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Archive => RPG Theory => Topic started by: Green on January 22, 2005, 06:33:24 PM

Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 22, 2005, 06:33:24 PM
This is not going to be a thread that talks about how Eurocentric a lot of fantasy settings are.  I think it's fairly obvious.  With the exception of games based on feudal Japan or wuxia films, there are few settings that do not use medieval Europe as the default.  The fantasy literature tradition, which forms the basis for many fantasy settings, is dominated by writers who are influenced by (for lack of better terms) dead white guys.  These things are well beyond an individual game designer's efforts to control, so I will not focus on them either.

The issue I want to address here is what specific things game designers can do to diversify the mythic and aesthetic elements of the game world.  Time and time again I have come across "worlds" which present only a single part of it (usually the most European-looking one) as being anything of interest or importance.  In the rare games that use a different culture as the dominant one, it is quite obvious that there is more to the world than is shown.  However, the tendency is to make the game about the setting, and I'm not always interested in that.

These things by themselves don't bother me.  Middle-earth is a prime example of the type of thing I'm talking about, and I love it to death, but I want to see something different.  (Note: I know that way too many game designers try to be Tolkien in the ways they create their worlds, and this is probably a big part of the problem.)

An example of a game that does something of what I'm looking for is Fading Suns.  An example of a setting that does this is Star Wars.  I'm not exactly sure what they do that makes it work for me.  What is it that the creators of fantasy settings can learn from science fiction and space opera with regards to cultural diversity?
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Jasper on January 22, 2005, 08:05:17 PM
One thing to consider is in discussing games based primarily on a European Medieval world, we're (probably) only discussing material released in English.  So a bias in that direction would be pretty natural.  If there are people on the Forge from a non-western society, which has its own RPing publishers, we should be very interested to hear from them.  Are things similarly biased towards their own country's cultural heritage?

Of course, you're talking not about changing bias (or explaining it) but in broadening our horizons.  But if some non-western fantasy exists out there, say written in Hindi, that would give us an obviously viable alternative.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Ben Lehman on January 22, 2005, 08:28:52 PM
It's strange, 'cause it seems to me that your two positive examples (Star Wars and Fading Suns) are both terribly eurocentric.  Look at the names in the original Star Wars: Luke, Leia, Han, Darth Vader.  All European.  Look at the faces.  Fading Suns may not be "fantasy europe" but it is a setting dominated by a Catholic Church, with an edge of Victorian sentiment.  All heavily european.

This is not to say they are bad settings.  Frankly, I think that most of the "European" settings that exist do Europe pretty darn poorly.  But that might be another issue.

As game designers and as GMs, I think we need to understand why such settings are so widespread.  I think a big issue may be player indoctrination.  I have a world which extends from fairy-tale castles to Incan-inspired mountain valleys to a really cool alternate China.  But, mostly, I run games in the "Euopeanish" section (really perhaps more North African, but that's neither here nor there), because I can say to my players "You live in a mountain shepherding village" or "you live in a large, old port city" and they know what I'm talking about.  If that village was Peruvian styled, or that city was Chinese, there would need to be a lot more explaining.  An alternate setting requires a strong commitment to an existing setting bible and a really cool hook to draw people in.

As far as non-european settings, I'd take a close look at Al-Quadim and Dark Sun for 2nd ed D&D.  One is a fantasy based on the tales of a not-European culture (medevial Arabia) and one is a fantasy that, while not explicitly from anywhere, contains a lot of elements from very old Fertile Crescent cultures like Babylonia and Sumer.  Dark Sun, particularly, covers its setting elements extremely well, and has a great hook (scantily clad desert babes riding insects!)

yrs--
--Ben
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Bankuei on January 22, 2005, 10:07:45 PM
Hi guys,

I think a few things can help folks convey cultural ideas easier without necessarily having to resort to 300 pages of detailed setting information.

•Ideals

Focus on a few key values and ideals held by the culture.  Show some examples of them in tradtions or customs, and also be sure to show where they fail or are selectively applied.

•Social Power Structure

Who's on top?  All the various issues such as caste, race, gender, age, etc. can be explained.  Be sure to include if the power structure is rigid, or if there are exceptions to the rule.

•Imagery and Flavor text

Never underestimate the power of artwork and colorful text.  You can look at Trollbabe's artwork for images of empowered women and the Shadow of Yesterday for a setting that isn't primarily european.  First edition Legend of the 5 Rings had really good flavor text, particularly in any history bit or character description.

•Reference to other sources

Movies, music, books, real world cultures to look at as models, etc.  As the culture becomes more fantastic this becomes less and less applicable.

All of these methods are effective and efficient for conveying culture and setting.  Picking up almost any core White Wolf book and you can see how they build alternate "world-views" with something like 200 pages, although the basics of it are usually transmitted in 5-10 pages at most.  

Chris
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: ffilz on January 23, 2005, 04:37:26 AM
Hmm, this is an interesting topic (especially since I'm running a campaign in a npn-european setting that has been with gaming since basically the start - Tekumel). A serious problem with a non-european setting is that more verbiage is necessary to convey information than a european setting. Of course as Ben mentions, our european gaming settings don't tend to be all that true to europe either. We rely so heavily on cultural shortcuts (and D&D has a huge influence here).

I'm getting an interesting perspective because my new player is Russian. From what he talked about today, it sounds like much of the Russian gaming is LARP. Talking with him has really got me thinking that I need to do some more reading to expand my own horizons to understand Tekumel better.

Chris raises some good points. Tekumel is presented in some of those ways, but mostly not. Reading the novels helped me a lot though. The game text (especially the original EPT text) really distorts the change vs stability conflict of the Tekumel religion (from the novels, we find a priest of stability marrying a priestess of change - not what you would expect from EPT's characterization of the two sides as good and evil).

Prof. MAR Barker has also pointed out on several occaisions that the game (even the game he runs) is not real Tekumel. I suspect even his game is more european than he envisions Tekumel as being, though he is mostly referring to things like the frequency of magic items and spell casters and such in his comment.

