How to address racism in a fantasy setting without it dragging down the game?

[Li Shenron]

I wonderd how you could bring this up in a game, not as a central theme but more of a side story like a church or organization which fights for complete equality or similar goals, without it being disruptive, unfun or comical as being allowed to kill certain things and take their stuff without reprecussions is kinda the central theme in many RPGs.

Well, if you want to have some "evil races" in your fantasy setting, the first 2 things coming to my mind...

1) Do not use a group of humans as an "evil race", always treat humans as a single race in the game, and use only monstrous races for your purpose.

2) Do not allow player characters of an evil race, if you don't want the PC to become the example of why such race should not be treated as irredeemable.

 

[Celebrim]

1) Do not use a group of humans as an "evil race", always treat humans as a single race in the game, and use only monstrous races for your purpose.

2) Do not allow player characters of an evil race, if you don't want the PC to become the example of why such race should not be treated as irredeemable.

I agree with both of these rules. One thing that gives me the willies and makes me really uncomfortable is when different ethnic groups of humanity are modeled as if they were separate species with separate origins. It's an ancient belief system, but the history of humanity could be summarized as one dang genocide after the other, and the view that we are "people", we were created this way, and the other tribes were different peoples with different creation stories is one of the classic ways that ancient racism was justified. And you sometimes even encounter that to the present day.

So while it might be respectful of the historical record and ancient myths, I've no interest in a setting where different human ethnic groups are different spiritually, physically, and by heritage. I've seen some really well meaning recent authors go down that path imagining that they are being respectful, and I am really uncomfortable with where that path goes in its ultimate conclusion.

In my own campaign, I don't allow a PC from a racial group that isn't people. There is no point whatsoever in playing say a minotaur or a gnoll, because those species are essentially complex automatons incapable of making a real choice. They are evil and always will be evil, so what's the point? Perhaps even more to the point from a process of play perspective, the player can "do it wrong". In the case of a "people race" - whether humans, elves, or goblins - how the player chooses to play his character is always correct, because he's playing a being with free will. Since how the player chooses to play the character is always correct, there is no need for me as a GM to interfere with the player's agency. If the player were playing a thing that wasn't a person, that is a being without free will, then either they agree to play the thing how I think it ought to be played or they aren't "doing it right". That's not really fun for anyone.

 

[Bohandas]

Emphasis on seem. My wife's a veterinarian, and we could have a long discussion about animal intelligence, but I think that'd be a bit of a derailing.

Some of them definitely go up to at least 3 because you can teach a chimp sign language, and the ability to communicate using language in the defining difference between Int 2 and Int 3

Most of my experience has been the GM making it interesting because the player assumes they're getting Bagheera, when really, they're getting something less than Doug, from Up. So, if you are talking to a squirrel, and you ask something that isn't about other squirrels, nuts, or common predators in the area, it's a bit of a slog.

PC: "Did the priest of Grummsh go by recently?"
Squirrel: "Wha?"
PC: "Man. Smell bad. Tusks. See him?"
Squirrel: "Oh. That way."
PC: "How long ago?"
Squirrel: ...
PC: "Five minutes? Ten?"
Squirrel: "Five my nuts?!? No have my nuts! "
PC: sigh

I know it's mostly just included here for comedic effect, but I don't think the kind of mishearing from the end of the dialog there could actually happen; it would just be another "what's that" instead because the spell would have to fail in its translation for such mishearing to occur

 

[eugenemarshall]

This is a great question. Indeed, it is the question that motivated me to create my current Kickstarter product, "Ancestry and Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e." (Apologies for the shameless self-promotion, but it actually seemed relevant here...)

The biological essentialism that underlies a lot of racism in the real world can be found in lots of D&D uses of race. I think one of the major ways in which this kind of racism shows up in D&D is by ascribing alignment to a sentient, playable race's biology rather than their learned and chosen behaviors. So we tried to address this with new character creation rules that tone down the biological essentialism.

The idea, in brief, is this:
We took the classic D&D races and divided their traits into those that are biologically heritable (like Darkvision, Size, Age, Draconic Ancestry, Fey Ancestry) and those that are communicated as systems of ideas, beliefs, etc through culture and education (like weapon training, languages, alignment, tool proficiencies, etc).

