In what we're writing, racial identity doesn't have it's own game mechanics, per se. Race is an in-game social distinction. Essentially all the mechanical race traits are turned into feats and you choose a set of starting feats, being either those or others. The race descriptions give ideas of what is considered typical in-game. They are called stereotypes because that's what they are; The way characters in the game think of different social groups.
In what we're writing, racial identity doesn't have it's own game mechanics, per se. Race is an in-game social distinction. Essentially all the mechanical race traits are turned into feats and you choose a set of starting feats, being either those or others. The race descriptions give ideas of what is considered typical in-game. They are called stereotypes because that's what they are; The way characters in the game think of different social groups.
That's excellent context, and makes the box text much easier to swallow.
Moreover, it begs a lot of questions about the OPs understanding of stereotypes in regards to sociological constructions of race (I think that's what the "academic" side is exploring). Racial identity or cultural identity is something held by someone identifying themself within a group. It's a personal and community act. Stereotyping is a phenomena of prejudice, assumptions, about a "type." An identity is developed by experience, a stereotype is utilized often as a result of lack or disinterest in experience. They can bandy social science and epistemology to declare some authority over the matter being contested by some of the comments, but I'm just confused as to the ends or point of this project. An academic org (who? basic academic workethos usually presumes transparency about the entirety of the process, including if not especially who paid for it) is funding ... faculty? post doc? grad student? undergrad? random folks on the internet? researchers to insert the concept of stereotyping into a game manual? A game manual that the authors will then "sell" to the gaming community?
I can't speak to the larger project, because I don't understand it, but I think there's some issues with the inquiry starting this thread. For one, if you didn't want to have a discussion of race in D&D, why is this thread called Race and Racial Identity in D&D? You're defending an articulation of racial stereotypes in an alternative rule set for a role playing game that recently has come under fire for representations of race. Did you really expect "oh, you're talking about stereotypes and their utilitarian value. Of course, if you're making broad assumptions about types, races, or classes of people. That's cool, you get a pass."? You are aware in the social sciences and epistemological discourses, there's a fairly on trend argument for a mode of being a rejecting stereotypes, which foster disengagement or at best short shrift managerial engagement, and instead argues for greater attention to presence and mindfulness. I mean, noted D&D endorsee Fred Rogers, while not explicitly talking about the game, was an endorsee of those practices decades ago.
The issue isn't that I'm trying not to talk about race, it's that the whole issue is that I am trying to talk about this one tiny aspect of how to talk about race. This is my full time employment. I've had those conversations. This bit of writing is the result of those conversations. I'm not attempting to obfuscate anything about the funding, I'm only attempting to be brief, because, a) this is one of 49 threads like this that I am monitoring, and b) I've found that if you aren't brief people either don't respond, or respond with something unrelated.
And no, avoiding the use of stereotypes is not the trend in the academic world. Making sure people understand that stereotypes are not only a function of prejudice, but also a function of basic cognition, is the trend. How exactly do you describe a broad group without making broad generalizations? The best you can do is acknowledge that they broad generalizations,and not binding.
I would argue that stereotypes are not a "function of basic cognition". Generalisations are and categorisation is, but stereotypes are not.
This is sounding more and more like a pseudo scientific attempted justification of unacceptable behaviour, like arguments that women are unsuited to certain work due to biological differences being used to justify misogyny.
I would argue that stereotypes are not a "function of basic cognition". Generalisations are and categorisation is, but stereotypes are not.
The distinction between categorization and stereotyping is entirely linguistic. You're brain isn't doing anything different.To use one term or the other isn't a justification by itself.
In each place that I've posted this, there's been a different issue, usually requiring additional context. That it isn't the same part of the context is a bit of a concern.
The beginning of the section this would appear in is this:
Understanding the Racial Stereotypes
The use of the term stereotype is entirely intentional. None of the quick descriptions here hold for all members of a given race, they are simply the most common and expected traits. Adventurers are often unusual people, and may not conform to these descriptions at all. For some, that was a factor in their taking up the adventuring life.
Traits related to culture can vary through unusual upbringing, aptitude, or lack thereof.
Physical traits like Claws or Keen Senses can disappear due to birth defects, lifestyle, events in the character’s life, or any other circumstance the DM will allow. Likewise, players can opt to not select traits that aren’t mechanically functional due to other traits of the character. For example, someone playing a blind dwarf isn’t required to take Darkvision. Players and DMs can use the stereotypes here for quick builds, or as the default options for characters when there isn’t any particular reason to change them.
In each place that I've posted this, there's been a different issue, usually requiring additional context. That it isn't the same part of the context is a bit of a concern.
