Sparked by a conversation elsewhere, but it made me realise something about settings I like: they feature prejudice and thus discrimination. Usually a lot of it along a whole range of values.

My favourite setting of all is history, which is chock-full of it. Nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, social class, wealth - every one of them is a potential source of tension and confrontation. And I love it. A setting feels a hell of a lot more real and credible when people have darker impulses and can be petty and narrow-minded about stuff that in the scheme of things is really stupid to get bothered about.

When I played WFRP2e, one of the things I appreciated having to deal with repeatedly was that even aside from being a foreigner (an Imperial in the Border Princes), my character was a peasant. Quite often important people completely overlooked him, or assumed he was a servant/bodyguard, or just didn't know how to place him at all. For a large proportion of the game, he was also illiterate, which caused the odd amusing situation where he had to rely on one of the other PCs to deciper a written missive.

That, ironically, was the only white character I've played in a very long time. My current character is a black Frenchman (of Senegalese descent and a Muslim by upbringing) in a game set in contemporary Paris. In one of our historical games (set in 1750 New York province), my character was half-Iroquois and very obviously not a European in his manner and dress, which caused complications.

See for me roleplaying isn't supposed to be a total escape from everything that makes our world what it is. I don't want Star Trek level utopian "everyone just loves each other and gets along", that's dull to me. I only need an escape from right-here-right-now, so as long as I'm not playing a game of contemporary people living ordinary lives, I'm golden.

I should also add, as an addendum, I am not white. I see and deal with discrimination in real life. That doesn't make it something I'd prefer to gloss over and pretend doesn't happen in my fictional worlds, it's something that is very much just a part of life. I also don't see myself as a victim, which is why discrimination isn't a tender issue for me to deal with in-game, or feel it needs to be excised for my personal comfort.

I don't mind that these discussions happen once in a while: I just resent it when they're framed in a passive-aggressive hypothetical against hypothetical bad GMs (as it was in that other place).

There is merit in exploring morally grey topics in RPGs. I mean, Blizzard made Orcs into a noble race with their own culture and all that: definitely not the mindless spawn of darkness of the typical Tolkienism. So it can work!

But yeah, sometimes we just want monsters to kill without doubting our own world view. I don't play RPGs to open up sociological shame about myself and my ideas about tropes in RPGs. Sure there's a place for having that debate, but if can be done without the usual garbage like: "GMs who use themes such as racism in their game settings ARE irredeemably racist themselves". Once that comes up, I'm out.

I agree on much of this.
I like a setting where things feel logical and where history has played out and the PCs live in a wold where that is going on.

Also, I enjoyed going with something familiar, but tweaking it in a few directions, so that the players feel racism and prejudice from a few directions, racial, guild, social class, and magic types.  Probably social class is the heaviest discrimination, to be honest.

It is part of the World in Motion, this feeling that history, large and small, has weight and is happening all around the players.  
 

"There are racial issues alive in Celtricia as well. Small Hobyts and the strong Orcash are the most numerous races in Celtricia, followed by the three original clans of the Humans, the ancient Omwo~ (Elven), the Klaxik (Dwarven), the Gnomic, and the Gartier. These races comprise the primary inhabitants of Celtricia that are within the civilized world. Understand, however, that it is considered an effect of culture to be able to integrate and work with other races, especially in the North-West Cradle areas where Orcash live side-by-side with Omwo~. Barabarians are tribal, integrated cultures are civilized. So in hyper-integrated cultures, race is considered much less of a divider than Guild or Country, however you will find many areas that hold to their own.  However, some cults still hold to the ideas that the Ogrillites are 'born in sin', while others see the still-existing outside tribes as evidence of the inferiority of the Ogrillites.  There is much growth still to happen.
But this very disintegration of racial identity is another dynamic that needs attention. The Omwo~, the firstborn servants of the Planars, are a race in remmision. Many ancient writings point to the advent of humans as a replacement for the Omwo~. The Stunatu, the Klaxiks, Gnomics, and Hobyts, were created to be workers, servants of others, back in the Age of Legends. In the last five centuries, the humans, who were created to replace the Omwo~ as the stewards of the 'Waking Dream' in most older religious texts, have watched the Hobyts outpace and supplant them with a cheerful, hard-working smile. And overshadowing that, the even more recent inclusion of many of the the Ogrillite races, the servants and tools created to defend the Cairnhold in the Age of Legends, and the bloody-handed soldiers of Arbor and the Dreadwing throughout the Age of Heroes and the early Age of Statehood, into the sunlit streets, shops, and even governments of today's Celtricia.
From here.

I like historical games, but I also like fantasy, sci-fi, or alternate histories where the prejudices are quite different from the historical ones.

