Inclusive Worlds

I go out of my way to not only not include anything but white european humans, but also have all my non-human races be light skinned and have european facial structure. I also make sure that none of my cultures resemble a real world society that is outside of europe. This has had only positive effects on the quality of my worldbuilding and nobody who I've shown my work to has noticed it.
Saging for a troll thread that needs to be deleted as soon as physically possible.

More heteronormativity. Come on, Veeky Forums. Why assume the dwarf is a male? Though I do appreciate that "he" likes women who don't fit into stereotypes. Maybe she also has a dick? That's be better.

>delete thread on gaming inclusivity
>asks the racist who doesn't include Europeans of all skin colors

The Adopted background in Pathfinder let you choose any racially exclusive feat, so you could have a half-orc with halfling traits.
So it's possible.

If it's a sci-fi world, generally speaking humans should have pretty much gotten over any form of prejudice because it's the space future, time has passed and we just don't give a shit anymore. There might be some tension between alien races, or maybe there are people bigoted against androids or what have you, but humans as a species see themselves as such, not a bunch of squabbling nations, creeds, religions etc.

In fantasy-land, same kind of deal. Humans are united by a commonality of being human, they don't much care about anything else. The sexism thing is usually justified by the fact it's hard to be a sexist when the adventurer lady down the street can land an arrow between your eyes or bench-press a carrige or set you on fire by thinking about it.
Is that entirely accurate? No, but it's a fantasy, it's a sanitised view of things, nobody's dieing of dysentery either.

That's not to say you can't build a world with discrimination - I was a player in a game where women just didn't go into politics, so I played the only daughter of a lesser noble and just Game of Thrones'd my way into it, with arranged assassinations and whispers in ears and a strategic marriage or two. Dealing with that adversity can be fun.

You can also just side-step the issue entirely by making fantasy land homogenous. You're in fantasy Japan? Everyone's Japanese. Fantasy Europe? Everyone's European. Someone from elsewhere would be exotic and noteworthy in themselves and judged as an individual because of that.

You can also add class based discrimination into pretty much every setting and have it be fun - who doesn't love to hate the stuck up aristocrat?

Personally I can't remember the number of times I've ever mentioned a character's race as a GM, even when I describe them physically because it's just not relevant to me. Let the players decide in their minds what colour the guy or girl's skin is.

I forgot to mention that I make sure that all races no matter how monstrous have both genders clearly defined and easy to tell apart once you know the signs.

Trans-species, like transpeople, only think they are different in some way. They're not physically able to assume these new characteristics.

it depends, not every world needs to be inclusive and inclusiveness is not always a virtue. I run a Toril game. In faerun, almost everywhere is extremely meritocratic, even the villains. the weak are left to fail and strong are raised up. The forgotten realms is extremely individualistic, as are most of the classic, pseudo-western D&D settings, it is a trait they picked up from their American origin and is what I would point to to divide them from a historical fantasy setting. Down south in Zahkara there is extreme tribalism: city vs nomad, enlightened vs barbarians, reformists vs fundamentalist. In group aid is a strong force and what allows a character to succeed can be who they know rather than what they can do. This results in incredibly tight communities, but some groups fall by the wayside. Generally the continent is wealthier than Faerun, but greater power discrepancy. After all station is stated. In the east, in kara-tur and maltara almost every country has a caste system. Outside of priesthood and hermitages there is very little opportunity for social mobility. Stable is the one word I would use to describe the east. The mandate of heaven makes slaves of everyone. No one from eunuch, slave, serf, to emperor can abdicate from their social responsibility. Even ununified, Shou lung Tu lung, Wa, Kozakura, and Koryo could probably stand up to invation from any other country on the planet, but their rigidity makes them unable or unwilling to exert much influence beyond their borders. Up above in realmspace every community has a gimmick.
So you see self determination within a setting is not a simple question, nor should it be (at least for anything bigger than a country). PCs are special if my players want to play something, I'll try to make it work, so the world does bend to them but doesn't break for them.

>You will never play as an Adopted (Dwarf) Aasimar Sorcerer (Orc Bloodline) 1 with the Scion of Humanity racial trait, the Racial Heritage (Half-Elf) feat.

Depends on the region.
You DO have different cultures in your setting, don't you?

Sure I have black and brown people.
Some races like some people and others don't due to history. The two "white" countries hate each other. One of them likes dwarves and the other likes a quasi-asian people some distance away. It all depends on the cultural baggage, not skin color.

As much as I think that you're screwing with us, you do have an interesting point.
Making every nation in a setting visually homogenous and bound to a certain range of cultures can make a setting better in a few ways. Cutting down on extreme diversity allows a GM to build an array of cultures that are grounded and make sense being next to each other. If you want a setting that spans the world, sure, extreme diversity is great. If you want a mish-mash little bit of this little bit of that setting it's fine too. But if you want a tight setting that's easy to get into, just focusing on a particular historical reference can really help you refine your work. Imagine setting that takes place on an island chain where half of the nations are Japanese, but there's also an American midwest one, a colonial British one, a medieval French one, and not!Songhai. It would look like garbage.

