Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 26, 2023, 03:56:25 PM
Japanese interpretation of European culture for Anime:

Hot girl in a uniform with massive jugs and drill hair comes to Japan, becomes friends with MC and is second best fighter.

Yep, and the guys I spent time with are fully aware of how ridiculous it all is.  The best way to understand anime is to look a kabuki and realize that it's an art form that's intentionally way over the top to elicit emotional reactions.

Quote from: BadApple on October 26, 2023, 04:05:08 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 26, 2023, 03:56:25 PM
Japanese interpretation of European culture for Anime:

Hot girl in a uniform with massive jugs and drill hair comes to Japan, becomes friends with MC and is second best fighter.

Yep, and the guys I spent time with are fully aware of how ridiculous it all is.  The best way to understand anime is to look a kabuki and realize that it's an art form that's intentionally way over the top to elicit emotional reactions.

Its an overused trope, Zom 101 had I think a German big tittied blonde superfan of japanese culture always telling the downer japanese girl this or that about their culture generally getting the women more nude or drunk and the guys went all in.  Of course one of the guys was a nudsist as well with really shitty reasoning.  Good anime, but annoying tropes.

Yeah, I only watched a few minutes of the video, during which they said virtually nothing about the Oriental Adventures book. The video is two frickin hours long, so if anyone wants to debate particular points, please cite a timestamp in the video.

I got to the part about the barbarian class which they critiqued as stereotyping and reducing different "barbaric" peoples -- but this doesn't seem to be about Asian prejudice, since they have no comparison to the Western-based barbarian class in D&D.

Quote from: BadApple on October 26, 2023, 03:23:02 PM
It has been a product that has been largely seen by the Asian gaming community I was exposed to as an invitation for Asians to join the larger community of gaming of western cultures.  I have seen no less that three copies in the hands of locals while in Asia and it was held as prized possession.  I did get asked by one guy to explain some of the contents (in the nature of confusion of how westerners see some aspects of Asia.)   Also, they seemed very warm to the idea of white guys enjoying playing out an interpretation of Asian heroes.

A real direct comparison would be an analysis of Fabula Ultima or Sword World.  And, for the record, Japanese gamers are fully aware that their interpretation of western culture in their gaming is by no means representative of actual western cultures

I'd be curious about Fabula Ultima and/or Sword World. Have you read them?

Especially, do either of them have a section about life in the West like the "Daily Life" section in Oriental Adventures? I'd be interested in how they generalize what Western life is like.

Quote from: jhkim on October 26, 2023, 05:44:18 PM

I'd be curious about Fabula Ultima and/or Sword World. Have you read them?

Especially, do either of them have a section about life in the West like the "Daily Life" section in Oriental Adventures? I'd be interested in how they generalize what Western life is like.

Sword World has a wiki you can peruse.  https://swordworld.fandom.com/wiki/Sword_World_Wiki

Both game rely heavily on world building and are what a lot of fantasy manga/anime are based on.  Sword World particularly is what a lot of JRPG video games are based on. 

So yes, there's a lot of direct and indirect things about life and society in the games. 

Anyone who has ever read a manga or watched anime knows that the stock in trade is cheerfully using stereotypes of European culture with no regard for context. It's just about fun and use of tropes. At this point the Japanese mangaka who cracks open a book or even Wikipedia to find an obscure word to name his demon lord has more knowledge of and respect for Western culture than the typical mind-fucked American.

They do not seem to have any 'likes' for those two videos - maybe even the wokies are too traumatized from having to do a presentation on the  required excerpt from Edward Said's Orientalism at their leftist madrassa to dare to give a thumbs up?

I watched 8 minutes of this, shook my magic 8 ball in my brain, and the little triangle through the window read "I have only one rule about evaluating matters hipster:   If you ain't wearing a bolo tie then you ain't made the Scene."

Quote from: jhkim on October 26, 2023, 05:44:18 PM
I'd be curious about Fabula Ultima and/or Sword World. Have you read them?

