D&D 5E The word ‘Race’

[EzekielRaiden]

Can you make a fiction people who are considered analogs to some real people? I don't know if that detail is the problem bit or if it's something that gets packaged with it.

I would argue that it is, in fact, a perfectly valid technique--at least in literature--to use an allegorical person or group of people to stand in for another group. Allegorical stand-in is a fairly typical feature of Gothic (and, by extension, Southern Gothic) novels. Many other works often use the people or challenges of a past time period to make commentary on the people and challenges of their present. Having just finished the Crash Course: Literature series from Youtube, I think it would be fair to say Things Fall Apart, written in 1958 by Chinua Achebe, uses the beginning of imperialist colonization in Africa (ca. 1890) in part to make commentary on racial relations of his present day. For a wholly different example, Indiana Jones can be seen as a dramatized version or blending of several real-life men, including Percy Fawcett, Roy Chapman Andrews, and William Montgomery McGovern.

Of course, the tradition of more openly allegorical characters, that is actual allegories themselves, is not particularly common today. Even Narnia, often thought of as a Christian allegory, is more properly considered speculative fantasy than an allegory (because Aslan is not "some lion who's symbolically Jesus for Narnia," which *would* be an allegory; as Lewis intended it, Aslan is Jesus, just the way Jesus looks in the alternate world of Narnia rather than on Earth.)

Whether it is acceptable to do the same thing(s) with the relatively stringy (and, unfortunately, nuance-lacking) narrative written into a game manual's backstory is another question.

 

[Uller]

What other aspects, specifically?

Throughout the eighties the game was stigmatized by some religious people and others.

Character death could cause players to commit suicide. Violence is a valid (and the prefered) way to solve problems. Magic, pagan religious influences and demonic influences could lure players to experimenting with the occult. These concerns (if they are important to you) are all every bit. as valid as this issue.

Let's try this. I have kids. My grandfather was an alchoholic. My brother is a functioning alcoholic. If I were to raise the issue of potions (things you drink to solve your problems) and said it was a barrier to me allowing my kids to play because I fear encouraging them or other children to solve problems with drugs and alcohol and then suggegested we change it to, say, single use totems or some such what would the general reaction be? Probably it would be to tell that if ihave a problem with potions as they have always been implemented then I should change it in my game and leave every one else alone.

Whether you see racism (or drugs or occult influences or encouragement of violence or whatever) hiding in the game or not is a function of your own preconceived notions. We all project our own inherent biases on pretty much everything.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hrm, you see absolutely no connections to racism in the idea that the only non-caucasoid race in the PHB is a group of murdering rapists and the race that is the "whitest" is depicted as good, enlightened, and virtually immortal?

Given the tradition of describing and depicting Elves as having almond-shaped eyes, angular faces, and frequently (though not always) eyes with a noticeable angle to them, I'm not sure it is entirely fair to classify them as "caucasoid," full-stop, no questions asked. Of course, I freely admit that their skin tones and hair types rarely reflect anything other than caucasoid phenotypes in art, even to the present day, but that's not quite the same as being "the whitest." (Plus, Wood Elves have a tendency to be at least a little more swarthy.)

Plus, in general, straight-up orcs havne't been a choice in the PHB, though whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is absolutely up for debate. And, at least starting with 4e, you have tieflings and dragonborn added to the mix; while the former might count as "caucasoid" if you can overlook the horns, tail, and red-, blue-, or purple-toned skin, I'm not sure there's any way to sell the dragonborn as "caucasoid."

Character death could cause players to commit suicide. Violence is a valid (and the prefered) way to solve problems. Magic, pagan religious influences and demonic influences could lure players to experimenting with the occult. These concerns (if they are important to you) are all every bit. as valid as this issue.

Each of these has been raised, at least once. My mother even once asked--after I was already an adult--whether I thought that playing a once-a-week D&D game was "addictive."

And, honestly, other than maybe the "experimenting with the occult" one, this isn't even the weirdest complaint I've seen. Someone, on another forum, earnestly argued that using the term "class" to denote one's adventuring abilities perpetuated the oppression of people in the real world. Because "class" is a term used to describe socioeconomic stratification; so using it in D&D to refer to people means you believe class structures are an inherent part of individuals, which allows socioeconomically powerful classes to perpetuate their control over less-powerful socioeconomic classes. (Or something like that; I don't know the exact logic, just that the poster asserted that RPGs are deeply, fundamentally, inherently classist and racist, because they use the terms "class" and "race.")

 

[MG.0]

OK, let's assume that I believed that D&D perpetuated racist ideas (which I most assuredly do not).

What SPECIFICALLY would you do to change it?

I've heard:

• Replace "race" with another word, which I think most people have agreed fixes nothing as other words can carry the same connotations.
• Remove ability score modifiers and use features to distinguish races. This just hides the issue under a different name.
• Remove all races except human? Not sure this was actually proposed or just mentioned in passing. Boring? 1st edition AD&D was definitely "humanocentric", but people sought ever-expanded roles for demi-humans.
  

Any others?

 

[Alzrius]

Throughout the eighties the game was stigmatized by some religious people and others.

Ah, I thought you meant some particular game terminology or mechanics.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ah, I thought you meant some particular game terminology or mechanics.

Well, to a certain extent it was. Prior to 2e, many things were referred to with typical/real-world terms: devils, demons, even some big names from actual occultist/folkloric ideas of Hell (Astaroth, Asmodeus, Mammon, Mephistopheles). In an effort to "clean up" to avert the fear of satanic/occult influence, many of these were given new names in 2nd edition: devils became baatezu, demons became tanar'ri, and the focus shifted to more obscure underworld-deity names like Orcus and Dispater (both of which were Roman deities of the underworld, the latter as Dis Pater).

