PrimeJunta

@Merikir, are you familiar with the notion of derailing? It's also know as the "what about the menz" gambit. Thing is, most of the time we assume white straight male as the default. If you're having a discussion about anything that's not strictly about white straight males in an open forum, it won't take long before someone starts whining that the discussion isn't about white straight males. Sexism? "Oh, what about reverse sexism." Racism? "A black guy called me a mean name once." I.e., if it's not about white straight male me, it doesn't matter. Privilege! It's kinda ironic that even here most of us talking on all sides of the issue are white straight males. Nobody hogs the floor like us. Privilege!

Nah. It's just that I've heard opinions like yours many, many, many times, and never once from anyone who isn't white. There are non-whites who subscribe to the same ideological worldview as you, mind (Steele much?) but they tend to express it noticeably differently. So it would take more than a simple assertion from you to convince me that you are, in fact, not a white male first-worlder. Present sufficient evidence -- for example, demonstrate that you understand something of what it's like to be a non-white non-male non-first-worlder -- and I'm certainly open to changing my mind. If you mean, do I think that people should watch their behavior differently depending on where they stand in the power structure, then yeah, I do think that. A white making a joke at the expense of blacks is reinforcing those power structures; a black making a joke at the expense of whites isn't. Ergo, whites should be more careful about making jokes at the expense of blacks than vice versa. I don't feel guilty about being white at all. It's not something I can change. However, I try to be mindful about it and the impact it has on what I do and say. Are you familiar with the notion of microaggressions, and the cumulative psychological effect they have on people? You mentioned fat white men earlier. Overweight people get to endure a lot of microaggressions all the time. If you know one – or happen to be one – perhaps you'll have an idea of how nasty that can feel. I'm not talking about overtly hostile stuff like people pointing and laughing; it's daily small indignities. Things like racism and sexism are quite similar. Why would you need to make any jokes about Jews and blacks? Isn't that best left to Jews and blacks? Then we can all laugh about them together.

Sorry, Barthomuk. "Privilege" is a word that describes a phenomenon. It is not an explanation of the phenomenon. The phenomenon itself is an objective reality. Whites and blacks do get treated differently, even when all other things are equal. For example, write a job application and send it to 100 companies. Write your name as Jamilah Brown on one, and Timothy McMillan on the other, with all qualifications otherwise identical. Then count how many of the companies invited you to a job interview. This experiment has been made lots and lots of times, and the white-male sounding name will get more invitations for interviews than the black-female sounding name.

One more thing: I'm not making any value judgment about "white" individuals. "White" does equal "privileged," though. That's not insulting. It's simply a fact. Because I'm white, male, and straight, I never encounter any number of problems that non-white, non-male, non-straight people do on a daily basis. For example I've never been pulled over by the cops simply because I 'look suspicious,' my boss doesn't talk past me to one of my coworkers when asking about the status of that project, and if I fall ill, my wife will automatically be treated next of kin, to pick three real-life examples. [No, Finland doesn't -- yet -- have marriage for all, although I have hopes we'll join the civilized world some time this decade.] And yeah, I do find it helpful to be aware of this privilege and try not to abuse it. (Also, just so you know -- almost everybody's privileged in some circumstances, and being a member of a minority doesn't give you a free pass to abuse your majority status when you happen to be in those circumstances. It's just that white straight men are in the privileged position almost all the time so we need to deal with this more than most other groups.)

Summa summarum, to get this back onto the topic of games -- I don't like characters that pander to (negative) stereotypes, espespecially negative minority stereotypes. This doesn't mean you can't have a villain who's black or a hero who's white. It just means that it's a big turn-off for me if everyone -- more or less -- is written to stereotype. I find it stale, predictable, boring, and -- often -- just plain mean. Why would you even want to do this stuff at the expense of a group that's already being shat upon?

It would make me think that you're lying, actually. Ah, but "equal in what sense?" is the crucial question. I believe very, very strongly that we're all equally deserving of human dignity. However, I observe that in practice we're very much unequal about actually receiving the same. Any ethics that doesn't take this reality into account becomes a bleak Spenserian "liberty to stay at the Ritz or sleep under a bridge." Yes, we privileged tend to reserve that right a lot. Actually, if they were all fat white dudes, then yeah, I very likely would have spoken up. But if they were all slim, able, and dressed in suits, then no, I probably wouldn't have. Give me a Che shirt to wear with my AK-47 and I'd have been blasting away at the forefront.

That's too bad, since that pretty much precludes the possibility of meaningful discussion between us.

