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I hope you and your players thoroughly enjoy themselves. If I ever find myself gaming at your table, I think I will be happy to follow your rules.
I hope you do as well. It just that some can be very passionate and I have seen friends long time friends just stop being friends over a disagreement on a topic. It is just easier to use a no politics rule as well at least during gaming and maybe even after. It's a touchy subject and sometimes people either want to hear only what they want to hear. Hard to have a discussion when 2+2 is 4 and the other person insists its 5 and one is bad person for not agreeing that it is 5.
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I mean, a player taking a thing that happens in the game and then using that to talk about some bit of real world politics is every bit as (in)appropriate as a player taking a thing that happens in the game and using it to talk about something they saw on television, or a recipe they're meaning to try, or any other tangent that has little to do with playing in the game. Like an offhand comment a la "Oh good, the Brownshirts are here" when the Chelaxian Dottari show up to a kerfuffle doesn't really merit comment, but a lengthy diatribe on logging policy is almost certainly going to be as inappropriate as would a lengthy diatribe on anything unrelated to the game.
But the thing is, once you start noticing certain sorts of things you can't just "turn off the part of your brain that notices them". So something like "are my merchant NPCs just a lazy Jewish stereotype?" or "is this entire plot just really colonialist"are absolutely worth considering in advance because a player who notices something like that when no one else speaks out might feel unwelcome at the gaming table.
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Reiterating "No politics" doesn't clear up what you consider "politics".
Absolutely. Things that player X thinks are just the way of the world, are 'politics' to player B.
One of the things that I think is worth considering in this debate is cultural similarities between the players involved, and how your assumptions about 'the way of the world' change more dramatically the further apart you are. By which I mean:
If I am playing a game with my friends, who are broadly speaking the same age, social group and social attitudes as I have, I can pretty much assume we don't need to worry about the subjects that come up in the game. But if I'm playing at a convention with near strangers I don't know what their levels of acceptance for certain subjects are, and what they consider unacceptable, so need to be more careful about what I say/do.
By extrapolation, if I am a games company that's selling a game to a global market I have even less idea of all the possible ways things that seem innocent in culture X are a big issue in culture Y, and that potentially hurts my sales.
Just to give a couple of random example:
Many years ago I had a (rather too serious) D&D GM, who had a house rule of 'you can only play characters of your owmn gender'. At the time this seemed a bit unneccesarily restrictive, and a silly rule, after all we were all friends, and my other half likes playing interesting female characters.
However, since then I've run into a few PFS characters of the "my 20 charisma sorceress' huge breasts are almost falling out of her skimpy silken bondage gear, and she proudly introduces herself as a Calistrian temple slave whilst cracking her ceremonial whip at you" variety, which really make we wish Justin was there to enforce his ruling, because I find them offensive and uncomfortable to play with (other people's sexual fantasies are in my "do not bring to the table" list.)
My second example is that reading through this thread there's an asumption that the people speaking/reading are American. I suspect most are. But if someone says (and I paraphrase here, no specific quote intended) 'we have First Amendment rights, that trumps everything', my response is 'not in my country we don't, so your argument doesn't apply'. Reasonable cultural assumptions by the original writer don't work because the audience is wider than anticipated.
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At the game table is one thing, but if you demand that no one talk to you about any concerns that you might deem political ever then you justify those concerns. That demand is itself political.
Maybe your remaining friends are AOK with that, but it seems a way of cutting yourself off from people outside that group.
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But the thing is, once you start noticing certain sorts of things you can't just "turn off the part of your brain that notices them". So something like "are my merchant NPCs just a lazy Jewish stereotype?" or "is this entire plot just really colonialist"are absolutely worth considering in advance because a player who notices something like that when no one else speaks out might feel unwelcome at the gaming table.
I agree except even when bringing the concerns up with the DM and party they may not change it no matter how problematic it is. If the DM and the rest of the group is also bothered by the change and willing to change the problematic element than so much the better. Except nothing is guaranteed and one may very well have to find another table.
