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

[Wyrmshadows]

If we really want real diversity in our game settings lets ask for more Nyambe's, Al Qadim's, Kara Tur's, Maztica's, etc. from game designers. Places where PCs can hail from where they actually have different cultures as well as differnt skin tones, hair textures and eye colors.

Dressing up every ethnicity in Euro-drag isn't diversity (though it can be an important start). It is still uterly Eurocentric and therefore the antithesis of real diversity. When D&D and fantasy PRing in general has a greater stomach for non Eurocentric fantasy we will see more and more believable portrayals of non-caucasian adventurers and not just Europeans with kinky hair or Asian eyes.

Too be fair, if we are going to stay deeply and profoundly eurocentric as a RPing community (which is likely the reality of D&D), I would way prefer to see the occasional african in euro-drag than a complete absence of non-caucasian faces.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Snoweel]

If multi-ethnic (as well as multiracial - dwarves and halflings and stuff) socieites are what people want then there's an easy shoehorn in the PoL setting - the old empire of Nerath may have been super-cosmopolitan and now the points of light contain humans of many different colours.

Though I imagine over time that interbreeding would make humans almost entirely some kind of middle-of-the-road coffee colour.

 

[Cryptos]

I guess I just never thought about it, or assumed that in the core books they gave people different ethic appearances so that the art could fit into any campaign world or setting.

Although I had an early 2e boxed set for Forgotten Realms, it never really interested me all that much. Most of the official campaign settings that I got into turned out to be exotic, like Al-Qadim, Maztica, and Dark Sun. When the settings you grow up reading about are Arabic, central American and then one that has bug people and infertile dwarf-human hybrids, I guess you just don't give things like skin color or allusions to real world ethnic backgrounds a whole lot of thought in terms of D&D worlds. There were all of these strange creatures of every possible color, and it was like, "yeah, so?"

Honestly that image of Tordek kind of reminded me of Lani Tupu, the actor that played Captain Bialar Crais on Farscape. And I never really assigned a race to him in my mind, he just was that character.

I do sometimes wonder about whether or not to draw on certain ethnicities and cultures in campaign settings when designing a world, but I almost never make an issue of it, letting players fill in the gaps in their own imaginations. I think worse than no diversity at all would be something that seemed like forced diversity or pandering.

But then I always liked Kingdoms of Kalamar, even though I technically never played in that world. It was more a world that showed you just how highly detailed you could get, rather than one that necessarily inspired you to play. You had at least six different ethnicities of human, and it accounted for human migration patterns, the spread of cultural memes and traditions (plus things like continental drift, etc.) It might be a bit overmanaged in terms of trying to create a "believable" fantasy world, but I suppose you could always just focus on one corner of the world for your campaigns, and you at least had the knowledge of what was "over there" if you decided to go in a different direction. They had a distinctly African ethnicity, the Svimohzians, as well as the eastern Mediterranean Reanarians and the Gallic Brandobians, and the ethnically ambiguous Dejy, who seemed to draw on every tribal ethnic culture at once.

The setting I'm currently working on assumes that all the humans on the featured continent were part of Bael Turath and thus turned into Tieflings (renamed), that the current humans on the continent were in the more recent past deposited on an island off the coast as part of a prison colony, and along with them they shipped off the Halflings (also renamed), whose gypsy flavor I have played up to make them more like river-borne Romani gypsies. So with the halflings, at least, I drew on a real world ethnicity to describe them. But with the rest, I didn't really consider it. Now that this thread has me thinking of the topic, I'm wondering if I should go back and do so.

I'm not sure what is the "right way" to do things: something like KoK that calls out distinct racial groups of humans or something like the above, where it's not really brought up and in general no assumptions are made. More than anything, I think worrying about there being a "right way" would probably be more denigrating than just doing whatever works for the setting.

I did have to laugh at a somewhat half-assed attempt at diversity in the 4e PHB that I noticed while trying to come up with some background for a group of Eladrin... they make a point of saying that Eladrin have "the same range of racial complexions as humans" but then they go on to say :they are more often fair than dark" and "their straight, fine hair is often white, silver, or pale gold" and "their eyes are pearly... orbs of vibrant blue, violent or green." It's almost like saying, "they don't have to be white... but they're white." Seemed a bit silly.

 

[Set]

http://www.toddlockwood.com/gallerie...d_female.shtml

I always saw Naull as kinda Mayan / South American Indian looking.

Ember with the African-American appearance was also pretty cool.

But the ultimate in inclusiveness, Mialee, the Iconic Transexual...

I did have to laugh at a somewhat half-assed attempt at diversity in the 4e PHB that I noticed while trying to come up with some background for a group of Eladrin... they make a point of saying that Eladrin have "the same range of racial complexions as humans" but then they go on to say :they are more often fair than dark" and "their straight, fine hair is often white, silver, or pale gold" and "their eyes are pearly... orbs of vibrant blue, violent or green." It's almost like saying, "they don't have to be white... but they're white." Seemed a bit silly.

Well, yes, they are ethnically diverse, in that they can be any shade of white you want.

 

[Celebrim]

It's a nonsense argument anyway. If you're not playing in medieval Europe, there's no reason to have an all-white world.

