Are there any non-human races that aren't white? Is there art showing this?
Are there elves/halflings/dwarves/gnomes/orcs out there with hair that isn't straight or wavy? Are there kinky haired elves somewhere? Are there forest dwelling elves with dark brown skin? Gnomes are described as having skin with such wildly varying colors that people think that gnomes dye themselves. So why have I only seen Caucasian gnomes? Am I missing art?
Gnomes are really the race that most prompts me to think about this. Like their description goes on about how wildly varied they are, from facial proportions to coloration. But like, I've never seen a picture of one that isn't just "Tiny white person with troll doll hair and eyebrows".
Wild elves in Elves of Goalrion have a picture that's leaning towards 'not your usual pale elf', but it's rather 'tan guy with dreadlocks' and the descriptions are not helpful in this matter either. The half wild elf 'bastard' in Bastards Of Golarion would suggested that might look more like our real world native americans than sub-saharan people.
Desert Half orc in the same book seems to be closer, but it is anyone's guess if the hair is a wig or naturally straight. Mountain halfbreed is a similar case.
That's what I got prom a glance. Can't comment on the gnomes, as I rather dislike the race and not look around for it quite as much.
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They've said that the older elvish art was in error - no matter what they told the artists, elvish art came in whiter than intended. Inner Sea Races may bring more diversity to elvenkind.
Book 1 of Mummy's Mask features this lovely half-elven lady.
That's all I've got off the top of my head...
The new iconic Mesmerist is a halfling who is not white.
It sounds like I might be missing some since I only get hardcover pathfinder books, and have at least one to look forward to, so that's neat.
The half wild elf 'bastard' in Bastards Of Golarion would suggested that might look more like our real world native americans than sub-saharan people.
Desert Half orc in the same book seems to be closer, but it is anyone's guess if the hair is a wig or naturally straight. Mountain halfbreed is a similar case.
I appreciate and am aware that half-breed characters do have like, individuals that represent different human races, though I haven't seen much of it in art. I am most interested though, in it happening with completely non-human characters though. Like Elves and Mwangi or Vudrani can have kids that look like their human parent is nice, but still in the domain of like "There aren't POC in non-human races."
Book 1 of Mummy's Mask features this lovely half-elven lady.
That's all I've got off the top of my head...
I especially hadn't seen this one. She looks pretty rad.
It sounds like I might be missing some since I only get hardcover pathfinder books, and have at least one to look forward to, so that's neat.
The half wild elf 'bastard' in Bastards Of Golarion would suggested that might look more like our real world native americans than sub-saharan people.
Desert Half orc in the same book seems to be closer, but it is anyone's guess if the hair is a wig or naturally straight. Mountain halfbreed is a similar case.
I appreciate and am aware that half-breed characters do have like, individuals that represent different human races, though I haven't seen much of it in art. I am most interested though, in it happening with completely non-human characters though. Like Elves and Mwangi or Vudrani can have kids that look like their human parent is nice, but still in the domain of like "There aren't POC in non-human races."
I thought as much, but seeing as I couldn't find wild elf art, I thought that maybe a half elf of that sub race would still shed some light on what they'd look like. I myself think wild elves need more love, and as someone who hopes to go into illustration I'm always disappointed by artists who hardly give any thought to the descriptions of their assignments.
Oh well.
Almost a month behind on this one, but the thought occurred to me as well - as elves/dwarves are based in European, particularly Anglo-Saxon myth, they would most likely resemble, well, Anglo-Saxons. Much the same way a Kitsune's human form would likely resemble someone of Yamato Japanese or Ainu extraction (though with a small tweak they could resemble someone more Chinese or Korean, and call themselves gumiho or huli jing accordingly)
That said, no reason you couldn't have a dark complexioned half-elf who was full-blooded Mwangi on his human side, if your campaign looked more like American Gods than Lord of the Rings which seems to be the general vibe on Golarion.
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Good question, and I agree that I'd like more diversity in the art for humans and non-humans alike. The only caveat is that I'd like to see non-human types of diversity for non-humans. Meaning, I don't just want to see black-skinned dwarves and elves from Mwangi. With humans, it's a little more natural to have them look like Earth-humans, plus we like to see people who look like us, so mirroring Earth-diversity for humans is fine. But find some other dimensions other than skin color and eye shape to vary the non humans. Heck, maybe Mwangi dwarves are really tall! Or maybe they have spots. Or clear irises. But absolutely more diversity. Not fair that all non-humans belong to the same globe-spanning phenotype.
