Quote from: kanePL;1086686but I noticed the word 'should' and didn't like it - I often hear a notion that a GM is there to indulge all of his players ideas and let them play whatever they want. I oppose that hence my statement

I'll stand by it.  GMs should work with their players to find ways to accommodate what the player wants.  It may involve some compromises by one or both; there may be some characters that simply can't work in a particular setting.  But a black dude in fantasy medieval Europe isn't that.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1086705I've always wanted to play a sentient penis, but somehow I always get kicked out of the groups where I bring it up. I've even tried to be gender equal by offering to play a sentient vagina, but no, that isn't allowed either.

Did you literally offer to do any of the work to explain
 a) how you came to exist
 b) how you came to be where you are
 c) how you interact in society

In my mind, letting your character levitate/fly would be a power issue, and physiologically, I don't understand how you would move in either case.  

Of course, it's perhaps telling that you think demanding to play a literal dick is somehow equivalent to wanting to play a character that 'looks' like you.  

I can't tell you how many players have wanted pink or purple hair, or violet eyes, etc.  Those are things that I don't typically think to include and while they're unusual in setting, they're at least plausible enough that it isn't a big deal.  

As others have said, PCs tend to be unusual if not exceptional.  And history is littered with crazy exceptions like a Native American in Jacobean England.

D&D is a setting with fire breathing sentient dragons, elves, magic, orcs, oozing jellies, half-spider/half-elf beings, ect, etc. What's so implausible about a magical sentient dick? It's your job as a GM to accommodate the players and work with them.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1086761D&D is a setting with fire breathing sentient dragons, elves, magic, orcs, oozing jellies, half-spider/half-elf beings, ect, etc. What's so implausible about a magical sentient dick? It's your job as a GM to accommodate the players and work with them.

Alright fine, you can play a White Man.  Just as long as you know that everyone hates you for the baby eating monster that you represent and as a DM I am going to passive aggressively screw you over the whole campaign.

Now pull your pants up, sit down and lets play.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1086757I'll stand by it.  GMs should work with their players to find ways to accommodate what the player wants.

If it fits GM's vision. If a player wants something I don't want in my game, I stand firmly against it. If we're in Viking setting and he doesn't want to be a Viking - he might be i.e. Slavic/Saxon captive raised by the Vikings. Such things happened reasonably often. That's how far I would go. If you think it's your job to accomodate what player wants, fine by me, your game your rules. But let's not forget the GM is part of the game, not servant of players, not their bi#%$.

Quotethere may be some characters that simply can't work in a particular setting. But a black dude in fantasy medieval Europe isn't that.

Cool. Such exception might fit you. Why do I feel obliged to endorse it? Pink hair not an issue to you? Black dude in medieval fantasy neither? Fine. Can it be an issue for me, please? I'm not teasing you, it just looks like you stand on some moral higher ground to tell people what they should do as GMs and what their obligations are. And there might be many approaches to this.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1086761D&D is a setting with fire breathing sentient dragons, elves, magic, orcs, oozing jellies, half-spider/half-elf beings, ect, etc. What's so implausible about a magical sentient dick? It's your job as a GM to accommodate the players and work with them.

I never laugh out loud at posts, but there's a first time for everything.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1086761D&D is a setting with fire breathing sentient dragons, elves, magic, orcs, oozing jellies, half-spider/half-elf beings, ect, etc. What's so implausible about a magical sentient dick? It's your job as a GM to accommodate the players and work with them.

Well, my games have most of those things (I don't remember any half elf/half spiders and no oozing jellies lately) even though it isn't D&D, so your point is valid except that some of my settings are cosmopolitan and some just aren't. So, my players sometimes would have had to wait for an opportunity to play a particular ethnicity. None of my Black players ever asked for characters that "represented" them, even though there was a Black kingdom nearby. Really, except for one guy who wanted to play a Samurai, it was never an issue. Oh, and a Samurai on the Silk Road wasn't all that out of place. He did not know that Samurai were mounted archers but he was happy when he found out. Korean Yalie, a Japanophile, go figure.

By the way, everyone, viking is an occupation, not an ethnicity or a nationality. The last raid I was on (I'm very old) half the crew were Wends.

Quote from: jhkim;1086753The thing is that if *I* (or other liberals) were to argue that there shouldn't be racism or sexism in Call of Cthulhu games - then I would be called out for demanding political correctness. Conversely, if there is racism/sexism in games, then I'm engaging in misery tourism. This seems very similar to the claim of the OP - damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

People can put whatever they want in their own games. So we're really just talking about official published adventures. And I think the default for those should be to largely avoid social issues because very few players are really interested in dealing with sexism, the plight of the working man, industrial pollution, racial segregation, etc. in their tabletop game sessions. Some small minority care very, very much. But the issue here is why those people feel everyone else needs to cater to their sensibilities.

Those aren't textbooks we're talking about. It's not whitewashing history to spend a few evenings drinking beer with your friends and playing Escape from Innsmouth without depicting racist attitudes in 1920 New England. If the DM and players want to explore those issues, cool. Have fun. Publishers are under no obligation to inform and shape public dialogue on the issue. And people who claim they do are no different than the god-botherers who fuelled the Satanic panic over D&D 40 years ago.

Quote from: jhkim;1086753I partly agree - in that people widely downplay various social issues that are still controversial today, like sexism, racism, and classism. No one seems to worry much about portraying Prohibition, though, as far as I can see - even though it was a social issue of the era. Regardless, I don't think that playing out lurid pulp action is inconsistent with having troubling social issues. I know that my 1890s CoC character Grimmond expressed his prejudice while fighting Chinese lackeys of Fu Manchu in the East End - which is very much pulp action. cf.

