East Meets West

You ever have this problem with asian people?

They just DO NOT understand the christian mythos. They treat demons as they would any other spirit, they do not understand the good/evil dichotomy and fall back on their shinto and taoist traditions.

This tends to creep into other aspects of roleplaying as well, as they consistantly see things in shades of grey instead of black and white. While this may be more true to life, I think its detrimental to western fantasy.

How do I explain the concept of eternal damnation, earthly corruption and absolute evil to people who grew up with traditions revolving around Buhdist Reincarnation, Earthly Shinto Spirituality and Taoist relativism?

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Tbqh from your description eastern fantasy sounds vastly more interesting.

Eternal Damnation is failing your ultimate master in God. God=Master. That should solve all issues quickly.

That's right. Don't you want to come to Gensokyo with us?

>You ever have this problem with asian people?

their cars keep bumping into mine

Fuck off, Touhoufag.

Thats almost entirely besides the point. There are plenty of RPG's with eastern settings that you could play if you wanted that flavor.

What I'm saying is that I want you stop pouring soy sauce on vanilla icecream, not that I don't want to try chocolate

You first.

I feel like this post is a clever joke that went over my head. You know that feeling when you're watching a movie and everyone else in the theater is laughing but you don't understand why? I'm getting that feeling.

>not that I don't want to try chocolate

Or, you know, chow mein. whatever analogy works for you.

I get that feeling everytime i hang out with a group of asian people. Its like they are all in on a gag that i'm unaware of.

I always get the feeling as though I am somehow being inappropriate, though no one will tell me why.

Give us back our fairies: they don't even belong in your setting!

thats an entirely different problem.

me on the left :3

>Gensokyo
Its called Arcadia you weeaboo faggot

Is that an edited copypasta? I'd like to see the original.

No, this isn't copy/pasta, this is my original post. Why, is this somehow funny to you?

We're all friendly here~

No, I don't have this problem.
And you don't either so no use pretending your "that guy" is an Asian guy who's cultural somehow prevented him from being exposed to fantasy media over the last fifty years.

Shit, there's evil demons all over the place in Chinese turn-based RPG's like Xuan Yuan Sword and Chinese Paladin.

No.

Fuck you.

Thats some Politically Correct BULLSHIT and you know it. These are deep epistemological concepts and there is a vast cultural divide between the east and west in this regard, and there is nothing racist or insensitive about pointing this out and trying to address it.

Most people can't understand ANY of the concepts I've listed, so it should really come as no surprise that someone from a different culture might have trouble understanding ideas or concepts from another culture unless you are relying on the most shallow interpretation of those ideas.

>People are dumb except for ME!
ok

>Cultural differences doesn't exist -You

Kami and other spirits from asian mythos are completely ephemeral. One minute they are an ancient evil, the next they are your best friend. Asianianic peoples tend to lack any reverence towards spirits, good evil or otherwise, and play them up for comedy as much as anything else.

Spirits to them are as mundane as any earthly appliance or refrigerator, they are just THERE, permeating the environment, and even when they are meant to be taken seriously, people usually do so out of fear or fraternal respect rather than awe.

A lot of this has to do with rationalism and the white washing of their cultures, (and this has taken its toll on our own western mythos as well) but its really prevalent in eastern storytelling, to the point where its almost its own trope.

Yes, plagiarists usually are.

I get what you did there, OP.

No one else seems to.

But I get you.

10/10

Eternal damnation = becoming a malicious spirit after a life of hatred, anger, or jealousy.
Earthly corruption = one of the core tenets of buddhism? In holding onto wordly things, you can't reach enlightenment and thus nirvana.
Absolute evil = there are plenty of things that are irredeemably evil in eastern culture, like demons and zombies, plenty of youkai..

I know, replying to a baitpasta thread. But this is just off the top of my head from my shallow understanding of eastern mythology.
If you can't come up with comparable things between the two, maybe you're just bad at explaining things.

I miss black and white in western fantasy. Well, mostly I miss white.

You sound like a weeaboo.

If so called "evil" kami are irredeemably evil, then why are nobles, sorcerors and shaman, all of whom hold high office and are almost univerally respected, always summoning them to do their bidding? Why are they potrayed as being "clever" or "cunning" instead of being seen as fools?

