Black people and Veeky Forums

I mean, I'm of the school that you can roleplay what you want, because that's what Veeky Forums is partially about - tabletop roleplay.

Besides, a shitty character can be any skin color or sex. You'd think we'd be the most egalitarian of boards because of this.

But then again, the majority of us are nerds. And let's be frank; Basketball Americans aren't really friendly to tabletop players for the most part.

What if you found out you're the only one in every game you play who cares? Just play your fucking characters.

Personally, I would allow it without much of a problem - however, I know that my current DM wouldn't, since black people don't exist in his setting.

What "we", Kemosabe? Some of us are perfectly happy not to be racist at all, ironically or otherwise, even on Veeky Forums.

Can't imagine anyone having a problem with that. Definitely not "That Guy: behavior, since it' can't possibly shit up the game for anyone else (except perhaps a That GM who won't budge on setting details).

However, I would have an issue with a black elf or a black dwarf, because come on.

Delicious brown elf is a thing.

Oh, here we go…

first of all, i hate D&D's equal representation SJW bullshit. secondly, if i was to run a fantasy game and had a black player, him playing a black whatever would be no issue at all. there just wouldn't be any significant black communities on the main continent because... mythic medieval europe.

>Oh and please no /pol/. Unironically or otherwise.
lel, newfag

I don't think character ethnicity is a relatable factor in this case. The character would have no cultural similarity to yourself, unless the setting had skin tone based racism and/or history of slavery, things that have had a monumental impact on black culture. They would have grown up just like everyone else, just with darker skin, and none of the cultural differences that exist in real life and that I (reasonably) assume have shaped your own upbringing.

see

>And with a world full of elves, dwarves and enough speciesism as it is, it'd be much harder to justify skin colour problems, methinks.
i don't think you understand how racism works. it'd still be a problem precisely because it hits closer to home.

If you are playing historical, like Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Mythras, this will become a story 'thing' in the game, which is not a bad situation for GM's or players. I would welcome this if you as a player accepted that like playing a Jew, Gypsy or Native american in Europe will have story connotations in historical periods where anyone other than Europeans would be seen as odd, and maybe the source of bad luck, witchcraft and weird stuff. Especially in the 17th century-- if those crazy fucks will burn 14 year old girls at the stake based on village hearsay, imagine what they would do with someone physically or culturally different? I shudder to think actually.

I run one game where one of my players is in England during the Danelaw as a Byzantine (sorcerer) and they do get into situations where backwards villages they end up in want to burn him because their milk went sour the week before or they imagine he gave them the evil eye. It's just more danger and story opportunity for me as the GM.

In more high fantasy settings? Likely they will have backgrounds and places where darker skinned folks originate baked into the setting and with Dwarves and half Orks around and allowed into cities, different types of humans should be a non issue.

Why are black people always so insecure and looking for approval? You act like a dog wanting to prove something to his master just play your character and fuck anyone who disagrees with your choice for some reason.

im seeing it and it means nothing; yours is a non-response

I dunno, man, why are you so confirmation bias?

yes, the common stereotype of black people is that they are always looking for white approval. well done.

ITT: nerds get revenge of high school bullies

>Why are black people always so insecure and looking for approval?
because that never happens to white/asian/latino/whoever people...

Wow, that sounded a bit racist even to me, and I'm a /pol/tard.

You and I both know that this won't be something GMs all agree on.

You and I both know thast its stupid that in worlds where knife eared immortals and drunk Scottish midgets battle flying fire breathing "lizards", people will get triggered by ethnicity.

Its so fucking stupid.

Not looking for approval just trying to avoid unnecessary trouble where I can. Not many black people in the Veeky Forums scene where I live.

If a black player constantly made black characters and only black characters, I'd be a bit disappointed in them. Part of the fun in roleplaying is putting yourself in the shoes of another, even if they're not similar to you. I'm not a reactionary Japanese samurai, but that doesn't mean I can't relate to that character or enjoy playing them.

Elves fuck willing human women. That hits home.

