Examples of and Approaches to Race in RPGs
There has been a fair bit of discussion regarding race and RPGs on Vincent Baker's new forum on "God, Sex, and RPGs" -- the eclectically-titled "I Would Knife-Fight A Man". I had posted first in the thread "Examples of Racism in RPGs" -- which broke down in controversy, but there were many follow-up threads, as seen in the forum category race & rpgs.
Via the IRIS Networks' Race and Ethnicity in Games sub-forum, I read an article on a Milwaukee newpaper site, "A new tone in gaming", about the third game in the Guild Wars series, "Guild Wars: Nightfall", which is set in a fantasy world inspired by North African culture. It was written by former TSR author Jeff Grubb (whose tabletop RPG credits include Marvel Superheroes, Buck Rogers, and D20 Modern).
Also via IRIS, I saw "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet" by Lisa Nakamura.
Examples of Race Issues
As I said in the Knife-Fight thread, I have never experienced racism in a game in the blatant sense of someone explicitly denigrating me based on race. However, there have been times when I have been made to pause and think about race. I'll talk about two of them.
At AmberCon NorthWest '06, I played in a game called "Exponential". I was playing the only Asian in a group of American scientist PCs, and as it happened, I was also the only Asian player. My PC was a rabid anti-communist, but even so when the destruction of the world was threatened, he suggested that we (the U.S.) talk to the Chinese government to work with them rather than trying to fight them to wipe out a project of theirs. However, everyone else was insistent that the Chinese couldn't possibly be made to understand the danger. Now, this is mixed up with anti-communism attitudes, but the vigor did give me pause. There wasn't anything overt, but it made me think. cf. my ACNW07 report
Many years earlier, I was playing in a horror campaign set in Victorian London. I was playing a white police inspector who was racist and violent, and we encountered Fu Manchu as a villain. Here's the bit that gave me pause. Naturally, my PC Inspector Grimmond was all violently against Fu Manchu, and there was an old Chinese shopkeeper (NPC) whom we had encountered. Grimmond was convinced that he worked for Fu Manchu, and went to beat him up. Now, as it turned out, in retialation for his brutalizing the old man, Fu Manchu captured Grimmond and tortured him. He was rescued by the other PCs with his lower half thoroughly chewed up by rats. As far as we had seen in the game, Grimmond's assumption that all Chinamen worked for Fu Manchu was correct. However, the GM was quite upset at Grimmond's racist and violent behavior on the basis of that assumption. He was perfectly aware of the racist nature of the Fu Manchu stories and mocked it, but nevertheless in retrospect I think that race was an issue here.
I'll have to ponder about other cases.
Issues of Race in Game Systems/Settings
There was an IRIS thread about creating non-racist fantasy races/cultures which was interesting. As many people have noted in the past, fantasy settings often reify common racist thinking -- i.e. there are inherently barbaric and/or evil races like orcs; race is a very concrete effect on one's abilities and personality; often there are distinct cultures especially tied to race (i.e. dwarves are good at mining and stonework); and race is a discrete quality (i.e. there are elves and dwarves, with nothing in between).
The Knife-Fight thread broke down in particular over issues with the drow in D&D, and in particular of white gamers dressing up as black elves. I'm not completely settled on this issue, but it certainlyi gives me pause. I imagine someone unfamiliar with it seeing a person dressed up as a drow at a convention:
P1: Is that dude dressed up as a black guy?
P2: Er, no. He's dressed up as a black elf.
P1: Interesting. There are black elves?
P2: Well, sort of, but not really. There are black-skinned elves, but they're an evil race who live underground, and have a different culture.
P1: Oh.
On the opposing side, the drow don't match most stereotypes of Africans -- but I also don't think that it a coincidence that the only black-skinned elves are evil.
Approaches to Real Races (i.e. Africans, Asians, etc.)
Among real races, blatant discrimination or essentialism is rare. (i.e. There are no games which have a "black" race with +2 Strength and -2 Intelligence modifier.) Still, there are problematic approaches. Two common problems I've seen seen are:
(1) Having non-white races be Western stereotypes of them. In particular, even if generally positive the races are often exoticized -- i.e. portraying Japanese as all ninja and/or samurai, with larger-than-life drama over honor. If there are multiple races, then the one race will all be the same culture and beliefs.
