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.