What about PoC?

I don’t want to derail this thread and make it in to something negative. I really appreciate the OP creating this thread and would like this discussion to remain civil.

On that note, that’s the dictionary definition of racism, not the sociological definition. I disagree with your statement but this isn’t a discussion that I want to bother since I doubt it’ll lead to anything beneficial.

As a change of topic, which COG/HG did you guys find to have the best character selection scenes? So far we’ve mentioned Choice of Vampires and Tin Star

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And here’s some more about casual racism.

You probably shouldn’t rely on the dictionary definition of racism since they use the extreme definition, they’re typically defined by white people, and you have actual people of color telling you that you are being racist. You don’t have to get defensive about it, instead you could just actually try to learn. Your defensiveness is preventing you from understanding us and you are actually pushing us away. I’m ignoring your last point because I have already discussed this earlier. I do want to help you understand it though, so if you are interested in talking about this privately, I’m down for it. I want to keep this a civil conversation and it’s nothing to be ashamed of to take a moment to educate yourself on something you may not entirely be aware of.

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I honestly think those two have the best when involving race, though I like how Seven Heirs of Ophaesia is doing it.
For background characters, I think Choice of the Deathless does a good job with race too.

I really liked Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck because there, I could just be a human. That’s all. No need for further differentiation. It was a nice change!

I also quite enjoyed how the author handled the natures and world views of its alien cultures. I thought it was one of the more convincing space-based, alien-species ChoiceScript games to date.

I thought @Eric_Moser’s Community College Hero did a nice job with diversity. Bonus for not being overly flashy about the inclusiveness, too.

And Study in Steampunk had several cultural clashes on a couple of continents, which in some ways mirrored colonial-era history. I enjoyed the way the conflicts were handled, both nationally and on an international level. Lots of prejudice, tolerance, misconceptions, and understanding, all blended nicely together. It felt believable.

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I forgot about Community College Hero and Study in Steampunk! Those are great games too. I think Creatures Such as We did too. Plus it’s free, so that’s nice.

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I agree, while it is true that the setting has an impact on characters, I find that the home town or country of the author has a humongous impact on characters, specifically on the character’s race. If, let’s say, you come from Barranquilla, Colombia you will be used to seeing Latinos and write thinking of them being Latinos while if you are from a town where most people will be white you will probably think of your character’s being white.

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This thread is relevant to my interests.

I’m also biracial, so I agree with a lot of the points RedRoses, Attolia and TruMaknae made. I get pretty peeved when I make a non-white character and their family has white features, or if there is only one minority character swimming in a pale sea…

But do you want to know what really grinds my gears? People who create huge fantasy worlds devoid of POC. And then when you call them out on it, they cry ‘historical accuracy’ or some other bullshit. It’s fantasy, you made it up. There is literally no excuse. It gets even worse when the fantasy worlds include elves or dwarves (who are white) and the author uses them for racism allegories instead of adding brown people. It’s so uninspired.

My game Carhalow is probably the whitest fantasy setting I’ve ever created and I’ve still managed to include multiple POC characters. It isn’t hard, people.

https://static2.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/Quot+you+actually+thought+i+was+serious+enough+to+send+me+_f84899b79213b34fa985a720106a7954.gif

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Do you mean Dragon Age?
“Historical accuracy” in fantasy is something that doesn’t even make sense because people of color didn’t just magically come into existence with American slavery. History is complicated and colorful and if anything it adds more to someone’s fantasy because it adds depth and uniqueness on top of actually being historically accurate.

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Well, Swedish-Korean is a rare combination even today and an impossible or extremely difficult for many historical settings. :smiley:

As to your main questions. I want more racial representation in games. Particulary, I want more games with default non-White settings. I love how Choice of Games has several games set in Asia or Asian-inspired worlds and hope to see some with other diverse settings. However, I understand that in order to write a good game and don’t make the charcters and plot stereotypical, an author has to know a lot about the culture and period where they want to set their game or that inspired their fantasy setting. It is a problem that most mainstream games are made by Americans or Europeans for predominatly white players who don’t know enough about other cultures, and sadly many don’t even want to know.
In case of CoG, I have the impression that there are also not enough authors who could write about many non-European settings. There is partly due to a language barrier, many people who could don’t speak English well enough to write a choice game.

As to choosing the race, it depends on the setting.
If it is a diverse place where race doens’ t matter much, it is best to either not mention the MC’s appearance at all or allow the player to name their MC’s race, ethnicity etc. Mixed race can be handled easily by adding a choice like “I actually have mixed ancestry” and then let them name the two groups the MC dedcends from. If the setting has several distinct groups but the MC’s background has an impact on how they are percieved or treated, the Vampires approach seems to be best, let the player choose from a set of list. In this case, mixed races migh be included into the list as well as some new groups distinct from both both parents. Alernatively, some kind of One Drop rule might exist in a setting, which would mean that the MC will be treated as member of one race even if he’s mixed and their other part/s will be ignored by the NPCs.
And if the setting reasonably implies a population where the vast majority belongs to a single race/people, be it white in medieval England, black in an African village or Inuit in the Arctic, I’m fine with the MC always belonging to the predominat group. If the author wants to allow them to belong a distinct minority background, they should provide an explanation how the MC or their ancestors came to this place and that the people accept them as different from the majority. However, a visible minority MC would stand out from the crowd, which would realisticly have some impact on how they are percieved. Perhaps this might even be the reason they were selected for the game’s quest.

