On the topic of Fantastic Racism

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On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by Hell_Born »

As a Gothic Horror Fantasy setting, it's long been expected in Ravenloft games that, whilst there are humanoid races, the human majority of the Demiplane tends to be quite suspicious of and reserved towards their non-human neighbors. Now, really, this is actually kind of understandable; the sad truth is that Ravenloft is full of monsters that appear as "almost, but not quite, humans" - red widows, vampyres, paka, vorlogs, skin thieves, and that's not even getting into the vast array of canonical lycanthropes - so, yes, people that don't quite fit are going to attract some wariness.

What I'm curious about is simple; how do you handle this topic in your Ravenloft games?

How strongly do you push this angle? Do you outright punish a player for wanting to be a non-human race?

How does fantastic racism cross-align with alignment in your games? I'm presuming most of us are, in the face of Raveloft's very real "demihuman" monsters, going to go with the assumption that "fantastic racism is a moral failing that can serve as a foothold for evil, but it's not inherently evil, anymore than being an alcoholic or very sexually casual is evil", but I was morbidly curious to see if anyone out there would actually promote fantastic racism as being a good thing in the Demiplane of Dread.

Just how strong is its grip? Is there any hope for a non-human to win acceptance in at least some small community through proving its valor? I mean, I think I remember there being rules that heroic deeds can reduce a character's Outsider Rating for a given settlement, and the Lamplighter PrC in Gazetteer 3 also knocks 3 points off of your OR due to you being recognized as a member of Mordent's most heroic local group, but does anyone actually play their Ravenloft games under the assumption that "no, you're a filthy dwarf/elf/halfling/gnome and that means humans will hate and despise you forever no matter what you do"? You know, the Marvel approach to fantastic racism?

Going off on a tangent, I've been wondering about this for hours, since I finally scored a copy of the VRG to Walking Dead: what would the Weathermay Twins do if they investigated stories of a "wolf-knight", a werewolf that is reported actually saving people, and found that he's no werewolf, but a very rare outlander; a Lupin, a member of a race of goodly-aligned anthropomorphic wolves. More than that, he's a Lupin paladin, still dedicated to upholding both his oath as a paladin and his people's centuries-old oath to hunt and slay werebeasts. How do folks think they'd take it, especially if he passes every anti-werewolf test they can think of?

Finally, coming at this from the other side of the fence... in the face of the fantastic racism arrayed against them, how much leeway do you rule humanoids (or demihumans or whatever other term you wanna use for playable races) have to defend themselves against human bigotry, prejudice and intolerance? Hell, do you even allow demihumans to use force to protect themselves from racist assailants, or is that an immediate Powers Check?

Say you have a scenario where the Mists spit out an Outlander party of goodly aligned adventurers with at least some demihumans somewhere in Tepest. Lost and confused, they wander into a nearby village looking for supplies. Naturally, everybody starts freaking out, especially because there's an Inquisitor of a particularly firebrand sort of nature in town. Realizing the locals aren't friendly, the party promptly moves to leave the place... not quick enough, because now there's a mob after them. They try to dissuade their attacks verbally, shouting assurances of non-hostility, then, when the assailants keep coming, trying to use non-lethal options to repel them (tanglefoot bags, fear spells, etc). Only when they keep coming despite that does the party kill the Inquisitor with a ranged attack and use the confusion to flee.

Would you consider the party evil in this scenario?
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by Mistmaster »

This is not even marvel approach, because there are a lot of people who starts to admire Mutants after the X-men exploits.
In my game fantastic racism can wary; big market towns and cities are tendencially more openminded than smaller comunities.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by ewancummins »

in my Mists over the Musarde game:

In Richemulot, demihumans are tolerated, but they are not welcome in polite society (unless perhaps they have done a great service for an important family). City guards treat them with additional suspicion. Dwarves in the city work in low-end jobs like rat trapping and canal dredging.
Elves are widely regarded as savage or decadent, depending on their mode of life.
Half-elves who favor their human side and don't make a big deal out of their elven heritage can pass in society, but only if they have sufficient wealth, personal power, and connections.

And that's in the relatively welcoming cities--the population of the countryside is less tolerant of nonhumans.


It all gets much worse for demihumans in places like Falkovnia, obviously.



I don't treat fantastic 'racism' as a moral failing . It's background color.
And thinking that dwarves tend to be greedy isn't unfair prejudice-- it's knowing what dwarves are like.

