I have recently joined an intriguing looking game set in the Wild West. I was wondering how players dealt with issues surrounding racism and sexism in historical settings? I am thinking in particular of the reaction of a white character to a black character in post-civil war US. I want to be able to convey a realistic setting with appropriate language should the need arise but don’t want to offend or upset fellow players, or break any rules.

Any thoughts, hints, etc.

It’s not a genre I’m terribly familiar with, but I’ve always though of the Wild West as a bit of a ‘fringe’ setting.  That is, the folks that couldn’t quite make it, or didn’t quite fit in in the big cities could make a future for themselves in the desolate spaces between the coasts.

I think a question of racism/intolerance would be very character specific (as opposed to locale-specific). If someone’s background meant that they were less inclined to accept a fella ... there might be ten more that wouldn’t even blink as long as he could sling a six-gun, or rope a calf (or whatever it is they did back then).

^^ I think it would be accurate to have the Chinese be an oppressed minority though.  They supplied a lot of railroad construction labor, and so saw quite a bit of the country.

I’m almost positive that they weren’t greeted with open arms everywhere they found themselves. This led to developing/maintaining insular, assimilation-resistant communities ... which served to drive the ‘other’ wedge a bit further. Sort of a negative feedback loop.

In my Western there just isn't that as Ski-bird said.  It is a fringe area, same as the North and South soldiers that fought against each other, individuals might mentally not like something but there is no prejudice towards any outwardly and the majority accept the race or the sex.  Females can own ranches, shops, etc and no one dwells on these things they just play their characters.  Maybe some other westerns area bit more strict on keeping  these things in game.  I just don't have any in game problems and even a man and a woman or vice versa can be a mixed couple.  There is no enjoyment in being racist or sexist to me and my players.

Deadlands (in all incarnations) point blank tells its GMs to not be racist/sexist.

The first thing to do is encourage the GM (since it reads as if you're a player) to have a frank, open, honest discussion with the group about the matter.

The group needs to know people's boundaries and set expectations across the board.  This will be useful for both the GM as well as for the players.  Historical accuracy generally isn't worth making people uncomfortable, especially if they're blindsided by it, and there's plenty of other ways to introduce conflicts and tension.

That's really going to inform everyone of how best to handle the situation.

As Cygnia mentioned, Pinnacle's Deadlands setting has had to deal with this, and it's worth noting that last year they actually pushed out a huge setting update that retconned how the setting dealt with the Civil War as part of what they termed the "Morgana Effect".  It might be worth giving it a Google to read the reasons why, written by Shane Lacy Hensley, the game's creator.

I think that as GM, I would explicitly state that while racist/sexist attitudes exist within the setting, PCs should not be the ones embodying them - at least not in terms that the players of the characters might find offensive.

It's also important to remember that even back during those times, not everyone shared the same views, and that lots of people just keep their views to themselves anyway. In certain aspects, it's no different than (for instance) playing an Elf that doesn't like other races in a D&D game... the party might have other races, but the Elf character probably just keeps their mouth shut/their views to themselves in the interest of not getting killed/run out of the PC group for <insert whatever reason here>.

I really think these replies to you are brilliant.  One more thing is prominent, talk with the games as a group.  I as a GM just won't allow anything that would make any player uneasy.  Best to talk to the game group you are in so everyone knows how everyone feels about it.  A game is not just one person but a group of two or more players and they need to talk together.

Thanks, that is great everyone.

To be clear, I don’t want to play my character as racist or sexist, but it is likely that certain attitudes will exist in a white male character of the age, even if they aren’t actively pursued.

1. Remember that these are games. Even the most historically accurate game is not tied to real life in any way. It is a realm of imagination so while it is easy to say "well that's how people acted back then" it is just as easy to say "people don't act that way in this setting" and call it a day.

2. As mentioned above it is very easy to say most people aren't raging bigots in any setting and you can make allowances for player characters. Maybe they are famous. Maybe they've got the papers that say they are legit free and you can say that the NPCs and other players have to respect that (except for obvious card carrying antagonists).

3. The priority is always for players & GM to have fun together. If your table can't happily come to an agreement about the balance between not having a hostile table and being "historically accurate" then perhaps you should get another setting that everyone can agree to.

---

Ultimately it is important to remember that the idea of "that's how my character would act" or "that's historically accurate" is bull poopy of an argument. You as players/GM ALWAYS have complete control in how these things work so if you have bigotry in your game that is a choice you are making. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and telling you that you have to treat someone like crap. Or if they are it should be very obvious that this is a bad thing and the person forcing you to do this is a very bad evil antagonist.

It is a work of fiction. Make better choices.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:31, Mon 25 Jan 2021.

And it's a perfectly valid choice to make.  It's fiction, it can be as grim, dark, nasty, vile, evil, etc as you and your group want.

