These things have been on my mind for a long time now.

What do you think about the fact that the overwhelming amount of characters on realistic/modern RPG forums are white?

I'm not bringing this up to cause any discrimination, and I'm definitely not pointing fingers at people and saying You all are racist! That's not what this is about. It just struck me as odd.

Personally, I've played about an equal amount of Asian characters as I have of anything else; I've also played two African-American characters, and several Hispanic ones... So this isn't the pot calling the kettle black. It's just a little upsetting, because I realized with characters who had 'unconventional' avatar claims (like Rihanna, or America Ferrera), they didn't get as much attention as others did.

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Another thing:

What is the fascination with sarcastic & slutty characters [girls]?

Mainly slutty. Just wondering. Personally, I think a lot of RPG characters are actually manifestations of the player's 'inner desires;' they're the type of people they wished they were, or have qualities they wish they had (which may or may not be an accurate observation; not like we would know!). So, I'm curious... Why are people so fascinated by pretending to be some STD-infected party-girl? Because they're 'cool'?

The sarcastic part bothers me, because, as a very sarcastic individual, I have realized many (perhaps 'most') people playing sarcastic characters aren't really good at pulling off the actual sarcasm. (neutral) Maybe I'm being elitist or something, but. . . It's just sort of funny.

Keep in mind the majority of RP experience on forums is on high school roleplay. So no need to say "Well that's not the case in animal RPGs..." Haha.

Some very good points. The sites I go to don't really attract the second type, so I'll just address the first.

I would very much like to see more cultures represented in roleplaying, and love when someone comes in with a highly developed character from something other than a Western culture. I've played mostly white and Asian characters, with a couple of black characters as well, although almost all of my characters have been from Western countries.

I've intentionally avoided Hispanic or other cultural characters mainly because I'm afraid my lack of cultural knowledge would offend someone or just be a very poor example of that culture, but I admit I am very interested when people make characters with a strong cultural background (it was my field of study).

That's a very good thing you brought up there Sunday. To say it bluntly, I've never even considered playing a african or asian characters. Simply because I myself aren't involved with any of such people in real life. The main people who I have around myself are white/Western. Although there are lots of people from other cultures living in the Netherlands, but I don't know any of them.

So that might be a good explanation why I never even considered playing a character with a background different then just being white/Western. I did have some characters who came from East Europe, although that doesn't really count for being that different.

I defiantly might consider playing a character in the future with a different cultural background then what I've played until now.

To be perfectly honest, i've never really thought of playing any ehtinic (I know the term sounds awful, but it's all i can think of..) character eigther. Most of my characters are European, maily because I'm american with European lineage nad it's what I know.

I did have on character which was half chinese, but to be perfectly honest, I made her while I had a crush on a friend of mine who was chinese, so I thought it would be cool to make her Chinese aswell, but I didn't know how's it's work out so i made her part Irish.

I guess we all fall into our comfort zones and that's good, but not good at the same time...

I've tried to play characters of different races, but I can never really get the backgrounds right. I'm just used to being a white Australian myself, and I guess that reflects in my role playing.

It's not really a matter of racism, but a large amount of ignorance on my part.

That probably has a lot to do with it. Personally, I'd rather people stick to what they know than get what they don't wrong.

I've played a couple of Chinese people, but my only problem is when it comes to the lingo and I can't speak chinese.

Also I choose mainly to RP as white females so that I an use my own life experiences in the role that I am curently playing. I'm sure that if an african-american signed up to a board they would choose to play an african-american character rather than a white character.

I really don't think that race is the issue here.

One nice thing about fantasy rpgs is it doesn't matter what background your avatar has, you don't need to worry about insulting someone culturally because it is a fantasy setting. I have never had a problem with this in my rpgs but I play about 90% fantasy.

I am in a Harry Potter one now tho, so we'll see how it goes there.

[/two cents]

I think your character's race totally depends on the RPG you are playing. For example, in the LoTR RPG that I run, the only dark skinned people are evil Southlanders, and there aren't many of them because they are not mentioned a good deal in the books. There are more white characters simply because that was the way the book was written, as I am sure is the case for a lot of role plays that are based on books, movies, or TV shows, especially if they have a large amount of canon characters. (However, in fantasy role plays like mine there are usually an abundance of a 'species' such as elf or human, whereas the hobbits or dwarves get less people playing them.)

Personally I have played several Korean characters, and an Indian character. I have also NCP'd a native American and a Haitian. However, the RPG (a pirates-based) did not have a huge market for a diverse character base because during that time even some whites were unimportant.

:D

As per the second, I agree with you. I think people just want to be slutty sarcastic angsty-boob heads because that is what is advertised as cool.

