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Cultural Appreciation
30 Plays14 days ago
This time Mark and Ben take on the touchy topic of cultural appropriation in RPG settings. As a worldbuilder and in the run of your games, you'll draw on real world history, culture, and traditions, and it's likely not all of them will be your own. We discuss how to do so with appreciation and sensitivity rather than stereotypes and exoticism. Tune in for our deep dive into one of our most challenging topics!
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Transcript
Mel Blanc's Voices and Cultural Representation
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, bet your bottom dollar Mel Blanc wouldn't be able to do Speedy's voice nowadays. Who's Mel Blanc? Who? Only a genius who did the voices for Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck.
00:00:13
Speaker
Genius? Sounds more like a white cat who stole a lot of jobs from Latinos and farm animals. But for serious, we're down on our last box of charcoal. What do you want to do? oh I don't know. How do you pass a test when there's so many different people marking it? Suffering, suck it, test.
00:00:31
Speaker
Open up, level up your farm. Tune up, your quest has now begun. Tune up, we'll show you how it's done.
00:00:42
Speaker
Tune up, tune up, tune up, tune up.
Episode Introduction and Gaming Experiences
00:00:49
Speaker
Well, everybody, welcome to another episode of Tabletop Tune Up. This one's going be memorable, I think. Mark, what do you have to say for yourself with that? ah Stop worrying, suck a dash. I have regrets. I have regrets, Ben.
00:01:03
Speaker
Do you? Okay. Well, hey, everybody, we're going to talk about cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, I hope, as we get into this episode. think we just did that intro.
00:01:14
Speaker
i Maybe. Before we get into the topic, Ben. How are things going with you? what Let me ask you, what are you playing good games right now? It's been a while since we checked in on our video game habits.
00:01:25
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I've been playing a lot of Satisfactory because it feels like it's actually productive work. You know, I'm getting some good things done there. That's always nice. It's a good feeling to have.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. Things are going well at at the work. you You pull up Satisfactory and get some stuff done. Yeah. I just started um Rogue Trader. Oh, good.
00:01:49
Speaker
How is it? no it's It's good. I mean, I'll tell you this. I've always kind of wanted to get into the Warhammer stuff. like mythos. And this is a great introductory to it because it really uses all the terminology and the text.
00:02:02
Speaker
And then it like kind of hyperlinks it so you can hover over words that you don't understand. And it'll tell you what the, what the meaning of it is, which I think for me, an introduction to Warhammer, uh, it's been very helpful and I've really enjoyed it.
00:02:18
Speaker
Well, that sounds like you've got a whole like learning experience going on. That's great. i know. Now I've got to play a Warhammer RPG of some sort. so Oh, well. It's go to have to happen someday.
00:02:29
Speaker
Someday. Well, that is a culture that exists far, far in the future. Let's look a little closer to home.
Cultural Appropriation in Fantasy and Sci-Fi
00:02:35
Speaker
We're going to talk today about this kind of interesting concept, this interesting thing that happens in role-playing games where we're imagining and constructing cultures from all over the fantasy worlds that we inhabit or the science fiction worlds or what have you.
00:02:51
Speaker
One of the interesting things is that we don't usually do that like from scratch. A lot of the time what we're doing is we're borrowing from real world cultures, from real languages, from real traditions and other things. And so one of the things that's come up in recent years has been people discussing ah this concept called cultural appropriation. so Mark, can you maybe kind of lead off here? what is there What is it that we're talking about when we talk about cultural appropriation? what is What is the kind of the the concept here?
00:03:19
Speaker
Now, we're talking about cultural appropriation. i mean, there's a culturalpal cultural appreciation and cultural cultural appropriation. And i don't think appropriation is inherently, is not always inherently a bad thing.
00:03:35
Speaker
okay But the way you do it could be bad. I want to give you some examples of so people kind of have an idea of like appropriation in modern context. And you could decide for yourself whether you feel it's too much, too little, or maybe just they shouldn't have touched it at all.
00:03:53
Speaker
Avatar, you think about the movie Avatar, James Cameron movies, you know you think about the Navi and how the Navi are very kind of allegorious to like Native Americans, you could you could say.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, they're they're definitely a kind of indigenous culture. Obviously, they're indigenous to the to the world that they live in Pandora. But it could be that they're gathering inspiration from legends and lore that he already kind of knows about the American mythos and the American Indians. And so there's a little bit of borrowing from that to kind of craft this story.