It isn't a problem. You'd only be a That Guy if you did something like expect special treatment or something. I think it sounds really fair.

Also, just because I was thinking about it recently, what are some good colors for black skin when miniature painting? I'm thinking of making some darker skinned dudes.

> implying human women don't laugh at tiny elven dicks

thats like the opposite of the black steriotype though

its dead on perfect for the average Veeky Forums poster though and what a surprise we're on Veeky Forums

I give no shits for historical accuracy or simulationism in my games, the game requires it.

So no, it wouldn't even be a special request. To be clear, Black people were unusual in Europe but not *that* unusual. Othello was written in 1604 and no one batted an eye over the black main character. The remains of black people dating from 13th C. in England. You'd find many black people in literally any European city with a port.

You can see Morocco from Spain. The Byzantine empire ran into Africa, as did the Roman Empire 700 years before that. Bringing 20th century racial politics to the game would totally make you that guy, though.

I'm not saying I would only play black people, just when/if I played a humanoid one that I could get away with it. I've played all types and never pushed that on them.

You know, there's also the other way of looking at it, although your opinion on this could vary. What I mean is that maybe you SHOULD play a black character to increase the presence of black characters in RPGs.

It sort of reminds me about what Malcolm X said about some of the black women of his time that would wear wigs and put all sorts of chemicals in the hair trying to straighten it out because they believed that white people's hair was considered more beautiful.

Certainly you shouldn't feel obligated to play a black character. Ultimately, I guess it would be best if neither you or anyone else playing cared one way or the other if the character was black or not, but it's not bad to think of the exposure aspect as a sort of side benefit.

As for me, I have a thing for black women and I also happen to draw my own characters so I would be happy to play a black character, but I also happen to be Asian. So I wonder if this is considered awkward or something for someone like me.

This will date me but:
Basecoat: Scorched Brown First Highlight" Dark Flesh Second highlight: Dark Flesh + Snakebite Leather Final highlight: Snakebite leather + Dark Flesh (more SB than DF than the previous).

This is one of those things that seems like it would only be a big deal if YOU made it a big deal, OP.

>If the GM is going for realism be prepared for being the center of attention when you enter a new town but then that's not much difference from being an adventurer all said and done
This.

Although, it might be less noticeable if there are fantastic races in the party too.

yeah, if people were to play US-style pastiche fantasy, aka forgotten realms shit where everything gets mixed without rhyme or reason. but then again these are pleb fantasy-worlds to begin with. 2/10, would not play.

t. old-worlder

>>He's never thoughtfully run his fingers through a thick, black Afro-Dwarf beard, complete with fro comb.

From the African thread on /s/, via MSPaint censoring, to you all with love

Depends on the setting, most settings I play in have black people. If it were entirely historically accurate I'd say that a black guy from that era is going to be so different to who you are anyway you might as well play a white guy.

We're not that different mate, don't sweat playing us wrong or anything, as long as you don't have your character break out the whitebreak and declare colonialism every 5 minutes I doubt anyone is going to call you for playing trans-racial incorrectly.

Black people in the US have a history where they were constantly told by white people and society at large that they were inferior. They only started breaking out of this mindset 50 years ago, which is not a lot of time.

It's obviously not as bad as it used to be, but they still have to deal with many negative stereotypes compared to other races. It's something that other races don't understand at first because they have much more positive histories for their race.

I dislike this attitude in general. Trying to please the crowd, always basing your decisions on the perception of those around you. More people should ascribe to the "Fuck it, I like what I like everyone else be damned" school of thought if you can even partially get away with it.

i.e: If you want me to care what you think you better be paying me for the privilege somehow.

I find that most people get tired when you place the same race over and over again.

I'm Mexican and play with only whites. For years I subconsciously made all my characters white, but eventually I noticed it and started to diversify. I feel like my characters are more fleshed out when I think about whatever culture they're from and now three of my top five favorite characters are nonwhite.

