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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1307601" data-attributes="member: 13654">Well, for starters, D&D was originally based on a pseudo-medieval Europe (PME), which makes the races dealt with predominantly Caucasian.  As all RPG's, including D&D, have begun to explore outside of that PME mindset that has changed a little.  But taking the biggest, most popular setting of Forgotten Realms as an example, it's still largely that PME mold.  Also, since RACE in D&D applies not to skin color but to something OTHER than Human, skin color tends to be used as an imprimatur of alien or foreign.  In other words, in the nation of BlahBlah, where you have Humans, Elves, and Dwarves as races, you get associations of Humans, Elves, and Dwarves of darker skin colors as foriegners.  That's a non-trivial point.Adding to that, I think it's likely that until fairly recently rpg's were still VERY predominantly written and illustrated by white authors.  It's perfectly normal that they should then create game materials where white=self=common, and color=other=foreign/alien.  As a little side note I'd point out that Judges Guild, the first real 3rd party publishers of D&D material, had a game world (the Wilderlands/City State of the Invincible Overlord) where exotic, even randomly generated skin (and eye/hair) color was often used for characters.Well then I'll just say that that is simply, I believe, an unfortunate choice for today's real-life circumstances.  Were Gary Gygax to invent the race of Drow today, it's very probable that he'd avoid giving them black skin because of sensitivities regarding the real-life equating of dark skin color with evil.  But, since it is not something that was done out of motivation of racism or bigotry there's no reason to change it.WotC has.  Not to any really obvious degree but you have to admit that having at least ONE iconic character as black is a step in that direction.  Maybe not enough, and maybe not even well-done, but it's movement.  Just as moving to the use of male and female pronouns in text examples is meant to be inclusionary of women.Since you do give examples of other games that have more "racial variety in non-human races" I think you're only demonstrating that the status quo IS changing in that regard.</blockquote>

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