Human Races & Peoples

[Hand of Evil]

This is more culture vs race and I beleive that any race can be in a culture, I try not to stero-type in my games. I try and look at what would be the reasons a culture would form and work it into my world myth.

Feudal Japan was not that different from Feudal Europe until the end of the Dark Ages; europe had to change because of a growing merchant class and other reasons but Japan was isolated and did not have the effect of the Dark Ages, there was a shift of power.

(yes - I know there is a LOT of details left out in the above).

 

[steenan]

In my games, I try to keep to a single ethnic type, unless the campaign contains a lot of long-range travel, so that different parts of the game world may be explored. I rather wouldn't mix Asians, Caucasians, Africans and American Indians in a single setting.

I don't keep the same correspondences between ethnic types and cultures as are present in the real world. There is completely no reason to do it - your skin color does not determine what gods you believe, how you build your cities, how you write your books and how you wage your wars.

For example, in the setting I'm currently working on all humans have very dark, nearly black skins, with rather tall and slim body types. There are no other ethnicities. The main human culture has some traits of ancient Egyptians, some of biblical Jews and some completely made up (eg. strong gender roles, but very different from what we had in real-world history, with only women as high-level military officers), but there are also different, minor ones.

When I use races in my games, they usually have similar variety as humans. It typically means only a single ethnic type, but multiple different cultures. For example, I have three kinds of elves that are seen in the setting as drastically different, but if one cut their hair and clothed them in similar way, it would be hard to tell one from another.

My characters usually fit the typical ethnic type of the setting and region I play in. I wouldn't play a character of my own (Caucasian) ethnicity in an Asian setting, unless I had a really, really good reason. If there are many human ethnicities mixed in the setting, I don't have any preference, though it's possible that I have a small subconscious bias in favor of approximately Caucasian types.

 

[Sunseeker]

But here's a few questions:
-IF you were doing an OA style setting...would you allow one of your players to play a PC that by their own description was caucasian (ala Last Samurai) or vice versa with a primarily european styled setting?

Yes, though reactions to them would depend on the locale in question. In a major city, noone would likely raise an eyebrow. In a small town, they would likely get more shifty looks(much as any non-human might).

IMO, if a town/city/nation is racially tolerant, that 9/10 elves, dwarves and the various "other" races will get equitable treatment to the humans, people aren't going to think twice about a human with a slightly variant skin-tone and strange features.

In the specific case that someone wants to play a sexy bald black man on a horse, I'll whip up a very basic "home area" from which people of that description typically hail.

I once went to far as to make a small campaign setting where (all) dwarves were black, simply to force players out of the "dwarves must be irish/scottish!" idea.

-How often do your homesettings include all ethnicities of humans that exist in real life; do you make room to include specific lands that these people hail from?

It's a matter of necessity, if I find it necessary, I'll do it.

-Do your elves and dwarves, etc include as much variety within one another as humans? Or are all your dwarves scotts?

Sometimes, yes. Elves are a hard case because the game already outlines several "racial variants" of elves, but not so much of dwarves. So generally play by that and allow elves to be diverse, but still each is an exclusive group, while dwarves are a more inclusive culture, but have much more limited racial variants.

-In your experience, do you (or your players) when playing Humans at least, tend to play characters who are of their own ethnicity, or does it depend on the setting?

Personally, as a mild-mannered middle class white man, enjoy playing black and arab characters. it's a fun exercise in breaking my own molds.

honestly, most of my players, and most of the people i've played with, dont play humans at all. So I don't think I have a good bearing there.

"You almost never see black people in D&D or FRPG art-its like one in a million. If you or me were to just magically show up in a fantasy setting, 9/10 times people would be like 'Where did you come?' "-friend of mine to me once

I would wager that there are some good economic reasons for this, but in my experience, recent gaming books have been much more diverse.

It makes me feel good to see the PF paladin.

http://paizo.com/image/content/RiseOfTheRunelords/Pathfinder7_Paladin.jpg

I hate pathfinder's art, but it's a good all around "I can represent anyone" picture.

At the same time, you also have to consider that while there are a wide array of humans, there are also a wide array of tiflings, gnomes, elves, dragonborn, dwarves, and many others. Aside from humans, this is a LOT of races/ethnicities to represent in a limited RP book.

I'll also bring up the oldschool Queen of The Spiders; on the cover of which the drow are black. I thought it was kind of hot ;D.

http://tsr.bothgunsblazing.com/dd1/gdq1-7.jpg

On a random side note, how have the drow changed? I know at one point they were night black, then black (ethnically; but not for long), then blue, and now in more recent incarnations this kind of purple color.