Is it immoral to think goblins are evil when they actually are evil-aligned as a race? Obviously not.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by ewancummins »

RE Wolf-Knight


Lupins
Yeah, B/X D&D and Mystara/Known World!
Yay!



IMC, I doubt most humans would stand still long enough to hear him tell his story. ''Man with wolf-head= werewolf. RUN AWAY! Or kill."
At best, he could live in a freakshow like the Carnival.
Pointy ears, hair feet, stunted build, and so on are enough to mark demihumans as freaks in many domains, so a bestial humanoid is going to be seen as a monster.

RE party and the firebrand inquisitor in Tepest

No, they aren't doing anything evil. They tried to avoid hurting anybody, tried to leave town, but the inquisitor and the mob left them little choice in the end.
Good-aligned PCs are not required to be become martyrs for the cause of interspecies social equality, or whatever.

If a DM rolled a powers check in such a situation, I'd be annoyed (as a player). I wouldn't argue with the ruling, of course, because it's his table and therefore his rules, but I wouldn't think it was fair or reasonable.
(Of course, if the DM does it the way I do, with secret rolls, I'd only know there even was a powers check if my PC failed.)

Now, if the party proceeded to raze the village after killing the inquisitor, and then hunted down and killed the men in the village mob, leaving children orphaned... :azalin:

Oh, and as you specified outlanders who've only just arrived in Ravenloft, the party in this scenario cannot be expected to know how people in Tepest behave toward demihumans. They may be surprised by the whole thing turning nasty so quickly.

A party that deliberately baited a bunch of superstitious Ravenloft peasants and then cut them down ''because we had to defend ourselves from those bigots'' is definitely in powers check territory, IMO. But that's a different scenario.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by alhoon »

Ravenloft, I do play racism as a force with mechanical applications (OR). Except Darkon. And keep in mind, I play demihumans as racists too, with elves thinking they're better than everyone else, dwarves the same.
For different races than the PHB, it's hard to argue that "X is equal to Y" when X is smarter, stronger, longer-lived. Anyone saying for example cloud giants are NOT better than humans overlooks that part. Or Dragons. etc.

Now it's also a medieval setting usually. So, inequality between the people is not just present, it's not just the norm, it's the accepted set of morals. Go and tell a king that his life is worth as much as the random peasant, or that the 15-years-old duke that his opinion is worth less than the opinion of the 50-year-old grandmother that raised 11 kids and 50 grandkids and you're not just risking the noble's ire; most people including that grandmother will consider you crazy.
It was considered good to die for one's king or to kill for the honor of one's liege.

What we consider "Good" and "proper" and "moral" in 21st century Western civilization is just a set of morals. They are not unique and they were different 100 years ago.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by Five »

Hell_Born wrote:Say you have a scenario where the Mists spit out an Outlander party of goodly aligned adventurers with at least some demihumans somewhere in Tepest. Lost and confused, they wander into a nearby village looking for supplies. Naturally, everybody starts freaking out, especially because there's an Inquisitor of a particularly firebrand sort of nature in town. Realizing the locals aren't friendly, the party promptly moves to leave the place... not quick enough, because now there's a mob after them. They try to dissuade their attacks verbally, shouting assurances of non-hostility, then, when the assailants keep coming, trying to use non-lethal options to repel them (tanglefoot bags, fear spells, etc). Only when they keep coming despite that does the party kill the Inquisitor with a ranged attack and use the confusion to flee.

Would you consider the party evil in this scenario?
Self Defence, and especially considering a textbook bottom-up escalation of use of force as used in the given example, should never be considered evil (in a moral sense). And a DM tablelord that says otherwise is, in my opinion, undeserving of his or her post. Essentially they are creating a no-win situation for the PCs by railroad.

However, with that being said, it's fair game for the DM to have the PCs' actions be perceived as evil by the townsfolk and the Inquisitor's peers and up the party OR (or notoriety) in that particular domain to set the groundwork for future in-game pardon or clearing of names/reputation...that sort of thing.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by Five »

alhoon wrote: And keep in mind, I play demihumans as racists too, with elves thinking they're better than everyone else, dwarves the same.
Great point.

As far back as Basic D&D the elves have always had that "Elves Lives Matter" reverse racism/bigot-bias thing going on. Alfheim elves (Gaz 5) are indeed an insular lot. Some of it is probably only natural (given the human debacle of Blackmoor), but even during resettlement they seem to be elves-only, the rest be damned. Hell, even their dealings with their emerging cousins, the shadow elves (not drow), can be read as misanthropic and downright cold...depending on your Gazetteer truth point of view (whether or not the shadow elves actually demanded rulership of Alfheim). And speaking of which, the shadow elves (Gaz 13) would be a perfect alternative origin point for Sithicus elves, IMO.

