The Forge Archives

Quote from: LibrisiaI'll be posting revised statements regarding my hypothesis about the male dominance in rpgs tomorrow or the day after.  

As veterans of the Forge's culture, can you please advise whether I should post here or the other thread?

The answer is that you should start on a new thread, like the one I am starting here.  The other thread is very broad and the subject doesn't have anything to do with male dominance per se.  By the way, Ron Edwards is a moderator.  He doesn't block posting to any threads but instead posts saying that it should be closed and moved to other threads.  Actually, he already did so in the "Yes, MORE on Religion and role playing" thread.  

So let's talk about gender/racial bias in RPG texts and game design here.  And just as a reminder, let's try to be relevant to RPGs.  i.e. Not about gender/racial bias in various societies in general.  

Quote from: ValamirOf course, most behavior is taught.  But the message of tolerance and acceptance is already being widely disseminated, its not like the civil rights movement is still struggling to be heard.  I disagree with your conclusion about propating such material. I fully believe that its perfectly fine (in fact, I'm tempted to say its a good idea) to allow the "material that currently teaches it" to propagate, for three reasons.

1) Because while such material is dangerous when viewed in a vacuum as the only source people are exposed to, when forced to stand up side by side with more rational material it is more easily seen for ridiculous nonsense that it is.  Racist propaganda shouldn't be rooted out and burned.  It should be set side by side with everything else so people can see first hand how stupid it is.

2) Because censureship is probably the most insidious evil a government can allow to be committed on its people.  And institutionalized peer pressure to cease and desist certain behavior is just another form of censureship.  In fact, in some ways its a worse form of censureship because its really easy to think you're doing the right thing while doing it.

3) Because there is a point where raising public awareness about problems and issues stops being informative and eye opening and starts being irritating;like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  All social interaction is an ongoing tacit negotiation between parties.  Pissing the other guy off when you're trying to get them to see things your way is just counterproductive.  I don't think you and I really disagree on this, rather I think we probably have different ideas of where that line is and how frequently issues of embedded bigotry need to be raised and addressed and how frequently they should be allowed to slide so as to give people time to figure out the answer on their own without pissing them off and building resistance to the cause you're trying to promote.

To bring this back to the point where I started voiceing my frustration on this thread, the idea of going back to point fingers (damning fingers or not) at elements found in roleplaying games (especially when most of those elements are a reach to begin with) is for me well on the "unnecessary" side of that line.

Well, but this is mostly irrelevant to RPGs.  No one here is talking about burning RPG books (as suggested in #1) or government legislation against them (as suggested by #2).  As a card-carrying ACLU member, I completely agree that book-burning, political correctness, and government censorship are all bad.  However, I do think that it is good to make people aware of the bias.  

I guess my difference with your #3 is that I feel most current gamers are not very aware of the bias within RPGs.  I have seen this in many discussions.  For example, I think that most gamers read the "Star Trek" RPG book and don't notice at all the portrayal of women in it.

Are you focusing on specific RPGs or on RPGs in general?

There is a wide variety of RPGs out there now, especially if we consider freeware.

Doctor Xero

Hi John,

QuoteI guess my difference with your #3 is that I feel most current gamers are not very aware of the bias within RPGs. I have seen this in many discussions. For example, I think that most gamers read the "Star Trek" RPG book and don't notice at all the portrayal of women in it.

I have had the fortune of playing with primarily roleplayers of color, and the racial bias is definitely noted.  Mostly it comes in two forms, either a complete absence of race(or culture that usually goes with it), or else a complete 2-dimensionality of a culture associated with particular groups of people.

Some glaring examples:
-African Gods become demons(Rifts, some D20 products, Vampire)
-Hispanics apparently do not exist in most games, except as street thugs
-Asians apparently use the words "Crimson", "Resplendant" and "Dragon" to describe everything from martial arts to tying their shoelaces.

While this may be a slight exaggeration, its not by much.  And this is all stuff that is dealing solely with actual gamebooks, things perfectly within the control of the authors, not even the actual play itself.

I was rather irritated to read this quote from Greg Stafford regarding a group in HeroQuest:

QuoteJust for information sake, I've generally held that the Heortlings are brown skinned, not white, or pink, as it were. Artists, most European, have tended to draw everyone as pretty much white, though.

(http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd9/2003.08/2529.html)

Consider how differently a lot of people would view their game if they realized that their heros that they've been envisioning all along didn't look like them.  Not to go overboard, but there is a certain level of wish-fulfillment that goes with envisioning yourself as a hero.  Of course, if you can't envision your ideal self looking like you...well...

I highly suspect women encounter similar issues regarding gender on this point.

Chris

Quote from: BankueiSome glaring examples:
-African Gods become demons(Rifts, some D20 products, Vampire)
-Hispanics apparently do not exist in most games, except as street thugs
-Asians apparently use the words "Crimson", "Resplendant" and "Dragon" to describe everything from martial arts to tying their shoelaces.

Why do I find this so funny, when really it's so sad?  Thanks, Chris!

A couple others to add, for purposes of breadth:

• All "foreign" cultures are homogeneous (e.g. Klingons in NextGen)
  
• Christianity is a plot against women and people with folklore (e.g. late Ars Magica)[/list:u]

  QuoteWhile this may be a slight exaggeration, its not by much.

  I doubt it's even exaggeration, really.
  

  Quote

  QuoteJust for information sake, I've generally held that the Heortlings are brown skinned, not white, or pink, as it were. Artists, most European, have tended to draw everyone as pretty much white, though.

  Consider how differently a lot of people would view their game if they realized that their heros that they've been envisioning all along didn't look like them.

  Personally, I doubt that the game would have caught on so broadly if everyone knew the heroes were black, but that's because I'm a cynic.
  
  As to broader considerations, like the argument between Ralph and contracycle {sorry, I don't know your first name}, I should note that I'm 100% with contracycle.
  
  Here in Massachusetts, as you probably know, we're dealing with the whole gay marriage thing in a big way.  If you look at the arguments against it, at some point everyone seems to slide into something along the lines of "marriage has been heterosexual for millennia" or "marriage was meant to be heterosexual" or "marriage is about procreation."  Some of the Christian Right are at least honest: they say that homosexuality itself is wrong, and figure that legalizing homosexual marriage says that it isn't wrong, which is at least logically consistent (although I disagree with the initial premise).  None of these arguments, apart from the Christian Right's argument, makes real logical sense: black people were slaves for a long time in the US -- does that make it right? again, who meant for marriage to be something in particular, and if it's God, isn't that a religious claim? again, if marriage is about procreation, then shouldn't you test for fertility before allowing a marriage, and furthermore punish those who get married and don't have kids?
  
  Okay, so here we have an instance in which discrimination is being debated within the courts and the legislature (as well as by our criminal Governor), and the argument seems to be "the majority doesn't like homosexual marriage so it should be illegal" vs. "this is discrimination against homosexuality."  Now let's suppose that what shouldn't happen (IMO, i.e. they succeed in getting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage) happens: you now have this particular distinction at an institutional level.
  
  How will people just living and playing next to homosexual people be affected by this?  It's much harder to root out discrimination when it's built into law than when it's just your annoying neighbors.  So at this level, argument about -- even proselytizing about -- discrimination is necessary to change how people think.  Argument about the underlying problems in formulating such a constitutional amendment need to be made before amendment happens.  Otherwise, you're assuming that given a long enough period, things always get better.  Really?  Enslavement of African people was a relatively late development, and happened well after things like the (rather milder) Greek slavery system had long since disappeared.  People don't get nicer all by themselves; it does take work.  I mean, to reveal my politics, if everybody just got nicer over time would we have a racist psychopath for a President?
  
  This is where I think RPG's have some power (at a small scale, admittedly).  If everyone has to confront these things head-on in their games, they have to actually think about it.  And I think a lot of discrimination comes from not really thinking about it, because people don't stand in others' shoes and consider what discrimination would mean if they were on the receiving end.  Is it a coincidence that, in the Massachusetts Legislature, an overwhelming percentage of women and Jews are in favor of gay marriage?  I suspect that they have experienced discrimination personally, and this has made them very leery of supporting such discrimination.  Meanwhile those in a dominant position -- white men with lots of money, like Finneran and Romney -- seem not to care.  Why?  Because this change threatens the status quo, and they are invested in the status quo remaining.  If everyone has to stand in others' shoes, it won't eliminate maniacs like G.W. Bush -- but it might stop perfectly nice but unreflective people from voting for him.
  
  Enough rambling.  But the point is that recognizing racism, sexism, etc. in games and elsewhere is not simply a matter of horribleness: lots of people believe they are being moral on such counts, significantly because they haven't seen the other side.  RPG's can help them see this.
  
  Chris Lehrich

Hi Chris,

One thing we might want to do in order to keep this thread from devolving into "my view, your view, his view" which tends to happen easily dealing with the topic of social justice, is to to keep it specifically focused on:

-roleplaying games and social justice within it

-what can be done with specific actions(as opposed to what should be done, with no actual steps)

In regards to that, something that I have and will continue to push is for more rounded treatment for folks in general, regarding both artwork and presentation of culture.  Another, issue that is also worthy if having more diversity of people involved in the hobby of defining their heroes and their fantasy. If you notice, this is no different than the issues faced by other media.

Chris

One of the initial questions that bothers me regarding the initial conversation is whether a printed item is or isn't it a cigar. This is vitally important, in my opinion, because it leads to the question of "what is acceptable to publish and what is not?"