I had a GM for a while who ran a game in which people from various periods were transported into a magical post-apocalypse. Without really thinking, I ran a character from the 1920's, and the GM pushed me to play up the racism and sexism. Like really pushed. And part of it, I believe, was to be able to have those aspects in a game to poke at other players without the blame or responsibility falling on him. Eventually the game fall apart, and part of it -was- due to my character's attitudes. I wish I'd realized it in advanced, and backed off of it. It was years ago, and I'm older and wiser.
The deal, perhaps said already here, is that the game is an expression of both the GM and the players. If they want to have those things in the game, great, let them. If one or more of them doesn't? Probably not the best game for them to be involved in, whether it be player or GM. It's good to start things with people being on the same page about it all, but if not, having the ability to say, "Hey, this thing in the game bothers me, can we either talk about it or excise it" is a real good thing.

It's also worth noting that, in a great deal of the Old West, racism was not as prominent as many people assume it to have been.  A lot of cowboys were ex-slaves that decided they didn't want to keep farming the way they always had, even if it was theoretically for their own benefit now.  A lot of the people who went west, initially, had to depend on their neighbors for help and survival, and you couldn't afford to be too picky about what their skin color was.

Later, as things became more established and more of an upper class began to develop, racism became more prevalent, so how racist a character or group might be would depend largely on what their background was...but if you're talking about an Old West cattle baron, he was as likely to hate an Irishman as anyone of Chinese or African ancestry, just because they were a lower social class, and therefore likely to be an obstacle to be removed.  Even different Native American tribes had different reputations, so while there was plenty of prejudice, it wasn't necessarily racism.

Various biases/prejudices there certainly were, ranging fr4om the oafishly overt to the poisonous polite. In a game with NPs like that, is the intention window dressing or wold elements for the characters to struggle with or giantess (or to work for a better society)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._suffrage_in_Wyoming

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 13):

Thanks, interesting stuff. As a Brit there are many topics that aren’t taught much in our schools, including the US Civil War (well, we had our own first!), War of Independence (apparently we lost so let’s gloss over that one) and the civil rights movement (we covered women’s suffrage, but only recently has the topic of race really entered into our school curriculum). So, we tend to learn our American history from movies and TV shows, which aren’t always the most reliable or accurate!

Well...it's fair to say that's where a lot of us learn our history, too...

But I've got a family history that includes some of the early settlers in the west, a few of whom were renowned for managing to work out peaceful neighbor arrangements with the Native Americans in the areas where they settled.  And for several years, I worked at a huge week-long festival celebrating the U.S. westward expansion, where a lot of things like the actual racial diversity of the early settlers were discussed in some detail...

I've also joined a western recently, but I'm playing a Brit who moved to the wild west and who is forming connections to the apparently ever growing Chinese population in the town.

I personally don't think you can avoid the subject of racism altogether in a historical game, but you can treat the subject delicately and illustrate how flawed the attitudes and behavior were back then.

I'd check with the GM.  Some play racism/sexism as it was in a time period, or at least as they believe it was, some play both as mostly non-existent, and all variations in between.

In reply to Starchaser (msg # 17):

Lol! I think it is the same game as me!

I'm running an early 20th setting so the wounds of the Civil War are still pretty fresh, I just told the players that if anyone finds the attitudes and -isms of the period offensive, just let me know, as it's more for the bitter flavor than integral to the story.

It's something that requires trust in the GM and clear guidelines for the group, if you're going to include prejudices as a theme.

I don't mind games with it or completely without it, if it the GM is keeping an eye on PCs and it's not gratuitous.

What does bother me is being in a historical game with themes of prejudice and being surrounded by PCs who keep reminding you how "progressive" they are every 5 minutes. If you want your character to hold modern values, that's fine, but don't stand there congratulating yourself in. every. single. conversation. Especially not when every other PC in the game is also doing it.

Just congratulate them fo hurdling the low bar of being as progressive as everyone else int eh game and ask them what they've done lately to help advance the cause of progress for [X] marginalized ingame group.

And watch them turn inside out.

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 22):

Yeah. It really makes me want to play the character who does hold those outdated beliefs; but at the same time, I don't trust the other players in those games to understand that's the character and not get shirty with me on a personal level.

Hey I'm not racist towards {{insert nationality here}}! My best friend is {{insert nationality here}}!

I'm playing racists, sexists, and classists in a fantasy game right now.  It's subtle, but some people are catching on that my characters have complexities and don't "just like everyone equally", some people are more "equal" than others to them.

Of course we've had out right racial supremacists in that game (NPCs and PCs), they ruffled feathers and had to walk against the stream, but they are there.  And it is a vaguely medieval/renaissance world so the races do not generally along at all outside our groups.

