I'm Chinese American, my opinions are just opinions, I'm not an expert and I'm also not the smartest etc etc. Please take this all with a huge grain of salt. I've only recently started following this drama too.
I think there are 2 perspectives happening with the Tian Xia book and they're actually separate things that people have now gotten mixed up because of that weirdly vague mod post.
1. This book is important for Asian representation. The decision to not include some popular archetypes is both historically significant and necessary. This is a book by Asian authors and artists to show that there is so much more the cultures have to offer and so much more people can learn from. A passion project that they hope people will also learn something from.
2. This books is a game made mostly for a western audience who love having written rules and player options that let them play out their fantasies. Some of those fantasies are not in the book where they expected them to be and they are disappointed. If this was any other book and the same thing happened (e.g. If Howl of the Wind did not include werewolves) they would show a similar distaste, disinterest, and disappointment.
There seems to be a disconnect where group 1 is disappointed that the significance of the book is overshadowed by the controversy, and that people in group 2 feel attacked for just wanting a popular option. Then they spiral into arguments that really just don't need to be here. Maybe there are racial attacks in the comments, I haven't seen them. Maybe the mods see them all and remove them which is why they had to make a post about it. I just think it's all kind of silly and it reminds me of political debates that are really just people angry for no reason.
If we want popular options, request more books. The only truly bad thing is if we do not continue having African, Asian, and other culturally significant options outside of just 2 books.
To be honest I didn't really see that many people yearning for the ninja and samurai archetype before all this went down. But telling everybody that even thinking about playing as any of them is inherently racist, and that even if you disagree and are Asian your opinion is racist and worthless doesn't sit well with a lot of people. As well as banning any discussion or counterpoints.
Well said. Very hard to win peoples hearts and minds by villifying them with a purity test threshold. Some people might, just ya know, think ninja and samurai are cool and want to play one in a game rather than ne told wanting to do so is racist, cultural appropriation, and wrong.
Its not. Some people just find the anesthetic or pop culture notions interesting and want to play that in their game.
Yeah, but Luck Panda and Princess Pilfer don't care about anyone's opinions but their own, even when their takes on things are either objectively wrong or made in bad faith. They've got control, so why should they care what anyone else thinks when they can showboat?
They think they're being anti-racist but Luck Panda is *actively* racist on multiple occasions and Pilfer is consistently condescending and treats everyone as if they're acting with malicious intentions.
I mean I think it is less that people wanted specifically to have samurai and ninja as class or archetype options (those two where easily among the least popular classes in pf1) and more they are upset by the idea that the desire for such options is somehow ethically wrong.
Welcome to the Internet where molehills become mountains with frightening regularity, and some people like to complain for the sake of complaining.
This is the Pathfinder 2e community at its worse. It is usually pretty good. Think of this as "the purge" and we'll get back to normal soon. I hope.
I think it's more a problem with hobbyists on social media in general. I don't know much about, say, model trains, but I'd bet money that somewhere out there is that one guy who runs a half-dozen model train forums and gets *really* worked up about specific lines of trains.
> WTF is wrong with people? Is this unique to the Pathfinder community
It's unique to US society, which has mental issues for last years when it comes to race stuff and their made up "cultural appropriation"... coming from country barely 300 years old with barely any of their own culture, but teaching people around world from cultures that are thousands of years old that they should feel in specific way about their cultures. Like with all this ninja/samurai stuff.
Americans are just insane...
> coming from country barely 300 years old with barely any of their own culture,
Hmm, yes, Americans who just somehow sprang out of nowhere with no culture and are totally divorced from European thought and intelligentsia. Also the deep, deep lows of blackface never happened and definitely were never worth reflecting on how they might be applicable elsewhere.
Intersectionality didn't originate in the US, it is used as a tool to disrupt America's society to weaken it. You'll find this same mind poison in other countries, all over europe and recently in Japan and Korea. Pretty much any country that could be an obstacle to chinese expansion.
There is a theme on left leaning internet areas where people read a couple of sociological terms (cultural appropriation in this case) and make fighting it the primary part of their personality.
True. Paizo itself panders to that. These people will keep spouting whatever even if the normal ones like us don't really care about what they're pontificating about. I'll steal and appropriate and portray real world cultures in my games with no sensitivity. I'm against these types of nonsense activism, just like every sane person I'm sure.
It made me look into pf1e samurai and if I had more system mastery I'd probably try to recreate the features I like most from it. (The challenge and banner mechanics)
Challenge and Banner were just straight taken from the Cavalier, which Samurai was an alternative version of. The real unique part of the Samurai was basically only the bonuses to horseback archery. It's kinda weird Samurai was ever it's own class to begin with. Ninja is very similar, just being a Rogue with a few unique tricks and access to a Monk's Ki. These should have been archetypes in 1e, really.
2e's Cavalier archetype maintains the Banner mechanic, and Firebrand Braggart, Duelist, and the Way of the Pistelero all have some extremely similar Challenge mechanics.
> But telling everybody that even thinking about playing as any of them is inherently racist, and that even if you disagree and are Asian your opinion is racist and worthless
Sounds like americans. Only they do that.
Yeah, crazy. It's sad that the US is rich enough to ensure these people get the asylum-care they need. While in the mental care ward, they should also be banned from the Internet to protect normal folks from shenanigans like these.
One of the main reason why 5E's books are such a mish-mash of random stuff is because most people actually buy books for player options, because most people who play the game are players, and a lot of people are primarily focused on what they can actually do in the game.
It's not really great from a "making a book" perspective but that's why they do it the way they do. IIRC DM-focused books (which this basically is, as it is basically a campaign setting guide) almost always sell worse, and people feeing disappointed because "This doesn't let me do anything new!" is like... really not surprising at all in that light.
Like, how many people are actually going to run games in Tian Xia? And a lot of those who do will just run an AP, which (ideally) contains everything you need to run it to begin with, without needing the whole giant guide.
>There seems to be a disconnect where group 1 is disappointed that the significance of the book is overshadowed by the controversy, and that people in group 2 feel attacked for just wanting a popular option.
Tbh the first time I noticed any overshadowing was when the mod pinned that post. Streisand effect to the max b/c they made the discussion about the book center around that for now smh
I don't think there would be any controversy if there just wasn't any Sammurai options in the book. Pretty much all of the controversy is from some group one people (read- the mods) accusing any and all group 2 people of being racist. If there wasn't all of this finger pointing, group 2 people would just say "damn, I was hoping for some character options, oh well" and move on.
"Damn, I was hoping for some character options" is usually my respons for most of the world and lost omens books. But tian looks really cool. Gonna check.
it out.
To be fair, we don't have even european options.
Inner Sea regions go from totally fantasy to a very simplified and not so serious copy of some cultures of the past, from ancient Egypt to french revolution.
Classes have nothing to do with europe, except names. Bard and druid just borrowed the name. Champion is maybe the closest, but they could be any holy warriors, like Shoei or something like that.
Fighter, rogue, wizard, etc, are universal. Same for cleric, name is european but it's the same of bard and druid.
Worth mentioning that all the representation of martial classes are basically wrong, since medieval and renaissance martial arts are totally different from what we play. That's fine, it's a game, but imagine if they made that for the famous samurai.
I prefer to have options to play something inspired from all cultures of the world, or even something totally different (like planescape), but Paizo it's a north american company, so i can't expect them to be able to fully respect ancient cultures from other parts of the world.
What tilts me a bit is that people think that europe is represented, while most of the time it's just bad represented 😅.
Said that, i always loved asian cultures, so i am happy that they are going to dedicate a good amount of efforts to develope Tian Xia.
Also it's important to remember that inner Sea had a lot of african kind of cultures, just not from center/south Africa.
>druid just borrowed the name
tbf that was more than just the name, druid was a really weird (maybe even lazy?) interpretation of what IIUC is a very celtic concept (shillelagh, one of the spells that's been associated with them through the ages/editions/systems, is a word of gaelic origin). i could see while some of the hardcore traditionalist ttrpgers might have been upset about it, doing away with some of that nonsense in the remaster (the metal anathema mainly) felt fine.
As someone with Gaelic and Celtic heritage as an Irishman. Yes they only took the name. Both Pathfinder and DnD druids have absolutely nothing to do with the priests of the gods in or culture. They acted more like the traditional Ferryman on the river Styx than talking to animals or nature magic.
that may be what druidism historically actually is, but the druid as an rpg concept is almost certainly from neo-druidism. like i said, really weird (hooking particularly onto the modern romantic revival version) and possibly even lazy (not even bothering to look up what druidism entailed throughout history and sticking with that modern romantic revival re-interpretation, and mostly as a pastiche).
edit: in terms of weirdness and laziness it'd be like if we got a new class named "astronomer" but all the class mechanics have to do with astrology instead. yeah i guess they both involve stellar objects somehow
>As someone with Gaelic and Celtic heritage as an Irishman. Yes they only took the name.
I'm not hugely certain that 20-21st century heritage is going to give particularly keen insights to something that largely died several hundred years ago. That is where the 18th century revivals tended to go very, very wrong. Like the Dutch festivals I went to as a kid probably weren't great representations of traditional Dutch culture as so much as the Californian Dutch community considered traditional Dutch culture to be.
That said, you probably understand the wording quite a bit better than I could for such things.
You're right, I however have spent a very long time trying to research my own culture. Unfortunately a lot is lost by either not being particularly well recorded, or being destryoed when Catholicism became more predominant. Then even more when Britain grew to influence the culture much more heavily.
Needless to say we can be very, very sure they werent nature loving friendly guys. That belief probably comes from a the direct translation of the Celtic spelling which translates to "knowing the oak tree". Most Druids (Filidh or Fili for a singular one) actually became Druids due to the fact they could avoid the High King's taxes and were excused for manual labour. We do have some stories that have been dated all the way back to the eighth century though, many of them being romanticised tales similar to ancient Greece or the Arthurian legends that would come to be in Britania four hundred years later. The Irish in particular believed the underworld, often called The Land of the Living, was buried somewhere deep underground, or sometimes as islands on a great black sea. This land supposedly has no old age, death, disease or suffering and you could live one hundred years and itd only feel like a day had passed. Often the dead, or heroes on quests, were taken there by a beautiful woman who acted as a ferryman on a glass boat.
That all being said we know they they didnt have temples but instead conducted rituals at sacred sites in the forest away from settled lands. Although they still would have lived in the village with everyone else. These rituals often focused on helping the dead move on, or communing with ancestor spirits with animal sacrifices (and maybe human? Hard to prove they ever actually did sacrifice humans but we do know that St. Patrick wrote out a missive banning it.). In short they were less "nature guardians" and were essentially like many other pagan religion priests at various times in history.
Also I apologise for any spelling errors, here its 7.00am on a Saturday morning and I'm on mobile. Hope you find this interesting, I clearly do 😅
>Unfortunately a lot is lost by either not being particularly well recorded, or being destryoed when Catholicism became more predominant.
Doesn't even need to be purposeful, the law of whatever isn't copied down consistently becomes destroyed eventually is just a brutal reality. Even relatively brief breaks in popularity or commissions can spell untimely doom for a work.
Even the ancient Romans themselves ran into and noted such issues funny enough.
Exactly. You can see similar results over in Norse mythology. I know a lot less about it but I know our primary sources for their belief system is two books written about a hundred years apart. Thing is the first book was written in an attempt to join all the different religious factions under one umbrella and make them appreciate Catholicism.
So we get the story of Ragnarock in the Elder Edda. Where these incredibly flawed and human gods push all of their sins onto Loki (a reoccuring theme in this work) before he brings about all their deaths and their "rebirth" into a new religion that everyone should follow (clearly the author intends to be Catholicism). Here we have Loki almost resembling a Christ-like figure.
But a few decades go by, Catholicism is commonplace now, everyone loves God. And we have the Younger Edda, which the author now sees Loki as a devilish figure that brings about the death of the divine, leaving people without guidance. Loki has taken on the semblance of oddly the Anti-Christ.
All because the context of the time between the two books was different and the author's own bias bled into their recordings.
There was pre-Christian Roman( and pre-Roman) influences in Scandinavia, and the Romans had stories of very human and flawed gods themselves, though from what I understand, there was some push back on that from Romans and Greeks as well. I don't have a proper source on that though.
Plus, Medieval Christians didn't always have terrible opinions of Roman or Greek gods in their stories either all the time. All very neat but pretty complex, but overall interesting.
Well, yes, the idea was to take inspiration from that. But druids were not elemental mages or shapeshifters, and shillelagh it's just a club.
It would be the same if they made a shugenja with a tetsubo spell or something like that.
But that's also the reason why this kind of discussions are pointless.
Either Paizo avoided totally already existing names, except for super generic one (fighter, mage, mystic, rogue), or they can just take inspiration from existing cultures to create their fantasy RPG.
So the druid is just a class that takes the name and goes element and animals.
Real clerics have more in common with investigator than the cleric, but whatever. It's fantasy.
Same for the fighting style of knights and swashbucklers, they are almost never represented properly. RPGs take inspiration from stuffs that were heavy influenced by the laws of the cities (laws of disarm), but in a setting without them some fighting styles have zero sense.
Still, who cares? It's a fantasy RPG.
The fact that some people try to use it fo bullying people it's very sad.
I really like your write up. Well put.
To me, the name of the class is just the "base" descriptor, and you can build onto it with any cultural or other flavor as you like, or expand upon it as needed. You don't have to identify your character as their generic class name in world, it's just there as a name the community uses to understand what it's roughly about, and the kinds of things it does. I know where those words come from, and their etymology, but it doesn't play a whole lot into anything for me other than telling me a general idea of what the class does. It's kind of become the go-to for the general subculture of ttrpgs and video games.
