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Grudge Immortal: Reflections
🕑 Added 2020-06-22 14:34:51 +0000 UTCHi everyone!
This is a post I've been meaning to write for quite a while. It's gonna get somewhat long, I think, and it's okay if you don't want to read through all of it. In fact, have a TL;DR:
I have come to the conclusion that the adventure module "Grudge Immortal" no longer represents who I am and who I want to be as an author. Regardless of my design intentions when I wrote it back in 2017, its contents now strike me as problematic and as enabling racially-charged, colonialist play.
I will not remove the module, which will instead be available to read for everyone (a pdf version can be found at the end of this post); but I am no longer comfortable profiting from it in any way.
Okay, now that you know what we're gonna talk about here, let's get started. First of all, I think a content warning is in order: we'll talk about internalized racism, lack of safety tools and mechanics in games, colonialist undertones, and orientalism.
I also want to explain what guided me in this re-evaluation of my previous work: this wouldn't have been possible without the extremely informing series "Asians Read AD&D Oriental Adventures", produced by The Asians Represent Podcast crew. Their patience and thoroughness have been impressive, and to top it off they're also fun to listen to.
And finally, I want to tell you why I chose to make this a lengthy, publicly available post. It's because this is a textbook example of why we, as game writers, need to stop thinking we can work on things on our own, especially when our writing draws from cultural elements that aren't our own. I may be Italian and not American, but at the end of the day I am still a white western person and surrounded by biases of all kinds.
It's true, when I worked on Grudge Immortal I had no means of contacting or affording sensitivity readers and/or advice from native Japanese historians and consultants - but you know what? I firmly believe that my best choice would have been to not write this module.
Instead, I arrogantly believed that I had done enough research, that I was "aware" enough to make it clean and respectful. And I did put effort into it, for months, this is not something I'm gonna deny - but the key part of this is that regardless of my original intention, my actions led to poor and potentially harmful results. It's not enough to mean well.
Now, many of you probably haven't read the module, or have read it but don't recall the details. Perhaps you spotted some of these problematic elements, perhaps you - just like me at the time - can't see them because of your perspective.
So I'm gonna list a few (there's A LOT MORE), and explain why they make me want to punch myself in the face.
Lack of Content Warning and safety tools.
I'll start from this very simple, but very serious problem. The scenario features gore, implied violence against children, violence against people, and many similar horrible things. This is simply part of Lamentations of the Flame Princess' milieu, but the fact I clearly didn't take into account that a random person might pick this up and come into contact with those topics. I did put a content warning on the DriveThruRPG page, but that's not enough.
And in general, I now firmly believe those topics should never be part of a game without proper safety tools (such as Lamentations itself).
Use of the word "Exotic".
This should really, really be avoided whenever possible. It immediately assumes a Western gaze.
Use of the term "eastern".
Describing a Japanese element as "eastern" supports the idea that Asia can be conflated into a blurry "Far East" of sorts. Why did I not simply say "Japanese" when describing something Japanese? Simply put, my brain clearly registered "eastern" as an acceptable synonym for Japanese. Which is fucked up.
Colonialist point of view.
When I wrote Grudge Immortal, I chose to have the PCs be non-Japanese. This was meant to be an innovation, a way to avoid the Rokugan trap of turning Asian characters into caricatures. And since the scenario is ultimately a situation in which greed is punished, it also felt like a "lesson". Colonialism bad, yes.
But with the way I wrote and presented the content, I am achieving the opposite result (which I now find obvious, but the fact that a couple years ago I thought otherwise is very telling).
I say that the characters can "emerge victorious" (p. 7) from the scenario, and most of the time I present the adventure location, Takashima, as "an opportunity to be seized". Which I now realize is inevitable when you write an OSR module: this is a gaming style that is intrinsically charged with colonialism.
A good way to tell how I now feel about these topics is to look at a recent game I made, Death Spiral, which is a "hopeless dungeon crawl". Death Spiral codifies the wrongs and folly of "murderhobos" into its setting and mechanics. It leaves no room for doubt; and when it comes to colonialism, there should be no room for doubt.
Asian people as "other".
