NPCs Are People, Too! - Social Insanity, Part 1

This is the first post in a series that will look at different components of the amorphous blob called society and how they're relative to realistic game worlds and to Shadows & Silver in general. Today's topic: Racism.

Sociology is the study of society and social structures and practices. Like literary criticism and economics, it's often called a "soft science", which is to say that, unlike mathematics or physics, you don't need to have concrete evidence to support hare-brained theories. You can basically just pull ideas out of your ass and people will nod thoughtfully and award you Nobel prizes. (Okay, maybe physics isn't the best example of an opposing science; work with me here.) You don't even have to make sense and, indeed, we often hold beliefs that are based on foolish theories about society that we didn't even know we had. Building a worldview (or, in the case of game developers, a world) on such mistaken assumptions can lead to a faulty end product.

(TANGENT: This is similar to why the U.S., which has for the past century held to the ideas of Keynesian economics, now finds itself in the current financial crisis. The assumption that the economy can be improved by violating the principles that make it work at all is flawed. In practice, the faulty idea actually produces the opposite of what it was supposed to: recession. Yes, it's deeper than that, but this is a post about racism, not stupidity (which, yes, will have its own entry).)

Anyway, finish these sentences.

1. Racism is bad because...
2. Racism exists because...
3. Racism is perpeturated by...
4. Racism can be eliminated by...

No, don't just keep reading. Actually do it. Finish the sentences. That way I can show you why your underlying social theories are illogical and that you suck. (Okay, no, it's so you can compare your logic, evaluate it against my theories and decide which makes more sense and why. If you disagree with me, comment and tell me why.)

If you're like most people, your answers probably go something like this:

1. Racism is bad because... all people are created equal, so no race is inherently better than another.
2. Racism exists because... people don't understand each other's cultures.
3. Racism is perpetuated by... racists spouting their ideas until people believe it.
4. Racism can be eliminated by... punishing racists for showing prejudice and/or spreading cultural awareness.

If you're like most people, you probably chose those answers as knee-jerk responses, because that's what society tells us. What we hear every day is usually what we regurgitate when people ask us what we think. (Hmm... maybe that's support for point 3?)

How would these ideas translate if placed into a game world? Take a typical example: dwarves and elves hate each other. The origin of this trope is found in the Silmarillion, in which a cadre of elves slaughtered a bunch of dwarves because they wanted their mithril mines. In Tolkien-dom, dwarves hate elves because the elves took the shiny stuff they like so much. The elves, of course, hate the dwarves for not understanding that they love shiny things too. Using the theory outlined above, we see the dwarves and elves hate each other because they don't understand each other's culture, right? And the hatred is perpetuated by the surly dwarves not wanting to see both sides of the issue. And the rift can be healed by folks deciding to set aside their differences and get along, a la Legolas and Gimli, right?

This is often the route we take when deciding on the social makeup of fantasy world. Why, in pretty much any given world, do dwarves and elves hate each other? It's not that it's a pervasive stereotype, but that there's a pervasive mode of thought that gives birth to it. Ridding yourself of the stereotype does nothing to rid yourself of the foolish thought that caused the stereotype to exist in the first place. The world in which dwarves and elves are friendly is not significantly different than the world in which they are enemies.

"Wait a minute," I hear you say. "So we're not supposed to make dwarves and elves enemies, but we're not supposed to make them friends, either?" No, the point is that, in either case, the core assumptions are there.

Tolkien does not make the same assumptions about racism that we so often do. In his mind, the dwarves and elves do not hate each other because of a lack of cultural awareness, nor is the chasm between them bridged by a conscious act of goodwill. Tolkien has a specific context, a reason for the enmity: the slaughter of dwarves out of greed. It's not a lack of cultural awareness: it's a natural reaction of hostility after a tragic crime against dwarfdom. No matter that thousands of years have passed. Elves and dwarves are still at odds over a real and very hurtful wound. At the end of the Return of the King, Legolas and Gimli heal the rift not by overcoming cultural differences but by finding that they can love and trust each other and, by extension, each other's races. In Tolkien's world, it's a wondrous statement of the power of friendship. When we try to keep the trope but rob it of the context, our worlds pale in comparison to the Master's.