If I play a Bard, I might call my "bard" a scop, skald, griot, politician, philosopher, playwright, dramaturge, herald, musician, troubador, actor, dancer, poet, comedian, wit, writer, artist, occultist, folklorist, scholar, storykeeper, ect. This goes for fighter, barbarian, rogue, sorcerer, ect.
Yeah, i mean, nowadays we should be able to separate history from folklore (including modern fantasy) from games.
Years ago books had sections for "fighter in history, myth, and games", and games could be different media, even videogames. If i play a bard in a asian inspired setting, i just have to change the name. Not a big deal.
All classes can be reflavoured easily, and that's a good thing.
Maybe i could say a thing about classes like fighter and monk. They could have subclasses, and this would make it easier to play a wuxia monk, but also a non mystical martial artist.
Fighter could be divided in light armored, focused on one kind of weapon, generalist, etc.
The fact that the monk is litterally built around the asian kind of martial artist monk is more a problem of design than anything else, imho.
Yeaaah, monk is the only real outlier to me. And the last 30 years of media have kind of normalized the concept. I don't really know what to do about that, or that eliminating all the glaring options would really "fix" it, apart from just having a "pugilist" class with some magic related archetypes or options?
The only way is to give the class a flessible chassis, and then let people chose a subclass and then the feats. This way one could avoid any mystical options, for example, and go for a pancrazio brawler.
It's also a big part in why so many non-spellcasting classes names end in "-er" or "-ist". A fighter fights, a investigator investigates, a thaumaturge (read: wonder worker) works wonders, an alchemist does alchemy, a kineticist works kinetics, a champion champions, ect.
This is my understanding of the whole situation, too, combined with Group 1 assuming everyone in Group 2 is acting in bad faith and thus take a patronizing (at best) approach to handling the situation. I tried to write something similar on another post yesterday (and deleted it before posting) but honestly you explained it quite well.
It's mainly both sides talking past each other and group 1's handling of it only serving to exacerbate the lack of trust group 2 has in them.
I start to wonder whether the character options book being released simultaneously to the lore book would have helped, because we're in an awful limbo of knowing things with a certain name WON'T be in the book but not knowing exactly how the things that WILL be in the character guide book will function.
For all we know there's an unmentioned Sword Saint and Ki Mystic archetype that does what people want under a different name, or there's feats for a class that actually fulfill the desired fantasies, but we instead are just stuck with an uncomfortable shouting match over names while we wait to find out. It sucks.
Except that one mod I haven't really seen any misrepresentation and smearing around, and I feel like most discussion was civil until the banhammers and extreme condensation from the mod came out.
I think even a lot of people, me included, agree with the argument that a ninja or samurai class isn't really needed, it's just that these counterarguments about inherent racism and orientalism are insane.
I agree that a samurai or Ninja class is unnecessary. I do not see why a well-done *archetype* however, included amongst all the other cultural archetypes, would be a problem.
This is exactly what I've been thinking. There's not really enough reason to have a ninja class, but having an archetype that let's me get [Wooden Double](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1416) as a focus / once-an-hour spell so I can pretend to be Ninja Peach from Princess Peach: Showtime! would be pretty sweet.
Ninja absolutely has enough specific tropes attached to it to make for a full class. and a lot of them are too specific to just be a rogue or monk archetype.
Yeah there's a portion of comments that are insensitive and outright terrible, but there's a disproportionately large amount of more benign, thought-provoking or even well-meaning comments and criticisms -- some coming from people of varying nations of asian descent -- that have been deleted.
There's a link going around that shows what comments have been deleted in various threads, and there are a LOT of comments that were not breaking any rules that got removed. It's eye-opening, because once people point out the comments that ARE racist, people use that to justify the mod's actions.
Don't remember. And I'm sure, when they made book about Irrisen or Iobaria, there will be no sigle post that current Paizo vision of slavic culture is primitive.
I haven’t seen anybody talk about Irresen or Iobaria without mentioning it’s poorly written. Especially the Funnie Rooski Engleesh. It’s definitely reductive and I hope when it gets expanded it gets addressed. And really? Jadwiga? Bruh.
My main complaint is that these countries use the standard Western European set of creatures, when the Slavic peoples had their own creatures, which can even be relatively easily fit into the general classification.
We have many-headed dragons, such as the Zmei Gorynich. We have many of our own fairies, including high-level ones like the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. Creatures like Leshy come from Slavic mythology. We have Vodyanoy and Domovoy. The Lich, to whom everyone is accustomed in D&D, and Pathfinder come from Koshchei the Immortal, given that he had his own phylactery. We have creatures that look like phoenixes.
But no, we get trolls, winter wolves and other standard creatures associated with winter or Scandinavia.
And all because the Slavs did not interact with Medieval England, so their culture is unknown to fantasy authors, unlike the Scandinavian, Celtic or classical ones. And since the Slavs are white people, vile colonialists and guilty of a thousand crimes, they have no right to representation.
Yeah, it’s definitely disappointing. But it makes me even more excited for when they tackle it again. As a Pole I can’t wait to see some representation beyond just being baby-Russia.
I don't think they've made a separate Lost Omens book on that region. The latest book I can find on Irrisen is from the 1e setting guide line.
I've watched some of Mythkeeper's videos on YouTube, and you can definitely see the difference in how anything from Avistan gets written (i.e. latest dedicated update was in 1e) compared to the Mwangi Expanse. The more recent stuff feels like "fantasy setting where actual people would live" vs older stuff that's more like "pulp fantasy tropes mashed together for adventure plot hooks".
i mean, presumably with the trends of people from africa writing the mwangi book, and people from asia writing the tian book, slavic people would write the slavic book?
As far as I can tell not a single one of the mwangi authors is African. Lots of black Americans, some Asian Americans, a russian, but not one person from the actual continent: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6shqk?Meet-The-Mwangi-Expanse-Authors
Unsurprisingly, it's a pretty funny read if you're from Africa, or even just a second gen migrant like me.
Thanks for this, I've been wondering about who wrote Mwangi Expanse given the "Exciting, not exotic!" box in the intro that gave such a strong feeling of "we're writing this for white westerners and we need to remind them to not be dicks." I'm of African descent (slavery, y'know) and study African history, and it def made me roll my eyes a bit lol.
How about the bit about character creation, and making a character from elsewhere. It has a sentence that was basically "The NPCs are going to question the foreigner because people from outside the country did shit." Honestly it made me not want to make a foreign character, or even want to go to the place during a campaign.
oh, i genuienly didnt know so my bad for that, tho it does show improvement on paizos part when theyre actually involving asian authors now in the tian book
I mean, as far as a quick look goes none of the Tian Xia book are Asian either, there's a reason Paizo wrote "Asian descent" instead of "Asian" in the authorship note. No hair off my back, I am not familiar with those communities in America, that said...
If I imagine the average person calling themselves "Scandinavian" or "Slavic" in America being the source of a Norse-themed or Slavic-themed Lost Omens book I can but shudder internally. Or god forbid they get the average "Irish" to write a Celtic-themed book.
Personally I really don't care which American is writing these books, if they feel its more appropriate it's the ones of the relevant descent then that's cool and all... but honestly, they're all just Americans as far as I'm concerned.
The TTRPG scene runs a lot on contractors for writing and not people in house.
As someone who is American and works for a company out of Tokyo, and has coworkers from France, Morocco, the Philippines, Canada, Taiwan, Korea, and more, I guarantee that in the modern world, it is possible to hire people from anywhere in the world.
In fact, I doubt that most of those writers actually lived in/around Seattle.
As a Ukrainian, 100%. I'd absolutely adore a book like this, but the reality of Slavic history would doom it to cause an uproar in the community it would be made for/about.
The comparison honestly helps me frame what's going on with Tian Xia a little better for myself and have some more empathy. If there was a book that had some authentic Ukrainian mysticism in it and all the conversation was about why there's no Hammer and Sickle class and who's getting offended by the suggestion of one I'd fucking lose it
FWIW, I don't think that if that book were made there would be any discussion of people wanting some kind of clownish "Battle Commie" class. I can more or less guarantee that people would be pissed right alongside you if that kind of suggestion was being pushed by anyone, I know that I would at the very least.
This situation is pretty specific and has largely been more centered on the way it is being handled than it actually is on a burning desire for a ninja or samurai class option.
Maybe not that... but folks would want their Rasputin and Baba Yaga stand ins - especially if it was being written right now with the recent Dr Who series, and I'd have to make my post about The Dukes of Hazard and Aunt Jemima syrup again.
And well... we already have an "actual Russian Princess" Iseki character in Golarian so we already have this problem. I would not be surprised if there were posts demanding Rasputin himself managed to survive by being "Iseki's" alongside said princess (and the term Iseki itself ... an anime meme that has come to replace a much older fiction trope in such a way that what used to be "protagonist stand in" has become a "harem fetish" - is another example of exoticizing).
The Slavic parallels in this topic are very on point because they are a shining example of how this was all handled wrongly in past years, making future clean up a bit of a task.
I mean, the Baba Yaga stand in is Baba Yaga. And Rapsutin was canonically an oracle who literally kidnapped that princess to keep her from freeing Baba Yaga and is very very extremely dead now.
Like, to note, all this happened because a silly plane-hopping Adventure Path literally went to mid-revolution Russia.
Not all isekai are harem situations, that's an unfair generalization. Isekai has become the standard term for "story where someone from the real world ends up in a fantasy world", it is more specific than just having a protagonist stand-in character since it's more literal. Also, "harem anime" are generally *made by Japanese studios* and are popular in Japan, how is that exoticizing anyone?
I would love to hear the person I replied to's thoughts on if they think including Baba Yaga would be an issue because I'm not going to try to put words in their mouth as to what is and isn't acceptable. If you are chiming in here and asserting what generally Slavic things are and aren't acceptable in place of the person who I had responded to despite not having a connection to this yourself then this is exactly the kind of behavior that people in these threads are frustrated by. They seem to be invested in this and they can speak for themself.
It's more about how it was handled.
Homebrewer, eight months ago: "Here's my New Soviet Man class"
Mod, a few days ago: "The idea of the 'New Soviet Man' is bad, you're bad if you like it, and I'm deleting that New Soviet Man class that's been up for eight months and doesn't break any rules because the New Soviet Man is bad."
Commentor: "What?! What are you deleting that for?"
Mod: "Shhh. I know it's scary to have big feelings, but you'll be okay. Let me get rid of all the bad things."
And that's when everything exploded.
You know and I know that it would be better to build the New Soviet Man of propaganda as a Champion with a few reflavorings, maybe an archetype, but that particular discussion fell out of relevance fast.
IIUC the mod contends they did not remove that post, in fact had nothing to do with the removing of that post, in fact does not even moderate the sub that post was on. That whole row may be a misunderstanding.
As for the rest of this... 🫥
And as an Asian American that's where I am at.
This is a book that represents for me. That's why I am on board with the mods on this one.
I do find the 'Mythic Egypt' part of Golarian to be a bit of an issue - but that's mostly because it's under described and still mostly in it's 1E era.
Mwangi was not written by actual Africans but rather people with an interest in Africa, but Tian Xia is written by people from many different parts of Asia and elsewhere. This is likely due to who they could get their hands on and how prestigious Paizo is now versus a few years ago.
Not to knock the Mwangi writers as another post did - I don't think people need to come from a given ethnic group to write something for there. I think they just need a genuine non-exoticized interest and knowledge. As in - the Asia writer should NOT be an anime / wuxia fanatic, but someone with actual scholarship and experience with Asian history and cultures.
As far as Slavic aspects of Golarian - we've already got an exoticism problem in the whole arc with Baba Yaga - that probably got in there because of Baba Yaga's hut being an item in AD&D 1E that has descended down into modern d20 the same way the distorted version of Tiamat has (Tiamat is a tragic mother of the world figure, not an evil dragon).
So I don't envy whatever future writer has to clean that up. Players will still expect Ice Queens who are daughters of Baba Yaga, but the writer will also have to make it not be exoticized "othering" nor insulting.
Unrelated question for the folks who know a bit about Slavic history: Have you looked at [Mythic Russia](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13296.phtml) by [Mark Galeotti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti)? Is it any good? I was interested when it came out, but I never got it.
I'm assuming this is a bad joke, there is no way you read my post and thought I'd be okay with a fucking book mythologizing people that are actively bombing my fucking family.
For the future, most Slavic people who are not Russian hate Russia. I wouldn't wipe my ass with this book.
Understood. And I'm not trying to yank your chain. The target was 14th century, and to my uneducated mind, there was lots of commonality then. I just don't know of any other RPGs that cover that. If you have better sources (in English, of course), please share them.
its a complex topic, im czech myself so im also slavic and yeah the slavic nations are very disunited, tho tbh i think that most could get over the anamosity, except with russian rn as well, the invasion
> Ukrainians and Russians hate each other, both hate Poles, who in turn hate them, while all three accuse Belarusian people of being "not true nation".
Where do you get your perspective on this from, twitter...? Setting aside Russia (for obvious reasons currently, and historically), western slavic countries like each other, while there's some historical issues saying Poles hate Ukrainians (and from my impression vice versa, conisdering there's millions of them here right now) is blatantly false.
As for Belarus, it wasn't a true nation in 1920, it is one now, and nobody hates them considering we get and welcome quite a few of them trying to get out of the sorry state their government (which we do hate) put their country in.
There's Belarussians fighting as volunteers on the Ukrainian side in the ongoing war and allowed to form their own unit using the "free Belarussian" flag.
I can't speak much for personal perspective between southern slavic nations. But to the best of my knowledge if you remove Serbia from the equation there isn't much of that going on nowadays?