Quote
Time and time again I have come across "worlds" which present only a single part of it (usually the most European-looking one) as being anything of interest or importance. In the rare games that use a different culture as the dominant one, it is quite obvious that there is more to the world than is shown.
Intersting observation. Tekumel, for all it's wonder and very non-europeanness really doesn't have much development outside the primary Tsolyani culture. There is recognition that there are other cultures, and there is some development of them (and I think MAR Barker knows far more about them than is published), but the amount published pales in comparison to what is published about Tsolyani culture.

So if one of the most developed settings doesn't do it, what can be done to improve the situation?

For Tekumel we could hope that when the new rules (D20 and BESM) get published that interest increases enough that MAR Barker puts out a lot of new information, on the other hand, the professor is getting on in years (I think he's in his 70s) and a LOT of information is in his head.

Frank
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Mark D. Eddy on January 23, 2005, 09:15:47 AM
There are a few other places to go:

Glorantha (HeroQuest being the current system) has a significant number of non-European style cultures, some better fleshed out than others. Some are vaguely Native American, some are vaguely Chinese, and some are -- well, unique (the Lunar "We are all Us" culture and the Uz "Uz is Uz and Dem is food" culture spring rapidly to mind).

Iron Crown Enterprises did some interesting things to Middle-Earth, including significant supplements on the Haradrim (North African-equivalent people), the Easterlings (very Slavic in nature), and some far-eastern cultures (the Wood Elves of the East are particularly strange, IIRC).

SkyRealms of Jorune is just wierd, if you can find a copy. the PCs are pre-citizens (Tauther) in an alien world (Jorune), trying to build up enough brownie points (challisks) to become citizens (citizens) of the main culture, which is basically post-apocalyptic. It's sort of a fantasy/science fiction mix.

Of some note, I think, is JadeClaw from Sanguine Press. It's the only (or, at the least, the first) English-lanuage RPG written by an Asian -- Chuan Lin is culturally Cantonese, and the book does an amazing job of reflecting the Wu Xia culture in an anthropomorphic setting. Actually, the anthropomorphic part helps sell the Asian worldview to some extent, the same way the IronClaw furries sell European classism.

I'm also with Ben in thinking that most RPGs actually do a lousy job of reflecting Medeval Europe, just so you know.
Title: Re: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on January 23, 2005, 11:27:37 AM
In his original post,
Quote from: GreenThe issue I want to address here is what specific things game designers can do to diversify the mythic and aesthetic elements of the game world.  Time and time again I have come across "worlds" which present only a single part of it (usually the most European-looking one) as being anything of interest or importance.  In the rare games that use a different culture as the dominant one, it is quite obvious that there is more to the world than is shown.  However, the tendency is to make the game about the setting, and I'm not always interested in that.
I'm a little confused about what you're asking.  At the start, it sounds like you are looking for specific steps that can be taken by game designers to make cultures, settings, etc. less Eurocentric.  At the end, you say that you're not always interested in setting.  I think I'm misreading the end part, not the start, but can you clarify?

I do have quite a lot of suggestions for how to break Eurocentric paradigms in culture/setting design, actually, but if you want specifics I need to know before I go on a tear that that's what you're looking for!  Can you help me get clear on what you want to discuss, precisely, in terms of "specific things game designers can do to diversify the mythic and aesthetic elements of the game world"?
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: NN on January 23, 2005, 11:42:05 AM
Im probably rambling, but..

Are fantasy rpgs really mostly set in medieval europe? Id say they are set in fantasy settings based on European fantasy literature, which only contain elements of medieval Europe. If you take out The Church, stick in polytheism, decrease mortality, improve literacy and prosperity, and then parachute in elves, dwarves, and orcs, how much medieval europe is left? Castle aesthetics?

I suspect that fantasy per se is a European idea - I would love to broaden my frpg horizons, by reading the Hindi Fritz Leiber, the Russian Clark Ashton Smith, or the Chinese Tolkein - but I dont think they exist.


On the practical level, game designers should probably:

stick some big physical barriers between cultures, so they can plausibly diverge extensively

and definitely:

when introducing spiffy new exotic elements, please 'ground' them in scenario and encounter ideas. Got some fantastic idea about guilds and technology? Show me the adventure.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: NN on January 23, 2005, 12:50:40 PM
Apologies if this is off-topic, but this thread has brought to mind a long standing problem ive had about creating believable fantasy cultures (and their attendant social, political, and economic structures)

How do you reconcile these stuctures with the fantastic power of individuals in a rule set like D&D? Or any system with a significant power curve?

ie: Why does Gonzo The Magnificient (20th level D&D magic user, Rune level RQ characters, etc) obey the King?  Ok, maybe this King is an Aragornesque superhero too, but what about his heir? Or his heir's heirs?

This issue might well be even greater in an unfamiliar setting, as theres no comforting warm bath of cliche to dip into.

Was Genghis Khan the mightiest warrior? And how would a pseudo-Mongol culture actually ruled by the ancient shaman look?
Title: Re: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 23, 2005, 12:53:19 PM
Quote from: clehrichAt the end, you say that you're not always interested in setting.  I think I'm misreading the end part, not the start, but can you clarify?

Certainly.  I didn't mean I wasn't always interested in setting.  What I meant is that I'm not always interested in a setting that simply swaps the medieval Europe default for another one.  In other words, I don't want the game to be about the setting.  For instance, L5R or Ars Magica.

QuoteI do have quite a lot of suggestions for how to break Eurocentric paradigms in culture/setting design, actually, but if you want specifics I need to know before I go on a tear that that's what you're looking for!  Can you help me get clear on what you want to discuss, precisely, in terms of "specific things game designers can do to diversify the mythic and aesthetic elements of the game world"?

Suggestions are fine, although I am unclear on what you mean by specifics.  I don't need specific examples of games that do the things you suggest, but I hope your suggestions aren't something vague like, "Don't forget about the brown people."
Title: Re: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Ben Lehman on January 23, 2005, 01:02:00 PM
Quote from: Green
Quote from: clehrichAt the end, you say that you're not always interested in setting.  I think I'm misreading the end part, not the start, but can you clarify?

Certainly.  I didn't mean I wasn't always interested in setting.  What I meant is that I'm not always interested in a setting that simply swaps the medieval Europe default for another one.  In other words, I don't want the game to be about the setting.  For instance, L5R or Ars Magica.

