Issue #5, Exploring design. Part 1 of the AIGA design. What is even [insert a verb]-ing culture? Alert: It’s a long read!

The title is self-explanatory. How do we know when we are doing the right thing to appreciate or appropriate the culture? Or what’s about respecting the culture? This is something I’m currently exploring to learn more about it as I take small steps in worldbuilding the xianxia[1] setting.

Since I was young, I grew up without going to Chinese school because I was denied the right to attend despite my family’s support. The reason was simple: I can’t hear. Instead, I spent a lot of time researching to understand my cultures from the internet to taking courses in Asian literature. I grew up watching some martial arts movies with my father, being a hardcore fan of them. I loved asking him about martial arts techniques, but we never associated them with its terminologies because it’s difficult to translate in sign language. I took a few classes to participate and understand different styles but never got involved with tournaments because my father emphasized that the martial arts are not for shows, but rather, for health and wellness.

Why does it matter that I shared a bit about my background? It does, especially when I am actively worldbuilding the setting with a certain expectation of respecting the cultures. It is not an easy task because 1. I knew the writing forms of zodiac animals and numbers; 2. All pinyin and writing are dependent on the phonetics; 3. I did not have access to take online Chinese classes during college. At the present, I could have taken the opportunity to invest my time in learning, but hey, a job change happened recently and more. We have our lives to set our priorities straight.

When I started learning how to design the games (Project Hunger, Untitled MoSh adventure, etc.), I noticed there were not many Wuxia-inspired adventures other than a few adventures from either the big red dragon or Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG. I explored some options on Across RPGSEA (go support it if you can!) and there were plenty of games inspired by the mythologies and folktales. The closest games I could find are Gubat Banwa with its unique spin which is designed by makapatag, and the recently released Wandering Blades RPG quickstart by Daniel Kwan and Drew Quon. Few known games using the martial arts (Righteous Blood Ruthless Blade, Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, Legend of Five Rings, etc.) are available though they are not my preferred games to run.

I decided to try the hacks using Old School Essentials (Necrotic Gnomes) and Old School Stylish (OSE supplement, Chris Ramdeen) in producing the game that is focused on martial arts. I wanted to try different angles where I focus on the cinematic style of the martial arts - after all, it’s all about drama! Then all left is the setting. I wanted something simple that’s designed for the short campaign, but where do I start? Then I recalled my experiences in attending the conference that’s focused on design.

[1] Xianxia (仙侠 xiānxiá) is a Chinese genre that involves martial arts in a high fantasy setting. For the accurate term, its translation states it literally means “Immortal Heroes”. Anything involved with magic, demons, supernatural entities, immortals, and Chinese folklore/mythology are the elements that help the protagonists achieve their cultivation of seeking immortality, greater strength, or finding eternal life with a heavy influence of Daoism. The origin of its definition is found on the blog, “Immortal Mountain”.

AIGA 2023 Conference

When I attended the conference last year, I learned something new about the principles of the design. There were two workshops that got me thinking and I came up with no answers: Designing for Culture and Design Responsibility. There will be two parts of this ongoing discussion. Please keep an eye out for the release of part 2!

Designing for Culture: Appreciation or Appropriation?

This topic came from the Lightning Talks series where a speaker discussed their experience in a multicultural environment. They lived their life of moving from different countries to other countries. Their showcased work was focused on promotional posters based in Hong Kong, and they included their creativity in the design process with their Hong Kongese clients. Their outcome came out well with some positive feedback.

In paraphrasing roughly[1], what the speaker made their point is:

“When we design, we should include the community feedback and adapt to fit their needs during the creative process. This is when we demonstrate cultural appreciation.”

In short, a thought-provoking question I had is, “How do we know when it is culturally appreciated even if the design is done by cultural outsiders[2] instead of cultural insiders[2] who could’ve had that opportunity instead?”

Frankly, I don’t have better answers to this question. Inspirisles RPG is a good example where they attempt to teach American and British Sign Languages (ASL/BSL respectively). It aims to “teach” the Hearing[3] community in hope of “inspiring” people to play with deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) people, but there is a minor problem: cultural differences. To be specific, USA and UK have distinctive subcultures despite sharing Deaf[3] culture.

