they could be anything else.  

And the same sort of reasons apply to RPG's.  Why is everything Euro-centric?  Well, because of the time, you likely weren't going to do anything else.  The art is all white folks, the cultures are dominantly European (again, with varying degrees of authenticity), and so on.  The genre fiction that D&D is based on is so heavily biased in favor of whites that other races might as well not even exist.  Conan, Tarzan, all the pulps.  Their deep, deep racism is hardly a secret.

We need to be aware of it and it really does need to be addressed.


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## Yaztromo (Mar 7, 2018)

Over the Hill Gamer said:


> In the future, they would be well advised to think it through more carefully when treading on issue areas that, when mishandled, many people could find hurtful and insulting.




In the past, _fantasy Vikings_ (for example) have been managed and mismanaged by most RPGs in many ways, mostly poor stereotypes, without Scandinavian countries declaring themselves hurt and insulted. The same can be said about merchant republics or Oriental Adventures: I haven't heard any Italian or Japanese or Chinese complaining about the stereotypes that were used and misused in the story of RPGs when touching that topics.

If publishers are told that they have to take incredibly extra care when mash upping other cultures in their games to avoid hurting and insulting nations, they will just avoid the topic. Yes, that nations will complain that they are generally overlooked, but it's the lesses evil compared to making the feel insulted.
Maybe that's what happened more than once in the past and one of the explanation that many cultures have been generally overlooked so far.


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## Tranquilis (Mar 7, 2018)

Cultural appropriation.

Social <insert trendy noun here>.

Othering (!?).

Sometimes a cigar’s just a cigar, folks.  Keep calm and game on.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 7, 2018)

Yaztromo said:


> In the past, _fantasy Vikings_ (for example) have been managed and mismanaged by most RPGs in many ways, mostly poor stereotypes, without Scandinavian countries declaring themselves hurt and insulted.




Good for them!



> The same can be said about merchant republics or Oriental Adventures: I haven't heard any Italian or Japanese or Chinese complaining about the stereotypes that were used and misused in the story of RPGs when touching that topics.




Well, I _have_ heard Asians complain about things in OA and other sourcebooks for a variety of RPGs; people of African descent complain about whitewashing of art or inclusion of stereotypes, etc. 

It’s a real thing.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 7, 2018)

Yaztromo said:


> In the past, _fantasy Vikings_ (for example) have been managed and mismanaged by most RPGs in many ways, mostly poor stereotypes, without Scandinavian countries declaring themselves hurt and insulted. The same can be said about merchant republics or Oriental Adventures: I haven't heard any Italian or Japanese or Chinese complaining about the stereotypes that were used and misused in the story of RPGs when touching that topics.
> 
> If publishers are told that they have to take incredibly extra care when mash upping other cultures in their games to avoid hurting and insulting nations, they will just avoid the topic. Yes, that nations will complain that they are generally overlooked, but it's the lesses evil compared to making the feel insulted.
> Maybe that's what happened more than once in the past and one of the explanation that many cultures have been generally overlooked so far.



Do Norwegians play Dungeons & Dragons? Well if they do, they'll have to learn English in order to play. Norway has 5.2 million people, would it be worth translating D&D books into Norwegian? What is the most common misperception about Vikings?




Vikings never wore these! Your typical Norwegian is not going to get offended if he sees this, its just wrong that's all.


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## Hussar (Mar 7, 2018)

Yaztromo said:


> In the past, _fantasy Vikings_ (for example) have been managed and mismanaged by most RPGs in many ways, mostly poor stereotypes, without Scandinavian countries declaring themselves hurt and insulted. The same can be said about merchant republics or Oriental Adventures: I haven't heard any Italian or Japanese or Chinese complaining about the stereotypes that were used and misused in the story of RPGs when touching that topics.
> 
> If publishers are told that they have to take incredibly extra care when mash upping other cultures in their games to avoid hurting and insulting nations, they will just avoid the topic. Yes, that nations will complain that they are generally overlooked, but it's the lesses evil compared to making the feel insulted.
> Maybe that's what happened more than once in the past and one of the explanation that many cultures have been generally overlooked so far.




Again, missing the point.

Are there poor products about Vikings?  Most certainly.  I know that.  But, I also know that there are a number of very good ones too.  Heck, I linked to the 2e Vikings sourcebook from TSR that was pretty well done.  IOW, you actually have the option, if you want, of choosing which kind of supplement you want for your game.

The same is certainly not true of anything to do with Africa.

Put it this way, let's play a game.  I'll name a monster or NPC inspired by Norse mythology from D&D that is either neutral or portrays Viking culture in a positive light, and you name something inspired by African mythology that is also either neutral or positive.  All of sub-Saharan Africa.  Let's see who runs out of stuff first.


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Just in case people think I'm blowing smoke here, here's a link to a currently funded Norse inspired module:  https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ey-to-ragnarok-a-norse-mythology-adventure-fo




The Norse kickstarter has numerous historical and mythological inaccuracies. Such as the use of elder runes, confusion and conflation with differing beliefs in Britain and Germany, the invention of a ‘dark elf’ separate from a ‘dwarf’, and so on. Such is how misinformation perpetuates.

Probably, the project should have restricted itself to Eddas and Sagas only, plus the Scandinavian archeological context.

In any case, it is fair to say, this kickstarter, is inspired at least in part by Norse traditions, even if it is moreso an amalgum of various times and places in the northern half of Europe, along with D&D monsters and modern New Age and Wicca witchcraft.


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> The Norse kickstarter has numerous historical and mythological inaccuracies. Such as the use of elder runes, confusion and conflation with differing beliefs in Britain and Germany, the invention of a ‘dark elf’ separate from a ‘dwarf’, and so on. Such is how misinformation perpetuates.
> 
> Probably, the project should have restricted itself to Eddas and Sagas only, plus the Scandinavian archeological context.
> 
> In any case, it is fair to say, this kickstarter, is inspired at least in part by Norse traditions, even if it is moreso an amalgum of various times and places in the northern half of Europe.




Heh, my impression of the Journey To Ragnarok, ‘Norse’ kickstarter is the following. It is like creating a setting on Mali in Africa, using an anthropological survey of a belief system of one of its ethnic groups, but then throwing into the mix, stuff going on in ancient Egypt, modern South Africa, plus a Tarzan novel, and voodoo beliefs from New Orleans in the US, ... but calling it ‘Mali’.


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## Hussar (Mar 7, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Heh, my impression of the Journey To Ragnarok, ‘Norse’ kickstarter is the following. It is like creating a setting on Mali in Africa, using an anthropological survey of a belief system of one of its ethnic groups, but then throwing into the mix, stuff going on in ancient Egypt, modern South Africa, plus a Tarzan novel, and voodoo beliefs from New Orleans in the US, ... but calling it ‘Mali’.




Not quite sure where you're getting all that from.  I haven't followed this Kickstarter at all, so, all I have is the kickstarter itself.  Seems pretty solidly based on Norse mythology to me.  I'm certainly no expert, but, "modern South Africa"?  What seems so out of place to you?  

But, in any case, STILL MISSING THE POINT.

It's not like this is a negative portrayal at all.  It's at least attempting to be authentic.


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Not quite sure where you're getting all that from.  I haven't followed this Kickstarter at all, so, all I have is the kickstarter itself.  Seems pretty solidly based on Norse mythology to me.  I'm certainly no expert, but, "modern South Africa"?  What seems so out of place to you?
> 
> But, in any case, STILL MISSING THE POINT.
> 
> It's not like this is a negative portrayal at all.  It's at least attempting to be authentic.




What is out of place? Many things.

For example. The vikings used the ‘younger runes’ with only 16 runes. Really only 15 runes because the ‘R’ merged with the ‘r’, thus fell out of use. The 24 elder runes are many centuries wrong. Moreover, the use of runes by modern witchcraft for divination, as if a kind of tarot cards, or an occultism organizational system, is strictly modern, and is alien to the Norse people. And so on.

I doubt the Journey To Ragnarok kickstarter is ‘attempting to be authentic’. (At least I hope not.) It is trying to be entertaining. It is moreso like a Monty Python romp thru Northern Europe, except more like an action movie, than a comedy movie.


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Also, its cosmology is wrong. It confuses Niflheim which is in the arctic north, with Niflhel which is underground. And it creates an erroneous separate place for ‘dark elves’, even tho they are the same thing as ‘dwarves’.



Perhaps the most serious error is also the most common. The authors simply dont understand what animism is or how it works. Are these authors Italians? In any case, the ethnocentricity assumes the Norse spiritual traditions are identical to Mediterranean polytheism. Odin and Thor are simply Jupiter. This profound and widespread ignorance about animism is in fact the result of ‘othering’ by Christians who confused all Nonchristian belief systems with the polytheism that Christians were traditionally disputing.

The situation is complex, because Germans under the influence of the Roman Empire did eventually worship their nature spirits as Mediterranean-style gods. But failing to tell the difference between the German (Saxon) and the Norwegian (Norroenn) is like failing to tell the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese.

Heh, every time I see a D&D cleric worship Thor, I cry a little.


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## Hussar (Mar 7, 2018)

But, again, are any of these mistakes (and, since I lack any real understanding here, I'll completely take your word for it) in any way portraying a negative stereotype?

I totally agree.  This is probably more an action movie take than anything else.  Fair enough.  But, even with the mistakes, the setting seems to be pretty positive in portrayals.  And, again, just because this one has mistakes, does not mean all fantasy depictions of Vikings are wrong.  There do exist, at least, from my very limited understanding, some fairly decently researched RPG's and D&D setting books which make a fairly decent stab at trying to be authentic.

It seems like we might be focusing a bit too much on a specific example.

Heck, I run my games over Fantasy Grounds.  Since my current campaign (Primeval Thule) is mostly bronze age, I keep trying to find battlemaps and whatnot depicting streets and towns that are reasonably contemporaneous.  I'm not terribly concerned with authenticity, but, at least stuff that can pass for, say, Roman or Greek towns.

What do I find?  Map after map after map of Renaissance level architecture.  It's bloody near impossible to find anything that looks like what I'm looking for.  I can find a thousand castle battle maps that look like 13th century France, but, trying to find a decent image of a hill fort is like searching for a needle in a haystack.


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> And, again, just because this one has mistakes, does not mean all fantasy depictions of Vikings are wrong.




Heh, pretty much all fantasy depictions of Vikings are wrong. For example, the TV show, Vikings, intentionally mixes fact with fiction for the sake of entertainment.

At least, their helmets dont have horns. So theres that.


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Since my current campaign (Primeval Thule) is mostly bronze age, I keep trying to find battlemaps and whatnot depicting streets and towns that are reasonably contemporaneous.
> 
> What do I find?  Map after map after map of Renaissance level architecture.  It's bloody near impossible to find anything that looks like what I'm looking for.  I can find a thousand castle battle maps that look like 13th century France, but, trying to find a decent image of a hill fort is like searching for a needle in a haystack.




As you mention as ‘hill fort’, in the Bronze Age, a ‘city’ is usually the size of a football stadium. It is basically just a government center surrounded by security walls. People generally lived in farms around the town.

You might be able to use the map of a palace complex, and just call it a ‘city’.



I know your over all point about representing vikings in gaming is that it is positive. At least fun. And true, there is an appreciation for how these fantasy versions keep Norse traditions alive and interesting.

At the same time, there is unease. It is like someone paints a portrait of you and hangs it in a public place, and everyone loves the painting, ... but it doesnt look anything like you.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 7, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> The Norse kickstarter has numerous historical and mythological inaccuracies. Such as the use of elder runes, confusion and conflation with differing beliefs in Britain and Germany, the invention of a ‘dark elf’ separate from a ‘dwarf’, and so on. Such is how misinformation perpetuates.
> 
> Probably, the project should have restricted itself to Eddas and Sagas only, plus the Scandinavian archeological context.
> 
> In any case, it is fair to say, this kickstarter, is inspired at least in part by Norse traditions, even if it is moreso an amalgum of various times and places in the northern half of Europe, along with D&D monsters and modern New Age and Wicca witchcraft.



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


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> Do you think that there are many Norwegians that would be offended by inaccurate portrayals of the Vikings?




I think that it fairly arrogant to sit here and be speaking for them.   I also find it interesting that suddenly how many are offended matters.  Previously it only mattered that some were offended.   I note also that when it comes to Norwegians, you are willing to concede that they might have individual opinions and not be a homogenous group.  I note that you are here judging whether they have a right to complain and setting up some standards about what a legitimate grievance and a legitimate response is in your opinion, with respect to Norwegians.  

BTW, thank you Hussar.  You are a gift.  Whenever you get into a thread, I no longer have to argue my own point of view, as you suitably destroy the opposing view.

Finally, let me say that I notice once again that everyone is more willing to talk about how much of a tragedy it is that Africa is not represented in fantasy literature, or not represented well in fantasy literature, but no one is actually willing to state what a good respectful representation would be that would in fact not be condemned as racist.   It's particularly ironic because it's quite clear to me that I'm one of the few people in the thread that has given Africa serious study with an eye toward fantasy D&D and actually understands how the lack of a good fantasy Africa is explained by the near perfect lack of information about historical Africa combined with the fact that any detailed pastiche fantasy Africa would be condemned as racist simply by presenting Africans as iron age tribal animists divided into a thousand often warring ethnic and linguistic groups. Witness for example how appalled people are by the notion of "wereleopards" in a presentation of Africa, and the guilt associated with such a presentation.  Never mind that in the real Africa there actually were-people who practiced animagus magic to gain the power of leopards and terrorize their enemies.   But we've already established that if I present Africans as they actually thought of themselves, someone is going to call me a racist.   So why in the world would I publish anything about Africa?   When it comes to Norwegians if I present them wearing bear skins and foaming at the mouth and chewing on their shields before going into battle and in my fantasy giving them the power that they believe this unleashed, I'll be praised for my depth of research and my detailed representation of Norse society in dark ages Europe.  But if I do the same thing for Africa, with leopard skin wearing cannibals as they actually were, then I'll be called "as racist AF".   Instead, someone will demand that I create a European style "Wakanda" (and probably a bunch of European nations with black skinned people and the superficial color of being African) that never existed to show my respect for Africa.   But then if I do that, someone will complain about that as well.  Heck, probably just presenting Africans in their historical costume would get me in trouble unless I alter that costume to cater to European sensibilities.  It's a no win situation.   And if you disagree, the best way to prove me wrong isn't to continue virtue signaling, but actually do the research and write the supplement.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Othering is a problem, but Wakanda is the opposite of othering.
> 
> As a matter of pure history, African culture collapsed in the West's middle ages, in part owing to desertification as the Sahara entered into a expansion phase and swallowed the once fertile farmland that supported the African empires.  The result was a hodge-podge of decaying petty kingdoms that never engaged in anything like the miracle of the Northern European renaissance and never produced a large body of literature and exactly zero science.  The sub-Saharan African cultures had themselves never advanced much past early iron age culture, and so were locked in a cultural paradigm roughly 3000 years behind the cultures of Europe and the Middle and Far East.  Besides which, isolated by distance and the Sahara desert, these cultures never truly interacted with any of the big three advanced cultural centers, and were largely known only through limited contact with coastal trading cultures (often through Arabic intermediaries).   As such, the reality of the world was that Africa was largely unknown in Europe, Persia, India, and China and was equally exotic to all of them.  No real African nation was interacting with any of them to any great degree, much less actually exchanging ideas with those cultures in literature, engineering and the sciences.   The same could not be said of those cultures themselves, even when they in fact seemed exotic and strange to each other.   Note for example how European culture serves much the same role in Japanese anime as Eastern culture serves in Western media.  Rome and Han China could be said to be peers, but after the fall of the culturally Phoenician Carthage (itself originally a colonial power) on the extreme northern coast, that could never again be said of any African nation.
> 
> ...




Africa didn’t “collapse” until colonization. 

And it certainly had its share of acedemic development, nor were all sub-Saharan cultures “3000 years behind Europe”, if such a statement even has any meaning. 