(2) Having non-whites just be whites with changed skin -- such as writing a game with no mention of race and illustrations of primarily white heroes, but then adding a footnote that other races exist and are treated equally.
While in principle, it is possible for a game to explicitly focus on racism -- I think a good approach is to concentrate on making other races normal. That is, for non-white races to have diversity within themselves as well as a relatively ordinary populace. In the Vinland campaign, I made a point to contrast the different cultures. My game was set in 1392 of an alternate history where the Icelanders successfully settled in the Hudson Valley. I played up the contrast of the traditionally more peaceful Algonquian tribes with the encroaching Iroquoian tribes (who were unifying under Hiawatha) who were the enemy. While in principle this might have been viewed dimly by an Iroquoian-derived player, I think for my players it was a study in the clash of cultures.
Approaches to Fantasy Races
On both Knife-Fight and IRIS, there was discussion made of fantasy races like elves and dwarves. On Knife-Fight, Simon C. wrote: I think fantasy races are interesting because they're just that: a fantasy about race. They're what racists want race to be: permanent, unalterable, genetically distinct, with clear implications for who that person is. It's okay to think that orcs are stupid, because if that's the way your world works, all orcs are stupid.
The built-in mechanics of race are interesting in that way. I note that while there is slight acknowledgement of half-breeds (such as Human/Elf and Human/Orc), they are presumably infertile because there are no quarters or other mixtures.
My own fantasy games have generally been all-human rather than featuring much of fantasy races like elves and dwarves. Still, I do recall some breaking of race assumptions. I remember years ago I played in a GURPS Fantasy game which was set in a post-apocalyptic Europe where magic had returned and history was repeating itself -- so you had elves and dwarves amidst Imperial Rome and medieval France. I decided to play a Romanized elf -- Antonius Publius Eldarus -- who had completely rejected the backwards ways of his people and was passionately Roman, extolling the virtues of Roman civilization. He acknowledged that there were problems with slavery (among others), but claimed that in order for the lives of all to be improved, there needed to be institutions that rose above what isolated tribes could do for themselves.
Via the IRIS Networks' Race and Ethnicity in Games sub-forum, I read an article on a Milwaukee newpaper site, "A new tone in gaming", about the third game in the Guild Wars series, "Guild Wars: Nightfall", which is set in a fantasy world inspired by North African culture. It was written by former TSR author Jeff Grubb (whose tabletop RPG credits include Marvel Superheroes, Buck Rogers, and D20 Modern).
Also via IRIS, I saw "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet" by Lisa Nakamura.
Examples of Race Issues
As I said in the Knife-Fight thread, I have never experienced racism in a game in the blatant sense of someone explicitly denigrating me based on race. However, there have been times when I have been made to pause and think about race. I'll talk about two of them.
At AmberCon NorthWest '06, I played in a game called "Exponential". I was playing the only Asian in a group of American scientist PCs, and as it happened, I was also the only Asian player. My PC was a rabid anti-communist, but even so when the destruction of the world was threatened, he suggested that we (the U.S.) talk to the Chinese government to work with them rather than trying to fight them to wipe out a project of theirs. However, everyone else was insistent that the Chinese couldn't possibly be made to understand the danger. Now, this is mixed up with anti-communism attitudes, but the vigor did give me pause. There wasn't anything overt, but it made me think. cf. my ACNW07 report
Many years earlier, I was playing in a horror campaign set in Victorian London. I was playing a white police inspector who was racist and violent, and we encountered Fu Manchu as a villain. Here's the bit that gave me pause. Naturally, my PC Inspector Grimmond was all violently against Fu Manchu, and there was an old Chinese shopkeeper (NPC) whom we had encountered. Grimmond was convinced that he worked for Fu Manchu, and went to beat him up. Now, as it turned out, in retialation for his brutalizing the old man, Fu Manchu captured Grimmond and tortured him. He was rescued by the other PCs with his lower half thoroughly chewed up by rats. As far as we had seen in the game, Grimmond's assumption that all Chinamen worked for Fu Manchu was correct. However, the GM was quite upset at Grimmond's racist and violent behavior on the basis of that assumption. He was perfectly aware of the racist nature of the Fu Manchu stories and mocked it, but nevertheless in retrospect I think that race was an issue here.
