[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Social Stigma

[Kromm]

Prejudice against an actual race – Ferengi, orcs, werewolves, or whatever – works better than prejudice against a cultural, ethnic, or religious group, or every member of one sex. That's because as far as we know, we have just humans in the real world . . . so unless you're using nonhumans as code for real-world groups (which is lazy world-building, and best avoided), you're unlikely to offend your players. In some genres, it's even a convention; e.g., nobody likes orcs, ogres, or similar "monster races," or those scary tentacle aliens who conquer planets and turn everyone into thralls with mind-control implants and exploding slave collars.

But Social Stigmas based on culture, ethnicity, faith, nationality, or sex require such delicate handling that "not fun" is just a slip of the tongue away from offending somebody. Those things are best recast as Intolerance on the part of NPC villains, as making stigmatizing entire groups a flaw on the part of those doing the stigmatizing – and inherently villainous – is much easier to digest. Most players have no problem with punching Nazis, so to speak.

Social Stigmas based on class get half a pass. If the class in question is strictly based on wealth and arbitrary social rules weakly tied or completely unrelated to ethnicity, faith, nationality, or sex, such a Stigma can work in a campaign where the PCs have it and are the heroic underdogs; most players have little or no difficulty with the idea of deposing the 1% or even the 10% who oppress the PCs. But in real-world societies, class tends to get entangled with things best avoided in the game (that is, it's inseparable from unearned privilege). Even when it isn't, the GM needs to work hard to ensure that the ruling class who have the power to stigmatize everyone else are sufficiently villainous; often, it works best to go all the way to Subjugated, because few or no players have a problem with rising up and deposing inhuman slave lords. Otherwise, Intolerance works best here, too.

The Stigmas that cause the least trouble at the gaming table are the ones that tend to go with rebels who did things their way (Criminal Record, Disowned, and Excommunicated), those that are temporary and suffered by everybody at some point (Minor), and those that can fairly be ascribed to monster races as noted above (Monster and, if you're careful, Minority Group or Second-Class Citizen). Otherwise, Intolerance is safer.

I know there are soi-disant "simulationists" who would defend the "need" for potentially offensive Social Stigmas in realistic historical campaigns, because they can't find examples of black millionaires in the Antebellum South, have issues with powerful woman warriors in medieval Turkey, or whatever. I think it best just to adjust the society to permit all character types as valid PCs, to have the unusualness of certain PCs be nothing more than a zero-point feature (most people find it surprising, sure, but react differently rather than worse or better), and to give Intolerance to those who have ultra-conservative racist/sexist views . . . who should in most cases be villains the PCs can defeat.

[Kromm]

To put that another way:

In all those older GURPS worldbooks that mention Social Stigmas for women, people of color, certain cultures (say, Romani or Jews), and so on, do this:

1. Remove the Social Stigma write-ups for those groups. Just delete them!

2. Add an Intolerance write-up explaining that Intolerance of those groups is more common in the setting than it is in our world today, and reminding gamers that such Intolerance tends to be a villainous trait, like Megalomania and Sadism.

3. In discussions of character types and templates, remove any words that suggest that a member of those groups who wields notable power – as a warrior, bureaucrat, inventor, crime lord, entrepreneur, or whatever – requires the GM's permission or should be forbidden as unrealistic. Replace those words with something along the lines of "since such a person would be unusual and stand out in a strict real-world interpretation of the setting, they would make an excellent PC!" After all, PCs are supposed to be exceptional.

And do exactly the same thing in your campaign notes.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

But Social Stigmas based on culture, ethnicity, faith, nationality, or sex require such delicate handling that "not fun" is just a slip of the tongue away from offending somebody. Those things are best recast as Intolerance on the part of NPC villains, as making stigmatizing entire groups a flaw on the part of those doing the stigmatizing – and inherently villainous – is much easier to digest. Most players have no problem with punching Nazis, so to speak.

From a fairness toward players and game balance point of view, it's unfair to have a character receive no points for the fact that a substantial number of NPCs in the campaign world will treat them badly, refuse to listen to them, respect them less, be less likely to help them, etc.

From a philosophical point of view, you can say that the reason that a character has Social Stigma is not any kind of flaw in their makeup, but rather the Intolerance of others, but from a game design point of view, that Intolerance of others really does constrain and limit the character, who should thus receive points for this.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

From a fairness toward players and game balance point of view, it's unfair to have a character receive no points for the fact that a substantial number of NPCs in the campaign world will treat them badly, refuse to listen to them, respect them less, be less likely to help them, etc.

