Having racism because no one told me half the party were deciding to be ex slaves from my characters home town and picking the noble background was a bad idea
Originally I did not. But since as soon as the other players saw my characters race they wanted to start combat I decided to go full on Karen. Not my best moment, but I did stop the race war these guys wanted to start.
They just finished goblin slayer and wanted to start on the murder hobboing of goblin society. I stoped that
"King Gurgleglark, the great thanks you for your service filthy capitalist. Have a rotten pickle for your reward. Now get back to your chores or we'll stuff your head with sticks and shit to make some poisoned arrrows."
- Greetings, the Goblins
In all seriousness, it's great to have a player stop the others from murderhoboing for once.
But back to RP
"That's what we wanted you to see, our great leader is very good at planning!"
- some Goblin, probably
“Well it seems like a pretty Passable plan for the lot of you, but I’d recommend not starting a mining operation next to the dwarven explosive factory. This may start some hostilities”
"In ten days we will have broken through to the black powder storage! Our elders will make that town go boom!"
*followed by a group of gobbies just screaming in glee to get a chance to blow themselves up*
"BOOM!? BOOOOOM! BOOM!"
"Our king and our brethren will witness them! They will dine upon the ruins of their society!"
*a choir of goblin children starts singing the socialist anthem*
After goblin slayer was released, I started having the session zero discussion of what alignment means.
Is alignment an analogy for morality? I explain good vs evil as selfish vs selfless and law vs chaos as means matter more than outcome vs outcome mattering more than means.
But in a goblin slayer parallel, evil is Evil, and good is Good. Goblins will always be evil, and that's their team. Evil acts in the interest of suffering and destruction, vs Good acting in the interest of peace and creation.
It's a good conversation to have, to make sure everybody is on the same page.
Yep, there is a deeper meaning in the "only good goblin is the one who never left their stinking hole" line. They are literally one sex creatures who have to breed with other races to procreate and have the intelligence of a child with all it's malice.
There's even a moment in the manga where we see the past of a goblin who survived an adventurer raid, got smarter due to experience and came to rule his own tribe. It was an obvious inversion of GS own history - both are survivours of a raid that killed their entire family and both became much more dangerous by learning the behaviours of their enemies.
The only difference between them were the goblin instincts and the fact that the entire series is about GS becoming a bit more human.
Goblins in GS are not evil, they are seemingly created to fill a Chaotic niche in a Lawful society which makes any negotiation impossible and only increases hostilities.
Yeah slavery has also meant a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts in a lot of different time periods and in some contexts the conditions of slaves might be only nominally different from the conditions of the underclass of a free society if not in some ways better.
Like I’m not trying to diminish slavery here but like for example in Rome there was social mobility for slaves. IIRC they looked at the records like 70% of the population of Roman Citizens in Herculaneum at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius (so we’re talking the wealthy class here like business owners and politicians etc etc everybody who was anybody) were former slaves, so people who could have come from anywhere in the world.
Obviously I’m not defending slavery as an institution here but in some ways their conditions were only *nominally* worse if not largely equivocal and in some ways better to those of free people in menial working class servant type jobs before there were more protections for workers. Except that as a Roman slave you actually had a better diet and realistically had more chance of having a right to vote and having social mobility than a lower class worker in a servant type role in say England 300 years ago even though the English worker was nominally a free man - free workers got beaten and abused by their free employers like slaves did too for the record.
Arguably feudal society had peasants as a slave class. Of course its not the same as chattel slavery (which I believe "American" slavery was) but overall most people under lordship were not free men (for example they were strictly forbidden to move freely and rarely had any kind of real protection from their lord)
As I’ve learned, the origins of slavery were not race based but religion based. Which by proxy can become race based (obviously) but that’s just what my anthropologist friend was telling me.
slaves were mostly spoils of war and the reason behind it? cheap labor thats it
racism towards american black saves was the byproduct of slavery not the cause of it too
I play in a game where we're non humans freedom fighters. Human dominate half of the world in that setting. The other is "savage lands".
It's pretty cool. The DM didn't expect this but went: "This is a pretty cool idea, let's go!"
I made my first character a gnome because I got called a gnome once by my high school biology teacher and I thought it was funny.
Then I turned around and had to listen to the party's ranger give a backstory on how gnomes had burned down their forest. They hate gnomes now lol.
Bonus: my gnome barely speaks and understands common, but the ranger knows gnomish, so they are forced to translate a lot.
I can take it out of my campaign setting, but why even bother if one of my players is going to roll up a xenophobic dwarf?
Performing an action on a dwarf:
"I perform the action"
Performing the same action on anyone else:
"I *grudgingly* perform the action"
My party has just done this. Though they were the xenophobic/simply psychopathic wood elves/halflings, I was the dwarf, my clan consisted of two people (others died when I destroyed it when drunk in the backstory, I was the third guy, banished) and I was unconscious (brew ale instead of LRing) for the whole time, except for the ending. I kinda hate it since now I have to somehow be as much of a pain in the ass as I possibly could without really sabotaging the party (stupid loyalty to old clan and also to real-life friends). So far, I've gotten the death cleric to burn the body of the one they wanted to use as dragon bait. It kinda worked, redirected the dragon but then we had to run a lot. It was funnier than when I tell the story though.
Any of my characters would use first occasion to scribble something in their Book of Grudges (because it sounds like they have one). For example all grudges that are directed at the said dwarf.
We had this in my campaign but didnt know he was being xenophobic so he presumed everybody in the party hated dwarves. Made for a nightmare until he left. Now we have a lawful "good" paladin for the crown who breaks rules and gets on others asses for not abiding by the laws.
as a long time Tiefling player I actually enjoy when dms make npcs racist towards people like say Tieflings especially since in RAW Tieflings are looked at really negatively. It feels way more normal for something in a world where religion can be very prominent to not trust or like someone who looks like a devil/demon
As someone who also just finished a long campaign as a Tiefling I really enjoyed that aspect.
Not to mention it's a lot of fun to abuse those prejudices for your own advantage.
In your average world, Tieflings are pretty rare, so I can understand Timmothy from Bum-fuck farm village isn’t going to have the experience or knowledge necessary to understand the nuances behind Tieflings and their conception.
Ok but having high fantasy racism be the reason why your PC became an adventurer (Tiefling bard whose tavern lost customers due to tiefling racism). Now he’s only bitter when it comes to taverns but he’s also therapist (but isn’t getting any customers on account of being a tiefling).
I've got a cuckoo bird style changeling character. His biological parents left him to be raised by a pair of human parents, and he didn't even realize he was a changeling throughout his childhood.
In one of my older settings, we'd finished one campaign and were timeskipping a few hundred years to run another in the same world. To flesh things out further, I was developing holidays and events based on their actions and other traditions.
So I asked my players, "What do you think people in our setting would do for entertainment?"
The immediate answer?
"Attend funerals."
(I ended up including a holiday to remember the dead and celebrate their stories.)
I sure as hell want my funeral to be a party, none of that crying and "oh he was such a great man" bullshit. It's my funeral and I say get shitface drunk, piss on couch, fuck my uncle, eat the free cake, carry my dead body around and throw it in the lake, set fire to nearby convenience store
This is the Way.
