I listened to the latest episode of Sam Chupp’s The Bear’s Grove Podcast today, and I felt I had to comment on the topic. Bear in mind, of course, that I’m not all that used to blogging, so this may or may not be coherent. Also, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Sam, and this isn’t intended to be any kind of rant.

I think the thing that really bugged me is the idea that, somehow, portrayals of races and cultures in fantasy RPGs constitute actual racism. The most common example – taken from the Gamers of Color LiveJournal community – is LARPers or con-goers dressing like drow (dark elves from the Dungeons & Dragons RPG) being compared to performers wearing blackface. This is really an example of seeing racism where there is none.

I understand that people from certain groups are discriminated against. That doesn’t, however, give any given minority (of which I am one) the right to assume that the creators of shallow fantasy cultures are necessarily being racially insensitive. Sometimes, there just needs to be some bad guys. I mean, nobody accuses George Lucas of being anti-British just because every Imperial officer in Star Wars had a high-class British accent; everyone just realizes that it sounds cool.

To be honest, I think that an orc is just an orc. They get slaughtered in droves because that’s what they’re there for. Yeah, sometimes it may make it more interesting in a given story to humanize them in some way, but more often than not, it’s unnecessary. I’m pretty sure that it’s usually us who project our own flaws onto these nonexistent fantasy cultures and races. On the other hand, I don’t go around complaining that atheists aren’t well represented in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It’s better to accept the fact that people write things like evil, subterranean, black-skinned elves into RPGs because they’re cool. Not because they’re supposed to represent any real-life culture or human phenotype.

Then again, what the fuck do I know? I am, after all, only some poor, privileged honky.