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Hi guys, as a Japanese pathfinder player who has actual samurai in my family tree here are my two cents. It's not racist, just like how me playing as a knight isn't racist. I'm not claiming a culture nor am I mocking European knights when I play one. I think they're cool and if people want to play as a samurai they should be free to play as one. I also understand that it can be upsetting to some people that samurai are often used as main representation for the Asian warrior archetype. But you have to understand that for a lot of people with little exposure, this is what many are most familiar with. It's the same everywhere, in Japan there is a subculture of admiring American Midwest cowboys.
There should definitely be more representation of other cultures. Hell, I would love to have a Maharlika representation for my Filipino half. But suppresing genuine curiosity and desire because you disagree with people goes against the idea of Pathfinder. If anything this should have become an avenue if introducing people to different warrior classes from different regions. I love it when I'm on Tumblr or other platforms where cool character ideas are shared to represent a culture. This type of discussion exposes me to cultures that I would have never gone out of my way to research.
I understand if you want to fight against stereotyping/misrepresenting a group of people but frankly, we didn't ask for your "protection". How I see it, as long as people are respectful to a culture that's all we can really ask for. Do your research, be curious, and just have fun. Isn't that why we all started playing to begin with?
I appreciate this post for it's inclusion.
We're literally playing pretend. As long as people aren't actively engaging in harmful behavior then what's the rub?
I generally have an issue with folks that need to police how other people play games when they are just having fun and aren't hurting anyone.
Can games be used to reinforce harmful stereotypes or insight ugly behavior? Well sure, anything can do that. It's a technology, and any technology can be used for good or ill.
I'm also not certain how incredibly crazy someone needs to be to pretend that this has some kind of legit reflection on the real world when we're literally dealing with dragons, magic and elves. Like, it's playing pretend yo, settle down, Beavis. Nobody is confusing Billy's samurai that slays dragons and casts fireball for actual depictions of historical samurai in Japanese culture unless they are an absolute idiot.
Thank you for writing the argument i wanted, but could not put into word.
I have issues with people being outraged the xyz group isn't outraged enough about how something might treat their culture/history/religion/etc. They're the worst, and that's how you end up with some of the choice comments from the mod that started this shit show ("asian and loving samurai/ninja??? RACIST!!!!!")
The mods are calling Barbarian ableist and problematic and Hags anti-Semitic in the discord.
Samurai is not where this behavior will stop at.
I mean... here's the thing... is some of that stuff rooted in ugly shit? Sure.
Everyone knows orcs are black people, goblins are jews, etc. because the people who made those legends were absolutely incredibly racist, and how much of that was an intentional part of the game design is really up to two things, likely the era it was created, and also what was in the heart of the person when they wrote it.
I grew up never considering orcs to be black people. Some people obviously do have that shitty stereotype. Hags could be seen as antisemetic or even mysogeny, as might any gender coded thing.
The thing is most people aren't feeding into those stereotypes, and frankly most aren't even aware of them. I didn't know about goblins being "code" for anti semitism till I was almost 30 and had been playing for 2 decades, and when I found out I though that was shitty that people do that, but it's also not what I'm doing when I play a fantasy game, not even a little. Shit my wife is Jewish by birth. 2/3s of my friends are trans or queer, I'm like the one weird token straight friend they have because we all grew up together playing games :P
It's tough to make a case that there isn't problematic stuff historically in TTRPGs, because there's literally mountains of evidence to support it. But is that what most of us are doing when we sit down to play pretend with our friends? Especially when our friends we play with may come from whatever background? I doubt it.
But this is something I've covered endlessly. There are people that use this stuff in an ugly way. But that's not everyone, nor should there be witch hunts to prove everyone is a horrible person because they aren't up on the latest twitter gossip or whatever. That's performative nonsense and it only does the same thing the fascists do on the right, it's horse shoe political nonsense and anyone who is genuinely progressive needs to grow the fuck up and realize not everyone is out to get everyone and not everyone is trying to be a racist jerk when they just sit down to play a game with friends.
