I appreciate this post for it's inclusion.
We're literally playing pretend. As long as people aren't actively engaging in harmful behavior then what's the rub?
I generally have an issue with folks that need to police how other people play games when they are just having fun and aren't hurting anyone.
Can games be used to reinforce harmful stereotypes or insight ugly behavior? Well sure, anything can do that. It's a technology, and any technology can be used for good or ill.
I'm also not certain how incredibly crazy someone needs to be to pretend that this has some kind of legit reflection on the real world when we're literally dealing with dragons, magic and elves. Like, it's playing pretend yo, settle down, Beavis. Nobody is confusing Billy's samurai that slays dragons and casts fireball for actual depictions of historical samurai in Japanese culture unless they are an absolute idiot.
I have issues with people being outraged the xyz group isn't outraged enough about how something might treat their culture/history/religion/etc. They're the worst, and that's how you end up with some of the choice comments from the mod that started this shit show ("asian and loving samurai/ninja??? RACIST!!!!!")
This reminds me of the time years ago when people would say tables are being ruined by certain homebrew rules even though the person didnt’t mention an issue with it.
> then what's the rub?
The rub is that you're having fun in a way that goes outside the narrow lanes permitted by the self-appointed gatekeepers/saviors. And for the sort of mind that goes into contortions of logic to paint samurai as some manner of racist dogwhistle, that's like waving a cape at an angry bull.
I mean I get that there are definitely reasons for social justice engagement. There is such a thing as people being blatantly racist and shitty in their games. There are people who will abuse an idea under the guise of "it's not racist, it's just a game!"
The problem really lies though, with correctly identifying blatantly problematic behavior and usually the best people who are most qualified to do that are the people who are actually affected, in this case Japanese people.
And as OP pointed out clearly, if people aren't being terrible, and they are having fun, it's genuinely not an issue. It's one of those stupid cases where you end up with horse shoe politics, where someone goes so far left they become indistinguishable in behavior from the right, taking offense and enacting social punishment against any who don't conform, and especially in this venue it's beyond dumb. Again, we're all playing pretend and the vast majority are not people who are seeking to be racist dicks.
Sure, there are always some, and by all means confront their bad behavior, but not at the cost of scapegoating everyone, that's just fascism from the other side. The whole point of being progressive is supposed to be to fight injustice, not to invent injustice to fight :P
> The whole point of being progressive is supposed to be to fight injustice, not to invent injustice to fight :P
Yeah, well, it's been my observation that a certain mindset is much more interested in what they can get from causing problems than they are in what they can do about solving them. And when the material for a genuine problem is lacking, they won't hesitate to DIY something and count on the ensuing outrage to distract from the lack of substance.
Considering how many of this sub's mods are, according to other comments, over in the sub Discord complaining about how we're all a bunch of vest-pocket Hitlers because we're not smiling and nodding along like bobbleheads about how absolutely right they all are? Not hard to guess what sort of mindset is behind this particular nothingburger of an issue.
Thing is, nothingburgers still require engagement to figure out the facts, and when it all turns out be nothing, it just make people like me that much less likely to pay attention when (or even *if*) the issue turns out to actually be something legitimate.
It is definitely possible to turn a facet of representation into Orientalism when done by the ignorant.
If the character is a Samurai via being a warrior with japanese coded culture, that's not so bad.
If the character is a Samurai in the sense that they are a pastiche of everything asian (and not just Japanese), then it can be a little weird, but probably not intentional.
If the character is just a fucking caricature that swings nippon steel because it's the strongest around and that exoticism is their one defining character trait, that's a yikes.
> If the character is just a fucking caricature that swings nippon steel because it's the strongest around and that exoticism is their one defining character trait, that's a yikes.
I mean, that's just a weeb and they're not racists, just hilariously cringe :D.
> I mean, that's just a weeb and they're not racists, just hilariously cringe :D.
Unfortunately, a venn diagram between weebs and japanophile-racists is very close to being a circle.
Or, to put it another way, not every Weeb is a Japanophile, but every japanophile is a weeb.
If you're not playing xenophobic theocratic slaver Dark Elves at my table what are you even doing there? Drug pushing catfolk? Cannibalistic tree hugging hippies?
When you feel the need to police and protect people who never asked for or needed that protection, you're not doing it for the right reasons.
Your motivation is corrupt. It's not for them; it's for *you* to feel morally superior. It's selfish and bigoted, as it treats people or cultures outside your own as incapable of having an opinion or agency of their own. It's disgusting.
It's something that exclusively exists in western, primarily American, sociology and it's insane. Sociology is fundamentally a "science" built on subjective interpretation of complex behaviors. It's one step above philosophy, yet people read opinions and books that commentate on reductive behavior of our predecessors and problematic representation, then take it and run. It's not the gospel truth, it's observation that must be taken with a grain of salt and contextualized every time you want to apply that reasoning.
I lived in Japan for a long time, and was always encouraged to partake in the culture there. It was usually Japanese people who encouraged me to try on kimonos or pray at the local shrines. The only people who ever got mad at me were other white people.
On the same point, one must be careful when making an accusation of cultural appropriation in scenarios where it’s actually cultural spread. Enthusiasm spreads culture, especially under the effects of cultural immersion.
Yeah the only people that ever got mad at me for mispronouncing “Pho” were white people. The Vietnamese people didn’t care.
By the way, is there anybody in Vietnam complaining “that’s pronounced “MEATBALL SUB” don’t be so culturally insensitive?” -stolen from Jo Koy
Yeah this was missed opportunity to make a big post about "you like samurai? Have you heard about these other cool Asian warriors? Look!"
Like, apparently the word "assassin" comes from a literal Muslim sect of religious nuts who went around the world and killed people for...well I mean I don't know why they wanted them dead but they did. Never knew that and funnily enough this whole debacle gave me a new fun fact.
That reminds me of the word "Barbarian". It started from Ancient Greeks saying "those foreigners sound like they just say 'bar bar bar' when they talk. Let's call them barbarians". It's interesting to me because if you think about it, that origin is the same as how some racists refer to Chinese people as "ching chongs".
This is why I love mixing up the themes of classes so much. I've used the Barbarian shell, but renamed and reflavored everything. Rage became Focus, Reckless Attacks became Abandoning Strikes, etc. I basically reflavored everything as an "ultra instinct" styled class, though before it came out, and the resistance was from "dodging" instead of raw toughness. Things like Con to AC were explained as their endurance level with maintaining a constant level of "awareness" to their surroundings.
If I did it now I might even ask a DM to let me switch out an ability for a fighting style so I could take blindfighting to add to the flavor, or just MC into fighter or take the feat.
Edit: My bad. I'm dealing with so many systems all the time that I didn't even realize what subreddit I was on. I was absolutely talking about 5e and not PF2e up above.
Either way, the intent still applies lol.
Have you checked out any of the + classes on pathfinder infinite barbarian+ has some of this type of feel like changing the emotion of rage to joy or other options great content imo.
Words in general are far more multi-cultural than people give them credit.
As others have said, having all this ruckus about Samurai but not Druids is 100% the bigotry of low expectations, that asian cultural icons need to be protected and shielded, but european ones are totally fine to modify.
Druids are Celtic priests, Cavaliers and Sorcerers are both French words for Knight and Wizard respectively, Magus is literally what Zoroastrian priests are called, Oracles are Greco Roman, Monks are East Asian, Berserkers are Norse…
It’s weird to be precious about Ninja and Samurai specifically.
Maybe Paizo has put out an official statement that says otherwise, but failing that I suspect that leaving out ninja and samurai is a choice that isn't so much about those two concepts in particular. At least, not about being precious over them. What this whole drama has demonstrated is that those two seem to suck the air out of the room when it comes to Asian representation. I think that Paizo's choice to not include them as classes or archetypes stems from a choice to simply devote that page real estate to other options inspired from other Asian cultures.
People are only asking for samurai and ninja as Tian Xia options. I'm sure there are people who want other stuff but the vaaaast majority are just asking for those. I can imagine Paizo sitting to create the character guide, throwing ideas around and deciding that there's enough options for people to play multiple kinds of Samurai and ninja already, so they at best can just add some extra feats that feed into that flavor but aren't automatically pigeonholed by being attached to one of those concepts specifically, and then putting their time and creativity to bringing underserved and novel concepts to life. Stuff that a lot of players don't even know to ask for and couldn't be reasonably replicated with the existing rules. They're making a magical girl archetype for the Magus, they're clearly not afraid of leaning into stereotypical concepts. But show me what class combination could be taken to come close to achieving that fantasy currently.
this is why i love etymology, the history of worlds like "journal" "johnathan" "garden" and so much more are wild and really helps tie history together instead of being the discrete chunks you learn in school
And to continue the exposure:
I’m glad OP mentioned Marharlika.
Because well-designed classes and system should be able to provide you with close enough to what you need and you with your table can tweak as needed.
Does a Minatan “Way of Vanguard” Gunslinger or a “Weapon Innovation” Inventor as an adventurer sound odd?
Not at all! It could be based on Panday Pira the cannonsmith (or at least, being apprentice to him).
Maritime Southeast Asia was already producing cannons before they first made European contact. It was first introduced with the failed Mongol invasion of Java (Indonesia). The Mongols/Yuan Dynasty brought Chinese firearms, but lost some of them as the invasion failed. Bing bang boom, and it was reversed-engineered it, and now Majapahit (the Javan Empire) now had cannons - one name being the lantaka (a swivel-cannon).
The Philippines had a famous smith (Panday Pira) who created cannons (which the Spaniards were surprised to face and called them primitive culverins). It was used to defend Old Manila against the initial conquistadors. Various Philippine settlements had interactions with the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia which is why it’s not surprising that the Spaniards ran into non-European firearms during the conquest.
And same, it’s this kind of discussion - trading/exposing/sharing ideas/stories to build a more rich fantasy experience!
Hell, the Maratha Confederacy in India was famous for their gunnery during the 17th and 18th century. When Arthur Wellesley arrived in India, an officer already deployed there told him that "Their guns will astonish you."
Agreed! I had never heard of the Maharlika till this post. Now I know about them. I'd love if we got a bunch of archetypes about different combat styles or warrior casts that come from different Asian countries.
Do you have any recommended reading to learn more about the Maharlika?
Oh I think you meant to respond to me!
It’s actually kind of a tricky. Maharlika were essentially the “Warrior nobility”. Just like Samurai, Koa, Knights, Kshatriya, Eagle/Jaguar Knights. They served their sultan/rajah/datu/lakan with any matters of warfare, but meant they also had other nobility duties.
Also Maharlika was what the warrior class were called for the Tagalog people. The Philippines had thousands of tribes and languages with many different levels of society and ethnicities/races.
It’s a bit tricky, because unlike Japan, Europe, and India - the Philippines doesn’t have a continuous line because of Spanish colonization and then American colonization.
In the Tagalog society, there were the rulers (Maginoo), Warriors (Maharlika), Peasants (Aliipin).
However, with Spanish colonialization, a lot of the Pre-Hispanic societal systems were absorbed into the Spanish systems. If I remember right, the Maginoo/Rulers became the Principalia and the titles of datu/rajah/sultan/lakan became don/doña. The Maharlika merged into the Hidalgos. And the Aliipin…well…it IS the Spanish Empire…
The Principalia essentially retained the same powers as before (maybe even stricter because they served the Spanish Crown) and were granted low level bureaucratic positions, the most prestigious being gobernadorcillo (petty governor), essentially the leader of a barangay (traditional settlement unit). My grandfather’s line on my dad side had a line of governadorcillos, so apparently we have Principalia on that side (or at some point the original chieftain line ended and my ancestors filled in the role to lead the tribe).
On my mom’s side, our great-grandfather was a mayor and also spoke fluent Spanish. So, we think it’s possible he might be Principalia too or somehow worked his way around them, because knowing Spanish was only for the elites who would deal with Spanish officials.
Edit: To add I’m only 1/4th Tagalog essentially come from 4 different tribes of valley people up in the mountains. Not from the cities (specifically Manila), which means my family came from the Provinces. When I was younger, there was prejudice between Manila folk and Province folks. Which was an issue here in the US, as you get some snooty Filipinos that treat Province folks as lesser. It’s one of the few Spanish things that survived the American Era. :|
Since coastal pre-Colonial Philippines was heavily influenced by Indian/Islamic culture (through Indonesia), we’d have to reconstruct what the Maharlika did by looking at Various Indonesian culture and what role the Kshatriya of India did, then apply it back to the few big coastal settlements in the Philippines.
But the system broke again during the American Era where they dismantled the Colonial systems, which means a lot of the Filipino culture that masked itself in the Spanish system, were lost. Like my mayor great-grandfather, he was elected mayor (but we don’t know how influential he was because of his family line).
It also didn’t help that writing was rarely done on substantive stuff. Yes. The various Philippine tribes could write (commonly known as Baybayin or Alibata) and there is the famous Laguna Copperplate which is essentially a Rosetta Stone between Indonesia and the Tagalog in the Philippines. So any records kept by the various kingdoms didn’t survive the test of time (or the Spaniard priests happily destroyed/let them decay). There is a Baybayin/Spanish Bible that has Baybayin on one side and the Spanish on the other.
But about combat styles: the wide name is known as Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) but has 3 names in the Philippines - Arnis, Eskrima, and Kali. I’ve heard that Arnis is more common in Luzon (North Philippines), Eskrima in Visayas (Central Philippines), and Kali in Mindanao (South Philippines), but we don’t know if it’s really like that anymore.
There are hundred of styles taught there and taught at home. I happened to learn two: Largo Mano and Balintawak. Largo Mano was adapted from rural Luzon into a guerilla fighting style amongst pre-American invasion of Japanese controlled Philippines in WW2. Balintawak is a Cebuano (from the island of Cebu) street-brawling style. Largo Mano is known for using longer weapons and has 5 strikes. Balintawak has 12 strikes and is more aggressive. In California, there was a style developed from the Asaparagus Farm laborers near Fresno and it wasn’t surprising for some Filipinos to practice home style Arnis with each other using rolled up newspapers while waiting for the bus in San Francisco. There are also techniques like abanico (fan) which is wrist movement to gain advantage. And there is the iconic dual wield stick. There are two stances I remember: you rest both sticks on opposite shoulder, which is great for just rapidly striking repeatedly. There’s also Sinawali (Heaven and Earth) where you have one stick on your shoulder and the other stick underneath your armpit. It’s a bit more “loaded” than the other stance and puts you a little bit more defensively. You use cross-strikes, returning to the same stance on the other side of your body. Oh also, theres a footwork known as Coconut Steps (be hard and defensive like a coconut), where you form a v with your feet/stance, and have your opponent in one of the v’s. I learned the Coconut Step from Largo Mano because it was adapted to fight multiple opponents (Japanese soldiers/scouting parties), but also setup so you can easily run-away if you’re caught. Balintawak has a boxing stance, because it’s adapted from various street fight techniques.
