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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 9139244" data-attributes="member: 6701124">From having seen a lot of these threads, it feels like I would...<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Avoid using real world racist phrasings and quotes in your descriptions (Gygax quoting Chivington, etc...) or things that are awfully close to it.  This sloshes over into...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Avoid having things you want treated like people (so, PC races) have biological/species parts that are just negative traits ("usually evil") or a set of traits that obviously fit with stereotypes that were used by real world racists/bigots against real life racial/ethnic minorities - especially when parts of the physical descriptions line up with the real world caricatures too (you can google those both in history, games, and books by famous authors).  Unfortunately for creators, sometimes it's hard to see these at first, but once they're pointed out they're obvious to lots of people.  And unfortunately, like with everything, there is a borderland where folks won't agree on if it's obvious or that bad.   (Tangentially, I imagine an example of a race that tends to be very deadly when angered and is based on a certain dog breed as a justification... and then watch the defenders of that dog breed get angry about it.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Someone will want to make lots of things people - so if you want something always evil maybe make it tied to an evil outer plane or undead or something like that (demon-cursed Gnolls, if they hadn't had a history of not being demon-cursed; vampires; far realm infested abberations).  That won't solve everything, but see (6) below.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Avoid having the learned/culture part sloshed with the biological/species part too much.  (While a species with lots of biological adaptations to underground might be much more likely to have skills that go with their biology, think about whether they get those innately or were they taught them).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Don't make the evil cultural groups have easy parallels to real world nationalities, ethnicities, and religions</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Realize that you won't make everyone happy</li> </ol>So, for elves, I can imagine a story about how in the early universe the fae-wild and prime material were all gooshed together and interacting and some of the proto-fae-beings came down and became the earth-elves, sky-elves, and water-elves and when the universe settled down they were separate species.  Within each of those groups are a variety of different cultures that typically train from very young age in different magic abilities and weapons and skills (high elves vs. wood elves vs. drow among the earth-elves) say.  And sometimes those cultures within each group have historically been associated with different physical appearances (just like geographically humans have differed in appearance) and that those blur around the edges, and presumably eventually would all smooth out if they could just stop killing each other over them.  Avoiding having most of the evil ones be, say, dark skinned, or most of the dark skinned ones be evil, might be a not hard thing to do.</blockquote>

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