Not talking about race wont make it go away?
It is certainly part of the solution. Let me pose a hypothetical.

If you have a child who was white and never told them that someone of a different skin tone was different to them, would they ever think that they are better or worse based on their skin colour?
Racism is taught. You are not born with racial bias, children see no difference. All they care about is if you will play with them. Children who see no difference grow up to become adults who see no difference.
Like myself, I do not care what skin colour you have, all I care about is if you are a good person.

Imagine if every parent in the world decided one day to stop teaching that people of other skin colours were different, would that not end racism?
When you bring race to the forefront of the conversation, when you make it the focus of a character in a game, what you achieve is demonstrating that the person who does not look like you is different from you.

Let me ask you this, when did you learn about racism? Was it innate, or was it taught?

When people say that they need a POC character to identify with, all that is highlighting is that THEY believe that there is a difference between the races. I do not. People are not the same, each individual is unique, but it is not their skin colour that defines them.

I believe there are only two differences between any human being, TIME and PLACE.
You are you because you where born and when. Change one of those and you become a different person. This is how I empathize with and under stand everyone I speak to, because they could have been me, they ARE me, but born in a different time and place. Everything else we share.

A lot of this discussion about race and skin color for Baldur's Gate seems to be coming from people who don't have a firm understanding that the Baldur's Gate series is not some standalone franchise existing in a vacuum. It's part of the Forgotten Realms. There ARE different races of human and prejudice and nationalism are things, whether they're overtly represented in the games or not. People of the Sword Coast are described as "tall build, pale skin, hair of flame or straw, and eyes of hazel or blue" and seem to be a fairer subset of Chondathan.

Not that the games seem to really care about the source materials. The Rashemaar (Minsc) are supposed to be very stocky, usually around 5'- 5'6", max. They all have thick black hair with men all sporting beards and baldness is entirely unheard of, lastly they're supposed to have dusky skin like the Bengali. Minsc has the skin color, more or less, and his vaguely Russian accent matches the culture, but the buck stops there. Dynaheir is pretty much wrong across the board. Near as I can figure is they figured that the Thayvians had a respectable population of Turmish people and so figured that a Hathran in Rashemen might not necessarily have been Rashemaar (which is preposterous). Not just because while only somewhat common in Thay, the Turmish people have never been described as having any significant (or even minor) population in Rashemen, nor would their ruling caste secretly be flooded with them.

And that's an issue that follows Valygar around too. It'd be one thing if he was a wandering Ranger, then him being a Turami or Bedine would make sense. But he's apparently from an ancient Amnish noble family- the Corthalas. How then does a black man with dreadlocks come by a Chondathan name, lineage and house? I figure unlike the insular Rashemaar, Amn is fairly cosmopolitan. Maybe some Chondathan man took a Bedine bride and Valygar was the issue. It's never overtly mentioned and I'm sure that like the Rashemaar characters it's because the developers were more interested in just making a game than giving two shits about the lore behind the game, but at least it's justifiable.

"Representation" has always existed in the Realms, and even if it's being implemented poorly and for the wrong reasons by developers it's not something you can really fault the game's for having. I just wish that if they were going to squeeze another POC character in for diversity bux, that they would take an effort to include the cultural background and have that be a part of the character as well. Lord knows I'm about sick of the fucking Sword Coast being the only thing that ever gets played. The only foreign character that they got right was Yoshimo and how softball easy is Kara-Tur (Japan)? Meanwhile, we could have a Tuigan (Mongolian), Shaaran (Native American), Ulutiun (Inuit), or one of the fifty other subraces make an appearance and actually make the enormous Forgotten Realms feel like it exists outside this one little chunk of shoreline.

Representation matters, you should just answered yes you have Wyll and kept the rest of this dribble to yoruself

Race only applies to humans, it was created to divide and make persecution easier. It has no place in any other context than racism.

Species and sub species and hybrid species are proper terms in games.
How does it make sense for all chars to be white cis hetero then if its not real? Also, if D&D is racist by not having people of color in it then its time to change that, plain and simple.

Also, i know what game im sure to get, SteelRising from Spiders. Theyre extremely good with diversity, they did proof so in GreedFall. I want to know if Larian will do better in BG3 than they did in DOS2.