Why do holy men constantly converse, make pacts with, and capture evil spirits if they are truly the embodyment of spiritual corruption?

Seems like every day you see some eastern hero talking to or tricking a god or spirit somehow. This is almost never a thing in christian mythos. (though it is sometimes a thing in greek and roman mythology)

>tfw grey&white fantasy
The best of both worlds.

Yeah, the concepts aren't hard to grasp and I've known about them since forever already. They just never actually have ever been a problem for you in any of your games at any point.
You just wanted to make a thread complaining about a hypothetical problem you've never had and likely never WILL have.

I mean be honest here; how many Asian folks do you actually KNOW in real life? Seriously, you don't need to justify the thread with a hypothetical problem you don't actually have; just make the thread to talk about the subject.
I'm aware of all that, and how it often leaks into other cultural bits like how their Judeo-Christian inspired demons are often only semi-malevolent at best, akin to Fair Folk (proving that it's hardly an "Asian" thing at all) or some Greek supernatural demigods or monsters that are alternatively harmful or helpful.

I just don't think OP has even come close to actually ever having a "problem" with it in their games because of one particular player.

I mean, St. George didn't get his name by challenging a wyrm to a riddle contest, he got it by slaying the fucking dragon.

Weren't there some extremely evil figures in Buddhism that fell out of the reincarnation cycle, the way the most enlightened ones rose out of it? If there is a system that most follow, you can have outsiders who shun the system and mean to destroy it.

There is a significant difference in that in Christianity, all spirits not of God are automatically considered of the devil, but this is not automatically true of all monotheistic religions - iirc djinns are considered neither innately good nor innately evil in Islam, and I think Judaism might have had something similar.

I've constantly had to deal with this cultural intursion. Many of my asian and weeaboo players want to play as summoners or warlock "pact witches" type charcters, and do so with all the levity you would see in an anime. They are constantly trying to do things like train evil chromatic dragons in d&d, or defy the edict of a god, they try to find ways around geas and generally look for ways to exploit the mythos as it is written, like summoning a demon who summons another demon and so on.

Query; where do you live?

-----------------------> The joke ------------------>

>Playing D&D
>Playing D&D with alignments
>Playing D&D with creatures with hardcoded alignments
Unless you specifically said you're going to do a stereotypical black-and-white morality campaign, you're a retard.

Yes, most of them become actual demons, and in one significant case, the Lord of the Underworld.

But nothing is fucking PERMANENT or ABSOLUTE, which is the point I'm making. You can obtain supreme enlightenment and be back to square one the next day, you can be cast into the fires of hell to burn for all eternity and turn it all around in some redemptive act.

The whole concept of Buhdism is built around the idea of impermanence, not getting attached to things because things are constantly changing and coming back around again, like some sort of cosmic dance routine.

How can you take anything fucking seriously when you can't ever win or lose, when nothing is of any consequence because nothing is ever rendered immutable?

You can always just get a "do-over" or wait for the wheel to come back round again.

Like I said, while it may be more true to life and a better life lesson overall, its extremely detrimental to western philosophy and western storytelling, at least within the traditional christian mythos using classical maxims.

I've had te exact opposite problem, with Westerners being completely fixated on the whole black and white existence of evil and good, and the complete lack of potential redemption and the rising of a spirit from evil to good. They're so damn fixated on it that you cant get tit through their heads that just because something is evil doesn't mean it's neither honorable nor worth saving.

California

And here we have the rub.

Fucking Christians.

The key difference that needs to be stressed is the you only get one chance. There's no retries. You will be judged and then there's eternity of that to come. Christianity are basically the religion without any sense of humour. You might be forgiven if ypu are sorry, truly sorry and will spend the rest of your time making it better. This means killing evil is not about the evil guy or the victims. It's about you scoring afterlife points, trying tp get a better spot closer to god.

The thing to be stressed is the life is suffering bit. Life will suck, so make it as good as posssible. For christians life is a contest of who is the most right. For Buddhists its a promise that things will be fine, do right by you and yours and in the next life you will be better equipped to become buddah.

Basically, thet need to play people that are complete ans utter fanatics. Scared of every damn thing.

See, i would have no problem with this, in an eastern setting. I have a problem with western settings being co-opted and being used to promote eastern teachings, because that is what essentially amounts to cultural approriation.

