Is this shoehorning diversity too much? Or do you think is necessary to make everyone feel included...

You knew exactly what you were doing when you posted this thread.

Do you never describe ethnicity, or do you describe it sometimes? Specifically, do you only describe a NPC's ethnicity when it's "not standard"?

I'm talking in a backwards way because I have a specific situation in mind. That is, one only describes the ethnicity of a character when they're not white, carrying the implication that white is the "default" race.

It might make sense to do so diegetically (this is a region inhabited by mostly white people, so of course most people you'll meet are white), but the decision to write that region as majoritarily white was yours, and you could have chosen differently.

I'm specifically mentioning white because I'm assuming OP is from a country where nonwhite are minorities, by the way.

I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just saying I think minorities in your group would appreciate if, say, the King was a black guy. And, it probably wouldn't make much sense if the King was the only black guy in a position of power for miles. I don't think your players are going to complain to you if you don't do this, unless you approach racial issues in a way they don't want in the game (for example, they play for escapism, and not to get reminded mostly white people hold positions of power due to screwing black people up historically).

I think I'm just skimming the issue, so I expecte I might have missed something or over generalized another.

I'll pitch in something different:

I've done it, and it worked out well, because it pandered to one of my players.

I'm a man, and I normally run games for all men. At one stage, I read about basically flipping a coin for the gender of important characters if it didn't matter, and started including a lot more female characters.

One of my players got really into it. Frankly I'm kinda worried about him. He's obsessed with Sister's Of Battle, pretty much exclusively plays woman when he's a PC and most of the competent allies and villains are females in his games.

But literally no one else in the group cares, so if the net improvements of enjoyment of my group is positive, why not?

8/10
I'm impressed with the subtlety of this one. It would have been a solid 10 if you hadn't jumped the shark with the parenthesis. But still quite solid work.

Considering he's doing it the right way by rolling for it, the way you should make just about every non-plot essential NPC if you have the time, this is fine. The main issue is that he's making every NPC human if this is the case which lowers diversity since black elves and dwarves are fukkin evil 99% of the time and the other races either can't achieve human skin colors or can and are still dicks a lot of the time.

youtube.com/watch?v=EHUCi6ZbVxU

I do get how OP's image got that from that video but it feels a little off. In the video he's sounds very much like an instructor telling you exactly what you must do and indeed does even list a very odd example of how he forcibly made every single culture in his setting multi-ethnic. All that said he says he does that to make people comfortable doing anything and to reflect the players he brings to the table.

It's not a methodology I can really get on broad with but I find it hard to get mad a people with good intentions.

I usually run games online and my players are thousands of miles apart, from completely different countries. Most recently, I've run DnD for two people from two different middle eastern countries, a swede and an american guy. English is my second language.

I just leave the characters arracial and let the players imagine them how they want to. It's usually not a problem and none of them were retarded enough to make a big deal out of the fanart they themselves drew.

You could easily dodge needing to describe ethnicity by jumping to culture.

The style of people's clothing, their accent, use of tattoos and piercings and mannerisms can easily pin them as an outsider. In fantasy games, you always have plausabile deniability to claim that the Not-Arabs are actually albino in complexion if someone takes from the description of their turban and barbaric ways that they are a thinly veiled charactature.

In more grounded campaigns? Most regions in the world are still not as heavily racially mixed. In China, it's notable to see a European. In Nigeria, Indigenous Americans would stick out.

Describing everyone, or no ones, race continually is only really important if you've made a point of having a heavily racially mixed setting from the get go.

I can't tell if this is a compliment or if you're saying I'm trolling.

To be fair, it does seem my post tries to paint white people as "boogeymen". Again, I was over simplifying and generalizing in the post.

In my defense, I think phone posting is awful, and that Veeky Forums isn't really the place for the (lengthy) discourse this topic could have. Especially because racism is a topic that heavily depends on country and culture. For example, I'm considered white in my country, but I probably wouldn't be considered white in the US. So "white people" can mean different things for different anons.

I don't understand that mindset of "It would be racist to NPC a black character as a white guy" mindset?