You can take off clothes, you cant take off skin...And racism existed in the 90s as much as it does now. This isnt a thread on racism at all however and i merely wanted to know if NPCs are black people or not. I see that many want to talk about anything but. And not talking about racism is part of the problem, we can discuss that on instagram or Discord, but not in here.
Diversity bux? Are cis hetero white NPC also in a game for diversity bux then? Oh wait, white is the default skin color...

OP seems to demand representation for her belief and do not accept or tolerate anything else; hnece her constant pointing out of Straight White Heroes and the like.

Using that logic, why can't my character have an firearm then? We got firearmss in the real world. If there is none, then the creators are hoplophobes.

And if you refuse to have firearms in the game, then you're a closed minded Hoplophobia bigot who is OK with everyone to have swords and shields. I want guns in my fantasy game, if you don't like it, don't comment.

See how bizarre that sounds?

Sorta like the KKK members demanding all movies must not include non-Whites, non-Portestants in them because they are below their innate, natural WASP superiority.

Really, it's just the other side of the same coin, just that you wrap yourself with the cloth of righteousness- like the KKK does. I'm right therfore, eeveryone is wrong.

If those elements are needed absolutely to please you in the media you consume, then those may well be the limits of your personality.

Perhaps in time, you will grow and matrure.

I seriously think you should try playing the game and relax a bit. You need each specific sexual orientation to
be represented in a game in order to not make drama out of it? I don't and I think you shouldn't mind what the hell
character's sexual orientation is in a game that is not Sims. Go browse the internet for that material and leave
games out of this nonesense.

It is about surviving the seromorphosis.

And just to remind you, seems you reaaally care much about skin tone for someone who seems to try and showcase
how strongly opposed to racism he/she is. Racism does not stop when you stop talking about it, it stops when no
one cares the skin tone or procedence of a character to enjoy a game.

Be grateful of the time and effort put into the game, try the character creation that allows you have even a blue
human person, consider reordering your thoughts if you feel like in hell when you see many white people, and
remember one thing: you know that also IRL you may encounter regions where people only have one skin tone?
would you also be in hell there?, or in hell if a game was placed there and you didn't have your desired skin
color in the character customization?

I think quite a few people just want to keep real-world politics/ideology out of the game.
What occurs in the game should happen based on the lore.
You won't stamp out racism by shoehorning POC and LGBT people into every game.
I think if you are overly fixated on the race of a character (unless it is for lore reasons) you might be the racist.
If you are angered by white people being the protagonist in a game, you might be the racist.
Most people connect with the STORY and EXPERIENCES of a character, not their race.
Most people are able to step into the shoes of someone else regardless of race, biological sex, or sexual orientation. If you can't, I think that's a problem with YOU, not with other people, the game, or the developers.
For example, when children play pretend, do they demand that they play someone who looks like them? No, children will pretend to be anyone and everyone. Like I said in my last post, racism is taught, and I think you have been taught to focus on race.

If a game has romantic relationships of any sort in it, then sexual orientation is relevant.

Opposite-sex relationships are so common in media, with way too many works even making such a relationship the main point of the work (see Romeo and Juliet for an example of this, and I'm pretty sure there are at least thousands of other examples), that it's become overused and, honestly, rather exhausting at this point.

I think these topics shouldn't even be perceived as political in the first place.

It's not just have one game with a white protagonist that's the problem; it's when *every* (or almost every) game has a white protagonist that's the problem.

Same can be said about male protagonists; the proportion of games with male protagonists is far higher than it should be. (Male protagonists really should account for slightly less than half the protagonists in games, with there being a comparable amount of female protagonists, with non-binary or otherwise non-gendered protagonists filling the remainder. This is, of course, not counting games with selectable gender, or that don't have a protagonist in the first place (like Tetris or Solitaire).)

Thing is, minorities are more likely to be able to connect with the experiences of a minority main character.

(Of course, the minority doesn't have to be a real world one; SaGa Frontier 2 is an interesting case where, in a common magic world, the most important playable character from a plot perspective is ostracized for not being able to use magic. However, this sort of connection won't happen if the main character is generic; particularly if the main character is a cishet white dude who is typical in the fantasy setting.)

Edit: I should probably point out that I actually don't play RPGs for the story; I'm more of a gameplay sort of girl. I play RPGs because I like RPG gameplay.

