"You're a half elf? Really?" From the P.A. Podcasts

[Hussar]

"I had no idea your character was black. He should act more black!"

Heh, I was wondering if this would come up.

Would it be fine if, at the table, in a modern game, halfway through the campaign, it suddenly came out that one of the players was black. Everyone at the table (barring the player of course) had no idea. The character was played in such a way that the issue of his background never came up. Not once. Not one single time.

And that's good roleplaying?

I know I'm taking flak for badwrongfun and all that. Fine. Y'know what? I don't care. If a player cannot take 5 minutes to establish a core element of their character - and yes, I do consider the fact that my character is a different SPECIES than another character to be an important fact - that's bad roleplaying.

Heck, if I did it as a writer, I'd get hammered. If my fantasy novel was two hundred pages in before I established that Legolas wasn't human, I'd be a very poor writer. "What do your elven eyes see?" is all it takes. Ok, it's a crappy line, but, you get the point. If my Twilek Jedi goes three sessions before the fact that he's blue and has "brain tails" comes out, I'm going to say I failed.

You can nitpick my examples all you like. That's fine. Get your own examples. My point was, establishing a character's race is a very simple thing. It takes all of 5 minutes to do. Again, and I'll keep repeating myself so long as people keep taking it the wrong way, I'm NOT saying that you have to make your race the most important aspect of your character.

By no means does your race have to be the most important aspect of your character. However, it IS an aspect of your character and should be brought into play at some point. At least brought in enough that the other players at the table aren't surprised ten or fifteen hours into play that you aren't what they thought you were.

I'm not picking on this particular example, really. It's just one of a bajillion I've seen over the years, almost exclusively with elves and half-elves. For some reason, people are capable of establishing the race of their character with almost any other race. With elves? It's "I'm a human that sees in the dark".

 

[MarkB]

Heh, I was wondering if this would come up.

Would it be fine if, at the table, in a modern game, halfway through the campaign, it suddenly came out that one of the players was black. Everyone at the table (barring the player of course) had no idea. The character was played in such a way that the issue of his background never came up. Not once. Not one single time.

And that's good roleplaying?

It's certainly not bad roleplaying.

Details of a character's physical appearance should be mentioned when they're first introduced, but it's easy for other players to miss things at that point, and afterwards, those details may not come up again for a long time.

Some players like to have their character fundamentally shaped by their racial background. Others (or even the same player with a different character) prefer to have other things define their character, with race only the most minor factor. Both approaches are right.

 

[Umbran]

And that's good roleplaying?

I don't think you can say without knowing more information - like, has the character's race been relevant?

 

[Umbran]

They really need a stereotype that justifies adverturing.

I disagree, unless you want to argue that the race, as a whole, is adventuring. In most worlds, adventurers are not a sizable fraction of the population. Adventurers are exceptions to the general behavior of the race, not examples of the general behavior.

So, the individual character needs to have a reason to adventure - the race as a whole can do what it darn well pleases.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think you can say without knowing more information - like, has the character's race been relevant?

I disagree. I think I can pretty easily say that.

How can a character's race not be relevant?

Really. How can it not have ever come up? Isn't a character's species about as relevant as its gender and, at the very least, general appearance?

Again, if I was writing a novel and, three or four chapters in, suddenly sprang on the reader, "Oh hey, by the way, so and so isn't really human, he can see in the dark. He's a half elf." that would be piss poor writing. Unless there was a specific reason why it wasn't mentioned, this should, at the very least, get a smidgeon of screen time. At least enough to establish a picture of the character.

Essentially, by not establishing the character's species, the player has made little to no effort to portray his character as it actually exists in the game. The other players have no idea what you actually are. Their mental image of the character is wrong, not through any fault of their own, but because they were not provided with some pretty relevant information.

There is a great deal of space between Chris Rock style rants on how the Man is Keeping Him Down and Fytor Goodwithswords. You don't need to carry a sandwich board proclaiming the character's species every single time you turn around. However, a bit of effort, at least once in a while, just to provide the other players with enough information to have an accurate mental picture of your character is hardly, IMO, too much to ask.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Heh, I was wondering if this would come up.

Would it be fine if, at the table, in a modern game, halfway through the campaign, it suddenly came out that one of the players was black. Everyone at the table (barring the player of course) had no idea. The character was played in such a way that the issue of his background never came up. Not once. Not one single time.

And that's good roleplaying?

If you're playing a modern game (early 21st Century), I'd say the role-playing has been excellent and should be praised.

 

[SSquirrel]

There is a great deal of space between Chris Rock style rants on how the Man is Keeping Him Down and Fytor Goodwithswords. You don't need to carry a sandwich board proclaiming the character's species every single time you turn around. However, a bit of effort, at least once in a while, just to provide the other players with enough information to have an accurate mental picture of your character is hardly, IMO, too much to ask.

You know, speaking of Chris Rock....ok, time to paraphrase Eladrin are basically the snooty high elves and elves are what prior editions termed wood elves. Well, how do the 2 elf races look at each other? Do Eladrin see themselves as the law-abiding, civilized types and the Elves are uncouth and untrustworthy? Borrowing from Chris Rock (and made appropriate to the conversation): "An Eladrin didn't steal your TV, an ELF stole your TV!"

 

[Umbran]

I disagree. I think I can pretty easily say that.

How can a character's race not be relevant?

I'll take a real but somewhat extreme example first to demonstrate the point: You are playing Paranoia - the character's skin color means absolutely nothing. There are no cultural biases in the game setting based upon skin color. It is irrelevant to the game.

Or maybe you're playing Tales From the Floating Vagabond - a game which centers around a bar that has a doorway to all possible universes, so that the bar is populated with such a variety that you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a species you've never seen before. In such a game, it is not unreasonable for the GM and players to consider that the population of that bar really doesn't care about what species you are.

In some other games, certain forms of "race" matter, while others do not. For example: Shadowrun. It matters if you are a human, an orc, or an elf. But, with only a couple exceptions, skin color means nothing - once you're a troll, being Asian, Caucasian, or African descent is not relevant.

In general, a character's race will be irrelevant if it does not significantly impact their choice of actions, or how others react to them. Whether or not it is relevant cannot be judged in general - it is specific to the socio-politics of the individual campaign.

 

[keterys]

Don't a lot of half-elves effectively try to blend in with another race?

I'm surprised that it wouldn't come up before that, with the half-elf 1/encounter power, but as a half-elf I don't see much reason to push his race to the forefront.

 

[Akaiku]

As an aside on the "You are a ___? Really?" thing, I have a character with a picture and everything that the GM keeps forgetting the gender of... I blame Serenity.