Did you think the people in this thread have no knowledge of D&D?
What a bizarre comment to make in the context of this thread. What relevance did you think it had to the topic?
Not if Warner Brothers and the Tolkien estate has anything to say about it.
Quite the contrary.
You are right; I am not being clear. I am wondering, beyond the criticism D&D received for inadvertently including potential references to racist imagery, if they have received any heat for not being woke in other respects, like culturally appropriating people’s real-life religions or parodying them, relying on others’ intellectual property (as @Miller points out can be problematic), or other ways in which they may have naively meant no harm but blundered into.
The book Deities & Demigods had many many errors regarding real world religions. AFAIK the later Legends & Lore is much more factually correct. My long time friend, DM, and Odin-worshipper owns a copy of the green cover Vikings handbook. I don’t remember finding any errors in it. The book even starts with a statement on how Vikings never wore horned helmets.
I may have mentioned this earlier but it’s been a long thread, the Vistani of Ravenloft seem to be based on every G*psy stereotype you can name. Some things can be updated or otherwise saved. Fer example, the Ilithid can still keep slaves. It’s just one of the many signs that they are evil. But, if you take the offensive stereotypes out of the Vistani, is there anything left?
Oriental Adventures, first published in 1985, is somewhat controversial in many circles which should come as no surprise given it’s title. Some common criticisms are that the setting focuses too much on Japanese influence to the exclusion of places like China or Korea, that it’s not an accurate portrayal of any real culture is is more akin to a theme park attraction, and that the whole thing is an expecise in Orientalism. There were some people who wanted WotC to stop selling the OA PDF but it’s still for sale. But all the old TSR stuff has a disclaimer warning potential readers that some material might be offensive.
WotC recently changed how races worked in the game by taking away ability score improvements based on race. i.e. Orcs no longer get a bonus to Strength, Dwarves to Constitution, or Elves to Dexterity. Instead, regardless of race, player characters are encouraged to put their ability score improvements on any attribute regardless of their race.
There are no longer any humanoid races who are always evil. (Not that it matters much since WotC has been phasing out Alignment for a number of years now.) Some people found the language used to describe orcs and other creatures too closely resembled real life rhetoric describing people.
Some of these arguments have some merit to them in my opinion. I don’t object to the changes to orcs not always being evil because that was boring anyway. But then I don’t think it’s racist to have the always be evil either. I’m not a fan of ASI being removed from race as I don’t think it’s racist to say an 80 pound halfling maybe should get the same Strength bonus as a 320 pound Goliath, but I can live with it. I’ve never noticed a character’s race making any significant difference to how an adventure was played so who cares about ASI based on race?
Replace “English” for “Japanese” and “Romantic Medievalism” for “Orientalism”, and you’ve got bog-standard D&D.
And if the English had a long history of being colonized and/or oppressed by Japanese, Koreans and Chinese, who then cherry-pick bits of their culture to use and mash together as they see fit, context-free, the analogy would have teeth.
Also, not as much “bog standard” DnD is actually Medievalism as you might think, a lot more of it is pure fantasy invented by some author (hobbits, trolls, the whole Vancian magic system), or anachronistic pre-Medieval stuff like druids, dryads, sphinxes etc.
Look, I don’t want to get into an argument with you about the different types and levels of colonialism, but Japan at least - which as noted, constitutes the overwhelming portion of the setting - is the one East Asian country that does not have a long history of being being colonialized or oppressed by anyone. They’re quite proud of that fact.
And I know what you’re going to say: someone whose ancestors may have been involved in oppressing a culture - or may have had the same skin color as someone who was involved in oppressing - cannot create anything referring to that culture. I disagree. I think anyone can write anything about anyone, so long as they do so respectfully, intelligently and while crediting their sources. But I don’t expect you to agree with me.
Other than the being forcibly opened up by gunboats, you mean …
Japanese are quite proud of a lot of “facts” that are anything but, like the entire early Imperial history.
I’m saying no such thing.
I’m just saying if they do, they should do so respectfully.
Not play a game of “how many contextless Oriental tropes can we fit in our Oriental Adventures”
“Contextless tropes” is practically the Dungeons & Dragons motto.
A necessary wake-up call, and probably the best thing that ever happened to the country. But I think that’s a discussion for another thread.
Colonizers gotta colonize, I guess.
“Necessary”, my ass.
Exactly. Which is why the Japanese were very, very fortunate they were able to modernize their military and centralize their government before some colonialist bastards literally took over the country. The only way to prevent colonialism is with strength, and Perry’s expedition gave the Japanese the opportunity to create some. Japanese isolationism would have been forcibly ended at some point - there’s no way the European powers would have left the country alone. The way it happened was the best of all of the bad options.
Perry’s expedition was an act of colonialism.
You’re drawing a distinction without difference, just like those who say “Ethiopia was never colonized”
Why? All this happened at the tail-end of their empire-building, they could have merrily left Japan alone and it would have been no skin off their teeth - it’s not like Japan was rich in resources.
You hold the colonizers in much higher esteem than I do. Do you really think they would have left an uncolonized country just sitting there? Those assholes would have conquered it simply because they could.
I can assure you I do not.
No.
Does that absolve those who were the first to do so from blame, somehow?
As I’ve mentioned previously I frequent a number of trumpist and far right forums (I like to operate on the front lines of the fight against ignorance).
And there’s been a firehose of D&D and LOTR memes of late. Battle lines of orcs are migrants trying to cross into the US. Elven archers standing in neat formation show the advantage of racial segregation. Pictures of orcs attacking are captioned with talking points about black crime.
Given the realities of society today, it does leave a bad taste if we’re going to depict all light-skinned people as essentially good (or, in the case of evil wizards or whatever, evil but smart; not just evil brutes). And darker-skinned species as bad, and usually stupid / animalistic.
And there’s no reason to mandate that these fictional species must only have one skin color, which happens to conform with common prejudices in our current society.
So yeah, by all means update the material IMHO. That’s not to say any of the old material was racist. Just that, yes, it probably should be a consideration when designing new cards / TV series / movies.
I think y’all might be talking past each other. Alessan, if I’m reading them correctly, is treating that expedition something like a live vaccine. The people who engaged in it were still pretty awful, but their work activated Japan’s immune system–er, defensive forces.
This is how I read it too. Japan benefited by the first act of attempted colonization being a showy but ineffectual one.
I understand what they’re trying to say.
My point is that it you can’t say Japan doesn’t have a history of colonization or Western oppression, and so it’s OK for Westerners to use Japanese tropes anyway you like in D&D, guilt-free. Sure, they didn’t have Opium Wars or Great Mutinies, but they didn’t willingly embrace the West, either.
And in my experience on these very boards, @iiandyiiii , once you start down the road of talking about how any country benefited from colonialism, it’s just a skip to the “…and that’s why it’s OK to celebrate colonialism…” style bullshit we’ve seen before.