What traits wouldn't be up for debate though? Would you say that a child of the ghetto has issues authority, requires to be respected at all times, resorts to violence to deal with many issues, has the limited vocabulary and grammar skills that often come with grossly underfunded schools? Or do we pretend that growing up in such an environment has no impact on the people who grow up there?

And what about the Jewish fellow, would he have the stereotypical large nose? Not necessarily, but he would be circumcised, and if he were caught passing, probably killed.

Of course in modern D&D role-playing has become passe, few players like the limitations of alignment, and when was the last time you ran into a dwarf who was taciturn, disliked the outdoors and distrusted elves. Have races in-game become nothing more than the series of pluses and minuses and stats and bonuses and feats that come with them? How much easier is it for ethnicity to be reduced to a profile picture without any character, as there are no bonuses for playing a Black person, or a White person or an Asian.

Of course it would have an effect. But why should it have the -same- effect for everyone? Why can't he want to prove that he's -better- than everyone assumes him to be?

When was the last time whether someone was circumcised came into a game? When was the last time it was even mentioned they were?

I don't know what DnD games you're playing, but I find that RPing is more in vogue now than it's ever been. RPing is more than just taking a racial stereotype, whether fantastical or real, and playing it to the hilt. Why not break the stereotype of the taciturn dwarf?

Yeah, race has a part in creating one's character. But you don't know how being that race, or having that background, will effect anyone, because it effects everyone differently.

You do realize that circumcision was how Jews were often identified, right? In anti-Semitic areas it was historically not uncommon to strip a man of his trousers to see if he was a Jew.

As to your other point, of course you can play the ghetto raised kid as wanting to get out, or wanting to improve himself, but that would be made evident by what he did, not who he was.

Considering someone who 'breaks' the stereotype a role-player is nonsensical though, it's like considering paint spilled on the canvas and smeared about randomly as much a piece of art as the works of Da Vinci or Michelangelo.

No one praises an actor who plays a shattered war veteran without any of the characteristics of one. It is playing within the characteristics that makes up the act or art of role playing. Playing a dwarf as if he were some 15 year old white kid from Redondo Beach, because that is who the player is, is role playing the way swimming in a kid's wading pool deserves a gold medal from the Olympics.

The effort of matching your character to what he (or she) is supposed to be used to be the point, not the ability to maximize your DPS. That's roll-playing, not role-playing.

If other people can't recognize your characters race and class based totally on your role-playing and not because you say "Hey, I'm a dwarf," then your not doing race, or ethnicity very well.

And you know what, plenty of people play that way, and have a blast, more power to them, just not my cup of tea.

Yes. I also know that level of detail is how you get in trouble. And that assumptions that all races are the stereotype is how you cause offense.

The fact is -not- all beings of one race are a stereotype. I'm not even sure most are. Stereotypes are -not- a good thing.

So you play, what seven foot tall dwarves and rail thin super-model hobbits?

Everyone plays fighters as fightery, and mages as magicy, theives tend play to their sterotype, and it would be weird of they didn't.

Not all stereotypes are bad, for example I imagine all light sockets will shock me if I stuck a spoon in them. Some stereotypes are valuable.

And when playing a role, they are pretty important. Heck, without stereotypes, playing against them is meaningless, not empowering and great role-play.

A chatty dwarf is possible, sure, but it means nothing without the context that this is unusual, and the repercussions that dwarf would feel from not only his community, but the humans and elves who should be surprised.

Close to home example, my Dad grew up in a seriously bad neighborhood in East LA thru the thirties and early forties. The internal sterotypes did not allow for people like my dad, who was brighter than average, so he was required to play his talents down, which made it harder to get out, but he did thru the military, When he got out, he went to UCLA in the GI Bill, and his own family had trouble accepting him for acting like he was 'better than them'. Tough to deal with  when your own father scoffs at your accomplishments.

Is there anything similar in this new age of role-playing you play in? Does a talky dwarf have to deal with how people react to that? Or the fact that he now hangs with elves? Lucky not to get lynched...
This message was last edited by the user at 02:34, Fri 10 June 2016.