I know the response is, "Anything that discriminates or promotes a bias against a group." But honestly, the question isn't so easily answered as all that.

Let me segue for a moment and then come back to the above: in the movie "The Animal" there is an African-american character who complains constantly that everything that is happening to him is because he is black...it's all racist. The amusing part is that everything he is complaining about is *good* -- he gets his food first at a restaurant, people apologize to him, he gets a promotion, etc. In other words, despite other possibilities, he chooses to blame the color of his skin for the events.

Here's a much less funny example to highlight my case: an African-American family moved in down the street this past winter. We didn't get along with the family at all nearly all summer. No, it wasn't the fact they were black, it was the fact they were selling drugs and letting their kids run wild (swearing at adults, wrecking property, beating up other kids (including ours), etc).

Towards the end of the summer, the police raided their house, and they were convinced it was our doing. Soon thereafter, they were evicted and they blamed us for that as well because we were "nigger-haters" and "racists."

We had nothing to do with the police raid that resulted in their eviction. In truth, I learned from a number of sources that the police had been watching that house all summer, collecting evidence...but this family chose to blame us and called us racist.

Let me clarify that: we're "racist" because because they're black, we're white, and we didn't get along. Because we wanted them out of the neighborhood. It's as simple as that -- to them. Nevermind the drug dealing. Nevermind their violent, disrespectful kids. They decided it was racist because they're black.

So, what am I saying and what does this have to do with RPGs and game texts in general? Simply this: you can see whatever you want wherever you want, even if it isn't there, if that's your view of the world. If you decide to be sensitive to it. Some folks want to call this "blaming the victim," I don't think it's that easy.

More personally, I have extensive experience with discrimination on the basis of religion, but I don't go looking for such where it isn't, which is precisely what I see a lot of people doing.

Consider all the flap over the Nemoidians in Phantom Menace -- the accusations they were caricatures of Catholic priests and asians, and thus painting both as "evil" through this symbolic language. Too much time spent by people looking for hate crimes where there weren't.

Now, compare this to our hobby and the specific example of dark-skinned, matriarchal elves being racist and misoginistic.

Oh, hell, let's drag the religion issue into it, too: they're goddess worshippers. Blatant goddess worshippers...the whole Lloth thing is a big deal with depictions of the drow. That's making out witches and feminine religious mysteries to be evil! The drow practices are saying "The supreme God cannot be a woman because women are vicious and cruel!"

But what is the solution being requested when these sorts of complaints arise?

Is it that we can never portray a black-skinned person as bad? (and Gods forbid a group of black-skinned people?) That women cannot be portrayed as evil or weak or slutty? That a matriarchy cannot be presented as utterly corrupt and evil? That a group of evil, very-humanoid beings can never have dark skin?

At times, it feels like there is an unspoken request that blue-skinned, sexless agnostics or white males be the only possible villians or negatively portrayed individuals in a game.

But there's not much room for interest if the only villians you can ever portray have no resemblances to any group in the world, or can only be white males, just because someone will take the similarity personally and claim it is just discrimination in action.

That is why I ask for the solution to the situation, because the implied solution is unsatisfactory and irrational.

Here is the problem as I see it: some forms of pain are self-inflicted, by being oversensitized to an issue, to the point where everything looks like the problem. You get shot once, and you get gun-shy; every loud noise is someone shooting. Trying to force everyone to stop making loud noises because they bother you is not a (good) solution, however.

Now, is the person experiencing real emotional pain because of the noise? Yes. This isn't to say they aren't. But is the actual problem the noise?

Compare that to racism, sexism, or other types of discrimination, and the attack upon apparently discriminatory material that often occurs.

Real racism, that is negative behavior towards individuals based on a person's ethnic/racial background, needs to be dealt with, //no doubt//, but diluting the issue by regularly attacking things which "look like" or "might be" racism, because they supposedly contribute to or reinforce negative stereotypes, is doing no one any favors, for such ultimately puts the whole issue off of most people's radar screens.

We all quickly lose sympathy for the plight of the loud, barking dog, and eventually eventually ignore him altogether, with a lingering and critical annoyance...and that does no good for the dog or us. Precisely as Krista points out.

Real racism is a real crime or hatred perpetrated against actual, living people intentionally for purposes of injury, debasement, or inequality, and which can be construed in no other way -- not references that look like/can be interpreted as racism. Further, they are situations which can be dealt with via a reasonable and positive (additive rather than subtractive) solution.

I have experience with real racism, I've had to deal with it on the job, and it utterly sickens me -- but we're talking situations which are a blatant case of a person specifically cursing and cussing about "niggers" et al. That's something I can do something about. I can complain, because it is an unfair stereotype based on inaccurate facts, with the conscious intention debase the target (as a group), and there is a rational solution to the problem.

In the end, what it comes down to is this: you can choose to be offended by something that may or may not be offensive. But does it actually address a real problem, or does it just confuse the issue with nuances and semantics...in this case, the real problem isn't that drow are evil AND black-skinned OR a matriarchy.

Obviously, there are people who need to work on what is and isn't discriminatory; sometimes, it's more a matter of too much homegenity: All X are X being false and thus portraying a false stereotype or reinforcing such. However, in some cases, all X really are X (or at least are for a fictional world). Ultimately, it is figuring out the difference between an element created for a good story and a symbol created for purposes of commentary.

It is much easier to find the divide when personal reactions to such are stripped from the equasion, though doing so is more difficult than just doing so.

Hi Raven,

I think that there's a lot more to this than simply "offensive".  A non-offensive 2 dimensional character, is still 2 dimensional.  And no, that's not saying that there isn't a place for 2 dimensional characters, but rather that there is an imbalance when that is all you see of a given people.  Like Ralph, I'm not for "banning" anything, but I am for promoting more diverse representations of people to balance the one-sidedness of how folks are represented.  

There are also a lot of levels to racism.  What does it say when a woman clutches her purse and crosses the street, regardless of whether you are in casual or business attire?  What does it say when it happens repeatedly in different locations, with different people?  They're not harming you, at least physically, but its definitely not cool.  And why are they doing it?  I doubt every one of them has been mugged by a person that looks like you...

Consider what any piece of media, but particularly games, is saying to a person of color when:

-a group of people and their culture is completely absent("Sci-fi epic! 20,000 races!  500 cultures! No black people!")
-you have a token representation, clearly included as a token acknowledgement("Look, we're NOT racist!")
-you have a group represented by stereotype, someone else's simplifcation of that group("See, chinese people are like this..."

Now consider again what the the above is saying to a white person, or, if as John says, if they even recognized it or bothered to give it thought.  Consider an rpg set in a modern city, with nothing but Hispanics.  It would clearly be considered a political statement.  The same rpg could be filled with white folks, and wouldn't be considered a political statement.

Again, the issue here isn't "this is offensive", but rather, overall, this is unbalanced.

And again, my take on this is that we shouldn't waste time trying to analyze if X is offensive or racist or what, but simply take the usual Forge policy:  Promote good games.

Chris

As Chris {bankuei} proposes, let's stick to RPG's in particular.

Now I have only one real problem with greyorm's post:

QuoteReal racism is a real crime or hatred perpetrated against actual, living people intentionally for purposes of injury, debasement, or inequality, and which can be construed in no other way -- not references that look like/can be interpreted as racism. Further, they are situations which can be dealt with via a reasonable and positive (additive rather than subtractive) solution.[emphasis mine

I just don't believe that all racism or other hate crimes are perpetrated intentionally.  People who deliberately perpetrate hate crimes, i.e. who get up in the morning and say, "You know what?  I hate those guys, on principle, and I think I'll go make trouble for them," are certainly beneath contempt.  They're also rare.  The problem isn't them: it's the people who say, "I have no problem with those people, they're fine with me, in fact they make such nice music (because those people have a good sense of rhythm, the same way they're all good at basketball), but I sure wouldn't want one dating my sister."  They do not intentionally perpetrate racism/sexism/etc., but it's discrimination nonethless.

OK, so back to RPG's.  You bring up an interesting point with the Drow who worship Lolth, the Spider-Goddess.  Here we've got black women, dominant in their culture, who worship a goddess, and they're clearly branded as evil.  Is this bad?  Yes, but not for this reason.

In essence, I'd argue that this structure is a natural outgrowth of the fundamental racism, sexism, and other hate-ism {if I may coin the term} in classic AD&D {I haven't read it since 1st ed.}.  Basically the world was divided into those who were good and those who were evil, and all this was intentional: if you were evil, you chose a worldview that was explicitly so.  So when these Drow women acted in evil ways, they knew they were being evil.  Orcs were evil by their very nature.  You're an orc?  You're evil, ipso facto.

This is a racist conception, at base.  So long as an RPG is playing the High Fantasy model, in which black and white (note unfortunate terms) are necessarily radically divorced, I can see that this sort of thing can be valid.  You say, "All Drow are evil.  Incidentally, they're also black, matriarchal, and worship a goddess."  Without any context, I don't have to like it but I can't say it's racist or anything like it.  But now let's get context.

Who are the PC's?  Well, let's suppose that usually they're white and male.  Let's suppose that they usually worship male gods.  Now let's pit them against Drow women.  Now is this racist?  Probably.

