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Good god yes. >_> It's not just race either, though that's a big part of it. Try finding fantasy characters who do not fit classical ideals of beauty. Maybe I want a short, fat, female knight!
Pictures? Try finding miniatures for that sort of thing. Invariably they'll be halflings or gross caricatures. Annoys me enough that I'm considering getting a 3D printer and just making my own at this point.
When it comes to your games that you run or playing in, how diverse is your NPC's? I'm talking about race, skin, gender, body type for NPC's.
My homebrew campaign is located in Ustalav, and I try to stick with Golarion's lore - that's for context.
Races: A majority of my civilized NPCs is human. I add a few half-orcs, gnomes, tengus etc. where it fits. My half-orc player has to face the local prejudices against his race, but it never resulted in any mechanical disadvantage, just some verbal conflict.
Skin: I stick with standard skin colors, meaning white for humans. Populating my version of Ustalav with numerous people of African / Eastern Asian type feels too much like a stretch.
Gender: My party meets roughly as much women as men in civilized territory. Positions of power are occupied by females, sometimes. I don't use other genders than the two standard ones - I'd expect them to be extremely rare in the area and not always obvious anyway.
Body type: There is the occasional corpulent NPC. Usually I stick to cliches here, like the fat tradesman or the chubby innkeeper.
For skin I just need to find a pic that's not white.
Why is that?
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If no one cares that Guard #10 is a black woman, okay sure I get that, but why would it be better if Guard #10 was a white man?
I mean, if nothing else ensuring that there are all kinds of people all over is useful to me to deprogram the widely held myth that "medieval Europe was all white people" that's so common in media. I mean, people have always traveled for a large number of people and the zones into which they can travel have never been color-coded. In the real world, language is more of a practical barrier than skin color (I mean, dark skin won't show the ambient dirt as much, probably), and fantasy games like this have the conceit that there's this universal language that everybody speaks.
The existence of a "common language" should make it more likely for someone to pick up from Jandeley and end up in Varisia after a bit.
My PCs have included:
- Starfinder: red hair bronze Medditerranian skin (but pale from lack of solar exposure), mixed ethnic features beyond that
- Pathfinder: a golem that looked like an outdoorsy sort of beautiful human of indeterminate ethnic origin; his "brother" (creator) is much more pale and scrawnier from being indoors at all times and not doing (he was a kalashtar)
- Pathfinder: a human of Tien, Mwangi, and Avistani mixed heritage who liked slightly Azlanti
- Pathfinder: half-elf probably white, but never clarified
- other system: a white scruffy dude, and a refined black man with a rapier
- other system: a red-haired drow, the equivalent of a duergar, and a half-goblin
- 3.5: a dueregar-blooded Mulani human
- a half-frost giant half-drow with blue skin
- an albino-like sorcerer with Draconic blood
- a half-elf sorcerer (darker skin, but mixed ethnicity)
- a paler-skinned human guy who was more tanned than the naturally darker complexion sorcere, above
So I'unno. As a GM, the ethnic makeup is generally whatever makes sense for the setting. Varies heavily.
If no one cares that Guard #10 is a black woman, okay sure I get that, but why would it be better if Guard #10 was a white man?
Or more importantly, that Guards #1-10 are all white men. Likely no one is really going to care about random mooks. Unless it's somehow important, Guards #1-10 aren't likely to get names or descriptions and that's fine - though even in a simple fight scene, throwing the occasional female pronoun in can help shift the impression. "You hit Guard #10. She goes down."
But the fact that most combat encounters and random extras in the streets or even minor NPCs like merchants aren't going to get detail, doesn't mean that when you do have NPCs get detail they should all be white men. PCs might or might not dig into the backstory - which might or might not be tied into their race or gender or orientation or whatever. It's okay to...The rub is most of this stuff just doesn't show up in gameplay. You can have a whole sweeping backstory for your varying NPCs explaining how them being black/gay/whatever mattered in their development but unless you go out of your way to reveal that, most players just don't care enough to dig in outside truly critical/recurring NPCs. If they're buying scrolls, quite frankly very few people care that Archmage Bob mastered the arcane arts because wanted to transition from woman to man and having Bob just belt that out in between scroll purchase is going to elicit some eye rolls.