This allows you to make a character who has human ancestry but is raised by elves and so is culturally elven (like Aragorn). The zine also includes rules for making characters of multiple ancestries. So, rather than just have half-elves and half-orcs (which are problematic in several ways), you can now also make a character of elven and orcish ancestry, or gnomish and halfling ancestry. And maybe those mixed ancestry characters grow up in an entirely different culture, so they might have elven and orcish ancestry, but be culturally dwarven. This is how it works in the real world, after all.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw it out there, since it seems actually on topic. Apologies for the crass self-promotion:

Ancestry and Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e

Alternate PC creation rules for 5e that replace Race with Ancestry, Culture, and Mixed Heritage, for awesome new PCs. #ZineQuest2

www.kickstarter.com

Ancestry and Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e

 

[Celebrim]

This is how it works in the real world, after all.

Your project sounds interesting and fits a niche. In my 3e game, I homebrewed up a much less ambitious version of what you are presenting to handle issues like adoption and mixed ancestry.

But I do want to put out that in the real world, there are no dwarves, elves, orcs, gnomes, halflings, bullywogs, and aarokocra. We don't really know how in the real world this would work, but I think it's safe to assume from a realism perspective that it wouldn't work like Star Trek with it's "Half-Vulcans" and "Half-Klingons". Star Trek is more space fantasy than science fiction, and it uses obvious fantasy parallels for many of its races despite the fact that doesn't make a bit of sense from a scientific perspective. Certainly from a perspective of how things work in the real world, you wouldn't expect huge fire breathing lizards to be able to interbreed with simians.

 

[eugenemarshall]

Your project sounds interesting and fits a niche. In my 3e game, I homebrewed up a much less ambitious version of what you are presenting to handle issues like adoption and mixed ancestry.

But I do want to put out that in the real world, there are no dwarves, elves, orcs, gnomes, halflings, bullywogs, and aarokocra. We don't really know how in the real world this would work, but I think it's safe to assume from a realism perspective that it wouldn't work like Star Trek with it's "Half-Vulcans" and "Half-Klingons". Star Trek is more space fantasy than science fiction, and it uses obvious fantasy parallels for many of its races despite the fact that doesn't make a bit of sense from a scientific perspective. Certainly from a perspective of how things work in the real world, you wouldn't expect huge fire breathing lizards to be able to interbreed with simians.

Absolutely fair critique. I should have shut up before that last line!

 

[Bohandas]

The biological essentialism that underlies a lot of racism in the real world can be found in lots of D&D uses of race. I think one of the major ways in which this kind of racism shows up in D&D is by ascribing alignment to a sentient, playable race's biology rather than their learned and chosen behaviors.

Yes, but D&D doesn't use the word "race" to mean race. For some moronic reason it uses it to mean "species". You wouldn't expect a pig, a chimp, or a dolphin to think like a human (or like each other, for that matter), yet that's exactly the expectation you're demanding here

We took the classic D&D races and divided their traits into those that are biologically heritable (like Darkvision, Size, Age, Draconic Ancestry, Fey Ancestry) and those that are communicated as systems of ideas, beliefs, etc through culture and education (like weapon training, languages, alignment, tool proficiencies, etc).

This works for game mechanics, but for fluff there's a third necessary consideration even if we grant an inherently humanlike psyche.

Let's take a look at gnomes, for example. They're 3-4 feet tall, they see in the dark better than a cat, their noses are super sensitive to chemical odors, and they take 40 years to reach adulthood. Don't you think that literally seeing the world from a different perspective is going to make someone see the world from a different perspective?

And the orcs have the most outre senses of all. It's my understanding that in the later editions of the game they have a direct line to Gruumsh hardwired into their brains. He doesn;t control them but he's a bad influence that they can perceive no matter where they are. That's gonna have an effect.

Imagine the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode Larry Miller Hair System (the one where carl gives the computer simulation bad advice), but starting way earlier in life.