BL>  So what you want, in my reading, is to not have to work for something that requires work?  I'm missing something here, I think.

Settings that we aren't familiar with are alien, by definition.  So, if we're going to play a game in an alien setting, can't you understand that figuring out that alien setting is at least going to be one major focus of the game, if not the major focus of the game?  There is no real way around this, unless you can find another setting that the players are instinctively familiar with.  Given that your goal seems to be to stretch us into unfamiliar settings, this is really really unlikely.

Some of this is about time.  I played a lot of Dark Sun in high school.  The first 2-3 years were all about exploring the setting.  Once we had done that, we could do other sorts of things with the setting, because we had it pretty well down.  But it took time, and it was time that we had to spend as a group, ourselves.  I suspect that the other settings being held up as examples here likewise are things that people's groups played for a long, long time.

Some of this is simply that alien settings are cool!  People who are going to want to play in them are going to want to explore them.  Why else would they want to play in them, if they didn't matter?

Quote
Suggestions are fine, although I am unclear on what you mean by specifics.  I don't need specific examples of games that do the things you suggest, but I hope your suggestions aren't something vague like, "Don't forget about the brown people."

BL>  Chris is offering a really great thing here, Green.  He is very well trained in a lot of cultural studies issues, to a level so far beyond "don't forget about the brown people" that I could not tell you.  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 23, 2005, 01:04:03 PM
Quote from: NNI suspect that fantasy per se is a European idea - I would love to broaden my frpg horizons, by reading the Hindi Fritz Leiber, the Russian Clark Ashton Smith, or the Chinese Tolkein - but I dont think they exist.

There is no Hindi Fritz Leiber as far as I know, but I think the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, and the Mahayana have some wonderfully fantastic and exotic elements.  One of the Chinese Tolkiens is Wu Cheng-en, who wrote a fantasy epic called Journey to the West.  I don't know much about Russian mythology and literature, but they certainly have a rich fairy tale tradition.  I can even give you the West African Aragorn: Sundiata.  The 1001 Arabian Nights, while not an epic fantasy in the Tolkien sense, is filled with magic, mystery, and wonder.
Title: Re: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 23, 2005, 01:28:26 PM
Quote from: Ben LehmanBL>  So what you want, in my reading, is to not have to work for something that requires work?  I'm missing something here, I think.

Yes.  You keep bringing up an "alien setting" at least, purely for the sake of playing in something unfamiliar.  That's not precisely what I want.  It is not preciely unfamiliarity that I seek, but a departure from having a culture whose aesthetic, political, and social aspects are dominated by a single perspective, be they pseudo-European, pseudo-Japanese, or pseudo-Chinese.  What I want is a variety of cultural viewpoints within a single settings.  In Fading Suns, for instance, we know that the Church and the Empire (in the for of the clergy and nobility) are the dominant cultural, political, and economic force, but that doesn't mean that theirs is the only perspective included.  There are guilds which differ as much from each other as the noble houses do, and aliens who are the most different of all.  Another game that does a bit of what I'm saying is the Wheel of Time RPG.  I'm not a fan of the novels, so I can't comment that much on it, but I do remember the variety of cultural viewpoints available.


QuoteI suspect that the other settings being held up as examples here likewise are things that people's groups played for a long, long time.

Not in the least.  I haven't played Wheel of Time or Fading Suns for very long.

QuoteSome of this is simply that alien settings are cool!  People who are going to want to play in them are going to want to explore them.  Why else would they want to play in them, if they didn't matter?

I didn't say they didn't matter.  I said that I'm not interested in the game being about the culture.  L5R, for instance, is about feudal Japan.  Every character in that game is defined by how they adhere or diverge from specifically feudal Japanese norms.

QuoteChris is offering a really great thing here, Green.  He is very well trained in a lot of cultural studies issues, to a level so far beyond "don't forget about the brown people" that I could not tell you.  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth?  Maybe I'm taking this the wrong way, but that doesn't seem to me like something one would say to a person whose intelligence and point of view you respect.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 23, 2005, 01:48:03 PM
Bankuei>  Thank you for understanding.  What you have written is the sort of response I'm looking for.  Thanks.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Bankuei on January 23, 2005, 03:19:51 PM
Hi Green,

I would highly recommend looking at both HeroQuest and The Shadow of Yesterday.  

HeroQuest's setting, Glorantha is highly detailed, complex and intimidating, but if you'll notice that not only do several different cultures get their own outlook, you also get some neat interactions between the cultures and mixing.  Like in real life, cultural transmission occurs on several levels,  from domination/occupation of one group over another, cultural exchange through trade, marriage and close habitation, as well as some bits of reverse culture adoption(the dominant culture taking up some of the oppressed culture's habits).  

The Shadow of Yesterday presents several cultures, already deeply enmeshed with each other, so it is also an excellent resource to look at for groups that have been co-located for some time.  It is also a clear and easy read in regards to what each culture is about.

As far as demonstrating the multiculturalism, it is key to use the example ideas I gave before with the focus of making sure that each culture to be featured is clear, along with examples of common interactions between them.

Chris
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 23, 2005, 03:33:34 PM
Bankuei> With all the good press HQ has been getting, I definitely would have bought it by now, but I can't seem to find a copy in my FLGS.

Ben> I'm sorry for my snappy reply.  Being cooped up in the house due to snow and ice tends to make you less than amicable.
Title: Re: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: greyorm on January 23, 2005, 03:53:59 PM
Quote from: GreenThe issue I want to address here is what specific things game designers can do to diversify the mythic and aesthetic elements of the game world.
Could you clarify what you mean by "mythic elements" and "aesthetic elements"? Do you mean, for example, adding pantheons of other gods or mythologies to a setting, which are not central to the story being told? Or similar things which are mentioned in passing without ever being really used/touched on/explained in play?

QuoteHowever, the tendency is to make the game about the setting, and I'm not always interested in that.
I'm not sure I understand what, precisely, you are looking for, then. If the game is not about the setting (and thus exploration of the portrayal of the cultures in it), then why worry about detailing those cultures, if they have no impact or influence on the content of the game? What is the importance here, or rather, what is the focus on in play in terms of events?

