Character Ethnicity

[Supreme]

I am starting this purely out of curiosity. What ethnicities have you played in your characters? Virtually all of my characters have been either generic caucasian, or Jews (which I am - somewhat). Please exclude posting about any characters with non-real ethnic backgrounds (aliens, atlanteans, mutants, etc.). Pardon the rough groupings, but they only allow a maximum of 10 options and there are only 24 hours in a day.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Supreme
I am starting this purely out of curiosity. What ethnicities have you played in your characters? Virtually all of my characters have been either generic caucasian, or Jews (which I am - somewhat).

Mostly Caucasian, but I've also done Thai, African/American, Japanese, and Latino.

The Caucasian origins: Bunch of US, but also Swiss, Israeli, and New Zealand.

BTW, your poll only accepts one answer.

[Supreme]

Originally posted by lemming
BTW, your poll only accepts one answer.
Yeah, sorry. It's my first. I guess just submit your most often-used character ethnicity -- or ignore the stupid thing entirely.

[Hermit]

I think I must have done almost every NPC ethnic option possible, almost. Probably missed one or two. Have done everything from American Indian, to Haitian, to Tawainese national, to Welsh. :)

PC wise, I tend to play Caucasian, born and raised in the United States. It is what I know best and I get lazy :)
Then again, I don't get to be a player often.
*Sigh*

[keithcurtis]

Most of my PCs tend to be Caucasian-ish, but in the course of GMing, I have played all of these as fully-realized NPCs, and many more.

Keith "master of a thousand voices" Curtis

[Starwolf]

I have done native american, japanese, english-caucasian, french-caucasian, Scottish-caucasian, American-caucasian, African-american, and generic caucasian.

[Ghost Archer]

My own characters tend to be 'generic' caucasian except for one Japanese.

[Zeropoint]

Now that I think about it, all of my human characters have been caucasian. No, wait--I've played a couple of Rokugani samauri, who were Japanese for all practical purposes.

With respect to personality, every character that I play is essentially me with a few minor variations. I think that if I tried to play another ethnic group, I'd either create a cliche, or end up playing them like a middle-class, white, west-coast American who happens to look a little different.

Zeropoint

[Monolith]

I have played White, Black, Native American, and Asian. As far as character nationalities I have done American, American Indian, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish.

[Vondy]

I generally play caucasian characters. I also play Jewish characters fairly frequently (I place them seperately because not all Jews are caucasian(North African and Central Asian Jews have different 'racial stocks' altogether)).

I have also played characters of various asiatic races (Chinese, Japanese, etc), and Native American characters.

I did play one Black character (an ethiopian Jew with an Israeli passport).

[Pol Rua]

Whatever works for the character. I do tend to play Irish a bit (my mum's Irish). But I've played American, British (Caucasian), British (Black), East Indian, Polynesian, I've played Brazillian, Chinese, Finnish. I've played an Australian Aborigine, a White Australian, a Russian.
Like I say... whatever works.


_____________________________________
Pol.

[zornwil]

I've almost entirely played caucasians as PC, although my current PC, Blazing Arrow from the Western Sea who Talks to the Old Mule, is half-American Indian/Native American and acts in a blundering way in how he thinks Native Americans "really" are. He was "enlightened" by several peyote trips and although he did gain some vaguely supernaturally based powers (mostly of minor effect) and learned somehow Indian martial arts techniques, he is obnoxiously and wrong-headedly an Indian hero in his mind, so much so his own people have never wanted him around.

Upon reflection it's probably a back-handed reference to my mother's politically correct (in the white guilt/noble superior native culture way) obsession with Indians as I grew up. In general I don't try to do ethnic characters as a PC and struggle with portraying them as GM because I grew up in a very homogenized cauc environment, even though I later lived in much more diverse areas.

[Alibear]

As I play with Germans, they really don't understand if I start to do non standard accents.
I played a Scottish guy once called Mad Mach, a flying speedster with a bad temper, who was fun to play. I could ham up the accent quite well.(easy for me I hear ya say)

"Oh is that right wee man? Do you want tae step ootside an talk aboot it? No? But Ah dae. c'mere you tae me, ya wee shite yae"

[Trebuchet]

My current character is Russian, but the one that preceded her was Greek. My first character was American white-bread.

In our current group we have:
2 American "white"
1 Filipino
1 Bhutanese-Apache Indian (Don't ask!)
1 Apache Indian (No relation.)
1 Russian
1 "Atlantean" of indeterminate ethnicity

We had an android, but I don't think it qualified as an ethic group member. :p

[lemming]

I notice some people listing their NPCs as well. If I included those, I'm not sure if there are many that I haven't.

[Lord Mhoram]

Play mostly caucasion, but have played African/American, Japanese, Native American, Arabic/African guy (went for the exotic look), and am currently playing a future american melting pot with distint african and hispanic features.

Country wise I've played lots of Americans, a Russian, and some Brits.

[Doctor Agenda]

I have run generic white (often), Russian, Hungarian, Austrailian (white), Mexican, Japanese (Bushido and L5R) and mixed. I tend to run non-white characters as mixed white (eg, Eurasian, half-Native American, part African-American) perhaps because I'm too lazy for the effort required to portray them sensitively without the safety net of "well, he's part white so any lack of authenticity comes from his mixed heritage". The most diverse game I've been in was a weird Old West with BESM rules (eccentric?) where the GM mentioned race issues would be touched on. We had a generic white cowboy, gw gambler, gw gunslinger, a mute Chinese immigrant Mistress of Kung Fu, and an Octaroon who turned completely Black (and back again) whenever he became angry because his African ancestor was the irrepressible Chango the Thunderer. This last guy (The Creole Kid) was mine, and maybe he is an example of the TV Sci Fi issue where "sure we have black men on our show as long as they have bugs on their heads, weird visors, pointy ears, a big energy spear (!), or spikes on their arms." Playing other ethnicities is tricky: play a stereotypical elf and no one blinks, play an African American and how you do it may reflect (consciously or unconsciously) or be perceived to reflect your real racial attitudes.

