Experiences Through Roleplay

"We had anticipated a little bit of pushback, maybe, against the requirement to make a character from the Sirdabi Caliphate, but there's actually been a lot more than I thought"

I spent a lot of the chargen phase dreading to find out how this was going playing out, tbh. I mean, yes, I'm a bit bored with the Western European Arthur/LOTR/GoT legacy because it's been the only game in town for ages *but* a lot of the reason I wanted to play this game was because I had gradually become suspicious that some people who strongly prefer that setting are looking to inhabit a fantasy of a "primitive", misogynistic, heteronormative, white-dominated "past" whose conservative, xenophobic and tribal values (lol Ensor's ears are burning) justify "righting" the "wrongs" of a more permissive/multicultural "modern" society. I get it; we are all anxious about living at the end of the world and want to retreat to cottages in the woods and make tea. But for some people the dangers of the modern world include brown people and queer people and women with jobs, and those cottages imply freedom from all that. I knew those people existed alongside the rest of us in this very niche hobby, and I wondered whether they would manage to have their way enough to make the Sirdabi Caliphate feel like Ensor - something I would have found heartbreaking tbh. 
 

They didn't, and I'm glad they didn't, and I'm glad to know the extent to which the administration was willing to tell them to get lost. I cannot possibly overstate the extent to which I am certain they will not be missed.

Edited to add:

Additionally, it is nice to have a game where a person of color can play a character who looks like them without that character being implicitly evil in the game's canon. That seems like a small ask but it is actually *very* difficult to find in fantasy role play settings. I find this rather haunting. SoA just feels like a relief from all of that, frankly. No more touchy debates about whether people are doing Haradrim wrong by not wanting to play them as Sauron-tainted racist caricatures, or whether one evil aligned matriarchal civilization balances out the misogynistic mores of the good guys.
 

Phew. It has been a long journey through the Mists. I am tentatively wondering if we have finally made our way home.

Esfandiar: "They didn't, and I'm glad they didn't, and I'm glad to know the extent to which the administration was willing to tell them to get lost. I cannot possibly overstate the extent to which I am certain they will not be missed."

AMEN.

I think there's fair reasons for people to not want to play people who aren't their own ethnicity in an RPG; I've read enough material on virtual blackface to think there's something to the concept. That said, I also think there's probably nothing wrong with exploring different cultures in a safer context like this; and like, it's not like the cultures of the Sirdabi Caliphate aren't made with a lot of care and thought. There's been a few times where I've felt uncomfortable with the whole idea of playing these non-white refugees, especially with the recent news cycle, because it can feel like it's making light of things or creating entertainment out of suffering that real people go through. But I think generally it's been done with enough grace to not come off as poor taste. But I'm white, privileged, and the kind of person who tries to be woke enough that I get myself tied up in knots about a lot of this stuff. Generally I resolve it in my head by going "is it more racist to play a respectful rendition of someone of a different ethnicity and culture, or is it more racist to refuse to play someone who's not white", which seems like an obvious answer to me, but it's not always so clear cut. I think I play characters who are nuanced enough that they're not any kind of stereotype, but it's always a fear when stepping out of this kind of comfort zone; not that I'm playing something I'm not used to, but more that nagging feeling that I'm doing something offensive, even if this is arguably one of the safest and least harmful ways to explore it.

That said, there's always a gut feeling part of me that goes "hey. it'd be fun to play a horse nomad. go play a horse nomad." So what I'm saying is you should let me be a Temulen.

I get it; we are all anxious about living at the end of the world and want to retreat to cottages in the woods and make tea. But for some people the dangers of the modern world include brown people and queer people and women with jobs, and those cottages imply freedom from all that. 

Put so eloquently, Esfandiar. I needed it to be bolded and underlined. <3 

Thoughts that I had written out for this ended up as a woefully messy and meandering amalgamation of things that I am still working on reconciling with the understanding that I look through an expressly Western lens. In fact, I had an entire essay written out that was all poised to be posted before my partner so lovingly advised me that my views are white and American. -Deleted-. Currently, I am trying to answer the following questions within myself: How can I do service to Avaria? Can I properly tell the story of a refugee when I feel so personally disconnected from the plight? What are the repercussions of attempting assimilation into a space that does not want you there? 

LGBT and queer identity, coupled with homophobia, is something I will endeavor to navigate further as well at some point. I feel incredibly privileged to be surrounded by an IRL community that doesn't make me feel like a devil and dipping into a world that will be interesting on an OOC level. 

...this also suddenly seems like a lot of words to say that I should read a book or something. In the end, I echo the thoughts above. It is nice to see such thought put into the topic and that makes me hopeful for the future of SoA. 

I wanted to say something to you, pof Firouzeh! And it also makes some sense to say towards pof Kinsa too.

Okay, so...

1. I don't want anyone to feel as if they have to share anything about their real life, such as what amount of privilege they come from, or anything like that, in order to weigh in on this conversation. I was going to share some about my own background without this disclaimer, but then I worried such a post might set too much of a precedent, and people might feel like they have to semi-doxx themselves. I don't want us to get involved in identity politics where one person has a more important perspective than another just because of some revealing personal information, or anything like that. It's fine to share some info out of choice or desire but there shouldn't be any pressure to do so at all; this is a roleplaying space. 