>european facial structure
>nobody who I've shown my work to has noticed it
Do you seriously describe the facial structure of humans and near-humans to your players?

This post deserves a (you). 5 star post user.

>Why hate a black human when those filthy fucking knife ears are trying to steal our women?
There are places in Africa right now where they will happily let whites and Asians hang around and invest in different projects, but the genetically and physically identical Africans from the next village over are literally subhumans that not only deserve to be rape-genocided out of existence, but are currently in the process of being rape-genocided out of existence. If you imply that they are at all the same kind of people, they will literally kill you for insulting them that badly.

Fat acceptance is an important part of inclusive worlds. How many fat warriors, fat wizards and clerics do you have in you party? What about overweight elves?

Sad but true.

>What about non-cis people and others not of the heteronormative bend? What about transmen and women, or even trans-species?
They can go die like they should in real life.

Motherfucker are you me? I only do not-Europeans with the occasional not-Arab and not-Asian as enemy races.

This is why I don't get people saying that if aliens suddenly show up that racism would end.

Tarkir had the first trans character of mtg.

theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/05/magic-the-gathering-introduces-first-trans-character

>Party has to stop every 5 minutes of leisurely walking for you to catch your breath.

>Saging for a troll thread that needs to be deleted as soon as physically possible.
That's literally every "hey Veeky Forums what's in your setting" threads. Most of the posts get zero replies, unless it's something that sets off the redditors here.

No, seeing as I went the Elder Scrolls route and based quite a few of my settings races on actual real life races, albeit the differences are much more obvious and meaningful in my setting.

>Can anyone, be they black, Asian, brown or even white succeed in any profession? Be it chamber maid, soldier, scholar or king?
There's more than enough stereotyping, economic backwaters, trade secrets, and isolationism to go around. My setting's not a utopian one, and in a lot of places a perceived 'outsider' would face an uphill battle getting somewhere in society. Especially if it involves becoming a ruler. Of course, who is and isn't an outsider depends strongly on where you are.
>What about non-cis people and others not of the heteronormative bend?
Depends on the society. A lot of 'em tend more toward the 'heteronormative' side of things for the obvious reasons.
>What about transmen and women, or even trans-species?
'Transspecies' would get you openly mocked at best. Your normal trans stuff is almost in the same boat, saved only by the existence of (incredibly expensive and in most cultures considered scandalous) magical means of, well, flipping sexes. Not all cultures go for that, and even fewer wholly endorse it. If anything, the expense has made it something of a status symbol in some regions, to show off how rich you are by changing biology as easily as clothing. Other cultures see this as incredibly decadent.

You made this thread specifically to shitpost. Fuck off.

>Fat acceptance is an important part of inclusive worlds. How many fat warriors, fat wizards and clerics do you have in you party?

Depends how many halfings there are.

Generally yes, because unless I'm running a game where inequality is going to actually matter as a theme (e.g. 40k, where paranoia about all aliens is vital to the setting) I take the approach that it's high fantasy, so the social and religious hangups that lead to discrimination didn't form in this world.

Mostly because they're historically based on dodgy interpretation of religions or philosophies that support equality, and in a world where gods can come down and tell you you're doing it wrong that's much less likely to happen.

Likewise ready access to magic would make cultural advancement easier and likewise migration of peoples, so the natural meetings of cultures via trade would be more common.

Yes, but certain people are more likely to succeed than others.

dude i'm a ruskie I couldnt care fucking less

>I've heard a lot of praise for worlds like Matt Mercer's Tal'dorei and other games not bound by Western tradition.

Wait, what? I'm listening to Critical Role and I've hardly ran across any roving bands of inexplicably black people in White Land, or trans people, or institutionalized homosexuality.

Anyone have the "Alesha gets turned into a cock-gargling butt slut" greentext from last year?

Different groups of people should have different levels of egalitarianism and you can use a certain group or characters relative bigotry (assuming it's unjustified or flawed) as a flaw or use a group or characters relative egalitarianism as a positive trait

>mfw players get upset when my explicitly racist Elf-supremacist actually behaves like a racist

>friend of mine who I invited to play wanted to play a black elf, not like, a drow, just a normal elf who happened to be black (friend is black)
>let him because I'm not a sperg
>nobody in my group cares because we aren't fucking manchildren.

Wow, so hard.

As the world is made to the enjoyment of my players, generally yes.

Different cultures however exist in my setting and if said cultures are hostile to each other and easily identifiable by race, it is much more difficult for an (N)PC trying to fit in a hostile culture.