In my experience, the issue of race in fantasy RPGs (or scifi RPGs that reskin the fantasy tropes, etc.) is so difficult to unpack that, well, you could write a whole book on it.
I personally approach it from a game design perspective, and (based on what you've shown so far) I think you're on a good track.
Adventurers are often unusual people, and may not conform to these descriptions at all. For some, that was a factor in their taking up the adventuring life.
Exceptionally minor quibble: obviously, this is a good argument for adventurers to have exception, but even minor NPCs and thoroughly boring, uninteresting characters wouldn't be compelled to conform, and I wouldn't want to give readers the impression that one must earn exception from a stereotype by being an exceptional adventurer...
We categorise and generalise all the time. Stereotyping goes much further than that. It is applying a massive generalisation to a large group of people and making damaging assumptions about them because of it, most often based only on what we have been told without any direct experience.
Categorisation is saying "this woman is a blonde". Generalisation is saying "this woman is a blonde, and blondes are generally bubbly and fun to be around". Stereotyping is saying "she's a blonde, so she's going to be fun, ditsy, and stupid".
We categorise all the time. Our brains are pattern recognition engines. We will then try to establish similarities in other areas between people in those categories. Stereotyping takes it a long way further than that in a destructive and damaging way.
In each place that I've posted this, there's been a different issue, usually requiring additional context. That it isn't the same part of the context is a bit of a concern.
The beginning of the section this would appear in is this:
Understanding the Racial Stereotypes
The use of the term stereotype is entirely intentional. None of the quick descriptions here hold for all members of a given race, they are simply the most common and expected traits. Adventurers are often unusual people, and may not conform to these descriptions at all. For some, that was a factor in their taking up the adventuring life.
Traits related to culture can vary through unusual upbringing, aptitude, or lack thereof.
Physical traits like Claws or Keen Senses can disappear due to birth defects, lifestyle, events in the character’s life, or any other circumstance the DM will allow. Likewise, players can opt to not select traits that aren’t mechanically functional due to other traits of the character. For example, someone playing a blind dwarf isn’t required to take Darkvision. Players and DMs can use the stereotypes here for quick builds, or as the default options for characters when there isn’t any particular reason to change them.
I think you've gone even further into offensive territory here. You will it's one thing to talk about stereotypes, entirely another to be directly talking of racial stereotypes.
Is this intended to be a commercial product or an academic research exercise? Are you trying to make a game people will want to play, or produce something to help you perform research into people's attitudes?
If this is purely academic, a tool for research purposes, it may be an interesting study.
If you are actually trying to make a successful product, I think you are going to p*** so many people off with this language that it is doomed to failure, no matter how much you try to justify it.
If you are actually trying to make a successful product, I think you are going to p*** so many people off with this language that it is doomed to failure, no matter how much you try to justify it.
I'm not the OP obviously, but I feel like I'm missing something.
Are you worried about offending racists, or people who insist on putting race mechanics into games?
Do you think this will offend the "stick to sportsgames, keep politics out of it" crowd?
Or do you think even mentioning stereotypes, and defining rules for ignoring them, is insensitive?
If you are actually trying to make a successful product, I think you are going to p*** so many people off with this language that it is doomed to failure, no matter how much you try to justify it.
I'm not the OP obviously, but I feel like I'm missing something.
Are you worried about offending racists, or people who insist on putting race mechanics into games?
Do you think this will offend the "stick to sportsgames, keep politics out of it" crowd?
Or do you think even mentioning stereotypes, and defining rules for ignoring them, is insensitive?
This isn't defining rules to ignore stereotypes, it's saying "the only way we can have racial identities is by giving you stereotypes, but if you really want to you can be different to everyone else of your race".
The very idea of defining racial stereotypes as part of the game is offensive in itself. Saying you can choose not to be a stereotype, but it's easier to just be the stereotype... Can you really not see how bad this all sounds?
Even the mention of racial stereotypes it's going to get a large negative reaction from a lot of people.
Different wording could make this a really good concept. However, wording it as racial stereotypes is terrible. Doing all this as a sociology experiment may be interesting, but as a commercial product?
they are simply the most common and expected traits
This already misses the mark on how stereotypes are used in reality. Most stereotypes actually have little to nothing to do with how common the traits are, and far more to do with how groups with power attempt to define other groups. "Expected" is accurate, however, because it usually creates a confirmation bias to perceive those who have the stereotyped trait as "typical" and those without as "atypical" regardless of the actual frequency of stereotyped traits.
