Notes on Language, Representation and Appropriation

Many of us do historical role play to learn about people, cultures and experiences of the past. But what to do when past norms are offensive to our present-day values? And what what to do when our portrayal may be unintentionally offensive to others?

The experience of life in the North America of the 18th Century would horrify most of us today: it was a place where slavery and genocide were not only accepted as necessary, but a part of offical government policy. Atrocities were practiced on all sides of the conflict. Democracy and human rights (even if exclusive to monied white men) were yet to be born. And in daily life, religious control and the arbitrary, often brutal, power of the sovereign pervaded every aspect of life. Within European society, inequality on the basis of race, gender and class were deeply entrenched. This was the social and political milieu of colonialism, a system that, through violence and dehumanisation, enables the powerful to extract and expropriate wealth, land and freedoms from the less-powerful. This is a grim and depressing setting.

Werewolves and ghosts don’t exist, but in a game we imagine they do, just for fun. Why not make the game fun for everyone by imagining radical racial and gender equality in the setting too? This is one option that is adopted in a few games. But not in mine.

This idealist revisionism is fine when games are purely a form of escapism. But it’s not helpful if we want to use games as a vehicle for learning about history and society. Imagining things as less horrible than they really were doesn’t help us learn much about the past. And this, after all, is a game of horror. I want you to be terrified by ghosts and demons, but also discomforted by the everyday norms of past centuries. For this reason, this game will aim for a realistic, and often uncomfortable, portrayal of gender, race and class.  But it aims to do this in a way that is unapologetically and explicitly anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic and anti-colonial.

How is this achieved? How can you portray exploitation in a game while being anti-exploitation?

Words matters a very great deal. Malicious or thoughtless use of language can enact violence; whereas thoughtful self-conscious use of language is one means of redressing past violence.  This is true in everyday life, and the same can be said for portrayals of characters and situations in a roleplaying game.

Some words are unambiguously violent and have no place even in a realistic historical setting. There is probably no conceivable circumstance that makes it OK to use the N-word in an RPoL game, not even in character, not even if your character is an unrepentant racist. There are other ways of acting in character that convey meaning without overt violence. For example, “Quantrill spews a string of racial epithets” gets the point across just fine without actually using any of the epithets in question.

Other words are not quite as violent, but still somewhat offensive. In the game we will use terms that, though commonly used at the time, may be contested today. The term “Iroquois,” for example, was commonly used, where Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) is today the acceptable term. But we’ll mostly use “Iroquois” in the game because that was the term widely used (up until the late 20th Century) to refer to political entities that were part of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

This raises another issue. Is it appropriate to use these words at all? And is it appropriation to represent indigenous characters, and indigenous mythology, in an online role-play community whose primary demographic is hetero white men? From a strict anti-colonial perspective, maybe not. But I take the position that in this game we’re a community of learners—you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t interested in the time and place—and we’re here to educate ourselves while having fun at the same time. We’re aware that it matters how characters are portrayed, and the thought, intention and depth of research behind the portrayal. I expect players to read about the time and people, use language with care and, above all, to not behave like an asshole.

And finally, the best way to avoid objectification and appropriation is to make your character human, with all the foibles, weaknesses and fears that we all have. The intrepid explorer and the brave, blameless noble savage are cardboard tropes. What makes your character weaker, more human? Are you a priest who fights in secret with lustful thoughts? Or an ageing leader who is losing memory and eloquence, and with it the ability to inspire? How do your struggles manifest in your everyday actions and words? No one is an island. Who do you rely upon and who do you love? Even in the darkest places there is human tenderness.

By observing these basics of respect and awareness, we should all be able to have have fun learning about history without re-enacting historic harms.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:27, Sat 14 Aug 2021.