QuoteWhat is it that the creators of fantasy settings can learn from science fiction and space opera with regards to cultural diversity?
Well, if we are talking about Star Wars, I would say it is not "other cultures" that you are actually interested in. It would seem to me that it is the mythic aspects of the setting rather than the cultural ones which you like.

I say that because Star Wars is about as "dead white guys" and Western culture as you can get. In fact, I'm not sure how it gets away from being anything but a European culture, or anything but a typical Eurocentric setting as you described not liking (the same for Fading Suns)? Could you explain?

From what you have mentioned in this thread so far, it seems to me that it is the suggestion of "stuff" "out there, somewhere" left undefined and unexplored that is of interest to you -- not in its exploration, but in its existance, because it gives more versimilitude, or more (even illusory) expansiveness to the world. Does that sound reasonable?
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on January 23, 2005, 08:46:11 PM
Okay, so I've been out shoveling snow and thinking about this -- there isn't a lot else to do while shoveling 3 feet of snow.  I then came back in and wrote up a little discussion about designing fantasy settings so they don't come out Eurocentric... but it ended up 23 pages.  So I need to fix that up, polish it, and put it up as an article.  But in the meantime, your question....

I think the first point is to recognize what we mean when we say that these settings are Eurocentric.  Green doesn't want to debate this, and neither do I.  I know what he means, and I think he's definitely right.  The basic points are:
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 23, 2005, 09:30:55 PM
clehrich,

Beautiful.  Thank you.  I'm flattered that I inspired an article, though.  I look forward to reading more of what you had in mind.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on January 23, 2005, 11:23:25 PM
Well, the article grows apace.  Sigh.

Glad you liked those points, Green.  Any particular points you want to bring up that I didn't touch, or disagreements, or things you want to expand on (or want me to expand on)?

One further point, though:

To my mind, the art of designing a really good fantasy setting, be it Eurocentric or otherwise, really resides in everyday life.  If you understand deeply how ordinary people live, in various walks of life and various parts of the world, the rest can lie gracefully over the surface.

Tolkien was extremely good at a number of things, but when it comes to everyday life it was only the hobbits he really did thoroughly.  For them, he seems to have drawn on his own country life and his idealized picture of how it should have been, how it was at its best.  But he doesn't seem to have liked cities much, if you ask me, because his cities don't seem very livable.

In order to work out a non-Eurocentric everyday life, you need to have a working knowledge of things like economics and a little anthropology.  Some cultural history of places other than home would help a lot as well.  Remember that the basic principles are always the same: food, clothing, shelter, sex, and entertainment.  The rest is gravy.

The thing that probably hits home most, of course, is sex.  If family relationships work quite differently than they do in typical imagined Euro-American cultures, everything will connect outward from that and make the whole seem quite alien and different.

This is why starting with myth and history, or religion as usually conceptualized (a bunch of gods), is unhelpful: these things don't matter to ordinary people's lives very much, at least not directly.  What you really need to know is what they eat and who they sleep with.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 24, 2005, 02:24:06 AM
clehrich,

I think that's about it.  If anybody has something else to add, I'm all for it, but I found what I was looking for.  Thanks.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Mark Woodhouse on January 25, 2005, 09:54:14 AM
Quote from: clehrich
This is why starting with myth and history, or religion as usually conceptualized (a bunch of gods), is unhelpful: these things don't matter to ordinary people's lives very much, at least not directly.  What you really need to know is what they eat and who they sleep with.

Well, I know Green said he felt his question was answered, but I did want to provide a tiny little bit of counterpoint to Chris.

The case differs somewhat when you are dealing with a certain kind of fantasy. When the 'gods' are a real thing that people encounter as a part of daily life, the direction of influence that Chris talks about can get reversed (or at least equalised somewhat). For us humans who live in a world where the gods, in so far as they might exist, are only ever operating behind the scenes and we can only hypothesize about them, the direction of social construction is as Chris describes it. We have the culture we have, built up from the messy basics of everyday life, eating, sleeping, sex, death, conflict. We rationalize a cosmic order to explain and justify it.

When that cosmic order is accesible and concrete, we may consciously try to order our culture on that model, or react against it. Essentially, the gods are part of our culture.

So take Chris's advice with a grain of salt if you are designing for a setting or game in which the supernatural is natural.

Best,

Mark

(who's working on a non-Euro fantasy setting himself)[/b]
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: NN on January 25, 2005, 12:46:37 PM
A related counterpoint: wouldnt our models of anthropological and economic organisation - European or non-European alike - also be undermined by the supernatural in a  high-magic world?

Id think that if its a high-magic world, have different game mechanics for magic and religion in the different cultures. You may want a unifying logic, and a "true" cosmology behind the variety, but keep it hidden from the players, and dont let any one culture get to close to the truth.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: greyorm on January 25, 2005, 06:59:08 PM
Yes, that whole "how common people react to religion" statement is something I wanted to address as well: Chris is talking about how things work in a culture very much like our own, or that of our direct ancestors, but I do not consider it a good base model to work from in all or most instances.

If you take older cultures, and some other not-so-older cultures, as your baseline, the idea that the common person will react to religion as something "only them there priests worry about, but say your prayers cause dad did" breaks down as a good model.

Let us take a culture like that of the traditional Ojibwe people, instead. In such, religion is something the common people do pay a very great amount of attention to, because it is intertwined with one's very life. For example, the Ojibwe have a saying, "Everything I do is a prayer." And this is very much true -- there is a spiritual, religious, ritualized aspect to every action, from waking up to sleeping, to greeting one's neighbors, to asking to play a game with friends.

You would no sooner fail to perform the proper rituals, and more importantly, no sooner fail to understand why you were performing these rituals, than you would fail to breathe.

The ancient Norse pagan culture is another much like this, where religion is in the hands of the individual people, not the "priests", and life is structured according to codes of honor and behavior dependent upon what the Gods have said is the proper way to act. Similarly, and in the same general section of the world, you have the Lapps.

The whole "religion is what dad did, and that's why" attitude comes from urbanization and progress, rather than some inherent property of people. Once you move back to more tribalistic cultures (perhaps because they are survival-oriented) -- like the Ojibwe, and like the Norse -- you find that the religion practiced is vitally and immediately important to the people, as much as anything else physical and immediate (like growing food, hunting game, and building shelter).

