Racism in your game?

[Ragmon]

I wish, I could say that me or my group are not racis to some degree in our games.

- Undead are always evil in our games and will be attacked on site, without question.
- Orcs and half/orcs are always dumb.
- Halflings are viewed as chaotic evil murdering and thieving bastards.
- Gnomes are crazy inventors.
- Goblins are dirty and they would rather die then take a bath (this really happened once, a goblin performed sepuku before we could place it in a pond, ).
- Elfs are snooty and viewed as gay (the males only).
- Dwarves are Scottish.
- Dragons ALWAYS open with a breath weapon.
- Bards are useless.
- Every dungeon has at least one pit-trap.
- One of our DM never lets us play women characters, or if he does he never acknowledges it (we are all human, males in real life... ).
- ... and for some reason we tend to use the "n" word a lot.

If you have atleast one of these points in your game the, yup you guesses it, you have some racism, sexism, classism, [insert type] -ism in your game.

How do you handle this, well you just roll with it.
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But on a more serious note, there will be racism in your game if you like it or not, or if you know of it or not, if you planned it or not.
How could you handle it? Well you could either create a happy-happy world, where everyone is friendly OR well there is no "or", its either a mind-controlled world of "happy" or its a healthy bias world, with inequality.

It will be always fun to watch the Dwarf and Elf got at it... "You inbred broomstick", "You mop faced cesspool". Or would you rather have a "hello, how are you, shall we go on an adventure together?"... XD

I know it sounds like I'm trying to argue with some one, but its not, its just how I write sometimes.

 

[Fetfreak]

Heh I have none of that!
Here is my spin:
Elves - savages, humans believe that they poop diamonds (long story)
Halflings - Tolkien like
Gnomes - Outsiders that live around rocks and cave, viewed as crazy because they love their rocks and clash with giants
Dragons - Extinct but are reborn when volcanos erupt
Bards - Don't exist!

 

[TMRose]

We have a new plot line in our present games that deal with bad guy Racism.
Seems there a new Orc Warlord in place and his first order of business is purify the Orc race and he is out to kill all the Grey orcs( he and a majority of the Orcs are green Orcs , ) and Half Orcs.
So when Our paladin lead group met a bunch of Refugees( Mostly females, children and the Old with a few wounded males.) fleeing to human lands, Do you slaughter them yourselves , send them back to be killed in an unpleasant manner, or let them into human land and maybe have major trouble later?

 

[Derren]

So it looks like that when racism is in the game it most of the time is a extreme, either very superficial by just trading insults or kill on sight genocide. The space between those two is explored rather rarely. I guess its because thats the kind of racism encountered most in the real world and history.

 

[DnD_Dad]

I've got a player and he hates dwarves with a passion. No matter what character/race/class he is there is an unbridled hatred for dwarves. So I make all important characters and story lines involve dwarves.

 

[Zaltys]

It's a common theme in my campaigns. Everyone's a little bit racist. Some more than a little bit, such as my elves who are generally xenophobic racists.

Actually, there are some exceptions. Ogres have no concept of racism, that's basically a house rule in my group. If it weren't for their tendency towards violence, they'd get along fine with anyone.

 

[Herobizkit]

Racism is THE theme of our current 4e game. Humans are Evil - they deal almost exclusively in slaves as their major moneymaker. So we have a Goblin, a Drow and a Half-Elf who are going all Robin Hood against the Human Empire by way of banding together the humanoid races against them. It's played mostly for laughs, as the humans are cartoonishly evil. Of course, we're cartoonishly not-so-nice to them, too... ^_^

 

[Bob the Destroyer]

My homebrew world has a lot of racism. The various human countries and people groups are all racist against each other, the elves are engaged in a bloody centuries-long war between their two races, and everyone else is involved in complex webs of hatred. I really think that it adds to the realism of the game and it helps me maintain immersion. My players don't care and ignore it, which is OK with me.