Will Tuladhar-Douglas
Will Tuladhar-Douglas  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

I have a request for the #ttrpg and #socialJustice folks.

Strap in; I don't usually do threads. But I need help from the angriest, un-White-est, un-eurocentric-ist corners, un-bound-by-gender-norm-ist corners of this place, the folks who play joyfully with their allies and kids because it's not a luxury, it's what we fight for.

(Sealions will be blocked instantly.)

My family---my children---love role playing games, and I have used collusive narratives with some rules, lots of world building, and dice since they were very small. But now that they are old enough to go looking on the internet, to read the rulebooks... we have a serious representation problem.

I guess it's (roughly) comparable to the systematic oppression in the #Fedi, though I really, really don't want to trivialise-by-comparison the appalling violence that Black heroes here are struggling to name and dismantle.

But when we look at the popular play-along videos or the books or whatever - we *are* the exotic at best, the horrors at worst. Everyone in those videos are the people who describe us as "the interesting family", the people who sabotaged our autism support groups with their instinctive racism, gender norms (and layer upon layer of other -isms).

1/n

Kevin
Kevin  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

@yetiinabox I ran Stars Without Number with one part of the sector belonging to an ethnic Japanese government and another an ethnic Chinese government. This was just inspired by the game's random language table (all real world languages) - I just rolled for each empire. My previous campaign was in a sector populated by people mostly of Arabic origin.

To be honest, it's up to the GM and table in games that aren't full of mostly white w/token artwork.

ubi
ubi  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

@yetiinabox There are some Asian ttrpg people on Mastodon. But I'm more familiar with the Southeast Asian scene. I've seen some interesting stuff come out from Malaysia, Singapore and the Phillipines recently.
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Will Tuladhar-Douglas
Will Tuladhar-Douglas  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

My family are Asian, but not from any of the dominant media types - not Desi or Steven He or any of those. My children grew up on true stories of their ancestors being slaughtered and mutilated in order to build an empire that is now a lovely tourist trope. Nuns and monks are regular visitors to our home, but they are geeks and ascetics and my dear friends, not mystical weapons masters with six-packs. I have told my children the amazing stories of the brave rabbit, the prince who abjures violence, the yaksas who get into philosophical debates, and house-guardian spirits who swap their gender so fast it leaves the sexist old monk unable to debate the emptiness of gender.

We don't drink alcohol. Some of us are genderfluid. We do rituals every day, not because we are wizards or clerics, but because that's just part of a well-ordered, polite family. We think hijras and sex workers are, umm, people with jobs and families. When the local thugs -- heck, the oldies with dyspepsia -- don't want to see us, we get told to f**k off back to {Pakistan | India | Thailand | ...} but we are from none of those places. We speak a language that a national government has repeatedly tried to extinguish, and a few more, and we always get asked, "Where are you *from*, that's *such* an interesting accent."

2/n

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Will Tuladhar-Douglas
Will Tuladhar-Douglas  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

So now that the kids are out there, looking at RPG materials on the internet, they are not seeing any healthy, affirming representations. It's hard enough at school or the GP surgery ("yep, that is really our family name. No, that isn't our language, really not." Year after year after year...) but online RPG stuff is awful.

So: could folks kindly recommend positive RPG sites that _start_ from waaaaay over on the far side of whatever divide it is that has white guys with token others on this side?

I fought this battle when I first played RPGs, back when DnD and Traveller were just three flimsy books, and I was lucky because I lived somewhere where being mixed-other ethnicity, being a sex worker, being from a family that was boringly traditional about religious values but not Protestant...where that was normal, or at least my adolescent #actuallyAutistic brain thought it was. I left, and moved far away, and became an anthropologist.

But all this White-normative, gender-binary, alcohol is good, wizards smoke pipes, Oriental girls and spirits are sex objects crap on the RPG internet - I need allies for my kids please. And I do not mean, just to be clear, White trans folk - thank you, but this is a different battle.

Xilabar the Dice Goblin
Xilabar the Dice Goblin  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

@yetiinabox

I could reccomend Righteous Swords, Ruthless Blades. It is designed by a bunch of translators who have repeatedly complained about the state of the genre and who are enthusiastic about historical accuracy (in terms of the period). That said, they are all white and the marketing is clearly trying to bring in white people, but I have faith in the product.

https://www.ospreypublishing.com/us/righteous-blood-ruthless-blades-9781472839367/

Charles Castleberry :pika:
Charles Castleberry :pika:  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

@yetiinabox I belong to a Discord group with some avid ttrpg players, who are somewhat diverse, all with progressive viewpoints; they're intelligent, funny, kind people that I've known for 15 years or so.

I copied your post in, and asked if they had any suggestions for what you were looking for, and got a couple of responses that hopefully you will find useful to check out. :-)

A screenshot of a longer post that recommends: Aisian designers: Capitalities, Orichalchum, Gubat Banwa, A Thousand Thousand Islands, ARC (and anything by momatoes) A website for finding Southeast Asian designs: https://across-rpgsea.com/ LGBT themes: Dream Askew & sister game Dream Apart, Monsterhearts, Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Hopeful stories instead of violent ones: Coyote & Crow, Wanderhome, Motherlands, and Wildsea. The responder notes that finding a game hitting more than one of these points at a time may be tough, since most games focus on one thing to do it well.
A screenshot of a longer post that recommends: Aisian designers: Capitalities, Orichalchum, Gubat Banwa, A Thousand Thousand Islands, ARC (and anything by momatoes) A website for finding Southeast Asian designs: https://across-rpgsea.com/ LGBT themes: Dream Askew & sister game Dream Apart, Monsterhearts, Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Hopeful stories instead of violent ones: Coyote & Crow, Wanderhome, Motherlands, and Wildsea. The responder notes that finding a game hitting more than one of these points at a time may be tough, since most games focus on one thing to do it well.
A screenshot of a longer post that recommends: Aisian designers: Capitalities, Orichalchum, Gubat Banwa, A Thousand Thousand Islands, ARC (and anything by momatoes) A website for finding Southeast Asian designs: https://across-rpgsea.com/ LGBT themes: Dream Askew & sister game Dream Apart, Monsterhearts, Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Hopeful stories instead of violent ones: Coyote & Crow, Wanderhome, Motherlands, and Wildsea. The responder notes that finding a game hitting more than one of these points at a time may be tough, since most games focus on one thing to do it well.
Paddy Hatchet
Paddy Hatchet  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

@yetiinabox hi there! A few dribs and drabs from my library...

I'm quite fond of 1000 Arrows, which is Warring states Samurai action by a couple of Asian Americans. Quite historically focused but with room made for non-western supernatural entities.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/407927/thousand-arrows

Gubat Banwa goes harder for fantasy in a Mythic Phillipino action vein. There's been some bad news around the creator, not fully party to that... but it looks like dev is going ahead, and the book is gorgeous.

Dr Neil Smith
Dr Neil Smith  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

@yetiinabox I'm not too sure what you're after, but you might like to look at a couple of Japanese games, "Golden Sky Stories" and "Ryuutama"? The former is about cute spirits solving problems through healing and understanding. The latter is about wanderlust and seeing the world. Wanderhome is in a similar niche.

"Dream Askew" and "Society of Rafa" may also be worth a look? Both are about community and healing.

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