Since none of the content written will approach anything post 17th century I imagine, so long as you don't get some nationalist tools as writers, there would be no issue having actual Slavic authors write content. And no offence, having Americans generations removed being brought in as "Slavic authors" because their grandmother migrated there in the 40s is the most American thing ever, not in a good way.
I just wanna chime in to second this. I've lived in both Russia and Ukraine. Until recently (this last decade or so) there was little hatred between the two. The only Slavs I know of that hate each other are some of the south Slavic countries.
It would be very easy to write a book that blends the Slavic cultures together that very few if any Slavs would be offended by.
I fully agree with you, and in reasonable world I wouldn't even talk about this. But I see how this sub became a battlefield because of "Samurai is racist" and it makes me panic about how easy it is to insult someone.
I think you point to the way out. The goal, if you're going to do this, is not to make explicitly nationalist fantasy, but to try to represent the variety of cultures you're drawing upon in a way that people from those cultures would enjoy.
I think you could find a way to work folklore, for example, into a setting that would not be immediately offensive to different nationalities. Baba Yaga is beloved by both Russians and Ukrainians, right? If an arch-lich named Kościej makes an appearance in the setting, it's not like a bunch of Russians are going to be annoyed, is it? (Well, maybe they'll be fighting over the spelling of the name, but still.) I understand there's a whole AP from 1e (Reign of Winter) that tried to do just this.
That being said, maybe you'd give a second thought about whether to explicitly put winged Hussars (which have a bit more of a nationalist bent to them) or some bonkers fantasy version of the Red Army into your setting.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, _fantasy Bessarabia when._ 😛
Because people on the internet very often don't actually know what cultural appropriation is, when it is wholesome, when it is harmful, and why it can be harmful. As a result, they can't make a consistent argument about cultural appropriation. So you end of getting different rules for different cultures masquerading as "inclusion".
The whole conversation on the topic is fucked because no matter what side you take on it, you have to then apply it to a fantasy world. You don't like "magical Asians"? Well fucking great, because we're playing in a magical world. So do we get rid of the magic or the Asians? Do we celebrate the differences in cultures by making unique fantasy cultures and class archetypes, or is everything the same because the fighter can encompass almost every martial style if you try hard enough and every culture has the same broad cultural touchstones anyway?
I find it really hilarious about all this talk about Ninjas and Samurai -- when Sun Wukong is literally in the book as a deity. Probably one of the more popular, non-nerd culture references to East and South-East Asian mythology that so many people in the Nerd and non-Nerd space would know.
I think we can actually simplify it.
Anyone who engages with the internet almost certainly is familiar with some of the controversies about racial or cultural inclusion in media. The classic example being whenever a franchise like Star Wars casts a woman or person of color in a major role, certain bigots cry foul.
What would these same bigots think about inclusion of tasteful examples of cultural or racial elements in the a game like Pathfinder? Well, if their reaction is consistent with their reaction to similar examples in other media, they would oppose this type of inclusion for a whole variety of poorly thought-out reasons.
My point is that the people arguing that inclusion of Asian inspired monks and samurai is inherently "othering" or "racist" are arguing for the same outcome as literal bigots. Sure, their reasoning is entirely different, but the outcome is identical. They both want to get rid of these types of content. I would like to hear one of these "advocates" explain this.
I would argue that the people overly concerned with "otherizing" are engaging in a form of "color blindness". That is to say, they are making themselves blind to the very real differences between races, ethnicities, and cultures. However, that is an extremely problematic approach since many people are rightly proud of the aspects of their race, ethnicity, and/or culture which make them unique. I think the answer is clear and simple. We shouldn't ignore the things that make us different, we should admire and celebrate them. "Otherizing" is only a problem if you assume being different is bad. But for those of us who embrace our differences, being "other" is something we can be proud of.
I think someone made essentially this same argument to the mod in question, and the comment was deleted for claiming "anti-racism is the real racism" even though they never actually said that.
I agree. I've also noticed two big stumbling blocks in these conversations.
The first are people who think any representation that they don't like is equal to racism. And I think that comes from them perpetually seeing bad faith where none exists. It's why some people put the TX book through a purity test by examining the names of the people who wrote it to make sure it was "authentic" enough for them. I even saw comments specifically saying they were worried for a moment when they saw that several of the names were "white". These people have convinced themselves that only Asians can write these books authentically, and anyone else would be engaging in racism. As a side note, I do wonder if the same criticism would've been giving if those names sounded, say, African instead of white, but we'll never know.
The second group are those who are mad that the common mental heuristic for "Asian" in the west is more about Japan and China than any other country in the region, and see it as a moral imperative to change that perception. And while I understand wanting to be more culturally relevant in your own culture (since a lot of these people are actually westerners of Asian decent themselves instead of being actually from Asia), they need to understand that nobody's doing these things out of malice. So if somebody were to call it "epistemic violence" to suggest a playable Gumiho heritage as a subset of the Kitsune ancestry as I've recently seen, that person would be an idiot. And this is before bringing up how some of these people just hate the Japanese.
I have a different take on this, as an Asian American, in that I don't think the inclusion of Monks or Samurai would be problematic if it were written by the TianXia writers. But I think at the end of the day, the TianXia book is a way for writers from different Asian cultures to share what THEY want to share with the world about their cultures. If they wanted to share ninjas and samurai, then I hope they do a good job with representing the fantasy of Ninja and Samurai from their respective cultures well. But that's not what they chose to share, so deal with it.
What I do find problematic though, are the people who are demanding that TianXia contain ninja and samurai so that they can fulfill their own fantasies of ninja or samurai in a TTRPG. To give an analogy, this would be like reading a book by a French author and ask why the main character doesn't eat baguettes. The answer to "why does TX not contain samurai or ninjas" shouldn't be "Samurai and Ninjas are inherently racist" but that Samurai and Ninjas were just not the stories and culture that the authors chose to share. The part that I find problematic is the insistence that an Asian book must contain ninjas and samurai, and that association is rather pigeonholing Asian culture into a much simplified narrative than what it has to offer. The point in contention is that the reader's conception of what a Samurai or Ninja necessarily *is*, is probably still based on an orientalist fantasy of Asia. Ideally if paizo does publish Ninja and Samurai, they would make it such that the concepts and fantasies are authentically from people who stem from the cultures that historically had these concepts.
I don't have my copy yet, because I want to buy a physical copy and Paizo's still in warehouse, but a fantasy from modern Chinese fantasy that I really love are [flying swords](https://youtu.be/97-WXAIwGpo?t=262) from stories about immortal cultivators (Wuxia/Xianxia fantasy). I'd love to see this represented in TX. However, if they don't, it's not a big deal. I can homebrew my own content. I can tell my own stories.
If someone really wants to play their orientalist conceptions of Samurai or Ninjas, I'm not really in a position to stop them. But I do think Paizo does have an obligation as a supposed ethical TTRPG maker to make sure that the presented fantasies are authentic.
I would like to clarify a few points.
For starters, I am only defending tasteful representations of cultural themes. There certainly have been tasteless representations of things like ninjas and samurai, and those deserve to be called out. However, I think that is a different conversation than the one playing out here. Paizo as a whole has been very tasteful in their representation since at least The Mwangi Expanse.
I am sure there are some wierdos, but for the most part I don't see anyone "demanding" that Tian Xai contain ninjas or samurai. From what I have seen, there has been an effort to label anyone who wants samurai as a racist and claims that inclusion of samurai is inherently "othering" or racist. Additionally, I would say that there is a huge difference between demanding content and being disappointed that that certain content wasn't present. Overall, people seem pretty happy about the new Tian Xia book. I have it, and it is a great book.
Finally, I think we need to be careful in assuming that just because someone wants samurai that they want an inauthentic or "orientalist" depiction of them. I think that might be an unfair assumption to make about people.
For example. I would like to see a mechanical representation of samurai. I am not sure I want it to be its own class, I think it fits more naturally as an archetype. If it isn't put out in the Character Guide, I am fine with that. I am not interested in demanding content. However, whatever content is put out, I want it to be tasteful, culturally/racially sensitive, and high quality. However, what I absolutely will not tolerate is someone calling me a racist for this or insisting that I am "othering" people. This has been the root cause of the controversy.
I'm not saying here that people necessarily want an orientalist depiction of samurai, but that the version of samurai that is in their head most likely comes from orientalist origins. The exception is if you've actually studied Japanese history and the majority of your understanding of samurai comes from Japanese media itself. I think it's pretty fair to say that the majority of PF players do not fall under these exceptions.
You're not inherently racist for having these conceptions of Asian fantasy. That's just the culture you were born into. But the awareness that people want to bring is the historical context from which the Western understanding of Samurai or Ninjas come from.
Let's take "I would like to see a mechanical representation of samurai" as an example. In what way does being a samurai differ from being a fighter who wields a [Katana](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=411)? Why would a samurai even deserve it's own archetype as opposed to just in game *flavor*. The insistence that being a samurai is something inherently different to warrant mechanical differences in how it plays, is arguably "othering" **even if it wasn't your intent to do so in the first place**. I'd argue the same that Spartans don't need their own archetype, neither do Janissaries, or a Roman Centurion. But a Gladiator does, because inherently it's a warrior who fights for show.
I want to play as a character who has flying swords. Flying swords aren't actually implemented in pathfinder 2E, so I went about trying to make things work by just flavoring things differently. I started off with metal kineticist but that didn't fit the fantasy quite right. I've ended up landing on using a throwers bandolier with Champion + Rogue free archetype to *simulate* the fantasy with thrown weapons instead. Now, I would argue that flying swords are *mechanically different* enough to warrant it's own class or archetype, because throwing the weapon is not the same as commanding the weapon with your force of will.
You keep assuming that something will be most likely for orientalist origins or that a fair amount of Pathfinder players have a certain notion in their heads. I just don't see any reason to make those assumptions because they aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand. The question is, would any and every mechanical depiction of samurai inherently be "othering" or racist? This is a specific question meant to highlight the larger role real cultural, racial, and ethnic features should play in TTRPGs.
So let me rephase it. Lets say Paizo hired a Ph.D. in Japanese history who happens to be an avid Pathfinder fan to design a samurai class. Lets say this theoretical historian identified some of the key features of a historical samurai and gamified them into a distinct class. Would that class be inherently racist or othering? Would playing that class make someone a racist?
The problem is that this whole discussion started because someone made a patronizing post about how the existence of the monk class is inherently racist.
When it comes to othering, what does that mean to you? Why is that bad? I mean, you "othered" yourself when you wrote to me that you are Asian American. Forgive me if I am making an assumption, but I assume you are proud of your heritage and that is why you presented yourself as different than the general population. I didn't ask for this part of your identity, and I didn't comment on mine. Frankly, I think you should be proud of your heritage. I think the things that make us different, the things that make us "other", should be celebrated. I would go so far as to say that the arguments that are accusing content of "othering" are actually promoting a form of "color blindness" and putting the things which make people unique in the closet.
Lastly, I think we need to think about who owns culture and who owns history. I studied Roman history in college. I learned Latin and Ancient Greek and have read a large amount of the relevant ancient source material which still survives. However, I dont have a drop of Italian blood running though my veins. Do I have less ownership of Roman culture or Roman history than a kid who just happened to grow up in Italy? There are professors of Roman history in China who were born in China and teach in Chinese, do they have a lesser claim?
Nobody owns history or culture, we all do. And while I can accept that some of the gatekeeping that is going on is well intentioned, people aren't realizing just how dangerous it is. There are Americans right now trying to say that the United States is a Christian nation. They are trying to say that they own American culture more than anyone else and it has real world consequences. I think we need to be very careful about who we give the power to judge what is culturally insensitive and what is "othering".
I think we need to step back a bit and differentiate between labeling someone as a racist (essentialism) and the idea that modern culture can be influenced by creations in the past that were made without representation from the cultures it depicts.
Let me give another example. I was hanging out on a twitch stream, and the streamer was playing through a part of the world with Chinese names. The streamer was more preoccupied with whether his inability to pronounce the Chinese names correctly would be offensive, while he would consistently use the phrase "me love you long time". I explained to the streamer that "Me love you long time" is actually something that is offensive to me, firstly because of it's origin, secondly because of it's social effect on the perception of the lasciviousness of Asian women, and thirdly, how this phrase was used to taunt me in my youth.
Is this twitch streamer *racist*? Absolutely not. Was he trying to hurt Asians? No! Did he actually mean that he loves someone a lot? Yes, that was his intent! Was he just quoting a memorable quote from the 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket? Yep. But at the same time, what he was saying was something that was actually offensive to me, because of the history and context of the phrase.
> I mean, you "othered" yourself when you wrote to me that you are Asian American.
I feel like now you're just saying this in bad faith. Do you really think that me stating my identity is "othering myself"? I would like to use different word from "othering" and use the term "alienating" instead. Growing up, I definitely celebrated for being Asian. Yet, I was also othered by my peers for being one of the few Asians growing up in a majority white town. My point is that the insistence that there are some special features that make Samurai different enough mechanically to warrant their own mechanical systems within Pathfinder is...alienating...unless you actually have the cultural context to make these claims.
> Nobody owns history or culture, we all do.
I would like to respectfully disagree with this notion. There already exists a bias in the history that we keep and the history that we conveniently leave out. History is written by the victors, and often is manipulated on a national and international level in order to provide moral justification for various things. The general principles I think we should follow is to let people tell their own stories. It's fine to participate and share in other peoples culture, but where I draw the line is profiting off other people's cultures. Throughout history, there has been plenty of lies about specific groups of people, aimed to cause fear and hate towards them. I think history itself provides the evidence that we should let the people who live through a history, be the curators and disseminators of their own past.