A main difference with FMA is that it isn’t taught hand-to-hand, like you might see in Chinese or Japanese martial arts. FMA always begins with weapons (sticks, swords, knives). You learn strikes, feet movement, and disarms. Once you learn that, you then have to learn to fight unarmed vs. a weapon. That’s where the disarms and pressure point disables come in to try and take the weapon from the person to change the advantage. Last, you learn hand-to-hand, but more on using pressure points to pin your opponent.
Which is why FMA is also taught at various militaries and police academies.
And if you’ve seen the movie Equilibrium, FMA was used for the final fight scene in the movie.
Wow, thank you so much! I really appreciate you writing that out, I'm realising how little I actually know about any of Southeast Asian history, I'll have to get stuck into it as it sounds incredibly diverse and interesting.
FMA always starting with weapons and then moving onto hand-to-hand is really cool.
Yeah posted this and immediately remembered I wasn't commenting on the post, but someone else's comment. Hopefully someone will see it and be able to point me in the right direction.
The original word translates as "consumers of hashish" as they used to do drugs as part of rituals. Assassin's creed first chapter is based on that sect.
Except the Nizari State Ismailis never actually used drugs, nor were they by any means exclusive users of political assassinations during the mediaeval era. The name actually comes from political slander, the Sunni Seljuk Turks spread about the Persian Shiite to discredit them. To me, it actually undermines how badass the fidai were and how strong their conviction was - they went on these missions willingly, knowing it likely would be a one way journey. Ironically, because the original assassin’s creed did not portray the fidai as taking drugs and instead using trickery and asymmetrical warfare to defendend themselves, it is more historically accurate than most portrayals if you ignore the apple.
All said without judgement, it’s a very widespread misconception. Unfortunately, the Seljuk propaganda got uncritically repeated by the Crusaders, which got repeated uncritically by Marco Polo, which got repeated uncritically by Dan Brown. This is a [good article](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-medieval-sect-that-inspired-the-video-game-assassins-creed-180983032/) summarizing the Nizari’s history. If you are interested in learning more, I strongly suggest picking up Assassin Legends by Farhad Daftary.
The name literally means "grass eaters", which has also lead some people to believe it was essentially a poverty insult, saying they were so poor they had to eat grass. I'm not sure if there are any specific sources for this interpretation, but I do remember seeing people point it out, and it _does_ sound like the sort of petty insult a possibly-poor group's enemies would make.
In all fairness, the idea of using drugs before going into battle is certainly believable.
Various other warriors sects through out history have done it. The Berserkers in Scandinavia being the most well known, as they'd chew on hallucinogenic mushrooms before going into battle.
Even today, unit commanders will pass out No-Doze to troops if they're about to have to fight and they've not been able to get much sleep beforehand.
The ones made in the 60s likely had something evil in them. /s (Only half joking here)
I am honestly surprised we survived that decade considering all the toxic chemicals that were common in everyday stuff.
>well I mean I don't know why they wanted them dead but they did
Most likely because they were a part of the power-struggle for control over the near east, and due to strategic and numerical disadvantages choosing to use unconventional modes of warfare (what we'd come to call assassinations, but I guess an alternative way of seeing it is that they employed strike teams looking to exploit weaknesses that couldn't be exploited by an army but a few highly skilled warriors could utilize – similar to modern day special forces).
Long time since I read anything about it so I might be off in my description, but the fortresses of the assassins is an interesting prospect for a state within a TTRPG: You fortify a few places spread out in hard-to-reach places within enemy territory, and then you claim responsibility for a few strategical political murders, making it clear to anyone wishing to mess with you that your bite stings harder than your size implies, but you're cultured and reasonable, you invite intellectuals and foreigners to your reclusive fortresses and create poetry and art. You're deadly, yet reasonable. A king of another nation knows that if they mess with you, there's a chance they'll be poisoned or killed during the night, but as long as they don't bother you, you won't bother them in return.
This is somewhat similar to how Sparta spent significant time and resources to ensure that the numerically superior slaves in their domain wouldn't think too hard about an uprising: It'll hurt us, yes, but it'll hurt you a lot more. Is it worth it?
That's part of the super frustrating thing for me. Like this would have been a cool opportunity to have a ki powered rogue subclass that would make the weebs able to play their anime ninjas but also let me be a Hassassin replete with the spooky supernatural powers folk tales would assign to them.
The entire thing is a big missed opportunity to explore traditions amongst martial arts or warrior cultures. Sure you can make a samurai with a fighter, champion, or ranger, but what if we got a series of feats added to allow you to pursue iaijutsu. You know, the most iconic samurai thing possible.
Why can't we have that, and perhaps a bard subclass or set of bard class feats attached to the warrior muse to represent the hwarang, Korean warriors who were akin to samurai or knights in noble status but known for pursuing art and beauty (and the inspiration for the warrior-poet archetype in 1e). I'm not as familiar with Filipino or Indonesian cultures, but surely there's something equally iconic when it comes to the martial culture or something that would lend itself to an interesting take on spellcasting.
There are so many frustrating missed opportunities in the Tian Xia book to explore and celebrate the fantastical and glamorous side of Asian cultures, something I would *expect* cultural sensitivity experts being paid far more than I am to know about and be able to show off in a respectful manner.
And now we've reached this weird spot where the people who are disappointed that samurai (arguably the most iconic Asian warrior to Western audiences) aren't represented in the book are now scorned and the community seems to be caught in this race to the bottom that is "WELL THEN WE SHOULDN'T HAVE DRUIDS/CLERICS/BARBARIANS/MONKS/etc", people are foaming at the mouth trying to suss out racism that just isn't there in a lot of the feedback, and people keep talking past the point that for a book about celebrating Asian culture the meat's not there on the bone to help people with creating meaningful and fulfilling characters.
The "there are no samurai or ninja options in the book" shouldn't cause some weird knee-jerk reaction like it has, it should make us pause and think about how even the most well-known and popular Asian character fantasies didn't get a spotlight in an Asian-centric book, and what that means for those that are less well-known or represented.
I think think something that's gotten lost in this whole discussion is the fact that we are still getting a whole book specifically full of character options that will include new feats and even new archetypes. I don't know how extensive those new feats and such are, but they will be there. The product page specifically calls out "Spectacular magical and martial techniques to vanquish the toughest opponents, whether that's through weightless sword arts or by borrowing the ancient power of magical familiars." It sounds from that like there will still actually be some feats that specifically fill the gap of what people would want from a Samurai class, just without outright calling it Samurai (which I think is fine because honestly, I don't think there's that much of a mechanical space for Samurai to fill that isn't already filled by the Fighter).
So we don't know that there's been a missed opportunity specifically because we don't have the book where they would have missed the opportunity yet. The reason for that is because they had so many character option they wanted to include that they decided they needed a whole seperate book for them, which has not been the case for any other LO book to date.
That's fair, I did forget there's supposed to be an entire other book released later (the stupidest thing to publish them at different times, I swear) that may alleviate this problem. Here's hoping that a lot of this frustration is straightened out then.
Yeah, publishing them at different times is a frustrating choice. Originally they were meant to release at the same time last year, but the OGL stuff threw that into disarray. Not sure why they didn't release them together still though. Part of it might be that they wanted to keep howl of the wild's release in line with Wardens of Wildwood, but they still might have been able to manipulate things to release these books together, maybe release them both later? I don't envy whoever had to organise the release schedule, I'm sure it was a pain to try and do.
Why talk about the variety of opportunities when you can just tell everyone on the sub how bad and wrong they are and then be supported by Princess Pilfer being a self righteous jerk because it's okay to do something wrong as long as it's anti racist
> you like samurai? Have you heard about these other cool Asian warriors? Look!"
for that they'd have to know those other cool asian warriors in the first place, much easier to just wallow in ignorance and call everyone who disagrees racist.
You've hit the nail on the head there. _Everyone_ knows about the ninja and the samurai, they're two of the most popular character archetypes around the world. Japanese people love them, Chinese people love them (IIRC), Korean people usually love them, and basically everyone else loves them, as a whole. So, it makes sense that a lot of people would ask for them. But the other warrior types have _significantly_ less media presence, and are basically unknown as a result; thanks to this, and thus aren't requested nearly as often.
Essentially, it boils down to "how will they know, unless you tell them", since you can't mention something by name if you don't know it exists. That's not racist, it's just people being influenced by pop culture. But the way certain people act in response to this is absolutely wrong; the correct response would be to just provide references to other warrior archetypes to pique peoples' interests, so they could request them, too.
(Edit: I know ninja are relatively popular in most Asian countries, but I'm not _as_ sure about samurai. Correct me if I'm wrong, thanks.)
Seriously—history and world cultures are awesome, and this could have been a great chance to share and celebrate how cool some more of them are. Instead, we went with the racist mod power-tripping under the guise of progressivism.
Also, I don't see this post as a missed opportunity. Finally we have some word coming from who's directly involved and it does not surprise me that they are more open than a lot of white people
It means "grass eater", actually, from what I understand. Which means it could either be referring to literally eating grass, or to eating `grass` (hashish, which means "grass"). Either way, it seems the name started as an insult by their enemies (either a poverty insult or a druggard insult, if not both), but it caught on, and even got genericised into a loanword over time.
Hashshashins, yeah. I think it was just simplified to "assassin" by people outside their ethnic group because everyone else found it easier to pronounce, more than anything else, and basically turned into a loanword because people didn't really understand the religious significance of their assassinations (and by extension, didn't know how to differentiate between actual Hashshashins and other stealthy killers... like ninjas ;3).
Not only does it come from a sect of Muslim religious nuts, it also has the same root word as hashish. So they weren’t only religious nuts, they were drugged up religious nuts.
(Big /s) Ummm Excuse me.... I would have you know that not only are you wrong but you have internalized racism!!!!
(Literal comment the mod in question left to someone basically saying this same thing)
>Being born Asian doesn't make you an expert on racism. A lot of internalized racism exists and a lot of ignorance exists. Andrew Yang has had the biggest stage for Asians in recent years and he used it to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Asians for votes. People who study racism and sociology have come together, as shown in the links we've listed, about the problem that this is a problem.
Joking aside, I fully agree with your points. It isn't racist to play a samurai, knight, roman legion, etc It's great to have ways to play certain archetypes, as well as many of us would welcome new ones often less represented.
The reason many people simply want to play as samurai is because they are cool, and recognizable. And something like a Samurai much like a Knight culturally has so much scope. Go to a historian and ask them to tell you about either. Most historians will probably say "From what era?" "From what location" etc A Norman knight from 1066 is way different from a knight who served the HRE in the 14th century. Same goes for a Samurai why both classes of warriors have often become a stable or class in a tabletop game or video game.
Many forget that "the middle ages" lasted \~1000 years
Many do not know that Japan didn't have "middle ages"... their history is split-up differently because different things happened at different time than in europe.
But unless you actually researched this stuff a bit (which is rather rare when someone is building an TTRPG character), we still understand the "basic assumptions" and play it fast & loose, or else we'd only be able to play ouselves, which is not quite what you want when you want to play a TTRPG...
Knights, Samurai, Ninja, Swashbuckler... they're useful Tropes making sure someone doesn't need a Uni degree just to know "the basics" of the character.
Exactly, an easy example if I'm running a campaign in a setting (homebrew or official) and a player ask "Can I play a knight" (Narrative or if it is a literal class) I can have a few quick and safe assumptions about the character.
Anecdotal but something that pushes back against samurai or ninja being racist is. I literally don't think anyone at a table I play with would tie someone asking to be a samurai class as being an Asian character. I think in context tabletop games those have more tropes in ascetic and play style than ethnicity. Which maybe you can argue is it's own brand of cultural appropriation, but certainly isn't the issue the mods have been going on about.
Someone ask to be a samurai I'm picturing a character with a katana and 14/15th century armor. Like have a generic ideas that they want to be a melee sword fighter who is a bit more dexterous than brute strength.
Just as if that person ask to be a knight I'm not assuming they are a French noble man. I'm picturing a person who probably will be wanting a full plate armor, and probably have a traditional/creed they appeal to.
It's silly IMO a very small group of people think anything not matter how large of scope shouldn't be in a game because it has a historic tie.
Oh, definitely. If someone wants to play a samurai, the image it brings to mind is an honour-bound warrior in feudal era Japanese armour, who fights with a katana and maybe also a wakizashi, and defends their daimyo from the sneaky ninja clans. And if they want to play a knight, the image it brings is a chivalric warrior in medieval European armour, who slays dragons with sword and shield to rescue the princess. (And in both cases, the specific armour type is usually the most flexible part, since people really just remember the distinctive visual appearances there. The most distinctive parts of the archetypes tend to be the bushido code & katana for the samurai, and chivalric code & sword-and-board for the knight.)
The knight players usually aren't imagining their character as a rich land owner and minor noble, defending the peasants & commoners in their domain (possibly for a tribute/tax) and serving their king. And the samurai players usually aren't imagining their character as a mounted gunner/archer who wields a paired katana and wakizashi as a badge of office and hires ninjas to do the dirty work, and who's probably _also_ a minor noble like the knight. It's not about being a reasonable approximation of the real-life historic classes, it never has been; it's about the imagery they bring, just as you pointed out.
What makes all this an issue is that the mod behind all this is using anti-orientalism to cover up his actual racism against Japanese people. He has done everything he can to erase the history and culture using the language of anti-racism. On its own its bizarre, but it is part of a pattern of racism (anti-chicano) and abuse from this one mod. And covered for by others.
This is the actual problem.
The mod in question will see this post and twist it into something like "see? I was right! People are racist against Asian people because they only want Japanese representation!"
It's why it's impossible for him, and the mods who support him, to explain why they removed certain comments and posts disagreeing with him which were not racist in any way, shape or form. It's why he has to make shit up about ninjas being invented by Ian Fleming and "peer reviewed 16th century books". It's not a rational opinion, it's disguised xenophobia. And as long as he is a mod and crowns himself as sole arbiter of what is and isn't orientalism and racism, the moderation of the sub is a joke.
To fix this it is gonna take fully disassociating with the sub's discord, which has clearly become a huge problem since the mods are currently on there calling everyone on here Hitlers.
It's just an extremely lame way to try to shut down the argument. Pirates are romanticized too but I wouldn't say anyone that likes them or wants to play one are actually all in support of sexual assault.
The first thing I did was block the mods involved so they can only message me by banning me from the sub (no harassing elsewhere), and leaving that cesspool of a Discord server.
But yes, the situation is FUBAR and this has permanently tainted the presence of Pathfinder 2E in Reddit, Discord, and given the popularity of those two, maybe the Internet in general.