"So that's it, then? Just give people a reason to hate each other rather than doing it as a matter of course?" No, while that's a step, there's much more to a realistic examination of racism than that. And chances are, if you care about internal consistency at all, you already have reasons for your racial conflicts. But if this is all you've got, then that's just what it is: racial conflict rather than racism.

"Dammit, Michael, what's your point?!?"

Lemme lay it out for you. In Tolkien, the crime against the dwarves was a conflict, and anger towards the perpetrators is an extension of the conflict. Racism is when the hatred towards those who committed the atrocity is expanded to those who did not commit it. So, in effect, it's not a group of elves that killed your people and took your mines, but the elves. That is racism.

Racism is the judgement of a person based on his race, a superficial quality, raher than on his identity, qualities, or actions.

So to a racist dwarf, Legolas is not a valiant warrior who stands out because of his own deeds. Rather, he's an elf, and all that that implies.

Context provides conflict, but, in the minds of racists, it also gives weight to the beliefs they hold. Indeed, the context is seen not as the cause of the racist beliefs, but as their vindication.

To take a real-world example, most of the Christian era has seen racism towards Jews. Common racist beliefs were that Jews wanted to undermine society, destroy the Church, and steal all the Europeans' money. One of the primary reasons for the hatred was that "Jews killed Christ", thus, by extension, making all Jews Christ-killers. "Only a people possessed by Satan could kill Jesus," they'd say, supposing that this was all the proof they needed that Jews were unpatriotic, intolerant, and greedy. Thus the conflict was used as vindication of the beliefs about them. It wasn't a lack of cultural awareness that could be healed by a sudden wave of understanding and the urge to stand around in a circle and sing Kumbaya. While there's still some racism towards the Jews, most of it was squashed by the Holocaust. (To think about: is this because people suddenly realized how ludicrous and dangerous it was to lump others into a group just based on race? Or was it because people suddenly said, "Dude, I think what we did to them is worse than whatever they supposedly did to us"? Since racism is still so widespread, my money is on the latter.)

Why does racism exist? I believe racism serves an inherent social need: namely, to associate with others who are like us. We want to find a group to which we can belong and feel safe with. The more homogenous, the better. In addition, we want to place others in groups and define why they don't belong in ours. You see it in high school: the nerds hang with the nerds, and the jocks with the jocks. If you decide to buck the system, you're a social outcast that none of the cliques want.

But that's not all racism is, right? After all, that would imply that jocks excluding nerds from their clique is an example of racism, right? Correct, which is why we go a step further. Racism is defined as sorting people into groups based on superficial characteristics like physical appearance or ancestry, things that have no bearing on a person's identity (unless they're superficial people as well; the stereotypical high school cheerleader, for example, finds her identity in her appearance). Furthermore, we make the assumption that all people who share that quality share other qualities as well. Jews are soulless, unpatriotic, and greedy. Blacks are uneducated, criminals, and violent. Whites are power-hungry, hateful, and oppressors. The list goes on.

It's not a lack of cultural awareness that causes this but that drive to associate ourselves with a group and hate anyone that's not part of that group. It's not solved by learning some random facts about someone else's group or eating some sort of weird ethnic food (despite the current trends in American schools). It's done by recognizing that people are people, real and unique and worthwhile in their own right, not cardboard cutouts whose only quality is their appearance.

So what does it all boil down to? Basically this: if you're going to have racism, understand how racism works. Have reasons races are at odds, but recognize that the creatures in the game are all people, too. They hate each other to the degree that they choose to find differences upon which to base their persecutions. They also don't all fit the mold you want them to.

Not all dwarves hate all elves. And if that doesn't occur to you when you add a "dwarves hate elves" trope to your world, you're probably either lazy or a racist yourself.

