D&D General Oh, the Humanity! Exotic Races, Anthropocentrism, Stereotypes & Roleplaying in D&D

[Minigiant]

First, as I wrote, I don't think there is any "roleplaying wrong." I think that there is roleplaying that can be annoying, and can be offensive.

But my question is where does the line between annoying race and annoying character? Especially when it comes to "exotic races".

If the who race is annoying or offensive then the issue is born of the setting itself and its guidelines of how the race acts (or lack thereof).

Second, a player can roleplay a fun and memorable character regardless of the "fit" in the campaign world- it doesn't matter whether there's 500 pages of lore tying the race to the setting, or an explosion of Handwavium opened a portal and sucked in the world's only kenku. Once the character is allowed by the DM, it really is in the player's control.

Of course. However you need a base to make a caricature or use it as a crutch. Without one, the player is the one developing the base.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Of course. However you need a base to make a caricature or use it as a crutch. Without one, the player is the one developing the base.

From the original post, written by an articulate, intelligent, and EXCEEDINGLY attractive individual:

A non-human race, on the other hand, comes with a set of pre-defined characteristics from D&D lore, from fiction, or from other sources that can be used as guidelines for roleplaying. "I'm a hard-drinking type dour type that doesn't like elves and has a Scottish accent." Sure, that might be a mangle of clichés that doesn't necessarily exist in 5e D&D lore, but at least it provides clear guidelines for someone trying to roleplay. For players that need a pre-set hook for roleplaying, non-human races will often provide that.

Even if there is no particular "hook" within a given setting, there are a number of sources to fall back on when defining the caricature/crutch of the non-human character.

 

[FrozenNorth]

From the original post, written by an articulate, intelligent, and EXCEEDINGLY attractive individual:

You forgot long-winded.

 

[Stormonu]

Art, Costumes and CGI have made dramatic advances since the original days this game came out. Even TV shows can create effects where what is real and what is fantasy is blurred and you're not just seeing some actor in bad make-up or a stop-motion skeleton stomp around the screen. What is strange and bizarre can look quite real and believable. With the likes of recent movies like the Planet of the Apes movies, you can get away with non-human primary characters and it looks (and acts) believable.

I think that is one of the big changes in our society. Back in older days, it wasn't possible to believably pass off non-human beings as anything more than "guy in a rubber suit" or Star Trek's "human with facial makeup". We can see, and imagine the non-human without it jarring us out of our imagination. The examples weren't there in the 70's & 80's (and most of the 90's), it cost too much or looked too fake and as people we have a hard time imagining something we have no basis to found our experiences on.

I don't play human characters in D&D anymore. I've been one for 50 years now, and when I game, I don't want to be stuck as one anymore. Give me Dragonborn, elves, dwarves - heck, I'm greatly enjoying my centaur character right now. Let me be something other than human - let me push at the boundaries of my imagination.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You forgot long-winded.

Wait .... isn't that what articulate means? It's a synonym, right?

I may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. I really am an idiot.

 

[embee]

Caricature. A dwarf with a Scottish accent. Annoying kender. The trouble with non-human races and caricatures is both micro- and macro. On the individual level, I have seen white players approximate a Miss Cleo accent (if you're young, think dubious Jamaican patois) to play a bullywug. I once knew a player that prefers to play his dwarf with an Irish accent ... because he drank a lot more than the average dwarf. There are a lot of players who will do things with "non-human" races that are ... well, let's just say questionable .... if they were to do it with a human character.

I agree and say that that's a problem that can be dealt with in a somewhat direct manner.

Talk to the player and/or DM. Explain the notion of cultural appropriation to them. This isn't a new concept or a new term. It's just that the notion of it has risen to prominence with the maturing of the internet and the rise of social media. As those whose cultures have been appropriated have been given a voice and a platform, their grievances are finally rising above the background noise. If someone rebels or chafes at the term, a reminder that blackface is cultural appropriation may put things in perspective. Charlie Chan is a classic illustration of the problem. Originally, he was a counterbalance to "Yellow Peril." But he also became the epitome of yellowface. The solution to the Charlie Chan problem is, regardless of your best intentions, to not go there. Just don't. Especially if you're not from the culture that is being appropriated.

