A racist race? What's your take?

[komradebob]

Y'know what, yer probably safe using the irish stereotype, especially if you're american born and especially if you're selling to americans of irish descent. I mean, c'mon, it's the stereotype we use for ourselves. The short part is a bit bothersome, though.

racist punk.

kidding.

k-Bob

[Matt Machell]

You might want to note that Victoriana (a steampunk RPG) got flack for having African Orcs (a search of the RPG.NET forums will turn up the threads). So people do take offence.

That said, companies with modern world settings often seem to get away with hideous stereotypes (White Wolf's Fianna spring to mind, also being Irish based) with minimal complaint.

-Matt

[madelf]

It's interesting that Matt brings up the Victoriana RPG.
It's actually an appropriate example.

Although I have only a passing familiarity with the game, having heard about it online but not having seen it first hand, it seems that the basic concept for my game is not entirely unlike that of Victoriana.
My setting is based on a pseudo-victorian time period (though I want to play down the punk and go for a more fantasy by gaslight  theme), and I'm treading similar ground in placing fantasy races in what are often recognisable as real places. Though they went further and used the real world names, the general idea is the same.
The RPGnet thread he mentions is also the first real indicator I had that I was going to get flack. Fortunately, as I recall, that thread also had a good healthy dose of intelligent comment on the ignorance of those making the racist accusations, and I found that part encouraging. I was still a bit concerned that placing a tribe of orcs in Africa would cause such a stir, especially since not all Africans were depicted as orcs in the first place and they were apparently handled quite sympathetically besides. It proved to me that some people will be offended by anything. Something I needed to have a firm grasp of for my project.



As far as offending the Irish, I trust that will be the least of my crimes against humanity.
With "American Indian" Elves, "Gypsy" Gnomes, "Nazi german" sorcerors, and "Spanish" witch-hunters (ie: the Spanish Inquisition), etc, etc...I'm sure the Halflings will go nearly unnoticed.  I believe in equal opportunity offensiveness, you see.

As to why I'm doing this...that's a question that must have an answer, but I have yet to put it into words properly. I tried to come up with some reasons in the other thread, that started this, but I didn't entirely succeed there either.

About the best I can say is that it feels right.
Everything else I've come up with is a rationalization of why it feels right.

It's not nostalgia. While some small pieces of the setting are recycled from an old D&D game, there really isn't much left. The game as it stands now has never been run (mechanic or campaign). My gaming group will be making characters next week in preparation for the first round of playtesting. So there's nothing "warm and bubbly" tying me to any of my design choices.

I've considered changing things, doing it a different way.

I've thought about stripping off the real-world influences from the races and countries in the game world, just create everything out of as close as I could get to whole cloth... and it didn't "feel" right.

I thought about just dumping the fictional names and just saying that "in this world the  halflings live in Ireland and they're these short guys who are just like the Irish. The Gnomes are gypsys and they're just like the Rom people. Germany is run by the Nazis everyone is familiar with, except that they use magic" ... and it didn't "feel" right.

I thought about getting rid of fantasy races entirely and doing an all-human alternate history setting...and it still didn't feel right.

One thing I've been thinking about (and which may come close to pinning down at least  a part of what is really just a gut feeling about the direction I want my game to go)  is the ability of an intelligent person (I'll go ahead and make the vain and foolish assumption that anyone who choses to read my game book is very intelligent) to overcome a stereotype, to identify it and see beyond it. So if they read the description of the Halflings of Aieren (understanding that the description itself is a stereotype) and realize "Hey, these halflings are the Irish"... then suddenly that person reading my book has a huge, nearly endless, and readily available source for understanding the awe inspiring depth and scope of the halfling people... because they can now borrow on the centuries of culture and history that make the Irish people what they really are...everything that the reader knows, or can learn, about the Irish will give his halfling character that much more depth and "realism".


Still, even then, there's more to it that I can't really explain. I guess what it comes down to is that if I'm going to do it, it has to feel right. To me. I have to trust in my own vision, and do it my own way. If I don't then it's not my creation any more. It's creation by commitee. It's some watered down, half-hearted, pathetic thing I cranked out to be PC.

And I think that would be far more of a wrong than any inadvertant offense I might cause in following my own path.

That doesn't mean I have to be a jerk about it though. And that's why I'm here. I want to be able to say that I did what I could to make my intentions clear. Then if you still dislike me for it, that's fine. That is your choice, and I wouldn't take it away from you if I could. But I did what I felt was right, and for that reason I'll be able to sleep soundly at night regardless of what accusations are made against me.
I think that's about all I can ask for.

[Valamir]

I certainly have no conceptual problem with the idea.

But I would recommend trying to pin down some explainable reasons for the "feel".  Whether you put those reasons into the text, or just have them handy for the inevitable controversy, you'll want to have a response ready that demonstrates that you've given the matter serious thought and didn't decide to do it gratuitously.

Being able to state a case succinctly that relies on something more than just "it feels right" will help diffuse all but the more hard core blatherers, I think.  But not having a clear and concise message, I think will leave you more vulnerable.

[madelf]

Excellent advice, Ralph.
And I do intend to keep trying to figure out why I feel the way I do about it.
It is seeming like the more I try to talk about it and put it into words, the closer I'm getting to being able to.

I definitely still have some wracking of my poor brain to do though. As if it hasn't been through enough already.

:)

[madelf]

More musings...Bringing Realism to the Fantasy Race


Although I have not previously put my reasons for doing this project under the microscope to the extent that I have lately, I did begin with a vague notion of what I wanted. (This notion even predated the idea of making it a game rather than simply fiction) And it was a somewhat contradictory notion even then.
I love swords and sorcery fantasy. I love all the things that make the genre what it is. I love the magic, and the cliché races, and the heroics... and yet I had become bored with fantasy. This was not a tolerable situation.

So I thought about what was lacking. What had led to my boredom?
One was the setting. At the time, I did not feel I could bring myself to write (or read for that matter) another line of pseudo-medieval drivel. So I began by thinking of time periods that I found fascinating. Among several other periods, I have always felt drawn to the 19th century.  So I started there, with a traditional "swords and sorcery" fantasy theme in a Victorian setting.

I was feeling better about my writing plans already, but I still wasn't done brainstorming. Another factor in my boredom was the lack of depth in far too much of the fantasy fiction I had been reading. It was cookie- cutter fiction for the most part, I've had little luck finding really good fantasy novels lately. When the weekly D&D game has more depth than my reading material, something has to change, and it ain't just the D&D game. But it wasn't depth that was the issue, not really. I've read a lot of Forgotten Realms stuff (some of it's really not bad as the genre goes), and that setting has more background detail and depth than any novel or game ever needed. I'd have to almost say there's too much.
So it wasn't so much depth I wanted, not really. I finally figured out that what I actually wanted was a bit more realism, a sense of believability. So all I wanted was the impossible. I wanted a realistic fantasy setting.

So I started creating one, in my own warped fashion.


Why Fantasy Races?

I believe that the use of fantasy races aids in reinforcing the fantastical quality of the setting. There is very little more effective than elves, dwarves, and gnomes to get across the point that this is not our world.

Fantasy races have a drawback as well. They have the disadvantage of being clichés. The particular race is almost always pretty much the same from game to game, and every member of the race is pretty much the same as every other member of that race. This is a limitation that is imposed (whether intentionally or otherwise) in many cases. I don't think it needs to be imposed. Just because they are fantasy races (to gain the beneficial aspects of the cliché), that does not mean they couldn't benefit from a healthy dose of reality (to diminish the short comings of the cliché).


My Crackpot Theories on Stereotypes Promoting Realism

After self-analyzing a bit, I've come up with some theories about what subconscious reasoning led me to the design decisions I've made regarding the races in my setting. Strangely it seems that despite my insistence to the contrary, by looking to enhance realism, I've built in more of a message (or at least a personal statement) than I originally realized.

They're still in the vague and formative stages, but here they are.

I theorize that tying the fantasy races to real world cultures will aid in "humanizing" the fantasy races. This may seem to be at odds with the reasons for using a fantasy race in the first place, but it really isn't (or doesn't have to be, at least). The existence of the fantasy race will still provide the desired "otherworldly" first impression, while the resemblance to a known culture helps add a depth and scope to the fantasy race that might otherwise be lacking. I feel that the very fact of the stereotype will, hopefully, aid the players in grasping the notion that members of the fantasy race should be individuals. When a person sees what is clearly a stereotype, then they will also, by extension, see beyond that stereotype to the understanding that (in this fictional world as in our own) the individuals are not defined by the perception of an entire group, (although they may be effected by that perception, which I'll get to shortly). This should serve to reinforce the idea of greater depth and "humanity" for the fantasy races rather than the usual drill of every dwarf being a miner because that's what all dwarves are.