I think people are trying to stay close to what they are comfortable with and knowledgable about when it comes to race in character creation. I have a variety of races among my own characters, but still I feel kind of stupid if I play someone without knowing much about their culture in the first place.

And I don't understand the fascination with those kind of female characters either. Maybe it's a pop culture thing- wanting to be around or create what the media tells us is the perfect ideal woman so that a little of that will rub off on us.

Bullcrap, I tells ya! I'm playing two middle aged men right now! =D

Woot!! I have 4 chars currently running actively on one RP (and two of them showing up in their teenage incarnations on another). All between the ages of 23-27 (Should probably think about that, though that's where our group is, so. . .). Two are male, two female. One of each is white and the others, the male is Puerto Rican, the female is Maori. I've had a Vietnamese character and a redneck in the past too. I like to research other cultures and while I know I'm not doing the culture justice, at least I'm learning about them, and doing at least a tiny bit of educating to anyone who reads my threads. At least that's how I justify it to myself :)

As to the slutty thing. I find it really irritating, especially when writers identify their character as such. I want to shake them and say "Is that all she is to you?" Damn. . . I mean, one or two of my chars have done things which might cause others to label them so, but I certainly don't, 'cause they're my characters and they're more than the sum of their behaviors. If the writer has no more faith in them than that as characters, then what hope is there of them being interesting people?

So I have a question for the 'non-white' members....

Discounting all otakus (they're in a class by themselves...lol), does it bother you when you see someone roleplaying a character with the same nationality as you, and they get some things wrong, or totally screw it up? Do you like to see people attempting to understand your cultural background, even if they don't get everything right?

I don't know about all this. Fiction writing(which encompasses the RPG world) is about taking on fictional challenges. Writers are watchers, observers, interpreters of experience. And within that interpretation they are free to be wrong--or at least outside the scope of what is currently accepted.

White writers portraying non-whites. Non-whites playing out the white experience. It's all good in my book. We all interpret our experience. That's what writers do.

Don't stay in your comfort zone. What's the point? To be a writer is to be daring and to live bravely.

Just because you grow up on a reservation doesn't mean you have the same experience as every other native kid who grows up on a reservation. What if you are a native kid who grew up in the city? Should you not write about a native kid who lives on a res? Should a native kid not write a white character since that is not his experience? What about a girls portraying boys? Boys portraying girls? What about gays portraying straights? Straights portraying gays? What about someone old portraying a character in their teens? What about a teen portraying a wise old man?


Culture might frame up a certain experience for some but within that, unique experiences abound. I think it's good to have read some first hand experiences of people from any group you are trying to portray. But what reaches across these "cultural" experiences is the fiber of humanity common to us all. That is what draws us to great stories; identifying with the character's experience regardless of their culture or their background or even the time the story is set in.

What I do not like is people attempting to portray people speaking English with accents. Those are hard to get correct and can become tedious to read, as well as bit insulting.

Cultural awareness is helpful and people should understand that there is a world out there that is unique and different from mainstream experience---but it should not hinder you as a writer from writing about characters outside your comfort zone. On the other hand, if you have some narrow interpretation of a person from a background unlike your own, if you interpret them only using common stereotypes and nothing more, if you avoid bring that human spark to them, you just look like a dolt.

Good writers read. Good writers research. They also fantasize and take crazy chances. That's what it's about.

Being a writer, and having several cultures represented in my (fiction) book, I've found that sounds nice in theory, but doesn't always fly in practice.

There's two main reasons:

1. Lack of information on everyday life in other cultural groups. There's all kinds of information about cultures, but not how they interact with each other on a daily basis. Until you live in another country, you don't really get the sense of what that means. Reading never gives you the flavor of everyday life or how people in a culture really interact with each other on a personal level.

2. We live in an age where there's a whole lot of people who are very sensitive about how their culture is represented, which is why I wanted to ask on here to see if that remains true in roleplaying.

I do get your point, Roswenth. This topic is discussed in a lot in university writing programs. My BA is in Creative Writing and American Indian Studies. My Masters work was in Cross Cultural Studies until the school decided to do away with the program. I got a Masters in Education instead.

I don't identify my race/ethnicity/etc here or on any web place I am on. I think it is curious to see what people do when they do not have it as a context with which to sum me up. And I often wonder if they would be surprised if they knew. That is where the problem is for me in focusing too heavily on attempting to portray some particular cultural factor in a fictional character.

I look past a white writer portraying someone non-white or vice-versa because I support creative freedom over political correctness.

Truth is subjective. Fiction is just that--fiction.

I do see that you care about creating an accurate representation of a character outside your culture and that is admirable, but no matter what you do, you will only have one slice of the experience. You can live among other cultures but it will be from an outsider's perspective. Your view of that culture will be tainted by your own. We cannot help but impose our own judgments on that experience.