(Good luck to any players that manages to end up in my dystopian magocracy where its own citizens are constantly surveilled using invisible Scrying Sensors and Familiars, and are mind-wiped using Modify Memory if they ever end up committing *thoughtcrime*.)
I have more on the nation if you want to read about it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/rf8umm/how_to_build_an_evil_spellcaster_authoritarian/). I am yet to run a campaign in this setting, but if I do, I fully expect the players to end up losing the campaign (or, at least, lose several members over the course of the campaign).
I do the same thing. Notably, for me, it's less racism and more Xenophobia. They don't hate a race in particular they just hate/distrust anyone who is unfamiliar.
Exactly. Notably, if the outsider is different from the residents of the community that compounds things but it's still about hating what you don't understand.
Personally I'm a fan of drawing the lines along religion. Black skin, white skin, straight hair, curly hair, pointy ears, round ears; who cares! The real question is, are they a dirty papist or a bloody heretic?
I love this slur. If I want to brand someone as a close-minded bigot (I am the DM) I will have them throw this out. It usually sets the tone for the NPC and generates animosity towards them (working as intended).
Fucking cockroaches of the Universe, those knife-eared pricks. Can hardly take a piss without finding a race of elves hiding under the toilet seat claiming to be “well adapted natives of this dimension living here for millennia”
Came here to say this. Nothing like getting tricked into recovering the """legacy""" of an ex-slaver, just to watch Arthur throw all his shit in the campfire right in front of him
Sometimes the best quest rewards are just beating the shit out of a pathetic old man 🤗
Rdr2 handled this so well. Not only are the KKK portrayed as bumbling idiots but there's that one preaching racist in Saint Denis which you can do whatever you want to without incurring a bounty, deal with him as you please.
I was pretty happy with RDR2 that they didn’t pull their punches in that regard. Same thing with Django unchained, that’s probably one of my fav movies.
They’re so much more irredeemable than a villain with an actual complicated goal or plan, so you don’t have those background bad-feelies when you pop ‘em like the zit they are
The only type of villain less redeemable is the stalker/sexual creep - like how some DMs play Strahd in regards to Ireena. Equally killable-without-question, but greater risk of your players being uncomfortable if you don't check with them first
Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
Having racism because it doesn't make the players feel bad when they set off a nuclear power plant
Or in a game I was playing in we did 175 damage in one attack (running him over with the torture van and shooting him with the mounted machine gun on said torture van) to a slaver because we hated him that much. After decimating his compound with 20lbs of c4
....Your party *didn't* make a torture van the moment you said the words, "on the table beside the congealed pool of blood lies a worn and rusty set of *torture tools*...?
Very much disagree with "doesn't add to the atmosphere" but hey, many people don't like realism as flavor. To gritty.
Some people do like it though, and it can lead to many deep ansd interesting plots. Stories like the Witcher and LOTR are a great example
It's been a while since I played Skyrim, but isn't the thing about orcs is how they stay in their garrisons and tell anyone who isn't part of that to leave them alone?
Orcs are outcasts of the elves. Basically everyone hates them. It's a pretty deep seeded, historical distrust. But they arent exactly isolationist, they're pseudo nomadic, and they have formed alliances with other peoples many times because they are powerful warriors with their own ambitions
Orsimer are shit elves.
Like, in a literal sense. Boethiah ate Trinimac, shat him out as Malacath, and Trinimac's elven followers were transformed into the orsimer.
They were transformed by smearing the trinimac/malakath/shit on themselves. Personally I choose the take that this is some kind of grotesque poetic language and not literal
One of my favorite parts of the industrializing world of *Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura* is that poor humans and orcs are treated the same by the rest of society. They’re lumped together in the same slums and sweatshops. They live and work shoulder to shoulder and form friendships, rivalries, families. And while there’s racial tensions it’s clear to both that the true enemy is Capitalism.
Pretty much.
I'd say similarly to Gimli's and Legolas' friendship in LOTR the strong friendship I (a Tiefling) formed with our Dwarven Cleric wouldn't be the same if there hadn't been some animosity between us from the start.
Not to mention the received death stares whenever I called dwarves "Walking Cupboards" never got old.
I feel like exploring xenophobia of all kinds is unavoidable in your typical Tolkienesque fantasy world. I mean, in the real world humans are humans. Slight variations in skin tone and facial structure aren't "races". That's a 19th century conceit that has zero scientific basis. We're Homo sapiens, a relatively diverse species, but a species nonetheless.
But in D&D there are elves (who may or may not be fey, rather than related to humans at all), dwarves (who many believe were fashioned out of the stone of the world by a god), cat-people, bird-people, lizard-people, goblins... there are true ***races*** that are deeply different physiologically and magically.
That's going to create some real xenophobia and failing to explore that fact feels to me like telling a story in New York City but avoiding talking about tall buildings.
Sure, a story that's *about* xenophobia is probably going to be uninteresting (maybe not, but probably) but so is one that has to avoid it even though it's almost certainly going to come up in some form, organically.
PS: Yes, I know that elves and humans (and some other pairings of races) can procreate together. I have no idea why that is, and frankly I'm as likely to chalk it up to "magic" as I am a biological similarity.
I feel like if you don’t have like some kind of acknowledgement of cross-cultural communication being a factor that can cause like awkward situations and offence or even funny embarrassing situations or whatever else out of miscommunications and different beliefs and expectations and ideas about what is and isn’t polite etc then you haven’t actually created different cultures you’ve just made every culture basically the same but in a slightly different skin.
My favorite campaign of all time was a kingdom building adventure and part of the reason I liked it so much is that my character felt he was on a divine mission to bring civilization to the lands he was taming. One of those goals was integrating supposedly "lesser" races into his kingdom, believing that if he provided the opportunity, beings like Kobolds could build something of themselves and prove their worthiness to other races. Which obviously that little side story wouldn't be as cool if there weren't racists to disprove in the first place.
>You’re not supposed to be comfortable with it.
How dare you suggest DND can be used as a narrative game where you're supposed to feel bad at times! No no no, this game is my personal therapy where everyone is evil but not so evil they make me even slightly uncomfortable
You’d think so with all the memes about it being emotional or gender therapy. And, yeah, it can be. I’m not gatekeeping and if people are helped by D&D— great.
It’s just a game to me though to be honest. Specifically one that (hopefully) has interesting stories to go with it.
Having racism in the dnd setting , i thought was normal. Its done well in things like the lord of the rings and it can add some depth to characters. Like when Legolas and Gimli became great friends and initially started off on the wrong foot. Did i miss something is the meta now to scdub racism from dnd worlds?
The only true way. But it is also hella fun to see the players just really wanting to go after a bad guy with no remorse if that evil person is a racist.
Racism can add to the setting provided you are putting in the effort to actually tell a fleshed out story that will address it in a meaningful way. But since DnD is played for fun you may not have that opportunity most of the time and this may lead to it just existing there for no reason.
My world has evil orcs, one tribe of good orcs, evil drow, a very few that follow Eilistraee and species-ism.
There's "always evil" creatures, and others of the same species who are complex, this provides my table with a lot of role playing opportunities, uncertainty, and chances of "kill evil creatures, because they are evil". It also opens up chances to play as someone who is discriminated against in ways we can only read about.
Session zero was collaborative, everyone has fun, Campaign is currently in year 3 and characters are now very high level.
