The way elder scrolls handles race is very bad imo. A lot of the races are based on actual cultures and have real racial stereotyping in them.
Yeah, I feel like more recent RPGs would have rolled most of the human races of Elder Scrolls into one “human” species with the same stats and let you choose backgrounds (Nord, Redguard, Imperial) with some skill buffs and maluses.
That way you can still have diversity without implying that humans of different backgrounds have different inherent physical or mental abilities (beyond what skills they’re more likely to pick up due to environment or culture). You can also still have Stat differences for the non-human races since they’re actually biologically different - like saying “gorillas are stronger than humans” is much less stupid than “black people are stronger than white people”.
Kinda reminds me of some pen and paper RPGs used to give strength maluses to women but stopped because it was horribly sexist.
Yeah, I feel like more recent RPGs would have rolled most of the human races of Elder Scrolls into one “human” species with the same stats and let you choose backgrounds (Nord, Redguard, Imperial) with some skill buffs and maluses.
That’s really how we’re supposed to think about it, the concept of “race” is an outdated video game concept. In-universe no one thinks of Nords as being, like, genetically able to handle the cold or Imperials as being, like, genetically silver-tongued. They’re just humans, and it might not even be possible in plenty of cases to tell someone’s race. Not to mention that obviously, being just humans, a Nord and Imperial could have a child and then that child would be mixed-race and it gets even harder. Then add in the fact that that mixed child could then bang a dark elf and produce a mixed-human with red eyes and scarlet hair. I honestly think that races will be handled very differently in TES6.
About racial mixing, it doesn’t exist in the elder scrolls, children are always the race of the mother, the father can be of any race. This is a problem because there is (multiple) white race(s) and a (single) black race. There are actual physical differences between a nord which is literally a fucking aryan, and a redguard which is the token black race. Honestly I think the whole series should just fucking die, Bethesda is a shitty company and it was founded by white men who should not have a voice in the video game industry anymore, bye bye Todd Howard, fucking get!
About racial mixing, it doesn’t exist in the elder scrolls
This is wrong in like 7 different ways, not least of all because we have canon mixed race characters which manifest traits from multiple races. Jagar Tharn, the antagonist from The Elder Scrolls 1 is one example. What you said comes from a common misreading of an in-game book.
Arena and Daggerfall (and Battlespire lol) had race selection framed as choosing where you’re from instead of picking your race. I have to wonder if this could’ve been avoided if they kept stat differences associated with the province your character is from and then providing race as an additional cosmetic choice. It would’ve been a cool little bit of extra customization too
maluses
I have never seen this instead of “penalties” before and I hate it. Is this entering common usage? Took me awhile to figure out what you meant.