Ultimately, however, the difficulty you are facing is that you are trying to satisfy two entirely different audiences (funders & customers) who have two entirely different goals. Not to be a downer, but at some point you are probably going to have to choose which one is the primary audience and focus the writing accordingly. Maybe it's possible to serve two entirely different audiences simultaneously, but it's exceedingly difficult without being disappointing to both.
The biggest single problem with races in D&D is that orcs (and a bunch of other non-playable humanoids) don't really have a reason for existing other than 'provide people the PCs can kill without feeling bad'. There simply isn't a way of making that not offensive.
The very idea of defining racial stereotypes as part of the game is offensive in itself. Saying you can choose not to be a stereotype, but it's easier to just be the stereotype... Can you really not see how bad this all sounds?
That does sound bad, but I think you might be putting words in the OP's mouth. Or maybe just leaping to some conclusions. (I mean, that's fair, the world is full of misguided people, and this issue has been beaten into the ground by all sorts...so it makes sense to be a little jumpy around here.)
they are simply the most common and expected traits
This already misses the mark on how stereotypes are used in reality. Most stereotypes actually have little to nothing to do with how common the traits are, and far more to do with how groups with power attempt to define other groups. "Expected" is accurate, however, because it usually creates a confirmation bias to perceive those who have the stereotyped trait as "typical" and those without as "atypical" regardless of the actual frequency of stereotyped traits.
I would honestly put in an explanation of why the grant funding requires you to use this wording. I'd like it here, so we can know your parameters/restrictions more clearly, but I think it needs to be clear to the people using the book, or some people are going to walk away.
I would especially change the last phrase: "because without a stereotype in a fictional setting there’s no racial identity at all." The whole thing reads as 'it's too hard to illustrate diversity in a fictional setting,' but this sentence doubles down on 'stereotypes are the only way to illustrate racial characteristics.'
The trend in social justice work these days is to de-stigmatize the word stereotype and talk about how stereotypes should or shouldn't be used. The whole book is about encouraging diversity, so I'm not concerned about that being a point of confusion. In a direct sense, any illustration of race itself is an act of stereotyping, so you literally can't do without it, even if you don't call it that. That point might do with being more explicit though.
I think it was best said when someone mentioned stereotypes are usually a power group's generalization of someone/thing, with little or no actual merit. Stereotypes would be things long the lines of "All Dwarves drink beer" while a generalization would be that "Beer is a very popular beverage in Dwarven communities" It's immensely difficult to use the word stereotype in a non-negative way, because it IS a negative term.
Whoever is insisting on it's use lacks either a grasp on our language or is trying to head off the complainers who will raise hell when you give an overview of the races (to be honest, SPECIES is more accurate for what we use in D&D) and scream that your stereotypes have limited my creativity!!!! I, for one, am more amused by folks taking up the HR banner for fictional creatures. It's great amusement reading people describe how Dragonborn, or Gnomes are being slighted and discriminated against......it's imaginary.
With that in mind, forcing you to use the word stereotype to describe this is a fail from the start, and juggling words will not make it acceptable to the care bears and hypersensitive, no matter HOW much you try. The word itself is negative and if this is something you will earn commissions of sales on, expect poor return. To explain how you use generalizations to show the "norm" for the different creatures would be not only more acceptable, but more accurate.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Adventurers are often unusual people, and may not conform to these descriptions at all. For some, that was a factor in their taking up the adventuring life.
Exceptionally minor quibble: obviously, this is a good argument for adventurers to have exception, but even minor NPCs and thoroughly boring, uninteresting characters wouldn't be compelled to conform, and I wouldn't want to give readers the impression that one must earn exception from a stereotype by being an exceptional adventurer...
Did it seem that it was phrased as a requirement? I'm having trouble with coming up with a phrasing that addresses the point without being verbose.
I think you've gone even further into offensive territory here. You will it's one thing to talk about stereotypes, entirely another to be directly talking of racial stereotypes.
What you can't talk about, you can't resolve.
You mention 'Different wording could make this a really good concept. ' Such as?
Adventurers are often unusual people, and may not conform to these descriptions at all. For some, that was a factor in their taking up the adventuring life.
Exceptionally minor quibble: obviously, this is a good argument for adventurers to have exception, but even minor NPCs and thoroughly boring, uninteresting characters wouldn't be compelled to conform, and I wouldn't want to give readers the impression that one must earn exception from a stereotype by being an exceptional adventurer...
Did it seem that it was phrased as a requirement? I'm having trouble with coming up with a phrasing that addresses the point without being verbose.
I think I would try to address it as two points:
People can be exceptions. In fact, people are often exceptions.
