@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'.