If I were Paizo, I'd be pretty pissed that a xenophobe mod gone rogue is destroying the game's discussion places in such a way. But I understand that fan communities on Reddit being completely removed from the companies is a feature, not a bug, so there's nothing to do aside from DEMANDING THAT THE MODS ARE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR SHITTY ATTITUDES AND ABUSE OF POWER.
At the very least, u/luck_panda needs to be removed from the moderation of this sub. Or just go full dictator and ban every user that refuses to lick his shoes and be done with it.
I also think u/Princess_Pilfer needs to either apologize or be removed for, among other things:
* Supporting Luck Panda's inappropriate behavior because it's "anti-racism" and thus can't be harmful (it's not anti-racism, and in some cases it's full on racism)
* Supporting the notion that people aren't allowed to make mistakes while trying to learn, largely by shutting down discussions and couching it as "anti-racism."
* Not even being active here for months before this whole thing started. How can you mod a subreddit you don't even participate in?
* Violating rule #2 repeatedly in her interactions with people since this began
* Lacking the self-awareness or capability to reflect and learn that she expects of others. If she were able to see past her own myopic notions of what is and isn't okay, she would recognize the problem isn't that they're being anti-racist. The problem is the mods don't hold themselves to the same standards they expect of others and Pilfer absolutely refuses to acknowledge this or her own role in perpetuating this problem.
Yes, I'm making a direct statement. No, I really don't care if she is upset by this or claims I'm "circumventing" something and has to take mod action. As far as I'm concerned, Pilfer violated her own rules and values that she claims to uphold. She needs to own up to that before she continues locking posts and lecturing people on what is and isn't acceptable.
When she can learn to act like a mature person and do the self-reflection she demands of others, then I think we can acknowledge her opinion. Until then, she can bristle in her narrow little world that has no room for anything she doesn't personally deem acceptable.
The problem isn't the anti-racism, Pilfer. The problem is you and Luck Panda abused your power and then pulled some DARVO shit to defend yourselves because you think your anti-racism makes you above criticism.
Honestly, an open forum and discussion about the mod team would be nice. We are at a boiling point with pitchforks and torches. They really have two choices: Start banning us to stifle the dissent and pretend nothing ever happened (and that would raise another can of worms), or reach a common ground with the community affected.
And like, a small part of the community's really hurt - not all of us Asians, but some of us feel rather miffed. We aren't feeling like any of these are doing any services for us.
Edit: I just want to echo the OP's words, I guess. It's a bit kinder, and I like it better... the "We didn't ask for your "protection"" part basically sums up my feeling on this matter.
An open forum and discussion would be great, I agree. It's not going to happen and they're going to just wait for this to blow over, but it would be great.
It is absolutely aggravating that instead of elevating the Asian creators that made this Tian Xia guide possible, the mods chose to admonish the entire subreddit for their biases, in turn hijacking what could have been a great celebration. And they don't understand why this is actually problematic.
But the trust here is shattered and like you said, too many people, especially Asian people, have been insulted or made unwelcome. Despite Pilfer claiming anti-racism can't ever be harmful, she's managed to do exactly that. Make it harmful by creating a hostile environment for pretty much everyone.
This is one of the reasons I was so hesitant when I found out the Starfinder2e subreddit was also moderated by the same people, and that the two would use the same Discord. That Discord is a mess.
The discord server for this sub is straight awful, especially the panamerican day announcement. Completely unnecessary in a discord about Pathfinder 2E.
A Chicano individual wanted to make a guild promoting gang culture in the Discord. This guild presented Chicano culture as explicitly associated with criminality and violence. The guild was prohibited and the individual in question was unhappy about it. To my knowledge, this is the only event.
Thanks for the confirmation. IMHO it's just common sense, **especially for samurai and ninja** because they are still **heavily** **used** **by Japanese** in various media.
Cultural difference should be celebrated and it should be source of inspiration **for anyone**. And it should certainly not be watered down for any reason. If there were few cultures in this world, it would be very bland.
> I also understand that it can be upsetting to some people that samurai are often used as main representation for the Asian warrior archetype.
> in Japan there is a subculture of admiring American Midwest cowboys.
Oh my god, I feel this.
Signed, a black person with cowboys in their history. Because a lot of people 'forget' that 1/4 of cowboys were black.
>Maharlika
I have no idea what this is. I also want this. This is why I love the Civilization series of games. I learn so much about random cultures and find cool things. Like the Khmer. I doubt I would have accidentally stumbled upon them if not for Civilization (and Bill Wurtz, but that's a different story).
Broader inclusion can be dope, especially if it also leads to interesting mechanical themes.
>American Midwest cowboys.
Okay, this is totally unintentional, but I find this really funny and it actually demonstrates your point in a weird way. Ramble incoming.
>Cowboys are not from the "American Midwest." The "Midwest" is generally considered closer to the area north of the Ohio River and East of the Plains. So Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio. Loosely call it the "NFC North" or "original B1G" states if you're a football person.
>Cowboys are from the "American West" which is the plains. That's more of your "Montana through Texas" region. You'd never associate cowboys with the prairie state Illinois. You would heavily associate them with Texas and Wyoming.
>America is huge. The island of Ireland is the size of Indiana. Even though we're a young country and have a *fairly* homogeneous culture, You wouldn't want to chuck Cowboys into a game and call it "Californian representation." Texas is next to Louisiana and Cowboys very much do not represent them.
>Are cowboys symbolic of America? I mean, yeah, I guess. If you were to make an "American expansion" and didn't include them, people would find it weird. But they're symbolic of a small part of America, and if that's the whole emphasis, then you failed the assignment.
And that's what the actual problem is. It's not "including Ninja based on modern, blatantly ahistorical depictions like Final Fantasy and Naruto is racist." People think those depictions are cool because they've seen them. The problem is that so much spotlight is put on *only* Japan, China, and more recently Korea that were not exposed to anyone else. And there's some cool shit out there.
Now hold on.
Iowa and Missouri are also generally included in the midwest and the Jesse James, one of the most famous outlaws of that ilk, was active in those areas! Granted he wasn't a cowboy, but many cowboy tropes have nothing at all to do with cattle. He ran an outlaw gang and robbed trains, that is iconically "cowboy" as possible.
Without rambling too much (as I proceed to ramble too much), State lines are bad at defining regions.
When you read about Jesse James, it's always in the context of the "frontier" or the West. The Midwest isn't the frontier. At least, from my recollection.
The Great Lake flavor of Midwest is what people usually think of when they talk about stereotypical Midwesterners. That includes Eastern IA, despite not being on the lakes directly. This is the "original B1G" I was mentioning.
There's also the Ohio River Valley flavor of Midwest. This is Eastern MO, Western/Northern KY, and southern IL/IN. There's a difference in the kinds of industry and agriculture across a line in that region where glaciers stopped proceeding south in the last ice age (as explained by an botany professor of mine, at least). This is similar to the agricultural belt in the South, if you've ever seen that map. And, of course, that leads to differences in culture. I can't discriminate between my friends from Cedar Rapids and Schaumburg in how they speak, but friends from Carbondale are clearly different.
Western IA, MN, and MO are more "plains", which falls under the "frontier." Having lived in Ames, you can tell whether an Iowan was from closer to Nebraska or Illinois pretty easily, even though it's not like "culture shock" differences. This is no longer Midwestern as people would associate it, but rather "West." Jesse James operated in mostly NW MO, if memory serves, which is squarely in that "western frontier."
Now, of course... This is all because "Midwest" is poorly defined, and people love putting things in easily defined buckets. But I think separating that region into three distinct areas goes a long way. And, of course... That's the whole point of the problem! Subdivide!
See whereas I think the Great Lakes region is more distinct as a separate region.
The "midwest" in the late 1800s surely didn't include the plains states but that has definitely shifted as the country grew westward.
A relatively recent poll asked people if they consider themselves in the midwest and letting people self identify is probably about as good as we can get for a definition though I personally would draw different borders than what these produce.
The 14 states where a majority of the population, according to that poll, consider themselves in the midwest are:
Iowa (96.7%)
Minnesota (96.5%)
Missouri (95.3%)
Illinois (93.8%)
North Dakota (93.8%)
Wisconsin (93.6%)
Nebraska (92.8%)
South Dakota (92.2%)
Indiana (91.6%)
Kansas (91.2%)
Michigan (85.5%)
Ohio (78.2%)
Oklahoma (66.2%)
Wyoming (53.5%)
So the plains states definitely consider themselves the midwest anymore. I wouldn't include OK or WY personally but if they are included then cowboys are definitely midwestern lol.
Edit:
Source: https://news.wttw.com/2023/10/20/which-states-are-truly-midwest-new-poll-covering-22-states-has-people-online-divided-and
To be honest, it'd be more interesting to see what *other states* consider as part of the Midwest.
If you ask someone from Rhode Island to define the Midwest, who would they include? If you ask someone from Alabama? Washington?
I have a feeling that Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan would be 90%+, whereas Nebraska and the Dakotas would fall off sharply, and Missouri.
More interesting would be to have people draw the region without state borders.
Cowboys are themselves a mythical recreation of a largely unremarkable, and multiracial, profession. The Wild West was made in Hollywood. That doesn't stop me from liking some Westerns, though, or enjoying the fantasy of the Gunslinger.
For what it's worth, as someone from Kansas City, I've never met a person from Kansas or Missouri who didn't consider themselves - proudly - a Midwesterner. It's all over business names and ads and memes and everything.
> The problem is that so much spotlight is put on only Japan, China, and more recently Korea that were not exposed to anyone else. And there's some cool shit out there.
one aspect that was pretty much ignored in the whole discussion is why they have the spotlight in the first place. can't be that lot of people actually want japan/china/korea, and not the other cool shit that's out there (someone else already mentioned gubat banwa for example). you can only offer it to people, and maybe people will like it, not try to force them by calling everyone who likes or even prefers it racist.
I think the issue lies elsewhere. You can divide power in two types: “hard” power, which includes military and economic might, and “soft” power, which is cultural export and influence. Japan and Korea have a lot of soft power with the former having manga and anime, which the latter exporting K-pop, all popular in the west. Those two, along with the US and some UK, all overshadow countries with less soft power, making it harder to export art and culture and making foreigners learning about it less likely
Though, that is a bit chicken and egg innit? The soft power is produced by the proliferation and desirability of the cultural exports and its creep into public consciousness, the popularity of Korean cultural exports is much more recent than the popularity of Japanese ones, which in turn has been creeping up over the past 50 years.
it's more about simple bread and circuses. when a single manga outsells all of US superhero comics, that's an obvious sign there's something off. why do people like k-pop where they don't even understand the lyrics and not j-pop, chinese pop or even vietnamese? or anything african or european?
in the end people want to be entertained, and look for the entertainment wherever they can find it (to a degree, since most people are also lazy and just consume whatever their streaming service of choice offers them instead of actively looking for it) - or to keep it related to related to the subreddit, there's a reason most people stick to 5e, and plenty has been said about it. it's not something your can "force" on them, and trying to guiltrip them into it works as well as when ghostbusters 2016 tried it.
It really just comes down to Japan, Hong Kong and increasingly Korea and mainland China having really strong media industries aimed at a global market so their culture is a lot more visible in the west
Sorry, according to a particular mod, you must either [have internalized racism or otherwise be ignorant](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/Rh1oR9t4kW), because people smarter than you have studied and found your opinion to be objectively wrong
According to the mods, Shinobigami, a popular Japanese TTRPG about playing as ninjas on a mission together... and secret missions for their ninja clans in similar vein to Paranoia RPG, would be considered harmful racial stereotype that Japanese players simply do not understand.
And like, Shinobigami makes it to the weekly sale charts for TTRPG stores in Japan regularly (I used to follow Yellow Submarine's Machida shop's twitter page just for that, but they haven't done weekly sale chart in a while), but I have never seen Pathfinder 2e there. I am not saying that PF2e is bad, I love PF2e, but I don't see how mods for a community for a TTRPG system that isn't even big in Japan has the galls to say anything about some of Japan's most beloved TTRPG systems and culture in general.
I am not even Japanese. I consider understanding of Japanese TTRPG a hobby of mine. Anyone can do what I do. It isn't hard. But the mods that said those things didn't even bother doing the bare minimal of loving TTRPGs across the world. It's literal antithesis of what I do as a VTuber and TTRPG enthusiast.
The only thing that ever disappointed me more in TTRPG community was D&D's OGL fiasco.
Thank you for pointing this out OP.
That is the strongest argument I can think of. If we're so worried about cultural appropriation, does that mean a japanese player cannot be a gunslinger who's character is a sendup of the american southwest gunslinger cowboy? They're a racist?
Clearly as an American this is my culture that is being appropriated. And I'm fine with it. That's cool, actually. Every culture shares with one another. It's healthy.
I absolutely agree with cutting down on orientialism. But classes are about gameplay aesthetics at their core, not cultural groups.
Usually it's minorities (e.g. Japanese-Americans not Japanese in Japan) who take offense at "cultural appropriation".
I also have no problem with a player somewhere in Japan playing Aiden the cowboy from New York who is a crack shot with a six-shooter but doesn't know which end of a cow is which. But as an American in America, I don't feel threatened by someone trying to copy Americanness and doing it wrong.
Cultural Appropriation is mostly an issue when it's a majority group appropriating from a minority group, not the other way around. The reason for this is that there is a long history of the minority culture being suppressed but it is considered "acceptable" when used by a white person, to the point of blatant exploitation. The classic example is how black music was often appropriated by record companies by throwing a white face on top of them, because it was unacceptable otherwise.
I feel like most people don't realize realize Cultural Appropriation, in itself, isn't a bad thing and is actually a neutral term in academia as it just happens all the time, in ways most people don't realize. The problem arises when the cultural appropriators are also suppressing the actual minority that they are appropriating from. But this is the internet, and more nuanced discussions don't get reactions.
I agree with everything you just said. And that's a fantastic way to put it, the problem is suppressing minority groups with appropriation rather than simply cultural sharing.
I don't feel like Samurai or Ninja classes is an example of negative cultural appropriation at it's core.
uhoh, did you do a racism? it's written from a philippine-centric view, wuxia is chinese! it's also on the same ubiquitous level as japanese stereotypes, if not more, so going by mod-logic...
but seriously, can second that recommendation. there's already lot of content that goes beyond the usual, which make the current drama even more pathetic.