Lore snippet: Humans in Enna enjoy their place at the top of the world. The rest of the races aren't demi-humans; they're subhumans. Orcs, goblins, and even dwarves, are all their misshapen, under-evolved cousins. Nature has destined humans to be dominant, and why not? They're the good guys after all, right?

In Adunay, no one suffers more than goblins. Unlike Krunag orcs, which are openly reviled, goblins are treated as you'd treat a dog turd on your shoe. Goblins have no legal status in Adunay, and can be enslaved, tortured, or even killed without question. As such, there's no goblin society to speak of, save that which can survive in hiding.

Creating Conflict

I've been considering lore and storyline a lot lately while I script, and one of the things I keep returning to is creating compelling conflict in the world. There's several things to keep in mind while creating conflict for S&S.

First, I want the conflict to be realistic. In the real world, though we like to think in terms of good guys vs. bad guys (we Americans are especially notorious for this), conflict is complicated. There are heroes and villains on both sides of every conflict and, though history is generally written by the victors, there's no "right side" in realistic conflicts.

From the beginning, one of the guiding principles of Shadows & Silver has been that there would be no overarching good vs. evil conflict, so it doesn't work to have traditional goblin raiders or the dragon that terrorizes the countryside. Rather, who you root for will depend on your perspective. A good example here is the War of Burdean Sovereignty. From the perspective of Burdeans, Burdea's sovereignty was more important than the political unity of Adunay. The belief in the ability of small states to govern themselves compelled them to action against what they perceived to be an oppressive regime. This is contrasted by the other Adunean states, which believed the strength of a united Adunay was more important than the rights of any individual state. As a character in the world, your viewpoint likely comes down to whether you see yourself as a citizen of Adunay or of your state. Burdeans, for example, are fiercely protective of their independence, and see themselves as Burdeans first and Aduneans second.

Burdea versus Adunay is a representation of the conflict of political identity, but also of security versus liberty. Most soldiers on either side of the war did not sit down to think about where they stood on the individual issues. Rather, the source of their national pride determined how they reacted to the different conflicts the War created.

Second, history is not linear, not just a series of events. Rather, it is a complex web of ideas, actions, and consequences. The effects of any action can be felt across the centuries, just as a butterfly beating its wings in the Pacific causes a hurricane in Florida. It's the way of the world, and the way of a realistic setting.

In S&S, the war with Burdea had consequences that continue to this day. For one, it caused unrest and political dissent in the populace at large on both sides. Social upheaval became a daily occurrence. The infighting also weakened the security of Adunay, making it vulnerable to those both within and without. The old monarchies fought for control even as the coalition devolved into chaos. In reaction to that, a wave of conquests swept Adunay, culminating in the establishment of an Adunean Empire ruled by martial law. Power and wealth lead the Empire to attack its neighbors, and the resulting war with the northern Krunags led to the Empire's fall, once again plunging the land into chaos. Today, though the Confederation has nominally established control over Adunay, but the revolutions continue. Hundreds of factions pull the government this way and that, others seek its downfall entirely.

Thirdly, it's important for the players to have lots of adversaries, but no real villain. Even if the PCs were to put aside their differences and pursue a common goal (how unrealistic is that?), there shouldn't be a Big Bad Evil Guy™ to focus on. Remember, conflict is not found in bad guys; it's found in ideas you oppose.

For a real world example, consider the Palestinian vs. Israel conflict. The conflict is not between people but between ideas. It's not a good guys versus bad guys conflict or a terrorists versus democracy conflict. It's not Hamas versus Mossad. It's one ethnic group's nationalism versus another group's nationalism. It's an idea versus an idea. So, while the idea you support has opponents, there is no "bad guy" to focus your attention on. To win the conflict, you have to unseat an idea, not a leader.

