Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

[cyst13]

Just finished reading the Digital Hero article about the evil race of Migdalars. Recently, on a thread about race and gaming, Michael Hopcroft wrote that he deplored the fantasy staple of evil races. Is the idea that an entire race can be evil an intrinsically racist concept, even if the race does not actually exist in the real world? Does the 'evil race' trope encourage fantasy gamers to think in negative stereotypes? Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?

If you do not think the concept of 'evil races' encourages racist thought because this is just pretend, would it be acceptable to run a Earth setting campaign with the 'evil race' being conspiratorial Jews, Yellow Menace Chinese, or dark jungle-cult Africans? These have all been featured in the adventure entertainment of past eras. If you think it's okay to game evil Migdalars and Orcs but not evil Jews, Chinese or Africans, please explain why.

[John Desmarais]

The "evil race" concept is really racist, but it is cliche'd. In some games this cliche' work, in others it doesn't. If you want a very "black and white with no shades of grey" view of good and evil in your campaign, than having a intrinsically evil race works well.

As for "real Earth" stuff, when I run pulp games Germans and Japanese are always mostly evil - because this was true in the literary works that I am basing my games on. In modern day adventures I have no such thing as an "evil race" - instead I lean towards evil organizations and governments.



John D

[Teflon Billy]

I think the biggest difference from fantasy evil races and a hypothetical real world evil race is that in a lot of fantasy settings the race is evil for some metaphysical reason. That they are intrinsically evil on the spiritual level. Which in our own real world mind set we would have a very difficult time accepting.

An example, Orcs are evil because the Dark God corrupted (insert non-evil race here)<INSERT race non-evil> Orcs are not evil because they choose to be, or that they were raised to be evil. They are evil because that is a fundemental aspect of them.

A hypothetical real world example Aryan Uber-mensch. The conspire to over throw the world persuing their own agenda of racial superiority. No matter how you get around it, as long as the race is grounded in the real world you not going to be suspend disbelief so much that you won't have that inkling in the back of your mind that if only you got to these people when they were young you could have changed them. That they are merely misguided, not truly evil. That they just need the right upbringing.

They only arche-type that comes close to a real world evil race are Evil Cultists. Human sacrificing worshippers of the Elder Gods if you will. These people tend to be framed as irredemiably evil. But even if a whole tribe or race of these people existed (The fictional Wakadoos of darkest Amazonia) you have the problem of you could still raise one of their infants to be an upstanding person.

Just my $0.02 and a dozen $0.25 words to spare :-P

TB

[rholio]

Questions like this are why my gaming group never used alignment when playing AD&D. Is there such a thing as an evil race? Yes, but only from another's perspective.

It's much easier, and more accurate, to have evil cultures, evil deities, even evil places, than an evil race. For example, in our campaigns, orcish tradition values strength, cunning, and cruelty to non-orcs. Someone exemplifying those attributes would be concidered evil by most races, but certainly not by orcs.

Drow culture is one of believed superiority, and vengeance. All other races exist to further the drow cause. Is that evil? Yes, to most outsiders, they would be called evil. Is a drow that spent too much time talking with the slaves, and that leaves to go to the surface to discover what it is like, evil? Yes, according to his own culture; others may find him to be very brave and noble, to escape the evil of drow culture and beliefs.

Simply put, society can be evil. People as a group, can be concidered evil. Some races will believe others to be evil, due to prejudices or history.

However, individuals of any race are not inherently evil. That said, it's a game, and labels like good and evil save a whole lot of time. Personally, good and evil is a bit complex for me... I prefer them and us.

[Blue Jogger]

Just finished reading the Digital Hero article about the evil race of Migdalars. Recently, on a thread about race and gaming, Michael Hopcroft wrote that he deplored the fantasy staple of evil races. Is the idea that an entire race can be evil an intrinsically racist concept, even if the race does not actually exist in the real world? Does the 'evil race' trope encourage fantasy gamers to think in negative stereotypes? Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?


Yes, it is a racist concept. The 'evil race' certainly encourages lazy thinking that obliterates the differences between race, culture, and environment.

But I love to slaughter orcs. They are so irredeemably evil that, we don't spend time trying to rehabilitate them or worry that Maagh is just trying to put food on the table for his wife and six kids. I like that spoolark sound, another orc is dead, I steal the gold from his dead corpse, complain that it was only a small handful of coppers and I move on.

But that's not my real life.

In real life, I have adrenline glands, its sole purpose, when threatened, to pump a chemical into my blood so that I can quickly assess a situation and kick butt or flee. That's real life. My thinking is already affected by these little things. Entertainment allows me to enjoy adrenline without kicking butt or fleeing.

[ghost-angel]

as everyone said, it is racist.

And it's also assuming you are coming from an equal moral standpoint.

Evil and Good are not absolutes, they are based off of one's moral plane, or point of view.

Evil to one is not evil to another.

To Ruk the Orc killing the enroaching human settlers trying to put up farms is not evil - he's fighting off an invander. To John the Farmer the invading orc is nothing more than an evil outsider burning his farm to the ground and killing him.

Is it evil that the Orcs didn't send someone to talk first? Well, maybe their culture doesn't have that concept yet, so to them it's not evil. In fact burning one farm may be their cultural equivilant of a warning shot.

the idea of Evil Races in most settings irks me to no end. I hate the idea that someone, even in fun and fantasy, would characterize an entire species like that.

Of course - this kind of thinking does spill into the real world. Most moderm combat training techniques, especially in times of war, will utilize "Dehumanizing Techniques" on soldiers to get them to think their enemy is not human but "An evil race" and thus upping the kill ratio of combatants. It is an extremely useful thought process when you need to invade and destroy another people .. and if two cultures are at war constantly (fanatasy or real life) then using the term "Evil Race" when one side is talking about the other works as long as you remember it's political jargon and not that one race is actually "evil".


my thoughts on it anyway.

[Outsider]

The first thing is to ask yourself -how- different your various races are from eachother. Are they peanut butter heads*, or are they -really- different, despite similarities in gross anatomy? IE : Is it racist to say that chimpanzees are not as good at sybolic reasoning as humans, or that humans are not as strong as chimpanzees?

Second, you have to decide for yourself how much of the way a person turns out is nurture and how much is nature. If nurture is predominant, then morality is largely a matter of upbringing. If nurture is predominant, then its the blood that matters, not the environment. A little of each, and sometimes, despite the best efforts of the "parent", the kid just turns out evil (or good!).

I tend to go for nurture peing -mostly- predominant as far as good/evil goes. If you get a wee little baby orc and raise him under different conditions than he would otherwise have been, his 'moral code' will turn out different as well. He may still prefer 'action' based solutions, since his physiology has a more highly developed "fight or flight" mechanism, but that doesnt mean he will necessarily be a bully. He may even develop some different habits, since his physiology will support them (example : his digestive system is more tolerant of things like spoiled foods, so they dont smell or taste bad to him. Subsequently, he often eats them, grossing out other people....)

[McCoy]

That's one of the things I liked abit RuneQuest, there were exceptions to racial steriotypes. The source material mentioned a Broo who was a pacifist Healer, among others. Players in my campagine encountered a helpful Ogre, and a Dwarf philanthropist. Yes, If I had thought of it I probably could have done this in AD&D, but the point is, the source material didn't encourage it (and I was much, much younger then).

In fantasy RPG's all intelligent NPC's should be assumed able to choose between Good and Evil. A good GM should "cast against type" often enough that when they tell the players "You see a Troll," the player's reaction shoud be something other than "We kill it, loot the corpse, and go on."

[Dog Soldier]

I suppose that racial origin and philosophy of the tribe would have a lot to do with it. Suppose the adventurers have never heard of "orcs" before. Now they go into an area where the locals all live in terror of the "orcs". The "orcs" kill and eat humans, raid and burn and generally act "orcish". Now lets suppose that we discover that the "orcs" are all the great-grandchildren of an incestuous brother and sister that fled the authorities to escape execution for sexually assaulting, killing and eating a small child. All of the "orcs" know where they came from, they all engage in every manner of depravity among themselves and all the females are quite fertile and have no problems conceiving and delivering babies from the earliest age. The "orcs" no exactly what evil is, and they revel in being evil.

Now, would these "orcs" qualify as an evil race? I think so.

[Doc Democracy]

This is one of those arguments that seem on the outside to be rational but really aren't at all.

The main point revolves around whether morality is absolute or relative. In our reality it is relative. An evil action from one perspective may not be evil from another.

In this reality any such concept as evil race is racist.

In fantasy realities - where magic works and Gods break your windows if you dis them - morality is often absolute. Those born into a race that follows an evil God will be evil - if the children are raised among good god-fearing folks then that child will revert to type. It can do nothing else - though it may rail and agonise over it.

In this kind of reality the concept is not racist - it is a reflection of everyday knowledge.

Absolute morality as a concept makes stories easier - no worries about whether killing is correct or not - your target is evil and deserves to die.

In our games it is difficult to keep moral relativism out of it and, if we are in any way educated, situations are more interesting if you can introduce even mild shades of grey.

So. There is no yes/no answer to the title question. It depends! :)


Doc

[Yamo]

The notion of an evil race is racist in the real world because, despite what some superstitious types maintain, good and evil are not fundamental forces that bind the universe together like gravity and magnetism. They're abstract labels that humans invented and that can be abused by humans in any number of destructive ways.

In a fantasy world where evil (Evil, really) is an outside force as real as electricty, pointing out that orcs are Evil is not a matter of subjective human morality applied to destructive ends, but rather one of pointing out an objective physical truth.

There's a HUGE difference conceptually.

[cyst13]

I really do not buy this hoohah about fantasy games existing in a different reality than our real world. Yes, you can design a fantasy world with evil corrupting magic in which the frame of the fantasy allows for a consistently evil race. However, this does not answer my initial question. Is it a good thing for us in the real world to pretend to inhabit fantasy worlds that are specifically designed to make racist concepts reasonable? I could probably design a Nazi Hero game that posits Jews as being fundamentally corrupted by evil Kabbalistic magic, but I would never do such a thing for the obvious reasons?

While I am strongly opposed to the current war in Iraq, I am at least relieved to see that most Americans have been able to make the distinction between a few terrorists and the great majority of good-hearted Muslims. But does anyone remember the racist hysteria that gripped this country when Iran took our embassy personell hostage in 1979? I knew a lot of people at that time who equated the words Iranian and Shiite with evil. Even if it makes sense within the parameters of a campaign to view a given race as evil, I don't think it's a good idea in the real world (which even includes gamers) to create such campaigns in which the concept of evil races makes sense. While we may protest that we are all smart enough to separate fantasy from fact, when a big national crisis comes up and our leaders start tossing about terms like "Evil Empire" or "Axis of Evil", that thin line suddenly becomes quite vague indeed.

[Wil Hyral]

It is a racist concept, as the human genome doesn't allow for a slider of morality. Basically, there is no "Good-Evil" gene. This is according to Steven Pinker with mentions from Dr. Chomsky.

However, cultures do vary in their senses of ethics and morality. There can be inherently evil cultures, who probably don't regard themselves as evil, or who probably regard evil as a beneficial practice.

[Teflon Billy]

I think it all comes down to whether the objective reality in which the fantasy world exists (kind of a weird concept I know) has as one of its foundations the aspect of metaphysical truths. Where free will can be subordinated to larger things in the Universe.

Are morals quantifiable concepts in this world?
Are Good and Evil well defined?
Does the spiritual manifest in the physical?
Is physical reality only a part of a much larger whole such that what you see isn't necessarily the whole thing?

If you answer yes to any of these then, yes, you can have "evil races" without it being "racist" or "lazy role players".

There are other campaign world concepts that could also lead to the same situation.

I welcome others to submit other world aspects that would lead to the possible existence of true "evil races". Mainly because I'm getting tired of the constant imposition of the current modern view points of moral-relativism and concepts of jurisprudence not allowing for true campaign freedom.

You can't have a world where Evil exists because Evil doesn't exist, you merely have misguided people.

I had similar problems with a thread on the Enworld forums because there were people saying that a Paladin should lose his powers for lethaly dispatching a child rapist in the process of carrying out an attack. They vicerally objected to his not giving "fair warning" before striking and his carrying justice himself. Seemingly ignoring that the perp was caught red handed. They thought knocking him out and having a Judge carrying out the same sentence would have been any different than the physical manifestation of a gods will on Earth was a lesser form of justice.

I can elaborate why I think this position is absurd, but I'd like to here from others in Herodom.

TB

[cyst13]

Teflon Billy,

Beyond your personal annoyance with moral relativism, do you think that in terms of the larger, real-world society in which we all live, it is a good idea for gamers to intentionally create campaign-worlds which justify the existence of "evil races"? Does it make us better people to employ our imagination in this way?

[Teflon Billy]

Teflon Billy,

Beyond your personal annoyance with moral relativism, do you think that in terms of the larger, real-world society in which we all live, it is a good idea for gamers to intentionally create campaign-worlds which justify the existence of "evil races"? Does it make us better people to employ our imagination in this way?If you as a gamer can not distinguish fantasy from reality you have far bigger problems than the game.

I do not buy, even for one minute, that having Illithids in my campaign world (creatures that for time immemorial of role playing have been irredimably Evil) is going to lead me to believe that Arabs are subhumans, I have their language to deal with every day to show me that ;-P

I think this is making a mountain out of a mole hill or looking for problems where they do not exist. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong :D

TB

P.S. Another thing, my imagination is mine, no one elses. The world does not own my imagination and I am free to do with it as a I like. Thought is not a crime. Now where was I? Oh, yes, Jennifer Connelly and the water soluble bikini...:whistle:

[Wolf]

Inherently I believe that this comes down to whether you can distinguish reality from Fiction… I mean one can argue that Orcs can be good in D&D. Why, because they are a condition of the environment they live in. They were raised that way. Orcs from Tolkien on the other hand are corrupted beings (elves really) Tainted with the shadow, and that infuses them with evil, Their creator, Morgoth, is evil, he knows it, he has a higher power to answer to, and that power has judged him evil, and he can accept that….
Now, does that make us think that there are an “evil� people here in present time, present location (however you wish to say our world, our look on life), well, I dunno, I’m not Psychologist, I have heard watching cartoons and playing video games make you want to kill, or at least make you so desensitized to it, that it would be easier. Does roleplaying start you on the road to Satan? For many families in the 80’s (hell, even today we’re fighting that stereotype) it did/does. This is the same question, are we all so weak willed that a little bit of difference is going to make us these people who stride against the grain of our culture, in the end, I believe that it’s your opinion, not mine, but yours that will make the difference.
As far as me, I’ve been all over the world, met all kinds of people, just because I kill orcs in game, it doesn’t make me a racist, living with my (older family) who believed in racism, has given me most of my tendencies, am I racist? HELL NO! However we all learn things from our culture, and that is what we learn, learning that that’s NOT how I see it, is just growing up, and taking responsibility for your own actions, much less opinions. It’s called thinking for yourself.
I was in the military, a Veteran of one of the numerous incursions we were involved in in the late 90’s through today. Most of the men I served with played lots of video games in their spare time before we went to war, Hell they were INFANTRY soldiers, “trained not to care� so all in all prime candidates for desensitization however, they shook, cried, and drank A LOT, when forced to get into a real firefight, or take a life. If you don’t buy it, talk to a Veteran of Normandy, Sicily, or any of the beach heads, or any of the fighting in WWII, it effected them.
All in all in my oh-so Humble opinion, you are born with the ability to accept, deny, or go along with whatever you hear or receive from whatever media source you wish, but hey, that’s me.
-Wolf

[Captain Obvious]

While we may protest that we are all smart enough to separate fantasy from fact, when a big national crisis comes up and our leaders start tossing about terms like "Evil Empire" or "Axis of Evil", that thin line suddenly becomes quite vague indeed.

Actually, when this happens, I tend to look at the national leaders as if they're wearing wizard hats or chainmail. It's pretty silly to paint with that broad a brush in the real world.

I think most people can separate fantasy from reality well enough that the game world can never be more than a caricature of the real world, and realize simplistic concepts that fly in a game's background story are impossible to apply to real-world politics.

[Lord Mhoram]

I mostly echo Doc Democracy, Yamo and Teflon Billy.

In a world where there is objective absolute right and wrong/good and evil, and powers/gods/whathaveyou that influence/control races to be one or the other, a race can be an evil race, and the situation is not racist. If that race partakes of whatever the campaign defines as objective evil, than that race is evil, and there is not racism about it. It is objective fact.

[ghost-angel]

Many of my games focus on moral-relativism .. making people question the concepts of good/evil and right/wrong, both characters and players.

I can't do this without certain things - one, you have to believe in the concepts of good/evil, otherwise you are amoral (not immoral, that's different). An amoral person may act equally good and bad as they don't see a difference where someone with morals (of either bent) would.

I propose this thought: Yin/Yang

you cannot have one side without the other, and each side contains a bit of the other within itself.

Is it healthy to play a game where you have an Evil Race? sure. As long as one remembers it is just that. I would suggest that in balance you put in a Good Race that is as far down the otherside of the axis as the Evil Race is, thus placing the players majority races in the middle forcing them to evaluate themselves on a moral plane (am I good? am I evil?) Thus the stuff of truly epic stories can be made.

If you encounter a player who is comfortable with the idea of an Evil Race and you see that the idea easily flows from game to real life (statements of bigotry being a good telltale, but actions as well) then you have a problem. Unfortunately more gamers fall into this than you'd think. This is a world still rife with racial bigotry on both small and large scales, so I offer this advice: If you are going to include races of absolute evil do so with care and make sure everyone understand that this is just a game. Be careful not to have evil races mimic real world ones if possible.

[Mutant for Hire]

My personal take on this can be found here:

http://www.supermegatopia.com/crushed/comics/fiend-ish/week-01.htm

Grunts are grunts, the same all over.

[badger3k]

The notion of an evil race is racist in the real world because, despite what some superstitious types maintain, good and evil are not fundamental forces that bind the universe together like gravity and magnetism. They're abstract labels that humans invented and that can be abused by humans in any number of destructive ways.

In a fantasy world where evil (Evil, really) is an outside force as real as electricty, pointing out that orcs are Evil is not a matter of subjective human morality applied to destructive ends, but rather one of pointing out an objective physical truth.

There's a HUGE difference conceptually.

There's still the basic problem that the definition of "Evil" in the fantasy world is based on this worlds terms. Look at slavery. In D&D it is Evil. No ifs, ands, or buts. A nation (or race, to keep to the topic) that keeps slaves is evil. So, if the human nation that is Lawful Good beats the orcs that are attacking it, they cannot capture those orcs and put them to work repairing the damage they did - for isn't that slavery? Sure they can pay them, but if they are not free and are forced to work, isn't that the same thing? So the LG society can't do that, or else they become evil.

If you have an Evil god, why is he called Evil? Is it based on a relative judgement or is it because all races and societies view it as such? To use the terms "Good" and "Evil" as descriptors without any relevance to the actions/thoughts behind them makes no sense - it's like saying I have black hair but am Blonde, because that's what I say I am. Does that make sense? Basically, the argument is that when, in game terms, you label something as Evil, it renders all other decisions or discussions moot - it doesn't matter if said Evil deity is one who heals the sick and loves his mother, he is still Evil and that is that. Of course, you can favor the argument that alignment dictates actions rather than reflects them, in which case, he could not do those things because he is evil.

That's one of the reasons I don't like the idea of alignments. Things such as Law and Chaos, and the Balance, make more sense than Good and Evil. Less "wriggle room" in those concepts.

That said, there's the other side of the coin - the view of the characters. The game world is designed from, more or less, one point of view. If the dominant races (such as humans, elves, dwarves, etc) view themselves as Good, then by default the rest could be Evil. The designators contain the prejudices built in, which has no effect on relative truths, since the characters would see it as the world is set up. Thus, you can have an Evil race but have Good members - namely those who turn away from their own culture and act more like the "civilized" races. Yes, it is racist, but that's the way the world is set up, so while we might have problems with it, the characters wouldn't, most likely. Besides, if you didn't have evil orcs to kill, what would you kill? And, similarly, isn't the idea of different races in fantasy games inherently racist, since they are usually designed to do one thing better than other races? Doesn't that make the whole idea bad, then - that elves are superior archers, dwarves smiths, orcs barbarians?

To be a great hero (or heroine), you need great enemies. If your enemy is not evil, then maybe that diminishes the heroism, and dilutes the "epic" quality of the genre. Good for some types of fantasy, not good for others. High fantasy has a lot of the Good vs Evil convention, normally. Low Fantasy might, but might not either - the Stygians were generally an "evil" race, but there were exceptions, and in any case, Conan didn't worry too much about the concepts of good and evil, at least not the way we look at it.

I prefer to use no alignments such as those, and if my players want to kill orcs, then these orcs will probably be bandits, or allied to an enemy of the player characters, or merely be in the way - in most fantasy worlds, the value of life was usually cheaper en masse - although most characters valued their own hides, to them, other's weren't so fortunate.

My two cp.

[Doug McCrae]

The main point revolves around whether morality is absolute or relative. In our reality it is relative. An evil action from one perspective may not be evil from another.Thanks for clearing that one up. I guess a few philosophers and theologians are going to have to look for new jobs tomorrow.

[Rage]

I think the real question is elves; just snotty wannabe vampires or Nazi Supermen?

[cyst13]

For those of you who think it is a simple thing to separate one's imagination from reality, would you consider it acceptable to play in a campaign in which Jews are an evil race who are using Kabbalistic magic to enslave the world? It would be the role of the Aryan PCs to stop the evil Jews by any means possible? This would be just imagination, right? So, is this okay?

[Rage]

in short yes, I played a one shot like that a while ago. The sorceror had been using God's mysteries without God's permission, he had turned all of the middle east into I guess a form of mordor with Jerusalem being the center and had convinced the jews that he was Gods annointed one. We all played Aryans (mainly because the group was made up of white guys) in fact I played a Norse goddess (Hel), it was quite a cool alternate reality story.

[cyst13]

Does anyone else on this thread think Rage's description of Aryans vs. evil (deluded) Jews is a good idea for a game?

[lapsedgamer]

The concept of a race of people who behave in an entirely predictable, monolithically evil way is the ultimate fantasy. What better place than the fantasy genre to explore this idea. If you were reading anything other than a certain type of fantastic fiction, and you were confronted by this idea, you would most likely balk. The only possible exception I can think of is Space Opera. You need the dynamic polarization of good vs. evil to make those types of books or movies fun to consume. By extention, the games that are based on the stories and movies take the same elements and blend them into role playing. None of these creatures actually exist, so you are not being prejudiced or racist when you portray them as being evil.

Everyone who is honest with themselves knows that they have been both good and evil during the course of their lives. Fantasy is a place where you generally don't have to worry about the mulitple levels or moral ambiguity that you have in the real world. That is one of the things that makes gaming a good diversion.

[Teflon Billy]

Does anyone else on this thread think Rage's description of Aryans vs. evil (deluded) Jews is a good idea for a game?
This question may come off a little more personal than nessecary, but what is your problem?

You seem to be actively trying to foment a problem that doesn't exist. Is your local circle of gamers filled with Aryan Nation types or something? What is your angle with this line of questioning?

It's starting to look less and less like you are honestly curious and more like you are trying to get at something more specific. Quit beating around the bush and get to it.

[Rage379]

Yeah man, that sounds totally kick ass. I'd play that game in a heart beat. Man Rage is awesome.

[Rage]

aww shucks, thanks mate.

[Rage379]

anytime mate.

[Rage]

man I totally feel like we have some sort of connection!

[Rage379]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Rage]

I guess we are different people then. Ahh well back to mucking about watching daytime television and eating weird malaysian instant noodles.

[Rage379]

hey thats what I'm doing! What flavour are your noodles? Mine are Satay chicken

[Rage]

thats freaky weird man.

[trechriron]

Warning. I am angry. This post is angry.


For those of you who think it is a simple thing to separate one's imagination from reality, would you consider it acceptable to play in a campaign in which Jews are an evil race who are using Kabbalistic magic to enslave the world? It would be the role of the Aryan PCs to stop the evil Jews by any means possible? This would be just imagination, right? So, is this okay?

Yes. If that is what the group wants to play. And, yes. It is simple. I categorically disagree with the idea that an RPG game has the moral responsibility to abide by value guidelines in an attempt to protect it’s participants from racist programming. I appreciate your right to intellectual debate, but you my friend are making some implications that frankly I find absurd. Based on your previous posts asking for the racial and gender make-ups of HERO playing groups and the implications of those inquiries only adds to my frustration. Perhaps you should pen an essay, get to the point, and make your accusations.

I had a long justification for this and then realized it would most likely be lost on Cyst13 in his/her/it’s obvious attempt to start a debate on the evils of the white male dominated game industry and the racist agenda they are pursuing through fantasy stereo-types or the fictionalization of real-world groups. Uh huh. Right. I say bump-kiss, hogwash, propaganda disguised as curious inquiry. I am a white male RPG player. I have oodles of angry racist friends (of different races...), oodles of angry friends of all colors, genders, sexualities, and ethnic origins, and oodles of angry white male friends who frankly don’t care. At least we all have one thing in common. We’re angry. Perhaps that should be our next great debate here at the HERO boards. Who here is an angry person? Then we can root out the emotionists amongst us.

Unfortunately, if this is the great focus of your hobby right now, I am afraid you have missed the point. My final words of wisdom on every thread of this nature here - Who cares?!?!

[ghost-angel]

Cyst13,

1) Rage's proposition (and his alternate self endorsement...) for a game of that nature would probably not be my first choice. However, if it were presented to me I may be inclined to say yes for the simple fact that it wold provide a roleplaying challenge for myself and an interesting diversion from my "normal" game.

2) Like Teflon Billy I want to know, what's the issue here? really. You're not contributing to the discussion in any useful form but to ask if would consider, and follow through, on playing an anti-Semitic focused game. Are you attempting to prove somehow that gamers are really all neo-nazi skinheads or some other form of racist?

3) Like Trechriron I also do not believe it is the responsibility of the gaming industry, the gaming company or the game itself to police moral behavior, especially in a fictional setting. That is what your parents, friends and own self are there for - to make sure fictional actions do not spill into the real world and perpetuate a fictional view into an actual view.

In conclusion: What's your problem?

[Rage]

I swear, I don't know the guy.

[Michael Hopcroft]

The problem with games in which such black-and-white concepts as 'evil races of Gnolls" exist is that, in the end, they are not as challenging ascampaigns in which morality in in the sorts of shades of grey you find in real people. Say a being was created with the direct purpose of destroying the world, and other beings were created with the purpose of opposing that being. Is the destoryer evil? Are the protectors good?

On the destoryer: the destoryer is a force of nature that happens to be capable fo senient planning. In a sense it is like a hurricane, an earthquake, or a tornado that just happens to be able to think. We don't call natural disasters evil desptie the great havoc they wreak.

