The Line Between Real Earth & D20 Earth

[Blue Sky]

It all depends upon how much your players need to be coddled and have everything bowdlerized, sanitized, and sugar-coated, of course.

Hmmph. I wouldn't claim it as coddling to not have to deal with something that, for some, just doesn't add to the game. If I was the deep, immersive roleplayer type, playing a minority in a game that has racism as a major theme might appeal to me. But I'm not. I want to kick in the door, grab the loot, beat up some bad guys, woo some women, and get on to the next scene, preferably all before breakfast.

To answer the original poster's question, it would probably never come up in a game. When I run, I'm thinking where the action is going to come from next. In the same way I wouldn't spend time describing the hassles and pitfalls of running a business (D20 roll: "Well, Indiana, your vacuum cleaner broke, and it looks like the delivery guy forgot your replacement belts again. What are you going to do?"), I'm not going to spend time on something that doesn't move the action along.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Agemegos]

It all depends upon how much your players need to be coddled and have everything bowdlerized, sanitized, and sugar-coated, of course.

Indeed. It also depends on how vehemently they insist that any flaws their country and society ever had must never be mentioned.




Just in case anyone thinks I am taking a shot at the US, I'll mention that when my father joined the [honorary] staff of the local hospital here in 1949, on his first ward round he couldn't find several of the public patients on his list. Inquiring of the matron, he discovered that they were segregated in an Aboriginal Ward. No country can count on being immune to this sort of thing: it is another tyranny against which we must be eternally vigilant.

 

[Dogbrain]

Just in case anyone thinks I am taking a shot at the US, I'll mention that when my father joined the [honorary] staff of the local hospital here in 1949, on his first ward round he couldn't find several of the public patients on his list. Inquiring of the matron, he discovered that they were segregated in an Aboriginal Ward. No country can count on being immune to this sort of thing: it is another tyranny against which we must be eternally vigilant.

And part of doing this is sanitizing it out of everything we can so we can pretend it never existed.

 

[Jehosephat]

Hmmph. I wouldn't claim it as coddling to not have to deal with something that, for some, just doesn't add to the game. If I was the deep, immersive roleplayer type, playing a minority in a game that has racism as a major theme might appeal to me. But I'm not. I want to kick in the door, grab the loot, beat up some bad guys, woo some women, and get on to the next scene, preferably all before breakfast.

To answer the original poster's question, it would probably never come up in a game. When I run, I'm thinking where the action is going to come from next. In the same way I wouldn't spend time describing the hassles and pitfalls of running a business (D20 roll: "Well, Indiana, your vacuum cleaner broke, and it looks like the delivery guy forgot your replacement belts again. What are you going to do?"), I'm not going to spend time on something that doesn't move the action along.

YMMV, of course.

As you say, different GMs may have different ways of telling a story, so it is possible. Here's a for instance. Duke "Blowfish" Washington, semi-famous jazz trumpeter was raised in Harlem. One night he happens to be in a "Negroes Only" club down south, when he notices some goons carrying in a bundle that looks suspiciously like a body. Does he mind his own business? Doe he investigate? Doe he tip off the WASP PCs? For at least one or two scenes he becomes pretty important as the one who can get into the club and be the eyes and ears for the PCs.

Obviously, a good GM isn't going to make the adventure hinge on information that PCs can't get to, without providing a means in which the PCs can find out. But depending on the group, some might go for this sort of thing. I know as a player, I would think it's kind of cool. It adds a certain something. And I would really get into it, if I happen to be playing Blowfish. But as you say, it would depend on the group. Some would go for those touches, others might say "screw it. Let's bust in anyway." Other groups, the situation might not ever come up. Again, I think it would be kind of cool, but then as someone who enjoys history, I would appreciate a GM adding that bit o' real-worldiness to the game.

 

[trancejeremy]

Of course, while racism was definitely present, not everyone subscribed to it. HPL was something of a nut, and had something of an unhealthy interest in eugenics (which was also popular then, not just in the US, but all over Europe, too)

Read some of the other writers of the day, and you won't find the same sort of attitude in all of them. In many cases, the opposite.

Chandler, Hammett, Earl Stanley Gardner, etc. One early novel of Chandler's does feature racism, Marlowe gets dragged into a blacks-only bar by a really big polish guy, but Marlowe makes a crack about the police not being interested in a shooting there because the victim was black.

 

[D+1]

Most people do not play RPG's to explore real-world trials and tribulations. They play them to escape real-world trials and tribulations. Even if you do go down that road it's going to depend a LOT on you and your players, your attitudes, reasons for gaming, sensitivities, and maturity as to how it'll work.

If I were to run a 20's or 30's real-world setting I would steer away from such topics simply for being inappropriate material for a casual, escapist entertainment. If I did touch on it I'd also focus on areas in the northern US where there were thriving, open, even prosperous black communities even if it were inaccurate and idealized.

 

[Krieg]

*click*

 

[Krieg]

As a side. Us living in the U.S. from a German background really got ethicnally castagized after WWI and exspecially WWII. So make sure you call all those with German in their background as krautheads.

Let's not conveniently forget that in many parts of the US there was a very strong Pro-German sentiment up to day that the two nations formally declared war.

Nor should we gloss over the fact that blacks did not face the same stigmitization in every part of the nation.

Bigotry certainly existed but it was not universally consistent in application nor in direction.