2. While I can respect people's wishes not to step on any toes in a conversation like this, by wanting to confess their privileges and mute themselves on the topic, and I admire how much awareness of one's own privilege that choice shows -- I also don't want anyone to feel like they're not allowed to talk about something just because they're "white and American" and thus somehow not allowed to have thoughts and opinions. While I am myself a minority, I have known other minorities of different kinds and everyone's struggles are different. One of my most enlightening conversations that I'll remember for the rest of my life was with a member of a different minority, who asked me some leading questions about racism. It was a very interesting discussion that wouldn't ever have happened if I had refused to explore it on the basis of not feeling entitled to talk about a struggle I hadn't personally experienced. While I think it's good to take into account, in our own minds, the humility to accept that we have not lived every possible experience ourselves, and truly listen to others who have lived those experiences, I don't think stifling courteous and critically-thinking speech is an intrinsically helpful part of societal evolution.

3. In that vein, I want to tackle the idea of 'cultural appropriation' and the concern regarding playing a character that is not exactly like oneself. Now that I've made the disclaimer in #1, I'll admit that I don't personally have 'white privilege' in my day-to-day life, but I've played 'white' characters. I have the privilege of having my birth parents, but I've played orphans. I have the privilege of general health, but I've played characters with chronic illnesses. I've played many characters who have privileges that I don't, and many who don't have privileges that I do have. This is just... roleplaying. In most places in Avaria, privilege regarding race is reversed, so if someone is playing a brown person they are probably still playing a privileged person in more ways than if they were playing a white person. It's a historically-flavored world, so many modern stereotypes are completely irrelevant. In short, we're really not worried at all about cultural appropriation. It's a fantasy world. Anyone can play anything. We had a guy play a ghost who has certainly not been dead IRL. (Almost certainly not? ) Now, if someone rolled in as a barbarian from An-Sor and absolutely every emote was about how xenophobic and illiterate and barbarian-ish they are, that wouldn't be offensive IRL, but it would just be kind of shoddy roleplay and make them vaguely annoying. Characters should be characters, not stereotypes. But even Avarian stereotypes aren't genuinely offensive because there aren't really any cultural parallels in real life. 

4. It's almost always when I play a character that differs from myself in some crucial way that I grow in some manner of empathy towards others, and sometimes that difference just happens by accident due to in-game ongoings. Like the first time I played a queer character, for instance, when I am straight. There was a feeling of crushing heartbreak over a forbidden love and I'll always remember that. Someone can have generic sympathetic sentiments without any empathy, and while I'd never tell someone IRL who was experiencing that heartbreak for real, "Hey I totally know what you're going through, I roleplayed a character once who was in kind of a situation like that" -- because of course it's not equivalent -- I'd just definitely feel more empathy for that person. And that's valuable to me. Conversely, I've been thinking some more about the times that I've exacerbated my personal issues due to roleplay experiences... and it's almost always because I ended up playing a character that was too like myself, in one way or another, that led to feelings of bleed or over-investment. 

5. But just like I don't think we have to necessarily avoid playing a character unlike ourselves, I don't think we need to strictly avoid playing one like us, either. It's just that we should probably try to be especially aware of these things, like pof Inaya said, and take as much care as we realistically can. Roleplaying has definitely had an impact on my own self and psychological development as a person through the years, and sometimes that was negative, as well as positive. Lately (in the past few years) I had an experience that changed me for the worse, and it honestly led to a lot of thoughts about game design. I ended up quiting this MUD primarily because I saw the effect it was having on my own gameplay style; and the way I was speedily returning to the PvP mentality -- a mentality that belongs to my past-teenage-mudder-self rather than the considerate adult I want to be today, and still have a good ways to progress toward. The way these games are programmed (mechanics leading to gameplay styles) and the way these games are run (staffer attitudes and policies) can have a pretty large effect on the experience that players take away. And to a degree, I believe gamerunners are responsible to steer their game away from becoming a negative influence. Of course, we can't take responsibility for everything, and we make mistakes, and we don't have infinite time and attention -- but we can at least be aware of issues and try to design in a thoughtful way. We can at least consciously aim for something good, and put some effort into that goal.

6. Maybe unfortunately this whole thread makes roleplay seem like some kind of cerebral social experiment or highfalutin' campaign for social justice and mental health........... but it's also good to remember that we're all just trying to play a game and have fun. :D It doesn't have to be that deep, all the time. Like you, pof Firouzeh, you don't have to think to yourself every time you log in "How shall I represent the journey of a privileged refugee in a third world backwater today" -- you can just happily think "I'm going to play Firouzeh" because... a whole character is so much more than just any one thing, and we definitely don't expect or even really want anyone to be telling a preachy story stuffed to the brim full of righteously-moralizing points. (Not that I think you were planning on that, at all, just making an overblown example.) It's just fascinating to me to reflect on these dynamics from time to time, and honestly I have way more reflections to blather about, but should probably use some free time today to fix bugs...