00:04:30
Speaker
And there might be reasons for that that are like little bit more shorthand. Maybe in the Zygots we kind of understand on ah and like a really core level some of those storylines. So maybe it eases up some of the heavy lifting that James Cameron would have to do the otherwise already burdensome three hour movie.
00:04:50
Speaker
ah Yeah. Well, okay. and And let's, let's park on that just for a second to say, like, you've talked about sort of like, uh, good, bad, there's probably a spectrum here. How are you kind of evaluating that? Is that an example of like kind of heavy handed or, or a bad use of a cultural appropriation? Or do you think that's actually a good example?
00:05:08
Speaker
I mean, I just think it's an example and and I'm not going to really go into the idea of like whether I should judge whether that's a good example or not. I would say that the first movie felt a little bit more original, but by the time you got to the third movie, it felt like, all right, we get The Native Americans.
00:05:25
Speaker
yeah So there's a certain amount of like, you know, kind of give and take with it. There's, there's a lot of other examples. Yeah.
Cultural Inspirations in Popular Media
00:05:33
Speaker
I mean, when I think about like game of Thrones, that's like a whole parade of like historical borrowings, right? Like the Dothraki, they have got, ah they've got a lot of, um,
00:05:42
Speaker
Mongol kind of? Yeah, they're kind of a like a step nomad ah type thing going on there. um Of course, there's all kinds of other cultures in there from like kind of northern European stuff to do you remember in the first season, Serial 4L, who is ah Aria's water dancing fencing instructor?
00:05:58
Speaker
my God. He says, not today, death. You know, what can we say You know, he's got this kind of Italian quality to him, this kind of quarantine maybe. Obviously, ah borrowed from ah emmeil and Emilio. Emilio.
00:06:10
Speaker
Can't say the guy's name. from a Inigo Montoya. Inigo Montoya, yes. it was spanishon Maybe it's Spanish, yeah. That's all I could think of every time I saw that character. That's funny. He's looking for the man with one extra finger. yeah So there's the six-fingered man, you might say. There's a there's a lot of of of places we borrow from, and and no matter what kind of story you're talking about, and it's interesting that science fiction does this very much in the same way that fantasy does this, right? How many planets did James Kirk land on that were some sort of stereotype?
00:06:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he had all kinds of interesting stuff. the interesting Some of the interesting episodes in in the old series were the ones where they landed on like a parallel earth where everything, you know, happened like on our earth except for this one thing, you know, like maybe the Nazis won or maybe it was, ah you know, it was almost like doing a time travel episode, but let them explore a lot of historical and cultural things.
00:07:06
Speaker
those were always kind of fun because they were like, um, I kind of think of them as like one shots, you know, like what if, remember that, remember that Marvel comic? What if? Yeah. Oh, loved water. They felt like, they felt like the what if comic back in the day. And I always kind of like, there was a part of me that kind of enjoy that, but I, let's talk a little bit about the differences. Like there's inspiration.
00:07:30
Speaker
We got homage, But we also talk about like is tropes you but these All these things are kind of tropey, right? yeah And they use these as shorthand to tell you a little bit about this culture without having to use a whole bunch of other explanation.
00:07:45
Speaker
If we just dress it up like you know it's the Middle East, your the audience, their mind will kind of fill in a little bit of that culture and they don't have to. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the way to think about this spectrum of of appropriation we're thinking about, right? On the one end, you've got kind of maybe ah a phrase or a quick borrowing or something like that that's kind of inspired. So I'll give you an example of that. You know that famous phrase that Conan the Barbarian utters about, you know, what is best in life? And he says, to crush your enemies,
00:08:16
Speaker
I can't even remember all See them driven before you. See them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women. this is That's basically a kind of a fairly close quote to something that one of the Khans said, one of the Mongol rulers said. i want to say it's Genghis Khan maybe. But anyway, <unk>s i would classify that as kind of inspiration because it's borrowing a little bit of the ethos and a little bit of that concept, but there's no sense in which Conan is a Mongolian barbarian, for example.