Finally, I think including mixed ancestry as well as differece between native and adopted cultures can have great potential and I would love to see games focusing on it. Such a story is particulary well suited for choice games.

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Although I can see where you’re coming from, I don’t think that insulting what a person said is the best way to say that you don’t agree with what they think, although good gif usage, that’s not OK.

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I don’t think Iris insulted him with the gif, since they’re focusing more on a sentence he admitted wasn’t a very good one, but I do think that since he’s asked not to continue the talk we should consider doing so.

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Not… really. I think they’re going for a color blind thing to avoid controversy. Most of their characters are white, but they do try. I give them a pass.

I was thinking about Lord of the Rings, and a lot of other older fantasy. Dat elf on elf racism. The Noldor and the Vanyar I think…? It’s been awhile haha. Anyways, there’s a whole tropes page worth of them.

It wasn’t my intention to insult him, just to express my disbelief. You’re right, though, it was immature.

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I think we disagree on Dragon Age, but I see what you’re saying.

I’ve really only seen the movies of Lord of the Rings so I know nothing about this. I’m just gonna nod and pretend I do.

may sound stupid but… what’s PoC??

Person of color.

The context is helpful here and can be found in the very first post:

Given that Tolkien was born in 1892, and his audence of book-reading English speakers in his home nation (the UK), was close to if not 99% white, I think it a little harsh to judge his works based on current day standards of inclusivity. I doubt very much that he foresaw the longevity of his own works or the countless copy-cats that they would inspire through the decades. And some of those more modern authors inspired by him like Ursula Le Guin have been much more inclusive.

That said, I don’t begrudge people for wishing Tolkien had been more inclusive.

@Feather: PoC=Person of Color

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Persons of Colour. (Edit: Oops, I ought to read better today - but I’m stressed, so please excuse me.)

I say it all depends. Does it matter for the story? Then yes. If not, well, personally I like customising my character, so if it is there I will be happy, but I won’t t object if it is omitted in case all it would be is a throwaway, fake choice. :relaxed:

As for historical, well, if we’re making stuff up, allow for us to be an exception rather than the norm, I’d say. Same goes for gender which has been around this bush a few times (no pun intended, get out of the gutters, please. :expressionless:).

I’m reminded of all the high school and college cafeterias I’ve sat in over the years in the US. There was always a great deal of self-segragation, with whites mostly on one side and blacks on the other with a few asian tables here and there. Nobody forced any of these students to segregate, it was something they chose to do. There were always a few social butterflies who flitted across the line to sit with friends of the other racial group with no negative consequences, but most seemed more comfortable associating with those who looked like themselves.

I believe this sort of preference for self-segregation tends to promote segregation on the story level too, as out of sight is out of mind. This is why integration is so important as people tend to stick with that which makes them most comfortable. People need to make an active effort to make friends with those unlike themselves. Without an active and voluntary push for integration, integration will never truly feel comfortable and the status quo will simply perpetuate itself indefinitely. Separate but equal isn’t really equal when the opportunities aren’t the same on both sides of the divide.

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I have to say, as an American of mixed-race myself I have noticed that 1 of the biggest problems is that many people seem to think that your race = culture and you have to act a certain way because of that. I have even had people tell me that they were mixed-race because they were French-Swedish-German or some other combination yet still 100% white because a lot of people here are taught to think that people act a certain way based on how they look. Growing up everyone told me I was white even though I don’t even look it but because I acted a certain way I had to be white because if I wasn’t then that would’ve changed there preconceived notions on how I was supposed to be. I have always found that to be the biggest problem in regards to race. Many have trouble realizing that how you are raised and how people treat you is not the same as the color of your skin but may be affected by it due to the cultural around you. Meaning that a person born of any color will still turn out to be the same person as long as they are treated the same regardless of that color.

It is nice to see some games on here as well as W.I.P.s that don’t use that process and I think that is a very nice start.

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I understand that, and there are tons of mixed people whose ancestry is from all over, so it can be hard to include every single ethnicity. If not impossible since there are so many cultures and more than 100 countries. In my opinion I’m okay if a game asks for my race and not my ethnicity. As for historical settings, I understand that as well. But what about fantasy settings? You can easily make things up so it’s more inclusive.

That’s how I see it too. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s necessary if a game doesn’t discuss racism or have implications about race. But if you want to add race options anyway, I’m totally down for that so long as you include every racial group (different from ethnicity) and options for mixed-race people. Maybe an author can be vague about the PC’s family’s appearances so that way it’s more inclusive and they’re not perceived as one race over the other, given features that aren’t exactly present in another race.

I’m actually okay with that too. In historical games that don’t offer race, I’m okay with playing a character who is a monoracial member of that particular group. 99% of the time my PC’s are completely different from how I picture them. A lot of them are white (setting) or Asian (setting usually isn’t the case, but I imagine them as East Asian for some reason) and one of my PC’s in Seven Heirs of Ophaesia is actually (as I picture her) Latina.

I’d love to see more race options for Indigenous peoples. In America there isn’t a lot of representation for them and they’re a minority which can often lead to unintentional erasure. This includes people who are Melanesian and Aboriginal. Haven’t seen many options for that, if I’m being honest.

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