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Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?


cyst13

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Guest Rage379

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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

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Hogwash

 

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' date=' 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?[/quote']

 

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?!?!

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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?

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

The problem with games in which such black-and-white concepts as 'evil races of Gnolls" exist is that' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

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

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

It is a racist concept' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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 [insert nazi propoganda here] 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 really are! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge"

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Also' date=' I would like RPGs to be something more than fun, entertainment, and diversion.[/quote']

 

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.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

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?).

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