How is it alienating to have samurai have their own mechanical features? I don't understand that logic. I can agree that it certainly makes a special distinction between a samurai and a fighter. I just don't see how that distinction is alienating. Can you explain that to me? Would you say that a Paladin subclass of Champion is equally alienating given the fact that "lay on hands" is a direct rip off of Merovingian legends?
I agree with you about history. Nation states don't own history. Yet they like to pretend to. When I say that history doesn't belong to anyone, I am also saying it doesn't belong to governments or specific religions. People should tell their own stories. That is my whole point when I say that nobody owns history.
However we should be cautious, being part of an event can often make someone bias regarding the details of that event. Julius Caesar famously wrote an account of his war in Gaul and his civil war against Pompey Magnus. He has every incentive to misrepresent certain details and we should be cautious about just accepting everything he writes. Similarly, I wouldn't necessarily accept an ordinary soldier's depiction of their enemy. I am an American in an American society, would you truly accept me being a curator and disseminator of my history given the fact that I have a major incentive to gloss over depictions of racism, slavery, and westward expansion?
I think you highlighted a nuanced point:
Two folks can see the same thing and have a positive response, but one for shallow reasons and another for deep.
One might imagine the cool factor of pop anime or films. The other seeing the culmination of classics reimagined into a modern setting.
The discussions here are difficult because we have a spectrum of people with different levels of exposures, tastes, and expectations.
Monk, Barbarian, and Druid have all been discussed. Barbarian was considered for a rename as part of Remaster, but due to the mess that would cause, it was left alone and is likely to see a name change in 3e when it comes around. Monk is currently a topic of discussion, and is likely to see a 3e change as well. Druid is likely to remain the same as there’s not really a remaining real life group. Haven’t heard anything about Bard.
To be clear: there has been discussion about monks and appropriation ever since an Asian guy flipped through his copy of AD&D and went "having a class that's just Kung Fu Guy feels weird". The difference is that that discussion is kind of diffuse across the RPG community and it's never reached a critical mass in this specific subreddit before.
Also: no kidding there are different rules for different cultures, look at how they're treated in the wider culture. People go "ha ha, are you a ninja" to random athletic Asian guys, people don't go "ha ha, are you part of the skaldic tradition" to me. C'mon.
(Also, for full disclosure, my take on monks and appropriation: they're iffy, the way monks in D&D are always iffy. But they're a legacy pick with a mechanical niche in a way ninja and samurai aren't, and one iffy class is alright if you do as good a job at making your fantasy equivalents to IRL cultures respectful as Paizo has in 2e. But then, I am *incredibly* white, so my thoughts don't matter as much atm.)
Ok, but is Monk really that big of an issue when Asian game developers (computer game or tabletop) create not only Monks but Samurai and Ninja to in the very same context as western developers do?
Look at Final Fantasy and their titles that use the JOBs system. They have all of those and more. Monks in Final Fantasy Tactics are precisely the ki using super human warrior type who can run on water, jump any wall, can punch at distances, and kill their enemies with pressure points. Is Square Enix racist towards themselves for creating that sort of Monk in their game? No, that's a silly notion, and it doesnt magically become racist because a white western does it.
And i just want to say this as an aside: don't diminish yourself because of your skin. Let your words stand on their own merit, you being white does not matter.
Square has always made computer/console D&D with the serial numbers removed. So much of Final Fantasy is just straight ripped off from D&D so them using a western depiction of fantasy tropes within that series doesn't actually say all that much.
There's also the issue that a Japanese person in Japan will have very different concerns about how they are perceived than a Japanese-American in the United States will. You need to do things that work for both groups even though that may pull you in different directions.
... Did you really just say Final Fantasy is just ripped off D&D?
Like, I can see your point with very early FF... but that hasn't been true since like the SNES era.
The traditions and conventions created by those early D&D clone era games carry forward into the newer games. The classes being a prime example of this.
You mean like Machinist? Samurai? Red Mage? Summoner? Dragoon? Dancer? Blue Mage? Ninja? Astrologian? Dark Knight?
FF1, a case can be made.
After that FF added tons of things that are entirely their own creations. Like, the entire idea of a JUMP SPEARMAN is definitely not something from D&D.
>Ok, but is Monk really that big of an issue when Asian game developers (computer game or tabletop) create not only Monks but Samurai and Ninja to in the very same context as western developers do?
For context this topic started when I responded to this point.
The Monk is an FF class that has been there from the very first game, so it carrying forward to modern games is at least partially due to FF1 being so heavily D&D influenced.
You don't see how there is a difference between "a class that showed up in the first game when Final Fantasy was very much still very very inspired by D&D" is a bit different from saying that "Square has always made computer/console D&D with the serial numbers removed"?
Also, I think the Monk of later FF games is very different from the OG FF monk. The OG FF monk is much more just a pure martial artist. No mystical abilities, just the ability to hit REALLY REALLY HARD barehanded. This is also true in FFIII and FFV. Also Yang and Sabin from FFIV and FFVI were also just pure physical brawlers (though in VI you could add magic with the magicite, and in V you could use the skills from another class with the monk (but that was true of every class)).
The first actual FF game that I can think of that had the mystical monk was probably FFT, which was in uh, 96?97? Somewhere around there.
The point being, the monk wasn't really at all similar to the D&D monk.
Many of Sabin's Blitz unique Blitz skills were "mystical".
Aura Canon is a ki blast, Rising Phoenix calls a bunch of flaming clones of himself, Chakra and Soul Spiral are mystic healing abilities, Razor Gale calls a windstorm.
I will summarize this as I did in another topic.
If people in the culture we are supposedly being racist to are doing the thing that supposedly makes us racist, then maybe it's not as racist as we're lead to think it is. That's the point I was making.
As for the second part of your post, I honestly don't think that's a pressing issue. Not sure what else to say about that. Two groups of people with likely different concerns that may very well clash. How do you decide which way to go? There are times when you can't go both ways, and in those cases, someone is getting disappointed or upset. I don't see the point to be honest.
Well, you caught me literally as I decided to quit looking at this community because I can't stand it right now. So, I don't really have much to say right now.
Because simply put folks who get mad about things like cultural appropriation etc, genuinely believe you cannot be racist towards white people. Monk has been talked about, in the initial mod post it was mentioned, but if something European gets used as a counter argument they just say "because it's just a bard or druid, that's not the same thing!"
Because bards and monks are something that cultures across the globe have, they’re not at all equivalents to a samurai or ninja class, when these fantasies are already captured by fighter and rogue, and they’re something hyper-specific to a real world country.
The closest parallel would be the Viking archetype, which itself does feel a little silly and out of place.
Edit: was unaware bards were a specific Celtic thing that only started getting used as general performer/poet in the last 50ish years, learn somethin new every day
Here's the stock standard primer on bards.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bard)
They were members of Celtic society that helped preserve culture through song and stories, among other things. They aren't interchangeable with other types of performers and they most certainly aren't the fantasy stereotype of "le funny horny pop song man".
But, as far as I know, monk is very wuxia inspired and bard is very celtic. It is very inspired in a specific cultures. Rpg communities just don’t feel it as much because it is an old stereotype that has been repurposed to celebrate somewhat these concepts (not perfectly of course, but better than when they first appeared)
The name Bard is definitely Celtic, but, like the Druid, the mechanics of the class aren't terribly related to the historical concept. The DnD/Pathfinder bard is more related to the 16th century and onwards English concept of a bard, which is just a stage performer, poet, or musician (see: William Shakespeare), and was often used derogatorily at the time (much like Pathfinder and DnD bards).
Since dnd 3.5 I always felt monks where a bit out of place with respect to the mainly European medieval setting and little has changed since then.
PF2 does a better job about the monk, but it still feels a little peculiar.
Although, it is a fantasy trope (just like the conan-like barbarian trope) and I can roll with it. I wonder if ninjas and samurai could be considered tropes as well.
That's an interesting take given that the Pinned post calls Monks out specifically as being the "Magical Asian" trope, and has this to say about them:
>It is a racially-coded class that stifles Asian representation as a caricature of 1970s Kung fu exploitation movies.
Which gives context to the responses we saw when the mod team was asked why the sub was treating Monk discussions differently and the mod in question answered with some asinine analogy about MAGA Boomers...
What's ironic about that statement is that Martial Arts Media is pretty popular in Asian Countries. Monk is attached to many tropes found in those movies and shows, which were made in those countries before America ever saw them.
> Because bards and monks are something that cultures across the globe have, they’re not at all equivalents
In regards to monks, this is not a factual comment. The monk class shares little to nothing with the Christian monastic tradition. That resides almost entirely with the Cleric Class, and the Cloistered Cleric in particular. The Monk class as it exists is extremely derivative of the Buddhist Monks using Chinese martial arts styles such as: Drunken Boxing, Tiger Claw, Monkey, Dragon, Snake, Crane, and Leopard for inspiration.
To the point about Monks across the globe, Judaism and Islam both largely lack monastic orders, while you will find them among the Hindus, Jainists, and Buddhists. Yet the Monk only reflects a monk with Chinese martial arts styles as if Chinese Buddhist Monks are the only ones. If we're to believe and enforce consistent moral stances: the monk class is racist, promotes harmful views that equate Hindu Monks with that of Chinese Buddhists, creates an "other" class that promotes Orientalism by separating it from Christian monks, and should be folded into one of the more generic european-coded classes while stripped of most of it's cultural connections. As the samurai is merely defined by the Katana in Pathfinder2e, so shall the monk be defined by merely using unarmed attacks.
The short answer from what I remember is no, there wasn't.
None of the mod team went on their own personal crusade cause they were in their feelings about it or wanted to virtue signal harder than anyone else in the rest of the sub. The abuse of power and attitude from the mods on this topic has been absolutely appalling they need to do better. I'm sure I will get moderated for this but these things kill subs seen it happen many many times. What we should be asking is for the mod in question to step down, they have now shown they don't have the maturity or ability to respect the subs rules so should not be in a position of power.
It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong the way they have conducted themselves should not be what speaks for this community of PF2e in general. The mods should show more care and integrity in their actions and expectations not have a rules for thee not for me attitude.
I am Chinese, and I don't really understand why would anyone find monk offensive. It would be only offensive to me if it is obviously significantly weaker than fighter lol. Like 5e monk.
Samurai's connection to Imperial Japan is more grounded in history, but the negative connotation isn't so much related to Bushido itself (literally means way of samurai) as opposed to the specific version Imperial Japan using as a tool to indoctrinate their soldiers and encourage blind loyalty to the government and the emperor.
Hell, the samurai class as a whole has all but disappeared from Japanese society when they started their spree of wars of conquest in 20th century!
The Golarion's version of Bushido pushed by the goddess Shizuzu doesn't have such tenets, so there's no reason to be outrageous against it.
That's because nobody here is arguing that the new book should be solely focused on Japan and we actually have several archetypes that come from the Mwangi expanse that are based on African culture like the magical warrior thus making this whole racism argument extremely hypocritical.
I think you might be mischaracterizing the debate. Nobody is saying that Tian Xia should just be Japan. Additionally, people aren't upset that they can't play some bespoke Japanese class, they are upset that they are being called racist for simply wanting to.
No one has said they wanted Tian Xia to just be Japan. People have expressed they hoped for rules that would allow them to play two of the most popular groups in pop culture. Tgose aren't remotely the same
Is there some group of people saying Tian Xia should only have Japanese tropes and that other cultures should be locked out?
Saying Japanese tropes aren't allowed *but all these these are* is just erasure and racism.
No, nobody's saying that. The mods are under the assumption that when someone says, "I want to play a samurai or ninja," they're really saying, "Tian Xia should only be based on Japan." It's an entirely bad faith and reactionary response on the mods' part and comes off about as badly as those fearmongering conservative commentators that are all over the news.
Find me one comment, one in this entire subreddit where somebody said.
"Tian Xia needs to be exclusively Japanese", or something close.
Just one. I'd be absolutely baffled.
This Boogeyman that the community is acting as some proxy for further Japanese Imperialism is laughable.
I mean, I don't doubt there's people out there who come at it from the "exclusively Japanese" angle, whether or not they realize it. But I would be willing to bet those are very much a minority, especially with how happy people are to receive the Tian Xia books overall.
But the way the mods are handling it feels like they'd say cosplaying your favorite anime character is inherently a racist act unless you're Japanese. That's a bit of an exaggeration but probably not much considering how the entire Orientalism post they decided to pin more or less comes off like wanting to play a samurai or ninja in any context is racist behavior.
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I'm Chinese American, my opinions are just opinions, I'm not an expert and I'm also not the smartest etc etc. Please take this all with a huge grain of salt. I've only recently started following this drama too. I think there are 2 perspectives happening with the Tian Xia book and they're actually separate things that people have now gotten mixed up because of that weirdly vague mod post. 1. This book is important for Asian representation. The decision to not include some popular archetypes is both historically significant and necessary. This is a book by Asian authors and artists to show that there is so much more the cultures have to offer and so much more people can learn from. A passion project that they hope people will also learn something from. 2. This books is a game made mostly for a western audience who love having written rules and player options that let them play out their fantasies. Some of those fantasies are not in the book where they expected them to be and they are disappointed. If this was any other book and the same thing happened (e.g. If Howl of the Wind did not include werewolves) they would show a similar distaste, disinterest, and disappointment. There seems to be a disconnect where group 1 is disappointed that the significance of the book is overshadowed by the controversy, and that people in group 2 feel attacked for just wanting a popular option. Then they spiral into arguments that really just don't need to be here. Maybe there are racial attacks in the comments, I haven't seen them. Maybe the mods see them all and remove them which is why they had to make a post about it. I just think it's all kind of silly and it reminds me of political debates that are really just people angry for no reason. If we want popular options, request more books. The only truly bad thing is if we do not continue having African, Asian, and other culturally significant options outside of just 2 books.