Like you don't have to slap on blackface and put on a minstrel show. What the fuck would be racist about it?

Depends on the setting. If the area the player's are in is fantasy constantinople having people of different skin colours isn't so bad but if it's fantasy sub-saharan africa mixing in different skin colours is fucking weird.

I'd argue for sex it depends on the world but if you're just making a human nation where male and females roles are neutral (i.e abundance of female soldiers and male caregivers) you may as well have a different fantasy race because human sex roles don't work like that. But if you want to do that it's your prerogative, it just makes it less believable (in as much as a fantasy world can be believable or realistic).

However shoe horning in diversity by rolling for a characters race or gender is fucking stupid, major npc's especially should have character traits that reflect their background, so in not!germany a guy from not!middle-east should have a different manner or way about them to the same character but from not!germany. The same goes for male and female npc's, men and women act differently, although I guess for generic npc number 11 the party asks for direction in the market square it doesn't really matter, rolling at least sex for that is meaningless.

Ethnicity is only relevent if the culture and appearance, traditions, etc. are significantly different from any other. Stranger in a strange land type thing. Going into specifics about each and every character, not the world, is self indulgent wankery (to put it crudely) and is specifically pandering to a very specific mindset and target demographic. Unless the ethnicity is specifically and immediately important to the current plot arc, it is wholly irrelevant.

> I think minorities in your group would appreciate if, say, the King was a black guy.
I'd be kind of annoyed unless there was a really good explanation or we were in whatever region of the world black people come from/exist in fairly large numbers. That seems like pointless tokenism. Especially when there are loads of more organic ways to include NPCs of different ethnicities.

It was a compliment for trolling so well. Like you're doing here.
Just because you're earnest doesn't mean it's not great bait.
Fantastic follow up, by the way.

I’m tone deaf

This is why you shouldnt play with Americans.
They are so obsessed with race that they will even make a play pretend game race obsessed by judging you by the amount of diversity you put in it. In my 15 years GMing I have never described a character by comparing them to a real life ethnic group because no-one(but Americans) care. I just give a general description and you imagine them in your head as you wish, because it has no importance. If I say for example "he's tall, has dark eyes and hair, has a dark complexion" is he black? Southern european? A spic (like me)? Maybe just a tanned white guy? Asian? It really doesn't matter, you imagine him as you want because it has no importance to the game.

The only time this has played different is when I played with Americans in roll20. The first player described his character as being "half German half Irish looking" and kept doing a shitty German accent all the game. He asked one or twice if a NPC was "Muslim looking". This made me understand why reddit and Colville keep talking about the topic but I am just glad I dont have to deal with Americans.

Just think. In the time it took you to make this bait, based around the practices of an eceleb who strives to create an inoffensive, easily accessible product, you could've made five Whitebox characters and probably lost one of them to a Save vs. Poison or die.

Also, I just don't really describe NPC's unless they have a significant feature that the players could utilize (race, potential class, any unique or obvious features). The Bartender having faded tattoos signifying she was of the druidic faith, once? Sure. Unless you're playing with the very far-left or very far-right, skin color isn't really something you can do that with in good taste.

I wasn't going to reply until he started talking about the Malazan books.
Those cultures are *not* multi-ethnic. The Malazan Empire conqures and subjugates other cultures, bringing them in line. In fact, the whole second book is about an ethnic/religious uprising (from the Fantasy Muslims) that devolves into butchery and barbarism in contrast to the peace and prosperity the empire brought.

The Empire recruits from everywhere and doesn't give a fuck what color you are if you're willing to fight. But the noble classes do. There's racism in the series, a lot of rape too, for that matter. I don't think Colville would like the books if he read them. The only thing that's really different about people is that women aren't physically weaker than men.

Colville is goddam retard in the video.
1. Characters can look and be anything. Are you an African rape child? No problem, your character can be Varga Vargsdottir, turbo-white olympic athlete and daughter of some dude from a metal band.
2. In times when travel is difficult and dangerous, ethnicities tend to remain separate. The Romans had more race mixing than most of history after their empires fell.
3. "I wish most of you weren't white and male"
4. Rape is more likely to be included in a game with women because we view it as the worst thing that you can survive. Character regularly die or get maimed, but nobody thought *that* was weird.
Similarly, male characters *could* get raped but don't. There's a whole discussion there to be had about attitudes to sexual violence, but that's not the point.

