Do people of color play RPGs?

[cyst13]

This is an adjunct to the thread about female gamers. Are RPGs a White thing or do they have broader appeal? Fantasy games are still mostly based on European folklore. South America, Africa and S. Asia have rarely been tapped as a gaming source. Is there anything in the way RPGs are presented that would put off people of non-Western cultures? Is the racial-spectrum of gamers broad enough?

Thoughts?

[Vondy]

My group has an 18 year old African American gent. We also have an American Indian fellow in our group.

[Beetle]

My group has an african-american couple and an asian man. There's only been one other time in 25 years of gaming that I was in a group with an african-american, but that probably has more to do with the lack of diversity where I grew up than with whether people of color enjoy RPGs.

[trechriron]

I have one purple male gnome, two green female mermaids, one talking orange male goldfish, and one talking golden male miniature Clydesdale. I myself am a pink male miniature sumo wrestler and my wife is a freckled red-headed female Pixie.

To further break down some of the demi-graphics.

2 are smokers, the rest are non-smokers.
2 are vegetarians, one is a vegan, the rest are typically omnivorous.
There is one Republican and the rest are semi-independent liberal types who vote based on strong personal ecological bias.
3 are avid movie-goers while 2 are avid book readers and the remaining two are simply content listening to the rest of the group talk about movies and books.
One is bi-sexual, one is tri-sexual, and the rest are mostly hetero-sexual with options for further definition after completing psychotherapy.
5 are in Psychotherapy of some kind, four are on prescription medications for various mental disorders, and one has completed Psychotherapy, been cleared of any wrongdoing by the courts, and is currently unable to obtain proper prescription medication as dictated by state authorities.
All are avid gamers, computer nerds, and geeky weird outcasts (as verified by independent authorities).
One is morbidly obese, one is heavy, and the rest are within published weight guidelines for their species.

Note of interest: Nothing gets the conversation rolling like the debate about who is REALLY gold and what part of being gold deserves the gold moniker. Fun times. Oh yeah.

I LOVE diversity in the game-place. Oh yeah baby YEAH!

[neverrob]

Yes, I do...for the last 22 years. I am one of 3 black males I know of that play RPGs.

IMHO, the reasons we don't play is:
1. We don't want to be a geek or an outsider. It is a social death sentence. The peer group is incredibly important. And so is a hard appearance.

2. When I started gaming, there wasn't any black iconic characters, fantasy literature, major black characters in comics or sci-fi. There wasn't much, if anything, representing us.

3. Usually you are introduced to the hooby by a friend or family member. Since you did have a black friend playing, odds are you weren't going to play.

The main reason I started was the Erol Otus covers on the old D&D box sets. I found the images to be evocative and epic depictions of great struggles and unimaginable rewards. It also helped that I was being bused across town to a school for "gifted" students and ran into a guy who would be a lifelong friend. He and some of his family members were gamers and they would invite me to play CoC or D&D. After that I was hooked. I had a hobby I enjoyed and a peer group that was supportive.

Then I rode the bus home.

The black kids in my neighborhood resented me because I was singled out for special treatment. I would get to the local school and go into a special area with the rest of the "gifted" kids to await the bus that would take me to my actual school. And since I was the only black kid on that bus, I would hang around and socialize with the white kids there. This got me labeled as a sellout and token and all the other demeaning labels. Some of the neighborhood kids' parents stopped inviting me to parties and gatherings, because my mom was supposedly "making us white". To make things worse, because of the busing situation, my friends lived several miles away, so seeing them on a regular basis was not going to happen.

But the flip side is also mixed. While dealing with other non-black gamers, I have had to endure casual racism, stereotyping, and gross underestimations of my intelligence. But I love the hobby, so I continued.

It took a strong self image (aided by my mom) and a cadre of great friends to help me continue.


Hope that gave you some insight.
rob

[tkdguy]

I started playing D&D in the Philippines. It was popular there when it first came out. I was already living in the USA when all the negative hype came around. BTW, most of the people I've rp'ed with are people of color.

[McCoy]

Can we define "people of color?" My dad was an Octaroon, my mother is legally White (back when that was a matter of law), but as much Shoshoni as my dad was Black. My sister and I look more hispanic than anything else, dark hair and olive skin. Again, we're both White by law, but were forced to attend the all Black school back in the Bad Old Days.

