MUers in the news?

Ganymede

But if the fry cooks forget to sprinkle Cajun seasoning on your fries and instead sprinkle racism seasoning on your fries, they're not likely to fire themselves if you complain to them. You gotta talk to people that can choose for them.

Those motherfuckers could have chosen to use the fucking Cajun seasoning instead of the racism seasoning on my damn fries.

not my fries

Arkandel

To be honest I never understood the 'purity' angle unless there's a technical, universal reason that it simply can't happen.

For example: If you run an Anne Rice MUSH and you choose that in your setting, due to supernatural reasons, vampires can't have sex ("it won't go up, Cap'n!") then I can't play my vampire gettin' it up anyway. If I did so it'd go against a hard rule (sorry...) that makes no sense to violate. So staff would be justified in telling me that no, I can't do that in RP - there are physical limitations of the universe involved that my character can't supersede.

However even in fantasy realms unless there are similar universal physical limitations in place, people... mingle. Sure, most people in Dorne might look a certain way but even so I'm sure some of them ran into an Asian- or black- or whatever-looking fella/gal at a bar one night and had some fun. Nine months later, look, a kid who doesn't look like the archetypical Dorne person! That youngster might be part of a minority, sure, but why care about that so much in the context of a game that you wouldn't even allow it as a playable concept? It doesn't make sense.

Macha

@Arkandel -sarcastic response incoming- But Arkandel, they only allow /nobles/. Clearly a noble family wouldn't have such ongoings.

(sarcasm over)

Arkandel

@Macha The way (well, one way) for to make that kind of stance defensible is if it's also applied to factors other than race.

What I mean by it is the issue wouldn't be racism. Westeros doesn't have that particular problem (it has so many others!). The issue is legitimacy; is Bob actually Joe and Jane's biological son or did Jane uh, mingle?

So if staff enforce this kind of doubt universally, so that each noble family has a rather specific range of 'looks' it can have, then I suppose I could understand it a bit better. Did anyone tell Bob's player he can't play the character because Joe and Jane are canonically blue-eyed blondes but he's desc'ed as a green-eyed and dark-haired dude? Is he aware that should he play that concept anyway there will be some PCs/NPCs who crack jokes about him being a bastard?

If that is not an ongoing thing then neither should be skin pigmentation.

faraday

@Arkandel said in MUers in the news?:

If that is not an ongoing thing then neither should be skin pigmentation.

Granted my knowledge of genetics ends at about the high school biology level, but as I understand it - the things that make up our physical appearance are not as simple as folks think. Recessive genes can be carried through many generations, and it's often multiple genes at play (124 for hair color, 16 for skin color, 150 for skin pigmentation according to a quick google). There have been documented cases of "throwback" genetics where you have things like a white baby born to black parents, or a black baby born to white parents.

All of that is rare, sure, but so? Lots of MUSH characters are rare in some way or another. Throw in adoptions, IVF, surrogates, fantasy lands where you can literally change the rules of genetics or involve magic in the equation... it's really not that hard to explain away families with differing skin tones.

Is this really something we need to expend our energy caring about or policing?

Arkandel

@faraday said in MUers in the news?:

Is this really something we need to expend our energy caring about or policing?

The funny thing in this scenario, specifically in Westeros, is we have an excellent example of how it played out.

King Robert's children were all illegitimate, borne of incest between Cersei and Jaime. While Ned Stark was investigating he had to delve deep into the royal genealogy to figure out what descendants 'should' look like. This is a clear indication that as a norm, such doubts weren't being cast.

So should there be energy expended on this? I'd say no. I guess there's some kind of argument to be made if too many characters are of an unexpected race since it'd skew the expected demographics, but a probably better way of addressing that is to give bonuses of some sort to incentivize new PCs adhering to those characteristics.

Ganymede

@Arkandel said in MUers in the news?:

For example: If you run an Anne Rice MUSH and you choose that in your setting, due to supernatural reasons, vampires can't have sex ("it won't go up, Cap'n!") then I can't play my vampire gettin' it up anyway. If I did so it'd go against a hard rule (sorry...) that makes no sense to violate. So staff would be justified in telling me that no, I can't do that in RP - there are physical limitations of the universe involved that my character can't supersede.

While I am sure that the impotent have been derided in history, I think that this is far a-field of what we have been trying to express.

To answer the question posed before about what is wrong about wanting to run a game that is monoethnic, I say that we have a word for people taking steps to create a word that is monoethnic, fantastic or not. That word is "racist." Were someone to want to create a fantasy world where adults engaged in sexual relationships with children under the age of 13, we would have another word for it. While I am sure some will think it unfair to liken a person who invents a fantasy setting that is monoethnic to a person that takes real-life steps towards creating a monoethnic culture, the word itself -- "racist" -- is apt and accurate, just as it is apt and accurate to call a choice "racist" while simultaneously pointing out that the person making such choice may not be so.

