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I was bumping around Paizo forums today and I stumbled on something that made me pause and think.
...perhaps it was made to make the juju concept actually be more like the real-world vodun religion that inspired it, instead of the intended-only-for-NPCs version in City of Seven Spears.
For those who aren't familiar with the religion, Vodun is an organized West African religion still practiced today. As Reynolds states above, the Juju Oracle is based off this modern religion.
What I am interested in this tread is to use Edwards Said's concept of Orientalism to understand what it means to represent non-western cultures and ideas. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the below quote is from Said's book Orientalism, and does a good job expounding on the contents of the term.
[Orientalism is] a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of "interests" which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what "we" do and what "they" cannot do or understand as "we" do).
Said used his concept to investigate artistic and scholarly work on the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Contemporary postcolonial scholarship has expanded some of the ideas in Orientalism to come to understand western knowledge on Latin America, and Oceania.
I am interested in using Orientalism to enrich role-playing by understanding how we represent non-western cultures and ideas. I think to a certain extent drawing on other cultures and foreign ideas provides something interesting for role-playing campaigns, I also am interested in how the "knowledge production" that takes place to understand these other cultures and foreign ideas are connected to the real-world "Orient and Occident."
How do we proceed with drawing inspiration from cultures? It is obvious that rich role-playing settings require diversity in culture, but what kind of challenges do we as game designers, GMs, and players face when selecting real-world cultures as source material? There are obvious differences between drawing own our own culture and drawing on the cultures of others. In what ways do we recognize this and how does it impact our game designing and roleplaying decisions?
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Not a tabletop roleplaying game, but I remember when Ocarina of Time was first released, the desert thieves in the game used a symbol very similar to the Islamic star and crescent. (This was changed in later releases of the game.) I think this obviously goes too far. While I don't think it's problematic to draw inspiration from stories of characters like Ali Baba, identifying fictional characters portrayed in a negative light with real-world religious symbols is doing much more than that. This is a pretty low bar, but I guess it's something?
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To be honest, is it as if they are representing WESTERN cultures with high fidelity? They are every bit as much of a caricature as the non western ones.
To be honest, is it as if they are representing WESTERN cultures with high fidelity? They are every bit as much of a caricature as the non western ones.
Well, it's not entirely an issue of fidelity. In fact, I think the creative process that we engage into create roleplaying content inherently rejects fidelity as the goal, because simply "accurately" reproducing the real world isn't creative at all.
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Most RPG cultures are going to be sort of like those exaggerated pictures that cartoonists draw - recognizable, mainly through exaggeration.
Most RPG cultures are going to be sort of like those exaggerated pictures that cartoonists draw - recognizable, mainly through exaggeration.
I don't think anyone is denying that cultures in RPG settings draw on real-world inspiration. The question is whether it is done in a problematic way. If you cannot think of any actual examples of this, I'm sure you can imagine a possible roleplaying setting which is grossly offensive.
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Problem is, you probably can't represent a culture at all without offending at least someone.
Problem is, you probably can't represent a culture at all without offending at least someone.
So is your assertion that we oughtn't try to produce settings which don't reproduce harmful tropes about real-world peoples?
There is no direct relationship between Juju Oracles and Vudon anymore than there is a direct relationship between Druids and real world Druids.
Well, the relationship between Vudon or real world druids and their fiction reflections is the subject I proposed for this thread. So whatever details and nuances makes up the differences between Vudon/Juju and Druid/Druid is apropos.
I don't think I suggested that there ought to be discriminatory standards, but maybe your meaning has been lost in your prose.
It is apparent to this poster, then, that the only value set which escapes this particular political conflict (though, perhaps, invokes others which are not currently obvious to this poster) requires allowing each gaming group to choose and then evolve its particular positioned perspective.
I guess I am not interested in resting this discussion out of some sort of reductive relativist position. While I imagine that any prescription for game design or roleplay is going to be contingent on specific game groups and contexts, I do think that there is some work that can be done to talk about these issues. In fact, that is the very reason I posted this thread.