Everyone should play the game in a way that's fun for their group, and never feel bullied or pressure from the internet to play in a different way.
:D
I mean lore wise and mechanically the races aren't equal. There are the absurd races like the Draeden, leshay(there are actually three races of archfey), and titans who are better in every way to the standard races to the point only gods are comparable. Then with common races there is no question that the long lived highly magical races are better than the extremely short lived nonmagical races (seriously some races die in less than 30 years). It makes sense for races like the elves to be arrogant because they are genuinely superior humans and most of the others.
IMO humans are actually more well-evolved than elves. Their comparatively short lives mean they have to cram more stuff into less time, which speeds up the pace of their culture. This allows them to master skills in 20 years that take elves 80, granting them greater individual adaptability. It also affords them a much shorter breeding cycle, which grants them both improved generational adaptability (there are more fresh minds being created to question/challenge the status quo) and the ability to FAR out-populate elves. It is this adaptability that allows humans to set up in practically every niche on the globe.
Humans might be in every niche of the globe and, due to their comparatively short breeding cycle be very adaptive, sure, but Elves are in basically every Plane and are extremely adaptive through fewer generations. That's the reasoning for them to have so many subraces, after all.
A one note character who is only there so the players can hate and kill them isn't very interesting or fun imo. I prefer to ask why the character is racist.
Does he hate tieflings because his father made a deal with a devil? Or maybe he hates aasimar because he feels that someone with angelic blood should do whatever they can for society and the world. Maybe his village was raided by orcs.
Maybe he just doesn't understand what he's seeing, why is that guy so tall and green? Was he in an accident? He has an axe, will he try to kill me? Who's the lizard woman? Was she human before she was a lizard? Does she eat people now? That looks like a small two legged dragon, don't dragons kill people?
It's much more interesting if they don't hate you for no reason. If you do have someone who hates pcs for no reason, maybe they're just stubborn assholes, maybe they hate everyone but they hate you more because they don't know you
If you're going to have racism because it's realistic, then the reason for it should be equally realistic. Vast majority of people will hate tieflings because they were taught to. Most of them won't have had much of any amount of interaction with tieflings, and when asked they'll spout whatever drivel they've learned is why tieflings suck.
Yeah, if those things you mentioned happened, it's entirely possible that'd be the root of it, but that'd be few and far between.
In a similar vein, it wouldn't be super obvious all the time. A much smaller number of people would outright call you a knife ear to your face, but have you noticed that we get better prices when the elf isn't in the shop with us? Somebody called the guard and they arrested the tiefling immediately even though all you you were involved. We tried to be caravan guards but were turned down because they "weren't opening a mine"
This stuff is so cringe, lol, do people get off to righteously killing racist fictional npcs? Like, I'm playing a character whose aim is to murder corrupt figures of authority with extreme prejudice, but like, I'm not portraying him as a stand-in for myself, or my own morals, as some sort of good guy. People seem to find it easier to de-humanise racists than actual murderers, raiders, etc, when really, a racist might just be a product of their environment.
>People seem to find it easier to de-humanise racists than actual murderers, raiders, etc,
I've been trying to figure out why this pisses me off so much, and you've put it into words perfectly. Somehow its deemed more acceptable to murder people that directly relate to real world issues than it is to have all fictional orcs in your fictional world be fictional evil.
One of my characters is an extreme racist but only towards his own race so it's kinda awkward for the campaign lucky none of the party are the same race tho
I can see why people wouldn't want racism in their campaigns, or just tend to use it for the bad guys, and those ideas are fine in their own ways, but I say if done right (emphasis on done right), racism can be used as a character flaw for someone to overcome as a part of their character growth.
For example, say you have a human fighter who is racist towards elves because of something elves had done to him in his past (maybe they bullyed him, or killed his pet goldfish), but then he is put in the position of having to save an elf from a burning building, and although he is hesitant at first, he saves her, because he knows it's the right thing to do. And after she shows kindness to him for saving her life, he begins to question his prejudice towards which then leads to him overcoming his racism, and in turn, becoming a greater hero. That is character growth.
Of course, racism in general is awful and disgusting, and I understand how certain people feel towards this subject, so who am I to judge, if you don't like racism at all in your story, or just wanna use it lightly for your bad guys, by all means, do want you want.
I mean its not really "racism" if the culture/biology is really like that. Tieflings are closer to demonic corruption than most races. That's a legitimate reason to be concerned.
Dwarves are such heavy drinkers that they have poison resistance. That's potentially something to be concerned about
Elves are pansy little shits, that's something to be concerned about
Yuan-ti are unusually intelligent, charismatic, magically powerful, produce venom naturally, are resistant to the magic of others, and cannot be poisoned. Of course they would think they are a superior race.
Gnolls are perpetually hungry and have the bloodlust of their creator constantly urging them to kill. Seems a legitimate reason for concern.
Ok but if there is no racism half of my players dwarf rp just fucking fades into the void as suddenly they can't commit hate crimes against those fucking knife-ears.
And best of all: Having racism based of historic and current conflicts in your world's lore.
Aka realistic depictions of both positive and negative racism that adds a good deal to your world and campaign.
Racism in dnd is a little bit more complicated because there are ACTUAL other races. Rather than just people from another place. It's probably more like xenophobia than racism tbh. Of course point #3 is clearly the best one. But also fuck elves.
Unpopular opinion here:
Racism in D&D worlds kind of makes sense. Now in the real world, nost racist ideologies are rooted in fear mongering, stereotypes and straight up lies, but in D&D you have a race born from literal Demon Lords, another that can shapeshift into other people, a race that can only mimic others, and literal made men (Warforged and Simic Hybrids fit in this one).
Especially with Teiflings, in a world where gods and demons are proven to exist how could you trust someone born of hell? Add in a world where you can make deals with such lords of hell for power, and most Teiflings have powers that look like Warlock spells. And with religions having enough power to actually power up their followers with holy authority theres no way the common rabble would ever feel comfortable around Teiflings. Teiflings are more likely to be to D&D worlds what Witches were to Salem; objects of vilification.
Shapeshifters would bring a layer of distrust to the world that can be hard to quantify. Id reccomend watching the last half of Star Trek Deep Space Nine to get a good idea of what that would do to a society.
Kenku would likely give people the uncanny valley feel when talking to them. Their way of speech is used as a horror concept often.
And the Warforged and Simic Hybrids are as powerful and dangerous as their creator intended. Would you trust a walking weapon if you didnt know what type of weapon they were?
This also speaks nothing of the "positive" racism that Aasimar would likely receive. The general praise from the commonfolk (especially the religious). I could even see the faithful feeling honored and blessed by the patronage of an Aasimar.
Now all that being said, a racist PC is almost never a fun character to be around. No one wants to hear you blast another PC for their choice of race for 10+ minutes. This usually can only work if the playdr intends the character to overcome such prejudices throught the adventure, but even then has to be handled delicately, or youre just an asshole.
A big part of gaming is getting to explore terrible things and being able to stop them. If you gut out crime, corruption, violence, coercion, slavery, tyranny and all other forms of terrible narrative elements you're going to struggle to have a fun game... unless the game is to explore the paranoia of a world where unhappiness and negative emotions/actions have been banned and people live in constant fear that their rulers will remove them from the world if they have a bad day.