It is always a tough call. For every person that does it well with thought and purpose there seems to be half a dozen chuckleheads who just want an excuse to be absolutely toxic individuals.

I would be less comfortable doing it here than in a face to face game. Harder to communicate how much of what you are doing is game, and how much is who you might really be.

It is also harder to know who is pretending to be the race or gender being oppressed, as how they play it could be more offensive than the characters who are being racist.

I am in a game now where there is an African American character who clearly wanted to play up the divisive issues involved there, and that character had his wings clipped a little by the DM, putting that stuff out of bounds. Probably a wise decision.

I have heard tell of RPG's on the Dark Web that deal with such things in a truly offensive way. Scares me a little that there are people who would want to do that...

Truth.  Had one in the game I'm in (the above mentioned fantasy) and every character he played was either overly racist, sexist, classist, angry, stubborn, greedy, something, that made the PC basically untenable to a group's dynamic.  Like they were deliberately being as disruptive as possible in that one manner, and using "but my character is a racial supremacist/stubborn/bad tempered/etc" as the excuse.

Ars Magica, the game so detailed the authors must have had OCD (the back of the rule book actually has a summary of mathematical formulas you need for the game, like an engineering textbook), naturally weaves this into the rules.

Characters have "Virtues" and "Flaws".  Spoiler Alert, the game is set in a "mythical Medieval Europe" so being a Jew or Muslim is NOT a "Virtue".

And it's not just a flaw, but a MAJOR one at that!

OUTSIDER

Major, Social Status  You belong to a group that is both readily   identifiable   and   distrusted   or   disliked.  Examples  include  Saracens,  Jews,  and  Moors.  You are shunned and often persecuted because of  this,  and  your  life  and  freedom  may  occasionally be in peril. You have a bad Reputation of level 1 to 3 (depending upon how easy it is to identify you) among members of the dominant social group of your area. There is no way for you to ever remove that stain, and you are marked by it wherever you go
This message was last edited by the user at 03:38, Sat 30 Jan 2021.

Kind of the way we treated Drow back in the day, but it is different, I think, when you treat fictional beings like that.

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 28):

In general I don’t mind racial intolerance in a fantasy setting. I ran a game in a homebrew world where half-orcs were seen as an underclass so would struggle to get service in good inns, shopkeepers might not serve them, etc. This worked well ,and the player who played a half-orc role played it well.

However, I played a game where we the party included two half-orcs (including me) and two dwarves. One of the dwarves was continuously antagonistic towards the half-orcs, claiming “hey, I’m just playing my character”. But it was non-stop. The other half-orc rose to the bait and responded, both IC and OOC. It eventually led to the characters attacking each other in the middle of a combat, and some choice words OOC. This also dragged in myself and the other dwarf, even though we had both tried to ignore it.

Handled differently, I.e. if all parties had agreed to it in advance, it could have presented a really fun role playing opportunity. As it was, it just felt like a nasty little racist venting anonymously, pretending it was all “just a game” .

The dwarf got booted, the half-orc quit not long after and then the game died, as all of the other players had gotten disillusioned at the bitter twist the game had taken.

Had something similar start to happen in a homebrew game I played in years ago.  One of the characters was an elf...in that particular setting, there was a history of bad blood between elves and dwarves.  Of course, another character in the party was a dwarf...

One advantage we had, though, is that I don't think there was more than one character of any given race, so nobody got "double-teamed".  Another advantage we had is that one of the characters was a home-brewed felinoid race that was unfamiliar with the history of the elves or dwarves...

So, one night when the elf was getting particularly pointed in the anti-dwarf sentiments, he asked why.  All in-character, on both players' parts, and unprompted by anyone.  The elf stumbled through some explanation about age-old feuds and the sort, to which the felinoid responded, matter-of-factly, "Oh...so you're a bigot."

Now, I know both players.  Neither of them are bigots, and they are both, still to this day, incredibly good friends.  But in that moment, the elf's player looked floored...probably had never been called bigoted in her life, and she struggled to come up with an explanation...the felinoid's player just said, "No need to excuse it...I just wanted to know if there was some legitimate reason for you to hate dwarves."

And that was the last that was said about it.  But there was a sharp decrease in the anti-dwarf rhetoric after that...

Sometimes, just like in real life, it just takes someone asking the right questions to get people started thinking about their assumptions.

On one hand, those who don't adknoweldge history are doomed to repeat it, and I don't want to clean away the stains of the past and pretend they never happened.

On the other hand, this is a place for an enjoyable past time to be held and enjoyed by sane rational people who want to relax and have a good time.  I don't think race and sexism have Any place in gaming.  It's true, it happened in the past, and we should remember it.  But we also have the duty and the right to be Better than those who came before us.

Probably the best way to deal with it is to simply remove it.   Treat the setting as a reenactor might; keep the look and feel, but toss the actual historical stuff.