The question is whether it is done in a problematic way.what worries me most about this is the possibility that someone thinks there is some monolithic answer to any particular case
...which is why I posed this question to a community of roleplayers, GMs, and game designers. It is because it is obvious that there is not and easy "monolithic" answer, and thus the openness of the questions I posed. Our perspectives may influence what is obviously problematic, but we aren't slaves to our own perspectives. We have the ability to come to understand the perspectives of others, and that is part of the purpose of this thread.
Problem is, you probably can't represent a culture at all without offending at least someone.
Do you think that this is inevitable in game design and roleplay?
To be honest, is it as if they are representing WESTERN cultures with high fidelity? They are every bit as much of a caricature as the non western ones.
I don't think that anyone would condone a roleplaying setting that was offensive and harmful to a western culture. For example, if Golarion had an obvious stand-in for the Basque people that was portrayed uniformly as an unsympathetic caricature of ETA-style terrorists, I wouldn't think it's okay just because it's a western culture. However, you have to recognize that in western society, there is a difference between cultures that that are considered part of "us", and those that are the "other". If nothing else, you cannot deny the vast amounts of historical racism coloring how non-western cultures were seen (c.f. Said, for example). Even to the extent we have moved beyond that, it still exists. Any attempts to draw inspiration from historical western interpretations of non-western culture have to be careful to avoid picking up those racist views.
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It seems inevitable in any fictional endeavor.
However, generally in my games I never try to represent a real world culture with the numbers filed off. The cultures are usually portmanteau. Say, renaissance Italy city states with something somewhat like a feudal Japanese culture grafted in.
Also ... You more or less have to use commonly recognized tropes for ease of recognition among players. Face it, it isn't usual that you are going to have anthropology students as players. If you try to recreate feudal Japan, say, accurately they aren't going to recognize it, and their expectations and play styles for a faux Japan are going to BE the tropes, and you have to work really hard to move them out of that. Of course, if you made the rpg in Japan, there would be an entirely different set of tropes regarding western cultures that it would be very hard to move THEM out of.
I will confess that that was somewhat intentional as I was spoofing postmodernism and critical theory (both of which cannot be mocked enough).
I don't think I suggested that there ought to be discriminatory standards, but maybe your meaning has been lost in your prose.
I'm sorry, I thought you were participating in good faith. Thanks for clearing that up, your first post was confusing.
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To be honest, is it as if they are representing WESTERN cultures with high fidelity? They are every bit as much of a caricature as the non western ones.I don't think that anyone would condone a roleplaying setting that was offensive and harmful to a western culture. For example, if Golarion had an obvious stand-in for the Basque people that was portrayed uniformly as an unsympathetic caricature of ETA-style terrorists, I wouldn't think it's okay just because it's a western culture. However, you have to recognize that in western society, there is a difference between cultures that that are considered part of "us", and those that are the "other". If nothing else, you cannot deny the vast amounts of historical racism coloring how non-western cultures were seen (c.f. Said, for example). Even to the extent we have moved beyond that, it still exists. Any attempts to draw inspiration from historical western interpretations of non-western culture have to be careful to avoid picking up those racist views.
And you think that say, Japan and china had none - and don't have right now - that? For example?
Edit:
What I reject is the implication that this is somehow unique to western culture or even particularly more common there than elsewhere.
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I was bumping around Paizo forums today and I stumbled on something that made me pause and think.
...perhaps it was made to make the juju concept actually be more like the real-world vodun religion that inspired it, instead of the intended-only-for-NPCs version in City of Seven Spears.For those who aren't familiar with the religion, Vodun is an organized West African religion still practiced today. As Reynolds states above, the Juju Oracle is based off this modern religion.
I find this premise problematic, because the original Juju mystery was already fairly close to the Vodun religion. Zombies are a legit part of the religion, and making them is definitely something bokors are believed to be able to do.