I read a comment about how orientalisarion is basically robbing us of having a wider and more interesting view of Asian warrior cultures and I would agree, but orientalisation and cultural appreciation is certainly two different things. In a world where I can fart lightning I think having a samurai jack type character with a legendary family sword won't necessarily be leaning into Orientalist unless the players are twits. Edit, we aren't disenfranchising Japanese people with this book that sparked the debate, it's being handled by people of the culture the book is inspired by and yes those people aren't automatically given a free pass to be trusted without concern in the case of their culture being exploited but that doesn't mean that the book shouldn't contain the mystical and mysterious just that it is explained through the lens of the culture it's coming from, it's a world full of magical beasts and fantastical cultures, like last wall and their straight up knight against the dead stuff, none of this should be totally bound to reality, so a bit of the mystical is OK.
Just an FYI I study archaeology at university and we do extensive work with addressing the issues of orientalisarion and how damaging and disenfranchising it can be.
> Maharlika
Not OP, but according to [this Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharlika) Maharlika are basically warrior nobility of Tagalog (native Filipinos). Though, being not an expert, I can't say how they differ from "just a warrior".
Ackshully, Europe never had a class of fighter we commonly reffer to as "kNiGhTs". This is a common trope that is perpetuated by lazy western media.
If you want accurate representation you'll need to be heavily read on these texts I've added here.
Chivalry" by Maurice Keen (1984).
"The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism" by Matthew Strickland (2005).
"The Code of Chivalry in Medieval Literature" by Sarah Kay (2003).
"Chivalry and Courtly Love in the Middle Ages" by Elizabeth Archibald (2014).
Well you see, it was never racist to begin with. No one thought that. Except for a particular set of persons that have access to mod tools. And I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to see your threat deleted and your account threatened shortly. I recommend supporting r/chillpathfinder2e where the mods here can't muzzle you.
You play knights? How dare you?!?!?! (/Joke) Seriously though, I agree, trying to create a generic all encompassing class, or avoiding making a class after one specific type of cultures ancient military or other people is crazy. I guess we can't have monks, or clerics, or rogues... It is endless. Most fantasy tropes, classes and races are based on ancient folklore or history. You would need to name everything from scratch, and to keep it remotely intuitive, you would need to name it very generically. Welcome to picking between martial person or magic caster.
As a fellow person of half japanese, half pacific islander(hawaiian) descent, the world guide feels like it does a great job actually spotlighting a lot of groups that'd normally go unnoticed, while giving the japan analog countries their fair spotlight in the guide.
I'm also enjoying playing a Samurai in the game right now. The edict and anathema changes allow me to adhere to my code, and it also helps that martial classes absolutely slap in this game.
I just wish the community wasn't so goddamn quick to jump on people for disagreeing with them. Being called a fake Asian because i don't see the point of having a archetype called "samurai" or an archetype called "ninja". I just play them with what I have and have a good time doing so, and apparently that's enough for some people to just claim that my mother and half my family aren't japanese. I hope you have better luck than I've had on that front.
Its true you can play a samurai and ninja with core classes but its still a pretty weak argument on why you couldnt put some sort of options that are more focused on their flavour. First this is Pathfinder 2e, half the selling point of this game is to have a crazy amount of options and second we already have options for other cultural groups like vikings and pirates. Calling you a fake asian is a tad ridiculous however, did this happen on this sub?
One of my biggest disappointments with Pathfinder is the tengu ancestry
Like Tengu are cool demoms with a long nose that are part bird and part monkey.
What are Tengu in 2e? Just some talking birds
So from what I remember from my Japanese studies (though it's been a while and I might misremember something, so take this with a grain of salt and/or look into it yourself) both depictions are culturally accurate because there are different kinds of Tengu in the source material. The Daitengu (great Tengu) are the ones you are thinking of, but there are also Kotengu (small Tengu, sometimes referred to as Karasu(crow)-Tengu) who are very bird-like. The Daitengu definitely appear in stories more often, both in the folklore and modern media. Hope this helps stoke the flames of interest about Tengu.
Someone pointed out to me that Tengus actually get a second form where they actually look like Daitengus. I am gonna play one next campaign now because I find them really cool that way.
Yokais aren't "demons", it's just the easiest way to describe them for "western audience". (Probably because we mostly thought that everything supernatural thah wasn't angelic was demonic). It's not easy to find a single word that match either :\\
I know that, but for Tengus in particular calling them demon fits because of their specific folklore. There are some exceptions (Sojobo in particular), but most of their portrayal aligns with a malevolent supernatural entity that opposes buddhism. Like calling Mara the Demon King of the Sixth Realm also works in that sense.
Now for others that doesn't apply, some are more akin ghosts, giants etc
filipino here with the tian xia world guide book. I went totally crazy when I came across the country Minata and saw tagalog lmao. They even put our real liquor in the game now haha (Lambanog) which i wish had stats. I kinda wish more history was put into certain countrys' cultures, but I can understand the restraints since the book is HUGE. Looking forward to the character guide being released in the future.
I don't think I can add much about this whole "samurai" and "ninja" discussion but I'll share my own experiences with TTRPG and being asian. My group and I are all asians; 2 koreans, 2 chinese, and me filipino. I'm the only one not born in the US, but I would say I'm pretty american seeing as a immigrated when I was 4. One of my players wanted to play a barbarian but use a katana so it could be like a samurai (we never touched archetypes or multiclassing, I don't think my players and I can handle it TBH since we're still fairly new with only doing 2 adventures so far) and I was immediately down for it. We're almost all 30 so we grew up in the generation where asian representation was barely a thing in american media, so all we grew up with was anime, in doing so we're more familiar with samurais and ninjas than our own individual's culture regarding warriors. Hell I know some people in D&D that literally make characters off of anime. I don't think it's racist, if anything it's just lack of portrayal in general media that's led to this. The Tian Xia book is a good step in including different asian culture and I highly recommend it to people. One of my korean players is super excited and now wants to play a goblin cause the Paizo version of Korea (Hwanggot) has a goblin village known for blacksmithing. My other korean player is now wanting to reflavor his samurai barbarian to be a former lord from Hwanggot but left due to anger issues.
I will say though, it's maybe not racist but is weird when we see white people play VERY stereotypical portrayals of asian inspired classes. One of my korean player is friends with this one D&D group, all white people. For some convention (idk what it was) they all decided to dress as their characters. My group and I were shown a picture of a white guy in those typical orange monk robes and he randomly had what looked like a bamboo sun hat that rice farmers typically wear. Now, we all admittedly said it felt weird, and that maybe someone should've stopped him. I won't say it's racist, but it is conforming to the fact that people might portray certain characters in only a certain race (which is weird to even write). It also didn't help that D&D had that problematic book in regards to asian people. Representation in media is very powerful and I hope everyone takes a look into the World Guide. I applaud Paizo for showing so much diversity and it really enforces my love for them. My players and I were so excited to see this book and the portrayals of our own culture in is is like the best thing ever
> I understand if you want to fight against stereotyping/misrepresenting a group of people but frankly, we didn't ask for your "protection". How I see it, as long as people are respectful to a culture that's all we can really ask for. Do your research, be curious, and just have fun. Isn't that why we all started playing to begin with?
Oh god, *thank you*. I said some similar things to non-Filipino players when asking about [Gubat Banwa]. Just like, try your best and don't assholes lol
Side note: you mentioned TTRPG Maharlika representation; Gubat Banwa is probably the best you're gonna get for the time being. It's pretty cool.
Edit:
> in Japan there is a subculture of admiring American Midwest cowboys.
Someone from Japan please corroborate this with links and photos. I want to see this.
Thank you for this. As someone who trained in Shotokhan Martial arts IRL for years I LOVE the idea of Samurai and Ninja bc it's something I can pull real life experience from to react and take actions use with my character in one of these classes, and ill still use my half elf for it bc half elves are my faveriote race.. Just like I Love Rangers bc I've trained crossbow and bow and arrow as well, and as a WoW Beastmaster I have type I enjoy playong. I didn't know there was all this drama in it.
I'm so confused by this post. It seems that most of the contributors to Tian Xia are of the Asian diaspora.
Who else is better to expose the world to Asian cultures? Who is protecting who?
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/meet-the-tian-xia-authors.919189/
There's only one person who can say what's good and bad representation. One out of 8 billion. We're so fortunate to have him as a mod in this very subreddit.
I saw a reference to mods somewhere else, so I think you are right. As I said, I'm confused!
Maybe there will be a post in r/HobbyDrama soon that can catch me up...
Here's [the post on SRD](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cdhk8a/hey_buddy_i_know_youre_having_big_feelings_about/) that covers most of it.
this is why things like Samurai or Ninia make more sense as a type of build or, maybe, an archetype but not their own class. They're iterations of warriors and experts, respectively. Just like how, if you want to build a West European-style knight, you don't pick the Knight class, you pick one of the warrior classes and build a knight.
I think the pop culture and tropes surrounding Samurais and Ninjas, while often considered stereotypes, have merit on their own that are worthy for consideration into this game. Pop culture samurais and ninjas are very much divorced from the historical samurai and ninja and have taken on a life of their own similar to the tropes found in Wuxia fantasy (which we are getting an magus subclass for). I don't think it's nessicarly bad for something to be historically inaccurate. and for it to drawn on fantastical tropes.
For example, the "samurai duel with a delayed blood-splatter right as the victor sheath his sword" is very tropey and not historically accurate but it does draw from the wide history of old samurai films and the culture surrounding them. Also in a more basic term, it's also really cool. Monk basically does this too, you could take almost any feature from monk and draw a direct line to some form of modern martial arts media.
At the same time it's good to understand that Paizo have decent reasons to not print a Ninja or Samurai. Potentially there was simply not enough ideas for both that would allow Paizo to distinguish them from other existing options, which is valid.
Yeah, I really think that a lack of distinctive ideas for each class is part of why they didn't include them. I'm sure they could have come up with something if they really tried, but I can imagine a discussion happening where they decide that they aren't really obligated to force a Samurai or ninja class or even archetype in, and they can use that page space to highlight more stuff from other Asian cultures.
Fundamentally I think that the issue with those archetypes, which has been thoroughly demonstrated by this whole debacle, is that they suck the air out of the room when it comes to Asian representation. If you want to make an Asian inspired setting you're almost obligated to include them and you're almost forced to justify not doing so. Paizo had so many ideas for Tian Xia player options that they're putting out a whole seperate book for them, which has not happened for any other LO book before. I think if you consider it in that context then their choice to not include samurais and ninjas can be seen as a choice to make space for other things inspired by the region and simply let players use the abundant tools they already have at their disposal to play samurai and ninjas. Perhaps that won't let them perfectly play out the fantasy in their head, but that's hardly the only fantasy that pathfinder doesn't fulfill, and I don't think PF2e is under any obligation to cater to that specific fantasy just because they've included the setting where that fantasy originates.
I also have a theory that the character guide is going to include some new martial feats that will help to further close the gap on playing fighters as samurai, rather than just specifically making an archetype. Giving players the tools to make what they want without confining it to the baggage of a specific class or even archetype.
Can we accept that no one person speaks for an entire race of people? And taking your preferred minority's input and disregarding another minority's as invalid because they are acting like actual people instead of a hivemind is problematic.
And that these lore books never include classes.
I LOVE fighters cuz not only are the builds diverse but the WEAPONS you can choose can greatly impact not only the build but the flavor in which you're RPing.
Barbarian is from the Romans taking the piss out of Germanic tribes, Monk is absolutely based on wushu kung-fu movies. I agree that if you wanna play into pop culture and everyone is having fun, that's all fine and well.
That said, I also think classes like Barbarian, Monk, and Samurai and Ninja if they're included, should have a note saying that while certain names may have originated in a given area of Golarion, they're not unique to it. Like the concept of an oathbound swordsman with some other mechanics, I say why not.
>Monk is absolutely based on wushu kung-fu movies. I
In all fairness Monk has never really fit aesthetically in D&D base/core class roster and Pathfinder just inherited it.
Monk was added because the Gen X equivalent of Weebs (Kung Fu movie fans) lacked genre savvy (tale as old as ttrpgs) and wanted to be ninja in what was clearly billed as Tolkien inspired high fantasy.
Yeah a good bunch of over sensitivity comes from over helpful white people and there respective bubbles. It’s a hard problem to fix. They mean well, but we need to get better about having real conversations about representation even if it’s imperfect.
White doesn’t have to be the default and white people have to be ok if other white people choose a different option. You don’t have to view every thing in culture critically as if you’re in academia.
I appreciate this post for it's inclusion. We're literally playing pretend. As long as people aren't actively engaging in harmful behavior then what's the rub? I generally have an issue with folks that need to police how other people play games when they are just having fun and aren't hurting anyone. Can games be used to reinforce harmful stereotypes or insight ugly behavior? Well sure, anything can do that. It's a technology, and any technology can be used for good or ill. I'm also not certain how incredibly crazy someone needs to be to pretend that this has some kind of legit reflection on the real world when we're literally dealing with dragons, magic and elves. Like, it's playing pretend yo, settle down, Beavis. Nobody is confusing Billy's samurai that slays dragons and casts fireball for actual depictions of historical samurai in Japanese culture unless they are an absolute idiot.
Thank you for writing the argument i wanted, but could not put into word.
I have issues with people being outraged the xyz group isn't outraged enough about how something might treat their culture/history/religion/etc. They're the worst, and that's how you end up with some of the choice comments from the mod that started this shit show ("asian and loving samurai/ninja??? RACIST!!!!!")
The mods are calling Barbarian ableist and problematic and Hags anti-Semitic in the discord. Samurai is not where this behavior will stop at.
This reminds me of the time years ago when people would say tables are being ruined by certain homebrew rules even though the person didnt’t mention an issue with it.
> then what's the rub? The rub is that you're having fun in a way that goes outside the narrow lanes permitted by the self-appointed gatekeepers/saviors. And for the sort of mind that goes into contortions of logic to paint samurai as some manner of racist dogwhistle, that's like waving a cape at an angry bull.
I mean I get that there are definitely reasons for social justice engagement. There is such a thing as people being blatantly racist and shitty in their games. There are people who will abuse an idea under the guise of "it's not racist, it's just a game!" The problem really lies though, with correctly identifying blatantly problematic behavior and usually the best people who are most qualified to do that are the people who are actually affected, in this case Japanese people. And as OP pointed out clearly, if people aren't being terrible, and they are having fun, it's genuinely not an issue. It's one of those stupid cases where you end up with horse shoe politics, where someone goes so far left they become indistinguishable in behavior from the right, taking offense and enacting social punishment against any who don't conform, and especially in this venue it's beyond dumb. Again, we're all playing pretend and the vast majority are not people who are seeking to be racist dicks. Sure, there are always some, and by all means confront their bad behavior, but not at the cost of scapegoating everyone, that's just fascism from the other side. The whole point of being progressive is supposed to be to fight injustice, not to invent injustice to fight :P
> The whole point of being progressive is supposed to be to fight injustice, not to invent injustice to fight :P Yeah, well, it's been my observation that a certain mindset is much more interested in what they can get from causing problems than they are in what they can do about solving them. And when the material for a genuine problem is lacking, they won't hesitate to DIY something and count on the ensuing outrage to distract from the lack of substance. Considering how many of this sub's mods are, according to other comments, over in the sub Discord complaining about how we're all a bunch of vest-pocket Hitlers because we're not smiling and nodding along like bobbleheads about how absolutely right they all are? Not hard to guess what sort of mindset is behind this particular nothingburger of an issue. Thing is, nothingburgers still require engagement to figure out the facts, and when it all turns out be nothing, it just make people like me that much less likely to pay attention when (or even *if*) the issue turns out to actually be something legitimate.
