Cultures in D&D/roleplaying: damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Derren]

Simply ignore it.
The people who see racism everywhere are very loud on the internet, but you are unlikely to run i to one in real life.

 

[hawkeyefan]

My audience is my players - friends I've been gaming with for a long time.

Buuuuuut... at the same time, the argument "oh if it's for in private it doesn't really matter" bothers me. While it' 99% sure I'll never publish, if my game isn't "fit for public use" then... part of me feels like there is something wrong with it.

Well when I said that, I didn't mean that you can be disrespectful of real world cultures in a private game so much as you will know your players and therefore have a better idea of whether or not they will take issue with a portrayal or any allegorical content. And they also know you and will be less likely to misinterpret your intentions.

I'd still expect that the intent be respectful.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

My audience is my players - friends I've been gaming with for a long time.

Buuuuuut... at the same time, the argument "oh if it's for in private it doesn't really matter" bothers me. While it' 99% sure I'll never publish, if my game isn't "fit for public use" then... part of me feels like there is something wrong with it.

If you want to spend the effort to make your game as PC, or whatever term you want to use, as it can be to please an audience that isn't going to read or play in it, and may or may not be offended if they did, go for it. But seems like a misuse of effort.

 

[Mallus]

Buuuuuut... at the same time, the argument "oh if it's for in private it doesn't really matter" bothers me. While it' 99% sure I'll never publish, if my game isn't "fit for public use" then... part of me feels like there is something wrong with it.

No one thing is right for every audience.

For example, in my campaigns it's totally kosher to make fun of a culture or group you belong to. Which is how we got to the Teutonic-Hawaiian "Polynietzschean" barbarians, Tieflings who speak Hebrew (and are named after parts of a Passover seder), and Communist dwarves shouting "Universal Healthcare" in battle.

We're fine with things like this. But I don't pretend for a moment it would appropriate to strike this tone in a public setting for, err, public players. It's a style of (self-deprecating and/or targeting) humor that evolved over time and is clearly not for everyone.

 

[Lanefan]

There's another approach to this which I've used for ages: take a non-serious Xena-Hercules approach and intentionally throw historical accuracy to the wind in favour of entertainment and amusement. Make the Norse out as over-the-top stereotypical Vikings. Make the Romans be a combination of uber-Lawful soldiery and backstabbing corrupt leaders. Make the Greeks out as a bunch of petty competing city-states and warlords* held together (barely) by a pantheon that squabbles as much as their followers. Throw in some Celts who can't do anything unless there's a tree involved somehow. Take your Dwarves (beer-swilling miners), Elves (snooty aristocrats whose whole society is a stuffy club), Hobbits (down-to-earth English farmers) and Gnomes (tricksters extrordinaire) and play on these cultural differences. And then turn it all up to 11 and take it right over the top.

* - as in petty tyrants with small bands of troops, NOT the game class!

In other words, instead of trying to suppress the stereotypes, embrace and enhance them! However, this really only works with "dead" cultures e.g. the ancient Greeks, Romans, Vikings etc. or fantasy cultures e.g. Dwarves, Elves, etc. To try to do this to a culture that still exists today is kinda asking for trouble.

Lanefan

 

[arjomanes]

Don’t be afraid to create villains from any culture. Actually DO create villains in every culture in your game. My current game is set in 13th century Latvia/Belarus. Religious contention is a major plus. Catholic Christians, Orthodox Christians, pagan balts, pagan slavs, even Mongol warriors who follow Tengrism, heretics, Jews, let’s include it all. And Germans, Russians, and Balts side to side with fairy tale witches, rusalka, leshies, and goblins in the woods. D&D is a fantasy game. Let fantasy books, stories, comics, and movies be your guide. Don’t make cardboard races; make sure every creature/monster has a motive. If you have orcs, make them a unique inhuman race. Same with elves or whatever. Don’t make the french elves or the germans dwarves. Add those races in where the shadows lie, deep in the woods, in caves beneath the earth, or down crooked alleys.