Look at AD&D, though.  Is this all usually true?  Good question, and I think it would take a lot of data to establish.  Which is why, at base, I don't think the Drow thing really demonstrates racism or sexism in gaming.  On the other hand, I never played AD&D all that much, in the end, so I'd be interested to hear what others say.  In other words, while I think that AD&D had an inherently bigoted structure, I can see that no single instance in the game can be isolated as bigotry.  Largely this is because I think they were going for High Fantasy, in which (as I've said) the various sides are radically divorced.  In addition, I don't think they were terribly concerned with things like motivation, so they did some dumb things without thinking about them much.  

Bad?  Yes.  Unthinking, but bad.  I somehow have this sense that if you were to walk through every single example with the original designers of the game, they'd be horrified and want to change things.  This is actually how I read Greg Stafford's response about "I think of them as black, though!"

Okay, so let's shift over to another game, like Ars Magica, late editions.

The main PC's are generally Magi, which is to say they use magic.  There are also hedge-wizards of various sorts around, who use special kinds of magic that are described as more or less parallel to folkloric ideas from various parts of Europe: shamanism, animal-transformation, non-sabbath witchcraft, etc.

The Church is a special institution that opposes all forms of magic.  The Church is explicitly based on the medieval Catholic church.  The Church, we are told, hounds hedge-wizards constantly because the latter do not follow exactly what the Church says they should.  When the Church catches them, they burn them.

The Church, as it turns out, is actually run by wealthy men who talk to demons from Hell.  They persecute hedge-wizards because the latter are (1) available as targets, (2) threatening, because ordinary people like them, (3) usually women, and (4) not worshipers of the apparently demonic God who stands behind the Church.

In other words, Church persecution of witches amounted to a conscious plot to eliminate the healthy, vibrant, and positive influence of non-Christian women who practiced ancient folkloric methods of healing.

Now if I point out that there are few if any examples of this actually occurring at any point in European history, and in fact that the vast majority of Inquisitors involved in witch trials seem to have been seriously attempting to defend the faith against what they understood to be Satan incarnate forming an army, and that the vast majority of trials were actually presided over by lay courts without Church sanction, and that the majority seem to have been held in Protestant courts which most certainly had no Catholic church sanction nor Inquisitors, and that most executions occurred in fact precisely because there were no Inquisitors present, I present you with a phenomenally complex picture of really unpleasant events which occurred for no single reason.

This also suggests that the Ars Magica (late editions) view of (1) the Church, and (2) the witches, is wildly distorted.  If I also tell you that the picture I've just drawn is in fact the now-standard picture presented in every modern history textbook I know of, you have to ask why the Ars Magica editors decided to frame witchcraft and so forth in this way.

"To tell a good story."

Sure, but why this one?  Why tell a story, explicitly based on historical events and people, that blames an entire institution for something they were not primarily responsible for?  Why claim that witchcraft was a good pagan practice, persecuted along the lines of a hate crime by demon-worshipping priests?  What are you trying to say?

This is the problem I have with the whole World of Darkness thing, actually, and you note that Ars Magica started telling this story as soon as White Wolf bought it.  Basically it constructs a good-vs.-evil story out of historical people and events, brands one group as Bad People (tm), then in effect claims that it's all in aid of telling a good story.  

Is this hate-speech or whatever an intentional thing?  I think it's very unlikely that the authors intended to promote anti-Christian feeling, or prompt people to become pagans, or anything of the sort.  Is it supportive of a particular brand of Wicca which just so happens to tell the same story as historical truth, as a story of how everyone used to persecute them, as a story of how Christianity is inherently patriarchal and evil and out to get decent, helpful women?  Yes, of course it is.

Isn't it legitimate to denounce such a thing?  I mean, they didn't mean to claim that all Catholicism is inherently evil, demon-worshipping, misogynistic, and racist.  But they did.  Isn't that a bad thing?  Am I just looking for discrimination and constructing it out of "a good story"?

Chris Lehrich

I think you can make separate goals out of:
(1) remove bias from RPGs (e.g. exclusion)
(2) remove exploitation from RPGs (e.g. tokenization)
(3) addressing racial/gender issues through game play (as has been talked about the Feminism threads)

And it's in fact really, really damn hard to handle all 3 at once, well. Poor execution of (1) can result in violation of (2), and implementing (3) without good (1) or (2) cheapens the subject matter itself. Therefore there's the inclination on my part to use theoretical/speculative settings (as opposed to theoretical ones) to facilitate a focus on (1) and (2) while consciously letting (3) aside.

Actually, there are multiple dimensions of issues which contain bias - gender, race, politics, economics, class. Myself, I'm going for a lack of bias/exploitation on gender and race issues, in part because my crowd of friends is largely on the same page as me, and so exploration in that area may just go into crowd-preachiness. However, I therefore make politics/class the central issue, as that's one win which there's more tenuous agreemtn, if any.

So when my thing comes to be a finished project, how can I establish a lack of bias or exploitation? Although I don't have mechanics, I would simply have a page devoted to sexism and racism, and explain how they fit into society; beyond that, I'd simply not make those a factor of gameplay. More specifically, if I don't want to tokenize asians, then I shouldn't create an Asian League or a Space Yakuza. (Similarly, I'm not going to create CyberHindus or MechaCatholics, because I want players to pay attention to the NeoMarxists and NeoNeoMarixsts and the TransMarketeers and so on.)

Any suggestions on how to go about (3) design while adhereing to (1) and (2)?

Hello,

I'm confused. I'm going to need input from John Kim, Librisia, and Ralph (Valamir) to help me out.

Are we discussing designing role-playing settings and other content which are less racist/bigoted/etc than, for sake of comparison, other entertainment media like movies?

Or are we discussing literally reducing racism/bigotry/etc in actual other people because of our games' impact and "message" to them?

And to whom is the conclusion (whichever it's for, and whatever it might be) addressed? Existing game designers and publishers? Role-players at large? The Forge community in a focused "let's do this, people!" sense?

Since all of the above is opaque to me, pending your help, I'm having an awful time following the points that are being made.

Best,
Ron

One thing with RPGs that you're going to have to fight against is the use of cliché, and by extension stereotypes.  I believe this relates to what Chris L. would call Baseline.  In creating a story you'll play on people's assumptions to fill in details not pertinent to the theme.  The elements you bring to light (I think this relates to Chris L.'s Vision) are part of the story's focus.

You might ignore race entirely; everybody will probably assume characters are white (HeroQuest?); but race isn't relevant to the theme.

A personal anecdote:
I'd left one of my character's skin color unspecified, then one day I decided upon a nice shade of brown.  Among the group this was initially met with resistance, because it wasn't what they had "pictured".  Pearly white was Baseline, because the players were white and the medieval feel of the character conjured up images of the english.  Well, after I specified her skin color, then it became part of the Vision, and opened the door to addressing racism issues like when the group went to a futuristic 1980's South Africa.

So Chris L.,

I think you are seeing discrimination where there is just an attempt at good story.  A moral or ethical statement is going to be biased against somebody - that's sorta the point in saying it.

Jason,

I don't quite follow.  What does the distinction between Baseline and Vision have to do with seeing discrimination where there's only an attempt to make a story?  Of course one has to push against and within a kind of accepted frame of reference, but why does that entail that racism doesn't matter, or doesn't exist if we're just trying to tell a good story?

I do grant that any ethical or moral statement, since it must be based upon a metaphysical and thus non-demonstrable support, must necessarily impose bias somwhere along the line.  But I don't get the relevance here.

I'm sorry; I just don't follow your point.  Can you clarify?

Chris Lehrich

Jason,

Continuing to think through the Baseline/Vision question at stake here, let me go back to Ars Magica, one of my favorite games:

Baseline was supposed to be medieval Europe, with certain important changes, notably (1) the existence of real, functioning magic; (2) the presence of active faeries of various sorts, along with critters and beasties of all descriptions (arising from folklore); (3) the demonstrable presence of God and Satanic evil, shown by the Dominion Aura and the Infernal Aura.  Apart from this, and the alternate history that more or less came with the territory, it was supposed to be medieval Europe.

Vision, I think, originally depended on the particular gaming group.  You set out to explore or develop some kind of story within this universe, and in the process discover things about it and about yourselves and your characters.  Something like that.  Anyway, you made it up for your group, and did what you wanted with it.  Not a lot of guidance there.  With a lot of tinkering, you could still transform AM2 into a Narrativist game.

Now between 2d ed. and 3d ed., when they shifted to White Wolf, the latter company started adding strong Vision elements, presumably to focus the point of the game.  What they did was to construct the Church as a thoroughly nasty institution, out to get women, pagans, magic, faeries, and anything else perceived as "peculiar" or otherwise out of their ken.  Meanwhile, they pushed for all such peculiar persons and beings to be more or less on the same side, beneath it all.  Thus they constructed a war between the Church and the Weirdies, with the PC's representing the latter.  I seem to recall references to witch-burning, which essentially didn't happen in that period at all.  That was rather later, and probably most were burned by Protestant lay courts in any case, which obviously didn't exist in the medieval period, pre-Reformation.

I suppose you could say that they injected a Premise to the game, but by my read of Narrativism they weren't Narrativist: the Premise was predetermined in its conclusion.  That is, the Church was wrong, and the Weird were right.  You just fought the good fight, or missed the boat.  That's a form of Force, if I get the terms right here.

Now I'm exaggerating somewhat, but not a lot.  Read some of the supplements on the Church, for example, or Shamans.  It's hard to miss.