Now, one might suggest that the undead stuff was part of the dark path of vodun, while the recent re-imagining of the mystery is not, but, well, it is. 1/3 of the revelations deal with the darker aspects of Vodun, as does the Final Revelation and 5/9 of the spells.
So, the only thing the change did was strip away the undead stuff, nothing more. It did not make it closer to the real religion.
Even to the extent we have moved beyond that, it still exists. Any attempts to draw inspiration from historical western interpretations of non-western culture have to be careful to avoid picking up those racist views.
Sometimes I do wonder (somewhat like Arssanguinus) whether it is possible to completely avoid picking up some of the racist/orientalist elements that persist in western culture. I suppose it is the job of the GM and game designers to avoid these things as best they can, while simultaneously doing what needs to be done to make a creative and interesting game/story.
My thoughts are, for game designers, GMs, and players the most important thing is that we remain sensitive to the less obvious racist/orientalist elements when they become apparent or are pointed out to us.
This is actually why I don't think Justin Rocket's relativist argument holds up. While it is true that there may be some elements that only become obvious within certain contexts, the ability to be sensitive and responsive to those concerns is something that ought be universally present in game designers, GMs, and players.
Roleplaying games are participatory experiences, and roleplaying material draws on what the participants understand from there own lives and culture. Because of this, the experience is are bound to draw on racism and sexism (among other things) which is bound up in our own culture. The question is, when this happens (and it will happens) can we (as both participants and producers of this culture) recognize and identify racism, sexism, etc for what they are.
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This thread feels like reading Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentalisms while riding in Idries Shah's Caravan of Dreams. Either that or a pitched battle between the Juggernaut and the Blob. And we haven't even hit the end of the page yet.
If you tacitly base any concept on Real World cultures you are asking for trouble. Someone somewhere will find offense. There is no objective way to determine "harmful". By all means discuss it and if you desire seek to codify/quantify it.
As I have said recently elsewhere, offense is for people who have an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic. By "taking offense" you give a huge measure of power to the person/activity you are disappointed/repelled by or disagree with. Either ignore it or call it, just don't get all bent out of shape about it - doing so is the reason why we have developed sharp rocks over time that are now so technologically advanced that they can wipe out cities. Get a grip people and stop getting upset! It only gives the negative idea/concept/act more traction.
What could someone else say to you that you could not outsay to yourself? You have the power to control what you are "offended" by. Now replace "you" with "culture x". Repeat indefinitely. Cultures are not people. They are imagined communities without rights or responsibilities, social control networks that restrict as much as they inform. If they can't weather insults then they have no business applying to human agency.
If you have sacred cows (to butcher another cultural trope) then kill them and eat them immediately. They are harmful and create division and disappointment. The only sacred ideal I can think of is to be compassionate and caring. I someone were to openly despise that sentiment, well, it says more about them than anything relevant to my sentiment.
Also ... You more or less have to use commonly recognized tropes for ease of recognition among players. Face it, it isn't usual that you are going to have anthropology students as players. If you try to recreate feudal Japan, say, accurately they aren't going to recognize it, and their expectations and play styles for a faux Japan are going to BE the tropes, and you have to work really hard to move them out of that. Of course, if you made the rpg in Japan, there would be an entirely different set of tropes regarding western cultures that it would be very hard to move THEM out of.
I think you can use recognized tropes and be safe. In fact, I think it can actually make it easier. For example, Legends of the Wulin is a wuxia-style rpg. At least in my readings of its rules, it seems to have a certain self-awareness. Wuxia as a genre has a lot of over-the-top elements which gives it a distance from any potentially harmful portrayals of Chinese culture. The creators of Legends of Wulin seem very much aware that their game is in a genre which is intentionally unrealistic and play to that.
