I'm writing up an alternate race system for an upcoming book, and I wanted to include the boxed text below. We're using the term 'stereotype' to label each race description, and the following text would appear to help explain why. I'm looking for feedback on how the text below reads. Is it getting the point across? Is it too long? etc.
(And just to respond to it before it comes up, I'm not looking to start another thread on why we need to address issues of race in D&D. There are already a lot of those. This is for feedback on the following, specifically.)
Aren’t Stereotypes Bad?
Yes, when we use them to make harmful assumptions, or use them to create rules and laws that require conforming to them. That’s part of why there are no required race traits in this system.
In real life, we often talk about the harm stereotypes can cause. This is understandable and necessary, as conversations of this nature help us to identify and address problems. We’re less inclined to discuss where problems aren’t present, and thus we tend to forget things that served a purpose.
Stereotypes, at their core, are generalizations, and generalizations on people exist due to the limitations on our lives. We aren’t going to be able to spend the time to get to know everyone we encounter on a deep, personal level, and to understand all the variations that go into making them a unique individual, for every individual. We create categories in our mind to generate a road map for how to interact with people we may only know for a few minutes or a few seconds. Most adults know that many people won’t match these ‘mental quickbuilds’.
In fiction, this effect is magnified by the fact that we don’t have years and decades of interacting with these people to deepen our understanding. Those fictional characters actually don’t possess the same level of nuance, because a writer can’t possibly give a character all of the detail an entire life would.
In role playing games, this is magnified again, because if you're going to be interacting with these characters, you’re inclined to want that easy roadmap on what to expect from people.
That’s part of why we’ve still included stereotypes here; because without a stereotype in a fictional setting there’s no racial identity at all.
Try using the word 'Archetype' instead of 'Stereotype'. You can still include your 'Aren't Stereotypes Bad?' text box to address the issue, but even then I'd consider focusing more on the use of archetypes/tropes in storytelling in your explanation over "stereotyping people is perfectly fine so long as you do it with love." I can say that my first gut reaction to your text box was a massive eye roll and a desire to give whoever wrote it a good several paragraphs of sass.
Something to the effect of "we use these archetypes as tools, to characterize the broad cultural strokes of a species/people/nation and describe the overall place they have chosen for themselves in our world. As with reality, individuals diverge from the archetypes of their kind all the time; assuming any given person will conform strictly to these archetypes is often a fools errand", or the like.
You can try and over-explain why you're using the word 'Stereotype', or you can avoid it in the first place and keep your document cleaner. I know what you're going for and why you're trying to explain Positive Helpful Not-Bad-We-Promise Stereotyping to people, but frankly? The people you're trying to mollify with this sidebar won't care. Either own the word and dispense with the sidebar entirely, hope that people will take your work as intended, or admit that you're playing with fire you don't need to play with and adjust wording even if it's not as as scientifically correct. Remember: you're selling this book to hobbyist gamers, not sociologists. You have to speak their language, not a sociologist's language.
That's all I have time for this morning. Hopefully it's at least somewhat helpful.
You can try and over-explain why you're using the word 'Stereotype', or you can avoid it in the first place and keep your document cleaner. I know what you're going for and why you're trying to explain Positive Helpful Not-Bad-We-Promise Stereotyping to people, but frankly? The people you're trying to mollify with this sidebar won't care. Either own the word and dispense with the sidebar entirely, hope that people will take your work as intended, or admit that you're playing with fire you don't need to play with and adjust wording even if it's not as as scientifically correct. Remember: you're selling this book to hobbyist gamers, not sociologists. You have to speak their language, not a sociologist's language.
That's all I have time for this morning. Hopefully it's at least somewhat helpful.
Avoiding it comes with other problems. We are explicitly condemning "Positive Helpful Not-Bad-We-Promise Stereotyping". We have to sell it to gamers as an end product, but we have to sell it to sociologists and others first to get funding to produce it. The formal terms are used because they are ultimately clearer.
