D&D General Fantasy Racism in D&D

[delphonso]

I'm currently running a game in Al-Qadim and having a great time not having bigotry around.

I tend to make everything have motivations in my game more than "driven by internal evil", and I do this because I feel uncomfortable with "goblin=bad" style games. I wish this were from a high horse, but it's actually because my favorite characters I've ever played were a gnoll and a kobold.

Racism has been an element in my games in the past. I tried to do more than elves hate dwarves and showed it in the form of structural systems which kept people groups down. Humans were dominant with most political and land-owning positions filled by humans, war-forged were refused citizenry and the rights therein, dragonborn were villainized by propaganda as a foreign threat.

Bigotry is less overt but some NPCs will drop it in - a royal servant making comments at a bullywug. Generally that has been a clue for PCs to dislike that character or watch them for future betrayal.

 

[pnewman]

To paraphrase Tom Lehrer - "Oh the dwarf folks hate the elf folks;
and the elf folks hate the dwarf folks;
and everybody hates Tieflings"

 

[Guest 6948803]

In the last few years I think I ran more Call of Cthulhu sessions than D&D, and before that, I ran alot of Deadlands and some Rippers.
In those, racism was present, because I like to run games close to historical reality of the setting. I don't really think I had any racism-driven plot tho.
Same for Hyborian Age game, it ain't pretty world, there were slaves left and right, lots of sexism and violence, close to REH stories.

However, D&D is different, my FR games have no sexism at all, and I keep racism personal - yeah, elves usually look down on dwarves, as said somebody before, nobody likes the drow (or rather, races with long history and reputation of evildoing) but nothing more, and no systemic racism. D&D is not good fit for heavy themes, and plays well without them. Oh, wait, sorry, we had racism in Curse of Strahd - relations between Vallaki and Grey Elves, and of course Vistani.

 

[Haldrik]

Having "races" where racial superiority is objectively true and mechanical enforced, is racism.

Fantasy racism is intentionally creating and imposing racist stereotypes for each fantasy "race".

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The movie and teleserie "Alien Nation" was an allegory about the Hispanic immigrant community. Some episodes of "The Legendary Journies of Hercules" (the version played by Kevin Sorbo, and point of Xena, the warrior princess as spin-off) were about the racism suffered by the centaurs.

Racism can appear in titles of speculative fiction. This is not wrong but if it used to promote racism against communities from the real world.

If you really want to erradicate for good the racism and other types of intolerance then you have to defend the respect for the human dignity. Without this Nietzche's warning becomes trues "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."

* I say it again. Today we are talking about drows, orcs and other fantasy races, but someday in the future the controversy will be about the tropes "reason vs faith/religion vs science" and sinnister minister.

 

[Ancalagon]

Having "races" where racial superiority is objectively true and mechanical enforced, is racism.

Are we sure about this? All humans have the same stats, no matter the color of their skin (I mean they all generate their stats the same way, no one has bonuses/choices the other one does not.

A dwarf is objectively different than a human. Their lifespan is much longer, they can see in the dark, they are much shorter etc etc. These differences don't justify hatred, but they are real differences.

By stating that all humans are the same, the game shouts out pretty strongly that racism in the real world is silly, because it's based on make-believe differences, differences that were made up to justify oppression and conquest.

I'm not saying that there is no racism in the roots of D&D. Rather, that some (not all!) of the racism perceived is only a matter of interpretation.

 

[Ancalagon]

As far as the original post...

does there have to be racism in your game? Why not imagine a world where there are problems (brigands! Cultists! Rampaging dragons! Dungeons with gold scattered about and no one is cleaning up!) but where racism just doesn't happen to exist?

 

[Minigiant]

In my world, the elves created orcs to fight the hobgoblins. The elves and orcs defeated the goblins and kicked them out of Fairyland.

The elves then treated orcs like second class citizens (because of course they did). So the orcs rebelled, fought, and seceded from the elves. The orcs then left Fairyland.

Then the elves had a civil war. The gnomes kicked the weakened elves out of the Fairyland.

So
The elves see the orcs as ungrateful brutes.
The orcs see the elves as bigoted snobs
The elves and orcs see goblins as violent warmongers (HOBS SHOT FIRST!).
The goblins see the elves as undeserving shepherds
The goblins see the orcs as foolish pawns
The elves see gnomes as treacherous opportunists.
The gnomes see elves as squabbling bourgeois

Ironically no one is racist to drow.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Racism is uniquitous in human history. I think this question you ask has a secondary question, which is "how closely do you wish to emulate real-world cultural history?"