Obviously, the Player Characters are assumed to speak and understand very little Japanese. From a design perspective, this was meant to make the players feel even more isolated, without the ability to easily communicate. It was meant to be a challenge. But in the end, and again, due to the type of game this is, this design choice backfires into turning the locals into sacks of Hit Points that you can't even have a conversation with. There is nothing in the module that humanizes them - in fact, most of them are already dead and no one is portrayed in a particularly good light.
Ascribing homosexuality to the "other" and the "enemy".
When I placed a homosexual couple in the adventure (the pirates Daichi and Hikaru), I thought I was doing a good thing. That I was normalizing.
However, these characters are enemies, adversaries, and raiders; add to this the previous point, and we have homosexuals presented as "foreign adversaries and almost impossible to understand."
Presenting Asian people as evil, weak, or in need of salvation.
I am borrowing from the words of Steve and Daniel from The Asians Represent Podcast here. These were some of the major trends they focused on while reading Oriental Adventures, and I can say that Grudge Immortal presents traces of this.
The people of Takashima are reclusive, they've been offering children to an unknown water entity for thirty years (seriously? thirty fucking years? this is dumb), they are greedy, but they also fell victim to the creatures from beneath the island.
The Japanese pirates, while led by a capable and somewhat honorable man, are still greedy, disobedient, opportunistic, and need the Player Characters to properly man the ship and leave the island.
Harmful female representation and stereotypes.
There's the corpse of a "local madwoman" in the woods. That's it, I don't even spend some time explaining why she got ousted from the community. I could've written about how she and others tried to fight against the traditions on the island, but no. She is clearly there simply to justify the presence of a folklore spirit, the Yonaki Baba, in the module.
And then there's the obligatory kusari-gama-wielding female pirate. Of course.
I also want to spend a few words on a sentence that I can't believe I wrote without realizing the possible implications. The description of the Yonaki Baba mentions that: "She is not undead, and whatever is done to the corpse of the madwoman in the woods will not affect the hag." Now, the purpose of this sentence was to say that even if you destroy that body, you don't destroy the apparition. But I don't think I have to point out how this sentence can be read as something very, very different.
Orientalism, otherization, fetishization.
There's several places where I still use terms like "bizarre" and "uncommon" to describe stuff that is very much part of daily Sengoku Japanese life. Again, the assumption of a western eye is highly problematic.
I also have to mention how a lot of scenario elements (the onibi, or the structure of the island temple, or the clothing worn by the priestess) largely don't make sense in such a small island, and are quite clearly placed there to showcase my research and knowledge, and for no other reason. Which, it's great that I researched that, but in an effort to show off I made those portrayals harmful.
IN CONCLUSION...
Many of these issues I realize come from the mental paradigm that I was following at the time - a paradigm that I chose to follow. The dynamics of survival horror and dungeon crawling naturally lead to otherization, objectification, and the general perception that everything and everyone is either an obstacle to overcome or an asset to take advantage of. The inability to fully communicate with NPCs only reinforces this, as do the many "hints and hooks" that regularly revolve around "what can be obtained by interacting with this or that person or object".
The point of this whole wall of text is that I remember my vision for Grudge Immortal very well: I had goals of inclusivity, respect for the historical context, non-fetishization, and a genuine desire to see readers become curious and research the various inspirations I had drawn from. And yet, this was the (disappointing and harmful) outcome.
My heart was perhaps in the right place, but I lacked the sensibility, awareness and ability to recognize my own limits as a person and as a creator. While I don't regret the effort I put into this and the lessons learned, I can certainly say that this product no longer represents me, and that it would be hypocritical of me to keep profiting from it.
So the next time you dismiss the thought of hiring someone to check your work and identify harmful aspects of it because "Come on, there's no way I could write something that bad", think again.
We all need to be better than we are.
That's it, this is basically all I wanted to say for now.
I'll be open to discussion of these topics in private (either via Patreon messages, Discord private messages, or any other means of one-on-one communication). If you want to develop your own idea and criticism of this work, you can download it below; but I honestly think you should first check out the playlist from Asians Represent.
Thank you for your understanding.
Emanuele
