I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Agree with pretty much all of this. It's why I tossed in the "and if all your players are on board with it" caveat.
On the other hand, if a game or book actually is racist or sexist, as opposed to simply including cultures or characters that are, a specific group of people being okay with it doesn't change anything.
There's some room for interpretation on exactly where the line between the two falls, I admit. But that's "some," not "infinite." And I'm constantly shocked at how often people throw out the "It's tradition!" justification, when the fact is it's precisely those period/cultural traditions that caused the problem in the first place.
Yeah, totally.
With something like Arthurian romance, a lot of folks' fun comes from a strict emulation of the genre tropes, which are very gendered. This might be true regardless of your opinion on real-world gender dynamics. It is not impossible for folks to enjoy being princesses and bro-knights and to get some fun from the interplay of the different spheres of war and family that are at play in a medieval lineage and on and on and to not take it to mean anything about how the real world operates. It's fantasy, it's just a game, just because I choose to play a quiet, submissive woman in a game doesn't mean I am that way in real life, etc., etc.
But being able to do that is sort of a superpower that not everyone has. It touches a lot of nerves for a pretty big swath of people who have been on the receiving end of some messed up gender issues, or who have seen people they care about on that end (like someone who is raising a daughter who doesn't care to conform to what society tends to expect of her, [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION]
). For those folks, a strict emulation of genre tropes is just not fun at all, and it's not fun in part because those tropes include these problematic stereotypes as hard rules. It strikes me that the above-mentioned strategy for games involving strong gendered mechanics ("We're going to play an Arthurian romance game, so tell me the type of character you're interested in playing, and I'll point out which gender you should be to play it. If you want to play a courtly manipulator, be a woman. If you want to be a mighty warrior, be a man.") probably would be hugely problematic for most people if applied to strong racial mechanics ("We're going to play a Lovecraftian horror game, so tell me the type of character you're interested in playing, and I'll point out which race you should be if you want to play that. If you want to be a scholar of eldritch lore, be White. If you want to be an idol-worshipping savage, be African."), though it's pretty easily accepted for fantasy RPGs ("We're going to play D&D, so tell me the type of character you're interested in playing, and I'll tell you which race is best for it. If you want to be a strong warrior, be a dwarf. If you want to be a smart wizard, be an elf.").
I think for some people, all of these game elements are comfortably in the realm of Fantasy Fiction No One Would Take Seriously, as much as elves and dwarves and halflings are. Clearly not real, just in-genre! For many who have actually been treated differently because of their gender or their race (and who are aware of it and have issues with it), these things are not fantastic flights of imagination, they're weirdly accurate portrayals of how some people have actually treated these people in their actual lives. Clearly, there's folks who think this stuff is basically true, to this day. And the line gets blurry. Gnomes can love gems, sure, but make them penny-pinching, big-nosed, foreigners who keep to themselves and are suspected of killing good human children to use their blood in religious rituals....and you're diving right into a CRAZY level of anti-semitism (which could even be unintentional if you have a plot about blood sacrifice and you're using 2e big-nosed comic relief gnomes and roll that one randomly is a cheapskate). So even seeking refuge in fantasy is not necessarily enough distance.
And all that is presuming good will, and deliberately not taking into account the kind of person who happens to roll dice around who really does believe these mechanics somehow represent some objective reality that deserves to be reflected in the game (ie, the guy who says, "No, it makes sense, in the Real World, women are fragile, weak, and scheming, so it makes sense for them to be better suited to that, more games should have stronger gender differences!"...come to think, you almost never hear of someone saying the same thing about human races, though I imagine it's not far from the surface). Clearly that person is just being a bigot and either not realizing it or not caring. I'd like to think that doesn't represent many people these days, but that might be optimistic.
So bringing this back to stuff like Honor, I don't think it's on par with "Women get -1 Strength because they're weaker than men on average", especially since it's not a specific rule that is presumed to reflect the real world or that must be followed in certain circumstances. It's not like WotC is advising that every game that includes an Asian fantasy analogue use Honor, or that Honor is limited and exclusive to Asian-esque places, or that all Asians need to have a stat to represent their inherent Asian Honor. It mentions an Asian-themed setting as one where you might use the mechanic. Which seems in line with the mechanic's goals and the kinds of stories associated with portrayals of Asia in the west. It doesn't ping on my (usually pretty sensitive) radar, but I get that it might for someone else, and it might've been better if WotC just said what they meant ("a campaign where one's reputation is important, such as one dealing with nobles, knights, samurai, or suchlike") rather than using a shorthand.
It might be a little diet racism, for sure.
The conversation has also made me wonder about adding a GUILT mechanic...though I suppose Alignment sort of works like one already...hmm...
