Is Shadowrun an unequal world?, Discrimination, and not just metahuman. Options

[Arethusa]

I would say the same sort of comic, facile simplicity characterizes much of the game beyond its handling of racism.

[mfb]

i agree with the poster. his point isn't that there's no discrimination against metahumans, it's that there's no meaningful discrimination against metahumans. playing someone with anti-metahuman attitudes is not presented as a desirable character option. 99% of the in-character personas display no metahuman bias at all, and the ones that do are written in such a way that they come off as ignorant redneck assholes or stiff-necked traditionalists--caricatures, not living, breathing personalities.

when was the last time one of you saw a Humanis member played as anything but a Humanis member first and foremost? in other words, have you run into many PCs or NPCs who are card-carrying members of an anti-metahuman group, but whose entire personality doesn't revolve around their anti-meta attitudes? when was the last time a human PC was able to buy a piece of gear, but a troll PC was stonewalled? when was the last time only the elf PC was allowed into the elf-only bar where the team's contact was supposed to meet them? when was the last time metatype mattered, in your game, in any capacity beyond their statblocks?

and this isn't really your fault, per se. it's the way the game is presented. Captain Chaos, Fastjack, Findler-Man, Connie Connoisseur, Picador, SPD--find me one poster in any of the sourcebooks who displays any level of bigotry against metahumans, but isn't presented as being a shitstain.

[eidolon]

I had a longer post ready, and I may post it later, but first I wanted to ask:

Am I the only one that sees the 400 pound white gorilla in the room?

[mfb]

hey, it's a glandular problem!

edit: i see a few of them, assuming that gorilla = elephant. which one are you talking about?

[eidolon]

The one with its arm sticking out at about a 45 degree angle to the floor, palm downward, wearing that funny cross on its sleeve.

And if you mix the animals, they're harder to miss.

[mfb]

nazis? nazis are 99% of the problem. they make things too simple; nazis take things straight from bigotry to genocide. do not pass go, do not collect complex social issues. they're bad guys, pure and simple--kinda the way caricatures are pure and simple. as soon as you equate anti-metahuman bigotry with nazis, you lose any chance of having an interesting character flaw.

[Critias]

Eidolon -- do you actually have something to say, or are you just going to keep dancing around talking about pale monkey Nazis, or something? I'm curious as to exactly what it is you think you're hinting at so cleverly.

[eidolon]

Not my point. A good point, but not my point.

[mfb]

then... what is? you can't say "that's not my point" without going on to describe what your point actually is. being all obscure does nothing to aid conversation.

[eidolon]

Apologies, but I'm not sure I want to take the overall conversation in that direction if it wasn't going to end up there anyway. Also, there's the possibility that I'm reading more than what is there. It's late and I'm tired.

[mfb]

a'ight.

so, yeah. i agree with the guys who say that racism in SR is trite and one-dimensional. trite and one-dimensional racism isn't racism at all, in the context of presenting a game world. racism is, by definition, a divisive issue. how divisive is it to have five hundred shadowposters over more than a decade standing arm-in-arm, singing En Vogue's Free Your Mind? (yeah, En Vogue, suckers, i went there!)

[Critias]

Upon reflection, it might seem like there are some of us in the conversation who are arguing racism is good, or it's healthy to be a racist, or, "man, I sure wish more SR characters were racists because it's cool," or what have you. Speaking purely for myself, I can understand where you might get that notion, but it is untrue. I just would prefer to see racism done well than done poorly -- when the only racism this gritty street-level game sees is the comedy hour hah-hah pathetic redneck racism (or the stick-up-his-ass Elven superiority hah-hah pathetic caricature racism), it detracts from the seriousness of an ongoing human problem.

When people are told racism is pathetic, funny, and nothing to really worry about except for a few fringe wacko's (who you can spot a mile away), people might start to believe that. Now, I understand that for some people and some people's games, that's as much as they want of it -- they might not like serious issues, they might like a more light hearted game, they don't care about racism in their action movie die-rolling contests.