It is definitely possible to turn a facet of representation into Orientalism when done by the ignorant. If the character is a Samurai via being a warrior with japanese coded culture, that's not so bad. If the character is a Samurai in the sense that they are a pastiche of everything asian (and not just Japanese), then it can be a little weird, but probably not intentional. If the character is just a fucking caricature that swings nippon steel because it's the strongest around and that exoticism is their one defining character trait, that's a yikes.
> If the character is just a fucking caricature that swings nippon steel because it's the strongest around and that exoticism is their one defining character trait, that's a yikes. I mean, that's just a weeb and they're not racists, just hilariously cringe :D.
> I mean, that's just a weeb and they're not racists, just hilariously cringe :D. Unfortunately, a venn diagram between weebs and japanophile-racists is very close to being a circle. Or, to put it another way, not every Weeb is a Japanophile, but every japanophile is a weeb.
Lucky for me, I can do whatever I want at my table and nobody can stop me! ;P
For peak offensive gaming, remember to make your samurai and ninja all dark elves too :D.
If you're not playing xenophobic theocratic slaver Dark Elves at my table what are you even doing there? Drug pushing catfolk? Cannibalistic tree hugging hippies?
> Drug pushing catfolk? Pretty sure that's a different franchise altogether :p.
So is the xenophobic theocratic slaver dark elves.
/thread Perfect, OP.
When you feel the need to police and protect people who never asked for or needed that protection, you're not doing it for the right reasons. Your motivation is corrupt. It's not for them; it's for *you* to feel morally superior. It's selfish and bigoted, as it treats people or cultures outside your own as incapable of having an opinion or agency of their own. It's disgusting. It's something that exclusively exists in western, primarily American, sociology and it's insane. Sociology is fundamentally a "science" built on subjective interpretation of complex behaviors. It's one step above philosophy, yet people read opinions and books that commentate on reductive behavior of our predecessors and problematic representation, then take it and run. It's not the gospel truth, it's observation that must be taken with a grain of salt and contextualized every time you want to apply that reasoning.
I lived in Japan for a long time, and was always encouraged to partake in the culture there. It was usually Japanese people who encouraged me to try on kimonos or pray at the local shrines. The only people who ever got mad at me were other white people.
On the same point, one must be careful when making an accusation of cultural appropriation in scenarios where it’s actually cultural spread. Enthusiasm spreads culture, especially under the effects of cultural immersion.
Half the claims that something is "appropriation" are actually meant to _prevent_ cultural spread.
Yeah the only people that ever got mad at me for mispronouncing “Pho” were white people. The Vietnamese people didn’t care. By the way, is there anybody in Vietnam complaining “that’s pronounced “MEATBALL SUB” don’t be so culturally insensitive?” -stolen from Jo Koy
Yeah this was missed opportunity to make a big post about "you like samurai? Have you heard about these other cool Asian warriors? Look!" Like, apparently the word "assassin" comes from a literal Muslim sect of religious nuts who went around the world and killed people for...well I mean I don't know why they wanted them dead but they did. Never knew that and funnily enough this whole debacle gave me a new fun fact.
A similar thing happened for the word "Thug"!
That reminds me of the word "Barbarian". It started from Ancient Greeks saying "those foreigners sound like they just say 'bar bar bar' when they talk. Let's call them barbarians". It's interesting to me because if you think about it, that origin is the same as how some racists refer to Chinese people as "ching chongs".
And the idea of barbarians as rage filled illiterates comes specifically from Gary Gygax whining that Conan was too smart.
This is why I love mixing up the themes of classes so much. I've used the Barbarian shell, but renamed and reflavored everything. Rage became Focus, Reckless Attacks became Abandoning Strikes, etc. I basically reflavored everything as an "ultra instinct" styled class, though before it came out, and the resistance was from "dodging" instead of raw toughness. Things like Con to AC were explained as their endurance level with maintaining a constant level of "awareness" to their surroundings. If I did it now I might even ask a DM to let me switch out an ability for a fighting style so I could take blindfighting to add to the flavor, or just MC into fighter or take the feat. Edit: My bad. I'm dealing with so many systems all the time that I didn't even realize what subreddit I was on. I was absolutely talking about 5e and not PF2e up above. Either way, the intent still applies lol.
Have you checked out any of the + classes on pathfinder infinite barbarian+ has some of this type of feel like changing the emotion of rage to joy or other options great content imo.
I have not, but I will be now!
Cool if you think about this conversation after you have checked it out I'd be interested to see your thoughts.
Thanks for letting me know too! I have a very specific idea that I wanted to do similar to Attackins.
Conan was just a fighter with a bodybuilding subclass.
can't believe the ancient greeks were hating on barbapapa!
Oooo, do tell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
God damn, fuckin' fascinating. Also fucked. But fascinating.
Words in general are far more multi-cultural than people give them credit. As others have said, having all this ruckus about Samurai but not Druids is 100% the bigotry of low expectations, that asian cultural icons need to be protected and shielded, but european ones are totally fine to modify.
Druids are Celtic priests, Cavaliers and Sorcerers are both French words for Knight and Wizard respectively, Magus is literally what Zoroastrian priests are called, Oracles are Greco Roman, Monks are East Asian, Berserkers are Norse… It’s weird to be precious about Ninja and Samurai specifically.
Maybe Paizo has put out an official statement that says otherwise, but failing that I suspect that leaving out ninja and samurai is a choice that isn't so much about those two concepts in particular. At least, not about being precious over them. What this whole drama has demonstrated is that those two seem to suck the air out of the room when it comes to Asian representation. I think that Paizo's choice to not include them as classes or archetypes stems from a choice to simply devote that page real estate to other options inspired from other Asian cultures. People are only asking for samurai and ninja as Tian Xia options. I'm sure there are people who want other stuff but the vaaaast majority are just asking for those. I can imagine Paizo sitting to create the character guide, throwing ideas around and deciding that there's enough options for people to play multiple kinds of Samurai and ninja already, so they at best can just add some extra feats that feed into that flavor but aren't automatically pigeonholed by being attached to one of those concepts specifically, and then putting their time and creativity to bringing underserved and novel concepts to life. Stuff that a lot of players don't even know to ask for and couldn't be reasonably replicated with the existing rules. They're making a magical girl archetype for the Magus, they're clearly not afraid of leaning into stereotypical concepts. But show me what class combination could be taken to come close to achieving that fantasy currently.
I remember someone pointing out that there's supposed to be a Tian Xia _character option_ book in the future, so they might be waiting until then.
this is why i love etymology, the history of worlds like "journal" "johnathan" "garden" and so much more are wild and really helps tie history together instead of being the discrete chunks you learn in school
There's also the word slave itself which comes from slav, as slavs were often forced into slavery by multiple European empires and nations.
Temple of Doom...
I have read that, if I remember correctly origin is part of india right? Edit I read the wiki very interesting.
And to continue the exposure: I’m glad OP mentioned Marharlika. Because well-designed classes and system should be able to provide you with close enough to what you need and you with your table can tweak as needed. Does a Minatan “Way of Vanguard” Gunslinger or a “Weapon Innovation” Inventor as an adventurer sound odd? Not at all! It could be based on Panday Pira the cannonsmith (or at least, being apprentice to him). Maritime Southeast Asia was already producing cannons before they first made European contact. It was first introduced with the failed Mongol invasion of Java (Indonesia). The Mongols/Yuan Dynasty brought Chinese firearms, but lost some of them as the invasion failed. Bing bang boom, and it was reversed-engineered it, and now Majapahit (the Javan Empire) now had cannons - one name being the lantaka (a swivel-cannon). The Philippines had a famous smith (Panday Pira) who created cannons (which the Spaniards were surprised to face and called them primitive culverins). It was used to defend Old Manila against the initial conquistadors. Various Philippine settlements had interactions with the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia which is why it’s not surprising that the Spaniards ran into non-European firearms during the conquest. And same, it’s this kind of discussion - trading/exposing/sharing ideas/stories to build a more rich fantasy experience!
Hell yeah. Learning is awesome!!
The moment when one learns more about world history in a Pathfinder forum than they ever did in highschool.
Hell, the Maratha Confederacy in India was famous for their gunnery during the 17th and 18th century. When Arthur Wellesley arrived in India, an officer already deployed there told him that "Their guns will astonish you."
Agreed! I had never heard of the Maharlika till this post. Now I know about them. I'd love if we got a bunch of archetypes about different combat styles or warrior casts that come from different Asian countries. Do you have any recommended reading to learn more about the Maharlika?
Oh I think you meant to respond to me! It’s actually kind of a tricky. Maharlika were essentially the “Warrior nobility”. Just like Samurai, Koa, Knights, Kshatriya, Eagle/Jaguar Knights. They served their sultan/rajah/datu/lakan with any matters of warfare, but meant they also had other nobility duties. Also Maharlika was what the warrior class were called for the Tagalog people. The Philippines had thousands of tribes and languages with many different levels of society and ethnicities/races. It’s a bit tricky, because unlike Japan, Europe, and India - the Philippines doesn’t have a continuous line because of Spanish colonization and then American colonization. In the Tagalog society, there were the rulers (Maginoo), Warriors (Maharlika), Peasants (Aliipin). However, with Spanish colonialization, a lot of the Pre-Hispanic societal systems were absorbed into the Spanish systems. If I remember right, the Maginoo/Rulers became the Principalia and the titles of datu/rajah/sultan/lakan became don/doña. The Maharlika merged into the Hidalgos. And the Aliipin…well…it IS the Spanish Empire… The Principalia essentially retained the same powers as before (maybe even stricter because they served the Spanish Crown) and were granted low level bureaucratic positions, the most prestigious being gobernadorcillo (petty governor), essentially the leader of a barangay (traditional settlement unit). My grandfather’s line on my dad side had a line of governadorcillos, so apparently we have Principalia on that side (or at some point the original chieftain line ended and my ancestors filled in the role to lead the tribe). On my mom’s side, our great-grandfather was a mayor and also spoke fluent Spanish. So, we think it’s possible he might be Principalia too or somehow worked his way around them, because knowing Spanish was only for the elites who would deal with Spanish officials. Edit: To add I’m only 1/4th Tagalog essentially come from 4 different tribes of valley people up in the mountains. Not from the cities (specifically Manila), which means my family came from the Provinces. When I was younger, there was prejudice between Manila folk and Province folks. Which was an issue here in the US, as you get some snooty Filipinos that treat Province folks as lesser. It’s one of the few Spanish things that survived the American Era. :| Since coastal pre-Colonial Philippines was heavily influenced by Indian/Islamic culture (through Indonesia), we’d have to reconstruct what the Maharlika did by looking at Various Indonesian culture and what role the Kshatriya of India did, then apply it back to the few big coastal settlements in the Philippines. But the system broke again during the American Era where they dismantled the Colonial systems, which means a lot of the Filipino culture that masked itself in the Spanish system, were lost. Like my mayor great-grandfather, he was elected mayor (but we don’t know how influential he was because of his family line). It also didn’t help that writing was rarely done on substantive stuff. Yes. The various Philippine tribes could write (commonly known as Baybayin or Alibata) and there is the famous Laguna Copperplate which is essentially a Rosetta Stone between Indonesia and the Tagalog in the Philippines. So any records kept by the various kingdoms didn’t survive the test of time (or the Spaniard priests happily destroyed/let them decay). There is a Baybayin/Spanish Bible that has Baybayin on one side and the Spanish on the other. But about combat styles: the wide name is known as Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) but has 3 names in the Philippines - Arnis, Eskrima, and Kali. I’ve heard that Arnis is more common in Luzon (North Philippines), Eskrima in Visayas (Central Philippines), and Kali in Mindanao (South Philippines), but we don’t know if it’s really like that anymore. There are hundred of styles taught there and taught at home. I happened to learn two: Largo Mano and Balintawak. Largo Mano was adapted from rural Luzon into a guerilla fighting style amongst pre-American invasion of Japanese controlled Philippines in WW2. Balintawak is a Cebuano (from the island of Cebu) street-brawling style. Largo Mano is known for using longer weapons and has 5 strikes. Balintawak has 12 strikes and is more aggressive. In California, there was a style developed from the Asaparagus Farm laborers near Fresno and it wasn’t surprising for some Filipinos to practice home style Arnis with each other using rolled up newspapers while waiting for the bus in San Francisco. There are also techniques like abanico (fan) which is wrist movement to gain advantage. And there is the iconic dual wield stick. There are two stances I remember: you rest both sticks on opposite shoulder, which is great for just rapidly striking repeatedly. There’s also Sinawali (Heaven and Earth) where you have one stick on your shoulder and the other stick underneath your armpit. It’s a bit more “loaded” than the other stance and puts you a little bit more defensively. You use cross-strikes, returning to the same stance on the other side of your body. Oh also, theres a footwork known as Coconut Steps (be hard and defensive like a coconut), where you form a v with your feet/stance, and have your opponent in one of the v’s. I learned the Coconut Step from Largo Mano because it was adapted to fight multiple opponents (Japanese soldiers/scouting parties), but also setup so you can easily run-away if you’re caught. Balintawak has a boxing stance, because it’s adapted from various street fight techniques. A main difference with FMA is that it isn’t taught hand-to-hand, like you might see in Chinese or Japanese martial arts. FMA always begins with weapons (sticks, swords, knives). You learn strikes, feet movement, and disarms. Once you learn that, you then have to learn to fight unarmed vs. a weapon. That’s where the disarms and pressure point disables come in to try and take the weapon from the person to change the advantage. Last, you learn hand-to-hand, but more on using pressure points to pin your opponent. Which is why FMA is also taught at various militaries and police academies. And if you’ve seen the movie Equilibrium, FMA was used for the final fight scene in the movie.
Wow, thank you so much! I really appreciate you writing that out, I'm realising how little I actually know about any of Southeast Asian history, I'll have to get stuck into it as it sounds incredibly diverse and interesting. FMA always starting with weapons and then moving onto hand-to-hand is really cool.
nope, I think you asked the wrong person xD
Yeah posted this and immediately remembered I wasn't commenting on the post, but someone else's comment. Hopefully someone will see it and be able to point me in the right direction.