In reply to Hunter (msg # 34):

After I read your post... all I could do was think about a Key & Peele skit.  The one in which they show up at a place where some reenactors are having a Confederate Army camp... And want to join the reenactment by being loyal servants and avoid becoming contraband.

I know there is/are a point(s) here somewhere... but damned if I can lay it out succinctly... So many layers to the black humor of the skit; confronting the "crackers" view of romanticized "The Cause", verses the reality of Southern Culture (Then verses Now)  ... literally "black" in the case of this skit.  A serious topic, laid out in a very complex and sophisticated manner.

I still have no idea how to express all my thoughts to any points, observations and comments in this thread.  Except to say, "I get it" when it comes to the difference between IC character portrayal and OOC actual player personality. If I get the feeling that IC and OOC are one and the same... I move on.

I have a zero tolerance policy for any games I run. Doesn’t matter if it’s historical or fantasy. I see nothing positive in allowing racism and racists in my games. There are only negatives. Many of them laid out by other posters so I won’t repeat them. For some reason people often feel the need to test this policy in subtle and overt ways, then act surprised when I boot them. It’s really sad when they vent spleen and try to defend being racist.

I'm curious for the thoughts of more experienced players/GMs: how do people reconcile an open, inclusive atmosphere free of racism in a game that specifically pits different races against each other (e.g., the stereotypical dwarves v goblins grudge)?

As a DM of a 5e game, I struggle with some of the more ingrained fantasy tropes. On one hand, you want new players to experience a "typical" fantasy world that meets some part of their preconceived notions and expectations.

On the other hand, "this race is evil, this one good" just smacks of an old school colonial mindset, and I abhor it.

Edit: To be clear, I realize experienced players/GMs might not have much of an issue playing around this problem. My question is more geared towards dealing with new(-er) players wishing to experience what they may view as a "stereotypical" fantasy setting.
This message was last edited by the user at 17:35, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

In reply to Jewwk of Shuu (msg # 37):

Simple. Don’t include it. Typical notions, stereotypes, and expectations be damned. A given group can have a grudge against another group, but it doesn’t need to be elevated to racism. Like this clan of dwarfs hates that tribe of orcs because they raid the dwarfs stronghold. And the tribe hates the clan because they befoul the river with mining waste, or some such. But it shouldn’t be racism. The dwarf would care about someone being an orc unless they’re from that one tribe.

Also, don’t use alignment. Especially of the “all X are evil” variety. If you want to keep a kind of how they act shorthand, use alignment from B/X D&D. Law or Chaos. Just be careful not to use those as stand-ins for good and evil.

In reply to Jewwk of Shuu (msg # 37):

It's easiest if you maintain a strict definition of the terms. If the humans in your campaign come in multiple shades, but don't discriminate on that basis in their own society then, technically, there is NO racism.
Conflict among humans, elves, orcs, goblins, kobolds, dwarves, halflings, githyanki, gnomes, svirfneblin, and/or the intelligent shoe people from the Crab Nebula is about species, not race.



You do realize that such a statement is only valid from a homocentric point of view. To explain, there are numerous intelligent species described as 'good' or 'evil' that do not seem to pose any sort of problem. However, when that intelligent species becomes bipedal there's a mindset involved. It should be just as difficult to assume good of all gold dragons as it is to assume evil of all goblins.
This message was lightly edited by the user at 19:58, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

In reply to soulsight (msg # 39):

That’s a laughably bad dodge. It’s still racism.

Different species can’t interbreed. We’ve had half-elves, half-orcs, and half-dwarfs in D&D for decades. Half-demons. Half-dragons. Half-angels. Half-elementals. They’re all common.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:56, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

Actually, that's laughably bad logic. Elves, orcs, dwarves, demons, dragons, angels, elemental, et al were existing concepts LONG before DnD and continue to exist outside the narrow world of that game and its lineage. In point of fact, the original orcs COULDN'T interbreed with humans, having been created by a non-human (I believe the species was noted as "Istari"). Adding half-elves and half-orcs to the mix could be considered an intentional incorporation of racism in the game BECAUSE it blurs the line between species and race. Unless, of course, the interbreeding is not considered naturally possible and the creatures thus created were produced through some external intervention. Then, even the half-elves and half-orcs and, heck, half-svirfneblin would be their OWN unique species. Thus there is no RACIAL conflict.

Furthermore, although it's true that the differences between the intelligent species can be explained away by giving each inter-species rivalry a history, this doesn't eliminate the idea that the individuals of a species show whether they're evil or good by the color of their skin (red dragons come to mind). No matter how you attempt to explain this, that idea is racist, though it has nothing to do with humans.

Since I'm doing it in your game, I do hope that you perceive me as one of the former group.