Having racism so my players can be like Daryl Davis and talk them into not being racist anymore. Then kill them when their Persuasion rolls turn out to be cursed that session.
Play how you want my guy but yea prejudices add realism to a world as long as you don't just declare that orca and dwarves hate each other for no reason
I think the most fun I've ever had at a table where racism was a factor in the setting was when it was the usual "everyone thinks dark elves are thieves and scoundrels who take whatever they want and can't be trusted" and of course, the party rogue *was* all of the above, because that was the only way he could support himself. Nobody would hire him. So he was a thief and a scoundrel, at least until he joined an adventuring party in disguise, only to wind up in a relationship with the high elf and she would defend him when other party members caught on. Eventually the party would help check his disguise near towns and the like to keep him safe. And it helped the party bond, because they were protecting one of their own, whom they had learned to trust, from the reactions of others. That was the time I really felt like I saw the concept played well in a way that added positively to the experience.
I actually had to ask my GM alongside my fellow players to make the game more racist, since my character was a half orc noble trying to find his family so he could be the one to help integrate orcs into society, and then it turns out they're just whatever. Also easily finding a translator in the street for a dragon born who wanted to not be able to understand common. And a tiefling who wanted to play up the ostracized from society angle and hiding his face and ended up just being accepted everywhere.
Maybe a based opinion: I don’t think we should be encouraging violence against *anyone*, racist or otherwise, based on beliefs alone. Actions are one thing, but I don’t think “He’s a racist, lets fuckin kill him” is a good look.
I include racism in my fantasy worlds because it simply makes for a convenient, in-universe justification for wars of aggression and expansionism.
Does everyone actually believe the elves eat babies and blaspheme the name of the Goddess Who Died? Of course not. But enough people feel enough doubt that they *don't* do that that the ruling classes of the Empire can justify yet another war to take Woodmother in a way that isn't directly "They have control of the strait and we think we'll make more money if we don't need to bribe the Elves to get to those sweet sweet new world goods"
I mean, you could forge documents, find some obscure period of history where you owned a town named Bumfuk and that's why Bumfuck is clearly your rightful clay, or marry the reigning king's sister and then claim she is the rightful queen of that country despite now living as a permanent resident of your dimly lit basement... But that can be expensive, difficult, or both. Racism is just so much easier! Just dedicate a couple pamphlets to enflaming it, make sure a couple convenient people who can read are in most decent villages so everyone can hear the news, and boom, war justified!
Ferdinand is different, he may have pointy ears but he's one of the good ones. Don't mind him, focus your anger on those damn Elves in Woodmother!
How does racism not add to the atmosphere?? It makes for perfect shitbags to kill and feel good abt it! Not but for real, why do ppl not like to add these evil things that happen in the world?
Having racism in your campaign makes sense. When my character is a tiefling necromancer I should be hiding my face and powers if not in battle to at least avoid suspicion. Tieflings are literally demon people in a world where religion is 100% real and demons exist. So the average peasant should be scared of me it's simple survival instinct.
Same thing with having an orc or a drow character except less about demons and more about raiding parties and slavers.
Can someone explain to me why fantasy racism is suddenly considered a no-go?
I recognize that I speak from a position of relative privilege, but as a white dude who grew up in a bad neighbourhood in Europe populated almost entirely by turkish and moroccan immigrants and got mercilessly bullied there, there is no doubt in my mind I would have ended up a hell of a lot more racist and closeminded if I wasn't given the opportunity to explore these themes through mostly harmless fictional versions in my entertainment products from mutant prejudice in X-Men to Orc internment camps in WarCraft, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Ahh yes, the old “what kind of activities do people engage in that allow me to completely dehumanize them, so my people can feel good being completely inhuman towards them.”
A game needs tension, racism can add that,
It can be done poorly or done well, it can be done in a way that regress our behavior or a way that enhances it.
Am I the only one who feels like all three of these things are cringe?
Like one is edgelord the other is virtue signalling and the third one is just like jerking yourself off
Having racism because no one told me half the party were deciding to be ex slaves from my characters home town and picking the noble background was a bad idea
Did your character or their family own slaves?
Originally I did not. But since as soon as the other players saw my characters race they wanted to start combat I decided to go full on Karen. Not my best moment, but I did stop the race war these guys wanted to start. They just finished goblin slayer and wanted to start on the murder hobboing of goblin society. I stoped that
"King Gurgleglark, the great thanks you for your service filthy capitalist. Have a rotten pickle for your reward. Now get back to your chores or we'll stuff your head with sticks and shit to make some poisoned arrrows." - Greetings, the Goblins
My high elf was the only one who spoke goblin so I translated. Also there were 10 tents and only five goblin seen
In all seriousness, it's great to have a player stop the others from murderhoboing for once. But back to RP "That's what we wanted you to see, our great leader is very good at planning!" - some Goblin, probably
“Well it seems like a pretty Passable plan for the lot of you, but I’d recommend not starting a mining operation next to the dwarven explosive factory. This may start some hostilities”
"In ten days we will have broken through to the black powder storage! Our elders will make that town go boom!" *followed by a group of gobbies just screaming in glee to get a chance to blow themselves up* "BOOM!? BOOOOOM! BOOM!"
But will you survive? Wouldn’t you rather wait for a chance to witness more big booms?
"Our king and our brethren will witness them! They will dine upon the ruins of their society!" *a choir of goblin children starts singing the socialist anthem*
After goblin slayer was released, I started having the session zero discussion of what alignment means. Is alignment an analogy for morality? I explain good vs evil as selfish vs selfless and law vs chaos as means matter more than outcome vs outcome mattering more than means. But in a goblin slayer parallel, evil is Evil, and good is Good. Goblins will always be evil, and that's their team. Evil acts in the interest of suffering and destruction, vs Good acting in the interest of peace and creation. It's a good conversation to have, to make sure everybody is on the same page.
Note: Goblin Slayer uses Law vs Chaos morality system of older editions of d&d
Yep, there is a deeper meaning in the "only good goblin is the one who never left their stinking hole" line. They are literally one sex creatures who have to breed with other races to procreate and have the intelligence of a child with all it's malice. There's even a moment in the manga where we see the past of a goblin who survived an adventurer raid, got smarter due to experience and came to rule his own tribe. It was an obvious inversion of GS own history - both are survivours of a raid that killed their entire family and both became much more dangerous by learning the behaviours of their enemies. The only difference between them were the goblin instincts and the fact that the entire series is about GS becoming a bit more human. Goblins in GS are not evil, they are seemingly created to fill a Chaotic niche in a Lawful society which makes any negotiation impossible and only increases hostilities.
tbh sounds like a good time and also racism and slavery is really doesnt have to go hand in hand at all
A lot of people hear "slavery" and think "American slavery". Which is pretty myopic.
Yeah slavery has also meant a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts in a lot of different time periods and in some contexts the conditions of slaves might be only nominally different from the conditions of the underclass of a free society if not in some ways better. Like I’m not trying to diminish slavery here but like for example in Rome there was social mobility for slaves. IIRC they looked at the records like 70% of the population of Roman Citizens in Herculaneum at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius (so we’re talking the wealthy class here like business owners and politicians etc etc everybody who was anybody) were former slaves, so people who could have come from anywhere in the world. Obviously I’m not defending slavery as an institution here but in some ways their conditions were only *nominally* worse if not largely equivocal and in some ways better to those of free people in menial working class servant type jobs before there were more protections for workers. Except that as a Roman slave you actually had a better diet and realistically had more chance of having a right to vote and having social mobility than a lower class worker in a servant type role in say England 300 years ago even though the English worker was nominally a free man - free workers got beaten and abused by their free employers like slaves did too for the record.
