The Specter of Racism

[Malachi Lemont]

I've been thinking a lot about the nature of world-building recently - about how enjoyable it is but also how dangerous it can be. It wasn't until recently, during my university course in cultural anthropology, that I realized what's been troubling me so much about many of the worlds I've created, or helped others create.

When creating a world, whether for an RPG or simply for the joy of imagination, we often fall back onto some basic assumptions about race - assumptions that the real world has been trying to overcome. I'm not saying it's wrong to dream up a world with elves and dwarves and goblins - not at all. But it becomes a problem when, over and over again, we assume, without even the need to explain why, that one's external racial identity matches one's internal identity. In other words, what's to say that every dwarf will automatically identify with dwarfliness (if that's even a word - if it's not, it should be!) or that every elf will be bitter toward the orcs, or that every half-elf will be equal parts human and elf. (And why not half-elf, half- dwarf? Why does one half have to be human?)

Sometimes we get lost in our fantasy creations, and we have to step back and think about what it means to be human. To be human is to think, to believe in the unknown, and to have the responsibility to tell right from wrong. The creatures of our stories - aliens, centaurs, lizardfolk - are undoubtedly human, because otherwise they would have no place in storytelling. So fantasy is not about answering the question, "What would a non-human society look like?" because no such society has or ever will exist. Fantasy is about taking a new angle on the richness and complexity of the human experience.

I came to this conclusion about RPG world-building during cultural anthropology class because it struck me as ironic how we deplore the 19th century notions of scientific racism, yet we create fictional settings that seek to validate these obsolete ideas. Until WWII, Europeans and their descendants in America saw little problem with the beliefs that:
---Humanity can be neatly divided up into well-defined categories,
---These categories demonstrate a correlation between appearance and personality, and that
---A nation's ability to dominate other nations is the sole measure of it's people's intelligence.

Of course now we all know that these ideas are total nonsense. Then why do we say things like...


Dwarves - The False Allies - All the archetypes fit. They're venerable, and though staunch defenders their race has declined. They bear grudges and aren't above treachery. They can live in the mountainous bit to the west of the map.

(from an unnamed world)



Only if everything is in place will gnomes strike back, with very underhanded business practices, ambushes, or even outright assassination, after their enemies thought them defeated and themselves in safety. This has given gnomes a reputation of being liars or cheats, as they will often make promises they have no intention to keep, to get themselves out of tight spots.



+2 Dexterity, -2 Charisma: Nezumi are agile but often erratic and short tempered.


Intimidating: Kaas receive a +2 racial bonus on Intimidate skill checks due to their fearsome nature.

( all from Ancient Lands - a beautiful campaign setting by the way, otherwise I wouldn't be picking on it.)


I like the idea of the buffalotaurs mostly just because the indians called Africans Buffalo Soldiers. For some reason I just had a mental picture of a runaway slave running into them and being accepted into the herd. That would just be a really fun character to play.


On the Ruskies: I like the idea of Alaska being a penal colony of there's. Actualy, considering that the continent is a giant magical pile up anyway and eastern europe may or may not be rather magical right now, the Russians sending some "alcolytes of Kosche", along with a few regular folk, out into Alaska might be entertaining, to say the least.


So, yeah, basicly suggesting russian necromancers setting up shop in north america.


(from Crossroads: The New World - which is coming along great. And by the way, I actually appreciate that you had the guts to mention real-world nationalities. Nonetheless, you have to be careful about the implications of saying "eastern Europe might be rather magical...")

So yeah. I'm sorry if I've been too harsh. I'm not trying to lay on the guilt. Believe me, I've made all of these mistakes before, and the wonderful people of Giant in the Playground have helped steer me in the right direction. My basic propositions for future world-building are:

---If you choose to draw distinctions between races, make the distinctions primarily cultural, not genetic. Try not to create separate species.

---If you do make a totally new species, like in the case of an alien invasion, do not go to great lengths to make them "totally different from us." I think it's far more fascinating to encounter aliens who we can relate to. Besides, who is the "us"? Humanity is far too diverse for you to create another species just as a foil to humanity.

---Don't accept racism to immediately arise as the natural result of the mixing of two groups. While there will probably be confusion due to cultural differences, don't expect a dichotomy of oppressor vs. oppressed to immediately evolve.

---Race relations are never static. They are constantly evolving.

---Different cultures have different definitions of race. Fictional worlds should address this. Someone might be an "elf" to one and a "dwarf" to another.

---Also, don't create a "normal" race that is average in all ways. I can't emphasize this enough. No one is truly average. Everyone is an alien to someone else. Please, just don't do this.

---Finally, remember: Cultures, customs, and histories do not just come to be. They are made by people. People with fears, hopes, desires, flaws, and virtues. Even if those people have pointed ears or short, stubby legs. "Tradition" is not a good enough reason for a social custom. "Tolkien said so" is not good enough either. We can't actually re-create the world, but we can offer a new and beautiful perspective on it. So let's do so.

Thank you for reading. Now let's go enjoy some world-building.

[Mith]

*Standing Ovation*

Great post! I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis of RPG worldbuilding, and the potential implications behind it. I remember getting quite frustrated with a friend of mine when we played 1e DnD because he thought it hilarious that he could be Lawful and have his character declare genocide on Goblinoids, while I was greatly disturbed.

[zabbarot]

I see you quoted me :P In all honesty I think at times we are too careful about race. Sometimes we try so hard not to step on toes that we just get awkward. For example, I've never liked the term 'Native American' if anything we're American and the white people are European American, so I'm perfectly fine using the term Indian. Sweeping generalizations are a problem, but people who are part of a culture will have similarities, especially in a lower tech world where travel is less common. Sometimes you have to summarize groups. Individuals will be different, but you can't really define a culture by listing every individual member. I'm Hispanic and I like refried beans and rice. Most of us do, you can add that to a description of Hispanics without really offending anyone. Sometimes cultures will have bad traits though. It happens. Racism, nationalism, even jingoism are real things and often they are cultural. That doesn't mean everyone coming out of that culture will feel that way, but it will affect their opinions, even if the effect is an extreme distaste for the practice. I feel the more important thing is to make sure the characters you use aren't just stereotypes.

[Amechra]

I think in some ways you are slightly off base.

If I were to, say, tell you that Elves in my setting are all pathological liars, that is a statement of fact. Unless I'm taking a position as an unreliable narrator, that statement just is. It's like saying that "some medicines are statistically more effective when used on this demographic"; no value judgment is made.

Because of we are going to call defining base personality traits of a different species racist, isn't it also racist to point out that the baseline for another race is different from our own?

If you don't define the differences of a species from humanity, you might as well just make them a separate human culture. I'd be really surprised if a Dwarf and I had similar worldviews.

[NothingButCake]

I am okay with different species (which may be a more accurate term than 'races') having innate differences. I think where the problem comes into play is that humans tend to 1. represent a generic European culture (tending towards English-German), 2. represent the 'default' around which the world and story is centered with other species/races (often representing non-European cultures) in contrast to them, and 3. represent the widest variety of individual expression.

I do not think the greedy Jew or the noble savage or the mysterious Oriental become acceptable characters when their species is switched out from human to another.

I think a big problem is that people use real-world cultures as shortcuts to writing depth. Instead of developing a sense of history and idiosyncrasy, it's "fantasy China" or "fantasy Africa" as though these labels had one static culture (or in the case of "Africa", as though the word has actual cultural weight or meaning as opposed to being the name of a continent of peoples who never thought of themselves as one). I think there is a similar problem in how fantasy cities are created, as though they were urban planned from the beginning (which could be possible, but generally isn't supposed to be the idea).

[Amechra]

Well, that's a lack of creativity on the author's part, rather than (probably) any intent towards racism.

I'd say the reason that humans always seem to have the widest range for personal expression is that we all know humans. They are vanilla. When it comes to the other species of Humanoid (at the very least), well, how many different variations on the flavor of Banana Fudge Ripple can you make?

Of course, I shouldn't be talking; I once wrote a race that literally only had ten or so personalities (not personality types, personalities.), which were hereditary (though the personalities could be "bred", due to that race knowing their own psychological profiles inside and out, though any "new" personalities would decay within a generation or two.), so eh.

[anacalgion]

---Different cultures have different definitions of race. Fictional worlds should address this. Someone might be an "elf" to one and a "dwarf" to another.



So I promise my goal is not to take one little bit of a very well thought out post and rip it out of context, but this bit is confusing me. Sorry if I'm just dumb but isn't a tiger to you a tiger to me? Neither of us is going to start calling it a duck, so why would citizens of a fantasy world?

[Amechra]

I think Malachi is looking at "races" as something along the lines of human phenotypes (you know, Hispanic, Caucasian, etc, etc), instead of as separate species.

The word "Race", as used in D&D, usually actually means something closer to "Species." It's an older use of the word, but still a valid one.

EDIT: I can clearly envision a society where a large subclass of the entities are completely incapable of thought, one where the inhabitants have no conception of the unknown, and one where the inhabitants have no moral sense.

You are being a tad limited in your viewpoint if you think it's impossible to have a non-Human society (we haven't found one yet because the only societies (because we've defined instinctual groupings to not be societies. Otherwise communal insects disagree strongly with your argument) we've encountered so far have comprised purely of Homo Sapiens Sapiens).

Sure, we might not be able to comprehend how such a society would function, but that's beside the point.

[Malachi Lemont]

Thank you so much for your constructive criticism. I'm glad I could start an important debate. I realize that I might be seeing a problem where there is none, and I'm certainly not saying that anyone here is taking the wrong approach to world-building. I also realize that my idealistic approach to world-building might be impossible to implement in a role-playing game, and might undermine what D&D is all about. I really appreciate your comments about race and fantasy. I think that we are all struggling to learn what world-building is all about, to learn what is appropriate in fiction and what is not - and I am glad to have such supportive people help me in that struggle. Please continue to share your thoughts on this difficult topic.

[TheStranger]

This is a tough topic, for several reasons.

First, because multiple races is a longstanding fantasy trope, and it's fun. I *want* to play D&D in a world with elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. And I don't want to feel guilty about it. Not only that, I want to kill orcs, and I want them to deserve killing. Maybe not all the time, but I'm flatly rejecting any worldview in which playing an adventure along the lines of, "orcs are raiding the countryside, go kill them," is a bad thing. Because for a lot of people, that's what D&D *is.* I'm not saying you can't develop a setting without these tropes, but they're genre-defining tropes, and I'm not going to find fault with anybody who enjoys them.

Second, because worldbuilding without leaning on these tropes is *hard.* Haughty elves, alcoholic dwarves, tinkering gnomes, and the like are convenient shorthands for worldbuilders to use. It would be the work of a lifetime to develop a setting of any depth without using any stereotypes at all. By developing archetypes, then developing characters that adhere to and depart from those archetypes, you can get more mileage out of your work.

Third, because these racial tropes are part of the shared culture of gaming, and part of the language that we use to share our ideas with each other. If I put a dwarven kingdom in a mountain range, people who read my setting can make some assumptions about what that kingdom is like. In my writeup for that kingdom, I can say, in essence, which tropes I'm invoking, which ones I'm avoiding, and which ones I'm subverting. But our shared understanding of what dwarves are and what they do helps me communicate my ideas to my readers.

Fourth, because fantasy races allow writers to explore ideas that have no real-world analogue. We accept a dwarven kingdom because we know what dwarves are like. But a large, wealthy, technological advanced society of humans who lived underground would be hard for us to accept without some extraordinary justification.

Fifth, because racism is a thing. In-setting, at least some different racial and cultural groups *should* hate each other. They should have stereotypes and prejudices. It's lazy worldbuilding for the game designer to adopt those stereotypes, make them all true, and leave it there. But these ideas should exist in-game, because the world is flat without them.

Sixth, because race and culture often go together. People from region X generally have racial trait Y. Region X also has a history of belonging to cultural group Z. Therefore, many people with racial trait Y will be part of cultural group Z, and will have many of the traits of members of cultural group Z. Again, it's lazy worldbuilding to leave it there, but those kind of generalizations are a valid stepping stone as you're developing a setting.

Seventh, and I don't like making this argument, but because there's not really an alternative. Humans form groups. We identify ourselves as members of these groups by way of shared traits. We identify others as not belonging to our group because of different traits. If I say the words, "hipster," or "geek," or "bro," or "thug," or whatever, those words carry meaning. I doubt anybody from the U.S. can read those words without thinking of a set of traits that exemplify that group. We group ourselves and others by way of shared traits - it's what we do. The traits may be in the nature of race, religion, nationality, culture, appearance, etc. But at the end of the day, your setting will have groups of people identified by shared traits. Race, in both senses of the word, is likely to be among them unless your setting is racially homogenous.

