About the changes in the new version of Conan the Wanderer

Conan: Adventures In an Age Undreamed Of
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A Kickstarter backer in the comments section of the latest Kickstarter Update found some other problems caused by renaming “Martial Arts” to “Unarmed”:

In the Encounters chapter you find on page 80:

MARTIAL ARTS DISCIPLE
(MINION, TOUGHENED)
This student of the martial arts is an example of those who
might be recruited to inhabit a Temple as described with
the talent of the same name on page 22.

And looking at the Wise Master Talents on page 22:

Wise Master
Prerequisite: Open Hand, one other Martial Arts talent,
Discipline Expertise 3, Insight Expertise 2, Lore
Expertise 2

That is very sloppy editing. If you rename something, you should search for all uses of the old term and replace those by the new term.

On the other hand: Replacing Martial Arts by “Unarmed” does not make much sense considering that at least for the cases above, the term “Martial Arts” is the absolute correct and non-offensive technical term.

This unfortunate and meaning warping renaming of Martial Arts needs to be rolled back, as it was done sloppily and causes more misunderstandings, unclear or even meaningless texts anyway.

Meanwhile, I find this whole topic more and more depressing, because the heavy-handed forced “speech hygiene” introduced not only gaps in information (drug trading route) or non-fitting renaming (Unarmed), but was also done so sloppily that the resulting text is worse than the original before the sensitivity treatment.

I had the impression that every step of working on a manuscript of a roleplaying product is supposed to make it better, to reduce errors and raise the quality. Apparently, in this case the opposite is the case.

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Agreed.

I think I have made my opinion regarding this issue clear, so everyone should know where I stand on this.

In any case, I would argue that you actually need a certain amount of stereotypes in a combat-heavy RPG. Because quite frankly, when I’m running around slaughtering hundreds of Picts, I actually don’t really want to know that it was Pict A’s last day on the job and that he was looking forward to getting home to his lovely family to enjoy a traditional Pictish meal.

At a certain point, you have to allow for some stereotypical elements, otherwise all player characters are basically murderers. And if we project 100% presentism on RPGs, my character would be sitting at home all day and manage his accounts.

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Other RPGs are loosing authors in droves because of stunts like this one. Several announced books for the German RPG The Dark Eye will not be published ever because their authors left being unhappy with the decisions the editors made in the last years.

Their cultural sensitivity reader would have fits if he would ever read some sourcebooks for the German RPG Midgard. One culture (Rawindra) there is based on medievial India, with cast system etc., another culture (KanThaiPan) is based on medieval China but is under control of a trinity of evil gods. The strength of Midgard is that every single culture on this world is based on real cultures so that you can use a history book to fillout the blanks.

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And this one is particularly well researched, written by people who are very knowledgeable about this topic.
It allows players to immerse in a culture very different from the one most are familiar or most know from euro-centric fantasy settings.

This is one of the strengths of roleplaying games: you get to experience - for a time - vastly different, exotic, mysterious, or even brutal (Cimmeria) cultures that are decidedly (and luckily) different from our modern, civil, much less violent and much less bloodthirsty daily lives.

And that is, what makes bringing modern day life political activism into such escapist pastimes and hobbies such a problem. Where to could you escape, then, if everywhere the current day politics haunt you and are omnipresent?

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Yes!! Off course It should be “Exotic” as seen from the Conan point of view!!

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That’s a good point!
I would say that Core book has a few problems and bits of wrong text (Alchemy?) but, at this point most of us know about them.
More tragic are the errors in Skelos and Jewels (which at this point are…4 years old?). Skelos, in particular, has some parts of the text so badly written/edited that they cannot be used. I remember a time when decent rpg companies used to publish errata lists…

By the way, when G+ was still something, some good Modiphius author spent sometimes answering ours doubts. Unfortunately G+ is no more.
So, I guess, instead that this “sensitive indoctrination” we should need some real errata checking…

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I really suspect that the “Sensitivity Reader” did not just really care about REH’s writings but also he did not care about Game Mechanics…

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Let’s bet that he had never played an RPG or read a Conan story? I suspect that he does not even care about the history of the cultures he tries to protect from us evil westerners! He has completely botched this job. Modiphius would do good if they hire a cultural sensitivity reader who both plays RPGs and is a fan of Conan, or they can return the license.

