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

[WayneLigon]

It's not something that would really sway me one way or another about a product. If I looked through a product featuring your typical normal fantasy world and saw either a fair amount of racial mixing in the art, or saw that all the figures were of one race - really, regardless of what that race might be - I probably wouldn't pay it much mind either way. I look more at how cool the art is, and how much it evokes the theme or the setting of the game. (Really, Traveller and WarhammerFRP are about the only games that come to mind as having developed a distinct and evocative art style all their own).

 

[Cadfan]

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.

...sort of. The thing is, while "traditional" fantasy is obviously pretty eurocentric in its stylings, its sort of grown into its own schtick that transcends its history.

Or in other words, "dude in a trenchcoat with a giant sword" isn't eurocentric. Its modern fantasy. No reason it shouldn't be freely available to every ethnic group.

 

[Celebrim]

Why would you have to assume it's arbitrary and political and not just an interesting aesthetic choice?

I wish I could answer that question the way I want to, but I'm already skirting a pretty fine line. The best I can manage is to deflect the question into a related area.

I read alot of science fiction. I mean <i>alot</i> of science fiction. I've read so many books, I've forgotten which ones I've read and find myself checking books out of the library and 5-6 pages into it going, "Wait a minute, I've already read this..."

I really don't care who writes the science fiction. If its a good story, they've got my respect and I'm part of thier fanbase. I've got my signed copy of Samuel R. Delany's 'Babel-17' to prove it.

But I knew Mr. Delany was black (and gay for that matter), long before I ever knew Mr. Delany was black. Why? Because its been my experience reading hundreds if not thousands of books that white writers generally don't have black protagonists. You can be pretty sure that a white writer will have a white protangonist in 90% of his books, and a black writer will have a black protagonist in 90% of thier books. There is too much conscious and unconscious self-identification going on. Unless you put a conscious effort into it, you write what you see in the mirror in the morning. (And frankly, of course they do and what the heck is wrong with it?) Writers seem to have a lot easier time switching gender than switching color. I'm not sure why that is, but personally I would like to believe that unconsciously they realize color is meaningless and adds basically nothing to the story.

I think painting is probably alot like that. Painters paint themselves. They paint who they see in the morning, only in variation. The only way that they are going to honestly paint someone with a different color is if someone close to them is modeling for them and happens to be that different color. Or else, they'll paint someone a different color if something about the scene suggests to them the presence of people of a different color. If I were to see a black character in Rome who wasn't a slave or a gladiator (slave), then I'd assume the blackness came from some conscious decision and feel pretty confident in my pre-judgement. Most of the time, people are drawing from a list of stock characters, regardless of what sort of art they are creating.

Before I'd think otherwise upon seeing a scene of humans of many hues together, I'd have to have some evidence of a well thought out cosmopolitan society that was also multi-hued. It wouldn't be Rome. I'd expect a fantasy city based on Leptis Magna or New Orleans to be multihued. If I saw that, I couldn't really infer anything, except perhaps, that sense it wasn't 'Rome' that first popped into mind someone was making a special effort to break out of the normal sterotype. I'd certainly hope that that wasn't merely to pander to those that reflexively praise racial consciousness as a good thing, but that would be about the limit of that.

 

[Celebrim]

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.

Maybe. I offered as much earlier. But I've also got the quote to go with the theory. Being right is a pain in the butt.

It would be nice if upon making that assumption I was wrong more often than I was right, or even that I was wrong a significant percentage of the time. If that was the case, I could stop making the assumption.

And believe me, I'd love to live in the world where that assumption was wrong. I mean, alot of the reason this provokes a rant from me is that I dislike so much that I'm not wrong. Growing up, I kinda did live in that world, where I never really thought of myself as white or anyone else as black, and never realized that anyone thought of me as white or thought that that meant anything. Of course, part of that was growing up with something akin to Asberger's syndrome and being nearly oblivious to the nuances of human social interaction entirely. Once I was forced to pick up on them, my responce was pretty much 'this sucks'. Once I got out of the happy elementary school experience where my best friend could be black and I could sleep over at a black kids house and nobody thought of me as the white kid (or if they did I was oblivious) and got thrust into a world of ethnic tribalism and incultured racial consciousness, yeah, I wanted to go back. I got sick and tired of being treated as 'white' by blacks because of my skin color, and 'black' by whites because of my (now faded) accent.