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Also ... You more or less have to use commonly recognized tropes for ease of recognition among players. Face it, it isn't usual that you are going to have anthropology students as players. If you try to recreate feudal Japan, say, accurately they aren't going to recognize it, and their expectations and play styles for a faux Japan are going to BE the tropes, and you have to work really hard to move them out of that. Of course, if you made the rpg in Japan, there would be an entirely different set of tropes regarding western cultures that it would be very hard to move THEM out of.I think you can use recognized tropes and be safe. In fact, I think it can actually make it easier. For example, Legends of the Wulin is a wuxia-style rpg. At least in my readings of its rules, it seems to have a certain self-awareness. Wuxia as a genre has a lot of over-the-top elements which gives it a distance from any potentially harmful portrayals of Chinese culture. The creators of Legends of Wulin seem very much aware that their game is in a genre which is intentionally unrealistic and play to that.
... Which is a reason I like immersive world creation. By giving the nations a history and a culture, and ties to the other cultures, they aren't a stereotype of an earth culture - they are a culture grounded in that world, who has animosity towards culture x because of history y, and adopted samurai based culture z in imitation(inaccurate in many cases) of long deceased culture z1. When someone says "but real Japan isn't like that!" The reply is "I know, this is NOT real Japan. This is xxxx, with a different history, different neighbors, and a different milieu in which it formed.
If you try to recreate feudal Japan, say, accurately they aren't going to recognize it, and their expectations and play styles for a faux Japan are going to BE the tropes, and you have to work really hard to move them out of that.
The interesting thing to me, though, is that a huge part of the "faux Japan" that we all know is actually due to the Japanese and their WWII propaganda.
The whole concept of Samurai who did not fear death and lived only to serve their lord and that sacrificed their life without blinking at the drop of their lord's hat--possibly the whole modern concept of bushido--was all bunk invented by the Japanese government to brainwash their own people into fanaticism, so they were willing to accept suicidal missions.
So, I'm curious--how does this play into Orientalism? It's not historically accurate, but it is how they wanted to be portrayed...
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... Which is a reason I like immersive world creation. By giving the nations a history and a culture, and ties to the other cultures, they aren't a stereotype of an earth culture - they are a culture grounded in that world, who has animosity towards culture x because of history y, and adopted samurai based culture z in imitation(inaccurate in many cases) of long deceased culture z1. When someone says "but real Japan isn't like that!" The reply is "I know, this is NOT real Japan. This is xxxx, with a different history, different neighbors, and a different milieu in which it formed.
Oh, I certainly agree. I think part of why some of these stereotypes are bad when used in fantasy settings is that they come off as very flat and one-dimensional. Group X is this one stereotype and only this one stereotype! But the more well-rounded and believable a fictional culture is, I think the less likely it is to be problematic. If a player or DM looks at it, they see something that looks like people, not something that looks like a caricature.
Not sure if this is what the OP's looking for, but here's what I've done for my homebrew world....
I basically did a lot of research, not on actual Asianic lands, but on what people I would be likely to have in my games actually had contact with and would recognize as Asianic.
That is, Movies & Anime (Princess Mononoke, Jackie Chan Movies, Naruto, Bleach, Zatochi, etc), RPG settings/notes (GURPS, D&D, Tien (PF), LotFR, Shadowrun, etc), and other things I could find on the internet, etc.
So, in my world, I have an 'Eastern Continent'. It's about as big as Australia. It has a ring of mountains in the center that keep an eternal cloud cover trapped. Within this ring, the Ivory Kingdom exists, ruled by Hopping Vampire Lords and other undead. The rest of the continent is divided into 5 kingdoms, Fire, Water, Wind, Wood, and Metal/Earth. Every name in the land is taken from an Asianic language, and often mixed together. For example, Ren'Shan is the name of the continent, which if you go back and figure out which languages I used are very roughly 'land of heavens'. Each time I name something in the land, I pick something by doing a google translate to Japanese, Chinese (Typically Simplified), Korean, Thai, or Indonesian. I try to make them meaningful. And I pick names from online lists of common family names in all the lands.
