Greetings!

Recently, I was reviewing some campaign notes for upcoming game sessions, and in the process, was reviewing the culture of a local area, where there are humans dominant, but they have also accommodated a race of Frog People that live amongst them. In the years and decades since embracing the Frog People as subjects and citizens--there have also been a large and growing minority population of Human/Frog People mutants.

The Frog People are of course, humanoids. They are amphibious reptiles, notable for their obvious and not-so-obvious Frog features and attributes. Besides having Frog heads, Toad-like skin appearance, elongated legs and broader feet, the Frog People can also open their mouths hugely, make bite attacks, and also make use of their very large tongues. The Frog People are also superior athletes, capable of making large standing jumps, performing some pretty crazy acrobatic movements and contortions, and possess some interesting Frog-like attributes, such as super-wide vision, superior target-tracking, enhanced ambush abilities, being able to remain motionless for long moments, breathing longer under water, and such like. My Frog People are generally strong and durable, physically, though intellectually tend towards being more simple.

Socially, the Frog People are more or less strongly communal, they have enormous appetites, are casually violent and brutal to others, including members of their own race, as well as being competitive and cannibalistic. The Frog People females secrete sexual pheromones that drive male Frog People into frenzies, which result in mass sexual orgies--even in public. Like their racial inspiration, Frogs and Toads have mass breeding episodes where female toads are engaged in breeding by entire groups of male frogs in a frenzied dynamic. Breeding then, for my Frog People race, tends to be pretty impersonal, typically public, and hugely socially focused on the importance of breeding lots of young. Food and eating for them is also of critical importance, with stronger members of society being entitled to more food, with smaller, weaker members of society getting less food, or less food choices. The Frog People are also entirely comfortable with hierarchies of strength, size, or other outstanding abilities, and openly embrace merit and accomplishment, with far less regard for sentimentality or anyone's perceived "rights". Furthermore, concepts of beauty are embraced, to some degree, though again, the Frog People also have additional weird attributes like admiring an individual's scent, body markings, the size of their tongue, an individual's ability at eating, and an individual's ability in fighting, defeating enemies, or killing and eating a rival. These favoured attributes are essentially universal to the Frog People, and extend to both male and females in equal measure.

As a semi-civilized minority ethnic population, they have grown to value and embrace a few additional things, such as weapons, food possessions, healthy children, croaking sounds, singing, artistic abilities, though they don't especially value money, in the sense of coinage. The Frog People minorities that live amongst the region's human cities and towns are of course economically and socially exploited in many ways, as well as being exploited for cheap labour and used as other sources of manpower, as well as being slaves, sex slaves, and also as entertainers. The Frog People compose an enormous urban population of poor labourers, menial workers, entertainers, prostitutes, and otherwise performing all of the hard, dangerous kinds of work and jobs that humans prefer to avoid.

Now, obviously, the numerous benefits o having Frog People as citizens and members of any given community are significant--but there are also considerable costs and different dynamics that present numerous offenses and problems for many humans in the community.

The various human communities have worked hard to embrace the Frog People in their communities, though this is merely some human communities. Other human communities may believe in killing the Frog People, outright, or killing them and using them as a food resource. Even, most particularly, for the more or less friendly human communties, there are more than a few challenges involved with embracing the Frog People into the community.

I thought about how challenging such a prospect is, and extrapolated to other campaigns, and WOTC books and campaign assumptions in general. The central idea of all these animal--and monstrous races--just all loving and getting along just sweet and fine amidst humans is often entirely ridiculous. The potential problems, dynamics, and challenges, depending on the race, can be HUGE. Clearly, some races would get along pretty well. Other races, like my Frog People race, would experience a mixed reaction, with even positive communities needing to do a lot of work to try and live together successfully. Other races? Yeah, not happening. Tolerance be damned.

How do you guys approach these kinds of considerations in your campaigns? How have your players? Do you chew on these things like I do in the world building process? I can also see how some might consider it far easier and more convenient to just assume a happy, uber-diverse, Seattle 2022-like environment. A super happy and diverse campaign environment doesn't require as much thought or work, for certain. But for some, like myself, I think about biology, culture, religion, social dynamics, all this kind of stuff when I design communities or societies, or develop how different races and communities may respond to each other, or other races. I don't assume they are all going to be happy and tolerant and diverse. I generally expect their to naturally be hatred, competition, lust, slavery, exploitation, and struggle, as different races strive for survival and supremacy, competing for mates, land, and resources. even in urban environments, competing and struggling for power, prestige, and primacy. Preference and security within the halls of power and prominence.