For context, I'm a 60-year-old white American male.  I'm not stupid enough to claim I am not at all racist, but I will claim that I try very hard never to be, and to be open-minded when it is pointed out to me that I'm being less than sensitive and/or making white-privileged assumptions, and then to stop.

Right now I'm playing (in praguepride's game) a gnome who has grown up in a sheltered gnomish village with a long-standing feud with a group of goblins that live not far away.  My gnome is now out in the real world, and there is a goblin party member.  She started out detesting him reflexively, but keeps being pulled into seeing him as a comrade and even a friend in spite of herself.  My long-term plan is eventually for her to overcome her childhood-trained racism altogether, but I expect it to take a while.


Arneson and Gygax both referred to Tolkien's work as providing much of the original inspiration for D&D, so I feel pretty comfortable drawing on it for the intent.  Tolkien had elves and humans interbreeding, most notably Eärendil, son of Tuor (a human) and Princess Idril (a Ñoldorin Elf of Gondolin).  Eärendil was the father of Elrond, who favored the elves, and Elros, who became the first King of Númenor (the line of humans that led to Aragorn II, a.k.a. Strider).  (So, Elrond is Aragorn's many-greats uncle, something like forty greats, which makes Arwen Aragorn's very distant cousin.)

In Tolkien canon, the origin of the orcs is that they were elves that were tortured and twisted by Melkor.  Since they came from elves and elves could interbreed with humans, I imagine that Tolkien would have assumed that orcs could, too.  In fact, there are suggestions that the Uruk-hai were the result of crossbreeding orcs and men, though it doesn't quite come out and say it.

In reply to liblarva (msg # 36):

I see nothing wrong with your policy at all. The same goes for your choice to boot players who cannot comport themselves to your policy.

Your game, your rules. If those rules are made clear up front by the GM and agreed to by the player during RTJ: that's what it is, no question.

Within the bounds of RPOL rules; Other games, other rules. But always, it's the GM's call.

For GM's and players alike: If the game is not a good fit...move on to other games.

For myself I have no issue with playing a Half-Ling (Does anyone know the stats for a full blooded Ling?)

A Half-Ling who is half-sized, half-witted, half-baked with an attidue that is half-assed who might just say something like, “You orc-loving, long streak of dark-elven pee... Orcs ate my mother."

To which the ebony skinned Elf replies,"Of course they ate your mother... Males are too stringy... Plus, the female naturally carries more fat; therefore tastier and have a richer mouthfeel. That is just the nature of Orcs... It's not racist you stunty, hairy footed, half-pint... Your mother was a Hamster and your father smells of Ling-on berries. “

How many "isms" in that? What is my OOC take on it...? The only factual thing here is that females do tend to have more fat cells than males... I suppose some folks could spin me according to how mysoginistic or racist I am being, or promoting. (Hint; Finding me to be either, or both, would be projection)

Yeah, I knew it was something like that. But the original elves were small supernatural beings that the word 'fairy' was eventually applied to and the original orcs were another term for goblin or specter. Be that as it may, if a game forces the existence of cross-breeding between these species it turns these species into races and CREATES an arena that allows racism. If the question is how to avoid racism then the answer is to stop trying to make the species into races.

As an aside, the DnD fallacy that humans can breed with orcs or elves but orcs can't breed with elves seems too easy to me, but that has nothing to do with this topic.

There are two different things going on in this question:  There is open and inclusive at the table, that is whom do I allow in my game, whom do I want to game with?  That can be open and inclusive, how you do this should be pretty obvious and simple at this point.

And how to have "inclusivity in play" while maintaining  bigotry in the setting?  Well, I have to half agree with liblarva, I don't bother.  Unless I'm running some pie-in-the-sky utopia where no one hates anyone else for "reasons beyond their individual actions" I don't bother with notions of "complete inclusivity in the setting".  There will be racism, sexism, ageism, bigotry, etc, because that's how a lot of groups tend to operate.

If the hill dwarves constantly pollute the waters that run into the plains goblin's lands and the plains goblins constantly raid the hill dwarves sheep, the stunties and gobbos won't just hate the "exact group" that bothers them, because who knows if this goblin isn't a plains goblin and that dwarves isn't a hill dwarf?  No, they will simply take a strong, probably even racist, hatred against that foe, especially when you dial up to "and this has been going back and forth for centuries".


Now that said, I don't tend to have "genetic" bigotry in my games, IE I don't do ye olde "all elves hate all orcs".  If I have a group of people that is bigoted towards another, they have a reason, even if it's a bad, forgotten, or illogical reason, they had a reason to develop the bigotry.


Then either throw it out and give certain races reasons to hate each other, or roll with the "Tolkenism", the "evil race" is always evil because a god made them evil.


