D&D 5E The word ‘Race’

[Sunseeker]

This.

Study the habits of other animals (even our closest cousins like mammals) and you'll see a lot of behavior that is unfathomable to humans; dolphins who use sex to assert dominance, mother cats who let a sickly kitten starve, ducks who will engage in necrophilia. If we created fantasy races with similar traits (dwarves use sex to assert dominance, elves let a sickly child starve, or gnomes who engage in necrophilia) we wouldn't be able to identify with or accept these as acceptable traits, even though such traits do exist in those animals and it hasn't stopped people from loving dolphins, cats, or ducks.

Even still, these aren't entirely unfathomable traits, you can find many of them in humans to some degree and it is the power of our ration and irrational mind that we are able to stop and look at these traits and say: I understand using sex as a method of dominance, even though I do not approve of people who do so.

Adding a single trait to a non-human species wouldn't make the race so unfathomable as to make the reader unable to connect, but adding enough of them as to make a non-human completely inhuman would.

I mean, imagine a race of elves who use sex to assert dominance to the point where if anyone misbehaves publicly, forcible sex is the manner in which they're punished. While at the same time, the weak are considered beneath their concerns to the point where they're not even fed, even if they break the law to feed themselves, they're not even punished by sex, it's like a stray animal stealing food to stay alive, they see it as that creature attempting to demonstrate its strength towards others, its will to survive. And the only way for these weaklings to exert dominance truly is of course, in a sexual manner but the only members of society truly weaker than them are the dead, so they specifically target the dead of the rich and powerful as a way to demonstrate dominance over the still living members of that family.

Yes, that's incredibly disturbing. There's no way in hell I'd allow a person to play that, much less even have it exist in my game because it is so outrightly disgusting that I barely want to read what I just wrote.

And that's exactly my secondary point: if you attempt to create something so inhuman such as that, you cause the reader to be so repulsed, so angered by what they are reading that they STOP READING. So writing something "human-but-different" is preferable to writing something "alien" because the simple fact of the manner is that people won't even bother with "alienisms".

 

[Ovinomancer]

shidaku, I keep trying to read your posts about how race is problematic in D&D, but then I get down to your signature and find myself triggered. If race in D&D is such an issue, why are your pushing an offensive message about real people being the result of racist fantasy tropes in every one of your posts?

 

[Aldarc]

We should probably protest cosmology, then, since it's a study of dark matter, called so because it doesn't interact with light. Obviously a modern incarnation of the European Manichaean light-good/dark-bad dichotomy perpetuating racist stereotypes.

Sarcasm aside, fears of the dark--that is, the absence of solar illuminance, "night"--almost surely predate classifications based on the melanin content of an individual's skin, since our reduced ability to see and resulting increased vulnerability has been here long before there were meaningful differences in melanin content of skin.

Yes. Some people have made claims about so-called "white" skin being holy, pure, light, and good, and "dark" skin as a bunch of negative things often opposed to them (and then further used that to justify atrocities). Does that mean we now cannot employ the presence and absence of photonic emission as symbolic of shared, and perhaps universal, human sentiment--be it the unknown, the unseen, the feared, or the mysterious?

Your sarcasm aside, I believe that it is our ethical obligation to be cognizant of the racist tropes that exist within the reception of fantasy and roleplaying games. We should be responsible enough to recognize how the presentation of races (and their associated tropes) can further reinforce culturally insensitive stereotypes in harmful ways. And it is our duty to either purge those elements or minimize the effects as best that we can.

Removing racial bonuses is certainly an option for more rules lite systems.
The DragonAge RPG lumps racial mechanics in with other "backgrounds", with different subraces being different backgrounds. So "dwarf noble" and "dwarf surfacer" are slightly different but treated like circle mage or Fereldan Craftsman. And it's possible to get simmilar bonuses from a variety of other backgrounds, so the races are less monolithic. Plus, an elven circle mage and human circle mage would be mechanically identical.
And you can mix-and-match to some extent, especially in the FantasyAGE book, where you can effectively crossbreed any race (highlighted in Titan's Grave with the half-elf, half-dwarf character and the half-surial, half-orc character).

They could have "cultural backgrounds" easily in D&D. Make bonuses for being "dwarf raised" or "farm raised" or "city raised". So an half-elf raised by humans in a city would be different than a half-elf raised by elves in the woods.