Basically, for 99% of the NPCs out there, gender, skin color, race, etc really IS just window dressing and not something to get worked up over, because frankly, who cares that Guard #10 is a black woman. No one cares about her story. We care about the villain, their recurring henchmen, and the supporting NPCs who recur and even then there's a high chance people aren't going to expend the effort/consider rooting around Sir Jamie's backstory to learn he became a paladin due to racial prejudice he suffered or whatever.
We have different play styles, I guess. If the party interacts with or actively observes an NPC, I describe them at-a-glance characteristics.
"You head for the bar to chat up some intel. The barkeep, a balding, barrel-shaped Taldan with rosy cheeks, polishes the bar with a worn cloth in the manner familiar to bar patrons throughout Varisia."
I don't need to know a backstory, but I do need to know (or improvise) enough to avoid breaking immersion.
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For skin I just need to find a pic that's not white.Why is that?
It's a lot easier to find white people, so I need to spend more time looking for pic's for my NPC's, to get more diverse people.
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Regarding "fantasy doesn't show the negatives of being a minority" I kind of want to ask- so what?
Like people play games like this to indulge in the fantasy of being strong, tall, charming, beautiful, good with a sword, able to shoot fire from your fingers, and all other sorts of things that a given player may value but might not personally exhibit (I mean, if you are a tall, strong, charming, beautiful fire-slinging sword expert, maybe RP someone other than yourself). So I don't see why "people see that you're a different color, but nobody is bothered by it" to be a fantasy any less worthy of indulging than "dragons exist."
I mean, if you're the proprietor of the sort of tavern where adventuring parties meet up for the first time, you've seen literally all sorts of things walk in through the door (and all of their money spends the same) so you're probably not chuffed about the person with a different complexion if you weren't put off by the Woman with an octopus for Legs, the human-shaped void without eyes or a mouth, or the 2 foot frog. Considering the wide range of "things that exist" in the game world, I would think the basic reaction to something wholly new that seems friendly would be one more of curiosity than aversion.
I try, but I'm not that good of an actor.
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Regarding "fantasy doesn't show the negatives of being a minority" I kind of want to ask- so what?
Tell that to halflings and tieflings in cheliax and halforcs in lastwall. Or basically anything non ustalavic human in rural ustalav. Or half-drow in kyonin
Tell that to halflings and tieflings in cheliax and halforcs in lastwall. Or basically anything non ustalavic human in rural ustalav. Or half-drow in kyoninRegarding "fantasy doesn't show the negatives of being a minority" I kind of want to ask- so what?
Not the point they were making.
Not the point they were making.Tell that to halflings and tieflings in cheliax and halforcs in lastwall. Or basically anything non ustalavic human in rural ustalav. Or half-drow in kyoninRegarding "fantasy doesn't show the negatives of being a minority" I kind of want to ask- so what?
I get it, their point is so what
My point is, the negatives of being a minority are expressed allegorically via these situations.
Not the point they were making.Tell that to halflings and tieflings in cheliax and halforcs in lastwall. Or basically anything non ustalavic human in rural ustalav. Or half-drow in kyoninRegarding "fantasy doesn't show the negatives of being a minority" I kind of want to ask- so what?
I get it, their point is so what
My point is, the negatives of being a minority are expressed allegorically via these situations.
No, that wasn't it.
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Tell that to halflings and tieflings in cheliax and halforcs in lastwall. Or basically anything non ustalavic human in rural ustalav. Or half-drow in kyonin
To be honest, one of the tropes I really dislike in genre fiction is "we're not going to discuss actual systems of oppression, we'll just model them onto elves, or mages, or mutants, or something" since well, orcs are actually bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and generally more dangerous than their counterparts, which is not a thing that can be said about any real world oppressed or marginalized group.