How many Scottish accents have I done for the dwarves I've played? Virtually none. In spite of gravitating towards dwarves because I'm short and stocky and have a chip on my shoulder. I'm not Scottish. Or Irish. Or descended from either. It's not my heritage. I don't do it because I've seen folks who think that it would be a fun Halloween costume to dress up as an Orthodox Jew and, as a Jew, that makes me see red. Call it what you want - Empathy, the Golden Rule, Don't Be An A**h**e. The concept is the same. If it ain't yours to use, don't use it.

If you're a player, don't appropriate other cultures. Just don't. If you think you're being respectful, you're probably not. If you're not Scottish (or of Scottish extraction), don't do that bad Scottish accent. Every D&D group is overflowing with them. Don't add to the pile. If you're not Irish, don't do Lucky the Leprechaun or Bono. No one needs to hear that 39th bad Dublin accent.

Also, remember, Scotland doesn't exist in D&D. Nor Ireland. Nor Romania. Nor Germany or the Netherlands or France.

In the movie "Gladiator" (and in the HBO series "Rome" and the Starz series "Spartacus"), the majority of the cast spoke with some kind of English accent FOR NO READILY DISCERNABLE REASON. The characters weren't British or Welsh or Irish or Scottish. Many would have spoke the vernacular. It was a useless trope. Kevin Costner's American accent would have been equally acceptable.

Solution: Don't adopt ridiculous voices. At best, it has no real purpose in-game. It doesn't add verisimilitude. And at worst, you're perpetuating stereotypes and being kind of a jerk.

DMs - talk to your players about not caricaturing (and try not to do it yourself).
Players - maybe talk to your DM about talking to the players about not caricaturing (and try not to do it yourself)

 

[Chaosmancer]

Reposting this from the other thread

Most DMs have Lizardfolk in their game worlds already. They are just generally atangonists instead of PC options. Same with Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Yuan-Ti, and Kobolds.

The biggest difference is taking those races from "always the enemy, kill on sight" to something that could be talked to, reasoned with and traded with. And considering how often in human history vicious enemies also had trade relations because they were next door neighbors? Not outside the scope of reason.

I mean, take the MM, and find every single creature with an intelligence higher than 5. Even if you take out the Undead, the extraplanar creatures, and the constructs, you have a lot of sentient beings running around your world doing things.


So, the problem never seems to be "we have too many sentient beings in the world" but is instead "we have too many beings let into the towns and cities of the world instead of being antagonists out in the wilds"

I think this is an unspoken part of the problem.

For example, let me assume that the Core 4 were the only PC options in Gygax's Greyhawk.

There were also Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Ogres, Trolls, six types of Giants, ten types of dragons, Mindflayers, Beholders, Grimlocks, Brownies, Dragonne, Drow, Ixitxachitl, Lammasu , Shedu, Locathah , Nymphs, Titans, Displacer Beasts (remember, they are intelligent), Ettins, Medusa, Hags, Gnolls, Rakshasa, Salamanders, Sahuagin, Tritons, Troglodytes, Treants, Yetis,

And I just skimmed an article about the 1e MM.

So, there seems to be plenty of space for a lot of monstrous intelligent beings, just not for player characters?

 

[Minigiant]

A non-human race, on the other hand, comes with a set of pre-defined characteristics from D&D lore, from fiction, or from other sources that can be used as guidelines for roleplaying. "I'm a hard-drinking type dour type that doesn't like elves and has a Scottish accent." Sure, that might be a mangle of clichés that doesn't necessarily exist in 5e D&D lore, but at least it provides clear guidelines for someone trying to roleplay. For players that need a pre-set hook for roleplaying, non-human races will often provide that.

Even if there is no particular "hook" within a given setting, there are a number of sources to fall back on when defining the caricature/crutch of the non-human character

My point is that often the exotic races don't have that many sources to use as guidelines. And often the sources that do are new, not settled, and/or shallow. What really is the accepted shared perception of a elephantman or hippofolk?

So people roleplaying exotic races are often doing so with little guardrails and few models. So if a Dungeon Master or World Builder includes one of these fluid races, they can morph into anything in the hands of a player.

