thread: 2014-08-30 : AW:Dark Age playtest preview: Peoples
On 2014-08-31, Brandon wrote:
As far as race is concerned, I think it really helps that when creating a people, the player or MC is forced to examine them from a number of perspectives, so you're probably not going to end up with a bunch of one-note societies. As a caveat, I'm also more comfortable in conversations about gender and sexuality, so I'm not sure how useful the rest of this post will be.
That said, the way the lists are currently constructed does still allow for some kinda shitty representations, for example, a people with +2 war, 0 rites and -1 wealth, you could have them known for:
- their fearlessness in the face of death
- their implacable blood vengeance
- their insatiability in war
- their ruthlessness
- their superb metalwork (bit of a stretch here, but presumably to make their murder tools)
And you could attach the appearance and names of a currently marginalised group of people, say Arabic or Berber. Then you have a bloodthirsty society comprised entirely of people of colour. Hopefully people aren't actually going to make this society, and if they do, hopefully they'll engage with why they're so focused on war, but lazy engagement with race is still a thing that happens quite often.
I think it would help to have the text try to get players to engage with the chosen qualities a bit more maybe adding a parenthetical '(why?)' to the end of statements such as the ones listed above.
Perhaps this makes the process way too complicated, but "they're known for" could be read as "these are things that outsiders think of these people, but the reality is more nuanced than this." That opens up the possibility of stereotypes and misunderstandings (not that it isn't there already, but perhaps it could be made more explicit in the text), and exploring that within play. Okay, now that I've typed this paragraph out it feels a bit like trying to shoehorn post-structuralism in where it isn't needed, but I'll leave it here for consideration.
So yeah, that's what I think about the race stuff at the moment. I'm really glad it's a conversation you're open to having though! I live in South Africa, so race and historical narratives are something that we need to engage with a lot; not that it isn't the case in a lot of other places, but it's good to see these issues being treated with sensitivity.
This makes GS go "That's how I read "known for""
It might also be well applied to description. "How others describe them" is a lot less limiting than "What they look like."