This is not intended as an insult by saying I can just mix and match, but to give the flavor for the players and keep things relatively consistent.
So, like I said, not sure if this is what the OP was asking for, but it's my way of presenting it.
What I reject is the implication that this is somehow unique to western culture or even particularly more common there than elsewhere.
I suppose that it's within the context of colonialism that the differences between how western culture participated in colonialism. This important distinction is essential for concept such as Orientalism.
what I shall be calling Orientalism, [is] a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West)as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles.
The "West" isn't necessarily defined by it's preponderance of racism. Rather, within the context of colonialism, the divisions between the West and the Orient is characterized by "an uneven exchange with various kinds of power" (Said, pg. 12). The make the issues of how we discuss different cultures relevant, because these discussions are interwoven with a histories of these uneven exchanges.
... Which is a reason I like immersive world creation. By giving the nations a history and a culture, and ties to the other cultures, they aren't a stereotype of an earth culture - they are a culture grounded in that world, who has animosity towards culture x because of history y, and adopted samurai based culture z in imitation(inaccurate in many cases) of long deceased culture z1. When someone says "but real Japan isn't like that!" The reply is "I know, this is NOT real Japan. This is xxxx, with a different history, different neighbors, and a different milieu in which it formed.Oh, I certainly agree. I think part of why some of these stereotypes are bad when used in fantasy settings is that they come off as very flat and one-dimensional. Group X is this one stereotype and only this one stereotype! But the more well-rounded and believable a fictional culture is, I think the less likely it is to be problematic. If a player or DM looks at it, they see something that looks like people, not something that looks like a caricature.
I will, however, say things like, for example, "for any cultural small detail I didn't fill in presume generic east European. For say, food, drink, types of music enjoyed whatever, if I didn't mention it, I give a generic "filler" culture as the padding.
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I will, however, say things like, for example, "for any cultural small detail I didn't fill in presume generic east European. For say, food, drink, types of music enjoyed whatever, if I didn't mention it, I give a generic "filler" culture as the padding.
And doesn't that give an advantage to players who are familiar with that culture, and a disadvantage to players from other cultures?
Of course it does, but you need something to go there, right? Do you notice how the default is Europe, and the other cultures are the exotic ones? That's Said's point.
Well, for a culture that is supposed to be vaguely eastern European, yes it will have vaguely Eastern European details. O course different cultures that are somewhat Japanese will be filled in with generically Japanese small details and things that are African will be filled in with vaguely African small details. Basically its an invitation for "if you want a small detail explained look up something from this sort of place and I will incorporate it. Its not major cultural details its flavor text. It tells a player what sort of pictures might be hanging on the wallif they are more likely to be having tea or drinking coffee, etcetera.
I picked Eastern European because that was the assumption in the most recent campaign starting point. The one before that was more of a "generic Chinese filler to go between the history, and major points. In that the feel of this campaign is more in that direction, even though this is explicitly not china. So for flavor text, look that way. Etcetera. So if you are searching for pictures of people on the Internet to be characters lean more that way, etcetera. It informs prop design general architectural styles, whatever. Its the color pallet that is used to paint in the details on the built culture.
The whole concept of Samurai who did not fear death and lived only to serve their lord and that sacrificed their life without blinking at the drop of their lord's hat--possibly the whole modern concept of bushido--was all bunk invented by the Japanese government to brainwash their own people into fanaticism, so they were willing to accept suicidal missions.So, I'm curious--how does this play into Orientalism? It's not historically accurate, but it is how they wanted to be portrayed...
Orientalism doesn't require that the portrayals be false or true. In part it's in the languages and the discourse. The first part is how we're conceptualizing the circumstances around this "bunk" about Samurai.
Assuming it's true, what do we even mean when we say "it is how they wanted to be portrayed..."? Who is they? The Japanese government? The Japanese people? For whom is this portrayal for?