African cultures had wealthy trade ports, great libraries, and everything else that Europe and Asia had. It just also had cultures that remained (and some few that remain) in a tech level that worked for them, seeing no need for “advancement”.

And then it was colonized by militarily superior forces, stripped of agency, robbed of resources and knowledge, and eventually sold out to predatory international debt masked as “aide”.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> When I first heard the term, it was the term for a particularly vicious sort of plagiarism, where an artist plagiarized the work of another artist and because that artist was a minority the artist doing the copying felt neither the need to site the original artist or to pay him for his work.
> 
> I'm fairly comfortable in stating that there is little or no disagreement that that is wrong, and that such actions today would meet universal condemnation and denouncing them would create little controversy.
> 
> But I'm also fairly comfortable in stating that that original concept has been misunderstood or ironically appropriated for a concept that depends not on some absolute and easily agreeable notion of what constitutes theft, but on a very vague concept that depends basically on people's feelings.   And the problem with that, is that in reality minorities actually aren't all identical and two people in the same minority group can have very different feelings about whether a treatment of their culture was appropriate and respectful.   Aside from the fact that there is no such thing as collective ownership of culture and no such thing as a spokesperson for that culture that can authorize the release of ideas from the culture, this leaves you in a situation where no matter how accommodating to other viewpoints you try to be, there can always be someone who said you did it wrong.




Not really. Cultural appropriation is when a person outside a culture, usually from a group who benefits either directly or indirectly from that culture’s marginalization, uses that culture’s hallmarks as a costume, or takes them and uses them as if they invented them themselves, and either way it often involves a blatant lack of respect for the context of that cultural element, such as white girls wearing bindi and dreadlocks without any connection to the cultures in which those things are a hell of a lot more than merely fashion.


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## Imaro (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Not really. Cultural appropriation is when a person outside a culture, usually from a group who benefits either directly or indirectly from that culture’s marginalization, uses that culture’s hallmarks as a costume, or takes them and uses them as if they invented them themselves, and either way it often involves a blatant lack of respect for the context of that cultural element, such as white girls wearing bindi and dreadlocks without any connection to the cultures in which those things are a hell of a lot more than merely fashion.




I just want to thank you for actually understanding what cultural appropriation is.  I've seen numerous posters in this very thread claim this or that will be labeled as cultural appropriation when in fact it wouldn't and hasn't been.


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> It just also had cultures that remained (and some few that remain) in a tech level that worked for them, seeing no need for “advancement”.




Oh how quaint; someone advancing the myth of the "noble savage".  Virtually in all the rest of the world, including the Americas, we see signs of technological progress.  But in Africa you believe that they stayed in poverty and disease, not because of disease or desertification or because of linguistic barriers or even because of the lack of high calorie to the acre crops and easily domesticated livestock or any other number of factors that tended to cause stagnation.  Instead, you believe that they choose to stay in poverty using primitive technology because that's what made them happy.  



> And it certainly had its share of academic development...African cultures had wealthy trade ports, great libraries, and everything else that Europe had.




Well, only if you treat 'Africa' as some sort of homogenous whole can you make that statement.   In fact, 'African' cultures that had wealthy trade ports and great libraries are confined to a narrow geography and slivers of time, and with one or two exceptions were colonial cultures and not 'African' cultures.   If we actually list this stuff, you'll start with Egypt.   Now Egypt is amazing.   It is so ancient that it managed to have three Dark Ages and three Golden ages while the rest of the world was still learning how to write.  But Egypt can't be used to stand for all of 'Africa', and quite notably there has been very little attempt in this thread to show that Egypt has not received detailed, respectful, and 'realistic' treatment in fantasy (because such an attempt would inspire guffaws).   Likewise, Carthage was a great city - the peer of Rome and with comparable achievements in the same period.   But Carthage and the other similar cities where colonial cities themselves, settled by Phoenicians that had to a certain extent (to use highly anachronistic language) "gone native".   Again, no one in this thread is really upset with the lack of representation of Carthage in fantasy gaming.   Presenting Carthage in your fantasy game is easy and can be done without controversy.   Similar, the great Library of Alexandria and all the learning that took place there was a wonder of the ancient world, and the center of learning in the Mediterranean.   But it was also culturally Greek.   And sure, the Greeks had inherited much of their learning from Egypt originally, but by the time of Alexandria they'd outgrown Egypt.  Similar, there were great libraries across the northern swath of Africa during the period of Islamic colonization, that flourished in the wake of the introduction of Arabic script and the learning brought from the various corners of the Islamic empire.   The truth is though, that would tend to get folded into 'Arabian Nights' fantasy representations.  The very lack of mention of that in the thread suggests how little we mean by 'Africa' when we think 'North African Islamic Empire during the Islamic Golden Age'.  And Ethiopia and the surrounding areas on the horn of Africa developed a flourishing native literary tradition using native script and developing a culture unique to that area, that I would be happy to trace in detail.   For now I'll just point out that what makes it unique is that alone Africa, Ethiopia was engaging in cultural appropriation rather than having culture imposed on them by external forces.  But all of this in its utter paucity doesn't prove your equivocation.   It just proves how desperate you are to equate Africa with Europe, rather than deal with the reality of Africa itself in all of its challenging difficulty.



> Africa didn’t “collapse” until colonization.




Which colonization?  The arrival of the Mesopotamian people in the lower Nile river valley?  The arrival of the Phoenicians along the North African coast?  The arrival of the Arab Armies during the age of Islamic imperial expansion?  Or the arrival of the Northern Europeans rather late in the game to find those cultures "in a tech level that worked for them"?


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## Imaro (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Oh how quaint; someone advancing the myth of the "noble savage".  Virtually in all the rest of the world, including the Americas, we see signs of technological progress.  But in Africa you believe that they stayed in poverty and disease, not because of disease or desertification or because of linguistic barriers or even because of the lack of high calorie to the acre crops and easily domesticated livestock or any other number of factors that tended to cause stagnation.  Instead, you believe that they choose to stay in poverty using primitive technology because that's what made them happy.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




So if you're clearly aware Africa isn't a homogeneous whole... why do you keep making sweeping statements about Africa in general?  Especially since you profess such deep knowledge of Africa...


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Not really. Cultural appropriation is when a person outside a culture, usually from a group who benefits either directly or indirectly from that culture’s marginalization, uses that culture’s hallmarks as a costume, or takes them and uses them as if they invented them themselves, and either way it often involves a blatant lack of respect for the context of that cultural element, such as white girls wearing bindi and dreadlocks without any connection to the cultures in which those things are a hell of a lot more than merely fashion.




Yes, I know what you think cultural appropriation is.   I just also know you don't realize just how racist and problematic what you just stated actually is.   However, solving that problem fortunately doesn't have to happen in order to discuss Africa's representation in gaming, unless you are going to argue that only someone from Africa can do that, in which case we should just close the thread.


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

Imaro said:


> So if you're clearly aware Africa isn't a homogeneous whole... why do you keep making sweeping statements about Africa in general?  Especially since you profess such deep knowledge of Africa...




For the same reason that people use terms like 'Africa' and 'Europe' as sweeping generalities; it's convenient.  

So backing up, when people use the word 'Africa' they don't mean 'Egypt' unless it is convenient to include Egypt.  The word 'Africa' generally first means in the hearer skin color.   That's not my fault.   I don't like it, but that's how it works.   It works that way in part because we've erroneously created classes like 'African American', leading to silliness like journalists referring to dark skinned people in Africa as 'African Americans'.   When we say, "African American", we don't mean an immigrant from Africa who wrecked his car in high school by crashing into a Kudo; we sadly mean someone with dark skin.    I don't like it, but there it is.   

You should see the confusion that happens when a naive fair skinned immigrant from Africa calls himself an "African American", or you should talk to my colleague from Rwanda about the belly laugh he gets from people 200 years removed from the continent and utterly removed from its real culture and languages calling themselves "African Americans".   But anyway, that's a tangent.

Consider even the title of this thread "When Fantasy Meets Africa".   It's pretty clear that the author doesn't mean "Egypt".  Egypt gets the pastiche treatment all the time, more often even than the Norse.  He largely means the problematic part of Africa, and particularly the sub-Saharan part, because that's what he discusses and that's what Wakanda is meant to represent in a less uncomfortable manner.  That's the part that really challenges and discomforts the modern reader and which is seldom represented, much less represented well, in fantasy gaming.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

Imaro said:


> So if you're clearly aware Africa isn't a homogeneous whole... why do you keep making sweeping statements about Africa in general?  Especially since you profess such deep knowledge of Africa...




Lol Acts like they have deep historical knowledge, only seems to know about classical history. 

I’m not surprised at all, frankly. 

The fact is, Africa had all that Europe or Asia had. Apparently, ancient and medieval Somalia doesn’t exist though? 

Eh, if I wanted to deal with dishonest “reversal” and other such rhetorical stratagems, I’d argue on Twitter.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I think that it fairly arrogant to sit here and be speaking for them.   I also find it interesting that suddenly how many are offended matters.  Previously it only mattered that some were offended.   I note also that when it comes to Norwegians, you are willing to concede that they might have individual opinions and not be a homogenous group.  I note that you are here judging whether they have a right to complain and setting up some standards about what a legitimate grievance and a legitimate response is in your opinion, with respect to Norwegians.




My opinion based on some Norwegians I have met, is that most wouldn't give a damn and won't waste their energy being offended about inaccurate portrayals of Vikings, because they are not Vikings today. Actually Vikings in my opinion would think those horned helmets would be silly, but would not be offended by them if people think that is what they wear. Vikings were basically small boat pirates that earned a living by raiding coastal villages and sea ports. Since they go around looting and taking hostages, I don't think a guy in a horned helmet is going to offend them. That is my opinion, but of course that is all we'll get, as we can't ask a real Viking about such matters. If I offended any Vikings, I am sorry!



> BTW, thank you Hussar.  You are a gift.  Whenever you get into a thread, I no longer have to argue my own point of view, as you suitably destroy the opposing view.
> 
> Finally, let me say that I notice once again that everyone is more willing to talk about how much of a tragedy it is that Africa is not represented in fantasy literature, or not represented well in fantasy literature, but no one is actually willing to state what a good respectful representation would be that would in fact not be condemned as racist.   It's particularly ironic because it's quite clear to me that I'm one of the few people in the thread that has given Africa serious study with an eye toward fantasy D&D and actually understands how the lack of a good fantasy Africa is explained by the near perfect lack of information about historical Africa combined with the fact that any detailed pastiche fantasy Africa would be condemned as racist simply by presenting Africans as iron age tribal animists divided into a thousand often warring ethnic and linguistic groups. Witness for example how appalled people are by the notion of "wereleopards" in a presentation of Africa, and the guilt associated with such a presentation.  Never mind that in the real Africa there actually were-people who practiced animagus magic to gain the power of leopards and terrorize their enemies.   But we've already established that if I present Africans as they actually thought of themselves, someone is going to call me a racist.   So why in the world would I publish anything about Africa?   When it comes to Norwegians if I present them wearing bear skins and foaming at the mouth and chewing on their shields before going into battle and in my fantasy giving them the power that they believe this unleashed, I'll be praised for my depth of research and my detailed representation of Norse society in dark ages Europe.  But if I do the same thing for Africa, with leopard skin wearing cannibals as they actually were, then I'll be called "as racist AF".   Instead, someone will demand that I create a European style "Wakanda" (and probably a bunch of European nations with black skinned people and the superficial color of being African) that never existed to show my respect for Africa.   But then if I do that, someone will complain about that as well.  Heck, probably just presenting Africans in their historical costume would get me in trouble unless I alter that costume to cater to European sensibilities.  It's a no win situation.   And if you disagree, the best way to prove me wrong isn't to continue virtue signaling, but actually do the research and write the supplement.


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## Imaro (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Lol Acts like they have deep historical knowledge, only seems to know about classical history.
> 
> I’m not surprised at all, frankly.
> 
> ...




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


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

Imaro said:


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




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

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

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

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


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## Yaarel (Mar 7, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


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




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

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



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

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

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

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


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

Imaro said:


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




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

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

It’s an astounding degree is dishonesty in rhetoric. 

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

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


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## Kobold Boots (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


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




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

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

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

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

Be well
KB


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## Gradine (Mar 7, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Please take this reply as being just a general "meh" and not at all intended to offset the intellects or insult anyone.
> 
> Exhibiting enhanced knowledge of something after a gauntlet has been thrown on a forum community doesn't mean much because anyone can use Wikipedia or look up a few things after someone gets snarky.
> 
> ...




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

Educational all around.

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

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

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

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

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


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

Gradine said:


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




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

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



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




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

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



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




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

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



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




Yep.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

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

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


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## Imaro (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


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




The Wikipedia is strong in this post... 

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


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## Sunseeker (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> @_*Celebrim*_ no one, anywhere, is saying that you can’t tell stories that are about a black woman if you’re a white guy. They’re saying that you do not have the relevant experience to tell a story that is about the specific experience of being a black woman in America, for instance, when you are a white dude.
> 
> As for the idea that there are no struggles that aren’t common to “the human experience”...that is literally just blatant nonsense.




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

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

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


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## ngenius (Mar 7, 2018)

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


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


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


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


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## Sunseeker (Mar 7, 2018)

ngenius said:


> Something to think about for everyone, especially the self-confessed "African allies" in this whole discussion, which, while very informative, is also blatant evidence of the privilege being paraded online that is not afforded to a significant majority of African children, who live in rural African villages across many countries in Africa (especially Sub-Saharan Africa) and, thus, unable to access all these wonderful books you discussed (both the bad stereotypes and the good respectful ones).
> 
> 
> In fact, I can almost bet a winning hand that the vast majority of those participating in this thread do not come from a rural African background (but I will not get into the politics of why many African nations despite years after Independence are worse off than relatively newer formed nations in some other parts of the world).
> ...




Well, that's nice and all, but that's sorta the point.  We _can_ have a voice in the process while they _can't_ (or are substantially less likely to be able to do so).  I mean I'm not the friggen Lorax of sub-saharan African kids here but it's hardly disingenuous to say "Hey, those folks can't speak for themselves but you oughta keep them in mind!"

I mean, what's the alternative?  F-em?


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


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




If I was wrong, then it would be pointless to write about those struggles, as no one would be able to relate to them even if I did describe them.

It seems to me that you have two radical positions here.  First, that a person's experiences are primarily the result of belonging to some group, so that everyone in that group can relate to the experiences of everyone else in it.   That is to say, if you are black woman then you are allowed to write about the experiences of being a black woman, even if that black woman is a fictional character.  And secondly, you seem to hold the opinion that despite this universal experience everyone in the groups you are slapping your labels on have, nonetheless everyone's individual experiences are so unique that no one else can possibly share them in common.

I find both of those positions "blatant nonsense", but perhaps those aren't actually what you are saying.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

shidaku said:


> This.  And it's important to recognize that the fantasy trials of Fantasy Black Woman in FantasyLand don't need to line up to real life, she may have some that are similar, she may have none, she may have lived a privileged life of royalty.  That's all fine and dandy for FantasyLand.
> 
> But if I (a white, middle-class male) were to want to write a story about the real trials of Real Black Woman IRL, I would be well out of my league, because I have experienced nothing in my life that would even remotely mirror the experiences of an IRL minority woman, or even a white woman!  But if I wanted my character to resonate with the audience, I would need to know those experiences, at least second-hand from someone who has studied them, or at ideally lived them, or both!
> 
> Sure, we may have common experiences: difficulty finding a job, trouble with bad landlords, that one waiter who was a jerk.  But these "shared experiences" are so generic as to be essentially meaningless.  Nobody wants to read a story about "all those things everybody does".  They want to read a story about someone who has unique struggles and challenges to overcome.  That's why there are movies about lone-wolf cops with nothing to lose, and there _aren't_ movies about Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling.  We just _assume_ that this person we're reading about has normal problems too, but we don't need to read about it.




Right! Tell whatever stories you want, but before telling stories about people whose lives you know fragall about, talk to actual humans who have some understanding of the thing. 

