How Dungeon Masters Handle Race

A thread asking dungeon-masters how “fantasy racism” – the antipathy of dwarves and orcs for example – affects the design and play of campaigns received a range of answers. One poster said “I have a pretty accepting world. I’m a bit more flexible with alignments than the books suggest … there aren’t really any major conflicts on a purely racial basis.”109 Players can change the alignment of individual characters or entire races so that some of the in-world justifications for mutual hatred are removed. One dungeon-master who did this explained that the move was designed to force players not to rely on the “‘usually good/evil’ tags in the monster manual when encountering a humanoid. Putting racism in the world is one thing, but I wanted the PC’s to have to stop and think about their reactions to the random orc versus the random elf.” By ignoring the rules of the game as it was designed, this move takes away a key aspects of gaming that sets Fantasy RPGs like D&D apart from the realworld and simultaneously draws attention to the constructed nature of racial prejudice.

Other dungeon-masters wrote about the challenges of creating a believable, coherent world where players can still effectively and enjoyably game as non-normative race; such situations can force players to consider the effects of racism beyond direct violence. One suggested ways of non-playercharacters expressing bigotry: “maybe they’ll charge them more, or give them cheaper drink, or cheat them or lie to them … maybe they are legally discriminated against.” Another responded that in their world the player characters are: “followed by stares and whispers. Merchants mysteriously don’t have certain items, or aren’t interested in what the PC’s sell. Those who will do business charge exorbitant prices.” Although this thread was a self-selecting sample in that only players and dungeon-masters who had considered the issue of racism in some depth and were already interested in it responded, their statements demonstrate a level of understanding about both its day-to-day and systemic manifestations.