My point is, a lot of what you're complaining about is fundamental to the genre, justified for in-world reasons, or even hardwired into us as humans. Now, it's not ok to use D&D as an outlet for real-world racism. It's poor worldbuilding to define any group solely by an archetype, and that can have unfortunate implications when one of the defining traits of the group is race (in either sense). And if your fantasy race is a proxy for a real-world race/culture, that's a problem. But D&D is historically a game with multiple races defined by various traits. If you want it to be something different in your setting, that's fine. But I don't think there's anything wrong with having some fun with the genre as it exists.

[Malachi Lemont]

I wholeheartedly agree with the Stranger's arguments in defense of the D&D race system. I understand that my propositions are extremely difficult to follow while still having fun with world-building. However, I still think that we need to maintain a sense of what race means to different people before we implement it in a fantasy world. Not to say that we shouldn't implement it. I'd much rather see someone take a risk in a world-building project and end up creating something borderline-offensive than see someone create a world full of lifeless, stale, politically-correct cultures.

[Gorfnod]

Bolded for emphasis.


Until WWII, Europeans and their descendants in America saw little problem with the beliefs that:
---Humanity can be neatly divided up into well-defined categories,
---These categories demonstrate a correlation between appearance and personality, and that
---A nation's ability to dominate other nations is the sole measure of it's people's intelligence.

Of course now we all know that these ideas are total nonsense. Then why do we say things like...

I do not come to argue the premise that these ideas are indeed nonsense but the fact remains that racism is still a very prevalent issue and indeed seperation of races is still supported by many world wide. One's racial bias can easily be concealed in public. I have seen many "not racist" folk act as polite as can be in mixed company and then change their attitude when only among close friends. The fact that these ideas are nonsense to some is not neccesarily that clear to all and even in the truly "not racist" the smallest bias will effect the creation of art.

[Morgarion]

Maybe I'm not following. On the one hand, you're saying let's back off of crystallizing races into statistical differences and let's think about their cultures and societies in relation to history. In my mind and the way I'm interpreting what you're saying, it sounds like you're making the case that stereotypy and ahistorical races are kind of offensive because it reinforces the mechanisms by which racist rhetoric propagates in real life. Then, you say you'd rather be borderline offended than indulge in worldbuilding that is unrealistically static. Unless I missed a step in someone's argumentation, I think that's a pretty big false dichotomy, although I might be reading into your first post a little bit.

Anyways, I have issue with a few of your suggestions. Culture over genetics when distinguishing among fantasy races is a big one. Especially given the way D&D works, for example, I think this would be so much more racist than the alternative. Let's say that goblins and orcs were just humans with different cultural norms - namely that banditry, murder and brute force were the most highly regarded values. WTF? That's so patently offensive.

As regards your no 'average/normal' race, this is pretty much mechanically impossible, especially as the number of races increase. You could, I suppose, make it so that every race receives some sort of modifier so that from the perspective of an average mechanical base (like D&D's 10s and 11s derived from the average on 3d6), no race's average stats approach that base very closely. Having no 'average/normal' race also kind of flies in the face of your previous directive, about making cultural distinctions as opposed to genetic ones, in my mind, unless you wanted to restrict 'racial' modifiers to skill bonuses in profession and craft.

[TheStranger]

Bolded for emphasis.


I do not come to argue the premise that these ideas are indeed nonsense but the fact remains that racism is still a very prevalent issue and indeed seperation of races is still supported by many world wide. One's racial bias can easily be concealed in public. I have seen many "not racist" folk act as polite as can be in mixed company and then change their attitude when only among close friends. The fact that these ideas are nonsense to some is not neccesarily that clear to all and even in the truly "not racist" the smallest bias will effect the creation of art.

Absolutely true. My defense of the D&D race system isn't meant to defend any implementation of real-world racism in the game. I'm not going to discuss real-world racial issues, but I'm certainly not blindly saying that it's all harmless because it's a fantasy setting. And I agree that it's important to consider the implications of your worldbuilding, particularly if you're planning to share your creation outside of a circle of close friends.

More problematic than race, in some ways, is the use of cultural analogues - your standard Arabian/Japanese/Scandinavian culture that fills the appropriate in-game niche. At the end of the day, there aren't any elves in the real world, and you're not going to offend very many people if you handle them poorly (unless they're clearly identified with a real-world group). You can't say the same for a country that's clearly based on popular conceptions of feudal Japan.

On the other hand, you need to get ideas from somewhere, and it would be hard to come up with a culture that didn't have things in common with a culture that's existed at some point in history. The problem is that intent is entirely subjective. If you're a racist and bringing that into the game, you're a bad person and should stop that. If your setting has some real-world parallels, either intentionally or unintentionally, but you didn't mean anything by it, you may want to change something if it's brought to your attention, but you shouldn't be getting death threats (well, the racist shouldn't be getting death threats either). But from the perspective of somebody who's offended by it, there's no way to know the difference.

As always, the real problem is that some people are jerks. Which leads us to the solution. Dudes, be excellent to each other.

[zabbarot]

I'd much rather see someone take a risk in a world-building project and end up creating something borderline-offensive than see someone create a world full of lifeless, stale, politically-correct cultures.

I think you're seeing a problem where one doesn't exist, or possibly even coming at it from the wrong angle. It can be problematic that the races in DnD are mostly monoculture. IE all elves act this way, all humans act this way. But at the same time even this makes sense. If you have a world with a much larger number of sapient species they will fill niche rolls. If orcs are physically stronger than elves it makes sense for them to play to their strengths in warfare.

I'm even okay with alignments being racial. Research shows that serial killers tend to have different brain function. So putting that in game terms a neurotypical human tends towards Neutral. Goblins could have a difference in neurology that means a neurotypical Goblin is chaotic evil. Even this opens up new possibilities. Now a Lawful Good Goblin is a mutant, and probably considered insane by members of his race.

Now maybe this sounds to you like the scientific racism you mentioned earlier, but you would be misunderstanding. We are all human. You can take any human on earth and raise them with any other group of humans and they will adopt that culture without problem. But the same cannot be said of a different species. You can raise a dog, but it will never adopt your culture. It will still do dog things, like mark territory or sniff dog butts. These things are instinctual. Can we really say that a fantasy sapient creature won't have it's own instincts? Humans instinctively mimic accents to fit in. What if other sapient species don't? Is it not anthropocentric to assume that they should be more like us? The fact of the matter is that the 'scientific' racism was based on assumptions with no factual substance.

And I realize I spent too much time with this open and Morgarion ninja'd me a bit on that.

[Whitersnake]

Malachi, I thought your analysis was interesting. In a way, I'm trying to do exactly what you're talking about in my Frigates and Flintlocks campaign setting, where I've eliminated races in favor of regional feats (and keep in mind that these regional feats have requirements that make sense; it's not as if having a European grandparent gives you access to the European feat tree even if you grew up in Australia). But at the same time, my setting chooses to focus on these issues and address them; I don't think every setting should be doing that. Let me address your actual points.



Sometimes we get lost in our fantasy creations, and we have to step back and think about what it means to be human. To be human is to think, to believe in the unknown, and to have the responsibility to tell right from wrong. The creatures of our stories - aliens, centaurs, lizardfolk - are undoubtedly human, because otherwise they would have no place in storytelling. So fantasy is not about answering the question, "What would a non-human society look like?" because no such society has or ever will exist. Fantasy is about taking a new angle on the richness and complexity of the human experience.I disagree. Don't get me work, fantasy CAN be about that, and often is. But exploring non-human societies is also a factor, if you're doing it right. Sometimes this is done wrong (like the Kender and their thievery) but other times it is done right. For example, a DM might look at hyenas. In hyena packs, the females are dominant, and rather viciously so. So when deciding what sort of role gnolls will play in his setting, the DM will say to himself "Well, what sort of society would emerge from tribal bands ruled over by vicious matriarchs?". At the same time, he can also look at other factors; hyenas have extremely painful childbirths, so he might want to think about how gnolls would react to this fact.

Is saying "Gnoll warbands are matriarchal and often quite vicious" racist? No, it's a statement of fact. It's no more racist than saying "leopards are almost always solitary hunters" or "when a male lion takes over a new pride, he will usually purge the last male's young". Saying something like "nail salons in California are run by Vietnamese women" is offensive not because there aren't nail salons run by Vietnamese women but because you're making an assumption: That if a Vietnamese woman is running a nail salon, she's doing it because she's Vietnamese. But that just doesn't apply to gnoll warbands because gnolls aren't a group of people with a certain culture; they're members of an entirely separate species who has its own "typical" member from which various cultures vary, and from which various individuals vary even more.


---If you choose to draw distinctions between races, make the distinctions primarily cultural, not genetic. Try not to create separate species. That's fine if you're going for a more realistic, less "fantasy" campaign like my Frigates and Flintlocks. F&F is meant to explore the question of, "how different would our world be if colonial powers and those they tried to colonize had access to magic?". But trying to say elves and dwarves are cultural choices rather than different species is just weird. Are you saying that in your world you want a culture of people who choose to be short, stout, and bearded?


---If you do make a totally new species, like in the case of an alien invasion, do not go to great lengths to make them "totally different from us." I think it's far more fascinating to encounter aliens who we can relate to. Besides, who is the "us"? Humanity is far too diverse for you to create another species just as a foil to humanity.Nothing wrong with doing both. A campaign that has a major human civilization and a completely alien nation of Yuan-Ti sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe the reason they're unable to reach peaceful compromise is because they come from such different backgrounds and have such different grasps of basic values?


---Don't accept racism to immediately arise as the natural result of the mixing of two groups. While there will probably be confusion due to cultural differences, don't expect a dichotomy of oppressor vs. oppressed to immediately evolve. Without going into real-world politics, I can tell you that this sounds way too optimistic and simply not in line with human nature. Humans tend to shy away from those different from them, often aggressively so. In the last few decades we've come a long way towards keeping our instincts in check (which is what we should be doing as civilized, sentient beings) though we still have a long way to go. A fantasy world, however, is usually set in the distant past. Any society which is based on the cultural values of the middle ages would not be happily embracing those different from them. So that gives you two options for non-racist societies, both of which are totally valid and interesting. First, other species of sentient beings would have had different backgrounds from us humans; perhaps they are far less likely to isolate themselves from the "Other". Or, perhaps some of your human societies have moral values closer to our own than to those of the people living a few hundred years ago. How these societies would clash and interact with the less friendly, more historical societies would be very interesting.


---Different cultures have different definitions of race. Fictional worlds should address this. Someone might be an "elf" to one and a "dwarf" to another.This just doesn't make sense. That's like saying that, had other species of humanoids survived the ice age, we could say that someone is a "Homo sapien" to one and a "Homo erectus" to another. These are biological classifications which, unlike race, have basis in fact. And like different species, it is entirely valid to say, for example, that the natural height range of Homo sapiens is higher than that of other hominids, or that elves tend to have more dexterous limbs (which doesn't mean that if you looked you couldn't find a clumsy elf and a dexterous dwarf; it just means that on population-level studies elves tend towards a higher dexterity). None of the things I've just mentioned are any different than claiming that tigers are bigger than lions. They are; that's a scientific fact, even if you can find a big lion and a runty tiger.

On the other hand, finding an elf who likes to wear heavy armor and swing an axe is entirely possible, as is finding a dwarf who likes to cast spells and sing in the forest. But just because the dwarf is a druid and the elf is a fighter doesn't mean that the dwarf is an elf while the elf is a dwarf, and no one other than racist people trying to offend the dwarf and the elf would say so.


---Also, don't create a "normal" race that is average in all ways. I can't emphasize this enough. No one is truly average. Everyone is an alien to someone else. Please, just don't do this.I don't think that fantasy really has normals or averages. Rather, there are people with bodies and cultures similar to our own. That makes them "normal" for us, but if we were elves playing Forgotten Realms we wouldn't be identifying with the humans; our "normal" would be the elves.

[Gorfnod]

Dudes, be excellent to each other.

First of all, love the Bill and Ted reference.


At the end of the day, there aren't any elves in the real world, and you're not going to offend very many people if you handle them poorly (unless they're clearly identified with a real-world group).

Pretty much have to pull the whole Watto from Episode I. "Look at me, I am a greedy, big-nosed, je....alien." It is terrible when you create something that offends someone but as the amount of exposure increases, the chance to offend just grows and grows. Simply put, you can't make everyone happy.


On the other hand, you need to get ideas from somewhere, and it would be hard to come up with a culture that didn't have things in common with a culture that's existed at some point in history.

To build off of TheStranger, fantasy stereotypes are comforting. They are known to us. I want to play the dwarf that respects honor and family above himself. I want to play the halfling that doesn't neccesarily think stealing is a big deal as long as its not really hurting anyone. I want to play the elf that... well I really don't want to play an elf. Anyways, these things are racist, specist whatever but they aren't real. They are made up races in a made up world.