Black Panther employed African experts on language, costume, and culture, and Black writers, director, etc, and a huge part of why it is so good is that everyone involved had so much passion for it because of all that. 

My favorite example is actually from music. You can’t get an album like Tracy Chapman’s first, self-titled, album from The Mountain Goats, unless someone like Tracy is writing on the album. John is one of the best folk composers of our time, but he hasn’t lived what Tracy has lived, and he isn’t immersed in a never ending sea of explorations of lives like hers.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> If I was wrong, then it would be pointless to write about those struggles, as no one would be able to relate to them even if I did describe them.
> 
> It seems to me that you have two radical positions here.  First, that a person's experiences are primarily the result of belonging to some group, so that everyone in that group can relate to the experiences of everyone else in it.   That is to say, if you are black woman then you are allowed to write about the experiences of being a black woman, even if that black woman is a fictional character.  And secondly, you seem to hold the opinion that despite this universal experience everyone in the groups you are slapping your labels on have, nonetheless everyone's individual experiences are so unique that no one else can possibly share them in common.
> 
> I find both of those positions "blatant nonsense", but perhaps those aren't actually what you are saying.




I think you are intentionally using dishonest rhetorical tactics, here, so don’t expect any serious engagement.


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

shidaku said:


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




Black women can't live a privileged life in reality?  Is there some single black woman that can stand in for all the variety of experience black women have?  Tell me the traits of this woman, please.



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




This moves the goal posts.  You might be well out of your league, and I must take that for granted.   I'm probably 'out of my league' as well, depending on the specific cultural background of the person I'm planning to write about.  I'm not planning to write a novel with a black female protagonist in the near future, and I hope that if I write one with a male protagonist that I'm sheltered by your theory from criticism that I'm not presenting diverse enough of a cast.  (I note in passing that JK Rawlings isn't accused of being unable to write believably of the travails of a teenage boy, despite never having been one.)  But if you open up the possibility that I could learn and study about being someone other than who I am, and then I would no longer be 'out of my league' you've totally changed the terms of this debate.  Previously it was asserted that it was not possible for a "white male" to write about a "black woman".  Now you've given a path by which he could do so.  Now it's as if you are disagreeing with me while agreeing with me.  Now that the goal post have moved, we aren't as far apart as all that.



> Sure, we may have common experiences: difficulty finding a job, trouble with bad landlords, that one waiter who was a jerk.  But these "shared experiences" are so generic as to be essentially meaningless.




No, quite the contrary.  These are the experiences of life that are most important.  They are what you want to write about and to a large part what makes a story worthwhile.  You change the setting perhaps to provide novelty, but its those core and common experiences that give the story power - loss, death, love, friendship, pain, failure, success, and so forth.  We could refine that list a lot to more and more specific, but they'd still hold a lot in common.



> Nobody wants to read a story about "all those things everybody does".  They want to read a story about someone who has unique struggles and challenges to overcome.




Well, yes and no.   We might never have been marked from the time we were a year old with a lightning bolt and been the chosen one destined to fight a dark wizard, but that is not IMO why a book like Harry Potter was so successful.



> That's why there are movies about lone-wolf cops with nothing to lose, and there _aren't_ movies about Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling.  We just _assume_ that this person we're reading about has normal problems too, but we don't need to read about it.




We have a very different idea of what literature is.  Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling could in fact be an important part of a very good story.  I'm more terrified of Cold-Calling than almost anything I can think of.


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I think you are intentionally using dishonest rhetorical tactics, here, so don’t expect any serious engagement.




Ah, in that case, I won't bother.


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## Gradine (Mar 7, 2018)

doctorbadwolf said:


> @_*Celebrim*_ no one, anywhere, is saying that you can’t tell stories that are about a black woman if you’re a white guy. They’re saying that you do not have the relevant experience to tell a story that is about the specific experience of being a black woman in America, for instance, when you are a white dude.
> 
> As for the idea that there are no struggles that aren’t common to “the human experience”...that is literally just blatant nonsense.




Came to respond with essentially this, but you beat me to the punch. I'll add that, just because you're a straight white dude doesn't mean you can't have well-rounded, multi-dimensional female, queer, and/or people of color in your stories (you absolutely should, in fact!) It also doesn't even mean that they can't be dealing with issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. Just that the general consensus is that you shouldn't be writing stories that are _entirely_ or _primarily_ about those issues if you don't have the first-hand experience. I'd go so far as to argue that doesn't even mean that you couldn't try and possibly even be successful at it! Just that... there's going to be criticism either way regarding telling stories that aren't yours to tell.

Other than that, I can't find myself arguing with most of the rest of post, and I especially want to agree on the point about stereotypes. I did particularly call out stereotypes that are negative, but all stereotypes are problematic and harmful, includes ones that might be considered "positive".


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## Gradine (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> If I was wrong, then it would be pointless to write about those struggles, as no one would be able to relate to them even if I did describe them.
> 
> It seems to me that you have two radical positions here.  First, that a person's experiences are primarily the result of belonging to some group, so that everyone in that group can relate to the experiences of everyone else in it.   That is to say, if you are black woman then you are allowed to write about the experiences of being a black woman, even if that black woman is a fictional character.  And secondly, you seem to hold the opinion that despite this universal experience everyone in the groups you are slapping your labels on have, nonetheless everyone's individual experiences are so unique that no one else can possibly share them in common.
> 
> I find both of those positions "blatant nonsense", but perhaps those aren't actually what you are saying.




To give you the benefit of the doubt [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION] didn't, I think you are severely mistaking their position. Your first stated position is not only correct but hardly radical at all. To deny that black people face experiences as a result of being black that other people don't face, and that most black people are able to relate to those experiences is to deny simply truths, basic reality, and essentially all data that has ever been collected on racial bias and discrimination. People of different races may have faced _similar_ experiences, but they still tend vary race-to-race (just to stick the example of race, but sub in gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) in extremely significant ways. Your second position is radically misunderstanding what they're saying.

There are experiences that _universal_ to, say, black women, but every individual black woman experiences those in slightly different ways from one another, but in ways that are still relatable to most black women. I say most because there are always going to be exceptions, folks who belong to any particular identity group that have not experienced the negative things that most of the other members of their group, or have simply not noticed them, or have simply been able to ignore said experiences thanks to some other matter of privilege (usually, class). 

That is to say, there do exist experiences that _only_ happen to black women, but don't happen to _all_ black women, and don't happen to every black woman in equal measure or in quite the same manner.

Also, if you are not a black woman (say, you are white man, but even a black man or a white woman), this does not mean that you cannot _understand_ or _empathize_ with their experiences. I am a white man, and I like to think I possess some measure of both. Never perfectly, because I will never experience those myself and can simply never _truly_ know how it feels, which is precisely why I shouldn't go about writing stories about those experiences. But I can, however, address them as well as I can, such as that is, from my own admittedly limited point of view.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 7, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Came to respond with essentially this, but you beat me to the punch. I'll add that, just because you're a straight white dude doesn't mean you can't have well-rounded, multi-dimensional female, queer, and/or people of color in your stories (you absolutely should, in fact!) It also doesn't even mean that they can't be dealing with issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. Just that the general consensus is that you shouldn't be writing stories that are _entirely_ or _primarily_ about those issues if you don't have the first-hand experience. I'd go so far as to argue that doesn't even mean that you couldn't try and possibly even be successful at it! Just that... there's going to be criticism either way regarding telling stories that aren't yours to tell.
> 
> Other than that, I can't find myself arguing with most of the rest of post, and I especially want to agree on the point about stereotypes. I did particularly call out stereotypes that are negative, but all stereotypes are problematic and harmful, includes ones that might be considered "positive".




Absolutely right, thank you. 

And honestly that is exactly where sensitivity readers come in (paid when possible/practical) to the process, which you touched on before. 

Also, you’re absolutely right in your reading of my position in the other post. I haven’t the inclination or patience to give that poster the benefit of the doubt, but I commend your patience in doing so.


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

Gradine said:


> To give you the benefit of the doubt [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION] didn't, I think you are severely mistaking their position. Your first stated position is not only correct but hardly radical at all. To deny that black people face experiences as a result of being black that other people don't face, and that most black people are able to relate to those experiences is to deny simply truths, basic reality, and essentially all data that has ever been collected on racial bias and discrimination. People of different races may have faced _similar_ experiences, but they still tend vary race-to-race (just to stick the example of race, but sub in gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) in extremely significant ways. Your second position is radically misunderstanding what they're saying.
> 
> There are experiences that _universal_ to, say, black women, but every individual black woman experiences those in slightly different ways from one another, but in ways that are still relatable to most black women. I say most because there are always going to be exceptions, folks who belong to any particular identity group that have not experienced the negative things that most of the other members of their group, or have simply not noticed them, or have simply been able to ignore said experiences thanks to some other matter of privilege (usually, class).




I think I can sum up my objection to that by saying that I don't think there are experiences that are universal to all black women.  To believe otherwise is to create a stereotype out of the phrase "black woman" and one that is likely both negative and false.   There might be experiences that are common to most black women in a particular place and time, whether to a majority or to a plurality.   But any experience absolutely universal to that group would be one universal enough to extend beyond it as well, by virtue of our common humanity.

But then, to confuse that further, you say this:



> That is to say, there do exist experiences that _only_ happen to black women, but don't happen to _all_ black women...




Now, I'm not entirely sure that I agree that there experiences that only happen to black women.  I'm rather agnostic on that fact.   Maybe there are and maybe there aren't.  Someone could explain one and I'd feel I'd learned something.   To point out a similar idea, the experience of childbirth only happens to women and is exclusive to and common to women.  But to me, when you say an experience is universal, you mean exactly that it happens to all people.  I would not assert that childbirth is an experience universal to women.

I would also not assert that though the experience of childbirth is exclusive to women, that it was so extraordinary in its uniqueness that it could not be understood or written about by a man.  (And I'm using childbirth here precisely because I consider that there is no possible human experience more extraordinary and exclusive, so that no greater example could be given.)  Nor in particular would I ever assert that there was something about being black that was as different from being white as the self-evident differences between men and women.   The contrary position strikes me as overtly racist.



> and don't happen to every black woman in equal measure or in quite the same manner.




I mean fundamentally, if we throw away "black woman" as a stereotype, not only is this obvious, but it's obvious that this very fact means that a black woman has no more or no less right to write about a fictional black woman than a white man does.  Because there is no such thing as this universal black woman in the first place.  She could be from rural Minnesota, inner city New York, suburban Dallas Texas, Brazil, or Kenya and these women would have no more in common with each other necessarily than I or someone else would have in common with them except for perhaps common experiences (like childbirth) that don't particular have anything to with being "black".  The same thing applies to the stereotype "white male".   It's quite likely that a man from a cultural background similar to the fictional black woman could right with much greater authority about being a black woman in that culture, than some black woman from some different culture.   When you start dealing with people as individuals, the utility of these stereotypes like "black woman" go away.   I have very little idea what they mean; I know, have known, and know of too many "black women".



> Also, if you are not a black woman (say, you are white man, but even a black man or a white woman), this does not mean that you cannot _understand_ or _empathize_ with their experiences.




This is the sort of statement that makes me think we are not so far apart, and it is the sort of concession or viewpoint that removes my objection.  But, as a precondition of being able to understand an experience, I must have some common experience with them.   If I have no frame of reference in common, then I can never empathize with their experiences.  I can't possible empathize with seeing something blue, if I've never seen anything blue.  If someone tells me about the delight of eating a ripe mango, fresh picked from the tree, I can't fully sympathize unless I've done that very thing myself, but I can't empathize at all without knowledge of ripe fruit, sweetness, hunger, and so forth.  If I have knowledge of ripe fruit picked fresh from the tree, sweetness in your mouth, juice dripping down the chin, and hunger satiated then even if I never eat the mango, I'm together with them in that place.  (Full disclosure, I've eat a lot of ripe mangos.)

As long as you are willing to concede that overlap and the ability to come to understand, then on this topic we only disagree about small and unimportant details or the particular semantics.   It's not at all clear to me that everyone in this thread is willing to concede that much though.


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## Erdric Dragin (Mar 7, 2018)

There's an old adage to writing, and it's extremely simple and wise.

"Write what you know."

If you don't personally know and lived experiences of certain cultures and/or peoples for a very long period of time...you probably have no business writing with them as the subject of any writing (except research). 

I know a woman writer who was going to write a historical fiction on the City of Cahokia, but she couldn't get around the fact that she was a white woman writing about a distinct culture that didn't belong to her and one she can easily slip into misrepresenting at moments in her story. She thought about doing a ton of research to validate her writing, but ultimately she realized it wasn't her place. She had great ideas, but at the possible expense of appropriation and misrepresentation. It just wasn't worth it.


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## Gradine (Mar 7, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I think I can sum up my objection to that by saying that I don't think there are experiences that are universal to all black women.  To believe otherwise is to create a stereotype out of the phrase "black woman" and one that is likely both negative and false.   There might be experiences that are common to most black women in a particular place and time, whether to a majority or to a plurality.   But any experience absolutely universal to that group would be one universal enough to extend beyond it as well, by virtue of our common humanity.




You seem to be unable or unwilling to separate "identity" and "stereotype". There's a pretty significant difference. I would say that as, presumably, non-black women, neither one of us really has the right to say for certain which is reality. I would say that most of the black women I know, have met, and have read have all concurred that there are experiences only black women face because of the facts that they are facts and are women. You'll hopefully forgive me that I'm more inclined to trust them on this than you.

Any quibbling about the meaning of the term "universal" semantics. Perhaps near-universal is the better turn of phrase but the existence of exceptions to any absolute in this regard should be taken as a given.



> I would also not assert that though the experience of childbirth is exclusive to women, that it was so extraordinary in its uniqueness that it could not be understood or written about by a man.  (And I'm using childbirth here precisely because I consider that there is no possible human experience more extraordinary and exclusive, so that no greater example could be given.)




I know several people who've given birth who would take exception to this, as well. I happen to be married to one of them. That wouldn't stop me from writing a story that contained child-birth, but I wouldn't presume to write a story from the perspective of a woman giving birth, because while I could _intellectualize_ the experience by hearing and reading enough of those stories, I've still never _felt_ them myself.



> Nor in particular would I ever assert that there was something about being black that was as different from being white as the self-evident differences between men and women.   The contrary position strikes me as overtly racist.




This is the crux, I believe, of your misunderstanding. You are absolutely correct that there are no _inherent_ differences based on race (or really any other type of identity, save those grounded in biological reality, such as biological sex or maybe disability). The difference comes from how people are _treated._ Both as individuals by other individuals, and as an entire group by systems that are either inherently inequal (see: the U.S. criminal justice system and police bias) or that are technically equal but have failed to account or correct for historic inequities (see: U.S. housing policy and redlining). You can and many certainly do argue against these truths, but the data and historical facts are there and they do not lie and their conclusions are plainly obvious.

The common counter-argument, that these things all happen to (primarily impoverished) white people too, is true, but it ignores the fact (and again, decades of data) that they happen to people of color at well beyond statistically significant rates, across all social and economic classes. Class certainly plays a significant role, but far from the only one.



> This is the sort of statement that makes me think we are not so far apart, and it is the sort of concession or viewpoint that removes my objection.  But, as a precondition of being able to understand an experience, I must have some common experience with them.   If I have no frame of reference in common, then I can never empathize with their experiences.  I can't possible empathize with seeing something blue, if I've never seen anything blue.  If someone tells me about the delight of eating a ripe mango, fresh picked from the tree, I can't fully sympathize unless I've done that very thing myself, but I can't empathize at all without knowledge of ripe fruit, sweetness, hunger, and so forth.  If I have knowledge of ripe fruit picked fresh from the tree, sweetness in your mouth, juice dripping down the chin, and hunger satiated then even if I never eat the mango, I'm together with them in that place.  (Full disclosure, I've eat a lot of ripe mangos.)