Used to play a dwarf who was ostracised by his community for being "too elf-y".  He loved nature - he liked nothing more than walks in the forest and considered birds and butterflies far more beautiful than any  coloured rock.  He played a flute that he had made himself, rather than a proper dwarvish instrument, like a drum or the bagpipes.  Gold, to him, was just another boring metal, though almost as pretty as some beetle carapaces.

His mother cried a lot when he was young, and his father eventually kicked him out of the clan, which is why he became an adventurer instead of a miner or a smith.

To me stereotypes are boring to play - heroes are assumed to be above the average, quite unlike the typical inhabitants of their world, and I prefer to play characters of whatever type/race that are a little bit to a lot different.  I've played a mage who was bone idle and preferred not to stir himself to use magic if he could get away with it, a dashing, swashbuckling Dwarf, a fashion-conscious Gnome (to him a certain period in the Forgotten Realms history was known as the Time of Trousers) who carried on (admittedly one-sided) conversations with his non-magical sword, a dark and gritty Halfling cutthroat, a well educated Barbarian (his father wanted nothing but the best for his son), and a priest who was only in it for the Smiting.  :>

You are certainly in the majority Skald, but I think for many boring also means difficult, and it's the effort that makes it all worthwhile for me. It's the difference between checkers and chess. Checkers is certainly easier, but there is a certain beauty that the more complicated game can generate.

Coloring outside the lines is only artistic if you know how to color within the lines, and the times that you stray outside of them are considered. Simply scribbling all over the page isn't something that takes any effort, and role-playing with no regard to the stereotypes is pretty much the same thing, most of the time.

Now that is very true - the old adage that you need to know the rules before you break them.  Happily played stereotypical characters for years and years, and still do so on occasion without finding them boring ... :>

A better way to say that just crossed my mind. Breaking stereotype can be fun, ignoring them is lazy. I would also be more impressed with a character that kept most of the stereotypes, and specifically broke one or two of them.

A lot of stereotypical characters are also either unplayable or a great detriment to things. This is particularly true in the fantasy setting.
The loner ranger who doesn't speak a word and goes off on his own is particularly disruptive, and this extends to the brooding dark silent loner whatever in most settings.
So is the drunken dwarf fighter outside taverns or fighting, the dumb orc barbarian is worse, and nevermind the classic paladin.

Unless you pretty much don't play them as such, just as twists of the stereotype or characters with a softer tone of it and a whole lot more depth. Stepping away from the cardboard cutout is a good thing.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:39, Fri 10 June 2016.

So, Jackson Pollack, basically?  *grin*

Seriously, there are so very many different ways to play characters.  My best friend played a troglodyte in a Palladium game, to the nines...dumb, illiterate, barely coherent at times, as likely to use his crossbow as a club as he was to bother cocking it and shooting...

In that same game, I was playing a troll who was a trained martial artist...but acted like the stereotypical troll around anyone outside the party.

And, contrary to the statements made about stereotypes being blatantly offensive...in my experience, there are good reasons why stereotypes develop.  The problem becomes when people ONLY see the stereotype.  For instance, I work in entertainment...and, not surprisingly, a lot of the entertainers I work with are homosexual.  Some of them have been every bit the 'squealing queen' stereotype, others are very definitely NOT that type at all.  I can see why the stereotypical gay man (as depicted in The Birdcage, for example) has come into being...but I don't assume every gay male I meet is going to act like Armand or Albert (or Agodar, for that matter).

When I play military characters, there are certain stereotypical aspects of military personnel that I often use...but I try to make my characters more than just a conglomeration of R. Lee Ermey, Clint Eastwood, and Dale Dye roles...those provide a framework, but I try to come up with some distinctive, universally human traits, as well as the hard-bitten, loud-and-foul-mouthed drill instructor type.  It works for me, and seems to work for most of the people I play with.

There is no one right or wrong way to play a character.  You may look at the standard formula for a dwarf, for instance, and see great delight in trying to stay within those strictures for what a dwarf 'should' be.  Ron, on the other hand, obviously looked at those and said, "Why in the world should ALL dwarfs be like that?  I want to go to some wild extreme AWAY from that."  I look at it and say, "Well, I like this, this, and this...but I don't think I need that or that."  None of us is playing the dwarf inherently better or worse than the others...we are infusing some part of ourselves into the dwarf and amplifying what we see as the most noteworthy results.  My dwarf, however, might make you want to pull your hair out, and your dwarf might bore me to tears.  But that's why I don't ask you to play my dwarf, and I don't ask to play yours...the characters are what work for us, as players, and (hopefully) for the GMs and other players with whom we play.