But just like there's always fascists you have to fight against, there's similar nonsense on the extreme left as well, and nobody who's an adult takes it seriously. Nobody is perfect, nobody is going to get it right the first time all the time. The only thing people can really do is express what makes them feel uncomfortable and others can try to do their best to respect that. But that's something that happens at the table. Public forums? Not so much. They are not safe spaces due to the fact that they are indeed public. That doesn't make it OK to excuse bad behavior, but not everything done that someone can be offended about is indeed done with a hateful intent, and frankly if given the chance, most folks will see that they've upset someone and apologize and try to make it right if they have any empathy or emotional maturity.
Orcs in Lord of the Rings (the original orcs for ttrpgs) never had any subsaharan african connotation and I fail to see how any aspect of orc appearance or orc culture in Lotr could be related to black people.
"Everyone knows orcs are black people and goblins are jews."
Uh, no? The fuck are you talking about? There is nothing specifically African or Black about orcs, unless you are incredibly racist. Goblins? Depends on the depiction, the Harry Potter goblins? Sure, maybe. The typical monster goblins you run into in a cave somewhere in pathfinder? I fail to see any stereotypes about jews in that.
To be honest, to me orcs always were the germanic/easter european barbarian tribes that ravaged the western roman empire and western kingdoms in early middle ages... Not black people. But that may be because my first introduction to fantasy was Warcraft and Warhammer?
Yeah... I always thought it was dwarves or gnomes that were meant to be racist depictions of Jews, thanks to the classic stereotype of interpreting Jews being good with money as "greedy". And I only really noticed that one thanks to someone pointing out that Master of Orion ][ making its merchant race a space gnome was a reference to the racial stereotype.
I'm honestly not sure why people seem to think, and/or want others to think, that all fictional races/classes/etc. are meant to be spiteful, racist insults to someone else. Really, to me, it tells me less about the race/class/etc. they're accusing than it does about the accuser themself.
The historical connection is fairly undeniable, especially when you look into the Gygax thought and felt about real life "savages". The inception of dnd is firmly rooted in colonialist bullshit and even today the lore of orcs often aligns uncomfortably well with white nationalist talking points about black people.
But even still it is not only possible but in many ways inevitable for the game to outgrow and transcend those racist roots. The overwhelming majority of people, such as yourself, are completly uninterested in a colonialist standards simulator and just want a cool game about fighting neat monsters.
So those roots fade until they are weak enough to be ripped away or simply forgotten entirely.
Orcs were originally boar-like creatures actually. Why they become more humanoid creatures I don't know...
Yeah, Japan’s Porcs are WAY better.
This reminds me of the time years ago when people would say tables are being ruined by certain homebrew rules even though the person didnt’t mention an issue with it.
The rub is that you're having fun in a way that goes outside the narrow lanes permitted by the self-appointed gatekeepers/saviors. And for the sort of mind that goes into contortions of logic to paint samurai as some manner of racist dogwhistle, that's like waving a cape at an angry bull.
I mean I get that there are definitely reasons for social justice engagement. There is such a thing as people being blatantly racist and shitty in their games. There are people who will abuse an idea under the guise of "it's not racist, it's just a game!"
The problem really lies though, with correctly identifying blatantly problematic behavior and usually the best people who are most qualified to do that are the people who are actually affected, in this case Japanese people.
And as OP pointed out clearly, if people aren't being terrible, and they are having fun, it's genuinely not an issue. It's one of those stupid cases where you end up with horse shoe politics, where someone goes so far left they become indistinguishable in behavior from the right, taking offense and enacting social punishment against any who don't conform, and especially in this venue it's beyond dumb. Again, we're all playing pretend and the vast majority are not people who are seeking to be racist dicks.
Sure, there are always some, and by all means confront their bad behavior, but not at the cost of scapegoating everyone, that's just fascism from the other side. The whole point of being progressive is supposed to be to fight injustice, not to invent injustice to fight :P
Yeah, well, it's been my observation that a certain mindset is much more interested in what they can get from causing problems than they are in what they can do about solving them. And when the material for a genuine problem is lacking, they won't hesitate to DIY something and count on the ensuing outrage to distract from the lack of substance.