I reject this conclusion. You can quite easily understand and empathize with an experience you've never (and will likely never) personal had/ve. It will never be the totally perfect understanding that the individual who actually experienced it has, but certainly enough to empathize with. You yourself have castigated me in this very thread for not bothering to empathize with a position I've never experienced and couldn't comprehend(rightfully so, I'll add). But I like to think we've come closer to understanding and empathizing with one another, even if we haven't necessarily come any closer towards agreement.


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## Gradine (Mar 7, 2018)

Erdric Dragin said:


> There's an old adage to writing, and it's extremely simple and wise.
> 
> "Write what you know."
> 
> ...




This is a better way of saying what I was trying to say earlier. Your friend might have done some great research and actually written a story was and might have even written the story with the appropriate level of respect and honor towards the culture, but it still wouldn't have been her story to tell. To say nothing of the ethical ramifications of publishing and consequentially earning a profit off the backs of a culture and story you don't own.


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## Celebrim (Mar 7, 2018)

Rather than continue dealing with useless generalities, let's get really specific.

Alex Haley wrote the work 'Roots' about his heritage as a black man living in the United States.  The work had a monumental impact on how Americans perceived the black experience in the United States and I heard many testimonies from whole generation of black men about how important the book and resulting TV mini-series was in their perception of themselves.

The problem is that it is a trivial matter to show that Alex Haley lied in every particular about the novel.  He did not do the research he claimed he did.  Anyone that does do the research will quickly find that the evidence he claims to have had, either does not exist or in fact directly contradicts and makes impossible the claimed events of the novel.  Worse, not only is it entirely a work of fiction, but vast swaths of the novel - including all the most well remembered and most impactful scenes - are lifted almost verbatim from a earlier novel called 'The African'.   Some 180 passages of the book roots were plagiarized from that earlier work, and this was so obvious that Alex Haley was forced to settle lawsuit with the author of 'The African' admitting to the plagiarism.   In fact, it was so bad that they'd found manuscripts where Haley had stapled pages of 'The African' to his work to aid as a reference.  Moreover, it is the opinion of many who have read both works, that the characters of 'The African' are more nuanced, complexly drawn, and authentic than the characters of 'Roots'.  Where changes were made, it was often to throw out real historical detail, or elements that made the characters more human and more realistic.   For Haley's work, it suited him better to create characters of transcendent nobility and courage, even if this meant sanding off the sort of things that made the character human.

The author of 'The African' is Harold Courlander.   He is a white man.

I think this leaves us with a really difficult and complicated question.   Of these two, which author, had more right to the story about a particular fictional black man - Alex Haley or Harold Courlander?  Which treated the historical source material more respectfully?  Which was more honest?  Who had in fact done the greater research to be able to reach back through time and place himself in the place of a black slave?   If in fact, Harold Courlander had no right to the story and if in fact he wrote a story lacking in power owing to his inability to understand a black slave, why did Alex Haley plagiarize his work?   Is 'Harold Courlander' guilty of cultural appropriation, and so we excuse the theft?   Should we tell 'Harold Courlander', "Don't write about African slaves; write what you know?", and if we are bold enough to tell him that by that same standard shouldn't we tell Alex Haley that?


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## Rygar (Mar 7, 2018)

Erdric Dragin said:


> There's an old adage to writing, and it's extremely simple and wise.
> 
> "Write what you know."
> 
> ...




To be clear, are you asserting that no one should be allowed to write anything unless they are specifically a member of the target race and culture?  To what degree does this go?  Is the earlier Harry Potter example disallowed?  As an American, can I write a story set in Berlin?  Am I allowed to write a story set in California if I'm from a different state?  Can I write a story about the French if I'm British?  Am I allowed to write stories that include redheads if I'm blonde?


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Rather than continue dealing with useless generalities, let's get really specific.




On the contrary, the generalities are what are pretty important in this conversation. Your specific example, meanwhile, is pointless, a single exception you seem to think disproves the general rule. Yes, Harold Courlander was a person who did a remarkable amount of research in the lived experiences of black Americans and wrote with exceptional respect and honor to those experiences. He was also a white man who, by and large, made his living telling the stories of black people. That is, _at best,_ an ethical gray area. One might make the argument that his lifes' work amounted to more good than harm, and I certainly wouldn't take that away from him.

And yes, Alex Haley plagiarized him when writing Roots. Unless that has ruined things for all black people everywhere forever, I'm not really sure what your point is bringing that up. I do know many black people who still see within Roots their stories (or at the very least, the stories of their ancestors) and point to it as a cultural artifact (both as a novel and through the multiple TV miniseries) that is, essentially, black stories told by black artists, and still powerful for that very reason.

Again, unless your point is that Courlander broke the "black ceiling" and Haley ruined all black peoples' claim to being able to tell their own stories as black people, I can't see any real point to this digression.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Rygar said:


> To be clear, are you asserting that no one should be allowed to write anything unless they are specifically a member of the target race and culture?  To what degree does this go?  Is the earlier Harry Potter example disallowed?  As an American, can I write a story set in Berlin?  Am I allowed to write a story set in California if I'm from a different state?  Can I write a story about the French if I'm British?  Am I allowed to write stories that include redheads if I'm blonde?




The answer to all of these questions is, of course yes, but you knew that, because that was the point of these strawmen arguments.

We've been speaking in generals, but sure, let's get to specifics. If you are American, yes, you can write a story about a frenchman. If you are white in America, no, you should probably not write a story about being black in America. If I have to explain the difference to you, you probably haven't been reading this thread very critically.

But what the hell, while I'm here. There are plenty of cultures, primarily (but not exclusively) non-white, that been colonized by cultures that are primarily (but not exclusively) white. They have had their narratives and their histories ripped them, and many continue, to this day, to exist in the minds of most people strictly as lazy and mostly negative stereotypes. Even if you do your research and present the topic as well as you possibly can, there still exists the fact that you are _stealing the narrative that doesn't belong to you from people whose narratives were historically stolen by people who look an awful lot like you._ If it's important enough for you that the story be told, why not instead spend your energy signal boosting the people who are telling those stories because they actually belong to them?


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## Eltab (Mar 8, 2018)

Erdric Dragin said:


> If you don't personally know and lived experiences of certain cultures and/or peoples for a very long period of time...you probably have no business writing with them as the subject of any writing (except research).



Holding to this guideline as you explain it, would prevent most anthropology-, history-, and archeology- -based novels from reaching the publishing stage.
It would serve to prevent people from learning about the experiences (pleasant or otherwise) of others, rather than increasing understanding of those experiences.


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## Eltab (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> _by people who look an awful lot like you._



... but who were NOT me.

You are effectively demanding that the sons be punished for the sins of their fathers.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Eltab said:


> ... but who were NOT me.
> 
> You are effectively demanding that the sons be punished for the sins of their fathers.




I'm demanding nothing. I'm asking you to accept the historical realities that have put white people in a position of privilege over colonized and/or enslaved people, realities that have yet to be fully addressed and corrected. Until they have been, until full equity has been achieved, no, I don't think it's particularly appropriate for a white person to tell and sell the story of a colonized culture.

Do you have any arguments to any of my other points? Or did you expect trotted out the tired line of "Well _I_ didn't own any slaves" would completely erase the realities of inequity today and totally invalidate everything else I said?


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Eltab said:


> Holding to this guideline as you explain it, would prevent most anthropology-, history-, and archeology- -based novels from reaching the publishing stage.
> It would serve to prevent people from learning about the experiences (pleasant or otherwise) of others, rather than increasing understanding of those experiences.




I'll point out that many of our worst and most racist stereotypes had their genesis in early anthropologists and historians. It's almost as if things tend to go much better when people are allowed to tell their own stories, warts and all. What a coincidence, am I right?


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

[MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION] I just want to commend you on the patience you've shown in this discussion with many of the posters.  You're a better person than me.  I think I've grown too cynical when it comes to ENWorld and discussing anything related to Africa.  Keep fighting the good fight man.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> @_*Gradine*_ I just want to commend you on the patience you've shown in this discussion with many of the posters.  You're a better person than me.  I think I've grown too cynical when it comes to ENWorld and discussing anything related to Africa.  Keep fighting the good fight man.




You must have missed the part upthread where I ripped into Celebrim then . I have a tendency to snark and get snippy and even begin to think the worst in people, which doesn't really help anybody. As I said somewhere earlier, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they mean well, but that their experiences have led them to accept conclusions different than the ones I've come to. So while I can still believe very strongly that I'm _right_ and the other side is _wrong_ (harmfully so), I need to remember that I can't necessarily fault people that also believe they've got it all figured out my _own_ position is doing more harm than good. Just do my best to state my case and hope I get people thinking, if not totally changed. And I may learn a few things myself along the way.

I haven't always been trying to be this empathetic, not even within this own thread. Nobody's perfect, least of all me. But I think it's still an important conversation to have and engage with. And as someone with most types of privileged identities you could think (I am a cishet white male), I can't really blame anyone for whom this subject is more directly personal for wanting to sit it out either. I had to step away from this one myself for a period.


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## Celebrim (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> On the contrary, the generalities are what are pretty important in this conversation.




No, absolutely not.  From generalities is how we get stereotypes and racism and all the various ills we are discussing!   No, I don't concede that statement at all.  The generalities are evil.  The specifics are what is important.



> Your specific example, meanwhile, is pointless, a single exception you seem to think disproves the general rule.




First of all, my jaw has literally dropped.  Where the hell do you think 'general rules' come from if not from the specifics?   

Secondly, there is no general rule so it never even occurred to me to introduce this as an exception to it.   I introduced it to spark a conversation about specifics that people wouldn't flee into vague generalities.

Thirdly, it's not a single example.  It's a particularly powerful example, but it's far from the only example.  But really, it's _only the examples that matter_.  The rule is only useful if it helps us with examples.  If the rule doesn't apply, then its useless or even wicked.   Your theory has to stand up to testing, or its worthless.   If you won't discard your theory in the face of example, then you are irrational.

Fourthly, technically a single exception does disprove a rule.  



> Yes, Harold Courlander was a person who did a remarkable amount of research in the lived experiences of black Americans and wrote with exceptional respect and honor to those experiences. He was also a white man who, by and large, made his living telling the stories of black people. That is, _at best,_ an ethical gray area.




What???  Seriously?  How the hell is that an ethical gray area?   



> One might make the argument that his lifes' work amounted to more good than harm, and I certainly wouldn't take that away from him.




Very generous of you.



> And yes, Alex Haley plagiarized him when writing Roots. Unless that has ruined things for all black people everywhere forever, I'm not really sure what your point is bringing that up.




In the context of who can said to own what, you can't see how that matters to the discussion?  And the only take away you have is that it would have been wrong if he had "ruined things for all black people everywhere forever"?   



> I do know many black people who still see within Roots their stories (or at the very least, the stories of their ancestors) and point to it as a cultural artifact (both as a novel and through the multiple TV miniseries) that is, essentially, black stories told by black artists, and still powerful for that very reason.




That is amazingly racist.  Why the heck should you judge a story by the color of the man who wrote it?  Am I expected to do that?  Who is expected to do that and why do you expect that of them?  



> Again, unless your point is that Courlander broke the "black ceiling" and Haley ruined all black peoples' claim to being able to tell their own stories as black people, I can't see any real point to this digression.




Digression?  Digression?   And no, that sure as heck isn't the point of my story.  The point of my story is that a white man wrote a good story about a fictional black man.  Your take away seems to be that that was ethically gray at best, but to be actual plagiarism invites a shrug.


----------



## Eltab (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> ... realities that have yet to be fully addressed and corrected ... would completely erase the realities of inequity today ...



How do you propose to do that?  
The fact continues to stand: most people of -insert advantaged group here- are not guilty of any act that caused other people to be disadvantaged.

Bewailing the existence of inequity does not really help distinguish between that imposed by one person / group upon another, and the inequities that naturally result as the result of differing effects of differing decisions.  (What do I mean by the latter?  For instance: inner-cities, where many teenage girls have children - thereby sabotaging their own economic future and the child's - are poverty-stricken.  Whereas societies where childbirth waits until after education, employment, and marriage tend to be wealthy.)

In the context of Africa, since the 1950s, the peoples of the continent have also been cursed with post-Independence governments that understood enough Socialism to become effective thieves of all available 'surplus' wealth, but not enough to know NOT to kill the golden goose.  Hence, a concentration of misery that had nothing to do with any outside group's action / inaction.


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## ngenius (Mar 8, 2018)

Great arguments but still tone deaf in some parts. 

So if a modern black American author writes a story about Africa and then profits from its publication, is that better than a white American writing the same story and profiting from it, with both profiting at the expense of the suffering Africans whose stories were good enough for a novel, but whose voices were not properly represented, since the profits from the stories based on their African experiences were basically kept in an already privileged nation (GDP-wise at least than any of the countries of Africa)?

This sort of exploitation could also apply to many role playing games. Most published hard cover full color table top games, including, those inspired by various African cultures, are just too expensive for a majority of African children to ever purchase and play with their under-privileged friends.

Is cultural exploitation okay in the games industry when publishers incorporate ideas and the stories from an under-privileged group to profit someone other than the group whose experiences created a profitable narrative?


----------



## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Eltab said:


> How do you propose to do that?




I don't have the answer to that. I don't think anyone has all the answers to that. I think maybe not continuing to steal stories from cultures who have had, as a matter of historical colonization, had their narratives and stories stolen from them, is a pretty damn good place to start though.

The fact continues to stand: most people of -insert advantaged group here- are not guilty of any act that caused other people to be disadvantaged.[/quote]

That we're not personally guilty means we needn't feel any guilt, not that we aren't still responsible for dismantling the inequity that we benefit from at the expense of others.



> Bewailing the existence of inequity does not really help distinguish between that imposed by one person / group upon another, and the inequities that naturally result as the result of differing effects of differing decisions.  (What do I mean by the latter?  For instance: inner-cities, where many teenage girls have children - thereby sabotaging their own economic future and the child's - are poverty-stricken.  Whereas societies where childbirth waits until after education, employment, and marriage tend to be wealthy.)




You are ignoring history again. The negative impacts you describe are not the net results of individuals making bad choices but of structural inequalities taking good choices away. The fact that you bring up education as a factor for wealthier, better-off communities boggles the mind; do you actually believe that access to education is equal in our society?



> In the context of Africa, since the 1950s, the peoples of the continent have also been cursed with post-Independence governments that understood enough Socialism to become effective thieves of all available 'surplus' wealth, but not enough to know NOT to kill the golden goose.  Hence, a concentration of misery that had nothing to do with any outside group's action / inaction.




The argument would (and has) been made that these oppressive regimes exist because the conditions created and through methods learned from colonization. I'm not nearly expert enough to know how much credence to give those arguments, but people smarter than I or, I assume, anyone else on this thread have made them. Of course, there were terrible things about these societies pre-colonization, and who's to say how those would have advanced or been corrected in the absence of them. But I think that saying that colonization (to say nothing of the modern-day tactics of the World Bank and IMF) have nothing to do with the current plight of Africa is, once again, ignoring important historical factors and contexts.


----------



## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Snip




This is where our conversation must end, I'm afraid, because we're not even having the same argument anymore. You've dismissed that which is most relevant to the conversation without so much as an explanation as to why you believe it's irrelevant, and you seem to want continue with this incredibly specific digression that has little bearing on what's actually being discussed. Not to mention that I don't think you have a strong grasp on what racism means, at least not in any sense I'm familiar with, including the ones that wrong. I at least can't wrap my head around how stating that black people still find incredible power in the story of _Roots_ in spite of its sordid history can be, in any way, racist.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Black women can't live a privileged life in reality?  Is there some single black woman that can stand in for all the variety of experience black women have?  Tell me the traits of this woman, please.



OOOO, whatboutism.  Sorry, not bothering.



> This moves the goal posts.



No, it doesn't.  This is exactly what we've been talking about.  And by "we" I mean the people who know what this is all about.  If you're not one of them, I suggest some research on the subject.



> (I note in passing that JK Rawlings isn't accused of being unable to write believably of the travails of a teenage boy, despite never having been one.)



