Racially diverse artwork in D&D...does it influence you?

[S'mon]

Now Tolkie-esque fantasy, you might have a point...But D&D isn't just based on Tolkien-esque fantasy...how about swords & sorcery, where regardless of how they are portrayed there are representations of cultures besides those that are euro-centric?

Yes, like I said D&D seems about equally based on Tolkienesque high fantasy (knights, dragons, elves, dwarves) and swords & sorcery (demons, elementals, cultists, sorcererers, giant carnivorous apes). The art has varied over the years (eg Elmore's art that defined Mentzer D&D was very much in the high fantasy tradition); but I agree there has rarely been the diversity of the characters in eg the two Conan movies, where it clearly wasn't for Political Correctness/Diversity purposes.

 

[S'mon]

Ah, but a real GH afficionado would point out that you were wrong. The skin color of the native Flan of the Flanaess ranges from light bronze to deep brown.

Flannae colouration is basically bronze; Gygax based them off Amerindian cultures; although the Duchy of Tenh is Flan.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

*confused*

So . . . you find it jarring when you go out and see non-White people wearing jeans, t-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, sweaters, or business suits? There's nothing particularly African about those items of clothing.

Um no.

Where the hell did you get that idea from?

I'm Asian by the way, and while I refuse to wear jeans or flip-flops or sweaters, I dress in a very "western" style.

I'm talking about things in the context of a fantasy world, that everyone else in this thread has been discussing. But yes, you may have been confused because I was referring to how people from places they come from dress like. As there simply feel there shouldn't be a land that's like France except everyone's brown.

 

[billd91]

Flannae colouration is basically bronze; Gygax based them off Amerindian cultures; although the Duchy of Tenh is Flan.

Indeed. But, as at leas the LG Gazetteer mentions, the coloration ranges to deep brown. So, brown-skinned characters in GH should not be a jarring issue that doesn't fit the milieu.

 

[billd91]

But usually with ethnic diversity in settings, I generally prefer it if people sort of dress the way their implied ethnicity does since I like there being these different ethnic dress, with some slight mixtures for the sake of practicality and being slightly different from the real world.

Where there's people that resemble Africans who sort of dress African, with the dashiki shirts or those long shirts with the caps, but maybe not quite the bright colours typically associated with some African clothing. Arabs sort of dress Arabic, but maybe since it isn't quite Islamic less women cover their faces (Al-Quadim had the Pantheist league as sort of the stand-in). Those sort of touches for fantasy worlds I'll be alright with.

But what if the setting isn't too closely based on real cultures - but still has a decent sprinkling of different skin tones? Are you saying that you aren't alright with racial skin differences that don't reflect our stereotypical notions of cultures associated with those skin tones? Have all black races got to have Afro-based cultures in fantasy art and literature? I surely hope not.

 

[S'mon]

Indeed. But, as at leas the LG Gazetteer mentions, the coloration ranges to deep brown. So, brown-skinned characters in GH should not be a jarring issue that doesn't fit the milieu.

Yeah; the Flannae aren't described as looking African though. But I think your point is that the Flanaess isn't identical to medieval Europe? You're right of course.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

But what if the setting isn't too closely based on real cultures - but still has a decent sprinkling of different skin tones? Are you saying that you aren't alright with racial skin differences that don't reflect our stereotypical notions of cultures associated with those skin tones? Have all black races got to have Afro-based cultures in fantasy art and literature? I surely hope not.

But even basing something on the real-world, there's a lot more than stereotypical notions of how cultures are like. Even with a group as diverse as blacks. And there are indeed many cultures around Africa, and outside of it in the "old world" with African populations. Let's take for examples Moors, or any of the more Islamic African cultures. They dress nothing like the stereotype of a loin-cloth bushman. Out there, there's a lot of thing to build on before having to rely on medieval western-european clothing.

And if you want to mix the ways cultures dress, well don't throw in western-european clothing. Okay maybe then for example these African-like people dress a lot like Yao-Chinese, which is a more obscure culture, which is better than putting them in the western-european clothing, which shows lack of bothering to research or imagination.

 

[Caliban]

Yeah; the Flannae aren't described as looking African though. But I think your point is that the Flanaess isn't identical to medieval Europe? You're right of course.

The Touv generally have the darkest skin among the human ethnic groups in Greyhawk - although to me their physcial features sound more similar to dark-skinned people from India than Africa.

In the The Scarlet Brotherhood sourcebook, Sean K Reynolds described the Touv thus:

The Touv people have dark brown or black skin. The also have blue or brown eyes, with black eyes being rare; and straight or wavy hair. They have rounded facial features and are typically shorter than most people of the Flanaess, with the tallest Touv reaching about 5'10" in height. While most Touv males do not have facial hair, certain subgroups can grow narrow beards on their chins. Women's figures are often round and lush. They speak Touv, a complex language that is a polyglot of tribal tongues containing many words that mean the same thing.
​

 

[mmadsen]

Why is it so hard to simply imagine non-White characters as normal in a generic fantasy setting? Is it really inconceivable to come across a non-White person in a predominantly White town or city who was actually born there?

Yes, it is pretty much inconceivable that a non-white would be born into an all-white quasi-medieval European community, just as it's pretty much inconceivable that a white would be born into an all-black quasi-Zulu community.

It's only in a world where populations are separated -- geographically or just socially -- that they develop as different races and remain that way.

Now, if you want to have a cosmopolitan Imperial capital or a wretched hive of villainy somewhere where the races mix, that's entirely plausible and fitting for many swords & sorcery settings.

If you want to have a mixed-race country though, where no one pays much mind to racial differences, that's a peculiarly modern situation that does not play along with fantasy's archaism but against it.

 

[eyebeams]

If you want to have a mixed-race country though, where no one pays much mind to racial differences, that's a peculiarly modern situation that does not play along with fantasy's archaism but against it.

This is another common misconception about the past. Ethnic homogeneity in other times was higher because people were less mobile, but the funny thing is that coherent definitions of people based on race are decidedly post-medieval and were fairly undeveloped until the Enlightenment, when slavery made it convenient to emphasize the idea. Prior to that physical characteristics were considered somewhat irrelevant as a means of separating people and were almost always conflated with nationality/culture -- where Europeans could be quite bigoted.

As a result, historians actually have trouble figuring out what the ethnicities of many historical figures were. This is especially interesting with Church figures, since writers from the period don't mention appearance much and art adapts the figure to suit the appearance of locals.

So a mixed-ethnicity city where nobody cares about race but everybody cares about religion and culture *is* more authentic than racism for the period.