D & D, from early editions on, has a history of treating its default, European-themed societies as 100% white, even though that's certainly not true of medieval Europe. Likewise, almost every Asian-themed setting is a stereotypical Japanese samurai-and-ninja filled place, or generally to rely on racial caricatures. There are certainly exceptions, but generally speaking D & D has been pretty full of fail when it comes to racial and sexual politics. 3E was a big step up in that its example characters were female as often as male, and it made an effort to use nongendered language or to alternate the gender it referred to example by example.
My impression of Pathfinder as better comes from only one hour-long lookthrough of the book, so I can't cite anything specific, but I recall the section on different countries and colors was a lot more chromatic and a lot less stereotypical than I was expecting.
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ninetydegrees
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on 2009-07-22 10:00 pm (UTC)D & D, from early editions on, has a history of treating its default, European-themed societies as 100% white, even though that's certainly not true of medieval Europe. Likewise, almost every Asian-themed setting is a stereotypical Japanese samurai-and-ninja filled place, or generally to rely on racial caricatures. There are certainly exceptions, but generally speaking D & D has been pretty full of fail when it comes to racial and sexual politics. 3E was a big step up in that its example characters were female as often as male, and it made an effort to use nongendered language or to alternate the gender it referred to example by example.
My impression of Pathfinder as better comes from only one hour-long lookthrough of the book, so I can't cite anything specific, but I recall the section on different countries and colors was a lot more chromatic and a lot less stereotypical than I was expecting.