I am not saying it's wrong to gain as much experience as you can in order to avoid common and insulting stereotypes.

I would like to agree with Ryan and add on to his point:

It shouldn't matter who you are, what you do, or where you come from. Being a writer means making yourself into someone else. Ever read any of Stephen King's books? Some of his best works are from the perspective of a non-white. He himself is a scrawny little white kid (pent up in a scrawny little white geek's body).

<3

Again, irrelevant to the point. Faulkner wrote some stupendously long sentences in some of his works. That doesn't mean that the general rule of keeping your sentences short and to the point doesn't apply. King, like many successful authors, has an uncanny ability to project another identity. That's one primary reason why they are successful authors and the average player isn't.

So as mentioned, if you feel you can portray it accurately, then by all means go for it. But many people, myself included, would rather see it done right or not done at all. If you feel like you're Stephen King, then by all means, give it a shot.

I can't really agree with you, Aleph.

I think that the world of roleplaying is the perfect playground for trying out these personas. No one is expected to be an awarding winning author on a roleplay board. These boards are a hobby and a great way to practice your writing skills and to really explore many elements of character building and storytelling.

Serendipity points to Stephen King as an example of a white writing from the point of view of a character who is non-white. There are loads more writers who do this all the time. I don't really believe there is anything "uncanny" about it. It is a simple fact of fiction. You can't really be a good writer if you play it safe and allow the current political climate to determine what you dare to write.

Cultural sensitivity has its place but it can come to a point where it almost starts to flow backward into something closer to softcore racism.

I brought this up earlier but will bring it up again; If it is not okay to attempt to portray someone outside your culture than is it okay to portray someone who is not your gender? your sexuality? your age? your economic status? your education level?

The point I am trying to make is that if we limit our writing to only our own experience, it becomes self-absorbed, dull and safe. It is okay to be wrong. It's okay to not be Stephen King. It's okay to venture into the worlds that interest you when your writer's mind calls you.

Eh, my masters is in Intercultural Studies.

"Political climate" has nothing to do with "playing it safe", for me at least. These are real people on sites, not political 'sides'. And roleplaying is cooperative, not personal, writing. It is a writing exercise, yes, but I don't think the purpose is sheer "it's all about my writing". It's about real live people. We all may argue that emotions don't cross over to the real person, but I doubt that's true for anyone. I know there are some cultures more sensitive that others. There was a thread on here not too long ago where someone was complaining that their culture was misrepresented all the time by roleplayers and others.

And if we're real honest, do 99% of people really do that much research into a culture before playing a character from that culture?

I still want to hear the opinion of someone with a different cultural background.

Interesting questions! First off, I don't have any experience roleplaying in school/real-life drama RPGs, but in the sci-fi, fantasy, comic/superhero games I have played at, I've noticed at least a little bit of both issues.

Ethnicity isn't usually a factor for me when I make a character, though I suppose there is something to the idea of "playing what you know" since most of my PCs are of European descent. I have a couple Asian and African characters under my belt too, and I'm presently kicking a Turk around in my head (yeah, I know, that sounds bad ;) ). One of my good RPG friends is an African American, and interestingly enough she usually goes for non-human characters in our roleplays - unless humans are the only character option, in which case she more or less has a balance.

Overall, I'd say I've seen a healthy racial mix between European, African, Asian and some Native American (with white folk noticeably higher in number). In almost 9 years of roleplaying, however, I have never seen a character from India, Latin America, or the Islamic world (ie, North African, Arabic, Turkish, Semitic, Persian...) - I think that's kind of interesting.

As for sarcastic/slutty characters... well, it's pretty much RP tradition to have a slew of characters more interested in screwing like rabbits than anything else on any given board, no matter the genre ;). I'll admit many of my characters do lean toward sarcasm, now that I think about it. I'm a pretty sarcastic person in real life, so I guess it's just a bit of the player creeping into the character.

Approximately one in every four or five characters I create is black. Half my characters are Jewish. I'm Jewish in real life and am more observant than my parents. I have flirted with the idea of becoming a bala tsuva so this for me is very familiar ground. As for the black characters, I've had black students, colleagues, and even a black supervisor. If I deal with educated (or good student) characters, the black ones aren't much different than the white ones. Characters are invididuals so it is very hard to get playing a culture all wrong.

Where fear of playing an alien culture really comes in is that there are no Medieval role plays (I have yet to see one) that involve either the three West African empires or a journey in to Africa. I also see very few Moslem Medieval characters. Moorish Spain almost never makes an appearance.

I think the hardest-to-play role play character I have created thus far is Oisin, a fourteen year old freshman boy. There just aren't a lot of boys that young. They are locked out of the romantic market. They get locked out of a lot of scenes that go one on one. The sad thing is that as a character Oisin is full of life, hope, and ambition. He is also a crypto-Jew. I know this, but he does not.