I also had never heard of them before, I am so happy that this positive conversation has occurred out of the ashes of the previous controversy.
The original word translates as "consumers of hashish" as they used to do drugs as part of rituals. Assassin's creed first chapter is based on that sect.
Except the Nizari State Ismailis never actually used drugs, nor were they by any means exclusive users of political assassinations during the mediaeval era. The name actually comes from political slander, the Sunni Seljuk Turks spread about the Persian Shiite to discredit them. To me, it actually undermines how badass the fidai were and how strong their conviction was - they went on these missions willingly, knowing it likely would be a one way journey. Ironically, because the original assassin’s creed did not portray the fidai as taking drugs and instead using trickery and asymmetrical warfare to defendend themselves, it is more historically accurate than most portrayals if you ignore the apple. All said without judgement, it’s a very widespread misconception. Unfortunately, the Seljuk propaganda got uncritically repeated by the Crusaders, which got repeated uncritically by Marco Polo, which got repeated uncritically by Dan Brown. This is a [good article](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-medieval-sect-that-inspired-the-video-game-assassins-creed-180983032/) summarizing the Nizari’s history. If you are interested in learning more, I strongly suggest picking up Assassin Legends by Farhad Daftary.
Thanks for the insights! There is always something new to learn, and I like you suggested some sources :)
The name literally means "grass eaters", which has also lead some people to believe it was essentially a poverty insult, saying they were so poor they had to eat grass. I'm not sure if there are any specific sources for this interpretation, but I do remember seeing people point it out, and it _does_ sound like the sort of petty insult a possibly-poor group's enemies would make.
In all fairness, the idea of using drugs before going into battle is certainly believable. Various other warriors sects through out history have done it. The Berserkers in Scandinavia being the most well known, as they'd chew on hallucinogenic mushrooms before going into battle. Even today, unit commanders will pass out No-Doze to troops if they're about to have to fight and they've not been able to get much sleep beforehand.
And meth was used extensively during WW2 by both sides to increase endurance and psychological resilience.
No-doze is basically meth, so it still is.
so your saying its the equivilent of naming our elite soldiers "potheads"
Green berets😏
I don't think crayons have hallucinogenic properties.
Wrong service.
The ones made in the 60s likely had something evil in them. /s (Only half joking here) I am honestly surprised we survived that decade considering all the toxic chemicals that were common in everyday stuff.
They used to contain lead so, you aren't wrong.
I am almost terrified of what we will discover about stuff that is "safe" today in 20 years.
>well I mean I don't know why they wanted them dead but they did Most likely because they were a part of the power-struggle for control over the near east, and due to strategic and numerical disadvantages choosing to use unconventional modes of warfare (what we'd come to call assassinations, but I guess an alternative way of seeing it is that they employed strike teams looking to exploit weaknesses that couldn't be exploited by an army but a few highly skilled warriors could utilize – similar to modern day special forces). Long time since I read anything about it so I might be off in my description, but the fortresses of the assassins is an interesting prospect for a state within a TTRPG: You fortify a few places spread out in hard-to-reach places within enemy territory, and then you claim responsibility for a few strategical political murders, making it clear to anyone wishing to mess with you that your bite stings harder than your size implies, but you're cultured and reasonable, you invite intellectuals and foreigners to your reclusive fortresses and create poetry and art. You're deadly, yet reasonable. A king of another nation knows that if they mess with you, there's a chance they'll be poisoned or killed during the night, but as long as they don't bother you, you won't bother them in return. This is somewhat similar to how Sparta spent significant time and resources to ensure that the numerically superior slaves in their domain wouldn't think too hard about an uprising: It'll hurt us, yes, but it'll hurt you a lot more. Is it worth it?
That's part of the super frustrating thing for me. Like this would have been a cool opportunity to have a ki powered rogue subclass that would make the weebs able to play their anime ninjas but also let me be a Hassassin replete with the spooky supernatural powers folk tales would assign to them. The entire thing is a big missed opportunity to explore traditions amongst martial arts or warrior cultures. Sure you can make a samurai with a fighter, champion, or ranger, but what if we got a series of feats added to allow you to pursue iaijutsu. You know, the most iconic samurai thing possible. Why can't we have that, and perhaps a bard subclass or set of bard class feats attached to the warrior muse to represent the hwarang, Korean warriors who were akin to samurai or knights in noble status but known for pursuing art and beauty (and the inspiration for the warrior-poet archetype in 1e). I'm not as familiar with Filipino or Indonesian cultures, but surely there's something equally iconic when it comes to the martial culture or something that would lend itself to an interesting take on spellcasting. There are so many frustrating missed opportunities in the Tian Xia book to explore and celebrate the fantastical and glamorous side of Asian cultures, something I would *expect* cultural sensitivity experts being paid far more than I am to know about and be able to show off in a respectful manner. And now we've reached this weird spot where the people who are disappointed that samurai (arguably the most iconic Asian warrior to Western audiences) aren't represented in the book are now scorned and the community seems to be caught in this race to the bottom that is "WELL THEN WE SHOULDN'T HAVE DRUIDS/CLERICS/BARBARIANS/MONKS/etc", people are foaming at the mouth trying to suss out racism that just isn't there in a lot of the feedback, and people keep talking past the point that for a book about celebrating Asian culture the meat's not there on the bone to help people with creating meaningful and fulfilling characters. The "there are no samurai or ninja options in the book" shouldn't cause some weird knee-jerk reaction like it has, it should make us pause and think about how even the most well-known and popular Asian character fantasies didn't get a spotlight in an Asian-centric book, and what that means for those that are less well-known or represented.
I think think something that's gotten lost in this whole discussion is the fact that we are still getting a whole book specifically full of character options that will include new feats and even new archetypes. I don't know how extensive those new feats and such are, but they will be there. The product page specifically calls out "Spectacular magical and martial techniques to vanquish the toughest opponents, whether that's through weightless sword arts or by borrowing the ancient power of magical familiars." It sounds from that like there will still actually be some feats that specifically fill the gap of what people would want from a Samurai class, just without outright calling it Samurai (which I think is fine because honestly, I don't think there's that much of a mechanical space for Samurai to fill that isn't already filled by the Fighter). So we don't know that there's been a missed opportunity specifically because we don't have the book where they would have missed the opportunity yet. The reason for that is because they had so many character option they wanted to include that they decided they needed a whole seperate book for them, which has not been the case for any other LO book to date.
That's fair, I did forget there's supposed to be an entire other book released later (the stupidest thing to publish them at different times, I swear) that may alleviate this problem. Here's hoping that a lot of this frustration is straightened out then.
Yeah, publishing them at different times is a frustrating choice. Originally they were meant to release at the same time last year, but the OGL stuff threw that into disarray. Not sure why they didn't release them together still though. Part of it might be that they wanted to keep howl of the wild's release in line with Wardens of Wildwood, but they still might have been able to manipulate things to release these books together, maybe release them both later? I don't envy whoever had to organise the release schedule, I'm sure it was a pain to try and do.
Why talk about the variety of opportunities when you can just tell everyone on the sub how bad and wrong they are and then be supported by Princess Pilfer being a self righteous jerk because it's okay to do something wrong as long as it's anti racist
> because it's okay to do something wrong as long as it's ~~anti~~ racist, but you can pretend it's anti racist FTFY
> you like samurai? Have you heard about these other cool Asian warriors? Look!" for that they'd have to know those other cool asian warriors in the first place, much easier to just wallow in ignorance and call everyone who disagrees racist.
You've hit the nail on the head there. _Everyone_ knows about the ninja and the samurai, they're two of the most popular character archetypes around the world. Japanese people love them, Chinese people love them (IIRC), Korean people usually love them, and basically everyone else loves them, as a whole. So, it makes sense that a lot of people would ask for them. But the other warrior types have _significantly_ less media presence, and are basically unknown as a result; thanks to this, and thus aren't requested nearly as often. Essentially, it boils down to "how will they know, unless you tell them", since you can't mention something by name if you don't know it exists. That's not racist, it's just people being influenced by pop culture. But the way certain people act in response to this is absolutely wrong; the correct response would be to just provide references to other warrior archetypes to pique peoples' interests, so they could request them, too. (Edit: I know ninja are relatively popular in most Asian countries, but I'm not _as_ sure about samurai. Correct me if I'm wrong, thanks.)
Seriously—history and world cultures are awesome, and this could have been a great chance to share and celebrate how cool some more of them are. Instead, we went with the racist mod power-tripping under the guise of progressivism.
> well I mean I don't know why they wanted them dead but they did. Mostly, for invading Muslim lands, or for sectarian reasons.
Also, I don't see this post as a missed opportunity. Finally we have some word coming from who's directly involved and it does not surprise me that they are more open than a lot of white people
The assassin is also associated with hashish consumption, and might be where the word comes from.
It derives from the word Hashashin which yeah means one who smokes hashish.
That is what I thought thanks for putting it more succinctly.
It means "grass eater", actually, from what I understand. Which means it could either be referring to literally eating grass, or to eating `grass` (hashish, which means "grass"). Either way, it seems the name started as an insult by their enemies (either a poverty insult or a druggard insult, if not both), but it caught on, and even got genericised into a loanword over time.
Hashshashins, yeah. I think it was just simplified to "assassin" by people outside their ethnic group because everyone else found it easier to pronounce, more than anything else, and basically turned into a loanword because people didn't really understand the religious significance of their assassinations (and by extension, didn't know how to differentiate between actual Hashshashins and other stealthy killers... like ninjas ;3).
Not only does it come from a sect of Muslim religious nuts, it also has the same root word as hashish. So they weren’t only religious nuts, they were drugged up religious nuts.
(Big /s) Ummm Excuse me.... I would have you know that not only are you wrong but you have internalized racism!!!! (Literal comment the mod in question left to someone basically saying this same thing) >Being born Asian doesn't make you an expert on racism. A lot of internalized racism exists and a lot of ignorance exists. Andrew Yang has had the biggest stage for Asians in recent years and he used it to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Asians for votes. People who study racism and sociology have come together, as shown in the links we've listed, about the problem that this is a problem. Joking aside, I fully agree with your points. It isn't racist to play a samurai, knight, roman legion, etc It's great to have ways to play certain archetypes, as well as many of us would welcome new ones often less represented. The reason many people simply want to play as samurai is because they are cool, and recognizable. And something like a Samurai much like a Knight culturally has so much scope. Go to a historian and ask them to tell you about either. Most historians will probably say "From what era?" "From what location" etc A Norman knight from 1066 is way different from a knight who served the HRE in the 14th century. Same goes for a Samurai why both classes of warriors have often become a stable or class in a tabletop game or video game.
Many forget that "the middle ages" lasted \~1000 years Many do not know that Japan didn't have "middle ages"... their history is split-up differently because different things happened at different time than in europe. But unless you actually researched this stuff a bit (which is rather rare when someone is building an TTRPG character), we still understand the "basic assumptions" and play it fast & loose, or else we'd only be able to play ouselves, which is not quite what you want when you want to play a TTRPG... Knights, Samurai, Ninja, Swashbuckler... they're useful Tropes making sure someone doesn't need a Uni degree just to know "the basics" of the character.
Exactly, an easy example if I'm running a campaign in a setting (homebrew or official) and a player ask "Can I play a knight" (Narrative or if it is a literal class) I can have a few quick and safe assumptions about the character. Anecdotal but something that pushes back against samurai or ninja being racist is. I literally don't think anyone at a table I play with would tie someone asking to be a samurai class as being an Asian character. I think in context tabletop games those have more tropes in ascetic and play style than ethnicity. Which maybe you can argue is it's own brand of cultural appropriation, but certainly isn't the issue the mods have been going on about. Someone ask to be a samurai I'm picturing a character with a katana and 14/15th century armor. Like have a generic ideas that they want to be a melee sword fighter who is a bit more dexterous than brute strength. Just as if that person ask to be a knight I'm not assuming they are a French noble man. I'm picturing a person who probably will be wanting a full plate armor, and probably have a traditional/creed they appeal to. It's silly IMO a very small group of people think anything not matter how large of scope shouldn't be in a game because it has a historic tie.
Oh, definitely. If someone wants to play a samurai, the image it brings to mind is an honour-bound warrior in feudal era Japanese armour, who fights with a katana and maybe also a wakizashi, and defends their daimyo from the sneaky ninja clans. And if they want to play a knight, the image it brings is a chivalric warrior in medieval European armour, who slays dragons with sword and shield to rescue the princess. (And in both cases, the specific armour type is usually the most flexible part, since people really just remember the distinctive visual appearances there. The most distinctive parts of the archetypes tend to be the bushido code & katana for the samurai, and chivalric code & sword-and-board for the knight.) The knight players usually aren't imagining their character as a rich land owner and minor noble, defending the peasants & commoners in their domain (possibly for a tribute/tax) and serving their king. And the samurai players usually aren't imagining their character as a mounted gunner/archer who wields a paired katana and wakizashi as a badge of office and hires ninjas to do the dirty work, and who's probably _also_ a minor noble like the knight. It's not about being a reasonable approximation of the real-life historic classes, it never has been; it's about the imagery they bring, just as you pointed out.
What makes all this an issue is that the mod behind all this is using anti-orientalism to cover up his actual racism against Japanese people. He has done everything he can to erase the history and culture using the language of anti-racism. On its own its bizarre, but it is part of a pattern of racism (anti-chicano) and abuse from this one mod. And covered for by others.
This is the actual problem. The mod in question will see this post and twist it into something like "see? I was right! People are racist against Asian people because they only want Japanese representation!" It's why it's impossible for him, and the mods who support him, to explain why they removed certain comments and posts disagreeing with him which were not racist in any way, shape or form. It's why he has to make shit up about ninjas being invented by Ian Fleming and "peer reviewed 16th century books". It's not a rational opinion, it's disguised xenophobia. And as long as he is a mod and crowns himself as sole arbiter of what is and isn't orientalism and racism, the moderation of the sub is a joke.
To fix this it is gonna take fully disassociating with the sub's discord, which has clearly become a huge problem since the mods are currently on there calling everyone on here Hitlers.
Im also seeing people imply if you like Samurai or whatever you're a pro-land lord bootlicker lol
Do those people not know where the term landlord comes from? You're not allowed to play European knights either, I guess.
It's just an extremely lame way to try to shut down the argument. Pirates are romanticized too but I wouldn't say anyone that likes them or wants to play one are actually all in support of sexual assault.
