6 hours ago, Mirith said:

A lot of the time when I ask people why they don't like the whole Utz Banzai part, its more they don't like yelling, not the "message".

This part I totally understand. I also get that people may see it as a bit of a cringe thing. 600 nerds about to play a card game and they all shout BANZAI! is a bit over the top.

I don't think it means it should stop - but I wouldn't be surprised if several people just stood outside the audience area to avoid the loud noise. At least it only happens once lol

It's definitely cringy but I dunno at some point you just have to get comfortable with yourself. And it needs to not involve being ok with your own nerdiness by demeaning others.

People who have trouble with crowds/noise, sure that's a different topic.

On the topic of things people find offensive, I find bananas offensive. Far to sexual.

I've been stuck for a week do to evacuation from a scary *** hurricane. I'm not feeling sorry for trivializing people who find Banzai offensive, or rage against cultural appropriation, while being perfectly accepting of what they've already culturally appropriated.

Call me when we decide to rename Montana.

7 hours ago, Manchu said:

OK and

The optics of not-hiring Asian actors to portray samurai are pretty bad.

Well like I said, it's tough to argue that only Asian people can cosplay Asian characters.

It's also weird to take too hard of a line on the "Asianess" of Rokugani characters. Makes me think of when people complained about Idris Elba playing Heimdall, a Norse mythological figure, in the movie Thor.

I find it fascinating that anyone cares what the reviewer had to say about anything aside from the game.

Are people really trying to probe the feelings of paid actors over a job they chose to do? Do they not have minds and emotional fortitude to stand up for themselves? Are they voiceless? Did FFG somehow bamboozle them? Were they told they'd be shooting a samurai themed Old Navy ad when suddenly they were accosted by energetic chanting card players? The shame! The horror! We thought these swords were for slashing prices!

As a Person who has lived in Japan for several years and speaks Japanese, I'm offended that people would prohibit me to chant in Japanese while playing a FANTASY game set in FEUDAL JAPAN!
Also, for our uneducated friends who think that Banzai is some death chant ... google it and educate yourselves a bit. Thanks.

P.s. I personally don't understand the Utz! part as it's not in Japanese and I'm not an old Old5R player.

L5R is not set in Japan or Feudal Japan. If it was then the whitewashing claim would be true. L5R is set in a mythic world called Rokugan which is loosely based on Feudal Japan/China/Korean civilisation though not history.

As someone writing pretty much an entire article for my blog about Cultural Appropriation and L5R, I find all this discussion interesting.

The skinny on my opinion? Wong's problem with the Banzai cheer is fair, and he has every right to be upset by it. However, L5R is a game which CELEBRATES Japanese military traditions, and if you have a problem with the Banzai cheer, well... let me tell you about Yobanjin Mura, the Colonies, and just what the Kami did when they arrived in Rokugan... I promise you, there's a LOT more to get upset about and maybe L5R is not a game for you if you do not like samurai.

For the Banzai cheer itself... eh? I am not tied to it precisely. But having something to shout at the start of a tournament does create a powerful sense of community and togetherness with the other people who broke their voices doing so. Do I need it for my organized play? No, but I would miss it if it were not there.

Rokugan is not Japan, but without Japan there would be no inspiration for Rokugan.

30 minutes ago, Matrim said:

L5R is not set in Japan or Feudal Japan. If it was then the whitewashing claim would be true. L5R is set in a mythic world called Rokugan which is loosely based on Feudal Japan/China/Korean civilisation though not history.

Oh yeah surely all the references to Ronin, Samurai, Katanas, Kami ( insert 50 more here ) makes a game LOOSELY based on Feudal Japan .... yeap (y) thumbs up for you my man (y)

I could go on at exhaustive length proving how ridiculous the statement 'set in feudal Japan' is but 99% of the people here understand it and though listing all the differences is fun I doubt you'd get it.

5 hours ago, Dydra said:

P.s. I personally don't understand the Utz! part as it's not in Japanese and I'm not an old Old5R player.

The samurai are sponsored by a snack food manufacturer, maybe?

I love the shout personally. I don't think it's "cringe" in the slightest. We should be proud and show our spirit. I get why the more deeply introverted sorts might feel uncomfortable doing it, but to be honest I feel those folks could probably do with a bit of community spirit and pride the most.

Also, personally, I think that if I was my white self living in Japan(and therefore a serious minority) I wouldn't be offended by celebrations of medieval culture or 'Englishness'(which they are huge on) so much as I would by Japanese folk speaking up "on my behalf" to whinge about tripe like cultural appropriation and get offended and uppity for me.