Considering how many of this sub's mods are, according to other comments, over in the sub Discord complaining about how we're all a bunch of vest-pocket Hitlers because we're not smiling and nodding along like bobbleheads about how absolutely right they all are? Not hard to guess what sort of mindset is behind this particular nothingburger of an issue.
Thing is, nothingburgers still require engagement to figure out the facts, and when it all turns out be nothing, it just make people like me that much less likely to pay attention when (or even if) the issue turns out to actually be something legitimate.
It is definitely possible to turn a facet of representation into Orientalism when done by the ignorant.
If the character is a Samurai via being a warrior with japanese coded culture, that's not so bad.
If the character is a Samurai in the sense that they are a pastiche of everything asian (and not just Japanese), then it can be a little weird, but probably not intentional.
If the character is just a fucking caricature that swings nippon steel because it's the strongest around and that exoticism is their one defining character trait, that's a yikes.
I mean, that's just a weeb and they're not racists, just hilariously cringe :D.
Unfortunately, a venn diagram between weebs and japanophile-racists is very close to being a circle.
Or, to put it another way, not every Weeb is a Japanophile, but every japanophile is a weeb.
Lucky for me, I can do whatever I want at my table and nobody can stop me!
;P
For peak offensive gaming, remember to make your samurai and ninja all dark elves too :D.
If you're not playing xenophobic theocratic slaver Dark Elves at my table what are you even doing there? Drug pushing catfolk? Cannibalistic tree hugging hippies?
/thread
Perfect, OP.
When you feel the need to police and protect people who never asked for or needed that protection, you're not doing it for the right reasons.
Your motivation is corrupt. It's not for them; it's for you to feel morally superior. It's selfish and bigoted, as it treats people or cultures outside your own as incapable of having an opinion or agency of their own. It's disgusting.
It's something that exclusively exists in western, primarily American, sociology and it's insane. Sociology is fundamentally a "science" built on subjective interpretation of complex behaviors. It's one step above philosophy, yet people read opinions and books that commentate on reductive behavior of our predecessors and problematic representation, then take it and run. It's not the gospel truth, it's observation that must be taken with a grain of salt and contextualized every time you want to apply that reasoning.
I lived in Japan for a long time, and was always encouraged to partake in the culture there. It was usually Japanese people who encouraged me to try on kimonos or pray at the local shrines. The only people who ever got mad at me were other white people.
On the same point, one must be careful when making an accusation of cultural appropriation in scenarios where it’s actually cultural spread. Enthusiasm spreads culture, especially under the effects of cultural immersion.
Half the claims that something is "appropriation" are actually meant to prevent cultural spread.
Yeah the only people that ever got mad at me for mispronouncing “Pho” were white people. The Vietnamese people didn’t care.
By the way, is there anybody in Vietnam complaining “that’s pronounced “MEATBALL SUB” don’t be so culturally insensitive?” -stolen from Jo Koy
Yeah this was missed opportunity to make a big post about "you like samurai? Have you heard about these other cool Asian warriors? Look!"
Like, apparently the word "assassin" comes from a literal Muslim sect of religious nuts who went around the world and killed people for...well I mean I don't know why they wanted them dead but they did. Never knew that and funnily enough this whole debacle gave me a new fun fact.
A similar thing happened for the word "Thug"!
That reminds me of the word "Barbarian". It started from Ancient Greeks saying "those foreigners sound like they just say 'bar bar bar' when they talk. Let's call them barbarians". It's interesting to me because if you think about it, that origin is the same as how some racists refer to Chinese people as "ching chongs".
And the idea of barbarians as rage filled illiterates comes specifically from Gary Gygax whining that Conan was too smart.
This is why I love mixing up the themes of classes so much. I've used the Barbarian shell, but renamed and reflavored everything. Rage became Focus, Reckless Attacks became Abandoning Strikes, etc. I basically reflavored everything as an "ultra instinct" styled class, though before it came out, and the resistance was from "dodging" instead of raw toughness. Things like Con to AC were explained as their endurance level with maintaining a constant level of "awareness" to their surroundings.
If I did it now I might even ask a DM to let me switch out an ability for a fighting style so I could take blindfighting to add to the flavor, or just MC into fighter or take the feat.