I don't understand this.  What are you "playing around"?  "That all Drow are Evil but yet Dritz?"  In that case, clearly "not all Drow".

Are you playing around tender Players feelings?  You have a choice to make:  Run the game you want to run or run the game they want to run.  No real inbetween on that.

THAT hits the nail on the head.  What is in the story because its the story, and what is for the players.

There is no racism for players.  Of course not.

But if it's banned from the story, we get, what?  Universes where unspeakably horrible evil happens on a regular basis (because heroes need to battle against it!) but not THAT particular brand of horrible evil because that's just too horrible evil to ever even mention?

And then... write all forms of evil out of games or just that particular one?

It's okay to deal with it in a story. Sure.  Of course.  And you can give your villains that and all sorts of other sinister, horrible, evil motivations.  That's what makes a villain.
 But of course its not for players... neither are all those other horrible evil things.  I expect bandits in games to plunder, but tolerating players who provided snacks for the game by robbing a supermarket on the way over to game night is not going to happen.

Now, what about when it's not just the irredeemable, implacable enemy?  What then?

Where does it fit in the story?  It shouldn't be something the protagonists are just "cool with".  It should be something, like any other flaw, that is recognized as something to overcome.  Do you ally with a known racist group?  Do you ally with a murderous bandit king?  What about when you have one of those "for the greater good" dire life or death moments?

These are character moments.  Exploring them is what stories are for.

As a rule I do not permit evil characters in my games.  I don't want characters who glorify any form of evil.  But I wouldn't write it out.  It can be part of the story. Like a dragon with a long history of incinerating villages, if its horrible it's there for a reason, as a challenge to players, not as a "try this, it's fun".

The subject here is specifically about *historical* settings though many of us are talking about fantasy games.  But the same thing applies.  If I were to run a historical game set in a time when racist feelings dominated, expect the baddies to be racist.  If you can accept that Sinister Von Mustache is so evil that he will blow up a train full of innocent people, but the fact that he's also a racist freaks you out... I don't know.

This message was deleted by the user at 07:43, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

It can be, if your group wants to play the villains.  Having played villains in the past, there are borders I won't cross, and I'm less likely to find blatant villainy fun anymore (I'm not 12-25 anymore), but even now I play some characters with the flaw of bigotry.


Or something to hold you back, something to fail at, something that complicates your Character's life.  Not all flaws need to be overcome in your "hero's journey".


Agreed.


In my games you can even expect teh "good' people to racist, sexist, ageist, ableist, etc.

If you're playing a cripple in Sparta, do not expect to be held to high esteem, even if the Spartans are the campaign's "good guys".

The issue in my OP was about general attitudes, not specifically about hate. In the setting of this game, a Wild West game, my character is a white, male, 40+ ex army officer. I am trying to play him as a nice guy, but would expect him to have certain attitudes towards women, black people, native Americans, Chinese people, etc. He doesn’t hate any of these groups, but may naturally see himself as superior to them due to his upbringing and the environment he has lived in all his life. Does that make sense?

In an encounter with a young female Chinese store owner I had him being happily surprised that she was allowed to run the store on her own and make business decisions without her father’s input and consent. No hate there, but still an attitude that would be regarded as sexist by modern standards.

In reply to Jarodemo (msg # 49):

So a world where even the 'good' characters would be racist, because it was the norm. Yes, that is a stickler, not sure I would be comfortable running in that game.

Mind you, there was a great western TV show from the late fifties, which was still a pretty racist time, and the main character was notably respectful of the minorities, even though the world itself showed limited opportunities to them, as in the menial jobs by the American society of its day.

I guess if I were to run in such a game, I would want to play a character who isn't even as racist as your character sounds like he would be, even if it was period.

If I were to run one, I think I would go out of my way to highlight the humanity of the minorities, and the inhumanity of the people who demean them.

Sadly I have heard there are role-playing games on the dark web that play to the opposite extreme, even the idea that people want to play an RPG in that way seems disturbing.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:08, Mon 22 Feb 2021.

That's a complicated thing, and that was the issue throughout most of history.

A Roman didn't "hate Germans because they were different".  He might respect and befriend Germans.  But if you asked him, he'd say something like "Germans are lazy and hard to motivate.  They are crude and childish and don't take well to education.. mind you they are nowhere as stupid as Slavs.  Naturally there are exceptional individuals among them.  Do I hate them?  Don't be ridiculous.  I reserve hate for those conspiring against me."

Many people simply took it as "natural order of things" that their group was superior, and others were lesser.

Today, it's racism.  But we get into the thorny problem of playing historical characters by modern day ethical standards.  That same Roman would have done many horrible things while considering it perfectly normal.  And he'd consider himself a fine, morally upstanding individual for not beating his slaves unless they really deserved it.

