It is a game. Racism and stereotypes are built into the games for a reason. In real life racism is a terrible thing and should be torn down. In the game however, it is not our world. We play characters within a huge world with many sentient creatures whose cultures have vast backgrounds. These prejudices should be portrayed, explored and overcome. We are actors telling a story.
falloutboy9993 I'd argue bigotry is still terrible even in a fantasy setting - *which is exactly why bigotry needs to come up in fantasy!* You can't condemn something if you're not allowed to discuss it! There's a fundamental difference between *depicting* bigotry and *promoting* bigotry. Have characters who are racist assholes, *so that they can be punished for being racist assholes!*
Right. There is a lot of violence in those games I've played (except narrativist ones of course), hte point is what do we do with that. Okay, I admit I've even enjoyed a plain hack'n'slash adventure time ago - but I've grown over it. Same with racism in games, as well as any social issue: we can use these to grow. Or we can grow taste for them. I vote for growing. Especially when GMing games with youngsters I will always arrange the adventures so that the characters grow and free themselves from unwanted prejudices.
It depends on how it is interpreted. There's a difference between having racism in the game and let it just be there, and talking about it in the game, maybe with a side plot or a character arc. What he means is, if the raw racism is in there, it'll leave the impression that it doesnt have to be changed. also, a lot of people use literature to show their points of view and it is actually a really powerful tool.
Well... yes and no. Stereotypes can be used as a valuable tool to build on expectations, only for you to hit them with a whole new view. Let's take the orcs as an example. We all know they're vicious, moronic brutes who like to kill anything. Keep throwing them at your party for the party to have expectations about orcs, then hit them with a few unique ones. A group of well-armored orcs get into formation and attempt to kill your party. Perhaps some orcs wear masks as a disguise and trade for their loot. You can throw cardboard cutout enemies, so you can break from that stereotype from the future.
I'm happy you talk about social influence of roleplaying games. Many of us are hardly aware of influence any game has on us. The character growth during the games has a real potential for making our lives better - especially when we are gaming with kids. Keep on!
Agreed. We all have had characters who are alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, sadists, vigilantes, and all sorts of reprehensible things. Do we also have a responsibility to deconstruct these in our sessions?
I like to play racist characters. It is really funny to play a character who has predjudices against a specific race. It is even more funny to play with someone who is that race.
Beautiful storytelling will ensue that can help us explore these ideas and the problems they cause and how we can overcome it. This whole video is very disappointing.
I personally think racism is very important in roleplay (since you don't really discriminate real beings). Racism creates very interesting conflicts in a fantasy world and even between party members. Once my dwarf companion nearly killed my elf because ''elves are egoistic snobs'' and it generated a conflict in the party that we had to solve during various sessions since he was the tank and I was the healer.
I like the idea that humans wrote the monster manual. So if creatures are more likely to defend their lands, than they will be portraited as hostile. Of course there are exceptions, but that wouldn't be as likely. Always assume that you are a part of the biggest group, instead of being a part of the smaller groups.
Racism in game is not the same as racism in real life. If in my game all orcs are mindless pillagers, then they are. Thats how they developed in my world. If dwarves have a deep seeded hatred for it, then they do. In a world strife with war and death, with races so drastically different, (unlike different skin colors of humans) It makes sense that the races wouldn't get along. To say they a character wouldn't have a racist mindset is just not plausible. It creates conflict, it helps build a story.
I would argue that racism is racism in games too. But when we are talking about different species, then that is not racism. So I think Brutal orcs can be fine. Wolfs are more aggressive than humans. Important not to do as in the Bright movie tho. Where they connected the orcs to black culture.
This video has the same problem as the previous one. Rather than try to work with the stereotypes, explore why they are such and such, you want to change it because "I don't like the way things are!" I get that you think Racism is bad. And I agree that it is. But take a step off of your pedestal, and think of this: Why is it that eastern asians are typically considered very intelligent and good at math? Don't just immediately say "That's a racist stereotype!" No, try to think and answer that question logically. WHY does that stereotype exist? The answer is their culture. Eastern Asia (China and Japan particularly) have a huge emphasis on education, study, and being good academically. A couple of Chinese university students I met a few months back told us about how their school days are, and we're talking FOURTEEN HOURS of study in a single day, including both classes and homework. So, when such incredible amounts of work is ingrained into the culture of a country, is it a wonder that people start to think of them as very intelligent people? It's far from a universal truth, but it is such a deep-rooted part of their very society that it isn't wrong. So I'll repeat what I said in your previous video on the very same topic: Work with Racism in the game, find out why. Introduce deviants where it fits, but don't force them in because "Racism is bad, m'kay?". Use it as a narrative tool, a part of the story. Furthermore, you equate Racism between us humans (where the differences are miniscule and unfounded) to Racism between different SPECIES. There are huge differences between them, and with different places of origin, different life spans, physiologies, etc etc. there is a ton of stuff for different cultures to arise. And from different cultures spring conflicts, and from conflicts racism can arise. If you want to celebrate the differences of the various races, first work through the negative aspects that said differences bring. Don't just throw them out because you don't like them. Honestly, it would be a much better message to send, that people can work together in spite of their inherent differences (Because there WILL be differences. It's unavoidable). To ignore the differences and throw them away - making things uniform or forcibly varied because you don't want to be racist, is even worse in my book.
> "To ignore the differences and throw them away - making things uniform or forcibly varied because you don't want to be racist, is even worse in my book." This is what annoys me about the political correctness that permeates the mainstream these days. This is exactly what it is trying to do, and I'm sorry to say, but that vision is boring. I, for one, would not like to play in or DM a world where every race is benevolently identical to the point where they are all practically nothing but multiple reskins of the same idealized, utopian human. (Except maybe in the case where it's a pocket dimension or one-off culture, ruled by a tyrant, like the Injustice Superman.) Yes, I know, #notall, but there are *always* exceptions to the rule. Usually, these exceptions are purged from their respective 'rule' (so to speak). Just look at Drizzt. Only recently has modern society become so accepting of exceptions that even the detrimental ones are allowed to flourish and bloom into full blown cancers. On a side note, this whole video (and the prior one) are making me think of the 1984 novel.
I think you misunderstood the bit you quoted. That wasn't me stating that I wanted to make everything uniform, or force every individual to be unique, to avoid racism. It was me stating that I DIDN'T want that, much like you said yourself :)
No no! I was not accusing you of harboring such ideas. Not at all. You sound sane and I am thankful for that. I was commenting on the sentiment of such double-thinking individuals who *actually* hold such flawed ideals.
Yo, I found this a few years late. But, I wanna say that I love it. I don't play D&D But, I first of all LOVE how you say that even though it /is/ fantasy, people act on very fictional and even unconscious biases/notions when they do stuff or make stuff in fantasy. I was about to make a rant about Racism in roleplaying in general and how some players do it wrong, defend it and how it CAN be done with the right context and handling. I /love/ how you say some of these ideals need to be challenged and deconstructed, how our ideals can leave impressions. Thinking about what you do (even in fantasy settings) make for a better person and honestly a deeper and better game/story. Sorry for all the hate you got for this video. As amateur writer, avid roleplayer and black dude, it's really nice to see there are some people in this community who aren't scared to use their platform to talk about stuff like this in a critical way cause, it's more serious then people know.
I have played as racists, bigoted and in general very bad characters but I will never accept that as a good thing. I have played a cannibal, at least two or three racists, a misogynist, a classicist and some torturing, pillaging, raping and real evil guys, and that doesn't mean I'm OK with any of that and nobody should think it. Your character is NOT you, it should never be and in my opinion the more different it's from you, the more special and challenging is to roleplay it. That's the beauty and the most fun part of roleplaying, you play a character that's very different from you and explore that mentality and culture without necessarily saying that's OK. Also, if I'm OK with everything my character says and does, can I call it roleplaying? Or it's more like myself making decisions instead of what my character would do? Also, isn't more fun that the majority of a race (elves, dwarfs, etc) have very similar traits and characteristics, but your specific tribe/family (or only you) are different from them, and maybe some NPCs that the GM uses? I mean, if you want to roleplay a Gaelic warrior from Celtic culture, nobody should call you on using some stereotypes related to that culture because that's what you want to play with that character and everybody should expect the same from your entire tribe, with just some exceptions to add some spice to the mix. Why is that different from playing an elf, a dwarf or a hafling? When people want to play elves, they expect them to be as the book say they are, unless you say something like "OK, I'm an elf but I come from a savage tribe that workship an ancient god of bloodshed, so we are violent barbarians etc", in which case your specific tribe should be like that BUT there still should be "regular" elves because it makes your tribe more special if they are the exception.
As said in the previous video. Something being in a game doesn't mean you HAVE TO endorse it as a GM or a player. If you play in warhammer, the human (and other races) are racist and xenophobe to the extreme. Does that mean warhammer player promote or condone racism and xenophobia ? I think not. Not even the creators of the universe I'd wager. Once again, your agenda pushing is obvious and your cultural relativism is showing. Could you please keep that out of the game ?
The title says "RPG Racism Discussed." which it should be. It does not say "How to avoid racism." which is essentially the whole point of the video and only a piece of how to handle and discuss racism within the context of an RPG.
It would appear that this video has touched a nerve. Perhaps a few of the viewers saw the title and were hoping to see an elitist rant. However, the outraged did not read the video description before seeing the video and displaying their disgust in the comments. 😔
The perpetuation of racism within D&D is founded on the history of each race. Gnomes and Dwarves have a history of war with giants and orcs, therefore they have a bias based on their experiences. Elves look down on everyone because they're not elves and they're all too unrefined and uncultured because they're short lived and impatient. Unless you're Valenar, then you're not only superior but have a penchant for barbarous assaults on your neighbors because you're bored. This creates tension and racism, yes. However it also mirrors the differences in cultures around the world. What one culture sees as just and righteous, another will always see as evil based on societal values and norms. This isn't to say that racism is good, but far too many people try to over simplify this extremely complex and broad based issue into purely good and evil, without looking into the deeper nuances. Look at bacon and hamburgers, eating these things makes You an evil barbarian to certain cultures, but to you it's a stupid reason for hate. How do you temper such an issue without forcefully changing one society or the other? There will always be people who can't just ignore your eating habits because it's against their beliefs, and that's one of the most mundane of examples for racism I can come up with.
on racism in roleplaying: Yes, you are right, you should not encourage racism. But it can be fun and helpful to explore it. here are some examples, how i used the theme of racism in my games: a) the village of frightful pesants, who fear the neighboring elven gypsie tribe, and hires the players to investigate them as they assume, the gypsies has stolen their cattle. As it turns out, the gypsies are peaceful and honorable people, who are equally afraid of the villagers. and the Cattle... it was eaten by a monster who terrorizes the village and the gypsies alike... b) as a player in shadowrun sometimes i play an racist nocturnal (an elven mutant) who has become an racist because he was the victim of prejudices from ordinary elves and humans alike. So he had grown rather racist to this groups. Now, over time he has learned to value the other players (who are mostly humans and elves) by beeing forced to work with them and seeng them not abusing him. and as the group moved to an area where racism against nocturnals is'nt existent, he slowly realizes that the "normal" (not racist) human and elve is not the exception, but the norm. so he (very) slowly get rid of his racism.
For once the comment section actually has a better lesson than the video: racism is bad, but it exists for a reason. When it comes to gming, understand it and use it, don't just throw it out because "MAH FEEFEES"
I agree with the DM version far more than I do with this one. Yes, I think the DM should be creating a variety of beings, both within and outside of the stereotypes, but no, I don't think racism nor stereotypes should be outlawed in games nor that every character must be open minded to all races. Racism is often part of a culture and history that, although not a good thing, should not be ignored or avoided just because we're telling stories. If anything, it can in fact help us tell better stories. - "Where does the rift come from between these two races?" Maybe there was a feud or even a war at some point that is relevant to the current story. - "There are characters of races that hate each other within this same party!" Maybe they will grow together to value each other regardless of what they look like. - "There's nothing to this character but being a bigot! I don't like them! They're stupid/mean/whatever!" Perhaps you can try to dig deeper to see where these deep rooted values come from, or perhaps he can just be the butt of the party's unredeemable jerk jokes, whatever you like. I think of these games as (in part) a way to examine the human condition (the good, the bad, and the ugly), and avoiding the unpleasant parts (at least in my humble opinion) doesn't teach any lessons, it just creates a politically correct sort of mentality where everything comes across kind of flat. Characters should definitely be unique but forcing them all to avoid stereotypes and racism as a whole is not a good story telling method, from my point of view.
A lot of people in the comments have expressed my thoughts on the subject, so I'm going to give a one sentence summary and a movie quote. Everything exists for a reason, including stereotypes- when you know why the stereotype exists, that's information you can use to build the world. And now for the quote: "Never thought I'd die fighting beside an Elf." "How about fighting beside a friend?" "Aye, I could do that." That scene would have carried no impact at all if there wasn't some degree of racial tension between Elves and Dwarves.
This is a somewhat related note on prejudice (not that racism and homophobia are similiar but bear with me) I am a lesbian, and when I met my wife, she was one of the least supportive of LGBT at the table. She was my best friend, and I didn't chastise her, I didn't say anything about it, I just made a character who was really badass, and also gay. He had faults, he was paranoid, overprotective, and poor social awareness, but when she engaged with him, she became much more accepting. By the end of the game she was fully invested in his relationship he had with another NPC, actively going out of her way to help. He faced homophobia quite a bit, but never did a "woe is me" or went on a long rant. He just made smart aleck comments and let it roll off his back. A year later my wife told me she was Bisexual and ashamed of it because of her upbringing, but my NPC made her feel it was okay to come out, after another year we started dating, and now we've been together for 5 years. I don't think the answer to solving these big issues at the table is to ignore them, but just show great characters that are fully developed and deal with these issues but are good despite it. This can go for a lot of things, and most of the big issues were dealt quietly without most players knowing. One player hates Catholics for a reason I don't understand, and suddenly the game has a couple of cool Catholic Detectives that she befriends. Another thinks anyone who wears skimpy outfits is a bimbo, and there's a contact shaking her ass to pay for medical school. They conform to some stereotypes but not to others, they don't exist to say I'm different than the others, they just also have more to them. While none of my players seem to have issue with Racism. I make sure my games have multiple ethnicities that are grounded with research in case anyone tries to call it in-historical.
I think half of the comments section missed the point of these videos. He's not saying to eliminate the story aspect of racism within games. Rather, it should be challenged. An example in D&D is Drizz't. As a PC, Drizz't faces adversity because he is a Drow, but he does not allow preconceptions about Drow to define him. If you play a kobold, you don't need to have them be snivelling before a dragon. Maybe they found a backbone and dream of being a glorious knight to a kingdom. The reason why it is important to critically look at racism in our games is because they are reinforcement in our lives. If we get in the habit if saying, "Is that Goblin really evil?" it makes it easer to do the same with other prejudices in the real world.
Devin Powers there is nothing wrong with a DM running a game with a group of characters who are prejudiced and have no intention of changing (in character), if that fits the game. Challenging the characters perceptions won’t necessarily make for a better game, depending on what the players and GM want from it.
