Quote from: Naburimannu;1119044all the documented Roman-era black people in England matter.

There was that one black Legionary in Britain who startled the Emperor (which Emperor, I don't recall), but no one from sub-Saharan West Africa. Unless you get your history from BBC shows I guess! And there was no Roman England, since the English invaded post-Roman Britain.

Quote from: jhkim;1119049The comparison is completely unlike. You qualify about sub-Saharan Africans -- but by making that distinction just makes clearer that there's no hard line. Northern Africans mixed with both sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans as well as Arabs.

But that's just not true. On the Atlantic coast there was extremely little mixing between sub-Saharan Africa and north/supra-Saharan Africa. There was more mixing in north-east Africa, with Nilo-Saharan populations somewhat clinal.

I don't quite get why the focus keeps getting diverted specifically to Atlantic coastal sub-Saharan West Africa. Seems arbitrary and unjustifiably limiting to me. It's not like nobody else in Africa qualifies as "black."

Quote from: Omega;1118992Right, theres like all of one line in the PHB and thats it.

Other books... Well thats another story and as for what their staff occasionally push, thats a totally different story. So far its been pretty minor really compared to some other companies.

Occasionally?!  It's about every few days!!  Every few days this guy Commisar Andy Staples feels the need to lecture and preach on their forum about diversity in medieval character building and if you're not into it or present any material which is inconvenient to his narrative, he becomes accusative and labels you as "against diversity" overall and suspect of white supremacy because you like the medieval genre.  He even kicks people out.  Who needs that. Fuck em is right.  Because of their obtuseness and marketing stupidity WOC will crush them in the competitive market like I said.

Quote from: Zirunel;1119141I don't quite get why the focus keeps getting diverted specifically to Atlantic coastal sub-Saharan West Africa. Seems arbitrary and unjustifiably limiting to me. It's not like nobody else in Africa qualifies as "black."

Because in the TV shows, movies and RPG art, that is who you see. That is who SJWs (& US black Afro-centrists) care about. They generally aren't aware that eg Ethiopians look nothing like Nigerians. They want Morgan Freeman as Hannibal, and Beyonce as Cleopatra. They aren't interested in a realistic depiction of ethnic diversity in the Roman Empire, when eg Egypt was a good deal whiter than it is now (after 1300 years of Arab slave raiding).

Also, sub-Saharan Africans don't care about being 'black', except in a few frontier areas like Sudan, where everyone looks USA-black, but the northerners see themselves as 'white Arabs' and see the South Sudanese as 'black'. In this sense race really is a social construct.

Quote from: Iron Cross;1119143Occasionally?!  It's about every few days!!  Every few days this guy Commisar Andy Staples feels the need to lecture and preach on their forum about diversity in medieval character building and if you're not into it or present any material which is inconvenient to his narrative, he becomes accusative and labels you as "against diversity" overall and suspect of white supremacy because you like the medieval genre.  He even kicks people out.  Who needs that. Fuck em is right.  Because of their obtuseness and marketing stupidity WOC will crush them in the competitive market like I said.

You and Omega are talking about different things.
He was talking about what could be found in the D&D books (which is not the topic of this thread).

You are talking about social media posts by the developers of C&S5.

Quote from: S'mon;1119144They want Morgan ... Beyonce as Cleopatra.

I'd go for that.

What I don't want is a historically accurate Cleopatra with a goiter.

Beyonce would not make a very "realistic" Cleopatra. Her skin tone may be closeish, but the cast of face seems wrong. More to the point, she would surely be delivering her lines in unrealistic English, not proper Koine Greek.

So yeah, realism would be thrown out the window. Totally unacceptable.

Could she pull it off from an acting point of view? Maybe. Claudette Colbert also did not physically resemble Cleopatra, and I don't think she spoke a word of Greek in the whole movie, so wildly unrealistic. But I thought she made a charming and delightful Cleopatra, so maybe Beyonce could pull it off too.  

In any case, Hollywood casting decisions are another arbitrary and irrelevant diversion from the topic. So what is the problem with having the odd black PC in a European medieval rpg? Sure, I can imagine snowflakey character concepts that would be a real stretch, but more generally, if your medieval Europe includes cities (unrealistic if it didn't), then the occasional black PC/NPC should be as plausible as the occasional Jewish PC/NPC.

Not that it matters terribly, but Cleopatra was a Ptolemaic, which means she wasn't even genetically Egyptian, (let alone sub-Saharan African), but rather Macedonian.   The ruling class of Egypt for almost 300 years probably did look more like Claudette Colbert than Beyonce, and this clear cultural division between ruling class and ruled wasn't that uncommon.  Think about the distinction between the French speaking Normans and the Anglo-Saxons in England, which is why our names for animals are Germanic (cow, pig) but our names for the food that comes from those animals are French (beef, pork).  