I'll put this in a separate message since it might get a bit longer. Bold claim. Let's see you argue it. Incorrect. I'm stating there is an oppressor and an oppressee. I am not stating this relationship is one-sided, nor that it never changes. I am stating that it is this way 'by default' when examining any particular situation in which it is, indeed, this way 'by default,' such as with institutionalized racism or sexism. How these relationships originated is irrelevant to my argument. If I was looking at the historical roots of such systems, though, I would point out that people tend to use their power to improve their lot, which leads to a feedback cycle where the powerful use their power to gather more power, and consequently human societies (at a larger than tribal level) almost invariably tend to self-organize as feudal structures. Our very recent experiment with large-scale democracy is very much the exception! I most certainly do not condone, say, black on white violence motivated by the race of the victim. I just think it is confusing and incorrect to treat both as 'the same.' The power relations make all the difference. I wouldn't consider violence by an invading army 'the same' as violence by a resistance movement resisting the invasion 'the same' either. This doesn't mean that I'd consider it justifiable for the resistance movement to, say, blow up a school full of children -- but it does mean that I would be even more outraged if the occupying army surrounded a school, lined up the children, and shot them. Oh, but it's entirely generalizable! All it's doing is adding a variable to the ethical equations: that of power relations. For example, I would say that "it is generally undesirable for a member of a privileged group to use that privilege to marginalize and objectify members of minority groups." See?

@Merikir, what part of the moral implications of the outlook I outlined do you find objectionable? The take-home ethical message is just something like this: if you find yourself as a member of the majority, be mindful of how what you say and do looks from the POV of the minority, and try not to be a ****. That's not very onerous IMO. Surely you're not claiming that power relations don't matter? 'Cuz that strikes me as patently absurd.

Re racism or sexism, I think the problem is that people are using different definitions of them. Personally I think it gets very confusing if you try to disassociate these concepts from power relations. So the way I use them, I don't try to do this: I define racism as something like "prejudices held by a higher-status group about a lower-status group, associated with markers designated 'racial.'" So by this definition a 'black' person could be racist about 'white' persons only in a context where blacks were the higher-status group. Same with sexism. (Edit: the notion of 'whiteness' could be a pretty interesting tangent in its own right. In practice 'white' isn't a race, even less so than 'black;' it's simply synonymous with 'the privileged majority;' its definition has shifted as new groups have been accepted as 'whites.' So under this definition, a 'black' could never be racist about 'whites,' since if that happened, the 'whites' would not be 'white' anymore!) This isn't to say that blacks can't have prejudices about whites, or women can't have prejudices about men. The consequences are just drastically different depending on the power relations, and I think it's unnecessarily confusing to lump both under 'racism,' even if qualified with 'reverse' or somesuch. I also think that almost invariably the prejudices held by minorities about majorities [defining 'majority' as 'the dominant group' and 'minorities' as 'subordinated groups,' even if they don't always match the numbers, as with sexism for example] are simply reactions to and mirror images of the prejudices held by the majority. Don't like 'reverse racism' or 'reverse sexism?' Do something about racism and sexism, and it will start to fade. This is why I don't have a problem with even pretty vicious humor if it's punching up (i.e., at the expense of a higher-status group), but I do have a problem with the 'same' jokes if they're punching down (at the expense of a lower-status group.) Or, put another way, I'll start telling jokes about gays, blacks, and Romany the day I'm absolutely 100% certain gays, blacks, and Romany are suffering no discrimination at all from the majority. And if I say something that offends a gay, black, or Roma I'll try to figure out what it was and not to do it again, and if it really was due to prejudice against straight white first-world males on their part, well, that's a pretty small thing to have to deal with compared to, say, being regularly pulled over/hassled/beat up by the cops simply for being somewhere they don't expect you to be.

Are you, by any chance, white, male, straight, with a middle-class (or higher) background, and living in a first-world country? Serious question, 'cuz it's extermely relevant to the 'punching up vs punching down' thing. These things are not symmetrical because of power relations! (Full disclosure: I am all of the above.)

Would you understand why someone might take offence with a game where you played as a German and the zombies happened wear yarmulkes and have names like Abram, David, Rebecca, and Rachel? (Edit: Actually, it might be possible to pull that off. You'd just have to be really, really good at wildly over the top humor. The South Park guys might be able to do it, even if they too fall flat on their faces from time to time. You'd be making brutal fun of racists by turning all the knobs to eleven. But the zombie game you're referencing isn't like that at all; it just reinforces existing, entrenched stereotypes. Punching down is not the same as punching up, see.) (Another edit: rephrased the question for more precisely communicating intent.)

So, you would consider, say, the Westboro Baptist Church 'politically correct' then?

What is this "Political Correctness bandwagon" you speak of?

Some of the hints Obsidian has been dropping have been pretty promising. Perhaps some society is really strongly prejudiced against magic-users for example. That would be cool. Re stats and bigotry, mmmmaybe. I just think it's unlikely that the bigotry would necessarily track the stats. The weaker or dumber could band together to keep the smarter or stronger down, for example. Being the smartest or strongest kid in the class is not an automatic ticket to being the most popular one, y'know.