Some measure of xenophobia and ethnic bigotry of some kind (often over tiny differences, like a split a few generations back) has been common. Racism in the modern sense is actually not that common. The Romans, for example, loved a good racial stereotype, but none of them were "better/worse", they were pretty much all largely negative and covered everyone (including Romans from actual Rome, who were stereotyped by Roman culture in general as devious and untrustworthy). The idea of "superior" and "inferior" races is a late one (albeit like a lot of ideas, it crops up earlier but doesn't take root).

You say of your campaign:

Racial tensions existed, but they were generally based upon history and not ideological ideas on race, or inherent superiority or inferiority. It was more distrust of otherness.

This is how human history was for most of history. Enslavement, for example, was horrific, but rarely racially-specific until the 1500s (Sparta being a notable counter-example), when it became incredibly convenient to enslave non-white peoples so thinking had to come into existence to justify that (as it flew in the face of existing societal and religious principles).

The other key phrase here being human history.

In a typical D&D setting, you have dozens of intelligent species who, somehow, have managed to not exterminate each other, many of whom don't constantly war with each other, and where typical D&D cities feature large numbers of different species living in relative harmony. And slavery is typically a strictly "bad guy" thing (and even then usually generalized).

So if you take that and work out from there, having "racism" or "speciesism" being a huge thing isn't really compatible with that. Nor is generalized xenophobia going to be really be viable in a lot of situations. Specific hostility towards cultures/species which interact in a negative way is much more likely.

Part of the problem I've seen with some people's games is that some DMs just try and play everyone in the setting as basically extremely xenophobic and generally hostile, like it's the Deep South in the 1800s, but that's just not how even human cultures normally are (xenophobia tends to be very mild, not extreme, without a specific reason), and thus anyone who isn't a plain vanilla human (or sometimes elf/dwarf) has to endure tons of tedious and pointless "NPC being a jerk towards them" RP from the DM. And a lot of the same DMs don't think treating the NPCs with equal, earned hostility is okay (which I've always found curious). It's like, if you want Murderhobos, step 1 is to make most NPCs into the game into complete jerks. Especially racist jerks.

So I tend to follow a similar pattern to you - there's xenophobia, there's open hostility if you're obviously a member or potential member of a group that, say, raids the people in question, but there isn't "organised racism", and the average person actually lives in the world he lives in, so is reasonably cosmopolitan, and has no doubt seen numerous "novel" races in his lifetime (i.e. new to him), so isn't going to freak out unless they closely resemble specific monsters or culture enemies.

Generally playing out deep xenophobia and hostility tends to be both dull/repetitive and doesn't make the game more enjoyable or engaging, or even increase verisimilitude. Better to make it exceptional and rare, which generally it logically should be.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

In a typical D&D setting, you have dozens of intelligent species who, somehow, have managed to not exterminate each other, many of whom don't constantly war with each other, and where typical D&D cities feature large numbers of different species living in relative harmony. And slavery is typically a strictly "bad guy" thing (and even then usually generalized).

He's playing in the Eberron setting, where the major powers have just concluded a war that is designed to evoke WWI, excepted it lasted 100 years. I share your view that the extreme diversity of races in D&D settlements makes it less probable that racism as we know it develop. I think hatred, though, must be prevalent, in the form of xenophobia. It was not easy to be a German living in Paris in 1919 or to be a Japanese living in the US in 1946. And those wars lasted 5-6 years, not 100. In that setting I'd totally replace racism with xenophobia. That said, most of the time PCs are extraordinary people interacting with other extraordinary people. They could care less if the regular tavern patron hates the Brelish because he spent years in a mud trench fighting a Brelish division, they are more likely to deal with the local ruler of the land who is much more cosmopolitan and, even if he hates Breland, has the common sense of hiding it because peace has been restored and it's not the time to be a jerk with those Sharnese heroes. There is no need to emphasize it that much.

Especially since PCs are heroes, and if you're roleplaying a jerk NPC, you shouldn't expect PCs to entertain the idea of working for him.

So if you take that and work out from there, having "racism" or "speciesism" being a huge thing isn't really compatible with that. Nor is generalized xenophobia going to be really be viable in a lot of situations. Specific hostility towards cultures/species which interact in a negative way is much more likely.

In a more common setting, I'd make xexnophobia less prevalent than Eberron. Mostly because those settings are more "point of light" to take a 4th edition reference. I don't think either racism or xenophobia as we know them could develop as a widespread sentiment in early medieval France or England, when nearly everyone spent his whole life within 20 miles of his birthplace. Imagining racism requires knowledge that different people exist, and I am not sure it was the case, except maybe in very general terms. Imagining xenophobia require a sense of "nationalism" that was probably not in the mind of most people before the 19th century.