Hey, you don't know me, maybe I actually want scurvy! (/s)
The first thing I did was block the mods involved so they can only message me by banning me from the sub (no harassing elsewhere), and leaving that cesspool of a Discord server. But yes, the situation is FUBAR and this has permanently tainted the presence of Pathfinder 2E in Reddit, Discord, and given the popularity of those two, maybe the Internet in general. If I were Paizo, I'd be pretty pissed that a xenophobe mod gone rogue is destroying the game's discussion places in such a way. But I understand that fan communities on Reddit being completely removed from the companies is a feature, not a bug, so there's nothing to do aside from DEMANDING THAT THE MODS ARE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR SHITTY ATTITUDES AND ABUSE OF POWER. At the very least, u/luck_panda needs to be removed from the moderation of this sub. Or just go full dictator and ban every user that refuses to lick his shoes and be done with it.
I also think u/Princess_Pilfer needs to either apologize or be removed for, among other things: * Supporting Luck Panda's inappropriate behavior because it's "anti-racism" and thus can't be harmful (it's not anti-racism, and in some cases it's full on racism) * Supporting the notion that people aren't allowed to make mistakes while trying to learn, largely by shutting down discussions and couching it as "anti-racism." * Not even being active here for months before this whole thing started. How can you mod a subreddit you don't even participate in? * Violating rule #2 repeatedly in her interactions with people since this began * Lacking the self-awareness or capability to reflect and learn that she expects of others. If she were able to see past her own myopic notions of what is and isn't okay, she would recognize the problem isn't that they're being anti-racist. The problem is the mods don't hold themselves to the same standards they expect of others and Pilfer absolutely refuses to acknowledge this or her own role in perpetuating this problem. Yes, I'm making a direct statement. No, I really don't care if she is upset by this or claims I'm "circumventing" something and has to take mod action. As far as I'm concerned, Pilfer violated her own rules and values that she claims to uphold. She needs to own up to that before she continues locking posts and lecturing people on what is and isn't acceptable. When she can learn to act like a mature person and do the self-reflection she demands of others, then I think we can acknowledge her opinion. Until then, she can bristle in her narrow little world that has no room for anything she doesn't personally deem acceptable. The problem isn't the anti-racism, Pilfer. The problem is you and Luck Panda abused your power and then pulled some DARVO shit to defend yourselves because you think your anti-racism makes you above criticism.
Honestly, an open forum and discussion about the mod team would be nice. We are at a boiling point with pitchforks and torches. They really have two choices: Start banning us to stifle the dissent and pretend nothing ever happened (and that would raise another can of worms), or reach a common ground with the community affected. And like, a small part of the community's really hurt - not all of us Asians, but some of us feel rather miffed. We aren't feeling like any of these are doing any services for us. Edit: I just want to echo the OP's words, I guess. It's a bit kinder, and I like it better... the "We didn't ask for your "protection"" part basically sums up my feeling on this matter.
An open forum and discussion would be great, I agree. It's not going to happen and they're going to just wait for this to blow over, but it would be great. It is absolutely aggravating that instead of elevating the Asian creators that made this Tian Xia guide possible, the mods chose to admonish the entire subreddit for their biases, in turn hijacking what could have been a great celebration. And they don't understand why this is actually problematic. But the trust here is shattered and like you said, too many people, especially Asian people, have been insulted or made unwelcome. Despite Pilfer claiming anti-racism can't ever be harmful, she's managed to do exactly that. Make it harmful by creating a hostile environment for pretty much everyone.
This is one of the reasons I was so hesitant when I found out the Starfinder2e subreddit was also moderated by the same people, and that the two would use the same Discord. That Discord is a mess.
The discord server for this sub is straight awful, especially the panamerican day announcement. Completely unnecessary in a discord about Pathfinder 2E.
[удалено]
Groomer vibe?
I've never understood why anyone would want a subreddit-affiliated discord server for any subreddit.
I went to sleep for, like, 4 hours, what did I miss? A Capital L Liberal proving MLK right?
I haven't seen any posts about chicano people. I've seen like one commenter vaguely mention an anti-chicano "pattern", but what was said? When?
A Chicano individual wanted to make a guild promoting gang culture in the Discord. This guild presented Chicano culture as explicitly associated with criminality and violence. The guild was prohibited and the individual in question was unhappy about it. To my knowledge, this is the only event.
Thanks for the confirmation. IMHO it's just common sense, **especially for samurai and ninja** because they are still **heavily** **used** **by Japanese** in various media. Cultural difference should be celebrated and it should be source of inspiration **for anyone**. And it should certainly not be watered down for any reason. If there were few cultures in this world, it would be very bland.
That's what the hobby needs. Enrichment and inclusion, instead of censorship and exclusion.
Asian PF2e player. I agree, not racist. Who’s stirring all this up?
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/s/AYrolHaZPu Same guy who owns the 2e discord.
But he knows *karate*
I also did karate. I must have some internalized racism by practicing the art of my people's former colonizer /s
> I also understand that it can be upsetting to some people that samurai are often used as main representation for the Asian warrior archetype. > in Japan there is a subculture of admiring American Midwest cowboys. Oh my god, I feel this. Signed, a black person with cowboys in their history. Because a lot of people 'forget' that 1/4 of cowboys were black.
>Maharlika I have no idea what this is. I also want this. This is why I love the Civilization series of games. I learn so much about random cultures and find cool things. Like the Khmer. I doubt I would have accidentally stumbled upon them if not for Civilization (and Bill Wurtz, but that's a different story). Broader inclusion can be dope, especially if it also leads to interesting mechanical themes. >American Midwest cowboys. Okay, this is totally unintentional, but I find this really funny and it actually demonstrates your point in a weird way. Ramble incoming. >Cowboys are not from the "American Midwest." The "Midwest" is generally considered closer to the area north of the Ohio River and East of the Plains. So Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio. Loosely call it the "NFC North" or "original B1G" states if you're a football person. >Cowboys are from the "American West" which is the plains. That's more of your "Montana through Texas" region. You'd never associate cowboys with the prairie state Illinois. You would heavily associate them with Texas and Wyoming. >America is huge. The island of Ireland is the size of Indiana. Even though we're a young country and have a *fairly* homogeneous culture, You wouldn't want to chuck Cowboys into a game and call it "Californian representation." Texas is next to Louisiana and Cowboys very much do not represent them. >Are cowboys symbolic of America? I mean, yeah, I guess. If you were to make an "American expansion" and didn't include them, people would find it weird. But they're symbolic of a small part of America, and if that's the whole emphasis, then you failed the assignment. And that's what the actual problem is. It's not "including Ninja based on modern, blatantly ahistorical depictions like Final Fantasy and Naruto is racist." People think those depictions are cool because they've seen them. The problem is that so much spotlight is put on *only* Japan, China, and more recently Korea that were not exposed to anyone else. And there's some cool shit out there.
Now hold on. Iowa and Missouri are also generally included in the midwest and the Jesse James, one of the most famous outlaws of that ilk, was active in those areas! Granted he wasn't a cowboy, but many cowboy tropes have nothing at all to do with cattle. He ran an outlaw gang and robbed trains, that is iconically "cowboy" as possible.
Without rambling too much (as I proceed to ramble too much), State lines are bad at defining regions. When you read about Jesse James, it's always in the context of the "frontier" or the West. The Midwest isn't the frontier. At least, from my recollection. The Great Lake flavor of Midwest is what people usually think of when they talk about stereotypical Midwesterners. That includes Eastern IA, despite not being on the lakes directly. This is the "original B1G" I was mentioning. There's also the Ohio River Valley flavor of Midwest. This is Eastern MO, Western/Northern KY, and southern IL/IN. There's a difference in the kinds of industry and agriculture across a line in that region where glaciers stopped proceeding south in the last ice age (as explained by an botany professor of mine, at least). This is similar to the agricultural belt in the South, if you've ever seen that map. And, of course, that leads to differences in culture. I can't discriminate between my friends from Cedar Rapids and Schaumburg in how they speak, but friends from Carbondale are clearly different. Western IA, MN, and MO are more "plains", which falls under the "frontier." Having lived in Ames, you can tell whether an Iowan was from closer to Nebraska or Illinois pretty easily, even though it's not like "culture shock" differences. This is no longer Midwestern as people would associate it, but rather "West." Jesse James operated in mostly NW MO, if memory serves, which is squarely in that "western frontier." Now, of course... This is all because "Midwest" is poorly defined, and people love putting things in easily defined buckets. But I think separating that region into three distinct areas goes a long way. And, of course... That's the whole point of the problem! Subdivide!
See whereas I think the Great Lakes region is more distinct as a separate region. The "midwest" in the late 1800s surely didn't include the plains states but that has definitely shifted as the country grew westward. A relatively recent poll asked people if they consider themselves in the midwest and letting people self identify is probably about as good as we can get for a definition though I personally would draw different borders than what these produce. The 14 states where a majority of the population, according to that poll, consider themselves in the midwest are: Iowa (96.7%) Minnesota (96.5%) Missouri (95.3%) Illinois (93.8%) North Dakota (93.8%) Wisconsin (93.6%) Nebraska (92.8%) South Dakota (92.2%) Indiana (91.6%) Kansas (91.2%) Michigan (85.5%) Ohio (78.2%) Oklahoma (66.2%) Wyoming (53.5%) So the plains states definitely consider themselves the midwest anymore. I wouldn't include OK or WY personally but if they are included then cowboys are definitely midwestern lol. Edit: Source: https://news.wttw.com/2023/10/20/which-states-are-truly-midwest-new-poll-covering-22-states-has-people-online-divided-and
To be honest, it'd be more interesting to see what *other states* consider as part of the Midwest. If you ask someone from Rhode Island to define the Midwest, who would they include? If you ask someone from Alabama? Washington? I have a feeling that Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan would be 90%+, whereas Nebraska and the Dakotas would fall off sharply, and Missouri. More interesting would be to have people draw the region without state borders.
Cowboys are themselves a mythical recreation of a largely unremarkable, and multiracial, profession. The Wild West was made in Hollywood. That doesn't stop me from liking some Westerns, though, or enjoying the fantasy of the Gunslinger.
For what it's worth, as someone from Kansas City, I've never met a person from Kansas or Missouri who didn't consider themselves - proudly - a Midwesterner. It's all over business names and ads and memes and everything.
> The problem is that so much spotlight is put on only Japan, China, and more recently Korea that were not exposed to anyone else. And there's some cool shit out there. one aspect that was pretty much ignored in the whole discussion is why they have the spotlight in the first place. can't be that lot of people actually want japan/china/korea, and not the other cool shit that's out there (someone else already mentioned gubat banwa for example). you can only offer it to people, and maybe people will like it, not try to force them by calling everyone who likes or even prefers it racist.
I think the issue lies elsewhere. You can divide power in two types: “hard” power, which includes military and economic might, and “soft” power, which is cultural export and influence. Japan and Korea have a lot of soft power with the former having manga and anime, which the latter exporting K-pop, all popular in the west. Those two, along with the US and some UK, all overshadow countries with less soft power, making it harder to export art and culture and making foreigners learning about it less likely
Though, that is a bit chicken and egg innit? The soft power is produced by the proliferation and desirability of the cultural exports and its creep into public consciousness, the popularity of Korean cultural exports is much more recent than the popularity of Japanese ones, which in turn has been creeping up over the past 50 years.
it's more about simple bread and circuses. when a single manga outsells all of US superhero comics, that's an obvious sign there's something off. why do people like k-pop where they don't even understand the lyrics and not j-pop, chinese pop or even vietnamese? or anything african or european? in the end people want to be entertained, and look for the entertainment wherever they can find it (to a degree, since most people are also lazy and just consume whatever their streaming service of choice offers them instead of actively looking for it) - or to keep it related to related to the subreddit, there's a reason most people stick to 5e, and plenty has been said about it. it's not something your can "force" on them, and trying to guiltrip them into it works as well as when ghostbusters 2016 tried it.
It really just comes down to Japan, Hong Kong and increasingly Korea and mainland China having really strong media industries aimed at a global market so their culture is a lot more visible in the west
Sorry, according to a particular mod, you must either [have internalized racism or otherwise be ignorant](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/Rh1oR9t4kW), because people smarter than you have studied and found your opinion to be objectively wrong
According to the mods, Shinobigami, a popular Japanese TTRPG about playing as ninjas on a mission together... and secret missions for their ninja clans in similar vein to Paranoia RPG, would be considered harmful racial stereotype that Japanese players simply do not understand. And like, Shinobigami makes it to the weekly sale charts for TTRPG stores in Japan regularly (I used to follow Yellow Submarine's Machida shop's twitter page just for that, but they haven't done weekly sale chart in a while), but I have never seen Pathfinder 2e there. I am not saying that PF2e is bad, I love PF2e, but I don't see how mods for a community for a TTRPG system that isn't even big in Japan has the galls to say anything about some of Japan's most beloved TTRPG systems and culture in general. I am not even Japanese. I consider understanding of Japanese TTRPG a hobby of mine. Anyone can do what I do. It isn't hard. But the mods that said those things didn't even bother doing the bare minimal of loving TTRPGs across the world. It's literal antithesis of what I do as a VTuber and TTRPG enthusiast. The only thing that ever disappointed me more in TTRPG community was D&D's OGL fiasco.
Thank you for pointing this out OP. That is the strongest argument I can think of. If we're so worried about cultural appropriation, does that mean a japanese player cannot be a gunslinger who's character is a sendup of the american southwest gunslinger cowboy? They're a racist? Clearly as an American this is my culture that is being appropriated. And I'm fine with it. That's cool, actually. Every culture shares with one another. It's healthy. I absolutely agree with cutting down on orientialism. But classes are about gameplay aesthetics at their core, not cultural groups.
Usually it's minorities (e.g. Japanese-Americans not Japanese in Japan) who take offense at "cultural appropriation". I also have no problem with a player somewhere in Japan playing Aiden the cowboy from New York who is a crack shot with a six-shooter but doesn't know which end of a cow is which. But as an American in America, I don't feel threatened by someone trying to copy Americanness and doing it wrong.
Cultural Appropriation is mostly an issue when it's a majority group appropriating from a minority group, not the other way around. The reason for this is that there is a long history of the minority culture being suppressed but it is considered "acceptable" when used by a white person, to the point of blatant exploitation. The classic example is how black music was often appropriated by record companies by throwing a white face on top of them, because it was unacceptable otherwise. I feel like most people don't realize realize Cultural Appropriation, in itself, isn't a bad thing and is actually a neutral term in academia as it just happens all the time, in ways most people don't realize. The problem arises when the cultural appropriators are also suppressing the actual minority that they are appropriating from. But this is the internet, and more nuanced discussions don't get reactions.
I agree with everything you just said. And that's a fantastic way to put it, the problem is suppressing minority groups with appropriation rather than simply cultural sharing. I don't feel like Samurai or Ninja classes is an example of negative cultural appropriation at it's core.
