Well i guess in a way that, that could only mean that it could be considered nowadays in the same way as... uhm lets say the golden carriage used every year to transport the king and queen for their annual speech is racist with on the sides depictions of colonial artist, displaying black people bowing towards the white dutch queen/or king not sure about that specific fact anymore

We can be certain that the artist did not had any racist intention when working on that picture nor did the King or Queen publicly ever displayed any racist tendency for the past 160 years or so.

Does an object or behavior used without any racism context can be taken up as racism, well yea as long as the users of that behavior or the owners of a certain object are made aware of the hurt and pain they are bringing to some individuals and decide to still use that object or display that behavior this can be called racism.

Truth to be told the last line of reasoning goes actually way past mine reasoning but since the court decided that black skinned people living in the Netherlands and many outside the Netherlands feel hurt or done short in any way when the national holiday ' Sinterklaas ' is celebrated by Dutch people with the use of One white skinned Saint and many black skinned servants. Of course i do understand this can come over as racist so, with a pain in the heart i/we embraced the new situation where there is One white/black/yellow skinned saint with all kinds of colored helpers releasing skin tone and embracing the new world which actually worked out quite fine. Still change can only be made if both sides tend to stay reasonable about it, and to make matters worst. For now the ending of this holiday in past form actually gave rise to more racial differences atm then in the years before. Something anyone who wants to fight for racism or change needs to be aware of. ( btw the carriage is now granted to the museum and the current king and queen will transport themselves with other means from today )

In that line i would like to address again that post from a couple of months back where in which was discussed how DnD tries to look for other ways to implement their stories and race descriptions so with that out of the way i guess we can safely conclude that DnD as an organization is certainly aware of how some of their old choices can be seen by a new public and is aiming to do something about it thus can't be called racist in any way anymore right?

It's definitely worth playing. Just don't play Lute's scenario first. (It's way too easy to end up in the final dungeon near the start of the game, and once you're there, you're stuck there for the rest of the game.)

In general, the recommended characters are:
* Red has probably the most structured quest, and is the most linear. Often a good choice for newcomers, though it's a while before you can really explore, and you may be stuck with a small party before this. (I haven't played Red's scenario, actually.)
* Emelia is also a good starting point, giving you a human main character, and some reasonable structure, including a specific place to go whenever you want to continue the main quest.
* T260's quest is also a good early choice; the main character is a robot this time, and different races have fundamentally different growth rules. Robots aren't that bad, as all you need is good equipment (which is the only way to boost a robot's stats), but they might not be the sort of growth system you expect in an RPG.

Later, you might try:
* Riki's quest isn't that bad, but the main character is a monster, and monster growth isn't that easy to deal with.
* Asellus grows like a human, but you get a lot of mystic companions whose growth, again, might be a bit tricky to deal with. Also, in the mid-game, bosses will sometimes ambush you in certain locations (but never the same location twice, and a couple of the "ambushes" aren't actual boss fights).
* Blue's quest basically consists of tasks that, for other characters, are side quests. You get a handy item that lets you teleport between regions quickly that no one else gets, and at least the endgame has some unique content. (The actual ending is, well, a bit odd...)

But then there is Lute.
* Lute's quest is rather minimalistic. You start with an intro cut scene, then are free to explore. If you go to a certain town (accessible right at the start), you will meet someone who will join, then you can take a ship ride in which what would ordinarily be a major spoiler is revealed. (Except that this could easily happen in the first 30 minutes of the game.) Then, you get the option to go to the bad guy's hideout, and that's the final dungeon, and you don't want to go there before you're ready. In any case, I do not recommend playing as Lute until you've played as someone else first.

You are mixing two totally different stuff: racism and game mechanics.

You can argue whenever it's a good idea as a game mechanics maybe, but it's not racist at all. Are you being racist if you say that a dog is not smart enough to be a neuro surgeon ? Then why saying that a totally imaginary race has less strength / intelligence / charm / etc... than another, would be racist.

Come on here that's just extreme straw manning, you have a race of dark skinned creature so it's obligatorily a metaphor for black peoples and therefore racist ? because of course fear of the dark or darker skinned creature never existed before in the history of humanity (regardless of their skin color), it's not like dark elves themselves existed in several mythologies in the past. And of course it means that the developer themselves don't like black peoples, because nobody would ever create a totally fictional evil creature / race if it is not a direct representation of their own prejudice or political belief.

Same with the "sexists" part, so now if devs / authors want's to create a fictional evil matriarchy they have to create an equal amount of "good" matriarchy otherwise they are considered as being sexists ?

What I am saying is that game mechanics can be racist.

Imagine if we had a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. In this game, it is possible to play as a white character or a black character. However, if you decide to play as a black character, you get -2 to all stats. If a game did that, it would very clearly be racist.

A similar consideration can apply to fantasy races. While giving races different characteristics can be interesting, making one race flat out worse than the other would be racist.