Unlike gaming forums where posters can get there way it simply not going to happen at some games they may get invited to. All a player can do is request (not demand) change is implemented. the rest of the group can change or ignore any requests.
At the game table is one thing, but if you demand that no one talk to you about any concerns that you might deem political ever then you justify those concerns. That demand is itself political.
Maybe your remaining friends are AOK with that, but it seems a way of cutting yourself off from people outside that group.
It is not simply a matter of just wanting an echo chamber it is also being surrounded 24/7 by politics. Go on FB and online and I see political elements. Open the TV and the same. Sometimes I want to talk politics and sometimes I don't. It just seems that many refuse to read a room and will force their politics on you. When asked refuse to stop simply because they feel strongly about their politics. It's all about the the time and place and whether the group is really interested in talking about it.
I had to remove two close friends because one started seeing politics in everything and anything the second would always bring up how he hated the guy in charge of the country. Talking about soccer (insert rant about the guy in charge of the country) and so on.
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I have to admit, all this talk of politics is confusing me. I don't understand how cultural appropriation is political at all. I'm not talking about governmental policy or legislation. I'm talking about courtesy, human rights and open, honest communication.
I mean. Is it that things like cultural appropriation tend to be divided by political party lines, like global warming in the U.S.? I guess I could sort of understand but... "global warming" is not a political topic. It's a scientific/environmental one. Gun control and gay rights are political topics, but the morality of gun ownership or homosexuality are not.
I've seen "politics" used as a shorthand way of saying, "Touchy subjects that people may feel strongly about and are likely to make others uncomfortable or argumentative if you bring them up and have a high likelihood of completely derailing the task at hand, especially if you say something that someone feels is inaccurate."
So how is the concern that I may be taking some of the authenticity and accuracy away from a people's culture political?
I was thinking about this thread and accuracy depicting a culture, and it reminded me of this article about an anthropologist studying the Tiv people (and the Tiv people studying the anthropologist's culture through her). They ask her to tell a story, and she tries to tell Hamlet to them.
The article is from the 1960's, which I feel illustrates my point that things don't age well (she seems openly condescending to her audience in a way that feels uncomfortable through 2020's lens). I also feel that it illustrates the difficulty in portraying a different culture accurately, as other cultures are always seen through the lens of your own and it's hard to understand concepts that don't exist in your own culture. That is to say, we may get the "what" accurate, but will struggle with the "why" unless we've lived in the culture (or unless we were born into the culture).
So, if we're destined to get things wrong despite our best efforts (most probably offensively so, if we have a wide enough audience), what's our solution?
I mean, really? What is our solution if we're trying to create an inclusive gaming experience that isn't jarringly offensive?
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But I strive in all things to be reasonable and consider myself naturally curious. So...what did you mean by your post?
So how is the concern that I may be taking some of the authenticity and accuracy away from a people's culture political?
I believe it basically all boils down to this: We live in an unprecedented time, where true conflict and suffering is distant from the majority of our country (and perhaps the world) though pockets of it still exist (more so in third world countries than others). The conflicts we've usually been wrapped up in are being minimized but the human desire to engage in conflict resolution remains, and thus we begin to hyper-focus on the few remaining ones. Lines that we've been comfortable with living with are now being pushed, lines that form core beliefs of different populations, core ideologies that form the character of cultures and societies. Lines that cannot be moved or broken without shattering entire foundations of belief systems. Human do not react well to those kinds of conflict.
To be completely concise: People are deeply interwoven into their beliefs and that makes them internalize those things as a part of themselves. Culture, religion, politics (which generally forms a replacement for religion in those that do not have one), and other similar groupings are areas where people internalize beliefs into who and what they are. In America, we are a melting pot and it is inevitable that our cultures will try to blend and competing ideas will battle to the death.
To be entirely blunt: People are looking for things to keep fighting over. Many people exist today without a true sense of purpose and they find that purpose in defending certain aspects of their culture, religion or political beliefs. I don't see the need to fight over things or hold on to ideas that can clearly be shown to be inferior to others. Cultural appropriation is mostly seen in a negative light but I don't share that view. It is a necessary part of creating a homogeneous collective of humanity, and I want to see the best of humanity preserved as we reach further beyond ourselves. Race and ethnicity are irrelevant. We are all human beings.