I think this works better from the perspective of the Dungeon/Game Master, what I took away from this is that he is not saying racism cannot or should not be in your world, but that we should not take a "racist" attitude towards entire races; that not all orcs and tieflings are evil. Other races can still despise each other, but not all members of any race should act the same.
An interesting topic. It's something I've thought about a lot whilst roleplaying in Guild Wars 2. Not exactly tabletop roleplay, but roleplay nonetheless. It's a setting where humans went from being the dominant species in the known world to having their territory reduced to one-fifth of the original size by a combination of infighting, natural disasters, monsters, evil gods and a resurge of several hostile species who want their land back. In short, it's a setting where Humans have plenty of reasons to hate both various other Humans and some of the other species like the Centaurs and the Charr. After learning the lore I got thinking and went: "What would happen if a Human character from a particular Human subculture who got the short end of the stick in a spectacular way were to join the Vigil, an international paramilitary organization dedicated to protecting the innocents and stopping major threats, regardless of which species those innocents are from, or whom the threat is threatening". Given that I was lucky enough to end up with a wonderful group of people, it has been a remarkable journey filled with both camaraderie and conflict which has lasted for a little over three years now. This leads me to the following thought: Were racial stereotypes included in D&D with the explicit purpose of allowing player characters to transcend those simple viewpoints?
I enjoy the idea of morally grey species fighting because it is more realistic but playing a racist character is fine. it is fine and good to play different characters with flaws and it is just an easy way to set up and evil race as an enemy
I knew someone who played a dragonborn that hates elves,and even though it was off of the script I gave them for all npcs. I made the elven archmage turn him into a elf,and when he began to understand elves he would turn back,and at the end of the game everyone knew it shouldn't have happened and still loved it. It was my favorite game of d and d ever. 😊
I had a half-orc character I played where she was found by humans and raised by them. I seriously built in opportunities to explore race in this character, but the opportunity was not explored. To be fair to my DM, this was at an official D&D table, where things had to be run "officially" and according to the distributed modules. But it would have been fun to have opportunities to explore my options. One of several characters I'd love to play in a different situation.
First off, I love your videos. They are great, educational and thought provoking. They deal with subjects that I believe need to be voiced and discussed. This, however, is a little bit different. Racism is wrong. Plain and simple, and I understand what you are saying in this video. If we have racism at the table, younger generations may see it as acceptable, which COULD, in theory, make them act similarly in real life. This problem could be said for anything else in the game. This really only applies to children or people who can't distinguish between the game and real life. Personally, I see no point in racism, but my last character was a fairly racist wood elf in D&D 5e. She had a personal vendetta against orcs and dwarves. Personally, dwarves are one of my favorite races, however, my character had a bad event with them and therefore "hates" them all because of it. Just because I roleplay a racist character does not mean that I am perpetuating racism. I thought you would have talked about the roleplay implications, like blocking off certain things and disregarding certain people. In game, no, not all orcs are savages, and not all dwarves are drunkards, but that doesn't mean that our characters can't think that. You talked on this channel about bringing meta knowledge to the game, and how, even though we as players knew things, our characters would not. What if my character grew up isolated and only heard bad stories of orcs pillaging and killing? Should my character just become accepting immediately of orcs? I believe not. My character can have development into accepting orcs, as that could create a great story, as it did with the character I mentioned earlier, but they should not be forced into an attitude or personality just because, in real life, racism is wrong. If that was the case, there would be no evil campaigns, no hate in the world, no conflict, and it would make a boring story. As long as everyone at the table understands that the game is the game and that you personally don't act that way in real life, racism in game can actually be great.
In my game world, there was a family in the service of a powerful fiend who expelled all the Elves out of a region of the continent and over 200 some odd years, ingrained a fear and hatred in the people. My two players in that campaign had elves who found themselves magically transported to this area through means that weren't their own. They then had to survive this area. My point is that I only use racism as a plot point and even then, not very often.
The good thing that stemmed from these videos is in my opinion the discourse in the comments that really delves deep into what racism actually is and how it can be used and subverted as a tool to tell better stories. I don't know if I'm giving Guy a bit too much credit here, but maybe it was intentional to ensure healthy discussions in the comments. After all, people love to disagree, and these two videos make disagreeing a bit too easy. If that was the idea all along, bravo. If it wasn't... hey, it was a good, albeit a bit flawed sentiment. ^^
Whereas I agree that racism is evil, I do see the need for orcs (to use the example) primarily as antagonists for the players. That said, I thoroughly agree that not all orcs should be the same and their individuality should be observed. I think one of the best means to explore this would be through the moral dilemma. What if the party encounter an orc and fight with him, then win? As he lies bleeding his mother runs out screaming and tries to shield his body. Would the players then kill them both? Remember the mother isn't attacking he PCs, she's trying to shield her boy with her body. I use this example as I introduced it into a D&D game years ago. The orc was a hotheaded teenager who bit off more than he could chew (the party). I further complicated the issue by having the orcs the victims of a smear campaign by a local land owner who wanted them wiped out so her could claim their land. This was why the party were there in the first place as they were hunting orc "raiders". The orc teenager eventually become a party hireling and worked with them for a while. And yes, having an orc with them forced the group to address attitudes against "their" orc. I don't know if the above example challenged racist attitudes but it did make for interesting stories, roleplaying encounters and added extra depth to my game.
So how do you deal with monsters? In my game I want to establish that many monsters have functioning societies and lives but this clashes with everything my players know about monsters. They just wanna kill them on sight for that sweet sweet XP.
I can see it being used as a npc motivation for the pc's quest. At one point I was designing a game where the PCS were going to hunt down a Thieves Guild to reclaim an item for treasures and in doing so they would find out that these thieves were actually keeping an even greater Menace at Bay although they took a small price now and then in maintaining this ability
I have a robotic character who doesn't understand social things like racism and I've been attacked so many times when trying to make conversation with random people on the road who of course were always thieves.
I am surprised a dungeons and dragons channel has turned into a moral grandstand and absolutely illogical. racism appearing in an rpg or narrative in a protagonist gives them a flaw and makes them more interesting. it can be used as a character arc, and racism doesn't come from nowhere, middle eastern racism is caused by the fact there is a lot of terrorism and human rights violations in the middle east. or racism towards black people which started as an attempt to dehumanize them during slavery and then became culturally ingrained. by your logic, an actor who plays a character whom is a racist is actually racist. lets say this actor enjoys acting and telling a narrative, by the logic stated, this person is a racist...
You just highlighted some very subtle points of history my wife and i discussed today. I'd add that the dehumanization seems to be the automatic psychological response to the obvious immorality of slavery. I'm impressed by your articulation of it because i just came to understand it all at the level you speak today. It's a shame we're shaming it here, D&D should be a place to experiment with it and learn by acting it out harmlessly. Prejudice (of which racism would be only one type) is crucial to explore so we can examine how to defeat it in real life.
NO! Ingame racism does NOT equal to IRL racism. Warhammer 40K is an especially good example of this. There "abhumans" (that does not mean a skin color, it means subspecies like Ogryn, Squat, Beastmen, Navigators, and stuff like that) face discrimination, while skin colour is not even noticed in the universe. Case and point, Comissar Ibram Gaunt is always portrayed as white, while Inquisitor Thot is a black man. Also I go to roleplaying events and roleplay sessions to NOT be concerned with realit 06:30 WHAT ON GODS GREEN EARTH CAME OUT FROM YOUR MOUTH? O.O RACISM AGAINST ELVES IS REAL RACISM? DO YOU REALIZE THAT ELVES DO NOT EXIST? O.O
A great example, I once used beast speech to befriend a colony of giant spiders. I man, sure, they WERE trying to starve us out so they could eat us, but that's just because they're carnivores. Actually talking to them, they were fairly friendly.
I don't always find it helpful to equate characters in fantasy settings and people in real life for several reasons. First, as many others have pointed out, having a character who is racist can make for good writing as their backwards and bigoted beliefs are challenged through experience. Playing a character with massive flaws doesn't equate to you being accepting of those flaws. I've personally played a serial killer, and yet I wouldn't condone wanton murder in any way. It was actually kind of exciting to see my character finally be brought to justice despite my best efforts for him to escape. Secondly, the vast majority of games take place in a medieval time period where xenophobia, lack of education, and constant risk of your neighbors actively killing you would naturally result in racism. This isn't an endorsement of racism, it is a flaw in the culture and a product of the times. The idea that a largely uneducated and superstitious population should be easily swayed out of their beliefs by a handful of individuals all for the sake of social progression is a little ridiculous. Finally, in fantasy settings there are a LOT more factors to count in between sentient species. For an extreme example, Mind Flayers are, usually, depicted as surviving off of the physical grey matter of other sapient creatures. This fact alone would inevitably put them at odds with other races, as their diet alone would make it necessary to actively PREDATE on their neighbors. I doubt it's a stretch to say that the other races would be willing to forfeit their brains (and lives) willingly, and thus the Mind Flayers would HAVE to turn to raiding, kidnapping, slavery, etc. just to FEED themselves. That is a massive rift between them and every other race that would be amazingly hard to mend, if it ever even could be.
I love your videos and they have been one of the most helpful resources I've found, but I mostly disagree with this one. It's about fantasy roleplaying, it's not about liking racism. Real world racism shouldn't be conflated with fantasy racism. I don't think fantasy RP should be limited by real world values. Whether or not a PC is racist would depend on the type of character they're playing in addition to their backstory. There could be a logical reason in a fantasy setting for a character to be racist and that shouldn't reflect on the player's personal beliefs. This could even lead to further character development down the line through their interaction with other players or if the GM has a good reason to introduce a situation which challenges their preconceptions. In my current campaign, my character isn't racist but he has good reasons not to be because of his alignment, personality, backstory and wisdom. However, one of my friends is a tiefling who thinks other races are beneath him, partly because he's arrogant and partly because of his backstory which is colored by bad experiences with members of other races who had prejudice against tieflings.
I normally love your videos. you're super informative and wise on many topics and have helped me as a DM. this video however makes little sense as to what it has to do with the game. racism is bad, in the real world. you are supposed to conform to the story outline the game and the DM have built for you. if you play Warhammer, you are going in knowing that pretty much every race is racist, xenophobic and bigoted. that is literally the entire premise. orcs all rape, pillage, and murder because that's how your DM or the book wrote them in there to do. people in the game will obviously think the orc in the party is here to do the same if he just waltzes into the village. stereotyping and racism are necessarily bad in a gameplay point of view. they further drive story and evoke the roleplay ability of players. you too clearly pushed your own ideological feelings with this video man.
Fun thing: When I played Divinity Original Sin with a ex-friend of mine. He said "Kill the orc!" I asked "Why?" he answered "Because it is an orc!" I then replied "Alright, Kill all the humans!" he was shocked and looked at me, and asked "Why?" "Because they are fucking humans that is why!" He didn't get it at all. If we are to kill all the Orcs; When in fact even in the lore of Divinity, the Orcs are just defending themselves, trying to take back land the Humans stole from them. Humans kill undead without a second glance, because undead, they never stop to think if they are friendly or not. They kill the Imps, Goblins, Elves, and Lizardmen, just because "Not Human." that pretty much screams Humans are the scum of the world. Of course there are humans who are good, but that is the thing, if you can accept that with humans, accept that with all species, not just humans.
Rules as written, gnolls are violent savages who slaughter and brutalize for the sake of slaughter and brutality. My gnolls are shamanistic hunter-gatherers who just happen to hunt other sapient species. Their elf skulls and human hide tents aren't signs of excessive cruelty, they're signs of efficiency, of using the resources available to them.
I have to say this is one topic where I agree with the comments much more than you. I’d be curious to see you make a response video addressing the comments as I’m interested in how you’d respond to them...
Grrr someone telling me not to be racist in my fantasy game *slams dislike* For real though, while fantastic racism can be done well its usually a crutch for the worst kind of player/DM. I certainly understand the reasoning behind nipping it in the butt of you don't think anyone's capable of doing it justice.
Hmm in some cases I can see your point in trying to bring in the topic of racism into the game and trying to brake it down. However in some games and fantasy/science fiction Universes it's just part of the experience, Warhammer 40K for example...everyone basically wants to rule the galaxy...or devour it. Pretty much every race in that setting has an inherent bias to some degree or another, perhaps the history of a certain race when acting as a whole is the reason for the prejudice against that race...in which case is for good reason. Yes there can be exceptions such as those who are disenfranchised by others of their kind, are atheist to the usual beliefs of what those around them believe and even those who try to be reformists. One thing I have found about role plays is everything is context dependent in order to feel natural, things need to make logical sense in order to progress smoothly. To sum up my thoughts. Racism, prejudice or just biases exist for a myriad of reasons, however braking said concepts down or even building them up should always be context dependent, organic and not just "Well because we feel like it and it makes us feel good". Just my observation and laying my cards on the table...make of it what you will.
I noticed when I play World of Warcraft, I'm legitimately racist to the blood elf race and I stereotype the players as being all narcassistic assholes, and I believe that's because the character creation restrains the player's character to that one personality that's set to the race already through emotes, animations and such. This video helped me realize that... It's kind of interesting how that works.
I love playing tieflings, its personally my favorite race in D&D, although, my current dm apparently doesn't enjoy them, i have to pay close to double the prices for most things due to it....
Seems pretty realistic. If peoples did not like demons or "demon spawns". 1. It maybe not about your DM did not enjoy them. Maybe he just want to show certain world points. His world is alive and kicking there should be some prejudices, some stereotypes... he just roleplays as best as he can. 2. Your DM may really dislike your choice of race. Cause now DM must to roleplay different reaction toward your character, it takes some time, but he may not feel that these events gave something useful or fun to the game.
.proof this is true.... Ogre in the movie "revenge of the nerds" turned out to be a good guy and also shared great wisdom, if I may quote, "what if C A T really spelled dog?"
an important point i feel was missed is that there may be players at your table who are dealing with issues of racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc, outside of the game table. by bringing these things into your game you're alienating any players who already battle these issues. the table should be an escape from the world, not a reminder of things that are shitty in it. maybe you have a black player in your game, and they see how you describe all of x race to be the same negative stereotype. how do you think they might feel about that, if they're already dealing with society saying the same things about their race?