In S&S, a similar conflict can be found in the colonization of former Nerath by the Aduneans and Salicians. These countries see themselves as bringing civilization to the backwards people of the eastern Plain, and they inevitably find themselves in conflict with the native peoples, who don't take kindly to being treated like the scum of the earth. The real conflict here is in the ideas. The West believes that, because of its technological superiority, it has the right to the resources of the East, and that spreading their civilization to them and ridding them of the "Brown Menace" is more than payment. The East believes its ways are its own, regardless of any technical inferiority, and that its lands are not open for exploitation by Western powers.

Finally, conflict exists independently of the PCs. It's not there so the PCs have something to fix. It's there because that's the way things are. If the PCs want to jump in and try to fix things, great. But if their shortsightedness simply messes things up more, even better. National and ethnic conflict is not easily settled, especially when it has lasted for centuries, and creating the illusion of true conflict within the game world requires a lot of forethought.

Think about the role you want conflict to play in your setting. Do you want bad guys versus good guys, or do you want something more fluid, more dynamic? How do you plan to complicate things? Do you want to try to teach the players a lesson as they unravel conflicts into their component ideas? Or do you want a sort of sandbox for them to deal with real-world conflicts within the game?

For those of you participating in S&S, what conflicts would you like to see played out? Most interested here in conflicts of ideas as listed above, but perhaps you have ideas for various factions that might vie against each other?

Finding Inspiration

I'm having fun ripping my hair out over the ambient system (which, though I hesitate to give any solid details yet, has become an epic-scope AI system), and reading Casa's latest post reminds me of the need to keep my inspiration up.

Building a PW is a lot of work. Like, scary lot. To the point where you almost imagine who in their right minds would do it without getting paid. It helps, of course, that I'm not content to cobble together a bunch of existing scripts and insist on rewriting everything (even if it ends up being the exact same code) I find just so it does exactly what I want. Still, I'd have imagined I'd get more done in the now over two years that I've been building.

So how does one find the inspiration for continuing a project that has already taken so much time and will yet consume so much more than it already has? I suppose on some level it's by reminding yourself that you've invested too much time and effort to quit now. But on another, it's the thought of how beautiful the finished product will be.

I began S&S as a labor of love, and along the way I've found others who are similarly entranced with both Neverwinter Nights and the opportunity to tell a compelling story. That love, I think, will be something that players will feel when they begin playing on the server, and it also means I'll be happier with the final product.

Yesterday I sat back and began to imagine playing in the world. Not just how the systems would work, or what the conversations would say, or how the areas would be designed. No, I began to think about the role-play that would come out of it, the stories I want to tell, and the characters I want to grow in it. Not so much from the point of view of a writer and a DM but from that of a player. I felt the atmosphere and the weight of the themes that flow through the world. I let my mind wander through the broad spectrum of people I'd meet, the places I'd see, and secrets I'd uncover. And even though I was imagining what I've already been trying to create, seeing it through the fresh new eyes of a prospective player gave me a new vigor. I don't want to just get this thing built and run it; I want to play in it, too.

How do you keep up your inspiration in your project?

Lore snippet: One of the causes for the current tensions between the states of the Confederacy of Adun was the War of Burdean Sovereignty. Burdea, a state in Upper Adunay that suffered heavily in the war with Nerath, tried to leave the coalition rather than submit to the rule of the new Confederation government. Claiming Burdea was sovereign over its own affairs, Major General Alexei Graudyn led his troops in storming Fort Lussk, a Confederation stronghold. He was hailed as a folk hero and continued his raids against Confederation forts for fourteen months. When Burdean Prime Minister Hendrick Chatham, fearing Graudyn's political aspirations, had him arrested and hanged for treason without a trial, Burdea plunged into civil war. The Confederation leapt at the chance to crush the vulnerable republic. All that remains of its cities are the blackened husks of buildings, and most of its people live in refugee camps throughout Adunay.

Shameless Cross-Promotion

I don't know how many people read this blog, other than those who are helping with or actively working on Shadows & Silver. Nevertheless, I thought I'd suggest that those of you who aren't in our little group take a look at some of those links in the sidebar there. Most of those helping with Shadows & Silver have their own projects, and most of those people have their own blogs detailing their progress.