Do we hate orcs because they are green? No, we hate them because they are mostly evil. Can an orc be good? Of course but so can a drow. That doesn't mean that Drizzt didn't have to bust his ass and prove himself time and time again to prove that "YES I AM GOOD". In a world were most things can kill you, it is indeed better to shoot first and ask questions later. It is not the worldbuilder that is being racist, he is just applying realistic expectations to the world that his characters live in.

It has never been stated that characters must follow archetypes and indeed it is often the shunning of typical cultural standards that creates adventures and makes them leave their homelands. This also allows for strange groups to be formed in the first place. Half-orc and elf in the same party? Well clearly someone is a bit of a free thinker.

[BRC]

what I find is often fascinating is to take bog-standard fantasy races, with all their monocultural personality intact, then remove all the moral judgements (Orcs are evil, Hobgoblins are cruel, ect) and mix them up in one community.

In a campaign I'm playing right now I'm an Orc in a largely human city (With a walled-off orcish district) I kind of went overboard with worldbuilding for the Orcish culture.
Basically, Orcs show respect by showing Strength. If an Orc wants to ask you somthing politely they show up with their most intimidating weapons and armor, they bring their scariest friends, and they boast about how awesome they are. The message being sent is not "I want to fight you" but "I respect your strength, so I came ready to defend myself if you choose to attack me".

by contrast showing up alone wearing fancy clothing would send the message "I feel you are so weak that I could defend myself from you without weapons or armor".

Humans see Orcs as Brutish, Orcs see Humans as Insulting.

In another vaguely industrial setting I ran I had Hobgoblins, naturally organized and blessed with Darkvision, worked in mines and organized labor unions.

[Gorfnod]

Completely off-topic but



Basically, Orcs show respect by showing Strength. If an Orc wants to ask you somthing politely they show up with their most intimidating weapons and armor, they bring their scariest friends, and they boast about how awesome they are. The message being sent is not "I want to fight you" but "I respect your strength, so I came ready to defend myself if you choose to attack me".

by contrast showing up alone wearing fancy clothing would send the message "I feel you are so weak that I could defend myself from you without weapons or armor".

I love this.

[Malachi Lemont]

Ouch. I should not have wandered into this mess by starting this thread. I appreciate all the great thoughts I've seen here. I'm not going to dispute anyone's point of view. I think that my original post had some major problems, and that those problems have now been addressed. There is no one "right answer" to this topic, and I think that if we continue to argue, then we will take all the fun out of D&D. I know that I've contradicted myself in this thread and that my arguments were rather short-sighted. I apologize.

I say let's leave this thread behind and move on.

[Gorfnod]

Ouch. I should not have wandered into this mess by starting this thread. I appreciate all the great thoughts I've seen here.

Yet another thing to disagree on. :smallwink: I am quite pleased that you started the thread.

It has gotten some good discussion started that reasonable adults should be able to talk about in a mature manner.

[TheStranger]

Pretty much have to pull the whole Watto from Episode I. "Look at me, I am a greedy, big-nosed, je....alien." It is terrible when you create something that offends someone but as the amount of exposure increases, the chance to offend just grows and grows. Simply put, you can't make everyone happy.
That was actually the example I was thinking of when I added the parenthetical. Of course, intent matters a great deal. If Watto was intended to be a Jewish caricature, that's obviously offensive.* If Watto was intended to be a stereotypical greedy merchant, and nobody realized until after the fact that he could also be interpreted as a Jewish stereotype (more plausible than you might think, although I'm not expressing an opinion on Watto specifically), then people are still justifiably offended. But the creator hasn't done anything wrong in that case, and will hopefully issue a sincere apology. At which point, those who were offended will hopefully understand that it wasn't intentional, and we will all go on with our lives.

*Would it be less offensive if the people who created, voiced, and animated Watto were all Jewish, and thought it would be funny?

[Haldir]

My only comment here draws from my training as a historian: racism or at least conflict of some kind usually accompanies the mixing of races, at least with humans.

We were cognizant enough to notice genetic differences and barbaric enough to think it mattered for a really long time. Now we have culture-ism, where Eurasian ideas on civilization are the deciding factor on which group of people gets to live or die.

If, however, you want to make the humans advanced enough to be not-racist, you need to really get into the human history and explain what events have caused this to subside.

Otherwise I don't the OP disagreeable in any sense, but I do fail to see the purpose of the post. If one man kills another because he is of the wrong race, is he any more dead than the man who was killed because he was of the wrong civilization (government, religion, economy)?

Go ahead and create your culture-ist worlds! I'm going to create racist and culture-ist conflicts to give my world the most conflicty-ist time ever.

[Amaril]

Basically, Orcs show respect by showing Strength. If an Orc wants to ask you somthing politely they show up with their most intimidating weapons and armor, they bring their scariest friends, and they boast about how awesome they are. The message being sent is not "I want to fight you" but "I respect your strength, so I came ready to defend myself if you choose to attack me".

by contrast showing up alone wearing fancy clothing would send the message "I feel you are so weak that I could defend myself from you without weapons or armor".

Humans see Orcs as Brutish, Orcs see Humans as Insulting.

Mind if I borrow this for my setting? I'm always on the lookout for more detail for my biggest neighboring Orc culture, which is sorely lacking at the moment.

[Gorfnod]

*Would it be less offensive if the people who created, voiced, and animated Watto were all Jewish, and thought it would be funny?

Strictly my opinion here but I would say no. Saying that "only jews can make jew jokes" or that "only blacks can say the N-word" is just another form of racism in my view. Anything that singles out a specific group of people, whether positive or negative, is discrimination. If I recall correctly, I believe that Affirmative Action is called Positive Discrimination in the UK. Even "Positive" discrimination is still bad if you ask me.

[Malachi Lemont]

Yet another thing to disagree on. :smallwink: I am quite pleased that you started the thread.

It has gotten some good discussion started that reasonable adults should be able to talk about in a mature manner.

Ok then. Keep discussing. Right now it just feels like with every post I just dig myself into a deeper hole.

[The Oni]

I for one always liked the way Magic The Gathering did Elves, where their insufferable perfectitude was subverted by the fact their beauty organized them into caste systems. If you were too unattractive (by elven standards), they would shoot you. They weren't inherently wicked but their culture certainly wasn't nice.

I've never felt that gnomes were Jewish - but then, I know more about gnomes from Pathfinder than D&D. In Pathfinder they have big noses and they're smart, but that's about the extent of their Jewishness. But that's the thing - people carry their own baggage into the game, and they're gonna see fantasy through the lens of real life.

If you bend over backwards trying to make races that don't resemble any real life culture, you're just going to end up making cultures and races that don't make any sense. Besides - does it make sense for a medieval society to be less racist than the modern day?

In effect, the races are what they are, and it's the way that you choose to play them, or interact with them, that defines what may or may not be offensive to whoever.

[ArlEammon]

World building is hard. That's why there are typically many Human nations, but few, if not just one Orcish, Elvish, Dwarvish, etcetera nations.

It's the same thing with Star Trek. . . Klingons are space Orcs, etcetera, and why so many fictional species seem to be one dimensional. So the Orcs are usually brutish or primitive tribal folk, the Elves are woods folk, the Dwarves are smiths.

[Blackjackg]

One of the fundamental precepts of most D&D worlds is that the actual workings of the world are dependent on belief-- more specifically, beliefs from a specific human perspective. There's a spell which can create any kind of food, but only food, even though in the real world "food" is an entirely arbitrary category. Even more arbitrary concepts like "good" and "evil" are likewise given objective meaning and are foundational to the basic working of the multiverse. Humanoids, animals and vermin are considered separate and distinct categories, even though in the real world we know that we're all basically the same. There's no doubt that in the rules of D&D and consequently in most worldbuilding, the way we think about things gives them a degree of reality. This makes some sense, of course, since canon D&D is creationistic: worlds were created intentionally by superintelligent beings.

I doubt there are any shocking revelations in the previous paragraph, but this basic premise also informs the issues of species and culture. Where in the real world saying that all people of a given race share a given quality is undeniably wrong and probably racist, in a D&D world it could well be a truth woven into the divine tapestry by the creators of the world. "All orcs are violent and evil." If the gods decreed it so, then there you have it. "You can tell a dragon's personality by the color of its scales." Sure, why not?

(It seems to me that in many D&D worlds, there's a creationist causality question... do gods create humans or do humans create gods? Maybe both. In any case, reality works based on someone's perspective, it isn't the way it is by chance.)

All of this isn't intended as an excuse, just a demonstration of how the conflation of race and culture is just one piece of a greater system of arbitrary categorization. I don't think that is an excuse, because frankly it's deeply problematic. Some people will find support in D&D for racist ideas, like that race and culture are inextricably tied; that there is such a thing as an "uncivilized culture;" or that intelligence is a number that varies by race. Those ideas are common, harmful and contagious, and they have woven themselves into the fabric of the game.

[TheStranger]

Some people will find support in D&D for racist ideas, like that race and culture are inextricably tied; that there is such a thing as an "uncivilized culture;" or that intelligence is a number that varies by race. Those ideas are common, harmful and contagious, and they have woven themselves into the fabric of the game.
I think those people will find support for racist ideas wherever they look. People find what they look for, and usually it's negative. If you were looking for it, you could say that D&D is anti-racism, because all humans are treated exactly the same under the rules. And you never hear about how D&D supports gender equality, even though there's total mechanical support for that. Usually you hear about sexism because of the scantily-clad damsels clutching the hero's leg.

[BRC]

Mind if I borrow this for my setting? I'm always on the lookout for more detail for my biggest neighboring Orc culture, which is sorely lacking at the moment.

Go right ahead.

[NothingButCake]

Besides - does it make sense for a medieval society to be less racist than the modern day?I am quoting this line but I am responding to a number of posts here.

I want to emphasize that yes, it makes complete sense. We think of racism as intractable and permanent but like all social phenomena, it can be historicized. Different cultures at different times had different ideas of what made a person civilized and was more often tied to things like language spoken (barbarians) or religion (heathens), but the idea that people were born into intrinsic differences based on the categories we mainly use now and the idea that these categories could be placed on a hierarchy is modern, as in occurring within Modernity.

I don't think having species-based prejudice in your setting is wrong or ahistorical, but I think it's cool to work with that.

As an example, I once worked on a continent that was mostly covered in deep canyons where birdfolk and dwarves lived parallel to each other as they each took up a niche. Over time, their cultures became very symbiotic with complementary strengths, but as the dwarves' technology looked into the earth, the birdfolk's technology looked up and outward. When the birdfolk began to develop long-distance flight tech, they began to trade with peoples on far continents. This trade allowed the birdfolk to become increasingly wealthy, allowing them economic advantage, then dominance, over the dwarves. This situation was enjoyed by the birdfolk, who then began to entrench their position through imbalanced laws and treaties, formalizing the new advantages they have into political and legal advantages, creating two implicit classes of citizens.

It gets excessive if every form of prejudice has a clearly explicit and explicable history, but I just don't see it very often and I'm into it.

[Blackjackg]

I think those people will find support for racist ideas wherever they look. People find what they look for, and usually it's negative. If you were looking for it, you could say that D&D is anti-racism, because all humans are treated exactly the same under the rules. And you never hear about how D&D supports gender equality, even though there's total mechanical support for that. Usually you hear about sexism because of the scantily-clad damsels clutching the hero's leg.

Well, you do have a point. People tend to see evidence of their existing beliefs everywhere they look. But D&D doesn't get entirely off the hook just because of that.

Not to belabor a point that is essentially tangential to the conversation, but D&D isn't actually squeaky clean even on gender and racial equality among humans. A casual read through source material for the Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms worlds shows that they've put a lot of thought into the personalities of the different subgroups of humans, some of which have direct real-world analogues, like the Olman who are based on the indigenous people of South America and the Rhennee who are based on the Romani. And it's not all positive-- the Rhennee are described in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer as chauvanistic and manipulative, with a reputation as thieves. "But that's just fluff," you might be thinking, "mechanically, they're all the same." Thanks to the Regional Feats in 3.X, however, that's not entirely true: continuing to use the Rhennee as an example, they have special access to the Rapscallion feat that "improves the credulity of your frequent lies." Not all humans are quite the same it seems.

It's trickier to point out places where gender inequality shows in the rules, (although there were explicit mechanical differences prior to 2nd ed. AD&D). There are certainly places where it shows up in the fluff, but that's not what you're talking about. The biggest inequality I see in the mechanics is a reinforcement of biologically-determined binary gender in humans and most demihumans-- your character is either male or female, and it almost certainly corresponds with the shape of their genitals. There are some mechanical elements that distinguish gender (e.g., prestige classes only available to female characters), and while these don't themselves strongly imply gender inequality between men and women, they do privilege binary gender identities above nonbinary genders. So, I wouldn't exactly call that equality.

