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Friday, September 16, 2011

Teaching Hate #1

As you probably know, racism is a very funny and lighthearted subject. It is completely harmless and highly entertaining. Because of this, I had conducted a small social experiment last year I would now like to share with you.

I had picked several older groups that had a considerable dragonborn minority and placed them in a city where dragonborn were the largest racial group, but significantly smaller than all other groups combined. Most dragonborn were honest mercenaries or craftsmen, but being honest, they never came into the PCs' radars. Instead, the PCs got roughed up by dragonborn ruffians, injured in dragonborn terrorist attacks and witnessed a bloodbath in dragonborn street riots.

The dragonborn are an ancient race of honorable warriors - what right do these soft newcomers have to force their laws on us? Oh, it's their city and we're the newcomers? Well, screw them, we're stronger, we're the offspring of dragons, they're furless apes!

Dragonborn kids want to LARP too. Also, sexual harassment suit coming in 9,8,7...

A small but vicious group called "Sons of the Dragon" was sweeping the masses and dragging the whole city into hell. Meanwhile, angered, the dictator of the city took harsher and harsher steps against the dragonborn, culminating in the Massacre in Heroes' Square in which the PCs had the dubious honor of participating.

On any side they chose.

I did not express my personal opinion on the issue even once. Instead, I gave the players total freedom and watched how they dealt with this situation. The result was... curious.

2 comments:

  1. Well, now I just have to know what happened.

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  2. This is the follow up post: http://dndkids.blogspot.com/2011/11/teaching-hate-2.htmlt

    ReplyDelete