Okay, so what I'm saying is that this development of Ars Magica attempted to "tell a good story" through Force.  That's bad design, IMO.  But furthermore, the Forced story amounted to a claim that Christianity is fundamentally evil, or at least that organized Christianity is so.  (It's worth noting here that the Kabbalah supplement, which I read once quickly, seemed quite sincere about trying to be fair and balanced; this suggests that the game designers weren't hostile to religion, only to dominant religion, and organized religion at that -- since they didn't seem to perceive Jewish communities as having a strongly organized religious structure.)

I guess the point here is that if you Force a story, and the story is one in which you stereotype very broadly and negatively, and the people in question are supposed to be anything like real people, then what you have is Forced discrimination.

I had a fascinating experience playing Ars Magica 2d ed., in fact, because I played a priest who was also a magus; he was a member of a special order that was about dealing with the Hermetic Orders.  The point being that a lot of Hermetic types were seemingly drifting a long way from the Church, and the Church thought this wasn't very good for their souls.  So along comes me to help them see the light and come back to Mother Church, in order to save their souls.

Now what was interesting was that this character never actually proselytized at all; it just didn't come up much, and besides he was pretty conflicted about a lot of things anyway.  But some players -- and I do mean players -- had this HUGE problem with a priest anyway.  So their characters would do things like forbidding me to get within X distance of them or their friends, and so forth.  Why?  Because I was a priest, of course, and obviously out to get them.

Note that as this was 2d ed., this wasn't in the rules or in the books anywhere; it did arise implicitly, in that Magi are basically rather uncomfortable in churches because their spells don't work well, but this is a pretty minor effect.  I mean, who needs to cast spells in church?

What arose in that game, then, was a moral conflict about whether Christianity was automatically "out to get" the Magi.  Lots of folks had these assumptions about the Inquisition yaddy yah, and would trot them out regularly.  Of course, the GM was a medieval history crazy, and kept pointing out that the Inquisition hadn't actually been invented yet, and besides was really about a change of the legal system that never came into England anyway, but it didn't matter.  Everyone "knew" that Christianity must be a Bad Thing Out To Get Us.

So what's my point, after all this?  I think that this game provided a fabulous opportunity -- not entirely taken, mind you -- for all of us to explore these assumptions and the reasons for them.  I spent a lot of time thinking hard about what it meant to be a priest in that world, surrounded by hostility, and how I ought to respond.  Others got to think about why they felt so hostile, and some of them at least came to the realization that they were making huge assumptions, not in any way justified either by in-game history or by my character's actions.

Practically speaking, then, I think gaming offers opportunities for this sort of reflection, and can actually change the ways people think.  I know it did for me, and for some of the other players there.  Not that anyone went out and converted or anything, but I think some ideas got revised.

BUT... this couldn't have happened in ArsMagica3, because you'd have had to rewrite significantly to make it possible that my character wasn't out to get them.

Well, I'm rambling again.  Hope this in some way clarifies something for somebody.

Chris Lehrich

Quote from: Ron EdwardsAre we discussing designing role-playing settings and other content which are less racist/bigoted/etc than, for sake of comparison, other entertainment media like movies?

Or are we discussing literally reducing racism/bigotry/etc in actual other people because of our games' impact and "message" to them?

And to whom is the conclusion (whichever it's for, and whatever it might be) addressed? Existing game designers and publishers? Role-players at large? The Forge community in a focused "let's do this, people!" sense?  

OK, as I originally conceived it, the Feminist Game Design thread was about designing games which communicate with and educate the players on social issues.  This thread was about how different genders and races are portrayed in RPG texts -- and how that portrayal affects the game.  So the other thread is about an effect we (for some set of "we") are trying for, and discussing how to achieve it.  This thread is talking about causes (i.e. portrayals like what I showed from Star Trek), and extrapolating what effects it has.  

To my mind, the text sets a pattern which influences play.  The examples are not just mechanics, but they are part of the over pattern of tone for the game.  I don't think that, say, the example text is important in itself -- but the general pattern is.  For example, if you design your game thinking about gender issues and have a 50/50 gender split among playtesters, then I believe it will come out differently than if you design it with a group of men and don't pay attention to it.  

The fact that it is patterns is important.  A cigar is never just a cigar, and it is never just a phallic symbol.  What matters is the context and the overall picture.  To take Chris' Ars Magica example, if one churchman is corrupted and diabolic, we can't say if it is just a cigar or not.  But suppose that 90% of the churchmen portrayed are that way.  It makes no sense to analyze these individually and see which ones are "just cigars" and which ones are "biased".  The point is that the general pattern has meaning.

Ok, John, before I post any reply to Chris, I want to make sure I'm in the right place. Now, it seems like I'm not, since this is about the effects of design, rather than the process of design.

Honestly, I avoided the other thread due to the "Feminism" title, for reasons I won't go into here, but it sounds like I should have been over there. However, I'm not sure my line of thought/questioning fits over there, either.

Here's what I'm on about: given certain controversial issues the designers are asked to avoid due reactions to such, why is it he has to avoid them? What is the use of the restrictions against ficitional elements like "evil Churches pretending to be good" and "evil black, female, goddess-worshippers"? Are these restrictions or avoidances in any way a healthy reaction or viewpoint?

So, does that fit here with what you're trying to accomplish with this thread? (If not, I'll just start a new thread for the discussion of that idea.)

Quote from: greyormHonestly, I avoided the other thread due to the "Feminism" title, for reasons I won't go into here, but it sounds like I should have been over there. However, I'm not sure my line of thought/questioning fits over there, either.

Here's what I'm on about: given certain controversial issues the designers are asked to avoid due reactions to such, why is it he has to avoid them? What is the use of the restrictions against ficitional elements like "evil Churches pretending to be good" and "evil black, female, goddess-worshippers"? Are these restrictions or avoidances in any way a healthy reaction or viewpoint?

I think this is the thread for your question.  But I'm not sure what restriction you are talking about.  RPGs aren't government censored in any countries as far as I know, and there isn't even a self-imposed ratings system like there is for movies.  If you are talking about what I and/or Chris L. or others like in games, then I don't think it is reasonable to call it a "restriction" regardless of what we think.  For example, I don't like "The Greenland Saga" and will give it bad reviews citing among other things the ahistorical negative portrayal of women.  However, I don't think this should be called a "restriction" demanding what game designers "have to" do.  

As for what I like, I don't at all believe in completely avoiding, say, evil or incompetant women.  But I do believe in avoiding an overall pattern of such portrayals -- i.e. all good societies are patriarchal, and all matriarchal societies are evil, for example.  To take a example of race portrayal, in my own Vinland campaign I have evil Native Americans.  It was very conscious design on my part to show broad range of native characters and culture.  So on the one hand there is Rowtag, the scary Mohican leader whose fanatic followers call themselves the Pequot ("Destroyers").  There are also the largely inconsequential Lenape.  There is Hiawatha, the Onondaga leader who was brutal in his treatment of the Adirondack and other prisoners.  There are the powerful Susquehannock and Narragansett, and the more accomodating Massachusett.  

I have similar distaste for sources which portray natives only as "noble savages" with no flaws or evil -- as ones which portray them as evil barbarians.

Chris L,

Quote from: clehrichI don't quite follow.  What does the distinction between Baseline and Vision have to do with seeing discrimination where there's only an attempt to make a story?  Of course one has to push against and within a kind of accepted frame of reference, but why does that entail that racism doesn't matter, or doesn't exist if we're just trying to tell a good story?

I do grant that any ethical or moral statement, since it must be based upon a metaphysical and thus non-demonstrable support, must necessarily impose bias somewhere along the line.  But I don't get the relevance here.

I'm sorry; I just don't follow your point.  Can you clarify?

Why of course I'll clarify!  Ok, first I don't mean racism doesn't exists, I mean that sometimes a bias is about theme not discrimination.  There are a lot of intelligent observations in this thread about why bias is bad.  The devil seems to need a little advocating here, and I thought I'd give it a go.

There's a big inference I'm making from the top part of my post where I'm talking about lack of racial representation, to the bottom part and your Ars Magica thing.  Let's see if it holds up.


*****

Let me throw out what I think Baseline and Vision are, just to head that off early in case my definitions are wrong.

Baseline:  
Audience assumptions.  A standard frame of reference for a story.  For example, medieval Europe.

Vision:
What diverges from the audience's assumptions.  A focus of the story.  For example, magic.

Baseline + Vision:
Medieval Europe + magic = Ars Magica.

*****

With Ars Magica part of the Baseline is the medieval Catholic Church, complete with inquisitors running around torturing and burning anything un-christian.  Whether or not this is a correct representation of the Catholic Church at the time, it certainly seems to be a correct representation of the target audience's opinion of what the church was at the time.  So, we don't need to go into details about the Church, we just say 'like the inquisition' and we're done, able to move on to the Vision - Satan worshippers (Church) versus magi.

As a less severe example, has anyone seen the movie Something's Got to Give?  (60 year old player falls in love with a woman his age after a long life of 20 year old women.)

We took Tara's grandmum and parents to go see it.  I walked out of the theatre wanting those two hours of my life back, her parents loved it, and grandmum seemed pretty all right with it.   I was not the target audience; the movie was targeted at the boomer generation.  In addition to situations that were more interesting to a different generation, there was also a generational bias I found kind of offensive.

