Color-Blind Casting
One of the most challenging things about running a generic D&D game is the question of ethnicity. Normally most D&D settings tend to approach ethnicity in one of two ways:
- Option A: Nations tend to be general analogues to "real world" nations or cultures, and are arranged accordingly: the pale-skinned raiders with the longboats are in the North, a darker-skinned culture with scimitars and genies can be found near the equator, even darker-skinned people are farther off but may make their way around;
- Option B: Everyone is white.
Yeah, so there you are. There are a few exceptions, of course; the World of Greyhawk, for instance, tracked four specific ethnicities that were not quite analogues to the European fantasy model, and actually handled all their migrations and stuff. If I were more awesome, this is what I would have done, but anyway.
More recently, you see some trending toward a more modern melting-pot approach; humans are assumed to be all the various "ethnicities" that they present in the real world, but with no real emphasis put on "this nation is white guys, this nation is black guys." In practice the art often defaults back to mostly white, but in the setting there are no implications about, say, a black man serving as captain of the guard in a vaguely Italian-inspired nation. No explanations necessary for why his family's there instead of that original land designated as home for his particular ethnicity; he's just one of the people.
It's basically color-blind casting, and it's remarkably appealing, all things told. Given that one of my favorite DVDs to pop in now and again is Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, wherein Denzel Washington utterly nails the role of the charismatic Italian prince, I suppose it's no surprise. When my brother was running a D&D game set in kind of a "settling the New World" premise, he based a prominent NPC on Slim Charles from The Wire, knowing that the actor had a presence that would immediately get reactions from me and Aileen.
Part of the appeal is undoubtedly my own laziness; D&D is just one of my hobbies, and I really don't feel like devoting the kind of hardcore scholarship to it that would require tracking migration patterns for all kinds of ethnicities for all kinds of races. It's a lot of work to figure out not just something that maps to our own world's natural complexity for human ethnicity, but for dwarves and elves and all them to boot. (Seriously, I'm not going to tackle the idea that not everybody is white and then assume that some PC races are.) And if this isn't one of my major interests, will I be doing it justice?
And that's really the question at hand. Color-blind casting may not be doing the matter justice, either. It doesn't quite respect the culture aspect of racial identity we have here: in a way, it opens it up so that all cultures belong to all skin colors, with maybe a slight bias to Earth expectations (somewhat more Mediterranean complexions abounding in a "Grecian" nation, more Arab and Semitic-looking people than white people in an Al-Qadim setting). You get lighter skins toward the poles and darker skins toward the equator in general, but with plenty of opportunity to go beyond medieval historical analogues. The somewhat Three Kingdoms-inspired Phoenix Empire game I'd like to run might wind up looking more like Dynasty Warriors, with some characters looking markedly less Chinese. While saying "If you look like you do in real life, any of these cultures could be yours" it also sort of says "none of these cultures are specifically yours."
Now to be fully honest, this is really an issue only for me. My gaming group's diverse in a "white people" way but not really ethnically. So if I did Option A nobody would mind. (Thankfully, Option B would irritate my wife at the very least.) So it's hard for me to sit down with players and talk about totally theoretical "But if you were Latino, would you feel more at home or less in this setting?" issues. It's entirely intellectual, and many years of White Wolf work have made me awfully leery of well-intentioned decisions making a setting seem less accessible. Even if it's, in this case, completely based on fantasy.
But I really like the image in my head. If it can work for Branagh, then I feel like I want to try casting Idris Elba as the Asgardian god of vigilance myself.
- Option A: Nations tend to be general analogues to "real world" nations or cultures, and are arranged accordingly: the pale-skinned raiders with the longboats are in the North, a darker-skinned culture with scimitars and genies can be found near the equator, even darker-skinned people are farther off but may make their way around;
- Option B: Everyone is white.
Yeah, so there you are. There are a few exceptions, of course; the World of Greyhawk, for instance, tracked four specific ethnicities that were not quite analogues to the European fantasy model, and actually handled all their migrations and stuff. If I were more awesome, this is what I would have done, but anyway.
More recently, you see some trending toward a more modern melting-pot approach; humans are assumed to be all the various "ethnicities" that they present in the real world, but with no real emphasis put on "this nation is white guys, this nation is black guys." In practice the art often defaults back to mostly white, but in the setting there are no implications about, say, a black man serving as captain of the guard in a vaguely Italian-inspired nation. No explanations necessary for why his family's there instead of that original land designated as home for his particular ethnicity; he's just one of the people.
It's basically color-blind casting, and it's remarkably appealing, all things told. Given that one of my favorite DVDs to pop in now and again is Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, wherein Denzel Washington utterly nails the role of the charismatic Italian prince, I suppose it's no surprise. When my brother was running a D&D game set in kind of a "settling the New World" premise, he based a prominent NPC on Slim Charles from The Wire, knowing that the actor had a presence that would immediately get reactions from me and Aileen.
Part of the appeal is undoubtedly my own laziness; D&D is just one of my hobbies, and I really don't feel like devoting the kind of hardcore scholarship to it that would require tracking migration patterns for all kinds of ethnicities for all kinds of races. It's a lot of work to figure out not just something that maps to our own world's natural complexity for human ethnicity, but for dwarves and elves and all them to boot. (Seriously, I'm not going to tackle the idea that not everybody is white and then assume that some PC races are.) And if this isn't one of my major interests, will I be doing it justice?
And that's really the question at hand. Color-blind casting may not be doing the matter justice, either. It doesn't quite respect the culture aspect of racial identity we have here: in a way, it opens it up so that all cultures belong to all skin colors, with maybe a slight bias to Earth expectations (somewhat more Mediterranean complexions abounding in a "Grecian" nation, more Arab and Semitic-looking people than white people in an Al-Qadim setting). You get lighter skins toward the poles and darker skins toward the equator in general, but with plenty of opportunity to go beyond medieval historical analogues. The somewhat Three Kingdoms-inspired Phoenix Empire game I'd like to run might wind up looking more like Dynasty Warriors, with some characters looking markedly less Chinese. While saying "If you look like you do in real life, any of these cultures could be yours" it also sort of says "none of these cultures are specifically yours."
Now to be fully honest, this is really an issue only for me. My gaming group's diverse in a "white people" way but not really ethnically. So if I did Option A nobody would mind. (Thankfully, Option B would irritate my wife at the very least.) So it's hard for me to sit down with players and talk about totally theoretical "But if you were Latino, would you feel more at home or less in this setting?" issues. It's entirely intellectual, and many years of White Wolf work have made me awfully leery of well-intentioned decisions making a setting seem less accessible. Even if it's, in this case, completely based on fantasy.
But I really like the image in my head. If it can work for Branagh, then I feel like I want to try casting Idris Elba as the Asgardian god of vigilance myself.