I might also go into various Muslim cultures and subcultures as a counterpoint to Chris' idea of how to build religion into a culture, but I think everyone understands my point.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on January 25, 2005, 07:18:53 PM
Mark and NN:

You do bring up an interesting point.  However, at the base level, I still think clehrich's advice applies.  Even when experiencing the same event, people tend to have wildly divergent ideas on exactly what is happening and why.  Take UFOs, for instance.

If you put magic into the equation, any number of things can result, depending upon your point of view.  It can be a divine gift, a taboo (things mankind was not meant to tamper with), a curse, a sign of supernatural origins, a natural force, etc.  One, some, or all of these may be true for a given culture.  

For a non-European model of magic, consider Africa.  In Africa, you generally have two forms of magic.  The first type of magician is a medium.  They interact with spirits for the benefit of the community.  The second type of magician is a sorcerer, who uses his abilities in malevolent ways.  What's interesting here is that sorcerers are not banished or harrassed into leaving since it's generally held that angering a sorcerer is not a good idea.  I'm not saying that people never got fed up with a particular sorcerer and took matters into their own hands, but there was never something like the Inquisition.  This creates some interesting dynamics in a culture that has a perspective on magic.  You can't simply kill or banish sorcerer, especially since they can come back as spirits.  You have to neutralize their powers or appease them in some way.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on January 25, 2005, 10:47:08 PM
We're getting a bit afield, but Green seems pretty easy about whether we're debating something useful, so....
Quote from: greyormYes, that whole "how common people react to religion" statement is something I wanted to address as well: Chris is talking about how things work in a culture very much like our own, or that of our direct ancestors, but I do not consider it a good base model to work from in all or most instances.
Hang on a sec -- you're reacting out of context.
Quote from: IAssume that if there is only one religion, it is a state religion, an important function of which is to maintain and stabilize royal or other centralized power. Assume that ordinary people don't pay a lot of attention to any of this, and mostly offer bits of food or whatever to the appropriate gods because they sort of think they ought to and it's what dad always did and besides, it brings you good luck.
The point is that if you are doing a quick setup and saying, "Okay, the Hargin all worship Byali," you're not talking about everyday life.  You're talking about state religion, some sort of big institutional structure.  What folks actually do, day to day, does not look very much like what the priests claim the worship of Byali is really fundamentally necessarily about -- because for them, it's big ritual supporting the governmental structure.

Which leads us to...
QuoteIf you take older cultures, and some other not-so-older cultures, as your baseline, the idea that the common person will react to religion as something "only them there priests worry about, but say your prayers cause dad did" breaks down as a good model.

Let us take a culture like that of the traditional Ojibwe people, instead. In such, religion is something the common people do pay a very great amount of attention to, because it is intertwined with one's very life. For example, the Ojibwe have a saying, "Everything I do is a prayer." And this is very much true -- there is a spiritual, religious, ritualized aspect to every action, from waking up to sleeping, to greeting one's neighbors, to asking to play a game with friends.
First of all, a flat correction: not to be snarky, Raven, but this has nothing to do with "older" anything.  The Ojibwe culture is in no sense older than, say, Sumer, where what you had was state institutionalized religion.

But your real point, and it's a very good one, is that tribal culture and in fact everyday religion for ordinary folks is much more complex than I make out.  This is true -- but it's also possible to reverse the Ojibwe statement and have it be equally valid: rather than say that playing games and eating and such has a religious aspect, you can also say that their religion is made up of playing games and eating and so forth.

What difference does that make, you ask?  Well, I don't know whether you folks are going to like this.  But if you had asked the Ojibwe these same questions about 200 or so years back, the answer would not have been the same.  They would have said, "Eh?  What the hell are you talking about?"  They don't have this separate category we call religion at all.  They do now, because we kept telling them they ought to.  Part of colonialism, actually.

See, what they've got is a system of a lot of interwoven elements.  They're quite tightly wound.  And it's not the case that one block can be set apart and labeled "religion" as a distinct entity.  That's really just not the way that sort of culture works -- or that sort of religion.

But practically speaking, if you're going to set up a fantasy universe, I doubt very much whether you want to get into this.  I figure there is a certain basic comfort level, and without falling smack into Eurocentrism we can't go running too far afield.  So how about gods and institutional religion?  Nothing European about that, especially -- it's quite big all over.  And that allows cities (they do go together), and writing (ditto), and all that good stuff we usually like in fantasies.  The crucial point in avoiding the cheez-whiz "All the Hargin are very devout and they believe X, Y, and Z" monoculture racist tripe is to recognize that folks don't always actually do what the elites (including priests) say they do.

Could you set up a bunch of really serious complicated tribal cultures and let 'er rip?  Sure.  Sounds like a blast to me -- surely that's obvious by now?  I mean, after all that yattering about myth in South America and such?  But is anyone going to play this?  I mean, who's going to sit down and think his way into a really complicated tribal culture like this that is so fundamentally alien to everything you think you know, all the most basic categories and so on, that it takes you weeks just to get oriented?

One last remark:
QuoteYou would no sooner fail to perform the proper rituals, and more importantly, no sooner fail to understand why you were performing these rituals, than you would fail to breathe.
Depends what you mean by "understand."  Understand what?  Why you're doing this?  Meaning, you can provide an account, an explanation, on demand, for this?  I'm afraid the evidence is flatly against this.  One of the first things that the great founders of fieldwork anthropology discovered was that people happily provide such accounts.  And they don't agree at all.  And some people say, a lot in fact, "Um, what do you mean?  Why do I do this?  I don't know, because that's how you do it, dummy."  So which is the right explanation?  Nobody's.  Everyone's right, and everyone's wrong.  And that's why folks actually mostly do their own thing and don't agonize about these sorts of issues.  Some people spend their whole lives agonizing about this sort of thing -- and a lot of them end up (or are already) priests, shamans, witch-doctors, etc.  But most folks do it because they do it.  Why should they spend more time thinking about it?

