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| By Simaelling from deviantart through wikimedia commons. |
Racism is a prominent issue to combat, and only recently the fields of video gaming and roleplaying have become battlefields to it. On one side, usually those identifying as "realists" and generally paralleling the political views of conservatives & reactionaries tend to reason that racism has to be acknowledged as part of a game and setting to promote realism and raise attention. On another side, there are those who promote diversity, claiming that a fictional world has all the room for racism to be eliminated on a lore-level, where it is missing from the history of the universe as a whole.
As I tend to, I agree with neither side. From the years I spent with roleplay, something was made clear: the former tends to promote a homogeneous world that is infamous for satisfying the "inner racist" in players, whereas the latter leads to racial stereotyping and tokenism in most if not all cases. Read on this blog post as I aim to explain more so the latter point than the former and my proposed resolution to it: the shelving of fantasy races as a concept.
Definitions & definitions
In general, I won't be dealing with the most indie and innovative attempts to tackle this issue in roleplay and fantasy, though I myself am somewhat part of such an initiative. The worlds I'll examine will remain the most mainstream fantasy universes and tropes. Though, there's the greatest issue which will inevitably gain me the hatred and spite of half the Tumblr community...
... the definition of race. Because - wait for it - I do base my definition of fictional races off the biological definition of race, which ... is non-existent, other than a collection of different traits usually bound together as part of a "social construct", though I prefer not using that term much. It implies a conscious creation, whereas the line at that is blurred to the point I aim not to take either a position or discussion on it.
Whether you agree with discussions on races as a social concept or not, the idea's importance grows tenfold when brought in relation to fantasy and fictional races. Whereas the concepts in our world have differences usually referred to in roleplaying as "cosmetics", like stereotypical skin, hair or eye colour, fantastic races tend to carry tangible affinity towards certain roles, different lifespans or obvious differences in body build.
Now you see the problem ...
The very idea of fantasy races (as per usual implementation) implies stereotypes and tangible distinction between races, something one would only expect to see in a right-wing paper on 60s USA. This is only worsened when breeding between races is part of the fictional lore, because it could potentially trail down a path of ... racial purity ideals? Or at least issues with the setting itself in reinforcing the idea that there isn't a major distinction between races. Take the usual half-elf example: in most fictional worlds, half-elves carry little drawbacks and merely inherit the beauty and lifespan of their elven parent.
On the other hand, if such distinctions aren't promoted there's always the issue of "defaulting to human". Without major differences between the fictional races, there's no draw to any of them and the decision will remain an arbitrary one. In larger communities that involve hundreds or thousands of players though, the decision will usually rely on bandwagoning, where a newcomer will choose the race most common in the community. Because "defaulting to human" is a tangible phenomenon, I've seen three roleplay communities already that had an ever-increasing human population.
The inherent paradox here is the critique of racism:
If you create distinct races to draw new players into playing them over "humans", you risk fulfilling the claims of radical supremacists applied to your world and as such will be called a racist, while at the same time you establish obvious distinctions between races in-character to promote persecution or discrimination.
If you refuse to create biological differences between races and merely allow cosmetics to prevail like in our world, you risk a complete lack of diversity by encouraging "defaulting to generic European" and the critique of racism.
If you balance the two, you will end up with racial minorities which may easily lead to in-character racial discrimination, once again leading to a critique of racism.
Deconstruction
The solution I personally promote to most issues is to de-construct everything and inspect core elements. In terms of races, any fantasy race, no matter how unique they are, can be reduced into an assortment of core elements, each divided into "cosmetics", "background traits" and "abilities". Cosmetics serve little purpose other than explanation for other traits. Background traits define a race's society, history, daily behaviour but are generally irrelevant to roleplay and game mechanics. Abilities are those that directly influence a character's prowess, whether with a silver tongue in a narrative environment or in a combat situation.
Let's take the stereotypical fantasy elf and see:
Cosmetics: long ears, frail form, tall posture, natural beauty, silken hair
Background traits: long lifespan, affinity for culture and craftsmanship
Abilities: affinity to magic, intelligence, charisma, inferior physique
Borrowing from the works of Ron Edwards and the GNS theory, these categories can be aligned with the different archetypes:
Gamism cares for abilities, gamists choose their preferred race based on their abilities and modifiers. Simulationists care for background traits, whereas narrative drivers tend to choose based on cosmetics. The latter not because cosmetics are held most important, more so because they are the least non-important.
First of all, it's clear and obvious here how races (if they exist) should be assorted into categories based on the ideals of the present game master, game designer or server owner. A roleplaying environment that lacks any framework for abilities will find that the lack of definition for racial differences may prove difficult to handle and so on.
Elimination
The reason for my three categories is simple: they are categories to explain how one can eliminate them as well. By now you may have grasped the idea that I generally reason against roleplay races ... though not based on some "political correct idea" or "medievalist realism", more so based on mechanics and to promote roleplay and actual diversity.