Interesting stuff to think about.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I put racism in my worlds for two purposes-

1. To give the players people to use their powers on with no moral qualms
2. To provide a character arc- overcoming one's bigotry.

Quote from: SHARK on December 28, 2022, 04:31:13 AM
I thought about how challenging such a prospect is, and extrapolated to other campaigns, and WOTC books and campaign assumptions in general. The central idea of all these animal--and monstrous races--just all loving and getting along just sweet and fine amidst humans is often entirely ridiculous. The potential problems, dynamics, and challenges, depending on the race, can be HUGE. Clearly, some races would get along pretty well. Other races, like my Frog People race, would experience a mixed reaction, with even positive communities needing to do a lot of work to try and live together successfully. Other races? Yeah, not happening. Tolerance be damned.

You said racial and cultural conflict in the subject line. Let me know if this fits.

My current campaign is more along the lines of Arthurian myth, where there is conflict, but at the center the kingdom has a good king and a positive code. In this case, the setting is inspired by Incan history - so the varied peoples of the Solar Empire are united by the worship of Inti and the leadership of the Sapa Inca. The most important thing are religious / spiritual differences rather than racial differences.

Quote from: SHARK on December 28, 2022, 04:31:13 AM
How do you guys approach these kinds of considerations in your campaigns? How have your players? Do you chew on these things like I do in the world building process? I can also see how some might consider it far easier and more convenient to just assume a happy, uber-diverse, Seattle 2022-like environment.

I've put a fair bit of thought into it - but I'm creating this as fantasy rather than as a historical setting. In my campaign, Inti really is a benevolent, good-aligned deity - and the PCs typically fight against evil cults / religions / spirits. Among his worshippers, racial differences aren't considered a big deal, but there are big religious and cultural conflicts with neighbors. The core races of the Solar Empire are human, elven, dwarven, halfling, and orc. However, there are other races that are integrated - especially in the provinces - who are fine as long as they integrate. Still, there are racial divisions outside the empire. My recent adventures were set in the north among the Dragon Lords of the cloud forests, and there was squabbling among the different colors of dragonborn - metallic vs chromatic, and colors within those.

Even minor divisions take on importance, like the emphasis of Viracocha compared to Inti within the same pantheon. This fits with a lot of medieval stories, where religious differences greatly overshadowed any racial lines. Knights of the Round Table didn't care about race as long as people were pious in veneration of God. But differences of worship could be a big deal.

Quote from: jhkim on December 28, 2022, 02:28:45 PM

Quote from: SHARK on December 28, 2022, 04:31:13 AM
I thought about how challenging such a prospect is, and extrapolated to other campaigns, and WOTC books and campaign assumptions in general. The central idea of all these animal--and monstrous races--just all loving and getting along just sweet and fine amidst humans is often entirely ridiculous. The potential problems, dynamics, and challenges, depending on the race, can be HUGE. Clearly, some races would get along pretty well. Other races, like my Frog People race, would experience a mixed reaction, with even positive communities needing to do a lot of work to try and live together successfully. Other races? Yeah, not happening. Tolerance be damned.

You said racial and cultural conflict in the subject line. Let me know if this fits.

My current campaign is more along the lines of Arthurian myth, where there is conflict, but at the center the kingdom has a good king and a positive code. In this case, the setting is inspired by Incan history - so the varied peoples of the Solar Empire are united by the worship of Inti and the leadership of the Sapa Inca. The most important thing are religious / spiritual differences rather than racial differences.

Quote from: SHARK on December 28, 2022, 04:31:13 AM
How do you guys approach these kinds of considerations in your campaigns? How have your players? Do you chew on these things like I do in the world building process? I can also see how some might consider it far easier and more convenient to just assume a happy, uber-diverse, Seattle 2022-like environment.