Ethnic frame of reference because the country is made up entirely of immigrants, so specific features are assosciated directly with groups due to heterogny of population. Whole continent is immigrant populated starting with the first wave crossing the land bridge from asia back in the ice age. That lack of specific American ethnicity is why this bullshit comes up. You got it bang on with the handling, just the major features. Merchant's inventory is more important than the lines in their face.

My world is large and diverse and my players like to travel so they come across different societies. Some are cosmopolitan, mixed societies with different races getting along fine while others are backwards and barbaric. There are poor egalitarian societies and there are rich ethno centrist nations, its a fantasy world after all, there's room for a range of stuff.

Sorry plebbit, saying swear words doesn't make you appear a grown up.

Asshat doesn't understand Malazan. Erikson has a degree in anthropology and knows more about cultures and interactions than this schlub ever will. The Malazan empire is roughly modeled on the roman standard, take em over, bring the useful bits in, leave someone to keep shit running, grab a few and make em invested in keeping it up, then fuck off to the next conquest.

I think it needs to be based on your world.

Are you in a place like NeverWinter ? A fantasy , Renaissance port town? you'll have a lot of diversity in races and people then.

Are you in a frozen Nordic norseland? There's going to be a lot of white dudes with beards, but you can run warrior women too which won't be seen as much different.

Are you in a Mediterranean setting? Lots of Bronze skinned folk and Asians (Persians ) , maybe some Africans if there's an empire like Carthage nearby.

Medieval Europe? Gonna be lots of white dudes, but there will be stark divided between clans, the likes of say the Irish /the Welsh /the French etc. And if you have crusader fun obviously throwing in people from Islamic countries makes sense.

Throwing it in randomly however stops you being able to explore an areas rich cultural makeup and the various differences involved which is missing out on a lot.

I miss the old Veeky Forums when we had fun quest threads instead of an endless procession of bait threads about identity politics.

it's okay if he used tables that are based on the historical composition of what classical fantasy is based on: (mythival) medieval europe. i suspect he didn't.

if his table is however based on the racial profile of 21st century USA, I don't know what to say. good luck and have fun, I guess, but don't presume your game has anything to do with classical (or tolkienesque) fantasy. our ways part at this point because I prefer classical fantasy.

>he thinks he can decide who participates and who doesn't
>laughing-girls.png

Looking at the quests board, it's basically a way more masturbatory cyoa. Lots of slow to update threads. They would all be buried on page 5 or so if re-merged. Stop with the daydreaming and bad bait.

>Or do you think is necessary to make everyone feel included?
No one is obligated to make others feel included, only not to exclude them on the criteria of race/etc.

This "inclusive" crap is purely feel good public diplomacy.

>This requires you to believe that all humans have the same potential to be intelligent, thoughtful and original.
>I hold with the second view.

So you believe someone born with down syndrome has the same potential as a genius?

Old tg threads are a bannable offense in nu-tg, elder. Know your place, scum.

>People still care about Colville after the fantasy grounds bullshit
Wowzers

Back before there were a billion quests, there were occasional good quests. It wasn't an overnight switch like "Last week we had not heard of quests, this week we're all masturbating to our frost giantess waifu".

I'd happily bring back occasional good quests, but a good quest knows when to end so it doesn't become impossible to get into, doesn't have a shit start, and isn't about waifus.

nani

MM grabbed Colville so hard by the balls after he admitted he plays RAW he deleted several of his previous videos and now claims he homebrews shit to make 5e rules lite.

Again, I feel like this is working with a "default" ethnicity. Which I'm not saying is either good or bad.

I'd think the dude is afraid of being accused of racism for doing something he doesn't consciously think is racist (whether the accusation is "right" or "wrong").