Especially, do either of them have a section about life in the West like the "Daily Life" section in Oriental Adventures? I'd be interested in how they generalize what Western life is like.

Fabula Ultima (literally "Last Fable" in Latin, but "Fabula" can also mean "Fantasy" and "Ultima" can be translated "Final"...) is an Italian game that aims to recreate the JRPG play experience (especially the various Final Fantasy games). There's ton of content about creating the setting for the campaign while keeping to the common themes of Final Fantasy (there's no common or premade setting, the idea being that in session 0 the group will collaboratively create the game world), and of course nothing about "the West": the game is not about that (and the author is Italian).

Saw a video online of a white guy in different ethnic costumes asking people of that culture their opinion and it was universally a positive reaction. Then in costume he asked college students who were universally offended by each.

The kids want to be offended.

This garbage is still floating around? I tried to watch it to better tear it apart once, but didn't have the fortitude to waste my time so.

I remember at the beginning they blame some stuff on Gary Gygax (who was barely involved in the book despite having his name on it) and bemoan the lack of sensitivity readers/Asian involvement. This despite the fact there were Japanese playtesters because TSR actually was concerned about authenticity. These people are credited in the book.

Am I crazy and misremembering?

Quote from: WERDNA on October 30, 2023, 01:05:55 PM
This garbage is still floating around? I tried to watch it to better tear it apart once, but didn't have the fortitude to waste my time so.

I remember at the beginning they blame some stuff on Gary Gygax (who was barely involved in the book despite having his name on it) and bemoan the lack of sensitivity readers/Asian involvement. This despite the fact there were Japanese playtesters because TSR actually was concerned about authenticity. These people are credited in the book.

Am I crazy and misremembering?

It forced WotC to hire one of the retards to write a throwaway adventure.  I don't remember if it was Radiant Asshole or Strixhaven: Pooter now in D&D w/o license fee, but those books didn't do well.  The more the WotC can be forced to pander, the harder and faster the management team running D&D gets the boot.  Winninger is gone, we'll see Brink next.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 30, 2023, 01:21:09 PM

Quote from: WERDNA on October 30, 2023, 01:05:55 PM
I remember at the beginning they blame some stuff on Gary Gygax (who was barely involved in the book despite having his name on it) and bemoan the lack of sensitivity readers/Asian involvement. This despite the fact there were Japanese playtesters because TSR actually was concerned about authenticity. These people are credited in the book.

Am I crazy and misremembering?

It forced WotC to hire one of the retards to write a throwaway adventure.  I don't remember if it was Radiant Asshole or Strixhaven: Pooter now in D&D w/o license fee, but those books didn't do well.  The more the WotC can be forced to pander, the harder and faster the management team running D&D gets the boot.  Winninger is gone, we'll see Brink next.

Regarding Oriental Adventures... Yes, there are a credited set of Japanese playtesters for Oriental Adventures. Particularly as a Korean, though, I hate how it uses only Japanese playtesters and primarily Japanese sources, yet often claims to describe the whole of the Orient. Noble warriors are samurai, sneaky rogues are ninja, etc. The "Daily Life" section also has a lot of generalities about the Orient.

To honeydipperdavid - I think you're thinking of "The Book of Inner Alchemy" in the Candlekeep Mysteries anthology, authored by Daniel Kwan. It seems to be common practice for WotC that if someone has a widely-read criticism of them, then they invite the author to write. For example, RPGPundit was particularly critical of 4th ed, and was invited to consult on 5th edition.

In general, WotC is facing a common RPG problem right now - the edition treadmill. Even the most popular editions always suffer a drop in sales after many years out. There are so many books available, that the buyers for any new book are decreasing, and it's hard to get a new "must buy" book. The only reliable solution is to release a new edition, and ten years is a relatively long time for an edition to last for most RPGs. WotC has been trying to come up with a fix for the edition treadmill by emphasizing subscriptions, but it's unclear how successful that will be or whether it will be any good.