I've put a fair bit of thought into it - but I'm creating this as fantasy rather than as a historical setting. In my campaign, Inti really is a benevolent, good-aligned deity - and the PCs typically fight against evil cults / religions / spirits. Among his worshippers, racial differences aren't considered a big deal, but there are big religious and cultural conflicts with neighbors. The core races of the Solar Empire are human, elven, dwarven, halfling, and orc. However, there are other races that are integrated - especially in the provinces - who are fine as long as they integrate. Still, there are racial divisions outside the empire. My recent adventures were set in the north among the Dragon Lords of the cloud forests, and there was squabbling among the different colors of dragonborn - metallic vs chromatic, and colors within those.

Even minor divisions take on importance, like the emphasis of Viracocha compared to Inti within the same pantheon. This fits with a lot of medieval stories, where religious differences greatly overshadowed any racial lines. Knights of the Round Table didn't care about race as long as people were pious in veneration of God. But differences of worship could be a big deal.

Greetings!

Yeah, Jhkim! Very nice! Your Dragon Lords of the Cloud Forests sound very interesting! Furthermore, yes, while I highlighted racial differences, cultural and religious differences can present very formidable challenges. I love it all, because on one hand it is grounded in realism, and on the other hand, such differences provide endless drama and conflict.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I've pretty much disposed of traditional fantasy races in my settings at this point, so I don't really have the opportunity for that kind of racial conflict. My current active campaign is in rough analogy of medieval England, so while there's lots of political conflict, it isn't really racial or cultural. Elves do exist in that game, but they're different from humans on almost a metaphysical level, and they don't coexist in the same spaces, so the conflicts aren't really analogous to real world ethnic differences.

In historical and semi-historical settings, I think you have to try and adopt the attitudes of the period, and I would argue that explicitly racial or cultural conflicts are relatively rare in the pre-modern world. There are lots of conflicts between "peoples", which I think is a more historically authentic way to refer to different population groups, but the proximate cause of them is more often something like resource competition, religious strife or historical grievance.

I'm working on a couple of purely fantasy settings. One of them is in a very nascent stage, but it's meant for a bit of an 80s fantasy film tone, so I'll probably indulge in the old world-ending-threat trope. The other is more serious, and in that the conflicts are religious and ideological, having to do with competition between different groups of Gods and different attitudes towards them. Some of the playable races are (allegedly) direct descendants of specific deities, so their culture is tied into the metaphysical conflict.

However, the last setting I did in which I used the classic fantasy races was kind of on point with this thread. It was some years ago, but it was a city/crime game, loosely inspired by Shadowrun and Gangs of New York. The central setting was a big human metropolis that had recently had a massive influx of immigrants from other races following a big war, and all the conflict was around the competing interests of the ethnic blocs. So I had Gnome cartels controlling certain industries, competition between Human and Dwarf labor unions, Orc traders muscling in on the market, Elves resenting the human influence on their culture, etc. Unfortunately the campaign was quickly doomed due to scheduling conflicts, but I thought the setting had promise.

The primary divides in my setting tend to be more religious than racial... the malfeans are persecuted as much or more for their unwillingness to abandon their ancestral monotheistic religion (which they believe offers them salvation from their ancestors sins) for the state-sponsored polytheistic faith than because of their inhuman features.

The Eldritch (elemental creatures from sprites to dragons) and some, generally barbarian, humans also worship this God of the Old Faith and are typically tolerated at best, hunted at worst.

Similarly, the humans, elves, beastmen and orcs each have their own interpretations of that polytheistic faith... which because the gods are distant and there is no access to the afterlife/Otherworlds cannot be resolved in the way it might in a standard D&D campaign; leads to religious wars over whose religion is the right one. Other than agreement that The Old Faith is clearly wrong they have wildly different interpretations that can't even agree on the number of gods (24 for the humans/orcs, 12 for the beastmen, 11 for the elves... or one + 10 predenders if you ask the humans, beastmen and orcs about the elven faith).

Far more wars rage over religion than have ever done so over what kind of creature you are.

Racial tensions are one of the primary sources of conflict in my setting. Long story short, in previous epochs, humans were top dogs and kinda dicks. Now that the human civilizations have suffered from a strong of supernatural/cosmic nukes, the other races are taking advantage of the power vacuum. Gnomes have a racial contract with an evil god to wipe out humanity. Centaurs, the not-Mongols of the setting are pretty aggressive about expansion.