00:08:41
Speaker
go to the little further along that kind of idea of an homage where you're, you're kind of borrowing a bit more, maybe you're kind of borrowing the stuff, but you're kind of tipping your hat to it. You can see there's inspiration and and maybe it's a little bit thicker, but it's not quite just at the level of, Hey, you know, we kind of winked at you a little bit, go further and you're going to see tropes,
Spectrum from Inspiration to Stereotypes
00:09:00
Speaker
right? You're going to see a lot of things you're going to see Maybe this is maybe more where James Cameron sits, right? Where it's, you know,
00:09:07
Speaker
You've got obviously animism, you've got people that are close to nature, you've got like bows and arrows and stuff. yeah you know You've got a lot of kind of life patterns and and attitudes and concepts and cultural elements that are that are really kind of directly borrowed.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then I think the the furthest end of this, and this is the one where I think we get into a little bit of trouble, is where you basically borrow things wholesale and what you end up with is basically a whole lot of stereotypes, right? Because if you don't actually have the original thing itself, if you don't actually have the original culture of India or the original culture of, right, if you're not basically transposing those cultures into this space, um but you're just kind of picking and choosing the elements that kind of made for a fun, pulpy story or something like that, then that stops being a culture. It starts being a kind of a collection of stereotypical things.
00:09:57
Speaker
So does that... Tell me a little bit about that. Is it the intent that is important here or is it like the end result? Because sometimes it's it's kind of muddy. Like sometimes the end result, you could have all the best intent, but you could come out with just the worst things that happen, you know.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because I think this is one of those things that is going to get contested a bit. And I think that that the context of what's going on in the culture at that time makes a big difference. I think if you started changing black stories right in the aftermath of the George Floyd thing, you're probably in a little more trouble than you would be at some other times. You know, the culture's got things to say about what kinds of stuff are acceptable what's not. So I think you want to be a little sensitive to that.
00:10:41
Speaker
yeah On the other hand, it's also the case that These are, you know, when we talk about cultures, these are things that belong to global culture. These are things that belong to history, right? And so there's always a way to, you know, bring the various kinds of life experiences that people have had into a respectful dialogue to kind of story that you want to tell. So my little my little shorthand piece of of advice to kind of think about as we go forward is when you think about the people that are represented in that culture or represented by that culture, like, do you think about them as kind of whole humans who they have they they have their heroes, they have their villains, they have their flaws, they have their desires and dreams, and they have all the different things that make them, you know, great full three-dimensional people?
00:11:23
Speaker
or are they there essentially for you to kind of beat up on some tropes and ah scalp your heroes and whatever else you might say? I also got to keep in mind too, like, i was just thinking about this, like, okay, so we played games like, you know, ninjas and super spies back in the day. And these are, these are you know, very culturally, you know, martial arts from all over the world, stuff like that. And if we got hung up on the fact that, oh my gosh, you know, how can we, how can we,
00:11:53
Speaker
have this martial arts, not, you know, from ours or whatever. And then there's some, there's some, you know, group of five kids playing D and D and in Japan. And they're like, well, how can we, how can we use knights and armor? Uh, if it didn't come, I, this argument gets ridiculous after some, at some point,
Cultural Sensitivity in Early and Modern RPGs
00:12:10
Speaker
right? So yeah can get done just, we got to have a little bit of fun, but let's, let's jump back real quick and talk about how kind of where this stuff kind of began, like the birth of role playing games.
00:12:22
Speaker
in particular D&D, I like to think of that D&D, D&D's and Demigods book that came out way back in the day. It's kind of one the early ones. And it it both sparked my imagination, but now it kind of horrifies it in some context.
00:12:41
Speaker
But it was a really cool book in that it gave you – well, Ben, what did it give us? So many things. I mean, so remember the Deities and Demigods was kind of like the D&D divinities in first edition D&D. And remember that Gygax and company way back then, they are literally just pulling in everything from everywhere they can find. They've got Greek mythology and Norse mythology and they've got... Well, they had like Cthulhu and they had they had the yeah you know they had all these Demigods, even from the popular culture books that were out at the time.
00:13:14
Speaker
Right. But what what do he else do they have here? Well, but they also had some actual extant current religions too. So I think they had, I think they had like some Indian religions, like ah they might've had Shiva or something. I'd have to go back and look. they some Hindu gods. And I think they also had some Buddhist representation and they were just really poorly done.
00:13:32
Speaker
Not a good idea. i mean, they didn't have Jesus in there. Yeah. Gygax was a Methodist, I guess. So maybe that was off limits for him. I don't know.
00:13:43
Speaker
You could see the the line in today's day and age that would have been like, no, come on, young. But I will say this like about those early books is that they put together stat blocks for a lot of deities that We always re-skinned to fit our own pantheon, and we had our own names and stuff.
