Ok, so here's the thing. I've been a roleplayer for over thirty years. I've gamed all over the UK, various game systems, universities, conventions, etc.
And only once in thirty years - thirty years ! - have I encountered a gamer who is not caucasian in the UK.
Now, I've no doubt there are many...but still, its a glaring fact that the proportion of gamers seems a bit screwy.
This was particularly brought home to me as I also do salsa dancing as a hobby, which is tremendously ethnically diverse (as well being a very good social scene and great exercise). Ok, so you might argue that salsas diversity is skewed in a different way , but still, it makes RPGs lack of diversity that bit more puzzling to me. i've always found roleplayers to be generally open minded and socially welcoming to people regardless of race, religion , nationality, etc..
So, I wondered - is this everyones experience ? Is there something about the hobby that is putting people off? Lack of ethnic rolemodels in the artwork (thankfully something paizo is not guilty of) ? Roleplaying stereotyped as a white male only club ? Cultural or social bias against a "nerdy" passtime ?
Thoughts? How might we improve the situation ?
Yeah I would agree- all white with no females either. Oh there was one girl in 1990 but that was a long time ago.
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I live in the U.S. so this experience may be different for others. All my black friends say TTRPG is a white person thing. However, all my Asian friends think its awesome, but never sign up. Women are making more and more appearances at tables in my experience as well.
I am not so sure the situation needs to be improved. Meaning I agree that gamers are typically open people and would welcome anybody regardless of sex or race. However, gamers do tend to be socially awkward and territorial. I have heard comments from outsiders to the hobby saying it seems like an exclusive club that you shouldn't bother joining unless you have a certified nerd card.
I think its just completely dependent on what your culture exposes you to. tabletop gaming having a massive stigma doesn't exactly help either. Looking from it both ways you're just as unlikely to a group of people in the Projects playing an rpg or playing warhammer, as you are likely to find a rpg group blasting f- the police on a street corner (I'm over exaggerating of course).
So I think It's less a case of "oh no way that's for nerdy white dudes I'd be too intimidated" and more of "Why would I want to do that It's for nerds." I know the latter is exactly how I was about warhammer until I actually played it, now years later I have 2 quite large 40k armies.
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I've played with several non-white people and a whole lot of women, and I live in Montana so, y'know, not the most ethnically diverse place ever. I think some of that comes from having LARPed for a while (bigger groups mean more people), and even more from actively recruiting people I meet and like to game with me even if they don't game to start with. I highly recommend that second bit in particular.
Ok, so here's the thing. I've been a roleplayer for over thirty years. I've gamed all over the UK, various game systems, universities, conventions, etc.
So, I wondered - is this everyones experience ? Is there something about the hobby that is putting people off? Lack of ethnic rolemodels in the artwork (thankfully something paizo is not guilty of) ? Roleplaying stereotyped as a white male only club ? Cultural or social bias against a "nerdy" passtime ?
Thoughts? How might we improve the situation ?
My gaming experiences in the UK have been restricted to a couple of "Games Day" conventions and pick-up games in youth hostels; so, I can't really comment on UK demographics.
I had to cogitate on my own experiences here in the US. So, just in the last week my role-players ethnically & gender wise were: two women, eight men, seven Caucasian, two Asian, and one African-American.
So, I guess my gaming table is pretty diverse, but the key is that I had to stop and think about genders and ethnicities before I could answer.
It just doesn't normally occur to me to think about classifying the players, and that is probably one reason my gaming table has been blessed with as diverse groups as it has.
That said, for creative activities like role-playing, diversity of thought and background has hugely positive effects. When I get a group together and some are from the city, some are from the country, some are academics, some are ..., the group tends to be more interactive and creative.
Thinking about it, I have had some all male gaming tables since 1977, but, since the mid-80s, almost all of the groups have had at least one lady, and the majority had 30% or more women in them. Of the campaigns lasting more than three years, all wre closer to 50/50 gender composition. Those two facts might not be independent.
Interesting ...
In service,
Depends on where you are. The town where I live is about 95% white, so it's more understandable that we don't see many gamers of colour around here. My friends who live in the considerably more diverse London, however, see a much wider variety of people at their gaming tables.
I live in the same town as werthead.
I grew up playing mostly with one other "white" kid, two guys with a Malay mother where older than me, and three other children my own age who where Jewish.
My other half is half-Filipino, was a comic book, film, computer game, and music geek from before meeting me and now also a roleplayer.
I also know a couple of Chinese roleplayers, though they are friends of friends.
Our home town is pretty well represented for female gamers. With 14 out a core population of about 38 roleplayer being female. The local WI even has a Roleplayers sub-group.
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I'd say in our region's (South-West England) table-top gamers are somewhere in the ratio of 75% Caucasian, 20% of various Asian backgrounds (mostly Thai and Vietnamese) and occasionally African.
As for gender, our club has four females in a group of 18/19 people, so a bit less than 25% female players if I use that as a basis.
Though at the UK Games Expo this year, from what I saw there was a fairly good mix of race and gender, so there's definitely diversity in the culture.
I'd say it's just a matter of who you know; most people tend to stick to their set social groups and quite often you'll find that your social circle is dominated by one ethnic group.
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I am UK-based.
My teenage playing group was all white and all male but then out of 130 kids in my year at school two were non-white.
I moved to Nottingham and was a founder member of East Midlands DND Meetup (which, I think, is now called EMRPGmeetup). All of the founders were white men but by the end of the first year we were about 40% female.
Without ever trying, or thinking about it really, I realise that I have never gamed with non-white players.
I've never lived anywhere very diverse either.
I grew up in country New South Wales - Australia (Until the 1960's restrictions were placed on the countries of origin for immigration - the majority of immigrants could only come from Europe, with the prefered European countries being the British isles and North Western Europe). This has skewed the populations in Australia, once the restrictions were lifted and the White Australia policy abandoned, larger numbers of non Europeans settled in the major cities, while very few moved to the country. There are major population variations in ethnicities each of the major cities, ie Melbourne is the second largest Greek city in the world.
There is a cultural bias in Australia against geeks, nerds, and squares.... If you are not outside in our ample sunshine playing sport, then there is something very very wrong with you to the point of you being Un-Australian. I played rugby league outside of school, and was on the school teams for Soccer and Australian Rules football, I was in Swiming Club and crew for my father on his yacht when he raced. If I dropped one sport I had to pick up another - i dropped swimming for Hap Ki Do. Getting time to play RPGs was an issue.
European Australian is a subjective term, as you will find if you trace the ancestry of most Australians there is a lot of non European in it. My ancestry has the standard Irish, English, Scottish, German, Dutch, French, but there is also Australian Aboriginal, Mauritian, African via Suriname.
In the 1980s the demographics of my hometown would have been 80% Anglo-Celtic 15% other European 3% Asian 2% indigenous Australian.
My highschool groups were 100% of European origin 1 female player.
I went to a country University, it was a lot more ethnically diverse than most would expect as it had a excellent reputation and it specifically marketed its courses to students in South East Asia, that combined with a lot of scholarships for Papuans and Pacific Islanders made for 75% European, 20% Asian the remainder being Islander and indigenous people.
My Uni groups ranged from 100% European to 90% Euro, 10% Asian. With some groups being 100% male and some 50% female.
When I moved to Sydney our home group was 100% Euro and 50% female.
This has changed to 100% male because of babies, other interests, and moving away.
At cons though there its still roughly 70% Euro, and the rest a mix with Asian being a majority. 70% male 30% female.
I went to Dragon*Con last year in Atlanta, Georgia, and I only remember seeing one person of color playing PFS. And she was green.