TL:DR While I agree with you wholeheartedly but I don't think DnD is the kind of environment to challenge someone's real life racist tendencies, campaigns are supposed to be fun escapes from life, and FORCING players (or the GM in this case) to do so is jarring and uncomfortable. We should be encouraging new aspects of play, not making them taboo, and I think many people look to your channel for advice on doing that. I was originally excited about you talking about racism in DnD because I'm playing a racist human, and I was expecting you to look at it from a character flaw that has room for improvement or change in some way, But these last 2 videos have kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I did make a comment on the last video, but I offered an argument for keeping racism rather than confronting the base argument of these videos. This time though, I felt the need to address it. While it is your channel and you can do what you see fit with it, I think the general expectancy from these videos is to give insight on a topic involving DnD. However both these videos have seemed like a grandstand, stating that you're against racism and trying to encourage other people to either express the same feelings through their DnD campaigns, whether through their PCs or their campaign design. Completely shutting off an aspect of human interaction in a fantasy setting just to show you're against it in the real world just makes it seem taboo, and future generations would be pushed to not even explore it in a "safe" environment. I just think that many people come to you to see new ways to approach a problem (the problem here being how to portray a racist character without being overly edgy) and we're greeted with "racism is bad and we should take every opportunity to challenge racist overtones in our campaigns". I do feel there were a few times when you started to present scenarios of approaching racism, but they were always prefaced with "racism is bad" rather than "What would my character think about in this situation and how would they react? Here's some examples of what I might do with this character in that scenario" like we normally get. When you suggested having the party of orcs try to interact with the town that shunned them, instead of doing a full stop on the story to try to make the town more accepting, I was thinking of it in terms of a side quest, where we learn that the town had been ravaged by a tribe of orcs up the mountain for decades, and since they saw orcs, the town became concerned. Then the party would have a new option in the story and can "casually challenge the town's racism" in a sense without having the players see this as an awkward anti-racism agenda push. I just think there was a better way to go about tackling this admittedly difficult and sensitive subject, and that there is merit in the statement that this is just fantasy, so for better or worse, it won't really effect the real world in a significant way.
Unfortunately, I think this is now counterproductive. Gamemastering style, technique and awareness are one thing, but admonition of content is another. At this point I feel I am being lectured and spoken down to. While it is perfectly valid to say "please take this under consideration", there is a wide gap between that and "your duty as a socially-aware game master is to structure your games this way so you can instruct your players". This is a disservice to me as a game master (and I've been doing this since 1977) and to my players. Please, do not use your Patreon/UA-cam channel as a soapbox. That is not what I, at least, am here for.
Me- I love racism, both in RPG and real life. It gives so clean and perfect leverage over ones mind to do whatever I please with it. So easy, so reliable, so quick to implement. I agree completely, that stereotype breaking makes the game richer, but then again you need to have a stereotype to break so the game can be enriched. If all the races should be consisting of totally unique individuals, the uniqueness and individuality would become the new stereotype we would have to break. Now, I'm not saying that this is wrong in itself, but why make more work, when the stereotypes are already established?
You rant on and on about making an interesting story but when it comes to the story involving characters who hate each other based on what they are then no no no, you can't have that kind of conflicts in your games thats ickky
The video wasn't saying that racism should never come up in the game; Guy was making the point that if racism is nonsense in real life then it should be nonsense in a fantasy setting too.
It´s indeed a tricky question. As i agree a lot on the things you´re talking about, i´m also of the oppinion that it is part of the game that there are those nemesis races like Orks and Drow etc. which you can use as a sterotype for players if you want to reveal a simple and plain enemy. In my many years as a gm i used a lot of these nemesis races who supprisingly helped out the party or where different from their kin. But there would be not much of a supprise to that, if every second ork likes to play musik or is a flower child on it´s finest. I strongly agree with you when it comes to players who simply attack a creature cause it´s colour is green. I´m a lucky person. My players mostly judge a creature by his actions not by it´s race. Diversity is good and a lot more fun than linking to the same sterotype again and again. But don´t take away a players arch enemy by making every ork unique and flowersome
I think a part of this whole thing is the same problem as saying "There's no black and white, only gray", reducing multiple different stereotypes into one fits-all schema. The important thing to realize here is to say A) there are different shades of gray, and B) there are also colors. Most different races or species might be the same brightness, but have different hues. And sure, technically, most any species could probably be most any possible personality, but those are not uniformly distributed. Most people are heavily influenced by their parents, and if their parents were pillaging brigands or sneaky thieves, they might tend into that direction as well. Of course, racism is something that is not accepted in our modern-day cosmopolitan society, but in most fantasy settings, we'll have a level of technology and sociology that's comparatively a few hundred years old. The different species mostly live in their own cities, tribes, enclaves etc., getting used to their own culture and mostly seeing other species as "the others". Then there's also the thing that while the different Fantasy species can interbreed, they are still fundamentally different. An elf typically lives longer than a human, who typically lives longer than an orc, and the mixed-race offspring of any of these has a life expectancy between that of the parents. Saying that all species are the same is like saying that all sexes are the same. Biology just doesn't work that way. All that aside, I'm pretty sure that racism in tabletop RPGs doesn't propagate racism in real life, since in the RPG, you'll be playing varioous different races throughout the game. Also, on playing with children: In a game where you murder people and fight horrors from the beyond that try to turn you inside out alive, I don't think children that are still at an age to be that malleable have any place.
Okay, I played a character that was racist against orcs and other green skinned creatures in one of my campaigns. However this was intentionally meant to be a character flaw, and to be quite honest, a medieval setting may very well have that in it's world because that is the frame of mind people and creatures had back then. While the state of things in the real world shouldn't be this way, this can still be explored in a game where the characters and creatures might not be so forward thinking. Suppose we decide to have all the religions in the game agree with each other as well, that's guaranteed not to happen given that some of the ideals in the books intentionally conflict. Further, the reason why most dm's stick with static and flat enemy creation is to simplify the game mechanics. While it may be a clever and inventive to mix up the occasional encounter, going to the other end of the spectrum can make every single encounter a chore to have to find motive in the creatures you encounter. As for alignment, like it was mentioned in the last video, it is necessary to have in your role-playing game because it reminds the players that there actions have consequences and if they do something too extreme they will alter that general moral fiber that they hold. While I respect your sentiment to attempt to cure an evil of this world, it simply doesn't make sense to apply to a fictitious world in which one can perform acts that are separate from the real world.
I fully agree but 1 thing I find we do that is wierd is the naming of Species as Races. I think a Species would be very similar. orcs would probably have many similarities as a species but the different Races of orc would probably have different cultures/natures/social norms. Same with Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Halflings ect...
Look, I don't know about you guys, but whether experiencing or pushing on another character, the hostility of racism is kind of the last thing I want in my escapist fantasy game.
Most fantasy settings tend to treat "races" more like "species". And although you aren't going to get a rigid cookie cutter template of how every single aspect of every single instance of that species is going to behave... there's generally some fairly predictible patterns you can expect over others. (Eg. An Owlbear is likely to attack if it's hungry, scared, or defending its territory and isn't likely to walk up and introduce itself.) Extend this to the Orc example and you have a sentient species with some mechanically established racial abilities, stat modifiers & proficiencies. So you have a balance between racially determined characteristics mixed in with the conscious personality and cultural influences on the character. And speaking of cultural influences, most settings have an established understanding of conventional orc culture that plays right into the stereotype. Which (barring large scale overhauls) means that if you see an orc dressed in traditional orc attire, carrying a traditional orc weapon, in a traditional orc environment... chances are he's probably going to behave like a traditional orc. Is that racism (or species-ism)? I guess... but it's a much more valid deduction than in a real world setting. There's no +2 INT for having a certain skin colour in real life. Black people aren't orcs. They have dark skin, thick lips, and curly hair... not fangs, a berserker rage state & inhuman strength.
I think what he is trying to say is not that your a racist because you have racism in your game, but that you don't HAVE to have racism in your game or have racism all the time in it if you so wish
Racism is a great way to play dnd, to be able to play out these awful things/thoughts and ideas of racism in a game(knowing full well that its evil) is a great sensation. As long as one knows that its part of a character and not who you are.
OK, this reminds me of two characters from the Red Dragon Inn game series by Slugfest (if you don't know it, check it out its amazing) There is a troll "Phrenk" and his niece "Natyli" who are from a non-typical tribe of highly intelligent and civilized trolls. With regular nomadic trolls being evil and brutish quote: "Usually trolls are mean, angry monsters who maliciously terrorize smaller folk. Nobody is exactly sure why - perhaps quasi-immortality drives them mad or constantly getting hurt and suffering through regrowing limbs is unbearable. Maybe they are just fed up with how everyone gives them a hard time for looking kinda scary. " In a fictional roll play setting I think the idea of racism is more complicated than it is compared to racism of our world. In some games the different races are such drastically different creatures that its possible for cultural and ethical differences to be too alien for an understanding to be reached. Should Orcs and Dwarves learn to get along? Yes. Should the Romulans and Vulcans mend the gap between their cultures? Yes. But from the trolls explained above, maybe a "normal" troll just can understand the idea of peaceful negotiation. If their gut instinct is hit it with a rock because it doesn't make sense, you will have a hard time talking to the troll.
Racism in games - say savage, violent orcs - is usually a re skinned racism from the real world. Not only is it a good thing to re think these stereotypes because it helps you yourself challenge your assumptions about cultural racism but also because it makes for better story telling. Don’t be lazy by reducing your fantasy races to stereotypical descriptions
What about exploring the reasons WHY we have these stereotypes? Surely they are there for a reason? If Orcs have a tendency toward violence, should we not tread carefully in their presence? If Dwarves produce supremely skilled masons, should they not be lauded? The important thing is despite our prejudices, we need to give people a chance and to treat others with respect. There is a difference between being prejudiced and bigoted, IMO.
The problem with the way you present the argument is when we apply the same logic to something like violence in video games (or role-playing). Studies have been done, and fantasy violence isn't correlated with violence in other aspects of the world. By the same token, I would expect fantasy racism to not be correlated with racism in other aspects of the world. However, fantasy settings (fictional settings) allow us to /explore/ things that would otherwise be detrimental to society, or ourselves, safely. We can certainly use a fantasy setting to explore racism - maybe we do that by calling out racism and fighting against it in the game, campaigning for equal rights for all creatures. Or maybe we do that by purposely creating a definitely racist character. And maybe we don't purposely explore it every game or every campaign. But it's certainly true that role-playing games offer a unique avenue to explore racism that won't be available in many other forms of entertainment.
"OH NO I'M LOSING SUBS AND MY LIKE/DISLIKE RATIO IS FUCKED HOW DO I FIX THIS? Was it that shitty video I made the other day? Oh I know how to fix this, MAKE ANOTHER SHITTY VIDEO SAYING THE SAME SHIT BUT MORE OBVIOUS THIS TIME." Great logic.
Okay, I commented on the last video so I'll try and make this one a bit shorter. No all characters of a race should not be the same, in some cases most should and only a few should be different and try to change their people's ways, other times all but a few should be different from the stereotype, but whatever the case may actually be, don't act as though the problem doesn't exist, have NPC's that hold prejudices against a member of the party, such as an innkeeper refusing them shelter if that one's with them, and see how the players react, and then see how their characters react and then work off that, conversely make a character that has genuine reasons for prejudices against a certain race, but keep in mind as a player that your character is almost certainly wrong, and as such may have to come to terms with the way they've treated innocent people.
I think it is important to point out tho. The different between an Orc and a Human can be fully cosmetic if the GM wants it to be. But there can also be a huge genetic/magical factor that can make them as different as you want. They can be closer to wolfs in there heads, if the DM would like that. Not sure there is something wrong with making a wolf-brained-green-skinned-human. That's not rasicm at all. But saying someone is less good when you know the only thing that's different is how they look, that's really bad.
So I'm running a WWII game. The players are commandos out to blow up a bridge. They come across a group of bright young German guys in France. So we can assume that they might just be a group of folk singers? Now don't get me wrong, I'm as much against racism as the next guy. But this is a game! It is in fact part of the fun to have Elves and Dwarves insult each other. I do not get together with my friends to lecture them on why they need to be nice. If they carry it past the game table that is their problem not mine.
RPG's generally have a reason for the racism. It is still a generalisation, because there's outliers in all races. But most have legitimate reasons. There's bits of history where huge things happened, where the race that is seen as 'evil' did hundreds of horrible things, and it was a significant group of them. On Earth, it tends to be people see a couple individuals performing similar actions, and some take it to mean they're all like that. Or they take statistics, and assume their just like that (not taking into account the reasons of they're disadvantaged, and are pretty much restricted to areas like that). And, in RPG's, the races do generally tend towards a certain way, because of how the race was made, by a god for example, so the vast majority will follow that. You should have some stereotypes of the race, but some extremities. Like there's the stereotype of the gruff warrior dwarf that likes to drink, but there's also some weedy wizard dwarves that don't like violence and hate alcohol. Elves are usually the cowards of the worlds, so have the Elven Heroes of legends that stayed to fight when the most battle hardened dwarf fled.
I mean, I kinda get where he's coming from, but most racial stereotypes in fantasy setting are for a VERY good reason. Elves are normally aloof because they live for almost half a millennium, so why bother caring about anything when you know you'll out live it a few times over? Orcs are normally angry rage heads because (in a handful of more sci-fi setting it's stated) that they produce almost twice as much testosterone and adrenaline as any other race. I know for my personal experience that a dash of ironic racism is actually quite amusing. In one game I'm playing an Argonian, and I refer to a lot of people based on skin color because Argonians describe each other based on scale tint because that's about as meaningful as hair coloration to them. It's like saying "Blond one, why is the raven haired one upset?" but instead it's "Pale one, why is the purple one (Dunmer) upset?" because to him, it's the same thing, and it just shows how meaningless it all is in the first place :P
Just because mindflayers are requierd to eat the brains of sentient beings to survive, that doesn't mean you shouldn't invite them into your home to meet yout children.
Love your channel, I am a new DM having just started two weeks ago and have been looking to make my games go faster as it seems progress has been limited. Anyway, thanks for focusing so heavily on the story elements of this wonderful game as I believe that it, not the stats, is what makes D'n'D so enjoyable to DM and play.
I'm fairly new to D&D, but in my first couple campaigns, my characters have been designed to be very accepting of all the other races IN SPITE of what the official lore tells you about the race dynamics. It's a reflection of my personal desire to value people for what they can do and not what they look like. Works great IRL, but honestly, I feel like I'm cheating the game, so to say. The fact that there are racial divisions built into the game allows interesting character development potential. A motley group of adventurers from different backgrounds forced to work together while initially distrusting each other is a great place to start the path of warming up to and understanding the situations of what were formerly caricatures in that character's mind. If I just say, "I'm cool with everyone; let's fight" then there are all sorts of interesting tension and role playing moments lost. It's kind of boring in a way. What better way to reinforce your personal belief in equality than by playing out a full scenario where you start the opposite way and have the opportunity to come around to someone different by learning more about them. In a way, it even feels a bit like metagaming to say, "I'm from a small, insular village of halflings, but all the scary stories I heard about in my upbringing don't mean anything to me for....reasons." Would YOUR CHARACTER in that setting feel this way regardless of the what the player feels? These games include racism to make things interesting in a fantasy world of many different races; they're not promoting it in real life.