In particular, I want to note Ben Harrison's new blog "The End Times", chronicling the development of his new project. Though Ben has been actively working in the NWN community for years now, he's undertaking a new PW project and made his first blog post today. Ben's been a big supporter of S&S, and he's helped Casa tremendously. I look forward to seeing his progress and (hopefully) getting to assist in making his dream project come true.

Best of luck, Ben. :)

A little more detail

Thought I'd take a break from scripting the ambient system to make a blog post.

So in the last entry I posted an exceedingly boring screenshot of a dude in a brown overcoat and equated him to one of the most famous arch-mages in D&D-geek culture. What gives? We'll talk a little more about Dante here.

Origin
Little is known about Dante save that he's a retired Churchman. As an Archonist, he traveled about the Plain seeking knowledge useful to the Church. After the most recent war with Nerath (about forty years ago), he retired to Midport, using the considerable wealth he gained in the war to build an inn. It was there that he founded the Order of the Ouroboros, an association of alchemists and adventure-seekers who continue his work seeking out occult knowledge in th Plain.

But behind every truth, there is a deeper truth. Dante, in fact, is responsible for much of the state of the world, and especially for the progress of alchemic study. Though I won't spoil any possible plots for those of you who may play on S&S when it is finally released, I'll let it drop that Dante is who you can thank for the triumph of science over mysticism in western culture.

Well, that was disappointingly minimal in the way of exposition. Okay, here's another, more juicy fact: Dante is one of the controlling investors in Aether Technologies, Inc. (better known as AetherTech). AetherTech is at the forefront of alchemic research in Emorlad, and its inventions are creeping into every corner of Adunay. It is both loved as a symbol of Adunean ingenuity and despised as a pit of Machiavellian bureaucracy. AetherTech is deeply entrenched into Adunean politics as well, and there's some speculation among the less patrotic of Adunay that AetherTech started the current war with the northern state of Kruna to profit from the sale of arms.

Motives
So Dante has his fingers in some not-so-nice business. I thought he was supposed to be a good guy, you say.

One of the underlying truths of human nature (and a concept which I hope to reflect in the morally grey world of Shadows & Silver) is that there are no such things as good people or bad people. In truth, there is good and bad in each of us. In some the good is stronger; in others, the bad is stronger. It's rather like the old Native American story, when the old man tells his grandson, "Whichever dog I feed the most is the winner."

It may seem a pedantic distinction, but it's not. In fact, it's a distinction that, if we made more often, would vastly improve both the quality of our role-play and the quality of our lives. Both in our games and in RL, we like to separate things into boxes in a futile attempt to quantify the world. The adventurers are good, the goblins are evil. The Allies were good, the Nazis were evil. It's an easy way to approach the world. It's convenient, and simple, to imagine yourself on the side of good.

But flip the coin to the other side. The Nazis believed they were doing good, for example. Solidifying control of the world under what they presumed was the rightful ruling race was, in their minds, one of the greatest goods they could achieve. In their war and their genocides, they believed they were accomplishing a noble and righteous goal.

Those goblins raiding the caravan likely believe the same. They're defending their territory from the ever-encroaching humans, taking back some small measure of the wealth stolen from their land. Curious, isn't it, how we put them into the "evil" box just because their goals conflict with ours.

So what is all of this to say? As Socrates tells us, no man willingly does evil. If he does evil, it's because he is trying to do good, either for himself or for another; his reason and, thus, his methods are simply clouded. Dante... well, his reason is clouded sometimes, though he refuses to admit it. He's not dogmatic, like many Churchmen. Since he's one of the more powerful forces in Emorlad, he tends to try to "fix" things, attempting to remake the world the way he thinks it should be. Unlike your typical, mislead tyrant, though, he sees himself simply as an agent of the change, not the destined ruler. He's quite happy to work in the background (or have others do the work for him) in order to make things right.

As the saying goes, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette.