Races and "races" in literature and RPGs

[Dotan Dimet]

Re: the RPG-Orc thing, the weirdest case of symbolic stand-ins IMO was in the Underground RPG, where psychotic superpowered discharged vets (the PCs of the futuristic setting) play a literary role that is analogous to that of black males in late 80s - early 90s Los Angeles.
But then, Underground is wholly about "issues", and its mix of Rap culture and retro-future gives you some odd juxtpositions.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Over in [Arrowflight] Pixies, poisons, and duty, as a side point, I said this:

Without putting too fine a point on it, "orcs" in the setting are clearly symbolic stand-ins for black people in terms of 1950s American literature, just as they are in so many other fantasy games. They are the ex-slave race, brawny and raw, full of potential and ready to join up in the over-culture, but faced with extreme prejudice and certain individual limitations. Please note I'm talking about a literary role/identity, not a real one. Those "limitations" are a source of tricky, high-tension conflict in the stories I'm talking about and they feature heavily in games like Arrowflight and Earthdawn.

Dotan Dimet responded with the above point, which after a little squinting I decided to ask to split off into a thread over here in RPG Theory. I figure it's a more general topic than my thread in Actual Play can handle.

Best,
Ron

[James Holloway]

Re: the RPG-Orc thing, the weirdest case of symbolic stand-ins IMO was in the Underground RPG, where psychotic superpowered discharged vets (the PCs of the futuristic setting) play a literary role that is analogous to that of black males in late 80s - early 90s Los Angeles.
But then, Underground is wholly about "issues", and its mix of Rap culture and retro-future gives you some odd juxtpositions.

I wouldn't necessarily have said that the racial equation in Underground is that specific -- many of the characters in the books, for example, are Latinos, and have identities relating to Latino youth culture. I think the vets are a stand-in for "the disposessed" in general, rather than specifically African-Americans. Certainly they're meant to be "minorities."