On the protector: There was once a group of people who felt a force of great evil was out to destory the world. To fight it, they rooted out all knowledge that defied the established ways of order and harshly punished, and even killed, those who posessed it. You have have heards of these guys; they were called the Inquisition. To serve what they saw as the cause of justice, they committed terrible atrocities. Historical hindsight shows that just about everything they did turned out to be based on some fals\ehood or mis-interpretation; they punished Galileo for seeing moons around Jupiter, when we all know there actually are moons around Jupiter. The protectors in this fantasy environemtn might very well act like the inquiosition, but that doesn;t mean that as a GM or player I have to go along with their excesses in the name of some absoilute good.

Finally, there is the force that crated this universe deliberately with these opposing forces. How do you describe that force? It created a universe, which is a benevolent act. Then it set in motion the means of its destruction, which is a malevolent one. THEN it decided to create an opposing force to mitigate the efefcts of the destoryer. This suggests an interest in a balance between the concepts of creation and destruction. Neither concept is any more good or evil than the other -- you can create a terrible weapon. You might as well attribute it to elemental evil that all things that live must eventually die.

[Korvar]

The problem with games in which such black-and-white concepts as 'evil races of Gnolls" exist is that, in the end, they are not as challenging ascampaigns in which morality in in the sorts of shades of grey you find in real people.

True. But we don't always play games to be challenged in that particular way...

[Black Rose]

True. But we don't always play games to be challenged in that particular way...

Granted. But that doesn't mean that playing such a game is wrong. Now, I admit that I, personally, wouldn't be too keen on a "wholesome Aryans vs. evil Jews" campaign. However, it would be a challenge to do it without falling into the glaringly obvious stereotypes.

[Chiba Bob]

It is a racist concept, as the human genome doesn't allow for a slider of morality. Basically, there is no "Good-Evil" gene. This is according to Steven Pinker with mentions from Dr. Chomsky.


Who's DNA was used in attempt to isolate good-evil gene? I can think of many candidates for the evil gene but who supplied the good gene for the comparison? I would like to know.

[cyst13]

To respond to the people who think I'm trying to prove that gamers are Neo-nazi male supremacists, that's just downright silly. Rather, I'm trying to take the activity of RPGs seriously. I don't know what the number of gamers currently is, but D&D at its height was being played by millions of kids throughout the world. Any activity that is participated in by millions of people becomes part of the public sphere. When it is in the public sphere, it is open to public debate. Questions of race and sex have been addressed in public for over a century now. All of the genres of fiction & film that feed RPGs (i.e. sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, etc.) have had to address these questions. And the creators of those genres have all had the same intitial reaction: "What's your problem, man?!"

As has been demonstrated not only on this thread but on previous threads addressing race and sex, there are gamers out there who have a problem with the way in which these topics have been addressed in games. If it's important to address issues of racism and sexism in television, movies, and books, then it is also important to do so in RPGs. Many of us got started in games when we were about 12 yrs. old. I think it's reasonable to ask how we are presenting RPGs to adolescent kids. Also, I would like RPGs to be something more than fun, entertainment, and diversion. I think the 'just fun' excuse gets used far too often and quite sloppily to shut down any intellegent debate. I would much prefer to see the RPG community take responsibility for the extent in which we participate in the creation of social values. I spend as least as much time and energy writing my games as many authors do writing fiction or screenplays. I think I have as least as much responsibility for the content of my imagination as do they.

[proditor]

Here's the problem with your response or more accurately, the actions before your response.

I was interviewed by the NY Times about 7 years ago along with my girlfriend because we LARPed. We were asked why we did it, we explained it was fun to play act. He asked what we did for a living and we told him (IT Liason and Admin Ass't respectively). Then he asked if we drank blood or ever thought we were REALLY vampires. After I stopped laughing I explained to this man what I'm going to explain to you.

Any movement gathers a radical fringe element. Look at right to life. The radicals of that group promote their agenda by killing people...kinda defeats the ideal of the name, no? Anything in this world that has an ideal or requires some imagination is bound to pick up a very small and very weird subset that the majority don't even want to associate with under any circumstances.

As a sidenote, we got mentioned in one sentence of the article, ousted in favor of the more colorful young lady who came in full costume, wearing fangs, who said she loved bloodsports and spurned the sunlight. The first I had ever met associated with LARPing btw, and I used to help run a 200+ person quarterly event.

Now, my question. WHY are you looking for this information? I'm expecting a media or academic paper answer honestly.

[Vanguard00]

My first thought was "Of course it's racist! That's the point!"

Fantasy in the Tolkien-inspired sense is about black and white, good and evil. The morally ambiguous or socially complex doesn't have a place there. You're either a good guy or a bad guy, so why not have an entire race of bad guys?

It's an escapist cliche that lets us get away from the burdening questions of morality and trying to separate intent from action, and personally I'm all for it. I wouldn't use Jews or Aryans or anything else as an "evil" race because it's way too real-world for me. I'd have to work too hard to overcome all my years of acceptance coupled with a serious lack of PC behavior, and that'd be too much effort for fun. That's not why I play RPGs. I would not presume to oppose or condone such game play, though. It ain't my game so it ain't my place to say. If it works for you, go for it.

YMMV, of course, but them's my two pennies.

[Outsider]

Well, one difference is that orcs are fantasy creatures, while Jews are not. Jewish people may be present in a fantasy setting, but they are still Jewish people, and portraying them in as is justifiably upsetting to them, and, I hope, to the rest of us. It just isnt equivalent when one assigns universal characteristics in game to a group with no real world existence, and when one does the same thing to a group that does have a real world existence. The former is unlikely to foster mistreatment of any real world group, even if the player in question has 'issues' seperating fantasy from reality. He might really get to hate orcs, but he will have a hard finding any orcs to mistreat outside of the game session. He might dislike people who display "orcish" characteristics, but that could be anyone, regardless of real world race. Unless, of course, the GM is using indentifiable real world racist stereotypes as the source for his 'orcs' and just daubing a little fantasy makeup on them for deniability. "Yeah, they're 'orcs', but you know who they [i]really are! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge"

[Korvar]

Also, I would like RPGs to be something more than fun, entertainment, and diversion.

What of those who want RPGs to be no more than fun, entertainment, and diversion?

Basically, to me it comes down to this; if in your game you have big-E Evil, then you can have races that serve big-E Evil, and that's not racist. Heck, you can have humans who serve big-E. That's useful for a particular kind of game, where the players don't want to have philosophical debates about the meaning of free will before doing something about the Orc that's trying to take their character's head off.

It's like having Nazis in movies. You don't have to worry about "good" Nazis - Nazis are all Bad Guys. We can mow them down with impunity.

However, if that's not the game you're wanting to run, or play in, then you don't have a big-E Evil in your game, and other races are, well, other races. Good, Bad, Nice, Nasty, and all points between. The players will have to take into account the motivation of the aforementioned head-taking Orc. And that's good, for the people who like to play that way.

I think the point is, however, that neither of these play styles is The One True Way.

[Lord Quintus]

The first thing is to ask yourself -how- different your various races are from eachother. Are they peanut butter heads*, or are they -really- different, despite similarities in gross anatomy? IE : Is it racist to say that chimpanzees are not as good at sybolic reasoning as humans, or that humans are not as strong as chimpanzees?

Second, you have to decide for yourself how much of the way a person turns out is nurture and how much is nature. If nurture is predominant, then morality is largely a matter of upbringing. If nurture is predominant, then its the blood that matters, not the environment. A little of each, and sometimes, despite the best efforts of the "parent", the kid just turns out evil (or good!).

I tend to go for nurture peing -mostly- predominant as far as good/evil goes. If you get a wee little baby orc and raise him under different conditions than he would otherwise have been, his 'moral code' will turn out different as well. He may still prefer 'action' based solutions, since his physiology has a more highly developed "fight or flight" mechanism, but that doesnt mean he will necessarily be a bully. He may even develop some different habits, since his physiology will support them (example : his digestive system is more tolerant of things like spoiled foods, so they dont smell or taste bad to him. Subsequently, he often eats them, grossing out other people....)

You beat me to it! That's pretty much exactly what I was going to say. That's the way we've always run our D&D games. I once had a paladin and we slaughtered a whole tribe of Goblins, but their children were unharmed. The other players wanted to kill the kids or leave them to starve. That wouldn't have sat well with my paladin, so I took the goblin children back to my temple to be raised by good people. Because I did something that could have potentially gotten myself killed (people really didn't like goblins in this area, the gate gaurds almost didn't let me into the city) I got a few bonus XP. Even though we killed a whole lot of goblins, we still had the basic understanding that it was their inferior intellect coupled with society that made them evil. (The lower intellect giving birth to that society.) If you look at it closely, the "evil races" like orcs and goblins tend to act like the societies of the pre-sentient humans, like neanderthals (spelling?).

[Chiba Bob]

I think the 'just fun' excuse gets used far too often and quite sloppily to shut down any intellegent debate. I would much prefer to see the RPG community take responsibility for the extent in which we participate in the creation of social values.


Only empirical evidence has a small chance of ever changing a person's mind and even then, most likely not; therefore, intelligent debates are pointless. The Internet is littered with subjective thought. It is one great trash heap of reason. There is little value in adding to the pile. I love and hate it all with the same breath.

[Chiba Bob]

Fantasy in the Tolkien-inspired sense is about black and white, good and evil. The morally ambiguous or socially complex doesn't have a place there. You're either a good guy or a bad guy, so why not have an entire race of bad guys?


Tolkien was a Christian and he may have been biblically inspired. The whole Good and Evil philosophy is more of a Judo-Christian concept. In the Old Testament, evil is likened to a disease and cannot be cured, only destroyed. During biblical times, some cultures consorted with demons ("ruined by the dark powers") producing half-human/demon offspring called the Nephilim. The whole idea of inherently evil races (such as orcs) in fantasy could be inspired by these biblical stories.

[Doc Democracy]

Thanks for clearing that one up. I guess a few philosophers and theologians are going to have to look for new jobs tomorrow.

:)

Now if I _knew_ you were going to read what I wrote I might have cleared up a few more of those 'tricky' problems...

[badger3k]

Tolkien was a Christian and he may have been biblically inspired. The whole Good and Evil philosophy is more of a Judo-Christian concept. In the Old Testament, evil is likened to a disease and cannot be cured, only destroyed. During biblical times, some cultures consorted with demons ("ruined by the dark powers") producing half-human/demon offspring called the Nephilim. The whole idea of inherently evil races (such as orcs) in fantasy could be inspired by these biblical stories.

While Tolkien was a Christian, there was only one letter written that supposedly said the LOTR was Christian writing (or something like that - I forgot the wording, and never have seen the letter). Most of what I heard of his statements denied any religious meanings - which doesn't deny a possible basis in the thoughts that gave birth to the story. Given that a lot of his material was heavily influenced by Norse (and other) mythology, the concept of opposites at war wasn't unique to the bible stories. I really wasn't aware of the Nephilim (have to add to research!), but I do recall the Elohim (IIRC?) that had many kids with the people of the earth back in Genesis. I'm not sure on that as a possible origin of evil races.

Given Tolkiens stance on industrialization, and the fact that the nature-loving elves were turned into the evil orcs through the bad guys mojo, that may have been seen as a corruption of people by technology (at least in the case of the Uruk-hai). Just a guess, I never really looked too deeply into the origins of the story, or Tolkien's views.

Of course, the end result is that we have some races that are categorized as Evil in some games. I doubt highly that this has any real effect on normal people (there is always a fringe that should stay away from anything that may stretch their fragile grip on reality). As I said before, the greatest heroes have the vilest villains - they need to opposites to really stand out in the genre. I think that some games reflect visions such as these, while others reflect more modern views on the world.

I think that the hobby reflects, rather than teaches, the morals/values/thoughts of the people involved. Given that the hobby is in a market economy, the radical fringe groups that do publish (and I've heard of many in the d20 arena) soon get drowned out or forgotten, except by those who have the same beliefs (ie - the larger audience as a whole tends to ignore them).

Nobody I know has ever changed an opinion or picked up a belief from what was in a game. Maybe from the social aspects of the game - meeting new people and new ideas from the players, but not from what was written in the books. Look at the fuss over the Book of Vile Darkness that came out a while back - all the bad things in the book. Naughty book. Heard lots of fuss back then, and now? Have there been people practicing human sacrifice, or torturing people (because of this book, that is)? Despite what Chick and Co want us to believe, it doesn't happen (again, except for those individuals who have problems and should only role-play under a therapists care).

Besides, who wants to worry about whether the orc, troll, human, or whatnot has been good to his family when he's coming at you with an axe? While morality can be explored if the group likes that, sometimes you just gotta hack!

[Vanguard00]

Tolkien was a Christian and he may have been biblically inspired. The whole Good and Evil philosophy is more of a Judo-Christian concept. In the Old Testament, evil is likened to a disease and cannot be cured, only destroyed. During biblical times, some cultures consorted with demons ("ruined by the dark powers") producing half-human/demon offspring called the Nephilim. The whole idea of inherently evil races (such as orcs) in fantasy could be inspired by these biblical stories.


No argument there, CB, but I was trying to show that the fantasy genre as it's generally known (orcs = bad, elves = good, etc) generally avoids the moral "gray area". Though there is some really good stuff out there demonstrating it, the idea of a "morally ambiguous" protagonist is still not as popular as the "white hat/black hat" versions. In a fantasy world I tend to add a touch more gray, but I still have definite black and white races/organizations/whatever. It usually provides a better backdrop for the stories I wanna tell.

[Outsider]

In a fantasy world I tend to add a touch more gray, but I still have definite black and white races/organizations/whatever.


I also had a "Red Cloak" mercenary organization. Nice guys, but not much personality. Mainly used when the storyline demanded that some 'good guys' get the axe, but not that a PC or one of their named henchmen die. :)

[Vanguard00]

The more I think about it the more I realize that the PCs in my campaigns are usually the "gray areas" in my story. They are the elements I can't really control. I provide a compare and contrast element (the "good guys" and the "bad guys") and let them find their way in between. Of course, I lean towards epic and high fantasy where this is easier, but even in "low fantasy" games I've generally had an "evil empire" of some sort. If I want a complication I simply make the main antagonist a likeable fellow, or lure one of the PCs into a personal relationship with a "bad guy".

And thus ends my attempt to answer the question honestly while ignoring the trollish undertones...

[Chiba Bob]

While Tolkien was a Christian, there was only one letter written that supposedly said the LOTR was Christian writing (or something like that - I forgot the wording, and never have seen the letter). Most of what I heard of his statements denied any religious meanings - which doesn't deny a possible basis in the thoughts that gave birth to the story. Given that a lot of his material was heavily influenced by Norse (and other) mythology, the concept of opposites at war wasn't unique to the bible stories. I really wasn't aware of the Nephilim (have to add to research!), but I do recall the Elohim (IIRC?) that had many kids with the people of the earth back in Genesis. I'm not sure on that as a possible origin of evil races.


Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that the LOTR was Christian writhing but given Tolkien's background, some of the concepts of good and evil may have a biblical origin. The Nephilim are from Genesis 6:4 (NIV) and their demon heritage it contested by many theologians. I am just saying that the ideas are there. The concept of intrinsic good and evil may have come from the bible. Tolkien did draw heavily from Norse mythology as well.


.

[Chiba Bob]

If I want a complication I simply make the main antagonist a likeable fellow, or lure one of the PCs into a personal relationship with a "bad guy".


My personal definition of good and evil is simple. Those who flip me the bird are evil and those who feed me charred meat and cold beer are good. I have no moral ambiguity in my philosophy.



.

[badger3k]

Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that the LOTR was Christian writhing but given Tolkien's background, some of the concepts of good and evil may have a biblical origin. The Nephilim are from Genesis 6:4 (NIV) and their demon heritage it contested by many theologians. I am just saying that the ideas are there. The concept of intrinsic good and evil may have come from the bible. Tolkien did draw heavily from Norse mythology as well.


.

Sorry - I didn't mean to give that impression. I used your idea to springboard mine. I do agree that his upbringing and beliefs in the war of good and evil inherent in Christianity may have been a big influence on the basis of the story, but I think the details came from elsewhere (the other myths, his ideas on society, etc).

Thanks for the info on the Nephilim too.

[Agemegos]

Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?

Is there any such thing?

The human appetite for stories (accounts of connected events with some sort of point to them) is so universal and powerful that we never bother to reflect on what a strange thing it is. Humans love stories so much that the US spends more making fiction than on health care. Bizarre!

I have my own theory about why we love stories so much, but being without evidentiary support it is not worth setting out here in international publication. But it doesn't really matter why we have this voracious appetite: either evolution or God or one of thethousands of other gods gave it to us for a reason, and it doesn't matter (for the purposes of this discussion) which or what the reason was. The human craving to explore chains of consequence through stories it too powerful to fool around with in safety.

It is with minds as with computers: [racist] garbage in [racist] garbage out. Spend a few hours every Saturday night rehearsing making judgements on racist grounds and the one thing you can be sure it won't do is make you less likely to use that dubious skill. "Men learn to be lyrists by playing the lyre", and Christ wasn't being stup[id when he went on with all that stuff about sinning in one's mind.

Let's keep our heroes heroic and out villains vile, okay? Wallowing in a mire in which the vile is heroic and the heroic vile won't be good for us.

[Agemegos]

Well, one difference is that orcs are fantasy creatures, while Jews are not.

Indeed. But the habit of judging people's deserts on the grounds of their race rather than their deeds is the same in life and fiction. It is not, in my opinion, something that it is wise to rehearse, especially with the positive reinforcement of fun.

[Vanguard00]

Indeed. But the habit of judging people's deserts on the grounds of their race rather than their deeds is the same in life and fiction. It is not, in my opinion, something that it is wise to rehearse, especially with the positive reinforcement of fun.


Explain to me how you play in any RPG without a stereotype of any sort? Play short, dumpy, flat-chested women, do ya? Aging black men missing teeth? Not a single cop/donut joke to be found? All lawyers are morally upstanding and let their conscience dictate their actions? Never had a Jewish doctor? Never had a black gang-banger? How about a Middle Eastern convenience shop owner?

Racism is a fact of life. It can be positive or negative, depending on how you take it and how you dish it out. Personally, I'm not racist. I generally assume everyone's an a$$hole until proven otherwise regardless of race, creed, religion. Sex is another matter, but only if they're hot (and female, and not sheep).

I have no idea what the point of the original post was, but y'all are taking this way too seriously. You'll suck the fun out of gaming.

Geez, I'm takin' my Irish/English/American Indian butt and goin' for a pint and crumpets, and I'm takin' my horse to do it. So there. :nya:

[Agemegos]

Only empirical evidence has a small chance of ever changing a person's mind

Can you cite any evidence for that? I believe that, as a counter-example, cognitive-behavioural therapy can change a person's mind. (And that, be it noted, consists mostly of willing changing the thoughts that one rehearses. It is after witnessing the power of CBT that I have become so concerned about the thoughts that we rehearse in RPGs.)

[Agemegos]

Inherently I believe that this comes down to whether you can distinguish reality from Fiction…

I am not sure that this is quite decisive. People can certainly distinguish between drills and exercises on one hand and real operation and emergencies on the other. Nevertheless the things they rehearse in the drills and exercises alters what they do in the operations and emergencies.

I'm not saying that playing a few villains is going to instantly corrupt every player, or that all GMs ought to be put on FBI watch lists at once. Nevertheless it is hard to prevent what we do or think a lot from becoming a habit, physical or mental. And I have lately been amazed to witness the power of changing people's mental habits (in treatment of depression with cognitive-behavioural therapy).

[Agemegos]

Explain to me how you play in any RPG without a stereotype of any sort?

I don't. I just make the stereotypes as inaccurate and misleading in games as they are in reality. Which turns out to make the games more interesting and entertaining, in my not-so-limited experience.

[Rage]

Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that the LOTR was Christian writhing but given Tolkien's background, some of the concepts of good and evil may have a biblical origin. The Nephilim are from Genesis 6:4 (NIV) and their demon heritage it contested by many theologians. I am just saying that the ideas are there. The concept of intrinsic good and evil may have come from the bible. Tolkien did draw heavily from Norse mythology as well.


.
Completley offtopic but:
Neiphlem were according to christian texts the sons of angels, which is why they called themselves the son's of God. And there is no hard biblical evidence that Angels are demons contrary to what popular theology says.
I have also seen theories that it was refering to Cains Children, I'll see if I can find the document.

[Rage]

I totally agree with you.
"What do you mean these Goblins have flame throwers? The're far to stupid to ever ahve figure... ooh"

[Worldmaker]

I don't. I just make the stereotypes as inaccurate and misleading in games as they are in reality.

Oh, you mean how you can always find large numbers of people who fit the stereotype of their groups exactly, and how the exceptions are usually not the majority? :jawdrop:

[Agemegos]

Oh, you mean how you can always find large numbers of people who fit the stereotype of their groups exactly, and how the exceptions are usually not the majority?

Not quite always, but very often. For example, the negative stereotype of Imperial servants in my SF setting is misperceived in some details.

[Worldmaker]

There are few races in my gameworld that can be pointed to and be called "evil" per se... but there are many who can be pointed to and be called "ruthless and cruel".

The Ngunglip icewalkers (the Taranchean version of eskimos), for example, think nothing of leaving a newborn baby out on the ice if they cannot afford to feed it, and oh by the way gramma's cough isn't getting any better so maybe she needs to babysit the newbown for a while, while the tribe keeps tracking the caribou.

Or the Ha'an, a society ruled by an elite caste modeled after the samurai (not precisely cloned, though... just modeled), who have only one punishment for any crime, regardless of severity, and that punishment is death by crucifixion and who see the weak (read "weak" as "anyone who isn't a member of the Ha'an warrior caste") as dishonorable trash not worth the time it would take to hold them (the trash, that is) in contempt.

Are either of these societies evil? And if so, it is because I (the creator of the gameworld) am racist?

Of course, then there are the corrupt societies of the Black Islands, far to the south of the Emerald Forest's coast, that worship Things No Man Was Meant to Know and engage in horrific rites... but that's a special case.

[cyst13]

To answer Proditor's question: I am not in the media nor am I an academic. I work part-time in a convenience store. I've been playing RPGs since I was twelve, which was over two decades ago. I don't have any axe to grind and I don't think RPGs cause people to worship Satan. I started this thread for the reasons I listed in my last post. Mainly I was curious and I wanted to start a good discussion. Seeing as that we are now on page 5 of this thread, I think I've been successful (pat, pat).

I was going to further argue my case, but Agammemos (hope I spelled that right) already said most of what I wanted to say. Just as a last word, though: I consider myself to be as non-rascist as I can possibly be. However, I also think that the impulse to form quick judgements about entire groups (race, gender, class, hippies, cops, etc.) is an intrinsically human quality, and not a very good one. I work nightshift at a convenience store in a downtown area and I get tossed a good deal of crap from both Black and White people on a regular basis. While I don't form snap judgements about White people (I'm White myself), I do tend to break them down into sub-groups and go from there. Something along the lines of "I hate those damn street kids!" As much as it galls me to admit it, I do the same along racial lines as well. When the adrenaline wears off and I cool down, I realize the irrationality of my judgement and try to forget it. The point is, though, that when I (and I assume I'm not alone) get into a stressful situation, my tendency to form aggressive emotions directed toward an entire group comes to the fore. It's something I have to consciously suppress in myself. And if I were spending every Saturday night pretending to slay evil races, it might not be so easy for me to suppress those real life tendencies. I can't prove this to be true, but if there is a chance that it is true, I don't think the pleasure of slaying orcs compensates for taking that chance.

[Gunrunner]

To respond to the people who think I'm trying to prove that gamers are Neo-nazi male supremacists, that's just downright silly. Rather, I'm trying to take the activity of RPGs seriously. I don't know what the number of gamers currently is, but D&D at its height was being played by millions of kids throughout the world. Any activity that is participated in by millions of people becomes part of the public sphere. When it is in the public sphere, it is open to public debate. Questions of race and sex have been addressed in public for over a century now. All of the genres of fiction & film that feed RPGs (i.e. sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, etc.) have had to address these questions. And the creators of those genres have all had the same intitial reaction: "What's your problem, man?!"

As has been demonstrated not only on this thread but on previous threads addressing race and sex, there are gamers out there who have a problem with the way in which these topics have been addressed in games. If it's important to address issues of racism and sexism in television, movies, and books, then it is also important to do so in RPGs. Many of us got started in games when we were about 12 yrs. old. I think it's reasonable to ask how we are presenting RPGs to adolescent kids. Also, I would like RPGs to be something more than fun, entertainment, and diversion. I think the 'just fun' excuse gets used far too often and quite sloppily to shut down any intellegent debate. I would much prefer to see the RPG community take responsibility for the extent in which we participate in the creation of social values. I spend as least as much time and energy writing my games as many authors do writing fiction or screenplays. I think I have as least as much responsibility for the content of my imagination as do they.

First off cyst, you assume that we all believe that it is necessary to address issues of racism and sexism in television, movies, and books when some medium attracts nation-wide attention. A "moral responsibility" of the media if you will? Well you're wrong, because I don't believe it. And not only do I not believe it, but I think that such an assumption sows the seeds for TRUE evil and I'll explain why.

I believe that my country (the United States) was founded on fundamental concepts of freedom. One of these concepts involves the free exchange of ideas and yes, freedom of speech. I believe that any person has the right to express him/herself anyway he/she wants without fear that some whiney group of snot-nosed, politically-correct hippies will control what is said by that person because A) they feel that this person NEEDS to be controlled because they have too much influence over our population or B) they feel that person has some kind of "moral responsibility" to address the latest fad, politically-correct agenda approved by said nazis...errr, hippies. Now I believe that your intentions may be good cyst, but to force people or organizations to change the way they express themselves is setting a very dangerous precedent. And to an American, it's treason.

Speaking of Nazi's cyst, you may believe (and understandably I might add) that it was racial and anti-semetic propaganda that was one of the most important factors in the creation of the Nazi regime, but I tell you this: NO amount of racist propaganda was the cause of Hitler's rise to power.

It was fear - fear to oppose the wave of Nazi propaganda because other organizations and ordinary citizens were not protected by any free speech amendments that would allow them to speak out against Hitler and give them the confidence and support to oppose him. And what happened to those in Germany that did oppose him?...well I won't get into that, but it's no mystery that the First Amendment would have protected the rights of various organizations who opposed Hitler during that time, and would have kept Hitler's political party from becoming dangerously powerful.

A writer for the St. Petersburg Times whose name I don't remember said "Give the government the ability to control free speech is giving it carte blanche to censor anything and everything." Nazi-controlled Germany is a perfect example of what happens when you give government such power.