Another sticking point (with admins) is when I want to send a character (a Jewish one) to services on Saturday morning or a Christian character to services on Sunday morning and find the RP lacks a faith oriented board or any house of worship.

I've noticed this as well. I'm mixed-race myself, and have played characters of various ethnicities, though most of them tend to be Hispanic. I have a bigger problem playing characters of the opposite gender than I do playing one of a different ethnic or cultural background. One thing that drives me up the wall about people not playing different ethnicities, is that in RPGs started AFTER Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, there were some Blaise Zabinis with white PBs, when it was explicitly stated in HBP that he was black!

As far as "slutty" characters go, it's something that I rarely do, and I don't have them hook up left and right. They have other interests besides sex.

Sarcastic characters? I'm guilty of that, but I'm pretty sarcastic myself, so it's not much of a stretch for me to play a character who is as well.

I'm finding both fourteen year old boys (I have three on one RP and one on another) are working out quite well. They are more competitive and team oriented than girls, have huge appetites, are still growing and will never menstruate. Two of them are immature and vain because they think they are God's gift to the gridiron.

What I am finding very difficult is one of my female characters. The role play she is on was originally a supplement to a role play set in Allen County Kentucky. When I asked permission to mention locations from the original role play in my supplement, she said she did not want the name of the county used. I'm not sure why but my role play broke away and became independent and I moved it to Greenup County Kentucky at the opposite end of the state. The problem is that Greenup County is smack dab in Appalachia.

I now have a nonplayer character who is Appalachian. I don't know squat about Appalachian culture except that the people have been in this country forever (as opposed to being third, fourth, or fifth generation American). Appalachians have also lived in the same general area for centuries, something hard for the great grand daughter of immigrants and a two time relo herself to grasp.

I am probably going to post an employment ad for someone who may know something about this part of the country.

Well, I've played on Chinese character and am planning on making a black one soon. I think it's mostly because people tend to stick to what they know better and are a bit afraid of offending someone if you do something wrong with the way the talk, act, etc. It'll be easy for me to play a Chinese character considering I am Chinese, and some people just don't want to take a risk at taking offense to anyone.

As for the second one, I've rarely seen any of that except in stories, mostly fan based stories. I think it has to do with people conforming together to hate all 'preps' and to make their characters as less preppy as possible. I'm not sure though. It could just be a fad for certain RP based sites. Personally, I don't like those characters that much unless they have a non-cliche depth to them, but hey, that's just me.

Addressing the ethnicity issue, I agree with most here that's it's mainly a matter of familiarity, I feel pretty good about playing all races, black, white, Hispanic, Asian because I'm exposed to that everyday. I'm aware of the cultures but I can understand those who aren't because most likely you won't know how to really act with let's say an African American character if you aren't one...and you happen to have a strong aversion to rap (an example, I know not all African Americans are into the music genre). It's hard to pretend to act like something you can't identify with.

As for the slutty girls, I'm guilty of that...although it has nothing to do with hidden desire. The slutty character is the fun character in my mind. I've haven't played one in too long but recently joined on a site at the request of another person (Plot twist that required her type of character.) In real life, I can say I'm sarcastic, slightly goofy...into crazy humor...but humor is hard to convey through text (although that's no excuse) and my characters are never overly sarcastic because that usually doesn't fit into their personality.

<sup>To respond to the original question, I'm not going to lie, I get hugely irritated, though not offended, by people who bastardize my culture. I don't mind mistakes here and there, but I can't stand the whole "I'm a sexxxiii geisha" thing that gets shoved down my throat every single time.

People who just want to explore outside of the comfort zone = yes! You're awesome. And if I come to you with a problem I have and you consider it, then I love you, even if you change nothing.

People who just want to feel exotic = bad. Very bad.

I don't want to be one of those bratty people who is all like, "You! You couldn't possibly understand me!"

But gah.

If I see another dragon lady or geisha girl, I will kill myself.

Ala crouching tiger hidden dragon, no less.

(happy)</sup>

I see what you mean. To be honest, I've played a majority of white characters more than anything else although I am half Asian. I've played a few Hispanic characters, but I guess I normally choose white just because I feel more comfortable and because since everyone else is, I don't want to be an "odd" one out or get less attention, as you said those who played people like Rihanna and America Ferrera normally do. I guess it's also because I don't want to mistake any parts of the culture I'm portraying, like Roswenth said.

And as for you second point, I've had an around equal amount of "slutty" characters and "good girl" characters. What you said about them bringing out the player's desires may not be 100% correct, but it definetly has something to do with it. I mean, I'm a good girl in real life, and I'm probably never going to be a really "free" girl, so it's fun to play one and pretend that I am. Does that make sense?