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 On Racism With Fantasy Races 
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
GordonGoblin wrote:
But some (most? all?) of those do have correct answers. That's not magical thinking. It's the moral landscape

I know they all have a correct answer, unfortunately a lot of people don't know which ones are.


Sat Jul 07, 2012 6:42 pm
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
BottledViolence wrote:
GordonGoblin wrote:
But some (most? all?) of those do have correct answers. That's not magical thinking. It's the moral landscape

I know they all have a correct answer, unfortunately a lot of people don't know which ones are.

that's perfectly understandable, that's why we need a conversation and that's why we have progress. If everyone knew the right answers we'd have nowhere to progress to.

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Sat Jul 07, 2012 6:52 pm
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
With respect to Racism. We have evolved in a way that we can subconsciously 'read' people which is why the Uncanny Valley is so difficult to breach. That means that we are predisposed to racism in a much broader sense. Anything that is not familiar and 'like us' is deemed a potential threat. Society tempers that and makes more things familiar. Racism is easy, coexistence is hard, that is just the way we are built.


Sat Jul 07, 2012 7:25 pm
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
GordonGoblin wrote:
BottledViolence wrote:
GordonGoblin wrote:
But some (most? all?) of those do have correct answers. That's not magical thinking. It's the moral landscape

I know they all have a correct answer, unfortunately a lot of people don't know which ones are.

that's perfectly understandable, that's why we need a conversation and that's why we have progress. If everyone knew the right answers we'd have nowhere to progress to.


One can just look around at our world - domestically and internationally - to conclude that people have different answers to many moral questions.

A fantasy world could be similar. I'd argue that if the GM is looking to create a realistic setting, those disagreements and conflicts would be rooted in the history and cultures involved.

However, some players may not want that element at all in their RPGs. I could understand if friends with political differences wanted to avoid touching on issues that would otherwise spark disagreement in the real world.

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Sun Jul 08, 2012 10:47 am
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
I've been following this thread closely but have not commented so far.

I'm working on writing a game setting -- the Three Kingdoms Commonwealth, centred around Lake Tourdion. The region has a history of racial, or rather species, disagreement ranging from dislike and annoyance based on recent perceived slights or insults, right up to bitter prejudice based on ancient memories of crimes long past. Among individuals it ranges from "You're weird like all the elves (or dwarves, or humans) I've met" to "You must be weird and evil because you're one of them."

A recent game I put together for CanGames was set in that place, just on the eve of the signing of the treaty between the kingdoms/races. It was interesting as a DM to watch the players, playing diplomats of the three races, forced into a situation where they had to trust each other -- at first unwillingly even though trusting each other a bit was the point of the treaty they were all there to get signed!
There was excellent roleplaying as the characters got past their cultural and biological differences to achieve something they (or their sovereigns) wanted, even while they hung on to their perceptions of the other races as "not us; not quite trustworthy because I will never from my gut understand them."

One of the things that is appealing about fantasy is that it gives us a stage to work out how things could be, in contrast to how they are. The Three Kingdoms will never get all the way past some racism, because the three races are as different as dogs, coyotes, and wolves. That doesn't mean I want (or will allow) my players to be raving bigots. The elves don't have to understand or like the dwarves, but they have agreed to work with them.


Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:46 pm
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
How racism can occur in a Fantasy world.

Predator vs. Prey.

There are a race of small fairy creatures, we'll call them Smurfs, who reproduce in massive numbers. They feed on a the berries of a small plant, which they cultivate on the small plots of lands that can grow the magical fruit. The Smurfs are preyed upon by the Minotaurs, who need to consume one Smurf each month in order to acquire enough magical energy to sustain their life. Unknown to the Smurfs, the Minotaurs help to keep their numbers low enough that the Smurf population doesn't grow beyond the capacity of the land to sustain them.

The Smurfs consider the Minotaurs to be evil, the Minotaurs disagree.

Competition for resources.

The Centaurs roam the Jovian plains surviving off the land, eating both plants and animals. Unfortunatly the Centaurs have to share the land with the Ogres, who also hunt wild animals. Because the land cannot sustain both the Centaurs and the Ogres, the two groups are known to fight in battles over land and hunting grounds. Because they have been fighting this war since both groups came to the Jovian plains five centuries ago, the two races have a mutual antagonism towards one another, and any group that travels through this land must be careful in choosing which group they side with.

Philosophical differences.

The Elves and the Dwarves both believe they were created by the pantheon of Earth gods known as the Vanir. They each have a very similar religion, but each race believes in a different version of the afterlife. The Elves believe that when they die, their souls are reincarnated in the form of animals, who when they die, then become elves again. The Dwarves on the other hand, believe that when they die, they are escorted into the blessed Halls of Plenty among the Vanir, there they can spend their afterlife awash with food and drink and song. Both groups are suspicious of one other, but tolerate the other race because they technically belong to the same religion. It just gets really hard when those elves talk about "the time I was once a deer in a past life."

That's three examples of how racism can appear in fantasy.

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Mon Jul 09, 2012 8:22 am
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Post Re: On Racism With Fantasy Races
BottledViolence wrote:
GordonGoblin wrote:
But some (most? all?) of those do have correct answers. That's not magical thinking. It's the moral landscape

I know they all have a correct answer, unfortunately a lot of people don't know which ones are.

What do you mean by "right answer" or "moral landscape"? The moral landscape of where? Who gets to decide this? Of the examples given:
goatunit wrote:
We might decide that the ownership of animals is wrong, as Joe pointed out. We might decide that a woman should have control over her body, or that killing unborn children is a barbaric pogrom. We might decide that having enough food to eat or receiving the best available medical care free of charge is a basic human right, or we might decide that such things should be rewards which goad us to be better contributors to our society. We might decide that prisoners, children, and the mentally ill should be allowed to vote, or we might decide that soldiers and other government employees should not. We might decide that it's wrong to eat meat. We might decide that it's wrong to proselytize religion.

many are fiercely debated, some are fringe groups, and some are taken as naturally and obviously not true.

To loop back to the topic at hand, were I to run a game that focused on such issues, I would not want them to easily map onto issues my group felt were unilaterally one way, because that's not how debates actually play out to the word at large. To activists trying to change those issues, I'm sure they do, but the opposition are not necessarily unilaterally evil people, even if we disagree with them.


Mon Jul 09, 2012 8:47 am
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