As a free thinking individual, I want every person and organization to have the right to speak and express their imagination without fear of social or government pressure. "Oh no! You shouldn't have campaigns with evil races!" Baloney. To censor, to control what is said and what is NOT said is to follow a path of ignorance; and moral relativism aside, if anything in this universe has a strong link to evil, it is ignorance.

There is no one in Heaven or Hell except the Almighty Himself that can tell me what I should or shouldn't say or how I should run a Hero campaign. So don't tread on me! :D

[Gunrunner]

I'm kind of tired, so I don't know if I went off topic too far or if I got my point across so I'll say it this way:

If you're worried about the concept of "evil races" in RPG's promoting racism, then implying that companies that publish RPG's should be held accountable for their influence on others is not the answer. Individuals should be held accountable for their own actions. To control what such companies should/shouldn't publish is akin to killing a monster with a bigger, meaner one. Sure, you got rid of the small monster but now you have a bigger, more dangerous one you have to deal with!

[trechriron]

...if anything in this universe has a strong link to evil, it is ignorance.

There is no one in Heaven or Hell except the Almighty Himself that can tell me what I should or shouldn't say or how I should run a Hero campaign. So don't tread on me! :D


I sit in here in reverance and appreciation for those words. I thought for a moment there I was losing my mind.

Thank you, Mr. Gunrunner.

[ghost-angel]

I'll second that endorsement of Gunrunner's words..

Really, while I wouldn't appreciate the game company if it were overtly racists or discriminatory ... it is not the responsibility of the game company to sensor the stories told by gamers.

Nor is it anyone elses. If a gaming group wishes to do this in a negative manner that is obviously detrimental outside the game then you won't find me there, but they can do it if they would like.

I've been discriminated against, like many people, and deeply resent being questioned by police for walking to a 7-11, asked to leave stores and harrased in general but others not like myself ... but that doesn't mean I'll start to hate anyone who carries that into a game for the purpose of the game.

Stories, fiction, movies, games all exist for one reason: Entertainment.

Yes, it IS just fun & games - that's the point!

2nd point - utterly off topic and directed at some of Gunrunner's comments regarind the National Socialist Party (Nazi Party) and it's rise to power...

One, Germany was one of the first countries to come out of the Great Depression, the National Socialist Party was lauded as the reason for this and loved by many Germans - and a good portion of the rest of the world - in the early 30s.

Two, this is the part that constantly stupfies me even if I can grok it, during the race for election (yeah, they were VOTED into power) one of the first things Hitler and the party said was "They would abolish the Democratic Elections" mostly because they blamed that for the cause of their part in the Great Depression.

While the actions starting the mid 30s and through the mid 40s of the Nazi part were undeniably atrocious in many cases and just down right Evil in more .. they can be credited with saving Germany's backside coming out of the 1920s. But then, there's a reason we say "The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions."

Come to think of it... that last quote might be part of Cyst13's point ... despite our best intentions in having fun if we keep certain elements such as stereotyping (which does work to an extent) and racism in our entertainment and games we will never fully stamp it out of society at large and thus perpetuate a problem we know to exist.....

It's late though, I shall sleep and ponder on this more.

[edit: oh, the spelling errors!]

[cyst13]

I find it interesting that Gunrunner made his argument that people should not be socially pressured into giving up a given viewpoint by comparing me to a Nazi. I asked a straight-forward question in this thread and many of the people who posted here answered with a yes. This is not my attempt to censor the gaming community.

My interpretation of Free Speech is that it should be used in an open forum such as the Internet to argue with others within the bounds of rational dialogue. If you convince someone, through peaceful argument, to adopt your viewpoint, that's not censorship. That's exactly the way the First Ammendment has always been intended to be used.

If you read my words that Gunrunner quoted, you can see that nowhere in there did I make a suggestion that individual gamers or game companies should be censored. Anyone here is free to do a search on my moniker. You will not find any such suggestion made by me anywhere on these boards. I am not in favor of censorship. I am in favor of dialogue.

And just for the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the American Hippie Nazi Party.

[Chiba Bob]

However, I also think that the impulse to form quick judgements about entire groups (race, gender, class, hippies, cops, etc.) is an intrinsically human quality, and not a very good one. I work nightshift at a convenience store in a downtown area and I get tossed a good deal of crap from both Black and White people on a regular basis. While I don't form snap judgements about White people (I'm White myself), I do tend to break them down into sub-groups and go from there. Something along the lines of "I hate those damn street kids!" As much as it galls me to admit it, I do the same along racial lines as well. When the adrenaline wears off and I cool down, I realize the irrationality of my judgement and try to forget it.


I don't think you are being a racist. When the adrenaline cuts in, the human brain is wired to sort friend from foe. It is a defense mechanism. At one time, an enemy was easy to identify because they looked different. Now we have to wear uniforms to be able to tell the enemy apart. Categorizing people when threatened is just the way our brain tries to deal with complexities of a hostile modern society. On the other hand, a racist actively hates people of other ethnic origins regardless of the situation.



The point is, though, that when I (and I assume I'm not alone) get into a stressful situation, my tendency to form aggressive emotions directed toward an entire group comes to the fore. It's something I have to consciously suppress in myself. And if I were spending every Saturday night pretending to slay evil races, it might not be so easy for me to suppress those real life tendencies. I can't prove this to be true, but if there is a chance that it is true, I don't think the pleasure of slaying orcs compensates for taking that chance.


If you let your job stress build up without some kind of emotional release, you are more likely to one day explode on someone. You need some way to cope with the stress your job generates. I think that slaying a few orcs on the weekend is a very healthy way of releasing the stress. I think if more people chilled and slew a few orcs it would be a much better world.


.

[cyst13]

And as an example of using rational dialogue to convince others, I offer Ghost Angel's above post. He started out agreeing with Gunrunner, who's opinion is opposed to mine. Then at the end of his post, after thinking about what I was actually writing, rather than what some one else characterized my opinion to be, he ended up summarizing my own thoughts much more concisely than I ever could. The system works after all.

[cyst13]

China Bob,

Yes, I agree with what you said in your last post. I think it is a primal, intrinsic thing. And as such, we have to consciously avert our thoughts from negative stereotypes. Civility is but a thin veneer atop our baser urges. I do blow off steam at work (an absolute necessity). I just don't know that it's such a good idea to blow off steam by reinforcing the same thought patterns of stereotyping groups that I was trying to avert to begin with. That seems a vicious circle. Usually, I just turn up the radio and do a little dancing.

[trechriron]

The system works after all…

I think you have mistaken your opposition’s stance to be “since your opinion is wrong/bad/stupid you have no right to foster a dialog on the subject�. I think, more to the point, your opposition 1) finds the suggestion of social responsibility in fictional gaming content by the part of gamers and publishers to be misled and 2) you have yet to provide evidence of either a current problem of intentional/unintentional racism in gaming or the existence of intentional/unintentional racism in current products.

So going against my original protest of “who cares?� and inferring some sincerity on your part to actually foster dialogue on this subject, I repeat my previous suggestion with more seriousness and less anger.

What exactly IS the subject? Please outline your problem and your concerns. I would like you to provide some evidence of both existing products supporting your theory and cite examples of actual play that you feel fosters racism (even in a generic manner would be fine for me). I have a hard time believing this is some random act of curiosity. Something inspired your inquiries.

I asked you to pen an essay (might I suggest a PDF attachment?) and that is precisely what I think you should do. If you truly feel this an issue, I think you need to present your idea clearly and do so boldly as to avoid any misunderstanding from your readers. Stating that “the existence of evil dark elves in games is racist� is not a point. I cannot grasp your reasoning from that bold assumption. Further clarifying that statement with “well, what if those dark elves were actually Kabalistic Jews?� only further clouds the issue. I need more theory. Connect the dots for me. Pretend I am an idiot. It helps relieve stress when dealing with me anyways. My friends do it all the time (actually supporting the theory that I AM an idiot, but I prefer denial over debate more often than not…).

I look forward to reading your thoughts if you are willing to take the time. If this is really just the simple question of “Is "evil race" an intrinsically racist concept?� then I stick with my original answer. No it is not.

On a related note – just because I disagree with your opinion does not mean I think it is stupid. I simply disagree.

Regards,

[Agemegos]

If you're worried about the concept of "evil races" in RPG's promoting racism, then implying that companies that publish RPG's should be held accountable for their influence on others is not the answer. Individuals should be held accountable for their own actions.

Well, Cyst13 isn't writing to his legislator, and isn't even writing to a gaming company. He's writing to some gamers and suggesting that they think about what they do. That seems more like a responsible exercise of free speech than it does like censorship.

[Agemegos]

I don't think you are being a racist. When the adrenaline cuts in, the human brain is wired to sort friend from foe. It is a defense mechanism. At one time, an enemy was easy to identify because they looked different.

There is some very interesing work in experimental psychology being done these days, showing that prejudice is an heuristic that is used to conserve cognitive effort. The ability to act on those rules-of-thumb we call 'prejudices' is an important ability with which we have been graced by evolution (or perhaps by one of the many possible creators) for very reasons that are doubtless very good (or at least were good in the environment in which we were evolved (or for which we are intended). And it ain't going anywhere.

The experiemental evidence tends to show that we rely more on these heuristics when cognitive resources are at premium: when we are busy and preoccupied, or when we are dealing with issues at the periphery of our attention while centrally engaged on something else. In short, prejudices come to the fore when we are in circumstances that make it difficult for us to apply conscious viligance. In even shorter, prejudices are difficult to control. This being the case, I urge that we ought to exercise what care we can about forming the wretched things.


If you let your job stress build up without some kind of emotional release, you are more likely to one day explode on someone.

This opinion is among the matter of Freudian psychology, and was once very influential in informing social policy. In the Seventies it was accepted unquestioningly that one ought to 'vent' anger to avoid the alternatives of either exploding or of 'turning the anger inward' into depression. But this theory has become controversial since, as it turns out to be without evidentiary support. There is a growing body of opinion that 'venting' anger rehearses anger, and leads to more angry behaviour. To become less angry, it is better to employ the techniques of cognitive therapy (also of Stoicism, Christ, St Paul, and the Buddha) to refute the reasoning that leads to anger and cultivate a calm mind.

You can read more about this in the popular works of Martin Seligman, such as Authentic Happiness.


You need some way to cope with the stress your job generates.

Yes. But I question that rehearsing murderous rage is a good way.

[badger3k]

Yes. But I question that rehearsing murderous rage is a good way.

Yeah- try this game for stress relief: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/pingu2.php
:angst: :cry:

edit - yeah, it's both bloody and violent, but fun...

[Gunrunner]

I find it interesting that Gunrunner made his argument that people should not be socially pressured into giving up a given viewpoint by comparing me to a Nazi.

Yes, indirectly I did compare you to a Nazi. This is because I want people to realize the serious danger your logic presents. And despite this or what you may believe, as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces I would fight and die for your right to disagree with me on this or any subject. However, people need to know the words that sew the seeds of tyranny so that even if it happens on a small scale such as this forum, they will be aware of it when it happens on a larger, more politically relevant scale. And as such, I am obligated to give you strong opposition, so if you feel offended by this then too bad. Your feelings are just collateral damage, not the focus of my opposition - so don't take it personally.


If you convince someone, through peaceful argument, to adopt your viewpoint, that's not censorship. That's exactly the way the First Ammendment has always been intended to be used.

I'm sorry, can you quote in this forum where it is that I threatened you? Do not confuse strong, civil opposition with anything other than peaceful argument.


If you read my words that Gunrunner quoted, you can see that nowhere in there did I make a suggestion that individual gamers or game companies should be censored. Anyone here is free to do a search on my moniker. You will not find any such suggestion made by me anywhere on these boards.

Really? What do you call this then?


I would much prefer to see the RPG community take responsibility for the extent in which we participate in the creation of social values. I spend as least as much time and energy writing my games as many authors do writing fiction or screenplays. I think I have as least as much responsibility for the content of my imagination as do they.

That may be fine for you, but when you begin suggesting what people/organizations should and should not say or take responsibility for, that is a form of censorship IMHO and such logic leads to worse forms of censorship. If I believed that an RPG was promoting strong racism, then I would tell that RPG's creator and everyone else that it is pure crap. What I don't do is tell that person what he should or shouldn't say. It's his right to publish whatever RPG he wants, and I'm not foolish enough to believe that people are such mindless sheep that it is the RPG - not the people - that must be held accountable for any actions such a game may influence. Many Jews died during the Spanish Inquisition, but I don't blame Christianity nor the Bible for that.

[Doug McCrae]

when you begin suggesting what people/organizations should and should not say or take responsibility for, that is a form of censorship IMHONo it isn't. Censorship must include the power to remove material from the document under examination.

[Agemegos]

I'm sorry, can you quote in this forum where it is that I threatened you?

On the other hand, can you quote in this forum where Cyst tried to censor or advocating censoring anyone? He is using peaceful argument to try to persuade others to his viewpoint. That isn't censorship, so don't try to confuse the issue by accusing him of attempting or advocating censorship.


Really? What do you call this then?

I don't know what Cyst calls it, but to me it looks like a reasonable and civil plea for roleplayers to act responsibly in consultation with their own consciences. I can't see how anyone could reasonably construe it as an argument that the authorities should impose censorship.


That may be fine for you, but when you begin suggesting what people/organizations should and should not say or take responsibility for, that is a form of censorship IMHO and such logic leads to worse forms of censorship.

And you are suggesting that Cyst13 ought not to say that people should take responsibility for what they publish and play? That they ought not to consider the possibility that their games might affect their mental habits?

And since it is obviously alright for you to say that Cyst ought not to say that sort of thing, why is it not alright for Cyst to say that people ought not to publish or play dangerous RPGs? Why is what you are doing not censorship?

By all means tell us if you think that evil races in fantasy are not racist, or that playing racist games presents no danger of making us racist. Argue, if you wish, that it isn't the players' or the publishers' fault if the games that they publish and play do make them racist. Hell, it's a free 'Net, so you can go on telling Cyst not to express his opinion because it promotes censorship: if you want. But saying "Don't say what you think: people should be allowed to say what they think" does come across as a paradox.


It's his right to publish whatever RPG he wants, and I'm not foolish enough to believe that people are such mindless sheep that it is the RPG - not the people - that must be held accountable for any actions such a game may influence.

"Sow a thought, reap a deed;
"Sow a deed, reap a habit;
"Sow a habit, reap a character;
"Sow a character, reap a destiny."

If you play a racist game and that makes you racist (it might not), so that you commit a racist offence (not all racists do), that is indeed your fault. Perhaps, therefore, it is a good idea not to play a racist game. I'm not suggesting that we ought to empower the authorities to censor RPGs. I'm just asking that we all think about this, consult our consciences, and act with prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude: when we are publishing games and designing adventures, just as we ought in everything else we do.

The right of freedom of speech provides that no expression of a view can be a crime. Which is not to say that no expression of a view can be morally wrong. Pointing out that an act is morally wrong, and asking one's fellow-citizens to abstain from that act is not the same as coercing abstention.

[Gunrunner]

You are correct and I retract that statement, but I still oppose that logic.

[Gunrunner]

I am referring to Doug's post in the above statement.

[Gunrunner]

"And since it is obviously alright for you to say that Cyst ought not to say that sort of thing, why is it not alright for Cyst to say that people ought not to publish or play dangerous RPGs? Why is what you are doing not censorship?"

I'm sorry Agemegos, but can YOU quote where it is that I said cyst ought not to say something? I just said that I don't agree with what he's saying. If you actually considered what I posted you would realize this. You remember the part where I said that I'd fight for cyst's freedom to disagree and argue with me? Was there something there that I said that you don't understand?

I'm not going to argue with you about responsibility of influence because it is just a matter of opinion/differing theories of which we both disagree.

[Agemegos]

I'm sorry Agemegos, but can YOU quote where it is that I said cyst ought not to say something?

My apologies, I considered that to be the implication of rabbitting on about the First Amendment (which forbids censorship) in close juxtaposition to describing what he was doing as censorship.

But since we are now agreed that Cyst is not attempting censorship and is not threatening anyone's First Amendment rights that part of the argument is moot.

The issue comes down to a question of whether it is a moral danger to play RPGs in which racist assumptions (eg. that a person's deserts can depend on his or her race) are true. I guess we agree that if rehearsing racist attitudes in RPGs tends to make us more likely to act on such attitudes in real life then it is such a danger. I guess that we also agree that that condition is a matter of fact that we can only be informed of by empirical evidence, and that such evidence is not available at the moment.

This being the case, I guess that all I can reasonably ask is that you be aware of the issue, keep half an eye out for the evidence when and if it becomes available, and act in this, as in everything, not unadvisedly or wantonly, but thoughtfully and conscientiously.

[Agemegos]

You remember the part where I said that I'd fight for cyst's freedom to disagree and argue with me?

I also remembered the part where you likened him to a NAZI, the part where you proudly associated yourself with the US armed forces, and what the US armed forces fought for in connection with NAZIs. And I remembered the part where you pushed an unjustifiable accusation of censorship, and implied that Cyst was attacking game publishers' First Amendment rights. You do agree that denying people their First Amendment rights is something that ought to be prevented?

[edited to add] I don't mean to imply here any disparagement of what the US Armed forces did against NAZIism. On the contrary, I agree that US efforts against German, Japanese, Italism and French fascism were proper and heroic.

I just wish that people in general would be a little slower to liken people to NAZIs for cheap rhetorical purposes. The NAZIs killed, tortured, and enslaved millions of innocent people. Asking gamers and game publishers to act responsibly in view of a possible danger is not in the same boat by any means. It was necessary to kill and die to stop the NAZIs. It is not necessary to kill and die to stop people like Cyst and me. We are not killing, torturing, or enslaving anyone. We are only expressing a concern that we have, and asking people to think about it and act circumspectly.

[Gunrunner]

Well said Agemegos, well said. On those points I can agree.

[Gunrunner]

Dangit man, you keep posting as I write something! ;) Anyways, I do believe that the ACT of denying people their First Amendment rights should be prevented, but I also believe I must expose the logic used that sets the precedent for such an act. Speaking and acting are two different things entirely in my opinion. The right to speak about such an act I would support (even if I don't agree with it and would argue against it), but not the action of denial itself.

[Gunrunner]

I also remembered the part where you likened him to a NAZI, the part where you proudly associated yourself with the US armed forces, and what the US armed forces fought for in connection with NAZIs. And I remembered the part where you pushed an unjustifiable accusation of censorship, and implied that Cyst was attacking game publishers' First Amendment rights.

It seems to me like you have a problem with me being a proud American, I fail to understand what you're implying here. As far as accusing cyst of censorship, I already conceded the point on that so why are you bringing it up again?

[Gunrunner]

I missed the part where you answered my first question. Please disregard.

[Agemegos]

Dangit man, you keep posting as I write something! ;) Anyways, I do believe that the ACT of denying people their First Amendment rights should be prevented, but I also believe I must expose the logic used that sets the precedent for such an act. Speaking and acting are two different things entirely in my opinion. The right to speak about such an act I would support (even if I don't agree with it and would argue against it), but not the action of denial itself.

Fair enough. Is it okay if I ask you to go a little easier on the NAZI analogies? You are afraid that Cyst and I will provide a moral justification for censorship if we established a belief that it is morally wrong to say or publish certain things. I am afraid that you will establish a moral justification for killing Cyst (and by extension me) if you establish a belief that we are equivalent to Hitler.

[Gunrunner]

My point was only to present a worst-case scenario. I don't believe you or cyst is an evil, tyrannical Nazi and I hope no one actually took it as my intent to denounce you as such. I know that both your intentions are good, but Ghost Angel's quote summarizes my beliefs about what cyst has been saying "The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions."

[Agemegos]

My point was only to present a worst-case scenario. I don't believe you or cyst is an evil, tyrannical Nazi and I hope no one actually took it as my intent to denounce you as such.

Similarly, it was not my intent (and I think it was not Cyst's intent) to urge that games ought to be censored.


I know that both your intentions are good, but Ghost Angel's quote summarizes my beliefs about what cyst has been saying "The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions."

The road to censoring games is paved with arguments that games can promote bad behaviour. The road to lynching Cyst and me is paved with arguments that we are like the NAZIs. Both intentions may be good. But both destinations are Hell. Let's all be careful about what paths we are paving.

[ghost-angel]

Well... I just read all that back and forth and over and under ...

1) I don't actually agree with Cyst in that we should be policing our personal entertainment for instances of immorality. We don't have ThoughtCrime yet...

2) I don't actually agree with Gunrunner in that Cyst's statements will, in an extreme case, lead to censorship or squishing of 1st Amendment rights.

3) Generally I don't agree with anyone at all actually.... no wait, off topic.

"With Freedom Comes Responsiblity"

Freedom-
We should have the freedom (which no one has denied mind you) to express concepts that are on moral shaky ground (racism, mysoginy, etc..) within a fictional setting such as an RPG.

this does several things - Firstly it makes sure we know and can identify those concepts in a Real Life(tm) setting and prevent them (hopefully). Secondly it allows us to act out certain less savory aspects of our culture in order to educate the young in what not to do - they won't know it's wrong to hate people unless we tell them, entities such as stories, RPGs, etc.. allow us to show them both the act and possible concequences of the act in concrete terms by example. Thirdly - Orcs are evil, they should be all killed (no, wait .. off topic again - ignore that last part).

Responsibility-
We need to recognize when we are acting in a manner detrimental to society and discontinue that act. If we are propegating Racial Hatred (as is the focus of this discussion) in Real Life(tm) situations we should stop ourselves or be made to stop by those around us - peer pressure is a wonderful thing occasionally.

Playing a game in which we act out certain unsavory feelings is not detrimental to society at large - in fact it can be healthy as a person can remove agressive tendencies in a controlled setting, eat a pizza and go home.

It is not our responsiblity to prevent someone from Thinking Evil(tm), it is our responsiblity to prevent someone from Acting Evil(tm) ie "Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."

Given the above (I had more points ... but they elude me at the moment) both Cyst and Gunrunner are absolutely 100% in the correct.... even if on polar opposites of the Opinion-O-Meter.

Cyst believes we should take care in the things we say and act out within a game, which we might want to look at, in order to make sure they stay in the game and don't leak out.

Gunrunner believes that no actions should be censored/lessened in any manner, which is correct as long as people take the personal responsibility to police themselves this will cause no problems at all, ever.

Unforetunately under any system from Anarchy to Totalitarianism you'll always get a few extremists and fringe elements that'll mess it all up, take stuff the wrong way and generally act like gits making the whole situation a pain in the backside for the rest of the world. These people should be likened to Orcs and slaughtered .. (I'm kidding. mostly).

In short: We should have the freedom to think and act out whatever we feel is correct, but should be sure not to infringe on the ability of others to do the same.

there was more .. I know there was. shoot.
the previous message has been brought to you by Sleep Deprivation(tm)
[side effects include loss of short term memory and a need for pizza at 0200hrs]

[GamePhil]

If you do not think the concept of 'evil races' encourages racist thought because this is just pretend, would it be acceptable to run a Earth setting campaign with the 'evil race' being conspiratorial Jews, Yellow Menace Chinese, or dark jungle-cult Africans? These have all been featured in the adventure entertainment of past eras. If you think it's okay to game evil Migdalars and Orcs but not evil Jews, Chinese or Africans, please explain why.

Because Jews, Chinese, Africans, and, yes, white people (somewhat more often than people seem to realise portrayed as inherently evil) are human beings. Human beings seem to be capable of free choice. But just because human beings have a certain quality (free will, in this case) does not mean that another creature is going to. The Migdalar could have evolved in such a way as to make "evil" behavior, by human standards, very appropriate for them. For another example, see the Xenovores, who were engineered to be canabilistic, conquering monsters, certainly an "evil" race from the point of view of anyone victimized by them.

Moreover, since the Migdalar are a magical race in a magical world, they need to work by the rules as we understand them even less. They can be evil because of some part of their metaphysical make up, or some such.

So, no, it is not in any way a racist concept. If you want modern racial concepts in a fantasy game, the appropriate place to have it is among the humans and other free-willed peoples, where it belongs. If you want the Migdalar to be among the free-willed people, great, but I certainly don't see how it makes someone that wants an evil people "racist".

[Worldmaker]

Okay, reality check time!


Guys, when talking about whether migdilar being inherently evil equals racism, or any other fantasy race for that matter, could we all please keep in mind that the migdilar are fictional?

They don't exist.

They are phantasms conjured up by Steve Long for our enjoyment.

And because they do not exist, we can hardly be prejudicial against them in any meaningful sociological way, if only because sociology does not apply to them. To put it another way, the question, while intriguing, is nonsense, res ipsa loquitor.

Now, if we were discussing a situation like.... I don't know... how about "All humans from Krasnovia are dark skinned, kinky-haired, and generally flat-nosed. They are seen as inherently inferior beings by the lighter skinned Buboxians who live on the other side of Lake Falalalala. The Buboxians regularly raid the Krasnovians, taking them for slaves (nearly three million slaves and counting, so far)"... if we were discussing a situation like that, we'd be talking racism...

But we aren't.

[Agemegos]

Okay, reality check time!Guys, when talking about whether migdilar being inherently evil equals racism, or any other fantasy race for that matter, could we all please keep in mind that the migdilar are fictional?

They don't exist.

They are phantasms conjured up by Steve Long for our enjoyment.

And because they do not exist, we can hardly be prejudicial against them in any meaningful sociological way, if only because sociology does not apply to them.

Indeed. But if we rehearse judging characters' deserts on the basis of their race (and especially if we reinforce that activity with enjoyment) we may cultivate that habit of thought. The danger is not that we might harm some migdilar. The danger is that we might make ourselves more inclined to rely on racially-based heuristics. If one practices mental arithmetic, in time it comes naturally. If one rehearses grievances, one becomes more inclined to anger. If one rehearses sad, defeatist, and self-disparaging scripts one tends to become depressed. I fear that something similar might be true of making moral judgements on the basis of race. Practice it every Saturday night and reward it with fun, and in time it will shape your character.

I am well aware that we can all (or nearly all) distinguish the events of games from reality. But I don't think that that is conclusive. I believe that the human fascination with stories is a cognitive facility with which we are equipped for the purpose of learning: learning from other's experiences, and also learning about others' attitudes even in fiction. And it is now beyond doubt that many of these cognitive facilities operate below the level of consciousness. Be that as it may, I think that there is a very strong case that social and cultural norms are transmitted by means of stories. It is far from plain that fiction, even when it know to be such, can have no effect on attitudes and behaviour.

I don't think that anyone has expressed concern for the wrongs suffered by fictional characters. Your refutation of such concern is therefore not decisive, nor indeed even germane.