I sincerely believe that this video misses a main point, at least from the GM point of view, that is "using racism as a problem to challenge the players". In this context, the villain (that wants something badly and is having difficulties to get it) is exploiting xenophobic feelings of groups of people to manipulate them better. The players are then tasked to deal with the situation, actively fighting against racism. This is best explained in an example. EXAMPLE (traditional fantasy): There is a war between, say, humans and dwarves. This helps the agenda of the villain, who is using the war as a distraction, so he can push his personal villainous schemes. Therefore, he supports economically both sides of the conflict, and infiltrates agents on both factions to encourage racial hatred, and ensure that the factions keep resources devoted to the conflict. As the Player Characters discover the secret plotting of the villain, they realize that they need to persuade the factions at war that the conflict only harms them in the long run, and reconciliation is the only option. They will have to work with the local people to make sure that they overcome the racial hatred that they developed while being manipulated by the villain. In this scenario, racism is exploited to better define what is an 'opposing force', and it provides a challenging problem for the players: Something to fight against, not merely something to dismiss. The power of storytelling is great, it should be used not to reject social issues, but to challenge them proactively.
The thing is that first impressions and stereotypes are much stronger when e.g. one race exists because of DEMONIC INTERFERENCE in the bloodline. So of course when my optimistic tiefling cleric and two dragonborn walk into a tavern in a city under siege by nonhumans (elves, gnomes, dwarfs and such are ok) we got challenged and tossed out. Outside the mercs sitting at tables welcomed us because they were not farmers or townpeople that have had their farm destroyed or family murdered by orcs, gnolls, dragonkin or halfdragon, goblins, etc. They understand that the fear and hate exists but they have the experience to not judge a book by its cover. Farmers and townfolk are not the most educated of people nor are they that travelled, if we go by medieval standards if you were a peasant you lived and died within c. 40 km of where you were born. So why would these people be so socially enlightened? Are some races more normal in that area? Then they might see humans as more than forrest-burning, fast-reproducing, warmongering children (as seen by elves for example), if humans share land or co-inhabit a town. People in fantasy rpg:s are (usually) not the world travelled metropolites that we are in our world of the interwebz. They see the same people every day and news from abroad is easily slanted or garbled. Racism is the result of fear and lack of knowledge. Where are the normal people in a medieval setting (concerning travel-time) getting the knowledge? If there are roaming barbarians that pillage every spring that are tattooed, how are heavily tattooed adventurers going to be recieved? "Oh, I clearly see that those tattoos are the markings of noble paladins in *city* 3 months griffin ride away and not the tribal markings of the local menace to our livelihood. Yes, we farmers are well informed about the world." ??? Some of the internal consistency disappears there.
You can use racism in a game to show that it is unacceptable in real life. Not all orks are evil just like not all elves are good. They are individuals, and should be treated as such, but that doesn't mean that just because your players kill a bunch of orks in a dungeon without getting to know them individually first makes your players bad, or racist. Now if you have them meet some orks for the purpose of showing them that not all orks are evil, and the players kill them anyway then you might have a problem. Also, I haven't gamed in years, more's the pity, but I still love gaming. I'd love to get back into tabletop RPGs some day, but there are very few players here these days.
racism is maybe unfounded but quite real. but in a fantasy setting with actual existing differend (humanoid) races i would even disagree on that. letting the dwarf kill the orc that could have helped the group is maybe a better lesson than pretending everything is magic and rainbows friendship
imagine this in a background: "well my dad was kidnapped by thiefling cult members after they raped my mother and killed her and my brother, they then beaten my dad to near death before cutting him open in a ritual and and planting a amulet in him to turn him into a zombified hulk creature that is forced to do their biding and destroyed a entire village. i then had to find him and kill him myself after he tried to kill me. the cult members got away with it and i've been hunting them ever since but no i don't have a reason to mistrust thieflings i don't know" sounds kinda ridiculous right?
why wouldn't thieflings do that? if in my background thieflings did that then they did it right? i'm not saying all thiefling are like that, just that a couple of them did this and there for my character has racist views towards thieflings because he doesn't trust them. i think racism is something that should be allowed to happen in rp. but i do think there has to be reason why a character has these point of view. that way it makes sense and a good dm should be able to give that player some interaction that might slowly start to change his mind.
That is exactly the point. The video is saying a "racist" would say all tieflings are demonic and would do so, whereas the video is saying they wouldn't, that, IMP, he is saying "can't we all get along?" That tieflings, and for that matter drow and orcs and such are just normal people who are discriminated against. While I agree there are some who act against their "nature," most don't.
but thats not the point he is making. he is saying that no thiefling would do that and we shouldn't say that thieflings do that. all i'm saying is that while most wont some will and to say none will is another extreme.
One thing I always hated about Star Trek was how the various alien races were always summarised by a single word: Klingons are a 'warrior' race, Vulcans are a 'logical' race, Ferengi are 'traders'... well, what are humans then? What one thing are we? It's just lazy writing. There's an episode of TNG where the mere existence of a Ferengi scientist is seen as laughable, but they have starships for God's sake! You can't have an advanced interstellar civilisation that has never had any scientists. It's the same with most races in fantasy settings, too. Defining all orcs as inherently 'evil' just doesn't make any sense to me. It's bad writing. What does it even mean to be evil... as a race? Having any kind of tribe or civilisation means its inhabitants are going to have to cooperate at some point, so they can't be *all* evil.
So because my character lives in a world of gods and objective good/evil, a world where whole cultures have a certain alignment and therefor has prejudices or even hatred of certain races... therefor I am a bad person or even a racist? I play shooters from time to time, does that make me a potential murderer? I see where you are coming from and I agree that you should do something about racism, wherever you encounter it. But in the REAL world! Not in you games...
I think roleplaying as a racist character is fine, it can open for funny encounters where the characters biases are challenged, and it can be justified depending on your characters backstory. I imagine most player characters aren't racist just because (though they can be, it's fiction after all), just like most humans in the real world aren't racist just because, nobody is born racist. Having a racist element to your character can be interesting I think, as long as you provide a reason for why the character is racist. Maybe your character is a Dwarf who's home town was attacked by raiding orcs on a regular basis, it wouldn't be surprising if such a character had racist attitudes towards orcs. Or maybe your character was a victim of racism, maybe he is a half-orc that grew up in a predominantly elven city where non-elves were discriminated and as a result of that has developed a hatred for elves etc. Like I said, this opens up for opportunities to address racism, maybe the racist Dwarf meets an orc NPC that is nothing like the orcs that used to raid his home town, maybe the half-orc meets a kind hearthed elf NPC, or maybe one of the party members is an elf that challenges the stereotype. I don't think what happens on the tabletop has any significant effect on our real life attitudes, If I played as a racist Halfling tomorrow, chances are I wouldn't suddenly start hating black people. One of the great things about role-playing games is that it allows us to not only explore cool and interesting worlds, it also allows us to be someone we are not, it can allow us to explore different kinds of attitude and behaviour, even behaviours and attitudes that are wrong/bad. If you want to play as an evil character, you can. If you want to be racist, you can. Playing as an overly sadistic character doesn't mean that you become a sadist in real life or that you approve of sadism, and I think the same applies to racism. It's a fictional setting and it allows us to be people we would absolutely disapprove of in the real world. And if a character is allowed to steal, murder, lie etc. I think a character should be allowed ot be racist as well.
Monster manual entries for races are not simply snapshots of a single individual as you suggest. They are a broad outline on that race's culture. For a man seemingly as intelligent as you are, I am baffled that you've allowed yourself such a small minded view on this topic, So much so that you'd even call playing into stereotypes as being racist. Orcs didn't get a reputation as violent raiders because of a small group of bad eggs. They got that reputation by going out in large bands of armed warriors for the purpose of pillaging and destroying the things around them with great frequency. To just ignore that about them is as disrespectful as saying that acknowledging the differences between peoples is also racist.
Race is always a touchy subject true, and of course, racism is horrible, but does that mean if has no place at the table? No actually, as long as everyone remembers the difference between reality and fantasy is can actually add a depth. Lets say your playing a half-orc or teifling, part of your adventuring might be to find acceptance, this adds depth. As mentioned in the video it allows people to come to understand that maybe you're not all monsters. Maybe your human bard's mother was sold into slavery (another horrible thing of course) because of a corrupt dwarven merchant. While your character quests to earn the money to buy her freedom, they also have the opportunity to grow and learn that dwarves and their culture as a whole spurns that kind of thing and that one cruel individual shouldn't paint their views. I once played a war-forged with the mindset that flesh creatures were weak and foolish with the intent of over the course of the game them coming to learn and understand them, even accept them. Many horrific things can make for great narrative if A: all of the players at the table are comfortable exploring it with you and B: everyone is able and willing to address it maturely. After all, just because that drunk in the par hates elves doesn't mean the GM is racist, their just happens to be a realism factor in the game that racist people exist. An example, a game I recently started, a player is an orc and went to a town that has a problem with orc raiders, as a result the garrison kept an eye on them all and even questioned them. Racism, yes, but also a narrative tie-in. The trick is to use it right and know your players limits. Rape or slavery for example are things that should be avoided if a single player would be uncomfortable with it, racism is no different.
My human paladin hates gnomes almost as he hates dragons, and he is a follower of smiad. They annoy him to the point that he was willing to beat one despite the possible loss of his powers and lucky for him my friend put him to sleep and dealt with the gnome in her own way. which ended with her selling a friend that had stopped showing up for our games into slavery sorta but i don't really know since i was sleeping and dreaming about strangling gnomes. Anyways that's my story and take from it what you may. :)
To me, most Mexicans look like fried chicken. This doesn’t mean I think that they all act like chicken. Wait, I think my metaphors are a little mixed up.
Id say making different members of the same race different really helps the believably, I find diversity within a group much more believable than seeing a group of cookie-cutters
I don't really agree with the concept that just because your character in a TTRPG is racist or an xenophobe means you think racism is acceptable and/or you're perpetuating racism and xenophobia I mean why should the way you are playing out a character in a game mean anything or have a connection to how you conduct yourself IRL and your IRL world view? I'm not saying racism and/or xenophobia is acceptable or good but just because I am playing as a character in a game that is racist or a xenophobe doesn't mean I accept or like it If someone really thinks playing a racist character in a game perpetuates IRL racism then all of the killing, crimes and violence that usually happens in games or TTRPGs should also be perpetuating IRL killing, crime and violence which it really doesn't Although I do agree on the idea of challenging racism targeted at you by a player or npc and/or being challenged by an npc or player when you are being racist as this adds to the story and narrative. But of course the first would imply that you/npc/player are playing a character with morals, alignment and ideals that would make them do such things This is actually the basis of my first ever DnD Character, I played an Half-Orc Fighter raised by humans in a human society which I have constantly tried to go against stereotypes to add more flavor and fun not to mention it was really interesting trying to deal when other showed racism towards me from disallowing me from buildings or even entire settlements or the players just poking fun and teasing about me being a Half-Orc and all that stuff
I think people are misinterpreting this. It's not to leave the topic of racism out of the game, but rather to not come in with racism from out of game. To not automatically assume that every member of a race is going to act a certain way because out-of-game the book says they do. Basically: No metagaming! I played in a campaign where racism was a main theme. If you weren't playing a human, you were trash. Except that, come to find out (through gameplay), not everyone in this kingdom held that ideal, the majority of those that did were really just massively ignorant (and yes, there were many resistant to learning because of herd mentality), and the few bigots that truly believed that everyone else was beneath humanity only seemed like the majority because they were the lawmakers and the ones whose shitty behavior thrived in this system. So even that was nuanced. My fetchling almost went to jail because she was trying to bring back her dead friend (who happened to be human) so she could bury her and the guards accused her of being a murderer on the basis that she's a fetchling, and all shadow people are evil. It took a bribe and a threat from an infamous leader in the slums to get her out of that situation. Another instance: a friend's catfolk was defending herself against a guard and ended up killing him. She would've been executed if not for the captain on duty being someone who saw past race and recognized it as self-defense and then logged it as an accident because the laws state that, no matter the reason, if a non-human kills a human the sentence is death (because asshole king is an asshole). This was an amazing setting! And it really highlighted the stupidity of stereotyping because we were the ones on the negative side of it. We had to work hard to get anything done, even to travel on the other side of the wall surrounding the slums, and it was fun to see if we would try to disguise ourselves or use diplomacy or sneak around. Nighttime and bribery were our allies, and not because we were bad people, but because that was necessary to get anything done (which of course perpetuated the idea that we were bad people). But were all tieflings the same? Were all elves the same? Were all humans the same? No. There were certainly instances of half-orcs banding together during a bar fight or fetchlings sticking to the shadows or aasimars going to church, but that was more because those particular half-orcs were friends from another place in the kingdom (forced together because of racism, then stayed together because they found friendship and formed an adventuring crew), those fetchlings also happened to be theives and were doing theif-y things like any other thief (mine was certainly not a shadow-clinger, nor were many npc fetchling shopkeepers or laborers who simply walked to places normally), and those aasimars had faith, where others didn't care, saw no point in it, or were even evil. I also like to play bigoted characters. It leads to a lot of situations where I have to work harder/ miss out on something/ get hurt because I refuse to take assistance from a damned wizard or because I refuse to talk to an elf or because I just absolutely have to kill every goblin I see immediately. There's a reason for each - one was brought up to hate magic, another lost profits because of an elf, and another's brother was eaten by goblins - but that doesn't make them right. Just because your tribe is prejudiced against magic doesn't mean you have to be, too. Just because one elf caused your business to fail doesn't mean that all elves are bad. Just because one group of goblins ate your brother doesn't mean that this one doesn't have useful information that the group needs before you kill him. The character then has an obvious flaw to change from throughout the course of the campaign. I do try to make sure that everyone's okay with it beforehand, though. In the end it's not worth it to me to reduce someone else's enjoyment just so I can play with bigotry as a flaw when another flaw would work just as well in its place and not reduce my enjoyment of the game one bit.
![[PLAYER] Making a character in D&D even better](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5NIcjvSyd3I/mqdefault.jpg)
![[PLAYER] Making a character in D&D even better](/img/tr.png)
![[PC] Looking at what makes a Great Player](/img/n.gif)
It is a game. Racism and stereotypes are built into the games for a reason. In real life racism is a terrible thing and should be torn down. In the game however, it is not our world. We play characters within a huge world with many sentient creatures whose cultures have vast backgrounds. These prejudices should be portrayed, explored and overcome. We are actors telling a story.
falloutboy9993 I'd argue bigotry is still terrible even in a fantasy setting - *which is exactly why bigotry needs to come up in fantasy!* You can't condemn something if you're not allowed to discuss it! There's a fundamental difference between *depicting* bigotry and *promoting* bigotry. Have characters who are racist assholes, *so that they can be punished for being racist assholes!*
Right. There is a lot of violence in those games I've played (except narrativist ones of course), hte point is what do we do with that.
Okay, I admit I've even enjoyed a plain hack'n'slash adventure time ago - but I've grown over it.
Same with racism in games, as well as any social issue: we can use these to grow. Or we can grow taste for them. I vote for growing.
Especially when GMing games with youngsters I will always arrange the adventures so that the characters grow and free themselves from unwanted prejudices.
It depends on how it is interpreted. There's a difference between having racism in the game and let it just be there, and talking about it in the game, maybe with a side plot or a character arc. What he means is, if the raw racism is in there, it'll leave the impression that it doesnt have to be changed.
also, a lot of people use literature to show their points of view and it is actually a really powerful tool.