Until fairly recently, in historical terms, virtually everyone was, by modern day standards, an evil person.  On the top, on the bottom.. they all did things we would consider vile.

Heck, the average medieval peasant considered public torture and execution to be entertainment.

So generally, I stick to modern day ethics, or a close Disney version thereof.  Not writing historical novels, here!

Some people mistakenly conflate racism, bigotry, and hatred.

I know this is probably a big flaming dump of a thread to join in, but to me, the strangest thing about dealing with racism in role playing games set in fantasy settings is how many games seem to take such a strange, unrealistic take on it.
A good example is the old rpg Rifts.  The main book vilifies the Coalition as this horrible, monstrous regime that is wholly based on the Nazis.  But the idea that they are totally evil because they hate non-humans is so silly in a setting where hordes of human eating monsters have literally poured through portals to wipe out most of humanity that I am not sure why they decided to make it their main villain.

I get that the coalition is supposed to be the extreme, that they went beyond simply hating nonhumans to using them as a reason to persecute everyone, but it is still such a strange way of taking on a real world subject.  In a setting where there are tons of creatures who will eat you, or your soul, or flay your family alive, or use you as a living battery for their magic, the true villain is racism?  IT just seems like a strange viewpoint that is far more based on real world views, than anything that would come out of the actual setting of the game.

The same can be said of some D&D settings.  If the worst thing about an NPC is that he is mean to someone because of their race or skin color, as opposed to using dark rituals to raise their relatives as undead solders or drinking their blood or summoning an actual demon, then maybe that NPC is the least of your worries.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the user at 00:38, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

More specifically, Racism is "the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another." It may be caused by various flavors of prejudicial thought (not all of which might actually be hateful, as such, just discriminatory), but there's actually a tangible effect on the world and on people.

Racists don't always hate people who are different than them. But they reliably treat them differently based on a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority or inferiority of a particular race. And that discriminatory treatment is reinforced by society, either through social pressure, selective ignorance, or outright codified law.
This message was last edited by the user at 07:26, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

This message was deleted by the user at 07:42, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

In that case, you replace Racism with Species-ism which is just as abhorrently bad and should be frowned upon.

In reply to Alex Vriairu (msg # 56):

I'm not sure you understand the term. Unless you agree that fear and hatred of spiders and/or snakes is immoral, species-ism is not racism.

Do the snakes and spiders in your example possesses humanlike qualities? Do they laugh, love, cry, contemplate existence, build societies, change through experience? Do they have the capability of being aware of their own feelings and sensations?

Furthermore, is that fear and hatred used as justification for mistreatment, discrimination, denial of opportunity or resources, even murder?

If your fantasy beings talk like humans, think like humans, and have a distinct culture like humans, then they meet all of our brains' requirements for humans, even if they also have scaly skin or crawl on walls. So if that applies, then yes, it is immoral to hate and fear them.
This message was last edited by the user at 13:54, Tue 23 Feb 2021.

In defense of RIFTs, while I agree with you, I still have some of the old source books and if you read through it there is a bit more nuance to be had.  If you read out beyond the core book and get into the history of the Coalition, it originally wasn't so extreme as it is at now, yes, they shot anything that came out of a rift for very understandable reasons, but it was radicalized by power seeking aristocrats to cement their power at a critical point in its political development.  The way I read it, the lesson isn't that "the real villain is racism" it's "the real villain is extremism/demagoguery/fascism".  You get the impression that you can believe either:

1) The Coalition is just pure evil
2) The Coalition is a Necessary Bad Thing that has the potential to be a Good Thing but good flipping luck fixing it

It's sort of the same vibe as the Imperium of 40K, it's a horrible organization, but the world it exists in sucks so bad you can understand why and how it developed and why it's successful.  Its values and modus operandi are deplorable, but the world it operates in is so extreme you understand why it's there and why people feel the need to support it; it's a black spot with some gray swirled around the edges.

It is an interesting idea, the Coalition, because it's very easy to believe that someone who lives in Chi-Town whose whole life is controlled by propaganda probably believes that everything outside the walls is 100% horrible and an existential threat to humanity.  On the other hand if you live in a frontier settlement where you probably conduct life sustaining trade with magic-users and non humans, you might well be a Coalition citizen but your POV is probably quite different.  I've always imagined it as full of some True Believers, but mostly scared, helpless people whose alternatives are to carry a flag for the fascists in the awesome black skull shaped death robots that swoop in and kill all the horrible monsters and, well, being eaten by the horrible monsters that laugh at your little laser rifle because you didn't carry the flag for the fascists in the awesome black skull shaped death robots.

That's actually kind of the point of the new Savage Worlds edition, was the other forces in the setting cooperating to give those people a viable alternative.