So yeah, (overt) racism all boils down to numbers really. Who's got the numbers to impose their views on whom. The greater the number the more public or blatant the expression(s).

Racism in Ravenloft/campaign...it's a card that can be both overplayed and underplayed, for sure. Spend too much time on it and it can derail or degrade your game (in a typecast sort of way), yet if you don't touch on it then you might lose out on some great opportunities in fully developing the atmospheric theme of Fear (as opposed to personal).
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by thekristhomas »

My approach to fantastic racism is basically everybody starts off racist, even the players, and experience of the other races tends to either dismiss or reinforce prejudice. So a 1st level PC dwarf is going to think that elves are effeminate scum but a 10th level NPC dwarf is probably going to have had elf friends over the years and might make arguments defending elves if anti-elven hate speech is used in his presence, but he probably still hates orcs, a 20th level dwarf though, might be so experienced as to have encountered a noble orc, fought alongside them against an enemy that could only be defeated by setting aside centuries of hate blah blah blah

At least, that's how it works in Darkon and on more traditional fantasy worlds that I run.

In Ravenloft I sometimes, for the sake of moral greyness, expand this principle to include the undead and other monstrous races. "Vampires are people too" is an idea that I have found easiest to introduce through pointing out to players (if the circumstances warrant) that were they to kill Count Vlad the Obviously Undead, they might have some difficulty proving to the authorities that their actions were lawful, can they prove, after the fact, that he was actually a vampire, and even if they can has he actually broken any laws, just by being a vampire. I also try to set up situations where they have to work for an NPC that they know is undead, but can't touch, and have them always deal straight with the PCs, generous and helpful, and contrast that with the tricksy living. I can usually get a group to actually like a vampire, and I don't always make the vampire betray them either.

As far as the Tepestani mob goes, thinking demi-humans are inferior/evil is not evil in itself, but murdering a demi-human is an evil act, it's the mob that should be worrying about powers checks. IMHO the Outlander PCs would be justified in thinking that they had stumbled across an isolated cult of human supremacists and feel duty bound to end the threat they posed, many villagers would die, but it wouldn't be until PCs were aware that these were just normal people and not a sinister death cult would I as a DM be thinking about powers checks (YMMV)
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by ewancummins »

:wink: But what if the mob is firmly convinced that demihumans are evil fairies?

It seems to me that if the DM exempts the PCs from powers checks for slaughtering villagers they mistakenly believe to be "death cultists" then it's only fair to extend the same cover to the villagers, in regard to the "foul spawn of the Shadow Rift" and those who consort with them.
;)
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by Five »

ewancummins wrote::wink: But what if the mob is firmly convinced that demihumans are evil fairies?

It seems to me that if the DM exempts the PCs from powers checks for slaughtering villagers they mistakenly believe to be "death cultists" then it's only fair to extend the same cover to the villagers, in regard to the "foul spawn of the Shadow Rift" and those who consort with them.
;)
Heh.

Yeah, it has always been within my interpretation of the Powers Checks that the DM needs to apply Fundamental Truth to the given situation, which sometimes only they have full access to, making it essential for the DM to not morally jam PCs into inescapable situations! In short, to do evil one needs to choose evil. The "evidence" can and will be blurred by things such as racism, biases (social and individual) and the like, but the choice is still made. Ignorance of Truth is not an excuse. And I personally include choices to join/give in to cults, belief systems, and the like. Good and Evil are black and white...it's not a cosmic concern that humans/etc (their guilt) choose to create grey...
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

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ewancummins wrote::wink: But what if the mob is firmly convinced that demihumans are evil fairies?

It seems to me that if the DM exempts the PCs from powers checks for slaughtering villagers they mistakenly believe to be "death cultists" then it's only fair to extend the same cover to the villagers, in regard to the "foul spawn of the Shadow Rift" and those who consort with them.
;)
Even if the mob are absolutely certain of their beliefs, they are wrong, and are the aggressors.

On the other hand the PCs are kinda right, the Tespestian people have allowed and supported a regime which tortures and kills the innocent, doesn't matter how earnest they are in their beliefs, that's evil.