If it doesn't work for you, don't try and do it that way...find some other option that does.

The crux of the point, well defined. The question is, when you run into a character that is difficult to play, do you face the challenge, or simply decide alignment means nothings, paladins can party with thieves without effort, etc. That was the reason the 1st Ed. Barbarian was such a badly designed class. All the balance was in the role-play, and no one was willing to put in the effort. Almost no one, I loved the looks on the party's faces when they used my find magic ability, and were stunned when I destroyed everything I found. Much like reality, no characters motivation should be so meta-game informed as to behave in the best interests of the party.

It's clear that 80%-ish of players will take the latter path. I just prefer otherwise.

In reply to Piestar (msg # 43):

I prefer to create characters that when played straight, they won't be wholly disruptive to the fun of everyone else in the table, that's just as bad as rules lawyering your way into having everyone else in the table not have fun, just in a different way.

So no, the paladin won't be a cardboard cutout, he'll be either unorthodox, have a decent enough excuse not to murder the party thief, or just be in a party where it won't be a problem.
Your barbarian example is the kind of character that is fun, once. And likely only for 3~4 scenes before the joke gets old, unless said barbarian is far more than the cutout, or the party is such that he isn't a problem.

It's not about 'challenge', there's no challenge in the stereotype because, as a stereotype, is so shallow that there's no depth there. To go beyond that into something that's actually playable is to step away from it. You twist things, you add far more depth, you ignore it and jump wildly away from it, you contrast your character to it, but playing it straight with nothing else to it? bleh.

In reply to tsukoyomi (msg # 44):

See, you fall into the 80%, and that's cool. I prefer playing with a party that makes the effort to learn to live with a character, bad traits and all. No fun in a game where everyone is part of one giant self-loving organism. Well, not for me.

Imagine if everyone wanted to play the Oriental Adventures setting without the stereotypes. Throw out Bushido, and Buddhism and all the culture traits that make the setting different. Might as well be playing a game of Clue. It's the effort needed to play within the restrictions that make it fun. Imagine trying to play a board game where people simply ignored any rule they didn't like. "Nope, not going to pay your rent there on Boardwalk." Or "Nope, not gonna roll my defensive dice to defend the Ukraine, and you can't make me."

It would be a wonderful world if we could simply ignore the people whose behavior we don't like, but isn't that half the challenge of the work-a-day life? it's the same, for me, in role-playing.

As to the barbarian, my character was too useful to the party, it didn't seem too much of an effort for them not to flaunt their magic in front of me when they knew I didn't like it. I worked in an office full of religious people, I didn't feel the need to walk around telling them how stupid I thought their religion was.

All in all, if role-play is too difficult a concept, you can always find roll-players, and that's okay too, if that's what you find fun. I don't.

Oh, I don't know ... there's even a Prestige Class the Forsaker in Masters of the Wild Sourcebook for D&D v3.0 that takes that 1st Ed concept to its extreme (as well as destroying magic items must refuse/resist magical healing) - surely there's an RP challenge for the rest of the party to work around that ?  "No, no .. this sword isn't magical - just got some nice traditional tribal engravings on it.  Just looks like it's on fire, but that's because I coat it with this special natural tree sap ..." <grrrins>

Sure, it's difficult dealing with a barbarian that REALLY hates magic ... but only a tad moreso that dealing with a paladin that will brook not even the faintest trace of evil, or a thief that habitually steals from his comrades.

Wouldn't play one myself, but I'd develop coping strategies if someone else was playing one.

What were those famous last words ?

"I'm not sure I should be travelling with you people.  My holy sword says that everyone in this group is an assassin except me."