And if you are not in the tropics, where high melanin counts are necessary to survive the pounding radiation, there is no point in having a brown skinned race of humans - unless, as the drow, you are trying to suggest something about the character of thier souls by thier outward appearance, which, would in the context of humanity be taken as mere racism. Likewise, unless you are up near the arctic circle, there is no reason to have race of humanity that has virtually no melanin so as to better absorb vitamen D in the near total lack of sunlight. Unless, again, you are trying to suggest something about the content of thier character through there outward appearance, which again, would be nothing but racism in the context of humanity.

Again, I'm going to have a serious problem with a human character being brown or ebony skinned merely for the sake of having a token brown skinned or ebony skinned character, because I'm going to immediately percieve this as an arbitrary and quite shallow attempt to pander to current politically correct morality. It offends me as some were offended by 2e's whitewashing of the appearance of containing occult material. I've got no problem with celebrating or exploring a cultural identity, that's great, but if you are to do so let's do so at a level maybe a little deeper than simply skin color.

It's not like only white-skinned people could think up longswords, plate armour, castles, and such.

I don't think I said I did. In fact, I offered a rather radical example of what I thought was a plausible line of development which would have found Africa ultimately the center of world learning - radical not just in that it overthrows the conventional politically correct thinking of 200 years ago which would have suggested condenscendingly that Africa had been trapped by the fact that Africans were racially incapable of high civilization, but radical in that it also rejects the current conventional politically correct thinking that condescendingly suggests that Africans were racially superior, but alas predestined by a trap of geography and climate to have been the also rans of humanity.

So, no, I'm about the last guy you should be lecturing on the idea that only white-skinned people could think up longswords and such. I never said anything like that. They didn't think up longswords. Bad luck that. Probably some fool white redneck persisted in trying to prove his manhood by getting on the back of a wild horse long after some black genious stopped trying to ride the zebra because he realized he could get his neck broken that way. Bad luck that. Sometimes foolish ideas turn out to be useful. However it happened, as I suggested in the earlier post, it could have happened some other way. But then, lets see it happen that other way. Let's see some imagination in the setting, rather than a European in more or less black face on the wierd out of game notion that doing art like that demonstrates your moral superiority.

I just don't think we are to the point in our society where a black character just happens to be black. Maybe its my particular prejudice, but absent other information, I'm going to see this in it:

THIS SKETCH WAS ANOTHER EFFORT ON MY PART TO INTRODUCE RACIAL VARIETY INTO THE GAME.

...and be turned off by it. If you were modelling stock fighter X after your brother or best friend, submitted the picture without thinking about the fact that you've got a 'black' character now, then I'd be impressed. I just personally find, "I'm so sorry about my umpteenth redneck ancestor domesticating a horse and inventing longswords, here let me paint a black guy to prove my sensitivity" very nearly as nausating as "Because my umpteenth redneck ancestor domesticated a horse, I'm racially superior to you."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I (black [multiracial] gamer dude living in the south) am usually disappointed by the uniformity of depictions in fantasy art. Waterdeep or Greyhawk may be racially diverse, for instance, but almost all of the humans are caucasians.

Now, there are some good reasons for this, the first one being that D&D has typically had a Eurocentric bias, but you'd think that their markets would be filled with travellers from far lands...and they might not be so pink.

That said, does it influence my buying patterns? Not a bit.

Its because I know that I can take Race X and adapt it to whatever cultural ID I want- like the Native American Minotaurs I ran a decade ago. Or the Nazi-esque elves I ran before that.

And I'm not afraid to put kilts on black people (thank you, Samuel L. Jackson!), feathered headresses and shell beads on Asians (and so forth) to shuffle up people's expectations.

 

[billd91]

Again, I'm going to have a serious problem with a human character being brown or ebony skinned merely for the sake of having a token brown skinned or ebony skinned character, because I'm going to immediately percieve this as an arbitrary and quite shallow attempt to pander to current politically correct morality. It offends me as some were offended by 2e's whitewashing of the appearance of containing occult material. I've got no problem with celebrating or exploring a cultural identity, that's great, but if you are to do so let's do so at a level maybe a little deeper than simply skin color.

And... suppose the character comes from a multi-cultural society? It's not like we don't have the example of Rome in history. Dominated by Latins, maybe, but also quite diverse at major trading and political points. Why would you have to assume it's arbitrary and political and not just an interesting aesthetic choice?

 

[Cadfan]

Again, I'm going to have a serious problem with a human character being brown or ebony skinned merely for the sake of having a token brown skinned or ebony skinned character, because I'm going to immediately percieve this as an arbitrary and quite shallow attempt to pander to current politically correct morality.

Your tendency to interpret a picture of a black guy in a suit of armor as a token attempt to pander to "current politically correct morality" rather than just a picture of a black guy in a suit of armor is, well, a character flaw.

 

[Cadfan]

And I don't even know what to say to the guy who thinks D&D shouldn't have multiracial character art.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

2Ed actually did a lot to forward the multicultural aspects of D&D. I mean, 1Ed had multicultural pantheons, but 2Ed gave us the cultures.

2Ed gave us Oriental Adventures, Maztica, and a host of non-Eurocentric lands in Forgotten Realms.

And the art sometimes reflected this...although sometimes it was just multicultural trappings on European bodies.