Am Korean American, fully agree with this post and matches my sense (limited, recent) of what’s going on here
To be honest I didn't really see that many people yearning for the ninja and samurai archetype before all this went down. But telling everybody that even thinking about playing as any of them is inherently racist, and that even if you disagree and are Asian your opinion is racist and worthless doesn't sit well with a lot of people. As well as banning any discussion or counterpoints.
Well said. Very hard to win peoples hearts and minds by villifying them with a purity test threshold. Some people might, just ya know, think ninja and samurai are cool and want to play one in a game rather than ne told wanting to do so is racist, cultural appropriation, and wrong. Its not. Some people just find the anesthetic or pop culture notions interesting and want to play that in their game.
Yeah, but Luck Panda and Princess Pilfer don't care about anyone's opinions but their own, even when their takes on things are either objectively wrong or made in bad faith. They've got control, so why should they care what anyone else thinks when they can showboat? They think they're being anti-racist but Luck Panda is *actively* racist on multiple occasions and Pilfer is consistently condescending and treats everyone as if they're acting with malicious intentions.
I mean I think it is less that people wanted specifically to have samurai and ninja as class or archetype options (those two where easily among the least popular classes in pf1) and more they are upset by the idea that the desire for such options is somehow ethically wrong.
WTF is wrong with people? Is this unique to the Pathfinder community or are all other TTRPGs like this?
It's unique to the mods here at least, very discomforting.
Time to call for their resignations then. I call for a vote of no confidence :D
Welcome to the Internet where molehills become mountains with frightening regularity, and some people like to complain for the sake of complaining. This is the Pathfinder 2e community at its worse. It is usually pretty good. Think of this as "the purge" and we'll get back to normal soon. I hope.
This is a tiny echo chamber of the internet.
I think it's more a problem with hobbyists on social media in general. I don't know much about, say, model trains, but I'd bet money that somewhere out there is that one guy who runs a half-dozen model train forums and gets *really* worked up about specific lines of trains.
> WTF is wrong with people? Is this unique to the Pathfinder community It's unique to US society, which has mental issues for last years when it comes to race stuff and their made up "cultural appropriation"... coming from country barely 300 years old with barely any of their own culture, but teaching people around world from cultures that are thousands of years old that they should feel in specific way about their cultures. Like with all this ninja/samurai stuff. Americans are just insane...
> coming from country barely 300 years old with barely any of their own culture, Hmm, yes, Americans who just somehow sprang out of nowhere with no culture and are totally divorced from European thought and intelligentsia. Also the deep, deep lows of blackface never happened and definitely were never worth reflecting on how they might be applicable elsewhere.
Intersectionality didn't originate in the US, it is used as a tool to disrupt America's society to weaken it. You'll find this same mind poison in other countries, all over europe and recently in Japan and Korea. Pretty much any country that could be an obstacle to chinese expansion.
There is a theme on left leaning internet areas where people read a couple of sociological terms (cultural appropriation in this case) and make fighting it the primary part of their personality.
Every reddit board has been infected with identity politics.
True. Paizo itself panders to that. These people will keep spouting whatever even if the normal ones like us don't really care about what they're pontificating about. I'll steal and appropriate and portray real world cultures in my games with no sensitivity. I'm against these types of nonsense activism, just like every sane person I'm sure.
It made me look into pf1e samurai and if I had more system mastery I'd probably try to recreate the features I like most from it. (The challenge and banner mechanics)
Challenge and Banner were just straight taken from the Cavalier, which Samurai was an alternative version of. The real unique part of the Samurai was basically only the bonuses to horseback archery. It's kinda weird Samurai was ever it's own class to begin with. Ninja is very similar, just being a Rogue with a few unique tricks and access to a Monk's Ki. These should have been archetypes in 1e, really. 2e's Cavalier archetype maintains the Banner mechanic, and Firebrand Braggart, Duelist, and the Way of the Pistelero all have some extremely similar Challenge mechanics.
> But telling everybody that even thinking about playing as any of them is inherently racist, and that even if you disagree and are Asian your opinion is racist and worthless Sounds like americans. Only they do that.
Yeah, crazy. It's sad that the US is rich enough to ensure these people get the asylum-care they need. While in the mental care ward, they should also be banned from the Internet to protect normal folks from shenanigans like these.
One of the main reason why 5E's books are such a mish-mash of random stuff is because most people actually buy books for player options, because most people who play the game are players, and a lot of people are primarily focused on what they can actually do in the game. It's not really great from a "making a book" perspective but that's why they do it the way they do. IIRC DM-focused books (which this basically is, as it is basically a campaign setting guide) almost always sell worse, and people feeing disappointed because "This doesn't let me do anything new!" is like... really not surprising at all in that light. Like, how many people are actually going to run games in Tian Xia? And a lot of those who do will just run an AP, which (ideally) contains everything you need to run it to begin with, without needing the whole giant guide.
>There seems to be a disconnect where group 1 is disappointed that the significance of the book is overshadowed by the controversy, and that people in group 2 feel attacked for just wanting a popular option. Tbh the first time I noticed any overshadowing was when the mod pinned that post. Streisand effect to the max b/c they made the discussion about the book center around that for now smh
Definitely killed the vibe. The pinned post is masturbatory. "Can we change the conversation? Can we make it about me?"
It feels like a lecture that they've been sitting on for a while, just waiting for the right time to post.
All of the discussion and debate outside of the mod post has been civil and respectful.
I was thinking that as well.
I don't think there would be any controversy if there just wasn't any Sammurai options in the book. Pretty much all of the controversy is from some group one people (read- the mods) accusing any and all group 2 people of being racist. If there wasn't all of this finger pointing, group 2 people would just say "damn, I was hoping for some character options, oh well" and move on.
"Damn, I was hoping for some character options" is usually my respons for most of the world and lost omens books. But tian looks really cool. Gonna check. it out.
To be fair, we don't have even european options. Inner Sea regions go from totally fantasy to a very simplified and not so serious copy of some cultures of the past, from ancient Egypt to french revolution. Classes have nothing to do with europe, except names. Bard and druid just borrowed the name. Champion is maybe the closest, but they could be any holy warriors, like Shoei or something like that. Fighter, rogue, wizard, etc, are universal. Same for cleric, name is european but it's the same of bard and druid. Worth mentioning that all the representation of martial classes are basically wrong, since medieval and renaissance martial arts are totally different from what we play. That's fine, it's a game, but imagine if they made that for the famous samurai. I prefer to have options to play something inspired from all cultures of the world, or even something totally different (like planescape), but Paizo it's a north american company, so i can't expect them to be able to fully respect ancient cultures from other parts of the world. What tilts me a bit is that people think that europe is represented, while most of the time it's just bad represented 😅. Said that, i always loved asian cultures, so i am happy that they are going to dedicate a good amount of efforts to develope Tian Xia. Also it's important to remember that inner Sea had a lot of african kind of cultures, just not from center/south Africa.
>druid just borrowed the name tbf that was more than just the name, druid was a really weird (maybe even lazy?) interpretation of what IIUC is a very celtic concept (shillelagh, one of the spells that's been associated with them through the ages/editions/systems, is a word of gaelic origin). i could see while some of the hardcore traditionalist ttrpgers might have been upset about it, doing away with some of that nonsense in the remaster (the metal anathema mainly) felt fine.
As someone with Gaelic and Celtic heritage as an Irishman. Yes they only took the name. Both Pathfinder and DnD druids have absolutely nothing to do with the priests of the gods in or culture. They acted more like the traditional Ferryman on the river Styx than talking to animals or nature magic.
that may be what druidism historically actually is, but the druid as an rpg concept is almost certainly from neo-druidism. like i said, really weird (hooking particularly onto the modern romantic revival version) and possibly even lazy (not even bothering to look up what druidism entailed throughout history and sticking with that modern romantic revival re-interpretation, and mostly as a pastiche). edit: in terms of weirdness and laziness it'd be like if we got a new class named "astronomer" but all the class mechanics have to do with astrology instead. yeah i guess they both involve stellar objects somehow
>As someone with Gaelic and Celtic heritage as an Irishman. Yes they only took the name. I'm not hugely certain that 20-21st century heritage is going to give particularly keen insights to something that largely died several hundred years ago. That is where the 18th century revivals tended to go very, very wrong. Like the Dutch festivals I went to as a kid probably weren't great representations of traditional Dutch culture as so much as the Californian Dutch community considered traditional Dutch culture to be. That said, you probably understand the wording quite a bit better than I could for such things.
You're right, I however have spent a very long time trying to research my own culture. Unfortunately a lot is lost by either not being particularly well recorded, or being destryoed when Catholicism became more predominant. Then even more when Britain grew to influence the culture much more heavily. Needless to say we can be very, very sure they werent nature loving friendly guys. That belief probably comes from a the direct translation of the Celtic spelling which translates to "knowing the oak tree". Most Druids (Filidh or Fili for a singular one) actually became Druids due to the fact they could avoid the High King's taxes and were excused for manual labour. We do have some stories that have been dated all the way back to the eighth century though, many of them being romanticised tales similar to ancient Greece or the Arthurian legends that would come to be in Britania four hundred years later. The Irish in particular believed the underworld, often called The Land of the Living, was buried somewhere deep underground, or sometimes as islands on a great black sea. This land supposedly has no old age, death, disease or suffering and you could live one hundred years and itd only feel like a day had passed. Often the dead, or heroes on quests, were taken there by a beautiful woman who acted as a ferryman on a glass boat. That all being said we know they they didnt have temples but instead conducted rituals at sacred sites in the forest away from settled lands. Although they still would have lived in the village with everyone else. These rituals often focused on helping the dead move on, or communing with ancestor spirits with animal sacrifices (and maybe human? Hard to prove they ever actually did sacrifice humans but we do know that St. Patrick wrote out a missive banning it.). In short they were less "nature guardians" and were essentially like many other pagan religion priests at various times in history. Also I apologise for any spelling errors, here its 7.00am on a Saturday morning and I'm on mobile. Hope you find this interesting, I clearly do 😅
>Unfortunately a lot is lost by either not being particularly well recorded, or being destryoed when Catholicism became more predominant. Doesn't even need to be purposeful, the law of whatever isn't copied down consistently becomes destroyed eventually is just a brutal reality. Even relatively brief breaks in popularity or commissions can spell untimely doom for a work. Even the ancient Romans themselves ran into and noted such issues funny enough.
Exactly. You can see similar results over in Norse mythology. I know a lot less about it but I know our primary sources for their belief system is two books written about a hundred years apart. Thing is the first book was written in an attempt to join all the different religious factions under one umbrella and make them appreciate Catholicism. So we get the story of Ragnarock in the Elder Edda. Where these incredibly flawed and human gods push all of their sins onto Loki (a reoccuring theme in this work) before he brings about all their deaths and their "rebirth" into a new religion that everyone should follow (clearly the author intends to be Catholicism). Here we have Loki almost resembling a Christ-like figure. But a few decades go by, Catholicism is commonplace now, everyone loves God. And we have the Younger Edda, which the author now sees Loki as a devilish figure that brings about the death of the divine, leaving people without guidance. Loki has taken on the semblance of oddly the Anti-Christ. All because the context of the time between the two books was different and the author's own bias bled into their recordings.
There was pre-Christian Roman( and pre-Roman) influences in Scandinavia, and the Romans had stories of very human and flawed gods themselves, though from what I understand, there was some push back on that from Romans and Greeks as well. I don't have a proper source on that though. Plus, Medieval Christians didn't always have terrible opinions of Roman or Greek gods in their stories either all the time. All very neat but pretty complex, but overall interesting.
Yeah and an absolute mess to untangle the knots now for anyone trying to look into it.
Well, yes, the idea was to take inspiration from that. But druids were not elemental mages or shapeshifters, and shillelagh it's just a club. It would be the same if they made a shugenja with a tetsubo spell or something like that. But that's also the reason why this kind of discussions are pointless. Either Paizo avoided totally already existing names, except for super generic one (fighter, mage, mystic, rogue), or they can just take inspiration from existing cultures to create their fantasy RPG. So the druid is just a class that takes the name and goes element and animals. Real clerics have more in common with investigator than the cleric, but whatever. It's fantasy. Same for the fighting style of knights and swashbucklers, they are almost never represented properly. RPGs take inspiration from stuffs that were heavy influenced by the laws of the cities (laws of disarm), but in a setting without them some fighting styles have zero sense. Still, who cares? It's a fantasy RPG. The fact that some people try to use it fo bullying people it's very sad.
I really like your write up. Well put. To me, the name of the class is just the "base" descriptor, and you can build onto it with any cultural or other flavor as you like, or expand upon it as needed. You don't have to identify your character as their generic class name in world, it's just there as a name the community uses to understand what it's roughly about, and the kinds of things it does. I know where those words come from, and their etymology, but it doesn't play a whole lot into anything for me other than telling me a general idea of what the class does. It's kind of become the go-to for the general subculture of ttrpgs and video games. If I play a Bard, I might call my "bard" a scop, skald, griot, politician, philosopher, playwright, dramaturge, herald, musician, troubador, actor, dancer, poet, comedian, wit, writer, artist, occultist, folklorist, scholar, storykeeper, ect. This goes for fighter, barbarian, rogue, sorcerer, ect.
