"The fictional lands of The Priory of the Orange Tree are inspired by events and legends from various parts of the world. None is intended as a faithful representation of any one country or culture at any point in history." - Samantha Shannon, "Author's Note" from The Priory of the Orange Tree

A very similar disclaimer featured on the final page of earlier versions of Traverse. Ultimately I removed it. I felt like including the disclaimer put me above criticisms of racism; like saying, "Hey, if you think my portrayals are racist you must have misinterpreted - read my author's note!" As a white person, I will never be above such criticisms - and, as I outline below, will often deserve them.

Rereading my game manual is a comfort activity for me. When my freelancing jobs have dried up, when depression hits and spoons run out and ongoing creative projects aren't inspiring me, I sometimes look at or listen to or otherwise revisit old projects. I don't know if I was in a particularly disillusioned mood this time or if clarity came through some other channel, but rereading Traverse was not comforting this time around. I realized, as I read, that my game is racist.

In building my world and my playable people groups, I was, like Samantha Shannon, inspired by real world cultures. I included a diverse collection of appearances to play, because I wanted my game world to reflect the diversity of our world. Like Shannon, however, I never intended to have any Tarxian heritage represent the cultural or historical reality of real people groups. I'm neither an anthropologist nor an historian, and I'm white to boot: I knew I would never be able to fairly represent a real world people group in my fantasy realm.

I amalgamated and invented, diverted and altered, and wrote up ten playable heritages - and what I wrote were summaries full of stereotypes, many of which have been used as tools of harm and disparagement throughout history. The description of my wood elves, whose language counterpart is Cree, includes the adjective "savage". "Honour" is used multiple times in the description of my people group who live amongst cherry blossoms.

I have realized that the real reason I felt uncomfortable with my disclaimer was because it was necessary. Readers of the handbook are almost likely to read my description of a certain Tarxian heritage and think I tried to replicate a real world culture. They may well read about the history of my fantasy people group and think I paralleled or attempted to parallel something real. And honestly, whatever my intentions, they wouldn't be wrong - especially if they are a person from the culture that I caricatured, generalized, bastardized, or amalgamated. If they see themselves or their heritage stereotyped in the pages of my handbook, who am I to and on what grounds can my disclaimer contradict them?

If the reader is white, like me, or just not of a culture involved in the background of a certain Tarxian "invention", my stereotyping and generalizing is hardly less harmful - if this reader learns about my honourbound martial artists and thinks, "Yeah, sounds like Japan to me" then I am implicated in the Orientalism even if I am not responsible for the nuance and breadth of every consumer's interpretation. 

While a consumer's interpretation is ultimately up to their own discretion, I am responsible to create something that is not so easy to "misinterpret", if I permit myself such an egregiously generous statement in reference to my current handbook (v. 2). "I encourage you to research further if you think I have accurately mirrored any real world culture," I wrote in my deleted disclaimer. But hasn't the damage already been done if a reader thinks that I accurately mirrored a real world culture? Haven't I already leaned into known stereotypes and relied on tired tropes? My disclaimer just foisted the blame and dodged the responsibility.

When spiraling into rhetorical questions and desperate theories following my realization, I ventured into other fantasy realms to consider their fantastical peoples. I spent time, for example, with Tolkien's dwarves. His orcs are known racial stereotypes - "swarthy", monstrous, evil - and his Southrons and Easterlings are not even thinly veiled, but his dwarves have largely become ubiquitous, popularly removed from their roots. But Tolkien himself said that the Dwarves were "like Jews." Characteristics, then, like a love of gold, become attached to Semitic stereotypes. (I encourage you to read this article for more on Tolkien's dwarves.) Likewise, that I've associated honour with a group of people with an "East Asian" look gives the association baggage that it wouldn't have if attached to a pale-skinned people (where it would elicit thoughts of chivalry and knighthood instead of Orientalism). 

Other fantasy works have avoided obvious racial stereotyping by popularly featuring only white-skinned peoples of various physiologies (halflings, dwarves, humans, elves) and then completely inhuman peoples (dragonborn, tieflings, tabaxi). This is something I don't want to do with Traverse. I want people of colour to be able (literally, visually) to see themselves as the heroes in my handbook and in their game worlds without having to, say, invent another continent or homebrew a culture.

Ultimately, I am writing handbook summaries and not a novel like Samantha Shannon, wherein I could provide greater nuance and deeper exploration. Each of the heritages in Traverse gets a very brief Wikipedia article, and that little article must naturally contain generalizations and stereotypes that could never properly encapsulate an entire people group. It is inevitably like summing up the citizens of a whole country in a few paragraphs; if writing about Canada, apologies might be mentioned, hockey will come up, and kindness and peace, maybe strip mining and genocide if the writer is balanced - but will the paragraphs have space to talk about the distinctly Canadian South Asian communities in some wide valley near the west coast?  Will it feel comprehensive, will it cover everything every Canadian feels to be a Canadian quality? No. It will be an insufficient collection of generalizations and stereotypes.

It is my responsibility, then, to find a way to include peoples of diverse appearance in my handbook without falling back on stereotypes with racist baggage. To "balance" deceptive guerilla warfare with egalitarian treatment of gender, as I've done, is not enough - it's only making my gold-loving dwarves mighty and strong. I also don't want to simply turn racial stereotypes into "positives" - I want to remove them entirely and replace them with unfettered qualities that will still lend human nuance to each heritage - as I've done, for example, with my people groups of inhuman physiology, and as I've done for elements of each people group.

I think I will also add to my inclusivity appendix a paragraph or two explicitly encouraging players to flavour their characters' communities with elements of their own cultures - to invent beyond the generalizations in the handbook and bring life to an intimate cultural niche within the grander scheme of their heritage as stereotyped in the handbook.

I honestly don't know if these measures are proper solutions, but I hope they mean something. If nothing else, and it probably will be, this exercise has helped wake me up a little bit more.

Thanks for reading, and, as always - I'm listening, or trying to.

- Adriel