Blacks in Gaming (Hyperlink)

[the Jester]

IMC I have multiple different ethnicities or "lineages" of each race. One of the human cultures is black skinned with wavy (hair); another has dark red to dark brown skin with an underlying hint of green (from an extinct precursor race with whom they intermarried). These guys have fairly Oriental features- epicanthic (sp?) folds, etc.

I've also used black halflings before.

My black elves are Drow, so special case.

Dwarves tend to have brownish or greyish skin of varying hue.

Gnomes are also more woody-looking than in D&D standard art, tending towards a chestnut color.

So, and I know I'm not necessarily either typical or the only one, at least some of us think about this and try to integrate different races into our campaigns.

 

[JoesephBear]

I think it depends on the setting of the game. If they released an "Oriental Adventures"-type book, should 10% of the humans depicted be black? IMO, no. In such a book the humans depicted should be neither black nor white.

Scumbag DM

Runs an Oriental Adventures campaign.

All the NPC's are anime-style caucasians.

 

[Aramax]

The way D&D handles 'races' it cries out for differances in human races,
What I did was to have the 'Northeners"(Blacks) be +1 to Cha ,in that people think of them as an interesting 'novalty" the way IRL americans view
austraillians or brits
another reason for the +1 cha,in my heavilly Lovecraft involved world

 

[UngeheuerLich]

i really would be careful to assign attribute bonuses for beeing black or white or whatever colour your skin is.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Malanin levels in the skin are dependent on climate. If a setting has a wide variety of climates separated by enough distance to prevent intermixing for thousands of years, then there will be different skin tones.

D&D tends to have an early renaissance tone to it, so by default travel has become easy enough for some cultural mixing, but not a lot. Thus, in a European climate, there will be a minority of dark skinned individuals, and in an African climate, the opposite is true.

I think the wisest course of action is to have a default assumption that D&D takes place in a world where most cultures, not just Europe, are going through a renaissance and age of exploration. Adventuring can happen everywhere, and each culture is busily interacting with others.

What this means, as far as the presence of black people goes, is that the primary African style cultures should not be presented as tribal. The challenge there is that, outside of Egypt and the south bank of the Mediterranean Sea, Africa doesn't have a real-world example of an advanced civilization in it's history. At least, not one that would be familiar to players. So, one would have to be built for the game.

This presents it's own challenges, of course.

 

[avin]

Also, according to wikipedia less than 8% of Brazil's population are "black," though that is admittedly a flexible term.

I seriously doubt it.

http://cenpah.blogspot.com/2010/01/populacao-negra-no-brasil-ja-e-503.html

According to this is 50%, I would bet something like that.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

moved to general discussion

note: this could obviously be a sensitive subject, we'll have to close it if it gets political.

Thanks

Could we perhaps merge his other thread with this'un?


http://www.enworld.org/forum/media-.../315417-grumpy-rpg-reviews-blacks-gaming.html

 

[gamerprinter]

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't the defining paladin character in the Pathfinder APG a black woman? While this doesn't specifically describe the race, it shows one example of a 'major character' who is black in Paizo's Golarian setting. Also Golarian has it's own distinctly African analog. I think Paizo does a decent job representing black humans in RPGs.

 

[S'mon]

But here is the short version, while black's constitute above 12% of the U.S. population, the appear in less than 1% of the art depictions of humans in the core D&D books in the past. [/SIZE]
Here D&D 5E/Next Challenge; make at least 10% of the humans depicted black. Not all art must depict humaniods and not all humaniods must be human, but of the humans 10% should be black.
If not, then why not?
[/FONT]

The Mestizo (mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry) population of the USA is around 15%. Should RPG art work characters be 12-15% Mestizo?

The female population of the USA is around 52%. Should RPG art work characters be 45-52% female?

If not, why not?

Well, one reason I can think of is genre; the largest RPG genre is medieval Europeanesque fantasy centred on combat, ergo lots of knights and similar - white men in armour.
Another is market - the largest RPG demographic is white males. It makes business sense not to alienate other potential markets eg through sexist or racist art, it does not make sense to set an art direction that gains you 2 black or female buyers but loses you 10 white or male buyers.

Personally I think white human male warrior characters in particular have been severely under-represented in D&D artwork in recent years. While I don't think black characters have generally been over-represented, Pathfinder art in particular has a very heavy representation of black characters. Personally I like it*, but I don't think Paizo have any duty to hit a particular quota.

*The biggest power in one of my D&D campaign worlds is an advanced black kingdom, so the Paizo art is good for NPCs!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, one reason I can think of is genre; the largest RPG genre is medieval Europeanesque fantasy centred on combat, ergo lots of knights and similar - white men in armour.

Agreeing with this...and everyone else who has posted it.

Adding: also, most of the major fantasy series that feature non-white cultures or characters haven't really gotten much RPG attention. I'm thinking of LeGuin's Earthsea, Turtledove's Darkness books, etc.