It just annoys me that there is this assumption that diversity is something we should be trying to artificially create. I think that the attempt to create destroys the very thing that makes it possible, which is to stop seeing ourselves and others through that lens. I think it is insane that we think that white Americans don't or shouldn't have the right and desire to think of themselves as having Frederick Douglas as a forefather, or that black Americans don't or shouldn't have the right and desire to think of themselves as being inheritors of Robert Lee as if our skin color is something that must foreever separate us.

Anyway, too political, but it is how artificial diversity influences me.

 

[Orius]

For me, it depends on the setting. Traditional D&D settings, in particular the Realms have a tendancy to ape Howard's Hyborea, so there are various kingdoms modeled after real world cultures roughly arranged about the same way the cultures were arranged in the real world. I wouldn't expect to see any major diversity in those worlds, except in major trade centers. The distances, geographical barriers, and lack of modern transportation will keep different racial groups more or less isolated.

If there is a more diverse setting though, I want it to make sense, and to be a product of that setting's history. Throwing different racial groups together just to give the setting an appearance of diversity tends to stick out like a sore thumb. If however, these different groups exist together because of historical reasons (like American diversity being the result of immigration and slavery as well as an indigenous population), then it feels more natural. It doesn't have to be a fallen empire, it could be a colony, the result of some sort of magical disaster bringing people together from many different lands or even worlds, or the use of magic that allows people to commonly travel vast distances easily.

Anyway, I think it's kind of foolish that WotC would discourage diversity in its art. That would only serve to prevent the game from attracting new players. I'd also think that being in a place like Seattle, that WotC would actually make a stronger effort to diversify the game.

 

[Jack Colby]

If it makes sense to the world being illustrated it's fine by me. I don't like when the multiracial art feels "forced", however. If we're talking about a strongly historical medieval Europe-based setting, art should reflect that. If it's a more modern world-inspired cosmopolitan fantasy setting, then more races should be depicted. I wouldn't buy or not buy a book based on the multiracialness factor of the art though.

For me, it depends on the setting. Traditional D&D settings, in particular the Realms have a tendancy to ape Howard's Hyborea...

Pet peeve: There is no such thing as "Howard's Hyborea". There is only the Hyborian Age, although one of the places existing during that time period is Hyperborea. It's not that hard to keep it straight.

 

[S'mon]

Now we have racial diversity within the fantasy races - white and black halflings in the same picture, for instance. This bugs me a bit as it forces convoluted in-game explanations that don't sit easily in most fantasy worlds. I'd rather have black halflings in a tropical setting, white halflings in a temperate setting, Mongoloid steppe halflings etc. Same goes for humans. Forcing 21st century American type diversity into a fantasy world feels tokenistic to me.

 

[S'mon]

The real thing I'm wondering is, if there is an equal spread of ethnic diversity in artwork throughout the books...would it make you less inclined to buy them? It seems the R&D team for 3e felt this way and it just seems silly to me, when looking at the actual campaign worlds WotC puts out.

Not sure what you mean by equal, but Asiatic wizards in European-medieval dress might be a turn off for me. I didn't like the 3e art but I don't recall objecting to the ethnicities of the characters. I do remember wondering about Ember the black Monk and wondering how she'd fit in my gameworld or Greyhawk etc. The 4e multiracial halfling pic did bother me though as there was no explanation in the halfling-racial description of river/marsh dwellers to justify it. I'd be happier with eg all halflings being black because they emigrated from the tropics recently.
On a side note, I've never liked underground-dwelling Drow having black skin. I prefer my dark elves pale-to-albino.

 

[S'mon]

Wizards of the Coast isn't the worst company when it comes to diversity in their illustrations, but they're not fantastic about it. The artwork still reflects a European dominance, and I think that's a shame.

If I felt that a company was aggressively anti-European that would probably affect my buying habits. OTOH, I agree with previous posters that the pulp Swords & Sorcery style is traditionally multi-ethnic, and s&s games' art should work with this trope or have a good reason why not. Conversely, Tolkienesque high fantasy is much more Eurocentric, and I like that too.
D&D of course falls somewhere between the two, and can reasonably go either way. But I tend to think it should avoid unthinking insertion of Diversity for purely tokenistic reasons of race (or gender) balance.

 

[S'mon]

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.

It could be either. If the nominal setting is Eberron, with lightning rails and a 20th century aesthetic, it comes across as just a picture of a black guy in a suit of armor. If the nominal setting is Greyhawk, with a medieval European aesthetic, it comes across as a token attempt to pander to "current politically correct morality".