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Uaithne
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How important is diversity of characters when RPing?

 

I see people "encouraging diversity" in RPs, or talking about how important it is that a wide variety of people are represented through RP characters.

 

To me, it's important that people have the opportunity to play different types of characters, but I don't force it.  I've never been one to ban a gender or type of character, but rather I'd encourage the creation of the type of characters the site lacks.  It's a little odd to me that people encourage diversity to the point where they're getting frustrated that their members don't have any [insert ethnic group] characters.

 

One thing I like to do is to encourage members to play different types of characters than what they've played in the past.  So if someone plays all females, I might encourage the person to try playing a male character.  We actually have a thread where people list their goals, and they can think about these types of things to see what their goals are for character creation.

 

The only time I'd get after someone for lack of diversity is if they make 5 characters and they're all the exact same.  But I don't think I've been in that position where I'd have to do that.

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This is very true. Last thing you want to do is force your members to play a specific role or race.

Nobody wants to be forced to a decision especially on an rp forum where most characters reflect the person to some degree.

 

Thanks for the reminder on this issue. I'll definitely link this on the resources page on my forum.

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I think diversity is very important, and I always try to encourage a large and varied cast of characters. Different backgrounds can impart such a wealth of character, personality, history, etc. to your characters that it's easy to make them all different and unique and I think it's great to see all those factors coming together. I practice (or at least try to) this philosophy in my own cast of characters.

 

I totally agree with you @Uaithne in that it's most important that people feel they have the opportunity to play whatever characters they want. I think banning based on arbitrary stats like gender, race, nationality, etc. isn't the best way to go about getting a diverse character base. Instead, you should practice what you preach. If you think your site needs more of X characters, then make your next character one of them. Lead by example and show how welcoming you are to other characters with you own.

 

I also encourage this type of behavior in my want ads. Unless it's for a blood relative, I never say that x character has to be a, b, and c. Instead, I'll usually use suggested face claims to get that across. Like, oh, we could really use some African American characters? I'll throw up face suggestions that are African American. Or, oh, we are really hurtin for some testosterone? Then I'll throw up some dude faces for this ungendered want ad. It's a subtle encouragement that I've found really helps. It doesn't throw anything in your face. I'll also employ this method if we get a guest or new member looking for a face for their character. I'll take a look at what we've got a lot of and suggest some faces that are more unconventional or that I think we could be better for using. 

 

I also like the idea of encouraging people to play something that challenges them. I actually think that could be a useful tool for an event or something on a site that maybe has gotten a little stagnant or stale and needs new life. So, not only are you promoting diversity, but you're introducing new inspiration as you breathe life back into a dying site. 

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How important is diversity of characters when RPing?

 

As a writer, super important because I feel like I'm being lazy if my characters are all of the same community (white for example). That feeling of laziness doesn't apply to LGB characters because apparently I have a personal vendetta against straight mainstream media. (I deliberately dropped the T because I am admittedly not great when it comes to creating trans characters.)

 

As an admin, super important. Because I don't want to create an environment that regurgitates the status quo. But all I do there is just lead by example. Thus far the forum hasn't needed any guidance on that front. I'm rather lucky. 😁

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Diversity in a site is important to me, but I'm also of the opinion that different sites encourage different kinds of a diversity. A fantasy site with several species can include species diversity while a human-only site won't include that at all. A site set in the French Court under Louis XIV probably won't have characters from a low social class.

 

While I can't speak from an active admin's perspective, as a member, I try to play the diversity I want to see even if I'm alone in doing so. Very rarely have I had problems finding plots for POC characters or characters that come from different cultures/backgrounds. IMO, people are going to play what interests them, and if having a POC doesn't appeal to them, well, admin encouragement probably won't change that. I will add that as a member, I much prefer it when admins do what they preach in terms of diversity.