 

[MNblockhead]

I don't worry about it in my personal, at-home games. That doesn't mean that I don't care about racist stereotypes or offending my players. Rather, it means that if I overstep a line, I know that I can be called out on it, address it, and move on. Offense given and taken among friends is a very different situation than in a more public setting with people who don't know each other well. I would be far more careful if I were running a game open to the public at a game store--but, even then, telling people to avoid real-world cultures is a bit of a cop-out. Most people will find it hard to ensure that their fantasy culture has no parallels with the real world. And even those who take the time to do so are likely to find that others will still perceive real-world stereotypes in your fantasy people.

If you are a publisher, yes, it behooves you to think about how your material may be perceived.

Otherwise, strive to be a decent person and let your players know that if they are uncomfortable or offended by anything that you are open to discussing it.

In my homebrew world, cultures are based heavily on amalgamations of real-world cultures--in particular, places I've lived and travelled in. Some are based on alternate histories (what if the Etruscan culture remained distinct and subsumed the nascent Roman culture rather than being subsumed by the Romans). I find it much easier to run a game where I have a base on real-world experience. For example, I made one Kingdom based on a mix of historical Tang-Dynasty China and Qing Dynasty fantasy and fiction. Having lived there (and Taiwan) and having travelled in many of it is provinces, it is easy for me to come up NPC, tavern, and place names on the fly. Of course I'm bringing in my white middle-class American world view and filters into it. But I don't think it is bad to roleplay another culture or race, even if based on real-world examples. I mean, I'm doing that with medieval Europe settings as well. I've seen almost none of Europe. My role-playing an English peasant or Norse "barbarian" viking are based on far less-nuanced stereotypes (mostly from pop culture) than my depictions of Chinese or Indians. I image that Germans are going to have more negative experiences in how they are portrayed in American games than most other groups.

Personally, I would worry more if I had to role-play someone from the American south--which is the one group I can think of that I've offended in recent memory.

 

[delericho]

Don't run games set in the real world, or settings that are only one step away from it.

Mostly this. These days, I very much prefer my fantasy settings to be exactly that - fantasy settings. So the default land is not "fantasy Europe", the lands to the east are not "fantasy Asia", and so on. Simply taking a real-world nation and filing off the serial numbers is... okay, I guess, but it's just not what I'm looking for in a setting these days.

But in addition:

There will never be one sure-fire solution that a DM or writer can use as a shield from criticism. But the shield of "I tried my best to cover the bases." is usually a pretty good one. Few people will fault you for putting in your best effort, so I guess what it really comes down to is this:

Did you put in your best effort?

This is pretty much it. The truth is that if you put something out there, there's a good chance somebody will take offense - because you didn't include their favoured group, or you did but you got some detail wrong (or, indeed, maybe you got it right and they're in the wrong - that won't stop them being offended!). Heck, I might even argue that if you're product doesn't have at least the potential to offend, it's probably so bland you might as well not bother.

So, make your best effort, and then don't worry about it. And if you do screw up and get something offensively wrong, apologise for the offense caused and try harder next time.

 

[Hand of Evil]

List out the cultural bullet items and treat it like alignment or substitute. Defining things like good and evil and presenting them to the players builds your cultural stereotypes.

 

[Gradine]

This is actually simpler than a lot of people make it out to be.

1) Do your research
2) Present the culture as human

There is not, and never really has been, such a thing as a monolithic culture. There are certain traits that are going to be universal or near-universal simply due to the nature of the way social and cultural norms work, but no culture has ever been free of outliers. Elsewise there would never have been a need for taboos.

The problem with replacing Mongols with Orcs is how D&D tends to present Orcs as a monolithic, chaotic and violent race. It is often not even presented as cultural, in most D&D presentations of Orcs, up to and including Volo's Guide, they are treated as being that way due to their very nature.

If you're pulling from historical human cultures, the most important thing is to portray them as human, with all the range and diversity that implies. If you're throwing in the Turks as nothing more than faceless bad guys to mow through, yeah, that's pretty damn problematic.

But the fact that you're even giving thought to this means that you're probably well-prepared to tackle this in a way that's humane and respectful.