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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BrokenTwin" data-source="post: 8472036" data-attributes="member: 7017978">I agree with the general sentiment expressed that there's a fundemental difference between portraying a role for fun (as part of an RPG) and portraying a role for profit (as an actor in a movie or show).Within that first subset, there's a major difference between attempting to explore an identity that you don't personally experience and playing a deliberate stereotype of that identity. But the waters get muddled when you account for the fact that a lot of people have no concept of identities outside their own as anything other than the stereotype, so an attempt at honest exploration can still appear as a thoughtless portrayal by someone with actual experience within that identity. And if there's nobody with that experience at your table, then you run the risk never exploring outside of that potentially harmful stereotype.And that risk is significantly more challenging to navigate as a GM, since they are both portraying significantly more characters than any given player over the course of a game, and frequently do not have the narrative space to portray characters as anything OTHER than a quick stereotype for ease of play. If you as a GM want to encorporate more minority identities in your game, than typically the only way you can do so is by calling attention to those traits, as otherwise the players will usually default to the assumption of straight white male. But calling attention to those differences can be seen as othering and tokenism, which is also bad. And instead of having the time and focus to do a thoughtful portrayal of a different identity, you may have half a dozen lines of dialog and description, frequently made up on the spot.All in all, I think as far as it applies to people at tables, what matters is intent. Good faith explorations of identities outside our own should always be encouraged, as long as they don't violate the social contract of the game. So long as people are willing to both accept constructive criticism AND give people the grace to make mistakes, then everything should work out.</blockquote>

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