Unfortunate Implications/Tabletop Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Important Note: Just because a work has Unfortunate Implications does not mean the author was thinking of it that way. In fact, that's the point of it being unfortunate. So, please, no Justifying Edits about "what the authors really meant." The way an author handles a trope is an important factor here; handling a trope in a clumsy manner can certainly create unintentional impressions for readers. Likewise, if a work intends the offensive message (for example, a piece of Nazi propaganda about Jews), it wouldn't count. Also, for something that may not be offensive to you personally but may offend others in a different culture or time period, see Values Dissonance.

Examples of Unfortunate Implications in Tabletop Games include:

Board Games

Card Games

  • The eponymous card in "BANG!" has a cartoon picture of a revolver firing but considering that they are the most common cards in the game and you play them on other people the problem becomes rather obvious.
  • Many fantasy games like to base nonhuman cultures on various "exotic" human cultures, sometimes complete with words directly lifted from the source's language. This becomes especially unfortunate when it's a species that's Exclusively Evil.
  • The New Musical Express once produced a pack of cards with rock musicians' pictures. A reader pointed out that it was a bit hypocritical of the NME to criticize Morrisey for alleged racist remarks while having a pack of cards with Bob Marley as 'The King of Spades'

Tabletop RPG

  • The earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons Drow. First some vague "evil black elves", then Exclusively Evil matriarchy that looked vaguely African in culture and skin color. Luckily, the publishers very quickly edited that last part and instead made them look obsidian-black, not brown, and more alien to human eyes -- forlorn pale "shadowelves" lifted from The Elves of Alfheim combined with an unrelated dark elf from its cover art. Though it's still an eeeevil matriarchy that must be destroyed (not to mention that popular male Drow "beating the system"). Aside of this unfortunate combination, they're supposedly mix of classical dark elves, post-Tolkienese elves and spider cult from Arlach-Nacha of The Seven Geases. Slightly lessened by the fact that most evil patriarchies (for example, orcs, who are generally quite Tolkienian in D&D) aren't treated any better.
    • Later became severely Depending on the Writer, especially when one tries to find in-'Verse reasons:
      • War of the Spider Queen shows how well most Drow fare when a tight grip of sadistic matriarchs and Religion of Evil constantly keeping them in check is released. Though this merely replaces the old Unfortunate Implications with "I know you and so do it to you For Your Own Good!" successfully pulled by Chaotic Evil deity.
      • Elaine Cunningham not only added notes about Drow culture (one cannot just roll Villain Ball day in day out), but made this theme to bite its own tail. Norse people heard only few rumors about Drow and expected to see "dock-alfar" from Scandinavian legends, as per Historical Reference. And that's more or less what they (accidentally) got.
    • Further implications of the Drow are that any society that is sexually open is necessarily evil, and that association with spiders (those helpful arachnids that eat many a pest) makes you evil as well.
    • D&D settings where each nation is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture can be prone to this trope.
    • Kill ugly green people and take their stuff. If the players find out there is a tribe of orcs menacing a human village, the players often give not a thought to cutting the orcs down in droves, helping themselves to their loot, and claiming they were entirely in the right. Orcs are not Exclusively Evil, and even if they were, that doesn't mean they aren't in the right in this individual case or that Violence Is the Only Option.
      • And the Exclusively Evil trope itself has some serious unfortunate implications. It's omnipresent in High Fantasy and very common in Low Fantasy and Space Opera.
      • A dragon quest can be this. If the dragon isn't a menace to the area, killing it may be entirely unjustified, and its hoard is it's property. However, players with good characters won't think twice about killing an ancient, incredibly intelligent sapient being unless it's scales are shiny. Dragons are Color Coded for Your Convenience, but that's not a set in stone rule and players usually look no further before deciding it's OK to kill it.
    • Ravenloft had the Vistani, a race of magical gypsies. Though generally portrayed sympathetically, the same criticisms made of the White Wolf Old World of Darkness Gypsies (below) could be repeated here. They received some Character Development later in the product line, but still fit every Roma stereotype out of a Hammer Horror film.
  • The Orks in Shadowrun could often be described as the "The New Blacks" as many things about them seem to be specifically designed to echo blacks (and occasionally, Hispanics). They have their own culture, which is quite popular on the street and amongst the less fortunate. They probably suffer the most from the Fantastic Racism, being seen as an actual threat by the normal humans due to how fast they multiply. There's even non-orks embracing Ork culture and become "Ork-Posers". Orks are more often presented as gangsters or criminals then Dwarves or Elves. Similarly, there are fewer Orks amongst the rich and successful then there are of any other race, save the Trolls (who are big and scary and rarer then all the other metatypes to begin with, meanwhile, Orks are the second most common Metatype after humans).