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Also realize that for some time some of the most virulent practitioners of orientalist was ... The "orient". Look up Japan's colonial past. Or china for example. Their interactions with Korea their own native people's, Mongolia ... And so on. This is not even close to a unique feature of western history. About the only thing you can argue is scale ...
And besides I find "the west" as a category about as stereotyped and inaccurate as talking about "the east".
Not sure if this is what the OP's looking for, but here's what I've done for my homebrew world....
I basically did a lot of research, not on actual Asianic lands, but on what people I would be likely to have in my games actually had contact with and would recognize as Asianic.
That is, Movies & Anime (Princess Mononoke, Jackie Chan Movies, Naruto, Bleach, Zatochi, etc), RPG settings/notes (GURPS, D&D, Tien (PF), LotFR, Shadowrun, etc), and other things I could find on the internet, etc.
So, in my world, I have an 'Eastern Continent'. It's about as big as Australia. It has a ring of mountains in the center that keep an eternal cloud cover trapped. Within this ring, the Ivory Kingdom exists, ruled by Hopping Vampire Lords and other undead. The rest of the continent is divided into 5 kingdoms, Fire, Water, Wind, Wood, and Metal/Earth. Every name in the land is taken from an Asianic language, and often mixed together. For example, Ren'Shan is the name of the continent, which if you go back and figure out which languages I used are very roughly 'land of heavens'. Each time I name something in the land, I pick something by doing a google translate to Japanese, Chinese (Typically Simplified), Korean, Thai, or Indonesian. I try to make them meaningful. And I pick names from online lists of common family names in all the lands.
This is not intended as an insult by saying I can just mix and match, but to give the flavor for the players and keep things relatively consistent.
So, like I said, not sure if this is what the OP was asking for, but it's my way of presenting it.
I think this is a legitimate way to build a world. One of the reasons I started thinking about this (a long while ago) was because I am attracted to Wuxia/Sengoku-jidai type themed roleplay and games. I tend to try to stick to formulations of these themes which take the "mix and match" style you use. These are often fun and rich themes, and by having explicit self-awareness a lot of the problems in these settings can be navigated.
By the west I assume you mean US interpretations of the west.... You don't have to go far to see or hear dismissive, patronising, or insulting representations of Australian, British, Canadian, French, German culture within American media and similar portrails of the US within other western media... It is about Nationalism and ignorance more than anything else.
Or even of the us within Japanese culture, or ...
Assuming it's true, what do we even mean when we say "it is how they wanted to be portrayed..."? Who is they? The Japanese government? The Japanese people? For whom is this portrayal for?
Obviously, the WWII Japanese government started it, but the Japanese people who fell for it have perpetuated it. So, it's a purposefully vague "they."
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Everybody does it.
My mom went on this cruise one time.
She was sitting a table over from Tony Soprano with the track suit and the gold chain,......and in walks the guy from Oklahoma with the US Flag baseball cap, red white and blue denim shirt, starched and ironed blue jeans, and red white and blue cowboy boots.
So, this living breathing Jersey stereotype adds to the imagery by saying, "...aye, check iddowt....it's Capm f*$&%im Ummerica ova deah....."
Also realize that for some time some of the most virulent practitioners of orientalist was ... The "orient". Look up Japan's colonial past. Or china for example. Their interactions with Korea their own native people's, Mongolia ... And so on. This is not even close to a unique feature of western history. About the only thing you can argue is scale ...
While there may be something interesting to be said about how colonialism by China and Japan, European colonialism has been going on for almost 600 years and modern imperialism for almost 200 years. And while Japan and China have participated in imperialism, the fact remains that the major imperialist and colonialist forces have been European and North American, of which these countries have not be subject to imperialization in the same way other countries have.
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Chinese colonialism has completely absorbed and removed cultures. And before that, china was under colonialism by the Mongols, and ...
Its not uniquely western, however desirable it might be to impart special evil to 'the west'
The Greeks, who at the time were arguably more middle eastern than western, the Persians, the ottomans ...