[Mith]

Basically, Orcs show respect by showing Strength. If an Orc wants to ask you somthing politely they show up with their most intimidating weapons and armor, they bring their scariest friends, and they boast about how awesome they are. The message being sent is not "I want to fight you" but "I respect your strength, so I came ready to defend myself if you choose to attack me".


I love this idea.

I guess my problem about portrayal of species in DnD (Note: I haven't played much other than 1e, so my RPG experience is a bit dated) is that some of the mortal races just are Evil. You don't even need Detect Evil, since you can be sure of there alignment. This wasn't just a norm that was renforced by thier society with a few rare exceptions, it was a given. THat's the style I do not care about since it implies that cultural views are biological imperatives that cannot be changed. THough from what I have heard and read, this has improved a bit in the later editions.

[Dodom]

---Different cultures have different definitions of race. Fictional worlds should address this. Someone might be an "elf" to one and a "dwarf" to another.

Since people have been commenting that they don't get this point, I could give an example from my own webcomic: it has a pretty gratuitous selection of fantasy races, and among them, only the more aggressive ones aknowledge that humans and orcs are two separate races. A small, unaggressive gnome sees both as big and mean, and can be tempted to look no further. From the opposite viewpoint, while an orc couldn't mistake a human for a gnome due to the large size difference, they do consider them very similar for their city dwelling, technology using lifestyles, and talking-based politics.
Perception is based as much - or more - on how one views oneself than on the people being judged.

[TheStranger]

Stuff.
I don't dispute any of your examples, but I don't find any of them to be problematic. Which is yet another crux of this issue - that which offends one person may be totally acceptable to another person (throughout this post, I'm using "offensive" as a catch-all; I don't want to argue about the semantics of offensiveness vs. unfortunate implications). There is no objective standard of appropriateness, and almost anything is at least potentially offensive to somebody. It's not a matter of some people being insensitive, or other people being too thin-skinned; people are just different.

But where does that leave a conscientious creator, who wants to create something but doesn't want to be offensive? Trying to make something that nobody finds offensive is probably impossible, and is likely to interfere with any vision the creator might have. On the other hand, you probably want to adhere to at least some standards of decency. Is there an answer that actually holds up to scrutiny? You can't say a creation is ok simply because most people find it acceptable, because that would give a free pass to things that only offend minority groups. Most people, I think, would tend to be subjective. "I am a reasonable person, and I have judged whether this is acceptable. Those who disagree are just looking for things to be offended by (or are too ignorant to see what's clearly offensive)." Or so the reasoning goes. I just can't see any truly defensible way to draw the line of what's ok and what's not.

IMO, the most intellectually honest solution is for creators to create material that they personally find acceptable, without regard for what other people might find offensive. If some people are offended by the end result, that's probably unavoidable, and I don't think any blame can attach in the absence of malice. If many people are offended, the creator probably will not go on to great success. If those who are offended raise objections that cause the creator to reevaluate his or her standards of acceptability, great. If those who are offended raise objections that the creator considers and finds unconvincing, great.

[Benthesquid]

Well, that's a lack of creativity on the author's part, rather than (probably) any intent towards racism.


Just a note- I don't think we're talking about intent towards racism here. If someone sits down and says, "I'm going to use elves as a metaphor to demonstrate the inferiority of the [insert real life group here] race," that's pretty terrible, but I don't think "The Role of Race in Fantasy Worldbuilding," is really the conversation we need to have with that individual.

The issue here is the way in which the common fantasy tropes may subconsciously affect the way that the players think about race, ethnicity and culture, and reinforce detrimental views.

[Morgarion]

It's trickier to point out places where gender inequality shows in the rules, (although there were explicit mechanical differences prior to 2nd ed. AD&D). There are certainly places where it shows up in the fluff, but that's not what you're talking about. The biggest inequality I see in the mechanics is a reinforcement of biologically-determined binary gender in humans and most demihumans-- your character is either male or female, and it almost certainly corresponds with the shape of their genitals. There are some mechanical elements that distinguish gender (e.g., prestige classes only available to female characters), and while these don't themselves strongly imply gender inequality between men and women, they do privilege binary gender identities above nonbinary genders. So, I wouldn't exactly call that equality.

At the risk of getting off topic, I think this is a really good point. To be honest, though, I am not myself aware of any prestige classes or feats that have gender prerequisites so I can't speak to the fact of mechanical distinctions. I do kind of feel that maybe the onus is on us (ha!) to explore issues of gender.

[Haldir]

Different cultures at different times had different ideas of what made a person civilized and was more often tied to things like language spoken (barbarians) or religion (heathens), but the idea that people were born into intrinsic differences based on the categories we mainly use now and the idea that these categories could be placed on a hierarchy is modern, as in occurring within Modernity.

I am going to argue this is mostly false, though there were likely other cultural factors involved when one group sought to intellectually degrade another, the people living at this time likely would have considered birth and race inseparable from culture and religion. I can very quickly provide the example of Feudal Japan and Europe and India's caste system as proof that racism and the belief in a fundamental difference based on lineage far predates modernity.

Edit- Just to throw in an example from a mythos that we all might be familiar with, I would say there is very strong evidence that the early Jews (modern day Palestinians) used religion to justify their racism, citing that they were the "chosen of God." Since we don't believe it was a proselytizing religion, the chances of you being one of the Chosen were pretty slim.

[SiuiS]

I use it as a Socratic exercise, myself. "What would a world where goons are not people, elves have no souls and the humors of the body cane measured react like?" From there, both 'overcoming these seemingly objective fallacies', psychological evaluations or even just simulations are all fun stories.

The reason behind generalization is to set a tone. "All elves are fair, music loving and soft people who nevertheless can be as ferocious as their forest home" isn't a limit. It serves the same purpose as beginning a story with "once upon a time, in lands far to the west...", it sets the stage and tone to allow for exploration in detail later. The framework is established and all judgements use that frame of reference, which is an artistic narrative tool to allow for different things to come to light. Behaviors of a character take on the tenor of our expectations of that character; two characters who act exactly the same, but one comes from background A and one from background B, will seem rather different if we are first given that background, led to believe it is true, and given time for it to sink in.

When done well, this generic racism and such, or even sexism and classism (though I personally don't truck with sexism much) all serve to set the stage so that we may experience deeper by contrast.


@ NothingButCake, Haldir steer clear of religion. It doesn't matter how relevant Japanese or Indian religious practices are from an anthropological standpoint; they're still real world religion.

[NothingButCake]

I am going to argue this is mostly false, though there were likely other cultural factors involved when one group sought to intellectually degrade another, the people living at this time likely would have considered birth and race inseparable from culture and religion. I can very quickly provide the example of Feudal Japan and Europe and India's caste system as proof that racism and the belief in a fundamental difference based on lineage far predates modernity.

Edit- Just to throw in an example from a mythos that we all might be familiar with, I would say there is very strong evidence that the early Jews (modern day Palestinians) used religion to justify their racism, citing that they were the "chosen of God." Since we don't believe it was a proselytizing religion, the chances of you being one of the Chosen were pretty slim.I would not describe what you're talking about as 'racism' though, and certainly not related to racism as it exists now, but that gets into a discursive disagreement that I do not think is resolvable.

My point though is that racisms are culturally and historically discrete social phenomena, rather than a static state of people, which I think your points add to.

[Haldir]

Unfortunately my duty as a scholar demands that I disagree. It does seem to be a near-universal aspect of human culture. I daresay that societies that don't have some racist overtones tend to be the anomaly. Dark history.

Of course, world building gives us the option to use or disabuse real historical examples as we please, because these worlds are designed to please us and to be something of an ideal. Worlds populated with non-racist peoples would have very different histories, if you started each civilization from scratch and tried to plot out how it grew.

If anything, multiple races would probably decrease the odds of highly racist societies. Races that looked down on others would quickly be banded against and destroyed....

[luciérnaga]

I'd object. Racism/racist ideology, aka the application of the concept of "human races" on people, is a definitely "modern, western" thing with white supremacy always at its core and coming from European imperialism/colonialism. What is meant by racism is not "stereotyping other people" in general, though this is often a part of it. But this is quite a meta-discussion, concerning to definition. You could also say that I'm speaking of "modern racism" here. For me "racism" is a modern concept (race theory), without historical equivalents in it's universalism.
If you take the indian caste system, babylonians making differences between people based on skin color and call it racism you apply modern understanding to a historic world you often know quite little about. Are Romans and Greeks describing all other surrounding people as Barbarians racist in a modern sense of the word? Is their "democracy" identical to "modern democracy"? No matter if you define this as "racist", "predating racism" or not, you need to heavily distinguish here. Another example: similarly would be speaking of "capitalism in the roman empire" because they used money or an exchange economy. But capitalism is a modern mode of production to which there is more than this.

What shows in modern fantasy worlds is the white supremacist racism prevalent in modern societies - because their authors most often live there, fantasy literature is a white, male, western dominated thing. We can cleary see this in LotR (for the people of color there, haradrim, eastlings, dark numenorians with "diluted blood" etc., for the elves and dunedains as "perfect aryans from atlantis", for the orcs as killable species who also employ non-western/non-white cliches and are genocided off as soon they are not(!) longer controlled by the dark lord Oo) which is the source of classic fantasy scenarios as most DnD-Worlds.
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works (the attempts to rescure Tolkien from his critics here are most often flawed - "but there are exceptions...", "intent is magic" and it shows, but it's quite a good list).

But canon is not king. One can subvert these scenarios to house other, more emancipatory stories. Rich Burlews does that in OotS - he employs all the cliches but breaks them from time to time (Redcloaks origin as best example), sometimes he does not (all orcs are unable to speak properly, heroes still kill a lot of other species or "monsters" without a thought). But often he uses his racist world as a background for anti-racist/anti-speciesist politics. As for example stated here perhaps:

Namely, they should acknowledge that if the fictional human kills the fictional dragon on sight for no reason than that they are a dragon, then that fictional human has done something bad.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16037258&postcount=234

Or here, same thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16038595&postcount=290

To take a racist world as a foil to show that it should be overcome is not difficult to do in worldbuilding. Harder would be to design an kinda utopian, non-racist society without smuggling your own racist (or make that sexist, speciesist, ableist...) cliches and stereotypes in there. But it's worth the try I think, and even if it would be to learn something about oneself. To get conflict out of a story, such a society would still have to be defended against outer or inner enemies/disasters/decay. The mistake here would be to try to create "the perfect society" - but rather one, that does certain things right. I would really like to see more scenarios trying that, also because it would be a nice alternative to all this "dark fantasy" or "good whiteskinned, whitebearded benevolent dictatorship fantasy" out there. :)

[Blackjackg]

(The post above this one)

Very well put. Thank you.

[Haldir]

I find your definition of racism racist, as the definition relies on Europeans and European cultures weird views on its colonization, completely ignoring that almost every other culture does the same thing. (Do you really think Africans are less racist than Europeans? Popular media and historical evidence would pose a huge problem for that thesis.) Most importantly I find it factually unsound, as you really can't provide evidence that an ultra-powerful radical shift occurred in the way people perceive race after Columbus stepped off his boat.

A better explanation that fits the evidence more clearly is one of universal human conflict, where racial differences were often cited (falsely) as supporting or justifying aggression and division. This would be that race-theory that you mentioned. Many cultures have them, few defined them as much as Europeans, admittedly, but Europeans did a hell of a lot of things with more effort than other cultures. The first line in the logic sequence for many warmaking cultures is "They are different and not as good as me. Therefore...." This is inherently a racist idea.

When I apply the term "racism" to ancient cultures, I do not need to use a modern definition (which I see no evidence for), only the very simple definition that racists believe that people of a different lineage have a value intrinsically tied to that lineage.

It is a very old concept, Europeans did not change it or redefine it, they just had the technology, institutions, and environment to foster it. Your Roman example of capitalism does not really jive, because we might be able to make a really good argument that the Romans did have a form of capitalism (which is just mercantilism with a new name, and does not really require any elements one would consider 'modern'). Things can exist before they have a name, afterall.

(In worldbuilding terms, all of this is extremely useful for developing civilizations. Picking how each different civilization thinks about others adds rich detail and can eventually explain larger scale conflicts and historical shifts in your world. The A's hate the B's because they fight over X, so the A's start writing about how the B's were founded by slutty demons, or whatever. Now we know A's have a cultural distaste for demons AND the B's.... so on and so forth.)

[luciérnaga]

I'm not talking about Columbus at all. I'm talking about the social darwinist turn in european anthropology and the sources of white suprematist ideology AKA race theory or scientific racism. They did not only go to wider lengths with that, they invented the concept of human races in the sense we use it today. Do you really deny here is a different quality/paradigm shift?
Is it "reverse racism" to state that the first theory of biological human races had white authors who set themselves on top of humanity? That the first systemic institutionalisation was European colonialism/slavery? Or simply history? What would your examples be?