Adventurers tend to be extraordinary, providing even further excuse to be diverse.
they are simply the most common and expected traits
This already misses the mark on how stereotypes are used in reality. Most stereotypes actually have little to nothing to do with how common the traits are, and far more to do with how groups with power attempt to define other groups. "Expected" is accurate, however, because it usually creates a confirmation bias to perceive those who have the stereotyped trait as "typical" and those without as "atypical" regardless of the actual frequency of stereotyped traits.
Ultimately, however, the difficulty you are facing is that you are trying to satisfy two entirely different audiences (funders & customers) who have two entirely different goals. Not to be a downer, but at some point you are probably going to have to choose which one is the primary audience and focus the writing accordingly. Maybe it's possible to serve two entirely different audiences simultaneously, but it's exceedingly difficult without being disappointing to both.
You raise a point that has been an issue of contention among those of us writing. Some of us wanted to send the point home about these being stereotypes by writing each from the perspective of the an outsider to each group, complete with little anecdote notes from characters like you see in other books. I'm not a fan of that, since I feel like the point is to say what these groups are, even if, as groups, that's going to be nebulous.
As far as having to serve different ends, well, I've never been able to write anything for publication without that being an issue, excepting in religious contexts.
The biggest single problem with races in D&D is that orcs (and a bunch of other non-playable humanoids) don't really have a reason for existing other than 'provide people the PCs can kill without feeling bad'. There simply isn't a way of making that not offensive.
This system, at least in theory, allows you to play as anything that is sentient.
I wrote a piece about monsters expressing that same issue, and about how the fact that more and more of the beings that we label outside moral concern are becoming playable characters in multiple media. I tend to think it's a sign of moral evolution in our culture.
In what we're writing, racial identity doesn't have it's own game mechanics, per se. Race is an in-game social distinction. Essentially all the mechanical race traits are turned into feats and you choose a set of starting feats, being either those or others. The race descriptions give ideas of what is considered typical in-game. They are called stereotypes because that's what they are; The way characters in the game think of different social groups.
That's excellent context, and makes the box text much easier to swallow.
I would argue that stereotypes are not a "function of basic cognition". Generalisations are and categorisation is, but stereotypes are not.
This is sounding more and more like a pseudo scientific attempted justification of unacceptable behaviour, like arguments that women are unsuited to certain work due to biological differences being used to justify misogyny.
The distinction between categorization and stereotyping is entirely linguistic. You're brain isn't doing anything different.To use one term or the other isn't a justification by itself.
In each place that I've posted this, there's been a different issue, usually requiring additional context. That it isn't the same part of the context is a bit of a concern.
The beginning of the section this would appear in is this:
Understanding the Racial Stereotypes
The use of the term stereotype is entirely intentional. None of the quick descriptions here hold for all members of a given race, they are simply the most common and expected traits. Adventurers are often unusual people, and may not conform to these descriptions at all. For some, that was a factor in their taking up the adventuring life.
Traits related to culture can vary through unusual upbringing, aptitude, or lack thereof.
Physical traits like Claws or Keen Senses can disappear due to birth defects, lifestyle, events in the character’s life, or any other circumstance the DM will allow. Likewise, players can opt to not select traits that aren’t mechanically functional due to other traits of the character. For example, someone playing a blind dwarf isn’t required to take Darkvision. Players and DMs can use the stereotypes here for quick builds, or as the default options for characters when there isn’t any particular reason to change them.
In my experience, the issue of race in fantasy RPGs (or scifi RPGs that reskin the fantasy tropes, etc.) is so difficult to unpack that, well, you could write a whole book on it.
I personally approach it from a game design perspective, and (based on what you've shown so far) I think you're on a good track.
Exceptionally minor quibble: obviously, this is a good argument for adventurers to have exception, but even minor NPCs and thoroughly boring, uninteresting characters wouldn't be compelled to conform, and I wouldn't want to give readers the impression that one must earn exception from a stereotype by being an exceptional adventurer...
We categorise and generalise all the time. Stereotyping goes much further than that. It is applying a massive generalisation to a large group of people and making damaging assumptions about them because of it, most often based only on what we have been told without any direct experience.
Categorisation is saying "this woman is a blonde". Generalisation is saying "this woman is a blonde, and blondes are generally bubbly and fun to be around". Stereotyping is saying "she's a blonde, so she's going to be fun, ditsy, and stupid".
We categorise all the time. Our brains are pattern recognition engines. We will then try to establish similarities in other areas between people in those categories. Stereotyping takes it a long way further than that in a destructive and damaging way.
I think you've gone even further into offensive territory here. You will it's one thing to talk about stereotypes, entirely another to be directly talking of racial stereotypes.