So, I'll say my piece: creating and enforcing a monoethnic game are racist choices. To me, it's that simple. If you want to avoid that particular reputation, choose otherwise, but people in the United States have been making these kinds of choices for generations, while trying to hide under the cloth of "I didn't mean to be."

Derp

@Ganymede said in MUers in the news?:

So, I'll say my piece: creating and enforcing a monoethnic game are racist choices.

In @Nymeria's case, she strongly asserts that her game is not mono-ethnic. But if you want to play anyone with any kind of actual power, importance, influence, etc, you have to be from the Noble houses, which are all apparently white-as-the-driven-snow.

Which is exactly the kind of systemic racism that we're still dealing with. So it doesn't even get a wash for not-actually-monoethnic because it's creating a clear power disparity for those who aren't in the Superior Caste.

I want to make that very clear.

And for those of you who questioned this before, let me say this very loudly:

Racism. Is. Wrong. This is not an argument, this is a statement of principle. I and @reimesu had a long discussion about whether we wanted to try to sieve out the Mod Voice stuff from the Personal Voice stuff on this one, and while I didn't get a chance to chat with @Runescryer about it I'm pretty sure that we're all on the same page:

MSB doesn't support racism and we absolutely will not be "fairly engaging" with racist ideas in an attempt for someone to try to justify why their bigotry is acceptable based on some kind of convoluted logic dance.

Nope.

faraday

@Derp said in MUers in the news?:

Racism. Is. Wrong. This is not an argument, this is a statement of principle.

100% agree.

But... some settings may have systemic prejudice. It's hard to skirt around in historical settings. Sexist gender roles in LoTR are pretty key to Eowyn's storyline. Shadowrun has its own form of racism (actual races, elves/dwarves/etc. not skin tone). Even a setting like BSG has oblique references to real-world ethnic discrimination.

All of these things are Wrong with a capital W, but that doesn't mean there should be a blanket prohibition against all Wrong things in storytelling.

I think it matters how it's handled. And I think there's a core difference between a world where you're injecting unnecessary prejudice based on your own assumptions/biases, and ones where the prejudice is more explicit in the setting.

Runescryer

@faraday said in MUers in the news?:

@Derp said in MUers in the news?:

Racism. Is. Wrong. This is not an argument, this is a statement of principle.

100% agree.

But... some settings may have systemic prejudice. It's hard to skirt around in historical settings. Sexist gender roles in LoTR are pretty key to Eowyn's storyline. Shadowrun has its own form of racism (actual races, elves/dwarves/etc. not skin tone). Even a setting like BSG has oblique references to real-world ethnic discrimination.

All of these things are Wrong with a capital W, but that doesn't mean there should be a blanket prohibition against all Wrong things in storytelling.

I think it matters how it's handled. And I think there's a core difference between a world where you're injecting unnecessary prejudice based on your own assumptions/biases, and ones where the prejudice is more explicit in the setting.

I agree that how it's handled is a key part of the problem. Racism as a setting obstacle for players to overcome can be interesting. But, it has to be done right.

The problem I have with @Nymeria's approach is that it's forcing players that want to play non-white characters to justify that character's existence. To a degree that white characters don't have to meet. All characters need to fit into the setting, I also agree on that; you can't just spontaneously start playing a previously unknown heir to the Throne, for example. But it seems that the bar for entry is lower for white characters than non-white. At least when it comes to characters that have impact and influence.

Again, this is an issue that fantasy seems to have more than science fiction. But I remember the absolute sh!tfest that happened when Voyager premiered and people were loosing their minds over a black Vulcan. Now, Tuvok wouldn't get a raised eyebrow.

When you go back and examine 'classic' fantasy, it is extremely mono-cultural, based on historic ideas that we now know are incorrect. Just one historical example are the Norse/Vikings. They were more than just a geographically isolated ethnic group of Northern Europeans. The Norse had established trade with multiple Mediterranean cultures, including Arabic. Viking barrows have been found containing goods originating in the Arabian peninsula as well as bodies with Arabic DNA.

And adapting the source material to be more conscious of the biases of the era/author isn't some new 'millennial/SJW' thing. Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories were chock full of racism and misogyny that got cleaned out in the 1984 movie. Conan's Amazonian love interest Valeria was much different in the movie than in the stories, for example. In the stories, Valeria could kindly be described as 'spunky'; she wasn't the most effective fighter and had to be rescued by Conan multiple times to save her from her own plan. Similarly, all of the evil characters were non-white or savage 'primitives'' like the Picts. Even one of Conan's staunchest friends, Artus, who is Black, was treated with a certain amount of 'You're A Real Credit To Your Race' condescension. Those characters were modernized for the Schwarzenegger (Valeria) and Momoa (Artus) Conan films.