The whole "keeping a registry of people who can shoot fire from their eyes is bad" as a metaphor for real world racism (etc.) is honestly kinda dangerous because keeping a registry of people who are liable to spontaneously burn down the forest, knock planes out of the sky, etc. is probably not a bad idea, honestly. Mages in Dragon Age, Augmented people in Deus Ex, Mutants in X-Men are honestly a better metaphor for gun control than racism, I feel.
How diverse are my games? My group is diverse but I definitely have a friend how only plays blonde vikings. A girl in our group has only played women and few of us have played women as well though things like race or skin color get brushed aside as we feel it doesn't matter. We identify each characters as their miniatures or their player. So my group being diverse in the player category translates over to our characters.
As a GM who runs almost exclusively homebrewed settings I generally try to map out population migrations and habits of my settings based on real life populations in similar climates. So for instance in a campaign that was primarily built up around a cold wet continent that has impacted a hot tropical continent with a small land bridge in between; the racial layout of mostly people who looked mostly like Latinos with the far northern areas looking like Northern Europeans and the people of the far south looking like South American native.
My players have never really had a problem with me telling them the race their character most likely is if they're from a given region. If they want to play something else it gives them a hook for being "different" in some way from the majority populous and if they want to be of the majority group I've just told them what that is.
{. . .}
The whole "keeping a registry of people who can shoot fire from their eyes is bad" as a metaphor for real world racism (etc.) is honestly kinda dangerous because keeping a registry of people who are liable to spontaneously burn down the forest, knock planes out of the sky, etc. is probably not a bad idea, honestly. Mages in Dragon Age, Augmented people in Deus Ex, Mutants in X-Men are honestly a better metaphor for gun control than racism, I feel.
I don't know about the others, but Mutants in X-Men (at least) are a metaphor for what happens when both of these things collide.
We don't have much of that in our world NOW, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared for when(*) the GATTACA scenario (or worse) arises . . . .
(*)not if
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One pool of RPG gamers I play in is 5 gays, 2 Lesbians, at least 1 bi and 2 of us lonely straights. Diversity is a joke at our table.
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To play devil's advocate here, it can be quite difficult to find visual aids that are racially diverse and can fit together without their clothing and gear clashing, and especially for something like roll20, one tends to get one token to use for all mooks of a certain type in order to cut down on visual clutter or potential for confusion.
First, never play devil's advocate for the sake of playing devil's advocate. Either speak from conviction, or keep it to yourself; claiming the devil's advocate position is just dickish and obnoxious, and a poor way to try and shield yourself from criticism, and leaves no room for further discussion that isn't just talking past each other or posturing in furtherance of a deliberately obstinate facade of the "devil's advocate."
And no, it isn't likely to cause a gear clash. Looking at my own considerable image collection, accumulated over many years? Other than Asian characters, who skew strongly toward katanas and samurai armor or ninja pajamas, most non-whites I have in my fantasy folder are in the same style of armor using the same style of weapons as is European fantasy norm, rather than more traditional forms of African and European weaponry as the white people. And ye olde digital pog maker for minting tokens for your Roll20 game is no real inconvenience.
To be honest, one of the tropes I really dislike in genre fiction is "we're not going to discuss actual systems of oppression, we'll just model them onto elves, or mages, or mutants, or something" since well, orcs are actually bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and generally more dangerous than their counterparts, which is not a thing that can be said about any real world oppressed or marginalized group.
The whole "keeping a registry of people who can shoot fire from their eyes is bad" as a metaphor for real world racism (etc.) is honestly kinda dangerous because keeping a registry of people who are liable to spontaneously burn down the forest, knock planes out of the sky, etc. is probably not a bad idea, honestly. Mages in Dragon Age, Augmented people in Deus Ex, Mutants in X-Men are honestly a better metaphor for gun control than racism, I feel.