00:14:04
Speaker
So it was nice to just have that. At the time, it was all we had. It was nice to have that book that you could just go, oh, look, I'm just going to re-skin this, and this will be a DVD for games. I need a death god or a fertility god. Well, there we go. There we go.
00:14:17
Speaker
Let me ask you, though, so there's there's that bit, and I think they've they've subsequently revised that. um There were also, though, like the the settings, and I think this is where there's a little bit more sensitivity these days, right? So if you're thinking about Al-Qadim or Oriental Adventures, some of these early game books, they've had versions of that that have gone through at least through third edition, which would have been somewhere between 2000 and 2007, I think, was when we started with the fourth. these were These were places that actually were modeled on kind of real historical-mythological histories, right? So Al-Qadim, of course, is is modeled on kind of the great Arabic empires of the Middle Ages. And it's borrowing a lot of kind of Arabian Nights ideas and a lot of the folklore of those things. Let's also not forget that like the people who made these books, they're all children of an era where we grew up with
00:15:07
Speaker
you know, uh, you know, movies that had like Arabian nights kind of characters, you know, these really kind of played by white people. I think in those cases, right. These fantastical movies with these golden dome cities and, yeah you know, beautiful, you know, locations. And then we also had like, we grew up with like Quentin Tarantino. We grew up with a lot of martial art movies.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah. So of course we wanted to see those kind of in our games. Right. Yeah. This is a kind of a thing. I'd be curious what you think about this. I would really be curious to see what like ah a revised fifth edition Al-Qadim done by somebody who had like a Muslim or an Arabic, I should say Arabic properly, heritage would would look like. You know I mean? Somebody who really kind of knew the literature, who kind of really enjoyed and wanted to share that with people and say, cool, here's your, you know, you want to play in in this kind of medieval Arabic folklore world, then
00:16:03
Speaker
Here you go. this Give us ah an Arabic medieval folklorist who to to design that. Do you think people would go for that? I think the heat they would get would be too much. i mean I think there would be people who'd want to play it.
00:16:15
Speaker
I just think would be a lot of people who'd be scared to play it. Interesting. I mean, they haven't put out a, when was last time they put out like a, they don't even call it Oriental Adventures, which sounds horrible now.
00:16:26
Speaker
But when was the last time they put out something of that kind? It's been a while. Third edition, maybe? Yeah, third edition, probably. I don't think it was, certainly not by fourth.
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah. So when we talk about that, though, we're, you know, we we have to kind of go back, which makes us think about that generational like context about how these people grew up with that stuff, these these cinema, these movies.
00:16:52
Speaker
There's a whole generation, generations after us, Ben, that has no context with that. yeah it they just They've not grown up with that experience. so you know They didn't have Ray Harryhausen with the stop motion animation stuff. They didn't have it.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there weren't there hasn't been a good Sinbad movie for a while, to your point. So that's kind of been the historical aspect of how RPGs have appropriated this stuff. It's been in settings. It's been in some of the cultural traditions and deities and things like that, mostly because people at that time were just kind of trying to pull in everything they could.
Balancing Appreciation and Appropriation in RPGs
00:17:28
Speaker
Every great story they'd ever seen, every great movie they'd ever watched, every great book they'd ever read. um That was kind of the fuel for the imaginative world building that they wanted to do. So i think the question for us now, this is, I think when we really come to it is this idea of appreciation versus appropriation. I think, I think I'm of the mind that I really want to see a way to bring these things in and do so in a manner that is respectful and interesting and compelling and fun. And I i think there should be a way to do that.
00:17:59
Speaker
I understand that there's ways you can get this really wrong. So let's talk about the ways to kind of do it right and do it wrong and what we should what we should be looking for. And I kind of hinted at some of that stuff a little bit earlier, but Mark, what do you think? Should we, is this a doable thing or do you think this is gonna be fraught with some minefields here or what?
00:18:19
Speaker
I mean, it's it's going to be fraught with with things. i mean But the main thing is, I would say, first of all, kind of be aware of your audience as well. like you know yeah I mean, we got to we got to be thoughtful about that.
00:18:33
Speaker
um And we have to use these tropes consciously. We have to think about them. they're good shorthand i'll be i'll be honest with you there are times when you want to have a a rather large culture and maybe the the party is going to be for for too long and you don't want to get hung up with you know hundreds of pages of like oh this is the culture so we can use shorthand um but you have to think about those assumptions that they carry and the audience, the people at the table, and those assumptions will carry.