Putting aside the obvious "kettle calling the pot black" analogy, just because whites do it to other cultures doesn't mean its okay for other cultures to do it to us.

When two cultures blend to create something new and exciting, thats great, but when you mix them in a way that basically just waters down the teachings of both, you get something that is weaker than its constituent parts.

But, if it's evil enough to be worth saving, then it's not that evil to begin with? If it looks like evil and tastes like evil, but G-man is willing to forgive it, it is not the ultimate evil and it is your moral duty as a Christian to try and turn them back towards the flock.

I thought the idea was that the G-man was willing to forgive anyone if they ask for it and have a sincere desire to change (and don't die first, I guess), and demons and whatnot are just too prideful and stubborn to do so.

I cant believe you actually tried to make this about cultural appropriation.

No. Demons are INHERENTLY evil. Also, demons and angels do not have souls, they are literal embodiment of concepts and ideals, and so can not change their nature.

Good bait.

-Evil- spirits are always sealed or destroyed. It's the not-evil ones that find their employ in the service of sorcerors.

But anyway, the point to your thread was that asian people CAN'T understand these things, not that eastern mythology doesn't have these things. And yeah, there is far less of a focus on absolute evil or eternal damnation, but that doesn't mean they're impossible to understand or don't happen at all.
Maybe you should spend more time finding the similarities and playing on those, instead of bitching about the ones that are different.

Well, thats what it is!

Just because they are doing it in a much more subtle and subversive manner doesn't mean that they are not doing it all.

Precisely. One major issue for some Chirstians is the concept of something being irredeemable is difficult to comprehend in spite of the fact that it's a core tenant, and it's common for demons to prey on their notions of innocence and try and con them by repeatedly playing coy. It explains why succubi are so effective: everyone is obsessed with trying to "redeem" them even though the chances of that happening are virtually nil, and it can get the weak of heart or even weak of faith to fall towards them in frustration.

Miko>Mom

No, the point of this thread isn't that they CAN'T understand, its that they DON'T, and that pointing this out actually seems to offend them for some reason.

Here's another fun fact: Angels and Demons cannot be destroyed. There are immortal. They generally can't be trapped within an object or location other than being sent back to plane which spawned them, either heaven or hell.

The christian mythos works hard at the principle of exclusion, meaning that anything that can not be incorporated into the christian mythos is excluded and does not exist.

I don't think anything really pisses me off more than people who claim to understand christian teachings or myths and criticism them relentlessly on that basis without any real comprehension of what they are about or what they represent.

Point of contention:

Most Eastern religions have a long standing tradition of incorporating other religions into their own mythologies. Christ is a kami, and angels are also kami, while God is a greater kami. Buddhism considers Christ a Buddha figure. The battle between Shinto and Buddhism is largely based in the fact that Shinto belief automatically sentence you to an unchanging etrnal death in Yomi - literally nothing you do matters, you will still be dead and in Yomi, so only what you do in your life has any importance at all. Likewise, Christianity clashed with Shinto on that count, as there is no eternal reward, ever.

It's a fucking joke on the yin-yang isn't it?

>Succubi:The Bane of Captain Save-A-Ho's everywhere

I'm not even sure who is trolling whom at this point, but cite?

Its still just a fact that when you take two things that are mutually exclusive and try to mix them together you get something that is true to neither.

Incorporating other peoples mythologies into your own while dismissing their moral teachings is essentially evangelicalism.

>and so can not change their nature.
then how did Lucifer fall?

I don't really find the moral teachings of christianity to be all that great, but I still have objections to taking stories that were essentially meant to teach one lesson and appropriating them so that they tell another.

interesting point: the mythos behind lucifer is largely based around a poem called "paradise lost" which is not considered cannon by most christian religions.

Its a rather recent convention that many christians take offense to.

While I hesitate to say that it is not part of the mythos, it is definitely not considered part of the christian religion.

You'll find that over and over again the gods names in the bible are translated to different names that change with the times and dates they are written, which is why in general god is referred to as "god" and not jehova or jahweh.

Comparative religions classes in college before the SJWs struck.