Personally though, I think D&D 5e is doing a pretty good job. They've doubled down on presenting diversity through humans. Because they can't show variations in ethnicity in elves and dwarves as easily, a very high percentage of the humans in the art and the adventures are non-white. The art in the human and fighter entries of the PHB are people of colour, as is the warrior fighting goblins on the title page.
It's a way to be inclusive. It's a big change from the TSR policy that the central figure of the cover had to be a white male so the audience would have someone they could identify with.

I agree that many tabletop RPGs are improving how they present 'race.' And flexible 'Backgrounds' may be the best alternative to the term 'Race' in terms of player creation.

There's also FATE where you can choose what sort of flavor aspects you want for your character. Your 'race' could very well be immaterial or you could emphasize it as a key part of your character.

 

[Minigiant]

I wrote a long article on this ages ago about "outside the box" thinking.

Non-humans act like humans for two reasons:
1: For the viewer to connect with. You can't care about the problems of a person, race or planet when you cannot connect with them. If the problems in question are too inscrutable, too silly, or too weird for the players to connect with, they simply won't care. Or worse, they'll react negatively.
2: Because they are written by humans. Humans can only write what they know, or think they know. Even writing what you think you don't know ends up giving off a vibe of "I wrote this to purposefully be strange and confusing." And that's fine...within a certain set of bounds.

If you get too far out of the box, too far beyond what a human player/reader can connect with, you're basically wasting your time writing. The lack of connection will cause the brain to effectively shut down, the eyes to gloss over and the viewer to lose interest.

Ostensibly your example seems silly because it looks to the reader as though elves are fighting over the choice in instrument. But you've got the underlying tones that allow the reader to connect with the elves: the war of succession. Arguing over what instrument should be played is a symptom of the disagreement over who should lead and how they should do it and what measure we should judge them on. These are all very connectable elements to a reader.

Take the dwarves in Dragon Age: they generally don't go above the surface because they have lived underground for so long, their brains literally cannot comprehend the open emptiness of the sky, resulting in a culturally, possibly biologically ingrained fear of open spaces. Much the same way the human brain cannot comprehend the vastness of outer-space, resulting in a breakdown in rational thinking and an expression of fear and terror over something their mind simply cannot comprehend.

There's a very connectable element there that is both very human, but when given to an entire race is enough to cause the reader to go "wow, that's really different" even though its not really different, the wide-spread nature of it makes it feel as such.

So, it's not so much that other species need to act inhumanly. It's that they need to act like humans, but in a manner that humans don't expect. Attempting to write non-humans as completely inhuman is simply a wasted effort.

Yeah, you can't go too alien or people can't relate. But making the race think human in relation to their circumstances goes a long way to displaying that races are different and not just "humans with special hats.'

That's why my elves are the way they are. They live a long time so internally elves do everything slowly and have time to practice and master anything they want. Having all the time in the world but having a stagnant culture means every adult elf is an expert on everything elven. Imagine a nation where every adult citizen has a degree in everything the really country cares about and everyone knows each others' aptitude. So elves can only challenge each other in weird things that outside elven culture.

So most humans make fun of elves for their slowness and crazy challenges but humans who bother to understand them get it.

It is even more important when PCs can be that race. Players have to be able to get it to buy into racial quirks. My elf in my friend's game treated humans and halflings like children and went full Grandpa on them despite their white hair and beards (hence elves don't grow beards and all dwarves have them, he didn't recognize it as age). He seemed so different when he attempted to play for stuff with toys, candy, and stories. When the DM stole the premise, we players really started seeing elves, dwarves, and halflings as different.

However, for monsters and nonplayable races, I think more inlumanity and alienness is allowed as there's no PC buyin. Orcs can violently fight over stupid stuff, goblins can be afraid of everything when alone, and dryads can be crazy clingy girls to their trees.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Your sarcasm aside, I believe that it is our ethical obligation to be cognizant of the racist tropes that exist within the reception of fantasy and roleplaying games. We should be responsible enough to recognize how the presentation of races (and their associated tropes) can further reinforce culturally insensitive stereotypes in harmful ways. And it is our duty to either purge those elements or minimize the effects as best that we can.

