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Where are all the minorities in fantasy?

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  • ARKdeEREHARKdeEREH Member Posts: 531
    I usually play as black half-elves with white portraits. More recently I have been playing with Sendai's portrait, but that requires me to play as a female character, which is okay since it's something different to try, but in general I like playing as a male since I can then romance people other than Anomen.
  • Corvus_MetusCorvus_Metus Member Posts: 19
    Most fantasy isn't racially diverse because most fantasy is Eurocentric and based on the historical middle ages. Authors could include minorities, but in many cases, they risk becoming the "token" character - a concept I believe is a lot more inherently racist than exclusion because nine times out of ten that said token black/Asian/Latino character become a stereotype.


    Secondly, forced diversity tends to be racist as hell, even if its unintentional. As someone who was was an avid player of the World of Darkness table-top games and there were a lot of cases of really bad ethnic stereotyping when it came to minorities - and even Italians!

    Now, I don't think they had any real ill intent despite the fact that the majority of their black male characters came off as the average "gangsta" from a cop show. However, it does show that being racially inclusive for the sake of being racially inclusive and using another's culture without really understanding it can lead to problems.
    Kitteh_On_A_Cloud
  • ARKdeEREHARKdeEREH Member Posts: 531
    @Corvus_Metus I was thinking this would be more in terms of allowing the PC to be someone from a different race, since there are already some non-white characters in the game such as Viconia, Yoshimo, and Valygar. Right now there are no player portraits if someone wants to be a non-white male character who is anything other than human and female non-white characters can really only choose Viconia's portrait. I think it would be nice if there were some additional portraits available that aren't associated with existing NPCs and that have different skin tones, and are also of both sexes of dwarves, gnomes, elves, etc.

    Since this would be the PC and not an NPC, it wouldn't really be a stereotype since you choose whatever your character does. You would just have more choices in terms of character generation.
    Kitteh_On_A_Cloud
  • LadyRhianLadyRhian Member Posts: 14,694
    Even in Science Fiction Games. If you have ever played Master of Orion 2, there is a race called the Gnolams. They are short, darkish and have huge pointy noses. The music for them is middle eastern Jewish in style. And their race's bonus comes in raising money. Yep, they are the space Jews... And their name is very similar to "Golem"...

    Meklars remind me of Boo:

    Anybody ask for sexy blue Elf women? Elerians got it covered.
  • Corvus_MetusCorvus_Metus Member Posts: 19
    ARKdeEREH said:

    @Corvus_Metus I was thinking this would be more in terms of allowing the PC to be someone from a different race, since there are already some non-white characters in the game such as Viconia, Yoshimo, and Valygar. Right now there are no player portraits if someone wants to be a non-white male character who is anything other than human and female non-white characters can really only choose Viconia's portrait. I think it would be nice if there were some additional portraits available that aren't associated with existing NPCs and that have different skin tones, and are also of both sexes of dwarves, gnomes, elves, etc.

    Since this would be the PC and not an NPC, it wouldn't really be a stereotype since you choose whatever your character does. You would just have more choices in terms of character generation.


    That, I'll agree with however - especially in the Realms, where it is racially diverse. I was referring to the genre as a whole, however, not just computer games.
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