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The thing is that if *I* (or other liberals) were to argue that there shouldn't be racism or sexism in Call of Cthulhu games - then I would be called out for demanding political correctness. Conversely, if there is racism/sexism in games, then I'm engaging in misery tourism. This seems very similar to the claim of the OP - damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

People forget that these are games and we play them to have fun and not to explore social and political issues. Lovecraft is liked because his stories are spooky and mythos is cool. We downplay or ignore racism, sexism, classism, or whatever because it's a downer and not fun.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1086757I'll stand by it.  GMs should work with their players to find ways to accommodate what the player wants.  It may involve some compromises by one or both; there may be some characters that simply can't work in a particular setting.  But a black dude in fantasy medieval Europe isn't that.
...

Yes it is possible for there to be a Black Muslim in medieval England.

So What.

Any GM has the right to shoot the Players Azeem the Moor character concept down like a Messerschmitt during the battle of Britain if he wants to.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Quote from: Haffrung;1086797It's not whitewashing history to spend a few evenings drinking beer with your friends and playing Escape from Innsmouth without depicting racist attitudes in 1920 New England. If the DM and players want to explore those issues, cool. Have fun. Publishers are under no obligation to inform and shape public dialogue on the issue. And people who claim they do are no different than the god-botherers who fuelled the Satanic panic over D&D 40 years ago.

Sure. I'm on the side that different people can and should play games differently. I've got no problems if people want to play a non-racist 1920s, but I also think it should be fine to play in historically racist 1920s. Publishers can publish both for different people's tastes.

Quote from: jhkim;1086824Sure. I'm on the side that different people can and should play games differently. I've got no problems if people want to play a non-racist 1920s, but I also think it should be fine to play in historically racist 1920s. Publishers can publish both for different people's tastes.

The issue with both of those things: racist and nonracists is that we end up with simplistic charcuterie.

Especially now and days we like to paint folks from the past as simple cartoon villains when they were anything but. And the players want to be Noble heroic 2019 versions of themselves. I don't think that's a good use of time but if folks enjoy themselves good for them

Quote from: Haffrung;1086718The great majority of people in pre-modern worlds spent most of their lives within 50 miles of where they were born. In cosmopolitan port cities, where a fraction of the population lived, things were different. In my games, a small barony in the wilds will have a homegenous population because almost all the people in that barony will trace their lineage back generations. If and when people from far away do arrive, they're quickly subsumed into the local population.

No, medieval Europe wasn't 100 per cent white. But rural England, France, and Germany were 98 per cent white. If I'm playing a mediterannean sword and sorcery campaign, the setting will be ethnically diverse like medieval Byzantium or Naples. If I'm playing a medieval town on the edge of the forest fantasy campaign, it will be ethnically homegenous.

"Quickly subsumed" means that if they marry, it will be with a local woman, and their children will grow up speaking the local language, and that will be it - but it still means that they have a lifetime as foreigners in that place.

And 98%, in a town or fief with a population of 1000, still means 20 foreigners. 90% of them, or 18, will be from other locales that are beyond 50 miles but still from the same culture. That leaves 2 guys who might very well be an Italian merchant and a Moorish freed slave, or a French minstrel and a Spanish monk.

As to the notion of a PC who is a flying magical sentient body part, put forth by another poster, sure, a Master has to draw a line somewhere, and personally I think it should be defined by the in-game considerations made in several posts above and not by political dictates. For me, the magical body part is unreasonable, and actually, if you as a player insist on it, it's probably a sign that I should reconsider taking you aboard in my group. The former Moorish slave is reasonable, OTOH, even in that 98% homogenous barony. Probably it was the baron himself who brought the man back from the crusade, and over time the man did some important service that gained him his freedom. He decided to stay, and there he is. What's he doing? Well, maybe the important service was healing the baron's son, and he now is the only healer in tens of miles. As well as the only Moor in hundreds of miles.
Rare and exceptional, yes, but not unreasonable. Especially for a PC.

Again, if it was a game publisher who told me "you must have at least a Moorish PC or NPC in that barony", I would ignore that.

Kevin Crawford/Sine Nomine (Stars Without Number, Godbound, Silent Legions) wrote an excellent fantasy Africa RPG called SPEARS OF THE DAWN.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110293/Spears-of-the-Dawn

But you're probably racist for reading that sentence.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1086761What's so implausible about a magical sentient dick?

We already have paladins!

Quote from: Haffrung;1086696GRR Martin included dragons in Westeros, so I guess he may as well include smart-phones and uber then too. Because fantasy.

How about Starbucks?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1086851Kevin Crawford/Sine Nomine (Stars Without Number, Godbound, Silent Legions) wrote an excellent fantasy Africa RPG called SPEARS OF THE DAWN.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110293/Spears-of-the-Dawn

But you're probably racist for reading that sentence.

Yeah.  Ever since I picked up Spears of the Dawn, I've been wondering how that's evaded the ire of TBP.

And the same for Crawford's "Red Tide" setting, which recasts the goblinoid races as the Shou, a collection of primitive, tattooed, basically-human tribal types, as they try to defend their territory from a wave of human/dwarf/elf refugees fleeing a world that's being consumed by the eponymous Red Tide.  When I introduced the setting to a group of European D&D players, one of them immediately asked whether the Shou were supposed to be American Indians, even without having been raised or educated in the US.