See, if you think that it's special and good and wonderful to focus on religion, to believe and worship and pray 24/7, because that's what really being spiritual is all about, THAT's Eurocentric.  That's a fundamentally Eurocentric conception of what religion ought to be -- a specifically Protestant one, in fact.  And it's one of the most pervasive myths we've sold to tribal peoples all around the colonial world, which is to say pretty much everywhere we got a chance to do it:  if you, the natives, tell us you live that way, we will give you honor and respect, although we will still maltreat you horribly in other ways.  But we're not going to kill you, because of your deep and wonderful wisdom.  Whereas if you say, "Um, we pretty much get on with things, and yes of course the spirits are important, why wouldn't they be? and incidentally that belt you're holding is kind of sacred so would you mind not picking at it?" then we will assume you're a bunch of illiterate savages.

Folks are folks.  The person who is mindful of the broader picture surrounding everything he does at all times doesn't exist -- or at the very least, he's extremely unusual in any culture.

Oh -- a last one.

Raven is dead right about Islam.  Everyone, go back and re-read that last paragraph from him.  Islam has institutionalized religion and all that, but it does not work the way it does here.  At the same time, most Muslims get on with their lives and don't worry about it all that much, but there is no question that the power-relations among clerical and governmental authorities are very, very dissimilar to the West.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on January 25, 2005, 11:05:41 PM
Quote from: Mark WoodhouseThe case differs somewhat when you are dealing with a certain kind of fantasy. When the 'gods' are a real thing that people encounter as a part of daily life, the direction of influence that Chris talks about can get reversed (or at least equalised somewhat). For us humans who live in a world where the gods, in so far as they might exist, are only ever operating behind the scenes and we can only hypothesize about them, the direction of social construction is as Chris describes it. We have the culture we have, built up from the messy basics of everyday life, eating, sleeping, sex, death, conflict. We rationalize a cosmic order to explain and justify it.

When that cosmic order is accesible and concrete, we may consciously try to order our culture on that model, or react against it. Essentially, the gods are part of our culture.
I have to say I rather doubt this.  If the gods walk among us, not conceptually but actually, they're people.  Not quite people like us, but people.  And that means they're part of the system.  To be sure, the system has to bend somewhat from the way it usually works here in the West, but not really all that much.

A nice example that fits both this and Raven's discussion comes from the Hopi.  As you probably know, they live in pueblos on mesas, in dense towns or cities, and they in some sense or other worship a bunch of spirits known as Kachina.  They also have other spiritual beings around, but let's stick to Kachina for a minute.

Now the Kachina do walk among the Hopi.  All the time.

If you look at it from adult eyes, what you have is some specially trained men, initiated into special highly secret cults (I mean secret -- they don't let this stuff be known to anyone, ever), who put on the sacred costumes and masks and walk within the cities for any number of complicated reasons, still very poorly understood.  

But the Hopi are adamant about this: they are not men dressed as Kachinas, but Kachinas themselves.

Now I said that about "adult eyes" not because I mean the Hopi are a bunch of children.  What Sam Gill discusses in a famous article (though he was not the first) is the fact that the adults in the community go to extraordinary lengths to prevent their children from ever thinking, even for a moment, that those are men dressed up.  Ever.  This isn't Santa Claus: they are dead serious about this.  And so the children genuinely live in a world where the Kachina walk among the Hopi, as they always have.

Then there is the first adulthood initiation, when the children are about 12 or so.  This is EVERY Hopi child, by the way; the initiations are held about every two years so you have quite a large group doing it together, boys and girls mixed.  They go through classic liminal rites: mild torture, starvation, sleep-deprivation, weird clothing, etc.  They get really seriously worked up.  These kids are taken to about the edge of their sanity, and it's all about the Kachina.  And finally, they gather them all into a special sacred room.

The drums pound.  The chanting begins.  It's the middle of the night and the kids are a total mental and physical wreck.  And then the Kachinas come in and dance.  A serious, wild dance.  A frenzy.  And at the crowning big moment, they whip off their masks and reveal their human faces.  You know, "Hey, that's Uncle Dave, not a Kachina!"

Native testimony is unanimous: this is a horribly traumatic experience.  It is world-shattering.  The children in some sense never recover from this.  But they all, unanimously, sign on to keeping the secret from the younger children.  All of them.

So....

What do the Hopi mean when they say that these are Kachina, not men dressed as Kachina -- and when they say this to each other and to outside observers?  They are quite serious.  This is not a game or a deception, and this is one of the least damaged and altered tribal cultures we have in North America.  How can they say this and mean it?

Do the Kachina walk amongst the Hopi?





Please sit down and turn that over in your mind very slowly.  I am dead serious about this.

---
If I were doing this sort of thing in a fantasy game, I would have the great revelation be this: the gods are only gods, nothing more.  That's the great secret, the thing that makes the difference between adults and children.  The children think the gods are something really amazingly special and different.  The adults know that the gods are just gods, not like us but really a lot like us, and that life goes on.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: apparition13 on February 05, 2005, 03:47:49 AM
Clerich asked:

QuoteDo the Kachina walk amongst the Hopi?

I would say in the Hopi reality tunnel, yes.  Out side the viewpoint the situation is ambiguous, unlike the footprint that used to be your vegetable patch before  Paul Bunyan and Blue decided to go for a stroll.
QuoteIf I were doing this sort of thing in a fantasy game, I would have the great revelation be this: the gods are only gods, nothing more. That's the great secret, the thing that makes the difference between adults and children. The children think the gods are something really amazingly special and different. The adults know that the gods are just gods, not like us but really a lot like us, and that life goes on.

This is certainly a great idea for a fantasy campaign, but  I think the point Mark Woodhouse was making is that assumptions about the relationships between gods, religion and society could be vastly different if gods are unambiguously manifest in the setting.  When the demons of Khorne are pounding on the gates of Kislev religion has an immiediacy we don't experience.  Life doesn't just go on when religious epiphanies are daily occurances, or more accurately it does go on, but not in any way we are familiar with.  As an example, when I first encountered Glorantha I thought it was a setting that was all about what life would be like when politics, culture are determined by religion and ethnicity and even species are rendered immaterial by cult affiliation.  All Swords of Humakt are brothers in arms, whether duck, troll, dwarf, or anything else.  I then discovered this wasn't quite what the case, but I'd still like to see it done.


