D&D General Do Your Human Characters Match Your Ethnicity (etc)?

[Charlaquin]

I am white and Hispanic, and most of the human characters I’ve played in D&D have been white or nondescript mixed-race. My characters range all across the gender, sex, and sexuality spectra though, whether human or otherwise.

 

[CleverNickName]

Not really, no. I tend to be all over the place with my characters. Over the last four years, I've played the following characters:

Cielo Azul: genasi (air) sorcerer, originally from the Plane of Air and sent to the Prime Plane to learn about her mother's side of the family. She is female, cis-het, and speaks with a Southwestern American accent (and I sprinkle them liberally with Spanish words and phrases.) Her skin is pale blue, but she would probably select "Hispanic" on a government census form here in the Real World.

Fafnir, Caller of Gales: dragonborn cleric of Bahamet (Storm domain). Nonbinary and asexual. When rolling up stats, I rolled a natural 5, and I put it into Dexterity--because of that, I gave them the Soldier background and a mithril leg brace. (Old war injury.) Speaks in a raspy, serpent-like voice similar to the Sleestacks of "Land of the Lost."

Weylen Cairn: human paladin who had contracted lycanthropy. He was male, White, cis-het, and I gave him Blackwall's voice (from the Dragon Age: Inquisition video game). Alas, he died on an ill-fated ocean voyage and was replaced with...

Vale Arborlon: human sorcerer, who had been warped by druid magic into a half-dryad hybrid. He would probably be classified as White (non-Caucasian) on a government census form. He speaks with a clipped, abrupt "television announcer" accent, and he is male and asexual.

Malachi Bontraegr: human warlock of the Raven Queen, with a custom background (he barely survived a vampire attack when he was younger). He was White, cis-het, married father of two, and had a Southeastern American accent. He was killed by a kraken in the later chapters of Storm King's Thunder.

Belarius Castella: (current active character) Dragonmarked human wizard of House Cannith. He is black, cis-het, and speaks with an American accent and a deep voice. For his character portrait, I use the Teferi planeswalker from Magic: the Gathering.

(I'm a White, cis-het male who grew up in Southern USA.)

 

[aco175]

I cannot remember playing a human in the last 30 years in any of my games. Even all the non-human characters are male and even with sexual situations hardly coming up in game, they were all heterosexual. Growing up none of the group I mostly played with played outside of this with one person who played woman roughly 1/2 the time.

All of this was mostly backseat unless it was needed, like when you need to know if your PC is right-handed or left-handed. I recall one of the older books say you should k=just be whatever your handiness is in real life for your PC. We must of just went with that for all the rest.

 

[Laurefindel]

Most of the times, or something relatively close - like scandinavian-type Illuskans from FR, Nords from Elder Scrolls , or nordic dwarf. I always get some sort of impostor syndrome when playing another specific ethnicity/culture, and I get too self-conscious about blatant stereotypes and bad accents to enjoy myself. So it doesn't matter if they "look" different (being elven or halfling or whatnot); ultimately they are more or less like my own culture.

Even when I play something different (truly alien characters notwithstanding), I still tend to play them as my culture (as integrated third or fourth generation immigrants).

In all honesty, I find the balance between inclusion of ethnicity/cultures different than my own, and cultural appropriation/stereotyping, difficult to achieve...

[edit] revised stance after further reflection:

Different ethnicity: very often.
Different culture (including that matching the said ethnicity); very rarely.

 

[Retreater]

(Speaking when I get to be a player, which happens rarely.) Yeah. I guess most of my characters are white males, same as me on the surface, but different in many other ways. The settings I have typically played in assume a white default, generic Eurocentric fantasy. I have played aliens and droids in Star Wars, a mutant vulture in TMNT, but in most fantasy games (D&D/PF/etc), it's the white default that has been around for decades. One outlier I had was a teenager of East Indian decent in Shadowrun. However, even if the setting was in another culture, I would probably play a white guy.
Why a "guy?" Because if you're a female character, my experience is that someone is going to hit on you. I don't want to roleplay that with a DM (or other player). It's not right, and I don't do it in my games when I DM, but I just don't want to put up with that crap. I'm here to adventure, not to find romance. If I had a female character, she would be similarly focused on the mission, not getting free drinks at bars. (This has been a near 100% occurrence in every game I've played in that had female PCs.)
Why "white?" I don't want to risk being offensive. As someone who has done a lot of community theatre, I would never dream of playing Othello (or any other PoC character.) It's not my place to pretend to be another human ethnicity. I will do it for NPCs for limited times, as a novelist might try to write a black character, but I don't want to perform another ethnicity.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[prabe]

In the past, most of my characters were a lot like me. Now, that's a good deal less true.

 

[Lanefan]

White straight guy here.

As a DM I eventually have to play pretty much everything under the sun as an NPC, with - I'll freely admit - varying degrees of success: some character types, ethnicities, etc. are simply easier for me to portray than others.

As a player, my own characters end up about 50-50 split in total between males and females.

They're almost always white, or close, but within that are based on various different ethnicities both real and fictional.

Most but not all are straight, and level of promiscuity varies between characters from "frigid-or-repressed" to "try-anything-anytime" to "only-within-marriage" to "can't-be-bothered-I'm-too-busy-adventuring" to various other degrees - they're all different.

 

[the Jester]

All of this was mostly backseat unless it was needed, like when you need to know if your PC is right-handed or left-handed. I recall one of the older books say you should k=just be whatever your handiness is in real life for your PC.

Interestingly, I have a system for determining handedness in my games!

You roll 1d20 and 1d12. If the d20 is higher, you are right handed. If the d12 is higher, you are left handed. If they match, you are ambidextrous.

 

[the Jester]

When it comes to humans in my D&D campaigns, there is only ONE human race.

There is no sub-races.
There is no black, white, yellow, etc.
There is no Asian, European, African, etc.

The ONLY time I would consider such, is if I am in a RPG like Conan/Hyborian Age, where such things are part of the actual game/world.

Otherwise, a human is a human, PERIOD!

A player has the option to customize them with hair and eye color ONLY if they wish.

And even then, regardless of if they do or do not, it does not effect any game mechanics.

Okay, but how do you describe a given human? What color is his or her skin?

I agree that altering game mechanics based on ethnicity is troublesome, and I don't have a problem with what you're describing; but there are times when almost every group goes around and describes their characters. Sure, there's only one human race, but what do they look like? And though it may not matter in terms of mechanics, I started this thread out of curiosity about how we all represent our characters. I know one guy who, when he plays a variant human (the ones that start with a feat), always makes them ethnically non-white. He's not trying to be racist there; but as a white guy, it just feels right to him that "alternate" means anything that doesn't look like him. (And he seems to be oblivious to the idea that, yes, an alternate human could in fact be any ethnicity- the "alt" part is only mechanical. Despite my mentioning it on more than one occasion.)