D&D 5E Should the next edition of D&D promote more equality?

[S'mon]

I take it that isn't just a consequence of the iconic Pathfinder Paladin and the iconic 3.5e Monk being black women?

I don't know what you mean by 'consequence' here?

 

[Hussar]

Ethnicity, sexuality, male/female ratio et al are all stuff that are setting and genre specific IMCs. If the art is depicting inhabitants of a high-latitude setting like the Nentir Vale I'd expect the inhabitants to have fair skin unless there's an in-setting explanation why not. If it's a tropical latitude setting I'd expect the inhabitants to have dark skin unless there's an in-setting explanation why not - this could be magic, recent migrations, etc. Pale white humans in tropical fantasy-Africa or black halflings in fantasy-Europe both benefit from some explanation, but it only takes a moment's thought, I'm not fussy. The least likely thing and the one most in need of explanation is a wide variety of skin tones among the same 'race' (human/halfling/dwarf etc) in the same setting. This can be plausible in a multicultural port city, and a widespread empire might result in some temporary colour variety before interbreeding evens it out, but I don't like art direction that uses it as a default without need of explanation.

As far as the default 'generic' art goes, I don't have a problem with current WoTC and Paizo art except that I'd like to see the occasional not-young-and-beautiful adventurer character. Paizo have their one iconic greybeard Wizard, Ezren, but 4e D&D art was completely devoid of adventurers who didn't look like US TV actors or fashion models.

But, I think this shows more people's internal biases. I mean, there's no reason that high latitude people would be fair. That's only true in Northern Europe. North America and Asia, that certainly isn't true. In fact, that native peoples of northern latitudes tend to be pretty dark on the whole. So, why should a northern latitude setting show blond, Nordics?

Now, sure, tropical peoples are darker, but, again, there's a pretty darn big range in the real world for equatorial peoples. From Africa to South America to the the Middle East and India to South East Asia, tropical peoples have a pretty decent range in appearance and skin tones.

And, considering the art in the books, at least in core books is meant to show a variety of settings and, hopefully, showcase the breadth of what kinds of campaigns you can run in D&D, I would hope that they would have a broad range of appearances.

To me, this image is something I'd love to see more of:

 

[Dausuul]

Ethnicity, sexuality, male/female ratio et al are all stuff that are setting and genre specific IMCs. If the art is depicting inhabitants of a high-latitude setting like the Nentir Vale I'd expect the inhabitants to have fair skin unless there's an in-setting explanation why not.

One word: Inuit.

If there's art depicting a small town and its inhabitants, I wouldn't expect those inhabitants to look particularly diverse, but "not diverse" doesn't equate to "Caucasian." A big city where people from a dozen nations come to trade, I'd be surprised if they didn't look diverse. However, the bulk of the art will depict adventurers rather than townsfolk, and adventuring parties have a long tradition of being motley crews in every sense of the word. If you can accept a party with multiple different species in it, it seems a bit silly to complain that two of the humans have different skin colors.

 

[delericho]

Need to quote the full post chain for context...

Both Paizo and WoTC tend to make most of their black character depictions female.

I take it that isn't just a consequence of the iconic Pathfinder Paladin and the iconic 3.5e Monk being black women?

I don't know what you mean by 'consequence' here?

The iconic characters appear again and again in the artwork. Because of that, and because Seelah is a black woman, you would expect a significant number of images in the book to include a black woman amongst the characters... but it would be the same black woman each time.

What this would mean is that if you did a simple count of the instances of a black woman appeared in an image versus the instances of a black man appeared, you might well get a very large mismatch, but if you count the number of individual black women appearing vs the number of men, you might get a much smaller number. (Probably no 1-0 in favour of women, but perhaps much closer.)

Note: I don't know the answers to any of these questions, hence why I'm asking - I'm not trying to make a point, or put forward an agenda, or anything similar; just curious.

 

[S'mon]

But, I think this shows more people's internal biases. I mean, there's no reason that high latitude people would be fair.

I was stating my preference, not a statement of absolute truth. I don't think there is an absolute here.