Edit: My bad. I'm dealing with so many systems all the time that I didn't even realize what subreddit I was on. I was absolutely talking about 5e and not PF2e up above.
Either way, the intent still applies lol.
Conan was just a fighter with a bodybuilding subclass.
can't believe the ancient greeks were hating on barbapapa!
Oooo, do tell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
God damn, fuckin' fascinating. Also fucked. But fascinating.
Temple of Doom...
I have read that, if I remember correctly origin is part of india right? Edit I read the wiki very interesting.
And to continue the exposure:
I’m glad OP mentioned Marharlika.
Because well-designed classes and system should be able to provide you with close enough to what you need and you with your table can tweak as needed.
Does a Minatan “Way of Vanguard” Gunslinger or a “Weapon Innovation” Inventor as an adventurer sound odd?
Not at all! It could be based on Panday Pira the cannonsmith (or at least, being apprentice to him).
Maritime Southeast Asia was already producing cannons before they first made European contact. It was first introduced with the failed Mongol invasion of Java (Indonesia). The Mongols/Yuan Dynasty brought Chinese firearms, but lost some of them as the invasion failed. Bing bang boom, and it was reversed-engineered it, and now Majapahit (the Javan Empire) now had cannons - one name being the lantaka (a swivel-cannon).
The Philippines had a famous smith (Panday Pira) who created cannons (which the Spaniards were surprised to face and called them primitive culverins). It was used to defend Old Manila against the initial conquistadors. Various Philippine settlements had interactions with the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia which is why it’s not surprising that the Spaniards ran into non-European firearms during the conquest.
And same, it’s this kind of discussion - trading/exposing/sharing ideas/stories to build a more rich fantasy experience!
Hell yeah. Learning is awesome!!
The moment when one learns more about world history in a Pathfinder forum than they ever did in highschool.
Hell, the Maratha Confederacy in India was famous for their gunnery during the 17th and 18th century. When Arthur Wellesley arrived in India, an officer already deployed there told him that "Their guns will astonish you."
Agreed! I had never heard of the Maharlika till this post. Now I know about them. I'd love if we got a bunch of archetypes about different combat styles or warrior casts that come from different Asian countries.
Do you have any recommended reading to learn more about the Maharlika?
Oh I think you meant to respond to me!
It’s actually kind of a tricky. Maharlika were essentially the “Warrior nobility”. Just like Samurai, Koa, Knights, Kshatriya, Eagle/Jaguar Knights. They served their sultan/rajah/datu/lakan with any matters of warfare, but meant they also had other nobility duties.
Also Maharlika was what the warrior class were called for the Tagalog people. The Philippines had thousands of tribes and languages with many different levels of society and ethnicities/races.
It’s a bit tricky, because unlike Japan, Europe, and India - the Philippines doesn’t have a continuous line because of Spanish colonization and then American colonization.
In the Tagalog society, there were the rulers (Maginoo), Warriors (Maharlika), Peasants (Aliipin).
However, with Spanish colonialization, a lot of the Pre-Hispanic societal systems were absorbed into the Spanish systems. If I remember right, the Maginoo/Rulers became the Principalia and the titles of datu/rajah/sultan/lakan became don/doña. The Maharlika merged into the Hidalgos. And the Aliipin…well…it IS the Spanish Empire…
The Principalia essentially retained the same powers as before (maybe even stricter because they served the Spanish Crown) and were granted low level bureaucratic positions, the most prestigious being gobernadorcillo (petty governor), essentially the leader of a barangay (traditional settlement unit). My grandfather’s line on my dad side had a line of governadorcillos, so apparently we have Principalia on that side (or at some point the original chieftain line ended and my ancestors filled in the role to lead the tribe).
On my mom’s side, our great-grandfather was a mayor and also spoke fluent Spanish. So, we think it’s possible he might be Principalia too or somehow worked his way around them, because knowing Spanish was only for the elites who would deal with Spanish officials.