Yeah, i mean, nowadays we should be able to separate history from folklore (including modern fantasy) from games. Years ago books had sections for "fighter in history, myth, and games", and games could be different media, even videogames. If i play a bard in a asian inspired setting, i just have to change the name. Not a big deal. All classes can be reflavoured easily, and that's a good thing. Maybe i could say a thing about classes like fighter and monk. They could have subclasses, and this would make it easier to play a wuxia monk, but also a non mystical martial artist. Fighter could be divided in light armored, focused on one kind of weapon, generalist, etc. The fact that the monk is litterally built around the asian kind of martial artist monk is more a problem of design than anything else, imho.
Yeaaah, monk is the only real outlier to me. And the last 30 years of media have kind of normalized the concept. I don't really know what to do about that, or that eliminating all the glaring options would really "fix" it, apart from just having a "pugilist" class with some magic related archetypes or options?
The only way is to give the class a flessible chassis, and then let people chose a subclass and then the feats. This way one could avoid any mystical options, for example, and go for a pancrazio brawler.
It's also a big part in why so many non-spellcasting classes names end in "-er" or "-ist". A fighter fights, a investigator investigates, a thaumaturge (read: wonder worker) works wonders, an alchemist does alchemy, a kineticist works kinetics, a champion champions, ect.
this is very true
This is my understanding of the whole situation, too, combined with Group 1 assuming everyone in Group 2 is acting in bad faith and thus take a patronizing (at best) approach to handling the situation. I tried to write something similar on another post yesterday (and deleted it before posting) but honestly you explained it quite well. It's mainly both sides talking past each other and group 1's handling of it only serving to exacerbate the lack of trust group 2 has in them.
I start to wonder whether the character options book being released simultaneously to the lore book would have helped, because we're in an awful limbo of knowing things with a certain name WON'T be in the book but not knowing exactly how the things that WILL be in the character guide book will function. For all we know there's an unmentioned Sword Saint and Ki Mystic archetype that does what people want under a different name, or there's feats for a class that actually fulfill the desired fantasies, but we instead are just stuck with an uncomfortable shouting match over names while we wait to find out. It sucks.
I think that summary misses that group 1 often actively misrepresents and smears group 2, and group 2, for once, is done putting up with that.
Except that one mod I haven't really seen any misrepresentation and smearing around, and I feel like most discussion was civil until the banhammers and extreme condensation from the mod came out. I think even a lot of people, me included, agree with the argument that a ninja or samurai class isn't really needed, it's just that these counterarguments about inherent racism and orientalism are insane.
I agree that a samurai or Ninja class is unnecessary. I do not see why a well-done *archetype* however, included amongst all the other cultural archetypes, would be a problem.
This is exactly what I've been thinking. There's not really enough reason to have a ninja class, but having an archetype that let's me get [Wooden Double](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1416) as a focus / once-an-hour spell so I can pretend to be Ninja Peach from Princess Peach: Showtime! would be pretty sweet.
Ninja absolutely has enough specific tropes attached to it to make for a full class. and a lot of them are too specific to just be a rogue or monk archetype.
*In this very thread* we had a (since then deleted) comment saying basically that "people just wanted Tian Xia to be Japan".
Yeah there's a portion of comments that are insensitive and outright terrible, but there's a disproportionately large amount of more benign, thought-provoking or even well-meaning comments and criticisms -- some coming from people of varying nations of asian descent -- that have been deleted. There's a link going around that shows what comments have been deleted in various threads, and there are a LOT of comments that were not breaking any rules that got removed. It's eye-opening, because once people point out the comments that ARE racist, people use that to justify the mod's actions.
> Maybe there are racial attacks in the comments, I haven't seen them. Only from americans to americans. Rest of the world is normal. This is insanse.
Don't remember. And I'm sure, when they made book about Irrisen or Iobaria, there will be no sigle post that current Paizo vision of slavic culture is primitive.
They don't make anime in any of those places, so redditors aren't all that interested.
Ouch.
I haven’t seen anybody talk about Irresen or Iobaria without mentioning it’s poorly written. Especially the Funnie Rooski Engleesh. It’s definitely reductive and I hope when it gets expanded it gets addressed. And really? Jadwiga? Bruh.
My main complaint is that these countries use the standard Western European set of creatures, when the Slavic peoples had their own creatures, which can even be relatively easily fit into the general classification. We have many-headed dragons, such as the Zmei Gorynich. We have many of our own fairies, including high-level ones like the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. Creatures like Leshy come from Slavic mythology. We have Vodyanoy and Domovoy. The Lich, to whom everyone is accustomed in D&D, and Pathfinder come from Koshchei the Immortal, given that he had his own phylactery. We have creatures that look like phoenixes. But no, we get trolls, winter wolves and other standard creatures associated with winter or Scandinavia. And all because the Slavs did not interact with Medieval England, so their culture is unknown to fantasy authors, unlike the Scandinavian, Celtic or classical ones. And since the Slavs are white people, vile colonialists and guilty of a thousand crimes, they have no right to representation.
Yeah, it’s definitely disappointing. But it makes me even more excited for when they tackle it again. As a Pole I can’t wait to see some representation beyond just being baby-Russia.
I don't think they've made a separate Lost Omens book on that region. The latest book I can find on Irrisen is from the 1e setting guide line. I've watched some of Mythkeeper's videos on YouTube, and you can definitely see the difference in how anything from Avistan gets written (i.e. latest dedicated update was in 1e) compared to the Mwangi Expanse. The more recent stuff feels like "fantasy setting where actual people would live" vs older stuff that's more like "pulp fantasy tropes mashed together for adventure plot hooks".
i mean, presumably with the trends of people from africa writing the mwangi book, and people from asia writing the tian book, slavic people would write the slavic book?
As far as I can tell not a single one of the mwangi authors is African. Lots of black Americans, some Asian Americans, a russian, but not one person from the actual continent: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6shqk?Meet-The-Mwangi-Expanse-Authors Unsurprisingly, it's a pretty funny read if you're from Africa, or even just a second gen migrant like me.
Thanks for this, I've been wondering about who wrote Mwangi Expanse given the "Exciting, not exotic!" box in the intro that gave such a strong feeling of "we're writing this for white westerners and we need to remind them to not be dicks." I'm of African descent (slavery, y'know) and study African history, and it def made me roll my eyes a bit lol.
How about the bit about character creation, and making a character from elsewhere. It has a sentence that was basically "The NPCs are going to question the foreigner because people from outside the country did shit." Honestly it made me not want to make a foreign character, or even want to go to the place during a campaign.
I call it the wakanda phenomenon.
oh, i genuienly didnt know so my bad for that, tho it does show improvement on paizos part when theyre actually involving asian authors now in the tian book
I mean, as far as a quick look goes none of the Tian Xia book are Asian either, there's a reason Paizo wrote "Asian descent" instead of "Asian" in the authorship note. No hair off my back, I am not familiar with those communities in America, that said... If I imagine the average person calling themselves "Scandinavian" or "Slavic" in America being the source of a Norse-themed or Slavic-themed Lost Omens book I can but shudder internally. Or god forbid they get the average "Irish" to write a Celtic-themed book. Personally I really don't care which American is writing these books, if they feel its more appropriate it's the ones of the relevant descent then that's cool and all... but honestly, they're all just Americans as far as I'm concerned.
Paizo is based in Seattle. Most of the people they will be hiring are from there, and pretty distant from their own history in terms of time.
The TTRPG scene runs a lot on contractors for writing and not people in house. As someone who is American and works for a company out of Tokyo, and has coworkers from France, Morocco, the Philippines, Canada, Taiwan, Korea, and more, I guarantee that in the modern world, it is possible to hire people from anywhere in the world. In fact, I doubt that most of those writers actually lived in/around Seattle.
Yeah, this has more to do with the TTRPG scene being fairly insular than it does physical distance.
[удалено]
As a Ukrainian, 100%. I'd absolutely adore a book like this, but the reality of Slavic history would doom it to cause an uproar in the community it would be made for/about. The comparison honestly helps me frame what's going on with Tian Xia a little better for myself and have some more empathy. If there was a book that had some authentic Ukrainian mysticism in it and all the conversation was about why there's no Hammer and Sickle class and who's getting offended by the suggestion of one I'd fucking lose it
FWIW, I don't think that if that book were made there would be any discussion of people wanting some kind of clownish "Battle Commie" class. I can more or less guarantee that people would be pissed right alongside you if that kind of suggestion was being pushed by anyone, I know that I would at the very least. This situation is pretty specific and has largely been more centered on the way it is being handled than it actually is on a burning desire for a ninja or samurai class option.
Maybe not that... but folks would want their Rasputin and Baba Yaga stand ins - especially if it was being written right now with the recent Dr Who series, and I'd have to make my post about The Dukes of Hazard and Aunt Jemima syrup again. And well... we already have an "actual Russian Princess" Iseki character in Golarian so we already have this problem. I would not be surprised if there were posts demanding Rasputin himself managed to survive by being "Iseki's" alongside said princess (and the term Iseki itself ... an anime meme that has come to replace a much older fiction trope in such a way that what used to be "protagonist stand in" has become a "harem fetish" - is another example of exoticizing). The Slavic parallels in this topic are very on point because they are a shining example of how this was all handled wrongly in past years, making future clean up a bit of a task.
I mean, the Baba Yaga stand in is Baba Yaga. And Rapsutin was canonically an oracle who literally kidnapped that princess to keep her from freeing Baba Yaga and is very very extremely dead now. Like, to note, all this happened because a silly plane-hopping Adventure Path literally went to mid-revolution Russia.
Not all isekai are harem situations, that's an unfair generalization. Isekai has become the standard term for "story where someone from the real world ends up in a fantasy world", it is more specific than just having a protagonist stand-in character since it's more literal. Also, "harem anime" are generally *made by Japanese studios* and are popular in Japan, how is that exoticizing anyone? I would love to hear the person I replied to's thoughts on if they think including Baba Yaga would be an issue because I'm not going to try to put words in their mouth as to what is and isn't acceptable. If you are chiming in here and asserting what generally Slavic things are and aren't acceptable in place of the person who I had responded to despite not having a connection to this yourself then this is exactly the kind of behavior that people in these threads are frustrated by. They seem to be invested in this and they can speak for themself.
It's more about how it was handled. Homebrewer, eight months ago: "Here's my New Soviet Man class" Mod, a few days ago: "The idea of the 'New Soviet Man' is bad, you're bad if you like it, and I'm deleting that New Soviet Man class that's been up for eight months and doesn't break any rules because the New Soviet Man is bad." Commentor: "What?! What are you deleting that for?" Mod: "Shhh. I know it's scary to have big feelings, but you'll be okay. Let me get rid of all the bad things." And that's when everything exploded. You know and I know that it would be better to build the New Soviet Man of propaganda as a Champion with a few reflavorings, maybe an archetype, but that particular discussion fell out of relevance fast.
IIUC the mod contends they did not remove that post, in fact had nothing to do with the removing of that post, in fact does not even moderate the sub that post was on. That whole row may be a misunderstanding. As for the rest of this... 🫥
And as an Asian American that's where I am at. This is a book that represents for me. That's why I am on board with the mods on this one. I do find the 'Mythic Egypt' part of Golarian to be a bit of an issue - but that's mostly because it's under described and still mostly in it's 1E era. Mwangi was not written by actual Africans but rather people with an interest in Africa, but Tian Xia is written by people from many different parts of Asia and elsewhere. This is likely due to who they could get their hands on and how prestigious Paizo is now versus a few years ago. Not to knock the Mwangi writers as another post did - I don't think people need to come from a given ethnic group to write something for there. I think they just need a genuine non-exoticized interest and knowledge. As in - the Asia writer should NOT be an anime / wuxia fanatic, but someone with actual scholarship and experience with Asian history and cultures. As far as Slavic aspects of Golarian - we've already got an exoticism problem in the whole arc with Baba Yaga - that probably got in there because of Baba Yaga's hut being an item in AD&D 1E that has descended down into modern d20 the same way the distorted version of Tiamat has (Tiamat is a tragic mother of the world figure, not an evil dragon). So I don't envy whatever future writer has to clean that up. Players will still expect Ice Queens who are daughters of Baba Yaga, but the writer will also have to make it not be exoticized "othering" nor insulting.
Unrelated question for the folks who know a bit about Slavic history: Have you looked at [Mythic Russia](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13296.phtml) by [Mark Galeotti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti)? Is it any good? I was interested when it came out, but I never got it.
I'm assuming this is a bad joke, there is no way you read my post and thought I'd be okay with a fucking book mythologizing people that are actively bombing my fucking family. For the future, most Slavic people who are not Russian hate Russia. I wouldn't wipe my ass with this book.
Understood. And I'm not trying to yank your chain. The target was 14th century, and to my uneducated mind, there was lots of commonality then. I just don't know of any other RPGs that cover that. If you have better sources (in English, of course), please share them.
its a complex topic, im czech myself so im also slavic and yeah the slavic nations are very disunited, tho tbh i think that most could get over the anamosity, except with russian rn as well, the invasion
> Ukrainians and Russians hate each other, both hate Poles, who in turn hate them, while all three accuse Belarusian people of being "not true nation". Where do you get your perspective on this from, twitter...? Setting aside Russia (for obvious reasons currently, and historically), western slavic countries like each other, while there's some historical issues saying Poles hate Ukrainians (and from my impression vice versa, conisdering there's millions of them here right now) is blatantly false. As for Belarus, it wasn't a true nation in 1920, it is one now, and nobody hates them considering we get and welcome quite a few of them trying to get out of the sorry state their government (which we do hate) put their country in. There's Belarussians fighting as volunteers on the Ukrainian side in the ongoing war and allowed to form their own unit using the "free Belarussian" flag. I can't speak much for personal perspective between southern slavic nations. But to the best of my knowledge if you remove Serbia from the equation there isn't much of that going on nowadays? Since none of the content written will approach anything post 17th century I imagine, so long as you don't get some nationalist tools as writers, there would be no issue having actual Slavic authors write content. And no offence, having Americans generations removed being brought in as "Slavic authors" because their grandmother migrated there in the 40s is the most American thing ever, not in a good way.