As I said, this is a controversy on a narrow or broader definition of racism for which there is no current solution (also we will find none here, and it does not really matter that much for this discussion). But modern (european/white originated) racism is of a completely different quality then predating historical methods concerning distinction through culture/phentotype etc. More so, it was exported globally through colonialism and today people referring to "race" today are reacting to them in one way or the other. Violence against whites in african states? Reactions to a history of apartheid and continued white domination. People of color world wide bleaching their skin? Reacting to a global culture of beauty catering to a white gaze. And so on.

For today, this is the absolutely dominant mode of racist thought, and the only one applied as a universal system. And no, I'm definitely not thinking either "Africans" or "Europeans" are ahead in some kind of "more racist than you" competition or something. I think "Europeans"/Whites are the people most privileged by racism. That is not necessarily the same thing.

You can apply modern terms to historical phenomena of course and people do it all the time, be it in the sciences of otherwise. But then you are in grave danger of making analytical mistakes by projecting modern thought on past cultures. The more you broaden definitions, the more vague you get concerning your subject. Maybe Babyblonian people wrote down something about "races" - but are we even sure our translation here is correct? Or are we projecting? The further you go back, the more difficult it gets.

What you are meaning concerning "they are different" is not necessary racist thought. It might be simply chauvinism/relation of domination. And that can take a lot of different dimensions. Economical/nationalist/religious...
Also racism begins not in valuing people differently or having prejudice. It begins with the systemic application of the concept of different "human races".

And no, capitalism is not a form of mercantislism (no necessary private property here, focusing on state power, no moderns means of production, there is a transition though, not with the romans. In some points you can even take modern - free market - capitalism as direct opposite of mercantilism if you want Oo).

Concerning worldbuilding -> of course conflicts between clans, ethnicities, nations, species are important here. Because conflicts are important, at least if you want suspense. But here one can come into the dangers of stereotyping again. So ALL the dwarves think ALL the elves are really evil trees in human form and do not deserve to live? Or is this just a ideology some or most dwarves in region X have while others, perhaps those who actually know some elves, are opposed to it? What does it do with your world to write up things like "all the As act like Z"?
I find it fare more exciting to have different factions in a specific sub group. How about different dwarven factions or clans behaving ... you know, differently? Competing ideologies? A major part in disproving biological concepts of "human races" was the notion, that there is more diversion inside a certain "sub group" than this group has compared to others. This is also true on a cultural level. Can one even really speak of "american"/"european" or even "asian" culture? Or "national culture"? Or are these more assumptions concerning the mainstream. Of course, if you build a world you want certain heuristics/ rules of thumb. But it does no damage to hint that there is an ocean of complexity and hidden secrets below that. ;) In fact, I think good writers do this all the time.

[Haldir]

I'm talking about the social darwinist turn in european anthropology and the sources of white suprematist ideology AKA race theory or scientific racism. They did not only go to wider lengths with that, they invented the concept of human races in the sense we use it today. Do you really deny here is a different quality/paradigm shift?

So here is the question that we have about history. Was European racism different than other cultures racism?


Is it "reverse racism" to state that the first theory of biological human races had white authors who set themselves on top of humanity?

The very term "reverse racism" works on the racist supposition that racism has an inherent direction, this is false, and biases your evaluation of the history. Allow me to posit my suppositions:

1. Humans have empathy and think about their actions
2. Humans have self motivations
3. Humans go to war

Edit- Having reread this post I believe I must add a fourth supposition.

4. Race and culture were more intrinsically linked for pre-modern humans.


That the first systemic institutionalisation was European colonialism/slavery? Or simply history? What would your examples be?

What did Europeans actually do to institutionalize racism, based on our evidence?

1. They wrote racist lies
2. They killed and subjugated other peoples.


As I said, this is a controversy on a narrow or broader definition of racism for which there is no current solution (also we will find none here, and it does not really matter that much for this discussion). But modern (european/white originated) racism is of a completely different quality then predating historical methods concerning distinction through culture/phentotype etc.

I have already provided a definition of racism that would be difficult to challenge - the belief that lineage is a intrinsically tied to the value of your life- easy, simple, difficult to argue against.

This is where you make a causation-correlation fallacy, my friend. You wish to say that Europeans had a different quality of racism, because they wrote a bunch of racist lies and killed a bunch of people. A more reasonable explanation is that Europeans are no more or less racist than other cultures, but had a leap in learning and became more literate than any other culture, but not learned enough to realize they were writing racist lies.

I like to give examples from African History, because so few people study it and it is particularly useful for racial issues. Africa has the worlds greatest concentration of genetic diversity, with three human subgroups sharing the southern half of the continent- Bantu, Koisan, and Pygmies. Archeological evidence suggests that once upon a time, the Pygmies may have been the dominant group of South African humans, but they are now restrained almost exclusively to the inner-Congo. It is believed they were pushed out of the wider, more open grazing grounds by the Koisan (who we might know as Bushmen), who in turn were pushed out of the most desirable land after the Bantu farmers began expanding. They are clearly defined not only in terms of genetic diversity, but culture and language, and very clearly have stratified themselves based on race.

So, Europeans wrote racist lies and subjugated others, but do you think the Bantu, had they been literate, would have wrote all about how the Koisan were their racial equals? My gut tells me no.

How about the Koisan? When they were viciously hunting, killing and raping the pygmies, did they think "Those pygmies sure are a great race!" Probably not.


More so, it was exported globally through colonialism and today people referring to "race" today are reacting to them in one way or the other. Violence against whites in african states? Reactions to a history of apartheid and continued white domination. People of color world wide bleaching their skin? Reacting to a global culture of beauty catering to a white gaze. And so on.

Now we must ask "How is European racism different than other people's racism?"

Well.... It's really not. I have already provided many examples, such as early Jews or Indian castes, where literate cultures wrote racist lies. History is full of examples of racially aligned groups conflicting with one another. So no, telling racist lies and subjugating other cultures is not uniquely European, or even new to Europe. Europe was simply different in its technology, was more literate and more capable of using war to feed its own self-motivations.

Saying that white Europeans have better blood is no more or less racist than saying the the Jews have the better God, it merely assuages our conscious (supposition 1) when we go to war (suppositions 2 & 3).

Having a Euro-centric immersion in racist literature is natural, since Europeans made so much more literature than anyone else, but it can definitely put some blinders on you and you can unintentionally give it more validity than it deserves by putting it in a special place in history.


For today, this is the absolutely dominant mode of racist thought, and the only one applied as a universal system. And no, I'm definitely not thinking either "Africans" or "Europeans" are ahead in some kind of "more racist than you" competition or something. I think "Europeans"/Whites are the people most privileged by racism. That is not necessarily the same thing.

Really, European technology and warmaking is what made them special in history and gave them the privilege that you see today.

This is the sum of the argument. Europeans did what everyone did: make life better for themselves and try and feel good about it afterward. Their racist lies were terrible attempts to explain why Europeans seemed to have the most advanced society, but should not be credited to an excess of racism on their part, rather a relative excess of scientific literacy combined a severe lack of scientific quality. (They knew there were explanations, but they did not have the right evidence or theories to accurately explain it.)

Europeans did not take racism to any extreme it had not already gone to, but they did take self-interest (supposition 2) to it's natural conclusion. There is quite strong evidence that many large bipedal apes were made extinct by humans all over Eurasia and Africa. Humans, having the technological advantage of speech, would here to be parallel to the Europeans technological advantage of Guns, Germs and Steel. (A fantastic read for anyone who wants to know what actually made the Europeans more technologically advanced than other cultures.)


Also racism begins not in valuing people differently or having prejudice. It begins with the systemic application of the concept of different "human races".

This is absolutely true, it's really too bad that every human culture seems to do it.


I have spoilered this part because this post is too long by far already.
And no, capitalism is not a form of mercantilism (no necessary private property here, focusing on state power, no moderns means of production, there is a transition though, not with the romans. In some points you can even take modern - free market - capitalism as direct opposite of mercantilism if you want Oo). You've made a few false suppositions here, mercantilism did have a form of private property, though it may not have been as legally defined as our current system, and the idea of a free market is actually factually bunk.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/09/the-entrepreneurial-state-appl.html

Modern capitalism relies on the public sector just as much if not more than mercantilism did. It is, however, much better at marketing itself as 'self-reliant.'

[NothingButCake]

The argument is not based on the supposition that historical Europeans are exceptional in their thought processes. The argument is based on the reality that their actions were unprecedented in scale and impact. European scientific racism fundamentally changed how the world thought about race. Just as English and French became global languages that helped change how people spoke to and understood each other, scientific racism experienced the same globalization.

To say that there are vaguely similar feelings underlying European scientific racism and other forms of prejudice throughout history and therefore they are part of all the same universal racism does a disservice to the diversity of human history and experience.

The argument that modern racism is culturally and historically discrete is like the argument that agriculture or gender roles are culturally and historically discrete. It is the simple recognition that while all people may prejudge, they did not do so everywhere always in the same way they do here now. Yes, human cultures all around the world and throughout history have raised plants and animals, but to say, "All humans have had agriculture and it's all fundamentally the same and it's inaccurate to distinguish between different eras and localities of agricultural practice," is ridiculous and academically unfruitful.

The point is that in fantasy worldbuilding, it is not a given that people are just going to be more racist or whatever because the technology level of those people are based on the technology level of Medieval Europe.

Again, the point is not that Europeans in Modernity are inherently more racist than other people, but that racism is not a static state of being for all humanity for all time.

[Haldir]

I have provided ample evidence that humans have been writing racist things and doing racist things (like murder) for as long as they have been human, oftentimes on a scale just as large as the European "scientific racism" you seem to be so fixated on. (Perhaps if you think that it was a shift, you are trapped in some sort of Euro-centrism concerning your knowledge of history.)

If you want to frame it as a historical shift rather than a continuity of a history of racism in our species, the burden of proof falls to you, but you would have to prove that Europeans took abnormal or drastic steps in their racist actions. Switching from false religious, mystical, or cultural race discrimination to false scientific race discrimination does not seem such a large step to me. Killing and enslaving people based on race also seems to be pretty common before Europeans began colonization. It doesn't get much more abnormal or drastic than that.


The argument is not based on the supposition that historical Europeans are exceptional in their thought processes. The argument is based on the reality that their actions were unprecedented in scale and impact. European scientific racism fundamentally changed how the world thought about race.

The argument that modern racism is culturally and historically discrete is like the argument that agriculture or gender roles are culturally and historically discrete. It is the simple recognition that while all people may prejudge, they did not do so everywhere always in the same way they do here now. Yes, human cultures all around the world and throughout history have raised plants and animals, but to say, "All humans have had agriculture and it's all fundamentally the same and it's inaccurate to distinguish between different eras and localities of agricultural practice," is ridiculous and academically unfruitful.

What is unfruitful is to focus on the minute details of blatantly false racist writings, such as the scientific merit vs. the mystical merit, and then give that racism undue merit as a historical phenomenon.

To use the agriculture metaphor, talking about European scientific racism as unique shift in the history of racism rather than a continuum of a long history of racism would be akin to talking about how a crop that failed to produce the desired phenotype was a unique shift in the history of agriculture.

More accurately, the racist elements of European colonization should be seen as a continuation of a very easily recognized universal human racism. This human inclination toward racism was adapted by the Scientific Revolution, which actually merits being a historical phenomenon.

A fictional world segregated based on race with high racial tensions inherent in the creatures and cultures of the world seems a very reasonable tangent to our own world. This is, of course, my theory based on the large amounts of evidence I have personally read and have attempted to communicate to you all.

[SiuiS]

Unfortunately my duty as a scholar demands that I disagree. It does seem to be a near-universal aspect of human culture. I daresay that societies that don't have some racist overtones tend to be the anomaly. Dark history.

Of course, world building gives us the option to use or disabuse real historical examples as we please, because these worlds are designed to please us and to be something of an ideal. Worlds populated with non-racist peoples would have very different histories, if you started each civilization from scratch and tried to plot out how it grew.

If anything, multiple races would probably decrease the odds of highly racist societies. Races that looked down on others would quickly be banded against and destroyed....

Defining an Other, demonizing that Other and extolling the virtues of your own selves is part of tribal thinking, and possibly hard-wired into being a human.

The issue is that this isn't racism, it's just prejudice. It's possible for this to apply within a race. It's the jock/need dichotomy. Sharks and jets. Preps and greasers. North and south. Them and Us. It leads to, but is not itself, racism.

[Lord Raziere]

Me, I just make all my races/species not-evil (because I hate such inherent nature nonsense) and then make sure they all have diverse cultures so that an orc can come from a completely good culture with no freaking hoops to jump through. (because I hate monolithic cultures that demand that they be evil anyways)

and then not worry about it.

