Racial insults for humans to toss at non-humans

[NewJeffCT]

Dwarf- Digger (works REALLY well, also as a self-referential term), mine monkey, butch, squirt, junior, stone jockey, aleblood (due to their unusual tolerance for booze), any disparaging size comment (while not racial, these are a problem for all of the smaller races)


Elf- Dandelion eater (I think this came from Shadowrun), flower-eater, ears, fairy, twanger (Elven stereotype- affinity for arrows), priss, woody (due to forest affinity stereotype), treetard, old-timer, fossil (in fact, any ageist slur that isn't obviously off setting will work)

Halfling- Half-pint, squirt, hairy paw, anklebiter, human jr, any disparaging size comment (while not racial, these are a problem for all of the smaller races)

Troll- Trog (another SR reference), clubby, bridgedweller

Human- Mundanes, banal ones, vanilla, flavorless one, stock, zilch (due to lack of unique features), defaults, hyoooomanz (in an evil sounding voice)

Half %s- Mongrel, mutt, impure, diet ~, ~ lite, and so on...

Also: this.

Thanks - I think I have a pretty good arsenal at my disposal now. The link was helpful, too, as there is one possible bar encounter.

 

[taferial]

Just one more,

a personal favorite when my elven supremecist was addressing the polluted half breeds...

"Half-man"

 

[cmrscorpio]

Just one more,

a personal favorite when my elven supremecist was addressing the polluted half breeds...

"Half-man"

In one of my campaigns, a player was playing a half-orc. Whenever the PCs had to parley one of the orc clans, the orcs referred to the half-orc as "half-man"

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

Humans usually use "pointies" as a derogatory word for elves in my campaigns, and use "stumpies" (which someone's mentioned) for dwarves, but also for halflings and gnomes. Racists usually can't tell the difference anyway - "they all look alike" etc.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Humans usually use "pointies" as a derogatory word for elves in my campaigns, and use "stumpies" (which someone's mentioned) for dwarves, but also for halflings and gnomes. Racists usually can't tell the difference anyway - "they all look alike" etc.

Good one - I know a couple of guys that like to play dwarves that would get livid if somebody mistook them for a gnome!

Nasty NPC "Hey gnome, we don't care for your kind 'round here."

Dwarf PC, shooting me his eyes of fury, "I'm a dwarf."

Nasty NPC: "Dwarf, gnome, you're all short and have beards, what's the difference? I can't tell."

 

[Dioltach]

"What's the difference between a dwarf and a pebble? One's small, boring and mostly useless, and the other's a stone."

"What's the difference between a halfling and a woodlouse? One's small and wriggly and lives under stones, and the other's an insect."

"What's the difference between an elf and a weed? One's an unsightly blight infesting natural areas, and the other's a plant."

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

The interesting thing about real world racial epithets is that they don't sound all that bad to a non-native speaker, out of context, and are no longer words in common use. The words generally don't mean anything to most people separate from their racial slur anymore. They're derived from a word that had meaning, but are slightly different, phonetically. As an example, one of the most offensive words in the english language is derived from, but not identical to, the word negro.

Example: Dwarves might once have briefly been called Diggers, but to model real world linguistic development, they might be called "Duggies" or something like that. It sounds completely innocuous... right up until someone uses it around a Dwarf and the Dwarf's face goes stony and he pulls out his axe.

This is perhaps a little obscure for around most gaming tables, but I've always found that words which don't have a "real" meaning do a better job of carrying the right emotional investment. EDIT: i.e. their ONLY meaning is the charged emotional content, so you don't have their innocuous real world meaning hanging around diluting their strength.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

The interesting thing about real world racial epithets is that they don't sound all that bad to a non-native speaker, out of context, and are no longer words in common use. The words generally don't mean anything to most people separate from their racial slur anymore. They're derived from a word that had meaning, but are slightly different, phonetically. As an example, one of the most offensive words in the english language is derived from, but not identical to, the word negro.

Example: Dwarves might once have briefly been called Diggers, but to model real world linguistic development, they might be called "Duggies" or something like that. It sounds completely innocuous... right up until someone uses it around a Dwarf and the Dwarf's face goes stony and he pulls out his axe.

This is perhaps a little obscure for around most gaming tables, but I've always found that words which don't have a "real" meaning do a better job of carrying the right emotional investment. EDIT: i.e. their ONLY meaning is the charged emotional content, so you don't have their innocuous real world meaning hanging around diluting their strength.

Point taken. I guess it depends on the seriousness level of the campaign. Instead of "Duggies", how about Deepers (of the deeps).

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Point taken. I guess it depends on the seriousness level of the campaign. Instead of "Duggies", how about Deepers (of the deeps).

I like Deepers. "Duggies" was just my attempt to play with the phonetics of "Diggers" in a way sort of parallel to real world words. It admittedly sounds pretty silly.

Of course, silly might be a good thing, if you don't really want to set up negative emotional responses in your players.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

In one campaign, I had humans putting on "dwarven minstrel shows"- wearing their shoes on their knees, wearing fake beards, having soot and dirt on their faces and carrying on about gold and gems.