Most often in not, abilities are based around stats (see D&D, Elder Scrolls games pre-Skyrim, SWTOR). As such, they can be as easily prescribed to in-race diversity as they can be to inter-race diversity. Fantasy races tend to serve as placeholder stereotypes for character archetypes. If you eliminate abilities and their source-cosmetics, you'll get a more homogeneous group of adventurers when it comes to "races", but a far more diverse one when it comes to "within race".
My favoured example for such is the halfling race. They possess no innate special trait a short-grown and hairy human wouldn't, other than their culture. If you removed the height difference in the LOTR universe, they could as well be a simple farming folk in the line of Gondor's splinter cultures next to the Rohirrim.
Background traits are harder to eliminate because they bear significant influence on the environment and setting, though they can often be prescribed to in-character curses, blessings or diseases affecting characters instead of races.
My favoured example for such is the deconstruction of the general "vampire" idea.
Cosmetics: pale skin, gaunt face, red eyes, fangs
Background traits: immortality, vulnerability to holy places, symbols, garlic & stake, affinity for intellectualism and high culture, living off blood & inability to digest other food/drinks
Abilities: physical superiority, vulnerability to sunlight, claws, ability to travel in form of a bat
Eliminate everything but the background traits and you'll have an "unholy elf" remaining. In that regards, any elven-like immortality in races can be explained with a simple curse or blessing other than a different race, and can be applied to any race, or if races are eliminated as a whole, to any character.
I personally hold cosmetics to be of little relevance. Those that hold any bearing on the character in the form of shaping traits (posture, beauty) can usually be ascribed to in-race diversity, whereas the "irrelevant" ones that result in little influence on gameplay or the narrative other than identification (long ears) can be removed with little consequences since their main purpose is to highlight racial "diversity".
What about the more unique races?
With the three-category dissection, you may wonder what to do with the "more unique" races, such as elementals, yuan-ti (snake-people), dragons or beast-like races?
They require a far more abstract thinking as they are dissected, and one has to mind the difference between cosmetics and actual abilities. Though in the end, the comparisons and elimination still stands: beast races and the yuan-ti are comparable to lycantrophy in sub-elements, elementals to archons and ascended mages from numerous universes and so on.
In the end, all elements can be sorted into two categories: those that could have been ascribed to in-race diversity, and those that can be ascribed to an obtained trait not derived from racial heritage.
Conclusion
In the end, creating a fantasy race, no matter how unique or special it is, is nothing more than pre-arranging a set of elements into pre-written categories. Races in fantasy worlds are said to serve gamists by providing differences in attributes, simulationists by promoting diversity in a setting and narrativists by allowing more diverse interactions.
Though in the end, the attribute system already allows gamists to have their differences and races only provide a slight tool for min/maxing, settings can be enhanced by diverse cultures just as easy as they can by diverse races (as shown by A Song of Ice and Fire), and these very cultures can also serve as guidelines for peer interaction for narrativists.
In the end, the idea of a "fantasy" race is proven to be little more than a limit on players. Gamists will default into their min/max race instead of choosing one they would have chosen based on personal preference, distancing them from the other players. Simulationists are plunged into an environment where elements aren't dispensed based on social standing, class, heritage and so on, but simple races which often coincide with geographical and national borders, leaving homogeneous environments built on stereotypes. Narrative drivers are confined in their narratives by the pre-written notions of races: their races is confined to a set of classes, a set of social behaviour and a set environment.
With these in consideration, I think it was about time the concept of "fantasy races" was cast away and buried somewhere far. Not because of some "political correct mumbo-jumbo", and not based on "medievalism", but the simple fact that while they pretend to promote diversity in a setting and game mechanics, in the very depths they actually limit them far more than anything else. Replace their attributes with a wider range of allowed distribution, allow players to hand-pick some abilities based on upbringing, education and background while reserve the rest for diseases, blessings, curses, magical items, traits or spells.
Defaulting to European
The most prominent argument I hear against the elimination of fantasy races is rather simple: if you remove them, players will default to playing white Europeans. On this part, I'm rather against the mainstream idea that "a mass of white is bad", since by essence of pointing out a majority of white one has to recognise distinction between white and black and thus both accept & encourage racism. Which is something I stand against.
If your group of adventurers or playerbase defaults to all-white, investigate the reasons for it. If there isn't any in-character prejudices and any character could be another colour of skin, eye, hair or whatever, why care? Would you care if your group or playerbase had a diverse range of skin colors but were all black-haired? That's more than possible with genetics though never cared for, same with brown eyes.
If any character could be re-placed with another skin, hair or eye colour, perhaps even biological sex, then it'll all boil down to the greatest critique I could pass towards the modern equality movements often dubbed the "liberal left" or the "politically correct" by the right: enforcing ideology over personal preference with claims of an issue.
Neither saying that it is right to keep token minorities in your roleplaying community for the sheer purpose of living out your inner racist in a made-up world and whenever it's pointed out just shrug and say "it's roleplay".
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