Unpacking thoughts I've been having about HoW

I’m really enjoying the game. I hope everyone is to. I might do a Stars and Wishes thread just for fun, so we can celebrate bits we liked.

Anyway.

I have been struggling with the game, in the light of a discourse that’s happening in the RPG space in the last couple weeks. It boils down to:

White players: We want to play POC characters.
POC players: Please don’t.
White players: How dare you.

Because I know who I want to listen to in that situation. And I look at games like HoW, or Cartel, or Nahual, which have POC by lines, and I have to wonder is that enough for my white ass to step into the space.

Anyway. Been turning it over a lot, and finally reached out to some POC gamer and creator friends to get their thoughts, because I’d like to not be the problem.

One creator I talked with put it in a way that put me in a good head space again.

“If they [the POC creators] are inviting you to play it and providing instructions on how to play it from their perspective, then yes, that’s enough.”

That was the piece my mind wasn’t grasping.

Anyway, probably no one else was especially stressed about this, and if so, yay! My take-away from this is “take another glance at the sections of the book on approaching the material respectfully, and be extremely mindful about that.”

Anyway. Off we go. See you all tonight.

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I’m going to concur with the advice your friend gave you. While I’m far from an expert in these things, I do feel like we’ve engaged with the game and its content in good faith and a respectable manner.

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Ditto.

I’ve seen this discourse play out and I’m happy with this attitude: “how do I, a white person, play this game from nonwhite people, centering a nonwhite perspective?” “Respectfully.”

This goes for Afrofuturist games like Into the Motherlands, Pasión de las Pasiones, and more. Like this game, PdlP isn’t even having you play characters from real life, but rather emulates a specific fictional genre.

So it’s something to always keep somewhere in mind, but I don’t feel uncomfortable here. If I did, or if any of you do, the appropriate thing is to speak up

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