Ideas are a battlefield. By all means, remember and honor where you came from. Don't get trapped in the belief one culture is superior to another. We have not created that culture yet.
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Short version, Arthur is English and always has been,
Correction:
Arthur was British, fighting against the proto-English.
And now revered as a hero by the actual English, including the myth that he will return one day to save them.
(If he does return, he won't be pleased to find the darn Saxons are running the country.)
It ought to be a prime example of cultural appropriation - taking someone else's folk hero, and making him your folk hero, even though you were people he was fighting against - but it really isn't. No one culture can actually claim ownership of the Arthurian legend.
More annoying to me was the King Arthur in Legends and Lore (and presumably in Deities and Demigods before that), who had a gold dragon on his shield. I can see why they wouldn't want to have a red dragon (not something a Lawful Good character in D&D would want to be associated with) but they should have left the dragon out completely rather than changing it.
Had they changed it to a white dragon that would have been downright offensive, believe it or not.
I can understand the concept behind the thought; the modern world is full of luxury and convenience. We don't have to worry about starving or freezing to death every winter, so we find other things to put our energy into.
I don't think I agree with the sentiment, though. Just because the hot-button topics of today aren't as immediately vital to basic survival doesn't make them trivial or imagined.
And more importantly, if "the good life" makes people soft and wanting to find something else to fight over/about, I feel like these human rights issues that are so prevalent right now would have emerged a few generations ago, when things were...I don't know...better? At least over here in the U.S.
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I was intending to communicate my disbelief at the audacity to claim that conflict and suffering don't exist for the majority of people.
Well, that's your problem right there. You extrapolated a limited statement into a universal one. I never said that a majority of people don't experience conflict or suffering. I implied that a majority of people in more developed countries are more insulated and isolated from the conflict and suffering that the majority of the world around us continue to experience. On the whole, we (collectively) experience less suffering and conflict, and we (collectively) still have the same drive to seek out and resolve conflicts. We should be OUT THERE helping the world, rather than picking ourselves apart.
Again, it is a failure to properly frame the statements into the context of the discussion. It is a common issue I find in most online discussions. The tendency for people to assume the worst and misrepresent the statements of others is why I tend to avoid these kinds of discussions in general.
I don't think I agree with the sentiment, though. Just because the hot-button topics of today aren't as immediately vital to basic survival doesn't make them trivial or imagined.
But, that just brings me back to what I stated before hand. We've started to dig at foundational topics and beliefs that form the foundation of entire worldviews. Playing cultural and political Jenga with these things, when they can be better left alone for time and cultural blending to deal with, is playing a dangerous game. People do not react well when their internalized values are attacked. Personally, I enjoy the back and forth that goes along with challenging ideas and beliefs.
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I mean the thing is, "understanding how systems of oppression work" is a burden that's placed on people who are members of marginalized groups, it is the privilege of those in the majority (or at least in hegemonic roles) to be ignorant of these things as they choose.
Just because you, like J.J. Watt, do not understand what was going on with people booing the "moment of unity" in which the fans were asked to be silent in last night's NFL kickoff does not mean that more melanic players didn't understand exactly what that was about when Chiefs fans showed their whole ass to the world.
Designer
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And more importantly, if "the good life" makes people soft and wanting to find something else to fight over/about, I feel like these human rights issues that are so prevalent right now would have emerged a few generations ago, when things were...I don't know...better? At least over here in the U.S.
Things definitely weren't better here in the US a few generations ago, we just lacked the communication structure and general level of acknowledgement for the value of all human life that is more prevalent today. I have a good friend whose grandmother once told me about the time she was taken from her ancestral home in the Aleutians during WWII when she was 12-years-old, shipped a distance equivalent to traveling from California to Florida in the hold of a fishing boat packed with other people, subjected to humiliating examinations for STDs by white doctors who were told not to trust Alaskan Native women if they said they were virgins because the indigenous people of Alaska were known to be of "low moral character", and then dumped in southeast Alaska. They didn't even clean the last of the unexploded ordinance off the island she was taken from until most of the people who could clearly remember living there were dead. There are men alive today who beat young Black boys with 2x4s for having the "audacity" to swim in public pools that the aggressors thought should be reserved for whites.