00:19:05
Speaker
Because some of the people at the table might have negative assumptions they're going to bring along with it. Or you know some people may have positive assumptions. Are those the assumptions that you want to bring forth in your game?
00:19:17
Speaker
So you have to be thoughtful about how shorthand can also get you stuck in a rut where i mean you thought you thought one thing, but everybody else was thinking moving of another.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So when you're talking about shorthand, you're talking about kind of the the little things you can do at the table that are going to give people that bit of homage or inspiration, somewhere in that kind of thinner end of the spectrum we're talking about. And if people have, if people come to the table with other kinds of associations in their mind they may have a harder time kind of, or they may jump to the wrong conclusions or think you're after something you're not or something like that, maybe. That is, that is exactly it.
00:19:52
Speaker
Okay. Well, so let's talk about this. So it is the case, as you're saying, that these these different kinds of tropes, we're going to stop short of stereotypes. I think at some point here, we'll want to sort of try to address a little bit what the difference is between a trope and a stereotype. But but essentially, the the tropes and the inspirations and the homages, all these things are a little bit of, as you say, kind of communication shorthand.
00:20:16
Speaker
And The idea here is to kind of let a little thing speak for a big thing. That's kind of how poetry works, right? Is you have a couple lines that can create an image and that then is something the reader fills in. And also it's like, even just a few, on that note, even a few bars of music can change that. You know, like like they all it does is triggering you're the person's imagination.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah. So i think I think part of the trick here then is if you're selecting from those tropes, if you're kind of trying to find something to give people a sense of of place and of culture and you're borrowing from real cultures, maybe the first thing to say is try to pick a range of of associations too right and try to pick things that are ordinary everyday kind of objective things so if it's um you know welcome to the culture with the dirty streets and the assassins i don't think that's going to flatter anybody right like nobody's going to want to be like that's that's literally what you came away with from from my culture right if you can imagine somebody from that culture is talking to you on the other hand if you said
00:21:19
Speaker
you know, let's talk about a culture that has had magnificent astronomy and mathematics. It has also had, um you know, ah terrifying amounts of poverty or, you know, they've had slavery maybe, but you could, you could, you could try to represent a range of things, right? You don't have to make it all good news, but, but if it's, if it's something where you can, can create a kind of balance, I think you're probably going to be better off Yes. I mean, obviously you want all the cultures in your games to have a certain amount of richness that players can be drawn into it and be excited about it or you know the stories you're trying to tell.
00:22:04
Speaker
And just having it be very bland. It's not good for anything, honestly. and It's not even just really about a pre cultural appropriation. That's just bad writing. You know what i mean? Yeah. yeah of So just, you know, ah but on your note, don't make it so one note that that one note paints the whole picture.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually a nice way to put it. um how do we How do we offset that? Well, one of the things I think you can do is actually do some homework. I mean, you'll probably notice, dear listener, that a lot of what we're talking about is is the idea that a player or players are going to be talking about cultures that really they didn't come from.
00:22:47
Speaker
And so if you're trying to kind of enrich your own understanding of cultures that you're not a part of, the best thing to do is start by reading and, you know, looking at the artifacts that that culture produced as opposed to stuff that was interpreted by people from your culture.
00:23:03
Speaker
So go to the primary material, not the stuff that gets done by later interpreters who are more familiar to you. So that that would be the kind of the big thing is look at the actual history, look at the actual sort of practices, thoughts, ideas, religions, look at the actual literature produced by those things. If you can get it in translation, let's say, then it doesn't mean you have to become a scholar in that sense, but it doesn't take very long for you to kind of get a good a good taste for that kind of stuff and to, to really see it for what it is. So Mark, as we get into 2026, we're thinking about what this means going forward. There's a lot of great open questions.
00:23:43
Speaker
What do you think we should be paying attention to first? Well, I guess the central idea is to think about like, you know, should we be using kind of cultural inspired regions?
00:23:57
Speaker
And if we are going to be using them, how are we going to do so in a way that is both makes the game exciting, the game good, but also doesn't make a people at the table flee in horror and yeah at the yeah offensive GM.