Plus, even as just a general tip on RPG writing - if you need to spend almost 300 words explaining why you are using a certain term (and apparently even more words elsewhere), it's a good sign you should probably just not use that term.
I think this is a great illustration of why Race and Racial identity needs to change from a 'stat purist' perspective. Stereotypes don't exist for a reason and the fantasy that they do is deeply harmful, even in a game.
Just to be clear, this isn't a thread about weather or not we can use the term 'stererotype'. That's set. It's a requirement of our grant funding. The money has come in from an inter-university sociology group who have already spent a lot of time on why this has to be this way. The question this thread is trying to address is weather or not the reason for it's use is clear.
Though it is clear there will be need for revision.
I am with Yurei and the others here. If you have to explain why you think stereotypes are not bad when used in the way you are using them, it would be better to avoid them in the first place.
Saying "We know stereotypes are bad, but..." feels like attempted justification along the lines of "I'm not racists/misogynistic/homophobic, but...". It rings hollow. The more you try to explain your way out of it, the bigger the hole you dig. There are other words you can use which don't have the negative connotations.
The writeup is pretty good. I would consider expanding it further:
Are "stereotypes" in your game mechanically enforced? If so, explain why and how, and how that relates to the way characters interact.
Is there room for mechanical variation for individuals? If so, explain why and how. If not, consider explaining how, when you get to focus on an individual as a PC or NPC, you can have opportunity to show identity and diversity outside of a stereotype.
If your book goes into sufficient depth, consider explaining the difference between "race," "ethnicity," and "culture," and how they can be modeled. Consider also "species" if that's relevant to your worldbuilding. (Maybe also the history of using fantasy/scifi race/species as an analogy for real world ethnicity, etc.)
Just to be clear, this isn't a thread about weather or not we can use the term 'stererotype'. That's set. It's a requirement of our grant funding.
That sounds dodgy to me. "We'll give you money to write this, but only if you use the word 'stereotype'"... I would be highly suspicious that the funding was coming from a group who wanted justification for their less-than-savoury views.
I don't think there is any way you can describe using 'stereotype' which would remove or dilute the negative connotations to the point where it was not highly contentious. In short, you are going to p*** people off by using the word, and probably p*** them off even more by trying to explain why you are using it.
EDIT: Re-reading your description above, it sounds like a defence of stereotyping and a dismissal of the harm it does. It makes misleading statements which appear to be an attempt to make them more acceptable. For instance, you say
Stereotypes, at their core, are generalizations, and generalizations on people exist due to the limitations on our lives. We aren’t going to be able to spend the time to get to know everyone we encounter on a deep, personal level, and to understand all the variations that go into making them a unique individual, for every individual. We create categories in our mind to generate a road map for how to interact with people we may only know for a few minutes or a few seconds. Most adults know that many people won’t match these ‘mental quickbuilds’.
What you seem to be trying to say in this is that, as not all generalisations are bad, stereotypes are not all bad. This is a false corollary. Stereotypes are just one type of generalisation, and they are a bad type. Other types of generalisations are not stereotypes, and some of those can be useful.
You also say "Most adults know that many people won’t match these ‘mental quickbuilds’". This tries to dismiss the fact that many people either don't know, or act in a harmful, lazy manner by ignoring this.
I'm not going to do a full examination or breakdown, but this is all just a really bad idea.
Stepping back to the higher-level conversation, I think that your second sentence, "when we...use them to create rules and laws that require conforming to them" clashes horribly with your last sentence, "without a stereotype in a fictional setting there’s no racial identity at all." Though I don't know the details of your alternate race system, it's probably, by definition, creating rules that require conforming to stereotypes.
So, first of all, I really really hope your system has means for escaping those rules. Or perhaps, if it's funded by a sociology group, it knows what it's doing. The general concept of "racial" identity has a very fraught history, so that's exactly the sort of thing an academic institution would study.
Secondly, maybe the end of the writeup should be more explicit about why games need generalizations to be playable, rather than making assertions about the nature of racial identity.
That’s part of why we’ve still included stereotypes here; because without a stereotype in a fictional setting there’s no racial identity at all.
