I was reminded of that by this review of Joseph Heinrich's book The Weirdest People in the World:
"Standing apart from the community, primed to break wholes into parts and classify them, Westerners are more analytical. People from kinship-intensive cultures, by comparison, tend to think more holistically. They focus on relationships rather than categories."
Players in games go on and on about their character's traits and foibles in a way that somebody from a non-Western non-industrial culture probably never would. It's a habit that has only got worse as an obsession with story tropes and character arcs has taken hold in roleplaying. It's a very 21st century mannerism to tell people that you're on the spectrum (if it's a spectrum then who isn't?) or to narcissistically expatiate on your life goals and attitudes.
I'm using Tekumel as an example, but this applies to all RPG culture gaming. There's a lot of it about, I'm glad to say. Some friends of mine are currently playing as Gwich'in tribespeople in 19th century Yukon. I make periodic stabs at publishing my and Jamie's Tetsubo game set in the Sengoku period. And I don't need to tell you that the medieval Europe on which Legend is modelled is a very foreign country to us today. These are all good examples of culture gaming, but it only pays off if the players are willing to make an imaginative leap outside their modern mindset into the perspective of an entirely different time and place.
Does it matter? Well, you can roleplay any way you like. Do whatever you enjoy, sure. But I would say that roleplaying is rewarding when it takes us on an imaginative leap outside ourselves, and that counts double when it allows us to slip outside our cultural preconceptions. Then it isn't just fun but it expands the mind and lets us appreciate how richly varied the human race can be.
Happy New Year, Dave!
ReplyDeleteA really interesting post. It put me in mind of Scott Alexander's discussions of "Universal Culture"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/
which notes: 'the incorrect model of “foreign cultures being Westernized” casts Western culture as the aggressor, whereas the model of “every culture is being universalized” finds Western culture to be as much a victim as anywhere else.'
I think this idea of "Universal Culture" is more or less what you're referring to with "Westerners at heart". And it does feel like these days many D&D settings just feel like modern life with technology replaced by magic (I don't think I could really differentiate D&D's Forgotten Realms setting from Critical Role's Exandria). That has its benefits - it's easier to get your head around a world that behaves very much like the one you already know - but you lose some of the appeal of roleplaying if settings only really differ in their aesthetics. Mind you, it can be challenging to play a character in a setting when you as a player are a newcomer to, especially if the character is meant to be familiar with it, so I can understand why some people don't want the hassle - especially when, as you have noted before, time is more limited and you may need to slot in with whatever groups you can find.
But as you say, different strokes for different folks, I guess - just as some people want RPGs to be a wargame with a layer of character over the top, and others want them to be improv with the rules as an aid, and yet others want them to be multi-authored crafted narratives, I guess some people want to explore the alien and different, and others want to operate in an environment they are familiar with.
Interesting points, Ray. I can see myself losing a day to Alexander's and Caplan's points, but just skimming one important idea right off the top: these days we often lazily refer to "Western science", to the extent that some even regard evidence-based thinking as somehow imposed by imperialists. But China and Islam both had evidence-based medicine long before the West. The ongoing struggle between rationality and superstition is by no means a contest with the West on one side and other cultures on the other.
DeleteNot that that's what I was originally driving at here, but we're all about the discursive on the FL blog!
This point about it being wrong to cast 'Western culture as the aggressor' is certainly true in Japan where the 'Westernization' is aggressively pushed by Japanese people. But interestingly it also has a sort of nationalist agenda, because it seems to go hand-in-hand with the promotion of the authorised 'Japanese traditional culture™' which was invented in the Meiji period as a conscious policy of national unification, and which erases difference in a very similar way to the 'Universal Culture' you mention. 'Foreign culture' (which in Japan means American culture) is used as a means of defining Japan by opposition, and thereby reinforcing the idea that Japanese people are group-oriented, passive and accepting.
DeleteI get the impression that a similar dichotomy has been fabricated by nationalists in India, where only a few decades ago secular views would be seen as modernizing and now are regarded (at least by the BJP) as imperialist Western culture.
DeleteTrue, but I think in India the imperialist West is being set up as an actual straw enemy (if I can mix that metaphor). What's happening in Japan seems weirder to me: I think the same people who promote the 'traditional' culture are also most supportive of 'foreign' culture. Maybe they are clever enough to recognise that you need an opposition, however false, to support an artificial construction?
DeleteIntriguing, though I'm having trouble understanding how that works.