The female lead character had a mid-twenties daughter.  The daughter is totally two-dimensional - dates/sleeps with many men, fears commitment, and just wants to have "fun".  This is, near as I can tell, the default image of how a mid-twenties person is seen from the eyes of the movie's target audience (boomers).  This is further illustrated by the fact that all the mom has to do is give her daughter a speech that sounds like it was pulled from a self help book about 'finding your joy', and six months later she's knocked up and married - "living her life to the fullest".  "If they would only listen they'd understand and their life would be better".    Gak.  Total stereotype and total crap drawn from a lack of understanding of who you're representing.

Anyway, I found the character offensive, but she was there for a purpose.  She was a Baseline (assumptions of the target audience), used to address a theme in the story.

As far as Ars Magica goes, all I'm saying is that the evil church is a Baseline.

*****

Now, does this mean theme is an excuse to discriminate.  Nope, but where you drawn the line between discrimination and thematic bias is going to shift with the target audience.  (I'm sure Something's Got to Give was not meant to be offensive.)  When you are part of the target audience I think it is very difficult to identify the bias, and hence further feed the stereotype.

In your last post I think you hit on a key technique to distinguish the two:  Making sure the bias can be questioned in play.

Quote from: Chris L.I guess the point here is that if you Force a story, and the story is one in which you stereotype very broadly and negatively, and the people in question are supposed to be anything like real people, then what you have is Forced discrimination.

Yeah, then you have preaching.  You have to be able to challenge a theme.  What's my word?  The literary term is 'exposition' I believe.

Let's say you have an RPG setting where gay marriage was legalized, setting off a world-ending chain of events.  Gay men could get married one weekend, spread their STDs, get divorced at the end of the weekend, and repeat the process next week.  This completely destroyed society, because city hall became swamped with gay marriage/divorce filings and decent white-folk couldn't squeeze in.  So, then non-perverts couldn't start a family and white people where eventually wiped off the face of the planet by the rampant spread of gay-diseases (because they make you work with the perverts too), and an inability to conceive children because the sanctity of marriage was destroyed.  What with all the white people being dead, all you'd have left is poor people and thieves - hell on earth.

Yeah, it's an extreme example.  Is it a thematic opportunity if you can challenge the assumptions and discrimination if you cannot?

I'm a little out of it, so sorry about the lack of clarity in this post.

Quote from: crucielLet's say you have an RPG setting where gay marriage was legalized, setting off a world-ending chain of events. [etc.]
Yeah, it's an extreme example.  Is it a thematic opportunity if you can challenge the assumptions and discrimination if you cannot?

That's an interesting question.  The way I proposed it in the previous post, it does seem as though I said that if you could challenge the theme, it wasn't discrimination, but if you couldn't it was.  Hmm.  Extreme though the example is, it does neatly foreground the problem.

Off the cuff -- and I need to think this through rather slowly -- it does seem to me as though the difference is Baseline & Vision, to resurrect that old distinction.  In short, I'm cool with Vision being a challengeable and in other contexts possibly discriminatory structure.  I'm not so cool with Baseline being so.

See, in Ars Magic (late), it's really the flat assumption that Christianity is fundamentally evil that bugs me.  I mean, if you wanted to focus on this as a difference from the normal world, and thus foreground it as a potential issue, that seems entirely appropriate to me.  If you say, "No, that's just the way it is, and the point is to debate something else," then I'm really bothered.

I'm not articulating this well.  I need to think it through a bit more; anyone else have a sense of the division I'm aiming at, or is it just me?

Good point, Jason.  [you stinker...]

Chris Lehrich

I just wanted to drop in a couple cents on the subject that actually hits home since I'm hispanic. (Well, technically, I'm so mixed that my ethnicity is rather ambiguous, but my extended family speaks Spanish and hails from South America, so there ya go.) Further, I grew up in the inner city of New York among drug dealers and gangbangers that most RPGs' target audience will fortunately never see in their lives. It has been many years since I left that environment and I'm glad to be rid of it.

I've been blessed to have never encountered a moment of race-oriented awkwardness or implicit discrimination in a gaming situation. However, the one thing that does tend to bother me is the initial look of surprise whenever I start speaking knowledgably with another role-player. It was humorous when I met a fan of Zombie: the Coil and they were very visibly shocked to meet a dark-skinned guy with dreadlocks instead of a pasty goth. (I cut off the dreads a couple years ago.)

Actually, designing Z:tC was quite cathartic. Here were Zombies. Slow, dumb, reliable for manual labor and general mayhem but little else. I could take a group of characters who had very low expectations placed on them, then imbue them with personality, complexity and, yes, kewl powerz, much to the surprise of the other well-established supernaturals of the World of Darkness. In hindsight, I worked through some very personal issues with that game.

The phenomenon reminds me of the scene in the Matrix where Neo meets Trinity and says, "I thought you were a guy." She replies, "Most guys do." She has a point. Without a face to attach to the words, you'll just kind of assume that whoever is saying them looks like you. However, in a field like game design, it's a safe bet that the majority of folks are going to be white males. I don't presume to know the social factors that make this so commonplace. Truth be told, if I were someone else, I would be surprised to find out I am an indie game designer too.

So, how do I see race in RPGs today? Well, I never really gave it much thought. Perhaps it's an unfortunate callousness, but I've long ago come to terms with the assumption that the default "hero" in many peoples' minds is going to be a white male and deviation from that standard is something of a novelty. Also, because of my mixed background and lack of deep cultural ties to any particular ethnic group, I'm probably less sensitive to any racial biases inherent in some game backgrounds. For example, I was annoyed by the homogenous Star Trek races because they're dramatically uninteresting, without even realizing they could be considered stereotypes of Earth cultures.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my pet peeves are, in order of least offensive to most offensive:

Absence - There is no mention of race in reference to the protagonists or antagonists, leaving it wide open for me to project myself into my hero. While the creators may be white males and envisioned their own heroes as being white males, they made mo attempt to impose that assumption on me or my hero.

Tokenism - An obviously self-conscious attempt to avoid being called racist, often resulting in ridiculously admirable two-dimensional representations of the very people the creator was hoping to avoid offending.

Stereotyping - Yes, I know that urban street gangs are primarily composed of minority youths. Believe me, I know.

So, I guess my only suggestion to game designers worrying about whether there is implicit racism in their creation is to just stop worrying about it. The less you mention it, the less you can fumble, the more I am free to have my dark-skinned hero.

Quote from: BankueiConsider an rpg set in a modern city, with nothing but Hispanics.  It would clearly be considered a political statement.  The same rpg could be filled with white folks, and wouldn't be considered a political statement.

The 'Angel' tv show is set in LA and has basically no Hispanics; in fact the east-European Boreanaz is about the most exotic looking member of the cast (to me).  It may not be a political statement, that there are hundreds of demon species in Angel-LA but no hispanics, but it certainly seems weird to me.  The strangest thing is that every 'victim' character Angel rescues is a white female, thin and probably blonde.  Is this a statement of who the audience is interested in seeing rescued?

I'm planning to start a campaign of the new Conan RPG (which draws a lot of inspiration from Sorcerer & Sword BTW), which tends to ignore the setting's sexism (no stat mods for female PCs) but does incorporate its 1930s racism - stat mods for different races (Cimmerians -2 Int, Zingarans -2 CON), plenty of derogatory comments of the kind you get in the REH stories, and the persistent idea that race X is 'weakened' and 'polluted' by interbreeding with race Y.  I probably have most trouble with this last one since it flies in the face of what we know in modern genetics - basically the wider the genetic mix, the healthier the offspring.
I'm not sure whether to treat this 'purity' belief as objectively true for the setting - ie incorporate the racism as a basic truth of the campaign - or treat it as a mistaken-but-commonly-believed falsehood.

I guess a different GM might have more trouble with the RPG using Howard's atheism, that the gods probably don't exist - personally I love this about the RPG, it immediately makes it a million miles from regular D&D worlds.

Quote from: clehrichI just don't believe that all racism or other hate crimes are perpetrated intentionally.  People who deliberately perpetrate hate crimes, i.e. who get up in the morning and say, "You know what?  I hate those guys, on principle, and I think I'll go make trouble for them," are certainly beneath contempt.  They're also rare.  The problem isn't them: it's the people who say, "I have no problem with those people, they're fine with me, in fact they make such nice music (because those people have a good sense of rhythm, the same way they're all good at basketball), but I sure wouldn't want one dating my sister."  They do not intentionally perpetrate racism/sexism/etc., but it's discrimination nonethless.

The former (race-hatred racialists) are clearly worse than the latter - when the former get to be in charge of a country, you get genocide.  Genocide is worse than being blackballed from the local country club.  OTOH "I wouldn't want one dating my sister" is clearly a racist or otherwise prejudiced attitude, I think most people who held this attitude would own up to being prejudiced at least in that particular regard?  When I was a child, a little old white lady at the bus stop recounted how she didn't like her sons dating black women.  I don't think anyone was in any doubt that this was a racist attitude.  Likewise my mother wasn't so keen on my sister dating a Sicilian - this was a clear example of prejudice*, only not labelled 'racist' because Sicilians are not considered a separate race from my family's race under current classifications.

*he was clearly the least-bad boyfriend she's had.  Much better than the Austrian cigarrette-smuggler/bank-burglar.

Quote from: S'mon
The former (race-hatred racialists) are clearly worse than the latter - when the former get to be in charge of a country, you get genocide.  Genocide is worse than being blackballed from the local country club.  