There could be other places where such changes occurred; I'm not super well-read on my pre-3e D&D history, and very poorly read at all on pre-2e.

 

[Jester David]

In Spelljammer, elves (specifically the IEN) are clearly analogous to Great Britain ca. 1880. I don't see how that correspondence causes a problem.

Applying cultures can't be done universally and what works with one culture is horrifically stereotypical for another. Look at how Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon serials/ movie was presented. It's roughly the same as Victorian elves (culture and apperance of a Earth culture as seen through the lense of the 1880s applied to a people in space) but one is pretty horifically racist and the other is not.

That's slightly different as we're closer to that culture. We can emulate it without drifting into tired stereotypes, especially not ones that are used negatively for the entire ethnicity. And, also, British stereotypes are not seen as stereotypes that apply to the entire ethnicity, it's very clear they're cultural.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hrm, you see absolutely no connections to racism in the idea that the only non-caucasoid race in the PHB is a group of murdering rapists and the race that is the "whitest" is depicted as good, enlightened, and virtually immortal?

Dragonborn are caucasoid? That's news to me.

Maybe it's my Darksun days, but I don't see halflings as caucasoid either. More aboriginal. Large foreheads, flat faces, high cheekbones, neotenous. Arguably more Asian than caucasoid.

Many of my human nations are not caucasoid. Ti'en Ch'i is Asian for example.

Drow are not caucasoid. They're not afroid either BTW.

There's no reason to think elves in general are caucasoid, in fact. They're generally depicted as light-skinned, but that could just mean they're Japanese. Or, you know, nonhuman.

 

[Jester David]

I completely disagree here. I know a number of Lovecraft fans and none of them would condone any sort of racism. All of them, without exception, are aware of Lovecraft's flaws and they can appreciate his work while acknowledging them. Thinking we have to purge work from the collective consciousness because it was written by flawed people or in a time or place with different morals is ridiculous and in my opinion dangerous.

I don't think purging Lovecraft is an option either. Lovecraft has become hugely influential. He did good work. It's important to separate the art from the artist.
But, at the same time, it is encouraging people to read and share the work of a pretty racist human being. Thankfully, Lovecraft no longer financially benefits from his work, so we're no longer directly supporting him (unlike, say, Orson Scott Card), so we're not supporting his beliefs through innaction.

But that does not mean we shouldn't try to avoid racist imagery and symbolism.
It's important for a balance to be struck and be careful what Lovecraftian elements you permit into the game. And to not be seen as condoning or forgiving his beliefs, which cannot even be argued as being "a product of his times". And when presenting something Lovecraftian, monsters are pretty safe, but when you drift into anything humanoid things get a little more uncomfortable. You need to be careful what aspects you are emphasizing and using to tell your story. And more deliberate action has to be taken to work against racism so as not to condone his racial beliefs.

To me, orcs are presented as nasty, evil, smelly, and violent. I would never associate that with any group of humans. Why would anyone else, and if they do how is that anyone's fault but theirs?

This is completely blaming the victim. "If you didn't like the obvious suggested implications, you should have thought that".

The movie creators presented the only dark skinned characters in the film - the only characters played by actors of colour - as brutal cannibalistic savages. Tolkien's accidental racism wasn't unknown prior to filming. This has been pointed out for years and years (as far back as C.S. Lewis, who was a friend of Tolkien). The filmmakers could have done something to counter these negative associations, but did nothing.

Do people associate elves with real world nations? That seems bizarre. What would be the point?

This is a poor argument. It's claiming that "because elves aren't racist, orcs must also not be racist." (Or "X =/= Z, therefore Y must =/= Z"). That's not logically valid.

Traditional portrayals of elves also don't conform to negative stereotypes of a race. Especially since they're presented pretty positively.

I always imagine goblins/orcs as grey-skinned, more pale than dark - probably from watching the Hobbit cartoon when I was young. I also wouldn't have a problem with dark-skinned elves. Drow are different; they have obsidian colored skin not because they are evil but because of their subterranean habitat.

Firstly, subterranean creatures would be pale and albino and not black.
Secondly, it doesn't matter if the exact hues match real world races. If all the heroes of a film are pale lily white and all the villains are darker in colouration it perpetuates the very old stereotype that goodness is equated with skin tone. The movies went out of their way to include token females, attempting to fix the accidental sexism of Tolkien, but they didn't include any black Hobbits or elves or humans.

Edit: As an extension to this, the light/dark thing is often used as a proxy in the battle between good and evil (think positive and negative energy planes). This is far more fundamental than any issue with skin color and derives from our collective fear of the dark among other things. I think pointing to this as an example of racism would be a mistake (I'm not saying anyone is. I'm just saying.)

You can still have a shadowy dark evil without colour-coding the protagonists based on skin colouration. The fear of the dark applies because of the shadowy unknown, indistinct and mysterious. So heroes in bright clothes in well lit locations convey the same effect.

The thing is Western culture is implicitly racist. Racism exists. It's a thing. Especially in movies.

RPGs are small enough that they can be different. They can be better. It is literally about fantasy, so we don't have to accept the broken, damaged, unpleasant world as it is. We don't need to use the same tired old, lazy tropes or condone the racism of our world. Just saying "well, we're not racist so it's not our problem" does nothing to fix the problem and makes the D&D/RPG community complicit through inaction.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

(because Aslan is not "some lion who's symbolically Jesus for Narnia," which *would* be an allegory; as Lewis intended it, Aslan is Jesus, just the way Jesus looks in the alternate world of Narnia rather than on Earth.)

Really? So you think CS Lewis's version of Jesus died twice? Once on Earth and once in Narnia? That's a pretty radical claim from a theological standpoint, and I am skeptical that Lewis meant to make such a claim. I think it's just an allegory, perhaps one that got muddier with subsequent books.