Regardless of how people feel about the Ren’dorei, they’re accepted citizens of the crown under Anduin Wrynn. Harassment and aggression towards them is still punishable as it would be towards humans, dwarves, etc.
Also, like. Racist characters tend to be very one note. If more of them were open to character development and progression by working through their prejudices, I would feel differently, but in the past decade or so I’ve mostly encountered players using their characters as vehicles for their own bigoted views out of character. Which is, y’know. Uncomfortable, to say the least.
People will gravitate towards the rule of cool. It’s always going to make things seem disproportionate. The best way to deal with an overabundance of ‘rare’ character concepts, is to think of player-characters as a small microcosm, with the majority being made up of NPCs.
Sure it is. But I mean since when did racism make much sense? A character sees a black-furred Tauren, and might then think it is a Grimtotem and they should be distrustful of them, seeing as they know the Grimtotem have that fur color. Then they might understand that they weren’t from the Grimtotem and they drop it.
But the Grimtotem, the ‘real’ ones we see having black hooves, so someone could still be racist towards those.
I can still see it as an argument as most Tauren I’ve roleplayed with has this belief. We see an overrepresentation of Grimtotem in the Twilight’s Hammer, and all the other obviously villainous things they have done. But yes, it is an opinion used as an argument because I believe it represents what many Tauren RPers think about it.
Okay, but then I think one should always make sure to mention that in the post, especially if used as an argument against someone else. This is unrelated to the tauren fur topic at hand, just a general thing.
Can you provide a comprehensive source or listing for the laws of Stormwind?
There isn’t one, to my knowledge. Meaning the guards role-playing at present are operating on a mixture of extrapolation from extraneous media, and common sense. It’s not a huge leap to assume that the allied races would receive the same protections, as they’re part of the Alliance as dictated by the king.
They’re operating on headcanon, yes.
Obviously the guards are going to put a halt to violence or theft, but there’s nothing to suggest they’re going to take time out of their day to battle casual harassment like you seem to imply.
(Nevermind there being laws against such a thing.)
By harassment, I was inferring things more serious than insults and cruel wordplay. Threats of physical violence, assault, etc. I think I see where your problem with my original post comes form, so that’s my mistake. Oops.
I assumed by “random racism” they meant racism without any justification, logical or illogical, within the setting. Most real-life racists point to something that , to them, explains or justifies their racism, however illogical or specious that reason is - Islamophobes might point to Islamic terrorists as a reason to fear or suspect all Muslims, regardless of the fact that those terrorists are a tiny, politically-radicalised minority of the Muslim population. It’s illogical, it’s unfounded, but there’s a rationale there. There’s no similar rationale I can think of for humans to hate dwarves or gnomes in the WoW setting, as they’ve been loyal allies for decades, and there’s never been a history of conflict between the races. I don’t think there’s ever been any instance of human racism towards dwarves or gnomes in the story.
But then again, real-life racism doesn’t always use a rationale based on “legitimate concern or fear” - cultural differences can also be the cause, and it’s easy to imagine a petty human disliking dwarves for their drinking or gnomes for their reckless experimentation. However, it then becomes a question of degree, or maybe “excess” as Vaxir says. I don’t think many real-life racists would call for the people of France to put into death-camps because they don’t like garlic in their cooking and have an inborn dislike of berets. Being as hateful and racist as Garithos towards loyal allies for cultural reasons doesn’t ring true. So IC racism has to be proportionate to its cause, and if it’s not, it appears “random”.
But no matter the degree of racism or the cause, I think the fact that RP is an online, text-based medium sometimes skews people’s depiction of IC racism. People might spew all kinds of abuse in forums and messageboards because it’s faceless and anonymous and they’re basically having an argument with imaginary people inside their own heads - but they’d be much more reserved and considered in word and deed IRL. I think people forget that their characters are speaking face-to-face in public - in the world of the characters, these are real-life conversations, and it’s not particularly true to life, or true to their characters, to be openly and aggressively bigoted or hateful.
I distantly recall Garithos lamenting the fact that he had to rely on dwarven mortar squads for something in the RTS game, but I never played it myself so couldn’t really find it on a dime.
Well, Garithos seemed to be quite anti any race that werent humans, so he had low tolerance for dwarves too, so fair to assume it was directed towards gnomes if he met 'em (not in-game).
I know it’s very much a buzzword on Argent Dawn, but I think the lack of tangible consequences contributes to the ‘problem’.
For the Void Elves, they’re not forced to be the victim of violence. If they don’t like it, they can refuse to engage with the roleplay and label it as racist trolling, something to promptly disregard in their roleplay.
At the same time, the prejudiced human characters can shout and commit all the violence they like, because they can simply announce their character spends a few days in the Stockades before being freed - or simply stating that there’s sympathetic ears among the guard who immediately free them.
There’s no tangible comeuppance for forming lynch mobs in the streets to round up Void Elves, because their circle of characters will continue unabated, even if there’s a loud segment of the community who opposes their roleplay - and the same goes for Void Elves who want to be open practitioners of a magic that is currently threatening life on the planet.
There have been countless threads on the topic of consequences and the potential solutions, so I won’t bore anyone on that, particularly since there’s never been any kind of consensus (AD is far too populated for it).
Yeah I too remember how in the Comic the commanding guard entered a Goldshire brawl only to tell the guy that started it that his aunt or something would be disappointed and then promptly let him go because of nepotism.
I also remember that other quest where the prison warden, defender of the law, asked you to commit a crime and murder a prisoner because it was quite likely that the nobles didn’t want him dead for one reason or the other (it was because what the leaders/King thinks affects what the people feel).
I like that you brought up the random wanted posters that anyone can put up and or hire mercenaries because the entire universe we’re playing in rotates around the hiring of adventurers-that-will-do-anything-for-loot.
In such a setting it’s especially refreshing to defend Those Touched By The Primordial Force Of Darkness because they got threatened with a shank.
