Why Are All the Elf Ears White? Revisiting Steal Away Jordan, Race, Identity, and Live Action Role-Playing Games

We have discussed slavery, historical memory, and the limits--and possibilities--of traditional pen and paper role-playing games (and other types of simulations) as teaching tools on a number of occasions.

Ultimately, our dialogue centered upon questions of representation, identity, and the ability to present the indescribable aspects of human evil, be it slavery, genocide, or the Jewish Holocaust, in an accessible format with rules for "playing" that in turn deem said experience a type of  "game."

The Transatlantic slave trade role-playing game Steal Away Jordan was the initial focus of this conversation. 

Said post remains one of my favorites here on We Are Respectable Negroes because I learned a great deal from the range of comments there and how all parties involved--new voices and established commentators too--offered their insights on some very difficult questions.

The website Canon Puncture and their podcast "Game Advocates" recently featured a conversation/review of Steal Away Jordan where they actually discussed what it was like to play the game. 

My initial response to Steal Away Jordan was based on the source materials and the abstract idea of the game; Now, after hearing the interview, I remain unchanged in my opinion that black chattel slavery is not suitable subject matter for a role-playing game (for me).

However, I am open to how it may be "enjoyable" for others.

Canon Puncture led me to another set of discoveries that I would like to share with those ghetto nerds and others who may be so inclined and interested. 

The live action role-playing (LARP) community is apparently large enough to have been the subject of a documentary, as well as academic conferences and workshops. The latter makes sense given how live action role playing is a type of theater. As such, it is a worthy site for critical inquiry and intellectual work.

Whatever the topic, a person can find an expert on it. The truism holds for live action role-playing.

To point. I discovered the Nordic Larp group through the website Story Games.

Here are two clips from the Nordic Larp organization that I think you will find enlightening and provocative.  

First, what do you do when all of the elf ears you bought at the store for your game are white, and your live action role-players are black, brown, and Other? 

Confronting institutional racism is integral to any anti-racist project. We must still also acknowledge how white privilege plays out in very subtle ways. 

In traditional pen and paper role-playing, as well as live action role-playing environments, the assumption that genres such as high fantasy are "white" and naturally "European" spaces remains a standing rule among too many gamers. For example, when I dabbled in Dungeons and Dragons as a teen, my character was a Moor or other like character. We can have dragons and magic in our games, but no black and brown folks? I think not.

Lars Nerback smartly talks about identity issues in live action role-playing:

Second, live action role-playing can be a very intense experience for many players. If we factor in how so many "geeks" and "nerds" often feel socially marginalized in their day-to-day lives, then feelings of vulnerability and exposure are focused and crystallized in their play and improvisational theater fantasy experience. 

These are not just "privileged white people problems." Rather, they are human challenges, moments in which such identity categories as race, ethnicity, class, gender, ability status, or sexuality can be focal points where those feelings and insecurities are amplified.

Sarah Bynne Bowman comments on that dynamic here:

Play is political. Play is also a space where identities are recreated, reinforced, re-inscribed, contested, made into sources of agency and resistance, and a means through which broader social relationships of Power, inequality, and hierarchy are legitimated. 

This dynamic holds true for live action role-playing and also those games that take place in the digital world.