I want to add a bit of moral scepticism to this debate.
There are very real issues in real life that should not be dismissed, are part of a long history of building tragedy on tragedy and are heavily tangled into everyday things. It's a serious subject matter.
I don't see how that justifies limiting the configuration space of potential fantasy beings and societies.
And there is a big difference between representing the existence of racism.
You assume that the racism (or speciesism) in ficitional settings is a representation of racism in this world. That reads a bit like: "It can only be there because it exists in our reality." Are you a devout follower of Parmenides by chance?
Barbarian is not a statement describing a skill set, it is a cultural term and it is a term used for a foreign culture in a demeaning fashion...
You can certainly have people with the skill-set of the class from any culture, not just low-tech cultures
So the low tech societies have less 'moral value' than those with more sophisticated technology? If not: Where is the problem with the low-tech portrayal?
Likewise, the treatment as goblins and orcs as always savage or cowardly or sneaky or whatever else is equally damaging. It's the "this is their natural state" part of depictions that is harmful. It can be the culture that has developed, but it shouldn't be represented as the only possible way they could exist.
It is their current position in the space of possible cultures. Why does the obvious truth that there are other possible coordinates need to be represented?
Could an elephant be blue? Sure, if someone painted it. Could there be smilodons still roaming the forests? Could the cannibal turn herbivore? Could the 18th century british government abandon colonialism?
That counterfactual goblin societies are not represented does in no way indicate that they could not exist in theory or in the future.
No, you can't control what is done in a home game, but you shouldn't encourage or turn a blind eye to such things, because some asshole will take it as tacit approval for such behavior.
[...]
When you publish, you have to be careful over how you might encourage people to behave.
Are people responsible for their own actions or not? Let us assume that freedom of will does exist. What does that make your suggestion? A call to (self)censorship.
Universal moral truths are assumed to exist as elements of reality. Their assumed existence is then used to argue for changing fiction into a tool for preaching them. There is no natural law. People from Plato to Sam Harris have tried and failed to prove the existence of universal moral truths. A given system of morals manifests itself as a local truth only in a given society (or individual) at a given time.
Projecting the current mainstream of western moral thought on the rest of the world is dogmatism. Demanding other cultures or even fictional characters to comply with ones own morals is the mindset of the inquisition.
Just because we call it a game does not mean its outside of the darker aspects of humanity which needs to be purged to make a better world for everyone.
Darker aspects that "need to be purged" to make a better world. Interesting choice of words. Many of those whom you would consider evil had the same goal and said similar things.
Other cultures have different ideas about what is morally right. My own countries (germany) culture of the past had radically different ideas about it. They would think of us as being mistaken. We might think of them as being mistaken. Was the maori chieftain right to hold slaves or was he wrong and evil as the slaves would have said? Who shall judge? We might sympathize with the "from the watery eyes of the slave" perspective, but that does not prove a moral truth.
It is my humble and fallible opinion that any kind of censorship is inherently totalitarian. I happen not to be a big fan of totalitarian systems. Not to demand limits to imagination in the name of political correctness or representation seems appealing to me. I could be wrong, but so could you.
The inherently volatile nature of systems of morals results in a huge array of contradictory ideas of right and wrong over time. That means that most of these ideas must be wrong and a maximum of one could be correct. Probability suggests that we should remain highly sceptical of our own moral ideas and ideals.
To clarify, I do not mind drow or greenies or other races, humanoid or non-humanoid, getting fleshed out more. But the assertion that no single intelligent race can ever be described as "evil" from the perspective of the arbitrarily defined "goodly" races strikes me as forcibly anthropologizing the entire setting. And that's too much. We are not the only creature in the world, not are we so interesting that absolutely every story ever should only involve humans in every single role, even for the non-humans.
A refreshing breeze of not anthropomorphizing fictional species and races.
Empirical turn:
Is there any proof that racism in video games causes racism in reality?
Only then would there be reason (if accepting the current morals as true) to change the games.