This line distills the entire problem into one sentence: why does there need to be a racial identity at all?
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.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Saying "We know stereotypes are bad, but..." feels like attempted justification along the lines of "I'm not racists/misogynistic/homophobic, but...". It rings hollow. The more you try to explain your way out of it, the bigger the hole you dig. There are other words you can use which don't have the negative connotations.
Again, not an option. We don't use the wording required by the grant and the book doesn't get produced. We've all gone through the sensitivity training and learned about why the term is necessary.
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.'
Fair enough. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole myself, even if it meant it was not going to be produced. It strikes me the same way as someone insisting that, in order to get funding, I must use the N word and explain why it was OK for me to do so...
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.
The best you can do is acknowledge that they broad generalizations,and not binding.
Ah, thank you, that sentence alone addresses the issue. Put something like it in the box text. (As I would guess you are aware, the issue is so frustrating in RPGs because game rules are binding.)
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I'm writing up an alternate race system for an upcoming book, and I wanted to include the boxed text below. We're using the term 'stereotype' to label each race description, and the following text would appear to help explain why. I'm looking for feedback on how the text below reads. Is it getting the point across? Is it too long? etc.
(And just to respond to it before it comes up, I'm not looking to start another thread on why we need to address issues of race in D&D. There are already a lot of those. This is for feedback on the following, specifically.)
Aren’t Stereotypes Bad?
Yes, when we use them to make harmful assumptions, or use them to create rules and laws that require conforming to them. That’s part of why there are no required race traits in this system.
In real life, we often talk about the harm stereotypes can cause. This is understandable and necessary, as conversations of this nature help us to identify and address problems. We’re less inclined to discuss where problems aren’t present, and thus we tend to forget things that served a purpose.
Stereotypes, at their core, are generalizations, and generalizations on people exist due to the limitations on our lives. We aren’t going to be able to spend the time to get to know everyone we encounter on a deep, personal level, and to understand all the variations that go into making them a unique individual, for every individual. We create categories in our mind to generate a road map for how to interact with people we may only know for a few minutes or a few seconds. Most adults know that many people won’t match these ‘mental quickbuilds’.
In fiction, this effect is magnified by the fact that we don’t have years and decades of interacting with these people to deepen our understanding. Those fictional characters actually don’t possess the same level of nuance, because a writer can’t possibly give a character all of the detail an entire life would.
In role playing games, this is magnified again, because if you're going to be interacting with these characters, you’re inclined to want that easy roadmap on what to expect from people.
That’s part of why we’ve still included stereotypes here; because without a stereotype in a fictional setting there’s no racial identity at all.
Sigh.
OTL
Right.
Try using the word 'Archetype' instead of 'Stereotype'. You can still include your 'Aren't Stereotypes Bad?' text box to address the issue, but even then I'd consider focusing more on the use of archetypes/tropes in storytelling in your explanation over "stereotyping people is perfectly fine so long as you do it with love." I can say that my first gut reaction to your text box was a massive eye roll and a desire to give whoever wrote it a good several paragraphs of sass.
Something to the effect of "we use these archetypes as tools, to characterize the broad cultural strokes of a species/people/nation and describe the overall place they have chosen for themselves in our world. As with reality, individuals diverge from the archetypes of their kind all the time; assuming any given person will conform strictly to these archetypes is often a fools errand", or the like.
Please do not contact or message me.
You can try and over-explain why you're using the word 'Stereotype', or you can avoid it in the first place and keep your document cleaner. I know what you're going for and why you're trying to explain Positive Helpful Not-Bad-We-Promise Stereotyping to people, but frankly? The people you're trying to mollify with this sidebar won't care. Either own the word and dispense with the sidebar entirely, hope that people will take your work as intended, or admit that you're playing with fire you don't need to play with and adjust wording even if it's not as as scientifically correct. Remember: you're selling this book to hobbyist gamers, not sociologists. You have to speak their language, not a sociologist's language.
