[Waypoints] Playing the RPG Race Card

The CP crew is getting together to record a few segments for upcoming shows tonight, and I proposed a discussion about our experiences with playing non-human (or non-dominant) races in RPGs. We’re going to do the segment, it turns out – but I still wanted to explore it a bit here in my blog as perhaps a teaser/precursor to the segment when it comes out in a future episode.

Basically, for a couple of days I’ve been mulling over the idea that – for me anyway – the idea of playing a different race often seems to be more a matter of gaining a particular set of abilities and powers and a schtick, rather than actually trying to portray a race within the cultural context of a setting (although as you’ll see below, I dunno if that’s as true as I was thinking it is).

For example, I’ve been pondering playing an ogrun or trollkin when we do our Iron Kingdoms/Savage Worlds mini-campaign in January. But when I asked myself why I’m really considering that, I found it is because I want to try to play a big tough grunt/brick with an ugly mug and a heart of gold, not so much because I have any real interest in exploring what it feels like to be an ogrun in the Iron Kingdoms. So it occured to me that if I want the tough but loveable grunt/brick Ben Grimm archetype, I don’t really need to be an ogrun to do that. I could be all those things with a human character.

When I proposed this discussion to the crew, I noted that Rich (the who is after all, ORKLORD) loves to play orcish characters. So, I asked him for his take. He responded with some things that actually unlocked a few things in my noggin:

Boy do I love to play orcs. One of the reasons I like them is that they externally represent their flaws – green skin, tusks, bestial appearance. Another is that their culture is barbaric, something I like because they just don’t truck with all the propriety and foppishness of our culture. They deal directly and definitively with things. Another alluring aspect of the orc is that they came from something so beautiful (in Tolkien legend, they were once elves) but
now they are twisted and downtrodden. To me, that leads to truly compelling stories.

Perhaps another thing is that orcs are hated by many gamers, so maybe I’m finding something cool in the uncool.

I’ve played orcs who revelled in their evil like gleeful, dirty children. I’ve played orcs who hid from their past and tried to ape humanity with middling success. Grbek, my Burning Wheel orc, was perhaps my greatest achievement. He was savage and brutal but he wanted to raise up his race to somethign greater than they had ever been. He was a tragic hero in my eyes, despite his brutality.

Rich’s description of Grbeck helped me realize that maybe I’m maybe jumping the gun a bit when I conclude that I don’t play other races with much depth. In the Star Wars PTA game Currently available in audion on Canon Puncture Actual Play) I play a wookiee, Kashyyk, with motivations similar to what Rich shared about Grbek. As I’ve already shared elsewhere, with Kash I am partially exploring ways to break the mold of “cool loyal sidekick syndrome”, by drawing my conflict along the lines of pitting my intense loyalty to Han against the massive responsibilities that destiny has placed upon me with the whole messiah thing. There is certainly some depth there. And I’ve made efforts to explore that by establishing scenes with wookiees in-game.

I haven’t really ever played many other non-humans, though the few I have played are memorable. I played Theo Mendaharin, an Eshu, in Changeling. I really enjoyed digging into West African culture and myth with him, and really striving to figure out how to inhabit that. But I had two years to play that out, too. When I started, he was nothing more than a swashbucking smooth-talking trickster (like so many of my characters) who happened to have dark skin. I also played a Lakota brave named Napewiakpa [Shining Arm] – not a non-human in this case, but still a character from a non-dominant culture – in Deadlands, and that was a similar journey. He was a little bit of Kashyyk, now that I think of it. Living in the white man’s world and trying to prove something, loyal to his white friends but also responsible as a spokesperson for – and reluctant leader of – his people.

Come to think of it, whenever I DO play a character from a “race” that is not dominant in the given setting, it always seems I base the character around having something to prove to whichever race IS dominant. I’m sure there’s some fun unpacking that could be done there.

So, yeah, this waypoint is an intentionally incomplete musing about race in RPGs. Come to think of it, since I’m putting this out before we record the segment, maybe some of you would like to use the forums to share your own thoughts on the matter, and maybe we can even work some of those into the segment.