I used to play rugby, in which it is part of the protocol to shout - first with your own teammates, then all together with the opposing team - before/after the game. As such, I find shouting Banzai! as a "team-spirit-building" thing more than anything else. If anyone does not want to partecipate in it, because they dislike the notion of shouting out loud/don't like noise/whatever-other-personal-preference, I think that's totally fine and they should not be looked down upon in the slightest: it's a thing that is done for fun, if it's not fun for them then they surely have a solid reason not to do it.

On one hand, I could accept a criticism of the Banzai! chant from an in-community in-game perspective if its meaning was offensive towards, say, the players not belonging to your clan (if its meaning was something like "hate your enemy"). However its meaning is, again, clearly positive: its goal is to celebrate the game all together and unify the community, not offending nor marginalising anyone.

On the other hand, it seems to me those who criticise it on the grounds of political issues are going in the wrong direction and showing a lack of discernment: they are incapable of distinguishing the border between a game and real life. Rokugan is a fictional setting, people chanting Banzai! are doing so because it's part of the setting, not because they are supporters of the Emperor or Japanese policy or anything else that might be implied by said chant. It's true that it is a symbol, but its meaning is clearly different from its historical real-life one: the intended purpose is what matters here. People should always be mindful of the difference.

To advocate its ban in a gaming context (which, just to be clear, is not what the reviewer did, as I understand it) is the equivalent of wanting to tell other people what they can and cannot have fun with, and is therefore to be considered as disrespectful of other people's autonomy.

The only saving grace for those advocating the ban is that there are indeed some topics on which it is considered bad taste to joke upon, regardless of the intent. So, if one really wanted to keep advocating for the "Banzai! ban" (or its general lack of taste due to the political context), I think they'd better focus on why the Banzai! chant could be considered a sensitive topic nowadays. Being italian, it makes me think of the satire made by Charlie Hebdo's writers on the victims of the earthquake in Abruzzo one year ago. There had been a lot of debate about the opportunity of such expressions of freedom of speech in that peculiar moment and, while I will not state my position here in order to not derail the conversation, I do find it a sensible topic to discuss. However this begs the question: do those who are in the "Banzai! is offensive" camp think it is comparable to that situation?

Finally, I think what @InquisitorM wrote a couple pages ago is correct: " Every individual gets to be offended at whatever they want, but being offended does not make the source offensive". It's not like those feeling insulted have always the right to forbid the others from doing/saying certain things: it's someone's right to their own sensistivity versus someone else's right to have fun with something. There is room for debate to decide which of the two is the appropriate reaction/feeling towards the issue. The statement that ethical issues boil down to personal preference rests on very flimsy propositions (I could expand on this since it falls in the field of my studies, but I'm afraid it would be well beyond the scope of this thread).

1 hour ago, Daigotsu Steve said:

Also, personally, I think that if I was my white self living in Japan(and therefore a serious minority) I wouldn't be offended by celebrations of medieval culture or 'Englishness'(which they are huge on) so much as I would by Japanese folk speaking up "on my behalf" to whinge about tripe like cultural appropriation and get offended and uppity for me.

^ This

White Knighting and Virtue Signalling are not becoming. Please stop.

As soon as I see someone of Asian decent take issue with the game in a way that isn't rooted in "Japan was evil in the 30's and 40's", then we can talk.

As it currently stands...

33 minutes ago, Yogo Gohei said:

^ This

White Knighting and Virtue Signalling are not becoming. Please stop.

As soon as I see someone of Asian decent take issue with the game in a way that isn't rooted in "Japan was evil in the 30's and 40's", then we can talk.

As it currently stands...

If you're an actor and you speak up over mistreatment or misgivings on the job, you'll probably never get that Old Navy ad.

15 minutes ago, qwertyuiop said:

If you're an actor and you speak up over mistreatment or misgivings on the job, you'll probably never get that Old Navy ad.

The quote names no one specifically, and when people are polled, unless there is a camcorder present the general understanding is that they can enjoy anonymity. The joke is still cute, though.

4 hours ago, Yogo Gohei said:

White Knighting and Virtue Signalling are not becoming. Please stop.

Insulting people by calling concerns over other people insulting people "white knighting" and "virtue signalling" doesn't help, either.

18 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Insulting people by calling concerns over other people insulting people "white knighting" and "virtue signalling" doesn't help, either.

Sometimes it has to be said. There is a danger is taking these people seriously. Not to say every single instance of this kind of thing is without merit, and that certain conversations aren't worth having, but inserting political agenda and attempting to enforce civic virtues in the comment thread of a review of a card game? Nah.