[Worldmaker]

Indeed. But if we rehearse judging characters' deserts on the basis of their race (and especially if we reinforce that activity with enjoyment) we may cultivate that habit of thought. The danger is not that we might harm some migdilar. The danger is that we might make ourselves more inclined to rely on racially-based heuristics.

Oh bullshit. This is the same unprovable rhetoric that says heavy metal lyrics cause suicide, Christianity causes abortion clinic bombings, and D&D causes satan-worship.

No one is going to become a racist because of how the fictional migdilar are "treated". Such people who are inclined to racist behavior will be racist regardless of whether there's a race of bad guys in a roleplaying game because they are already badly wired (if you'll excuse the analogy), not because of the input from a roleplaying game.

[Agemegos]

Oh bullshit. This is the same unprovable rhetoric that says heavy metal lyrics cause suicide, Christianity causes abortion clinic bombings, and D&D causes satan-worship.

It is by no means unprovable. You could take a statistically significant number of volunteers, divided them at random into a study group and a control group, and measure their propensity to make stereotype-based judgements of people (using one of those techniques based on measuring the delay in performing word-association tasks while placed under cognitive strain). Then you could put the study group through a long course of RP adventures designed to make an intrinsically-evil race salient, and the controls through an similar course with no inherently evil race. Then you could re-test their propensity to stereotyped associations of traits with racial groups.

This study has not been done that I know of, but you are wrong to say that what I suggest is unfalsifiable.


No one is going to become a racist because of how the fictional migdilar are "treated". Such people who are inclined to racist behavior will be racist regardless of whether there's a race of bad guys in a roleplaying game because they are already badly wired (if you'll excuse the analogy), not because of the input from a roleplaying game.

Your assertion, although confident and no doubt sincere, does not settle my apprehensions.

[proditor]

I reiterate from before. ANYTHING can attract a fringe element. No, there have been no studies about the effrects of RPing in a game that encourages casual racism, but there have been studies about RPing and Heavy Metal and Video games being the steep slope to drugs, alchohol, satan-worshipping and raunchy sex. First off, I never got any of these side benefits from my hobbies or musical tatstes, so more than anything, I feel ripped off. That aside, the results, every darn time, are that for the vast majority of people these hobbies or entertainments have no appreciable effect in any of the mentioned/studied areas. For a small group, yes, it happens. My counter is that a small group also thinks they have been probed by aliens. Some folk will gravitate to certain things regardless of the setting, stimulus or peer pressure. Others will follow a path and accept something wholeheartedly and without reservation. And here we get to the sermon. THAT IS NOT MY PROBLEM. This is the same thing that upsets me about the think about the children camp. Yes, there are times and places that are more appropos than others, but long and short, don't ride roughshod over my right to enjoy sick humor or foul language because you can't handle your child. The same rule applies here (loosely). Don't mess with my hobbies just because the same group that would insist they saw Elvis at the bowl-a-rama plays RPG's and turns into a bunch of anti-social tools because of it.

Sorry for the random and bitter nature of my post, but I have no tolerance for the idea of mandated protection based on the actions of a small minority that probably needs councilling as opposed to legislation.

[Worldmaker]

It is by no means unprovable. You could take a statistically significant number of volunteers, divided them at random into a study group and a control group, and measure their propensity to make stereotype-based judgements of people (using one of those techniques based on measuring the delay in performing word-association tasks while placed under cognitive strain). Then you could put the study group through a long course of RP adventures designed to make an intrinsically-evil race salient, and the controls through an similar course with no inherently evil race. Then you could re-test their propensity to stereotyped associations of traits with racial groups.


And you'd still never be sure that you've proven anything, because as has been pointed out, people already inclined toward racism will be inclined toward racism whether or not you "expose" them to the mistreatment of the poor, fictional migdilar.

I've been playing RPGs for 28 years (since March 15, 1976, in fact, when I was given D&D as a present for my 13th birthday). I've been, in the context of fantasy and gaming, slaughtering orcs, goblins, kobolds, and other so-called "evil races" by the millions for each of those 28 years.

By your reasoning, I ought to be a card-carrying member of the Aryan Brotherhood by now, with fifteen to twenty race-based crimes under my belt. I'm actually proud to tell you that this just isnt the case. And why?

Because racism is not something that can be implanted by a single outside source. Its too complicated for that.

[Worldmaker]

I reiterate from before. ANYTHING can attract a fringe element.

That's one of Niven's laws... "No cause is so right that one cannot find a complete and total idiot following it."

[Captain Obvious]

Thinking about the most basic premise here, I've realized that I've rarely, if ever, played a game where race alone was the deciding factor in attacking a group. Generally speaking, fights came about in self-defense, or because the other group was at war with the players' nation, or the other group was plotting some evil scheme.

Except perhaps for the old classic "Keep on the Borderlands" adventure, where the players raid a cave complex to stop the depredations of several small clans of humanoids (none of which are ever actually in evidence, unless the GM/DM works it in on his own), I can't think of any instance where race is the primary deciding factor in whether to fight or not.

[ghost-angel]

"If video games affected us we'd be dancing in dark rooms to repetative music and eating pills."

.....


The point that was originally brought up is

"Does fostering a fictional racial hatred based on obvious or inobvious evils eventually foster a possiblity for that racially based hatred to leak into the real world? And should we, as a self aware group, consider the consequences of our actions in such a setting to take care that they do not, in point of fact, spill into the real world?"

I believe the answer to be Maybe and Yes respectively.

It's possible that, since people have continuously proven themselves to be gits in general throughout human history, playing out discrimination in "the game" might foster the idea in someone that it's ok outside "the game" as well. So we should, as a group of society-minded people, take this into consideration and curb that kind of behavior should we happen upon it.

Does this mean we need a wholesale reigning in of potentially threatening or deviant gaming behavior? No... everything is on a case by case basis and no amount of blanket enforcement (voluntary or otherwise) will prevent people from doing stupid and/or detrimental things to themselves and others around them.


there .. that's mostly what I was trying to say last night before passing out on my bed. And I never did get my Pizza. dammit.

[Beetle]

The point that was originally brought up is

"Does fostering a fictional racial hatred based on obvious or inobvious evils eventually foster a possiblity for that racially based hatred to leak into the real world? And should we, as a self aware group, consider the consequences of our actions in such a setting to take care that they do not, in point of fact, spill into the real world?"

I believe the answer to be Maybe and Yes respectively.This would only be the case if one accepts the extremely dubious (and as yet unproved) idea that fighting orcs (for example) in an RPG because they are inherently evil is analagous to racism in the real world. I don't think there's a real connection there. I haven't seen this connection proved either on this thread or in any of my personal experiences in 26 years of gaming.

Also, I think people are missing that the term "race" usually has a very different meaning in RPGs than it does in real life. What we're talking about with orcs (for example) isn't a different "race" in the manner of white/black/indian/chinese, but an entirely different type of creature that is not human.

[cyst13]

Techriron,

Sorry it took so long for my reply. I haven't been ducking you. I don't own my own computer, which limits my Net access.

You asked me to write an essay for you explaining my position in detail. This is a perfectly reasonable request to make. Unfortunately, I am hesitant to comply. I think one of the best aspects of Net discussion boards is that they are emergent phenomena. I may have started this thread, but after my first post, it ceased to be 'mine'. I don't want to offer anything which should be taken as the definitive account of this thread's intent. I prefer to see that arise from the interplay of all the thread's participants. However, I think perusing the past posts made ny Agemegos, Ghost-Angel, and myself will help clarify my intent, if you're still interested.

As a concession to Gunrunner, I do think he raised an important point. While I certainly would never support any form of externally imposed censorship on game companies or on gamers themselves, there is some danger that arguments on touchy subjects as race can be abused. If some social action group who is dead-set on destroying the RPG community (and we know from recent history that such groups do exist) were to read this thread, it would be possible to quote my words and perhaps those of Agemegos out of context in the mainstream media in an effort to discredit gaming as a whole. That's really not such a paranoid far-fetched scenario. Trouble is, I have no idea how to raise issues such as this without courting that danger. It's just something we have to live with.

Also, while Gunrunner was being deliberately provocative in comparing me to a Nazi, I really can't fault him for that. I also was being deliberately provocative in comparing slaughtering orcs to slaughtering Jews. I pushed an analogy to a logical extreme in order to prod the debate. Both Gunrunner and I may have ruffled some feathers along the way by using extreme rhetorical techniques, but ce la vie. I got over it, and I bet he has as well.

One point I do want to clear up is that I am not saying that including an "evil race" in a game has a one-to-one relationship to fostering real-life racism. Both Agemegos and Ghost-Angel seem to have picked-up on this subtle distinction, but I think it's worth repeating. What I am proposing is that there are numerous unconscious influences on our conscious beliefs. RPGs are only one such influence among a wide web of influences, but to many of us here, RPGs are a very significant aspect of our lives. While few of us would admit to being out-and-out racists, I think most of us have a propensity to make absolute categorizations of large groups of people during times of stress. This kind of thing can bring out racist beliefs/behavior during times of extreme stress in the best of people. Example:

The Army's investigation into the Abu Graib prisoner abuses found that anti-Arab racism is prevalent among the US soldiers there. (I hope no one misinterprets this as a slur upon US soldiers. I have enormous respect for the work our soldiers are doing in Iraq and the sacrifices they have and continue to make. I also think the soldiers on the ground are receiving an inordinate amount of blame for an institutional failure which was the responsibility of the military brass and our civilian leadership) While I can't prove this, I assume the soldiers serving in Abu Graib were initially no more hostile toward Arabs as a group than any other cross-section of Americans. However, when they were placed in the extreme stress of being shelled daily, seeing their comrades killed on a daily basis, receiving little support from the higher-ups, being removed from their families and social support groups for extended periods, and just the general grind of being in a stinkin hot desert day after day, their ability to rationally override the impulse to negatively stereotype those of another culture was diminished. In that situation, what is that determines which soldiers participate in the abuse of prisoners and which do not? There are, of course, a number of answers to that question. But I do think at least one factor is the way in which each individual soldier had been psychologically trained in the course of his life to view groups of others. When human beings are put in extremely stressful situations as that, what psychological resources do they have to resist the impulse to categorize people as groups rather than indiviuals?

To Gunrunner and any other soldiers or relatives of soldiers reading this, it is my sincerest hope that you do not interpret the above example as an attack upon the integrity of the US military or any individual soldiers currently serving in Iraq. Again, I have enormous respect for the sacrifices that they have all been asked to make in these most trying times.

So, to conclude. If a soldier at Abu Graib had spent his Saturday afternoons slaying evil orcs when he was in high school, would it mean that he would be more likely to view Arabs as a group as the enemy? No. I do not at all believe that could be made as a blanket statement. What I do believe is that it MAY constitute ONE aspect among many of a soldier's psychological constitution. It MAY be that some soldier in this circumstance MIGHT have the precise psychological balance that one influence in favor of judging an entire group (even a fictional group, like orcs) just MIGHT tip that soldier's view towards judging Arabs as a group, rather than as individuals. Note: this proposition applies to anyone under extreme stress, not just soldiers. Cops have to deal with these same issues, as well as other occupations.

Granted, I can't prove that my proposal is right. That's why I formed this thread's title as a question rather than a statement. In my own moral balance, I think that the possibility that pretending fictional groups can be categorized as 'evil' MAY impact my own real-life outlook during periods of extreme stress is reason enough not to include 'evil races' in my game. Whether anyone choose to follow suit is for them to decide.

[Nuke]

I've only loosely followed this thread, but my comment in response to your initial question is that for every enjoyable hobby, there are those whose mind is such that it can be influenced by it. Some people are ensnared by good food, some by alcohol, and I'm sure some people by the violence in RPGs (where it's racial or not).

It was always my belief that the reason why the arguments of the 70s regarding the evils of D&D faded away was that people began to realize that it did not globally affect gamers. However, inevitibly, some gamers had the weaknesses I described above and could not separate fantasy from reality.

It's my belief that in general, racial stereotyping in gaming does not affect gamers in much the same way that playing Monopoly does not cause you to want to drive others bankrupt for your own gain. Our minds are pretty good at separating reality from fantasy, it's only the few isolated incidents of those with a mental "weakness" (if you will, knowing that we all have weaknesses in some area).

My characters (note that I purposely do not say "I) have slayed orcs, goblins, and kobolds by the thousands, and yet I have been called one of the gentlest and non-aggressive people my whole life. Killing them has not been a release for me because I had no aggression pent up. It is more that in the world of fantasy, often concessions are made that reduce realism and add enjoyability.

The world we live in is grey, and the world we live in is dull. Most fantasy gamers long for the world of simplicity, where being heroic means avoiding the greys most of the time. Not all of the time, a good GM always puts in scenarios every once in awhile to make the world more real (the "evil" orc family that on your way to slaughter you find out had just had all their children killed by the local community just for being orcs and made a retributive strike).

Lots of people on this board seem to thrive on "grey" campaigns, and more power to them. To me, though, I have enough grey to deal with watching the news! In fact, I'm longing more and more for a nice 4-color supers campaign, now those are a nice escape! *giggle*

[trechriron]

Thanks for the response Cyst13, I figured your net access was limited in one aspect or another with those auto-fire posts across the board at certain times. :D

You may have a theory, but I feel it would take some leg work, interviews, and serious social study before I would consider it a solid theory.

Have you seen the movie American History X ? I imagine some of my more racist friends got sucked into that flick on the premise of the violence and tone as it was advertised. Then the tables got turned on them. A great movie with an interesting intent.

IF (and this is a biggie IMO) stereotyping races as evil could lead towards a stress induced racist outlook (stress induced racism SIR…:D), then offering situations that break those stereotypes could lend to breaking that auto-response. Under this theory, that would be a possibility, even if I consider the theory to be remote.

In some ways I guess I have a hard time with the SIR theory as it is really a specific idea within the whole social engineering theory. One could assume that racist parents produce racist children. I pointed out before that my parents (and especially my Grand Father) were racist. I am not racist. This outlook has been repeated many times over the years in some of my friends. I also have a friend I would consider racist whose parents are decidedly NOT. So it is hard for me to grasp the idea that a persons environment influences choices to this degree. In the end I feel each person is responsible to make these choices. In movies and literature this theme; the racist person who sees the errors of their ways and CHOOSES to change, is repeated frequently.

I still feel our social responsibility lies within us. To ourselves we can hold a standard of equality and to ourselves we should practice it. A company or a group cannot be responsible to teach these values to others or to even regard the inclusion of any of these factors in a fictional work to impose such responsibility upon them. If they choose to use any influence to bring light to these issues, great! But it should be viewed for what it is; Not the manifestation of a company taking responsibility for enforcing values but a group of concerned people using their influence to educate their customers to an issue that is important to them. I am grateful for the courageous people who have created movies, literature, and even games that highlight these issues, as they have taught me humanity like no other lesson could.

A person choosing to do the right thing or make a difference is far more valuable in the end than any implied responsibility is ever going to be.

Thanks for the lively debate, I apologize for the tone of my first post. I have some strong feelings about racism and I harbor some deep hope that my nieces and nephews will grow up in a very different world I am seeing today.

See you around the boards,

[Agemegos]

And you'd still never be sure that you've proven anything, because as has been pointed out, people already inclined toward racism will be inclined toward racism whether or not you "expose" them to the mistreatment of the poor, fictional migdilar.

Then there would be no difference between the study group and the control group, and probably no difference between the 'before' and 'after' measurements.


Because racism is not something that can be implanted by a single outside source. Its too complicated for that.

Perhaps. But practice increases facility even with complex skills.

[Agemegos]

I have no tolerance for the idea of mandated protection based on the actions of a small minority that probably needs councilling as opposed to legislation.

No more have I. But fortunately no-one has yet suggested it. The question is "Does fostering a fictional racial hatred based on obvious or inobvious evils eventually foster a possiblity for that racially based hatred to leak into the real world? And should we, as a self aware group, consider the consequences of our actions in such a setting to take care that they do not, in point of fact, spill into the real world?"

Does it happen? I don't know, but maybe. Should we consider the consequences of our actions and take care? I think that's a no-brainer: yes. Should the nanny-state legislate? Hell no!

[Agemegos]

The world we live in is grey, and the world we live in is dull. Most fantasy gamers long for the world of simplicity, where being heroic means avoiding the greys most of the time.

It seems to me that play in general consists (or at least includes a component) of exercising faculties with which we have been equipped either by evolution or our various creators and which do not get enough of a workout in our daily lives. A lot of sports, for example, seem to exercise the faculties of a hunter or even a warrior. If that is the case, then perhaps RP situations that require sorting working out which are the good guys and which the bad appeal to those people whose daily lives do not demand enough to fatigue their moral faculties, while those players whose everyday circumstances either fatigue their moral discriminations or are such that their moral discriminations inhibit the exercise of other faculties.

Me, I find RP adventures in which the good guys can be discriminated from the bad guys by some trivial physical observation to be damned dull.

[Agemegos]

I still feel our social responsibility lies within us.

So do I, and so I think does Cyst13. But that isn't inconsistent with pointing out possible dangers to others, is it? Everyone has to make their own judgements, but must they necessarily gather their own information, and refrain from sharing insights?

I think it is an interesting reflection of our times that so many of us interpret any argument that something that happens is or might be bad, and every argument that something that isn't happing would or might be good, as an attempt to expand the scope of government intervention. I guess that experience of the last thirty-five years or so would give people that impression.

[proditor]

No more have I. But fortunately no-one has yet suggested it. The question is "Does fostering a fictional racial hatred based on obvious or inobvious evils eventually foster a possiblity for that racially based hatred to leak into the real world? And should we, as a self aware group, consider the consequences of our actions in such a setting to take care that they do not, in point of fact, spill into the real world?"

Does it happen? I don't know, but maybe. Should we consider the consequences of our actions and take care? I think that's a no-brainer: yes. Should the nanny-state legislate? Hell no!I agree with your second paragraph completely, but...I think the predication here is we don't know our groups/players well enough to know if they are going to be able to handle a game where "clearly defined evil by appearance" will lead them down a slippery slope. Now in the beginning of any newish group, this can be a hazard. However, I'd think that a few sessions would enable you to see what caliber of folk you are gaming with and take whatever measures you consider appropos. This could range from making sure more impressionable members understand the concept of RL ambiguity to simply not gaming with that person and saying "Dude, it's a game. The orcs are not a zionist conspiracy and you are frankly creeping me out. Good luck in the future, I won't be back." Because really, in the end, that's who you are responsible for. Yourself and your kids. If they and you are settled firmly enough on planet earth, the difference between an orc and a RL anything else will be clear enough so that this is never an issue. Not taking you to task per se, just outlining my own sort of personal responsibility idea.

[Doug McCrae]

Oh bullshit. This is the same unprovable rhetoric that says heavy metal lyrics cause suicide, Christianity causes abortion clinic bombings, and D&D causes satan-worship.A friend of mine with a psychology degree once told me that domestic violence figures spike on the nights when a heavyweight title bout is televised. Explain that Mr. What-We-Watch-Doesn't-Affect-Us-In-Any-Way.

[Doug McCrae]

In my view the concept of evil races does promote racism. Very very very very slightly. So slightly in fact that I don't think it's worth worrying about.

Ultimately even the best of us are at least a little bit racist. Provided it's no more than that I don't think we should beat ourselves up over it or be too concerned about it.

There's a lot of far more important, big, serious evils out there we could be confronting instead.

[Agemegos]

A friend of mine with a psychology degree once told me that domestic violence figures spike on the nights when a heavyweight title bout is televised. Explain that Mr. What-We-Watch-Doesn't-Affect-Us-In-Any-Way.

Easy. Heavyweight title bouts are real, and therefore people can't distinguish between them a reality. But experiments have shown that even children can tell fiction from reality. So obviously violence and hateful attitudes lauded in fiction are harmless.







[That's ironic, godammit!]

[Worldmaker]

A friend of mine with a psychology degree once told me that domestic violence figures spike on the nights when a heavyweight title bout is televised. Explain that Mr. What-We-Watch-Doesn't-Affect-Us-In-Any-Way.


Yeah, sure. I've seen the results of studies that show that domestic violence vs. men... yes, you read that right...spikes during the Superbowl, too.

I think its the same thing as the "breast cancer epidemic" foolishness. The number of breast cancer cases hasn't changed... the tracking of breast cancer has.

In short, the studies are skewed to produce expected results.

[Agemegos]

Because really, in the end, that's who you are responsible for. Yourself and your kids. If they and you are settled firmly enough on planet earth, the difference between an orc and a RL anything else will be clear enough so that this is never an issue. Not taking you to task per se, just outlining my own sort of personal responsibility idea.

Well, this may be why we arrive at different conclusions. I believe that we are responsible for all the predictable consequences of our actions, not just their effects on ourselves and our children. If a demagogue incites a mob to riot, is he not responsible for that? If an official orders an atrocity, is he not responsibile for the actions of his subordinates? If a preacher preaches bigotry, is he not responsible for religious hatred insofar as it results from his sermons?

Besides which, if you cast your mind back over the matter of this thread, you will recall that I have been arguing on the basis that playing genocidal characters may make ourselves, not others, more at risk of becoming racist.

I understand the widespread skepticism. But experience of cognitive-behavioural techniques has astonished me with the extent to which people are able to change their characters by use of mental drills. And there is ample evidence from experiments in social psychology that demonstrates that prejudices which we usually keep well under control by self-monitoring can leak around the edges of our guards when we are concentrating on other issues. Best, in my opinion, not to form the prejudices. And safest, therefore, not to rehearse making moral judgements on the basis of birth, even in play.

[Worldmaker]

You know what? All you overly sensitive whack-jobs are right... the presence of evil races... the migdilar, or the orcs... have made me a racist. I'm absolutely sure that I will be utterly vile and prejudicial to the next orc or migdilar I ever encounter.

Until then, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

[Agemegos]

You know what? All you overly sensitive whack-jobs are right... the presence of evil races... the migdilar, or the orcs... have made me a racist. I'm absolutely sure that I will be utterly vile and prejudicial to the next orc or migdilar I ever encounter.

What about the next straw man?

[badger3k]

Easy. Heavyweight title bouts are real, and therefore people can't distinguish between them a reality. But experiments have shown that even children can tell fiction from reality. So obviously violence and hateful attitudes lauded in fiction are harmless.







[That's ironic, godammit!]

Actually, no it isn't. Watch a fight, or an action movie, or a football game. For most people, if they are interested in it, they will experience an increase in adrenaline and all that - their emotions get stirred up. Why do people get into fights at sporting events?

There's a difference between watching a fight and reading about a fight. Or playing one in a role-playing game. I don't know about you, but I get more excited by playing Vice City on my playstation than saying "roll to hit, you hit, roll for location..." - even if I enhance it to "Your blade swings out and slices into the side of your foe. Blood sprays in a fountain....". It's a lot easier to get into a game when there are visual cues.

Take Lord of the Rings - Boromir's death sequence. Which moved you more (ie, which caused a greater emotional - physiological is probably a better term - reaction) - reading the passage in the book, or watching it happen on the tv/movie screen? Odds are in most people, they would have a bigger reaction (and one more easily noticeable through standard medical or psychological tests) from the visual account. Human reactions are based on all aspects (visual, aural, mental, etc), but visual will top mental as a major effector in most people's cases.

That's the biggest difference between a boxing match and games. If games had a similar effect, we'd see more incidence of criminal behavior from the countless gaming groups world-wide ("Hey, I had to stab him - he touched my dice!")

edited to hopefully make a few passages easier to understand.

[badger3k]

Well, this may be why we arrive at different conclusions. I believe that we are responsible for all the predictable consequences of our actions, not just their effects on ourselves and our children. If a demagogue incites a mob to riot, is he not responsible for that? If an official orders an atrocity, is he not responsibile for the actions of his subordinates? If a preacher preaches bigotry, is he not responsible for religious hatred insofar as it results from his sermons?

Besides which, if you cast your mind back over the matter of this thread, you will recall that I have been arguing on the basis that playing genocidal characters may make ourselves, not others, more at risk of becoming racist.

I understand the widespread skepticism. But experience of cognitive-behavioural techniques has astonished me with the extent to which people are able to change their characters by use of mental drills. And there is ample evidence from experiments in social psychology that demonstrates that prejudices which we usually keep well under control by self-monitoring can leak around the edges of our guards when we are concentrating on other issues. Best, in my opinion, not to form the prejudices. And safest, therefore, not to rehearse making moral judgements on the basis of birth, even in play.

During all these "cognitive-bahavioral techniques" that you have seen, where they all done by people trying to change? Or did they involve people who had no idea what was going on? If you have any web sources, can you cite something (or give a link) - it would be interesting to read that.

My point is that unless the tests were done on those who had no idea of what was supposed to happen, then you also have to include the aspect that the participants were actively (even subconsciously) trying to achieve the changes. Big difference than the more subliminal shifts you posit.

The other point is where to draw the line. Say I write a book, with the intent to make money. No message, no plan to influence people. But someone reads that one character in there comitted suicide (it moved the plot along, after all), and sees his life is like that. So he kills himself and blames my book. Am I responsible? Apparently so - according to the view posted above.

The limits that others use has more to do with intent and expected reactions/influences. By using the same logic above with racism, we can say that by having warriors in the game, we are encouraging people to use violence to solve their problems. Or, as was posted, since we have spell casters, we must be teaching people that magic is possible and therefore must be real. Same thing with multiple gods - the games really do promote polytheism! BADD must be right.

Now, let's see - I am more of a pantheist than anything else (although the term henotheistic might be applicable) - so let's call that half right. I don't believe in magic, so that's a negative on that. And while I light martial arts and sparring, I'd rather talk my way out of a fight if I can since that's better than getting into a useless fight. Makes that a negative. That's 2.5 to .5, No to Yes. So, since I've been gaming since 78 (I think, although I think I really started back in the bicentennial of 76), I don't seem to have been affected in those ways. Why is this supposed racism different from the same charges made years ago?

It seems to me that only the names have changed, but the argument is still the same.

[Agemegos]

During all these "cognitive-bahavioral techniques" that you have seen, where they all done by people trying to change? Or did they involve people who had no idea what was going on?

They all involved people who were trying to change.


If you have any web sources, can you cite something (or give a link) - it would be interesting to read that.

Sorry, but I'm working from paper sources and personal experience.


My point is that unless the tests were done on those who had no idea of what was supposed to happen, then you also have to include the aspect that the participants were actively (even subconsciously) trying to achieve the changes. Big difference than the more subliminal shifts you posit.