In closing, basing fantasy on any sort of 'historical' era invites in all the negative views and prejudices regarding that era, unless the author is open to adaptation. Example: There was a rather large outcry at The Gentleman Bastard Sequence over the introduction of a woman being the greatest pirate in that world, with readers calling it unrealistic and 'a woman can't be a pirate'. Then, author Scott Lynch unloaded on those complaints with the fact that the largest pirate fleet ever assembled on Earth (400 ships, 40,000-60,000 men) was under the command of Zheng Yi Sao, a woman.

So. Things 'are how they are' until we find evidence that no, they in fact were sometimes different than what we originally believed or assumed. With all that said. I believe @Nymeria has the right to run the game how they want to run it, even if I disagree with the premise. In reality, the idea of 'pure' canon never works out well and creates divisions, like we're seeing, about what is and isn't 'in canon'.

Ganymede

@Runescryer

To add: the largest armada ever created was Chinese, led by Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch.

So, yeah, so much for European naval supremacy.

Derp

@faraday

Yes. I agree with all of that.

faraday

@Runescryer said in MUers in the news?:

The problem I have with @Nymeria's approach is that it's forcing players that want to play non-white characters to justify that character's existence. To a degree that white characters don't have to meet.

Yeah, again I think it comes down to the nuances of how it's handled.

Take TGG's Guadalcanal campaign for instance. I couldn't play a female front-line marine because that just wasn't a thing in 1942, and I had to work harder to explain what the heck my Australian missionary nurse character was doing there.

But that didn't bother me. It wasn't some arbitrary decision based on someone's narrow interpretation of 'canon'; it was a well-understood aspect of the setting. More importantly, there was no judgement attached. Staff was encouraging and accepting of those of us with atypical characters.

il-volpe

@faraday I've always found the "we don't allow concept Y because we can't think of a reason such a person would be in our setting" to be, eh, arrogant. As if game-runner being unable to think of a reason for a woman to be at Guadalcanal means that nobody can possibly think of one.

faraday

@il-volpe said in MUers in the news?:

I've always found the "we don't allow concept Y because we can't think of a reason such a person would be in our setting" to be, eh, arrogant. As if game-runner being unable to think of a reason for a woman to be at Guadalcanal means that nobody can possibly think of one.

Sure, I don't like blanket prohibitions either. I think every character should be taken on their own merits. But at the end of the day, character plausibility is always going to be a judgment call.

With well-established settings, whether a concept did exist is often easy to establish. There were no women nurses at Guadalcanal in actual history.

It's when you ask whether a concept could have existed that it gets sticky. What one person considers a plausible explanation will tweak someone else's suspension of disbelief. Also, having 1 one-in-a-million character in your game may not be a big deal, but what if you have 10 in a small town setting? It can definitely have an impact on the thematic feel.

The main thing for me is to be careful that our bar for suspending disbelief isn't rooted in implicit biases or ignorance.

Ghost

Forcing "purity" (interesting term for the topic, isn't it?) in an RPG is a slippery slope.

Sure, Genre-wise you don't want Luke Skywalker using 2022 tiktok meme examples in RP (he's supposed to be from a galaxy far away in a long time ago), but there's a pretty big line between "Creative preference" and "tyrannical GM nonsense". In the case of BofD and these two mentioned in the topic, their angle is that they view themselves to be an authority on the setting and they're literally inviting people to play content they view themselves to be owners of. So I don't get why people even bother to play that game, because ultimately it comes down to playing "house" with a couple of kids in their backyard and they'll make you leave if you're "not doing it right".

Why bother trying to be creative or create ANYTHING in an environment with someone who will tell everyone what their characters are, what they think, what they would or wouldn't do, etc?

These people are all "No" and not "Yes, and". They're not even "maybe, so" or "No, but". At the risk of sounding snide, they're literally using someone else's literary work and reputation to build themselves as an authority on the content and gatekeeping the shit out of it...and one of their preferred gates to keep is that BIPOC aren't in the ruling caste, make racist jokes, and consider black characters in the setting to be a matter of "woke cancel culture".

So, constructively, this should all be a lesson on do's and don'ts when it comes to understanding a few key things.

if you don't want people to try to create their own things and having a stake in it, you should be solo-writing it and not running it as an RPG where you falsely promote the concept of logging in to have agency over...well...anything.
Yes, it's true that players/fans blur the concept behind a character's skin color as being indicative of support for ACTUAL people with that skin color. Is it a minefield? Yes. Is it 100% about the content? No. It's somewhat shades of politics, social issues, etc blurring it's way into content. Still, it's best to understand this and take at least a "maybe, but" approach.

You could create a setting where 1000 all-white families boarded a spaceship and colonized a planet, and after 200 years there are 10,000 people who have ONLY mated with people on that initial all-white spaceship, and people will STILL be like "...can I play a black character?" and your answer should always, ALWAYS be to question why the fuck you decided creatively that everyone in that ship was white to begin with. What's up with that?