The more problematic element is that the tribes of snarling green skinned monsters in "standard" European fantasy tend to serve as the stand-ins for Africa, and the "heroes" slaughter them wholesale without qualm.
As to mutant registration act talk? Having a gun is a choice. Being born is not. Also, the real world US government isn't taken over by aliens every Tuesday and isn't continuously on the cusp of rounding up everyone who was born with a gun license and putting them in internment camps, and our world doesn't have a recurring and demonstrably extant post-apocalyptic future where the US minted hordes of killbots to kill the birthright gun license holders, until the robots go out of control and destroy all humans. That the government isn't inherently trustworthy to the represented groups is a huge source of the conflict, both in the stories and in the real world.
It depends on the setting and the location ... some areas are going to be more homogenous, some more diverse. I also can't make a sweeping generalization because I often make settings without the Tolkien races (including humans).
Typically, I'll come up with a population percentage ('35% X, 25% Y, 20% Z, 20% Misc) and roll that. 50/50 on gender (barring setting, of course, like an Amazon-ish society). Sexuality never enters into our games, so that's a non-issue.
Many of my decisions are driven by what fits the setting. So as a GM my NPC mix tends to broadly reflect the demographics of whatever region the players are adventuring in.
As a player I also allow myself to be influenced by the campaign setting. For example, I associate Dragonlance with kender, Wizards of High Sorcery and Solamnic Knights. I've played in two Dragonalance campaigns. In the first I played a kender rogue, in the second an elven wizard. If I play in a third I hope to play a knight.
On Golarion I've played a human cleric and a gnome paladin. I played the cleric in Kingmaker. Since that campaign begins in Brevoy I read up on the region and the human ethnic groups common to the region. Of these I decided that Ulfen best fit the concept and this in turn helped determine physical attributes such as height (6') and hair colour (white blonde, although until that point I'd visualised her as being dark haired).
Although romance doesn't usually play a great part in our games, I also decided that she was a lesbian because it seemed to fit her personality. However I expected to spend the campaign in the closet or having a discreet affair with a minor NPC. But it came to pass that I fell in love with the party paladin. She'd been making eyes at the party fighter, but he was courting an NPC and didn't even notice. Indeed I was the only one (both IC and OOC) who recognised her behaviour for what it was.
So, seeing that another player was keen to roleplay a romance, I came out of the closet and began courting her. We played out the entire courtship, marriage and childbirth. (We used sex-changing magic to turn into men and get each other pregnant!) Most of this was played out over email between sessions and come the end of the campaign our exchanges ran to several hundred pages.
I consider it the finest piece of roleplaying I've ever done as a player, but it wasn't planned. It just happened.
Wow that's some fine RP there. Any time I had done that it was not by choice. I had a GM that wanted every player to have some relationship, I did not know that when walking in. I told him that, I did not want to do it. So the GM did not let me RP with any of the NPC's. I left that game 5 sessions later.
Also every NPC was a white human. I don't have problems with GMs wanting to keep all the NPC's white. But I do have a problem with every NPC being gay. If the NPC had a partner it would be the same gender. I try to keep it every random when choosing a NPC partner. Also I got bored seeing human after human. He said the town was diverse because one dwarf bartender.
When it comes to your games that you run or playing in, how diverse is your NPC's? I'm talking about race, skin, gender, body type for NPC's. I think I do a good job on race, gender.
This is pretty telling of where we're at as a society: the OP doesn't mention disability or class as a part of diversity.
I have one mini that I have been able to use for a very wide variety of characters. The mini is carrying a sword and shield and wearing armor and a closed helmet. Since the mini has no visible face, I can give the character any facial appearance that I like.
I have also found cases where the game mechanics force me into particular race/gender combinations. For example, I recently decided to build a natural weapon fighter who got a claw/claw/bite natural attack routine without spending any feats on it and concluded that the best way to get that combination was with an Annis-born Changeling who was raised by Half-Orcs. So the race forces the character to be female, and my decision that the character should have her appearance reflect some actual Orc ancestry forces her not to look very human.