Indeed. CBT achieves remarkable relief of (say) depression by retraining inappropriate habits of thought. This is done deliberately, and by the informed effort of the patient. There is nothing subliminal or involuntary about it. On the other hand, the aetiology of straighforward depression (not bipolar disorder) seems to consist entirely of dwelling on inappropriate thoughts: it is a mental habit formed by rehearsal. And yet no-one sets out to become depressed. It seems clear that mental habits can form character even without an intention to personal change. From my personal experience something similar seems to be true of anger, and some psychologists seem (according to their writings) to agree. There is, however, no well-conducted study of the treatment of anger with CBT, at least that I know of.


The other point is where to draw the line. Say I write a book, with the intent to make money. No message, no plan to influence people. But someone reads that one character in there comitted suicide (it moved the plot along, after all), and sees his life is like that. So he kills himself and blames my book. Am I responsible? Apparently so - according to the view posted above.

If it is reasonably foreseeable that what you write will lead to people killing themselves (or others) who would not otherwise have done so, then I urge you to think carefully before deciding to publish. Where to draw the line? I can only leave that to your own conscience.


Why is this supposed racism different from the same charges made years ago?

The charges made years ago included an assertion that D&D games actually consist of satanic worship, and that players whose characters reach third level are taught to cast real-life magic spells. They were driven by malice and paranoid delusion.

The possible dangers that I am discussing are admittedly speculative. But my apprehensions are informed by an actual knowledge of what goes on in a role-playing game and some empirical findings from cognitive psychology, not on a belief in magic. Also, I am not hostile towards role-playing games, and only urge that we should hold the content of our games to the same standard that we hold our other activities.

[proditor]

Badger3k, thank you thank you thank you for touching on something I had completely forgotten. By Agemegos reasoning, I should be more violent and likely to lash out when I am actively taking martial arts classes. I'm currently not and my aggresion level is profoundly higher than when I am. I'm looking at getting back into it over the next month (Assuming the finances pan out) and also looking forward to the decrease in my aggresiveness. I can base this off the following: Due to the time/money conundrum (I usually have one but not the other) my attendance at classes is spotty at best. When I'm training regularly, sparring regularly, have my adrenalin much higher than normal for longer periods...I'm less aggressive. I've been on and off classes 5 times in the last 15 years and this formula always holds true. Many of my fellow students state the same thing. When they take classes and spar regularly, they are less physically aggressive in day to day situations.

As for killing orcs might make me a racist....

Just no.

Feel free to cite whatever sources you want, whatever reports and treatsies you can find. I'm not buying it. If anything, gaming in general has made me more accepting as I met people from other cultures who were in my gaming groups. Strangely, none of them started to call me a cracker after a long orc killing session either. The face to face dynamic of gaming enhances the chances that you won't turn into a racist IMHO, and the MASSIVE benefit gained from talking to someone from a different background than yours far outweighs the very very very minor possibility that killing orcs on sight might make you view things differently in RL.

If you are predisposed for whatever reason to dislike/hate/fear a given ethnicity, then claiming that killing orcs in D&D made you do it is right up there with "no one told me dumping hot coffee in my lap would hurt".

I'm normally not this blunt, but seriously, if killing orcs on sight becomes the reason you think you are racist or are becoming more racist, you have much deeper issues.

[proditor]

If it is reasonably foreseeable that what you write will lead to people killing themselves (or others) who would not otherwise have done so, then I urge you to think carefully before deciding to publish. Where to draw the line? I can only leave that to your own conscience. Okay, I'm not buying this one at all. By this logic, some of the great but depressing masterpieces of literature should not have been written because someone who needs treatment might go off the deep end????

No, no and again no. THEY need to get help for themselves. Personal responsibility. If you can see that someone is in pain and suggest help for them, great, more power to you. But if someone reads Nabakov and takes their own life in depression, I'm sorry, trying to blame the writer here is at best criminally irresponsible.

We often hear some of our more pessimistic pundits say (Roughly) "Life is short, ugly and it ends in pain". I prefer to think it's what you make of it. If you make it a hell, it will be. It took me a long time and professional help to NOT make my own life a hell and I have little to no sympathy for those who blame everyone beyond themselves for the misery they feel when they could do something about it.

[Agemegos]

Okay, I'm not buying this one at all. By this logic, some of the great but depressing masterpieces of literature should not have been written because someone who needs treatment might go off the deep end????

That depends. Did they do good as well? Did the good they did outweigh the bad? If so then careful thought would have encouraged the publication. But if a work does net harm to Mankind, I don't think that its publication is justified for Art's sake. Art is for people.


It took me a long time and professional help to NOT make my own life a hell and I have little to no sympathy for those who blame everyone beyond themselves for the misery they feel when they could do something about it.

Fair enough. But I'm not blaming other people for my problems (which are minimal anyway). Nor am I encouraging others to do so. I am encouraging people to take command of their destinies by taking command of the habits they cultivate.

[Agemegos]

Badger3k, thank you thank you thank you for touching on something I had completely forgotten. By Agemegos reasoning, I should be more violent and likely to lash out when I am actively taking martial arts classes.

Why? Do you rehearse angry thoughts and unprovoked lashing out in your martial arts classes? Or do you rehearse calm self-control and defensive use of force?

[Agemegos]

As for killing orcs might make me a racist....

Just no.

Feel free to cite whatever sources you want, whatever reports and treatsies you can find. I'm not buying it. If anything, gaming in general has made me more accepting as I met people from other cultures who were in my gaming groups. Strangely, none of them started to call me a cracker after a long orc killing session either. The face to face dynamic of gaming enhances the chances that you won't turn into a racist IMHO, and the MASSIVE benefit gained from talking to someone from a different background than yours far outweighs the very very very minor possibility that killing orcs on sight might make you view things differently in RL.

Fair enough. Judging people by their race is not the only thing that you rehearsed in gaming, and the net effect may well be positive. Perhaps there is no effect. Perhaps you have resisted an effect. Perhaps you are more tolerant and accepting than you would have been if you hadn't gamed, but less so than if you had played games without irremediably evil races in them. It is not possible to tell from a sample of one, even if your self-knowledge were perfectly reliable.

You will note that neither Cyst 13 nor I has advocated giving up RPGs, nor have we given up playing ourselves. You may conclude that we do not think that RP gaming is itself a dangerous activity.

In short, I agree that RP (especially the less superficial adventures, and most especially in gaming groups with diverse backgrounds) is on balance wholesome, even beneficial. That doesn't exclude the possibility that some games are not as good as others.

[Chiba Bob]

Dangit man, you keep posting as I write something! ;) Anyways, I do believe that the ACT of denying people their First Amendment rights should be prevented


Did you know that the RPGs are censored regardless of the First Amendment. I can think of one Champions product that did not make it to the shelves.

[ghost-angel]

We should remember ... that just because WE can't prove something or that something hasn't been proven does not outlaw its possible existance.

Do RPGs, in general, and especially racially focused RPGs foster rascism, bigotry and violence?

No, not at all.

Is it possible that an RPG featuring the above items might adversly affect someone heading in that direction already, or who has the psychological makeup to head in that direction but hadn't yet come to that particular conclusion?

probably.

Should we, as a group, keep an eye out in order to curb the tendencies of the person in line item two and make sure they don't slip into a negative role in real life?

Yes, if you care about these kinds of things. If you're asocial (or antisocial) and don't care then that's obviously your choice.

Does psycholigical drilling (repetative psychological tasks in order to enforce certain behaviors) work on humans?

yes, it does. Very effectively.

READ: "On Killing" it maps out, in part, the psychological effect of combat and war on a human being and how we use modern psychological training (the study goes up through training used through the Vietnam war) in order to increase our kill-ratio and "intent-to-kill fire ratio" from less than 20% in WW1 to over 95% in Vietnam.

Does America have an extremely bad habit of taking an item from a fringe element of unstable mind, or a small fact, and turning it into an "epidemic" such as the following: "RPGs cause rascism and violence in America's teens!"

oh so very much it does.

READ: "The Culture Of Fear"

A few things are pointed out in that book, like if we added up all the people who died from various forms of cancer, hoof-in-mouth, e-bola, salmonela poisoning and heart disease as provided by several "reliable" sources the United States would have reached a population of zero approximately five years ago.....

(tangent aside on the disease thing...)

Is it likely that playing in a game that features various forms of rascism, violence, hatred, prostitution, politics, theft and the wearing of silly outfits to cause anyone to do any of the above?

not likely unless they were 1) already doing them or 2) had a perpensity (sp?) towards such acts already or 3) just plain stupid.

Unforetunately a very large portion of our population can be classified under 3) and I'm not just being mean -- we have a A LOT of stupid people on this planet who just don't get it.

Fortunately many stupid people lack the imagination required to actually play an RPG for any length of time greater than an afternoon. Therefore the threat of an RPG turning someone into a violent rascist person is minimal at best - but not entirely impossible.

Of course, I can't prove anything with good hard numbers..

But we can't prove a lot of things, and we don't discount them - I point to the majority of the population that believes in a God or Gods of some form. Can't prove it, doesn't mean it's not out there and no one believes it. Doesn't mean we should discredit someone for such a belief in an item.

What Cyst brought up was the questions (I say he brought it up because he started the thread, he didn't actually bring up every single point involved, but made us think about it)

is it possible? - sure
is it likely? - not really
should we keep an eye out anyway? - recommended suggestion
can any of this be proven through imperical evidence? - no
does that mean we can ignore it? - if you want, but why take the chance
should we censor the product because of this vague possibility? - no
so why the heck are we talking about it? - to make us think and not stagnate our brains


I Am The Voices In Your Head
[edit - because I can't spell after 0100hrs]

[Worldmaker]

What about the next straw man?


Okay, hot-shot... let's look at your argument for a moment.

You equate creating out of the ether an non-human species of being whose psychological makeup is overwhelmingly (and exaggeratedly) based on ruthless, amoral, and cruel behavior with prejudice and discrimination against real people.

You dismiss the fact that no actual, living breathing human beings are actually being discriminated against in favor of the argument that a very small number of people, who are already predisposed toward such behavior anyway, might through obsessive overexposure and by the smallest of chances, have their tendency toward such behavior increased microscopically, despite no evidence showing that this will, or even can, happen.

And you insist that the rest of us, the overwhelming majority for whom having an evil species in a fictional setting has no effect, must change our behavior on that miniscule chance that a pre-existing bigot might perhaps become infinitessimally more prejudiced against a real group of people based on the unproven "prejudice" that the mere existence of a phantasmal species in a fictional setting is supposedly creating.

Where I come from, this is what we call a disassociation from reality. I mean it. The fact that other people are actually taking this load of nonsense seriously makes me weep for my species.

[Beetle]

We should remember ... that just because WE can't prove something or that something hasn't been proven does not outlaw its possible existance.True, it just means it's not worth being concerned with until it is proven (or at least shown to be likely). Right now, the main assertion of this thread is on the same level as a claim that an invisible, intangible and inaudible dragon lives in my garage.

There has not been a shred of evidence to support the idea that the use of ficitional, non-human monsters as stock villains in fantasy games has any relation whatsoever to real-world racism. As Worldmaker said earlier, the only logical result of anti-orc games would be anti-orc racism, but orcs don't really exist. There's been no evidence presented that a person having a fantasy character that fights made-up creatures results in increased real-world racism, sexism or anti-semitism.


A friend of mine with a psychology degree once told me that domestic violence figures spike on the nights when a heavyweight title bout is televised. Explain that Mr. What-We-Watch-Doesn't-Affect-Us-In-Any-Way.I’d ask him to support his assertion with facts. Good luck to him, because it hasn't been proven yet. See snopes (http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp).

[cyst13]

As a point: You don't typically prove something before developing a hypothesis. You first have to decide whether this is a possible aspect of reality. If you decide it is, THEN you can attempt to falsify it by experiment. Unfortunately, since I'm not a social scientist, it would be restrictively difficult for me to test this hypothesis. Ergo, I'm going by intuition.

[cyst13]

I've never met anyone who has posted to this thread, but I am willing to accept that none of us are racists. Is anyone will to admit to an incident in your real life in which you were aggressively confronted by a person of a different race and this caused you to form a brief judgement about all people of that race? Even if you quickly repudiated that judgement, did you have it in your head for a moment? If so, you understand how easy it is to slip into the thought pattern of judging people by group rather than individually.

Yes, you were able to quickly repudiate that thought and you probably never acted on it. Good. But what if it were not a one-time experience? What if you were a cop or a soldier or lived in a very violent society and you were exposed to aggression from people of different races on a daily basis? What psychological resources would you fall back upon to restrain yourself from allowing those brief anger-induced moments of racism to grow into a more long-term outlook? Is it possible for good people to adopt hateful attitudes under certain circumstances? Are any of us immune to this?

[badger3k]

They all involved people who were trying to change.

Sorry, but I'm working from paper sources and personal experience.

Indeed. CBT achieves remarkable relief of (say) depression by retraining inappropriate habits of thought. This is done deliberately, and by the informed effort of the patient. There is nothing subliminal or involuntary about it. On the other hand, the aetiology of straighforward depression (not bipolar disorder) seems to consist entirely of dwelling on inappropriate thoughts: it is a mental habit formed by rehearsal. And yet no-one sets out to become depressed. It seems clear that mental habits can form character even without an intention to personal change. From my personal experience something similar seems to be true of anger, and some psychologists seem (according to their writings) to agree. There is, however, no well-conducted study of the treatment of anger with CBT, at least that I know of.

While I might agree in general, I disagree with the particulars. But thanks for the info. Are you a psychiatrist, psychologist, or just have an interest in the field? Just curious.

Now here's the bigger issue to me - the personal responsibility issue:



If it is reasonably foreseeable that what you write will lead to people killing themselves (or others) who would not otherwise have done so, then I urge you to think carefully before deciding to publish. Where to draw the line? I can only leave that to your own conscience.

If we have to try to judge the authors of works by these "standards", where does that leave the reader? Doesn't the reader have a responsibility to themselves and others? Let's turn it to gaming. There are a few games dealing with a feudal Japanese-style setting. Seppeku is common (well, more so than a European-style game). Should I remove this facet of the game because I think someone might play the game and kill himself? It might be different if I was writing a book on how to kill yourself, or encouraged others to do so. There would be a direct link from my work to the action. Not in a game, though. Like I said - the difference is in the intent and the effort. I would have no problem if somebody who played my game killed himself (unless I knew them, that is). My questions would be along the lines of "Where were his family and friends? Did anyone notice the warning signs (if any, that is)? etc" If the individual was an adult, he made his choice - it was his own responsibility - but surely his compatriots bear some of that.

If someone used my game to try to promote racism (since the Asian cultures were very unflattering about gaijin and to us were racist), then I would want to say something against the misuse of my work. Would I publish some comment or disclaimer in my work regarding such things? Possibly - they are becoming more common these days precisely because of thinking like this.



The charges made years ago included an assertion that D&D games actually consist of satanic worship, and that players whose characters reach third level are taught to cast real-life magic spells. They were driven by malice and paranoid delusion.

Unfortunately while some have left this world, there are others still active today who teach these things to people (some teach them to law enforcement personnel). How well accepted this is, I am unsure of, but the fact that they keep doing it and making money is scary. I did find one link that seems to be comprehensive on the subject :http://www.rpgstudies.net/stackpole/pulling_report.html. For Mrs Pulling I think guilt also was a motivating factor, but the belief in these things has spread beyond the original group.



The possible dangers that I am discussing are admittedly speculative. But my apprehensions are informed by an actual knowledge of what goes on in a role-playing game and some empirical findings from cognitive psychology, not on a belief in magic. Also, I am not hostile towards role-playing games, and only urge that we should hold the content of our games to the same standard that we hold our other activities.

I got on this argument to add my beliefs and its an interesting topic. I think we do hold gaming to the same standard as our other activites. I think that your standard for games is artificially low. My original question still stands (ok, maybe not original one, but it's in there somewhere) - why should we hold the "racist" elements to a different standard than the violence, magic, gods, slavery, etc?

As I said before (unless I didn't post it) the whole concept of races in games is racist. Elves are generally longer-lived (or immortal), better looking than humans, etc - sure sounds superior to me. The Tolkien-style war between dwarves and elves is a race war. What else can it be? I think for games such as these, the term "racism" may need to be redefined or otherwise reworked. If not, then fantasy gaming (and many others) are all inherently racist, from what I can see.

[Agemegos]

Okay, hot-shot... let's look at your argument for a moment.

Good idea.


You equate creating out of the ether an non-human species of being whose psychological makeup is overwhelmingly (and exaggeratedly) based on ruthless, amoral, and cruel behavior with prejudice and discrimination against real people.

No I don't. I argue that rehearsing the act of making moral judgements on the basis of race may reduce out resistance to making moral judgements on the basis of race.


You dismiss the fact that no actual, living breathing human beings are actually being discriminated against ...

No actual, living, breathing casualties are actually evacuated in a disaster drill either. We still learn from the drill. No actual enemies are out-manoeuvres ina field exercise: we still learn from the exercise.


And you insist that the rest of us, the overwhelming majority for whom having an evil species in a fictional setting has no effect

Psychological studies that detect racist attitudes in people's subconscious behaviour (by the time it takes them to make decisions and the time it takes them to recognise words) indicate that in populations studied (Californian and Arizonan undergraduates for the most part) the majority harbour racist attitudes. Of course most of them are able to suppress these when dealing with them in tasks occupying central attention, but they tend to leak through in tasks deal with peripherally. And income studies and employment studies and studiesof jury verdicts and sentencing and even the identifications of eyewitnesses all indicate that members of racial groups connected with negative stereotypes all suffer from significant disadvantages in normal life because of tacit racist attitudes.

It may be hard for you to imagine (not having any racist attitudes yourself), but the majority of people in modern western societies seem actually to be afflicted with subconscious racist prejudices. For example, I have them myself.

You confidently assert that even if the effect I fear is shown to exist the vast majority of people are in no danger of reinforcing their racist prejudices by rehearsing in RPGs acting on such prejudices. That seems unjustified. I concede your point that rehearsal may not produce the psychological changes I apprehend. But I cannot agree that the majority (vast or otherwise) stand in no danger of forming subconsicious racist attitudes: they already have them.


must change our behavior on that miniscule chance that a pre-existing bigot might perhaps become infinitessimally more prejudiced against a real group of people based on the unproven "prejudice" that the mere existence of a phantasmal species in a fictional setting is supposedly creating.

You will search my posts in vin for any insistence that anyone must. Besides which your use of 'miniscule' and 'infinitesimally' assume what you are trying to prove.


Where I come from, this is what we call a disassociation from reality. I mean it. The fact that other people are actually taking this load of nonsense seriously makes me weep for my species.

I'm sorry to have made you so sad. But perhaps reality out where most of us live is different from reality in your neck of the woods. Racist attitudes (subconscious and otherwise) are rather common out here. Even the majority of well-brought-up and decent middle-class people have been shown to harbour them, even those people who strive to act justly. Rehearsing decision-making techniques in fictional contexts has been shown to reinforce the use of those techniques in real life: an entire training industry is built on the fact. Or indeed several. It is admittedly a speculation that racist decision-making is generalisable, ie. that rehearsing making judgements against one race reinforces the habit of making decisions on the basis of race in general. But we're still a long way from hallucination.

[Worldmaker]

I'm sorry to have made you so sad. But perhaps reality out where most of us live is different from reality in your neck of the woods.

Obviously... since where I live common sense and logic and not some unproven pseudoscientific quackery guide our decisions.

Your theory is ridiculous, your conclusions even more so. The "facts" backing up your argument are unconvincing and subject to personal interpretation producing variable conclusions.

Your entire argument is weak. At best.

[cyst13]

Even if the only good thing that would come of this thread would be the opportunity to witness Agemegos maintain his considerable elan in the face of hostility and progressively hone his highly articulate arguments, I think it would still be worth it. This guy would make an awesome Vulcan! Kudos to you, sir.

[cyst13]

In an attempt to come at this topic in a different way, I would pose a question to all those who answered 'no' to this thread's title.

Do you think creators of fantastic fiction can use imaginary groups of 'people' to foster real life tolerance towards others in their audience?

Specifically, I'm thinking of X-Men and Star Trek. Both these series have specifically intended to encourage their audiences to be more tolerant through the examples of their characters. Both Professor X and Jean-Luc Picard are the moral voice of those series, and they actively enourage us throughout the series to treat all others with tolerance. Is it possible for this to have any affect on how people who read/watch these series act and believe in real life? If you answer yes, then why doesn't the opposite hold true in treating orcs as homogemously evil?

[ghost-angel]

Attn: Worldmaker


If you do not believe that psychological conditioning is not possible through repetative expersises I point you towards your nearest military training facility.

Any psychological condition can be "trained" into the human brain .. you just have to find the right set of buttons to do so.

Are RPGs one of the buttons that could trigger "rascist" attitudes in people through constant training that any given race/gender/religion/etc is Evil?

Maybe yes, Maybe no. But it's a good place to look and check out anyway. Even if we can't "prove" it (I'll note here that no one has "Proved" the existance of "God" and we (as a species) kill for that belief on a daily basis) doesn't mean the possiblity doesn't exist and we should keep an eye out.

Do I believe we should censor our gaming to not include Evil Races? no, not at all - they are a part of the medium.

A child does not know the different between "fiction" and "reality" until you TELL them.... And RPGs are but one thing children have access to in order to expand their imagination and concept building techniques. With that in mind we might just want to take an extra moment to make sure our actions in game have no adverse effects out of game.

If it's not an issue with you and you don't want to take the time then stop insulting Agemegos and his theories until YOU prove that what he says is wrong. The burden of proof can fall both ways.

(and before you start calling the theories pseudo-scientific crap again, remember that we once thought that way about anyone postering the idea that the world was round, bacteria made people sick and flight was possible).

[Worldmaker]

Do you think creators of fantastic fiction can use imaginary groups of 'people' to foster real life tolerance towards others in their audience?

Specifically, I'm thinking of X-Men and Star Trek. Both these series have specifically intended to encourage their audiences to be more tolerant through the examples of their characters. Both Professor X and Jean-Luc Picard are the moral voice of those series, and they actively enourage us throughout the series to treat all others with tolerance. Is it possible for this to have any affect on how people who read/watch these series act and believe in real life? If you answer yes, then why doesn't the opposite hold true in treating orcs as homogemously evil?



Promote, but not foster. They can put the message out there but they are in no way in control of how that message is accepted and/or interpreted. It might be their goal to spread the message "Tolerance is good", and they do a good job of it, but they aren't programming people to be more tolerant merely by spreading the message.

That said, there are going to be people who do just as you suggest: take the "philosophical message" of the comic book to heart... or at least play at doing so. Most people who do so, have other problems of one sort or another. I refer to those pathetic living stereotypes at SF and Trek cons that everyone and their brother jokes about because they are real if you want a concrete example.

Personally, I think a person who takes their philosophy for living from a comic book... even a well-written, rational comic book that is being written with a noble cause in mind, has big, big problems.

[Worldmaker]

Attn: Worldmaker


If you do not believe that psychological conditioning is not possible through repetative expersises I point you towards your nearest military training facility.

Any psychological condition can be "trained" into the human brain .. you just have to find the right set of buttons to do so.


Been there, done that, still have the bullet-wound scars to show for it.

You are now arguing apples and oranges. Military training, where the subject is under constant supervision in a high-pressure closed environment with no escape valve is quite different than four to six people gathering around a dinner table once a week for four hours. The two situations are so drastically different that your comparison is laughable.

A person who reacted to the latter situation as if it were the former has more problems than merely being susceptible to any sort of "racist philosophy" you people are imagining exists in the RPG material.





If it's not an issue with you and you don't want to take the time then stop insulting Agemegos and his theories until YOU prove that what he says is wrong. The burden of proof can fall both ways.

Heh. Right. Two things. Well, two and a half things.

1. I never insulted Agemegos. I don't know the man, but he seems to be intelligent and is certainly eloquent and I have no reason to be personally insulting to him.

1a. I said his theories were laughable and the support for those theories weak at best. This is an honest appraisal based on the so-called evidence he's provided, and is thus a proper critique of his hypothesis. His theory... note the noun in this sentence please... has yet to be supported by any probative data, and until such time as it is I will continue to be skeptical.

2. Its not up to me to prove that he's wrong. Its up to him, as the person making the statement in the first place, to prove himself right... and sorry to say he's got a long, long way to go because so far all he's posted is questionable research, facts that can be interpreted any number of ways, and repeated rewordings of his original theories.



(and before you start calling the theories pseudo-scientific crap again, remember that we once thought that way about anyone postering the idea that the world was round, bacteria made people sick and flight was possible).

And that changes what, precisely? You are now saying a = b, c = b, therefore d = b. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

[Doug McCrae]

Its not up to me to prove that he's wrong. Its up to him, as the person making the statement in the first place, to prove himself right... and sorry to say he's got a long, long way to goWhat sort of proof do you mean? A scientific proof in the sense that smoking has been proven to cause cancer? Obviously that's impossible as no studies have been done in this area. You know this, I know this, everyone involved in the debate knows this. So why are you asking for proof?

[Worldmaker]

What sort of proof do you mean? A scientific proof in the sense that smoking has been proven to cause cancer? Obviously that's impossible as no studies have been done in this area. You know this, I know this, everyone involved in the debate knows this. So why are you asking for proof?


Oh, this is good. You're rebuking me for not taking your hypothesis on faith. What, are we in church now? Excuse me for having a sense of skepticism and a working cerebellum.

[Doug McCrae]

Oh, this is good. You're rebuking me for not taking your hypothesis on faith.You shouldn't take it on faith. You should take it for what it is, an interesting idea for which there is some evidence but no proof. Providing counter evidence, as has been done, is perfectly appropriate. Demanding proof isn't.

[Worldmaker]

You shouldn't take it on faith. You should take it for what it is, an interesting idea for which there is some evidence but no proof. Providing counter evidence, as has been done, is perfectly appropriate. Demanding proof isn't.

Congratulations on the working cerebellum, by the way.


Here's the thing... I don't think there is any evidence supporting the hypothesis, have said so, and have provided counter-argument. You're the one trying to convince me otherwise, so the burden of proof is on you.

[Doug McCrae]

I don't see it that way. If we are trying to convince you that evil races promote racism are you not equally trying to convince us that they don't? I don't see the burden of proof falling on anyone.

[Worldmaker]

I don't see it that way. If we are trying to convince you that evil races promote racism are you not equally trying to convince us that they don't? I don't see the burden of proof falling on anyone.

That's not how intelligent discussion works. You put forward a hypothesis, you have to support your statement.

[Doug McCrae]

It has been supported, just not proven.

[Worldmaker]

It has been supported, just not proven.


Right, and I find the support that has so far been offered unconvincing.

[dbsousa]

[wading into a conversation that I know I should avoid]
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart?"

The problem with races that are "evil because they are evil" is not that they promote racism in otherwise pure minds. People are tribalist by nature, and assign evil traits to those outside the tribe with abandon. The problem with evil races in fiction is that it accepts this tribalism, and feeds it back to us without processing it. "Evil races" are 2-dimensional by design, and are a poor excuse for actual characters. In gaming, they are lazy storytelling, and a shortcut I try to avoid.