Now I'm just picturing a dark skinned bald dwarf with dark shades and an afro comb in his immaculate beard but instead of a black power fist for a handle it's a hammer. Oh and shaft music is playing in the background.

But what colors are they?

>What I mean is that maybe you SHOULD play a black character to increase the presence of black characters in RPGs.
full. on. retard.

>next edition d&d: 50% of denizens along the swordcoast are people of color
thanks you, sjws

I don't really see that as any problem at all. I don't even really care if you want to be a knight or whatever.

My primary job as a DM is to facilitate your fun. Unless you're fucking up the fun of the other players then I'm pretty open to just about any request. I can't even imagine why anyone would have a problem with this unless the setting was significantly more important to them than the fun. And even then I'm certain there would still be a way to have a black character function with a bit of 1on1 work between you and DM.

Roll some dice and party on dude.

>He thinks Drow and Dragur are fine as PC races
Get that dick out of your ass.

Play a halfling and make him black.
Everything about it fits.

But really, just go and self-insert as an Orc already as most of your kin do.

>I find that most people get tired when you place the same race over and over again.
Why do they give a shit that I enjoy playing from my comfort zone? If they want to mix it up all the time that's their business. I'd suggest rather than crawling up those people's ass and trying to please them that someone that wants to play the same race/etc. all the time find other people to play with.

But why do you care if there's blacks and non-whites in a setting.

If there's orcs and kobolds and all that good shit, a guy with a higher melanin count shouldn't be triggering your shit.

You uh.

You wanna talk about your issues with Basketball Americans, ace?

It may seem forced now, but eventually that's exactly what will happen. I personally don't care either way, but look where the trend is going. Eventually we're just going to be a brown nation or planet because every race will have mixed with every other.

Depends on the setting and group. I wouldn't mind. I always assume that a character looks like the player unless specified otherwise, anyways, so I picture black droids, fat ghosts or female skeletons on a regular basis. I guess a lot of people do the same.
Just discuss it with your GM like two reasonable adult beings.

But honestly, in a fantasy setting with various races like dwarf, ork, fiends, dragons and so on, I doubt that people give much importance to the color of your skin.
>By the hells, why are you black, were you cursed?
>Nah, it's my natural color. I come from across the sea.
>Oh. That's a long way... You guys got elves there too?
>Don't tell me about it, they're a fucking nuisance. I came here to get a break.
>Yeah man, fuck elves.
And even if it was the case, the GM could change the paintjob of the setting to make it fit pretty easily. It's not a very big change to make.

I don't think any reasonable person would care.

>Black people so dark they're practically blue
I wish that's something America had more of, because it looks fucking amazing.

Well, according to some posters up yonder, having a black character is an issue for some reason.

Guess when you have goblins and hobgoblins and dragons and shit, the real issues are what color a guy's skin is.

Although I suppose it is naive to think that humans as a whole wouldn't find excuses to shit on each other, even if there were other species to contend with.

Who in the world would victimize you for this? Lmao. It's fantasy. I'm pretty sure a 4 foot nothing ornery drunk axe wielding maniac would draw a LOT more attention than a black guy. Play whatever helps you relate to your character best and if they make it a big deal just come join my game. Only exception would be a REALLY strict, historically accurate campaign and who would want to play that gay shit?

There are literally demons and green people walking the streets. Being a dindu is the least of your concerns.

All together now, children: It depends on the setting.

Generic fantasy world: Probably not gonna be an issue. Might be mistaken for a beefy drow if you're dark enough or a lanky dwarf if you have a broad nose. Or maybe there are just black people in the setting that intermingle with the rest of human society.

Specific fantasy setting (i.e. Faerun, Tamriel etc): There's probably a nation or province made up of people that look like you. Probably no issues unless there's bad blood between nations. Even if you're not actually from the nation in question, people might assume you are.

Historical Game: You are likely to have a bad time, but there's definitely potential for interesting role playing. I played a black man in a civil war era Hunter game, it was good fun, if pretty depressing.