So my premise is that the existence of a recognizable stereotype will (by contrast to it's own limited nature). help to negate the necessarily limited description (stereotype) of the fantasy race. And that, by using this inherent reaction to stereotypes, it will give the fictional setting more perceived depth, and will aid in the suspension of disbelief (while at the same time still reinforcing the idea that it is in some ways different than our own reality). I think it will also help make the point that these fantasy races are actually races (as opposed to different species that are simply called races, as is the norm in the fantasy genre) who are not so very different from one another as they may be initially perceived.

I find this highly appropriate for a setting that emulates the 19th century, a time when it was far more common than today to think of people of another race (or even social class in many cases) as something other than one's fellow man. Using the fantasy races will simulate that sense of "other", while the ties to real world stereotype (that is blatantly acknowledged as such) will appeal to the more modern understanding that we really are all fellow men (and women). It should provide an interesting dichotomy, to balance the perceptions of the time period emulated by the game with the reality that although we are all different, we are still very much the same.

To sum up, it should give a very slight sense of the racial/cultural value system of the period without dragging the actual levels of social unpleasantness out into the harsh light of day, or (far worse) into play. It will allow the setting to address the realistic issues  of racial division (and it's a candyland setting if it assumes that no-one  hates their fellow sentient beings for one ignorant reason or another) without having to make it as ugly as it actually was (or even still is). The fantasy races then become the rose-colored glasses we peer through at a time when people were less socially enlightened than we are today. Racism is real. Racism will appropriately exist in any historical or pseudo-historical setting that bears even the slightest sense of realism. So we will acknowledge its existence, but we will not revel in it.

I don't know if this makes any more sense than anything else I've said, but it's at least getting me another step closer to figuring out  how to explain what the hell I was thinking.
Thanks for bearing with me.

[Lara]

*takes a deep breath*

You guys are far more literate then I, I've had to re-read some of your posts twice to digest the meaning.  My mother would be ashamed.

I would just like to throw out a few comments, mostly geared towards madelf's last post.  (a little background might help.  I run an online role play only group for adults, most of the eight races are custom crafted.)

We tried what you are trying ... take a sterotypical race and blend it with realistic earth cultures, and in our medium it was a dismal flop.  Its been a long time since I was actively involved in table top rp but I do remember the caliber of rper to be pretty high, so you may not experience this.

For our new project we are trying a slightly different formula, which I present, but may not serve your goals of a traditional fantasy genre.  We went with a new fictional sub-human race with a blended historical base, layered with a healthy dose of mystical.

We choose a new sub-human race because we couldn't get the players of non-human's out of the stero type, no matter how much supporting material we provided.  (and our game has over 1500 pages of content).  The sub-human means they walk talk think and act like humans -- but we dont call them humans.  Sounds like a minor distinction perhaps, but we also wanted to avoid the traditional human role-play of everything goes.

We blended the historical because it blurs the sterotype lines just a tad while still providing a source for additional research on the net, something players enjoy doing when they play a human based culture it seams.  For one example we mixed highlander and viking into one kingdom.

The mystical was the last layer to provide the high fantasy, a god and culture that made this "new" race seem to be its very own.

Now I'm not sure if anything I said was helpful, just thought I'd share that at least in our medium we had difficulties getting players out of any percieved sterotype.

Lara

[contracycle]

original removed.

Here is my central problem with the idea of humanising stereotypes.  Stereotypes are, necessarily, a short hand form, a reduction, of a whole person let alone a group of people. Sometimes these stereotypes are essentially innocent shorthands; but even if they are not meant to be pernicious, they often become so.

A shorthand description of this nature leands itself easily to being abused.  A certain spin or view can be imposed on the shorthand form; and becuase the shorthand form is being used precisely as a substitute for looking at the real thing, that spin or view can be propagated uncritically.  At this point the short-form has become a propaganda tool, a weapon.  More deliberately, a shorthand form can be used to very deliberately to demean, to vilify, to dehumanise, and because of our long and deep history of conflict, almost all of them have been.

So to me, it seems a futile effort to 'humanise' a stereotype when that stereotypes very function is to dehumanise the people it describes (allegedly).  I don't think there is any realistic prospect that a use of a sterotype can serve the goal of undermining that stereotype - becuase if the user does not value the stereotype, why are they using it in the first place?  Their usage implies recognition and validation.

It seems to me then that if the desire is to challenge a stereotype, the best method is to produce character to whom the streoitype would normally be applied, but without applying the stereotype.  In other words, by the presentation of real people in all their glory and complexity.  It seems to me I can do a betterb job of undermining a sterortype of 'the Irish' by producing real, complex Irish characters, rather than presenting a stereotype of the Irish and then exhorting my readers not to use it.  That is only adopting a "do what I say, not what I do" approach, and is always unconvincing IMO.

