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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 8349920" data-attributes="member: 42856">I am not sure. I'd say 90%, but not 99.99%. Non-humans are the hardest, but the same problem arises with values within a civilization of humans. Let's say the PC is from a slaver empire, like Rome. Are 99.99% roleplaying 20th century westerner trying to abolish slavery, or is there a significant part of them at least trying to roleplaying being from that culture, being raised in it and embracing its values? It's not as difficult/borderline impossible as non-human, but I have seen a significant part of players engage with it and have fun. I have also, from the same group, seen people bored to death by a session-long in-character discussion about a finer point of the setting's politics and whether it is ethical to bind elementals to propel airships (while most of the group had fun). I agree that it's not the most common type of play, and I don't imply any play style is superior to another, nor that I don't engage in dungeon-delving sometime and have fun, but I think it's more prevalent than you estimate. It's a cognate subject, but it also affects representation: can cultural values other than 21th century, Western ones be represented in a setting at this point? Can lizardmen be strongly territorial, human flesh eaters AND a playable race? Of course, if you don't play them as an "acting exercise" to borrow your words, it doesn't really matter because you won't say "hey, Bill the Warrior just failed is 3rd death save... dibs on his liver!" except for comedic value and not really roleplay the fact that you're stooping to adventuring with foreign livestock for some unfathomable reason that would make your ancestor disgusted. Same goes with a cannibalistic, HUMAN, society. Most settings make a point of having gender equality nearly everywhere, making fantasy societies more socially advanced than what we currently enjoy (at least among the groups available to PCs)... Can you still depict a strongly patriarcal or matriarcal society without incurring criticism nowadays? Most setting are free of intra-species prejudice (there is few example of overtly racist [in the real life sense] societies, and few overtly racist against other species (even the dwarf/elf hatred is more a friendly rivalry than a dark, "go sit at the back of the bus" relationship). I am feeling that not only self-insertion lessens the need to have other species as available to PCs, but also that some cultures, whenever PCs can hail from them, are (increasingly?) 21th century United States replicas because of the need of anyone being able to self-insert. If your numbers are true and 99.99% of the people don't care about how their species (extra hard) and cultural values (very hard) would influence their decision making, then it's better for the game to have maximum diversity... but then I don't see the added value of having varied cultures and species depicted in game if the ultimate goal is to roleplay them the same way. I'd feel that the settings writers are making a lot of effort that would go to waste.</blockquote>

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