 

For a site I'm working on, diversity is a visible part of the setting. The problem is that the freedom available isn't readily apparent. Even though female characters are virtually non-existent and anyone who isn't cishet can be put to death if found out, any social class, history, age, race, nationality, disability, etc is permitted and encouraged. It is entirely possible for a farmer to outrank the son of a duke, and one of the setting's most popular heroes only had one eye and one arm. I include some information about diversity in the site documentation because it's not obvious to anyone familiar with the setting. And I intend to do my part to have my own characters represent the diversity available. A senior character has risen from being an orphan to someone even higher ranked characters can turn to for information, a boy who can't speak the language of everyone else around him. My co-admin intends on having a character from a country that's hated with a passion and doesn't have any noble family or connections.

 

In addition to wanted ads, I'm keeping a list of one-line character suggestions. Some are meant to be humorous, but others try to show that just about anyone from anywhere could fit in the setting. 

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I actually turned one of my characters from an NPC which I'd created for a character's background into one which was playable, simply because most of the original characters in the fandom were mostly female. (You might get lucky and come across a human male character in the fandom, or an elf, but most of them were females, particularly female dwarves and elves, with more elves than dwarves. Admittedly, three of my playable dwarf characters were females, so I probably didn't help, but I liked to explore the crafting obsession that dwarves have - one was a blacksmith and the other a jewellery maker and seamstress.) I also made a Beorning, since no one ever made them. People making dwarf OCs was probably because of the Hobbit, but the elf thing seemed to be something that people did because they wanted their character to be perfect. It wouldn't bother me if the elf characters were interesting and didn't nearly all have the same background - (usually Thranduil's wife or daughter.) 

 

I don't like pushing people towards making 'ethnic' characters or LGBTQ ones - I think that should be down to the personal interests of the writer. I would never ban characters based on ethnicity, gender, race/nationality or sexual orientation - to do so reveals ignorance, even when it bans 'normal' characters. I'd just like writers to create interesting, balanced,  sensible, non-stereotypical, non-Mary-Sue characters that are good to interact with.

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Diversity for the sake of diversity is... Kind of pointless in my opinion. But I've also seen boards that require ("encourage") players to roll non-white/LGBT, etc characters for every X white/straight character and others straight up ban white/straight characters. It gets to a point where you're doing more harm than good and your attempts to create a "diverse" board are, instead, crippling your player base.

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Personally, if diversity happens... great. But I'm not going to chase it. I'm not going to ask people to make something else. People will play what they want, either with me or without me. 

The way I see roleplay worlds are that for every character of a certain type there are so many more that aren't them. By that I mean if someone creates a young white woman, it doesn't mean there isn't a young black woman there. There are thousands of characters that exist in any world that just go about their lives. We don't see them or hear them, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. (This is the same reason I don't care about ratios. )

 

Plus, it also depends on setting. I mean in a historical based roleplay there may be reasons why there aren't many of a certain gender or race around. Like for a medieval kingdom set in England there really wouldn't have been many black people around at that time (due to the fact travel was so much more dangerous and time consuming).

Nor would there really be many women in the Knight profession. (Largely due to the fact Knights were warriors and, if chivalry were to be believed, it'd be a massive insult to allow a woman to fight and risk herself. Plus there is that whole physical component of being in combat wearing armour.)

 

Plus as a bit of an aside, I kind of think that people keep using diversity more as a virtual signal of how good they are rather than being something actually useful/real. Perhaps this is just me being skeptical due to tumblr influence in roleplay...

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"There are three sides to every story... Your side, their side, and then somewhere in the middle is the truth."
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@Kit the Human - honest question here.  Why does the LGB(T) community get a pass on the idea of "laziness"?

 

@VirusZero - I have to agree with you on the fact that sometimes more "diverse" characters might be there but "behind the scenes."  That's generally my thought when you're RPing in a town-based or open-world RP.  A more "controlled" setting such as a school or any RP where there is a strict census might be different.  I know in my Hunger Games RP, we had to be very strict about the number of males and females that went into the arena because that's canonical.

 

Also, it confuses me when people are pushing racial or sexuality diversity on a small town America RP. My general understanding is that many small American towns have a heavily white (or black or hispanic depending upon the area) population, and you're probably going to get more straight characters than not.  Larger cities and college towns might be otherwise.

 

The other thing that comes to mind is that people are generally playing what they want to play.  If people are making only female characters but then complaining about not having any male characters for relationship purposes . . . well, they kind of made their own problem there.  Be the change!