[luciérnaga]

Hey Haldir. It's indeed unfruitful to continue this way because you cannot even get the fact that we have a controversy in definitions here.
You use a definition that's so broad that it borders on labelling all kinds of group based dicriminations or "xenophobia" as synonym to "racist", I employ a rather narrow definition because I want to emphasize on historical reality of racist conceptualization.
Now you use your definition "look people did all do racist stuff in the past, why don't you get it?" to tell me mine is utterly wrong. But I do not even label this as racist, perhaps predating racism, because the concepts behind them were others.
Racism for me here is NOT emnity between somehow ethnically dictinct groups. It's applying the false concept that they belong to genetically evolved, different human "races" you can seperate humanity into. And this thought is mirrored in the contemporary conceptualization of distinct fantasy races (perhaps it might be even applicable here from a biological viewpoint, but that still changes nothing about its stereotypization or its moral message concerning real world society. And then, everything is applicable in fantasy if you want so...).
You need (social-)darwinist thought, a theory of genes, global evolution and so on for that. And no, economical or religious motives of hate between groups might be intersected with racism, but NOT the same thing. Dammit, even the first known usage of the word "race" was some times around the later middle ages (came up in spain i think, "raza"?).
Racism for you is a form of prejudice. For me its an encompassing system or social relations.
It seems to me you think I want to put the blame on the poor, abused europeans by presenting them as "ueber-racist villains" in being more "abnormal, drastic" and so on in their actions. Well concerning imperialism, apartheid, the holocaust and so on, you could sure argue that the impact of racist Europeans far excels behaviour of other groups you could label as "racist". But that is not even my point here. My point is, that it were Europeans who invented the concept of human races.

For you though, "being racist" is part of a "human nature" or "natural human behaviour" you somehow managed to narrow down for you to grasp. I for my part think an essential "human nature" is a concept as fictional as "elven nature" or "orcish nature"/not possibly to grasp, because its a process not a static.
You're perceiving something as normal ("everyone did it, right?") and extrapolating from there on that it must be that way. Aside of the fact that in my book you're identifying diverse phenomena with each other: what if you encounter something that does not fit into your all-encompassing theory of human nature? Either you can include it or state it's devious/antihuman/perverse etc. People did that with homosexuality (because no reproduction, and reproduction should be natural behaviour, and "meh") for example, or gender dualism. When you apply it to anti-racism here, you can argue that's too part of universal human nature (if you don't want to make it "perverse/bizarre/weird"). After all, humans have acted against racism thoughout all history. So what? Are all humans born racists? Both capabilities to racism and anti-racism are natural human notions? Then we could as well leave that out of the equation or state that we didn't know so much about human nature as we thought we did. I'll throw another key in here: socialization. Can you really say this is a nature or nurture thing? Hen or egg?
The capability to do it is there. And if you want "natural" (insert you favorite buzz word here). But actually doing it? Not so much.

We could as well just agree to disagree here. We simply mean other, but still intersecting, things when we speak of "racism".

One point left though:

A fictional world segregated based on race with high racial tensions inherent in the creatures and cultures of the world seems a very reasonable tangent to our own world. This is, of course, my theory based on the large amounts of evidence I have personally read and have attempted to communicate to you all.
You are right for the first point. A fictional world with racist tensions is of course a tangent to our world - because our world is almost universally touched by racist thought. Big BUT: A fictional world is created artifically by people that want to convey a certain message with it. You want to show people something about racism? Add in conflicts concerning it. Now what does: "it's ok to kill it, as long as it got green skin or pointy ears" tell you here concerning racism?
Or "they're just genetically wired to be stupid". Of course, it's possible all orcs are unredeemable evil monsters and all trolls are dumb as a stone. Because, again, everything is possible in fantasy worlds. But in chosing this tropes, you also communicate certain analogies and needs. You can do it, but perhaps its good to think about if you even want to beforehand. As I said, you can even chose to make a absolutely racist world to better convey an anti-racist message.
Then to "i have read a lot" - sure one notices that, and I'm thankful for all your exciting examples here. But we all have certain preconceptions about what we do or think in which we might want to fit new input. You might have them, and I do too. It does not matter how much we read, but what we make of it. Here's a nice quote by Marx (from German Ideology):

"Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany."
We can never be sure not to be "this valiant fellow". :)

And last but not least:


You've made a few false suppositions here, mercantilism did have a form of private property, though it may not have been as legally defined as our current system, and the idea of a free market is actually factually bunk.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/business...tate-appl.html

Modern capitalism relies on the public sector just as much if not more than mercantilism did. It is, however, much better at marketing itself as 'self-reliant.'

I was not saying that mercantilism had no form of private property. Oo
I said it was not the dominating mode and the dominating mode of capitalism is private ownership of the means of productions. And yes, the idea of a free market is as self contradictory as the idea of "fair trade", and I agree with the article in wide parts, but we're talking of applied ideological systems here, aren't we? I think capitalism in itself is "bunk", but well... the ideologies of mercantilism and capitalism even contradict one another in some parts. How could they be identical? The one is a follow up to the other. So there are similarities of course... i sense our next definition problem. :D

[Haldir]

Hey Haldir. It's indeed unfruitful to continue this way because you cannot even get the fact that we have a controversy in definitions here.

That is ignorance on your part, my friend, not mine. I have readily recognized that you have a race theory, I just don't think it's very informed by history. You've put an arbitrary label on a certain cultures war-making without recognizing the legitimate parallels in just about every other cultures warmaking.

Unfortunately,
It's applying the false concept that they belong to genetically evolved, different human "races" you can seperate humanity into. this supposition is not true. It is a controversial but essential fact that we must grapple with, there is genetic variation in our species that we can prove.

This is not, however, evidence for one race being superior to another. Many people would rather not recognize our legitimate genetic diversity just because of sensitivity to the information being used to rank the races. This is detrimental to the intellectual process.


You use a definition that's so broad that it borders on labelling all kinds of group based dicriminations or "xenophobia" as synonym to "racist", I employ a rather narrow definition because I want to emphasize on historical reality of racist conceptualization.

See above post about the burden of proof. Xenophobia is racism when it becomes institutionalized, and almost all cultures in history have instituted it via their armies and political organization.


Now you use your definition "look people did all do racist stuff in the past, why don't you get it?" to tell me mine is utterly wrong. But I do not even label this as racist, perhaps predating racism, because the concepts behind them were others.

1. You provide no examples.
2. Even if you want to consider culture and race separate (most ancient peoples wouldn't think that way), every continent has managed to become segmented along racial lines. Is it possible that you have misunderstood the truth of the concepts that you claim are so important?


You need (social-)darwinist thought, a theory of genes, global evolution and so on for that. And no, economical or religious motives of hate between groups might be intersected with racism, but NOT the same thing. Dammit, even the first known usage of the word "race" was some times around the later middle ages (came up in spain i think, "raza"?).
Racism for you is a form of prejudice. For me its an encompassing system or social relations.

I actually agree it is an encompassing system of social relations, I just see the truth of the big-picture progression of human social relations and you choose to focus on the minutiae. These economic and religious motivations that you want to differentiate have exactly the same outcomes and influences as scientific racism. 1. People are subjugated 2. Lies are written about them.


It seems to me you think I want to put the blame on the poor, abused europeans by presenting them as "ueber-racist villains" in being more "abnormal, drastic" and so on in their actions. Well concerning imperialism, apartheid, the holocaust and so on, you could sure argue that the impact of racist Europeans far excels behaviour of other groups you could label as "racist". But that is not even my point here. My point is, that it were Europeans who invented the concept of human races.

Except insofar as it's totally untrue. If you choose to ignore the other, well documented examples of those exact same incidents happening between two non-European races, I can only assume that you simply will not let go of your bias.
Because Europeans said "race" instead of "infidel" does not qualify, to me, as a significant topic of historical discussion, considering the specific action taken are not really so unique until you include advanced European technology and science. Perhaps, if you want to be a historian of the specific idea of colonial race relations, but to frame it as a unique occurrence does put you dangerously close to a racist assumption about European intellectual history that would be very untrue.

It definitely does not qualify as a topic of world-building discussion, unless you want to deal with a similarly scientific culture and need a real-world analogy to draw from.


You're perceiving something as normal ("everyone did it, right?") and extrapolating from there on that it must be that way. Aside of the fact that in my book you're identifying diverse phenomena with each other: what if you encounter something that does not fit into your all-encompassing theory of human nature? Either you can include it or state it's devious/antihuman/perverse etc. People did that with homosexuality (because no reproduction, and reproduction should be natural behaviour, and "meh") for example, or gender dualism. When you apply it to anti-racism here, you can argue that's too part of universal human nature (if you don't want to make it "perverse/bizarre/weird"). After all, humans have acted against racism thoughout all history. So what? Are all humans born racists? Both capabilities to racism and anti-racism are natural human notions? Then we could as well leave that out of the equation or state that we didn't know so much about human nature as we thought we did. I'll throw another key in here: socialization. Can you really say this is a nature or nurture thing? Hen or egg?
The capability to do it is there. And if you want "natural" (insert you favorite buzz word here). But actually doing it? Not so much.

I have made none of these suppositions. I have merely made an observation based on factual happenstance. My response to this whole tirade is simply this- an example does not make a case. If I were to find a peaceful culture of non-racists, I cannot assume that all people are racists. If I find six continents that have segmented themselves with war, and those segments tend to be along racial lines? I think I have a pretty good case.


Then to "i have read a lot" - sure one notices that, and I'm thankful for all your exciting examples here. But we all have certain preconceptions about what we do or think in which we might want to fit new input. You might have them, and I do too. It does not matter how much we read, but what we make of it.

I have outlined all of my preconceptions, if you wish to challenge them, I welcome it, but there is a rather large burden of proof there.

[Rakaydos]

I think the two of you are drowning out other discussions, being too focused on parallels with RL and not explaining why it has bearing on a fantasy setting.

Could you at least take the philosophy theses to spoiler boxes?

[Everyl]

So, uh, skipping the philosophical debate about what concepts can be properly labeled racism, I find this topic to be an interesting one in fantasy settings. I've been thinking about it, and related issues, quite a bit lately, since I've been revamping my oldest D&D setting in case I ever get to use it again.

One big way to address some of the OP's concerns is to simply be careful how you word the fluff around a given group's "racial" modifiers. For example, instead of saying, "Kaas receive a +2 bonus to Intimidate because of their fearsome nature," you could say, "Kaas receive a +2 bonus to Intimidate checks because most kaas societies value shows of strength highly." (Disclaimer: I know nothing about kaas, just pulling that from the OP as a possible example). This shifts many "racial" talents from being genetic to being the result of a typical upbringing in a community of that race.

Also, in many fantasy settings, an individual race is relatively low in population, and likely has a smallish "homeland" somewhere, which can contribute to the monoculture effect. Basically, if dwarves are all either citizens of the Granite Mountain Empire or expatriates thereof, it makes sense to see a bit less variation in them than you see in a race that has many nations and cultures, some of which are relatively isolated from one another. Giving a race a monocultural homeland can be lazy world-building if you're trying to flesh out a planet (or more), but it can also just be a matter of scope - a campaign set in a limited region could simply say that only dwarves from one specific culture are commonly found in that region, and assume that far away there are other dwarven cultures who may have very different priorities. They're just not important to the story at hand.

To be entirely honest, what bugs me about D&D RAW is more that humans are set up to be the versatile race, with individuals not particularly shaped by their cultural backgrounds. A PHB human can accurately represent any human from anywhere, just choose feats and skills appropriate to their background. Other races, on the other hand, wind up needing "subraces" to fill pretty much any background other than the PHB default assumptions. For example, what if you decide that you want a "typical" gnome in your setting to be a merchant-sailor? Their home islands are distantly overseas from where the campaign is set, so you pretty much only see the sailors and traders in the story. In that case, the PHB gnomes don't make a whole lot of sense, with their racial abilities being mostly based around warfare with giants, goblinoids, and kobolds, alchemy (dangerous on a ship!), illusions, and living underground. Unless the hostile races in question are common as pirates in the setting, pretty much none of that makes sense for a culture of fisherman and traders. You wind up having to either modify gnomes in your setting or make subraces for sailing gnomes, dry-land gnomes, arctic gnomes, and any other environment or cultural focus that could potentially invalidate the PHB stat blocks. You could say, "If RAW gnomes are poor sailors, then make the nation of sailors some other race," but that gets back to the question of why humans are the only race with any adaptability built-in whatsoever.

One thing I'm trying to do with my game setting is to give every race at least as much room for cultural variation as humans get. The real world shows us that humans have the potential for a huge variety of cultures, and I'm not a talented enough world-builder to give every race ever published a similar degree of variation without resorting to real-world cultural analogues that would, at best, feel forced. However, I can come up with some broad-strokes categories for regional cultures, the way that we can crudely categorize "European" or "East-Asian" cultures - sets of cultures that share at least some major historical, religious, and/or technological influences. I figure, if I can make several distinct cultural categories for each race, including cultures that have been heavily influenced by contact with other races, then I'll probably be doing better than average in that regard.

