Racism in your game?

[Razjah]

[MENTION=25619]haakon1[/MENTION], just to be clear, my post was not a comment on your first post explaining Cauldron. I was just making a general comment.

Racism like the Cauldron plantations can work great in a game. But in the games I have experienced, racism happens in the background unless a PC happens to be of a particular race. Dwarves don't like elves? No problem until the party stops by a dwarven outpost for supplies. Now the elf needs to use an intermediary because the fletcher won't sell to a poncy elf. Which can be great, once or twice. What I've seen happen is every dwarf the party comes across treats the elf character like crap and there never seems to be a justification.

Having regional groups subjugate other regional groups seems like a great way to have this work in a game. Like you said, it challenges the moral characters. But, has this come up in your games? This seems like it could derail a game if certain characters feel they need to free the slaves.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Really, almost every area is fair game in my campaigns (especially my current campaign). I don't really delve into some of it in any great depth, and I might imply some things while vividly highlighting other areas, but I like using all the tools I can to get across the feel I want. I do understand why this doesn't work for some people, though. As always, play what you like

 

[MrHemlocks]

Having just finished Bioshock Infinite I wonder how people handle racism in their games.
As BI showed, racism is a rather touchy and ugly subject but can help immersion quite a lot. Granted, it was a pseudo historical setting, so the racism displayed was a product of its age, but this also applies to fantasy settings.

So how do you handle racism in you games? Does it even exist? At which degree? And how does it influence the PCs?

My son plays the new Bioshock Infinite and I love the world in the clouds. I my opinion multiculturalism has ruined America like it has ruined the Roman Empire. The Bioshock world is wonderful and full of hard hitting themes. If all races were meant to be equal than we would all be the same... In my games race and culture matter as does the person's gender.

Mod Note: Please see Morrus' note in red below. Thanks. ~Umbran

 

[Morrus]

I like to include a bit of historical verismilitude in the form of racism, sexism, religious intolerance--whatever fits in the setting. A modern egalitarianism is too much for my sense of immersion to handle. So humans may distrust and have prejudices against non-humans. Dwarves and elves don't care for each other. You are judged by your religion. And in most lands, women aren't in the military. Of course PCs, and adventures in general, break the rules all of the time.

I don't mind fantasy races being mean to each other. For me, it's representations of things that my players might actually be which is the issue. Orcs hating dwarves is fine. Hating homosexuals? Or black people? Not fine. Too close to reality.

 

[billd91]

I don't mind fantasy races being mean to each other. For me, it's representations of things that my players might actually be which is the issue. Orcs hating dwarves is fine. Hating homosexuals? Or black people? Not fine. Too close to reality.

Depends on the game. I think the interactions with the locals in the Nairobi leg of the Call of Cthulhu campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep are definitely more fun with the tinges of racism written into characters.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think that as with many genre fiction examples, conflict between different humanoid species stands in for conflict between human races. I don't generally delve too deeply into developing human nationalism, mostly because the world has enough factions as it is. If I did, I suppose prejudice and conflict would be natural (if unfortunate) consequences.

 

[Bagpuss]

I my opinion multiculturalism has ruined America like it has ruined the Roman Empire. If all races were meant to be equal than we would all be the same.

Here's me thinking America was based on equality,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."

people can have equality with out needing to be identical, we are all the same in that we are all human, the difference between individuals in the same race are so great that any generalisations are moot.

Getting back to gaming...

I think it depends on the game and how much you want to bring it up, if you are playing a WWII era game, it is likely to come up at some point, but even then it can be ignored for a lot of the time.

 

[Morrus]

I my opinion multiculturalism has ruined America like it has ruined the Roman Empire.

MrHemlocks, that sounds racist. I don't know if you meant it to be, but that's how it comes across to me. In either case, it's not an appropriate subject matter for EN World -- please keep the discussion to racism in game settings, not the real world. And to be clear, whether or not one allows racism in their games, it is absolutely not tolerated at EN World. At all.

 

[Smoss]

My current campaign world is very much human based (Monsters are rare and a waning force). Dislike of different human cultures (racism) was actually built into my world as a core concept. Certain cultures really don't agree with each other.

Of course, I also wanted to turn things a bit around from how OUR world turned out in order for people to identify with the races a bit differently. For example, the one culture that is similar to a mix of gypsy culture and native american culture - Their physical appearance is strongly nordic (Blonde/red hair, white skin, etc). Pretty much all the people that the "civilized" people consider as evil, savage, etc - are all very pale skinned. Meanwhile my "roman empire" is asian, my "greeks/spartans" are african...

It is amazing what a small thing like switching which physical appearance and which culture they are affects opinions. And allows people to see a different side of how hurtful racism can be.
Smoss
----------------------------
Read all about this world here!

 

[Gilladian]

IMCW I decided that I liked the idea that elves and dwarves feud with each other, and after thinking about it, I came up with what seems to be a good motivation for a particular region of my campaign world; historically the elves live in the forests on the slopes of a mountain range. The dwarves live under the mountains. They need lots of charcoal to burn to smelt the iron ore they mine; they use the wood from the forest. Instant conflict, instant reason for long-term racial tensions between elves and dwarves.

If something like this fits the campaign world, I will use it. There may well be other regions of my world where elves and dwarves banded together to fight off the orcs who would have decimated both races if they didn't become allies; in that region, elf-dwarf relations are very different.

I do use a few different "human races" in my world; the Shalani are a group who have genetically isolated themselves from the rest of the human racial groups; they've begun to diverge over several thousand years, and tend to be taller and fairer than other groups; the folk of greenvale are tall, but tend to be darker-haired and have darker skin-tones than the shalani. And the Mirani-folk are smaller and darker, with black hair and eyes. None match specifically any "earth-counterpart" and PCs are always free to vary their own PC's appearance, but it gives me room to say, "the small dark-haired rogue says something in a tongue you didn't catch..." and then the PC who took Mirani as a second language pops up with "Can I understand him?"

(Also, everyone knows the Shalani are horse-thieves! Tall blond man tries to sell you a horse, check 3 times to see if it isn't stolen!)

But I try to stay right away from issues that affect the real world; no sexist limitations on roles for female characters, nor STR limits, etc... and my campaign worlds are suspiciously egalitarian; when there is slavery, it is generally recognized as bad by everyone except the group practicing it, and so on.