Modern setting: Obvious

Futuristic setting: Likely to not matter. In Eclipse Phase for instance, race, sex, even species is ephemeral. Hell, in Degenesis, you a kang n' shit. You might not be well liked, depending on where you go, but that's more because you're the top of the food chain, now.

Honestly? I wouldn't give half a shit. Make whatever you want, if they're an interesting character and not the same character again and again, I don't care what race they are.

OP in your opinion as a black human, can dwarfs be black? I am conflicted over this.

>Oh and please no /pol/.

/pol/ here.

Honestly I don't care. Even if you're playing something historical (which you probably aren't) there are still going to be travellers.

Literally nobody has ever looked at fantasy roleplaying and said "WHITES ONLY". All that has ever been said is that squawking about 'NOT ENOUGH POC IN MUH EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY' is dumb, and that no other culture is under the same pressure to depict foreign protagonists.

>I understand the vast majority of Veeky Forums settings are based on European cultures

Not directly. D&D for instance borrows a lot of themes from various mythological sources, but it takes place in an original creative universe, and doesn't aim for any real-world historical propriety.

The manuals emphasize that characters can belong to any number of races or creeds. Later manuals even divide races up into different sub-races or cultures that have distinct features.

>special request

That's not a special request, though.

Why would you make it a point to play a black character? Why would that be important to you? I actually don't give a shit if a character is brown, white, or green, but you're the one picking their skin color just to signal your virtue. Have an ounce of self-awareness.

To be quite frank, I don't see how the color of your character's skin makes them more relatable. That's like saying you can't play an authentic elf unless you have long ears. This is fantasy. Make-believe. You can be whatever you want.

By "relatable" do you mean you're more comfortable with your character's skin being dark? Because if that's so then its perfectly fine. Play what you're comfortable with.

Or by "relatable" do you mean you want to draw on your own life experiences and use that as a basis or inspiration for your character? Because almost everyone does the that, and they don't to draw physical parallels with their character to do it.

>no rap or meme bullshit
Sometimes that isn't a bad thing. Check with your GM regarding meta humor. Sometimes you can break the fourth wall to inject humor into a scene, or make a passive remark about your character that has more to do with you than them. I'm native american, and every once in a while i can sneak in a casino joke or peace pipe reference into my character's dialogue - always makes my buddies laugh. Oh, that too: know your crowd.

...

Hell, even in 40k, you have entire planets loosely based on African nations and kingdoms. Or that just happen to be black for whatever reason. 40k is only as lily white as it is because A) it's written by whitebread bonglanders, and B) 38,000 years of reproducing in mostly artificial environments is a whole lot of time to breed melanin out of the gene pool. Or breed it back in, if being dark skinned was somehow advantageous on your local planet.

because for a eurofag like me fantasy is about diving into some variant of a mythical medieval (or renaissance) europe. i don't throw every shit from all corners of the world into one pot, stir it and praise the resulting hodgepodge a great fantasy setting. i leave such bullshit to amerifags (TSR/WOTC wink, wink).

Personally I want to say a hesitant yes. It's just a race of dwarves who lived too close to a magma pool or something. Or maybe the hill dwarves of a southern continent so they got more sun than your average angry little man.

>My question is, would be "that player" if that's the only special request I make?
In my case, it depends on the setting.
Some are rather strict on how the species look, some are more lax and diverse.
Generally speaking, i don't run medieval european fantasy, and i never go for """""realism""""" and i know i'm not alone on this. You should take this into account, OP.
Using a nonhuman or planar ancestry of some sort usually makes this a non-issue.
Saying your character comes from a special bloodline that has this or that trait also makes this a non-issue.
By non-issue, i mean that you don't even need to ask "is it okay if my character looks kinda like this?" and you just run with it.

That's perfectly fine.

Unless there's no blacks in-setting of course, but otherwise I see nothing wrong with it. I only play male characters (even though I've had female character concepts) for pretty much the same reason.