Edit: To add I’m only 1/4th Tagalog essentially come from 4 different tribes of valley people up in the mountains. Not from the cities (specifically Manila), which means my family came from the Provinces. When I was younger, there was prejudice between Manila folk and Province folks. Which was an issue here in the US, as you get some snooty Filipinos that treat Province folks as lesser. It’s one of the few Spanish things that survived the American Era. :|
Since coastal pre-Colonial Philippines was heavily influenced by Indian/Islamic culture (through Indonesia), we’d have to reconstruct what the Maharlika did by looking at Various Indonesian culture and what role the Kshatriya of India did, then apply it back to the few big coastal settlements in the Philippines.
But the system broke again during the American Era where they dismantled the Colonial systems, which means a lot of the Filipino culture that masked itself in the Spanish system, were lost. Like my mayor great-grandfather, he was elected mayor (but we don’t know how influential he was because of his family line).
It also didn’t help that writing was rarely done on substantive stuff. Yes. The various Philippine tribes could write (commonly known as Baybayin or Alibata) and there is the famous Laguna Copperplate which is essentially a Rosetta Stone between Indonesia and the Tagalog in the Philippines. So any records kept by the various kingdoms didn’t survive the test of time (or the Spaniard priests happily destroyed/let them decay). There is a Baybayin/Spanish Bible that has Baybayin on one side and the Spanish on the other.
But about combat styles: the wide name is known as Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) but has 3 names in the Philippines - Arnis, Eskrima, and Kali. I’ve heard that Arnis is more common in Luzon (North Philippines), Eskrima in Visayas (Central Philippines), and Kali in Mindanao (South Philippines), but we don’t know if it’s really like that anymore.
There are hundred of styles taught there and taught at home. I happened to learn two: Largo Mano and Balintawak. Largo Mano was adapted from rural Luzon into a guerilla fighting style amongst pre-American invasion of Japanese controlled Philippines in WW2. Balintawak is a Cebuano (from the island of Cebu) street-brawling style. Largo Mano is known for using longer weapons and has 5 strikes. Balintawak has 12 strikes and is more aggressive. In California, there was a style developed from the Asaparagus Farm laborers near Fresno and it wasn’t surprising for some Filipinos to practice home style Arnis with each other using rolled up newspapers while waiting for the bus in San Francisco. There are also techniques like abanico (fan) which is wrist movement to gain advantage. And there is the iconic dual wield stick. There are two stances I remember: you rest both sticks on opposite shoulder, which is great for just rapidly striking repeatedly. There’s also Sinawali (Heaven and Earth) where you have one stick on your shoulder and the other stick underneath your armpit. It’s a bit more “loaded” than the other stance and puts you a little bit more defensively. You use cross-strikes, returning to the same stance on the other side of your body. Oh also, theres a footwork known as Coconut Steps (be hard and defensive like a coconut), where you form a v with your feet/stance, and have your opponent in one of the v’s. I learned the Coconut Step from Largo Mano because it was adapted to fight multiple opponents (Japanese soldiers/scouting parties), but also setup so you can easily run-away if you’re caught. Balintawak has a boxing stance, because it’s adapted from various street fight techniques.
A main difference with FMA is that it isn’t taught hand-to-hand, like you might see in Chinese or Japanese martial arts. FMA always begins with weapons (sticks, swords, knives). You learn strikes, feet movement, and disarms. Once you learn that, you then have to learn to fight unarmed vs. a weapon. That’s where the disarms and pressure point disables come in to try and take the weapon from the person to change the advantage. Last, you learn hand-to-hand, but more on using pressure points to pin your opponent.
Which is why FMA is also taught at various militaries and police academies.
And if you’ve seen the movie Equilibrium, FMA was used for the final fight scene in the movie.
Wow, thank you so much! I really appreciate you writing that out, I'm realising how little I actually know about any of Southeast Asian history, I'll have to get stuck into it as it sounds incredibly diverse and interesting.
FMA always starting with weapons and then moving onto hand-to-hand is really cool.
nope, I think you asked the wrong person xD
Yeah posted this and immediately remembered I wasn't commenting on the post, but someone else's comment. Hopefully someone will see it and be able to point me in the right direction.
I also had never heard of them before, I am so happy that this positive conversation has occurred out of the ashes of the previous controversy.