Before I share my perspectives, I want to emphasize that I am not speaking up for everyone in the d/hh communities, especially that there are multiple identities within the community to explore - there are plenty of articles online to learn and understand. From my lived experience, I do feel that there is a lack of strong recognition toward Deaf consultants with cultural competency for Inspirisles RPG (hey, cultural sensitivity consultant too!). If you read its kickstarter page, the designers may have good intentions, but that’s coming from the savior’s perspective that they “speak up” for d/hh communities. I personally don’t feel comfortable with the idea of saviorship nor inspiraporn because it does come off as patronizing and demeaning to imply that I can’t do anything as a person or let it alone as a potential opportunity. However, I listened to some players from the other side, whose perspectives are different from mine. The designers’ contributions benefit the community because it helps spread more awareness about sign language. How, they are teaching the community to see through the deaf person’s perspectives that encourage the players to actively learn some basic alphabets and signed words.

See the differences? Keep in mind, privilege differences do play big factors to understand complex layers of the “Deaf” culture across countries. Will this make a good case of cultural appreciation…or appropriation? Think about it. What’s the difference between appropriation and awareness? Appropriating the culture is something we are too familiar with: to take something from someone’s culture and turn it into something that’s not culturally correct for profits, intentionally or unintentionally. Being aware of the culture is about understanding the culture and giving its people a platform to get recognized or have an opportunity to share their lived experience. In the end, do you feel that the game is considered a cultural appreciation or appropriation even though technically, it did bring the awareness of correct fingerspelled alphabets?

How can we balance cultural appreciation and appropriation in our games? What is the right thing to do? Having a cultural sensitivity consultant is paramount though I feel that the cultural subtleties do evolve over time to match our present. The accuracy of cultural references will be challenged from time to time in wrestling with our cultural identities, which makes cultural appreciation important to demonstrate some respect toward a cultural community. Do I consider myself an expert at cultural sensitivity? Specifically in Deaf, Chinese, or Filipino cultures? Maybe not. Maybe. I see myself as a lifelong learner to do my research, but I also try my best to maintain the accuracy of the cultural references. I am sure that there is plenty of information somewhere that I might even miss out on and make more mistakes. This reason plays a factor in my hesitation to share the playtest version of the OSE hack even though my background is related to both Deaf and mixed Asian cultures.

The dilemma of accepting cultural outsiders for their design appreciation is one thing, but designing responsibility is another layer to peel off the cultural appreciation/appropriation. This will be continued in Part 2.

Wrapping up the discussion

Going back to my stance regarding the Substack, I decided to keep this Substack open solely for the storage. My extensive research revealed that there are different degrees of monetary investment with an average price of $5 or more to get full features. There are plenty of free blogging sites that come with pros and cons. Ultimately, the certain numbers hitting the limitation sealed the no-deal for me. My platform goal is to be casual and enjoyable at low-commitment maintenance.

My best recommendations are Wordpress, Tumblr, Itch.io, Hubspot (maybe), Jekyll with Github (requires minimum coding knowledge), Blogger, buttondown, and beehiv.

If you feel this post is worthwhile sharing, go ahead while keeping in mind that my lived experience is not “one-of-all-kind” and please keep an open mind to explore a multitude of perspectives.

[1] Noted, the speaker spoke too fast for me to multitask writing and listening. I chose to focus on the sign language interpreters instead of writing.

[2] Sources (courtesy of Root (Dice Stew)). Kersen, T. M. (2016). Insider/Outsider: The Unique Nature of the Sociological Perspective and Practice. Journal of Applied Social Science, 10(2), 104-112. https://doi.org/10.1177/1936724415626961, Suwankhong, D., & Liamputtong, P. (2015). Cultural Insiders and Research Fieldwork: Case Examples From Cross-Cultural Research With Thai People. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 14(5). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406915621404

[3] Deaf with a capitalized D means there is a cultural identity, community, and sign language for Deaf people. A lowercase “d” means having difficulty with hearing in general. In my case, I consider myself as deaf and fluent in sign language that interacts with Deaf community to some degree.