    • This could also been seen as a case of Fantastic Racism in that even in the future, we will find a group to single out for prejudice.
    • Not to mention Shadowrun‍'‍s other little gaffes, like most of North America being taken over by Magical Native Americans, most of everything else being taken over by Evil Japanese Mega Corporations, most of the non-shadowrunning population being trideo-numbed idiots who don't have a clue that UCAS elections had been rigged for forty years, etc. This is due to most Cyberpunk being written around the time of Japan's (obvious, at least) technological dominance over all other nations, with a smidgen of wapanese worship here and there. (Elves being ridiculously Asian, most specifically 90%ish acting like modernized Japanese samurai)... Yeah, they're all intentionally hammy, although Orks are really closer to what we now call 'chavs' but with better musical taste, at least in the fluff this troper's read. (this goes for their slang, too.) Shadowrun has a well built world, but unfortunately suffers from trying to link every sci-fi trope ever made into a single world.
      • There's also the almost complete absence of any trace of Jewish characters and culture in the published works. For instance, the original Seattle Sourcebook from 1990 lists restaurants and other establishments for every stripe of metahuman as well as most European cultures along with North American natives. But try to find a kosher deli or a bagel place in it and you're completely out of luck.
  • Most of Warhammer 40,000's female combatants are heavily sexualized with fetishes out the wazoo, generally with S&M overtones. This is justified inside the heavily patriarchal (and generally effed-up) Imperium, but many of the women that we actually meet (such as Inquisitor Amberley Vail) are just as professional and dignified as anyone else.
  • The Old World of Darkness had its share of, um... interesting ethnic interpretations:
    • Vampire: The Masquerade had the Ravnos clan, a clan of Roma origin whose clan weakness was a roll to resist engaging in illegal activities. Rumor has it that the ham-fisted portrayal of Romani culture was why the writers chose to kill the clan's antediluvian (who took a good chunk of the clan with him) during the Time of Thin Blood.
    • Werewolf: The Apocalypse was a bit worse. Oirish bards with a penalty to self-control, Nordic warriors with very uncomfortable ties to the Nazis, two Magical Native American tribes... over time, some of the stupider elements (such as the tribal penalties) were removed from the system, and the tribes became a bit more developed, but in the beginning, things were awkward.
    • Probably the worst example was the now-infamous Gypsies book, which turned an entire real-world ethnic group into a minor supernatural template. Complete with a stat called "Blood Purity."
    • Assamites: Because the world really needed some Vampire Arabs to go with its Space Jews.
    • Don't forget the Science Is Bad vibe in Mage, Werewolf and Changeling.
      • The whole point of the World of Darkness setting, especially old WoD, is that there was a war between science and the supernatural and the latter lost, hard, and were forced into annoying and power-limiting things like the masquerade in order to avoid going completely extinct. The fact that Science is something that your character has blinders on about is something all the sourcebooks hint at, and Mage especially points out explicitly on several occasions that the Technocracy (the main antagonist) was actually right on basically all counts in the conflict that wiped most of your guys out. So this is more like a subverted or averted trope than an unfortunate implication.
    • And pretty much every supernatural type in the Old World of Darkness got Recycled IN ASIA counterparts, with varying degrees of Unfortunate Implications, primarily springing from the fact that Asian countries had an entirely separate cosmology from the rest of the world. There was a separate afterlife for Asian Wraiths, alternately called 'Yin World' and 'The Dark Kingdom in Jade', and Asian vampires were people who had gone to a special Asian hell that only Asian people go to, and then escaped.
    • Transylvania by Night features a vampire who haunted the Jewish district of Prague and fed on Christian children. Oh dear.
  • One of the races of the 1980s Talislanta game, the Moorg-wan, are nicknamed "Mud People" in the products. Apparently it's a case of honest ignorance on the writers' part, as the Moorg-wan really do live in mud and bear no resemblence to any human ethnic group that white supremacists denigrate by that name.
    • There was also an alchemical item called "Yellow Peril" in the game at one point. And the nation now known as Raj (which is inhabited by Exclusively Evil nihilistic death cultists) used to have a name and flavor text that would have fit a Fantasy Counterpart Qurac.
  • Green Ronin's Dragon Age table top role playing game is set in the video game series. Females are treated by almost all races as the equals of males. The one race with strict gender roles (Qunari) doesn't say women's roles or men's roles are lesser, just different. However, the dwarven caste illustrations show exactly one female - the servant caste washing woman with a mop bucket and some rags. Whoops.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Unfortunate_Implications/Tabletop_Games?oldid=2011105"