 

[Nellisir]

But, I think this shows more people's internal biases. I mean, there's no reason that high latitude people would be fair. That's only true in Northern Europe. North America and Asia, that certainly isn't true. In fact, that native peoples of northern latitudes tend to be pretty dark on the whole. So, why should a northern latitude setting show blond, Nordics?

Agreed. People assume that what they're familiar with is the norm, or the default, and anything different requires explicit "explanation". In our world, fair skin is an adaptation to increase vitamin D creation in higher latitudes, but it's not universal (ie Inuit), nor is the reverse universal (South American native people). The gene for adult blue eyes came from a single mutation (http://www.livescience.com/9578-common-ancestor-blue-eyes.html); that was then propagated there's no biological advantage to it.

Why should vitamin D even exist in a fantasy world? Skin color could result from common genes, like hair or eyes, that express differently within members of the same family. You'd have a sibling with fair skin and dark hair, another with bronzed skin and blonde hair, a third with dark-skin and red hair, and a forth with red-toned skin and brunette hair. Hair could be kinky or curly or straight or wavy.

Evolution might not even work in a fantasy setting. Half-elves are born to people who live near elves (or elves who live near humans). Half-giants are born to people in mountainous regions. A rampaging supernatural evil leads to a rise in cockatrice, dire boars, and gorgons in later months, as the supernatural taint transforms creatures.

(I feel like this goes right along with "all ninjas are asian, all desert-societies build temples and worship the sun-god, and all northern societies are viking barbarians. Boring, and complete failure of imagination.)

 

[Nellisir]

I was stating my preference, not a statement of absolute truth. I don't think there is an absolute here.

Is this correct: your preference is that anything different from what you expect has an explanation?

 

[billd91]

Why should vitamin D even exist in a fantasy world? Skin color could result from common genes, like hair or eyes, that express differently within members of the same family. You'd have a sibling with fair skin and dark hair, another with bronzed skin and blonde hair, a third with dark-skin and red hair, and a forth with red-toned skin and brunette hair. Hair could be kinky or curly or straight or wavy.

Evolution might not even work in a fantasy setting. Half-elves are born to people who live near elves (or elves who live near humans). Half-giants are born to people in mountainous regions. A rampaging supernatural evil leads to a rise in cockatrice, dire boars, and gorgons in later months, as the supernatural taint transforms creatures.

(I feel like this goes right along with "all ninjas are asian, all desert-societies build temples and worship the sun-god, and all northern societies are viking barbarians. Boring, and complete failure of imagination.)

The downside to all of this is the more you deviate from familiarity with special cases for your campaign, the more work you have to do to explain it to yourself and players so you and they don't fall back on your own experiences and assumptions. And not everyone wants to go through that much work for relatively little practical gain.

 

[bogmad]

Why should vitamin D even exist in a fantasy world? Skin color could result from common genes, like hair or eyes, that express differently within members of the same family. You'd have a sibling with fair skin and dark hair, another with bronzed skin and blonde hair, a third with dark-skin and red hair, and a forth with red-toned skin and brunette hair. Hair could be kinky or curly or straight or wavy.

Evolution might not even work in a fantasy setting. Half-elves are born to people who live near elves (or elves who live near humans). Half-giants are born to people in mountainous regions. A rampaging supernatural evil leads to a rise in cockatrice, dire boars, and gorgons in later months, as the supernatural taint transforms creatures.

This is all true, especially for a setting where it's spelled out, but there is something to be said for having an established shorthand for people to look at and immediately accept without it being jarring and taking them out of the fantasy while they rationalize why this white guy has a black brother.

I'd rather see a multicultural world with lots of diversity stemming from different cultures than just a blank melting pot of races sharing the same culture. It gets dodgy though if you start saying "All ninjas have to be Asian," instead of "this school of fighting originated in this culture, but it's not unheard of for a white guy to have similar abilities"

 

[Obryn]

The downside to all of this is the more you deviate from familiarity with special cases for your campaign, the more work you have to do to explain it to yourself and players so you and they don't fall back on your own experiences and assumptions. And not everyone wants to go through that much work for relatively little practical gain.

But this is a core rulebook. Not a setting.

In my FATE Core book, there's a cyborg kung-fu gorilla.

-O