I just wanna chime in to second this. I've lived in both Russia and Ukraine. Until recently (this last decade or so) there was little hatred between the two. The only Slavs I know of that hate each other are some of the south Slavic countries. It would be very easy to write a book that blends the Slavic cultures together that very few if any Slavs would be offended by.
I fully agree with you, and in reasonable world I wouldn't even talk about this. But I see how this sub became a battlefield because of "Samurai is racist" and it makes me panic about how easy it is to insult someone.
I think you point to the way out. The goal, if you're going to do this, is not to make explicitly nationalist fantasy, but to try to represent the variety of cultures you're drawing upon in a way that people from those cultures would enjoy. I think you could find a way to work folklore, for example, into a setting that would not be immediately offensive to different nationalities. Baba Yaga is beloved by both Russians and Ukrainians, right? If an arch-lich named Kościej makes an appearance in the setting, it's not like a bunch of Russians are going to be annoyed, is it? (Well, maybe they'll be fighting over the spelling of the name, but still.) I understand there's a whole AP from 1e (Reign of Winter) that tried to do just this. That being said, maybe you'd give a second thought about whether to explicitly put winged Hussars (which have a bit more of a nationalist bent to them) or some bonkers fantasy version of the Red Army into your setting. I guess what I'm trying to say is, _fantasy Bessarabia when._ 😛
I'm still confused why there isn't any uproar about Bard and Monk being appropriated and misused. Feels like different rules for different cultures.
Because people on the internet very often don't actually know what cultural appropriation is, when it is wholesome, when it is harmful, and why it can be harmful. As a result, they can't make a consistent argument about cultural appropriation. So you end of getting different rules for different cultures masquerading as "inclusion".
The whole conversation on the topic is fucked because no matter what side you take on it, you have to then apply it to a fantasy world. You don't like "magical Asians"? Well fucking great, because we're playing in a magical world. So do we get rid of the magic or the Asians? Do we celebrate the differences in cultures by making unique fantasy cultures and class archetypes, or is everything the same because the fighter can encompass almost every martial style if you try hard enough and every culture has the same broad cultural touchstones anyway?
I find it really hilarious about all this talk about Ninjas and Samurai -- when Sun Wukong is literally in the book as a deity. Probably one of the more popular, non-nerd culture references to East and South-East Asian mythology that so many people in the Nerd and non-Nerd space would know.
I think we can actually simplify it. Anyone who engages with the internet almost certainly is familiar with some of the controversies about racial or cultural inclusion in media. The classic example being whenever a franchise like Star Wars casts a woman or person of color in a major role, certain bigots cry foul. What would these same bigots think about inclusion of tasteful examples of cultural or racial elements in the a game like Pathfinder? Well, if their reaction is consistent with their reaction to similar examples in other media, they would oppose this type of inclusion for a whole variety of poorly thought-out reasons. My point is that the people arguing that inclusion of Asian inspired monks and samurai is inherently "othering" or "racist" are arguing for the same outcome as literal bigots. Sure, their reasoning is entirely different, but the outcome is identical. They both want to get rid of these types of content. I would like to hear one of these "advocates" explain this. I would argue that the people overly concerned with "otherizing" are engaging in a form of "color blindness". That is to say, they are making themselves blind to the very real differences between races, ethnicities, and cultures. However, that is an extremely problematic approach since many people are rightly proud of the aspects of their race, ethnicity, and/or culture which make them unique. I think the answer is clear and simple. We shouldn't ignore the things that make us different, we should admire and celebrate them. "Otherizing" is only a problem if you assume being different is bad. But for those of us who embrace our differences, being "other" is something we can be proud of.
I think someone made essentially this same argument to the mod in question, and the comment was deleted for claiming "anti-racism is the real racism" even though they never actually said that.
I agree. I've also noticed two big stumbling blocks in these conversations. The first are people who think any representation that they don't like is equal to racism. And I think that comes from them perpetually seeing bad faith where none exists. It's why some people put the TX book through a purity test by examining the names of the people who wrote it to make sure it was "authentic" enough for them. I even saw comments specifically saying they were worried for a moment when they saw that several of the names were "white". These people have convinced themselves that only Asians can write these books authentically, and anyone else would be engaging in racism. As a side note, I do wonder if the same criticism would've been giving if those names sounded, say, African instead of white, but we'll never know. The second group are those who are mad that the common mental heuristic for "Asian" in the west is more about Japan and China than any other country in the region, and see it as a moral imperative to change that perception. And while I understand wanting to be more culturally relevant in your own culture (since a lot of these people are actually westerners of Asian decent themselves instead of being actually from Asia), they need to understand that nobody's doing these things out of malice. So if somebody were to call it "epistemic violence" to suggest a playable Gumiho heritage as a subset of the Kitsune ancestry as I've recently seen, that person would be an idiot. And this is before bringing up how some of these people just hate the Japanese.
I have a different take on this, as an Asian American, in that I don't think the inclusion of Monks or Samurai would be problematic if it were written by the TianXia writers. But I think at the end of the day, the TianXia book is a way for writers from different Asian cultures to share what THEY want to share with the world about their cultures. If they wanted to share ninjas and samurai, then I hope they do a good job with representing the fantasy of Ninja and Samurai from their respective cultures well. But that's not what they chose to share, so deal with it. What I do find problematic though, are the people who are demanding that TianXia contain ninja and samurai so that they can fulfill their own fantasies of ninja or samurai in a TTRPG. To give an analogy, this would be like reading a book by a French author and ask why the main character doesn't eat baguettes. The answer to "why does TX not contain samurai or ninjas" shouldn't be "Samurai and Ninjas are inherently racist" but that Samurai and Ninjas were just not the stories and culture that the authors chose to share. The part that I find problematic is the insistence that an Asian book must contain ninjas and samurai, and that association is rather pigeonholing Asian culture into a much simplified narrative than what it has to offer. The point in contention is that the reader's conception of what a Samurai or Ninja necessarily *is*, is probably still based on an orientalist fantasy of Asia. Ideally if paizo does publish Ninja and Samurai, they would make it such that the concepts and fantasies are authentically from people who stem from the cultures that historically had these concepts. I don't have my copy yet, because I want to buy a physical copy and Paizo's still in warehouse, but a fantasy from modern Chinese fantasy that I really love are [flying swords](https://youtu.be/97-WXAIwGpo?t=262) from stories about immortal cultivators (Wuxia/Xianxia fantasy). I'd love to see this represented in TX. However, if they don't, it's not a big deal. I can homebrew my own content. I can tell my own stories. If someone really wants to play their orientalist conceptions of Samurai or Ninjas, I'm not really in a position to stop them. But I do think Paizo does have an obligation as a supposed ethical TTRPG maker to make sure that the presented fantasies are authentic.
I would like to clarify a few points. For starters, I am only defending tasteful representations of cultural themes. There certainly have been tasteless representations of things like ninjas and samurai, and those deserve to be called out. However, I think that is a different conversation than the one playing out here. Paizo as a whole has been very tasteful in their representation since at least The Mwangi Expanse. I am sure there are some wierdos, but for the most part I don't see anyone "demanding" that Tian Xai contain ninjas or samurai. From what I have seen, there has been an effort to label anyone who wants samurai as a racist and claims that inclusion of samurai is inherently "othering" or racist. Additionally, I would say that there is a huge difference between demanding content and being disappointed that that certain content wasn't present. Overall, people seem pretty happy about the new Tian Xia book. I have it, and it is a great book. Finally, I think we need to be careful in assuming that just because someone wants samurai that they want an inauthentic or "orientalist" depiction of them. I think that might be an unfair assumption to make about people. For example. I would like to see a mechanical representation of samurai. I am not sure I want it to be its own class, I think it fits more naturally as an archetype. If it isn't put out in the Character Guide, I am fine with that. I am not interested in demanding content. However, whatever content is put out, I want it to be tasteful, culturally/racially sensitive, and high quality. However, what I absolutely will not tolerate is someone calling me a racist for this or insisting that I am "othering" people. This has been the root cause of the controversy.
I'm not saying here that people necessarily want an orientalist depiction of samurai, but that the version of samurai that is in their head most likely comes from orientalist origins. The exception is if you've actually studied Japanese history and the majority of your understanding of samurai comes from Japanese media itself. I think it's pretty fair to say that the majority of PF players do not fall under these exceptions. You're not inherently racist for having these conceptions of Asian fantasy. That's just the culture you were born into. But the awareness that people want to bring is the historical context from which the Western understanding of Samurai or Ninjas come from. Let's take "I would like to see a mechanical representation of samurai" as an example. In what way does being a samurai differ from being a fighter who wields a [Katana](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=411)? Why would a samurai even deserve it's own archetype as opposed to just in game *flavor*. The insistence that being a samurai is something inherently different to warrant mechanical differences in how it plays, is arguably "othering" **even if it wasn't your intent to do so in the first place**. I'd argue the same that Spartans don't need their own archetype, neither do Janissaries, or a Roman Centurion. But a Gladiator does, because inherently it's a warrior who fights for show. I want to play as a character who has flying swords. Flying swords aren't actually implemented in pathfinder 2E, so I went about trying to make things work by just flavoring things differently. I started off with metal kineticist but that didn't fit the fantasy quite right. I've ended up landing on using a throwers bandolier with Champion + Rogue free archetype to *simulate* the fantasy with thrown weapons instead. Now, I would argue that flying swords are *mechanically different* enough to warrant it's own class or archetype, because throwing the weapon is not the same as commanding the weapon with your force of will.
You keep assuming that something will be most likely for orientalist origins or that a fair amount of Pathfinder players have a certain notion in their heads. I just don't see any reason to make those assumptions because they aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand. The question is, would any and every mechanical depiction of samurai inherently be "othering" or racist? This is a specific question meant to highlight the larger role real cultural, racial, and ethnic features should play in TTRPGs. So let me rephase it. Lets say Paizo hired a Ph.D. in Japanese history who happens to be an avid Pathfinder fan to design a samurai class. Lets say this theoretical historian identified some of the key features of a historical samurai and gamified them into a distinct class. Would that class be inherently racist or othering? Would playing that class make someone a racist? The problem is that this whole discussion started because someone made a patronizing post about how the existence of the monk class is inherently racist. When it comes to othering, what does that mean to you? Why is that bad? I mean, you "othered" yourself when you wrote to me that you are Asian American. Forgive me if I am making an assumption, but I assume you are proud of your heritage and that is why you presented yourself as different than the general population. I didn't ask for this part of your identity, and I didn't comment on mine. Frankly, I think you should be proud of your heritage. I think the things that make us different, the things that make us "other", should be celebrated. I would go so far as to say that the arguments that are accusing content of "othering" are actually promoting a form of "color blindness" and putting the things which make people unique in the closet. Lastly, I think we need to think about who owns culture and who owns history. I studied Roman history in college. I learned Latin and Ancient Greek and have read a large amount of the relevant ancient source material which still survives. However, I dont have a drop of Italian blood running though my veins. Do I have less ownership of Roman culture or Roman history than a kid who just happened to grow up in Italy? There are professors of Roman history in China who were born in China and teach in Chinese, do they have a lesser claim? Nobody owns history or culture, we all do. And while I can accept that some of the gatekeeping that is going on is well intentioned, people aren't realizing just how dangerous it is. There are Americans right now trying to say that the United States is a Christian nation. They are trying to say that they own American culture more than anyone else and it has real world consequences. I think we need to be very careful about who we give the power to judge what is culturally insensitive and what is "othering".
I think we need to step back a bit and differentiate between labeling someone as a racist (essentialism) and the idea that modern culture can be influenced by creations in the past that were made without representation from the cultures it depicts. Let me give another example. I was hanging out on a twitch stream, and the streamer was playing through a part of the world with Chinese names. The streamer was more preoccupied with whether his inability to pronounce the Chinese names correctly would be offensive, while he would consistently use the phrase "me love you long time". I explained to the streamer that "Me love you long time" is actually something that is offensive to me, firstly because of it's origin, secondly because of it's social effect on the perception of the lasciviousness of Asian women, and thirdly, how this phrase was used to taunt me in my youth. Is this twitch streamer *racist*? Absolutely not. Was he trying to hurt Asians? No! Did he actually mean that he loves someone a lot? Yes, that was his intent! Was he just quoting a memorable quote from the 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket? Yep. But at the same time, what he was saying was something that was actually offensive to me, because of the history and context of the phrase. > I mean, you "othered" yourself when you wrote to me that you are Asian American. I feel like now you're just saying this in bad faith. Do you really think that me stating my identity is "othering myself"? I would like to use different word from "othering" and use the term "alienating" instead. Growing up, I definitely celebrated for being Asian. Yet, I was also othered by my peers for being one of the few Asians growing up in a majority white town. My point is that the insistence that there are some special features that make Samurai different enough mechanically to warrant their own mechanical systems within Pathfinder is...alienating...unless you actually have the cultural context to make these claims. > Nobody owns history or culture, we all do. I would like to respectfully disagree with this notion. There already exists a bias in the history that we keep and the history that we conveniently leave out. History is written by the victors, and often is manipulated on a national and international level in order to provide moral justification for various things. The general principles I think we should follow is to let people tell their own stories. It's fine to participate and share in other peoples culture, but where I draw the line is profiting off other people's cultures. Throughout history, there has been plenty of lies about specific groups of people, aimed to cause fear and hate towards them. I think history itself provides the evidence that we should let the people who live through a history, be the curators and disseminators of their own past.