The original word translates as "consumers of hashish" as they used to do drugs as part of rituals. Assassin's creed first chapter is based on that sect.
Except the Nizari State Ismailis never actually used drugs, nor were they by any means exclusive users of political assassinations during the mediaeval era. The name actually comes from political slander, the Sunni Seljuk Turks spread about the Persian Shiite to discredit them. To me, it actually undermines how badass the fidai were and how strong their conviction was - they went on these missions willingly, knowing it likely would be a one way journey. Ironically, because the original assassin’s creed did not portray the fidai as taking drugs and instead using trickery and asymmetrical warfare to defendend themselves, it is more historically accurate than most portrayals if you ignore the apple.
All said without judgement, it’s a very widespread misconception. Unfortunately, the Seljuk propaganda got uncritically repeated by the Crusaders, which got repeated uncritically by Marco Polo, which got repeated uncritically by Dan Brown. This is a good article summarizing the Nizari’s history. If you are interested in learning more, I strongly suggest picking up Assassin Legends by Farhad Daftary.
Thanks for the insights! There is always something new to learn, and I like you suggested some sources :)
The name literally means "grass eaters", which has also lead some people to believe it was essentially a poverty insult, saying they were so poor they had to eat grass. I'm not sure if there are any specific sources for this interpretation, but I do remember seeing people point it out, and it does sound like the sort of petty insult a possibly-poor group's enemies would make.
In all fairness, the idea of using drugs before going into battle is certainly believable.
Various other warriors sects through out history have done it. The Berserkers in Scandinavia being the most well known, as they'd chew on hallucinogenic mushrooms before going into battle.
Even today, unit commanders will pass out No-Doze to troops if they're about to have to fight and they've not been able to get much sleep beforehand.
And meth was used extensively during WW2 by both sides to increase endurance and psychological resilience.
so your saying its the equivilent of naming our elite soldiers "potheads"
Green berets😏
I don't think crayons have hallucinogenic properties.
Most likely because they were a part of the power-struggle for control over the near east, and due to strategic and numerical disadvantages choosing to use unconventional modes of warfare (what we'd come to call assassinations, but I guess an alternative way of seeing it is that they employed strike teams looking to exploit weaknesses that couldn't be exploited by an army but a few highly skilled warriors could utilize – similar to modern day special forces).
Long time since I read anything about it so I might be off in my description, but the fortresses of the assassins is an interesting prospect for a state within a TTRPG: You fortify a few places spread out in hard-to-reach places within enemy territory, and then you claim responsibility for a few strategical political murders, making it clear to anyone wishing to mess with you that your bite stings harder than your size implies, but you're cultured and reasonable, you invite intellectuals and foreigners to your reclusive fortresses and create poetry and art. You're deadly, yet reasonable. A king of another nation knows that if they mess with you, there's a chance they'll be poisoned or killed during the night, but as long as they don't bother you, you won't bother them in return.
This is somewhat similar to how Sparta spent significant time and resources to ensure that the numerically superior slaves in their domain wouldn't think too hard about an uprising: It'll hurt us, yes, but it'll hurt you a lot more. Is it worth it?
That's part of the super frustrating thing for me. Like this would have been a cool opportunity to have a ki powered rogue subclass that would make the weebs able to play their anime ninjas but also let me be a Hassassin replete with the spooky supernatural powers folk tales would assign to them.
The entire thing is a big missed opportunity to explore traditions amongst martial arts or warrior cultures. Sure you can make a samurai with a fighter, champion, or ranger, but what if we got a series of feats added to allow you to pursue iaijutsu. You know, the most iconic samurai thing possible.
Why can't we have that, and perhaps a bard subclass or set of bard class feats attached to the warrior muse to represent the hwarang, Korean warriors who were akin to samurai or knights in noble status but known for pursuing art and beauty (and the inspiration for the warrior-poet archetype in 1e). I'm not as familiar with Filipino or Indonesian cultures, but surely there's something equally iconic when it comes to the martial culture or something that would lend itself to an interesting take on spellcasting.
