What bothers me is when it's assumed that ethnic people must be depicted with the tropes and accoutrements that we associate with that ethnicity in the real world. There's no reason, in fantasy artwork, why an Asian-looking wizard can't be dressed like a classical fantasy wizard, rather than looking like Mako from Conan the Barbarian.
This was alluded to in another post, but, yes, there is a reason for it. In something that is meant to be as general and generic as D&D (in the sense that players can customize the world as much as they want), it's shorthand. Rather than recreating an east Asian or north African nation from scratch, the designers recognize that we, as humans on Earth, have a common pool of knowledge from which to draw. That isn't to say it's always
right, but it does exist for a purpose.
In my mind, then, the question isn't whether or not it's an Asian wizard in classic garb, it's why is that unusual? Sure you have shorthand--
and there's no way to escape that, even if you want--but it can be used differently. Frex, dark-skinned people are such because of the environment in which they evolved . . . but put all of them into a more classic medieval setting, instead of the light-skinned people. Then, you can have the same tropes and shorthand of medieval fantasy . . . but with darker-skinned people.
And then you'll have people saying, "But wait--if they're dark-skinned because they live in such a sunny, hot environment, what are they doing wearing plate mail and riding heavy warhorses?!?" And that, folks, is why I'm not a game designer.
Having limited interaction with people of differing cultures you would have been more likely to grow up in the belief that the only differences between cultural groups are the clothes we wear and the food we eat - harmless and banal differences to be sure.
IME, having limited interaction with people of differing cultures means you take your views from popular media, and generally popular media is very stereotypical. YMMV, obviously, but I don't think that growing up in a predominantly X environment generally makes people MORE open-minded.
In a generic product, such as the PH, I would prefer to see a more diverse set of heroes.
Amen. If this is meant to represent a huge population in generic situations, it should be as diverse and representative as possible.
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.
I agree with you, sir (or madam, as the case may be). To answer your original question, I bought the 4e PHB because my group is switching to 4e. The artwork in it has nothing to do with it, either way. However, if there had been a huge outcry that WotC had an Agenda, I might have researched that a bit and then argued for or against (depending on the Agenda in question) switching. As it is, artwork will not influence my decision for the core books (I'm eventually going to get the DMG as well, and my SO and I already own a copy of the MM), but it might influence my decision to buy splats and other supplements.
Of course you can run a campaign anywhere, its just that these places are the most popular apparently and they just happen to be European analogues and more than likely to be populated most strongly by caucasian types.
Hm, perhaps THAT is the core problem, then. Why are the most popular (and I'm reading this as "populated" for this argument's sake) places chock-full of light-skinned people?
The answer to that, most likely, is that the majority of the people at WotC are light-skinned and the majority of the consumers of their product line are light-skinned.
I must admit, it feels particularly odd to have a "white" halfling next to a "black" halfling, or whatever. (Together, they fight crime!)
LOL!
Talk about monolithic and dull cultures. Dwarves love mountains, elves love the woods and halflings (recently) love rivers.
Again, it's shorthand. Of COURSE you can have desert elves (hell, why not have desert dwarves?), but unless you want a 500-pound set of core books, they can't elucidate EVERY possible incarnation. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I'd like to think that the 4e designers were giving a general "fantasy" feel (partially, no doubt, to draw in new customers) with the expectation that players will be creative enough to modify it when they so desire.
However, if I were to look at a peice of fantasy artwork with a black person in it, the first thing I would think is that they consciously shoe horned a token black face into the art work purely for the sake of superficial pandering to ideas of racial diversity.
And that's the problem. It's a thin line between pandering and including. My first reaction to seeing a "multicultural" X is to not react. But if someone were to point it out to me, my reaction is generally, "Oh, look, it's the token X." So where do you find balance? *I* would find it by having the minority be the light-skinned. Very few people would say, "Oh, look, it's the token white," even if 99% of the rest of the thing is non-white. But in a market that's predominantly light-skinned, it doesn't make sense to have the light-skinned be a gross minority. As has been mentioned, people like what they can identify with.
Real diversity isn't merely an issue of skin tone, angle of the eyes, height od the cheekbones, etc.
Obviously. However, there does seem to be, at least in the United States, a sense that a diversity of physical features are not represented equally or well in most situations. Yes, merely coloring the white dude black isn't terribly effective, but it's probably the best many can manage at this point in history. Which brings me to your next point.
Dressing up every ethnicity in Euro-drag isn't diversity (though it can be an important start). <snip>
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.
And:
I just don't think we are to the point in our society where a black character just happens to be black.
Exactly.
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."
However, the assumption that "painting a black guy" is to prove sensitivity is kind of shallow. Unless someone says the latter, I'm not going to think it of them, so why do the same with the former?
The other thing that bothers me is that, in general, settings seem to be willing to mix and match elements between European cultures, but not between others. It seems to me that by comparmentalizing all cultural elements into "European" vs. "Asian" vs. "African" vs. ..., we vastly limit the number of interesting and different cultures we can design.
I am NOT being snarky here, but I don't understand what you're trying to say. It sounds like you're saying that European cultures are swappable, but Asian cultures aren't and African cultures aren't. Isn't that opposite of what you're trying to argue?
By restricting non-European cultures to a single nation/region, or by completely compartmentalizing all non-European cultural elements, it becomes much easier to optionalize them and thus leave out the ethnicities that would be represented therein
I think there isn't anything wrong with making things "easier to optionalize" unless it's done specifically to marginalize or exclude.