[madelf]

Lara,
I must admit to having trouble following my own logic at times, so don't feel bad if it takes you some extra effort to figure out what I'm saying.

I'm interested in how you make the distinction between a "stereotypical race blended with earth cultures" and a "sub-human race with a blended historical base" (who are apparently human, just not called human). You say it's a minor distinction and I'm afraid I may have missed it as they seem to really be the same thing in essense. Or does the fact that it's a non-tradtional race help break the mold? Or is it the blended historical base rather than a more-or-less pure one what you think makes it work better?



Gareth,
Thanks for stopping by.

I guess you're saying that even presenting a stereotype as a stereotype and stating that it should be recognized and dealt with as such, is likely to be insufficient to get my point across.

Unfortunately I'm not convinced it's possible to describe "real people in all their glory and complexity" within the limited confines of a two or three page write-up in a game book, at least not accurately (in a novel it would certainly be possible to present a character with greater depth and complexity, but I don't have the option of that much space). This is part of the reasoning I'm using for falling back on presenting a stereotype, directly pointing to the fact that it is one and the reader should understand that it is only the common perception, not the actuality.

I'm also thinking that presenting stereotypes as stereotypes might be appropriate given the period setting and the quest for a level of "realism". Stereotypes were much more accepted as fact then, than they are now. So perhaps a slightly different approach would be to portray the stereotype even more blantantly as the common misperception by others that the race must live with, and then go on in the same descriptive space to provide a few additional pieces of information about the culture which contrast the stereotype. Still without trying to encompass all that is that people, but trying to make it increasingly clear that more is there than meets the eye.

If you've got any suggestions on how I might be able to portray a real culture based fantasy race in a full enough manner to avoid stereotype, I'd love to hear them. Or (even after your reference to the WW splatbooks) do you feel that the very attempt to do such a thing is doomed to failure?

I suspect that simply sticking fantasy races to real world cultures and calling them Irish Halflings, Gypsy Gnomes, and American Indian Elves would be at least as offensive as what I'm doing now. Although I did have a thought at one point about taking prominent creatures from regional folklore and making those the people inhabiting each particular region. So we'd have the Barbegazi of Northern France, the Ohdow being native to North America,  Australian Bunyips, Welsh Pwca,  etc., with no humans in the world at all.
Maybe something like that would go over better, I don't know.

I'll grant that the easiest solution would be to just toss the fantasy races and the fictional names out with the trash and simply acknowledge that these people are Irish, these are German, etc...
It would certainly enhance the realism aspect, and make it far easier to point to realistic cultures without exhaustive detailing. I just can't help but think it would loose something vital in the process.
And it might just open up a whole new can of worms when I bend reality and start merging time periods together and messing with historical events. And who will I tick off if I start using actual historical figures as npcs? (I know people have done it before, but I'm not sure how much flak they've received for it)
It seems the possibilities for disaster never end, so I can't see that I'd be any worse off doing it the way I am now and trying to minimize the potential for misunderstanding my intent.

[Lara]

Or does the fact that it's a non-tradtional race help break the mold? Or is it the blended historical base rather than a more-or-less pure one what you think makes it work better?

Yes actually both make the distinction, a subtle one perhaps, but one that seems to make the difference.  However I won't be able to tell you how fully sucessful it is for another six months. :)

Lara

[contracycle]

Unfortunately I'm not convinced it's possible to describe "real people in all their glory and complexity" within the limited confines of a two or three page write-up in a game book, at least not accurately (in a novel it would certainly be possible to present a character with greater depth and complexity, but I don't have the option of that much space). This is part of the reasoning I'm using for falling back on presenting a stereotype, directly pointing to the fact that it is one and the reader should understand that it is only the common perception, not the actuality.

Yes fair enough.  In fact, I take that further sometimes and wonder how  the author of a novel is able to construct the mentalities of at least a handful of people.  I don't think that characters can ever be really as complex as real people, with the possible exsception of things like RPG where there is a 1-to-1 relationship between author and character.

Whatever description you give of a splat, it will always be a terribly limited view.  I recognise that you are trying to maximise this limitation by exploiting an existing are of insight, as it were, but I fear that this is too likely to run into associations you did not intend.  But there is a big difference between the 'voice' you use as an author speaking to the reader directly, and the voice you use speaking as a character in your world.  This is the major virtue of the WW example; even if you used that principle for entirely ordinary character races, that still means that you have to produce one sterotype per viewpoint.  That is, the orcs opinion and stereotype of dwarves is likely to centre on different issues than those that inform the elves opinion and sterotype of the dwarves.  At the very least, producing such 'perspectivised' stereotypes you a) avoid making definitive/normative statements as the author of the piece, and b) provide much more material and a more rounded view of the subject when all the different views are synthesized.