 

[eugenemarshall]

Yes, but D&D doesn't use the word "race" to mean race. For some moronic reason it uses it to mean "species". You wouldn't expect a pig, a chimp, or a dolphin to think like a human (or like each other, for that matter), yet that's exactly the expectation you're demanding here

(Hmm, I'm not sure I follow, but I'll try to reply as best I can. I apologize if I am misunderstanding your comment. I mean all of the below in good humor and a spirit of friendliness.)

In canonical D&D, elves and humans can have offspring. And orcs and humans can as well. What is the biological reason, therefore, that elves and orcs cannot? What's more, their offspring are fertile. So, if we are using ideas from real world biology, elves and orcs and humans cannot be different species. I might add that older editions had dwarf-human offspring and many more unusual options as well.

On the other hand, this is a magical world; using real worlds concepts of biology probably isn't going to work. And it certainly isn't something I'm interested in or offering here, for sure.

What's more, the majority of the rules in our document are about how to handle someone growing up in a different culture from their ancestry, like a human raised by elves (like Aragorn) or a dwarf raised by halflings. The biological reproduction stuff is just a small part of the document.

Also, let me clarify: the rules I'm offering are optional, made available for players who are interested in playing these combinations. I'm not trying to take away the PHB classic character creation rules or condemn those who use them.

If you want your games to use realistic concepts of sexual reproduction, well, I guess D&D doesn't provide rules for that, so you'd have to home-brew them!

 

[Celebrim]

Yes, but D&D doesn't use the word "race" to mean race. For some moronic reason it uses it to mean "species".

We have to remember that the writers of D&D aren't the ones that heaped tons of connotations and ideas onto the word "race" since the time they chose it. It's perfectly valid English to speak of "the human race" to distinguish it from other sorts of animals. The word only means "having a common heritage/parentage". (Not that there weren't plenty of ugly ideas associated with the word before hand, but let's not go there.)

So, the human race, the dwarf race, the elf race, the goblin race are all perfectly valid constructions, and the choice of race even has some reasonableness to it. The word "species" carries with it a lot of scientific and biological baggage that is not meant to be implied as pertaining to a fantasy setting. In a scientific setting, it makes no sense for Spock to be "half Human and half Vulcan". As a "space elf", it is entirely within the archetype for Spock to be half-human and half Vulcan.

Where you get in trouble is going from the idea that because you can interbreed Vulcans and humans, that there aren't profound biological differences between Vulcans and Humans which influence their emotional contexts, their culture, their lifestyles, their desires, and their behavior. You get into trouble when you assume, that if it looks human it probably is basically human, sans some minor irrelevant features like pointed ears that distinguish Vulcans from humans hardly more than one human is different than another. Thus you get the idea that a Vulcan raised by humans would basically be human, or a human raised by Vulcan would basically be Vulcan. Heck, even the initially unreflected on assumption that since Vulcans and Humans look alike they could interbreed, naturally, is part of this rather simplistic mindset. It's the same thing that puts mammary glands on Dragonborn, or gets you John Carter marrying an egg laying Martian Princess and having a child by her (though, to be fair, it's strongly hinted John Carter is not actually human).

Point is, it's not incorrect to say that a green blooded Vulcan is essentially biologically different than a Human, and you are right that it is a bit of a categorical error to see that as being the same problem as human racism (human racial categories having a very weak biological basis).

What I'm seeing is a cultural trend toward proclaiming that if two species have a clear biological difference, you are being racist.

And since we are on the topic, real biological differences can lead to real alignment propensities.

To lead off with a less explosive example, the dwarf alignment propensity to lawfulness and the elf alignment propensity to chaoticness are in my homebrew setting the very natural result of their respective biological differences. They are not merely learned and chosen behaviors but innate and natural impulses of both species that are overcome only with difficulty. While not every elf is chaotic, and not every dwarf is lawful, the vast majority of the two races act according to their biological imperatives. In the case of elves, a lawfully structured society isn't even really possible for them. If they collectively tried to do that, they'd probably just go extinct because it is so completely unsuited to their biology.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Five my nuts

I find this inordinately hilarious.