For example, I don't have a problem with Star Trek as a setting. Sure, old Earth prejudices are gone - but varying with the time period, there is plenty of prejudice against (and from) Cardassians, Romulans, Borg, androids, holograms, and others.

For example, in my Vinland game, the predominant prejudice was against the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) - who were the war-mongering invaders into the territory of the Icelandic settlers and their Algonquian-speaking allies. Plus they were cannibals and in league with dark, alien spirits.

I like racial wars.

Years ago when S&W:White Box came out, I drew up a human-only PC setting where the Elves and Dwarves are locked in a global genocidal racial war destined to destroy the world. Humans can only hope to stay neutral and hope their gods can save them from the apocalypse. Woe be upon human nations that have taken sides in the conflict.

In my Warhammer games, I play up the "fear of others" so even citizens of the Empire in the Empire are looked askance if they are not natives to the town.

I'm of like mind with the OP.
I've been playing in an online CoC group that's running Ripples of Carcosa. The first segment is set in ancient Rome and our Citizen PCs treated the slave PC pretty poorly... then, during the next segment, set in Medieval England, the Norman PCs had no qualms about abusing the Saxon Peasants... only worrying about their deaths as an economic concern. It really helped with the flavor of those settings... if the slaves and saxon had been treated as full equals it would have undermined the verisimilitude and lessened the impact of the coming horrors.

Agreed. I love playing in settings that make room for discrimination to be a thing - not because I'm secretly* a racist asshole who just wants to get my bigotry fix, but, as mentioned, it adds a level of verisimilitude to the game world. My DM's custom setting has quite a bit of casual racism both between and within the different cultures, as well as a good bit of social discrimination, which makes for a lot of interesting interaction both within and without the party and ultimately results in a better game.

*My fantasy racism toward elves is not remotely secret.

Quote from: Necrozius;825828Sure there's a place for having that debate, but if can be done without the usual garbage like: "GMs who use themes such as racism in their game settings ARE irredeemably racist themselves".

That sentiment comes from BNGs and SJWs, people who cannot sufficiently separate reality from a game setting.

I associate our modern morality with our modern world. Since I play in settings that are materially different from ours, they are are also morally different. So in a medieval fantasy game, the Enlightenment has not happened. And for pre-Enlightenment people, suspicion, brutality, severe hierarchies, and widespread ignorance were the norm.

I like my fantasy like my steaks - dark and bloody. So I definitely agree. I don't mind playing in an utopian setting once in a while, but I don't see it as objectively, or so to say, OOCly "inclusive and egalitarian" - by playing in a tainted, prejudiced society, we can experiment with actual real life issues, rather than pretend that sweeping them conveniently away, with Hollywood - level white - washing and Balderisation, is making us objectively "nobler" players.

To no offense to D&D players, I think a lot of this comes from the way how alignments and such are played out nowadays. If you take players raised, like me, on Warhammer, CoC or Elric, they will have very different expectations of RPG worlds than ones that started out playing D&D.

I have no idea how to run NPCs completely divorced of prejudice.

Quote from: Old One Eye;825865I have no idea how to run NPCs completely divorced of prejudice.

I imagine it would be like running NPCs devoid of envy or jealousy of any kind.

Quote from: Bren;825886I imagine it would be like running NPCs devoid of envy or jealousy of any kind.

It would be pretty darn weird... unless it was something like Paranoia and all the PCs and NPCs were clones of each other... even then something would come up... odd numbered clones oppressing their even numbered brothers.

Quote from: Haffrung;825857And for pre-Enlightenment people, suspicion, brutality, severe hierarchies, and widespread ignorance were the norm.

Thank goodness we don't have any of that nowadays!

Quote from: Old One Eye;825865I have no idea how to run NPCs completely divorced of prejudice.

Agreed, and it seems to me that the OP is arguing against a straw man.

Yes, there are settings like Star Trek where many modern-day prejudices like human racism and sexism are largely absent. However, that doesn't mean there is zero prejudice in that setting - it's just different than common real-world prejudices.

In practice, I don't find any problem playing in the Star Trek universe - and I find there is plenty of conflict and prejudice.

I reject, contemptuously, the brain-damaged premise that what I put in my game setting and how I have my NPCs react reflect by definition my real-life values.

There are indeed some elements I downplay.  One of my wife's high school friends hung himself from a bridge that's visible from our front porch; I don't make hanging, and especially suicide by hanging, a prominent part of my game.  I've known too many rape victims to have sexual assault make a prominent part of plots.  But that has nothing to do with making my setting reflect my values, and far more to do with my personal squick factor.