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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Incenjucar" data-source="post: 1645124" data-attributes="member: 6182">The trick is that many fantasy writers are seemingly afraid to actually create racial differences WITHIN a species.Even in D&D, when they DO dare to be different, has to make a sub-race out of everything (Gray orcs, the thirteen flavors of elf, etc.)The stereotypes seem to hold on too dearly, and, at the same time, people are afraid to have real world style within-species racism, and trade it for, what seems to be more acceptable, specism.Myself, I like having fantasy races with as much variety in culture as any human, and human races that actually acknowledge a difference between each other.For instance, I have a plains-dwelling group of humans that are fairly comparable to the real world's African peoples as far as genetic physical features go, and I even took the real world's voodan stereotype and made it interesting, with the twist that the goodly tribes cannibalize to prevent the use of corpses for magic, have pet ghouls and carrion crow swarms, etc.  They also have mythology devoted to explaining why they have dark skin and the other humans they have dealt with have lighter skin; basically the richness and strength that is found in dark, rich soil, was given to them for their bodies, while the rest of the humans had pale, weak soil for their composition.  You have no idea how much I've sweated over the idea of offending someone by making skin color such a big deal as to have myth behind it.People just hold too fast to stereotypes, yet fear them mightily when you can point to someone who falls under it.Just like many people think that the drow are a sign of Gygax having a fear for strong women of African ancestry.</blockquote>

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