Well... yes and no. Stereotypes can be used as a valuable tool to build on expectations, only for you to hit them with a whole new view. Let's take the orcs as an example. We all know they're vicious, moronic brutes who like to kill anything. Keep throwing them at your party for the party to have expectations about orcs, then hit them with a few unique ones. A group of well-armored orcs get into formation and attempt to kill your party. Perhaps some orcs wear masks as a disguise and trade for their loot. You can throw cardboard cutout enemies, so you can break from that stereotype from the future.
I'm happy you talk about social influence of roleplaying games. Many of us are hardly aware of influence any game has on us. The character growth during the games has a real potential for making our lives better - especially when we are gaming with kids. Keep on!
accepting it in your game does not mean accepting it in the real world.
fiction and reality are concept too hard to grasp for the moral busybodies and the permanently triggered.
lol true
Yeah man, when Tolkien made Gimli and Legolas rivals, it was because he was a bigot and approved of such ideas. /s
Agreed. We all have had characters who are alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, sadists, vigilantes, and all sorts of reprehensible things. Do we also have a responsibility to deconstruct these in our sessions?
You could argue that Tolkien was actually attempting to deconstruct bigotry, which would support this guy's point.
I like to play racist characters. It is really funny to play a character who has predjudices against a specific race. It is even more funny to play with someone who is that race.
If the other player is cool with it, it can make an interesting dynamic, especially if the characters overcome it over time.
Gimli and Legolas are a great example of this ^^
Beautiful storytelling will ensue that can help us explore these ideas and the problems they cause and how we can overcome it. This whole video is very disappointing.
I personally think racism is very important in roleplay (since you don't really discriminate real beings). Racism creates very interesting conflicts in a fantasy world and even between party members. Once my dwarf companion nearly killed my elf because ''elves are egoistic snobs'' and it generated a conflict in the party that we had to solve during various sessions since he was the tank and I was the healer.
I like the idea that humans wrote the monster manual. So if creatures are more likely to defend their lands, than they will be portraited as hostile. Of course there are exceptions, but that wouldn't be as likely. Always assume that you are a part of the biggest group, instead of being a part of the smaller groups.
1:38 "sometimes a good raping is quite fun"
uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh.......
*backs away slowly*
4 out of 5 people enjoy mass rape...
Racism in game is not the same as racism in real life. If in my game all orcs are mindless pillagers, then they are. Thats how they developed in my world. If dwarves have a deep seeded hatred for it, then they do. In a world strife with war and death, with races so drastically different, (unlike different skin colors of humans) It makes sense that the races wouldn't get along. To say they a character wouldn't have a racist mindset is just not plausible. It creates conflict, it helps build a story.
I would argue that racism is racism in games too. But when we are talking about different species, then that is not racism. So I think Brutal orcs can be fine. Wolfs are more aggressive than humans. Important not to do as in the Bright movie tho. Where they connected the orcs to black culture.
Forgotten Realms: "oh, an elf, interesting"
Dragonlance: "oh, an elf, interesting"
Eberron: "oh, an elf, interesting"
Shadowrun: "Never trust an elf"
Yet Gimli.said that exact thing in LotR 🤔
This video has the same problem as the previous one. Rather than try to work with the stereotypes, explore why they are such and such, you want to change it because "I don't like the way things are!"
I get that you think Racism is bad. And I agree that it is. But take a step off of your pedestal, and think of this: Why is it that eastern asians are typically considered very intelligent and good at math?
Don't just immediately say "That's a racist stereotype!" No, try to think and answer that question logically. WHY does that stereotype exist?
The answer is their culture. Eastern Asia (China and Japan particularly) have a huge emphasis on education, study, and being good academically. A couple of Chinese university students I met a few months back told us about how their school days are, and we're talking FOURTEEN HOURS of study in a single day, including both classes and homework. So, when such incredible amounts of work is ingrained into the culture of a country, is it a wonder that people start to think of them as very intelligent people? It's far from a universal truth, but it is such a deep-rooted part of their very society that it isn't wrong.
So I'll repeat what I said in your previous video on the very same topic: Work with Racism in the game, find out why. Introduce deviants where it fits, but don't force them in because "Racism is bad, m'kay?". Use it as a narrative tool, a part of the story.
Furthermore, you equate Racism between us humans (where the differences are miniscule and unfounded) to Racism between different SPECIES. There are huge differences between them, and with different places of origin, different life spans, physiologies, etc etc. there is a ton of stuff for different cultures to arise. And from different cultures spring conflicts, and from conflicts racism can arise. If you want to celebrate the differences of the various races, first work through the negative aspects that said differences bring. Don't just throw them out because you don't like them. Honestly, it would be a much better message to send, that people can work together in spite of their inherent differences (Because there WILL be differences. It's unavoidable). To ignore the differences and throw them away - making things uniform or forcibly varied because you don't want to be racist, is even worse in my book.
+
I think you are elaborating on my point, giving more examples and such. But I'm glad people see it the way I do ^^
> "To ignore the differences and throw them away - making things uniform or forcibly varied because you don't want to be racist, is even worse in my book."
This is what annoys me about the political correctness that permeates the mainstream these days. This is exactly what it is trying to do, and I'm sorry to say, but that vision is boring.
I, for one, would not like to play in or DM a world where every race is benevolently identical to the point where they are all practically nothing but multiple reskins of the same idealized, utopian human.
(Except maybe in the case where it's a pocket dimension or one-off culture, ruled by a tyrant, like the Injustice Superman.)
Yes, I know, #notall, but there are *always* exceptions to the rule. Usually, these exceptions are purged from their respective 'rule' (so to speak). Just look at Drizzt. Only recently has modern society become so accepting of exceptions that even the detrimental ones are allowed to flourish and bloom into full blown cancers.
On a side note, this whole video (and the prior one) are making me think of the 1984 novel.
I think you misunderstood the bit you quoted. That wasn't me stating that I wanted to make everything uniform, or force every individual to be unique, to avoid racism. It was me stating that I DIDN'T want that, much like you said yourself :)
No no! I was not accusing you of harboring such ideas. Not at all. You sound sane and I am thankful for that.
I was commenting on the sentiment of such double-thinking individuals who *actually* hold such flawed ideals.
Yo, I found this a few years late. But, I wanna say that I love it. I don't play D&D But, I first of all LOVE how you say that even though it /is/ fantasy, people act on very fictional and even unconscious biases/notions when they do stuff or make stuff in fantasy.
I was about to make a rant about Racism in roleplaying in general and how some players do it wrong, defend it and how it CAN be done with the right context and handling. I /love/ how you say some of these ideals need to be challenged and deconstructed, how our ideals can leave impressions. Thinking about what you do (even in fantasy settings) make for a better person and honestly a deeper and better game/story.
Sorry for all the hate you got for this video. As amateur writer, avid roleplayer and black dude, it's really nice to see there are some people in this community who aren't scared to use their platform to talk about stuff like this in a critical way cause, it's more serious then people know.
I have played as racists, bigoted and in general very bad characters but I will never accept that as a good thing. I have played a cannibal, at least two or three racists, a misogynist, a classicist and some torturing, pillaging, raping and real evil guys, and that doesn't mean I'm OK with any of that and nobody should think it. Your character is NOT you, it should never be and in my opinion the more different it's from you, the more special and challenging is to roleplay it. That's the beauty and the most fun part of roleplaying, you play a character that's very different from you and explore that mentality and culture without necessarily saying that's OK. Also, if I'm OK with everything my character says and does, can I call it roleplaying? Or it's more like myself making decisions instead of what my character would do?
Also, isn't more fun that the majority of a race (elves, dwarfs, etc) have very similar traits and characteristics, but your specific tribe/family (or only you) are different from them, and maybe some NPCs that the GM uses? I mean, if you want to roleplay a Gaelic warrior from Celtic culture, nobody should call you on using some stereotypes related to that culture because that's what you want to play with that character and everybody should expect the same from your entire tribe, with just some exceptions to add some spice to the mix. Why is that different from playing an elf, a dwarf or a hafling? When people want to play elves, they expect them to be as the book say they are, unless you say something like "OK, I'm an elf but I come from a savage tribe that workship an ancient god of bloodshed, so we are violent barbarians etc", in which case your specific tribe should be like that BUT there still should be "regular" elves because it makes your tribe more special if they are the exception.
As said in the previous video. Something being in a game doesn't mean you HAVE TO endorse it as a GM or a player.
If you play in warhammer, the human (and other races) are racist and xenophobe to the extreme. Does that mean warhammer player promote or condone racism and xenophobia ? I think not. Not even the creators of the universe I'd wager.
Once again, your agenda pushing is obvious and your cultural relativism is showing. Could you please keep that out of the game ?
+
kenshiro84 His agenda should be obvious, because it is incorporated into the title of the video. It is not necessarily a bad agenda to many of us.
The title says "RPG Racism Discussed." which it should be. It does not say "How to avoid racism." which is essentially the whole point of the video and only a piece of how to handle and discuss racism within the context of an RPG.
It would appear that this video has touched a nerve. Perhaps a few of the viewers saw the title and were hoping to see an elitist rant. However, the outraged did not read the video description before seeing the video and displaying their disgust in the comments. 😔
Or perhaps some of us simply disagree with him on what the best way to address or use racism within an RPG is.
The perpetuation of racism within D&D is founded on the history of each race. Gnomes and Dwarves have a history of war with giants and orcs, therefore they have a bias based on their experiences. Elves look down on everyone because they're not elves and they're all too unrefined and uncultured because they're short lived and impatient. Unless you're Valenar, then you're not only superior but have a penchant for barbarous assaults on your neighbors because you're bored. This creates tension and racism, yes. However it also mirrors the differences in cultures around the world. What one culture sees as just and righteous, another will always see as evil based on societal values and norms.
This isn't to say that racism is good, but far too many people try to over simplify this extremely complex and broad based issue into purely good and evil, without looking into the deeper nuances. Look at bacon and hamburgers, eating these things makes You an evil barbarian to certain cultures, but to you it's a stupid reason for hate. How do you temper such an issue without forcefully changing one society or the other? There will always be people who can't just ignore your eating habits because it's against their beliefs, and that's one of the most mundane of examples for racism I can come up with.
on racism in roleplaying: Yes, you are right, you should not encourage racism. But it can be fun and helpful to explore it. here are some examples, how i used the theme of racism in my games:
a) the village of frightful pesants, who fear the neighboring elven gypsie tribe, and hires the players to investigate them as they assume, the gypsies has stolen their cattle. As it turns out, the gypsies are peaceful and honorable people, who are equally afraid of the villagers. and the Cattle... it was eaten by a monster who terrorizes the village and the gypsies alike...
b) as a player in shadowrun sometimes i play an racist nocturnal (an elven mutant) who has become an racist because he was the victim of prejudices from ordinary elves and humans alike. So he had grown rather racist to this groups. Now, over time he has learned to value the other players (who are mostly humans and elves) by beeing forced to work with them and seeng them not abusing him. and as the group moved to an area where racism against nocturnals is'nt existent, he slowly realizes that the "normal" (not racist) human and elve is not the exception, but the norm. so he (very) slowly get rid of his racism.
For once the comment section actually has a better lesson than the video: racism is bad, but it exists for a reason. When it comes to gming, understand it and use it, don't just throw it out because "MAH FEEFEES"
I agree with the DM version far more than I do with this one. Yes, I think the DM should be creating a variety of beings, both within and outside of the stereotypes, but no, I don't think racism nor stereotypes should be outlawed in games nor that every character must be open minded to all races.
Racism is often part of a culture and history that, although not a good thing, should not be ignored or avoided just because we're telling stories. If anything, it can in fact help us tell better stories.
- "Where does the rift come from between these two races?" Maybe there was a feud or even a war at some point that is relevant to the current story.
- "There are characters of races that hate each other within this same party!" Maybe they will grow together to value each other regardless of what they look like.
- "There's nothing to this character but being a bigot! I don't like them! They're stupid/mean/whatever!" Perhaps you can try to dig deeper to see where these deep rooted values come from, or perhaps he can just be the butt of the party's unredeemable jerk jokes, whatever you like.
I think of these games as (in part) a way to examine the human condition (the good, the bad, and the ugly), and avoiding the unpleasant parts (at least in my humble opinion) doesn't teach any lessons, it just creates a politically correct sort of mentality where everything comes across kind of flat.
Characters should definitely be unique but forcing them all to avoid stereotypes and racism as a whole is not a good story telling method, from my point of view.
A lot of people in the comments have expressed my thoughts on the subject, so I'm going to give a one sentence summary and a movie quote. Everything exists for a reason, including stereotypes- when you know why the stereotype exists, that's information you can use to build the world.
And now for the quote:
"Never thought I'd die fighting beside an Elf."
"How about fighting beside a friend?"
"Aye, I could do that."
That scene would have carried no impact at all if there wasn't some degree of racial tension between Elves and Dwarves.
There's also the fact that systems in games like pathfinder have bonuses when attacking other races.
This is a somewhat related note on prejudice (not that racism and homophobia are similiar but bear with me) I am a lesbian, and when I met my wife, she was one of the least supportive of LGBT at the table. She was my best friend, and I didn't chastise her, I didn't say anything about it, I just made a character who was really badass, and also gay. He had faults, he was paranoid, overprotective, and poor social awareness, but when she engaged with him, she became much more accepting.
By the end of the game she was fully invested in his relationship he had with another NPC, actively going out of her way to help. He faced homophobia quite a bit, but never did a "woe is me" or went on a long rant. He just made smart aleck comments and let it roll off his back.
A year later my wife told me she was Bisexual and ashamed of it because of her upbringing, but my NPC made her feel it was okay to come out, after another year we started dating, and now we've been together for 5 years.
I don't think the answer to solving these big issues at the table is to ignore them, but just show great characters that are fully developed and deal with these issues but are good despite it.
This can go for a lot of things, and most of the big issues were dealt quietly without most players knowing. One player hates Catholics for a reason I don't understand, and suddenly the game has a couple of cool Catholic Detectives that she befriends. Another thinks anyone who wears skimpy outfits is a bimbo, and there's a contact shaking her ass to pay for medical school. They conform to some stereotypes but not to others, they don't exist to say I'm different than the others, they just also have more to them.
While none of my players seem to have issue with Racism. I make sure my games have multiple ethnicities that are grounded with research in case anyone tries to call it in-historical.
I think half of the comments section missed the point of these videos. He's not saying to eliminate the story aspect of racism within games. Rather, it should be challenged. An example in D&D is Drizz't. As a PC, Drizz't faces adversity because he is a Drow, but he does not allow preconceptions about Drow to define him.
If you play a kobold, you don't need to have them be snivelling before a dragon. Maybe they found a backbone and dream of being a glorious knight to a kingdom.
The reason why it is important to critically look at racism in our games is because they are reinforcement in our lives. If we get in the habit if saying, "Is that Goblin really evil?" it makes it easer to do the same with other prejudices in the real world.