But if you're in a game that's run a little more darkly, a little more dirtily, and that's a little more likely to roll up it's sleeves and run into shit like organlegging, kidnapping/prostitution/bunraku rings, terrorism, drug and BTL peddling... well, racism is another one of those ugly things that might come up, and might just be a little more serious (and prevalent) than the cartoonish redneck Humanis with the chewing tobacco and the pick-up truck.

So, well, yeah. The reason some I'm calling out for more (or at least more serious) racism in your average game isn't because, y'know, I dig racism or whatever. It's that I think it should be presented in such a manner so as to allow it to be taken seriously, handled realistically, and to give us one more tool to show us that the Shadowrun future sucks donkey balls to live in, instead of being presented to us as a cool place to be. As written, the only racists you ever run into are the black-wearing moustache-twirling villain types, that everyone can see from a mile away, and everyone (even the most hard-hearted professional killers) laughs at behind their back. That's kind of silly.

[eidolon]

[mfb]

[mfb]

i'm gonna double-post, which i don't normally do, because this post is in a bit of a different vein from the previous one. i'm going to show an example of a point at which SR could have shown some real gritty, dirty racism, and chose instead to avoid the issue in favor of more black-and-white, cut-and-dried cartoon comedy: SURGE.

for once, i'm not talking about that stupid catgirl. i'm talking about the part where they show the anti-SURGE hysteria that's supposed to have sprung up around this phenomenon. let's see: on page 27, Cap deletes 0.8Mp of an anti-SURGEling rant; the portion that remained packs more stereotypes (stupidity, herdthink, Tourettes-like inability to speak without spewing epithets) into one and a half sentences than most actual bigots find it seemly to fit into a paragraph. on page 31, Cap introduces the opposition view as "loathsome and despicable", and the only people who post in that section do so with an obvious anti-Humanis bent.

after that, we've got SURGE clubs and catgirls. the entire section presents only two possible views of SURGE: you either embrace it, and associate yourself with intelligent, modern people; or you reject it, and associate yourself with either uneducated morons or stiff-necked, intractable traditionalists.

who picked the stiff-necked, intractable traditionalists in their character designs? raise your hands. nobody? none? color me surprised.

[knasser]

[knasser]

[Critias]

I've known James long enough to be convinced he's not really much of a racist, no matter what he says -- he hates everyone, equally. Also, "running a Black Sun cell" isn't some crazy "I'm a skinhead terrorist" brag. He's running a game for a Black Sun (SR4 elven supremacist group) terrorist, is all. No need for google; it's a Shadowrun thing, not a RL thing.

Also, SlitheryD never said anything about intellectual potential, only "average mental ability," a statement that's purely factual truth. Certain racial/ethnic groups score higher (or, rather, lower) than other certain racial/ethnic groups on tests designed to measure that sort of thing. It's not a racist statement, it's just a statement; people still get antsy when you point it out, but the statement in and of itself isn't offensive, merely factual. Conskill explained it in a bit more detail.

[Kagetenshi]

[knasser]

EDIT

[Demonseed Elite]

I'm surprised Saito hasn't been mentioned at all.

I do agree on some aspects and disagree on others. On one hand, there absolutely has been a leveling of the playing field a bit over time in SR. Afterall, if you look at the early editions of SR, how many metahuman Big Ten executives were there? Aside from Lofwyr. Now we have ork CEOs, dwarven major shareholders, free spirit executives, etc. This isn't really indicative of there being less racism, but more metahumans are breaking through the glass ceiling.

On the other hand, I dealt specifically with issues of racism when I wrote Hong Kong for Runner Havens. Hong Kong's racism definitely exists, though not down the normal human vs. metahuman lines familiar in other places. In Hong Kong it is natives vs. foreigners, encouraged by the refugee/immigrant crisis.

[Witness]

[Apathy]

[Witness]

Stephen J Gould's argument was that intelligent tests themselves were culturally biased: structured to test only certain culturally preconceived notions of certain kinds of intelligence. Indeed I guess the whole concept of IQ tests may seem strange to many- dare I say it more enlightened- cultures. But this is straying off topic.

[mfb]