Race in RPG and the Alternatives

[jhkimrpg]

My theory post, "Who's on Top? -- Social Class in Tabletop RPGs" brought me back to some continuing thoughts on representations of race in RPGs, following up on my other posts under the racism tag.

In particular, I'd like to link to the Race in D&D blog, started by Chris Van Dyke last November after he gave a presentation on that topic for nerd

Comments

[roseembolism]

I do indeed. This has a lot of bearing on a number of issues I'm trying to work out in Under the Green Moon, my "hard fantasy" project. One ting I want to do is to avoid conflating race with culture, as most rpgs seem to do; I even dislike the way the term "race" is used in RPGs. I'm not sure if I've made things better or worse by using the term "breed" instead.

Complicating this in my WiP is that while I dislike making individuals of a race identical or stereotypes, the "younger" are actually products of advanced genetic engneering thousands of years previously. Therefore it makes sense that they would have common traits.

One thing I have done, is separate out cultures from breeds, and give stereotyped attitudes for those cultures (while noting that exceptions are plentiful). So for instance, a Viridian and a Daemon who are both nobles of the Old Empire will have more in common than two Viridians, one of whom is an Old Empire noble, and the other a sea nomad.

Anyway, this post gave me a lot to work with. Thank you!

[whswhs]

In Tolkien's case, at least, I'm not convinced that the different "races" are mainly analogs of human races. I've been struck for some time by a different analogy. Some literary critic wrote of W. B. Yeats that his social ideal was a perfect feudal system, with a learned clergy, a brave aristocracy, a contented peasantry, and tradesmen who knew their places. That's exactly what Tolkien gives us in the "free peoples": elves, men, hobbits, and dwarves, respectively. That is, he's showing us an idealized analog of Catholic medievalism . . . in which, of course, most of the different classes were endogenous, and perhaps even of different sizes: a knight's children would grow up bigger than a peasant's because they ate better.

And then, of course, the wicked industrial capitalists Sauron and Saruman come along and create a degenerate proletariat of orcs. . . .

[macklinr]

Interesting, John.

Another RPG that wasn't focused on the human average that comes to my mind is In Nomine. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. It did have various varieties of angel & demon that were race package analogs, but it fit within its own paradigm.

[jhkimrpg]

I've browsed In Nomine, but don't know it in detail. It seems that as far as race goes, it is in the same framework as the World of Darkness games of being all non-human, with various splats as the groupings.

[yamanin]

Another problem with race/alien species is that most players run an elf exactly the same way they would run a dwarf, except perhaps favoring a race's 'signature weapon,' which in most systems is pretty much a cosmetic difference anyway.

The system I'm developing eschews fantasy races for all of the reasons stated above; instead; I have developed a set of very distinct human races and cultures. A character's culture of origin defines his starting language and the technology he's familiar with, but that's about it.

[jhkimrpg]

Fair enough. There certainly isn't a need for fantasy races or a parallel quality at all. I probably should have mentioned this as an option, since there are some games that have only human races, such as the OGL Conan game or 7th Sea.

I'm glad to hear about the culture of origin being a minor shift. The OGL Conan game, for example, treats its human races much like fantasy races. i.e. Shemites get a bonus to Appraise skill, bow use, and coup de grace; Kushites get a bonus to spear use and to outdoor skills in a hot environment; etc. For my tastes, this is uncomfortably close to R.E. Howard's view.

[princeofcairo]

Shouldn't a Conan game be close to Robert E. Howard's view?

[jhkimrpg]

Well, not for my tastes. I've only played one-shots of Conan, but I've done a fair bit of Call of Cthulhu, and one Lovecraft trope that I'm glad hasn't surfaced in play is being threatened by horrible, animalistic negroes.

I talk about this some in "What makes a good celebration?" Yes, by making a game a Conan game I am celebrating what makes Howard great -- but the game can be transformative and still true to the source.

Not all early writers were actively racist, but Lovecraft and Howard stand out to me. I love their writing, but there are parts of them that I'm not interested in reproducing.

[sim_james]

I followed that link to Stormfront - pretty scary stuff. I didn't like to read more than a few posts.

I don't think that there -needs- to be a "default" race. Some racial or cultural groups might be more or less common, but why do we -have- to be normative? There's no default race in Talislanta, helped by the lack of clear human/elf/dwarf analogues. You can easily define what the baseline is - zero in each stat - but there isn't a specific race that inhabits that position.

Heck, were I to redesign D&D, I'd love to give humans something like +2 Constitution and a bonus to overland travel and endurance. They're the baseline due to lazy design, not because there -has- to be a baseline.

[jhkimrpg]

That's a good point! However, I don't think humano-centrism is lazy. It is very deliberate, and indeed reflects common themes such as Tolkien's picture of humans eventually inheriting the world over the other races.

I don't think these choices are inherently lazy or wrong, just that there ought to be more variety. That would include no default, human default, and non-human default.