I'll have to ponder about other cases.
Issues of Race in Game Systems/Settings
There was an IRIS thread about creating non-racist fantasy races/cultures which was interesting. As many people have noted in the past, fantasy settings often reify common racist thinking -- i.e. there are inherently barbaric and/or evil races like orcs; race is a very concrete effect on one's abilities and personality; often there are distinct cultures especially tied to race (i.e. dwarves are good at mining and stonework); and race is a discrete quality (i.e. there are elves and dwarves, with nothing in between).
The Knife-Fight thread broke down in particular over issues with the drow in D&D, and in particular of white gamers dressing up as black elves. I'm not completely settled on this issue, but it certainlyi gives me pause. I imagine someone unfamiliar with it seeing a person dressed up as a drow at a convention:
P1: Is that dude dressed up as a black guy?
P2: Er, no. He's dressed up as a black elf.
P1: Interesting. There are black elves?
P2: Well, sort of, but not really. There are black-skinned elves, but they're an evil race who live underground, and have a different culture.
P1: Oh.
On the opposing side, the drow don't match most stereotypes of Africans -- but I also don't think that it a coincidence that the only black-skinned elves are evil.
Approaches to Real Races (i.e. Africans, Asians, etc.)
Among real races, blatant discrimination or essentialism is rare. (i.e. There are no games which have a "black" race with +2 Strength and -2 Intelligence modifier.) Still, there are problematic approaches. Two common problems I've seen seen are:
(1) Having non-white races be Western stereotypes of them. In particular, even if generally positive the races are often exoticized -- i.e. portraying Japanese as all ninja and/or samurai, with larger-than-life drama over honor. If there are multiple races, then the one race will all be the same culture and beliefs.
(2) Having non-whites just be whites with changed skin -- such as writing a game with no mention of race and illustrations of primarily white heroes, but then adding a footnote that other races exist and are treated equally.
While in principle, it is possible for a game to explicitly focus on racism -- I think a good approach is to concentrate on making other races normal. That is, for non-white races to have diversity within themselves as well as a relatively ordinary populace. In the Vinland campaign, I made a point to contrast the different cultures. My game was set in 1392 of an alternate history where the Icelanders successfully settled in the Hudson Valley. I played up the contrast of the traditionally more peaceful Algonquian tribes with the encroaching Iroquoian tribes (who were unifying under Hiawatha) who were the enemy. While in principle this might have been viewed dimly by an Iroquoian-derived player, I think for my players it was a study in the clash of cultures.
Approaches to Fantasy Races
On both Knife-Fight and IRIS, there was discussion made of fantasy races like elves and dwarves. On Knife-Fight, Simon C. wrote: I think fantasy races are interesting because they're just that: a fantasy about race. They're what racists want race to be: permanent, unalterable, genetically distinct, with clear implications for who that person is. It's okay to think that orcs are stupid, because if that's the way your world works, all orcs are stupid.
The built-in mechanics of race are interesting in that way. I note that while there is slight acknowledgement of half-breeds (such as Human/Elf and Human/Orc), they are presumably infertile because there are no quarters or other mixtures.
My own fantasy games have generally been all-human rather than featuring much of fantasy races like elves and dwarves. Still, I do recall some breaking of race assumptions. I remember years ago I played in a GURPS Fantasy game which was set in a post-apocalyptic Europe where magic had returned and history was repeating itself -- so you had elves and dwarves amidst Imperial Rome and medieval France. I decided to play a Romanized elf -- Antonius Publius Eldarus -- who had completely rejected the backwards ways of his people and was passionately Roman, extolling the virtues of Roman civilization. He acknowledged that there were problems with slavery (among others), but claimed that in order for the lives of all to be improved, there needed to be institutions that rose above what isolated tribes could do for themselves.