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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 3724545" data-attributes="member: 4720">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.</blockquote>