Because she's writing about Fantasy Boy in Fantasy Land.  That plays right into what I said.  His trials don't need to mirror the IRL trials of IRL Boy because he's _not_ IRL Boy, he's Fantasy Boy.



> But if you open up the possibility that I could learn and study about being someone other than who I am, and then I would no longer be 'out of my league' you've totally changed the terms of this debate.  Previously it was asserted that it was not possible for a "white male" to write about a "black woman".  Now you've given a path by which he could do so.  Now it's as if you are disagreeing with me while agreeing with me.  Now that the goal post have moved, we aren't as far apart as all that.



I don't know who asserted what, and frankly: I don't care.  A lot of people like to shoot their mouths off about what Cultural Appropriation is or isn't.  I spent the time to learn about it as part of my major, so I can, with a _reasonable_ certainty say I know what it _is _and I cannot be held accountable for what other people might claim.

And yes, I _have_ read theories by a few that a white person can never write about a black person, or should never, or that a man should never write about a woman, and so on and forth.  These people are by-and-large the minority and generally considered on the extreme end.  The general consensus is that you shouldn't write about things you don't know about without putting in some reasonable effort to learn about them (and then since you would know about them, the statement wouldn't apply to you).  

The goal posts haven't been moved.  You've just been claiming the extremes are the norms, and this is false.



> No, quite the contrary.  These are the experiences of life that are most important.



YOU may think so, but the vast majoritydoes not agree with you.  So on an Occams Razor scale between "the vast majority be wrong because you think these things are important" and "you must be wrong because the vast majority disagrees with you" I'm going to think that the obvious answer here is: you are wrong.



> They are what you want to write about and to a large part what makes a story worthwhile.  You change the setting perhaps to provide novelty, but its those core and common experiences that give the story power - loss, death, love, friendship, pain, failure, success, and so forth.  We could refine that list a lot to more and more specific, but they'd still hold a lot in common.



These subjects are so meaningless as to not even warrant discussion.  Yes, people want to read about "loss, death, love, friendship, pain, failure, success, and so forth" but they want to read about the guy who had the _unique_ loss.  The _weird_ death.  The _crazy_ love.  The _impossible_ friendship.  The _extreme_ pain.  The _punishing_ failure.  The_ incredible_ success.  They don't want to read about Bob and Joe's normal adventures in normal time.  



> Well, yes and no.   We might never have been marked from the time we were a year old with a lightning bolt and been the chosen one destined to fight a dark wizard, but that is not IMO why a book like Harry Potter was so successful.



Then lets take the fantasy out of it and talk about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is for all intents and purposes, Harry Potter but without the magic.  This book was successful for many of the same reasons Harry Potter was, it wrote about a subject in a manner that was familiar to the target audience.  It didn't spice things up with magic but fundamentally while Hollywood did a lot of that, Harry Potter was your usual coming-of-age story...spiced up with some magic.  

Now I can't speak to the research or input these writers got on their subject, or their personal knowledge of it, but my point is: they wrote stories to appeal to a certain target demographic.  It _worked_ because it connected with those readers.  That's all I'm saying about if your want to write the IRL Adventures of Black Female.  You're writing a product to appeal to a certain target demographic so you need to _know your stuff_.



> We have a very different idea of what literature is.  Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling could in fact be an important part of a very good story.  I'm more terrified of Cold-Calling than almost anything I can think of.



Humor aside, I don't care what your definition of literature is.  We have plenty of sample material based on what books get read a lot and what books don't that we can _objectively_ say what sort of material makes for interesting literature and what sort of material _doesn't_.  You'll note that Tolkein doesn't have a book detailing the 61 years between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings because what Bilbo did can be summed up in a couple sentences: he went home with his money and led a nice normal life for a really long time.  Because noone is going to read that book.  Noone is going to _buy_ that book.  But they'll happily read the book that surmises Bilbo's life in a short paragraph.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> This is where our conversation must end...




I'm afraid so.  I'm finding I can't continue this discussion without really telling you what I think.  In as gentle of terms as I can muster, you live in a world of boxes, labels, and stereotypes which you cast around freely and impose on people with arguments from averages and statistics and other crazy nonsense.   The thing you most remind me of is shouting with the son of the local head of the KKK over whether average IQ's proved blacks were inferior.  I find your whole worldview just as detestable and it has pretty much the same basis.

You say, "I at least can't wrap my head around how stating that black people still find incredible power in the story of Roots in spite of its sordid history can be, in any way, racist."

Well, you might could wrap your head around that more easily if you actually had contemplated what you actually said and what I said in response.  Banal generalities like your strawman aren't the problem.   I already made it clear that I have no problem with people finding incredible power in the story of roots in spite of its sordid history, so pretending that is what you said is just a really crappy thing to do.

What you actually said was, "I do know many black people who still see within Roots their stories...essentially, black stories told by black artists, and still powerful for that very reason."  

You are probably sadly right, but it disgusts me that the test of a story's importance seems not to be truth or quality, but rather the color of the person who told it.  You'll happily apply a double standard there and not be the slightest ashamed about it.   That's the problem I have here.  I don't mind that a story spoke to them.  I do mind that the only reason it spoke to them is the color of the author.

Your way will never bring healing, only division.  It breeds hatred and contempt and irrationality.



> You've dismissed that which is most relevant to the conversation without so much as an explanation as to why you believe it's irrelevant, and you seem to want continue with this incredibly specific digression that has little bearing on what's actually being discussed.




I can't even imagine how you think that.

We have a very different theory on what it means to be human and what it means to be moral.  You accused me of not knowing what "identity" means.  I think you are quite wrong.  We have a fundamental disagreement on its importance.  Let's remove all ambiguity from the term.   In your world view, a person's identity is the collective groups that they belong to - that is the thing that makes them the same as other people (at least by your agreed upon classification scheme).   In Latin, you are talking about _identitas_.  Your view of morality is that we should treat people according to the collective group that they belong to according to your preferred classification scheme (race, gender, sexuality, etc).  Ironically, you call this 'not being racist'.   My view could not be further away from yours.  In my world view, a person's identity is the thing that makes them uniquely themselves - what in the Latin we would call the _ipseitas_.   In my world view, the person's individual ipseitas is vastly more important than their identitas.  Only from knowing the ipseitas do we truly know them and treat them as individuals rather than as labels on a box or numbers in a bin.   If all we know is their identitas, we might know something about them, but usually not nearly as much as we would think because every identitas is tainted by stereotypes and biases.   Only if we see past that can we know the individual.   In my world view, the way we treat each other morally is to treat them according to what they deserve as individuals, preferably with the same respect that we would like to be treated with as individuals.  We don't lump them into classes and then think we've got enough to go by.   We call that in my world prejudice.   We call it that, because that is what it is.


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## Celebrim (Mar 8, 2018)

shidaku said:


> OOOO, whatboutism.




Wait, how is that... you know what, nevermind.



> Sorry, not bothering.




Me too.



> You'll note that Tolkein doesn't have a book detailing the 61 years between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings because what Bilbo did can be summed up in a couple sentences: he went home with his money and led a nice normal life for a really long time.  Because noone is going to read that book.  Noone is going to _buy_ that book.  But they'll happily read the book that surmises Bilbo's life in a short paragraph.




PS: Ironically, Tolkien addresses this very point in 'The Hobbit', but his conclusion is subtly different than yours.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 8, 2018)

Eltab said:


> How do you propose to do that?
> The fact continues to stand: most people of -insert advantaged group here- are not guilty of any act that caused other people to be disadvantaged.




To cut right to the heart of this oft-repeated point is that the reason that it is Cis-White-Male-Bob's burden to "do something about" things he didn't _personally_ do is because he benefits from the systems; the institutional, cultural, legal, philosophical and social systems established by people who _did_.  We're not asking Bob to take responsibility for Grandpa Joe.  We're asking Bob to understand what Grandpa Joe did, and to recognize that Bob benefits from those things and that many of those things were bad.  

Lets say your Great-Grandpa was a two-bit criminal who robbed a train.  With that stolen money he bought a lot of land, where he discovered a lot of oil, where he started a successful oil business, which then payed for you to go to Stanford while you drove a nice car, lived in a nice house, and eventually married a pretty wife and used that money and education your Great-Grandpa's robbery money generated to let her be a stay-at-home mom and send your kids to private schools.

This is _exactly_ what my ancestors did.  Just replace "money" with "land" and you have the birth of the United States.  I didn't do anything personally, but I benefit from the actions of people who did.  Since I cannot simply reject those benefits it is my responsibility to be aware of their impact and _do something_ about it.  Just because Grandpappy is dead, doesn't erase what he did, or how wrong it was.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Wait, how is that... you know what, nevermind.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




If you're gonna chicken out, don't bother to open your mouth in the first place.  Here's your membership card in my ignore list.


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## Shasarak (Mar 8, 2018)

Doug McCrae said:


> This is all basically fine, the treatment of the villagers won't be racist or anything. The only problematic aspect imo is the wereleopard and how much that's played up. Like there might be a whole evil tribe of wereleopards who are in conflict with the good tribe. It's a problem because of the idea that black people are closer to nature, particularly the savage, animalistic aspects of nature, than non-black people. One can see that idea in relatively benign form in the superhero Storm, for example.




Wouldnt the fact that they were a tribal village living in the jungle make them close to nature by definition rather then just because they were a "black" village?


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## Hussar (Mar 8, 2018)

The issue in my mind is simply one of opportunity. If I want to run a Viking inspired game, I’ve got a mountain of resources to use. Heck forty years ago the Dieties and Demigods gave a dnd treatment to Norse gods. The DMG has rules for Viking ships. The PHB has equipment lists for creating Viking inspired characters. 

Sure it might be shallow as all get out but at least it’s a start. 

If I wanted to use 11th century central Africa as an inspiration, I’ve got .... nothing. I’ve got to write virtually everything myself. 

And that’s the problem. You want cannibal were leopards in your setting?  Great. Fill your boots. But what else is there?  

I can open Storm Kings Thunder right now and see Viking longships in the art. Sail to the home of the frost giant jarl. All viking inspired elements. And I could do that in dnd forty years ago. 

Let’s see you set up a Central African kingdom using only the core books.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Norwegians are conscious that they are the Norse of today, and know about the Viking Era. They try to preserve the valuable aspects of viking era society − like courage, democracy, high status of women, reverence of nature − while leaving the less valuable aspects behind − like violence.
> 
> When they see things like horned helmets, they know it is absurd, and just treat it as silly fun.
> 
> ...




No country, with any history to it, is ever 100% innocent. There is some good and bad in all countries.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 8, 2018)

Hussar said:


> The issue in my mind is simply one of opportunity. If I want to run a Viking inspired game, I’ve got a mountain of resources to use. Heck forty years ago the Dieties and Demigods gave a dnd treatment to Norse gods. The DMG has rules for Viking ships. The PHB has equipment lists for creating Viking inspired characters.
> 
> Sure it might be shallow as all get out but at least it’s a start.
> 
> ...




Your right! Civilization was late in coming to Sub-Saharan Africa, there is no getting around that, that means there was not much writing. Most of Africa was unknown to most Europeans in the 11th century, much of it was still being explored as late as the 19th century. Egypt is an African country, but that is not what is usually meant when the term "African" is used. A fantasy world is not out world, if their are things we don't know about a real culture, we make up cultures, often based on popular fiction such as Tarzan for instance. This doesn't reflect real African culture, but if we were to do real African culture we couldn't include magic, because the real Africa never had magic.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 8, 2018)

> Civilization was late in coming to Sub-Saharan Africa, there is no getting around that...




The sub-Saharan kingdom of Kush rose about the same time as the Greek Dark Ages- @1000 BCE- hardly “late”.


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## Hussar (Mar 8, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> Your right! Civilization was late in coming to Sub-Saharan Africa, there is no getting around that, that means there was not much writing. Most of Africa was unknown to most Europeans in the 11th century, much of it was still being explored as late as the 19th century. Egypt is an African country, but that is not what is usually meant when the term "African" is used. A fantasy world is not out world, if their are things we don't know about a real culture, we make up cultures, often based on popular fiction such as Tarzan for instance. This doesn't reflect real African culture, but if we were to do real African culture we couldn't include magic, because the real Africa never had magic.




Well, since this is in the context of D&D, magic is kinda part and parcel.  D&D has never been a history simulator and was never meant to be.  At best we're going to get an "inspired by" sort of sub-Saharan Africa setting, not one that is a direct translation.  And, really, all the elements of D&D are based on pretty fast and loose interpretations and inspirations.  There are few, if any, attempts to directly translate historical elements into the game.  Fair enough.  But, I'm imagining a fictional conversation when D&D was being created.

Fictional Gary Gygax - OK, guys, I have this cool idea for a fantasy game where we're going to mash up all this stuff from fantasy, myth, legend and whatnot.  What ideas do you have for me?

Fictional Bob - Well, the vikings had berserkers.  Let's have a class that's the biggest bad ass around, most HP, strongest and all around ass kicker.

FGG:  Cool.  Anything else?

Fictional Dave - Well, there's druids.  Hrm, let's make them really powerful spell casters and, in a few years, we'll release a new edition where they're arguably one of the two strongest classes in the game.  

FGG:  Ok, right.  What else?

Fictional Steve - Hrm.  Howzabout we draw on Arthurian stuff.  We'll make a knight class called a paladin that's so much more powerful than any other class that it has to have a slew of restrictions put on it just to reign it in.

FGG:  Fantastic.  I love it.  And?  What about Africa?

Fictional Larry - I know.  We'll have cannibal were-leopards.

FGG:  ... ummm... well... how about we save that for a later supplement.  We don't want to get too far out there.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

shidaku said:


> To cut right to the heart of this oft-repeated point is that the reason that it is Cis-White-Male-Bob's burden to "do something about" things he didn't _personally_ do is because he benefits from the systems; the institutional, cultural, legal, philosophical and social systems established by people who _did_.  We're not asking Bob to take responsibility for Grandpa Joe.  We're asking Bob to understand what Grandpa Joe did, and to recognize that Bob benefits from those things and that many of those things were bad.
> 
> Lets say your Great-Grandpa was a two-bit criminal who robbed a train.  With that stolen money he bought a lot of land, where he discovered a lot of oil, where he started a successful oil business, which then payed for you to go to Stanford while you drove a nice car, lived in a nice house, and eventually married a pretty wife and used that money and education your Great-Grandpa's robbery money generated to let her be a stay-at-home mom and send your kids to private schools.
> 
> This is _exactly_ what my ancestors did.  Just replace "money" with "land" and you have the birth of the United States.  I didn't do anything personally, but I benefit from the actions of people who did.  Since I cannot simply reject those benefits it is my responsibility to be aware of their impact and _do something_ about it.  Just because Grandpappy is dead, doesn't erase what he did, or how wrong it was.




My grandfather never had slaves, never exploited blacks, worked hard, saved lives, and made the world a better place.

So, you owe my grandfather money, then.


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## Hussar (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> My grandfather never had slaves, never exploited blacks, worked hard, saved lives, and made the world a better place.
> 
> So, you owe my grandfather money, then.




Funnily enough, that's true of my grandfather as well.  He was an Air Force officer in the Canadian Forces.  

Something no non-white non-male could be at the time.  

Even people who can claim to have worked hard, saved lives and made the world a better place, still probably benefited from racism.


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## terraleon (Mar 8, 2018)

Polyhedral Columbia said:


> Thanks for this article.
> 
> Existing Sub-Saharan African-inspired cultures in the D&D Multiverse:




There is Garund, from Paizo.

And Southlands, from Kobold Press. I'm close with the authors, I know they put in a lot of research.


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## terraleon (Mar 8, 2018)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The sub-Saharan kingdom of Kush rose about the same time as the Greek Dark Ages- @1000 BCE- hardly “late”.




Kush isn't really sub-Saharan. It's between Ethiopia (or what is usually called "Sheba" in that time period) and Egypt. It's kind of Sahara-parallel.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> My grandfather never had slaves, never exploited blacks, worked hard, saved lives, and made the world a better place.
> 
> So, you owe my grandfather money, then.