;>

In reply to Piestar (msg # 45):

Funny you go on condescendingly about rollplayers, right after flaunting that your barbarian was only tolerated so the party could get one more meatshield. Why was the party really tolerating the barbarian instead of going to the nearest tavern and hiring some less disruptive slab of meat? was it just for the metagame reason that it was your character? is that kleptomaniac thief really necessary or can they replace it with the next street rat for a few coppers? should they travel with the homicidal maniac paladin or hire a cleric of a more sensible deity? these are characters that are only traveling with the party because metagame.

Roleplaying is a social activity you do for fun, part of that is not crushing the fun of everyone else. There's a line between 'a little prickly' and fun-crushing, much like there's a line between friendly ribbing and unbearably insulting.

If a character concept is going to fall strictly on the later, as many full on stereotypes played straight are wont to do unless under very specific circumstances, maybe it's a better idea to play someone else, particularly when they rarely have ingame reasons to even be with the party other than 'you meet at a tavern...'
This message was last edited by the user at 08:04, Fri 10 June 2016.

In reply to tsukoyomi (msg # 47):

You totally miss the point, my barbarian wasn't a difficult person to play with because of my choices, it was because I played him by the rules. the rules of role-playing were what gave that class any sense of balance. Would you prefer a jigsaw puzzle that one giant slab of a single color and made up of eight square pieces? Well, maybe yes, that does seem to be the role-playing game you are fighting for.

Certainly there is a line between fun-crushing and a little prickly, but there is also the difference between getting pleasure from playing the game, or being one of those people who only want to play if everything goes easy and perfect and if that requires cheat-codes that's fine. Leet, I believe the term is, that nephew whose ten and still cries if he loses at Monopoly.

A good party, in the kind of game I like, has rough edges, but reasons that they need to (or choose to) stick together. Elves and dwarves working together in the Tolkien? Yes, but with all the rough edges that made the stories a joy to read. Imagine Legolas and Gimli if they hadn't been both completely of their race, with their prejudices and prides, but forced to work together for the common good and eventually forging a lasting friendship? In the game you seem to be lobbying for, they would have simply been the best of friends from day one. And no one would remember the books today.

In reply to Piestar (msg # 48):

So.. you didn't choose a class that would make him problematic to get along with others? wasn't it your choice to play the special snowflake everyone had to work around?

Why is "wanting everything to be easy and cheating" wanting to play a game where it makes sense for the characters to be traveling together and not grabbing choices that either don't interact with the party at all or are automatic TPKs 2 minutes in if played straight?

Why are you bringing up Tolkien, when the characters were very much deeper than the stereotype (not that there was much of a stereotype at the time), exactly what I've been advocating since the first post? Gimli might have been a dwarf with contempt for elves, but he wasn't a drunk, he was more than just a fighter, he was a lot less prickly than the modern straight stereotype, making him not a complete pain to travel with, he was capable of grudging admiration from pretty much the get go. In short, he is in several ways different, softer, and in many ways deeper than the cardboard cutout.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:38, Fri 10 June 2016.

Boromir tried to take the ring, Gandalf was prone to wandering off on his own (Hobbit more than LOTR), Frodo and Sam struck out on their own because the former didn't trust the rest of the party.  Aragorn put the lives of the two other hobbits ahead of the main quest.  Pippin's curiosity about the Palantir put everyone at risk by alerting the enemy.

Which side of the discussion were you on again ?  <grrrins>

I quite agree that the game is far more enjoyable when the party basically all get along, and one player's character choices can really mess that up ... but that kind of player could just as easily derail a game by playing a stock standard fighter.

Barbarian smashes magic items ... the rest of the party ask him why and reason with him, explaining that magic is no better or worse than his axe - it's the use to which it's put.  Barbarian grows a little as a person ... much like Gimli changed his attitude over time, overcoming the traditional Dwarf/Elf antagonism to become first friendly rivals and then firm friends with Legolas.

1st Ed Barbarian (and 3.5 Forsaker) is perhaps an extreme example, but ideology driven character types - Paladin, Druid and quite a lot of Clerics (if they stick closely to the beliefs of their chosen religion) - can be just as problematical.

Not to mention games where characters are evil by design.