Gender themes and sexuality are usually not explored in detail, but it is assumed to be irrelevant.

>black
they are far away and are irrelevant
>Asian, brown
more relevant, but still not really
>Be it chamber maid, soldier, scholar or king?
of course not
>What about non-cis people and others not of the heteronormative bend? What about transmen and women, or even trans-species?
my world is set before leftists had to invent new problems
also flat penalty for female strength is the simplest way to obtain realistic strength distribution

A medieval society is not cosmopolitan at all. People were xenophobic even to nearbough towns. While there were tradition of hospitality to travellers, most people would heavily rely on only the close ones you trust.A stranger is someone to be suspicious off. You never know if he's a mercenary or an outlaw double if he wears weird clothes or have strange skin.

How can there be ANY trade when Orcs, Trolls, Elves, Kender, and bandits infest the roads?

His broader campaign setting is very inclusive.

Sexual orientation did not exist as a concept. To everyone in the past, if you were gay, it just meant that you were a pervert, noo need for special labels, and you would be mad to not want to fuck women too.

Elves aren't black, though. They can be brown (wild elves) and dark (purple-ish) but they're not black. Their grace, intellect and mannerisms don't work. Unless you've made ghetto elves?

Sure.
When one of your neighbors is a lovecraftian horror and the other is a tyrannical undead dragon, stuff like skin color, gender and sexuality don't matter as much.
They also have no bearing on stats.

Nope, just a black elf. Worked fine, because my group isn't filled with manchildren.

You’re a white nigger aren’t you?
That’s like, even worse then a regular nigger because you’re everything a nigger is and you don’t have the excuse of being from the ghetto or poor.

From what I've read of the campaign book. seems super average and the problem is, there isn't that much to draw you in.

IIRC Tal'dorei had a kingdom ruled by a gay pair of sky giants or something, and there was apparently an interview where Mercer said he envisioned the setting as an "idealized fantasy America", except it ain't no Federation and all the social problems still exist so whoop-dee-doo

It mean its unique, but its not exactly compelling. It sounds like that shit was randomly rolled.

Monarchies dont work this way.

Current game very much so.
>had to go around stating our preferred nouns first game.
>”they” who initiates will only respond to neutral pronouns and straight up says they can ignore us if we misspeak.
>biological female who is playing a butch female power fantasy.
>creates weird issue where no one seems to know how to address “them” or their obviously female character.
Thank god they dropped.

Also;
>diverse and gay is the norm in this multicultural universe.
>playing a straight male feels weird in this universe.
>obvious wish fulfillment of the dm and way to express his political views.
>everyone hold hands for understanding type shit.
>playing a gruff no nonsense character and feel so out of place because I’m not playing a 10 hyphenated noun that tries to talk down the orcs murdering villagers.
>kill me.

"-4 STR" and political shout-outs in the same post? C'mon man, be a little more creative with your bait at least.

Maybe bring up the fact that the fact there is no prejudice and everyone holding each other's hands in a circle means zero conflict because everyone is reasonable and understanding, when really they'd just be taken advantage of by the first person who gets the idea to.

Also, would be funny if you were the healer of that group and that person was ignoring you... but also needed healing.

Don't be a petty bitch to a healer, thats what I'm saying.

Depends on the monarchy.
Autocratic inheritance-based monarchies do, but you’d be surprised how few strict inheritance-based monarchies there were. Most cultures used “nearest living relative”, including adopted kids (adopting a nobleman into your family you considered a valuable ally was a REALLY common thing in most of Asia as well as Migration-era cultures), and later on some used the monarch as an elected official, including two of the largest and longest-lasting European nations.
Inheritance laws aren’t set in stone because rulers often would just change them because why the fuck not, they’ve got swords and you don’t wanna die.

France/Britain/Spain were the big and consistent “always pass to nearest child” ones, except not even fucking then because Britain and France once fought a war that went on and off for 100 years over exactly one line of inheritance law difference, and later on Spain did too.

Inheritance laws aren’t really a great set in stone thing because anyone actually familiar with history can pick up on how most of the time they were used as an excuse to fight a war which changed the laws then changed them back again later.

>one line of inheritance law difference
What was the line, out of curiosity? I don’t know much history.

It's set in Thuringia in 1199. The French character is very exotic.

Right now it’s focused on evil groups that seem to only be evil because they are staunch traditionalists.

We straight up
Murdered a group of guys for doing their job because their obviously evil due to their secretive Templar styled nature. Aside from that it’s been mindless undead and monsters.

>they seemed to be doing fine keeping peace in the land until we showed up and decided their system was bad for some reason. But my character isn’t paid to think, he’s paid to protect party members and mitigate threats.

No, I automatically exclude people who ask about political and social issues that have no bearing on my games from playing.