The drow are mostly dark greys, to dark blues and dark purples. I think they've strayed away from making them ethnically black to avoid the accusation that they were portraying black people as evil.

Personally, with elves, I consider that they 'tan' backwards to humans, as elves in forests seem to always be light while Drow are dark. I get that this is more a representation of "good" and "evil", but I think it makes it fun to consider that an elf who spends all day sun-tanning could end up white as a sheet, while an elf who spends all day in full-plane and dungeon crawling would darken.

 

[Mallus]

-IF you were doing an OA style setting...would you allow one of your players to play a PC that by their own description was caucasian (ala Last Samurai) or vice versa with a primarily european styled setting? [/SIZE]

Sure. I might ask the player to make their PC short, however...

-How often do your homesettings include all ethnicities of humans that exist in real life...

Never. Even the most detailed of my homebrew settings are grossly simplified representations, and representation of other fictional worlds, not the real one.

... do you make room to include specific lands that these people hail from?

Sure. I try to be open to player-created countries, cultures, species, etc.

-Do your elves and dwarves, etc include as much variety within one another as humans?

No. Non-humans tend toward monoculures, while human tend toward gross simplifications of actual cultures. My goal is to keep the amount of setting information down to a manageable, and more importantly memorable, level.

I like to give whole cultures a limp.

Or are all your dwarves scotts?

All the dwarves in our current setting a surly drunk musicians living in a feudal underground version of The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T..

-In your experience, do you (or your players) when playing Humans at least, tend to play characters who are of their own ethnicity, or does it depend on the setting?

I've never played a PC with my particular ethnic derivation, though I did once create an entire culture that was a parody of my own ethnicity. There were a brown-supremacist Hawaiian/Germanic mash-up called the Polynietzschians who lived on, and worshiped, the volcanic isle of Tiki-Ishii, up until the point it exploded. They had a thing for blonds...

 

[Krensky]

-IF you were doing an OA style setting...would you allow one of your players to play a PC that by their own description was caucasian (ala Last Samurai) or vice versa with a primarily european styled setting?

Depends on what he wanted to do and my (and maybe the setting designer if that's not me) vision of the world. In general, yes if they have a good story.

-How often do your homesettings include all ethnicities of humans that exist in real life; do you make room to include specific lands that these people hail from?

Well, for a few in story reasons the majority of humans are sort of a mushed together indeterminate ethnicity as we consider it. Now they have their own concepts of it, but these relate directly to bloodlines of humanity, not cultural and geographic concerns. Everyone belongs to one of the bloodlines, and society as a whole has some level of stereotyping, and each bloodline tends to have a similar look. Mainly because they're descended from very small, very specialized gene pools. There's room for extremes, throwbacks, and oddities though. Some bloodlines have multiple archetypes as well.

-Do your elves and dwarves, etc include as much variety within one another as humans? Or are all your dwarves scotts?

'Elves' or, rather, the analog are more or less completely uniform, like a small mountain village. Primarily as they are xenophobic, militaristic (as in, all of their society is one big military) zealots who cling to the old ways that put them near the top of the societal pecking order.

The dwarven analog looks very diverse but tends to have a somewhat consistant culture that puts them somewhat outside whatever culture they maybe living in, but their status as tradesmen, craftsmen, and bankers along with their often uncanny knack with ancient artifacts means they're tolerated to varying degrees.

-In your experience, do you (or your players) when playing Humans at least, tend to play characters who are of their own ethnicity, or does it depend on the setting?

Depends somewhat on the setting, although I typically don't play humans in the first place.

I myself (african american) have only played a black character thrice once in Vampire, CoC and PbP but also in LARP;I only made a caucasian character once; over the course of my human characters I've played several middle-eastern, and East Indian characters, with a few east asians.
"You almost never see black people in D&D or FRPG art-its like one in a million. If you or me were to just magically show up in a fantasy setting, 9/10 times people would be like 'Where did you come?' "-friend of mine to me once

Depending on what African ethnicity (and to some degree what shape you're in), people in might just assume you're an exemplar of one of the bloodlines. One of the Legorn (soldier) bloodline subtypes is drawn (genetically) from the Zulu. The Legorn also have Norse, Celtic, Native American, Northern Mediteranian and Han subtypes. All of these use the same stats (the Legorn talent for exemplars, any human talent for the rest).

I suppose I should have mentioned my home brew setting as a fallen sci-fi world where the old empire made heavy use of genetic modification to fit it's population to their assigned (before birth) roles. Legorn, for instance, is a derivation of Legion.