Devin Powers there is nothing wrong with a DM running a game with a group of characters who are prejudiced and have no intention of changing (in character), if that fits the game. Challenging the characters perceptions won’t necessarily make for a better game, depending on what the players and GM want from it.
Right... killing people is fine, but not prejudge. It's a game. Everything is fine, because nothing is real.
wait I'm not supposed to abhor the mutant, burn the heretics and purge the xenos?
Only if it is for the EMPEROR!
I think this works better from the perspective of the Dungeon/Game Master, what I took away from this is that he is not saying racism cannot or should not be in your world, but that we should not take a "racist" attitude towards entire races; that not all orcs and tieflings are evil. Other races can still despise each other, but not all members of any race should act the same.
An interesting topic. It's something I've thought about a lot whilst roleplaying in Guild Wars 2. Not exactly tabletop roleplay, but roleplay nonetheless. It's a setting where humans went from being the dominant species in the known world to having their territory reduced to one-fifth of the original size by a combination of infighting, natural disasters, monsters, evil gods and a resurge of several hostile species who want their land back. In short, it's a setting where Humans have plenty of reasons to hate both various other Humans and some of the other species like the Centaurs and the Charr. After learning the lore I got thinking and went: "What would happen if a Human character from a particular Human subculture who got the short end of the stick in a spectacular way were to join the Vigil, an international paramilitary organization dedicated to protecting the innocents and stopping major threats, regardless of which species those innocents are from, or whom the threat is threatening". Given that I was lucky enough to end up with a wonderful group of people, it has been a remarkable journey filled with both camaraderie and conflict which has lasted for a little over three years now. This leads me to the following thought: Were racial stereotypes included in D&D with the explicit purpose of allowing player characters to transcend those simple viewpoints?
I enjoy the idea of morally grey species fighting because it is more realistic but playing a racist character is fine. it is fine and good to play different characters with flaws and it is just an easy way to set up and evil race as an enemy
by racist I mean, the character that selves have a set up hatred to other races or race
I knew someone who played a dragonborn that hates elves,and even though it was off of the script I gave them for all npcs. I made the elven archmage turn him into a elf,and when he began to understand elves he would turn back,and at the end of the game everyone knew it shouldn't have happened and still loved it. It was my favorite game of d and d ever.
😊
I had a half-orc character I played where she was found by humans and raised by them. I seriously built in opportunities to explore race in this character, but the opportunity was not explored. To be fair to my DM, this was at an official D&D table, where things had to be run "officially" and according to the distributed modules. But it would have been fun to have opportunities to explore my options. One of several characters I'd love to play in a different situation.
First off, I love your videos. They are great, educational and thought provoking. They deal with subjects that I believe need to be voiced and discussed. This, however, is a little bit different.
Racism is wrong. Plain and simple, and I understand what you are saying in this video. If we have racism at the table, younger generations may see it as acceptable, which COULD, in theory, make them act similarly in real life. This problem could be said for anything else in the game. This really only applies to children or people who can't distinguish between the game and real life.
Personally, I see no point in racism, but my last character was a fairly racist wood elf in D&D 5e. She had a personal vendetta against orcs and dwarves. Personally, dwarves are one of my favorite races, however, my character had a bad event with them and therefore "hates" them all because of it. Just because I roleplay a racist character does not mean that I am perpetuating racism.
I thought you would have talked about the roleplay implications, like blocking off certain things and disregarding certain people. In game, no, not all orcs are savages, and not all dwarves are drunkards, but that doesn't mean that our characters can't think that. You talked on this channel about bringing meta knowledge to the game, and how, even though we as players knew things, our characters would not. What if my character grew up isolated and only heard bad stories of orcs pillaging and killing? Should my character just become accepting immediately of orcs? I believe not. My character can have development into accepting orcs, as that could create a great story, as it did with the character I mentioned earlier, but they should not be forced into an attitude or personality just because, in real life, racism is wrong.
If that was the case, there would be no evil campaigns, no hate in the world, no conflict, and it would make a boring story. As long as everyone at the table understands that the game is the game and that you personally don't act that way in real life, racism in game can actually be great.
In my game world, there was a family in the service of a powerful fiend who expelled all the Elves out of a region of the continent and over 200 some odd years, ingrained a fear and hatred in the people. My two players in that campaign had elves who found themselves magically transported to this area through means that weren't their own. They then had to survive this area.
My point is that I only use racism as a plot point and even then, not very often.
The good thing that stemmed from these videos is in my opinion the discourse in the comments that really delves deep into what racism actually is and how it can be used and subverted as a tool to tell better stories.
I don't know if I'm giving Guy a bit too much credit here, but maybe it was intentional to ensure healthy discussions in the comments. After all, people love to disagree, and these two videos make disagreeing a bit too easy. If that was the idea all along, bravo. If it wasn't... hey, it was a good, albeit a bit flawed sentiment. ^^
Whereas I agree that racism is evil, I do see the need for orcs (to use the example) primarily as antagonists for the players. That said, I thoroughly agree that not all orcs should be the same and their individuality should be observed.
I think one of the best means to explore this would be through the moral dilemma. What if the party encounter an orc and fight with him, then win? As he lies bleeding his mother runs out screaming and tries to shield his body. Would the players then kill them both? Remember the mother isn't attacking he PCs, she's trying to shield her boy with her body.
I use this example as I introduced it into a D&D game years ago. The orc was a hotheaded teenager who bit off more than he could chew (the party). I further complicated the issue by having the orcs the victims of a smear campaign by a local land owner who wanted them wiped out so her could claim their land. This was why the party were there in the first place as they were hunting orc "raiders".
The orc teenager eventually become a party hireling and worked with them for a while. And yes, having an orc with them forced the group to address attitudes against "their" orc.
I don't know if the above example challenged racist attitudes but it did make for interesting stories, roleplaying encounters and added extra depth to my game.
So how do you deal with monsters? In my game I want to establish that many monsters have functioning societies and lives but this clashes with everything my players know about monsters. They just wanna kill them on sight for that sweet sweet XP.
Make the players the real monsters lmao
Juan Rodriguez their cultures are fucked up, or the party is on contract for something and simply don't care
I can see it being used as a npc motivation for the pc's quest. At one point I was designing a game where the PCS were going to hunt down a Thieves Guild to reclaim an item for treasures and in doing so they would find out that these thieves were actually keeping an even greater Menace at Bay although they took a small price now and then in maintaining this ability
I have a robotic character who doesn't understand social things like racism and I've been attacked so many times when trying to make conversation with random people on the road who of course were always thieves.
I am surprised a dungeons and dragons channel has turned into a moral grandstand and absolutely illogical. racism appearing in an rpg or narrative in a protagonist gives them a flaw and makes them more interesting. it can be used as a character arc, and racism doesn't come from nowhere, middle eastern racism is caused by the fact there is a lot of terrorism and human rights violations in the middle east. or racism towards black people which started as an attempt to dehumanize them during slavery and then became culturally ingrained. by your logic, an actor who plays a character whom is a racist is actually racist. lets say this actor enjoys acting and telling a narrative, by the logic stated, this person is a racist...
You just highlighted some very subtle points of history my wife and i discussed today. I'd add that the dehumanization seems to be the automatic psychological response to the obvious immorality of slavery. I'm impressed by your articulation of it because i just came to understand it all at the level you speak today. It's a shame we're shaming it here, D&D should be a place to experiment with it and learn by acting it out harmlessly. Prejudice (of which racism would be only one type) is crucial to explore so we can examine how to defeat it in real life.
NO!
Ingame racism does NOT equal to IRL racism. Warhammer 40K is an especially good example of this. There "abhumans" (that does not mean a skin color, it means subspecies like Ogryn, Squat, Beastmen, Navigators, and stuff like that) face discrimination, while skin colour is not even noticed in the universe. Case and point, Comissar Ibram Gaunt is always portrayed as white, while Inquisitor Thot is a black man.
Also I go to roleplaying events and roleplay sessions to NOT be concerned with realit
06:30 WHAT ON GODS GREEN EARTH CAME OUT FROM YOUR MOUTH? O.O RACISM AGAINST ELVES IS REAL RACISM? DO YOU REALIZE THAT ELVES DO NOT EXIST? O.O
A great example, I once used beast speech to befriend a colony of giant spiders. I man, sure, they WERE trying to starve us out so they could eat us, but that's just because they're carnivores. Actually talking to them, they were fairly friendly.
I don't always find it helpful to equate characters in fantasy settings and people in real life for several reasons. First, as many others have pointed out, having a character who is racist can make for good writing as their backwards and bigoted beliefs are challenged through experience. Playing a character with massive flaws doesn't equate to you being accepting of those flaws. I've personally played a serial killer, and yet I wouldn't condone wanton murder in any way. It was actually kind of exciting to see my character finally be brought to justice despite my best efforts for him to escape.
Secondly, the vast majority of games take place in a medieval time period where xenophobia, lack of education, and constant risk of your neighbors actively killing you would naturally result in racism. This isn't an endorsement of racism, it is a flaw in the culture and a product of the times. The idea that a largely uneducated and superstitious population should be easily swayed out of their beliefs by a handful of individuals all for the sake of social progression is a little ridiculous.
Finally, in fantasy settings there are a LOT more factors to count in between sentient species. For an extreme example, Mind Flayers are, usually, depicted as surviving off of the physical grey matter of other sapient creatures. This fact alone would inevitably put them at odds with other races, as their diet alone would make it necessary to actively PREDATE on their neighbors. I doubt it's a stretch to say that the other races would be willing to forfeit their brains (and lives) willingly, and thus the Mind Flayers would HAVE to turn to raiding, kidnapping, slavery, etc. just to FEED themselves. That is a massive rift between them and every other race that would be amazingly hard to mend, if it ever even could be.
I love your videos and they have been one of the most helpful resources I've found, but I mostly disagree with this one. It's about fantasy roleplaying, it's not about liking racism. Real world racism shouldn't be conflated with fantasy racism. I don't think fantasy RP should be limited by real world values. Whether or not a PC is racist would depend on the type of character they're playing in addition to their backstory. There could be a logical reason in a fantasy setting for a character to be racist and that shouldn't reflect on the player's personal beliefs. This could even lead to further character development down the line through their interaction with other players or if the GM has a good reason to introduce a situation which challenges their preconceptions. In my current campaign, my character isn't racist but he has good reasons not to be because of his alignment, personality, backstory and wisdom. However, one of my friends is a tiefling who thinks other races are beneath him, partly because he's arrogant and partly because of his backstory which is colored by bad experiences with members of other races who had prejudice against tieflings.
+
I normally love your videos. you're super informative and wise on many topics and have helped me as a DM. this video however makes little sense as to what it has to do with the game. racism is bad, in the real world. you are supposed to conform to the story outline the game and the DM have built for you. if you play Warhammer, you are going in knowing that pretty much every race is racist, xenophobic and bigoted. that is literally the entire premise. orcs all rape, pillage, and murder because that's how your DM or the book wrote them in there to do. people in the game will obviously think the orc in the party is here to do the same if he just waltzes into the village. stereotyping and racism are necessarily bad in a gameplay point of view. they further drive story and evoke the roleplay ability of players. you too clearly pushed your own ideological feelings with this video man.
Fun thing:
When I played Divinity Original Sin with a ex-friend of mine.
He said "Kill the orc!" I asked "Why?" he answered "Because it is an orc!"
I then replied "Alright, Kill all the humans!" he was shocked and looked at me, and asked "Why?"
"Because they are fucking humans that is why!"
He didn't get it at all.
If we are to kill all the Orcs; When in fact even in the lore of Divinity, the Orcs are just defending themselves, trying to take back land the Humans stole from them.
Humans kill undead without a second glance, because undead, they never stop to think if they are friendly or not.
They kill the Imps, Goblins, Elves, and Lizardmen, just because "Not Human." that pretty much screams Humans are the scum of the world.
Of course there are humans who are good, but that is the thing, if you can accept that with humans, accept that with all species, not just humans.
Rules as written, gnolls are violent savages who slaughter and brutalize for the sake of slaughter and brutality. My gnolls are shamanistic hunter-gatherers who just happen to hunt other sapient species. Their elf skulls and human hide tents aren't signs of excessive cruelty, they're signs of efficiency, of using the resources available to them.
I was actually expecting this to be an april fools tbh.
I have to say this is one topic where I agree with the comments much more than you. I’d be curious to see you make a response video addressing the comments as I’m interested in how you’d respond to them...
Grrr someone telling me not to be racist in my fantasy game *slams dislike*
For real though, while fantastic racism can be done well its usually a crutch for the worst kind of player/DM. I certainly understand the reasoning behind nipping it in the butt of you don't think anyone's capable of doing it justice.
Hmm in some cases I can see your point in trying to bring in the topic of racism into the game and trying to brake it down. However in some games and fantasy/science fiction Universes it's just part of the experience, Warhammer 40K for example...everyone basically wants to rule the galaxy...or devour it. Pretty much every race in that setting has an inherent bias to some degree or another, perhaps the history of a certain race when acting as a whole is the reason for the prejudice against that race...in which case is for good reason.
Yes there can be exceptions such as those who are disenfranchised by others of their kind, are atheist to the usual beliefs of what those around them believe and even those who try to be reformists. One thing I have found about role plays is everything is context dependent in order to feel natural, things need to make logical sense in order to progress smoothly.
To sum up my thoughts. Racism, prejudice or just biases exist for a myriad of reasons, however braking said concepts down or even building them up should always be context dependent, organic and not just "Well because we feel like it and it makes us feel good". Just my observation and laying my cards on the table...make of it what you will.
I noticed when I play World of Warcraft, I'm legitimately racist to the blood elf race and I stereotype the players as being all narcassistic assholes, and I believe that's because the character creation restrains the player's character to that one personality that's set to the race already through emotes, animations and such. This video helped me realize that... It's kind of interesting how that works.
I love playing tieflings, its personally my favorite race in D&D, although, my current dm apparently doesn't enjoy them, i have to pay close to double the prices for most things due to it....
Seems pretty realistic. If peoples did not like demons or "demon spawns".
1. It maybe not about your DM did not enjoy them. Maybe he just want to show certain world points. His world is alive and kicking there should be some prejudices, some stereotypes... he just roleplays as best as he can.
2. Your DM may really dislike your choice of race. Cause now DM must to roleplay different reaction toward your character, it takes some time, but he may not feel that these events gave something useful or fun to the game.
.proof this is true.... Ogre in the movie "revenge of the nerds" turned out to be a good guy and also shared great wisdom, if I may quote, "what if C A T really spelled dog?"
an important point i feel was missed is that there may be players at your table who are dealing with issues of racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc, outside of the game table. by bringing these things into your game you're alienating any players who already battle these issues. the table should be an escape from the world, not a reminder of things that are shitty in it.
maybe you have a black player in your game, and they see how you describe all of x race to be the same negative stereotype. how do you think they might feel about that, if they're already dealing with society saying the same things about their race?
TL:DR While I agree with you wholeheartedly but I don't think DnD is the kind of environment to challenge someone's real life racist tendencies, campaigns are supposed to be fun escapes from life, and FORCING players (or the GM in this case) to do so is jarring and uncomfortable. We should be encouraging new aspects of play, not making them taboo, and I think many people look to your channel for advice on doing that.