No. You have the ethical responsibility to actually show the level of harm caused before calling for the eradication of something. How do you know that your solution will be effective if you don't know the scope of the problem?

You can call race in D&D problematic, but that's a useless term that only means 'I don't like it.' If you can't actually show what the harm is, along with the scope of that harm, you shouldn't advocate for a solution that's as draconian as the one you claim here. This is the logical equivalent of stomping your feet and demanding candy.

Race in D&D may be an issue. It may be something worth addressing. Declaring it such isn't sufficient. Do some work to support your claims other than saying the source material is racist or that people might feel pushed out of the hobby. People are pushed out of the hobby for all kinds of reasons (mostly being in crappy groups, but hey, different thread topic), unless you can show that race distinctions in D&D is a pervasive issue and has harmed more than a small handful of people (and, most importantly, can do it without reference to critical theory -- what a load of crud that is), then you cannot be taken seriously as someone calling for a radical change to the hobby.

 

[Aldarc]

No. You have the ethical responsibility to actually show the level of harm caused before calling for the eradication of something. How do you know that your solution will be effective if you don't know the scope of the problem?

You can call race in D&D problematic, but that's a useless term that only means 'I don't like it.' If you can't actually show what the harm is, along with the scope of that harm, you shouldn't advocate for a solution that's as draconian as the one you claim here. This is the logical equivalent of stomping your feet and demanding candy.

Race in D&D may be an issue. It may be something worth addressing. Declaring it such isn't sufficient. Do some work to support your claims other than saying the source material is racist or that people might feel pushed out of the hobby. People are pushed out of the hobby for all kinds of reasons (mostly being in crappy groups, but hey, different thread topic), unless you can show that race distinctions in D&D is a pervasive issue and has harmed more than a small handful of people (and, most importantly, can do it without reference to critical theory -- what a load of crud that is), then you cannot be taken seriously as someone calling for a radical change to the hobby.

Imagine if we were talking about 'black face' or racist cartoon talking crows in this context instead of racist tropes in gaming. How do you think that your demands here from me would sound? What might that evidence look like? How much evidence would it require to convince you that they were harmful and racist then? How much work must I go out of my way to produce just to satisfy your objections then?

If you think that ethically "racism is bad" is a true statement, and you state that "race in D&D may be an issue" and "something worth addressing," then why do you seem so reluctant to do so or to explore that yourself? Why are you so reticent to reflect on the issue of racism in gaming? Are you afraid of what you might find should you actually apply an honest critical examination of the materials? I am genuinely curious as to why you and a few others seem so hellbent on resisting even examining the possibility that D&D may handle 'race' in a culturally-inappropriate (i.e. racist) manner.

'Problematic' is not the only word available for me to use, nor would the issue go away simply with you dismissing the argument with a hand wave because of my word choice discomforts you. Would changing my word choice there make you feel better? What would that accomplish? I would have thought that 'problematic' would be more to your liking since it would soften the blow from what other people would otherwise just openly call 'racism' or 'cultural appropriation.' Yes, I dislike it. I dislike the perpetuation of racist tropes in fantasy. I want it minimized. I believe that constantly-evolving media, including tabletop RPGs, should reflect the sensibilities of the their time, especially if the game hopes to survive. There can certainly be racism in fantasy, with heroes valiantly resisting against it, but it becomes an issue when real life racism is built into the game's presentation and assumptions of "other" races, creatures, and cultures.

Furthermore, it's bizarre to think that the idea of attempting to reduce racist tropes in D&D should somehow be construed as "draconian." Your priorities may be out of whack if you are more concerned about preserving fantasy game tropes than reducing the perpetuation of racist tropes. I don't know what to tell you. Racism and sexism in fantasy tropes may not affect you in the least, but that does not mean that these issues are nonexistent or have no effect on others. I have seen women offended by sexism in roleplaying tropes, and I have seen people of color offended by racism in roleplaying tropes. I have seen people refuse to game in certain settings because of the manner in which those settings flavored its races and creatures using real world peoples and cultures. We can both apply circumstantial evidence until our faces turn blue, but that solves nothing and does little to address the issue.