Anyway, to echo Lara's point, I do think it helps to start from a non-traditional race that does not carry pre-existing associations.  I was trying to think of another example after fluffing it with conspiracy X - I was wrong, these are not player races at all, but Monsters.  However, the example I did think of was SLA Industries, which has quite an interesting mix of the traditional and the novel.  SLA is quite an orthodox system with conventional race/splat divisions.    Almost all of these can be compared with conventional fantasy race breakdowns.  You have two sorta-elves, the Ebons - cool mysterious mystic elf - and the Wraith Raiders - dextrous violent sneaky elf.  You have a sorta-dwarf: the claymore-wielding, kilt-wearing drugged up Frothers.  Theres a sorta-orc/ogre: the 313 Stormer vat-grown combat trooper.  But because all of these are clearly original - if also clearly inspired by prior work - theres no real probability of anyone thinking this is a statement.  Even the Frothers, which do accord with a pretty negative stereotype of the Scots, are clearly distinguished by being a vocation rather than a breed, and by using only one specific stereotype rather than a holistic one.  The Wraith Raiders and the Shaktar (read: Barbarian) are actual races, or more accurately species, but even so are given enough original characteristics to be neither a human culture nor a straight rip-off of Fantasy. All this, and in no more than one and a half pages per splat, and thats all you get.

Its true to say I have many questions about say the Wraith Raiders than are answered in then limited space they are given; but the medium is an inherently limited space, any medium.  The only things we can control are those we take the time and effort to actually say in the medium; we cannot control the readers intepretation of the medium.  Rather than using this fact to disclaim responsibility for what we do say, I think it is more constructive to use the limited space to say what it is we want to say and get the best possible effect within the available scope.

Edit: some of the above was inspired by MJ's point about the way 'blade' can be interpreted in Shakespeare over in the Interactive rant thread.  Also, HeroWars/Quests use of Enigmatic References.

[madelf]

But there is a big difference between the 'voice' you use as an author speaking to the reader directly, and the voice you use speaking as a character in your world.

Okay, I get that.

Let me run this idea by you then...
I've got two elements already included in my descriptions that I may be able to expand upon.

One is an introductory quote, by a fictional character, who gives a little "personal insight" at the beginning of each race (and nation) write-up.

The other is a sub-section at the end of each write-up called "Relations With Others" which goes into a brief outline of what the race just described thinks of each of the other races (I also have a similar sub-section in each nation write-up).

So what if I expanded the "personal insight" quote from this fictional and self-proclaimed (it's a long story, but suffice it to say that I can certainly make the point that this character is someone of limited veracity and reliability) world traveller to encompass the entire race description. Now we do not have a stereotype handed down from on high by the author, but rather a subjective viewpoint presented by a fictional character within the "story" of the book.
This "personal" presentation would then be balanced by the "Relations With Others" sections of each racial description that would present more varying viewpoints on the various races (which could even be done "in character" as well if it made more sense. And it might, as that way it would be one member of the race offering his viewpoint on the other races, rather than being another stereotype of the way "all" members of the race see other races)

This could even be augmented by presenting sample characters which completely break down the stereotype. For instance after our "world traveller" gets done explaining how all the Dwarves of Pean-Huin are kilt-wearing mountain dwelling highlanders who all work as miners or engineers...then offer up a sample character of a Dwarf who is a coastal fisherman and wouldn't be caught dead working bare-legged all day in the salt spray.

I could even include another fictional character (or perhaps the sample character) to refute the first, if neccessary.
If you've read any of the Forgotten Realms material written by Ed Greenwood, particularly the Volo's Guides... he uses this method quite effectively. The narrator will present a multitude of "facts" and included in a sidebar is a small quote from the character Elminster, snidely pointing out just how full of crap the narrator actually is.

Also, might it be productive to move a little away from the traditional races of Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, etc to regional folklore references like the Barbegazi and Ohdow?
That might help to prevent the stamping of traditional fantasy race limitations onto cultures borrowed from the real world. And if the folklore-based races are inherently tied into the culture of a particular region in the first place, then perhaps that will seem more agreeable in terms of using the culture as a starting point.


Am I maybe getting somewhere with these ideas?