Is this intended to be a commercial product or an academic research exercise? Are you trying to make a game people will want to play, or produce something to help you perform research into people's attitudes?
If this is purely academic, a tool for research purposes, it may be an interesting study.
If you are actually trying to make a successful product, I think you are going to p*** so many people off with this language that it is doomed to failure, no matter how much you try to justify it.
I'm not the OP obviously, but I feel like I'm missing something.
sportsgames, keep politics out of it" crowd?This isn't defining rules to ignore stereotypes, it's saying "the only way we can have racial identities is by giving you stereotypes, but if you really want to you can be different to everyone else of your race".
The very idea of defining racial stereotypes as part of the game is offensive in itself. Saying you can choose not to be a stereotype, but it's easier to just be the stereotype... Can you really not see how bad this all sounds?
Even the mention of racial stereotypes it's going to get a large negative reaction from a lot of people.
Different wording could make this a really good concept. However, wording it as racial stereotypes is terrible. Doing all this as a sociology experiment may be interesting, but as a commercial product?
This already misses the mark on how stereotypes are used in reality. Most stereotypes actually have little to nothing to do with how common the traits are, and far more to do with how groups with power attempt to define other groups. "Expected" is accurate, however, because it usually creates a confirmation bias to perceive those who have the stereotyped trait as "typical" and those without as "atypical" regardless of the actual frequency of stereotyped traits.
Ultimately, however, the difficulty you are facing is that you are trying to satisfy two entirely different audiences (funders & customers) who have two entirely different goals. Not to be a downer, but at some point you are probably going to have to choose which one is the primary audience and focus the writing accordingly. Maybe it's possible to serve two entirely different audiences simultaneously, but it's exceedingly difficult without being disappointing to both.
The biggest single problem with races in D&D is that orcs (and a bunch of other non-playable humanoids) don't really have a reason for existing other than 'provide people the PCs can kill without feeling bad'. There simply isn't a way of making that not offensive.
That does sound bad, but I think you might be putting words in the OP's mouth. Or maybe just leaping to some conclusions. (I mean, that's fair, the world is full of misguided people, and this issue has been beaten into the ground by all sorts...so it makes sense to be a little jumpy around here.)
That is an excellent point.
The trend in social justice work these days is to de-stigmatize the word stereotype and talk about how stereotypes should or shouldn't be used. The whole book is about encouraging diversity, so I'm not concerned about that being a point of confusion. In a direct sense, any illustration of race itself is an act of stereotyping, so you literally can't do without it, even if you don't call it that. That point might do with being more explicit though.
I think it was best said when someone mentioned stereotypes are usually a power group's generalization of someone/thing, with little or no actual merit. Stereotypes would be things long the lines of "All Dwarves drink beer" while a generalization would be that "Beer is a very popular beverage in Dwarven communities" It's immensely difficult to use the word stereotype in a non-negative way, because it IS a negative term.
Whoever is insisting on it's use lacks either a grasp on our language or is trying to head off the complainers who will raise hell when you give an overview of the races (to be honest, SPECIES is more accurate for what we use in D&D) and scream that your stereotypes have limited my creativity!!!! I, for one, am more amused by folks taking up the HR banner for fictional creatures. It's great amusement reading people describe how Dragonborn, or Gnomes are being slighted and discriminated against......it's imaginary.
With that in mind, forcing you to use the word stereotype to describe this is a fail from the start, and juggling words will not make it acceptable to the care bears and hypersensitive, no matter HOW much you try. The word itself is negative and if this is something you will earn commissions of sales on, expect poor return. To explain how you use generalizations to show the "norm" for the different creatures would be not only more acceptable, but more accurate.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Did it seem that it was phrased as a requirement? I'm having trouble with coming up with a phrasing that addresses the point without being verbose.
What you can't talk about, you can't resolve.
You mention 'Different wording could make this a really good concept. ' Such as?
I think I would try to address it as two points:
You raise a point that has been an issue of contention among those of us writing. Some of us wanted to send the point home about these being stereotypes by writing each from the perspective of the an outsider to each group, complete with little anecdote notes from characters like you see in other books. I'm not a fan of that, since I feel like the point is to say what these groups are, even if, as groups, that's going to be nebulous.
As far as having to serve different ends, well, I've never been able to write anything for publication without that being an issue, excepting in religious contexts.
This system, at least in theory, allows you to play as anything that is sentient.
I wrote a piece about monsters expressing that same issue, and about how the fact that more and more of the beings that we label outside moral concern are becoming playable characters in multiple media. I tend to think it's a sign of moral evolution in our culture.