Haven't actually counted, but seems like there was usually at least one other Black man in every group I gamed with. The group that went on hiatus a couple months ago had another Black man.

[BNakagawa]

I've gamed with people of all sorts of ethnicities. But for the most part, the vast majority of the folks I have gamed with have been white.

This includes the several years I spent in Atlanta.

[KawangaKid]

We do! I started the hobby here in the Philippines (with my classmates who were all Filipino... which means that they could have Malay or Indonesian, Chineses, Spanish, or Caucasian blood running through their veins...).

Endured the bad times (for those who don't know, the Philippines is a very religious country - the 700 club shows saying D&D was demonic made it tough to be a gamer in those times) and tried to keep playing. Then I stopped and went to the U.S. for a spell.

My gaming groups were in California, and had a buncha Americans of European, Japanese, Mexican, Hawaiian, Filipino, and Native American descent.

Then I came back here, and it's mostly Filipino gamers... with a few visiting / resident Americans / Canadians / etc.

[nexus]

I'm black and I've been gaming for 20 or so years. I can definately relate to the "trying to be white" accusations, but they are not as bad now a days.

[cyst13]

As far as defining "people of color"; no, we really can't. There's been a good deal of talk in the biology community in the past few years that the concept of race has little to no scientific validity. Race is self-identified (you or your parents or the community just tell you what race you are); it's not based on objective fact. This has actually caused problems in medicine where doctors need to know whether a person actually belongs to a given race (defined by genetics) in order to determine if they are more susceptible to certain diseases. (eg. Africans and African descendants have a greater susceptibility to sickle cell anemia. Jews have a greater susceptibility to Tay-Sachs disease) Since race is self-identified, there is a statistically significant portion of the population who identify as one race while their genome is closer to another racial category. For the purpose of this thread, I think we should say that "people of color" covers everyone who does not mark the box "White" on census surveys.

[cyst13]

Questions for the African Americans, Philipinos and other people of color who responded: When you play human characters, do you specify that the PC is of your own race? Do you ignore that aspect? Have you ever played White characters, whether to fit in with a White group or just because you wanted to? In fantasy games, have you been attracted to playing non-human characters? Did real-life race considerations play into this decision?

Also, to the guy who grew up gaming D&D in the Philipines, did your group, consciously or not, adapt the European basis of the game to fit in with Philipino culture (eg. social structure, folklore, personal dynamics)?

[cyst13]

Neverrob,

Your post was excellent; very well thought out. One thing that caught my mind was that you said you'd had to endure casual racism, stereotyping, and gross underestimations of your intelligence from non-White gamers. For the benefit of White gamers who may or may not even realize what they are doing, can you please give some specific examples of this? Thanx.

[Kirby]

This is an adjunct to the thread about female gamers. Are RPGs a White thing or do they have broader appeal? Fantasy games are still mostly based on European folklore. South America, Africa and S. Asia have rarely been tapped as a gaming source.
Thoughts?

The last two gaming groups I was in each had one black male in them. At gaming conventions, I've seen plenty of "non-white" males that participate. Thinking on this thread, I don't recall seeing any "non-white" females. I wonder if that is true, or if they just didn't want to go to a 'geek' convention.

My *guess* as to why our fantasy games in the U.S./North America are based mostly on European folklore is that Americans were originally British subjects and Britain being part of Europe. In fact, all the North American lands have been European owned since Alaska was purchased from Russia. (Seward's folley, yeah right!) There have been some attempts to get into the Asia theme, notably L5R. But hey, this is just a guess from me.

[Blue]

My gaming groups have always been caucasian. It's got more to do with where I live and who wants to play than any purposeful exclusion.

In High School there was a sizable number of asian students who played (My High School having been situated in a largely Vietnamese community). But the group I played with were all white.

The group I played with in Chino were all white, despite the large hispanic population.

Of the group I play with now, two members are married to asian wives, but everyone who actually plays is caucasian.

I guess I'm saying that there are plenty of RPG players out there of ethnicity, I've just never had one in a game of mine.