(Similarly, game mechanics can be sexist. See the Gold Box AD&D games for an example here, or even the 1e rules they're based off of.)

(Another thing: I don't like how, in most RPGs, non-human playable races are really just "humans, except X". Give me races that don't play anything like humans! SaGa Frontier did this well, as did SaGa 1 and 2. (Well, SaGa 2 espers are a bit too much like humans (basically, humans, but with special abilities and worse stat growth) for my taste, but at least robots and monsters are completely different mechanically.))

That is a very broad meaning for the word racism you are using there. Racism should at least have some form of agreement going on. It now seems you are taking on specialist types of characters or traits and call them bad in general play.

This is of course a difficult subject so i do want to ask you, is this really how you see some mechanics?

To be taken as a number and state because of some possible outcome that verdicts racism is a possibility?

I mean wow, if i would be black or even worse a black women i would probably be holdings my knifes ready because of your ridiculing every act they had to endure

That's not what we are talking about here. And even if it was it would depends, are those characters supposed to be humans, based on real world humans or a fictional species/race ? is there a lore justification for it ? if yes what is it ? etc...

No that's two different things.

If you say in the real world that black peoples are less intelligent than white then that's definitely racist, because it's wrong, it's based on prejudice and ignorance and not on any sort of fact.

But if, in a fictional world, if the devs/authors say that goblins have less max INT stats that high elves, that orcs are a lot stronger than halflings, etc... that's not racist, because in this world it's the truth, it's not based on prejudice or anything it's just a fact.

In short that's not racism that's just world building.

The funny thing is: If it was the white character with -2 nobody would say anything. It would be totally fine and acceptable. Why does "racism" and "sexism" always only work in one direction in this twisted world?

Starcraft was quite racist. It depicted Zergs as some kind of mindless, hive-minded blood-thirsty creatures which all look and act alike, when in reality they are all individuals, like snowflakes. They may seem aggressive towards terrans and protoss, but that can most probably be attributed to the racism they've endured for ages.

They retconned that in Starcraft 2, just like with the Orcs in Warcraft 3...basically the Zerg just had come under bad influence and were sort of misunderstood.
But Zerg (hive consciousness etc.) are so alien that anything like "racism" doesn't apply anyway imo.

World building can be racist.

This particularly applies if a race is strictly better than another, for exmple. If they're different, but balanced, that's generally not too much of a problem (though it would help if players could opt out of those differences to create characters who are atypical and defy stereotypes), but the problem is when you don't have that balance.
If a race can be described as "humans, except that...", then I would say that they're close enough (from a game mechanics perspective) to humans that they can be seen as a sort of human. If that description doesn't apply, then there's a bit more of a gap.

Also, a lore justification would not get rid of the racism.

Racist? nope it cant be racist at all

not too much of a problem? what problem does it create ? there is no problem at all ,cause it doesnt create any problem , stereotypes are there cause it true for the majority , whats the point of races if they are just the same? nothing

so again what is the problem if those dont have balance? there is no problem , only made up ones by your cult

the only racism in games if the characters are racists themselves, and even that is not a problem at all

Here's an example of racial erasure that, I believe, was not the original intent of the developers.

I remember seeing (this may have been in the Wasteland subforum here, in fact) a screenshot of Wasteland 2. In it, a character named Jill Yates is described as being a "handsome black woman", but that wasn't reflected in her portrait, which was that of a white woman.

In any case, later I saw a changelog entry saying that her portrait was changed to something more appropriate. I have not seen any screenshots of her portrait post the patch, but my guess is that she's actually black in the resulting portrait, fixing the issue.

"Better" is often quite subjective...

So, if a game designer makes a game with distinct races who are not equal... it sounds like you are essentially calling that game maker a racist. Am I reading into your statements correctly?

IMHO this kind of reductive reasoning -- if I'm reading your posts correctly -- that illustrates how a game maker who only allows playing as a male could be called a sexist. I'm certain there were people who argued this on the Witcher games.

Personally I find prejudice in game storylines quite interesting... but "utopianism" in mechanics problematic.

"Better" is often not subjective. In a typical D&D, one would say that a Long Sword +2 is better than a Long Wword +1, and nobody would argue anyways. A player, given the choice between the two, will choose the +2 over the +1. (This is, of course, assuming the game has built up a trust relationship with the player; if we're talking about a troll game, all bets are off. This is also assuming the game mechanics are reasonably well behaved, and there isn't a reason for the player to intentionally use a weaker weapon.)

The problem with games forcing the player to play a male character are that:
* It's way too common, far more than games that force the player to play a female character.
* Often times, the justification is quite flimsy (like in Eschalon Book 1, if you try to change the character's gender on the character sheet; that game's handling of it is worse than if they just left that off the character sheet).

Do they smell as bad as those filthy Naskout folks? (This message from a resident of Saskout on planet Lennus, the world where the game Paladin's Quest takes place.)