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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epic Meepo" data-source="post: 9137782" data-attributes="member: 57073">Even if we assume the game was describing Humans as they exist in real-life, a racist trope is a racist trope. If the rule for game authors is, "Don't rely upon racist tropes when describing people," authors shouldn't get a free pass to rely upon racist tropes when describing people in their own in-groups. The same goes for racial slurs. If the publisher doesn't permit authors to use racial slurs, authors shouldn't be allowed to use racial slurs to describe themselves.I disagree. When the game describes any humanlike species (not other humanlike species), it crosses the line into human ethnic diversity. If Humans are just one of several playable, humanlike species in the game and game authors are expected to avoid othering language, Humans can't be given any special treatment not given to any playable non-Human species. This remains true even if the game's author is a real-life human.So is it racist that there are three Elf Lineages, or not? Those Lineages are different because of things impossible to real-life humans (Darkvision and Spells). Per your most recent argument, that helps avoid racist tropes. And I'll add that no Elf is being othered for having a Lineage, since every Elf has a Lineage. There's no stigma or value judgment associated with any Lineage. Just differences with no real-life stereotype as a referent.Those are only racist tropes because you are assigning subjective value judgements to species (smartness, aggressiveness, and thievishness, in your examples). We could look at other types of human differences, such as average height, without being even remotely racist. If there were hypothetical Variant Goliaths that were Large but otherwise mechanically identical to Humans, there'd be nothing racist about it. (Unbalanced, yes. Racist, no.)</blockquote>

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