I was originally excited about you talking about racism in DnD because I'm playing a racist human, and I was expecting you to look at it from a character flaw that has room for improvement or change in some way, But these last 2 videos have kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I did make a comment on the last video, but I offered an argument for keeping racism rather than confronting the base argument of these videos. This time though, I felt the need to address it.
While it is your channel and you can do what you see fit with it, I think the general expectancy from these videos is to give insight on a topic involving DnD. However both these videos have seemed like a grandstand, stating that you're against racism and trying to encourage other people to either express the same feelings through their DnD campaigns, whether through their PCs or their campaign design. Completely shutting off an aspect of human interaction in a fantasy setting just to show you're against it in the real world just makes it seem taboo, and future generations would be pushed to not even explore it in a "safe" environment. I just think that many people come to you to see new ways to approach a problem (the problem here being how to portray a racist character without being overly edgy) and we're greeted with "racism is bad and we should take every opportunity to challenge racist overtones in our campaigns".
I do feel there were a few times when you started to present scenarios of approaching racism, but they were always prefaced with "racism is bad" rather than "What would my character think about in this situation and how would they react? Here's some examples of what I might do with this character in that scenario" like we normally get. When you suggested having the party of orcs try to interact with the town that shunned them, instead of doing a full stop on the story to try to make the town more accepting, I was thinking of it in terms of a side quest, where we learn that the town had been ravaged by a tribe of orcs up the mountain for decades, and since they saw orcs, the town became concerned. Then the party would have a new option in the story and can "casually challenge the town's racism" in a sense without having the players see this as an awkward anti-racism agenda push.
I just think there was a better way to go about tackling this admittedly difficult and sensitive subject, and that there is merit in the statement that this is just fantasy, so for better or worse, it won't really effect the real world in a significant way.
+
Good point
Unfortunately, I think this is now counterproductive.
Gamemastering style, technique and awareness are one thing, but admonition of content is another. At this point I feel I am being lectured and spoken down to. While it is perfectly valid to say "please take this under consideration", there is a wide gap between that and "your duty as a socially-aware game master is to structure your games this way so you can instruct your players". This is a disservice to me as a game master (and I've been doing this since 1977) and to my players.
Please, do not use your Patreon/UA-cam channel as a soapbox. That is not what I, at least, am here for.
Me- I love racism, both in RPG and real life. It gives so clean and perfect leverage over ones mind to do whatever I please with it. So easy, so reliable, so quick to implement.
I agree completely, that stereotype breaking makes the game richer, but then again you need to have a stereotype to break so the game can be enriched. If all the races should be consisting of totally unique individuals, the uniqueness and individuality would become the new stereotype we would have to break.
Now, I'm not saying that this is wrong in itself, but why make more work, when the stereotypes are already established?
You rant on and on about making an interesting story but when it comes to the story involving characters who hate each other based on what they are then no no no, you can't have that kind of conflicts in your games thats ickky
The video wasn't saying that racism should never come up in the game; Guy was making the point that if racism is nonsense in real life then it should be nonsense in a fantasy setting too.
It´s indeed a tricky question. As i agree a lot on the things you´re talking about, i´m also of the oppinion that it is part of the game that there are those nemesis races like Orks and Drow etc. which you can use as a sterotype for players if you want to reveal a simple and plain enemy. In my many years as a gm i used a lot of these nemesis races who supprisingly helped out the party or where different from their kin. But there would be not much of a supprise to that, if every second ork likes to play musik or is a flower child on it´s finest.
I strongly agree with you when it comes to players who simply attack a creature cause it´s colour is green. I´m a lucky person. My players mostly judge a creature by his actions not by it´s race.
Diversity is good and a lot more fun than linking to the same sterotype again and again. But don´t take away a players arch enemy by making every ork unique and flowersome
Being named after Drizzt, I was at first somewhat alarmed at seeing my name in the video description
I think a part of this whole thing is the same problem as saying "There's no black and white, only gray", reducing multiple different stereotypes into one fits-all schema. The important thing to realize here is to say A) there are different shades of gray, and B) there are also colors. Most different races or species might be the same brightness, but have different hues.
And sure, technically, most any species could probably be most any possible personality, but those are not uniformly distributed. Most people are heavily influenced by their parents, and if their parents were pillaging brigands or sneaky thieves, they might tend into that direction as well. Of course, racism is something that is not accepted in our modern-day cosmopolitan society, but in most fantasy settings, we'll have a level of technology and sociology that's comparatively a few hundred years old. The different species mostly live in their own cities, tribes, enclaves etc., getting used to their own culture and mostly seeing other species as "the others".
Then there's also the thing that while the different Fantasy species can interbreed, they are still fundamentally different. An elf typically lives longer than a human, who typically lives longer than an orc, and the mixed-race offspring of any of these has a life expectancy between that of the parents. Saying that all species are the same is like saying that all sexes are the same. Biology just doesn't work that way.
All that aside, I'm pretty sure that racism in tabletop RPGs doesn't propagate racism in real life, since in the RPG, you'll be playing varioous different races throughout the game.
Also, on playing with children: In a game where you murder people and fight horrors from the beyond that try to turn you inside out alive, I don't think children that are still at an age to be that malleable have any place.
Okay, I played a character that was racist against orcs and other green skinned creatures in one of my campaigns. However this was intentionally meant to be a character flaw, and to be quite honest, a medieval setting may very well have that in it's world because that is the frame of mind people and creatures had back then. While the state of things in the real world shouldn't be this way, this can still be explored in a game where the characters and creatures might not be so forward thinking. Suppose we decide to have all the religions in the game agree with each other as well, that's guaranteed not to happen given that some of the ideals in the books intentionally conflict. Further, the reason why most dm's stick with static and flat enemy creation is to simplify the game mechanics. While it may be a clever and inventive to mix up the occasional encounter, going to the other end of the spectrum can make every single encounter a chore to have to find motive in the creatures you encounter. As for alignment, like it was mentioned in the last video, it is necessary to have in your role-playing game because it reminds the players that there actions have consequences and if they do something too extreme they will alter that general moral fiber that they hold.
While I respect your sentiment to attempt to cure an evil of this world, it simply doesn't make sense to apply to a fictitious world in which one can perform acts that are separate from the real world.
I fully agree but 1 thing I find we do that is wierd is the naming of Species as Races. I think a Species would be very similar. orcs would probably have many similarities as a species but the different Races of orc would probably have different cultures/natures/social norms. Same with Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Halflings ect...
Look, I don't know about you guys, but whether experiencing or pushing on another character, the hostility of racism is kind of the last thing I want in my escapist fantasy game.
wow, i thought this title was a joke for a second.
Most fantasy settings tend to treat "races" more like "species". And although you aren't going to get a rigid cookie cutter template of how every single aspect of every single instance of that species is going to behave... there's generally some fairly predictible patterns you can expect over others. (Eg. An Owlbear is likely to attack if it's hungry, scared, or defending its territory and isn't likely to walk up and introduce itself.)
Extend this to the Orc example and you have a sentient species with some mechanically established racial abilities, stat modifiers & proficiencies. So you have a balance between racially determined characteristics mixed in with the conscious personality and cultural influences on the character. And speaking of cultural influences, most settings have an established understanding of conventional orc culture that plays right into the stereotype. Which (barring large scale overhauls) means that if you see an orc dressed in traditional orc attire, carrying a traditional orc weapon, in a traditional orc environment... chances are he's probably going to behave like a traditional orc.
Is that racism (or species-ism)? I guess... but it's a much more valid deduction than in a real world setting. There's no +2 INT for having a certain skin colour in real life. Black people aren't orcs. They have dark skin, thick lips, and curly hair... not fangs, a berserker rage state & inhuman strength.
I think what he is trying to say is not that your a racist because you have racism in your game, but that you don't HAVE to have racism in your game or have racism all the time in it if you so wish
Racism is a great way to play dnd, to be able to play out these awful things/thoughts and ideas of racism in a game(knowing full well that its evil) is a great sensation.
As long as one knows that its part of a character and not who you are.
Well said. Thanks for making this video
OK, this reminds me of two characters from the Red Dragon Inn game series by Slugfest (if you don't know it, check it out its amazing) There is a troll "Phrenk" and his niece "Natyli" who are from a non-typical tribe of highly intelligent and civilized trolls. With regular nomadic trolls being evil and brutish quote: "Usually trolls are mean, angry monsters who maliciously terrorize smaller folk. Nobody is exactly sure why - perhaps quasi-immortality drives them mad or constantly getting hurt and suffering through regrowing limbs is unbearable. Maybe they are just fed up with how everyone gives them a hard time for looking kinda scary. "
In a fictional roll play setting I think the idea of racism is more complicated than it is compared to racism of our world. In some games the different races are such drastically different creatures that its possible for cultural and ethical differences to be too alien for an understanding to be reached. Should Orcs and Dwarves learn to get along? Yes. Should the Romulans and Vulcans mend the gap between their cultures? Yes. But from the trolls explained above, maybe a "normal" troll just can understand the idea of peaceful negotiation. If their gut instinct is hit it with a rock because it doesn't make sense, you will have a hard time talking to the troll.
Racism in games - say savage, violent orcs - is usually a re skinned racism from the real world. Not only is it a good thing to re think these stereotypes because it helps you yourself challenge your assumptions about cultural racism but also because it makes for better story telling. Don’t be lazy by reducing your fantasy races to stereotypical descriptions
What about exploring the reasons WHY we have these stereotypes? Surely they are there for a reason? If Orcs have a tendency toward violence, should we not tread carefully in their presence? If Dwarves produce supremely skilled masons, should they not be lauded? The important thing is despite our prejudices, we need to give people a chance and to treat others with respect. There is a difference between being prejudiced and bigoted, IMO.
The problem with the way you present the argument is when we apply the same logic to something like violence in video games (or role-playing). Studies have been done, and fantasy violence isn't correlated with violence in other aspects of the world. By the same token, I would expect fantasy racism to not be correlated with racism in other aspects of the world.
However, fantasy settings (fictional settings) allow us to /explore/ things that would otherwise be detrimental to society, or ourselves, safely. We can certainly use a fantasy setting to explore racism - maybe we do that by calling out racism and fighting against it in the game, campaigning for equal rights for all creatures. Or maybe we do that by purposely creating a definitely racist character. And maybe we don't purposely explore it every game or every campaign. But it's certainly true that role-playing games offer a unique avenue to explore racism that won't be available in many other forms of entertainment.
"OH NO I'M LOSING SUBS AND MY LIKE/DISLIKE RATIO IS FUCKED HOW DO I FIX THIS? Was it that shitty video I made the other day? Oh I know how to fix this, MAKE ANOTHER SHITTY VIDEO SAYING THE SAME SHIT BUT MORE OBVIOUS THIS TIME."
Great logic.
Okay, I commented on the last video so I'll try and make this one a bit shorter. No all characters of a race should not be the same, in some cases most should and only a few should be different and try to change their people's ways, other times all but a few should be different from the stereotype, but whatever the case may actually be, don't act as though the problem doesn't exist, have NPC's that hold prejudices against a member of the party, such as an innkeeper refusing them shelter if that one's with them, and see how the players react, and then see how their characters react and then work off that, conversely make a character that has genuine reasons for prejudices against a certain race, but keep in mind as a player that your character is almost certainly wrong, and as such may have to come to terms with the way they've treated innocent people.
I think it is important to point out tho. The different between an Orc and a Human can be fully cosmetic if the GM wants it to be. But there can also be a huge genetic/magical factor that can make them as different as you want. They can be closer to wolfs in there heads, if the DM would like that. Not sure there is something wrong with making a wolf-brained-green-skinned-human. That's not rasicm at all. But saying someone is less good when you know the only thing that's different is how they look, that's really bad.
Can I still be prejudiced against Necromancers?
So I'm running a WWII game. The players are commandos out to blow up a bridge. They come across a group of bright young German guys in France. So we can assume that they might just be a group of folk singers? Now don't get me wrong, I'm as much against racism as the next guy. But this is a game! It is in fact part of the fun to have Elves and Dwarves insult each other. I do not get together with my friends to lecture them on why they need to be nice. If they carry it past the game table that is their problem not mine.
RPG's generally have a reason for the racism. It is still a generalisation, because there's outliers in all races. But most have legitimate reasons. There's bits of history where huge things happened, where the race that is seen as 'evil' did hundreds of horrible things, and it was a significant group of them. On Earth, it tends to be people see a couple individuals performing similar actions, and some take it to mean they're all like that. Or they take statistics, and assume their just like that (not taking into account the reasons of they're disadvantaged, and are pretty much restricted to areas like that). And, in RPG's, the races do generally tend towards a certain way, because of how the race was made, by a god for example, so the vast majority will follow that. You should have some stereotypes of the race, but some extremities. Like there's the stereotype of the gruff warrior dwarf that likes to drink, but there's also some weedy wizard dwarves that don't like violence and hate alcohol. Elves are usually the cowards of the worlds, so have the Elven Heroes of legends that stayed to fight when the most battle hardened dwarf fled.
I mean, I kinda get where he's coming from, but most racial stereotypes in fantasy setting are for a VERY good reason. Elves are normally aloof because they live for almost half a millennium, so why bother caring about anything when you know you'll out live it a few times over? Orcs are normally angry rage heads because (in a handful of more sci-fi setting it's stated) that they produce almost twice as much testosterone and adrenaline as any other race. I know for my personal experience that a dash of ironic racism is actually quite amusing. In one game I'm playing an Argonian, and I refer to a lot of people based on skin color because Argonians describe each other based on scale tint because that's about as meaningful as hair coloration to them. It's like saying "Blond one, why is the raven haired one upset?" but instead it's "Pale one, why is the purple one (Dunmer) upset?" because to him, it's the same thing, and it just shows how meaningless it all is in the first place :P
Just because mindflayers are requierd to eat the brains of sentient beings to survive, that doesn't mean you shouldn't invite them into your home to meet yout children.
Every character should, even NPC's, must be diffrent from the stereotipe given to them by the majority
Creates a more unique and fun experience
Wraith Rock when everyone is special no one is
gamesdisk true
Love your channel, I am a new DM having just started two weeks ago and have been looking to make my games go faster as it seems progress has been limited. Anyway, thanks for focusing so heavily on the story elements of this wonderful game as I believe that it, not the stats, is what makes D'n'D so enjoyable to DM and play.
Everyone should play a kobold at least once.
I'm fairly new to D&D, but in my first couple campaigns, my characters have been designed to be very accepting of all the other races IN SPITE of what the official lore tells you about the race dynamics. It's a reflection of my personal desire to value people for what they can do and not what they look like.
Works great IRL, but honestly, I feel like I'm cheating the game, so to say. The fact that there are racial divisions built into the game allows interesting character development potential. A motley group of adventurers from different backgrounds forced to work together while initially distrusting each other is a great place to start the path of warming up to and understanding the situations of what were formerly caricatures in that character's mind. If I just say, "I'm cool with everyone; let's fight" then there are all sorts of interesting tension and role playing moments lost.