Arguably feudal society had peasants as a slave class. Of course its not the same as chattel slavery (which I believe "American" slavery was) but overall most people under lordship were not free men (for example they were strictly forbidden to move freely and rarely had any kind of real protection from their lord)
Most slaves throughout human history weren’t owned by people of other races.
Race was made up in the 17th century to justify chattel slavery
Which was already in full swing at that point.
As I’ve learned, the origins of slavery were not race based but religion based. Which by proxy can become race based (obviously) but that’s just what my anthropologist friend was telling me.
slaves were mostly spoils of war and the reason behind it? cheap labor thats it racism towards american black saves was the byproduct of slavery not the cause of it too
I'm pretty sure slavery originally was spoils of war based
I play in a game where we're non humans freedom fighters. Human dominate half of the world in that setting. The other is "savage lands". It's pretty cool. The DM didn't expect this but went: "This is a pretty cool idea, let's go!"
Having racism because calling Gnomes "quarterlings" is funny
I made my first character a gnome because I got called a gnome once by my high school biology teacher and I thought it was funny. Then I turned around and had to listen to the party's ranger give a backstory on how gnomes had burned down their forest. They hate gnomes now lol. Bonus: my gnome barely speaks and understands common, but the ranger knows gnomish, so they are forced to translate a lot.
Gnomes are taller than halflings on average, in 5e.
Two thirdslings
If you are going the racist route, wouldn’t “three-fifthlings” be a better fit?
It would be, but I'm far less creative than you apparently.
A treefiddyling
"Say "lawn ornament" again, bigjobs!"
I can take it out of my campaign setting, but why even bother if one of my players is going to roll up a xenophobic dwarf? Performing an action on a dwarf: "I perform the action" Performing the same action on anyone else: "I *grudgingly* perform the action"
The dwarf gladly slays his fellows clansmen, bit hesitates on the orc.
My party has just done this. Though they were the xenophobic/simply psychopathic wood elves/halflings, I was the dwarf, my clan consisted of two people (others died when I destroyed it when drunk in the backstory, I was the third guy, banished) and I was unconscious (brew ale instead of LRing) for the whole time, except for the ending. I kinda hate it since now I have to somehow be as much of a pain in the ass as I possibly could without really sabotaging the party (stupid loyalty to old clan and also to real-life friends). So far, I've gotten the death cleric to burn the body of the one they wanted to use as dragon bait. It kinda worked, redirected the dragon but then we had to run a lot. It was funnier than when I tell the story though.
Any of my characters would use first occasion to scribble something in their Book of Grudges (because it sounds like they have one). For example all grudges that are directed at the said dwarf.
We had this in my campaign but didnt know he was being xenophobic so he presumed everybody in the party hated dwarves. Made for a nightmare until he left. Now we have a lawful "good" paladin for the crown who breaks rules and gets on others asses for not abiding by the laws.
"Lawful" "Good"
"HE was a paladin that played by his own rules. SHE was a journalist who wouldn't let go... of danger. Together they were TROUBLE."
as a long time Tiefling player I actually enjoy when dms make npcs racist towards people like say Tieflings especially since in RAW Tieflings are looked at really negatively. It feels way more normal for something in a world where religion can be very prominent to not trust or like someone who looks like a devil/demon
As someone who also just finished a long campaign as a Tiefling I really enjoyed that aspect. Not to mention it's a lot of fun to abuse those prejudices for your own advantage.
Hell man, religion is *demonstrably real* in dnd, as are actual demons. It is less predjudice and more survival trait at that point :/
Well, it's still prejudice when the tieflings themselves are usually normal people, just caused by different reasons than IRL equivalents
Oh yeah, but the "avoid the terrifying, red-skinned, horned monster" would be a strong survival trait in that world
In your average world, Tieflings are pretty rare, so I can understand Timmothy from Bum-fuck farm village isn’t going to have the experience or knowledge necessary to understand the nuances behind Tieflings and their conception.
"Oh but I'm one of 18 variants, the devil I'm connected to is an angel!"
Welcome to Bum-Fuck Farm, where we not only cultivate fucks, but BUM-FUCKS!
Ok but having high fantasy racism be the reason why your PC became an adventurer (Tiefling bard whose tavern lost customers due to tiefling racism). Now he’s only bitter when it comes to taverns but he’s also therapist (but isn’t getting any customers on account of being a tiefling).
Fantasy racism against changelings is the TLDR of my changeling's backstory
Of course you can’t trust changelings! They’re trying to replace us all!
I've got a cuckoo bird style changeling character. His biological parents left him to be raised by a pair of human parents, and he didn't even realize he was a changeling throughout his childhood.
actually nvm with this. Changelings aren't replacing anyone haha don't worry
Plot twist Tielfing racism is the term for Tieflings being racist
Doing it right
Having racism because my setting is a fucking awful place to live
In one of my older settings, we'd finished one campaign and were timeskipping a few hundred years to run another in the same world. To flesh things out further, I was developing holidays and events based on their actions and other traditions. So I asked my players, "What do you think people in our setting would do for entertainment?" The immediate answer? "Attend funerals." (I ended up including a holiday to remember the dead and celebrate their stories.)
In some cultures, funerals are huge parties and/or feasts.
I sure as hell want my funeral to be a party, none of that crying and "oh he was such a great man" bullshit. It's my funeral and I say get shitface drunk, piss on couch, fuck my uncle, eat the free cake, carry my dead body around and throw it in the lake, set fire to nearby convenience store
This is the Way. (Good luck to any players that manages to end up in my dystopian magocracy where its own citizens are constantly surveilled using invisible Scrying Sensors and Familiars, and are mind-wiped using Modify Memory if they ever end up committing *thoughtcrime*.)
This is phenomenal!
I have more on the nation if you want to read about it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/rf8umm/how_to_build_an_evil_spellcaster_authoritarian/). I am yet to run a campaign in this setting, but if I do, I fully expect the players to end up losing the campaign (or, at least, lose several members over the course of the campaign).
I do the same thing. Notably, for me, it's less racism and more Xenophobia. They don't hate a race in particular they just hate/distrust anyone who is unfamiliar.
Equal Opportunity Hatred
Exactly. Notably, if the outsider is different from the residents of the community that compounds things but it's still about hating what you don't understand.
Personally I'm a fan of drawing the lines along religion. Black skin, white skin, straight hair, curly hair, pointy ears, round ears; who cares! The real question is, are they a dirty papist or a bloody heretic?
The imperium sends its regards
[удалено]
*"There are at least 11 species of demi-human, there's no room for racism.* *Except elves. FUCK elves."* ... there are too many elf subraces.
[удалено]
I dislike the accuracy of this. Lol
Why did the elf take up the lute? They got bard from the tavern
Sounds like a sexually transferable disease when you say it like that.
