> This has bugged me for years. It's occurred to me that
Science
> Fiction and Fantasy, while generally "progressive" in tone, has
always had
> this flirtation with racism (and class, of course) -- in a lot of
novels,
> and moreso in games, birth is destiny. If you are playing a Dwarf,
you will
> have high strength and constitution (or might and endurance or
whatever),
> lower dexterity, be bad at magic, etc. Glorantha and its various
systems,
> it seems to me, have been against that -- sure, there are racial
and
> cultural trends: Uz are big and hungry, enlo are stupid, dwarves
are
> "mechanical," Heortlings crude and ignorant, Black Oaks shifty,
etc, but
> there are a lot of individual exceptions. Individual choices seem
to matter
> in a way that is absent from a lot of fantasy worlds.
I strongly agree. Furthermore, many of these stereotypes are then
subverted, and presented simply as rival perspectives. Uz are big
and hungry, sure, but then when you look closer, you realise that
they are not *just* big and hungry, but proud, wise, sorrowful,
jolly, kin-minded, etc, and to them humans are these dangerous,
runty despoilers...
Mark