This is a game about living traditions. There are players within the community who practice religions that are represented within the game.
To combat the potential issues that may emerge from this, we have a few guidelines to help you think about how to potentially portray characters with different cultural backgrounds.
- Be respectful of the cultures you are portraying. Do some research, understand both the history and the present. Understand that cultures are made up of real thinking and feeling people and try to build on cultural portrayals from those people. If you want citations or links, feel free to ask the ST staff.
- Do not attempt to costume as someone from a different race using makeup. This is especially true if portraying someone of African descent, but is equally true for other cultures. Recent history has shown fairly clearly that this cannot be done in an inoffensive manner. If you have questions about this, feel free to ask the ST staff.
- Do not construct characters around negative stereotypes about religions or negative behaviors by religious people. While this game is to a certain degree about the limitations of religious dogma, many of the people involved in this game struggle against issues such as sexism, homophobia and racism within religious community.
All in all, this is about being culturally sensitive, not about restricting ideas. But we as an ST staff are open to helping. Feel free to get feedback from the ST staff on potential ideas and we will try and workshop things with you to try and avoid culturally insensitive depictions.