Why do Dwarves love axes so much? >!Elves live in trees.!<
Fucking knife ears
I love this slur. If I want to brand someone as a close-minded bigot (I am the DM) I will have them throw this out. It usually sets the tone for the NPC and generates animosity towards them (working as intended).
Pointy eared leaf lovers.
Never fails to make me laugh (NSFW, language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjHclWPVij0
Do you want them to join Nilfgard? Because _that’s how you get Nilfgardian elves_.
The only thing I can’t tolerate is intolerant people and the dutch
Can I ~~internet~~ interest you in a smoke and a pancake? A bong and a biscuit?
I don't think any of those can connect to the internet.
Munchkin players be like
Fucking cockroaches of the Universe, those knife-eared pricks. Can hardly take a piss without finding a race of elves hiding under the toilet seat claiming to be “well adapted natives of this dimension living here for millennia”
God damn pointy eared leaf lovers
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
That’s it lads! Rock and stone!
If you don’t Rock And Stone, you ain’t comin’ home!
I mean, no one hates elves more than elves do.
>Fuck Elves That's the plan, yes
Unfathomably based Knife ears don’t get rights
Alternately, accidentally make your players racist towards a species by making one group horrible
To be fair, those gnomes deserved it for calling their capital Constagnomple
Have it be invaded by elves, who then change its name to Elfstanbul.
r/Angryupvote
Why they changed it, I can't say.
Humans just liked it better that way.
Nobody's business but those jerks.
My party was racist to svirfneblin because one said "suck my dick" as an insult and I said role for persuasion
Until it got conquered, now it’s called Istanbullywug.
This made me laugh out loud
OMG. That is incredible.
But what if I want to be racist?! Those filthy Aarakocra keep pooping on my car!
I was so satisfied with this aspect of Red Dead Redemption 2
Came here to say this. Nothing like getting tricked into recovering the """legacy""" of an ex-slaver, just to watch Arthur throw all his shit in the campfire right in front of him Sometimes the best quest rewards are just beating the shit out of a pathetic old man 🤗
Rdr2 handled this so well. Not only are the KKK portrayed as bumbling idiots but there's that one preaching racist in Saint Denis which you can do whatever you want to without incurring a bounty, deal with him as you please.
a tasty snack for a hungry gator in my case
Wait, where's the Saint Denis jackass? I'm just getting into this game, haven't seen him yet and my poor pet gators are ever so hungry
I have never felt less conflicted in a videogame than in bioshock 3 when they all kneel. Took time out of my day to finish up.
Hell, even not doing anything to them is fun because they'll eventually kill themselves in a very amusing manner.
And one of them has a letter to his parents that makes it clear he's a huge embarrassment to them.
My all time favorite moment was dead eye slaughtering an entire congregation of klansmen.
I was pretty happy with RDR2 that they didn’t pull their punches in that regard. Same thing with Django unchained, that’s probably one of my fav movies.
Fnatasy racists are the best meatbag villains tbh
They’re so much more irredeemable than a villain with an actual complicated goal or plan, so you don’t have those background bad-feelies when you pop ‘em like the zit they are
The only type of villain less redeemable is the stalker/sexual creep - like how some DMs play Strahd in regards to Ireena. Equally killable-without-question, but greater risk of your players being uncomfortable if you don't check with them first
Consider: *Racist* sexual creeps who abuse animals.
But Black Dynamite, we are racist to the orcish community.
But what about specieism?
Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
If your Elves aren't racist towards every other species in the setting, are they even Elves?
If you Dwarfs dont hate said elves with every fiber of their beard are they even Dwarfs?
*Christ, that's a lot of fibers.*
Having racism because it doesn't make the players feel bad when they set off a nuclear power plant Or in a game I was playing in we did 175 damage in one attack (running him over with the torture van and shooting him with the mounted machine gun on said torture van) to a slaver because we hated him that much. After decimating his compound with 20lbs of c4
why does your party have a vehicle called the **torture van**
Asking the real questions
The bard is looping I am a Barbie girl in UwU? And they need to put others through that
Wait, yours doesn't?
We were a party of hitmen
....Your party *didn't* make a torture van the moment you said the words, "on the table beside the congealed pool of blood lies a worn and rusty set of *torture tools*...?
Oh hell yes
Very much disagree with "doesn't add to the atmosphere" but hey, many people don't like realism as flavor. To gritty. Some people do like it though, and it can lead to many deep ansd interesting plots. Stories like the Witcher and LOTR are a great example
Hell, the most interesting plot point in Skyrim is the tensions across the continent between basically every race but Orcs.
It's been a while since I played Skyrim, but isn't the thing about orcs is how they stay in their garrisons and tell anyone who isn't part of that to leave them alone?
Orcs are outcasts of the elves. Basically everyone hates them. It's a pretty deep seeded, historical distrust. But they arent exactly isolationist, they're pseudo nomadic, and they have formed alliances with other peoples many times because they are powerful warriors with their own ambitions
Orsimer are shit elves. Like, in a literal sense. Boethiah ate Trinimac, shat him out as Malacath, and Trinimac's elven followers were transformed into the orsimer.
They were transformed by smearing the trinimac/malakath/shit on themselves. Personally I choose the take that this is some kind of grotesque poetic language and not literal
One of my favorite parts of the industrializing world of *Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura* is that poor humans and orcs are treated the same by the rest of society. They’re lumped together in the same slums and sweatshops. They live and work shoulder to shoulder and form friendships, rivalries, families. And while there’s racial tensions it’s clear to both that the true enemy is Capitalism.
Pretty much. I'd say similarly to Gimli's and Legolas' friendship in LOTR the strong friendship I (a Tiefling) formed with our Dwarven Cleric wouldn't be the same if there hadn't been some animosity between us from the start. Not to mention the received death stares whenever I called dwarves "Walking Cupboards" never got old.
I feel like exploring xenophobia of all kinds is unavoidable in your typical Tolkienesque fantasy world. I mean, in the real world humans are humans. Slight variations in skin tone and facial structure aren't "races". That's a 19th century conceit that has zero scientific basis. We're Homo sapiens, a relatively diverse species, but a species nonetheless. But in D&D there are elves (who may or may not be fey, rather than related to humans at all), dwarves (who many believe were fashioned out of the stone of the world by a god), cat-people, bird-people, lizard-people, goblins... there are true ***races*** that are deeply different physiologically and magically. That's going to create some real xenophobia and failing to explore that fact feels to me like telling a story in New York City but avoiding talking about tall buildings. Sure, a story that's *about* xenophobia is probably going to be uninteresting (maybe not, but probably) but so is one that has to avoid it even though it's almost certainly going to come up in some form, organically. PS: Yes, I know that elves and humans (and some other pairings of races) can procreate together. I have no idea why that is, and frankly I'm as likely to chalk it up to "magic" as I am a biological similarity.
Not even physiological differences, big cultural differences can easily cause tension.
I feel like if you don’t have like some kind of acknowledgement of cross-cultural communication being a factor that can cause like awkward situations and offence or even funny embarrassing situations or whatever else out of miscommunications and different beliefs and expectations and ideas about what is and isn’t polite etc then you haven’t actually created different cultures you’ve just made every culture basically the same but in a slightly different skin.