Hey Green, just a couple caveats before beddy-bye,  I can go into more detail if you like.  Clerich's post (3rd from the top) is a work of art and the best world building advice I've yet encountered.  Religion has already been alluded to, I'd like to add magic and non-humans to the list.  

How widespread is magic?  What is it capable of?  Who wields it?  How powerful is it?  This can turn societal norms we are familiar with on their heads.    For example, some (if not all, not my area of expertise) of the prevelance of patriarchal societies can be attributed to greater physical capacity for violence (ie:  bigger and stronger).  Access to magic can render the size and strength difference moot, leading to egalitarian or even matriarchal (if females have more access to magic) societies.  

With regard to non-humans, the questions I ask are what do they eat, when are they active, how are they organized, what are their mating patterns, what do they value.  I usually have a vague impression of where I'm going, but I find mating patterns to be the most useful place to start.  For example, what would Ogres be like if they were organized like gorillas, with a much larger male controlling a harem of a few smaller (for ogres) females with solitary males wandering about looking for an opportunity to displace a "silverback" ogre.  What if dwarves were somewhat like elephants, with females living with children and adolescents and males on their own, at least until they have proved themselves fit (no wonder you never see dwarf women, and that's why they are always after gold)?  What if goblins are hive animals, with one or more queens, one or more males and many drones (invariably female in all existing eusocial insect species, both sexes in naked mole rats), all female?  Bear in mind intra-species warfare between ant hives are frequently wars of extermination that make human ethnic cleansing seem mild by comparison.  Or my personal favorite, what if Hobbits/halflings/kender were like bonobos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo)?

I suppose my ultimate advice would be to take clerich's post as a foundation, and add your own twists at various points to personalize your world.  

night.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on February 05, 2005, 04:19:22 AM
Quote from: apparition13
Quote from: IIf I were doing this sort of thing in a fantasy game, I would have the great revelation be this: the gods are only gods, nothing more. That's the great secret, the thing that makes the difference between adults and children. The children think the gods are something really amazingly special and different. The adults know that the gods are just gods, not like us but really a lot like us, and that life goes on.
This is certainly a great idea for a fantasy campaign, but  I think the point Mark Woodhouse was making is that assumptions about the relationships between gods, religion and society could be vastly different if gods are unambiguously manifest in the setting.  When the demons of Khorne are pounding on the gates of Kislev religion has an immiediacy we don't experience.  Life doesn't just go on when religious epiphanies are daily occurances, or more accurately it does go on, but not in any way we are familiar with.  As an example, when I first encountered Glorantha I thought it was a setting that was all about what life would be like when politics, culture are determined by religion and ethnicity and even species are rendered immaterial by cult affiliation.  All Swords of Humakt are brothers in arms, whether duck, troll, dwarf, or anything else.  I then discovered this wasn't quite what the case, but I'd still like to see it done. [emphasis added]
Actually, I quite take your and Mark's points.  What I'm trying to get at, and not doing it very well, is that the crucial point is everyday life.  See, if encounters with the gods or demons or whatever is everyday life, then that everyday life looks really different; as you say, it's not at all what we are familiar with.  My contention is that if those things are everyday life, then they are everyday life.  I know that sounds like a dodge, or a non-statement, but it's quite a big point.

In a great many fantasy settings, when the gods come and talk to you it's a big religious epiphany.  Basically it's constructed on the model of a miraculous event, an insertion of the Hand of God.  But if this happens every few days, it's just one of those things that happens.  It should be taken seriously, sure, but so should a lot of things.

I think one of the most elegant versions of this I have ever seen is Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Arete.  Basically the main character forgets everything, and he also sees gods.  To him, because he doesn't know better, they're just weird people.  Interesting, important, meaningful people, somehow more powerful or something than other people, but they're people.  You don't just yatter on at them, because something about them tells you that they are Other, but the main character never really quite gets that they are gods, that their otherness is something normal people worship at a remove.  He just doesn't really have that remove, because for him, they are everyday life again.

I think that following up the miraculous-as-everyday thing makes the "miraculous" something quite other than how we, in the West, think of it.  It's just how life works, you know?  And what I meant about the Hopi was that adult life is recognizing that the Kachina do indeed walk in the streets, and that they are also your uncle, and that these things do not at all contradict one another.  Just because he's your uncle doesn't mean you go up and ask him to lend you five bucks.  That's a Kachina there, you know?  That's a powerful godlike spirit.  You don't mess around.  But he's also your uncle.

It's often been claimed that fear made the gods; it's an old Latin tag I could quote but won't.  The thing is, that's not especially common outside the West.  As Durkheim correctly noted, a more common way of looking at the gods is as a kind of extreme older brother.  They look after you, they're bigger than you, they're more powerful and probably more important than you.  But deep down, they're family.  And it seems to me that if you have gods running around all over the place, they become family, or friends, or enemies, or whatever.  They don't stop being gods, but they're also folks.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: apparition13 on February 06, 2005, 12:24:58 AM
clerich wrote:
QuoteWhat I'm trying to get at, and not doing it very well, is that the crucial point is everyday life. See, if encounters with the gods or demons or whatever is everyday life, then that everyday life looks really different; as you say, it's not at all what we are familiar with. My contention is that if those things are everyday life, then they are everyday life. I know that sounds like a dodge, or a non-statement, but it's quite a big point.

(emphasis mine)  Nope, clouds part.  To paraphrase, what we are familiar with is "everyday life", what you are refering to is "everyday life, version 1.1 the gods are amongst us".  The details of what is experienced would be different, as they are for us and our medieval ancestors, but the psychology of everday life (another day, another dollar;  same shit, different day etc.) would be the same.  So the rabbit god in the carrot patch again, wouldn't be a source of wonder and awe but frustration and "honey, I thought you propitiated him this week".  About right?  If it is I'd hazard a guess that we are talking about the same thing, just viewed through differenct lenses.  The way I see it, the more lenses the better.  I believe my confusion stemmed from the use of system in this extract:
QuoteIf the gods walk among us, not conceptually but actually, they're people. Not quite people like us, but people. And that means they're part of the system.

with system, as political system, implied in section 6 of your original post in this sentence:
QuoteAssume that if there is only one religion, it is a state religion, an important function of which is to maintain and stabilize royal or other centralized power.