 

[Laurefindel]

If you're a player, don't appropriate other cultures. Just don't. If you think you're being respectful, you're probably not. If you're not Scottish (or of Scottish extraction), don't do that bad Scottish accent. Every D&D group is overflowing with them. Don't add to the pile. If you're not Irish, don't do Lucky the Leprechaun or Bono. No one needs to hear that 39th bad Dublin accent.

Also, remember, Scotland doesn't exist in D&D. Nor Ireland. Nor Romania. Nor Germany or the Netherlands or France.

That's another things I've been struggling with. Between cultural appropriation and taboo, there's got to be a respectful middle-ground. But by saying "don't appropriate another's culture" or "don't do what isn't of your own heritage", ultimately what people hear is; "don't play anything that isn't you". The place in-between is hard to define.

Then things get muddied further: can I do a bad Scottish accent because I've got Scottish descendants on my father's side? Can I do a good Scottish accent even if I have no Scottish ties? Can I explore a culture that isn't mine because I want to play that Maasai-looking warrior image that I find so cool and inspiring? Or is it worse to use the image and strip it of all its culture to replace it with my own? Is it better if I play that Maasai-looking elf image that I find so cool and inspiring?

Lets get closer to home. What about a Scandinavian-looking dwarf? I'm not Scandinavian. Is a Greek-looking hoplite closer to my culture than my first-nations ancestors? I certainly have more native blood, but I know next to nothing of their culture. Could I allow myself to play a character that has traits of one or the other? Pushing further, should I allow myself to play a person of the opposite sex? I really want to say that I can, and do so respectfully, even if I'm not perfect in my representation (or lack thereof). Or is gender ok because it doesn't involve colonialism, despite the naughty word-up stuff that results from sexism? It goes deep.

Of course, Scotland, Ireland, and our world in general doesn't exist in D&D, but for those of European descent, European nations and cultures are the building blocks of medieval fantasy, if only by the way they dressed and looked, by what they built and the weapons they manufactured, and by what they achieved politically, artistically, aesthetically (not to mention Asian, Middle-Eastern, African, East European nations and cultures). Avoiding all cultural references is impossible, even if we disguise them as elvish, dwarven, tabaxi, or dragonborn cultures.

Between white-washing everything because you can't allow yourself to play anything else, and appropriate every culture to yourself willy-nilly, I believe that there is - or at least i hope there is - a place for respectful use of other people's colour, language, culture (or tidbits of it), gender, and orientation.

 

[Mercurius]

So, there seems to be plenty of space for a lot of monstrous intelligent beings, just not for player characters?

It is an interesting question, but one I think can be answered in a way that makes sense within the context of a setting.

The PC races are the dominant races of the world. Usually elves and dwarves had their peak thousands of years before, and humans are now the dominant species. This is drawn directly from various mythologies, such as the old Irish stories of the migrations of men who pushed out the Tuatha de Danaan, who previously had pushed out the Formorians. Mythology of different cultures is filled with such instances, often in the context of the gods (e.g. Olympians driving out the Titans, and then the Olympians fading from memory and losing their power; the Aesir, Vanir, and giants of Norse myths; the Asura and Deva of Indian myths; etc).

And of course we have our own pre-history, with recent cousins like the Denisovans and Neanderthals either killed off or incorporated by Cro-Magnon and other modern Homo Sapiens.

Tolkien codified this dynamic with his races, and the overall "lost golden age" vibe, which resonated with the 19th century Romanticism that influenced him, and of course we all know the huge impact had on all modern fantasy from the 1960s on, including D&D (despite what Gygax would have us believe).

Anyhow, the way I see it, in most D&D worlds the elves and dwarves have declined, but are still quite powerful, and have learned to live in harmony with humans (for the most part). Humans generally reign supreme. Halflings and gnomes don't have the same civilizational ambition, so they have never been dominant, but they instead have learned to live symbiotically with the "big three." The "monstrous" races have been pushed out and marginalized in various ways, and are the "others" to the dominant species of the world.

Different worlds can and do play with this in a variety of ways. In Dragonlance, there are the Irda and ogres who once were more powerful. Others had old Orc or Hobgoblin empires that have since fallen. Some even have Orcs or other humanoids as a coeval major race--like Earthdawn and Warcraft.

I think the key is, again, playing with the tools of D&D lore in a variety of ways, and structuring it all in such a way that internal consistency is achieved, and everything makes sense within the logic of the world itself.