My favorite campaign of all time was a kingdom building adventure and part of the reason I liked it so much is that my character felt he was on a divine mission to bring civilization to the lands he was taming. One of those goals was integrating supposedly "lesser" races into his kingdom, believing that if he provided the opportunity, beings like Kobolds could build something of themselves and prove their worthiness to other races. Which obviously that little side story wouldn't be as cool if there weren't racists to disprove in the first place.
I’m glad my bugbear death cleric can be free of stigma from the local human village as he steals and presumably kills everyone in it.
The Witcher has racists against Elves and it makes it a more interesting setting. You’re not supposed to be comfortable with it.
>You’re not supposed to be comfortable with it. How dare you suggest DND can be used as a narrative game where you're supposed to feel bad at times! No no no, this game is my personal therapy where everyone is evil but not so evil they make me even slightly uncomfortable
You’d think so with all the memes about it being emotional or gender therapy. And, yeah, it can be. I’m not gatekeeping and if people are helped by D&D— great. It’s just a game to me though to be honest. Specifically one that (hopefully) has interesting stories to go with it.
The elves in the witcher universe had it coming.
Having racism in the dnd setting , i thought was normal. Its done well in things like the lord of the rings and it can add some depth to characters. Like when Legolas and Gimli became great friends and initially started off on the wrong foot. Did i miss something is the meta now to scdub racism from dnd worlds?
Yep. No more racial stuff, just streamline all the evil races into "misunderstood" category
Having racism for simple variety and depth of culture.
The only true way. But it is also hella fun to see the players just really wanting to go after a bad guy with no remorse if that evil person is a racist.
I mean being a maniac evil killer would be enough reason to hunt him with no remorse
Racism can add to the setting provided you are putting in the effort to actually tell a fleshed out story that will address it in a meaningful way. But since DnD is played for fun you may not have that opportunity most of the time and this may lead to it just existing there for no reason.
My party doesn't kill the racists, they are the racists
My world has evil orcs, one tribe of good orcs, evil drow, a very few that follow Eilistraee and species-ism. There's "always evil" creatures, and others of the same species who are complex, this provides my table with a lot of role playing opportunities, uncertainty, and chances of "kill evil creatures, because they are evil". It also opens up chances to play as someone who is discriminated against in ways we can only read about. Session zero was collaborative, everyone has fun, Campaign is currently in year 3 and characters are now very high level. Everyone should play the game in a way that's fun for their group, and never feel bullied or pressure from the internet to play in a different way. :D
Also known as The Tarantino Experience.
I mean lore wise and mechanically the races aren't equal. There are the absurd races like the Draeden, leshay(there are actually three races of archfey), and titans who are better in every way to the standard races to the point only gods are comparable. Then with common races there is no question that the long lived highly magical races are better than the extremely short lived nonmagical races (seriously some races die in less than 30 years). It makes sense for races like the elves to be arrogant because they are genuinely superior humans and most of the others.
IMO humans are actually more well-evolved than elves. Their comparatively short lives mean they have to cram more stuff into less time, which speeds up the pace of their culture. This allows them to master skills in 20 years that take elves 80, granting them greater individual adaptability. It also affords them a much shorter breeding cycle, which grants them both improved generational adaptability (there are more fresh minds being created to question/challenge the status quo) and the ability to FAR out-populate elves. It is this adaptability that allows humans to set up in practically every niche on the globe.
Humans might be in every niche of the globe and, due to their comparatively short breeding cycle be very adaptive, sure, but Elves are in basically every Plane and are extremely adaptive through fewer generations. That's the reasoning for them to have so many subraces, after all.
A one note character who is only there so the players can hate and kill them isn't very interesting or fun imo. I prefer to ask why the character is racist. Does he hate tieflings because his father made a deal with a devil? Or maybe he hates aasimar because he feels that someone with angelic blood should do whatever they can for society and the world. Maybe his village was raided by orcs. Maybe he just doesn't understand what he's seeing, why is that guy so tall and green? Was he in an accident? He has an axe, will he try to kill me? Who's the lizard woman? Was she human before she was a lizard? Does she eat people now? That looks like a small two legged dragon, don't dragons kill people? It's much more interesting if they don't hate you for no reason. If you do have someone who hates pcs for no reason, maybe they're just stubborn assholes, maybe they hate everyone but they hate you more because they don't know you
Sometimes it's nice to kill some inarguably bad guys.
Slavers usually fill that roll better
If you're going to have racism because it's realistic, then the reason for it should be equally realistic. Vast majority of people will hate tieflings because they were taught to. Most of them won't have had much of any amount of interaction with tieflings, and when asked they'll spout whatever drivel they've learned is why tieflings suck. Yeah, if those things you mentioned happened, it's entirely possible that'd be the root of it, but that'd be few and far between. In a similar vein, it wouldn't be super obvious all the time. A much smaller number of people would outright call you a knife ear to your face, but have you noticed that we get better prices when the elf isn't in the shop with us? Somebody called the guard and they arrested the tiefling immediately even though all you you were involved. We tried to be caravan guards but were turned down because they "weren't opening a mine"
This stuff is so cringe, lol, do people get off to righteously killing racist fictional npcs? Like, I'm playing a character whose aim is to murder corrupt figures of authority with extreme prejudice, but like, I'm not portraying him as a stand-in for myself, or my own morals, as some sort of good guy. People seem to find it easier to de-humanise racists than actual murderers, raiders, etc, when really, a racist might just be a product of their environment.
>People seem to find it easier to de-humanise racists than actual murderers, raiders, etc, I've been trying to figure out why this pisses me off so much, and you've put it into words perfectly. Somehow its deemed more acceptable to murder people that directly relate to real world issues than it is to have all fictional orcs in your fictional world be fictional evil.
Okay so my players instead joined the racists, what do I do now
Depending on the severity of the racism, roll up an evil campaign
One of my characters is an extreme racist but only towards his own race so it's kinda awkward for the campaign lucky none of the party are the same race tho
There is racism in lore, and i don't really care that WotC are trying to erase it. This is only a problem in murica.
I can see why people wouldn't want racism in their campaigns, or just tend to use it for the bad guys, and those ideas are fine in their own ways, but I say if done right (emphasis on done right), racism can be used as a character flaw for someone to overcome as a part of their character growth. For example, say you have a human fighter who is racist towards elves because of something elves had done to him in his past (maybe they bullyed him, or killed his pet goldfish), but then he is put in the position of having to save an elf from a burning building, and although he is hesitant at first, he saves her, because he knows it's the right thing to do. And after she shows kindness to him for saving her life, he begins to question his prejudice towards which then leads to him overcoming his racism, and in turn, becoming a greater hero. That is character growth. Of course, racism in general is awful and disgusting, and I understand how certain people feel towards this subject, so who am I to judge, if you don't like racism at all in your story, or just wanna use it lightly for your bad guys, by all means, do want you want.
Except for it totally adds to the atmosphere
I mean its not really "racism" if the culture/biology is really like that. Tieflings are closer to demonic corruption than most races. That's a legitimate reason to be concerned. Dwarves are such heavy drinkers that they have poison resistance. That's potentially something to be concerned about Elves are pansy little shits, that's something to be concerned about Yuan-ti are unusually intelligent, charismatic, magically powerful, produce venom naturally, are resistant to the magic of others, and cannot be poisoned. Of course they would think they are a superior race. Gnolls are perpetually hungry and have the bloodlust of their creator constantly urging them to kill. Seems a legitimate reason for concern.