To me it's more about the players than the characters - the right group of players can work with anything.  Though personally I still wouldn't take a magic-hating Barbarian to the table.  :>

Boromir was getting mind-whammied by the ring, can't really blame the guy for failing a will save right? Gandalf was a GMPC if there ever was one, saving party members is saving party members, sometimes you fail your disable device or knowledge check...
Of course, the big split is the kind of thing most games outside pbp or similar formats wouldn't have survived, or tried for that matter, just because it looks pretty in a book doesn't make it less of a mess in tabletop.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:10, Fri 10 June 2016.

Considering Tolkein's dwarves were the inspiration for the stereotype of the D&D dwarf, it's odd to hear you say he wasn't that much of... what, not much of what he was the archetype of the race.

And despite your apparent rage, I've said many times, your style of play is not only fine, but the way most people play. You remind me of the days when I played Never Winter Nights (what an addictive game that was) and I played in a server that did not allow PvP. About 85% of the servers allowed some sort of PvP, but gosh darn it if people whom you remind me of badgered the DM for having his own place for people who didn't like PvP. They never changed his mind, but sadly they drove him into quitting running his world all together.

I was given that barbarian to play, all the characters were pre-set, and we had to be pretty high level because low level barbarians cannot even party with a mage or cleric at level one. Not if you played by the rules.

Speaking to Skalds point, I was once in a campaign where an unpleasant character decided to play a Drow. Now I am old school, Drow are de facto evil in the minds of the normal character. Drzzt (or whatever his name was) is only special in a world where that's true. I always felt it ironic that the tale of the ultimate outcast generated a world where good guy Drow are as common as hotdog vendors in New York. Anyway, he not only played a race which the GM admitted had a prejudice about it, but he then chose to sneak up on us at night. He was shocked (shocked I tell you) when we slaughtered him.

A reasonable player, and half-way decent role-player would have found a better way to introduce himself to us.

Another example, I am trying out 5th edition (not a big fan, but we'll see. Feels like it was build to please power-gamers, the type of people we all laughed at back in the old days.) I went with a ranger character with the pirate background. When I joined with the party, it turned out there was a character whose background had him hating pirates. The GM, being of the same mind set as Tsukoyomi, just assumed we all got along and off we went to fight stuff. After the session me and that player lamented the fact that we didn't get to/have do deal with the friction between us.

And after all, isn't the role-playing between the characters the bread and butter of a good game? How much can there be if everyone is simply assumed to be singing Hakuna matata and sharing in group hugs? But I know the answer to that, most games I come into contact with are not about that kind of stuff, it's about killing monsters, getting treasure and becoming mega-powerful. Modern players brag about finding a feat or class combination that 'breaks the system'. It's about 'winning' in a far more personal sense than the style I like to play.

Heck, back to Tolkein, Bilbo's character was a hella difficult guy for the party to deal with, from the get go. If they had fit together so well at the start as they did at the end, the story would almost have no reason to exist.

Still curious to see if anyone thinks Oriental Adventures would be any fun if you stripped it of the cultural trappings...

Meanwhile, Piestar, you seem determined to live up to the stereotype of the Edition Warrior.



Culture =/= cultural trappings. Culture =/= stereotype. The latter are, at best, a simplified, bullet point version of the former.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:07, Fri 10 June 2016.

Not sure what that term means. You gotta remember, I'm an old person, I don't keep up with all the young people slang. Please explain...

It's hardly new. I have old issues of Dragon where the letter column is filled with tracts bemoaning the 'dumbing down' and 'power gaming' and 'roll-playing' of each new edition over the later, going back at least to AD&D 1e.

Anyway, addressing the original point, and speaking as someone who studied anthropology: to actually understand a culture takes years of immersion, at a minimum. That's not an option for most RPers for real-world cultures, let alone fantasy cultures. So working with stereotypes, whether that means adhering to or diverging from them is really the only tool we have. The problem is that they're a crap tool, that stereotypes exist only in the eye of the beholder, and that they may bear no relation to the referent. At best, you can emulate surface behaviours and traits, but with no understanding of the thought processes and value- or necessity-structures that produce them.

So as long as you accept that rather than playing X you're playing your impression of the Cliff Notes, X for Dummies, Baby's First version of X and accept with good humour that you're ignorant as hell on the matter, it's probably okay. Provided everyone around the table feels the same way.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:31, Fri 10 June 2016.