There are also other conflicts going on like the rivalry between merfolk, aquatic elves (who make up 90% of the elves in this setting) and the all out war between those two races and the fish people (not sahuagins). Or how beastfolk, proto-lycanthropes, basically destroy all undead on sight since they, the beastfolk, were created by an undead tyrant via torture and experimentation to serve as slaves and food. Not to mention. The various cultural divides that exist even within the same race.

I use racial conflict as a common story hook. My players typically don't think too hard about it.

The only places in my fantasy games you are multi-cultural setups are typically port cities.  Even then the main culture of the region will be dominant. 

However, I do occasionally put in an oddball culture or racial character in odd places, but keep that as a rarity.  A curiosity. 

I actually feel that keeping things separate and distinct helps a game feel like traveling far away means something.  I don't want to leave my melting pot village, get on a multi-cultural ship at the melting pot capital city, sail far away and set foot in...a melting pot port city just like back home.  See, there is value to NOT have everywhere you go have every race and customs.   I want to leave medieval France and sail far away to medieval Japan, or meet the mysterious Wood Elves, or see the famous mountains of the Dwarves. 

If your tavern has a lizard man barkeep married to a barbarian with two elven serving wenches and a dwarf bouncer, you're tavern in the next town probably will just be the same thing.  Just repeat and repeat.  Meh.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 28, 2022, 07:49:42 PM
The only places in my fantasy games you are multi-cultural setups are typically port cities.  Even then the main culture of the region will be dominant. 

However, I do occasionally put in an oddball culture or racial character in odd places, but keep that as a rarity.  A curiosity. 

This is how I do it as well. Then again I cut my teeth on Harn which was very vanilla human-centric.

Quote from: SHARK on December 28, 2022, 04:31:13 AM
I can also see how some might consider it far easier and more convenient to just assume a happy, uber-diverse, Seattle 2022-like environment.

Happy?  This part HAD to be sarcasm.

I've really only heavily detailed one region of my setting (though there are stories of places beyond, like the Blood Wastes of Bestia or the Endless Archipelago) and while demographics are a bit mixed being set 200 years after a cataclysm wiped out the global magitech "utopia" (i.e. a lot of the demographics are "where your ancestors happened to be when everything went to shit") it's really only along trade routes that you see significant mixes of the different kinds.

The big cosmopolitan city of the setting sits at the crossroads of three such routes (first port up a miles wide navigable river where a major fork joins it at the neck of a sizable lake [giving it a well protected harbor] and the closest point near a waterway to the only viable pass for a thousand miles through the mountains to the east... it being built around one of the few surviving skyscrapers in the region also makes it one of the few safe places for airships to dock).

There you will see a little bit of everything because it's a natural confluence. Up along each of the trade routes though things become much less diverse. The Toria Tribes up the river fork are almost entirely human (though Eldritch blood is common in their ancestry). The Elven theocracy lies along one of banks of the main river (still over a mile wide at that point) and most non-elven ships skirt the opposite bank rather than run afoul of the theocratic elven supremacists. The overland trade route leads into the territory of the Beastmen, most living in single-species communities.

The main kinds who intermix are the humans, dwarves (humans transformed by demons to be better mining slaves), malfeans (humans bred with demons during the Demon Empire to be overseers of the human and dwarf populations) and mutants (humans warped by the energies of the Cataclysm two centuries ago).

You'll note the common theme there that those particular kinds who are so mixed all are or used to be humans. There's discrimination and the occasional purge, particularly against malfeans and the more disturbing looking mutants, but they still generally allowed in the same communities (albeit typically in slums or ghettos as their economic opportunities aren't great most places).

Well, I don't really play or GM many games these days, but I do love reading rules and thinking about them though, and this was something I was actually thinking about the other day. I think race and culture in any media can be really good drivers of both conflict and motivation to 'adventure'. Cultural differences, the 'us and them' have been the source of wars, conflict and tension for as long as mankind has existed. As motivation, it has also been the inspiration behind efforts to unify, bring together and unify groups that have traditionally been deeply suspicions of one another.

These are some elements that can certainly be used for some really great storytelling, something the 'race and cultural differences are made up but we need still need one of each in everything' crowd has completely abandoned in favor of having a clear moral and ethical message rather than spin a good, believable tale. I think a scene in the early parts of The Rings of Power illustrate just how bland this can make stories when they mix and match culture, creed and sexuality without any conflict or even tension. A mixed race couple of the same sex openly and freely displaying affection in front of a diverse and multicultural crowd of people.