DeleteI wrote a reply to this but foolishly got distracted and wrote the reply below, which of course erased what I'd written, as I hadn't sent it yet. What I was meaning is that it is easier for Japanese traditionalists to define Japanese culture by saying what it isn't (American!) than what it is. But this doesn't require them to actually be antagonistic towards American culture.
DeleteAnd of course, the above process happily dispenses with rationality whenever it needs to. I have seriously had conversations here with people who told me that Japan is unique... because it has four seasons.
Going off topic here, but I noticed something after linking to this piece on Facebook. There, instead of discussing the idea of roleplaying in different cultures, most of the comments assert that authenticity is impossible and we can never know what (say) Sparta was like anyway. This seems to be a pattern for social media, which isn't about discussion but about planting a flag. "I propose this idea." "You're wrong!" So be glad of the collegiate atmosphere still to be found on blogs, say I.
ReplyDeleteI remember many years ago being told by a correspondent (I think it was to Robert Rees's zine) that I was foolish to advocate for culture games because we could not know any culture other than our own. When I pressed this with a few thought experiments (what about my son, for example, who has a foot in both British and Japanese culture), I got nothing. Nor did I receive any response to my point that 'our own' culture, displaced by a century or two, is no less alien than any other culture. I confess, I rather unfairly leapt to the conclusion that the correspondent was just another ignorant racist.
DeleteNowadays, given what has transpired, I feel so saddened that people believe this nonsense about hermetically sealed, distinct, impenetrable cultures (possibly a result of consumerism, or is that just the embers of the old anarchist in me protesting?). My son studies International Relations at university, so obviously this issue has come up, and you don't have to study very far before you realise that cultures are never singular; always overlapping, multivalent entities, highly complex and rarely reducible to the bromides of politicians. Saying that we 'cannot understand any culture other than our own' is basically like saying that we 'cannot understand anybody else'. Even if true, if you live your life this way, you're basically a sociopath.
Yes, and the irony is that the people who nowadays prate about cultural appropriation and assert that all other cultures are unknowably alien also claim to be anti-racist, whereas in my book they are the racists.
DeleteThis reminds me of the article I read recently about identity politics, noting the way they have become a sort of back-door method whereby racists can be racist without being called on it. Instead of saying 'We don't want any black immigrants!' you can say that you want to preserve traditional culture.
DeleteI've cited before (though this is a different point) the Greenpeace spokesperson who said that for the West to try to kick Saddam out of Kuwait in 1990-91 was racist because we had no right to judge the affairs of Arab politicians. Whereas I would say that holding Saddam to different standards than, say, Mussolini or Stalin would itself be racist.
DeleteI'm not quite sure if that spokesperson also thought Nelson Mandela (or any other black African) had no right to judge the white apartheid regime in South Africa. It's not just that these people have got their whole concept of racism hopelessly muddled, it's also that they're not even consistent.
On knowing what Sparta was really like, I don’t think that really matters too much. Any game is going to take a particular view on any culture we represent in it. They’re just slices of life that emphasise some aspects and completely ignore others. The American 1920s of Call of Cthulhu is hardly a demographically, culturally, economic, etc representation of actual life in that time and place. A game set in feudal Japan could be about adventuring Ronin, or it could be about the struggles of farmers like the ones that hire the Seven Samurai. They would be very different games. You pick a perspective and try to do it justice, while also adapting it to be actually playable.
DeleteAnd to make it credible, I think. My objections to Pressfield's novel (Spartans as 'Nam grunts) and Snyder's movie (Spartans in speedos) is that they are making no effort whatsoever to create a culture with any depth or consistency. We can't know what authentic Sparta was like, but we can instantly tell when we're being sold a fake.
DeleteA very interesting discussion! I am sorry to have only just caught up with it. I think Simon Hibbs makes some good points. There was a time when I would try to authentically and comprehensively re-create some historical culture in my games - whether that be Medieval France or Roman Egypt or Dark Age Britain - but in the end I realised that was impossible not least because the historians still have so many unanswered questions. But you can use what we do know, probably focussing on a few key elements, to create something that does look and feel very different to modern Western culture even if can never be 100% accurate. And that is enough, I think, for a good culture game. I would just add that we need to remember that cultures are contested. I would be hard pressed to accurately describe British culture today because someone could always be sure to come up with an example that seems to counter what I have asserted. In games I tend to veer towards traditional cultures where things can be simpler because too much complexity only ends up confusing everyone, especially the players. But in any game I would want to present some competing viewpoints, alternative practices, etc - which makes the setting more dynamic as well as more like life.
ReplyDelete