In the end, the only reason I can think to cling to the many-races model of fantasy world-building is because it's so widely expected among players. It is, in many ways, easier to make an interesting, compelling story about a conflict between people if everyone involved is at least of the same species. You can take the approach that Rich has in OOTS and try to twist the racial stereotypes to make the players/audience uncomfortable with their instinct to feel no guilt from killing someone based on their green skin, but if your antagonists are already relatable just from being human, the moral questions are a lot easier to work in. One of the most fun D&D games I ever played was a game where, outside of monster fights, the antagonists were all of the same race as at least one party member. Even though the game was hack-and-slash driven, that was still enough to get us wondering if we should really be killing all of those guys just because we disagreed with their objectives.

[Haldir]

Everyl: I think your problem is precisely why we should discuss the philosophical implications of our cultural and racial histories, because understanding how each of those cultures developed and interacted in our world will allow you to fully flesh out an intensely distinct world of your own.

My greatest tool for this has been studies in economic history, because in my mind, race and imagination allowed humans to group and leverage their resources, and it is based on the strength of these resources that we can gauge a great deal about their culture. The Giant did something very similar in his world-building articles, but with a very generalized form of geography. The more specialized you get, the more texture you can add to your different races.

[Tvtyrant]

So, uh, skipping the philosophical debate about what concepts can be properly labeled racism, I find this topic to be an interesting one in fantasy settings. I've been thinking about it, and related issues, quite a bit lately, since I've been revamping my oldest D&D setting in case I ever get to use it again.

One big way to address some of the OP's concerns is to simply be careful how you word the fluff around a given group's "racial" modifiers. For example, instead of saying, "Kaas receive a +2 bonus to Intimidate because of their fearsome nature," you could say, "Kaas receive a +2 bonus to Intimidate checks because most kaas societies value shows of strength highly." (Disclaimer: I know nothing about kaas, just pulling that from the OP as a possible example). This shifts many "racial" talents from being genetic to being the result of a typical upbringing in a community of that race.

Also, in many fantasy settings, an individual race is relatively low in population, and likely has a smallish "homeland" somewhere, which can contribute to the monoculture effect. Basically, if dwarves are all either citizens of the Granite Mountain Empire or expatriates thereof, it makes sense to see a bit less variation in them than you see in a race that has many nations and cultures, some of which are relatively isolated from one another. Giving a race a monocultural homeland can be lazy world-building if you're trying to flesh out a planet (or more), but it can also just be a matter of scope - a campaign set in a limited region could simply say that only dwarves from one specific culture are commonly found in that region, and assume that far away there are other dwarven cultures who may have very different priorities. They're just not important to the story at hand.

To be entirely honest, what bugs me about D&D RAW is more that humans are set up to be the versatile race, with individuals not particularly shaped by their cultural backgrounds. A PHB human can accurately represent any human from anywhere, just choose feats and skills appropriate to their background. Other races, on the other hand, wind up needing "subraces" to fill pretty much any background other than the PHB default assumptions. For example, what if you decide that you want a "typical" gnome in your setting to be a merchant-sailor? Their home islands are distantly overseas from where the campaign is set, so you pretty much only see the sailors and traders in the story. In that case, the PHB gnomes don't make a whole lot of sense, with their racial abilities being mostly based around warfare with giants, goblinoids, and kobolds, alchemy (dangerous on a ship!), illusions, and living underground. Unless the hostile races in question are common as pirates in the setting, pretty much none of that makes sense for a culture of fisherman and traders. You wind up having to either modify gnomes in your setting or make subraces for sailing gnomes, dry-land gnomes, arctic gnomes, and any other environment or cultural focus that could potentially invalidate the PHB stat blocks. You could say, "If RAW gnomes are poor sailors, then make the nation of sailors some other race," but that gets back to the question of why humans are the only race with any adaptability built-in whatsoever.

One thing I'm trying to do with my game setting is to give every race at least as much room for cultural variation as humans get. The real world shows us that humans have the potential for a huge variety of cultures, and I'm not a talented enough world-builder to give every race ever published a similar degree of variation without resorting to real-world cultural analogues that would, at best, feel forced. However, I can come up with some broad-strokes categories for regional cultures, the way that we can crudely categorize "European" or "East-Asian" cultures - sets of cultures that share at least some major historical, religious, and/or technological influences. I figure, if I can make several distinct cultural categories for each race, including cultures that have been heavily influenced by contact with other races, then I'll probably be doing better than average in that regard.

In the end, the only reason I can think to cling to the many-races model of fantasy world-building is because it's so widely expected among players. It is, in many ways, easier to make an interesting, compelling story about a conflict between people if everyone involved is at least of the same species. You can take the approach that Rich has in OOTS and try to twist the racial stereotypes to make the players/audience uncomfortable with their instinct to feel no guilt from killing someone based on their green skin, but if your antagonists are already relatable just from being human, the moral questions are a lot easier to work in. One of the most fun D&D games I ever played was a game where, outside of monster fights, the antagonists were all of the same race as at least one party member. Even though the game was hack-and-slash driven, that was still enough to get us wondering if we should really be killing all of those guys just because we disagreed with their objectives.

On the other hand there are quite a few human subraces in D&D (I don't know about other fantasy stories.) Illumians, Silverbrows, halfdragons, etc.

I think any attempt to connect racism amongst humans to the physiological differences that a dragon-man is going to have is a bit far. Several races in D&D explicitly fly, or are 10 ft. tall, or any other number of fantasy conventions that have no connection to human life.

[luciérnaga]

I think the two of you are drowning out other discussions, being too focused on parallels with RL and not explaining why it has bearing on a fantasy setting.

Could you at least take the philosophy theses to spoiler boxes?

I think for me it's over none the less. Because:
you simply will not let go of your bias is exactly what i thought reading Haldirs last post.
Oh, and for
you have a race theory, no I've not, as you see concerning the part you quoted me saying the concept of races is false (biological scientific standard, at least since the '70s btw, there are NO human races/subspecies). Simple genetic variation is a completely different thing and it is more variant IN suspected "racial groups" then between. It's very probable that your personal genetics, for example as someone perhaps labeling "european/caucasian/white etc" are more similar to some people you would categorize as "african" or "asian" then to all people you would be categorized alike.
If it's not "agree to diagree" it's "my gosh, just go and actually read some books on racism written by actual non/anti-racists or modern biologists". But you don't have to. Because you know, you "see the truth", fully grasp "human nature" and so on, maybe I just have not seen the light ... oh, come on. ^^ In my book things like
six continents that have segmented themselves with war is historical nonsense. Classical internet conspiracy nuts - you read out of history what you want to be there and ignore the rest. Warfare along continental lines? Has never been there.
And I'm not longer going to argue about racism with someone who actually still employs race concepts. Oo Talking about bias, really?

___________

@Everyl:


For example, instead of saying, "Kaas receive a +2 bonus to Intimidate because of their fearsome nature," you could say, "Kaas receive a +2 bonus to Intimidate checks because most kaas societies value shows of strength highly
But then, don't you use the same stereotyping. Perhaps just "worded differently"? Of course, concerning that "race" would fit only to some fantasy people, while others are actually completely different species, there can be huge differences. But intimidation would be a special thing... they wouldn't be that intimidating too each other or people that know their ways, right?



if dwarves are all either citizens of the Granite Mountain Empire or expatriates thereof, it makes sense to see a bit less variation
Only if Granite Mountain Empire is rather small and got no contact to the outside world... else there ought to be a lot of variation.



Other races, on the other hand, wind up needing "subraces" to fill pretty much any background other than the PHB default assumptions.
The whole concept of "race" in real life concerning humans, refers to the existance of "human sub species" (races). Which, as said above, is biologically falsified. But concerning fantasy worlds, if one wanted (concerning fantasy it's all what one WANTS to be there and what message to convey with it) it could be more true. At least, humans, orcs, elves can often breed with each other? So are they maybe belonging to the same species? Definitions are all somewhat fuzzy here. The "sub races" thing for naming different cultures of the same species is really kinda weird. Never really thought about this, concerning the relation between humans ("the norm") and other fantasy species. Thanks.


if your antagonists are already relatable just from being human, the moral questions are a lot easier to work in. One of the most fun D&D games I ever played was a game where, outside of monster fights, the antagonists were all of the same race as at least one party member. Even though the game was hack-and-slash driven, that was still enough to get us wondering if we should really be killing all of those guys just because we disagreed with their objectives.
Good argument for not serving/breaking the cliches i think. :) But concerning "antagonist material" ... species aside, there can be just a lot of hack and slay concerning different objectives. If the hungry pillagers emerging from the woods are humans or orcs, what difference does it make? They want to kill you and take your stuff and if you don't want that to happen, you have to defend yourself.

[Haldir]

I think for me it's over none the less. Because: is exactly what i thought reading Haldirs last post.
Oh, and for , no I've not, as you see concerning the part you quoted me saying the concept of races is false (biological scientific standard, at least since the '70s btw, there are NO human races/subspecies). Simple genetic variation is a completely different thing and it is more variant IN suspected "racial groups" then between. It's very probable that your personal genetics, for example as someone perhaps labeling "european/caucasian/white etc" are more similar to some people you would categorize as "african" or "asian" then to all people you would be categorized alike.
If it's not "agree to diagree" it's "my gosh, just go and actually read some books on racism written by actual non/anti-racists or modern biologists". But you don't have to. Because you know, you "see the truth", fully grasp "human nature" and so on, maybe I just have not seen the light ... oh, come on. ^^ In my book things like is historical nonsense. Classical internet conspiracy nuts - you read out of history what you want to be there and ignore the rest. Warfare along continental lines? Has never been there.
And I'm not longer going to argue about racism with someone who actually still employs race concepts. Oo Talking about bias, really?

Many claims, no evidence, and thinly concealed argument ad hominem. Six continent HAVE segmented themselves along racial lines and there is almost certainly huge variation in different human races. Your vague "since the 70's" allusion relies on some out-of-date studies that never really grappled with the truth.

Especially since the newer research is looking at tons of passive genetic information that at one point in time wasn't fully understood, but is now more properly conceived as time-pertinent genetic switches that become dormant after they do their job.

How should we view African pygmies and Koisan? They are as genetically different as Bantu and Europeans, or Bantu and Koisan, or Pygmies and Koisan. You can choose to ignore the facts, but I refuse to be so ignorant.

So yes, this is done. Thank you for your attempt at a scholarly debate. However, in the future, I'd recommend including some facts in your presentation.

[Fairy Lisa]

I've been thinking a lot about the nature of world-building recently - about how enjoyable it is but also how dangerous it can be. It wasn't until recently, during my university course in cultural anthropology, that I realized what's been troubling me so much about many of the worlds I've created, or helped others create.

When creating a world, whether for an RPG or simply for the joy of imagination, we often fall back onto some basic assumptions about race - assumptions that the real world has been trying to overcome. I'm not saying it's wrong to dream up a world with elves and dwarves and goblins - not at all. But it becomes a problem when, over and over again, we assume, without even the need to explain why, that one's external racial identity matches one's internal identity. In other words, what's to say that every dwarf will automatically identify with dwarfliness (if that's even a word - if it's not, it should be!) or that every elf will be bitter toward the orcs, or that every half-elf will be equal parts human and elf. (And why not half-elf, half- dwarf? Why does one half have to be human?)

It’s easy to forget that we’re all just humans trying to basically invent entirely new species when we create our worlds (which is what I would classify Elves/Dwarves/etc. as), and instead of defining them primarily in biological terms, we define them in cultural anthropological terms (what they do, what they eat, gender differences, how they treat other races/species/cultures, economics, industry, etc.)

But somebody thought up most of that for us already, probably. Tolkien, Myths, old racist beliefs, presently existing cultures, etc. and the truth is, when we look at other cultures, we don’t know what to think, initially. So we look for the obvious, the bits that stand out, very little that’s more obvious than physical appearance. Then we get to know the culture, a little bit at a time. Stereotypes are just easy. It isn’t even just cross-culture, intraculturally, there is usually stereotypes about what it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be born on a patch of dirt located over on the west coast or the east coast, the south, the north, the middle, protestant, catholic, muslim, or whatever.

The alcoholic dwarves is a good one though, for relating to human nature. I’ve heard it said that real Koreans eat kimchi (my best friend does not, and cannot eat any spicy food, and the Korean side of her family makes fun of her for this), real Texans don’t put any sauces on their barbecue, real Coffee lovers drink their coffee black, real men fight back, real San Franciscans eat Mission Burritos, all sorts of weird ideas, based on people’s own ideals of what the people around them are like. Most of these stereotypes are not even real, not even remotely real, but people want them to be real, because it gives them a sense of identity.