At least for Tolkien's elves and dwarves it looks like plain ol' birthrate, rather than lack of ambition or somesuch. In fact the main overarching story for his elves was the rebellion and exile of the Noldor. They set out from the safety and glory of Valinor to carve out kingdoms for themselves in the broad lands of Middle-Earth, against the will of the Valar. The sons of Fëanor were in it for the Silmarils of course, but Galadriel and many who followed her did it out of ambition and other very "human-like" motives. OTOH his elves seemed to produce roughly the same number of offspring as humans, but over a much, much longer time period as they were biologically immortal. (Círdan the Shipwright of the Grey Havens was one of the first generation of elves, for example – he wasn't born, but awoke at Cuiviénen.) That means that humans would outbreed them by a factor of ten or more. That means that over a couple of centuries they're effectively screwed unless they adopt a pest control type strategy before it's too late.

Technologically potent individuals, their groups, orders, factions fighting all over the place because fo racist sexual and other discrimination is chaos. Why would a bunch of nerds discriminate women instead of welcoming another talent to their rank? ... Oh.

Or, of course, a bunch of templars and wizards could band together and burn her at the stake.

Good point. In my particular case, I assumed humans would be on top because of what Obsidian has told us about the world of P:E. They specifically mentioned that orlans are subject to prejudice and discrimination, and that Vailians – the most technologically advanced, richest, and most expansive civilization – are human. I would be very interested to play a game set in, say, a gynarchy. It would be an interesting way to explore this stuff from a different angle. However, the point I attempted to make was pretty much the same you're making. I.e., that it's fine for the world to be prejudiced, but it's not fine for the game to be the same. The game could do this in any of a number of ways. IMO the best way would be to give each race/sex/whatever broad advantages in some circumstances and broad disadvantages in others. For example, assume that orlans are subject to discrimination. So then make a part of the game take place in a Vailian city, and another equally developed part in an orlan village. How will the humans treat the orlans? How will the orlans treat the humans? Maybe the human will find himself treated as a mark, a cop, or a tourist, and will have to fight a real uphill battle to get the locals to cooperate at all. Personally I'm not really that concerned about stuff, as in, "getting the best." In any case most "stuff" in games like this is either crafted or found adventuring. I don't think it'd be an unbalancing advantage for, say, humans to have access to better merchants. That would be quite easy to balance out, say by giving the orlans some cool racial special abilities, or access to those grubby pawnshops which turn out sell the best poisons and the hottest stolen stuff under the counter. But yeah good point about humans and men always being the majority. It would be cool to see that assumption flipped. I hope someone soon does that. T:ToN perhaps?

Or, of course, it could go like it usually does: they could designate you an honorary human. Even the Nazis designated some Jews honorary Aryans. (I bet they were really chuffed about that honor.)

Less content. Less interesting challenges. Less interesting gameplay. Bloodlines is an excellent example of how to do it right. The Nosferatu had particular challenges they had to surmount, and the game experience was different because of them. You didn't get the social intricacies of playing as a Toreador, but you got something else instead. So it's kind of correct to say that the the world of Bloodlines treats Nosferatu as second-class citizens, but the game of Bloodlines totally doesn't. Nosferatu gameplay is fully fleshed-out and every bit as interesting as playing as any other clan.

Yep. It's one thing for the game world to discriminate against classes of individuals; it's another for the game to do the same. This is why I dislike tired videogame tropes like boobplate and damsels in distress. They just pander to some really dumb expectations and relegate one class of individuals – women – to eye-candy status only. So it would be a bad thing if bigotry in P:E led to a situation where, say, playing as an orlan or a woman would lead to a significantly poorer game. This doesn't mean the game world can't be bigoted. You just have to put in alternative content for all sides. If a city guard is human males only, you might make a criminal underground that's non-humans only. If additionally you made elements of the guard corrupt and elements in the criminal underground take care of the community where it operates, then both paths would get a rewarding and materially different experience, and both paths would benefit from the added depth the other brings to the table. It would have the added benefit of believability, since this resembles how bigotry and social groupings operate in real life. You wouldn't want to overdo this of course; it'd be a bit of a let-down if the entire plot was predetermined by the choices you made at character creation. But I think it would be possible to work in this kind of thing "organically" as it were.

I take it you really, REALLY like pauldrons?

I agree. Just salting in constant and repetitive malicious comments is a very cheap and easy way of doing it, and rather than that, it would be better not to do at all. What I'd like to see is shops, taverns, inns, guilds etc. that are "men only," "women only," "humans only," "orlans only" etc., with suitable social status associated. An orlan entering a shop selling magical luxuries would be turned away with "We don't serve your kind here;" a human barging into a grubby orlan pawnshop would be met with "Please sir, we have nothing here." Hey, you could then even add features that would let you circumvent these limitations. Disguise skills or illusion magic that would let you pass as a member of another group (if you knew how to act the part too), special, perhaps demeaning and humiliating, perhaps exceptionally challenging quests that would get you accepted as an honorary hu(man), and so on.

Fantasy is often escapist, but it doesn't have to be, and IMO it's not the core of the genre at all.