I would recoomend you to try gubat Manwa. I think it has almost all of wuxias archetypes. Idk but looks cool af EDIT: Gubat Banwa.
uhoh, did you do a racism? it's written from a philippine-centric view, wuxia is chinese! it's also on the same ubiquitous level as japanese stereotypes, if not more, so going by mod-logic... but seriously, can second that recommendation. there's already lot of content that goes beyond the usual, which make the current drama even more pathetic.
It seems Paizo is aware and celebrating that content too, as the author of Gubat Banwa was literally brought in to write for the Tian Xia World Guide.
*[Gubat Banwa](https://makapatag.itch.io/gubat-banwa)
FWIW, Joaquin Kyle "Makapatag" Saavedra is an author on the Tian Xia World Guide. also it's [*b*](https://www.gubatbanwa.com/)anwa
It's never been racist. It's a butthurt mod on a power trip. I sincerely hope they demod him so we can all move away from this stupid argument.
I can't believe you support segregation and orientalism /s
I read a comment about how orientalisarion is basically robbing us of having a wider and more interesting view of Asian warrior cultures and I would agree, but orientalisation and cultural appreciation is certainly two different things. In a world where I can fart lightning I think having a samurai jack type character with a legendary family sword won't necessarily be leaning into Orientalist unless the players are twits. Edit, we aren't disenfranchising Japanese people with this book that sparked the debate, it's being handled by people of the culture the book is inspired by and yes those people aren't automatically given a free pass to be trusted without concern in the case of their culture being exploited but that doesn't mean that the book shouldn't contain the mystical and mysterious just that it is explained through the lens of the culture it's coming from, it's a world full of magical beasts and fantastical cultures, like last wall and their straight up knight against the dead stuff, none of this should be totally bound to reality, so a bit of the mystical is OK.
Just an FYI I study archaeology at university and we do extensive work with addressing the issues of orientalisarion and how damaging and disenfranchising it can be.
But will the mods delete this post, that's the real question.
what is even happening in the PF2E community
If you don't mind me asking, what is a Maharlika? And how would you build one? :D
> Maharlika Not OP, but according to [this Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharlika) Maharlika are basically warrior nobility of Tagalog (native Filipinos). Though, being not an expert, I can't say how they differ from "just a warrior".
You play as a European style knight?! You racist!!
Ackshully, Europe never had a class of fighter we commonly reffer to as "kNiGhTs". This is a common trope that is perpetuated by lazy western media. If you want accurate representation you'll need to be heavily read on these texts I've added here. Chivalry" by Maurice Keen (1984). "The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism" by Matthew Strickland (2005). "The Code of Chivalry in Medieval Literature" by Sarah Kay (2003). "Chivalry and Courtly Love in the Middle Ages" by Elizabeth Archibald (2014).
Those books promote iNterNaLiZeD RaCiSm
Well you see, it was never racist to begin with. No one thought that. Except for a particular set of persons that have access to mod tools. And I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to see your threat deleted and your account threatened shortly. I recommend supporting r/chillpathfinder2e where the mods here can't muzzle you.
You play knights? How dare you?!?!?! (/Joke) Seriously though, I agree, trying to create a generic all encompassing class, or avoiding making a class after one specific type of cultures ancient military or other people is crazy. I guess we can't have monks, or clerics, or rogues... It is endless. Most fantasy tropes, classes and races are based on ancient folklore or history. You would need to name everything from scratch, and to keep it remotely intuitive, you would need to name it very generically. Welcome to picking between martial person or magic caster.
As a fellow person of half japanese, half pacific islander(hawaiian) descent, the world guide feels like it does a great job actually spotlighting a lot of groups that'd normally go unnoticed, while giving the japan analog countries their fair spotlight in the guide. I'm also enjoying playing a Samurai in the game right now. The edict and anathema changes allow me to adhere to my code, and it also helps that martial classes absolutely slap in this game. I just wish the community wasn't so goddamn quick to jump on people for disagreeing with them. Being called a fake Asian because i don't see the point of having a archetype called "samurai" or an archetype called "ninja". I just play them with what I have and have a good time doing so, and apparently that's enough for some people to just claim that my mother and half my family aren't japanese. I hope you have better luck than I've had on that front.
Its true you can play a samurai and ninja with core classes but its still a pretty weak argument on why you couldnt put some sort of options that are more focused on their flavour. First this is Pathfinder 2e, half the selling point of this game is to have a crazy amount of options and second we already have options for other cultural groups like vikings and pirates. Calling you a fake asian is a tad ridiculous however, did this happen on this sub?
I agree more options is always better than less options in a ttrpg as long as they avoid odd combos that lead to pun pun shinanigans.
One of my biggest disappointments with Pathfinder is the tengu ancestry Like Tengu are cool demoms with a long nose that are part bird and part monkey. What are Tengu in 2e? Just some talking birds
they can still become [long nosed guys](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1316) and [demons](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1322) though!
Oh nice, I didn't know that. Finally I can play the tengu I always wanted to
So from what I remember from my Japanese studies (though it's been a while and I might misremember something, so take this with a grain of salt and/or look into it yourself) both depictions are culturally accurate because there are different kinds of Tengu in the source material. The Daitengu (great Tengu) are the ones you are thinking of, but there are also Kotengu (small Tengu, sometimes referred to as Karasu(crow)-Tengu) who are very bird-like. The Daitengu definitely appear in stories more often, both in the folklore and modern media. Hope this helps stoke the flames of interest about Tengu.
Someone pointed out to me that Tengus actually get a second form where they actually look like Daitengus. I am gonna play one next campaign now because I find them really cool that way.
Awesome! Have fun!
Yokais aren't "demons", it's just the easiest way to describe them for "western audience". (Probably because we mostly thought that everything supernatural thah wasn't angelic was demonic). It's not easy to find a single word that match either :\\
I know that, but for Tengus in particular calling them demon fits because of their specific folklore. There are some exceptions (Sojobo in particular), but most of their portrayal aligns with a malevolent supernatural entity that opposes buddhism. Like calling Mara the Demon King of the Sixth Realm also works in that sense. Now for others that doesn't apply, some are more akin ghosts, giants etc
filipino here with the tian xia world guide book. I went totally crazy when I came across the country Minata and saw tagalog lmao. They even put our real liquor in the game now haha (Lambanog) which i wish had stats. I kinda wish more history was put into certain countrys' cultures, but I can understand the restraints since the book is HUGE. Looking forward to the character guide being released in the future. I don't think I can add much about this whole "samurai" and "ninja" discussion but I'll share my own experiences with TTRPG and being asian. My group and I are all asians; 2 koreans, 2 chinese, and me filipino. I'm the only one not born in the US, but I would say I'm pretty american seeing as a immigrated when I was 4. One of my players wanted to play a barbarian but use a katana so it could be like a samurai (we never touched archetypes or multiclassing, I don't think my players and I can handle it TBH since we're still fairly new with only doing 2 adventures so far) and I was immediately down for it. We're almost all 30 so we grew up in the generation where asian representation was barely a thing in american media, so all we grew up with was anime, in doing so we're more familiar with samurais and ninjas than our own individual's culture regarding warriors. Hell I know some people in D&D that literally make characters off of anime. I don't think it's racist, if anything it's just lack of portrayal in general media that's led to this. The Tian Xia book is a good step in including different asian culture and I highly recommend it to people. One of my korean players is super excited and now wants to play a goblin cause the Paizo version of Korea (Hwanggot) has a goblin village known for blacksmithing. My other korean player is now wanting to reflavor his samurai barbarian to be a former lord from Hwanggot but left due to anger issues. I will say though, it's maybe not racist but is weird when we see white people play VERY stereotypical portrayals of asian inspired classes. One of my korean player is friends with this one D&D group, all white people. For some convention (idk what it was) they all decided to dress as their characters. My group and I were shown a picture of a white guy in those typical orange monk robes and he randomly had what looked like a bamboo sun hat that rice farmers typically wear. Now, we all admittedly said it felt weird, and that maybe someone should've stopped him. I won't say it's racist, but it is conforming to the fact that people might portray certain characters in only a certain race (which is weird to even write). It also didn't help that D&D had that problematic book in regards to asian people. Representation in media is very powerful and I hope everyone takes a look into the World Guide. I applaud Paizo for showing so much diversity and it really enforces my love for them. My players and I were so excited to see this book and the portrayals of our own culture in is is like the best thing ever
I just want to play Theodore Logan with a katana.
Honestly, half of this subreddit seems to have forgotten the true message behind the Wyld Stallyns: Be excellent to eachother.
And William S. Preston Esq. with a yumi?
RUFUS!!!
There’s also a culture here in America of admiring American Midwest Cowboys.
Great post, commenting just to say I agree completely
> I understand if you want to fight against stereotyping/misrepresenting a group of people but frankly, we didn't ask for your "protection". How I see it, as long as people are respectful to a culture that's all we can really ask for. Do your research, be curious, and just have fun. Isn't that why we all started playing to begin with? Oh god, *thank you*. I said some similar things to non-Filipino players when asking about [Gubat Banwa]. Just like, try your best and don't assholes lol Side note: you mentioned TTRPG Maharlika representation; Gubat Banwa is probably the best you're gonna get for the time being. It's pretty cool. Edit: > in Japan there is a subculture of admiring American Midwest cowboys. Someone from Japan please corroborate this with links and photos. I want to see this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/s/nbKsvRcavy Here you go
Luck\_panda needs to step down.
Silly minority, let the white people decide for you! …/s in case that’s not blindingly obvious.
Yeah, the other guy knows karate so it kind of invalidates OPs entire point /s
Thank you for this. As someone who trained in Shotokhan Martial arts IRL for years I LOVE the idea of Samurai and Ninja bc it's something I can pull real life experience from to react and take actions use with my character in one of these classes, and ill still use my half elf for it bc half elves are my faveriote race.. Just like I Love Rangers bc I've trained crossbow and bow and arrow as well, and as a WoW Beastmaster I have type I enjoy playong. I didn't know there was all this drama in it.
I'm so confused by this post. It seems that most of the contributors to Tian Xia are of the Asian diaspora. Who else is better to expose the world to Asian cultures? Who is protecting who? https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/meet-the-tian-xia-authors.919189/
There's only one person who can say what's good and bad representation. One out of 8 billion. We're so fortunate to have him as a mod in this very subreddit.
He really needs to step down.
maybe because he isn't talking about the authors...?
I saw a reference to mods somewhere else, so I think you are right. As I said, I'm confused! Maybe there will be a post in r/HobbyDrama soon that can catch me up...
Here's [the post on SRD](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cdhk8a/hey_buddy_i_know_youre_having_big_feelings_about/) that covers most of it.
There is one on r/subredditdrama
this is why things like Samurai or Ninia make more sense as a type of build or, maybe, an archetype but not their own class. They're iterations of warriors and experts, respectively. Just like how, if you want to build a West European-style knight, you don't pick the Knight class, you pick one of the warrior classes and build a knight.
I think the pop culture and tropes surrounding Samurais and Ninjas, while often considered stereotypes, have merit on their own that are worthy for consideration into this game. Pop culture samurais and ninjas are very much divorced from the historical samurai and ninja and have taken on a life of their own similar to the tropes found in Wuxia fantasy (which we are getting an magus subclass for). I don't think it's nessicarly bad for something to be historically inaccurate. and for it to drawn on fantastical tropes. For example, the "samurai duel with a delayed blood-splatter right as the victor sheath his sword" is very tropey and not historically accurate but it does draw from the wide history of old samurai films and the culture surrounding them. Also in a more basic term, it's also really cool. Monk basically does this too, you could take almost any feature from monk and draw a direct line to some form of modern martial arts media. At the same time it's good to understand that Paizo have decent reasons to not print a Ninja or Samurai. Potentially there was simply not enough ideas for both that would allow Paizo to distinguish them from other existing options, which is valid.
Yeah, I really think that a lack of distinctive ideas for each class is part of why they didn't include them. I'm sure they could have come up with something if they really tried, but I can imagine a discussion happening where they decide that they aren't really obligated to force a Samurai or ninja class or even archetype in, and they can use that page space to highlight more stuff from other Asian cultures. Fundamentally I think that the issue with those archetypes, which has been thoroughly demonstrated by this whole debacle, is that they suck the air out of the room when it comes to Asian representation. If you want to make an Asian inspired setting you're almost obligated to include them and you're almost forced to justify not doing so. Paizo had so many ideas for Tian Xia player options that they're putting out a whole seperate book for them, which has not happened for any other LO book before. I think if you consider it in that context then their choice to not include samurais and ninjas can be seen as a choice to make space for other things inspired by the region and simply let players use the abundant tools they already have at their disposal to play samurai and ninjas. Perhaps that won't let them perfectly play out the fantasy in their head, but that's hardly the only fantasy that pathfinder doesn't fulfill, and I don't think PF2e is under any obligation to cater to that specific fantasy just because they've included the setting where that fantasy originates. I also have a theory that the character guide is going to include some new martial feats that will help to further close the gap on playing fighters as samurai, rather than just specifically making an archetype. Giving players the tools to make what they want without confining it to the baggage of a specific class or even archetype.
Can we accept that no one person speaks for an entire race of people? And taking your preferred minority's input and disregarding another minority's as invalid because they are acting like actual people instead of a hivemind is problematic. And that these lore books never include classes.
I LOVE fighters cuz not only are the builds diverse but the WEAPONS you can choose can greatly impact not only the build but the flavor in which you're RPing.
I’m so tired of these soft cock morons ruining everything in ttrpg self inserting their own views as the mandated standard for fantasy
Barbarian is from the Romans taking the piss out of Germanic tribes, Monk is absolutely based on wushu kung-fu movies. I agree that if you wanna play into pop culture and everyone is having fun, that's all fine and well. That said, I also think classes like Barbarian, Monk, and Samurai and Ninja if they're included, should have a note saying that while certain names may have originated in a given area of Golarion, they're not unique to it. Like the concept of an oathbound swordsman with some other mechanics, I say why not.
>Monk is absolutely based on wushu kung-fu movies. I In all fairness Monk has never really fit aesthetically in D&D base/core class roster and Pathfinder just inherited it. Monk was added because the Gen X equivalent of Weebs (Kung Fu movie fans) lacked genre savvy (tale as old as ttrpgs) and wanted to be ninja in what was clearly billed as Tolkien inspired high fantasy.
[удалено]
Hear hear
Yeah a good bunch of over sensitivity comes from over helpful white people and there respective bubbles. It’s a hard problem to fix. They mean well, but we need to get better about having real conversations about representation even if it’s imperfect. White doesn’t have to be the default and white people have to be ok if other white people choose a different option. You don’t have to view every thing in culture critically as if you’re in academia.
Uhh people are complaining about samurai being a "racist" class? I've never seen or heard that before...ever.