Had Tolkein written the Lord of The Rings about Aragorn, a noble human who rallied his troops against an unfeeling horde of inhuman beasts, led by a personification of Evil, few would remember him, except as a hack. Instead, he wrote about a little man who had to struggle with his own demons, knowing that in the end, his failure almost destroyed the world, except that his merciful decisions earlier saved him.

Evil Orcs don't make people racist. But anyone who gives any thought to the true nature of evil in the world will be bored, bored, bored, by them.
[/wading into a conversation that I know I should avoid]

[proditor]

Sidenote from before on Martial Arts. The question was..."Why? Do you rehearse angry thoughts and unprovoked lashing out in your martial arts classes? Or do you rehearse calm self-control and defensive use of force?"

Well, neither really. Most of the arts I've taken are "Hard" or "Hard/Soft" styles like TKD, Goju-Ryu, Kenjitsu and some basic self-defense. In those, There wasn't a lot of introspection, more of a do it 10000 times until the move becomes muscle memory. However, all 4 also had the emphasis on what a good "Kiai" could do in terms of force and the application of it. Self-control, yes. Calm? Not to my perception. Defensive use of force? Hardly ever. One of the patterns for Goju-Ryu had no less than 12 groin strikes and 6 throat strikes and it was very very clearly a take an opponent out so completely that they will never ever get up again type of thing.

I won't say that each of these styles didn't have some introspection and inner reflection (With the exception of the self-defense course) but once the "bell" sounded, you put on your war face, harnessed that adrenalin and tried as hard as possible to put the other guy down.

I think that there is a perception about martial arts that is just not universally applicable and that is about spiritual enlightenment. It is there for many of the styles out there, I found some great inner peace with Kenjitsu, but it is also absent in many of the more modern and lethal styles like Krav Maga.

All of that said, I'm still much calmer and more willing to think/talk my way out of a confrontation when I'm taking classes. YMMV though.

[cyst13]

Speaking as some one on the 'Yes' side of this debate, I have to say that Worldmaker has been correct in his recent posts. Those of us who agree that 'evil races' in games is not only a racist concept but possibly promotes real life stereotyping in some gamers have the burden of proof on our shoulders. We are the ones positing a hypothesis which contradicts what most gamers already assume to be true. Worldmaker, Gunrunner and the others who are on the 'No' side of the debate are supporting the status quo. They do not have to prove their argument. They only have to critique our argument, should they wish to do so. If the 'Yes' argument is ever accepted to be true by the majority of the world's gamers, it will then be incumbent upon those remaining in the 'No' camp to support their position. Until that time, those of us in the 'Yes' camp have to provide the best evidence and arguments possible.

Worldmaker also makes another good point. As eloquent and articulate as Agamegos has been, he has not offered evidence in a refutable manner. Specifically, if this debate were to be conducted at a professional level, it would be incumbent upon anyone offering evidence from behavioral psychology to footnote exact studies to support one's claims. That would allow those in the other camp to refute those studies on their merits. As it is, those reading Agemegos' posts have to rely on his authority and assume that he is interpreting the evidence to which he refers correctly. Since none of us actually knows anything about Agamegos, there's no reason to believe he's infallible.

In his defense, this is not a professional forum. None of us are being financially compensated for our time spent on these boards. And to expect Agemegos to sacrifice significantly more of his personal time to scrupulously researching and footnoting his arguments is more than can be reasonably expected of a person who is not being paid.

I don't think the 'Yes' camp will be able to prove or even strongly back up our argument with evidence in the course of this thread. Herogames.com is really not the appropriate forum for scientific progress. Hopefully, though, these arguments have helped to clarify the thoughts of all the participants, whatever their final opinions might be.

[Vanguard00]

Herogames.com is really not the appropriate forum for scientific progress.

Not that this has stopped you from posting thread after thread of potentially-inflammatory questions under the pretense of "in relation to gaming".

Personally, Cyst (and the name is appropriate), if you want to ask your questions, ask them in the NGD forum and ask what you want to know. Twice now I've seen you come right out and say that your reasons for the questions you ask actually had little to do with the games or genres in which you posted them. I'm sure there's more, but I don't read 'em all.

I don't think you have an "agenda" in the malicious sense, but you're not representing your reasons for asking the questions you do with any sort of integrity. You continually throw out additional questions to promote or incite some sort of given response. You take the intellectual high ground but won't let the issue settle. That's the mark of a troll to me, however intelligent and educated he may be.

Regardless of whether you think RPGs promote racism, my suggestion is to quit fanning the flames. I do not believe you represent roleplaying or gaming in general in any positive manner, and I for one don't appreciate your presence on the genre threads.

[Sylevus]

If I place evil gods vs good gods in a battle for the universe, and mortals cater for the favor of one side or the other and allow themselves to be manipulated as part of a greater battle, how is this plain jane vanilla stereotyping?

If Ugror the Orc pledges his life to Gruumsh and commits acts of violence and rage against civilized lands for the promise of power, wealth, or pleasure.... then is it not fair to say that Ugror and his people are evil? I am sure if you catch Ugror in a position where he does not have the upper hand he will be ever so much more reasonable and accomodating, but that is only so long as he believes you have the upper hand. Should you believe every excuse he makes for his behavior? Should you go out of your way to invent excuses for his behavior? Or do you stand up to it? If his being nice is only a matter of momentary powerlessness how do you trust him for the future? Can you? Should you? When your descendants are cursed with his actions and hate will you then regret your mercy? Will his ability to beg off of his actions and claim to want to be better, while all the time building himself up stronger embolden others to stand up the same?

I hope you can see an interesting parallel here.. Good people must be strong to stand up to evil people. Once you have identified them, you must find a solution to the problem. Greed, jealousy, religious hatred... all of these things are in our face at the moment. Giving wealth will not give respect, instead it just gives power and strength to people obviously willing to use it wrongly.

So I for one will make sure that evil is shown for what it is, and reward the heros in my campaign for being strong enough to stand up to it!

[Beetle]

In an attempt to come at this topic in a different way, I would pose a question to all those who answered 'no' to this thread's title.

Do you think creators of fantastic fiction can use imaginary groups of 'people' to foster real life tolerance towards others in their audience?

Specifically, I'm thinking of X-Men and Star Trek. Both these series have specifically intended to encourage their audiences to be more tolerant through the examples of their characters. Both Professor X and Jean-Luc Picard are the moral voice of those series, and they actively enourage us throughout the series to treat all others with tolerance. Is it possible for this to have any affect on how people who read/watch these series act and believe in real life? If you answer yes, then why doesn't the opposite hold true in treating orcs as homogemously evil?Interesting question, but I'm not sure that it really applies. In the case of Star Trek and X-Men, the authors are deliberately creating situations with real-world counterparts. In other words, they are intentionally creating in their works a fictional variant of real-life situations with the purpose of making the reader think. That's not usually the case in a fantasy RPG.

[Beetle]

[wading into a conversation that I know I should avoid]

The problem with races that are "evil because they are evil" is not that they promote racism in otherwise pure minds. People are tribalist by nature, and assign evil traits to those outside the tribe with abandon. The problem with evil races in fiction is that it accepts this tribalism, and feeds it back to us without processing it. "Evil races" are 2-dimensional by design, and are a poor excuse for actual characters. In gaming, they are lazy storytelling, and a shortcut I try to avoid.

Had Tolkein written the Lord of The Rings about Aragorn, a noble human who rallied his troops against an unfeeling horde of inhuman beasts, led by a personification of Evil, few would remember him, except as a hack. Instead, he wrote about a little man who had to struggle with his own demons, knowing that in the end, his failure almost destroyed the world, except that his merciful decisions earlier saved him.

Evil Orcs don't make people racist. But anyone who gives any thought to the true nature of evil in the world will be bored, bored, bored, by them.
[/wading into a conversation that I know I should avoid]Hey, we all knew better than to get involved with this, it just didn't stop us. (Maybe WotC can use involvement in this thread as an example of the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom in their next edition... :p )

Interesting point about Tolkein. I'm re-reading LotR beginning to end for the first time since high school. While I'm enjoying the story and the language, I do find myself wondering what the Gross National Product of Mordor is. How does Sauron feed his troops (does he trade with the Haradrim?)

Lawrence Watt-Evans has a list of "Rules for Fantasy Writers" one of which is that evil people don't believe themselves to be evil. Everybody thinks he's in the right (something he uses to good effect in his novel "Touched by the Gods")

[cyst13]

Vanguard00,

Of all the people who've posted disagreements with my positions on these boards, you're the first and only one to explicitly say that I do not have the right to do so. If I had not started this thread or others, then all the posters who contributed enlightening and stimulating thoughts to them would not have had the opportunity to do so. I do not believe the RPG community is in any way the worse for my having posted threads to these boards. Nor have I ever admitted to having nefarious ulterior motives. If my thoughts have evolved throughout the course of a thread, that's a natural result of participating in a debate.

If my opinions are truly noxious to you, might I suggest that in the future you ignore all threads bearing my name?

[Worldmaker]

Of all the people who've posted disagreements with my positions on these boards, you're the first and only one to explicitly say that I do not have the right to do so. If I had not started this thread or others, then all the posters who contributed enlightening and stimulating thoughts to them would not have had the opportunity to do so. I do not believe the RPG community is in any way the worse for my having posted threads to these boards. Nor have I ever admitted to having nefarious ulterior motives. If my thoughts have evolved throughout the course of a thread, that's a natural result of participating in a debate.

If my opinions are truly noxious to you, might I suggest that in the future you ignore all threads bearing my name?


Aw, he's all right... he's just being Dave.

[Vanguard00]

Vanguard00,

Of all the people who've posted disagreements with my positions on these boards, you're the first and only one to explicitly say that I do not have the right to do so.

Whoa there, Sally. I never said any such thing. I would never say any such thing. You ought to look up the word "explicitly", cuz I don't think it means what you think it means. I didn't even disagree with your position. You, like another, need to not put words in my mouth and just read the words on the page.

What I said was, I don't believe that you contribute to roleplaying or gaming in general in any appreciable fashion with these questions, and that I don't appreciate your presence on the genre threads. I also suggested going to NGD and posting your questions there without the veneer of "as it relates to gaming".

Go back and check my post. That's what I said. Honest. I'll wait...

My opinion is as good as any other on this board and I expressed it after watching you continually direct the thread into (potentially) increasingly inflammatory areas. I maintain that belief. Being my belief, it is never wrong. It can be misguided, based on a false premise, changed at a later date, but never wrong. It's what I believe right now, and it's perfectly valid.


If my opinions are truly noxious to you, might I suggest that in the future you ignore all threads bearing my name?

I'm a curious sort so I had to check at least a couple of 'em out. This is one I followed all the way through, just to see if my theory bore up under scrutiny. It does. I might not ever say anything again, having spoken my piece here. Ignoring you is certainly an option, of course, but I don't think it's come to that yet.

It's my belief that in the common usage on discussion boards, and based upon what I've seen so far, that you're a troll. A well-spoken and seemingly well-educated troll, and perhaps untintentionally so, but your questions are all geared towards inciting heated debate, something which usually quickly disolves into flaming as buttons are pushed. Your questions about women, race, etc, seem highly inflammatory, and in the context in which you present them they seem to have only the thinnest relationship to gaming, and virtually none at all the Hero System genre boards in which you post them.

I can't do anything about your presence here but come right out and say that I don't appreciate it. That's it. That's what I came to say. I can't do anything more than that. It's not my place to, nor would I have it any other way. I do, however, have the right to say such, and I felt it appropriate, so I did.

[Vanguard00]

Aw, he's all right... he's just being Dave.


Hrm...I have no idea how to respond to that. :think:

[Doug McCrae]

I've found cyst13's threads to be extremely interesting. A little heated perhaps but that's perfectly understandable given the subject matter.

I certainly don't think he's a troll. He just wants to talk about subjects that interest him.

[Doug McCrae]

Tonight I've been writing up a history for a fantasy world, which purely by coincidence (honest!) is quite strongly racist.

I've got a first race of men who were created by the gods - superior to the men of the current era (and the races that arose in the intervening period) in every respect. However they interbred with other races of men that sprung up (my history doesn't say how these lesser races came to be) diluting their racial purity. This led to moral weakness and the first race were destroyed by the gods in a great flood.

Now if that's not racism I don't know what is. It's straight out of Theosophy and Nazi mythology (with its story about how the Jews deliberately interbred with the Aryans to dilute their racial purity). Admittedly I don't say whether any of the races were black.

[badger3k]

On a similar bent, there's a webcomic I'm reading - Elf-Only Inn.

Sounds good, right? Well, the name is the name of a chat room. Obviously, the room is not Elves-Only. Here's one with surface elves, dark elves, and racism?

http://www.elfonlyinn.net/d/20040413.html

[badger3k]

Here's one a few pages later:

http://www.elfonlyinn.net/d/20040503.html

[Doug McCrae]

Elf Only Inn:

No Dwarves Or Irish

[dbsousa]

If Ugror the Orc pledges his life to Gruumsh and commits acts of violence and rage against civilized lands for the promise of power, wealth, or pleasure.... then is it not fair to say that Ugror and his people are evil?

It is fair to say that Ugror is Evil. It is not fair to say that his people are evil.


I hope you can see an interesting parallel here.. Good people must be strong to stand up to evil people. Once you have identified them, you must find a solution to the problem.

I do see the parallel, and reject it. Good people need to stand up to the evil in themselves. You can't identify evil people from good, because the ability to do good or evil exists in each of us.

As this pertains to Gaming...
I have been thinking about this topic long before I read the thread. In my post apocalyptic fantasy game My group's characters come from four races (Cribbed heavily from Savage Earth and Gamma World), each with enmity towards the others. My goal, (and I suspect my player's goal as well) is to tell a story in which racial enmity is the evil in the land, and their rejection of it will save the world and all its races.

This is an intrinsically difficult foe to personify, but he will definitely have a kick-ass Laser Beam for an arm...

[assault]

There are two aspects to my answer.

First, the idea that roleplaying encourages racism is on a par with the idea that roleplaying encourages devil-worship.

Second: Orcs in my universe are evil because they were made that way. They have no more choice than robots do. No free will. No capacity to choose between good and evil.

If anything, perhaps, that possibly disqualifies them from being evil, but it certainly disqualifies them from being good.

They are the tormented, insane, slaves of Evil, often with at least some streak of demonic ancestry.

Could a child fathered by an Orc be brought up Good? I don't know. Usually Orcs either murder those they rape, or drag them away to the Pits. Since those Orcs with the greatest element of demonic ancestry are the most likely to successfully reproduce, any such "Good" Orc is likely to be pretty deeply corrupt on a spiritual level.

[Sylevus]

So the question maybe should not be are the people inherently evil. But is the society weak enough to allow acts of evil to go unchallenged. To allow evildoers to reward each other and go unpunished. Does the society enable bad people to gather together and use fear to control the actions of those around them?

The evil orc chief does not control each and every orc. He controls ten orcs who control ten other orcs, and within the community of orcs there may be 100s of individuals who COULD stand up to him, but do not because they fear that they will do so alone and face the tens of tens all alone. The systems and rules of this society do not encourage people to stand together, for the sheer reason that they are put in place to KEEP people from standing together against the leader.

So we try to make the orcs morally equivalent to the elves and what do we get? One society that would rather not fight, but has to for their survival. And one society where the best and the brightest see the only opportunity for reward as pushing the aggression. Assuming the elves can talk to the orcs, what are the chances of finding the 100s of dissatisfied just want to get along orcs, and not one of the tens of tens networked throughout?

The inability and lack of willingness of a society to deal with evil is a problem for that society. We have people in America today telling us we should not confront others because being judgemental is wrong. More wrong somehow than the killing and maiming of innocents. More wrong than removing the source of power for an evil man to allow the 100s of people the opportunity to stand up and reject his evil.

Yet our results are not what we hoped for. The people are not culturally strong enough to repudiate the evil and stand up against the elements who are now trying to redefine the actions of the US as something less than what they are. There are individual of course who are the exception, the brave leaders willing to risk their own lives as part of the government, but how many are there as a stepping stone for their own advancement only? How many in the army merely to feed their families, but not to provide order and security.
The terrorists walk free in most communities. Able to cause fear because the community still does not reject these types of behaviors.

So yes. A race can be prone to evil and evil actions. The culture can allow, encourage, even foment evil actions. And you can not separate these actions from the people willing to let them happen. In our games the heros are supposed to care. They are supposed to belong to a side that is willing to stand up to the very physical AND spiritual presence of evil.

I know playing shades of grey is an interesting topic of debate. But at some point you have to step away from the intangible and see what the results are. The orcs may not be desirous of hurting elves, but they allow it to happen. They allow their anger to be directed that way. THey buy into the hate. And even if the elves Kill Chief Ugror, there is still another Ugror waiting in the background for his chance to lead, and another and another. So what choice do the elves have? Do they hope removing one Ugror gives the orcs the chance to change? Do they show the better example by retreating from his advances and refusing to offer conflict? Do they allow the destruction of their homes and forest?

You can argue shades of grey until you are blue in the face, but at some point in your life when you are faced with the actions of evil men... what will you do? What will you tolerate? How much will YOU excuse? All this debate paralyzing people into inactivity because they doubt their ability to make a difference is a joke. Its a weakness in society that encourages the terrorists to act. Osama bin Laden pushed, and pushed, and pushed again to the point he felt America was weak for the taking. And he is still half right given the amount of people willing to equate our actions in Iraq, and the deaths involved as being equivalent to his actions against New York City.

Misguided or not, our presence in the Middle East has always been intended to protect our economic health and hopefully to be a broker or mediator for peace. Unfortunately we exercise our power only through words, and the cultures in the middle east have a long history of playing with words. So instead of a shield against violence, we become the crutch used by people to commit violence. I believe the Israelis want peace. I believe the leaders of the Palestenians do not.

They use our freedom of speech to bandy around nice speeches about wanting peace while planning attacks against civilians and fomenting racial hatred of their neighbors. The US in the name of peace and regional stability forces Israel to hold back, and honestly forces the neighbors to stay out of the debate... directly. But money and hatred is supplied in no short demand by the neighbors and the willingness of people to stand up for others wanting to take things from those who have them instead of building things better for themselves.

At some point in our times we need to call things what they are and hold people accountable for the results. If the Palestenians want peace, then the Palestenian people have to demand it of their leaders and repudiate those committing acts of violence. The Israelis need to be strong and willing to negotiate, but not torn apart by weakness, hestitance, and a lack of unity. In short they need to show a strength and willingness to do what is right so that their neighbors are willing to do what is right.

[Doug McCrae]

First, the idea that roleplaying encourages racism is on a par with the idea that roleplaying encourages devil-worship.I think roleplaying probably does encourage devil-worship. If the game has references to it anyway. Traveller certainly doesn't. And what's wrong with devil-worship anyway?

The real fraudulent claim made against rpgs is that they encourage suicide. This has been statistically proven to be false. I can't see why they would, given that rpgs don't particularly make any reference to it.

However surely any subject matter has a small effect on the behaviour of the reader or player? I'd say playing sci-fi games encourages people to apply for jobs at NASA. By an incredibly slight and only statistically noticeable factor.

[Worldmaker]

However surely any subject matter has a small effect on the behaviour of the reader or player? I'd say playing sci-fi games encourages people to apply for jobs at NASA. By an incredibly slight and only statistically noticeable factor.


My point is this: why should we, the greater majority who amazingly enough don't have thought processes which follow the "orc = evil means minority = someone to be discriminated against) worry about it?

If an infinitessimal portion of the RPG community becomes influenced by orcs into hating people of another race, then as I have already pointed out they've got problems going *into* playing RPGs. The fault lies in the person, not the RPG, and thus the solution lies in changing the person, not the RPG.

[assault]

Here's how it works: we already have diffences of opinion. If you sit around a table with a bunch of people that already agree with you, your existing opinions are going to be reinforced.

Here is an example:


Misguided or not, our presence in the Middle East has always been intended to protect our economic health and hopefully to be a broker or mediator for peace.
...
I believe the Israelis want peace. I believe the leaders of the Palestenians do not.


I'm not interested in an argument about this.

This, however conventional, is an opinion. It is entirely possible for a reasonable human being to disagree with it.

So, if you want to indulge in shades of grey, then, yes, indeed, "Evil" and "Good" are relative.

Count me down for "Evil", buddy.

But, if you follow the fantasy conventions of supernatural/spiritual evil, this stuff doesn't work.

The real answer is: "don't be a tosser".

There is Good. There is Evil. These are the normal conventions of fantasy.

If you want to play historical fiction, feel free. Then you can indulge your prejudices until the cows come home.

Just don't tell me about it.

I might have to start quoting Tacitus.

[FenrisUlf]

Interesting point about Tolkein. I'm re-reading LotR beginning to end for the first time since high school. While I'm enjoying the story and the language, I do find myself wondering what the Gross National Product of Mordor is. How does Sauron feed his troops (does he trade with the Haradrim?)

Lawrence Watt-Evans has a list of "Rules for Fantasy Writers" one of which is that evil people don't believe themselves to be evil. Everybody thinks he's in the right (something he uses to good effect in his novel "Touched by the Gods")

Well, he did mention the big slave-farms to the south of Mordor proper at one point. And I rather imagine that Tolkien orcs can get along just fine by eating their own weak, wounded, whatever. They were more biological artifacts than an actual race, after all; at least, they were shown as such in the movies.

Which does get around a problem with Tolkien, that 'nothing was evil in the beginning; not even Sauron.' Tolkien did state in his letters that Sauron was 'as /close/ to absolute evil as any being could ever get'. So it seems he felt there were some good traits in even the worst people.

[dbsousa]

So yes. A race can be prone to evil and evil actions. The culture can allow, encourage, even foment evil actions.

Am I right in understanding that you believe that a race or culture can be evil by nature?

I don't want to be accused of misunderstanding. Could you please clarify this statement?

[Derek Hiemforth]

I just want to offer a point that might help clarify a bit of the argument. Philosopher and Worldmaker and others have implied it, but not exactly spelled it out in these terms.

"Evil races" in RPGs do not represent an intrinsically racist concept, for one simple reason. "Race," in the sense RPGs traditionally use the term, is a misnomer, and does not mean "race" in the same sense as we use the term in the real world.

What RPGs call "race" is actually species.

I don't accept the notion of an "evil race" (i.e., an evil ethnic group) in reality, because I don't believe it's possible for humans to be inherently evil. In reality, the word "evil" essentially means "extremely abberant from normal behavior/beliefs/worldview/etc. in a negative direction (more destructive, more repressive, etc.)" Behavior, beliefs, and worldview are not inherent traits in humans... they are not like gender, ethnicity, eye color, etc. They are learned, taught, absorbed from the culture, and so on.

Based on that, I can accept the possibility of a culture of humans that is predominantly "evil"... i.e., a culture that encourages behavior or passes on beliefs and worldviews that are much, much more destructive, repressive, etc. than those of humanity in general. However, even such a culture would not universally produce evil people. Just as there are some individuals in benign cultures who hold negative views, there will always be some people in negative cultures who hold benign views.

It is also possible for me to imagine the existence of a species where the traits of behavior, belief, and worldview are inherent... especially if the species is fictional. I can imagine a species that is hard-wired to act in a manner that would be evil by human standards.

In general, I think the most interesting fantasy worlds blend all of these elements. Humans may have some "good" cultures with evil individuals, some evil cultures with good individuals, and some cultures generally close enough to the norm that they are neither evil nor good, but include good and evil individuals. Some non-Human species may have evil cultures, but some good individuals (and so on).

And some non-Human species might be so different from humans that they innately behave in a manner humans consider evil, and cannot simply choose to behave differently, any more than a fish could choose to breathe air. In Hero terms, the evil of these species would be a Physical Limitation... not a Psychological Limitation. (Assuming the game was centered around non-evil species, of course. Amongst only their own species, it wouldn't be a Disadvantage at all.)

[keithcurtis]

People might want to re-read the posts from the last time this topic came up. It was a slightly different approach which asked more about the possibility of an evil race. It can be found here (http://www.herogames.com/oldForum/FantasyHero/000043.html).

As for what Tolkein said on the matter of Orcs, evil and Christian thought, I'll repost what I did at that time:


From a letter to W. H. Auden 12 May 1965
[Auden had asked Tolkein if the notion of the Orcs, an entire race that was irredeemably wicked, was not hertical.]

WRT the LOTR, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of the orcs is heretical or not. I don't feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief which is asserted somewhere, Book 5 page 190 [1], where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sorts and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable.....

[1] "The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs: it only twisted and ruined them"


Keith "Muddling the topic, again!" Curtis

[keithcurtis]

Only empirical evidence has a small chance of ever changing a person's mind and even then, most likely not; therefore, intelligent debates are pointless. The Internet is littered with subjective thought. It is one great trash heap of reason. There is little value in adding to the pile. I love and hate it all with the same breath.

I love this! It should be a banner above the NGD boards.

Keith "rep comin' your way" Curtis

[keithcurtis]

WRT the actual topic:
I personally don't believe that having a "wicked race" (species) in your campaign will lead to increased bigotry/prejudice in my real life. Nor do I think violent video games will cause me to be more inclined to shoot people, or that cartoons will lead me to potentially suicidal behavior (ie. jumping off cliffs.) I am perfectly capable of drawing a line between the two realities, the "real" reality (my experiences), and the "sub-reality" of a work of fiction.

In the same breath, I do believe that something like the X-Men can cause a person to contemplate the nature of prejudice in a positive manner. The latter is designed to do so. The X-Men often reads like a treatise against prejudice. It is what it is about. It is designed to make you think about prejudice and to form an opinion that it is bad/wrong.
This is not true of orcs. There is no portrayal of orcs in fiction (that I have found), which is designed to promote bigotry, where it is the point of the story. Orcs are a symbol of Evil To Be Overcome, not a symbol of Whom To Hate.

Keith "stop being pedantic and just exercise some common sense" Curtis

PS. Hi Derek, good to see you post!

[Teflon Billy]

In the same breath, I do believe that something like the X-Men can cause a person to contemplate the nature of prejudice in a positive manner. The latter is designed to do so. The X-Men often reads like a treatise against prejudice. It is what it is about. It is designed to make you think about prejudice and to form an opinion that it is bad/wrong.{A little off topic}The only problem I have with the X-Men in this regard is that people take it a little too far. From reading fanfic done by people in this genre (particularly the movie fic) they don't imprint these problems of prejudice on people, they imprint it upon one country. I have not read a fandom that is more consistently cynical and antagonistic towards America anywhere else.