Quote from: jhkim on October 30, 2023, 02:56:02 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 30, 2023, 01:21:09 PM

Quote from: WERDNA on October 30, 2023, 01:05:55 PM
I remember at the beginning they blame some stuff on Gary Gygax (who was barely involved in the book despite having his name on it) and bemoan the lack of sensitivity readers/Asian involvement. This despite the fact there were Japanese playtesters because TSR actually was concerned about authenticity. These people are credited in the book.

Am I crazy and misremembering?

It forced WotC to hire one of the retards to write a throwaway adventure.  I don't remember if it was Radiant Asshole or Strixhaven: Pooter now in D&D w/o license fee, but those books didn't do well.  The more the WotC can be forced to pander, the harder and faster the management team running D&D gets the boot.  Winninger is gone, we'll see Brink next.

Regarding Oriental Adventures... Yes, there are a credited set of Japanese playtesters for Oriental Adventures. Particularly as a Korean, though, I hate how it uses only Japanese playtesters and primarily Japanese sources, yet often claims to describe the whole of the Orient. Noble warriors are samurai, sneaky rogues are ninja, etc. The "Daily Life" section also has a lot of generalities about the Orient.

To honeydipperdavid - I think you're thinking of "The Book of Inner Alchemy" in the Candlekeep Mysteries anthology, authored by Daniel Kwan. It seems to be common practice for WotC that if someone has a widely-read criticism of them, then they invite the author to write. For example, RPGPundit was particularly critical of 4th ed, and was invited to consult on 5th edition.

In general, WotC is facing a common RPG problem right now - the edition treadmill. Even the most popular editions always suffer a drop in sales after many years out. There are so many books available, that the buyers for any new book are decreasing, and it's hard to get a new "must buy" book. The only reliable solution is to release a new edition, and ten years is a relatively long time for an edition to last for most RPGs. WotC has been trying to come up with a fix for the edition treadmill by emphasizing subscriptions, but it's unclear how successful that will be or whether it will be any good.

They already did 5.5E where they pulled racial asymetry to equalize the races and its a lead fart.  6E is adding more abilities to player subclasses while they try to find a way to decrease lethality more, ie HP inflation and damage deflation - leading to long slog combat.  I haven't see 6E do anything about reducing HP's, increasing lethality and putting in decreasing cability as the damage piles up.   Even putting in 2 points, 66% and 33% hp where a player loses capabilities and 50% where monsters loses capabilitis could do somthing for the game.  Bounded Accuracy means no +4/+5 and the game designers thinks they don't have to develop high CR versions of monsters - well they do.  We are in the harvest phase now where D&D is releasing splat books, they would have had at least 3-5 years if they kept good rules balance, they did not.

Quote from: BadApple on October 26, 2023, 07:47:59 AM
I couldn't get 10 minutes into this shit.

It's a three year old video with comments turned off.  The first thing they said was to pretend that Oriental Adventures is problematic, and to imply that people who want to enjoy it without "knowing" that are somehow bad.

I couldn't even get a minute into it, is what I'm saying.  Maybe I'll try again later, I'm sure they have some howlers somewhere in there, but it's literal hours of them being mad right?

Quote from: Venka on October 30, 2023, 03:30:39 PM

Quote from: BadApple on October 26, 2023, 07:47:59 AM
I couldn't get 10 minutes into this shit.

It's a three year old video with comments turned off.  The first thing they said was to pretend that Oriental Adventures is problematic, and to imply that people who want to enjoy it without "knowing" that are somehow bad.

I couldn't even get a minute into it, is what I'm saying.  Maybe I'll try again later, I'm sure they have some howlers somewhere in there, but it's literal hours of them being mad right?

The video is worth watching to give you an introduction to leftard struggle sessions.  They cover 1 page of content, stretch it out to 2 hours of lies, suppositions and just pulling stuff out of their asses.  If gives you a good idea of the typical marxist thinking.  Never take their studies as fact, always counter them with other studies proving them wrong.  James Lindsey got a leftist science magazine to review Mein Kamf where they replaced the Jews with men, and they didn't realize it was literally Hitler's writing.  After you watch something like that, it gives you an idea of the work that needs to be done to save society.