Good question, and I agree that I'd like more diversity in the art for humans and non-humans alike. The only caveat is that I'd like to see non-human types of diversity for non-humans. Meaning, I don't just want to see black-skinned dwarves and elves from Mwangi. With humans, it's a little more natural to have them look like Earth-humans, plus we like to see people who look like us, so mirroring Earth-diversity for humans is fine. But find some other dimensions other than skin color and eye shape to vary the non humans. Heck, maybe Mwangi dwarves are really tall! Or maybe they have spots. Or clear irises. But absolutely more diversity. Not fair that all non-humans belong to the same globe-spanning phenotype.
Why even call them elves or dwarves at that point, though? Why not delve into the African mythology and/or literature inspired by it for some close cultural analogue? Just about every culture has trickster spirits and craftsman spirits, would there really be a point exporting European-inspired goblins to Minkai when bakemono would suit just as well? Maybe it's just a difference in terminology (like how my own Kitsune character has her race listed on her sheet as simply "fox spirit" as she's based more off the sionnach of Celtic myth).
That's a major strength and weakness both of Golarion, I think. On the weak side, trying to span so much with the world building stretches things thin, and you wind up trying to do too much with the storytelling - but it also happens that that lends itself well to something from everyone's tastes. To stick with Mwangi as an example, I love that it takes about equally from real-world African mythologies and Western writers' impressions of Africa and associated myth, from Hemingway and Kipling to H. Rider Haggard.
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I love the idea more different types of creatures based on more and more obscure, non-Western legends. But dwarves/gnomes/elves/halflings, etc. are much more wide spread. They really are planet-wide races. Hell, elves are even from another planet! So why would they only settle in the Golarion equivalent of Northern Europe? (Maybe they sought out areas when the humans had the same skin tones as theirs? Just kidding. Bad tautology.) The main core PC races, while based mostly on European mythology, are so wide spread that there has to be some sort of diversity in their population. Some of it might parallel human diversity due to similar circumstances or shared culture, but some of it might also be unique. Do Golarion-born elves look like Castrovel-born elves? How about dwarves who breeched the surface on different sides of the planet as a result of the Quest for the Sky? I think there's a lot of potential for more diverse core non-human races as well as more niche local races.
The only example that immediately springs to mind is in the first book of Second Darkness has a Mwanganese elf named Kwava, who is written as fairly dark skinned, but his official illustration is still fairly pale.
This is one of those tricky issues where there's a lot of places on the pipeline where things need to go smoothly though. First, you need non-human races to show up in the first place. Golarion is a very human-centric setting in general, and even with the canonically human-heavy demographics of any given city, writers rarely remember to include any non-human NPCs in adventures.
Then there's remembering to call for diversity. Most of the actual written material spells this out in the general sense (gnomes all vary wildly in appearance, elves take on the skin tones and features common to humans living in the same regions if they're around long enough, this ethnicity is most common in this region, etc.) but that doesn't help if whoever's commissioning the art doesn't know, or doesn't specify.
Then there's the actual artist involved, who will often ignore many specified details and just focus on the ones that seem most relevant. I seem to recall someone on the Paizo staff a while back talking about how unfortunate it was that so many NPC illustrations from Legacy of Fire came back white in spite of requests, but the timetable forced them to make do. Come to think of it, I'm really curious now if Mummy's Mask came off better there, I haven't had a chance to look it over yet.
Ultimately though, the real problem is that fantasy art has such a longstanding history of whiteness to it, it's everyone's default. The only real fix for that is for writers, and particularly artists, to train themselves out of it.
To the degree where if I commissioned "an older scar-covered ranger" without any other details, ideally you'd come back to me with a hard-eyed thick-framed black elven woman. And then say "you should have specified that" if I say it isn't what I was looking for.
Ultimately though, the real problem is that fantasy art has such a longstanding history of whiteness to it, it's everyone's default. The only real fix for that is for writers, and particularly artists, to train themselves out of it.