I would not have an issue at all.
To be fair though depending on the setting i'd roll to see if npcs you deal with are racist though

Was just about to chime in with the Spanish experience. And those Spaniards went places: there are people born in Ireland with very dark skin (in comparison to most of us who are either pasty-faced or sunburnt, depending on the season) because of what we refer to as Armada blood, from some of the sailors who were shipwrecked here back in 1588. Plenty of good reasons to be in a European setting of the time.

t. Social justice warrior
50 years of welfare

Are

Are you afraid of non-European things? Because Europe isn't one homogeneous culture, you know. Like, Renaissance Italy and Renaissance Sweden for example weren't just copypastes of each other's culture and beliefs.

I suppose if you were playing with asshole players on a hyper realistic campaign (low or no magic) then it could be a problem. Otherwise, you're paying a world with orcs goblins and dwarves. No one should care that you happen to be a black one of these.

Even in the most realistic settings, you can always just be the foreigner from the far east or something similar.

yeah, I wouldn't bet my money rather on racewar before such an outcome. europe is already about to shut its borders, whether trump wins or not - in the US the issue of white majority will become ever more pressing. there will come a time when europeans might have to gun down unarmed non-whites trying to settle in europe. in droves.

color of skin will always matter. for as long as the human sex drive isnt colorblind, at least. but that's something that lefties don't understand - to them color carries no significance. foolish.

Exactly. There were black knights, idk why white people change history just to put the black man down

Thanks! I'll definitely try this, although I'll have to get different paints.

Daily reminder that Spain used to be white as shit, then the Moors conquered their country, made them convert to Islam, and fucked everyone brown for hundreds of years, and that's one reason Latinos are the color they are today. It's a bit rich to say black people had no impact on Europe when Spain was ruled by them for centuries.

When i say "relatable" I literally mean comfortable. It's just when I picture a character in my head it automatically defaults to black if it doesn't have a "special" skin color like green blue or some shit like that.

>All that has ever been said is that squawking about 'NOT ENOUGH POC IN MUH EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY' is dumb, and that no other culture is under the same pressure to depict foreign protagonists.
this. and in case anybody claims that this isn't an issue, i refer you over to this post: he seems to think that we'll all eventually swallow this kind of bullshit. well, that ain't happening, not on my watch.

Okay but as long as the human race continues on, who gives a shit about what your skin color is.

Not a problem IMO at all. The vast majority of fantasy settings in gaming are just that: fantasies. There's plenty of room for other races, and most settings these days give you justifications for doing exactly this.

Talk it over with the DM, of course, but neither I nor any DM I've ever played with would have a problem with this.

As for your decision, I think that over time you'll eventually decide to branch out in your characters. I know I did. Most men mostly play male PCs and most women mostly play female PCs. This racial thing isn't any different.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that blacks in other settings might have entirely different social positions in your game world. So you can identify with their appearance (and your fellow players can visualize your character better) but they might not perceive their racial identity the same way that you do. As a quick analogy, take the difference between african americans and recent immigrants from africa. In my experience, those groups rarely interact socially and there's a major difference in how they perceive themselves.

So keep in mind that YOUR experience may not cross over. Physical appearance doesn't dictate your life. But feel free to play whoever or however you wish, setting and gaming group permitting.

Sorry about your thread getting shit up by /pol/.

It was an inevitable result, I'm afraid.

>t. Social justice warrior
lel, god no. is me

dice+2d6

>You'd think we'd be the most egalitarian of boards

We are. Everyone hates everyone else, everyone is a fit subject for ridicule.

Well, except perhaps /pol/ (and /sjw/ when they're swarming). Everyone pretty much hates them most of all.

I only hate niggers, not black people.

ITT: people get triggered about melanin.

>Why are Veeky Forums posters always so insecure and looking for approval?

ftfy

You just described every OP in the history of Veeky Forums

Yeah, I'm on a tablet and going on about Moorish Spain seemed to be labouring the point. Half of Italy was the result of race-mixing too, hence the stereotype of dark skin and hair.

So you can pretend to be a fictional entity like a dwarf but can't relate to it unless it's a nigger?

Because niggers are inferior.