It's boring, bland and devoid of soul IMO, and since they chose to put this focus on sexuality and race front and center, they also have the responsibility to ground it in the universe, because they show us a very progressive society, and those don't just pop up naturally, but through struggle and effort. It falls flat because they have no other motivation to show stuff like this other than send a message to the present day, 'progressive' viewer. That is an example of very poor usage of race and culture. A much better way would have been to show this towards the end as a result and consequence of struggle and sacrifice. An effort to change the world for some reason that we are shown, given to us as viewers as a reward where we have invested ourselves in this outcome for some reason.

So in essence, you don't have to have it in your games IMO, but it can certainly add a lot to it if you do it right.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 28, 2022, 07:49:42 PM
I don't want to leave my melting pot village, get on a multi-cultural ship at the melting pot capital city, sail far away and set foot in...a melting pot port city just like back home.  See, there is value to NOT have everywhere you go have every race and customs.   I want to leave medieval France and sail far away to medieval Japan, or meet the mysterious Wood Elves, or see the famous mountains of the Dwarves. 

If your tavern has a lizard man barkeep married to a barbarian with two elven serving wenches and a dwarf bouncer, you're tavern in the next town probably will just be the same thing.

My current campaign is all mostly within a single empire which emphasizes its roads, trade, and migration. (It is a fantasy parallel to the Incan empire.) So basically all cities are trading hubs, but there can be regional differences among such cities, even when they are melting pots. By analogy, in the Middle Ages, Constantinople, Beirut, and Alexandria were all melting-pot port cities - but they had great differences between them.

In the Solar Empire, my first adventures were around a trade hub in the cool southern deserts. That had some humans and elves from the central empire, but there were also genasi, tieflings, and aasimar from the long-time cultures there.

Later adventures were set in the northern capital, where the dominant population were dragonborn - who squabbled among their various clans. However, there were also dwarves and elves from the central regions of the empire.

I plan on expanding to visit other regions of the empire where there are different regional mixes.

Quote from: daft on December 29, 2022, 10:53:03 AM
It's boring, bland and devoid of soul IMO, and since they chose to put this focus on sexuality and race front and center, they also have the responsibility to ground it in the universe, because they show us a very progressive society, and those don't just pop up naturally, but through struggle and effort. It falls flat because they have no other motivation to show stuff like this other than send a message to the present day, 'progressive' viewer. That is an example of very poor usage of race and culture. A much better way would have been to show this towards the end as a result and consequence of struggle and sacrifice. An effort to change the world for some reason that we are shown, given to us as viewers as a reward where we have invested ourselves in this outcome for some reason.

People often interpret race in terms of modern America, which is a projection true for both left and right. However, history doesn't just divide into old racism that struggle turns into progressive non-racism.

For example, Arthurian tales have two prominent non-white knights - the Saracen Sir Palamedes, and the Moor Sir Morien. Their race was not shown to be a big issue, to the point that when reading it can be easy to overlook their race. As I mentioned, the dividing lines in the Middle Ages was religion much more than race.

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2022, 02:23:49 PM

Quote from: daft on December 29, 2022, 10:53:03 AM
It's boring, bland and devoid of soul IMO, and since they chose to put this focus on sexuality and race front and center, they also have the responsibility to ground it in the universe, because they show us a very progressive society, and those don't just pop up naturally, but through struggle and effort. It falls flat because they have no other motivation to show stuff like this other than send a message to the present day, 'progressive' viewer. That is an example of very poor usage of race and culture. A much better way would have been to show this towards the end as a result and consequence of struggle and sacrifice. An effort to change the world for some reason that we are shown, given to us as viewers as a reward where we have invested ourselves in this outcome for some reason.

People often interpret race in terms of modern America, which is a projection true for both left and right. However, history doesn't just divide into old racism that struggle turns into progressive non-racism.

For example, Arthurian tales have two prominent non-white knights - the Saracen Sir Palamedes, and the Moor Sir Morien. Their race was not shown to be a big issue, to the point that when reading it can be easy to overlook their race. As I mentioned, the dividing lines in the Middle Ages was religion much more than race.

Oh for sure. There are so many more things to create tension and conflict around than those two. In the case of Sir Palamedes and Morien, it sounds more like they wrote it well by not pushing it int o the readers face without a proper foundation as to why the reader should care.