Which is why I said it (probably) wouldn't make sense if the King was the only black person in a position of power. Now, if the King was black, and so was half of the court, or even of the population, this would be much better. I believe no one thinks token characters are a good way of having representation. Sure, it's better than nothing, but it's also bad.

The issue with saying "depends on the setting" is that someone created the setting, and they might as well as have made different choices of what ethnicities there are in it. If ethnicity doesn't matter, then one could have chosen to have different ethnicities and it wouldn't matter. Otherwise, then you're explicitly dealing with racism in your game, so you should at least be prepared to receive criticism for it.

It also doesn't help what people defend as "realism" isn't necessarily realistic at all, or even something to strive for. What I feel people really mean by "realism" is verisimilitude, usually. For example, ASoIaF isn't realistic, but it's believable enough for most people. Most people think there were no black people in Medieval Europe, but there was a black knight in the Round Table (I believe he was called Black Knight or somesuch). I can try to source that last one if one wants me to.

I feel like some anons would sperg out at whatever I post whether I wrote it better or not. But at this point, anything could be considered bait.

What's the American like?

>it's okay if he used tables that are based on the historical composition of what classical fantasy is based on: (mythival) medieval europe. i suspect he didn't.
Fantasy at this point has moved so far away from historical accuracy that this frankly isn't a good metric any more.

If they want to be included they can make their own stuff, run their own games, etc.

>D&D at this point has moved so far away from historical accuracy that this frankly isn't a good metric any more.
FTFY. Believe it or not but plenty of us still like tolkienesque fantasy, instead of sucking up WOTC's diversity slobber.

>reddit

You have to go back

How do you know what Reddit looks like

>diversity
Magical realm bullshit liberal fetishism in my experience.
Inevitably American "only blacks are diverse" stuff at that.

MM? This is not your secret club, stop typing cryptically.

Mike Mearls, Colville is dependent on him constantly advertising his channel.

>shoehorning
>into original work as its being made

>diversity
>there are multiple colors, but no discussion of geographical or cultural origins
>no affect on anyone's role in the story

You're both retarded.

Why is this even a question? When I play L5R or Oriental adventures, it's assumed we're all or mostly east asian characters.

If this is a medieval europe themed setting, it makes sense for 99% to be white with a few easterners and africans in appropriate positions (in other words, not as feudal french lords, but maybe as merchants at a port.

For the record, I don't think I've ever described skin color in a game. It just never ocurred to me to go "yeah he's black too" what is the point of doing that? If your friends are getting upset and bugging you to talk about race and basically pull diversity moves in your magic elf fantasy, then you need new friends.

That's called having "mommy issues."

Either that or he's a closet tranny.

Colville's pretty much on suicide watch and his D&D videos are the last remaining shred of relevancy he has left after the game he wrote was fucking murdered by the press for having shit tier lore (which he wrote).

>there's people that are both important and not-white, not-male in this game REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Is this the new Veeky Forums conspiracy theory? I have never seen Mearls actively promoting Colville and Matt only deleted one video, the one where he talked about fantasy grounds which he explained why but I forgot.

>Is this shoehorning diversity too much?

It's neither to little nor too much. It depends entirely on your tastes and who you're DMing for.

>Or do you think is necessary to make everyone feel included?

It's necessary to make the players at the table feel included. This can be done in many ways, up to and including going the extra mile when generating races and the like. That said, it doesn't HAVE to be done that way either.

>I don't describe ethnicity, I just give general looks so everyone can imagine it as they please. Am I doing it wrong?

Is it working for your group? If so, no?

>I have never seen Mearls actively promoting Colville
Why do you post in theses threads if you don't follow the scene?

What game?

I follow the scene. Give me two examples.

Evolve, Turtle Rock Studio is in the shitter and is now begging Chinese shovelware pushers for capital.

Clearly you don't because he's on the front page of sage advice right fucking now. Lying is bad user.

>if his table is however based on the racial profile of 21st century USA, I don't know what to say. good luck and have fun, I guess, but don't presume your game has anything to do with classical (or tolkienesque) fantasy. our ways part at this point because I prefer classical fantasy.