No, I don't think that division is remotely as strong as you do.  The former are, after all, powerless unless they have their position validated by the tacit approval of the latter.  Its not the former I worry about - the mad dogs are easy to spot.  Its the consent given by the many that is dangerous.

Quote from: contracycle

Quote from: S'mon
The former (race-hatred racialists) are clearly worse than the latter - when the former get to be in charge of a country, you get genocide.  Genocide is worse than being blackballed from the local country club.  

No, I don't think that division is remotely as strong as you do...

Not "clearly worse"?  Um, ok.

Quote from: S'mon
Not "clearly worse"?  Um, ok.

More precisely, symptomatic rather than causal.  The chinese have a proverb that the secret of leadership is to find a parade and to get in front.  I'm saying its the people in the parade who make the demagogue  dangerous; without them, the demagogue is just a ranting loon.

Quote from: John KimRPGs aren't government censored in any countries as far as I know, and there isn't even a self-imposed ratings system like there is for movies.

No, simply the self-imposed ratings system called the Marketplace.

Doctor Xero

Quote from: Bankueikeep it specifically focused on:
-roleplaying games and social justice within it
-what can be done with specific actions(as opposed to what should be done, with no actual steps)

Quote from: crucielOne thing with RPGs that you're going to have to fight against is the use of cliché, and by extension stereotypes.

Quote from: clehrichIf you look at the arguments against it, at some point everyone seems to slide into something along the lines of "marriage has been heterosexual for millennia" or "marriage was meant to be heterosexual" or "marriage is about procreation."  Some of the Christian Right are at least honest: they say that homosexuality itself is wrong, and figure that legalizing homosexual marriage says that it isn't wrong, which is at least logically consistent (although I disagree with the initial premise).

I agree, Bankuei.  I'd like to take cruciel's insights and  clehrich's insights (and gobi's) and add on to them with my own knowledge and thoughts.

Like many of the people on this thread, I have also been a victim of bigotry, although in my case it's possible to "pass" for the mainstream majority, which adds an extra consideration.  Between this and my own civil rights considerations, I've had to think about prejudice from the perspective of the prejudiced individuals : what is it that makes prejudice a seemingly desireable perspective for them?  No one would be prejudiced if it were a horrible experience -- it must fulfill some social and/or psychological needs.  I achieve nothing if I treat them as monsters, even when their actions are sometimes monstrous.

In the 1930s, author Flannery O'Connor stated that there will always be prejudice against Black men in the South so long as impoverished White men in the South needed someone to claim they are better than (as an escape from the oppressive class system remaining in the South at the time).

Obviously, this is not the only cause, but let's consider it for a moment for the insights it provides.  One cause of racism would be thus : a White man in the 1930s South lived in a social system in which hierarchial pecking order was crucial to his sense of identity and human worth, and a poor White man would find himself on the bottom rung, giving him little reason to live.  One way to be a somebody, however, is to find a bigger nobody; by finding a group he could always look down upon, a poor White man could insulate himself against the horrors of being on the bottom of the Southern hierarchial food chain.  The descendents of the freed slaves, however, were "newbies" to the social ladder, so they had no resources to prevent being turned into permanent residents of the bottom rung.  Thus, while Black men had every reason in the 1930s South to hate racism, White men had every reason to be psychologically and socially dependent upon racism as their only way to avoid potentially suicidal feelings of worthlessness.

The same thing has been true of other bigotries.  We know that one of the (many) root causes of homophobia historically is that it has provided insecure heterosexual men with a target against which they get free validation in their manhood (hence the conflation of homosexuality and effeminacy).  We also know that in the 1900s a number of social commentators and would-be social engineers began an aggressive campaign to force all males to be more "manly", and the homosexual was an easy boogie man to use to frighten males into conforming to this anti-affection pro-competition misogynic male ideal.  (This appeared around the time of the Muscular Christianity movement in which Jesus was re-envisioned as a rough-n-tumble bodybuilder into "healthy male" rivalry with all other men, leading not as a divine visionary for universal familyhood but as the alpha male or stallion of the apostolic pack.)  Similar causes have been linked with prejudice against women and Jews.

But on one level, it makes a certain sad sense : everybody likes to feel good about himself/herself, and one way to do this is to have somebody one feels oneself to be better than.

And in times of war, it has been useful : is there anyone who dares suggest it might be wrong to make condemnatory generalizations about Germany of the 1930s into early 1940s?  Even today, recognizing the humanity underlying the Nazis is not seen as philosophical magnanimity but automatically convicted as veiled anti-Semitism.

If you take a look at RPGs, you'll see that the possibly racist elements work for the same reasons as those I've lined above -- and so long as those needs are being fulfilled in this fashion, there will be a certain joylessness in removing these "harmless" stereotypings . . .

In AD-&-D, there will always be orcs so long as player-characters need someone against whom they will look good.  Orcs give everyone the advantage in the grading curve for evil and squallid stupidity -- no matter how bad a character is, he or she can always know at least he or she is not an orc, and no matter how impoverished or ethically suspect a character may be, he or she can slay a couple dozen orcs to let off some tension and no one will bat an eye.

Someone once wrote in Dragon Magazine that demons are cool villains because there are no ethical qualms about stereotyping them and hating them all.

The above runs also true for many RPG depictions of religions, genders including sexuality, cultures, etc.

Any time an RPG provides a baseline race (or culture) -- the most evil race, the race with the automatically most skillful thieves, the most cherubic race -- that RPG has provided and installed a prejudicial theme.

Any time an RPG provides a boogie man race or enemy race -- the latest ad nauseum thinly veiled imitation of the Nazis, for example, or of the evil Star Wars trilogy empire -- that RPG has provided and installed a prejudicial theme.

Another cause is the simple fact that, to survive modern day life, it is often necessary for us to interact with people in terms of their roles rather than their individual identities.  I interact with the clerk at the drugstore as a clerk, not as William Renault.  I interact with the police officer as a police officer, not as Lynette Diai.

Cliche' generalizations provide people with a sort of linguistic hypertext not only to their roles but to a plethora of notions.  "She's as fastidious as a Brit!"  "I couldn't help swaggering -- I'm in a very Texan mood."  "If you get any more Hollywood on me, I'll scream!"  "He's very Italian with the way he uses hand gestures every time he talks."

In such fantasy chronicles as Conan the Barbarian, various tribes were used as representations of specific human traits.  This even occurs in The Professor's work (and is emphasized in Jackson's film adaptations), with almost all elves stoically melancholy and almost all dwarves gruffly greedy and almost all hobbits self-absorbed yet innocent -- notice how often Gandalf or Thorin or Aragorn will make an observation about Frodo or Bilbo and immediately generalize it to be true of the entire hobbit race!

In RPGs, this occurs continuously, particularly in fantasy RPGs.  Anyone remember the old AD-&-D chart which told a player how his/her PC felt about other races?  Fantasy RPGs aren't the only ones which do this: the World of Darkness meta-world falls apart without its meticulously drawn stereotyping (all Pookah must make a saving throw or lie???), and in the Star Trek RPG, part of the ambience includes having allegedly socially perfected humans say such things as "wow! logical as a Vulcan!" or "annoying, like all Bajoran women" or "hmph! I should have known better than to trust a Klingon!"

Why do people do this?  In addition to being intellectually easier and in addition to satisfying the human compulsion to classify and categorize, when seen as harmless, it's fun!  Some of the most blatant gay stereotypes I've seen have been acted out by gays clowning around; numerous Black and Hispanic comedians base their comedy routines on acting out Black and Hispanic stereotypes.  In Jackson's LOTR: The Return of the King, everyone laughs when Gandalf comes upon Merry and Pippin feasting at the flooded tower and reacts by exasperatedly snorting his explanation of their impractical behavior: "Hobbits!"

There may be a valid human need underlying this tendency despite its vulnerability towards prejudicial stereotyping.  After all, it is useful to know the baseline normative expectations in a new culture or community.

I'd suggest that an RPG needs to make it clear the difference between societal norms and the ways other societies stereotype this society and the inborn traits of the race itself.  For example, I recall one excellent article on dwarves in AD-&-D which discussed a certain tribe of dwarves who know they are far more complex than dour lovers of precious metals but have found it to their advantage in dealing with other races to perpetuate this stereotype, even being amused themselves by the stereotype.  The article went on to specify societal norms amongst that dwarven community and how those norms have contributed to that stereotype.

Any time an RPG reduces all members of a race to handy cliche's and generalizations, that RPG has provided and installed a prejudicial theme.

However, an RPG should acknowledge the players' human needs for roles and baseline normative expectations.

I know there are other causes of racism and other solutions to them in RPGs; these seem to have been overlooked a tad.

Doctor Xero

Quote from: Daniel 'gobi' SolisThe phenomenon reminds me of the scene in the Matrix where Neo meets Trinity and says, "I thought you were a guy." She replies, "Most guys do." She has a point. Without a face to attach to the words, you'll just kind of assume that whoever is saying them looks like you.

I was going to make a joke about this; but as I thought the joke, it brought me up short on something implicit in this that easily goes unnoticed.

The joke was, I was going to say that I thought from his posts and designs that Jared Sorenson was black, but how could you be black with a name like Sorenson?