Wooooooosh!  
My point ----------------------->
Your head.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 8, 2018)

terraleon said:


> Kush isn't really sub-Saharan. It's between Ethiopia (or what is usually called "Sheba" in that time period) and Egypt. It's kind of Sahara-parallel.




Just looking at the map, Kush was located sort of where Sudan is now- a bit south of Egypt.  A good portion of its northern region was partly in the Sahara.  Much of its southern region was below the Sahara.  Do a search for “ancient sub-Saharan” cultures, and it pops up as one of the first.

So I’ll stick with my response.

I’ll also mention that the kingdom of Punt (@2500BCE)_ could _be considered here but for the fact we don’t know exactly where it was.  They traded with the Egyptians, but the Egyptians didn’t do us the favor of saying where they were located.  Such has led to scholars putting it all over the map, including the Arabian Peninsula.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 8, 2018)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The sub-Saharan kingdom of Kush rose about the same time as the Greek Dark Ages- @1000 BCE- hardly “late”.



Funny, I've never heard the Kingdom of Kush mentioned in Social Studies, World civilization class. There was Sumer, there was Babylon, there were the Egyptians and their pyramids, there was Persia, the Ancient Greeks, China, Alexander's Empire, there was the Roman Republic, The Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance in Europe, there was Galileo and his observations of mountains on the Moon. The Chinese invented gunpowder. Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and discovered two new continents, Magellan sailed around the World. James Cook discovered Australia, and Antarctica. The Spaniards and he Portuguese conquered Central and South America. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain The American Revolution led to the establishment of the Worlds most successful Democratic Republic, so I wonder why the Kingdom of Kush was not mentioned in all of this, was it an oversight? What were the great accomplishments of that kingdom which were of note in a World History class? 

There was a reason why Africa was called "the Dark Continent" and that had nothing to do with skin color. Africa was "explored" by Europeans. The native Africans didn't have good maps of their continent, the Europeans had to draw maps from their explorations to fill in the blank areas. Africa is where the human race began, it is the oldest continually inhabited continent by humans on the planet Earth, yet we were still exploring parts of it and filling in blank areas on our map in the 19th century. "Doctor Livingston I presume!" Are you saying that all of this is wrong? 

Egypt was a great civilization, it build impressive monuments such as the Pyramids, they built temples with columns, they had mathematicians, and they studied the stars so they could predict when the Nile would flood. But the Egyptians were North Africans. Hannibal was also a North African, that gave the Romans a lot of trouble. Alexandria, in Egypt was a great center of learning and the home of many philosophers an mathematicians, but most of Africa's civilizations that I heard about were from North Africa. Why do you suppose the Kingdom of Kush was not covered in this World civilizations class? Was it a conspiracy?


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> Othering is a problem, but Wakanda is the opposite of othering.
> 
> As a matter of pure history, African culture collapsed in the West's middle ages, in part owing to desertification as the Sahara entered into a expansion phase and swallowed the once fertile farmland that supported the African empires.  The result was a hodge-podge of decaying petty kingdoms that never engaged in anything like the miracle of the Northern European renaissance and never produced a large body of literature and exactly zero science.  The sub-Saharan African cultures had themselves never advanced much past early iron age culture, and so were locked in a cultural paradigm roughly 3000 years behind the cultures of Europe and the Middle and Far East.  Besides which, isolated by distance and the Sahara desert, these cultures never truly interacted with any of the big three advanced cultural centers, and were largely known only through limited contact with coastal trading cultures (often through Arabic intermediaries).   As such, the reality of the world was that Africa was largely unknown in Europe, Persia, India, and China and was equally exotic to all of them.  No real African nation was interacting with any of them to any great degree, much less actually exchanging ideas with those cultures in literature, engineering and the sciences.   The same could not be said of those cultures themselves, even when they in fact seemed exotic and strange to each other.   Note for example how European culture serves much the same role in Japanese anime as Eastern culture serves in Western media.  Rome and Han China could be said to be peers, but after the fall of the culturally Phoenician Carthage (itself originally a colonial power) on the extreme northern coast, that could never again be said of any African nation.
> 
> ...



I couldn't have said it better myself, the truth is inconvenient for us westerners who are hand wringing over European colonialism.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> Funny, I've never heard the Kingdom of Kush mentioned in Social Studies, World civilization class. There was Sumer, there was Babylon, there were the Egyptians and their pyramids, there was Persia, the Ancient Greeks, China, Alexander's Empire, there was the Roman Republic, The Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance in Europe, there was Galileo and his observations of mountains on the Moon. The Chinese invented gunpowder. Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and discovered two new continents, Magellan sailed around the World. James Cook discovered Australia, and Antarctica. The Spaniards and he Portuguese conquered Central and South America. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain The American Revolution led to the establishment of the Worlds most successful Democratic Republic, so I wonder why the Kingdom of Kush was not mentioned in all of this, was it an oversight? What were the great accomplishments of that kingdom which were of note in a World History class?
> 
> There was a reason why Africa was called "the Dark Continent" and that had nothing to do with skin color. Africa was "explored" by Europeans. The native Africans didn't have good maps of their continent, the Europeans had to draw maps from their explorations to fill in the blank areas. Africa is where the human race began, it is the oldest continually inhabited continent by humans on the planet Earth, yet we were still exploring parts of it and filling in blank areas on our map in the 19th century. "Doctor Livingston I presume!" Are you saying that all of this is wrong?
> 
> Egypt was a great civilization, it build impressive monuments such as the Pyramids, they built temples with columns, they had mathematicians, and they studied the stars so they could predict when the Nile would flood. But the Egyptians were North Africans. Hannibal was also a North African, that gave the Romans a lot of trouble. Alexandria, in Egypt was a great center of learning and the home of many philosophers an mathematicians, but most of Africa's civilizations that I heard about were from North Africa. Why do you suppose the Kingdom of Kush was not covered in this World civilizations class? Was it a conspiracy?




You not having knowledge of something does not in fact equate to said knowledge not being accurate... just saying, there seems to be quite a few "African history experts" popping up in this thread with suspect assumptions and facts. 

Oh and to answer your question about why it wasn't covered in World civilizations class... I would say for similar reasons that the contributions of blacks, hispanics and other minorities in America are rarely if ever taught in Amercan History classes...


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## Celebrim (Mar 8, 2018)

Thomas Bowman said:


> Funny, I've never heard the Kingdom of Kush mentioned in Social Studies, World civilization class.




You might have under the term Nubia.  Kush, like Punt, is an unfortunate bit player in the sweep of history.  As an underdog, you can root for from the sidelines, and for a while it ruled over Egypt when Egypt started to enter into its final senility.  But it got beat down hard by the Assyrians and the Romans, and eventually, cut off from the rest of the world by being a landlocked country and with its neighbors declining in importance it sort of faded away leaving only a legacy of temporary military glory, a few small pyramids, and a lot might have beens.  By the time the Islamic colonists/conquerers swept over North Africa it was gone, it's native language already extinct.

If the language could be cracked, it might enter into the history textbooks.  But history isn't really the study of the past: it's the study of books.  With no primary texts we know how to read, there isn't much anything to put in a history textbook that isn't pure speculation.  

In any fantasy version of Africa, I think it would be important to explore those might have beens.  A fantasy version of Africa that was just a bit wetter might well have told a very different story.  There is no need to adhere to the same sweep of tragedy, and I'm sure most reviewers would rather have a triumphant Africa than one that seems to lose every roll of the dice.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> I'm afraid so.  I'm finding I can't continue this discussion without really telling you what I think.  In as gentle of terms as I can muster, you live in a world of boxes, labels, and stereotypes which you cast around freely and impose on people with arguments from averages and statistics and other crazy nonsense.   The thing you most remind me of is shouting with the son of the local head of the KKK over whether average IQ's proved blacks were inferior.  I find your whole worldview just as detestable and it has pretty much the same basis.
> 
> You say, "I at least can't wrap my head around how stating that black people still find incredible power in the story of Roots in spite of its sordid history can be, in any way, racist."
> 
> ...




<Insert played-out Luke Skywalker quote here>

I was going to be quite done with this, because between the part where you suddenly shifted topics to Alex Haley's plagiarism (I'm not going to bother responding to anything more about this, because I've answered your objections regarding "racism" quite clearly in posts not directly quoting you up-thread, you can go read them on your own) and then accusing _me_ of shifting the goal posts, and then dismissing decades (if not centuries) of research and data clearly detailing historical and still quite current inequities as... what was the term you used... ah, there it is, "crazy nonsense", I no longer have any reason to believe in your sincerity to continue this discussion with actual intellectual honesty. But then, you were willing to extend that same courtesy to me when I clearly hadn't deserved it, and besides, there's so, so, _so much wrong_ with everything I've quoted above, about me, about the people with whom I share an ideology, about your own ideology quite frankly, that I'm going to take one more crack at it. Don't get me wrong, I harbor no illusions I'll be able to dispel your own, but there's some definite mischaracterizations that need to be corrected, and hopefully they'll be illuminating to _somebody._

First and foremost, you seen to be laboring under the illusion that you live in a world, or that your worldview is at least promoting, a world without boxes. This is a lie, whether you believe it yourself or not. The "perfect world" you seem to describe is very much a world of boxes. Or to be more accurate, box. See, your worldview possesses one single box. And while you like to pretend that all of humanity is welcome in the box, every bit of empirical reality reveals that that too, is a lie. Because the box was built by you. You define its limits and its borders. And you don't seem to realize how truly exclusionary that box is. And it allows you to declare that everybody outside that box is part of the problem. It smacks of that "color-blindness" nonsense from the 90's, which was supposed to be "anti-racism" but was only able to conceive of "racism" as "talking about race, like at all", and so only extended the courtesy of "color-blindness" to people who conformed to the norm. Which is white. And it allows conversations like "people of color nearly-universally face statistically worse outcomes in our society by nearly every measure that matters and here is the mountains of data and evidence to support that" to be easily dismissed as "crazy nonsense".

And because you don't realize that you've built yourself a box that is exclusionary and isolationist you can't imagine there being a different way of being a box. Because your central thesis seems to rest on two utterly false premises: (a) that every human experience is universal, and (b) that it is impossible to understand or empathize with somebody if you cannot personally share their experiences. 

But here's the thing. Yes, the world I live in is full of boxes. Hundredes of thousands of millions of boxes. An infinite supply of boxes. But these are not the static, isolated boxes that you live in. They move and interact and merge and split in an infinite array of conflict and celebration and compassion and empathy and _learning._ Yes, it's chaotic. And yes, it can lead to conflict, and yes, that conflict can even lead to negative outcomes. The current post-wave balkanization of feminism, for instance, has left the movement with little in the way of a cohesive, central ideology, and that has made it easier for enemies of feminism to mis-characterize and demonize it. But these conflicts have a way of creating new ideas and moving... well, movements forward, as they have always done dating at least as far back as the debates between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.

Because while _you_ may treat everyone with respect and as individuals regardless of their identities, and while that is admirable, _that is not the way the world currently works or has ever worked._ Individual prejudices and systemic inequities still exist, in ample quantities, basically worldwide, and we do not solve them by sticking our heads in the sand pretending that they don't. And we _definitely_ don't solve them by castigating anybody with the audacity to actually speak up out about them. 

And here's the thing; despite living in all of our different boxes, we are still able to come together, to celebrate our differences, to understand one another, to empathize with one another, and to share in knowledge and learning and move our conversations forward. Even if we can't necessarily share in the experiences of others. Our very existence proves your central premises wrong.

There's nothing left to really say. I've got a Story Hour recap I've fallen behind on and session planning I've fallen _way_ behind on, and I don't see how there is any way I could more clearly elucidate the points I'm trying to make. Maybe someone else will do a better job of it. Or at least a different job. Which would in itself be worthwhile.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Mar 8, 2018)

Hussar said:


> The issue in my mind is simply one of opportunity. If I want to run a Viking inspired game, I’ve got a mountain of resources to use. Heck forty years ago the Dieties and Demigods gave a dnd treatment to Norse gods. The DMG has rules for Viking ships. The PHB has equipment lists for creating Viking inspired characters.
> 
> Sure it might be shallow as all get out but at least it’s a start.
> 
> ...




I've heard points like this in the past.  Do you think the Eurocentric representation in traditional RPG is something other than the market providing what most of the people want?   Is there even close to the same level of demand for Africa-centric RPG products in the market at large?


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 8, 2018)

Celebrim said:


> You might have under the term Nubia.  Kush, like Punt, is an unfortunate bit player in the sweep of history.  As an underdog, you can root for from the sidelines, and for a while it ruled over Egypt when Egypt started to enter into its final senility.  But it got beat down hard by the Assyrians and the Romans, and eventually, cut off from the rest of the world by being a landlocked country and with its neighbors declining in importance it sort of faded away leaving only a legacy of temporary military glory, a few small pyramids, and a lot might have beens.  By the time the Islamic colonists/conquerers swept over North Africa it was gone, it's native language already extinct.
> 
> If the language could be cracked, it might enter into the history textbooks.  But history isn't really the study of the past: it's the study of books.  With no primary texts we know how to read, there isn't much anything to put in a history textbook that isn't pure speculation.
> 
> In any fantasy version of Africa, I think it would be important to explore those might have beens.  A fantasy version of Africa that was just a bit wetter might well have told a very different story.  There is no need to adhere to the same sweep of tragedy, and I'm sure most reviewers would rather have a triumphant Africa than one that seems to lose every roll of the dice.




I quite agree. Without hard information, we have to substitute our own fiction. In my view there is nothing wrong with the Jungles of Chult. In our own world, Africa is still being explored, we have a complete map, but we are learning new things about it every day, because so much of it was unrecorded. I think "dark continents" have their place in many fantasy worlds, and their is nothing wrong with including them in a fantasy world with lost civilizations and ruins to explore. Much of D&D is about exploration after all.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I've heard points like this in the past.  Do you think the Eurocentric representation in traditional RPG is something other than the market providing what most of the people want?   Is there even close to the same level of demand for Africa-centric RPG products in the market at large?




It's kind of a chicken and egg question... isn't it? 

EDIT: In other words until Vampire the Masquerade made such a big splash... was there no demand to play vampires, or was it just not being met and thus those who would buy a game about vampires vs. say a traditional euro-fantasy game were just moving on to other things besides ttrpgs since they weren't being catered to?


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> It's kind of a chicken and egg question... isn't it?
> 
> EDIT: In other words until Vampire the Masquerade made such a big splash... was there no demand to play vampires, or was it just not being met and thus those who would buy a game about vampires vs. say a traditional euro-fantasy game moving on to other things besides ttrpgs?




True.  Though I remember seeing some d20 fantasy Africa stuff.  Did it sell?  Of course that is small publisher stuff.  If they did an edition that drew as much on non European myth and legend and set the games in these types of areas would it hinder sales of "D&D Woke", or would it drive them higher?  I'm guessing WoTC has some data on this that influences their decisions.   They took some heat online for ToA so it will be interesting to see what they do next in that regard.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> True.  Though I remember seeing some d20 fantasy Africa stuff.  Did it sell?  Of course that is small publisher stuff.  If they did an edition that drew as much on non European myth and legend and set the games in these types of areas would it hinder sales of "D&D Woke", or would it drive them higher?  I'm guessing WoTC has some data on this that influences their decisions.   They took some heat online for ToA so it will be interesting to see what they do next in that regard.




I don't know honestly... However I would say be careful with assuming that any fantasy Africa stuff would give us a correct indicator... I say this because how it's worded above (correctly or incorrectly) seems to assume other factors like quality, marketing, portrayals, etc. aren't also a factor beyond it being African-esque fantasy.  The thing about Vampire the Masquerade was it made playing a vampire cool through it's use of marketing, quality of art, gamebook fiction, portrayal of vamps, etc.   I don't just want African-esque fantasy... I want good African-esque fantasy that has cool artwork, makes me want to play in the setting and portrays the cultures and people it's based on in a nuanced way... basically what I look for in any rpg stuff I am willing to spend my money on.