What exactly about classical fantasyland requires a certain ethnic makeup? Typical fantasyland is not, in fact, geographically similar to medieval Europe in any way - DMs generally make diverse climates so as to accommodate maximum adventure.

Even Arda is not actually medieval Europe. It's a huge world with a ton of different people all over.

Hell, what is classical fantasy? Most D&D settings don't really resemble anything Tolkien or Anderson wrote that much; you'll rarely be literally playing in settings like those. The average D&D setting probably has as much in common with the works of E. Howard as it does with those of Tolkien.

Do people like this describe the skin color and sexuality of every NPC the party meets? I can't recall playing or GMing a single game where either of these factors was ever explicitly mentioned, and male or female only came up based on what pronouns the GM used.

I swear, there is some kind of low level OCD running through the population that makes them obsess over the racist/sexist implications of every single word or action and the only pacifier is to pretend everyone is equally represented in everything. All the numbers have to align just perfectly to soothe this autism.

He is bigger than sageadvice. I dont ser how he being invited to a few podcast means that he needs Mearls.

>Do people like this describe the skin color and sexuality of every NPC the party meets?

Yup. I've played with people like this, and they will ask about it if the DM doesn't describe it themselves. And if they're DMing, you know there will never actually be a white male anything that's not a villain. So if you see a white guy, you pretty much know it's fightan time.

>Do people like this describe the skin color and sexuality of every NPC the party meets?

Probably not, to be honest. They probably just make a slight effort to not have everyone be the same when players press for details.

I've met people who think this sort of thing is important, and their DMing style is rarely any different from that of others in any practical sense. It's just something they keep in mind when it comes up, I guess. Which is fine - it's not something I'll really bother setting side brainpower for, but it doesn't interrupt my enjoyment of a game if oh gee after two or three sessions since meeting them there's a slight hint that that one NPC we know might be gay.

I can't say I've ever described the race of any NPC I've run, other than the obvious species kind. I like to think if I leave that open, my players can just assume whatever they want about their look, and fill in gaps that way. Although thinking about it, I haven't used many women in my campaigns, but that's mostly because I don't have any confidence in being able to pull off a woman voice without making an ass out of myself.

Actual plays, advice panels and similar podcasts have a incredibly low retention rate, it isn't a conspiracy theory that they need to relentlessly network and advertise their stuff; this rubs a lot of people the wrong way when they see the same 5 faces rotating around different channels like a STD at a swingers weekly meetup.

>that's mostly because I don't have any confidence in being able to pull off a woman voice without making an ass out of myself.

Don't. Just use your normal voice, describe her voice, and then continue in your normal voice to what she says. Every DM I've had that did voices, it became a joke how terrible they are. It breaks immersion even more if everyone is trying not to laugh at a terrible voice.

Depends on the setting otherwise for the games I've played the GM rarely brings it up.

All that it matters is if they are male or female. We tend to play 40k so you know it doesn't fully matter. Occasionally it will be brought up if a player is describing themselves or if we let the dice pick everything about us.

But people tend to play what they know. I stick to straight females because that's what I am. That Guy plays big breasted sluts and doesn't pay attention half of the game because he's THAT GUY, the black guy tends to play black characters, and we've got other players that can play both genders and various races because they're skilled enough to do it.

I would agree with others who would say the geographical location matters as well because well that's a big factor for ethnic diversity. But if you're shoehorning the spunky Black-Irish-Asian woman into a roll that is oozing with "this shouldn't be possible unless she is really that qualified" and fails to show that she is qualified for that role then you can say that is shoehorning.

>rolling for skin colour

No unless you are running Shadowrun.

If you run a game set in a medieval society then most people of that society will have the same skin colour.

Diversity of character > diversity of ethnicity

>Watching running the game by Matt Colville made me realise that I don't describe ethnicity, I just give general looks so everyone can imagine it as they please. Am I doing it wrong?

I don't even know who that Matt guy is, but yeah, you seem to be doing it right. I mean, who cares if someone's ethnicity and/or skin color is relevant, except if it could be useful later (for exemple, if you are playing a gumshoe detective story and you need to find someone based on visual clues) ? Alternatively, you can describe people of color if you want, without it being "forced diversity" at all. You are the GM, so just do what you want.