It's worth remembering the Coalition themselves are tremendous hypocrites, they have no problem using psychics, mutants, non-humans etc. to advance their own agendas under the banner of "it's okay when WE do it" and that's solidly in the lore without head-canon (see Dog Boys).  I've always portrayed them as having spies and traitors in enemy factions. That doesn't make them not evil, rather it makes them a little bit less cartoonish and a bit more realistic.

There is some nuance there to explore if you really want to, but I would say it depends a lot, possibly too much, on the Gamemaster to add some fiber to it and make it a more believable depiction.  If you're just reading the core rulebook I get that you do not get that impression of nuance or believability anywhere.  Siembieda... he's a very creative writer, but he's not a novelist he's a world builder.  That roughness is part of the charm of RIFTS, because it's raw and it's somebody's unfiltered vision and I love stuff like that even when it is a bit unrefined, but it does mean you have to work at it harder to make an actual narrative.

But then again, that's any game.  You can have flat, irredeemable and unbelievable villains if you want, that works for some games sometimes it's even best.  Or you can put the work in and make villains that players can understand the motivations of, which actually makes the players hate the villains even more in my experience.

Your bolded statement in the second paragraph is the primary definition of racism, and the key word is BELIEF.  ANYONE (even the oppressed) can hold racist beliefs.  It is the application of racism by those in a position of power that LEADS to oppression.  Racism by itself does not equal oppression.  It is when you qualify it, by saying "systemic racism" or "institutional racism" that it takes on that definition.

That being said, it is true that racism does not equal hatred, necessarily.  It is discriminating based on race.  It can come from a position of hate, of course, but does not have to.  Traditionally, some plantation owners in the South looked at their racist actions towards their slaves as simply those of a parent taking care of a wayward child.  The lack of hatred does not make it any less racist.

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The Coalition States in RIFTS is a very good example of systemic racism due to beliefs of the powerful, leading to oppression.  But a closer look at some of the anecdotal stories in the books shows that individuals have the ability to challenge those beliefs on a personal level, when confronted with situations that run counter to what they were taught.

When you have a campaign dealing with the Coalition on a large scale, it is difficult to separate it from the policies and beliefs held by them as a nation.  When roleplaying in such a setting (or any historical setting), it is disingenuous to completely ignore the political and societal norms of the period.  That does not mean that those ideas have to be a focus, nor even in the forefront.  The players should not typically be the ones embracing those racist ideals, though a minor case to build and learn from is always a popular trope.

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All in all, it always comes down to personal preference when roleplaying.  If a player is not comfortable with it, they will avoid it.  If a GM doesn't want it to be a part of their campaign, they will avoid it.  As long as people are upfront and open about it from the beginning, it will make it easier to have an enjoyable experience together.

like I said in my post, I understand there is nuance to the coalition in the written material.  But when the authors make them literal Nazi stand-ins, with every aspect of their army covered in death's heads and lightning bolts, they aren't really trying for a morally grey group.  They want the players to hate them.

I just think it's funny that the authors put more effort into painting the coalition as bad guys than they did showing how horrible it would be to live in a world full of dinosaurs, xiticix, psi-stalkers, and trans-dimensional horrors like the splugorth.  It's just a weird mix to try to put in a morally gray, nuanced enemy in a world with such obviously evil antagonists.

Even the Third Reich was more nuanced than most people think.  There were true believers, the rebels, the oppressed, and the average person who was just trying to get by day-to-day without the gestapo showing up on their doorstep to drag them away because they inadvertantly said or did something that classified them as an enemy of the state.
And, there were plenty of great advancements that came out of Nazi Germany, as well.  The jet engine, the rocket engine, the Volkswagen, high fidelity audiotape, the connection between alcohol and liver disease, and even the connection between tobacco and cardio-pulmonary disease.  Be advised, I am not advocating for the fascists, but their scientists did much to advance knowledge.

I agree with everything you said.  What I was saying was that the game intentionally depicts them as the clear villain of the setting.  They emphasize their evil over almost anything else.  Most people view Nazis as totally evil, so using them as your intentional reference point for your fictional villain usually isn't going to invoke nuanced consideration.

All I am trying to say is that often, when modern games take on racism and sexism, it is emphasized as worse evil than the utter horrors that the game also contains.  I think this is a strange way of doing it, and shows the mindset of many modern writers and players.

It reminds me of the show Chicago PD that my wife watches.  For several seasons they've had literal murderers on their police force, including their sergeant, but when an act of racism occurred, then they all had to stand against the corrupt cop that did it.  By writing their episode like that, they're showing that a person having a racist mindset was a less tolerable sin than actually killing someone.  It's just a very strange take to have.  Maybe it shows how desensitized people are to the violence inherent in most roleplaying games.

Given that this topic cannot be discussed without reference to real world politics and political situations, this thread is being closed.  Thank everyone for keeping the discussion civil.