The Gaming Den

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I realize that among gamers, especially D&D players, the term "race" is accepted as a neutral term, generally referring to background character templates based on heredity. Usually I'm able to see it the same way, but it still makes me cringe on occasion.

It's the real-life connection. I'm a white guy living in the U.S., and I become very self-conscious when somebody brings up the topic of "race" in real life. Sometimes I find it hard to seperate that feeling from it's far less controversial meaning in RPG discussion.

Well maybe because the proper term for "race" in real life is ethnicity.

That and I am playing a game where dragons and mindflayers exist. Race is the last thing that make me cringe (think about the mating practices of mindflayers and human to produce half-mindflayers)

Leress at [unixtime wrote:1184229053[/unixtime]]That and I am playing a game where dragons and mindflayers exist. Race is the last thing that make me cringe (think about the mating practices of mindflayers and human to produce half-mindflayers)

As Terry Pratchett once put it: In the Discworld, white and black cooperate and gang up on the green.

Seriously, this has never been a problem for me. Then again, you Americans have a lot of memes having to do with race so maybe I'm just not programmed to consider the term "race" as insulting. As far as I am concerned, race happens. Whatever.

I also fail to see the big deal.

The Drow bother me.

For many reasons.

Ideniifying evil elves by them being black is just the tip of the iceberg on those guys.

Oversensitive reactions to discussions about race have conditioned you into thinking that even a neutral discussion about the differences between black people and white people is somehow wrong.

MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1184233920[/unixtime]]Oversensitive reactions to discussions about race have conditioned you into thinking that even a neutral discussion about the differences between black people and white people is somehow wrong.

So you may say, but I see multiple levels of subliminal insecurities of their creators in the various traits of the drow.

I find the black races=evil races thing with drow and dwarfs and other "dark X's" to be telling enough.

But drow, I mean they also have the whole evil matriarch thing happening to represent the authors sexual insecurities.

Heck the themes aren't that subliminal, I mean the drow guy who tries to turn it all around with revolution, he has a pet black panther.

Come ON.

Never bothered me, but then again a conversation about ethnic differences conducted in mixed company doesn't make me the slightest bit nervous either.

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1184236505[/unixtime]]Heck the themes aren't that subliminal, I mean the drow guy who tries to turn it all around with revolution, he has a pet black panther.

Heh, I'd never even noticed that. Still don't care either, putting a racial overtone on everything is just like looking for phallic objects everywhere.

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1184231206[/unixtime]]The Drow bother me.

I've never been bothered by the fact that they are evil. I do get somewhat bothered by the question of why any group of people so far removed from UV radiation of the sun would be such an extreeme case of un-albino but otherwise I don't really notic the association.

Since the current D&D model is to make them dark charcoal grey (as opposed to the more human dark brown) with white hair instead of black it also tends to break any real world associations for me. Even the everquest model with dark blue skin and white hair also breaks the model. (Especially when the drow ladies are wearing nothing but their bright red underwear.)

D&D has gotten me to associate "race" with "species," though it probably helps that I've always considered things like skin color or whatever to be "ethnicity."


The racist and sexist themes you find in the drow are only the tip of the iceberg. Didn't the 1st edition orcs basically look like black people?

PhoneLobster wrote:I find the black races=evil races thing with drow and dwarfs and other "dark X's" to be telling enough.

Well, black = evil is a historical theme which predates slavery.

PhoneLobster wrote:But drow, I mean they also have the whole evil matriarch thing happening to represent the authors sexual insecurities.

I guess, but couldn't they have just done it to spice things up? You know, to break the monotony of every race having the same old king and male guards etc etc

PhoneLobster wrote:Heck the themes aren't that subliminal, I mean the drow guy who tries to turn it all around with revolution, he has a pet black panther.

I don't get it.

The Black Panthers, Malcolm X...

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1184244233[/unixtime]]
The racist and sexist themes you find in the drow are only the tip of the iceberg. Didn't the 1st edition orcs basically look like black people?

Personally, I thought that 1e orcs looked more like pig people to me. But that's just my opinion.

Might have been that; I never had the 1st edition rulebook, so I'm going off something I read somewhere.

Black Dragons are evil too, and if you think that has some kind of ethnic subtext....

As are white dragons, and red ones, and blue, and green. But the shiny dragons that are named after precious metals are good.

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1184236505[/unixtime]]
But drow, I mean they also have the whole evil matriarch thing happening to represent the authors sexual insecurities.

I can see the rest of the stuff you're saying about the racism part, but I didn't really see any evidence of this...

Also in 1E, orcs were pig headed humanoids.

Cieling Cat wrote:D&D has gotten me to associate "race" with "species," though it probably helps that I've always considered things like skin color or whatever to be "ethnicity."

Agreed.

Mr. WaeseL wrote:Well, black = evil is a historical theme which predates slavery.

Agreed.

The idea of evil races is an uncomfortable one. If evil requires you to be a moral agent, then how could an entire race be evil? If it has choice in the matter, it is a moral agent and can choose to not be evil, and if it doesn't have choice then it's not a moral agent and can't be evil any more than a storm or volcano can be.

So that's a problem. A severe problem, since it seems that D&D has always asked that we buy into the idea that committing genocide upon the evil races is OK on the grounds that they are evil.

---

So yeah, the idea of race bothers me in D&D. Not because there are multiple sapient races to choose from who have different abilties, but because some of them are Good and some are Evil. That's just fucked right up.

-Username17

Frank wrote:So yeah, the idea of race bothers me in D&D. Not because there are multiple sapient races to choose from who have different abilties, but because some of them are Good and some are Evil. That's just fvcked right up.

Interesting. I never attributed my discomfort of that conundrum to race. I always attributed it to the definition of evil.

The idea of "race" in D&D bothers me a lot less than the idea of "race" in real life.

In D&D, race is just a container word with almost no meaning at all, basically equivalent to 'subtype'. It distinguishes between individuals with quantized differences. You can have "the elven race" and "the human race", and you can also have "the aquatic elf race" and "the wood elf race". The differences are specific abilities and numbers: low-light vision, attribute +2, etc.

In real life, "race" is a way to subdivide a multidimensional continuum of characteristics which vary from individual to individual. In real life, I can accept "the human race" and "the crocodile race". I can even understand "the Irish race", "the Texas redneck race", "the Midwestern urbanite race", and "the Yanomamo race" as being synonymous with the ethnicity container words, but "the black race" and "the white race" are illusions so long as one isn't controlling reproduction to create new species. It's only human fuzzy category-based logic which allows them to survive.

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1184231206[/unixtime]]The Drow bother me.

For many reasons.

Ideniifying evil elves by them being black is just the tip of the iceberg on those guys.

The real problem with the cavern/evil races is that they're far too dark skinned.

Really, Drow, Dueregar, Svirfneblin etc. should all be albinos. That's just me.


In any case, the 'race' argument reminds me of something from Shadowrun.

The human supremacists: "Who really cares if that guy sitting beside you on the subway has darker skin than you do, where there's a 7-foot tall lump-covered horned and fanged monster sitting down the aisle?"

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1184256068[/unixtime]]As are white dragons, and red ones, and blue, and green. But the shiny dragons that are named after precious metals are good.

Colour-coded for your convenience!

Fwib at [unixtime wrote:1184270175[/unixtime]]Colour-coded for your convenience!

And wasn't that the stupidest idea by Gygax ever...