[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor vs. Psychopaths

[Adam Wiggins]

On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, James Wilson wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> >Anyhow, I wanted to point out that a similar (although not identical) tack
> >was taken on some of the older whitie vs. darkie muds.  The one I had the
> 
> excuse me? "whitie" and "darkie"?!?
> the connection between RL racism and the traditional fantasy conceit of 
> 'monstrous' races has never been expressed more clearly.

Um, if racism bothers you, I'd say you'd best get the hell out of anything
related to computer games.  I mean: your average fantasy book or mud is
generally focused largely on warring tribes of varying races that don't
get along too well.  One of my favorite races on the first mud I played
was dwarf, because *every* other race *despised* them.  Great fun.  Or
single player computer games: take your typical strategy game: in Master
of Orion, the goal of the game was to become Dictator of the Universe
through a policy of racial genocide.  In Command and Conquer, the
(arguably) "strongest" side was the Axis, aka the RL Bad Guys(tm).

Racism is no fun in real life, but can be great story fodder for
entertainment.  By a similar token battling a dragon is not something I
would do in RL, but rather enjoy in my entertainment.

Anyhow, you're also counting out the typical nose-to-the-ground outlook of
nerds.  I've actually broached this topic once before, back when I was
actually playing Mortal Conquest.  A buddy and I used to go to the
university lab to play MC together.  A mutual friend was watching us and
picked up the fact that I was playing a 'darkie' and the other guy was
playing a 'whitie'.  The observer mentioned that is was "ironic".  We
asked why.  He said, "Well, you know..."  Eventually we coaxed out of him
that he thought it was ironic because my friend playing the whitie was
black, whereas I was playing a darkie and am not.

Would we have ever thought of this ourselves if someone hadn't pointed it
out?  Probably not.  We're nerds, we don't have time to think about stuff
like this.

Adam