Inclusion is not a good in and of itself. Inclusion of incompatible people is an evil.

What happened with Evolve and what's this Fantasy Grounds drama? I actually hate Colville so I'm interested in hearing what he did to fuck up so badly.

>It's necessary to make the players at the table feel included.
and you accomplish that by making sure everyone has a character. damn, why are people such morons?

Watch the Crowbcat video on Evolve to see how much of a blunder it was. On the subject of Fantasy Grounds, he put up a video talking about how great fantasy grounds was, and later changed his mind after trying to do some 5e stuff in it and took down the video since he no longer thought he should endorse it.

What's wrong with that assuming he wasn't paid to endorse it?

>It's necessary to make the players at the table feel included.

Is it though?

There really isn't anything, some people just like to make mountains out of molehills. Some people just dislike Colville cause he's a bit SJW in his videos, he gets posted incessantly here cause he's cheap bait, and they feel like he's coattail riding on Critical Role. Which are perfectly fine reasons to dislike him.

It isn't about the video being created, It's about the timing of the video being taken down which was admittedly very suspicious, Colville's advice and entire attitude towards 5e changed very quickly afterwards.

...Yes? If your players don't feel all that involved in your game you are failing as a DM. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gender or race.

As an American, I would like to apologize. People in power have successfully altered the dialogue on identity so that the lower classes will squabble amongst themselves on the basis of racial differences rather than unite against oligarchs on the basis of differences in power.

>Some people just dislike Colville cause he's a bit SJW in his videos

I'm pretty sure it's mostly because of the initiation and haste videos being released so close together which made a lot of people suspicious of him.

Evolve had a story?

youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJ7ES57jeY

This is your average Colville written dialogue.

Badwrongfun was never good faggot. Stop trying.

>but I find it hard to get mad a people with good intentions.
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Never forget this

But we had bait long before we had quests. We just called it trolling back then.

He was the most quiet. Played a dwarf cleric and qorked well with the rest. The middleeastern guy was a That Guy at times, but mostly because he kept trying to push his character as an edgy loner.

>somehow people thought this was good enough to use
Fuck's sake.

What's the "Haste" video, I don't see it on his channel, did he delete it? If so, where can I find it?

>An adult was paid legal tender to write this

Pretty sure they're talking about the video where he says he let one of his players use haste to give himself a new set of attacks as a gish. People don't like it when he says rule of cool is a valid reason to rule on the spot because they're spergs

He's probably referring to this video youtube.com/watch?v=3v2_JDz2Di0

>1. Characters can look and be anything. Are you an African rape child? No problem, your character can be Varga Vargsdottir, turbo-white olympic athlete and daughter of some dude from a metal band.

Have you considered that they may not want to play Varga Vargsdottir? Colville says in that video that if they don't care what race they play it doesn't matter, but some people DO want to play their own race.

>In times when travel is difficult and dangerous, ethnicities tend to remain separate. The Romans had more race mixing than most of history after their empires fell.

Which is probably why he runs is games in the aftermath of a Romean Empire analogue's fall.

>"I wish most of you weren't white and male"

THIS is somewhat bullshit, though to be honest I'd like more asian cuties in my D&D so whatever.

>Rape is more likely to be included in a game with women because we view it as the worst thing that you can survive.

Come now, this is bullshit. I have literally never seen rape included heavily, or inflicted on PCs, in a way that wasn't exceedingly obvious fetish shit. The D&D community isn't even the type to agree with the 'worse thing you can survive' narrative, and you state why in your own post.

I'm not generally the type to do any kind of racewhatever shit. My settings are usually big and diverse but relatively divided, or if they're not, they're focused on a specific cultural/ethnic theme and therefore pretty mono-ethnic. But there's nothing really wrong with how Colville does it either, and I find that your points demonstrate a misunderstanding and willful disregard for what's actually being said.

There's a lot to dislike about that video including him straight up lying about Adam Koebel.