Within even the past year, Monte Cook Games was accused of presenting a racist caricature of Native American culture in one of their recursions for The Strange. A sizable petition went up in response. The people at MCG are good people. It was not intended racism, so the people at MCG were naturally hurt by the accusation. But MCG acted ethically. They gathered input and feedback from consumers, and they reflected on their product design decisions. They did further research and consulted with Native American groups, and then released a more culturally-sensitive "Ohunkakan recursion" for free.

 

[Uller]

It doesn't illustrate either of those points. These past noun-changes have nothing to do with the current discussion of the term "race."

So when my friend dumped his D&D books in the dumpster circa 1985 because he didn't want to take party in the hobby because it included demonic influences that could be used to influence young people in the real world it was nothing at all like you saying you have a problem with the word race because someone somewhere might use that to justify their real world racism...

Nope...no similarity at all...

 

[Jester David]

I disagree. If I try to avoid offense, but offense is still taken, I am not at fault. Yes, it is an opportunity to discuss such things, and possibly modify behavior, but people need to take responsibility for things that bother them. I'm sure I carry beliefs that would offend a large number of people. I try not to inflict those on other people or take offense from people who think differently. I expect the same of others. To expect more is to be unreasonable.

If you try and avoid offense, you are not typically at fault. However, when someone says something causes offence and that behaviour is not changed, you very much are at fault. If someone is offended by something, saying you disagree doesn't help. That's not trying to avoid making offense. That's really the opposite.

Not sure what a movie has to do with whether or not D&D needs changes to avoid perpetuating racial stereotypes. Hollywood does a lot of stupid stuff, but no one is to blame for it except Hollywood.
Again with the movies.
Yes racism is real and exists in movies, although I would draw the line at saying all Western culture is implicitly racist. That's painting a lot of people with a pretty broad brush.

Hollywood is a microcosm of pop culture as a whole. Not everyone is racist, but there's plenty enough racism to go around, both overt and systemic/unconscious. I'm not going to say "if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem" or some other tautology. But it's preferable to work against racism, to work against the problem, to be better than society as a whole. After all, gaming is a small community so it's easier to enact changes in behavior, thinking, and attitudes than in larger groups.
Plus, nerds and gamers get hit with so many negative sterotypes, we know what it's like. So we should know better.

It is obvious D&D draws on material that includes racism, but that is a lot different than saying D&D perpetutes racism as has been suggested by a number of posters. I don't think it does.

You don't think it does. Or rather, you don't want to think it does. You don't want something you love and enjoy to be racist and part of something ugly. And that's the issue. Because, frankly, it's not what the un-offended think that matters. We're not the ones being offended.

A lot of what is being said amounts to "This vegetable grew in fertilizer, so eating it is like eating crap." I think the people suggesting D&D promotes racist behavior have failed to point to anything substantial in the game that could or needs to be fixed. As I've said before, variety and differences between the in-game races IS NOT RACIST. Having differences isn't racist. Exploiting those differences to insult or demean someone is.

Having differences isn't racist. Saying "all dwarves are clumsy" or "all elves live in the woods" is a little close to "all Asians are good at math" or "all Scottish people are cheap". It hits buttons, especially from people who have been confronted by those kind of attitudes.

 

[Alzrius]

If you try and avoid offense, you are not typically at fault. However, when someone says something causes offence and that behaviour is not changed, you very much are at fault. If someone is offended by something, saying you disagree doesn't help. That's not trying to avoid making offense. That's really the opposite.

I'm glad to hear you say that, because your posting in this thread causes me offense; not the contents of your posts, but rather that you're posting in this thread at all. I'd like you to change that behavior and cease posting here, otherwise you'd continue offending me, and thus very much be at fault. I'm not interested if you disagree that you posting here is offensive, that doesn't help (just the opposite).

Since you believe that someone should comply and cease what they're doing when told they're causing offense, I trust you not to post anything further in this thread.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm glad to hear you say that, because your posting in this thread causes me offense; not the contents of your posts, but rather that you're posting in this thread at all. I'd like you to change that behavior and cease posting here, otherwise you'd continue offending me, and thus very much be at fault. I'm not interested if you disagree that you posting here is offensive, that doesn't help (just the opposite).

Since you believe that someone should comply and cease what they're doing when told they're causing offense, I trust you not to post anything further in this thread.

Instead of providing glib snark, you should consider making a more helpful contribution to the discussion at hand by suggesting your own understanding of the subject of wrong-doing in the matters of offensive remarks.