Irrelevant. Its still a fact of life that they have been doing this for over 2000 years, and Christianity has been doing so for far less time and failing at it far more often than they would like (c.f. Voodun, Shinto). The adaptability of Eastern religions that are capable of incorporating aspects of Western religions while the inverse is untrue just goes to show how inflexible the Christian religion is and why it and all other Abrahamic religions are destructive to other cultures that do not embrace them.

People who know what Ying and Yang are don't fall for that, because the Yin and Yang are subjective in all things.

No its very relevant. We aren't debating the subjective value of each others teachings, we are debating (in this particularly divergent thread) whether its moral to appropriate other peoples cultures or whether or not you have a right to preserve your own cultures teachings.

Or are you basically saying the problem isn't that asians don't understand our culture, its that they just don't respect our teachings or particularly care when they appropriate our mythology?

If I had to guess, I'd say the user you're replying to was ever so subtly trying to insult black people.

Hm. Interesting question. I'm an American-born Chinese, and thinking back on my DMing, I can tell you many instances where demons and such aren't the obligatory evil manipulators so much as assholes with different motivations. I do present forces of impossible to redeem evil that can't be reasoned with, but more often than not, the antagonists are just people who see things differently from the players, and then they have little recourse but conflict.

But I can't explain away this phenomenon as simply an "Asian cultural thing," because Western fantasy is very much into "shades of gray" over the last two decades. Look at popular fantasy works like "The Witcher" with its redeemed monsters, the noble savage variant of the orc in the "Warcraft" lore, or how "A Song of Ice and Fire" doesn't paint characters as good or evil so much as complex humans with different goals. You can even look at Drizzt within D&D, with his rebellion against the nature of his people. The black and white morality that some of the original creators of D&D envisioned just doesn't seem as fashionable today.

I think op seems to want to run a game with a modernist or pre-modernist outlook. The whole references to trying to stay true to classical christian ideas and folklore and whatnot.

The whole thing of "he knows what he does is evil but he does it anyway" or "he knows what he does is evil but he must do it for good" and other character things where there's a lot of conflicting value judgements and it's assumed universal morality doesn't exist. These are more post-modern things, especially since the 50's but huge in fantasy in the past couple decades.

OP is probably bringing up all these super traditional concepts because he's running a game based on middle ages fantasy and wants to "get into the medieval mindset" hardcore. A game like that usually appears "profoundly alien and very familiar" to westerners.

See, you don't have a problem: very rarely is a human ever actually beyond the point of redemption outside of his own volition: the point over the damned is that they will not accept salvation due to being overburdened by one of the seven deadly sins to the point that it consumes their character (pride being the #1 offender here).

It often seems gray because many times that person who seemed "evil" only appeared so due to a lack of information on the part of the observer. Though most people accuse gray settings of edge, those that aren't carciatures, they actually tend to imply that there are a lot less pure evil people then one would imagine, and a greater net potential for good.

Black exists, and white exists, but what most people confuse for black is merely a shade of dark gray; it falls on the shoulders of the spectator on whether they wish to try and fix the gray into a white or cut their losses and snuff it out if it's gonna snuff out more whites.

>Many of my asian and weeaboo players want to play as summoners or warlock "pact witches" type charcters, and do so with all the levity you would see in an anime.

Warlock. He casts spells. ASIAN SPELLS

Though the idea that christianity is fundamentally alien to asians is sorta odd if you've met almost any stateside korean and most american chinese.

Obviusly it depends on the religion in question.

Because it is not only moral but absolutely necessary for Shinto to incorporate other religions spirits and beings into their own so that those spirits and beings can have a place in Japan. In Buddhism it is moral to incorporate other teachings when they are benevolent and will cause no harm, because the tenets of Buddhism demand acceptance of others (they are not very good at following this tenet).

In Christianity, it is supposedly immoral to incorporate others beliefs because of their exclusionary practices. Obviously this hasn't stopped them (Christmas, Easter, etc.) and when they have done so with other inclusionary religions it has backfired terribly (Shinto, Voodun).

In other words, whether or not it is moral is dependent on the religion, and in the Eastern religions it is moral, and in the Western ones it is not.

...

Who the fuck cares. /pol/ bogeyman is the second worst thing after /pol/.

Really?

So then its okay if I incorporate Ronald Mcdonald into a shinto temple and pray to the hamburgler?