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## Thomas Bowman (Mar 8, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Funnily enough, that's true of my grandfather as well.  He was an Air Force officer in the Canadian Forces.
> 
> Something no non-white non-male could be at the time.
> 
> Even people who can claim to have worked hard, saved lives and made the world a better place, still probably benefited from racism.




Benefitted from racism? I really can't think of anyone who has benefitted from racism. Racism is always a negative thing.

I am done talking about this subject, too many pitfalls and emotion, I'd rather talk about Vikings and medieval Europe, a much safer subject.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Hussar said:


> Even people who can claim to have worked hard, saved lives and made the world a better place, still probably benefited from racism.




This is the moment, when the discussion simply dissolves into irrational anti-white hatespeech. Generalized racism against white ethnic groups.

The discourse punishes white ethnic groups for being ‘white’ and does harm for no other reason except that the ethnicity is white.

The discourse does evil.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> I don't know honestly... However I would say be careful with assuming that any fantasy Africa stuff would give us a correct indicator... I say this because how it's worded above (correctly or incorrectly) seems to assume other factors like quality, marketing, portrayals, etc. aren't also a factor beyond it being African-esque fantasy.  The thing about Vampire the Masquerade was it made playing a vampire cool through it's use of marketing, quality of art, gamebook fiction, portrayal of vamps, etc.   I don't just want African-esque fantasy... I want good African-esque fantasy that has cool artwork, makes me want to play in the setting and portrays the cultures and people it's based on in a nuanced way... basically what I look for in any rpg stuff I am willing to spend my money on.




When i said small publisher stuff I was referring to it most likely not having the production values of a WOTC or Paizo book. Writing quality is up to individual tastes of course.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Muslims today, benefit from centuries of Islamic imperialism that perpetrated violent totalitarianism and ethnic cleansing of aboriginal peoples.

But where is the outcry against Muslim ethnicities?

The racism is directed against European ethnicities, only. Irrational racism. Unethical racism.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Currently, I am enjoying the show, Black Lightning, it is a superhero scifi that takes place in a black community. It has only one significant white character, the ‘token white’. But the story is sympathetic to him, and treats him as an equal. He and the superhero are partners of a kind.

An other scifi that takes place in a black community is ... heh, I forget what it is called, I stopped watching it. It annoyed me. It treats the few white characters with little sympathy, placing them in subservient and/or silly roles. It comes across as hateful, racist, and I need not watch it.

To reverse the roles of injustice, is still the same injustice. No one heals. Nothing gets better. It is the same kind of hate and racism. Reversal causes the same dysfunctional paradigm to persist.



Comparing these shows, ‘authority’ and personal agency turns out to be a vital requirement for portraying a minority ethnic group. In this black community, the white is the minority ethnic group.


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## Staccat0 (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Muslims today, benefit from centuries of Islamic imperialism that perpetrated violent totalitarianism and ethnic cleansing of aboriginal peoples.
> 
> *But where is the outcry against Muslim ethnicities?
> *



Hopefully in Muslim majority nations where it belongs? I doubt many of us have a vested interest in improving our children's lives by talking about that so why bother? Just to deflect with transparent whataboutisms?

There is nothing punishing or racist about acknowledging why other people have had disadvantages historically and how that benefitted people like me. It's just something built into our society and to ignore it is cowardice. Attacking other people's culture's as a defense from our own glass house would be childish. 



> The racism is directed against European ethnicities, only. Irrational racism. Unethical racism.



You'll be fine.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Currently, I am enjoying the show, Black Lightning, it is a superhero scifi that takes place in a black community. It has only one significant white character, the ‘token white’. But the story is sympathetic to him, and treats him as an equal. He and the superhero are partners of a kind.
> 
> An other scifi that takes place in a black community is ... heh, I forget what it is called, I stopped watching it. It annoyed me. It treats the few white characters with little sympathy, placing them in subservient and/or silly roles. It comes across as hateful, racist, and I need not watch it.
> 
> ...




I'd really love to know what the second show you are referencing in this post is since, at least if it's American tv, what you' re describing (whites in a subservient and silly role compared to minorities)  is so rare as to mark this setup (if accurately described) as a rare anomaly. You've certainly piqued my curiosity...  Any chance you'll remember the name?


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Archeologically, slavery has been around for thousands of years, since the Bronze Age. It evolved in a combination of people using labor to pay off financial debts and people being captured in war and coerced to do labor. The lines between these two categories often blurred. Slavery is still going on today. An estimated 40,000,000 humans are currently involved in slavery today. The slaves are mostly in Muslim nations, and mostly women.

Slavery is as old as civilization. Just about every ethnic group from China to Norway to Saudia to Nigeria has seen the institution of slavery. Even in the Bible, as old as the ages that it describes are, slavery is already a fact of life.

It is a white ethnicity that was the first, and at that time the only ethnicity, to abolish slavery. Namely the United Kingdom.

Ending the institution of slavery is something the ‘white’ British ethnic groups can be proud.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> I'd really love to know what the second show you are referencing in this post is since, at least if it's American tv, what you' re describing (whites in a subservient and silly role compared to minorities)  is so rare as to mark this setup (if accurately described) as a rare anomaly. You've certainly piqued my curiosity...  Any chance you'll remember the name?




I remembered the name after I posted, Superstition. Its subtle racism is a shame too, because otherwise, it covers subject matter that would have found interesting. A show about magic is always a plus!

By the way, in this show, the whites are the ‘minority’. The blacks are the defining ‘majority’ and the dominant ethnic group.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Archeologically, slavery has been around for thousands of years, since the Bronze Age. It evolved in a combination of people using labor to pay off financial debts and people being captured in war and coerced to do labor. The lines between these two categories often blurred. Slavery is still going on today. An estimated 40,000,000 humans are currently involved in slavery today. The slaves are mostly in Muslim nations, and mostly women.
> 
> Slavery is as old as civilization. Just about every ethnic group from China to Norway to Saudia to Nigeria has seen the institution of slavery. Even in the Bible, as old as the ages that it describes are, slavery is already a fact of life.
> 
> ...




There is a _significant_ difference between slavery as it has been practiced by various cultures and civilizations over the millennia and even indentured servitude the very specific type of chattel slavery practiced predominantly upon Africans (as well as occasionally native populations of the Americas, though that fell out of practice fairly early on) by predominantly European colonizing forces in the Americas. To compare it to what the ancient Greeks and Romans were doing is to betray a lack of knowledge about those differences.

And yes yes, African peoples participated in and benefited from chattel slavery as well, nobody denies that. But as been pointed out repeatedly, this isn't about assigning blame for what one's ancestors did. It's about addressing the legacies of those actions and how they impact people _today._ Because slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining; these may not be in practice any longer (though in practice, schools today are more segregatd now than at any point since at least the 1970's), but combined with education funding being tied to property values, and redlining segregating neighborhoods in ways that haven't allowed those excluded to build and pass on the kinds of equity others have had access to, we live in a society where we do not have true equality of opportunity. And social mobility has been on the decline for a while now.

So no, nobody has to atone for the sins of their fathers. They should, however, recognize the significant head starts centuries of systemic racism have given most of us that others haven't had access to, and I believe we have a responsibility to do what we can to correct that. Not to give up what we have, but to find some way to share it. To this point, nobody's found a silver bullet solution to that, but I don't think there's going to be any. It's going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of time to make frustratingly incremental progress. But, as the say, the arc of history bends towards justice. So I'm hopeful.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> There is a _significant_ difference between slavery as it has been practiced by various cultures and civilizations over the millennia and even indentured servitude the very specific type of chattel slavery practiced predominantly upon Africans (as well as occasionally native populations of the Americas, though that fell out of practice fairly early on) by predominantly European colonizing forces in the Americas. To compare it to what the ancient Greeks and Romans were doing is to betray a lack of knowledge about those differences.
> 
> And yes yes, African peoples participated in and benefited from chattel slavery as well, nobody denies that. But as been pointed out repeatedly, this isn't about assigning blame for what one's ancestors did. It's about addressing the legacies of those actions and how they impact people _today._ Because slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining; these may not be in practice any longer (though in practice, schools today are more segregatd now than at any point since at least the 1970's), but combined with education funding being tied to property values, and redlining segregating neighborhoods in ways that haven't allowed those excluded to build and pass on the kinds of equity others have had access to, we live in a society where we do not have true equality of opportunity. And social mobility has been on the decline for a while now.
> 
> So no, nobody has to atone for the sins of their fathers. They should, however, recognize the significant head starts centuries of systemic racism have given most of us that others haven't had access to, and I believe we have a responsibility to do what we can to correct that. Not to give up what we have, but to find some way to share it. To this point, nobody's found a silver bullet solution to that, but I don't think there's going to be any. It's going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of time to make frustratingly incremental progress. But, as the say, the arc of history bends towards justice. So I'm hopeful.




Are you actually saying that various Muslim customs today are practicing a ‘benign’ ‘compassionate’ form of slavery. Because that would be idiotic, as well as unethical.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> It's about addressing the legacies of those actions and how they impact people _today._




Slavery is happening *today*. In Africa.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine, your comments come across as racism.

You seem to *only* direct criticism against the socalled ‘white’ ‘race’.

Even when you acknowledge other groups as equally responsible, you seem to omit any criticism against other groups.

It seems to me, you are indulging in an unethical practice of ‘selective enforcement’.

I dare you to criticize any other ethnic group with equal dedication, besides ‘white’ ethnic groups.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Are you actually saying that various Muslim customs today are practicing a ‘benign’ ‘compassionate’ form of slavery. Because that would be idiotic, as well as unethical.




No. Not at all. Let me reread what I wrote... yeah, no, definitely did not say any of that. I'm a little mind-boggled how you came to that conclusion.

But let's set aside that strawman for a second and talk about what I... think(?) you're trying to say here, which is to say "but look at what they're doing over there!" Which is a rhetorical device I thought we'd all grown out of in middle school. But to indulge you: what I'm talking about is racial and other forms of systemic inequality that exist, currently, right now, today, in the United States, which is where I live, due to centuries of legal practices that have alternatively relegated black people and other racial minorities to less-than-human, less-than-full-citizens, and not-deserving-of-the same-opportunities-as-white-people.

Now, does the sorts of oppression that occurs in other countries and other cultures currently concern me? Yes, yes it does. But, seeing as how I don't belong to those cultures, it also is not my responsibility to step in and tell them how to run things. Fortunately, literally every nation in the world has home-grown justice movements that are working to correct the oppressions within their own communities. And I do feel a responsibility to do what I can to support those movements (which is, admittedly, not much), but there's a world of a difference between supporting local women's rights movements in Muslim-run countries and us, as Americans, marching in and telling them what they ought to be doing. Because... our track record isn't exactly the greatest ourselves.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Slavery is happening *today*. In Africa.




Depending on how you want to define sex trafficking, you could make the argument that similar forms of slavery are happening *today* in the United Freaking States of America.

It's not that I don't see your point. But saying everyone else is crappier than us does not mean it's okay for us to be okay with just being a better form of crappy. *Especially* if you seem to want us to be some sort of world police to tell other countries how to handle their business, we need to be doing a better job of it ourselves first, don't you think?


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Now, does the sorts of oppression that occurs in other countries and other cultures currently concern me? Yes, yes it does. But, seeing as how I don't belong to those cultures, *it also is not my responsibility to step in* and tell them how to run things.




Regarding the Holocaust. Never again.

What you said, your refusal to intervene, suggests you are among the people who let the Holocaust happen.

This is one of the reasons why various contemporary philosophical frameworks are *ethically* bankrupt.

Humans have an obligation to facilitate justice for other humans, regardless of where they were born.

We are all humans. Members of the same human species.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Gradine, your comments come across as racism.
> 
> You seem to *only* direct criticism against the socalled ‘white’ ‘race’.
> 
> ...




Except I'm not *criticizing anyone,* *because that's not the frakking point.* I'm not on some crusade to make you feel like crap for the actions of your ancestors. All I care about is the inequities that exist in our society, *now,* and the steps that we can take to *fix them.* I don't give a  who feels guilty for what, because frankly, anybody's guilt is irrelevant. It's a distraction, so people can talk about their feelings instead of actual structural inequalities. Everything else is white noise.

I'm frankly getting really pissed off with people making me out to be some god-damned strawman white-hating bigot. Anybody who's spent two minutes reading what I'm actually saying will know that I'm anything but. If you can't get your head out of that mind space, and focus on what _really matters_, that's on you, but stop dragging my name in the mud with you.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Depending on how you want to define sex trafficking, you could make the argument that similar forms of slavery are happening *today* in the United Freaking States of America.
> 
> It's not that I don't see your point. But saying everyone else is crappier than us does not mean it's okay for us to be okay with just being a better form of crappy. *Especially* if you seem to want us to be some sort of world police to tell other countries how to handle their business, we need to be doing a better job of it ourselves first, don't you think?




You seem to lack information about what is going on today with regard to slavery. The sex trade is a small part of it.

Full, cruel, murderous, evil, slavery is flourishing today, across the Muslim world, especially in Africa.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> I remembered the name after I posted, Superstition. Its subtle racism is a shame too, because otherwise, it covers subject matter that would have found interesting. A show about magic is always a plus!
> 
> By the way, in this show, the whites are the ‘minority’. The blacks are the defining ‘majority’ and the dominant ethnic group.




Okay I've watched the show and no blacks aren't the majority in the town it takes place in... but the focus of the show is on a specific family which is black (In the same way Charmed was focused on a white family of sisters).  Exactly what white characters are regulated to silly or subservient roles?  The white main cast memebers I remember are...

Tilly: She works for the family but is versed in magical lore and artifacts and was the heir apparent to a witch coven after her mother died until she turned her back on them because of the wedge they'd driven between her and her birth mother.

Russ: A white guy whose dating Calvin's daughter Garvey and shows the outsider perspective but in later episodes is slowly inducted into some of the mysteries and strangeness of the Hastings family ultimately culminating in him rescuing Garvey in one episode.

The Dredge (when he inhabited the body of a white guy): Major villain whose able to get the better of Issac and Calvin in the earlier episodes of season 1 but is ultimately defeated because... well he's one of the bad guys.

The Mayor: Also a bad guy whose knowledge and power are on par with or surpass Issac's and who serves as a long term foil and sometime ally. 


So I'll ask how exactly are the white people in the show regulated to silly roles, and secondly how are they subservient... unless you mean Tilly who actually is an employee of the Hastings and so should be somewhat subservient... they are her employers (thought she is treated much more like family than a regular employee).


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Regarding the Holocaust. Never again.
> 
> What you said, your refusal to intervene, suggests you are among the people who let the Holocaust happen.
> 
> ...






> You seem to lack information about what is going on today with regard to slavery. The sex trade is a small part of it.




Jesus Christ, with this. Can you address what I'm actually saying for one god damned second and stop with the excessive nitpicking of strawman accusations of things *I'm not actually frakking saying?*

Yes, we as a nation should have done more for the victims of the Holocaust. Like, I don't know, maybe opening our borders and accepting for refugees? And funneling aid to the people resisting within that nation? You know, *the very crap I'm actually advocating for?!* But we didn't do any of that. We also shoved Japanese people into internment camps. Not that you actually want to have a conversation about the  that's happened and is happening in our own backyards. No, not when you can villify all of the black and brown people over there doing _so_ much worse crap so why are we even talking about this?

No, you're just being a troll, and not actually interested in having a real conversation.

I've never considered anyone worth blocking before but I'm starting to re-consider that.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> Except I'm not *criticizing anyone,* *because that's not the frakking point.* I'm not on some crusade to make you feel like crap for the actions of your ancestors. All I care about is the inequities that exist in our society, *now,* and the steps that we can take to *fix them.* I don't give a  who feels guilty for what, because frankly, anybody's guilt is irrelevant. It's a distraction, so people can talk about their feelings instead of actual structural inequalities. Everything else is white noise.
> 
> I'm frankly getting really pissed off with people making me out to be some god-damned strawman white-hating bigot. Anybody who's spent two minutes reading what I'm actually saying will know that I'm anything but. If you can't get your head out of that mind space, and focus on what _really matters_, that's on you, but stop dragging my name in the mud with you.