[Chaosliege]

I've played Caucasion-Generic, Russian, British, Chinese, Japanese, African American, and of course Alien.

[Patriot]

I am Caucasian (of ukrainain german,and croatian decent)
Patriot (Dr. Dan Hunter) is caucasian of english decent
BlackBanshee (Timothy Black) is of African american decent
Cheif Rising Storm is an american indian
The Knight Owl (Alexander Shollars) is caucasian of german decent
in order they are
An unemployed chef
A medical doctor
a unemployed teacher
an indian shaman
A city councilman

[farik]

The trouble with the polls is you can't make more than one selection
I picked Chinese
but I've also played
Caucas
African American
Hispanic
and
Tibetan

[Fuzzy Gnome]

Caucasian mostly (American, Canadian, and Prussian)
Chinese (Shampoo clone)
Oh yeah, I played a half Japanese half Finnish character in Streetfighter. Refer to somebody's comment on some other thread about how Japanese and Finnish sound similar if you don't understand them.

[McCoy]

Caucasian, American and European; Nisei (American born child of Japanese immigrants); Native American, Shoshoni, Navajo, Cheyenne, and Apache; African-American; African-African; Middle Eastern; this does not include NPC's.

Humm, no Latins that I recall.

[Ron]

I'm caucasian and so are most of my characters, originated from several countries. However, I've already played a hispanic superhero (Puerto Rican) in a Champions campaign, a Portuguese jew in a quasi-historical campaign in XVII Century Brazil, an african inspired mage in a GURPS Fantasy game, an arab (Sirian) in a Star Trek game, a few orientals (mostly samurais, thus Japonese, except for a definitely Chinese inspired mage) in D&D's Oriental Adventures and Sengoku and perhaps a few more I am not remembering right now.

[Tasha]

Mostly white characters. Although I have played Japaneese, African-American, Scottish, English, German.

That of course leaves out Fantasy Races, Artificial Intelligences, Intelligent Animals and of course Aliens (not all based on Primate evolutiion)

I try to play what I know. I feel really uneasy playing other real world races. I don't want to offend someone if my portrail is based on stereotyping, or played somewhat white. So I keep it simple.

Tasha :o

[MuscaDomestica]

Right now
Ars Magica, Russian Mage, Russian peasent girl and Polish Jew
Fantsy Hero: Well... Centaur not a real world race
Changeling: (ending) White, very pasty white, also he is a caucasion.
Exalted: (starting this week) Obviously Chinease
Shadowrun: Old character, Costa Rican, New character American born Japanese.

[Solomon]

I mostly keep to "white" ethnics: I don't usually feel confident playing cultures I have little practical knowledge of, unless the setting somehow warrants it (ie Rokugan).

Most Superheroic campaigns I have run were based in America, since Superheroic comics are such an American thing. As a result, most Champions characters I have run or GMed were Americans; either Caucasian, African-American, Chinese-American or Nippo-American. Non-americans include Italians, Latino-Americans (Chile, Argentina), English, French.

Other modern settings: mostly Italians, with a few French, British, Scottish, German, American or Spanish ones.

[Deejmeister]

Funny story from an actual (Shadowrun) char-gen session:

Erick (GM): "What's (the race of) your character going to be this time?"

Greg (Yurok Indian): "Probably a Sioux, or from the SS council."

[after Greg goes home...]

Erick: "That Greg, man, all his characters are indians."

Jeff: "Well I don't know, I usually play white guys..."

Erick: "Oh... I guess you're right..."

I am of the opinion that players usually play characters that they can relate to, often without thinking about it.

[Jhereg]

I find most of my actual roleplayers (as opposed to roll-players), like a break from their own ethnicity. They play ethnicities differing from their own about 1/2 the time. I think a player branching out in that regard is a sign of character depth.

My current Star Hero campaign is a first, as there are no whites of American descent among PC's We have:

2 Russians (brothers)
1 German
1 Middle-Easterner (Psionic)
1 Alien

[Agent X]

I've role played about half those on this list.

[Doug McCrae]

Mainly I play Caucasians. Once I was an Australian aboriginal and one time I played a Jew but that's it. I do have a lot of female PCs though.

[Snarf]

In my last game, one of the PCs was Japanese and the other one was Romani (modern day gypsy). I think that's an ethnic group...

[Michael Hopcroft]

I've played at least three Japanese characters. Mostly this is because I've played in quite a few anime-centered games.

One of the more amusing examples was when I played a naive young magical girl in a comedy campaign who ekpt getting the meanings of words confused. She frequently got kawaii ("cute") and kowai ("scary") mixed up. She was also incredibly naive. the campaign broke down when the Gm cheated blatantly in my favor and everything ended in massive acrimony 9one of my character's trope's was that nothing she did ever worked the way she wanted it to -- ever.)

[KawangaKid]

In the U.S. I used to play a fair number of Filipino characters in the games that allowed it.

Over here in the Philippines, I seldom do that...

[BoneDaddy]

Mostly American white guys
One Jamaican black elf (physad, Shadowrun)
One Russian ork (StreetSam, Shadowrun)
Various Native Americans (Shadowrun, and the unenvied Flaming Justice, an early Champs hero)
A Japanese or two (5, if you count the clones...)