Combine "system" with "people" and I think politics, hence the misunderstanding.
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: clehrich on February 06, 2005, 12:49:47 AM
Quote from: apparition13Nope, clouds part.  To paraphrase, what we are familiar with is "everyday life", what you are refering to is "everyday life, version 1.1 the gods are amongst us".  The details of what is experienced would be different, as they are for us and our medieval ancestors, but the psychology of everday life (another day, another dollar;  same shit, different day etc.) would be the same.  So the rabbit god in the carrot patch again, wouldn't be a source of wonder and awe but frustration and "honey, I thought you propitiated him this week".  About right?  If it is I'd hazard a guess that we are talking about the same thing, just viewed through differenct lenses.  The way I see it, the more lenses the better.
I'm assuming that you're being facetious, and that my cracking up at the remark on the rabbit god was intended.  Because I don't actually mean that it's necessarily quite that everyday, but I think we're on the same page, right?
QuoteI believe my confusion stemmed from the use of system in this extract:
QuoteIf the gods walk among us, not conceptually but actually, they're people. Not quite people like us, but people. And that means they're part of the system.
with system, as political system, implied in section 6 of your original post in this sentence:
QuoteAssume that if there is only one religion, it is a state religion, an important function of which is to maintain and stabilize royal or other centralized power.
Combine "system" with "people" and I think politics, hence the misunderstanding.
Hang on a sec, I'm having a little trouble parsing here.  I'm not going to do a Ralph Cramden "I said that you said that I said..." thing, because that'll make it worse.  Best I can do: here is what you had thought I said:
QuoteThe point is that the gods become politicians
Have I got that right?

In which case, no wonder you thought this a little odd!

Sorry.  I have been thinking rather too much about the issue of constructing fantasy settings since this thread first began, and a lot of the way I'm going about it weaves through various kinds of Marx-influenced ways of thinking about culture and society.  So when I said "system" I did mean politics, but you have to remember that for the Marxian crew, everything is politics.  Just because of the peculiar range of things I've been reading, the phrase "everyday life" is strongly colored for me with a Marxian tinge --- I'm thinking M. De Certeau, L. Febvre, H. Harootunian, etc.  So yes, because the gods are people they are political actors, but no, I don't mean that in a narrow sense.  I mean that the common conception we have of gods and spirits is that they are outside whatever system it is that we are living in and constructing and being constructed by; if the gods walk among us all the time, they are no longer outside the system but part of it, just like all of us, all the time.

My impression is that we're pretty much on an even keel here, yes?
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: Green on February 06, 2005, 01:12:31 AM
The discussion about the influence deities would have on everyday life if they manifested all the time is interesting, but I would prefer to keep things on topic and read about gods walking amongst us in another thread.

To bring the discussion to a more relevant point, I believe that going beyond the Western understanding of spirituality is indeed a great way to break away from the default Eurocentric cultural model.  In particular, moving from the transcendant to the immanent spiritual perspective changes the way people view their place in the world.  I agree with Chris in that immanent divinity would lead people to deal with gods and spirits as family and neighbors rather than beings completely beyond our understanding and experience.  A parallel example I can think of is a person who has been able to see and speak to spirits since childhood.  Regardless of what you believe about spirits, the person who sees them perceives and interacts with them much like they would anybody else.  The rules of interaction and the manner of contact may be different, but no more different than using a telephone or the internet to contact someone.

As far as magic and non-humans, I think what we must be careful of (and what is more or less what has been said throughout this thread) is making assumptions about how they work.  If we assume that non-humans are simply biological variations of humans or other animals, or that magic is a force that can be quantified like gravity or electricity, we run the risk of making everything just like it already is.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that you cannot answer questions about magic and non-human entities until you define magic and what makes non-human entities the way they are.  I'm not saying that completely disregarding real history and real science is the goal, but I think we should use these as springboards rather than boundaries.  For instance, something I've considered is making photon-based life forms that loosely correspond to angels, devas, and fairies.  Rather than spending so much time finding reasons why it can or can't exist, I'm more interested in exploring the natural, social, and metaphysical ramifications of this idea.

Otherwise, why play fantasy?
Title: fantasy settings and cultural pluralism
Post by: CPXB on February 06, 2005, 11:48:27 AM
Quote from: GreenTo bring the discussion to a more relevant point, I believe that going beyond the Western understanding of spirituality is indeed a great way to break away from the default Eurocentric cultural model.  In particular, moving from the transcendant to the immanent spiritual perspective changes the way people view their place in the world.  I agree with Chris in that immanent divinity would lead people to deal with gods and spirits as family and neighbors rather than beings completely beyond our understanding and experience.
I think it is very wrong to conflate the Christian worldview with the Western.  Prior to Christianity, European pagans very much treated spirits as entities that they walked with on a day to day basis.  Confucious would find pre-Christian Roman spirituality both comprehensible and proper.

It is very hard, I think, to define what makes a spiritual belief "Western" or "Eastern".  One would think that Buddhism could make for the archetype of Eastern philosophy and its differences from Western philosophy; but the most common form of Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, formed because of the contact of Sogdianian and Bactrian Buddhists with Hellenized kings (such as in "The Questions of King Milinda").  Likewise, many people have noticed that in the words of Jesus strongly resemble certain Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and speculate the 12 years of his life that the Bible doesn't mention could well be him traveling into the East.

As another example of what I'm talking about, you said that your first post that Star Wars is an example of the sort of thing you're referring to.  When the first SW movie came out -- I guess we're calling it episode 4, now -- my father got me a book called "The Force of Star Was" which treats the movie as a Christian allegory.  And much of the brouhaha over more recent movies has been the percieved racism in the orientalism of the badguys (esp. in ep 1 with the, what?  Trade Consortium?) and the whole Jar-Jar Binks fiasco.  My point being that many people don't take Star Wars as an example of Eastern-style mysticism (heck, considering how Lucas fails to understand the topic I'm pretty glad for this) and very much see racism in his percieved orientalism and depiction of some aliens.

In a more practical matter, in my experience in trying to run games with non-Western perspectives (something that I nigh constantly do in fantasy games) is very hard because few players really have an interest in attempting to understand non-Western cultures.  IME, they don't much want to do it.