Remember, the Tepestian Inquisition is not a imposition of the Darklord, as the state religion of G'Henna is for example, but the result of "free" choices made by the people themselves.

IMC it is a rare Inquisitor who has not felt the attention of the Dark Powers even if he remains unmarked by them
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by ewancummins »

thekristhomas wrote:
IMC it is a rare Inquisitor who has not felt the attention of the Dark Powers even if he remains unmarked by them

It's been overused, perhaps, but..

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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

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thekristhomas wrote:
As far as the Tepestani mob goes, thinking demi-humans are inferior/evil is not evil in itself, but murdering a demi-human is an evil act, it's the mob that should be worrying about powers checks. IMHO the Outlander PCs would be justified in thinking that they had stumbled across an isolated cult of human supremacists and feel duty bound to end the threat they posed, many villagers would die, but it wouldn't be until PCs were aware that these were just normal people and not a sinister death cult would I as a DM be thinking about powers checks (YMMV)
This makes sense on one level (story-based/personal horror), however, wouldn't you consider offensively putting people to the blade/crushing their skulls in with blunt instruments/blasting their mortal bodies with eldritch energies (ultimately destroying any and all chances at redemption), no matter how misguided the individuals of said mob are, a bit on the...extreme side of things?

Or are you saying you'd just delay the checks, in favor of story/development?

In General:

There is no evil in holding bigoted viewpoints (or worse), I agree, and even though the assaults on the demihumans (unprovoked, grievous, and perhaps even nonbrutal murder) are acts of evil that warrant a Powers Check, remember that not everybody in the mob would actually be the ones to materialize their hatred through such brutality. Most would be there "in spirit".

The Inquisitor is more interesting. If they stand back and simply direct the crowd then I'd argue a threats of violence roll. It is a "lesser charge", or course, which is probably why most Inquisitors who act in this way (use a mob to maliciously enforce their will) would remain largely untainted by the Dark Powers. The more hands-on Inquisitors would, naturally, be more prone to the attentions of the Powers That Be. It's a bit of a loophole, but given the nature of the Dark Powers I'd never make it a conscious choice on the part of the Inquisitor. It's simply a coward's way out, perhaps a subconscious move based on guilt or a natural preservation of the soul (which they are typically well indoctrinated).

Those points aside, as well as self-defence, I'd argue that the moral "right" in regarding mobs of bigots/racists/etc would be to somehow, passively, show them the errors of their ways. Fighting fire with fire may be the (emotionally) easy way, yet sometimes (most times) the hard, nearly impossible way is the true path of the righteous. Of course this won't be easy to pull off, but remember there is said to be a limited number of paladins travelling the Dread Realms, so...

Yeah, in a lot of ways Ravenloft is a tough challenge for the typical Dungeons and Dragons player. In fact, I could see the typical paladin of other settings failing prey to the Dark Powers on a consistent basis. The martial/weaponized nature of the paladin, combined with their "inbred" spiritual superiority (a trait shared by the typical Inquisitor), is a very rickety bridge in regards to the Dark Powers.
Last edited by Five on Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:54 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by Mistmaster »

There is a thing called not lethal demage, a feat to do it without penalties, and a metamagic feat to do it with spells, without even spending highter slot.
If I'm a Paladin I would definitly have that feat; There are a lot of spells which can subdue an angry mob withoud resorting to lethal force; Defending someone from an angry mob is definetly a good thing to do; killing misgided villagers should be avoided thought. I will have Powers Checks only if the characters resort to lethal force without even trying an alternative.
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Re: On the topic of Fantastic Racism

Post by thekristhomas »

I would argue that in many D&D settings the discovery of an evil cult by PCs would often result in the death/surrender of said cult. Any cult members killed would be ok because the cult members are evil and killing evil things is ok, it's better than ok it's good.

I think with Tepestians, as opposed to nearly every other population in the demiplane, this is the closest parallel. I would also suggest that had the villages Elena Faithhold slaughtered been Tepestian she wouldn't have ended up a Darklord, because these people have actively chosen an evil ideology.

Even the zealots of G'Henna are, in a way, morally superior to the Tepestians as their zealotry is enforced by the DL and the land itself. The Inquisition has not been imposed on the people of Tepest by anyone other than the Inquisition, who are just normal Tepestians, not infused with the quasi-divine authority of a mad man who can transform men into mongrelmen.

So to be clear, it is pretty much only Tepestians I would have this approach with, as I think their situation is pretty much unique in the demiplane
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