What we're seeing right now in the US is, in many ways, a backlash from two sides in a war that's been going on for hundreds of years, one which proponents of hate won for a very long time but were losing until very recently, despite having inertia and every kind of power(cultural, economic, religious) on their side. The rise of white aggression in the US today can be one of two things, depending on how we act as a country: the last, wet gasps of a culture that thrived on the suffering of others, or a reversion to the darker times of a few generations ago.
We have advantages today that we've never had before, though. Despite the very real and present dangers posed by white supremacy, plague, and ignorance, the entire world has been moving in a positive direction, slowly but surely. Though it may not be as true today as it was a year ago, this is still the safest and best period in human history to be a human, regardless of your race, creed, or social status. Part of that is knowledge. Murders don't stay hidden like they used to. Communities with shared goals speak to each other and help lift each other into the spotlight so we can address the inequities and abuses that plague not just the US, but many other countries' societies as well. One of the reasons people tend to reflect on "the good old days" is because the "good old days" were a time of ignorance, where victims weren't given voices and power went hand-in-hand with abuse in a way that wasn't contested, and was often even lauded. People in positions of privilege genuinely believe it was better, because they were sheltered from the truth.
2019 was a better world for everyone in it than 1989. 1989 was a better world for everyone in it than 1959. That doesn't mean that there aren't still issues, but one of the strange silver linings to the doom and gloom we're constantly exposed to is that said exposure is part of progress. Crimes and abuse aren't allowed to stay buried. There's so many eyes on every event that it's increasingly difficult for spin doctors to hide reality (though they're for sure trying). Suffering today is less than it was in our grandparents' day, even if they were too isolated from the world to know it. We have perspective they didn't (or don't) have.
That doesn't mean there is no suffering; there very much is. But it's less than it was before, and the best thing is that even though it doesn't feel that way, the reason it doesn't feel that way is because the lies and manipulations of those in positions of power cannot go unchallenged. Stories of death and oppression that never reached the ears outside of the communities where the tragedies were occurring now reach the whole world.
I'm of the opinion that it is not true that people have more time to worry about trivialities because of their own comfort, but rather that we have the forces of oppression calling in all their might and power because they know they're losing. And the reason they know they're losing is because they thrive on ignorance. They thrive on people in Oregon not hearing about Black men being murdered in California, on people in Vermont not being aware that Indigenous rights are being violated in the Dakotas. And they don't have that anymore. If a child is killed in the streets, the world knows about it 5 minutes later. That's why the very information we take in is under attack, and why it's so important for us to weed out untruths and protect our ability to transmit and understand the events of the day. We're getting better, but the people who benefit from the suffering of others know it and are fighting back, so that doesn't mean that "better" is "good enough". We just have to keep pushing forward so we don't lose what we have. The closer we are to peace and equality, the harder we'll have to fight to keep from backsliding.
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...We're getting better, but the people who benefit from the suffering of others know it and are fighting back, so that doesn't mean that "better" is "good enough". We just have to keep pushing forward so we don't lose what we have. The closer we are to peace and equality, the harder we'll have to fight to keep from backsliding.
Indeed. The time for the real evil in this world to remain hidden in the shadows is quickly ending. We absolutely need to be vigilant because they will try to adapt and move more into the mainstream, giving legitimacy to their behavior through whatever means they can. Otherwise, it will rise in guise of a better world and return us to a time of ignorance.
...audacity to claim that conflict and suffering don't exist for the majority of people.
Your exact words. Look at them again closely and explain how what I said and how what you said are the same. Here is a hint: distant does not equal non-existence.
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You can only reach this conclusion - that we're just looking for conflicts and fighting over trivial things - if you've already decided that the topic at hand is trivial. If instead it's important, but just not obvious to some, then we are helping the world.