“I’m a Korean, I eat kimchi, I know what it means to be a Korean because I am one, and real Koreans eat kimchi because I am a real Korean, and I eat kimchi.”

Given the opportunity to stereotype, most humans will take it. Even people that really are not racist or sexist or otherwise discriminate in any other way will still joke about hippies and hipsters and people from a different part of the world that are ethnically the same and therefore are “fair game”. What you see in most RPG worlds is just a reflection of that, and it’s not really a bad thing, just a human thing. Humans are weird, okay! :smallsmile:

Please don’t regret starting this conversation though, it’s an interesting one. You raised interesting points and got people thinking, there’s no shame in that.

[Malachi Lemont]

Please don’t regret starting this conversation though, it’s an interesting one. You raised interesting points and got people thinking, there’s no shame in that.

Thank you for your support. I feel much better about this topic than I did a week ago.

[Everyl]

But then, don't you use the same stereotyping. Perhaps just "worded differently"? Of course, concerning that "race" would fit only to some fantasy people, while others are actually completely different species, there can be huge differences. But intimidation would be a special thing... they wouldn't be that intimidating too each other or people that know their ways, right?

To an extent, yes. The objective is to move away from saying, "Characters of race X are all like Y" and instead say something like, "The culture in which the members of race X who are playable in my game come from emphasizes skill Y very highly in their basic family education, which translates into this bonus." In reality, any sufficiently large or cosmopolitan population is going to have exceptions, but with a small enough sample group, some generalizations can probably be made. People from a horse-riding nomadic culture on the steppes are going to tend toward different cultural priorities than people from an archipellago of small islands who rely on fishing for most of their food, and both of those are going to be very different from an agrarian society. It's not perfect, of course, but RPGs aren't perfect representations of reality to begin with.


Only if Granite Mountain Empire is rather small and got no contact to the outside world... else there ought to be a lot of variation.

I was assuming a fairly small nation in this case. I tend to default assume that countries in D&D settings are on the small side, with only a few significant cities at most; I probably shouldn't have used the word "Empire" in my random dwarf country name, since it implies something larger and more likely to have a cosmopolitan mix of peoples from a huge variety of backgrounds. If a country is relatively small and not very diverse in its ecology, then there will be fewer differences in culture within it, as more people will be making their livings in the same ways; a landlocked country won't have any divide between fishermen and farmers, for example.


The whole concept of "race" in real life concerning humans, refers to the existance of "human sub species" (races). Which, as said above, is biologically falsified. But concerning fantasy worlds, if one wanted (concerning fantasy it's all what one WANTS to be there and what message to convey with it) it could be more true. At least, humans, orcs, elves can often breed with each other? So are they maybe belonging to the same species? Definitions are all somewhat fuzzy here. The "sub races" thing for naming different cultures of the same species is really kinda weird. Never really thought about this, concerning the relation between humans ("the norm") and other fantasy species. Thanks.

You're welcome. It really leapt out at me during my current world-build, as I'm making several interconnected worlds with different races hailing from different homeworlds. It seemed really strange that humans could be plopped anywhere, but if you want to populate most of a planet with elves or dwarves, you have to do really strange things with the climate and ecology of the world or have different "subraces" for different climates. I still haven't decided how I'm going to work around this.



Good argument for not serving/breaking the cliches i think. :) But concerning "antagonist material" ... species aside, there can be just a lot of hack and slay concerning different objectives. If the hungry pillagers emerging from the woods are humans or orcs, what difference does it make? They want to kill you and take your stuff and if you don't want that to happen, you have to defend yourself.

Depends on the antagonists in question. In the game I was in, we were trying to stop a major war from breaking out between two powerful nations, one mainly human, the other mainly elven. The elven leaders felt they had a religious imperative to conquer and "civilize" the "barbaric" humans, and the common people either bought into the religious dogma or, for the most part, didn't care enough to try to stop the war. The two-and-a-half elves in our party wound up trying to stop the war, but that put us in conflict with a lot of rank-and-file soldiers who were basically just following orders and had little grasp of the greater conflict. We felt little regret when we finally got to face one of the generals who was pushing for the war in battle, but we would have rather not had soldiers on either side dying in the conflict.

And I'm not going to go into any more detail about my past campaigns here unless it's directly relevant to the topic.

[luciérnaga]

@Haldir:
Facts? Well you could have googled them, read them up (on wiki, elsewhere) or your local library. I am not your personal search enginge. And scholarly discussion? Earnest? :D You're mixing all kind of conflicts, social, cultural and genetical factors and call it "racism"?
And no ... not "continental populations" have segmented biologically, but isolated communities. You cannot trace this along continental lines at all, but along cultural lines. Of course, there are a lot of coincidences were cultural and geographic diversion fall in one (large oceans, distances and such) so along some continental borders this is right, but along other continental borders genetic differences are seriously nonexistant. Even then, you also cannot prove distinct warfare along continental lines at all (even me sepaking of "euroean colonisation" is much to broad, because it's just refering to mostly west european imperial powers, also invading other european areas and defining them inferior or "not purely white"). You bring straw arguments and then want me to find facts against them. ^^

But well, concerning that you mean by "facts" - "things people other people call scientists wrote" how about you read this: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/tenfacts.pdf
You will find also some fallacies in your past argumentation named again. ;)

And for the "ad hominem" - sorry, if you put humanity into different races bases on "continental ancestry" I don't know what we have left to say to each other. I don't like to argue with people who do that, as little as I like to argue with people citing the "one true word of god". (seriously offtopic, but because it's rather beautiful - there is a sentence in the coran invalidating holy scripture or, especially islamic, fundamentalism based on it: "If the sea were ink for the Words of my Lord, surely, the sea would be exhausted before the Words of my Lord would be finished,) Allah says that even if those oceans were ink for the Words of Allah, and all the trees were pens, the pens would be broken and the water of the sea would run dry, and the Words of Allah would remain, for nothing can outlast them.")
Years past i would get seriously enraged, now it just tires me.


@Everyl:

RPGs aren't perfect representations of reality to begin with.

Yes. Super-important point for me. RPGs are a simplified rules corset to tell stories with. And these rules tend to tell me something about what the writer finds to be important. For example it makes a difference if you write "people from culture x tend to have skills y and z among others - here is a list, if you want take them with your bonus skill points, if don't want to leave them - it's up to you" or "people of culture x automatically get a bonus on y because, you know, they're all alike".


I still haven't decided how I'm going to work around this.
I think cultural differences work well here. But to emphasize that "race" itself is at it's core a cultural conception trying to show off as biological - what if the "wood elves" classify the "sea elves" as a different race and oppress them? Or the human scientists classify three different orcish races but most orcs themselves do not? And those who do learned their racist views from the humans, because orcish lore didn't even have a concept for that? :D
Send a whole different message than the omniscient narrator point of view "it's canon, fixed, in the rules, these people are races/subraces, these are not".

@fairy lisa:
Thank you, interesting post.

Stereotypes are just easy.
I think this is the base of it somehow. "Race" or "species" as heuristics (generalizations to simplify something). I think they are in real life, as they are in fiction. Question would be - do we need this heuristics, or can we find better ones... I think that really is a thing worth thinking about. :)

[Ormur]

Don't feel bad, this is an interesting and very worthy subject and I think it's been pretty civil.

Also I've been worrying about this for my new setting since I think the default D&D setting is rather problematic.

First of all you're probably right about being sceptical towards "races" in fantasies, they spring from pretty noxious ideas but I don't think they're wholly irredeemable if handled well. I won't claim to having found a way to do so but I've been at least trying to distance myself from the elven monocultures and thinly disguised attributed based on real-world stereotyping.

I kept species as stat-blocks but made them solely biological, and they are species with genetic differences that preclude procreation. Some species might have more muscle mass on average or have anatomies better suited to running fast or climbing and they might range from herbivores to carnivores. There is no racial adjustment to mental stats however and no bull**** +4 to basketweaving species-wide.

On top of that I intend to have a cultural template, it's going to be tough to balance them and create enough but they might represent a tribe's preference for certain ranged weapons for hunting and defence, the likelihood that most people of a semi-nomadic culture of shepherds could ride and handle animals and the emphasis on book learning in the upper layers of an urban civilization. Most of those would still be optional, and they'd be cross-racial. A gnoll from a culture of nomads adopted at early age into a urban culture would get the urban culture's skill-set and bonuses (as options at least). If there are few gnolls in that culture his carnivorous diet might have implications but that wouldn't mean he had the faintest idea of how to hunt animals.

I do think it would be interesting to see how different anatomies shape cultures but that would only be one factor, I'd assume mental faculties are the same and that historical and environmental differences would trump racial ones all the time. The cultures of a species that can climb trees with ease might get shaped by that but it won't matter if individuals belong to a desert culture.

[Tectonic Robot]

I wandered in here expecting to find homebrew on some sort of undead personification of racism, and instead found a complex discussion of racism and how it appears in Dungeons and Dragons. Surprising!

Carry on!

[Everyl]

@Ormur:

Have you read the D&D Next playtest documents yet? One thing I like about it is that all characters choose a background, which affects how they interact with the world and roughly half of their starting proficiencies (the Next equivalent of class skills). It solves a big 3.X problem with over-stereotyping classes to the point that you have to make new versions to cover concepts like "wilderness rogue," "urban ranger," or "educated fighter." I'm considering trying to homebrew something similar into 3.X, but focusing it more on covering the cultural elements that are, by default, assumed to be a direct aspect of race by RAW.

If I do it right, it should be possible to make characters akin to Terry Pratchett's Captain Carrot, a human who was raised among dwarves and thus considers himself to be a dwarf, despite being over twice as tall as the dwarves in the setting. And, in my setting at least, there would be a number of different backgrounds "dwarven" backgrounds, anyway.

[Ormur]

Yes, one of my players told me about the similarities after I mentioned this to him. I haven't taken a look yet but I should.

Captain Carrot is an excellent example of a character I hope would be achiveble in my homebrew as well. I'd also hope the addition of "class" skills and other cultural features through backgrounds would also help broadening the classes that are sometimes too limited without players having to jump through too many hoops. I'd also hope to involve players in the world building by allowing them to take part in designing their own cultural backgrounds.

Another thing, I was going to keep mental stats completely separate so as not to associate them with either biology or culture. I'm wondering if I should go with just some kind of a point buy adjustment or offer a few predetermined sets (like maybe absent minded professor: +2 int, -2 wis or mindless brawler: +2 str, -2 int).

[Haldir]

The article presented is baseless pandering to a way we'd prefer things to be and not the way they actually are. An arbitrary distinction between race and culture are assumed, when most people living before modernity would have never considered a difference. This is precisely because of his (uselessly) stated "fact" (I quote it because of its appalling obviousness) that human populations are genetically related based on geography. Duh. People's who were able to displace others did so and did not consider that culture was distinct from race- the two were intrinsically tied for the vast majority of human history. (See the stated suppositions that support my argument from the beginning of this debate, where I very clearly denounce any historical evidence for these ridiculous distinctions.)

Worse, it states the obvious as deep insight and expects us to ignore legitimate phenotypical and genotypical variations that can be proved. Rather, some of the facts presented in the article serve to prove that culture and race would have inseparable (see above).

I would have given this article a C. Great effort, but nothing is really contributed to a greater understanding of human nature than Darwin and many many many others have already provided, and panders to a specific intellectual inclination which, while quite vogue, will not stand up to factual scrutiny. (Human populations are more similar than they are different and genetic variation is better considered as a continuity than a distinction? Of course they are, idiot, that's how evolution works! Thanks for positing nothing that we can't already see, you freaking tool. How about trying to say something useful?)

Additionally, Luc, you misunderstood a basic tenet of my argument. Never once did I claim that each continent had its own genetically distinct group (though Eurasia is dominated by a genetically identical group of individuals, unlike Africa), but instead I said that each continent has a series of groups that have segmented themselves along racial lines . (Your awful article chooses to term these as "populations," a name that sounds much nicer but neglects some observed truths that are uncomfortable for a society such as ours.)

[Weltall_BR]

I just wanted to say I have read through most of this thread and learned a lot. Thank you people for all your insightful thoughts.

[Fairy Lisa]

@fairy lisa:
Thank you, interesting post.

I think this is the base of it somehow. "Race" or "species" as heuristics (generalizations to simplify something). I think they are in real life, as they are in fiction. Question would be - do we need this heuristics, or can we find better ones... I think that really is a thing worth thinking about. :)

Yes, of course we can, but whether it is worth it is up to individual campaign designers. I’m of the opinion that any amount of complexity is possible, but the more complexity you add to the underlying system that the players have to work with, the further the system trends away from being used for role-playing games and towards being role-playing simulators. The former is fun, the latter is a chore to run, but if you start with a simple enough game system and write with that in mind, then it would become easy to create better heuristics.