Not necessarily. I note, for example, that transgender kids typically prefer to play someone of the gender they identify with, even if they don't realize they're transgender.

*sigh* Nevermind. Let it rest.

Hello, out and proud gaymer here.

I don't often post in the forums, but after reading your posts, I felt I needed to reply to your comments.

First of all: could you please check your trans activism at the door? People are here to discuss the amazing Baldur's Gate 3, not contentious issues like transgender rights. There are other spaces on the internet that are tailored for such subject matter.

Second: please, please stop using the term 'transgender children'. No one is born in the wrong body and effeminate boys / masculine girls will grow up to be normal (or as you would call it: "cisgender") homosexual adults when not indoctrinated with gender propaganda. To suggest to a child it could make its same sex attraction more socially palatable by undergoing invasive surgery to more closely resemble the opposite sex is, in my eyes, child abuse. Could the homophobia be any more brazen?

Third: a vast majority of men and women who 'transition' come to regret it and will detransition. They started transitioning because it seemed like the solution to all of their mental issues, but of course, after transitioning the issues remained. A man cannot become a woman and a woman cannot become a man.

As stated before so eloquently by Roahin, the Forgotten Realms are already an incredibly diverse setting with many different races. I am sorry dude, but not everyone wants to indulge your delusions. You will likely call me 'transphobic', but notice how I am not advocating violence towards you. I just don't see you as a woman.

Peace.

@dtgreene

1. These things are political/ideological. Just because you think they shouldn't be does not change that. There are people who disagree with the idea of shoehorning in a character just for diversity.

2. Again, it is YOU that has a problem with race. It is YOU that is looking at only skin colour. Most people who are going to play this game will see the CHARACTER of the avatars they create, they will see their story.
The problem with your ideological world view is that it ultimately leads to absolute chaos where no one can be happy. How are you ever going to account for every single individual who wants representation in a game? If I choose to identify as a Japanese, homosexual, transgender, non-binary person who is sexually attracted to red Camaros but only those made before 1979, should I go to the developers and DEMAND that I be represented otherwise they are bigoted, racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, anti-car lovers? This way of thinking collapses when you assess it pragmatically.
I will solve your problem of representation for you. How about developers and story makers create characters which speak to the essence of being human and all the pain and joy that comes along with it. No one is left out. Everyone knows what it is like to be human. Leave race out of it. Leave sexual orientation out of it. Leave the biological sex of the character out of it. Make good characters who explore what it means to be human.

3. You talk about minorities and how they are more likely to only connect with minority characters. This statement in itself is racist. You are effectively saying that because someone else is a different skin colour they are separate from other people and cannot understand what another person is feeling. This is again taking your real world politics and putting them in a game. If the game takes place in a fictional country where everyone is black, would a person who is POC in real life then play a white character in game because in this fictional world the white people are the minority?
If you read my original post you would see that I am a minority. I am a second generation black immigrant. To say that people like me can really only identify with a black character is racism. I have been a victim of actual racism. I have been beaten for the colour of my skin. Forcing POC into a game for diversity sake will not stop racism, all it does is make people think that someone of a different skin colour is actually different than them. You want to help stop racism? Do you actually care about minorities like me? Stop talking about racism. Stop telling people that POC are different from everyone else.

This ideology of yours is antithetical to the original movement which ended segregation. Judge not based on the colour of one's skin, but on the content of their character.

Skin color and sexuality arent politics. Full stop. Or do you say the same thing about cis hetero white NPCs? I doubt it.
You are transphobic and spreading lies about trans people and transitioning. Get out.
Then why do we shoehorn white NPCs into every game? Oh right, because its the default skin color, its not political, only black people are.

Shocker: instead of engaging with my points, the trans rights activist tries to bully me into silence. It's not like we in the LGB community haven't seen that before.

The only lies being perpetrated are by trans rights activists; lies with very real, harmful and irreversible consequences. Sex is binary and immutable. Trans women are men and trans men are women. I bet you believe gay men should "unlearn their genital preferences" and date trans "men", too. How is this any different from gay conversion therapy?

I will not tell you to 'Get out', since I would not want to smother your free speech. I will ask you to take your activism somewhere else, though. This really is not the place.

You are unironically lecturing a black man about racism?