Then it occurred to me to wonder this: why would I assume that anyone was black? Isn't that in itself a display of prejudice? Daniel's certainly right that I never imagined him to be Hispanic; but then, I don't think I ever really imagined him as being anything in particular--and if I had, it would merely have been a reference frame in my own mind. I was shocked when I first saw a picture of Jared, because he did not look like I'd envisioned. The same is true of the first photo I saw of Ron Edwards, and of Seth Ben-Ezra and his wife Crystal. (I'm even shocked when I see photos of me, because I never think I look like that.) We all do create mental images of other people, and they're always wrong--but if I were to assume you were black, or Hispanic, or Asian, without any basis other than the way you write, that would be prejudicial. It would in some ways be more prejudicial than if I'd envisioned you as white.

This isn't true in all cases, certainly. I get mail from people for whom English is not a primary language, and I can often identify their native tongue from the way they structure their English--but that's based on articulable evidence. On the other hand, just within the last couple nights I saw a commercial for a recording by a singer on Motown records, and I was surprised that he appeared to be white--because Motown, in my youth, was the label for black artists, and because the song he was singing had a lot of "soul" influence in it. I was fooled by the evidence. But I don't think it would have been wrong for me to have pictured this guy as being black based on the sound of his music and the name on the label, even if that is prejudicial. What would have been wrong would be for me to draw other conclusions about him based on the assumption (or even the knowledge, if it were true) that he was black.

You can't picture someone without making assumptions about race and gender, unless you have facts. Imagining them as one thing or another is not prejudicial, unless you use that image as the basis for other judgments about them.

Have I suffered from discrimination, a white male Anglo-saxon Protestant?

Well, my wife never told her grandmother that I was Eye-Talian (about three eighths, if I've done my math correctly, but culturally dominant in my mother's immigrant family with whom I had the most family contact). She would not have approved.

I also suffered a great deal of discrimination as a child because I was not at all athletic, and in some ways I think that mattered more to the kids in my school than your race or your religion--it was certainly sufficient cause to warrant beating me up on a regular basis.

I suspect everyone is on the brunt end of discrimination of some sort some times. You can choose to blame your problems on it, or you can prove yourself as an individual.

Have I drifted?

Doctor Xero's post is excellent.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. Young
I also suffered a great deal of discrimination as a child because I was not at all athletic, and in some ways I think that mattered more to the kids in my school than your race or your religion--it was certainly sufficient cause to warrant beating me up on a regular basis.

I suspect everyone is on the brunt end of discrimination of some sort some times. You can choose to blame your problems on it, or you can prove yourself as an individual.

This is a world away from being relegated to menial jobs, being seen as inherently criminal, or allocated to inferior positions on public transaport and domestic zoning.  So while in a strictly literakl sense, yes your schoolmates may have "discriminated" against you, but it is by no means qualitatively comparable with real racism or sexism.  In fact, I find the comparison trivilialising such a serious problem.  Neither racism nor sexism can be overcome by just "proving yourself".

Quote from: contracycle

Quote from: S'mon
Not "clearly worse"?  Um, ok.

More precisely, symptomatic rather than causal.  The chinese have a proverb that the secret of leadership is to find a parade and to get in front.  I'm saying its the people in the parade who make the demagogue  dangerous; without them, the demagogue is just a ranting loon.

Race-hatred racialists are not necessarily confined to a few rare demagogues & sociopaths, it's quite possible for the majority of a population to actively hate and fear another race/culture etc and seek to do them harm, although of course they're much more likely to express this if whipped into a frenzy by aforesaid demagogues.  I suppose you could argue that race-hatred racialists are a minor problem in the modern USA; in very large parts of the world that's definitely not the case.  I'm from Northern Ireland where ethnic religion-based hatred is traditionally very much part of the milieu.  Maybe nowadays only a minority of people on either side actively hate the 'enemy' side, but it's a pretty big minority.

As John has given me the go-ahead, I'll try to drag this discussion away from the political/social soapbox it is drifting towards and back onto the topic of RPGs (Gareth and S'mon, would you please take the poli-sci argument to a more appropriate venue?).

Quote from: John KimI think this is the thread for your question.  But I'm not sure what restriction you are talking about.  RPGs aren't government censored in any countries as far as I know...

Self-imposed restriction, then -- or rather, an unenforcable cultural restriction brought to bear by segements of our society. Or as Xero states, (a specific segement of) the marketplace.

What that restriction is, precisely, is what I'm getting at. There's lots of complaints by folks about "what is unacceptable" but I want to know "why" and examine that "why" to see if the reasoning really is...well, reasonable.

My purpose, in this discussion specifically, is to determine what the limits of design are, and why those limits are (or should be) there. What are the constraints under which a conscientious writer should labor when producing fictional elements for a setting or scenario and why should he labor under those? (My specific example of "what to do with dark elves" was meant to highlight this issue.)

For example, I'll disagree with your historical interpretation of the events surrounding the Inquisition and Burning Times, but only to point out that many pagans (and specifically Wiccans) would consider the ideas you are posing as nothing short of an attempt to downplay the patriarchal domination and cultural suppression of women engaged in by the Church and the society it headed; that your rejection and criticism of the set-up of Ars Magica's background is nothing more than a continuation of the oppression of women and pagan religion by the Church, because your rejection of it as discriminatory entails support for that oppression.

Now we have ourself a nice little argument, don't we?
But where does it get us? Nowhere. I'm as right as you are.

What it does do, however, is reinforce my point: while I hear about a great deal of "discrimination" in various creative endeavors, including RPGs, from what I'm seeing, a lot of that is perceived discrimation.

So, if you see where I'm coming from, the problem with some of the complaints is exactly what you pointed out: it's fiction.

What you seem to be saying is that the only way to have good fiction is to avoid painting any particular (or particularly sensitive) group as evil (even by similarity (ie: "no dark skin")). That "element of a story" concerns must come secondary to the possibility of the element being discriminatory -- and damn the fact that it is fiction anyways.

From my viewpoint, saying "What if..." is not saying "This is...", precisely the confusion I pointed out in my lengthy previous post, and something I label as problematic to the creative process. Perceieved discrimination can't really be dealt with in any positive manner that I can see.

Quote from: cleherichThe problem isn't them: it's the people who say, "I have no problem with those people, they're fine with me, in fact they make such nice music (because those people have a good sense of rhythm, the same way they're all good at basketball), but I sure wouldn't want one dating my sister."

Now, see, here we disagree. That IS intentional racism in my book -- it is intentional discrimination against a real group for real purposes that is causing harm to that group. It may not be physical harm, or emotional harm to a specific individual, but creating and acting according to a false, negative perception thereof.

It doesn't matter that the speaker doesn't consider it "racist" (few racists consider their remarks racist, anyway), the content and intention of the behavior is clearly discriminatory based on illogical/irrational premises, and is designed to segregate society and individuals based on those factors.

Having "dark elves" (or insert other token person/creature here) in a campaign just doesn't do that.

So, when a conscientious writer sits down to create an interesting fictional setting and situation, how can he be expected to keep his creative freedom in light of the possibility/threat of discrimination? (ala the Nemoidians in SW:tPM; the dark elves in D&D; etc.) Especially considering how destructive such (perceived) discrimination can be to the actual value (and intent) of the work? And considering that, yes, there IS "bad discrimination" (I am not saying there is not) which a writer can and should avoid.

Any insights?

Quote from: greyormAs John has given me the go-ahead, I'll try to drag this discussion away from the political/social soapbox it is drifting towards and back onto the topic of RPGs (Gareth and S'mon, would you please take the poli-sci argument to a more appropriate venue?).

(snip)

Quote from: cleherichThe problem isn't them: it's the people who say, "I have no problem with those people, they're fine with me, in fact they make such nice music (because those people have a good sense of rhythm, the same way they're all good at basketball), but I sure wouldn't want one dating my sister."

Now, see, here we disagree. That IS intentional racism in my book -- it is intentional discrimination against a real group for real purposes that is causing harm to that group. It may not be physical harm, or emotional harm to a specific individual, but creating and acting according to a false, negative perception thereof.

It doesn't matter that the speaker doesn't consider it "racist" (few racists consider their remarks racist, anyway), the content and intention of the behavior is clearly discriminatory based on illogical/irrational premises, and is designed to segregate society and individuals based on those factors.

(snip)

Any insights?

Er, how about you just said exactly what I was saying, only apparently when I say it it's an "inappropriate poli-sci argument"?

Re dark elves/drow - I'm quite confident Gygax was not being intentionlly racist & sexist.  I'm not absolutely certain with Lucas' Nemoidans & Gungans, they seemed so blatant (esp the Nemoidans), but I'll take his word for it.

I'm not sure whether the general trend of the discourse here is advocating self-censorship in the Politically Correct sense - ie that authors should consider whether someone might take their black-skinned evil lesbian dominatrix elves to be racist/sexist/homophobic, so the author should stick to white-skinned evil heterosexual male villains only.  To me that would be undesirable.  I think it's good to play with stereotypes and expectations - like Vance's Dying Earth story where Cudgel meets the ugly tusk-mouthed men  who turn out to be 'good' and the beautiful blond fair-skinned men are 'evil'.  This shouldn't be allowed to become a new stereotype either though - "all orcs are noble and good".  Complex and surprising fantasy societies are almost always more interesting.

Quote from: greyormSo, when a conscientious writer sits down to create an interesting fictional setting and situation, how can he be expected to keep his creative freedom in light of the possibility/threat of discrimination? (ala the Nemoidians in SW:tPM; the dark elves in D&D; etc.) Especially considering how destructive such (perceived) discrimination can be to the actual value (and intent) of the work? . . .