5 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Insulting people by calling concerns over other people insulting people "white knighting" and "virtue signalling" doesn't help, either.

You're assuming the concern is genuine or altruistic in nature and not as a way to garner attention or favor. Could be either, but the quote referenced implies the latter. Did you read what was quoted or just jump at the opportunity to white knight for a hypothetical white knight?

On 9/11/2017 at 2:02 PM, kpsmith said:

I have to agree with Manchu in that there is no other RPG as immersive as L5R. Why? Its the culture. Social etiquette is baked into the setting. It influenced heavily by Japanese culture that it becomes an experience, unlike every generic fantasy game out there.

While L5R is a fun setting (which is why we're all here, in part), there's a whole bunch of RPGs out there that don't have generic fantasy settings and have a bunch of social etiquette baked into the setting. It doesn't take much looking around to find some other examples, and realize that L5R is fun but hardly unique in this regard. If you enjoy L5R because of that, you might also want to try looking into them if you feel the need to recharge your batteries with a change of pace.

The first and most obvious is the grandpappy of social systems in RPGs, and still one of the best RPGs ever written, Pendragon (which John Wick admitted to me in our interview ages ago was a major influence on his own design of L5R's RPG). No game has yet matched the twinning of theme and mechanics that Pendragon has pulled off. If you have any interest in Arthurian lore, this is a must buy, and it's also strongly recommended to any players interested in seeing one of the great RPGs of all time.

Others of note include: Blue Rose is a great swashbuckling romance game set in a France that's as much France as Rokugan is Japan. Ars Magica has cultural strata and privilege baked in from the start of its very Middle Age look at Hermetic Magic, with magi not only being more powerful than any other character type, that's a deliberate feature of the game. The legendary Unknown Armies has, as they say, "broken people trying to fix the world", with the players becoming awakened street-level magicians in today's world, but the power you can grab for yourself is equal to the sacrifices of the things you care about to spend. Nobilis is somewhat the same idea but from the different end of the spectrum -- players are gods of various concepts, only the important concepts that people want to be have already been taken (Death, Love, War, etc.), meaning new players get to start as incarnations of things such as Boring Thursday Afternoons, Potholes, or Itches on the Back, and the interplay of the gods on modern life as players attempt to scramble about for more power (or just being left alone from jerks with larger concepts) is entirely based in the social structure of the Nobilis (it's also a cool example of a diceless system, in which point spends from a pool determine outcomes).

Then there's any number of the "smaller" RPGs that have been coming out lately, all of which have very rich social rules sets as not only a feature, but pretty much their entire reason for being. Highlights from these would include Little Monsters (the RPG about over-the-top teenage romances, only all your characters are monsters, such as vampires, ghosts, demons, zombies, and etc.) and Fiasco (the Quentin Tarantino or Coen Brothers movie simulation game, in which you're all a bunch of characters involved in a crime in over your head even as a session starts, and even being killed in a scene doesn't mean you're not in the game any more, because there will probably be a number of important flashbacks which show what schemes your character hatched before the story started, and what led them to being killed in the first place).

On 9/11/2017 at 2:14 PM, InquisitorM said:

I never said that. I said that the thing itself is not inherently offensive. Every individual gets to be offended at whatever they want, but being offended does not make the source offensive.

Solipism is not exactly a useful refuge to box yourself into, friend. But have fun in your vacation.

3 minutes ago, qwertyuiop said:

You're assuming the concern is genuine or altruistic in nature and not as a way to garner attention or favor. Could be either, but the quote referenced implies the latter. Did you read what was quoted or just jump at the opportunity to white knight for a hypothetical white knight?

I read both threads, here and at Shut Up & Sit Down, in their entirety. I have yet to find accusations of "white knighting" or "virtue signalling" that are not themselves symptoms of name calling in an attempt to just belittle another position.

9 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Insulting people by calling concerns over other people insulting people "white knighting" and "virtue signalling" doesn't help, either.

I will admit that the term virtue signalling has been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overused in today's society. Basically, anyone expressing an opinion online gets accused of it. Because the internet is terrible. But, to me at least, this a a pretty black-and-white case and it isn't helpful.

None of these people have given any indication, whatsoever, that they are being insulted or offended. No one that is creating the game / chanting / cosplaying is doing it in a way that is intended to cause offense. The only Asian person I have seen that was offended by any of this is in the SUSD comment thread, and his issues stem from an apparent deep hatred of the Japanese, and not anything inherent in the card game / pageantry.

If no one is intending to offend, an no one is actually being offended, what is the point of being offended on someone else's behalf? It's absurd.