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Your final line definitively get to the point.

What University gives you a professional degree ro become a perfect “Sensitivity Reader”??? We all know that there’s a lot of subjectivity in choosing what is and what is not sensitive.
But combining “Sensitivity” with “love for REH and for the game itself” should be a good tactic.
They did so with “Adventurer”.
I suspect this is not the case with “Wanderer” but, to be true and honest, I would like the Sensitivity Reader to speak with his own voice (on facebook, these forums or on the KS page) and explain us.
Maybe he really claims to be a REH writings lover and maybe he even play the game sometimes.

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Don’t blame the Cultural Sensitivity Reader. They did what they were supposed to do: Point out potential cultural insensitivities. It’s not their job to evaluate whether or not those issues are appropriate for the setting or make sense in the context of game mechanics or are against the spirit of REH. That’s entirely up to the publisher, i.e. Modiphius.

If I were to hire someone to find potential defects in my house, I would expect them to be as thorough as possible. I’m the one who decides which of those issues are important to me.

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When Jason Durall was line developer he was very good about responding to backers. He was also one of the original writers. But, based on the credits, Matt Timm is now line developer and Sally Christensen did the editing/proofreading (or at least oversaw it). Those are the folks that should at least attempt a response.

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There was a similar situation with Adventurer, but thanks to allowing backers to see the draft and active engagement from Jason, the situation was resolved cordially and still respected the source material and cultural analogues involved. The new line developer needs to step up and help resolve the problem.

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Yes, but he changed game material (apparently) without knowing what he was doing and (as we see from the “Martial Arts” leftovers confusing other mechanics), neither was he good in doing what he was supposed to do and check.
Let say it’s a communal responsibility, the Reader, the Proofreader, the Line Editor o whoever had a role in changing this text and not even care that those changes were consistant throughout the whole book.

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Luca, good points all and agreed that it is a team effort. I wish they would have let the backers take a look at the edits and provide feedback too. But I also understand the tremendous amount of pressure backers have been putting on the company to close the deal and get it shipped. Ugly situation all around.

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Yes, but (as far as I remember) they ALWAYS gave us the final PDF before starting printing and we gave comments. Maybe they gave us very few days, maybe 5 or 7, but they’ve always been correct in that sense.
Now…I’m not sure since I’ve not really understood whether they started printing or not (maybe it’s just me, and I’m not a native english speaker, or maybe it’s because updates are now written by a person different from the one who used to write them a couple of years ago).

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I for one much prefer staying true to the original source material than to try smoothing rough edges and trying to protect feelings. Conan was gritty, violent, had spicy content, all wrapped in a gruff setting that took on a life of it’s own. You want to write a little forward, explaining how the real world has changed, that some terms that were not offensive during the time of the original books are now, how mankind has grown and bettered themselves but that in the interest of authenticity it was decided that it remains, I’m fine with that. But the moment you strip those things away, you change what the game is, it stops being Conan and becomes just another fantasy setting. Rewriting the past doesn’t change it, give context and stay true to what it was supposed to be.

So far, I have bought every hard cover book they have released, several sets of the dice, tile sets, even bought into the Monolith game for the miniatutes, but if they’re going to start changing content due to sensitivity concerns, then I’m going to loose interest fast. I currently have four players, all of which have bought several books from the line as well who feel the same way. (As one of them said: “If we wanted to worry about people’s feelings when we played, we’d play D&D.” It got chuckles from around the table.)

I hope that they stay true to what Conan is, and that they don’t allow the setting to loose it’s magic because they’re pandering to the feelings of people who will never play the game anyway.