There are so many frustrating missed opportunities in the Tian Xia book to explore and celebrate the fantastical and glamorous side of Asian cultures, something I would expect cultural sensitivity experts being paid far more than I am to know about and be able to show off in a respectful manner.
And now we've reached this weird spot where the people who are disappointed that samurai (arguably the most iconic Asian warrior to Western audiences) aren't represented in the book are now scorned and the community seems to be caught in this race to the bottom that is "WELL THEN WE SHOULDN'T HAVE DRUIDS/CLERICS/BARBARIANS/MONKS/etc", people are foaming at the mouth trying to suss out racism that just isn't there in a lot of the feedback, and people keep talking past the point that for a book about celebrating Asian culture the meat's not there on the bone to help people with creating meaningful and fulfilling characters.
The "there are no samurai or ninja options in the book" shouldn't cause some weird knee-jerk reaction like it has, it should make us pause and think about how even the most well-known and popular Asian character fantasies didn't get a spotlight in an Asian-centric book, and what that means for those that are less well-known or represented.
I think think something that's gotten lost in this whole discussion is the fact that we are still getting a whole book specifically full of character options that will include new feats and even new archetypes. I don't know how extensive those new feats and such are, but they will be there. The product page specifically calls out "Spectacular magical and martial techniques to vanquish the toughest opponents, whether that's through weightless sword arts or by borrowing the ancient power of magical familiars." It sounds from that like there will still actually be some feats that specifically fill the gap of what people would want from a Samurai class, just without outright calling it Samurai (which I think is fine because honestly, I don't think there's that much of a mechanical space for Samurai to fill that isn't already filled by the Fighter).
So we don't know that there's been a missed opportunity specifically because we don't have the book where they would have missed the opportunity yet. The reason for that is because they had so many character option they wanted to include that they decided they needed a whole seperate book for them, which has not been the case for any other LO book to date.
That's fair, I did forget there's supposed to be an entire other book released later (the stupidest thing to publish them at different times, I swear) that may alleviate this problem. Here's hoping that a lot of this frustration is straightened out then.
Yeah, publishing them at different times is a frustrating choice. Originally they were meant to release at the same time last year, but the OGL stuff threw that into disarray. Not sure why they didn't release them together still though. Part of it might be that they wanted to keep howl of the wild's release in line with Wardens of Wildwood, but they still might have been able to manipulate things to release these books together, maybe release them both later? I don't envy whoever had to organise the release schedule, I'm sure it was a pain to try and do.
Why talk about the variety of opportunities when you can just tell everyone on the sub how bad and wrong they are and then be supported by Princess Pilfer being a self righteous jerk because it's okay to do something wrong as long as it's anti racist
FTFY
for that they'd have to know those other cool asian warriors in the first place, much easier to just wallow in ignorance and call everyone who disagrees racist.
You've hit the nail on the head there. Everyone knows about the ninja and the samurai, they're two of the most popular character archetypes around the world. Japanese people love them, Chinese people love them (IIRC), Korean people usually love them, and basically everyone else loves them, as a whole. So, it makes sense that a lot of people would ask for them. But the other warrior types have significantly less media presence, and are basically unknown as a result; thanks to this, and thus aren't requested nearly as often.
Essentially, it boils down to "how will they know, unless you tell them", since you can't mention something by name if you don't know it exists. That's not racist, it's just people being influenced by pop culture. But the way certain people act in response to this is absolutely wrong; the correct response would be to just provide references to other warrior archetypes to pique peoples' interests, so they could request them, too.
(Edit: I know ninja are relatively popular in most Asian countries, but I'm not as sure about samurai. Correct me if I'm wrong, thanks.)
Seriously—history and world cultures are awesome, and this could have been a great chance to share and celebrate how cool some more of them are. Instead, we went with the racist mod power-tripping under the guise of progressivism.
Mostly, for invading Muslim lands, or for sectarian reasons.
Also, I don't see this post as a missed opportunity. Finally we have some word coming from who's directly involved and it does not surprise me that they are more open than a lot of white people
The assassin is also associated with hashish consumption, and might be where the word comes from.
It derives from the word Hashashin which yeah means one who smokes hashish.
That is what I thought thanks for putting it more succinctly.