I call bullshit. No culture is so transient that it doesn't have its own form of inertia. (except maybe the jews) If your culture has nothing worth preserving, then you wouldn't mind when somebody takes all your cultures most treasured fables and stories and mixes them with commercials for taco bell and burger king.

I mean, hell, there is a reason you don't see giant inflatable statues of jesus at car dealerships.

Something has got to remain sacred.

>So then its okay if I incorporate Ronald Mcdonald into a shinto temple and pray to the hamburgler?

Yeah about that......

youtube.com/watch?v=OWY3u1Jtzr0

>Cultural differences are wider than the Gulf of Mexico and as incomprehensible as the Elder Gods, guys!

I mean cmon, Middle East is in Asia. Many parts of non-Middle East Asia has been exposed to the Middle Eastern philosophy of Absolute Evil and Absolute Good, and would understand that.

And from a purely Veeky Forums viewpoint, only absolute good and absolute evil existing is boring. That's why the alignment chart has that space in the middle for Neutrals, as a way to spice Good vs Evil 'Western' school of thought.

tl;dr: OP is strawmanning. And pretending that all asians are retarded. I mean cmon, even the stereotype is the other way around.

So, no cite. Thanks.

Extremely. You have posted a very interesting albeit racially charged topic, but your post has a large degree of earnestness.

Frankly your post would stand out as pasta were it not for the fact I have never actually seen this topic discussed here.

According to Shinto, Ronald McDonald will eventually be a kami.

The restaurants have been worshipped, cared for, supported, and observed since 1937. In 2038 that will have been long enough to elevate Ronald to kami status.

I could print up a bibliography and it wouldn't matter.

Here's your list. I'd appreciate it if you actually looked some of these ting up and verified my statements, but you're not going to, so, thanks for wasting my time in giving you citations you'll never actually look at.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Religions, John Bowker
A New History of Shinto, John Breen and Mark Teeuween
Historicizing "Tradition" in the Study of Religion, Steven Engler
On Understanding Japanese Religion, Joseph Kitigawa
A Comparative Study of Religions, Yakub Masih
Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions, Peggy Morgan
The Illustrated Guide to World Religions, Michael D. Coogan
Essentials of Buddhism : basic terminology and concepts of Buddhist philosophy and practice, Kogan Mizuno

Actually, wouldn't he be a tsukogami not a kami? I don't think there's rules for attaining "kami-hood", just for loved tools gaining a soul.

Tsukogami would be if a particular statue became imbued with a spirit (not necessarily a kami). Tsukogami are a form of youkai, specifically haunted objects. Kami are more pervasive and more ephemeral than only objects gaining sentienc/kami. Places, objects and people can also become kami.

In a bizarre parallel, the antagonist from In the Mouth of Madness had it right.

I may have meant a tsukomogami. The one where if you use an object and treat it well for 100 years or so it gains a soul and becomes sentient.

I don't know, man. I mean, I get what you're saying, and I hate anime too, but you mostly just sound racist and butthurt over something that's not really important.

They're a subset of kami, "kami born of a tool used and revered", but they are also considered youkai, spirits born of nothingness. It's hard to tell one from another, and the distinction is mostly a case of in what manners the spirit is propitiated.

Seconded. I'm guessing it might be something to do with an original post that complained the other way around?

Not a fan of medieval literature, are we? A peasant and outwitting the devil - who was extremely stupid, by the way - was a pretty common theme. It's only in more recent times that we've gotten into the pseudo-Zoroastrian portrayal of the devil as powerful and cunning.

To be fair, Christians do not understand the Christian Mythos either.

A very interesting thread. I'd just chime in from a muslim point of view.

Traditionally in Islam, there was also a general acceptance of other cultural values and customs, not just people of the book. It was called 'Urf in shariah, which basically meant that any practice that doesn't go against the core beliefs or tenets of the shariah, was acceptable. That is why Islam can seem so different amongst the groups around the world, for example West Africa vs China vs Middle East vs Indian subcontinent vs Indonesia. Local customs were incorporated and became part of the religion.

Wahabism (and most of the other reformist movements of the last few centuries) are all about purging Islam from these "foreign" ideas and practices which they consider to be unislamic.

I believe the Youkai is the tool that is loved for 99 years and then discarded, given soul from spite at being denied.