To double-underline what I said: It won't be "a substantial number of NPCs in the campaign world." Most NPCs will raise an eyebrow but not care. As I said, it'll be villains – those who might also have things like Megalomania and Sadism – who will have Intolerance. And villains generally treat the PCs badly anyway, so that's worth no extra points.

The entire point of my argument is to remove "everybody hates these guys, just because" from games and make hatred a villain disadvantage. For instance, in a campaign where all Nazis hate Jews and only some PCs are Jews, Nazis will all be villains and treat all PCs badly because they're on the other side. What the Intolerance does is give the GM cause to show Nazis mistreating certain NPCs, and thus the PCs an excuse to shoot Nazis.

[awesomenessofme1]

That's all well and good for some combinations of setting and genre, but if nothing else, there are situations where there will be practical legal issues, separate from reactions. And you can just handwave that, but like I said, it depends on the setting and genre.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

it depends on the setting and genre.

. . . and gamer comfort levels. My objective is to address that. It tends to get left out, and it's more important than setting or genre: uncomfortable gamers -> gamers who leave -> no campaign -> setting and genre irrelevant. I've seen that exact chain of events occur many, many times, though only once over in-world prejudice.

Also, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a publisher. I firmly believe that more customers would be put off by a game that takes a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-was stance on real-world ugliness in what's supposed to be a fun pastime than would be put off by a game that dials back historical realism a bit for the sake of being less ugly and more fun for gaming. Traditionally, GURPS has had a kernel of gamers who like stark realism, but I don't particularly believe that they're the majority in 2020.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

. . . and gamer comfort levels. My objective is to address that. It tends to get left out, and it's more important than setting or genre: uncomfortable gamers -> gamers who leave -> no campaign -> setting and genre irrelevant. I've seen that exact chain of events occur many, many times, though only once over in-world prejudice.

Also, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a publisher. I firmly believe that more customers would be put off by a game that takes a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-was stance on real-world ugliness in what's supposed to be a fun pastime than would be put off by a game that dials back historical realism a bit for the sake of being less ugly and more fun for gaming. Traditionally, GURPS has had a kernel of gamers who like stark realism, but I don't particularly believe that they're the majority in 2020.

Even if you don't want to cater to realism, in terms of drama, stories run on conflict and heroes are often defined by overcoming obstacles. Real-world ugliness makes for good conflict and good obstacles.

Practically speaking, a whole lot of genres, stories and adventure hooks only work because the protagonists do not have a lot of social capital and thus can't simply rely on authorities. Without prejudice, willful ignorance and xenophobia, PCs telling the truth about serious threats will, all too often for good adventuring, be believed.

Indeed, in a world where only villains, clearly marked as such and thus easy to deal with, have the prejudices humans have in the real world, the authorities are likely so competent and reasonable that problems are all solved with well-organized, fair, balanced and competent official action, where there is certainly no need for heroes who stand outside the structure of law and order.

[awesomenessofme1]

Sure, but there's a difference between making concessions for the sake of player enjoyment/comfort and just throwing out all pretense of historical accuracy. The scenario you describe sounds a lot closer to the latter to me. And I'm not even opposed to doing that, but I'd definitely be put off if a game like GURPS assumed it to be the default.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Kromm

To double-underline what I said: It won't be "a substantial number of NPCs in the campaign world." Most NPCs will raise an eyebrow but not care. As I said, it'll be villains – those who might also have things like Megalomania and Sadism – who will have Intolerance.

I definitely like the idea if moving it from Social Stigma to Intolerance. I actually did that in a recent campaign; The king was very blatantly racist and was already set up to be the villain against the largely half-human party.

Originally Posted by Kromm

. . . and gamer comfort levels. My objective is to address that. It tends to get left out, and it's more important than setting or genre: uncomfortable gamers -> gamers who leave -> no campaign -> setting and genre irrelevant. I've seen that exact chain of events occur many, many times, though only once over in-world prejudice.

That's honestly happened to me as a GM. I dropped a campaign because I didn't like being a part of it and it was entirely my fault.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

That's honestly happened to me as a GM. I dropped a campaign because I didn't like being a part of it and it was entirely my fault.

It happened to me, as the GM, before play even began. I tend to be something of a method actor at the tabletop, and I started to have a bit of a slow onset panic attack while merely preparing for one particular villain. Admittedly, it wasn't a run of the mill bigot, but Josef Mengele.