It means "grass eater", actually, from what I understand. Which means it could either be referring to literally eating grass, or to eating
grass(hashish, which means "grass"). Either way, it seems the name started as an insult by their enemies (either a poverty insult or a druggard insult, if not both), but it caught on, and even got genericised into a loanword over time.Hashshashins, yeah. I think it was just simplified to "assassin" by people outside their ethnic group because everyone else found it easier to pronounce, more than anything else, and basically turned into a loanword because people didn't really understand the religious significance of their assassinations (and by extension, didn't know how to differentiate between actual Hashshashins and other stealthy killers... like ninjas ;3).
Not only does it come from a sect of Muslim religious nuts, it also has the same root word as hashish. So they weren’t only religious nuts, they were drugged up religious nuts.
(Big /s) Ummm Excuse me.... I would have you know that not only are you wrong but you have internalized racism!!!!
(Literal comment the mod in question left to someone basically saying this same thing)
Joking aside, I fully agree with your points. It isn't racist to play a samurai, knight, roman legion, etc It's great to have ways to play certain archetypes, as well as many of us would welcome new ones often less represented.
The reason many people simply want to play as samurai is because they are cool, and recognizable. And something like a Samurai much like a Knight culturally has so much scope. Go to a historian and ask them to tell you about either. Most historians will probably say "From what era?" "From what location" etc A Norman knight from 1066 is way different from a knight who served the HRE in the 14th century. Same goes for a Samurai why both classes of warriors have often become a stable or class in a tabletop game or video game.
Many forget that "the middle ages" lasted ~1000 years
Many do not know that Japan didn't have "middle ages"... their history is split-up differently because different things happened at different time than in europe.
But unless you actually researched this stuff a bit (which is rather rare when someone is building an TTRPG character), we still understand the "basic assumptions" and play it fast & loose, or else we'd only be able to play ouselves, which is not quite what you want when you want to play a TTRPG...
Knights, Samurai, Ninja, Swashbuckler... they're useful Tropes making sure someone doesn't need a Uni degree just to know "the basics" of the character.
Exactly, an easy example if I'm running a campaign in a setting (homebrew or official) and a player ask "Can I play a knight" (Narrative or if it is a literal class) I can have a few quick and safe assumptions about the character.
Anecdotal but something that pushes back against samurai or ninja being racist is. I literally don't think anyone at a table I play with would tie someone asking to be a samurai class as being an Asian character. I think in context tabletop games those have more tropes in ascetic and play style than ethnicity. Which maybe you can argue is it's own brand of cultural appropriation, but certainly isn't the issue the mods have been going on about.
Someone ask to be a samurai I'm picturing a character with a katana and 14/15th century armor. Like have a generic ideas that they want to be a melee sword fighter who is a bit more dexterous than brute strength.
Just as if that person ask to be a knight I'm not assuming they are a French noble man. I'm picturing a person who probably will be wanting a full plate armor, and probably have a traditional/creed they appeal to.
It's silly IMO a very small group of people think anything not matter how large of scope shouldn't be in a game because it has a historic tie.
Oh, definitely. If someone wants to play a samurai, the image it brings to mind is an honour-bound warrior in feudal era Japanese armour, who fights with a katana and maybe also a wakizashi, and defends their daimyo from the sneaky ninja clans. And if they want to play a knight, the image it brings is a chivalric warrior in medieval European armour, who slays dragons with sword and shield to rescue the princess. (And in both cases, the specific armour type is usually the most flexible part, since people really just remember the distinctive visual appearances there. The most distinctive parts of the archetypes tend to be the bushido code & katana for the samurai, and chivalric code & sword-and-board for the knight.)
The knight players usually aren't imagining their character as a rich land owner and minor noble, defending the peasants & commoners in their domain (possibly for a tribute/tax) and serving their king. And the samurai players usually aren't imagining their character as a mounted gunner/archer who wields a paired katana and wakizashi as a badge of office and hires ninjas to do the dirty work, and who's probably also a minor noble like the knight. It's not about being a reasonable approximation of the real-life historic classes, it never has been; it's about the imagery they bring, just as you pointed out.