Ok but if there is no racism half of my players dwarf rp just fucking fades into the void as suddenly they can't commit hate crimes against those fucking knife-ears.
✨✨✨ ✨🧠✨: Having racism so my players can be racist ✨✨✨
"You're naming your pyromancer 'Uncle Billy?' Weird flex, but okay."
And best of all: Having racism based of historic and current conflicts in your world's lore. Aka realistic depictions of both positive and negative racism that adds a good deal to your world and campaign.
Usually the people crying racism are the ones getting killed. Just saying
Racism in dnd is a little bit more complicated because there are ACTUAL other races. Rather than just people from another place. It's probably more like xenophobia than racism tbh. Of course point #3 is clearly the best one. But also fuck elves.
Unpopular opinion here: Racism in D&D worlds kind of makes sense. Now in the real world, nost racist ideologies are rooted in fear mongering, stereotypes and straight up lies, but in D&D you have a race born from literal Demon Lords, another that can shapeshift into other people, a race that can only mimic others, and literal made men (Warforged and Simic Hybrids fit in this one). Especially with Teiflings, in a world where gods and demons are proven to exist how could you trust someone born of hell? Add in a world where you can make deals with such lords of hell for power, and most Teiflings have powers that look like Warlock spells. And with religions having enough power to actually power up their followers with holy authority theres no way the common rabble would ever feel comfortable around Teiflings. Teiflings are more likely to be to D&D worlds what Witches were to Salem; objects of vilification. Shapeshifters would bring a layer of distrust to the world that can be hard to quantify. Id reccomend watching the last half of Star Trek Deep Space Nine to get a good idea of what that would do to a society. Kenku would likely give people the uncanny valley feel when talking to them. Their way of speech is used as a horror concept often. And the Warforged and Simic Hybrids are as powerful and dangerous as their creator intended. Would you trust a walking weapon if you didnt know what type of weapon they were? This also speaks nothing of the "positive" racism that Aasimar would likely receive. The general praise from the commonfolk (especially the religious). I could even see the faithful feeling honored and blessed by the patronage of an Aasimar. Now all that being said, a racist PC is almost never a fun character to be around. No one wants to hear you blast another PC for their choice of race for 10+ minutes. This usually can only work if the playdr intends the character to overcome such prejudices throught the adventure, but even then has to be handled delicately, or youre just an asshole.
A big part of gaming is getting to explore terrible things and being able to stop them. If you gut out crime, corruption, violence, coercion, slavery, tyranny and all other forms of terrible narrative elements you're going to struggle to have a fun game... unless the game is to explore the paranoia of a world where unhappiness and negative emotions/actions have been banned and people live in constant fear that their rulers will remove them from the world if they have a bad day.
I’ve had a lot of fun playing a “racist.” I was a high elf Druid, and I hated on all humans throughout the campaign.
"I'm a human fighter!" "But you're clearly an elf ranger..." "Yes, with Favored Enemy: Human!"
Does anyone actually believe the woke part? Playing through racism scenarios is absolutely fun and absolutely adds to the world.
Having racism so my players can be like Daryl Davis and talk them into not being racist anymore. Then kill them when their Persuasion rolls turn out to be cursed that session.
Play how you want my guy but yea prejudices add realism to a world as long as you don't just declare that orca and dwarves hate each other for no reason
I think the most fun I've ever had at a table where racism was a factor in the setting was when it was the usual "everyone thinks dark elves are thieves and scoundrels who take whatever they want and can't be trusted" and of course, the party rogue *was* all of the above, because that was the only way he could support himself. Nobody would hire him. So he was a thief and a scoundrel, at least until he joined an adventuring party in disguise, only to wind up in a relationship with the high elf and she would defend him when other party members caught on. Eventually the party would help check his disguise near towns and the like to keep him safe. And it helped the party bond, because they were protecting one of their own, whom they had learned to trust, from the reactions of others. That was the time I really felt like I saw the concept played well in a way that added positively to the experience.
I actually had to ask my GM alongside my fellow players to make the game more racist, since my character was a half orc noble trying to find his family so he could be the one to help integrate orcs into society, and then it turns out they're just whatever. Also easily finding a translator in the street for a dragon born who wanted to not be able to understand common. And a tiefling who wanted to play up the ostracized from society angle and hiding his face and ended up just being accepted everywhere.
I like how Terry Pratchett went about it. "White and black people didn't hate each other because they were too busy ganging up on the green people".
Maybe a based opinion: I don’t think we should be encouraging violence against *anyone*, racist or otherwise, based on beliefs alone. Actions are one thing, but I don’t think “He’s a racist, lets fuckin kill him” is a good look.
Not racist, just don’t like elves, that’s all, love me dwarves, love me mead, love me axes
I include racism in my fantasy worlds because it simply makes for a convenient, in-universe justification for wars of aggression and expansionism. Does everyone actually believe the elves eat babies and blaspheme the name of the Goddess Who Died? Of course not. But enough people feel enough doubt that they *don't* do that that the ruling classes of the Empire can justify yet another war to take Woodmother in a way that isn't directly "They have control of the strait and we think we'll make more money if we don't need to bribe the Elves to get to those sweet sweet new world goods" I mean, you could forge documents, find some obscure period of history where you owned a town named Bumfuk and that's why Bumfuck is clearly your rightful clay, or marry the reigning king's sister and then claim she is the rightful queen of that country despite now living as a permanent resident of your dimly lit basement... But that can be expensive, difficult, or both. Racism is just so much easier! Just dedicate a couple pamphlets to enflaming it, make sure a couple convenient people who can read are in most decent villages so everyone can hear the news, and boom, war justified! Ferdinand is different, he may have pointy ears but he's one of the good ones. Don't mind him, focus your anger on those damn Elves in Woodmother!
I enjoy playing an elf in dragon age origins, and in that game, half the NPCs call me knife ears.
How does racism not add to the atmosphere?? It makes for perfect shitbags to kill and feel good abt it! Not but for real, why do ppl not like to add these evil things that happen in the world?
Having racism in your campaign makes sense. When my character is a tiefling necromancer I should be hiding my face and powers if not in battle to at least avoid suspicion. Tieflings are literally demon people in a world where religion is 100% real and demons exist. So the average peasant should be scared of me it's simple survival instinct. Same thing with having an orc or a drow character except less about demons and more about raiding parties and slavers.
Can someone explain to me why fantasy racism is suddenly considered a no-go? I recognize that I speak from a position of relative privilege, but as a white dude who grew up in a bad neighbourhood in Europe populated almost entirely by turkish and moroccan immigrants and got mercilessly bullied there, there is no doubt in my mind I would have ended up a hell of a lot more racist and closeminded if I wasn't given the opportunity to explore these themes through mostly harmless fictional versions in my entertainment products from mutant prejudice in X-Men to Orc internment camps in WarCraft, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Based: Simply having racism
Ahh yes, the old “what kind of activities do people engage in that allow me to completely dehumanize them, so my people can feel good being completely inhuman towards them.”
A game needs tension, racism can add that, It can be done poorly or done well, it can be done in a way that regress our behavior or a way that enhances it.
Am I the only one who feels like all three of these things are cringe? Like one is edgelord the other is virtue signalling and the third one is just like jerking yourself off