Basically, the House of Valois (France) had a guy who changed inheritence laws to say “no daughters can inherit” at one point to secure the heir of his choice’s succession (there was a war fought over that too BTW), while the House of Plantagenet (Britain) did not make the same change. France has no king at one point and while they’re looking for a new ruler that’s part of the senpai, Britain goes “I got one here and it’s me because I’m from the female inheritence line”. France says no, and then they go to war.

Honestly though, the inheritence was just an excuse; Britain saw an opportunity and took it and also they still had a grudge against France.
Inheritence laws are just like religious ones; people use them retroactively as excuses for shit they were already going to do anyway.

I've got a cyberpunk setting where cosmetic surgery is incredibly cheap, we're talking as cheap as toothpaste.

Everyone except the most destitute ends up getting surgery to look like someone who's of mixed white and Asian heritage. Anyone whose real ethnicity can be discerned at a glance is either practically homeless, mentally ill or someone who's got an ideological resistance to human enhancement (one of the few groups of people who look straight up "white" for instance are the Amish)

Pic related, the perfect man.

One of the Wizard/Scholar faction's former leaders is an old man that turned himself into a loli when he retired. Does that count as being trans?

DESU the majority of these social problems can be magicked away without any issue, and are far less of an issue when you have to worry about pseudo-Catholic vampires with their ghost-possessed gargoyles, and elves trying to collect your regret or sensation of hunger, and that's not to mention entire nation of were-people with a grudge against one of your former scholar-kings. Do were-people count as trans-species?

All the humans are a bit of a monorace, thanks to the fact that they're all descendants of a single expedition during pre-modern times. The lycans have a bit of a Chinese bent. The Vampires are definitely eastern European inspired, and the fae are mostly weird forms of beautiful-verging-on-creepy or trees.

>Pic related, the perfect man.

Congratulations, user, you just created a world grimmer and darker than all the Kafka's books, Warhammer 40k, the whole run of Heavy metal, all the Russian literature, all works of Urobuchi Gen and teletubbies combined.

There are no Asians as there is no Asia.

There is a dark skinned ethnicity from up north around the equator. The players only know one dark skinned individual because simple not many of them are around here. The one guy they know is one of the secret police’s too magi and a mind alteration specalist.

There is racism however, mainly special racism though towards non-human and non-vodyanoy. Though Borovoi are hyper insular and no one even interacts with them. Domiovoi and Kikimora are often exploited.

As for gays/trans/etc. it’s never really come up. In a magical setting being trans isn’t nearly the plight in the real world because one can alchemically fully transition sex so that they actually become a fully functional member of their desired sex. Also since their religious values do not care about trans individuals there is no stigma about it. For gays there are actually a religious culture up north where people are fashionably gay to mimicking the priest kings.

A good half of the countries near the players are theocracies or used to be before recent revolutions.

>Can anyone, be they black, Asian, brown or even white succeed in any profession?

Sure as long as they're in their own country, where they belong.

Sometimes you just need to question yourself/the parties actions and rationalize doubts in character. this can be even done with a money-focused mercenary type character, the cognitive dissonance being that its just a job and someone else would of done it and you need to look after no.1 [you].

>nipple armour

>Is your world inclusive, Veeky Forums?

No, all the settings with humans in them are designed so that the only race of humans are caucasians. Considering the settings only offer environments suited for caucasians and to no other human races I see nothing wrong with.

Even LOT5R?

A king without a clear heir is in an extremly vulnerable position. It only takes one knife to bring his entire kingdom down and trigger a civil war.

Happened in my campaign, King was killed off by a usurper who believes his rightful throne was stolen... also they led a Hastur cult and led a cult insurrection, then framed the PCs.

Civil war is still on.

Once had a campaign where the King's only heir was surprisingly pro-democracy and wanted to dissolve the monarchy.
Had one super-traditionalist guy in the party who was really hardcore in favour of the King staying King, even with the people on the brink of revolution and the actual King not wanting to be King.
The players ended up with some spy vs spy shenanigans to stop him preventing all the diplomacy from going awry and assassinating the leaders of the newly-forming Parliament. without openly killing him.

Nobody gets a (you) go be stupid somewhere else

Nobody abbreviates it like that.

>t. thinks the entire black world consists of ghetto trash
You've never met a Moroccan or Jamaican, have you? My apartments have some Jamaican immigrants in them, and they are the nicest and most polite people in this shithole (a close second goes to the elderly african-american grandma who lives beneath me). Meanwhile, the whites across the hall from me got evicted last month for selling crack.

The greeks saw faggotry as the highest form of love and viewed women as a necessary evil. In Sparta, it got so bad that women often had to shave their heads and bind their breasts to look more like men the first few times they laid with their husband.

> doesn't know the crime rates of Jamaica