Nobles were OTHER than the common people, sometimes not just in terms of taste and education, but often down to genetics and language.  The ancient world WAS diverse, but not in the same sense as the modern world.  It's diversity was more like many small distinct "micro-nations" than one large society.  Cross-overs happened, but they would have been odd and remarkable individuals. The modern "diversity uber alles" crowd really wants sameness and ubiquity.  They want to erase the actual social distinctness, and hence real diversity, of other times and places.

Quote from: Brendan;1119162Not that it matters terribly, but Cleopatra was a Ptolemaic, which means she wasn't even genetically Egyptian, (let alone sub-Saharan African), but rather Macedonian.   The ruling class of Egypt for almost 300 years probably did look more like Claudette Colbert than Beyonce, and this clear cultural division between ruling class and ruled wasn't that uncommon.  Think about the distinction between the French speaking Normans and the Anglo-Saxons in England, which is why our names for animals are Germanic (cow, pig) but our names for the food that comes from those animals are French (beef, pork).  

Nobles were OTHER than the common people, sometimes not just in terms of taste and education, but often down to genetics and language.  The ancient world WAS diverse, but not in the same sense as the modern world.  It's diversity was more like many small distinct "micro-nations" than one large society.  Cross-overs happened, but they would have been odd and remarkable individuals. The modern "diversity uber alles" crowd really wants sameness and ubiquity.  They want to erase the actual social distinctness, and hence real diversity, of other times and places.

I think it is at least mildly important, and I think we all understand this. I expect s'mon specifically cited Beyonce to highlight the incongruity of casting a "black" woman to play a Macedonian Greek woman. We get it. We do have a pretty good idea what Cleopatra looked like, and no, not really Beyonce, nor Claudette Colbert. Rhea Perlman might be a better choice than either if you just want the face to be right. But maybe Rhea Perlman with Beyonce's olive skin tone.

As for elites "realistically" being different from their subjects, absolutely. Sometimes different in origins, sometimes not.  But almost always different culturally. The sine qua non of being among the elite is your ability to move in international circles that your subjects would find exotic, or even alien. You speak the lingua franca, whatever it may be, whether koine Greek, Latin, French, nowadays English, whatever. You share the cultural pursuits and interests of foreign elites, maybe more than you share the interests and pursuits of your own subjects. That is one (But only one) reason I think it is interesting for rpgs to have multiple languages, not just "common." But none of that is necessarily connected to "race," nor need it necessarily be connected to race in an rpg setting.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119051Which AFAIK is mostly ethically Arab. But every time people bring up how north Africa is within spitting distance of Europe what they mean is that therefore Africans (as in "black" people) must have been common. But that isn't quite the race that dominates that portion of Africa.

Northern Africa is mostly Arabic-speaking, although you hear the older languages now and then, but people of Arabian descent are a minority. Berbers et al, are not Blacks but they aren't Arabs either.

Quote from: Zirunel;1119141I don't quite get why the focus keeps getting diverted specifically to Atlantic coastal sub-Saharan West Africa. Seems arbitrary and unjustifiably limiting to me. It's not like nobody else in Africa qualifies as "black."

There is more human genetic diversity in Africa than in the rest of the world. President Obama wasn't at all closely related to African-Americans, for example. Obviously, one can call his father's Luo people Black, because that has no precise meaning, but they are genetically distant from West Africans.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1119175Berbers et al, are not Blacks but they aren't Arabs either.

Berbers are extremely white - they're lighter than the great majority of Italians. Some Gulf Arabs are quite dark, but Caucasian of course (except a few descended from African slaves). But outside Arabia most cultural 'Arabs' aren't really of Arab ancestry. Plenty of Levantines look lighter than Italians, too - that whole 'black Jesus' thing was ridiculous.

Quote from: Zirunel;1119170I think it is at least mildly important, and I think we all understand this. I expect s'mon specifically cited Beyonce to highlight the incongruity of casting a "black" woman to play a Macedonian Greek woman. We get it. We do have a pretty good idea what Cleopatra looked like, and no, not really Beyonce, nor Claudette Colbert. Rhea Perlman might be a better choice than either if you just want the face to be right. But maybe Rhea Perlman with Beyonce's olive skin tone.

Having just Googled Beyonce ...her skin tone does rather resemble that of the Khoi & San peoples of SW Africa. Conceivably some ancient Egyptians may have had a similar skin tone, given some physical similarities, although we don't really know, and there doesn't seem to be genetic evidence in support so this is just speculative at best. Certainly not Cleopatra, though. Cleopatra was Greek, and Greeks are, again, lighter skinned than most Italians, never mind lighter than Beyonce.

Quote from: Iron Cross;1119143Occasionally?!  It's about every few days!!

Meant 5e D&D.