 

Really, you all have some good ideas and thoughts on the topic.  Thanks for contributing!

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2 hours ago, Uaithne said:

@Kit the Human - honest question here.  Why does the LGB(T) community get a pass on the idea of "laziness"?

 

Good question! Because I default to gay characters for a variety personal reasons (I have some straight characters too.) 

 

But I can be diverse within that very broad umbrella; and that's something I'm aware I can improve on. And I want to improve on.

 

I think that answers your question?

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PSI: an Occult Investigations RP

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You can also find me at:

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51 minutes ago, Kit the Human said:

 

Good question! Because I default to gay characters for a variety personal reasons (I have some straight characters too.) 

 

But I can be diverse within that very broad umbrella; and that's something I'm aware I can improve on. And I want to improve on.

 

I think that answers your question?

 

Yes it does, thanks.  I don't think it's necessarily lazy to play what you know or what you're comfortable with, so don't degrade your character abilities.  (Unless, of course, it's truly lazy.  But it doesn't sound as such.)  It's nice to explore and grow, but sometimes in baby steps.

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  • 2 months later...
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I play a rather diverse cast of characters. Out of my current crop, only one is white, but he’s an 82 year old Hungarian Jew with a playby of a man in his 80s. I’m taking on a wanted ad, he’s a white guy, but is in his 50s with a playby in his 50s. I have a Japanese lesbian pop singer with a minor disability, a black guy who grew up in a violent neighborhood and converted to Mormonism, and am almost done with the app on my cop who’s nominally Muslim (only went to the mosque on holidays as a kid for the most part) of Turkish and Azerbaijani heritage and is bisexual.

 

I’m a white bisexual girl with some invisible disabilities from California in a community that’s 80% white. I just find these concepts interesting and fun to play. When I see people talk about encouraging “diversity,” frankly I cringe and am tempted to run away. Usually it fetishizes me and the concepts I like to play. What it often seems like is people from privileged backgrounds engaging in slackivist feel good pseudo activism.

 

Playing a black person, or a lesbian means nothing frankly. That’s only a small part of a character. The “and” is more important. “He’s black and…and Catholic…and grew up rich…and is from Maine…”

 

I notice a lot people only talk about encouraging certain types of diversity. We don’t talk about age diversity very much, different economic backgrounds, religions, cultures or nationalities. I usually see a big emphasis on “POC” (a term which I find rather offensive) and LGBT+ with most people being too fearful or apprehensive to play the T. I’ve also seen people be dismissive about when someone gushes about their well researched say Swedish character when the discussion of diversity comes up because that isn’t “diverse” because he’s white, male, and heterosexual. It’s a very restrictive version of what the word means.

 

Basically, I’ll just keep writing the concepts that interest me. Just keep the light on for me and let me write what I want to.

 

When I had my rp set in modern day Japan (don’t have a site currently and am happy as a helpful member), I had an article on LGBT issues I wrote up myself, as well as an article Zainichi Koreans (Koreans either born and raised in Japan or stayed in Japan after WW2). With my faqs I included a list of transgender Japanese celebrities and some gender bending performers (because some people don’t want to play typical cis people to play a trans person). In my adoptable concepts, I included Koreans, people of different age groups, a Brazilian, a Tibetan/German, a trans man, etc. I even had a pair of conjoined twins. This was just to get an idea of what you could play on the site. People look at wanted ads, other adoptable concepts, and existing characters to get an idea of what is acceptable to play.

 

I’d say diversity is more important for staff than it is for players for that reason. Just remember that there are a lot of types of diversity.

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Diversity of all types should be a writer's inner challenge. Not to come from outside, but from within them. You aren't good at playing a male, a gay, an older character or a child? Research and practice makes it perfect. You won't ever be able to, if you don't try and persevere. Not a main character at first, a supporting one with limited story time is enough, but try, research and you'll succeed.

 

A writer should be able to write all kind of characters the story requires. And when I hear "I can't write males/ old people/ etc..." I get mad. Hello, they aren't aliens, they are just normal people, and surely you have some around to draw some inspiration from!

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