00:24:17
Speaker
The cringe is real. The cringe could be real. um That doesn't necessarily mean that like a desert setting is inherently problematic. It doesn't mean that that, you know, kind of kung fu monk is innately, inherently disrespectful.
00:24:34
Speaker
You know, we just got to find a way and a balance to to treat these things with the love and respect that they deserve. You know, because at the end of the day, Well, hopefully we all just love these these kind of these cultures and these amazing things that they bring to fantasy RPG.
00:24:54
Speaker
And just like the way we like to share you know our culture when it comes to these fantasy games. I think that these other cultures or who are in the hobby, people who play this from other cultures, they andtu also want to share and because let's let's face it,
00:25:11
Speaker
is We are a small group of people here playing this game. So we are very much a family in that regard. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're trying to find the ways to do it right, we talked a little bit about sort of researching those primary sources. We've talked a little bit about how, you know flattening the the culture or people from that culture in kind of a single note situation or where they're not kind of fully three-dimensional, fully realized humans with their own needs, desires, challenges, context,
00:25:39
Speaker
um I think all of that is is good advice to follow if you want to make sure that you're avoiding the problematic aspects of this.
Global Connections and Cultural Perspectives
00:25:46
Speaker
um I think we've we're very lucky in the sense that there's more connection around the world than there's ever been. and so I think you have access to ideas, voices, creators, and people who are in other places who can give you that.
00:26:01
Speaker
So um You know, maybe in closing, we could just talk about that, you know, to your point, RPGs are collaborative and maybe what this means is we need to expand our collaborative circle a bit a little bit and um help other people's imagination inform our imagination.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and keep in mind that like, and cultural borrowing or appropriation in a sense kind of built this hobby. ah and And I don't think there was any sort of malicious intent in that.
00:26:30
Speaker
I think that's just the nature of like fantasy collaborators. And well I'm just kind of curious if this is going to be, you know we've kind of gone away from it in the last, I haven't seen publication about anything about these different cultures much, but I'm just kind of curious if it's going to ever come back.
00:26:48
Speaker
If Maybe this cultural awareness might might shape the future of this game in ah in a way that that's different than, I guess, appropriation.
Future of Cultural Sensitivity in RPGs
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, i really hope it does in the sense. I'd really love to see, as I said, like a kind of ah a modern version of like an Al-Qadim or a Karatour, I think was the name of the place in in Faron.
00:27:09
Speaker
i was just going to mention that that setting seems to kind of meld a little bit of that into into an idea. um But I'd love to see that taken on by creators and by people who are really inspired by and really deep and and in love with the cultures that that are being ah kind of inspiring that those settings.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see what we'll see what happens. But in closing and closing thoughts, guys, inspiration is part of creativity and awareness is part of your craftsmanship. So, Oh, nice turn of phrase. You do have to kind of work on that you guys. And it's just part of growing.
00:27:46
Speaker
It's part of growing as a GM. It's part of going as a person. That's about all I got on it, Ben. What you, what about you? Well, I think, I think I've kind of laid out everything I think about this at the moment. um We're going to learn, of course, as we continue on, i think having,
00:28:03
Speaker
you know, really deep grounding and in love for the cultures from which you borrow in is going to be a recipe for success. And for, and for the listeners out there, you could post this on our YouTube. What are some of your favorite examples of like, uh, cultural appreciation or inspiration that you've seen in popular culture that really hit the mark?
00:28:24
Speaker
Once that you look at go, Oh, that, that just got me super excited. That was cool. You know, that was when you, and what were ones that you just like, Ooh, That was cringy.
00:28:35
Speaker
Can't do that again. yeah I'd like to hear. And lastly, I'd love to hear how you guys handled this at your table. I know it's not the easiest thing to talk about, but if you guys get a moment, we'd love to hear from you.
00:28:47
Speaker
I will say we've already done an entire episode on accents and how to be wise about that and and not cringy there. So we'll refer you to that for actual sort of performance in game. But yeah, go ahead and leave a comment for us on YouTube. Go ahead and leave ah a note for us at tabletoptuneup at gmail.com. And speaking range, Ben, now let's...
00:29:07
Speaker
Get our outro and let's put on that cringy music. Okay. Yeah. All right, you guys. Hey, this has been fun. We'll see you in a couple more weeks. We'll have more tabletop tune-up for you. But until then, keep those dice rolling. Tune-up, tune-up, tune-up, tune-up.
00:29:46
Speaker
to
00:30:20
Speaker
Tonight, tonight