Bias-Based-Hatred as a Mechanical Trait or Flaw In Role Playing Games

I play both historical wargames and role playing games. I’m, currently, more of a historical wargamer but I have a D&D game once per week now (5th Edition for those wondering).

One of the reasons why I never got into historical wargaming for years is the prevalence of nazis. Not WP skinheads goose-stepping the halls nazis but models and figures on the table getting pushed around nazis.

*note – when I type “nazi” both Word and Blogger apps correct it by capitalizing it for me. No. I will go through and give it the little “n” that the word deserves.

I go to a lot of historical wargaming fan pages on Facebook, that and military modeling. I also watch a lot of miniature painting tutorials on Youtube to learn the craft. On top of that I have gone to gun shows, collector shows, knife shows…. Places where militaria can be had. What do I find? Seems it’s 50% nazi.

Granted, nazis were a part of WWII. You go to the Bolt Action wargame Facebook page and what is posted up about half the time? nazis. You’ve got the US, Japan, Italy, Britain, Canada, USSR, and about 10 other countries that can be represented with models and figures in the game but Germany gets a good 50% share of it.

Even worse you go to the military history modelers pages and even out of the context of World War Two… so all of human history’s militaria … and half of the model jobs are WWII Germany.

I’m not typing this to judge, nor will I solve any issue here with this blog. I'm just pointing it out and noticing a thing. I was once told that if a historical game con I go to were to allow “cos-play” or people dressing up as a norm for the con, a good half of them would be in WWII German uniforms. To me that’s weird. Not edgy, not historically accurate, not accusatory but a pathological fetish of some kind.

I was regaling Gretchen with the story of my last D&D gaming session. Part of the anecdote consisted of a “street fight” our characters got into. One of the newer party members (and new player) saw some druegar chasing some deep gnomes down a street. The character, their “flaw” (a background trait in D&D 5e) was “hates all gnomes”. So, he yelled racial epithets at the deep gnomes like “Run you cowardly deepys!”

This resulted in getting the attention of the druegar that turned and attacked us and an encounter was had. Sure, D&D is all about the encounters and me relating it is not the point.

Gretchen asked, “Why did the player have his character yell racial epithets at the gnomes?”
I answered, “It was his character’s flaw, he has to role play it.”
She came back with, “Man… that’s so played out. Why do so many people role play flaws as racism?” and she high-lighted a point that I recognized in historical wargaming but not in RPG and my decades of exposure to them: When given the choice to pick a flaw, it’s a good chance “biased hatred for X” is the go to.

I thought back to my own experiences in RPGing over the years and who I’ve played with. There are quite a few instances of:
“Oh, my character hates all elves.”
“Since I hate all city-dwellers…”
“My character was assaulted by men, so she hates men.”
“Bah! Rich people suck and since I’m chaotic neutral…”
“Me and my dwarven family are superior to all elves, humans, and halflings because…”

Whether flaws as a mechanic are mandated or not, the above is extremely common. Rarely do you get a greed compulsion or partial deafness as a flaw.

Some would say it is good that when mandated to pick a flaw one picks a form of racism or biased hatred. I disagree. There are a lot of flaws available that is not racism. Many games that mandate flaws list them and the player will look at that list to ponder the choice. Check out Savage Worlds and the 50 or so disadvantages you have to choose from in the core rulebook. I’ve played Deadlands and Savage Worlds based systems about 4 times in my life and, invariably, there is a player or two that picked the “racism” or “hatred” disadvantage. Obviously it’s never “My character hates black people.” and the target is something softer or fitting to the world being played but still, there is that shade of racism in there and that was picked as a disadvantage over the other 38 choices.

I have my own theories on why this happens though none are “proof” of any kind and some have their own biases wrapped up in them. Some of the less troublesome of them are that bias-hatred is an easy way to play out a character flaw; racism is not constantly “on” like a missing hand would be in a game world; nazis have a lot of varying cool gear to model.

That said I do have more biased opinions of a darker nature that I’d rather not post here as I don’t want them misconstrued in some way as that has happened to me before because I lack an ability to word things right and make my statements clear. I do want to add that in no way am I saying that playing Germany in Bolt Action equates you to being a nazi. Nor does playing an elf-hating human ranger in Dungeons and Dragons equate to being a white power supporter. What I am saying is I think it’s weird how often that comes up in a game.

With this blog I'd like to start that conversation - why the WWII Germans? Why biased-based hatred as the go to flaw?

Also I would like to acknowledge my wife, Gretchen Martin, as the person to shine a light on this. Thanks baby, it's why we're good together.