It is extremely troubling to me that people can so easily assume that this country would do such vile things (which I will freely admit it is capable of doing) but can not and does not contemplate that the rest of the world would just as easily, if not more easily, do the same things. Canada and Europe are automatically these bastions of free thinkers who are havens anti-prejudice thinking. That it's only the evil americans (because it isn't just the government, it's the people themselves) that are driving this bigotry.

I think the X-Men's storyline may only be an avenue for expressing their contempt for their country, but I may posit that they may get so in genre with regards to their writing that they don't consider the alternative, that america isn't all bad and europe isn't some utopian fantasy world of community togetherness.

Anyhoo, I've derailed enough, back to your regularly scheduled dialectic.

TB

[Agemegos]

My original question still stands (ok, maybe not original one, but it's in there somewhere) - why should we hold the "racist" elements to a different standard than the violence, magic, gods, slavery, etc?

I don't think we should. I'm not a Jew or Christian, so I'll leave you to fight your own fights vis Ã* vis magic and gods. But I do think that there is a danger in rehearsing belligerent attitudes, and so I try to play characters who use violence only with justification, and try to find not-violent approaches where possible. Of course, this may have something to do with my finding purely tactical games rather dull.

"Be a hero": not just pretty words, but a creed to game by.

[badger3k]

I don't think we should. I'm not a Jew or Christian, so I'll leave you to fight your own fights vis Ã* vis magic and gods. But I do think that there is a danger in rehearsing belligerent attitudes, and so I try to play characters who use violence only with justification, and try to find not-violent approaches where possible. Of course, this may have something to do with my finding purely tactical games rather dull.

"Be a hero": not just pretty words, but a creed to game by.

OK - that's one of the things I was curious of, whether you regard violence, et al, under the same aegis as the race issue.

[cyst13]

Teflon Billy,

This is an off-topic response to your last post. (Hey, we're on page 13; it's bound to go off-topic sooner or later) You're right. While Anglo-Americans have practiced our share of racism (vs. Natives, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, etc.), we've never gone to the absolute genocidal extremes of Nazi Germany, King Leopold of Belgium, the Hutus in Rwanda, the Turks vs. the Armenians, Stalin vs the Ukranians, the Khmer Rouge vs. Everyone, et. al. The difference between us and those other nations, though, is that we Americans theoretically have the power to affect what our government does. It is far more difficult for the average X-Men fan to have an affect on the Arab govt. in Sudan's efforts to eradicate the Dinka.

Some Americans who criticize America may indeed genuinely hate this country. However, speaking as an American who has been critical of this country's policies, when I offer my criticisms, it is in the hope of making our country better. I do not criticisize from a desire to tear it down. The U.S. has promoted a standard of democracy throughout the world that is better at promoting human values than any other form of government. I just want to see us live up to our own values.

[Teflon Billy]

Teflon Billy,

This is an off-topic response to your last post. (Hey, we're on page 13; it's bound to go off-topic sooner or later) You're right. While Anglo-Americans have practiced our share of racism (vs. Natives, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, etc.), we've never gone to the absolute genocidal extremes of Nazi Germany, King Leopold of Belgium, the Hutus in Rwanda, the Turks vs. the Armenians, Stalin vs the Ukranians, the Khmer Rouge vs. Everyone, et. al. The difference between us and those other nations, though, is that we Americans theoretically have the power to affect what our government does. It is far more difficult for the average X-Men fan to have an affect on the Arab govt. in Sudan's efforts to eradicate the Dinka.

Some Americans who criticize America may indeed genuinely hate this country. However, speaking as an American who has been critical of this country's policies, when I offer my criticisms, it is in the hope of making our country better. I do not criticisize from a desire to tear it down. The U.S. has promoted a standard of democracy throughout the world that is better at promoting human values than any other form of government. I just want to see us live up to our own values.
Oh, I have no problem with people being critical of this country, there is just a level of strident pitch to theauthors' vitriol that goes beyond wanting to effect government policies to just holding general contempt for this country.

I also have other issues with X-Men style bigotry. One being that bigotry it isn't logical (in so much that bigotry can be logical). Where is the hatred coming from? The common thread I find most bigotry is an Us vs. Them dynamic and some sort of perceived threat to a persons lifestyle. Whether it be a "dilusion of the race" do to interracial marriage or the loss of economic self determination in the "Jewish Banking Conspiracy" there is something else, beyond the mere differing factors of the people involved.

The most egregious example I find in this is the consistant rejection by the mutants family. The obvious analog is someone who comes out of the closet at puberty. But the level of ostracization does not gernally run to this level, this consistently. There are always aberations of course.

So I ask, where is the unseen force that is pushing this semi-racist hatred for mutants? In the comics you had Apocalypse pulling the strings and you had others. But I just don't buy into the motivations that Marvel has come up with. It doesn't hold up to a critical eye.

[Gunrunner]

Quote by Cyst:

"Do you think creators of fantastic fiction can use imaginary groups of 'people' to foster real life tolerance towards others in their audience?

Specifically, I'm thinking of X-Men and Star Trek. Both these series have specifically intended to encourage their audiences to be more tolerant through the examples of their characters. Both Professor X and Jean-Luc Picard are the moral voice of those series, and they actively enourage us throughout the series to treat all others with tolerance. Is it possible for this to have any affect on how people who read/watch these series act and believe in real life? If you answer yes, then why doesn't the opposite hold true in treating orcs as homogemously evil?"

Good point, and yes I do believe that literature can be used to influence people in this manner and the opposite. I think that a fantasy story with "evil races" is a bad example because it's distance from our reality prevents us from relating with the principles of such a world. That does not mean, however, that a story which does relate closely to our reality cannot be used to influence people in a racist manner. I think if someone had bad experiences with a race of people their whole life and told others about it, it could very likely influence those listeners to think of people of that race in a more negative manner.

At the same time, what can be done? If you feel that people with destructive or idiotic ideas should be silenced, then who in this world do you trust enough to determine what is right and wrong, what should be said or not said? I don't even trust myself for that task and I'm my own greatest fan :) Giving someone or a group of people the power to control which ideas are promoted and which ones are banned is encouraging corruption on a huge scale. By it's very nature it creates inequality.

Cyst, you make an excellent point by asking this question and I'm glad to see that you aren't taking anything I say personally, it shows you to be a reasonable person.

To continue our eternal discourse however, the problems you present will never provide a perfect solution. You may as well try to find the solution for world peace or the eradication of crime. So long as humans live, there will always be war, there will always be crime, and there will always be disagreement. That is the nature of mankind, it is when we accept this reality do we become wiser and realize that we all fight the battles of wars that can never be won. That doesn't mean we stop fighting, but it will give you the peace of mind that you seem to need.

[ghost-angel]

Oh, I have no problem with people being critical of this country, there is just a level of strident pitch to theauthors' vitriol that goes beyond wanting to effect government policies to just holding general contempt for this country.

I also have other issues with X-Men style bigotry. One being that bigotry it isn't logical (in so much that bigotry can be logical). Where is the hatred coming from? The common thread I find most bigotry is an Us vs. Them dynamic and some sort of perceived threat to a persons lifestyle. Whether it be a "dilusion of the race" do to interracial marriage or the loss of economic self determination in the "Jewish Banking Conspiracy" there is something else, beyond the mere differing factors of the people involved.

The most egregious example I find in this is the consistant rejection by the mutants family. The obvious analog is someone who comes out of the closet at puberty. But the level of ostracization does not gernally run to this level, this consistently. There are always aberations of course.

So I ask, where is the unseen force that is pushing this semi-racist hatred for mutants? In the comics you had Apocalypse pulling the strings and you had others. But I just don't buy into the motivations that Marvel has come up with. It doesn't hold up to a critical eye.

the simple social stigma of being "different" is all you need sometimes.

We are, despite claims to the contrary, a country of cliques from small to large. If you are different then you will be persecuted. This country has a massive history of witch-hunting..

The clearest line I could draw to point to a real life analogy of why Mutants in the Marvel Universe a persecuted en masse is McCarthyism, where we persecuted, en masse, people we thought to be Communist. Going to far as to black list a large number of people from several industries.

It's not a very good analogy to be honest, but it is clear that Americans have the ability to hate, persecute and attempt to control those they perceive as a threat to either themselves, their family or their "society/neighborhood"... and we believe what the TV tells us, we really do.

So what's the driving force in the bigotry faced by Mutants in the Marvel Comics? They aren't normals.

There are always expecetions to the rule, and the actual trigger will be different for various people from Jealousy to Fear to Misunderstanding to just plain old Xenophobia and Racism, to being told they are something they aren't.

[dbsousa]

Teflon Billy,

This is an off-topic response to your last post. (Hey, we're on page 13; it's bound to go off-topic sooner or later) You're right. While Anglo-Americans have practiced our share of racism (vs. Natives, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, etc.), we've never gone to the absolute genocidal extremes of Nazi Germany, King Leopold of Belgium, the Hutus in Rwanda, the Turks vs. the Armenians, Stalin vs the Ukranians, the Khmer Rouge vs. Everyone, et. al.I would include our slaughter of the Native Americans and our slaughter and enslavement of Africans among the atrocities above.

[cyst13]

Gunrunner,

Glad to read we're on friendly terms. Don't worry; you didn't hurt my feelings. I expect people with strong feelings to express them strongly. Nothing wrong with that. With a slightly different emphasis, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote in your last post. And thanks for the concern about my peace of mind. I really am a peaceful guy, though (a practicing Buddhist). I've honestly enjoyed this thread. I love arguing the minority opinion!

Teflon Billy,

You're right. Marvel never does explain why the great mass of Americans who have accepted all humans as equals and generally rejected discrimination and prejudice are suddenly gripped with homicidal rage towards mutants. I don't think it would ever be as bad as they portray it. However, if you look at the rhetoric at some of the people freaking out about genetically modified crops and goldfish, it kinda makes you wonder how people would react to GM humans. The comics are primarily aimed towards kids, though, and they have to make the issues into broad caricatures for the kids to pick up on them.

The New X-Men strip written by Grant Morrison does a much better job with subtlety and the strip also goes international to show that prejudice is not an uniquely American quality. Might be worth checking out.

[Worldmaker]

I would include our slaughter of the Native Americans and our slaughter and enslavement of Africans among the atrocities above.


Why is it that no one ever mentions the "Native Americans" slaughtering each other or the Africans enslaving each other when they start talking about atrocities?

[Outsider]

Why is it that no one ever mentions the "Native Americans" slaughtering each other or the Africans enslaving each other when they start talking about atrocities?

Because it would tarnish those people's 'victim mystique' and could even lend a hand to the "everybody is rotten, some are just more successful at it than others" theory.

[keithcurtis]

I think a good case could be built for anti-mutant hysteria. Mutants are not just different, they are <I>powerfully</i> different. Some are individuals who can affect entire governments just by force of will. No society could long endure with such wild cards within it. You think security is tough at airports now, how would you defend against telepaths with an axe to grind?
Any sane governmental power structure that wants to preseve itself would do its utmost to eradicate or control such a group. It's the same reason we don't want private individuals to own thermonuclear weapons. There is no reasonable defense.
Fortunately, there is no real corrolary in the real world that I can think of.

Keith "tough solutions to a totally fictional problem" Curtis

[Teflon Billy]

Teflon Billy,

You're right. Marvel never does explain why the great mass of Americans who have accepted all humans as equals and generally rejected discrimination and prejudice are suddenly gripped with homicidal rage towards mutants. I don't think it would ever be as bad as they portray it. However, if you look at the rhetoric at some of the people freaking out about genetically modified crops and goldfish, it kinda makes you wonder how people would react to GM humans. The comics are primarily aimed towards kids, though, and they have to make the issues into broad caricatures for the kids to pick up on them.

The New X-Men strip written by Grant Morrison does a much better job with subtlety and the strip also goes international to show that prejudice is not an uniquely American quality. Might be worth checking out.
Thanks for the heads up on the comic. I might have to add to my current subscriptions (currently at 5:D)

Which X-Title is it specifically?

TB

[cyst13]

It's just called "New X-Men" and it seriously rocks! There are two large hardcover collections out for it already. I recommend them both. There are like a thousand different X-Men series, so make sure it's the one written by Grant Morrison.

[Blue Jogger]

I think it is fairly well defined in the Marvel Universe.

The MU media protrays mutants are shown doing incredibly violent acts without any explaination on why these mutants are fighting those mutants. And they usually split afterwards, so there isn't anyone saying, "Sorry about this, we had to neutralize Sabertooth. We'll come back tomorrow and use our incredible powers to repair the roads, the broken sewerline, and collateral damage."

It is easy to villainize a group of people that are constantly protrayed as exceptionally violent monsters that destroy everything.

Whenever the X-man does use its power to save people. And gets good press. Then, for a little while, they do seem to get a little slack from the public. Until the next big battle and then its back to "those violent mutants! There ought to be a law!"

There's also the fact that the X-men, despite their actual age, are symbolic teenagers. Nobody understands them, they don't know how to fully control their bodies and have strange and powerful emotions, and they feel like freaks outside of their clique.

[cyst13]

Good points. Though I still wonder why non-mutant superheroes don't get the same flack as the mutants. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four do as much damage as the X-Men, yet nobody calls for their heads on a platter.

[Korvar]

Good points. Though I still wonder why non-mutant superheroes don't get the same flack as the mutants. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four do as much damage as the X-Men, yet nobody calls for their heads on a platter.

There are also terrorist groups of Mutants who do Bad Things in the name of "Mutantkind", which isn't going to endear anyone to them. Plus there's an oft-touted idea that Mutants represent the "next step in human evolution", with the implication that Mutants are going to do to "normal" humans what the Cro-Magnons did to the Neanderthals, with the further implication that this is "wipe them out".

[keithcurtis]

I totally agree, realistically, the government should be just as worried about other supers as mutants. In defense I can only offer two points.

1) Mutants are an easily identified and labeled group. To target the Avengers, we would have to have a broad platform against, mutants, aliens, androids, people too smart for their own good, and Norse-Storm-Hammer-Gods.

2) The X-Men stories are largely about persecution and bigotry, while Avengers stories are primarily about whuppin' bad guys.

Keith "Literary licensed to kill" Curtis

[PhilFleischmann]

I've been thinking about this issue for a long time, and I have more to say than what I'll say here:

So: orcs are evil. Orcs are evil because the Evil Overlord has enslaved them, mind, body, and soul, and makes them evil. After a long and arduous battle, the PCs defeat the Evil Overlord. This is the point at which most fantasy stories end, unfortunately IMO.

The strings are cut. For the first time in many generations (if not centuries or millenia), the orcs suddenly find themselves having free will. They are no longer supernaturally compelled to be evil. Now what happens? Do the automatically become good? I doubt it. They have no concept of what it means to be good. Is there some alternate supernatural force that will suddenly make them good, like a "Good Overlord"? That seems rather silly to me. I think this would be a great place to *start* a campaign, rather than end one. The orcs have to figure out who they are, and what their values are, and how to live their lives, and how to build their society. It ain't gonna be easy. There will be plenty of evil opportunists who will want to become in effect the next evil overlord. Some of these opportunists will be orcs, some will be of other races. "A struggling and confused leaderless horde? Now's my chance!" What will the PCs do? Can they teach goodness to the orcs? Do they want to after all they've been through? "How can you forgive these filthy orcs, after what they did to Rimorob?!" Can they prevent the rise of a new evil overlord?

[Agemegos]

What RPGs call "race" is actually species.

Halfelves and half-orcs are infertile, are they? That'll be news to Elrond and Elros.


I don't accept the notion of an "evil race" (i.e., an evil ethnic group) in reality, because I don't believe it's possible for humans to be inherently evil.

Neither do I. And that is why I am careful not to rehearse judging any people as being evil because of their birth, even in fiction.

[assault]

Halfelves and half-orcs are infertile, are they? That'll be news to Elrond and Elros.

In fact, of course, the situation is a "none of the above". We aren't dealing with scientifically defined species, obviously, but we aren't dealing with culturally defined "races" either.

It's entirely normal in fantasy literature and mythology for radically different groups to be interfertile. The whole demigod thing is the best example!

This isn't something that can be formally defined - "it just is".

As for Agemegos' political scruples - I think you are trying too hard. There is a difference between fantasy and reality.

I'm not going to give you my political resume, but I'm quite happy killing imaginary orcs, or playing with plastic panzers, and then going out and campaigning against racism and militarism. I've been doing it for decades, and I'm planning on keeping doing it for decades.

So, just - chill out.

[assault]

The strings are cut. For the first time in many generations (if not centuries or millenia), the orcs suddenly find themselves having free will. They are no longer supernaturally compelled to be evil. Now what happens? Do the automatically become good? I doubt it. They have no concept of what it means to be good. Is there some alternate supernatural force that will suddenly make them good, like a "Good Overlord"? That seems rather silly to me. I think this would be a great place to *start* a campaign, rather than end one. The orcs have to figure out who they are, and what their values are, and how to live their lives, and how to build their society.

Interesting.

Of course, usually when the Dark Lord falls, most of the Orcs get killed off in the catastrophe, but, yes, there would be survivors.

I guess they would do what they have always done - head for the hills and turn bandit.

The fall of the Dark Lord rarely sees the eradication of Evil as such - just its major focus. New threats usually arise.

So Orcs will usually find themselves either self-employed, or working for a new boss, rather than going into another business.

I doubt they would end up forming a distinct society of their own in any short period of time. In the long run they might, I suppose. In the short term they would probably be stuck with whatever band/clan form they kind of inherit. The toughest/smartest leads, with the aid of a clique of toadies and bullies.

Now, if we go with the idea that the original Orcs were corrupted Elves or whatever, that is, that they are fallen immortals, it is possible that one or two of them may be capable of repenting and being forgiven. But this is pretty much like vampires gaining souls - it can happen, but it's pretty rare.

There is one final conception of what Orcs are, and that is that they are just another bunch of humanoids, who happen to have fallen under the Dark Lord's power. That is, they are essentially just the same as the humans that worked for him. In that case, they could behave in exactly the same way as the latter.

This is the case where they could build a "Good" society.

[Jkeown]

I don't have evil races in Caleon... I never have. The very first Caleon game occured the afternoon I bought the first Fantasy Hero book back in June or July of 1986. Opened the darn thing, read about trolls. Saw they had a 10 INT.

"Huh! ...my Monster Manual says that Trolls are evil, and have "low intellegence." These FH Troll-guys are as smart as normal folks... they can decide for themselves."

That wasn't the exact thought process, but does serve to note the difference between AD&D 1st edition and HERO. That book sorta let me see that I could use the words "Good" and "Troll" in the same sentence. The original D&D material just said they were all Chaotic Evil and left it at that.... FH1 didn't say anything about behavior... just said they were big and ugly, so no players would come across the table at me barking "rules."

Glad I bought that book... yessir... I like it.

[Agemegos]

Why is it that no one ever mentions the "Native Americans" slaughtering each other or the Africans enslaving each other when they start talking about atrocities?

Good question, and very apposite.

Sometimes it may be because those atrocities are not relevant to the point at hand. For example, if I had asserted that Australians never commit atrocities, then it would be a relevant counter-argument to point out some of teh atrocious things some Australians have done to aborigines. Whether aborigines had or had not ever committed atrocities themselves would not be relevant in that case.

But far more often I think that this tendency you note is the result of the interaction of four pernicious fallacies. First, the fallacy of attributing credit or blame for the actions of any members of a group to all the members of that whole group. Second, the fallacy of considering that people are either wholly good or wholly evil, instead of recognising that most people, including most who are really pretty admirable on the whole, do some bad things. Third, the Manichaean fallacy that Good and Evil are two sides that are engaged in a war with each other. And fourth, the fallacy of confounding facts with value-judgements.

I think the fallacious reasoning in this case goes as follows: "If any American indians or African blacks had ever committed atrocities then those whole races would be evil. Fighting against evil people is good, so the US would have been fighting the Good Fight in the Indian Wars. However, my whole point is that the US was committing an atrocity in the Indian Wars. The American indian atrocities therefore contradict my conclusion, and so they must be false. Or at least I ought to suppress them."

I am glad that you challenged this fallacious and racist reasoning, because I fear that the reason methods that people rehearse in arguments about history on teh INterNet they go on to apply in making political (eg. voting) decisions.

[Agemegos]

There is a difference between fantasy and reality.

Indeed. I would never doubt it. But when I read through Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and take stock of the things and people who have influenced me, I become acutely aware that many of my heroes, the people on whom I attempt to model my behaviour, are fictional characters. I suspect that the role of the taste for fiction that exists in the human psyche is to enable us to adopt and transmit cultural norms through story-telling.

[cyst13]

Phil,

I'd actually been doing a lot of thinking about running a campaign along the lines of what you'd described as an analogy of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. In that year, the Hutu govt. organized a propaganda campaign against the minority Tutsi population, trying to convince Hutu Rwandans that the Tutsis were planning to massacre them. While this was completely invented, there was a background to it. The Tutsis were a majority in neighboring Burundi and had orchestrated past massacres of Hutus in Burundi. The Hutu Rwanda
govt. whipped the population into a frenzy of fear and then forced them to massacre 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the entire country.

I'd thought, what if orcs were still around after the fall of the dark lord. They are no longer magically compelled to do evil, but they have not been allowed to integrate into society because of their past reputation. The PCs could live in a city with a minority orc population who are forced to live in slums and do all the shit work for the non-orc population. Then the govt. of the city decides to "do something about this orc problem once and for all." The PCs have to take sides.

Having thought about this, I think it would be important to have the PCs and the non-orc populace ambivalently motivated. The orcs, like any group of people allotted the worst place in society, would be violent and given to crime. Orcs would still be ugly and socially unpleasant by human standards. And most every non-orc member of the society would have lost grandrelatives to the orcs under the Dark Lord. They would still rehearse the tales of the evil orcs. The PCs, perhaps playing town constables, would be put in a position of having to deal with the orcs and they would come to see that the orcs are indeed individuals. Some are more intelligent and personable than others. The orcs would attempt to organize themselves and express their legitmate grievances to the city govt.

This is all still in the planning stages, but I think this idea has a great deal of potential as a way of exploring contemporary social issues through the lens of fantasy. I also think it could be done in a way that the GM would not be moralizing to his players.

[PhilFleischmann]

Halfelves and half-orcs are infertile, are they? That'll be news to Elrond and Elros.
Just a side note: Even though the original intent of the definition of the word "species" was to denote the inability to cross-breed with another species, it turns out to be much more arbitrary than that. First, scientists said that a species cannot produce offspring with another species. When animals of two different species were place together and cross-breeds started to appear, they were faced with a choice: Either revamp their whole taxonomic system which they'd been using for a long time, or change the definition of species. They chose the latter, and the new definition meant instead that two different species cannot produce an offspring that can reproduce. And once again, reality showed that what they were calling species could produce fertile offspring. Most scientists today acknowledge that the line between one species and another is fairly arbitrary. A and B are very similar, but they are called separate species, while C and D are very similar, but are called separate sub-species. Most of the classifications are based more on historical labels than on reproductive ability. After all, few cross-breeds occur in nature without some human intervention, and not all combinations have been tested. If you put dog sperm into a female cat, I don't think you'll get a dog-cat crossbreed, but you can cross a dog with a coyote. I don't know if anyone has ever tried putting human sperm into a female gorilla, and I hope they haven't.

[Agemegos]

Just a side note: Even though the original intent of the definition of the word "species" was to denote the inability to cross-breed with another species, it turns out to be much more arbitrary than that.

Indeed. The distinction between races and species is arbitrary and semantic. That doesn't argue that the supposition that orcs, elves, and humans are of different species rather than different races is a secure footing for any argument,


I don't know if anyone has ever tried putting human sperm into a female gorilla, and I hope they haven't.

I would expect that the first step would be to perform an in vitro fertilisation using a gorilla ovum and human semen and vice-versa, and to allow the zygotes to develop into eight-cell embryos before destroying them. Only if that seemed promising would anyone try allowing the hybrids to develop to term. And when they did the choice of host-mother would be tricky. Really you'd think that a human womb would be a better choice than a gorilla one, to avoid likely obstetric difficulties. So expect gorilla sperm to be put into some sort of political prisoner or member of a hated ethic minority, before human sperm is put into a female gorilla. And by the way, chimpanzees or bonobos would seem like a better choice than gorillas.

You may be interested inthe SF novel Orphans of Creation, by Roger MacBride Allen. This has as its premise the discovery of an unsuccessful attempt inthe Antebellum South of the US to use Australopithecines as a morally-acceptable substitute for human slaves.

[cyst13]

On the species topic, it's true there is a good deal of bleed between close species. Darwin himself said that there would be no distinct point in time when one species evolves into another. The idea of species is an intellectual construct that zoologists placed upon nature in the 18th C. to make it more comprehensible. Unfortunately, it's become so widely accepted that many people now mistake the concept for reality. I think the biggest challenge to the concept of species is that the largest percentage of the Earth's biomass is comprised of asexual microbes. Microbes are classified as species too. But since they (mostly) reproduce by splitting in two, that puts them outside the definition of species.

[Capt JT Kohonez]

Thank you for the sanity.


Oh bullshit. This is the same unprovable rhetoric that says heavy metal lyrics cause suicide, Christianity causes abortion clinic bombings, and D&D causes satan-worship.

No one is going to become a racist because of how the fictional migdilar are "treated". Such people who are inclined to racist behavior will be racist regardless of whether there's a race of bad guys in a roleplaying game because they are already badly wired (if you'll excuse the analogy), not because of the input from a roleplaying game.

[Markdoc]

>>> I would expect that the first step would be to perform an in vitro fertilisation using a gorilla ovum and human semen and vice-versa, and to allow the zygotes to develop into eight-cell embryos before destroying them. Only if that seemed promising would anyone try allowing the hybrids to develop to term. And when they did the choice of host-mother would be tricky. Really you'd think that a human womb would be a better choice than a gorilla one, to avoid likely obstetric difficulties. So expect gorilla sperm to be put into some sort of political prisoner or member of a hated ethic minority, before human sperm is put into a female gorilla. And by the way, chimpanzees or bonobos would seem like a better choice than gorillas.<<<

Even chimps are far enough removed from humans that there is essentially no chance of a viable cross-fertilzation.

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

I'd thought, what if orcs were still around after the fall of the dark lord. They are no longer magically compelled to do evil, but they have not been allowed to integrate into society because of their past reputation. The PCs could live in a city with a minority orc population who are forced to live in slums and do all the shit work for the non-orc population. Then the govt. of the city decides to "do something about this orc problem once and for all." The PCs have to take sides.


This sounds like a really good idea to use as a feature for a campaign world, if not the main theme for a campaign. I'd be interested in hearing how it plays out.