You are not incorrect in your statement. Some of the things we are in conflict over are trivial depending on how you view the problem. The real interesting part eventually turns out to be who is correct about the triviality of the issue. I apologize in advance that we cannot discuss specifics here, as that would go against forum policy. I welcome the opportunity to learn and grow my opinions, though that comes with its own problems, namely those that refuse to return the gesture and insist that they are correct, and the depths of their emotions of the matter make all the difference.
I learned a long time ago that how I feel about something and the depths of my emotion on a subject do not, and cannot, change what is or is not true. But then, my worldview is predicated on the foundational assumption of objective (and universal) truth. You cannot reason and progress in any direction if subjectivity lays at the heart of your worldview, because in the end, what is true is merely your opinion.
Sorry, when I said things were "better", I was referring purely to the level of comfort and/or luxury available to the common people and such. More stable economies, a better wages-to-cost of living ratio, etc. If soft/convenient living has left us with so little to complain about, why are we fighting against an even wider array of issues than when living was softer/more convenient?
But then, that's still probably a hopelessly complex issue to lay any specific claim to. I don't understand economics or any of that stuff nearly enough to comment on it with any confidence.
And at any rate, this thread seems to have gone well and truly off the rails.
I stand by my previous comment: cultural appropriation is not a political subject. I think there's always a point at which you can take an issue too far, where offense is unavoidable and sensitivities are dialed up to an unreasonable degree, but the core concept of gaining consent, giving credit and doing research to treat cultures and people with respect... that's at least worth striving for.
But if this thread can't get back to gaming, I guess we might as well lock it up?
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Of course. Absolutely. But it seemed to me that this subset was the very one being referred to in the post I was replying to. The "assuming all of your points are correct, here's why you still might be wrong" approach has been an effective one in my experience; you avoid getting bogged down arguing over each and every point that you disagree with and (hopefully) gain at least a little credence with your opponent or whatever by not fighting them or dismissing them out of hand.
At any rate, it would appear to me that DeathlessOne, while they do not have the same stance as mine, is far from my outright enemy on the subject, so while I may disagree with at least a portion of their argument, I think I can understand it. It's muddy issue.
And at any-any rate, we're still far from the beaten path of this thread or these forums.
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Well, you're never going to get permission from a culture to use something from that culture which is not yours. Nor would the consent of a specific person be sufficient to give you license to use something (even if that person is solely responsible for it (e.g. even if Andrzej Sapkowski gave you permission to use Geralt of Rivia in something, CDPR, Netflix, and R. Talsorian Games might have something to say here).
But the point is not to get a license you can wave in people's faces to say "no, I'm okay here!" it's to imagine how whatever you're doing looks from the perspective of someone who's not you. Or specifically how does it look from the perspective of the people who have the most stake in whatever it is. It might be difficult to understand all perspectives, but this is why sensitivity readers are a thing.
Indeed, consider how someone with more stake in it than you will react to you borrowing something, and use whatever you use with humility. You might mess up, and if you do you listen, apologize, and fix it.
/bows. It's nice to get different perspectives on issues like this, especially perspectives that seem to fall somewhere on the spectrum besides absolutely positive or absolutely negative.
As for concerns about consent, as I said earlier:
1. The taking of culture without consent. This one's tricky, because you can't ask A Culture for permission, and Individuals are bound to disagree.
I think the important thing is to make an attempt. Don't just dive in without ANY other perspective beside your own...
That's actually where I draw the line. If I do my best to be respectful and polite, if I actually take the time and put in the effort to try and do the right thing...and then I'm attacked because I failed, I tell those people to maybe consider their priorities again.
By all means, correct me. Inform me. Show me how you'd prefer I'd handle this subject that's near and dear to you. I want to know. But if you see my honest attempt to be a decent human being and you get pissed and call me names or whatever because I didn't do it the way you think I should have? No.There are enough people out there who wish harm on others, who knowingly spread misinformation or who just don't care about people who are not themselves. They are the enemy, not me. I'm an ally. If I'm an ignorant one, let me know. I will try to handle my failings with grace, and I will go about curing myself of ignorance.