I don't know if there's anything that needs to be "fixed" so much as fantasy fans can expand our scope. For the longest time, "fantasy" just meant medieval European fantasy, specifically Tolkien drawing on Anglo-Saxon myth (though Celtic and Slavic myths seem conspicuously absent, the latter being understandable given the time period though the former always struck me a bit of a glaring omission). R.E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft brought in early Mesopotamian influences, and soon Middle Eastern myth became part and parcel with djinni and the like. Ancient Egypt gives us mummies, Eastern Europe brings vampires and werewolves.
Again, there are so many traditions in other parts of the world that English-speaking fantasy fans would find both refreshingly original and polished, with a long tradition backing them, in much the same way Japanese and Korean films are becoming popular in America, as they've got long-standing tradition in their native countries but go by a far different formula than the mainstream Hollywood fare American film fans are accustomed to. People are starting to tire of the same old thing with elves and orcs and are looking elsewhere. Personally, I'd love to see someone try to do a monomyth based on a syncretistic look at West African or East Asian traditions the way Tolkien did for northwestern Europe. I'm not alone - Nnedi Okafor's African-inspired fantasy and speculative fiction is becoming popular, and there's a new action-RPG in development from a team in Cameroon based on the myths of the area.
Keep in mind also that a lot of Native American and African myths, for example, survived through oral tradition alone as the tribes that kept them didn't have a written language to speak of.
I'm myself currently working on a home campaign set in a region similar to South/Southeast Asia inspired largely by the events recounted in the Mahabharata and Ramayana since I wanted to try something different. I hope it works out.
Well can't speak too much on Golarion but I know Faerun had an entire race of dark skinned dwarves, called Gold Dwarves. I think they also had elves of varying skin colors and such. I really don't see why you can't make your character a certain skin tone if it fits what you want. Though it would be epic to have a 'modern' campaign with a dark skinned dwarf dressing and acting like Shaft or Mr. T.
Almost a month behind on this one, but the thought occurred to me as well - as elves/dwarves are based in European, particularly Anglo-Saxon myth, they would most likely resemble, well, Anglo-Saxons. Much the same way a Kitsune's human form would likely resemble someone of Yamato Japanese or Ainu extraction (though with a small tweak they could resemble someone more Chinese or Korean, and call themselves gumiho or huli jing accordingly)
That said, no reason you couldn't have a dark complexioned half-elf who was full-blooded Mwangi on his human side, if your campaign looked more like American Gods than Lord of the Rings which seems to be the general vibe on Golarion.
Personally, I think its more interesting if races can be as diverse as possible in their appearance. For instance, when I wrote the Kitsune Compendium, I took into consideration that the "foxes as tricksters" folklore spans the entire continent of Eurasia, as well as several different Native American tribes. Foxes themselves are also are hugely diverse in terms of their fur colors, so my ultimate choice was to create a whole bunch of different kitsune subraces in the same way that a human could be Cheliaxian, Ulfen, Mwangi, or Tian and have different bodily expectations for each human subrace.
Likewise, elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes all have physical diversity in Golarion. Gnomes come in practically every color palette scheme imaginable. Elves slowly adapt to a bodily structure suitable for their environment in-canon (although Paizo could do with more artwork of darker skin elves). Halflings have diversity comparable to humans as well; the Iconic Mesmerist is evidence of this. Finally, dwarves have the Ouat subrace, which is much more North African in appearance (and monastic) compared to your "Tolkien Dwarf."
As an aside, my general thought is that physical and emotional diversity is an important component of all races, not just humans. Paizo knocks the ball out of the park with human diversity; now they need to step up their game on non-human diversity too.
Where are my african dwarves?
My Asian halflings?
We need more black elves, (Drow don't count).
Why even call them "dwarves" or "elves" if they're based on a completely different mythology, though? Other than for ease of understanding, out of game. For instance, just as my Kitsune is based on a Celtic trickster spirit-fox, my gnome Warpriest of Yamatsumi is a yama-bito or Japanese mountain spirit. Do we "need" a retread of elves with an African appearance (that have so few traits in common with the elves of Tolkien or Wagnerian myth it's just a misnomer at that point) anymore than we "need" 6' tall, musclebound, blond blue-eyed Samurai named Chad?