Again, selective enforcement.

Your comments criticize ‘white’ ethnic groups only.

You studiously and passionately deflect away any criticism of nonwhite ethnic groups.

Your comments come across as racist, by definition. Antiwhite, even irrationally so.

Gradine, the overall impression of your comments come across in the same way as white supremacists who are trying to sound ‘sophisticated’.

We know from history, educated people can be among the worst racists. ‘Sophisticated’ assaults that target a specific ethnic group, are racist.

Racism even includes racism against white ethnicities.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Gradine, your comments come across as *racism*...




You keep using this word but I don't think it means what you think it means...


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Again, selective enforcement.
> 
> Your comments criticize ‘white’ ethnic groups only.
> 
> ...




Okay, I'm done with this, and I'm done with you. Since you're not actually at all interested in reading what I'm actually saying, and instead twist what I've said into a bunch of things I'm not actually saying so you can create this strawman racist holocaust-denier to argue against because that's easier than confronting and addressing the actual content of my posts, I'm done engaging with you.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Again, selective enforcement.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Examples of ‘selective enforcement’.

A judge who only rules harsh sentences to black defendants, while declaring all white defendants innocent, or guilty only of lesser charges even for the same crimes.

A police officer who only arrests black suspects, while allowing white suspects to go free.

A state prosecutor who only prosecutes crimes by whites, while turning a blind eye toward any and all crimes by blacks or other nonwhites.



Selective enforcement is a pernicious method of racism.


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## Doug McCrae (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> It is a white ethnicity that was the first, and at that time the only ethnicity, to abolish slavery. Namely the United Kingdom.
> 
> Ending the institution of slavery is something the ‘white’ British ethnic groups can be proud.



If we Brits should feel proud because of the 1807 Slave Trade Act and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, oughtn't we also to feel guilty for the role we played in supporting slavery? British ships carried 3.3 million slaves over the course of the transatlantic slave trade, more than any other nation except Portugal/Brazil.

The main resistance to slavery came from slaves themselves including acts of sabotage, escapes and rebellions. The greatest and most successful slave revolt in history began in 1791 in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). A significant factor in the passing of the 1833 act was the Christmas 1831 slave revolt in Jamaica.


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## Mallus (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> You keep using this word but I don't think it means what you think it means...



I think they know what it means.

(But I also think they’re trolling! Which is a shame, because this was going fairly well, all things considered.)

Re: demand for African-inspired gaming materials - all I can say is “who knows what the future might prove commercially viable?”. How crazy would it have sounded 5-10 years ago if you predicted one of the highest-grossing Marvel movies (or movies, full stop) would star T’Challa, with a nearly all Black cast behind him?


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Doug McCrae said:


> If we Brits should feel proud because of the 1807 Slave Trade Act and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, oughtn't we also to feel guilty for the role we played in supporting slavery?




Sure, but most civilizations were guilty of slavery, including ‘white’ Europeans, including ‘black’ Africans, including Arabs, including East Asians, and so on.

All humans can do is look at what is going on today, and try to figure out how to make social systems work better.

The British did that, to their credit. Thank you, Britain.



Today, there are all kinds of injustices that we dont even notice because they are such facts of life. But in the future, humans will notice how stupid such injustices were, and how unbelievable it was that humans put up with them.


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## terraleon (Mar 8, 2018)

If you're looking for recently-ish released Africa-adjacent RPG material, there is:

Southlands by Kobold Press (Pathfinder)
and
Between Sand & Sea, and Lands of the Nile, both from Atlas Games' Ars Magica.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

I definitely think I'm going to make a more deliberate effort to add obvious white supremacists to my block list. If only for my mental and physical well-being.

Anyway, to take the conversation waaaay back to the OP, the obvious and best way to introduce Afro-fantasy to your games is to seek out the works (novels and gaming) of African authors, of which there are quite a few. Failing that, if you must write the setting yourself, do your research and be as respectful as possible of the cultures you're taking inspiration from. It's also a good idea to seek out a sensitivity reader make sure you haven't allowed some unconscious bias to creep in or you haven't crossed some sort of line you weren't aware of. It's important to understand nobody's perfect and everyone's liable to make mistakes.


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## Hussar (Mar 8, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I've heard points like this in the past.  Do you think the Eurocentric representation in traditional RPG is something other than the market providing what most of the people want?   Is there even close to the same level of demand for Africa-centric RPG products in the market at large?




Oh, probably not.  Fair enough.  But, then again, there's a difference between having a few options and zero options as well.  Forty years and we have, essentially, zero options.  

I mean, how much demand is there for Indian (as in India) mythological creatures in the game?  But, we see Rakshasa in every edition.  Or Coatl.  Or any number of critters and concepts from pretty much every corner of the Earth.  

Except Africa.  It's an oversight.  Not a deliberate one, I believe.  But, it does appear to be a pretty rich source of something new.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> I definitely think I'm going to make a more deliberate effort to add obvious white supremacists to my block list. If only for my mental and physical well-being.




I'm used to it now... whenever Africa gets brought up int the context of D&D and/or fantasy ttrpg's on here, it's inevitable... It tends to make me more likely to avoid these types of conversations in general on EnWorld.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Black Americans are culturally vibrant, politically relevant, and increasingly financially mobile.

There will inevitably be great roleplaying adventures, inspired by black Americans.

Personally, what I find most interesting about black Americans is the church culture. (I am talking mainly about black communities in the South. I was shocked at how different black communities are in the North, such as in Boston.)

In church, the entire black community unites as one, in a black egalitarian unity. The mayor sits next to the janitor, who sits next to the teacher, who sits next to the banker. There are no ‘seats’ of privileged status. The church functions like the brain of the body of the community, in a spiritual mindfulness.

This structure comes directly from Africa, albeit it is a blend of various cultures in Africa. When the US abolished slavery, white Americans were destroyed financially by the Civil War. Newly free African Americans suddenly formed autonomous and prosperous towns. Later laws and historical forces often harmed these successful black communities. But they did happen, and created a matrix for an authentically African culture to develop and evolve within the United States.


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## Shasarak (Mar 8, 2018)

Hussar said:


> And the same sort of reasons apply to RPG's.  Why is everything Euro-centric?  Well, because of the time, you likely weren't going to do anything else.  The art is all white folks, the cultures are dominantly European (again, with varying degrees of authenticity), and so on.  The genre fiction that D&D is based on is so heavily biased in favor of whites that other races might as well not even exist.  Conan, Tarzan, all the pulps.  Their deep, deep racism is hardly a secret.
> 
> We need to be aware of it and it really does need to be addressed.




Is it because it was made by Americans?

Sometimes when I am watching Chinese films I wonder why everything is so damn Chino-centric.


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## Hussar (Mar 8, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Is it because it was made by Americans?
> 
> Sometimes when I am watching Chinese films I wonder why everything is so damn Chino-centric.




Heh, has absolutely nothing to do with a reaction to Hollywood, at all, of course.    Funny that.

And, you'd have a point if it was actually reflective of American society - that whole mixed culture thing that draws on all sorts of ethnicities to create a unique, vibrant culture.  If America was 100% white, then fair enough.  Because, let's face it, that's what D&D was for a very, very long time.

We're doing better, and we should continue to do better.

-----------

Just as a side note, I'm not terribly fussed by ToA to be honest.  It's at least _trying_.  To me, that's the first big step.  They can add in some of these cultural elements into a financially successful product and show that yes, it's okay to add more.


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## Gradine (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> I'm used to it now... whenever Africa gets brought up int the context of D&D and/or fantasy ttrpg's on here, it's inevitable... It tends to make me more likely to avoid these types of conversations in general on EnWorld.




What's sad is, I've had better conversations about it here than basically anywhere else online. If there are more enlightened corners of the nerd internet, I've yet to stumble across them.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Black Americans are culturally vibrant, politically relevant, and increasingly financially mobile.
> 
> There will inevitably be great roleplaying adventures, inspired by black Americans.
> 
> ...




Here we go... another "expert" on African American culture... funnily enough for many blacks in America, especially younger generations, the church is regarded as one of the driving forces behind the justification of slavery as well as the loss of traditional African belief systems... but yeah, the fact that a janitor and a mayor can sit together in black churches totally makes up for that. 

And no... white Americans were not destroyed financially by the Civil War or by the abolition of slavery... this statement is just absurd.  Now I know you must be trolling.


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## Imaro (Mar 8, 2018)

Gradine said:


> What's sad is, I've had better conversations about it here than basically anywhere else online. If there are more enlightened corners of the nerd internet, I've yet to stumble across them.




Oh, don't get me wrong the conversation usually starts out good (and there are quite a few posters of various ethnicity on here I wouldn't mind grabbing a beer with and talking more in depth about it)... but the ending is usually the same and that grows more disappointing each time.


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## Derren (Mar 8, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Black Americans are culturally vibrant, politically relevant, and increasingly financially mobile.
> 
> There will inevitably be great roleplaying adventures, inspired by black Americans.




That raises the question if black Americans are actually looking for authentic African settings or just for a romanticised version of it, the same way the European middle ages is romanticised in core D&D? And if that is the case does it really matter who writes those settings when they have nothing to do with real world history in the first place?
Wakanda from Black Panther kinda fits that. A romanticised idea of "what would have happened without colonization", coupled with various ancient African imagery.

Because lets be honest, while there might be some fragmented and by now twisted remains, culturally African Americans of today are not all that close to modern or historic Africans. The same way the average "white" RPG gamer is not really interested in the setting representing the real historic medieval Europe.


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## Yaarel (Mar 8, 2018)

Imaro said:


> Here we go... another "expert" on African American culture... funnily enough for many blacks in America, especially younger generations, the church is regarded as one of the driving forces behind the justification of slavery as well as the loss of traditional African belief systems... but yeah, the fact that a janitor and a mayor can sit together in black churches totally makes up for that.
> 
> And no... white Americans were not destroyed financially by the Civil War or by the abolition of slavery... this statement is just absurd.  Now I know you must be trolling.




Your post suggests the South was wealthy after the Civil War, conveying a profound ignorance about US history.

The abolishment of slavery wiped out the Southern, agricultural, slave-based economy.

Southern whites became profoundly poor.

Only by recent times, say the presidency of Clinton, have southern states generally recovered economically from the financial devastation of the Civil War.


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## Staccat0 (Mar 9, 2018)

Derren said:


> That raises the question if black Americans are actually looking for authentic African settings or just for a romanticised version of it, the same way the European middle ages is romanticised in core D&D? And if that is the case does it really matter who writes those settings when they have nothing to do with real world history in the first place?
> Wakanda from Black Panther kinda fits that. A romanticised idea of "what would have happened without colonization", coupled with various ancient African imagery.
> 
> Because lets be honest, while there might be some fragmented and by now twisted remains, culturally African Americans of today are not all that close to modern or historic Africans. The same way the average "white" RPG gamer is not really interested in the setting representing the real historic medieval Europe.




Not necessarily a direct reply. Just a jumping off point.

Africa is composed mostly of countries and borders decided by colonists with very little regard for the cultures and peoples who were already there. It would be nearly impossible for most African Americans to trace their lineage back to whatever culture they hailed from the way I can know my family is mostly from Germany.

Our relationship to our past is so fundamentally different that I don't think most people with skin like mine will ever be able to really fully empathize with that experience. It's maybe not worthwhile to compare those experiences 1:1.

We may want a romanticized blend of European culture for any number of reasons, but I don't know if that should really weigh on the conversation of who writes these things. Really, it's the least we can do to just get out of the way and let black artists explore their own culture.

I think BP is notable in that a mega-corporation had a structure and a canvas, but were willing to let Ryan Coogler and co tell their own story. Same thing with Atlanta on FX. Clearly that has resonated and paid off financially.

I think an RPG supplement would work best much the same way. Hire some great artists and let them explore the subject within the strict confines of what the market has come to recognize. Having white people guess at that product will just be inherently less interesting, because we have our all have own cultures and experiences and can bring different things to the table. 

Will that make a good product for me? Would the average gamer buy it? I dunno. 

If something is good and does the work (I think it's easy for people who are less literate in the cinematic language to overlook how much effort BP puts into putting the right lenses on white people's eyes and experiences) then I believe that it will find an audience, but I can't speak to the size of that audience.

Having Mike Mearls and Kieth Baker or whoever inherently make it less interesting to me as a piece of art, and I think generally less appealing to POC. The mechanics might end up being sound but they won't take the creative risks or detours that would be inherent to someone exploring their own history. It seems safer but I think would just be guaranteeing that you get something bland rather than something that feels fresh.


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## Gradine (Mar 9, 2018)

Staccat0 said:


> Having Mike Mearls and Kieth Baker or whoever inherently make it less interesting to me as a piece of art, and I think generally less appealing to POC. The mechanics might end up being sound but they won't take the creative risks or detours that would be inherent to someone exploring their own history. It seems safer but I think would just be guaranteeing that you get something bland rather than something that feels fresh.




I find it interesting that you call out Keith Baker specifically, when I consider Eberron to one of the most subversive D&D products out there with regards to social justice issues. Subverting the typical "always evil" races thing was, I think, a pretty big risk that wasn't really done in established settings before and exponentially increases the storytelling potential of the setting, particularly with regards to prejudice and bias. What they did with Goblinoids and especially Orcs was, I think, truly revolutionary for the time.

Don't get me wrong, I want to see even more diverse works from more diverse writers within D&D, but I'd always considered Baker one of the better guys in that regard.

Edit: I re-read your post and I think I completely misread the point you were trying to make, and I completely agree with you. Just wanted to leave in my own Eberron-fanboy two cents


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## Imaro (Mar 9, 2018)

Yaarel said:


> Your post suggests the South was wealthy after the Civil War, conveying a profound ignorance about US history.
> 
> The abolishment of slavery wiped out the Southern, agricultural, slave-based economy.
> 
> ...




It is much more nuanced than the simplistic statement that "white Americans were destroyed financially"  While true that some wealth was destroyed (how could it not be you just lost a free labor force and the foundation of the southern economy)...the fact is that the emancipation of slaves actually created a situation in the south where the white entrenched elite lost their stranglehold on the majority of southern wealth and those with moderate wealth actually had greater opportunities to increase their wealth...


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## Derren (Mar 9, 2018)

Staccat0 said:


> Not necessarily a direct reply. Just a jumping off point.
> 
> Africa is composed mostly of countries and borders decided by colonists with very little regard for the cultures and peoples who were already there. It would be nearly impossible for most African Americans to trace their lineage back to whatever culture they hailed from the way I can know my family is mostly from Germany.




That makes for an interesting comparison as "Germany" is a rather modern concept too, created at the end of the 19th century when Africa had already been mostly colonized. Before that the country now known as Germany (and some additional parts lost in the world wars) were a loose coalition of tiny kingdoms, some which also had their borders set by outside invaders like Napoleon. So saying that your ancestors are from Germany is about as accurate than saying your ancestors are from modern day Nigeria.


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## Gradine (Mar 9, 2018)

Imaro said:


> It is much more nuanced than the simplistic statement that "white Americans were destroyed financially"  While true that some wealth was destroyed (how could it not be you just lost a free labor force and the foundation of the southern economy)...the fact is that the emancipation of slaves actually created a situation in the south where the white entrenched elite lost their stranglehold on the majority of southern wealth and those with moderate wealth actually had greater opportunities to increase their wealth...




Hahaha holy crap, what is this white supremacist nonsense you're responding to? "Those poor southern whites based their entire economic structure around the legal ability to own, buy, sell, rape, torture, and murder other human beings, and then got told they couldn't do that anymore, where's the sympathy for theeeeeeeem."


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 9, 2018)

OK, it’s getting overheated in here.  I’m shutting things down so The Admiral doesn’t have to bother.


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