Speaking as someone on the demographic fringe of a fringe activity, I think a lot of these questions can be answered by the writer asking whether the conceptual and thematic elements of the setting can be best served by presenting it in a particular way.  For instance, in many fantasy games, the default cultural model is pseudo-medieval Europe, yet the themes and concepts behind those games do not make this necessary in the least.  It's just more familiar.  Doing things a certain way only for the sake of familiarity does little to solve the problem.  So, for the conscientious writer, I would say that's the first thing that should be dealt with.  As yourself, "Am I doing this because it is really what this setting is about, or because it is familiar and comfortable?"  If it's the latter, I'd say it's time to go back to the drawing board.

The good thing about this question is that you can apply it to every aspect of the setting.  Geography, history, cultures, even supernatural creatures.  For instance, fantasy settings consistently portray elves as the "über white people."  It doesn't take much to go from the assumption that northern Europe is the only place to find a race of inherently beautiful, regal, magical creatures to the idea that northern Europe is the source of these things.  Why not go beyond that?  Is there something about the idea of inhuman grace, beauty, and power that makes it necessary to portray elves as fair-skinned, light-haired, and light-eyed?

Fantasy is not the only genre that can benefit from a little bit of this kind of questioning.  Let's take the vampire mythos.  Vampires are pretty much universal, yet you consistently see vampirism presented romantically, often basing it on the appeal of the goth aesthetic.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the vampire is frequently portrayed (in most media) as a gothic concept rather than a global phenomenon.  Unfortunately, the games that present vampires as a particularly goth aesthetic do not say this.  Instead, they portray it as universal and human, but the application and appeal is so limited that it can be easily written off as "white people [censored]" rather than something that has relevance to everyone.  Even if the goth aesthetic is the focus of a writer's concept of vampires, it would be good to ask if there is something about the goth subculture that necessitates it being based in WASP sensibilities (even as a way of deviating from them) or if there are elements in other cultures that can be adapted to the goth aesthetic or explored from a goth mindset.

As far as not hampering creative freedom, I am afraid there is little to be done about that.  On the one hand, I can see from the artist's perspective that you do not want outside factors influencing your decisions as you create.  On the other hand, I sometimes feel that if inspiration is that difficult, if you find it so hard to think outside the mold, then perhaps your idea needs to stay on the shelf until you are ready to go beyond your comfort zones.

I've talked about this to an extent here (http://pub83.ezboard.com/fgamerchickplanetfrm3.showMessage?topicID=254.topic), but that sort of derailed.  However, it has ideas I still feel are worthwhile and relevant to your concerns.

Quote from: Greenin many fantasy games, the default cultural model is pseudo-medieval Europe, yet the themes and concepts behind those games do not make this necessary in the least.  It's just more familiar.  Doing things a certain way only for the sake of familiarity does little to solve the problem.

I agree with you overall on this, Green.  I'd just like to add another reason many people will default to Anglo-European cultures in fantasy works and such : in our politically-charged modern U.S. culture, Anglo-European cultures are a sanctuary from spurious charges of racism or political correctness (I'm not referencing legitimate charges of racism or political correctness, only the spurious ones).

(In my very personal opinion, one of the things which has hindered our efforts to end racism is that some less-than-ethical people have appropriated the term for politically-motivated witch trials, in the process diminishing the term 'racist' by making it appear to be a political smearing rather than a legitimate term for a type of bigot.  Soon enough, actual bigots don't care about the term as much while genuinely innocent people fear the smear tactic power of the term.)

To illustrate by example : a modern writer writes a story in which an aggressive culture attacks the protagonist's culture.  If the aggressive culture is darker-skinned and the heroine's culture is lighter-skinned, the writer is accused of being a racist.  If the aggressive culture is lighter-skinned and the heroine's culture is darker-skinned, the writer is dismissed as being politically correct.  If the aggressive culture and the heroine's culture are both darker-skinned and the writer herself is lighter-skinned, the writer is accused of appropriating exploitatively another culture.  So the safest move for a modern writer afraid of taboo labeling is to make both cultures lighter-skinned, because no one seems to care what a person writes about lighter-skinned cultures these days.

(This is why I personally think that cultural activism, while slower, will ultimately be more effective than legislative solutions at ending racism once and for all once basic civil rights are fully established.)

Doctor Xero

An additional thought to add to the melange in this thread :

I recall reading a study involving behavioral patterns as the result of child abuse by an alcoholic/drug-using mother or father.  A group of researchers discovered that a number of children exhibited all the behavioral traits of victims of child abuse even though thorough investigation made it clear that these children had not experienced child abuse.  Researchers then made case studies of the children and their families, and they learned something which has seriously increased the complexity of child abuse family studies.

In a number of cases, the child in question had not experienced child abuse, nor had either of the child's parents, but one of the child's grandparents ~had~.  The grandparent in question had been traumatized enough that she or he had role modeled the behavior of a victim of child abuse for his or her offspring, who had then passed it on to the child in question through similar role modeling.  Thus, even though the children had never experienced child abuse, they reacted with all the fearfulness and wariness and anxiety of victims of child abuse because this was the normative behavior they'd learned from their parents who had learned it from their grandparents who had developed it in response to child abuse trauma!

In the same way, a child or grandchild of a victim of racism may very well react as a victim of racism even if she or he has not personally experienced it, and this can be true for entire communities as well as for individuals -- a factor with serious implications for how we need to address the tragedies of historic racism as well as current racism!

In the same way, a child or grandchild of a bigot may very well pick up subtle or hidden racist behaviors even if she or he is not a racist on any conscious or emotional level, also true for entire communities as well as individuals.

How might this influence RPGs?

I recall one RPG I ran which dealt with racism (though that had not been my conscious intention -- I was simply trying to run a good campaign!) as the protagonists uncovered the historic roots of the traditional enmity of two game-world cultures and were able to end the racist enmity by making it clear to both cultures how they were still reacting to long-irrelevant historical circumstances.  (Having the majority of the racism end so quickly was a little unrealistic but made for a nice ending to the campaign.)

Doctor Xero

Regarding the "evil black matriarchal lesbian dominatrix elves".. Guess what is my problem with this? The "evil". Why there has to be "evil"? What does it even mean? Why to label a group, even an individual as "evil"? It's not realistic, it does not help telling a story I'd like, but it does promote chauvinism (original, broad term), black'n'white worldview and 'better-than-thou' attitude.

So, I'm bugged by the evil black matriarchal lesbian dominatrix elves. I'm also bugged by the evil green polygamous cannibal orcs. I'm also bugged by the evil white partiarchal straight human males. Notice the common nominator.

Of course, I'm more bugged by the drow issue than the orc issue, because though I'm not black, much less an elf, other aspects make it personal. But the baseline problem is labeling some things good and others bad, without any logic whatsoever. Why drows are evil? They just are. Why orcs? Designer felt like it. Why the need of evilness? To have something to kill without moral problems? And that is a good thing to do?

And continuing the rant, why are all individuals of a given group alike? Not realistic either, and makes incredibly boring story material. Diversity, people! You can state the dwarven culture values gold over all. Ok, but I want to see also dwarves that are generous, and dwarves who have sworn the oath of poverty. Orcs are violent and vengeful? Ok, but I want the reasoning behind it, and few pacifists. Hobbits are peaceful and jolly culinarists? Fair enough, but not without a suicidal alcoholic halfling assassin. Elves are prone to beauty and harmony? Ok, but I want my warmongering psycho noldor. (Wait, I have them..)

And most cultures are heavily male-dominated? Let them be, but show me also strong females and people crossing boundaries. Yes, I want a couple of high-ranking males in a mathriarchal system, too. And I don't want the "all X are A and no A is Y". It can be a common belief in a particular gameworld, but it shouldn't be the truth in the system.

Preaching? You bet. I want better RPG's (who doesn't?). And, if it is possible to "make world a better place" with RPG's (even however small part of it), I'm all for that, too.

Um, bunny distraction.. You've gotta deal with my chaotic text as it is.

Hi Raven,

There are no definite answers to your question.  There is no PC guide that will tell you what is too far.  What you can do, is simply be conscious of what you are putting forth(which is what authors/artists of any sort should be doing along with the unconscious flow to their work).  

As far fantasy races being interpreted as real races, it mostly comes about through 2 things:
1- Absence of an ethnic group
2- Fantasy race which falls into much of real world stereotypes of said ethnic group

While we can always retreat to the notion that "it's all fantasy" the simple fact is, with any form of art, you are making a statement to real people.  

The issues folks had with Phantom Menace was seeing the stereotypes they deal with on a daily basis transferred on screen with the attitude of, "See, they're lying, greedy bastards, and the best thing to do is blow them up!", which may be an exaggeration, but consider if LOTR orcs all spoke in ebonics or spanish, and you'd get a good idea of what people are pointing to.

I'd say this whole issue regarding fantasy races is really empty.  The racial bias issues I have witnessed as a source of contention throughout my gaming experience has been the treatment of the actual ethnicities in the various books, ranging from mistreatment of culture(African=voodoo, Chinese=kung fu), to the complete absence.  Orcs, drow, whathaveyou, hardly mattered in the fact of what we people of color were being portrayed as.

Chris

I've posted my revised hypothesis on Male Dominance in RPGs (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9841)

Cheers,
Krista