[Captain Obvious]

A thought, in re: cyst13's freed orcs idea --

"Okay, I realize that you lost family in the War of the Darklord. Did you ever think that I might have lost family as well? And don't go giving me 'divine retribution' as your reason for forcing me to live this way. Where were your gods when WE cried out against the powers of darkness?"

Another thought...if the campaign takes place generations after the war, many longer lived races would have members who took part in the fighting. Their biased views would likely color society's views as a whole. Perhaps orcs should have a way of showing that their side wasn't the only one capable of atrocity...maybe orcs inherit some portion of their ancestors' memories, and can "remember" what great-great-grandma saw at the Sack of Fort Blood before she escaped the dwarven suicide berserks. The characters would have their work cut out for them in reconciling these centuries old and very personal grudges....

[PhilFleischmann]

It wasn't cyst13's idea, it was mine.

I don't know how many people know this, but I had heard that the original plan for the Star Wars movies was for there to be nine of them. They start in the middle (which is a classical literary technique which I always forget the name of), showing the defeat of the empire, then go back and show how the empire came to power, then go forward and show the rebuilding of society/the building of a better society. Now the last trilogy has apparently been cancelled. I think that's a shame. I think it could be a very interesting story to answer the question, "You've defeated the bad guys, now what?"

Just about every country in the world has been under some form of oppression at some point in its history. And many have thrown off their oppressors. All these countries have some form of an Independence Day. Mexico has three of them, IIRC. But to me, the far more important question is what kind of a society did they build once they were independent? It's sort of like moving out of your parents' house - it's a great day to celebrate your freedom, but you haven't yet accomplished anything significant with your life.

[PhilFleischmann]

To get back to the topic: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Well, yes, but only in a tautological sense. Let's put orcs aside for a minute. What about demons? They are actually, inherently, and essentially EVIL! Evil is their whole raison d'etre. Is it racist to say that demons are evil? I guess is could be racist, but it's also true! In the real world, racism is a despicable belief, because it isn't true. You can't even draw a real racial correlation with good and evil. But you may be perfectly correct and justified to say that the vast majority of orcs are evil, because they live in evil societies that encourage them to be evil, and place no value on being good. Evil is a real thing, not just an arbitrary label. We call orcs evil, not because they're ugly or smelly, or they eat food that we thing is yucky, or their language sounds harsh to our ears. We call them evil, because they do evil. They kill for fun. They practice human sacrifice and cannibalism. Violence is the preferred method of solving disputes. If you don't appear stronger than them, they'll attack. It you try to reason or negotiate with them, they'll be happy to kill you. That's why they're evil.

[Doc Democracy]

Sorry - completely off topic - please ignore but I was interested...


Microbes are classified as species too. But since they (mostly) reproduce by splitting in two, that puts them outside the definition of species.

Hmmm. Now I'm with you about the species thing. It is a classification thing to make things easier to comprehend and to allow useful generic statements to be made. There is something to be said for it though as many groupings are unable to sexually reproduce across groupings.

However, I don't htink that asexual reproduction puts a species outside of the definition of species. I know of lots of bacteria and other microbes that have both genus and species names suggesting that they do in fact belong to species categories...


Doc

[cyst13]

Phil,

This is a VERY long thread and I don't blame anyone coming to it now for not reading all the posts. As a heads-up, though, the argument made a subtle shift of emphasis about page five or six. I acknowledged that it is possible to create a game world in which it is valid to view entire categories of being as evil (e.g. demons, orcs, etc). The question then changed to "Does pretending that entire classes of intelligent beings can be evil encourage racist beliefs in real life?" If you're interested in the arguments for yes on that question, I recommend starting at about page five and reading the posts of myself and Agemegos. Almost everyone else answered no, in one way or another.

Doc Democracy,

You're right. All known microbes are classified as genus and species. There really isn't much alternative available now. The question, though, is if you define species as a group of organisms that are able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, how does this apply to single celled organisms? They don't interbreed and fertility has little to no relevance to them.

There is a huge range in physical characteristics among domestic dog breeds. If you didn't know better, you might assume a chihuahua to be a different species than a St. Bernard, judging by looks. But since you can cross the two animals and produce fertile offspring, that qualifies them as belonging to the same species. You can't do this with asexual microbes.

Doing DNA testing is slippery also. Little known fact: many microbes can actually establish a tube from one microbe to another and transfer as much as 20% of their genetic material from one organism to the other. This just shows how difficult it is to really nail down microbes into categories. Which, I believe, is intrinisic to the mecurial nature of microbes themselves. They adapt fiendishly fast. Come up with a drug to kill them and a few years later they're all resistant. Are the resistant bacteria now a new species? Who knows?

If you're really interested in this topic, the scientist who first opened my eyes to this conundrum was the biologist Lynn Margulis. She has a number of widely available and accessible popular science books that address issues of microbial lilfe.

Also, I appreciate your enthusiasm for and contributions to the "orcs after the fall of the Dark Lord" idea. (I hesitate to claim it as my own for fear of further offending Phil) I probably won't be able to work on that campaign for a year or so. But it is something I've been thinking about in my spare time ever since the Rwandan genocide. I would definitely need the right players, though. One guy stuck in hack-n-slash mode could ruin the entire campaign.

[cyst13]

The last paragraph of the above post is directed to Captain Obvious. Thanx Cpt.

[Captain Obvious]

Hey, no problem. I just had some juices flowing, and needed an outlet.

And, BTW, sorry for not giving you proper credit, Phil...

[arcady]

People who've seen my posts in past years know I feel very much that 'evil races' are an inheritantly racist concept.

Some time back I took a look at typical gaming fantasy and found in it strong parallels to the American West.

Orcs are often described in the same way American Indians were often described. - dirty brutal warlike savages that kill for no reason, lack intelligence or grace, cannot be tamed, worship dark forces, and 'savage' women.

Today we don't think of them way, but that -is- the language once used for them.

Similar lines can be drawn out in other areas - right down to the idea of large tracts of unsettled wilderness.

When I first saw that, back in the late 80s, I tried to make a setting that flipped it and showed it from the Orc POV, but with the humans, elves, and so on still thinking the same way they did in 'gamer fantasy'.

Today I avoid making any race inherritantly good or evil. The noble savage is as much of a racist stereotype as the savage savage - and I don't need either in my fiction to make it complete.

[PhilFleischmann]

This is a VERY long thread and I don't blame anyone coming to it now for not reading all the posts. As a heads-up, though, the argument made a subtle shift of emphasis about page five or six. I acknowledged that it is possible to create a game world in which it is valid to view entire categories of being as evil (e.g. demons, orcs, etc). The question then changed to "Does pretending that entire classes of intelligent beings can be evil encourage racist beliefs in real life?"
Yes, I know. I was getting to that. I've just today finished reading the entire thread ( :idjit: ).

I am also firmly in the "no" camp. Fighting evil orcs, demons, or migdalars doesn't make me believe that real-world "races" or ethnic groups are inherently evil, any more than playing a wizard makes me believe that magic works in the real world. I don't believe in astrology or numerology or in earth/air/fire/water as the elements even though I incorporate those things in my games.

But at least a few points are getting lost here:

1) Racism is not inherently a bad thing. It is bad in the real world because it is false - the idea that certain races/ethnicities are of less human worth or lower character. If there really was a race in the real world that was evil, would it be racist to say so? Sort of, but that wouldn't be a bad thing because it would be true.

2) I think Agamegos and others are pointing to the wrong thing when they talk about the "rehearsed behaviors." I've never rehearsed racism in a game and I don't know of anyone who has. When I fight orcs, I'm not thinking, "Damned orcs, kill 'em all! They're inherently evil!" I'm thinking, "These are the orcs that have been ravaging local villages, so I'll put a stop to their evil," or "Uh-oh. Orcs are charging at me with weapons drawn. I'd better defend myself." The behavior I'm rehearsing is fighting against evil, i.e., being a hero. Even if I'm thinking unheroically, "These orcs stand between me and the treasure," that still isn't racist.

If orcs were the only source of evil in the world - the PC's never encounter evil humans like Saruman or Wormtongue or the Haradrim - then it might be racist. But I've never heard of a game where that was the case, nor have I ever read a fantasy book where that was the case.

Are you speaking for yourself? Do any of you (cyst13, Agamegos, et al.) feel yourself becoming racist when playing in such RPGs? Do you fear it is making you racist? I don't, and I know that in fact, it isn't. If you do, I'd say that's your personal problem, and I would appreciate it if you didn't assume that the rest of us share that problem.


Also, I appreciate your enthusiasm for and contributions to the "orcs after the fall of the Dark Lord" idea. (I hesitate to claim it as my own for fear of further offending Phil)
Oh, come on. I'm not offended. I just wanted my props. :cool: Often, when I see a good guys vs. bad guys movie, I often wonder about the surrounding events: How did the bad guys come to power? How will the good guys get things back to normal now that the bad guys have been defeated? But that's a little off-topic.

[Doug McCrae]

Another point is that under third ed DnD, orcs aren't always evil, they are now 'usually chaotic evil'. I believe only extra-planar beings such as demons and devils are always evil.

Cyst13, do you think that makes the concept less racist?

[cyst13]

Phil,

I empathize with your gag factor in having to read this entire post. I'm about ready to ignore it altogether myself. After 200 posts, I feel I've seen this argument from every angle there is to see. But you raised a good point. I haven't, as yet, offered an example from my own gaming experience, so here goes:

I was playing in a guy's homebrew fantasy game that had a humanoid race that were basically orcs, though he named them something else to appear creative. All of these guys that we had met had been bad news and were impossible to reason with under any circumstances. When we were visiting one city, we saw one of these "orcs" leaning up against a wall and whistling to himself, minding his own business. The thief w a dagger PC stealths up and stabs the guy in the throat, killing him. When I asked him why he did that, he told me that they were all scum and deserved to die. To me, that's rehearsing racism. And that incident is not unique to my gaming experience.

As to whether I feel myself becoming more racist when I play games with orcs, no I don't. But then I don't have the slightest idea how becoming more racist would feel. One's judgement of one's own personality is notoriously unreliable. I live in Portland, OR, which is a liberal bastion. Other than the skinheads, you'd be VERY hard pressed to find a white person in this city who admits to being a racist. Yet when the DA's office conducted a study of Portland juries, they found that white juries routinely gave longer sentences to black criminals than white criminals for the same crimes. If you interviewed any of the white people on those juries and asked them if they felt themselves being racist when they were deliberating, I doubt any of them would say yes.

[cyst13]

Doug,

Frankly, I'm thoroughly sick of the entire concept of alignments. If you posit an imaginary race or species with roughly human-level intelligence, then the individual members of that species should be capable of acting individually. If there are cultural factors involved that encourage the members of a species to conform to one set of values, that's fine. But those cultural factors should be described. The game should explain why most orcs are driven to act in a way that could be described as chaotic evil. If those conditions were changed, would they continue to be evil?

Stanley Milgrom conducted a famous sociology experiement in the 70s in which he had volunteers administer electric shocks to a human being under the guidance of a professional scientist in a white coat. Unbeknownst to the volunteer, the subject was an actor who was not actually being shocked, but he acted as if he were. If I remember correctly, 60% of the volunteers followed the orders of the scientist and continued administering electric shocks to the point where they had apparently killed the human subject.

I mention that experiement because I think it shows that essentially good people can get caught up in a perverted institution and commit acts which would be considered evil. To show orcs being caught up in such a situation provides nuance to a game and allows the PCs to interact with the orcs in ways other than simply killing them. If the PCs can manage to remove some of the orcs from their cultural institutions or if they can convince orcs within those institutions that they are doing something wrong and they have alternatives, they would be able to save both orcs and their potential victims.

Even if you don't believe that having evil races in a game can promote real life racism (and I'm not fully sure I do), I think it's just a good thing to imagine the PC's adversaries richly with real motivations. Just being evil doesn't cut it for me. Not only does dealing with realistically motivated adversaries allow for a wider range of PC strategies, but it encourages all the real life humans involved in the game to think of creative not-necessarily-violent solutions to the problem of "evil" groups.

This carries over directly to our current war on terrorism. Is attacking terrorists militarily always the best way of stopping terrorism? Or are there non-military strategies that we could use to complement military force that would help solve the problem? This is the sort of creative thought process that RPGs can encourage if they allow for honestly motivated adversaries.

End of rant.

[Doc Democracy]

I've been following this with some interest. As I've said before, I run a group in my local church hall every Thursday and the issue of racism has come up more than once.

Teenage boys seem at times almost inherently racist and I've been using the system to reflect their attitudes back at them. They, as the system almost encourages, choose demi-humans (I'm including half-orcs in that) as characters coz of all teh cool stuff that they get. I tell them as they choose it that the region dislikes and discriminates against demi-humans. Which they choose to ignore due to the cool stuff.

I then reflect their language about other people back at them in game replacing real world terminology with in-game stuff bad mouthing orcs, dwarves and elves. They get really annoyed but I've noticed they are far more thoughtful in their language use real-world than they were before. Hasn't improved their instinctive terminologies though!! :)

Don't know if that is a for or against point...


Doc

[cyst13]

Neither do I, but that is an interesting insight.

[cyst13]

Doc Democracy,

I received your message about discussing species. I don't know how to send private messages, so I'll just say I'm always willing to talk biology. I'm not a scientist, but I try to stay informed. If you start a thread on the NGD board, give me a heads-up. I don't spend much time there and am not likely to notice your thread on my own. Thanks for the interest.

[PhilFleischmann]

As to whether I feel myself becoming more racist when I play games with orcs, no I don't. But then I don't have the slightest idea how becoming more racist would feel. One's judgement of one's own personality is notoriously unreliable.
Racism isn't a matter of personality. It's a matter of values and beliefs. Are you not aware of your own feelings? I heard a story on the radio once about a guy who was mugged by a black guy, and as a result of this unpleasant experience, noticed himself becoming racist. He would start to feel uncomfortable and suspicious of any black person he saw. This is what it means to have an experience "make you more racist."

I have also been mugged, once in my life (more than enough), and the mugger was black. This did not cause me to become more racist at all. Why not? What is the difference between me and the guy on the radio? Simple: I have also had plenty of positive experiences with black people. I interact on a regular basis with black co-workers, friends, and fellow gamers. The guy on the radio admitted that he really didn't know any black people personally. The only direct experience he had ever had with a black person was to be mugged. The cure/vaccination for racism is to expose yourself to other ethnicities, to learn through direct experience that people who look different from you are just people, and not any different in any inherent way that really matters. It has nothing to do with determining the mugger's motives, brain chemistry, or neural structure. Precisely because I'm not racist, I want the police to find and arrest the mugger and throw him in jail. Because I'm not racist, I know that the only significant difference between the mugger and me is the choices we made: he chose to do something evil, and I didn't. He had every bit as much capacity as I do to do good or to at least refrain from doing evil. To grant him leniency because he's black is absolutely racist. It basically says that black people can't help being evil, that they have a genetic predisposition to evil, which is a dispicable, racist belief which I wholly reject!

The same can be said of orcs, demons, or migdalars. If they're inherently evil, then they must be stopped. If they are predisposed toward evil, then we must be prepared to defend ourselves and stop the evil that they do. If they are fully free-willed, then they are fully responsible for the evil they do and must be dealt with accordingly.

If orcs have free will, I would treat evil orcs the same way I treat evil humans. That is the very opposite of racism.

And just because you can compile statistics that show differences in sentencing of blacks and whites, doesn't mean those differences are caused by racism.

So, RPGing with evil monsters isn't making you more racist. It isn't making me more racist. But you still believe that somewhere out there, someone is becoming more racist? You might as well say, "I've never seen a dragon, and I don't know anyone whose ever seen a dragon, but I still believe there are dragons out there somewhere."

Oh, yeah, and about the thief who backstabbed the orc minding his own business: maybe the character is in fact racist. But does that mean the player is racist? If an actor plays a racist character, does that make the actor more racist? If an actor plays a stupid character, does that make the actor more stupid? If an actor plays a highly intelligent character, does that make the actor more intelligent? If a racist actor plays a non-racist character, does that make the actor less racist? If a gay actor plays a straight character, does that make the actor less gay? If a straight actor plays a gay character, does that make the actor more gay? Why is racism the only factor you're concerned about? Isn't the possibility of my becoming more violent more of a concern than becoming racist? After all, there's a lot of combat in these games. What about players who play berserkers or have a Berserk/Enraged? Aren't they "rehearsing" berserk violence?

The idea that the characteristics of characters automatically transfer to the players is contrary to the whole idea of role-playing, IMO. People have been telling stories and playing roles of good and evil characters for entertainment since the dawn of history. When kids play cops and robbers, someone has to be the bad guy. Do these kids grow up to be real-life criminals? The acitivity being rehearsed is the necessary and good activity of fighting against evil. I think the world might be a better place if more people "rehearsed" fighting against evil, if they understood that evil doesn't go away by appeasement or inaction, but by active opposition.

[Agemegos]

Are you speaking for yourself? Do any of you (cyst13, Agamegos, et al.) feel yourself becoming racist when playing in such RPGs? Do you fear it is making you racist?

Well, I never play such games, so the question is nugatory. But I have considerably modified my own cognition and behaviour by rehearsing thoughts (in treatment of depression and a tendency to lose my temper), and I have been astonished at how effective this technique can be. I don't feel calmer or sweeter than I used to, but I never lose my temper and rarely feel angry any more. This was a real eye-opener to me.

And there is some question as to whether I would feel racist when and if I became more racist. There is a well-known psychological illusion in which people (most of us) ascribe our own decisions to rational processes even while acknowledging that others reach the same decisions through errors. When we learn that 90% of people rate themselves in the top 10% for driving skill, or that 60% rate themselves in the top 10% for social adjustment , or whatever, we laugh at the others, not at ourselves.

[cyst13]

At the risk of Agemegos and I seeming like clones, I gotta say I'm with him again on this point. I'm not sure that you and I can ever come to an agreement on this point, Phil, because we have two mutually exclusive views of human motivations. You seem to believe that your behaviors and attitudes are solely influenced by your conscious beliefs. I'm of the belief that most of what we think and do is influenced by emotions and learned responses that are outside of our conscious awareness. I do think the DA study I cited before is valid. Since race was the only significant variable in the cases studied and since they used a large sample, race was concluded to be the determinate in length of sentencing. I don't think the jurors had to be aware of racist predispositions within themselves in order to be influenced by them. This is the reason why judges ask jurors to excuse themselves from cases if they have some prior involvement with a similar case. People can not consciously will away their biases.

While the example you cite of the guy being mugged seemed like racism (and perhaps it was), it may have been that he had developed a phobia of black people. Traumatic experiences can produce feelings of fear in similar circumstances. While this is one possible basis for racism, and can be felt in the form of fear, it is not the only one.

As for the guy who's PC stabbed the orc, I asked him about it player to player. (My PC wasn't there at the time, or I would've stopped him) He was not answering as his character and he saw nothing wrong with what he did.

As for the idea that if orcs are intrinsically evil, they must be stopped: that's true. Again, I'm simply questioning the point of making the orcs intrinsically evil to begin with. It doesn't make for better storytelling. It doesn't have any relation to real life. And it severely restricts the number of options available to the PCs in dealing with the orcs. The notion of intrinsic evil is one of the weakest tropes of the fantasy genre and I think it's past time that we outgrow it.

[Agemegos]

I think the world might be a better place if more people "rehearsed" fighting against evil, if they understood that evil doesn't go away by appeasement or inaction, but by active opposition.

I agree, though I would add the rider that fighting with evil people is not always the best (nor even an effective) way to combat evil. But then in RP characters are by no means limited to fighting as a means to oppose evil. As I mentioned (or at least alluded to) before, I think that RP offers a valuable opportunity to rehearse truth, justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence, and other heroic qualities.

[PhilFleischmann]

I'm not sure that you and I can ever come to an agreement on this point, Phil, because we have two mutually exclusive views of human motivations. You seem to believe that your behaviors and attitudes are solely influenced by your conscious beliefs. I'm of the belief that most of what we think and do is influenced by emotions and learned responses that are outside of our conscious awareness.
Ah! Then allow me to clarify: I don't necessarily think that all of our behaviors and attitudes are shaped by conscious beliefs: I just think that our moral actions, i.e., whether we do good or evil, are so shaped. I may have a habbit of drumming my fingers on the table, which I am completely unsconscious of, and which stems from some subconscious emotion, but drumming my fingers on the table is not a good or evil action. Children often act out on subconscious emotions, but adults usually learn to consciously choose their actions. I may feel like killing someone due to some repressed emotion of which I am not fully aware, but I make the conscious decision not to kill, because I believe to do so would be morally wrong. Can you provide an example of someone doing something evil (or good) without any possibility of conscious control? Apart from children and the insane, that is.


People can not consciously will away their biases.
Another important area where we disagree. My reactions to this statement include, "Speak for yourself," and "So how does one get rid of one's bias, if not consciously?"


As for the idea that if orcs are intrinsically evil, they must be stopped: that's true. Again, I'm simply questioning the point of making the orcs intrinsically evil to begin with. It doesn't make for better storytelling. It doesn't have any relation to real life. And it severely restricts the number of options available to the PCs in dealing with the orcs. The notion of intrinsic evil is one of the weakest tropes of the fantasy genre and I think it's past time that we outgrow it.
I don't necessarily disagree with you on this, but I think I'm beginning to see the source of our difference: I really don't think it's all that important whether or not orcs' evil is inherent. If evil is being done, you try to stop it, regardless of the motivation behind it, or whether it is consciously chosen, unconsciously precipitated, or supernaturally imposed. IMO, IME, and IMG, the motivations of the villains are less important than the responce of the heroes. The heroes are the stars of the show, after all.

Oh, BTW, my "feeling like killing someone" example above, is not directed at you. I'm not upset or angry at you. I think you're wrong about a few things, and we don't have to come to agreement. This conversation has been very long, and quite possibly a complete waste of time, but I've enjoyed it.

[Brilliant Helm]

Just finished reading the Digital Hero article about the evil race of Migdalars. Recently, on a thread about race and gaming, Michael Hopcroft wrote that he deplored the fantasy staple of evil races. Is the idea that an entire race can be evil an intrinsically racist concept, even if the race does not actually exist in the real world? Does the 'evil race' trope encourage fantasy gamers to think in negative stereotypes? Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?

If you look into the origination of evil races you would see some differences. I would guess that Tolkien's Mythology is the best originator. But to understand Tolkien's concept, you have to understand the origin of orcs, goblins, etc.

These races were formed from elves who chose evil, and were changed into orcs by their corruption and the influence of the dark lords.

Thus these races were formed by choice, not by genetics, per se. From the point of the first choice of these races ancestors, came the members of the race that followed. Now we have a problem. Because while the first orcs were formed from the repercussions of a choice, the prodigy were not. So the first orcs were not a racist concept, but on the face of it, the prodigy were.

But this idea only goes so far. Because Tolkien talked about the control of the dark lord Sauron over orcs, goblins and the rest. Sauron was using some kind of mind control on the "dark races." This is demonstrated in the Return of the King book, when Tolkien says the orcs fled being now freed from the Dark Lord's grasp, or some such statement.

So now we have mind control involved. But why would orcs be more susceptible to mind control than other races? Something in the water they drank? Who knows, someone more versed and interested in the Simarillion and Tolkien's Mythology may be better able to explain.


If you do not think the concept of 'evil races' encourages racist thought because this is just pretend, would it be acceptable to run a Earth setting campaign with the 'evil race' being conspiratorial Jews, Yellow Menace Chinese, or dark jungle-cult Africans? These have all been featured in the adventure entertainment of past eras. If you think it's okay to game evil Migdalars and Orcs but not evil Jews, Chinese or Africans, please explain why.

Actually conspiratorial Jews have been used in Hero Games, there was one character named Kabbalah I believe who was a villian. Using one member of a race or ethinicity means nothing in my opinion. It person is judged on their personal conduct.

[cyst13]

For my example, I'm going to choose the same one I've been using. First, though, I'm not talking about committing evil. I think that's a loaded term for the reasons I expressed in another thread. There are two distinct connotations for evil and people rarely bother to specifiy which they intend. Instead, this is an example of people allowing unconscious biases to influence their decisions: the juror example given above. Unconscious biases play important roles in the decidions of jurors, judges, politicians, and scientists. It is common practice for people in all these positions to excuse themselves from their duties in the interest of avoiding unconscious bias. The double-blind method of experimentation was designed specifically to counteract possible biases by the subjects and scientists involved in medical experiments. If evil races in games do predispose players towards stereotyping real life groups of people, I don't think this would likely manifest itself in violent acts. I don't believe even the most violent RPGs promote real life violence. However, this unconscious bias might manifest itself in the decisions jurors make, in voting decisions, and in the friends one chooses. I can't prove this, but that's my hypothesis.

As far as consciously willing away one's biases, it's been shown repeatedly that even well educated professionals who are fully aware of the concept of observer biases continue to exhibit those biases. There is an extensive literature dealing with this in the sciences since it directly relates to the ability to do objective science. Perhaps I'll try to find some studies to cite at a later date.

One of the reasons why I specifically do not like the intrinsic element of evil races is because it severely restricts PC options. I've harped on this before, but once more can't hurt. If an entire race is evil for the sake of evil and they pose a threat to you and yours, all that you can do is destroy them. Sometimes this is the case in real life, as when we fought the Nazis (which, BTW, I support). More often, though, there are other options than military force. With terrorism, for example, while military confrontation is an option and many times a necessity, this usually must be supplemented with non-violent forms of intervention. There is an excellent tome called The Other Path which describes how the govt. of Peru largely conquered the Sundero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerillas/terrorists through legal and economic means. They restructured the economy of the nation to allow the poor to start their own businesses and own their own homes. Once they were invested in the health of the Peruvian nation, the poor were no longer fertile recruiting ground for the Sunderos. Many Sunderos quit the rebel life and joined the civilian economy. That is one kind of intervention to stop an evil (def 1) group that would not be possible against an intrinsically evil race. You can't offer intrinsically evil beings any incentives to stop doing evil. You can only kill them, and then go kill some more of them. This may work for computer games, but in RPGs, it's a real yawn.

I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed this debate, Phil. I'm really sick of it, but that's no reflection on you. I've been arguing this thing for 18 pages now.

P.S: When you admitted to unconscious impulses to do things like tap your fingers, you allowed me to sneak in a reference to a great book about the emotional basis of decision making. Antonio Damasio, a highly respected neuroresearcher and physician, wrote a book entitled Descarte's Error. In it, he gives evidence from his own clinical practice and from experimental research that the state of one's body can influence one's thoughts. He shows how your body in effect creates your emotions. When you feel irritable when your body is tensed up, that affects your decision making process. I can't possibly do justice to the thesis of this book in this thread, but if you are interested in reading a non-hippie book about this topic, I highly recommend this one.