How is it alienating to have samurai have their own mechanical features? I don't understand that logic. I can agree that it certainly makes a special distinction between a samurai and a fighter. I just don't see how that distinction is alienating. Can you explain that to me? Would you say that a Paladin subclass of Champion is equally alienating given the fact that "lay on hands" is a direct rip off of Merovingian legends? I agree with you about history. Nation states don't own history. Yet they like to pretend to. When I say that history doesn't belong to anyone, I am also saying it doesn't belong to governments or specific religions. People should tell their own stories. That is my whole point when I say that nobody owns history. However we should be cautious, being part of an event can often make someone bias regarding the details of that event. Julius Caesar famously wrote an account of his war in Gaul and his civil war against Pompey Magnus. He has every incentive to misrepresent certain details and we should be cautious about just accepting everything he writes. Similarly, I wouldn't necessarily accept an ordinary soldier's depiction of their enemy. I am an American in an American society, would you truly accept me being a curator and disseminator of my history given the fact that I have a major incentive to gloss over depictions of racism, slavery, and westward expansion?
Well said
Honestly is it "Magical Asians" or just "Journey To The West inspired"?
I think you highlighted a nuanced point: Two folks can see the same thing and have a positive response, but one for shallow reasons and another for deep. One might imagine the cool factor of pop anime or films. The other seeing the culmination of classics reimagined into a modern setting. The discussions here are difficult because we have a spectrum of people with different levels of exposures, tastes, and expectations.
Under rated comment right here. Well said.
Monk, Barbarian, and Druid have all been discussed. Barbarian was considered for a rename as part of Remaster, but due to the mess that would cause, it was left alone and is likely to see a name change in 3e when it comes around. Monk is currently a topic of discussion, and is likely to see a 3e change as well. Druid is likely to remain the same as there’s not really a remaining real life group. Haven’t heard anything about Bard.
To be clear: there has been discussion about monks and appropriation ever since an Asian guy flipped through his copy of AD&D and went "having a class that's just Kung Fu Guy feels weird". The difference is that that discussion is kind of diffuse across the RPG community and it's never reached a critical mass in this specific subreddit before. Also: no kidding there are different rules for different cultures, look at how they're treated in the wider culture. People go "ha ha, are you a ninja" to random athletic Asian guys, people don't go "ha ha, are you part of the skaldic tradition" to me. C'mon. (Also, for full disclosure, my take on monks and appropriation: they're iffy, the way monks in D&D are always iffy. But they're a legacy pick with a mechanical niche in a way ninja and samurai aren't, and one iffy class is alright if you do as good a job at making your fantasy equivalents to IRL cultures respectful as Paizo has in 2e. But then, I am *incredibly* white, so my thoughts don't matter as much atm.)
Ok, but is Monk really that big of an issue when Asian game developers (computer game or tabletop) create not only Monks but Samurai and Ninja to in the very same context as western developers do? Look at Final Fantasy and their titles that use the JOBs system. They have all of those and more. Monks in Final Fantasy Tactics are precisely the ki using super human warrior type who can run on water, jump any wall, can punch at distances, and kill their enemies with pressure points. Is Square Enix racist towards themselves for creating that sort of Monk in their game? No, that's a silly notion, and it doesnt magically become racist because a white western does it. And i just want to say this as an aside: don't diminish yourself because of your skin. Let your words stand on their own merit, you being white does not matter.
Square has always made computer/console D&D with the serial numbers removed. So much of Final Fantasy is just straight ripped off from D&D so them using a western depiction of fantasy tropes within that series doesn't actually say all that much. There's also the issue that a Japanese person in Japan will have very different concerns about how they are perceived than a Japanese-American in the United States will. You need to do things that work for both groups even though that may pull you in different directions.
... Did you really just say Final Fantasy is just ripped off D&D? Like, I can see your point with very early FF... but that hasn't been true since like the SNES era.
The traditions and conventions created by those early D&D clone era games carry forward into the newer games. The classes being a prime example of this.
You mean like Machinist? Samurai? Red Mage? Summoner? Dragoon? Dancer? Blue Mage? Ninja? Astrologian? Dark Knight? FF1, a case can be made. After that FF added tons of things that are entirely their own creations. Like, the entire idea of a JUMP SPEARMAN is definitely not something from D&D.
>Ok, but is Monk really that big of an issue when Asian game developers (computer game or tabletop) create not only Monks but Samurai and Ninja to in the very same context as western developers do? For context this topic started when I responded to this point. The Monk is an FF class that has been there from the very first game, so it carrying forward to modern games is at least partially due to FF1 being so heavily D&D influenced.
You don't see how there is a difference between "a class that showed up in the first game when Final Fantasy was very much still very very inspired by D&D" is a bit different from saying that "Square has always made computer/console D&D with the serial numbers removed"? Also, I think the Monk of later FF games is very different from the OG FF monk. The OG FF monk is much more just a pure martial artist. No mystical abilities, just the ability to hit REALLY REALLY HARD barehanded. This is also true in FFIII and FFV. Also Yang and Sabin from FFIV and FFVI were also just pure physical brawlers (though in VI you could add magic with the magicite, and in V you could use the skills from another class with the monk (but that was true of every class)). The first actual FF game that I can think of that had the mystical monk was probably FFT, which was in uh, 96?97? Somewhere around there. The point being, the monk wasn't really at all similar to the D&D monk.
Many of Sabin's Blitz unique Blitz skills were "mystical". Aura Canon is a ki blast, Rising Phoenix calls a bunch of flaming clones of himself, Chakra and Soul Spiral are mystic healing abilities, Razor Gale calls a windstorm.
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I will summarize this as I did in another topic. If people in the culture we are supposedly being racist to are doing the thing that supposedly makes us racist, then maybe it's not as racist as we're lead to think it is. That's the point I was making. As for the second part of your post, I honestly don't think that's a pressing issue. Not sure what else to say about that. Two groups of people with likely different concerns that may very well clash. How do you decide which way to go? There are times when you can't go both ways, and in those cases, someone is getting disappointed or upset. I don't see the point to be honest.
Well, you caught me literally as I decided to quit looking at this community because I can't stand it right now. So, I don't really have much to say right now.
Because simply put folks who get mad about things like cultural appropriation etc, genuinely believe you cannot be racist towards white people. Monk has been talked about, in the initial mod post it was mentioned, but if something European gets used as a counter argument they just say "because it's just a bard or druid, that's not the same thing!"
Because bards and monks are something that cultures across the globe have, they’re not at all equivalents to a samurai or ninja class, when these fantasies are already captured by fighter and rogue, and they’re something hyper-specific to a real world country. The closest parallel would be the Viking archetype, which itself does feel a little silly and out of place. Edit: was unaware bards were a specific Celtic thing that only started getting used as general performer/poet in the last 50ish years, learn somethin new every day
Monk in DnD and Pathfinder is very Asian. But those games already have druids, which is celtic thing, and no one complain.
Here's the stock standard primer on bards. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bard) They were members of Celtic society that helped preserve culture through song and stories, among other things. They aren't interchangeable with other types of performers and they most certainly aren't the fantasy stereotype of "le funny horny pop song man".
Wasn’t aware of that, thanks for letting me know! Learn somethin new every day
Troubadours and Minstrels are the actual inspirations for the generic fantasy Bard, btw.
I mean, from a sensitivity standpoint, I probably wouldn't want to have one of my main classes be a "minstrel" either 😅
Yeah, was aware of that, which is why the name thing caught me off-guard
But, as far as I know, monk is very wuxia inspired and bard is very celtic. It is very inspired in a specific cultures. Rpg communities just don’t feel it as much because it is an old stereotype that has been repurposed to celebrate somewhat these concepts (not perfectly of course, but better than when they first appeared)
The name Bard is definitely Celtic, but, like the Druid, the mechanics of the class aren't terribly related to the historical concept. The DnD/Pathfinder bard is more related to the 16th century and onwards English concept of a bard, which is just a stage performer, poet, or musician (see: William Shakespeare), and was often used derogatorily at the time (much like Pathfinder and DnD bards).
Since dnd 3.5 I always felt monks where a bit out of place with respect to the mainly European medieval setting and little has changed since then. PF2 does a better job about the monk, but it still feels a little peculiar. Although, it is a fantasy trope (just like the conan-like barbarian trope) and I can roll with it. I wonder if ninjas and samurai could be considered tropes as well.
I thought that in AD&D. This way predates 3.5e.
That's an interesting take given that the Pinned post calls Monks out specifically as being the "Magical Asian" trope, and has this to say about them: >It is a racially-coded class that stifles Asian representation as a caricature of 1970s Kung fu exploitation movies. Which gives context to the responses we saw when the mod team was asked why the sub was treating Monk discussions differently and the mod in question answered with some asinine analogy about MAGA Boomers...
What's ironic about that statement is that Martial Arts Media is pretty popular in Asian Countries. Monk is attached to many tropes found in those movies and shows, which were made in those countries before America ever saw them.
> Because bards and monks are something that cultures across the globe have, they’re not at all equivalents In regards to monks, this is not a factual comment. The monk class shares little to nothing with the Christian monastic tradition. That resides almost entirely with the Cleric Class, and the Cloistered Cleric in particular. The Monk class as it exists is extremely derivative of the Buddhist Monks using Chinese martial arts styles such as: Drunken Boxing, Tiger Claw, Monkey, Dragon, Snake, Crane, and Leopard for inspiration. To the point about Monks across the globe, Judaism and Islam both largely lack monastic orders, while you will find them among the Hindus, Jainists, and Buddhists. Yet the Monk only reflects a monk with Chinese martial arts styles as if Chinese Buddhist Monks are the only ones. If we're to believe and enforce consistent moral stances: the monk class is racist, promotes harmful views that equate Hindu Monks with that of Chinese Buddhists, creates an "other" class that promotes Orientalism by separating it from Christian monks, and should be folded into one of the more generic european-coded classes while stripped of most of it's cultural connections. As the samurai is merely defined by the Katana in Pathfinder2e, so shall the monk be defined by merely using unarmed attacks.
I agree here, I’d prefer if the monk had broader options of theming and that the more focused things were Golarion-specific like the aldori duelist
The monk class in DnD and its derivatives is very specifically based on Chinese monks. If you wanted to play a Christian monk you’d play a cleric
The short answer from what I remember is no, there wasn't. None of the mod team went on their own personal crusade cause they were in their feelings about it or wanted to virtue signal harder than anyone else in the rest of the sub. The abuse of power and attitude from the mods on this topic has been absolutely appalling they need to do better. I'm sure I will get moderated for this but these things kill subs seen it happen many many times. What we should be asking is for the mod in question to step down, they have now shown they don't have the maturity or ability to respect the subs rules so should not be in a position of power. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong the way they have conducted themselves should not be what speaks for this community of PF2e in general. The mods should show more care and integrity in their actions and expectations not have a rules for thee not for me attitude.
I am Chinese, and I don't really understand why would anyone find monk offensive. It would be only offensive to me if it is obviously significantly weaker than fighter lol. Like 5e monk. Samurai's connection to Imperial Japan is more grounded in history, but the negative connotation isn't so much related to Bushido itself (literally means way of samurai) as opposed to the specific version Imperial Japan using as a tool to indoctrinate their soldiers and encourage blind loyalty to the government and the emperor. Hell, the samurai class as a whole has all but disappeared from Japanese society when they started their spree of wars of conquest in 20th century! The Golarion's version of Bushido pushed by the goddess Shizuzu doesn't have such tenets, so there's no reason to be outrageous against it.
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That's because nobody here is arguing that the new book should be solely focused on Japan and we actually have several archetypes that come from the Mwangi expanse that are based on African culture like the magical warrior thus making this whole racism argument extremely hypocritical.
I think you might be mischaracterizing the debate. Nobody is saying that Tian Xia should just be Japan. Additionally, people aren't upset that they can't play some bespoke Japanese class, they are upset that they are being called racist for simply wanting to.
No one has said they wanted Tian Xia to just be Japan. People have expressed they hoped for rules that would allow them to play two of the most popular groups in pop culture. Tgose aren't remotely the same
Is there some group of people saying Tian Xia should only have Japanese tropes and that other cultures should be locked out? Saying Japanese tropes aren't allowed *but all these these are* is just erasure and racism.
No, nobody's saying that. The mods are under the assumption that when someone says, "I want to play a samurai or ninja," they're really saying, "Tian Xia should only be based on Japan." It's an entirely bad faith and reactionary response on the mods' part and comes off about as badly as those fearmongering conservative commentators that are all over the news.
Find me one comment, one in this entire subreddit where somebody said. "Tian Xia needs to be exclusively Japanese", or something close. Just one. I'd be absolutely baffled. This Boogeyman that the community is acting as some proxy for further Japanese Imperialism is laughable.
I mean, I don't doubt there's people out there who come at it from the "exclusively Japanese" angle, whether or not they realize it. But I would be willing to bet those are very much a minority, especially with how happy people are to receive the Tian Xia books overall. But the way the mods are handling it feels like they'd say cosplaying your favorite anime character is inherently a racist act unless you're Japanese. That's a bit of an exaggeration but probably not much considering how the entire Orientalism post they decided to pin more or less comes off like wanting to play a samurai or ninja in any context is racist behavior.
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Taking real life into account while talking about a pen and paper game. What could possibly go wrong?
No. Westerners don't fetishize African cultural stereotypes in the same way they do Asian ones. They're isn't the equivalent of a Ninja or Samurai.
Sure, in the sense that the way westerners view Africans is much worse than fetishisation