It's kind of boring in a way. What better way to reinforce your personal belief in equality than by playing out a full scenario where you start the opposite way and have the opportunity to come around to someone different by learning more about them. In a way, it even feels a bit like metagaming to say, "I'm from a small, insular village of halflings, but all the scary stories I heard about in my upbringing don't mean anything to me for....reasons." Would YOUR CHARACTER in that setting feel this way regardless of the what the player feels?
These games include racism to make things interesting in a fantasy world of many different races; they're not promoting it in real life.
I sincerely believe that this video misses a main point, at least from the GM point of view, that is "using racism as a problem to challenge the players". In this context, the villain (that wants something badly and is having difficulties to get it) is exploiting xenophobic feelings of groups of people to manipulate them better. The players are then tasked to deal with the situation, actively fighting against racism. This is best explained in an example.
EXAMPLE (traditional fantasy):
There is a war between, say, humans and dwarves. This helps the agenda of the villain, who is using the war as a distraction, so he can push his personal villainous schemes. Therefore, he supports economically both sides of the conflict, and infiltrates agents on both factions to encourage racial hatred, and ensure that the factions keep resources devoted to the conflict. As the Player Characters discover the secret plotting of the villain, they realize that they need to persuade the factions at war that the conflict only harms them in the long run, and reconciliation is the only option. They will have to work with the local people to make sure that they overcome the racial hatred that they developed while being manipulated by the villain.
In this scenario, racism is exploited to better define what is an 'opposing force', and it provides a challenging problem for the players: Something to fight against, not merely something to dismiss. The power of storytelling is great, it should be used not to reject social issues, but to challenge them proactively.
The thing is that first impressions and stereotypes are much stronger when e.g. one race exists because of DEMONIC INTERFERENCE in the bloodline. So of course when my optimistic tiefling cleric and two dragonborn walk into a tavern in a city under siege by nonhumans (elves, gnomes, dwarfs and such are ok) we got challenged and tossed out. Outside the mercs sitting at tables welcomed us because they were not farmers or townpeople that have had their farm destroyed or family murdered by orcs, gnolls, dragonkin or halfdragon, goblins, etc. They understand that the fear and hate exists but they have the experience to not judge a book by its cover.
Farmers and townfolk are not the most educated of people nor are they that travelled, if we go by medieval standards if you were a peasant you lived and died within c. 40 km of where you were born. So why would these people be so socially enlightened? Are some races more normal in that area? Then they might see humans as more than forrest-burning, fast-reproducing, warmongering children (as seen by elves for example), if humans share land or co-inhabit a town.
People in fantasy rpg:s are (usually) not the world travelled metropolites that we are in our world of the interwebz. They see the same people every day and news from abroad is easily slanted or garbled. Racism is the result of fear and lack of knowledge. Where are the normal people in a medieval setting (concerning travel-time) getting the knowledge? If there are roaming barbarians that pillage every spring that are tattooed, how are heavily tattooed adventurers going to be recieved? "Oh, I clearly see that those tattoos are the markings of noble paladins in *city* 3 months griffin ride away and not the tribal markings of the local menace to our livelihood. Yes, we farmers are well informed about the world." ??? Some of the internal consistency disappears there.
You can use racism in a game to show that it is unacceptable in real life. Not all orks are evil just like not all elves are good. They are individuals, and should be treated as such, but that doesn't mean that just because your players kill a bunch of orks in a dungeon without getting to know them individually first makes your players bad, or racist. Now if you have them meet some orks for the purpose of showing them that not all orks are evil, and the players kill them anyway then you might have a problem.
Also, I haven't gamed in years, more's the pity, but I still love gaming. I'd love to get back into tabletop RPGs some day, but there are very few players here these days.
racism is maybe unfounded but quite real. but in a fantasy setting with actual existing differend (humanoid) races i would even disagree on that.
letting the dwarf kill the orc that could have helped the group is maybe a better lesson than pretending everything is magic and rainbows friendship
"sometimes good raping is quite fun"...
What??
I find very hard to roleplay cruel things even when I DM.
imagine this in a background: "well my dad was kidnapped by thiefling cult members after they raped my mother and killed her and my brother, they then beaten my dad to near death before cutting him open in a ritual and and planting a amulet in him to turn him into a zombified hulk creature that is forced to do their biding and destroyed a entire village. i then had to find him and kill him myself after he tried to kill me. the cult members got away with it and i've been hunting them ever since but no i don't have a reason to mistrust thieflings i don't know" sounds kinda ridiculous right?
Actually, I think he was getting at, is that tieflings wouldn't do that - you're just assuming they would because they have horns and tails. ;)
why wouldn't thieflings do that? if in my background thieflings did that then they did it right? i'm not saying all thiefling are like that, just that a couple of them did this and there for my character has racist views towards thieflings because he doesn't trust them. i think racism is something that should be allowed to happen in rp. but i do think there has to be reason why a character has these point of view. that way it makes sense and a good dm should be able to give that player some interaction that might slowly start to change his mind.
That is exactly the point. The video is saying a "racist" would say all tieflings are demonic and would do so, whereas the video is saying they wouldn't, that, IMP, he is saying "can't we all get along?" That tieflings, and for that matter drow and orcs and such are just normal people who are discriminated against. While I agree there are some who act against their "nature," most don't.
but thats not the point he is making. he is saying that no thiefling would do that and we shouldn't say that thieflings do that. all i'm saying is that while most wont some will and to say none will is another extreme.
One thing I always hated about Star Trek was how the various alien races were always summarised by a single word: Klingons are a 'warrior' race, Vulcans are a 'logical' race, Ferengi are 'traders'... well, what are humans then? What one thing are we?
It's just lazy writing. There's an episode of TNG where the mere existence of a Ferengi scientist is seen as laughable, but they have starships for God's sake! You can't have an advanced interstellar civilisation that has never had any scientists.
It's the same with most races in fantasy settings, too. Defining all orcs as inherently 'evil' just doesn't make any sense to me. It's bad writing. What does it even mean to be evil... as a race? Having any kind of tribe or civilisation means its inhabitants are going to have to cooperate at some point, so they can't be *all* evil.
So because my character lives in a world of gods and objective good/evil, a world where whole cultures have a certain alignment and therefor has prejudices or even hatred of certain races... therefor I am a bad person or even a racist?
I play shooters from time to time, does that make me a potential murderer?
I see where you are coming from and I agree that you should do something about racism, wherever you encounter it. But in the REAL world! Not in you games...
Not sure what you wanted to achieve with this video, Guy. I'm not seeing anything new you haven't already said in the other video.
That's call doubling down... next step is virtue signaling.
Last one is going full REEEEE. :(
Shame.
I think roleplaying as a racist character is fine, it can open for funny encounters where the characters biases are challenged, and it can be justified depending on your characters backstory. I imagine most player characters aren't racist just because (though they can be, it's fiction after all), just like most humans in the real world aren't racist just because, nobody is born racist.
Having a racist element to your character can be interesting I think, as long as you provide a reason for why the character is racist. Maybe your character is a Dwarf who's home town was attacked by raiding orcs on a regular basis, it wouldn't be surprising if such a character had racist attitudes towards orcs. Or maybe your character was a victim of racism, maybe he is a half-orc that grew up in a predominantly elven city where non-elves were discriminated and as a result of that has developed a hatred for elves etc.
Like I said, this opens up for opportunities to address racism, maybe the racist Dwarf meets an orc NPC that is nothing like the orcs that used to raid his home town, maybe the half-orc meets a kind hearthed elf NPC, or maybe one of the party members is an elf that challenges the stereotype.
I don't think what happens on the tabletop has any significant effect on our real life attitudes, If I played as a racist Halfling tomorrow, chances are I wouldn't suddenly start hating black people.
One of the great things about role-playing games is that it allows us to not only explore cool and interesting worlds, it also allows us to be someone we are not, it can allow us to explore different kinds of attitude and behaviour, even behaviours and attitudes that are wrong/bad. If you want to play as an evil character, you can. If you want to be racist, you can.
Playing as an overly sadistic character doesn't mean that you become a sadist in real life or that you approve of sadism, and I think the same applies to racism.
It's a fictional setting and it allows us to be people we would absolutely disapprove of in the real world. And if a character is allowed to steal, murder, lie etc. I think a character should be allowed ot be racist as well.
Monster manual entries for races are not simply snapshots of a single individual as you suggest. They are a broad outline on that race's culture. For a man seemingly as intelligent as you are, I am baffled that you've allowed yourself such a small minded view on this topic, So much so that you'd even call playing into stereotypes as being racist. Orcs didn't get a reputation as violent raiders because of a small group of bad eggs. They got that reputation by going out in large bands of armed warriors for the purpose of pillaging and destroying the things around them with great frequency. To just ignore that about them is as disrespectful as saying that acknowledging the differences between peoples is also racist.
Race is always a touchy subject true, and of course, racism is horrible, but does that mean if has no place at the table? No actually, as long as everyone remembers the difference between reality and fantasy is can actually add a depth.
Lets say your playing a half-orc or teifling, part of your adventuring might be to find acceptance, this adds depth. As mentioned in the video it allows people to come to understand that maybe you're not all monsters.
Maybe your human bard's mother was sold into slavery (another horrible thing of course) because of a corrupt dwarven merchant. While your character quests to earn the money to buy her freedom, they also have the opportunity to grow and learn that dwarves and their culture as a whole spurns that kind of thing and that one cruel individual shouldn't paint their views.
I once played a war-forged with the mindset that flesh creatures were weak and foolish with the intent of over the course of the game them coming to learn and understand them, even accept them.
Many horrific things can make for great narrative if A: all of the players at the table are comfortable exploring it with you and B: everyone is able and willing to address it maturely. After all, just because that drunk in the par hates elves doesn't mean the GM is racist, their just happens to be a realism factor in the game that racist people exist.
An example, a game I recently started, a player is an orc and went to a town that has a problem with orc raiders, as a result the garrison kept an eye on them all and even questioned them. Racism, yes, but also a narrative tie-in.
The trick is to use it right and know your players limits. Rape or slavery for example are things that should be avoided if a single player would be uncomfortable with it, racism is no different.
My human paladin hates gnomes almost as he hates dragons, and he is a follower of smiad. They annoy him to the point that he was willing to beat one despite the possible loss of his powers and lucky for him my friend put him to sleep and dealt with the gnome in her own way. which ended with her selling a friend that had stopped showing up for our games into slavery sorta but i don't really know since i was sleeping and dreaming about strangling gnomes. Anyways that's my story and take from it what you may. :)
To me, most Mexicans look like fried chicken. This doesn’t mean I think that they all act like chicken. Wait, I think my metaphors are a little mixed up.
Id say making different members of the same race different really helps the believably, I find diversity within a group much more believable than seeing a group of cookie-cutters
40K players: *confused screaming*
I don't really agree with the concept that just because your character in a TTRPG is racist or an xenophobe means you think racism is acceptable and/or you're perpetuating racism and xenophobia
I mean why should the way you are playing out a character in a game mean anything or have a connection to how you conduct yourself IRL and your IRL world view?
I'm not saying racism and/or xenophobia is acceptable or good but just because I am playing as a character in a game that is racist or a xenophobe doesn't mean I accept or like it
If someone really thinks playing a racist character in a game perpetuates IRL racism then all of the killing, crimes and violence that usually happens in games or TTRPGs should also be perpetuating IRL killing, crime and violence which it really doesn't
Although I do agree on the idea of challenging racism targeted at you by a player or npc and/or being challenged by an npc or player when you are being racist as this adds to the story and narrative. But of course the first would imply that you/npc/player are playing a character with morals, alignment and ideals that would make them do such things
This is actually the basis of my first ever DnD Character, I played an Half-Orc Fighter raised by humans in a human society which I have constantly tried to go against stereotypes to add more flavor and fun not to mention it was really interesting trying to deal when other showed racism towards me from disallowing me from buildings or even entire settlements or the players just poking fun and teasing about me being a Half-Orc and all that stuff
I think people are misinterpreting this. It's not to leave the topic of racism out of the game, but rather to not come in with racism from out of game. To not automatically assume that every member of a race is going to act a certain way because out-of-game the book says they do. Basically: No metagaming!
I played in a campaign where racism was a main theme. If you weren't playing a human, you were trash. Except that, come to find out (through gameplay), not everyone in this kingdom held that ideal, the majority of those that did were really just massively ignorant (and yes, there were many resistant to learning because of herd mentality), and the few bigots that truly believed that everyone else was beneath humanity only seemed like the majority because they were the lawmakers and the ones whose shitty behavior thrived in this system. So even that was nuanced.
My fetchling almost went to jail because she was trying to bring back her dead friend (who happened to be human) so she could bury her and the guards accused her of being a murderer on the basis that she's a fetchling, and all shadow people are evil. It took a bribe and a threat from an infamous leader in the slums to get her out of that situation.
Another instance: a friend's catfolk was defending herself against a guard and ended up killing him. She would've been executed if not for the captain on duty being someone who saw past race and recognized it as self-defense and then logged it as an accident because the laws state that, no matter the reason, if a non-human kills a human the sentence is death (because asshole king is an asshole).
This was an amazing setting! And it really highlighted the stupidity of stereotyping because we were the ones on the negative side of it. We had to work hard to get anything done, even to travel on the other side of the wall surrounding the slums, and it was fun to see if we would try to disguise ourselves or use diplomacy or sneak around. Nighttime and bribery were our allies, and not because we were bad people, but because that was necessary to get anything done (which of course perpetuated the idea that we were bad people).
But were all tieflings the same? Were all elves the same? Were all humans the same? No. There were certainly instances of half-orcs banding together during a bar fight or fetchlings sticking to the shadows or aasimars going to church, but that was more because those particular half-orcs were friends from another place in the kingdom (forced together because of racism, then stayed together because they found friendship and formed an adventuring crew), those fetchlings also happened to be theives and were doing theif-y things like any other thief (mine was certainly not a shadow-clinger, nor were many npc fetchling shopkeepers or laborers who simply walked to places normally), and those aasimars had faith, where others didn't care, saw no point in it, or were even evil.
I also like to play bigoted characters. It leads to a lot of situations where I have to work harder/ miss out on something/ get hurt because I refuse to take assistance from a damned wizard or because I refuse to talk to an elf or because I just absolutely have to kill every goblin I see immediately. There's a reason for each - one was brought up to hate magic, another lost profits because of an elf, and another's brother was eaten by goblins - but that doesn't make them right. Just because your tribe is prejudiced against magic doesn't mean you have to be, too. Just because one elf caused your business to fail doesn't mean that all elves are bad. Just because one group of goblins ate your brother doesn't mean that this one doesn't have useful information that the group needs before you kill him. The character then has an obvious flaw to change from throughout the course of the campaign. I do try to make sure that everyone's okay with it beforehand, though. In the end it's not worth it to me to reduce someone else's enjoyment just so I can play with bigotry as a flaw when another flaw would work just as well in its place and not reduce my enjoyment of the game one bit.