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@Modiphius, I’d like one of you to have a look and a statement to the following. So let’s have a look how the “martial art” wushu is defined:

<<Wǔshù literally means “martial art”. It is formed from the two words 武術: 武 (wǔ), meaning “martial” or “military” and 術 or 术 (shù), which translates into “art”, “discipline”, “skill” or “method”. The term wushu has also become the name for the modern sport of wushu, an exhibition and full-contact sport of bare-handed and weapon forms (套路), adapted and judged to a set of aesthetic criteria for points developed since 1949 in the People’s Republic of China.>>

So the translation of “wushu” literally means “martial arts”, a term originally invented by the chinese themselves and not by some “insensitive westerner”.
And now your “cultural consultant” literally made wushu an insult. Honestly? Your “cultural consultant” made an original chinese term, the chinese themselves invented and widely use (then and today) an insult? Honestly? He literally outlawed a cornerstone of chinese tradition and history. That’s insensitive and a very sloppy work at best.

Face it, your “sensitivity reader” literally didn’t remove “offensive” terms, he literally added insult to injury to chinese martial arts traditions instead. Or so to say, this “consultant” did not have any clue of what he was doing. He has no knowledge of asian cultures, sad but true.
I’d pay to see that “cultural consultant” travel to China and explain to wushu practitioners that their martial arts is a smear word to them.

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That would have been the most acceptable way to handle such things. Write an introduction addressing the modern-day sensibilities and the differences to the times the original stories were written. That would have been good. - What we got, is not good.

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Okay, as there is no Feedback from the Modiphius personnell in the Kickstarter comment section, I have written a direct message to Chris Birch via KS there (just click on “Chris Birch, Modiphius” below the PLEDGE NOW! button of the Conan campaign). Maybe this might produce some statement by the Modiphius man himself. So if some of you like to share your concerns with him as well, you are very welcome. The more the merrier. Here’s what I wrote him:

Dear Chris,

I am not sure if you are aware about the big controversy of the changes of Conan the Wanderer made by your “cultural consultant”. His descision to change certain terms is sketchy at best. That Dowdell and Lites have requested to be deleted from the credits makes me and many others very sad, both are fan favorites in the Conan community.

As an example the term “martial arts” was deemed “offensive” by your consultant which he replaced with “unarmed”. Why, I don’t know, because a “cultural consultant” should be aware that the term martial arts is deeply inbedded in chinese culture and history as following definition proves:

<<Wǔshù literally means “martial art”. It is formed from the two words 武術: 武 (wǔ), meaning “martial” or “military” and 術 or 术 (shù), which translates into “art”, “discipline”, “skill” or “method”. The term wushu has also become the name for the modern sport of wushu, an exhibition and full-contact sport of bare-handed and weapon forms (套路), adapted and judged to a set of aesthetic criteria for points developed since 1949 in the People’s Republic of China.>>

Calling wushu to be an offensive term, try to explain this to chinese wushu practitioners, that the name wushu (martial arts) is a smear word to chinese people. Sorry, the cultural consult did no good job here.

Same for the removal of the vendyan caste system. I told an indian co worker that the consultant has deemed the Hindu caste system to be offensive and he was rolling his eyes, explaining to me that the caste system is deeply inbedded in Indian/Hindu history and though it isn’t practiced as rigidly in modern India it is nonetheless an important part of their history/culture.

Those are just two of the many very needless changes the consultant made. He wanted to remove offensive terms but just added additional insults towards the cultures he tried to cater to in a very misguided manner.

One backer made the suggestion to bring back Dowdell & Lites and remove the consultant from the Conan productline and rather put a disclaimer at the beginning of each book, something like <<how the real world has changed, that some terms that were not offensive during the time of the original books are now, how mankind has grown and bettered themselves but that in the interest of authenticity it was decided that it remains>>.

Thank you for reading my concerns and regards,

Emmanuel (a big Modiphius fan)

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Oh, and by the way, did the team of Conan scholars led by Jeffrey Shanks greenlight the rewriting of what was already approved by them afterwards?

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