That's all I have time for this morning. Hopefully it's at least somewhat helpful.
Please do not contact or message me.
Avoiding it comes with other problems. We are explicitly condemning "Positive Helpful Not-Bad-We-Promise Stereotyping". We have to sell it to gamers as an end product, but we have to sell it to sociologists and others first to get funding to produce it. The formal terms are used because they are ultimately clearer.
I agree with Yurei1453.
Plus, even as just a general tip on RPG writing - if you need to spend almost 300 words explaining why you are using a certain term (and apparently even more words elsewhere), it's a good sign you should probably just not use that term.
I think this is a great illustration of why Race and Racial identity needs to change from a 'stat purist' perspective. Stereotypes don't exist for a reason and the fantasy that they do is deeply harmful, even in a game.
That's not really what science is telling us, nor epistemology. As to stereotypes not existing for a reason, what about the reasons listed above?
Just to be clear, this isn't a thread about weather or not we can use the term 'stererotype'. That's set. It's a requirement of our grant funding. The money has come in from an inter-university sociology group who have already spent a lot of time on why this has to be this way. The question this thread is trying to address is weather or not the reason for it's use is clear.
Though it is clear there will be need for revision.
I am with Yurei and the others here. If you have to explain why you think stereotypes are not bad when used in the way you are using them, it would be better to avoid them in the first place.
Saying "We know stereotypes are bad, but..." feels like attempted justification along the lines of "I'm not racists/misogynistic/homophobic, but...". It rings hollow. The more you try to explain your way out of it, the bigger the hole you dig. There are other words you can use which don't have the negative connotations.
The writeup is pretty good. I would consider expanding it further:
That sounds dodgy to me. "We'll give you money to write this, but only if you use the word 'stereotype'"... I would be highly suspicious that the funding was coming from a group who wanted justification for their less-than-savoury views.
I don't think there is any way you can describe using 'stereotype' which would remove or dilute the negative connotations to the point where it was not highly contentious. In short, you are going to p*** people off by using the word, and probably p*** them off even more by trying to explain why you are using it.
EDIT: Re-reading your description above, it sounds like a defence of stereotyping and a dismissal of the harm it does. It makes misleading statements which appear to be an attempt to make them more acceptable. For instance, you say
What you seem to be trying to say in this is that, as not all generalisations are bad, stereotypes are not all bad. This is a false corollary. Stereotypes are just one type of generalisation, and they are a bad type. Other types of generalisations are not stereotypes, and some of those can be useful.
You also say "Most adults know that many people won’t match these ‘mental quickbuilds’". This tries to dismiss the fact that many people either don't know, or act in a harmful, lazy manner by ignoring this.
I'm not going to do a full examination or breakdown, but this is all just a really bad idea.
Stepping back to the higher-level conversation, I think that your second sentence, "when we...use them to create rules and laws that require conforming to them" clashes horribly with your last sentence, "without a stereotype in a fictional setting there’s no racial identity at all." Though I don't know the details of your alternate race system, it's probably, by definition, creating rules that require conforming to stereotypes.
So, first of all, I really really hope your system has means for escaping those rules. Or perhaps, if it's funded by a sociology group, it knows what it's doing. The general concept of "racial" identity has a very fraught history, so that's exactly the sort of thing an academic institution would study.
Secondly, maybe the end of the writeup should be more explicit about why games need generalizations to be playable, rather than making assertions about the nature of racial identity.
This line distills the entire problem into one sentence: why does there need to be a racial identity at all?
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.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Learn something new every day!
Again, not an option. We don't use the wording required by the grant and the book doesn't get produced. We've all gone through the sensitivity training and learned about why the term is necessary.
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.'
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
Fair enough. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole myself, even if it meant it was not going to be produced. It strikes me the same way as someone insisting that, in order to get funding, I must use the N word and explain why it was OK for me to do so...
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.
Ah, thank you, that sentence alone addresses the issue. Put something like it in the box text. (As I would guess you are aware, the issue is so frustrating in RPGs because game rules are binding.)