Many published roleplaying settings reflect our own cultural biases, for example, by putting white people in the "core" of the setting with "exotic" (i.e., not white) cultures around the less-detailed edges.
Many home-brewed settings end up being disproportionately full of white people too. I catch myself doing this, even though I'm well aware of my bias and try not to make my geopolitical setups "just like Europe/North America, but with all the minorities moved to the edges of the map."
A trend toward whiteness in settings comes out in many other subtle ways, for example how by default NPCs are assumed to be white unless otherwise noted as "other than white."
For GMs who want to avoid the obvious and subtle ways they can end up with an overly-white settings:
- What things can these GMs do during world-building to defeat a bias toward making cultures white and to make their own game worlds more inclusive?
- What things can these GMs do during play to make the world feel more diverse and less culturally monotonous to the players?
Best Answer
Directed towards your second question, assuming you aren't running a real world campaign, make sure you clearly detail not only the differences between your world cultures, but perhaps the background / history of the differences.
Create cheat-sheets for players playing characters from those cultures, which you (and maybe with the help of the player) update and add to as the campaign continues - perhaps even toss in some interesting wise quotes that exemplify some aspect of a culture. For example, a saying from Japan such as "The nail that sticks up gets knocked down" as contrasted with "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" tells a lot about the importance of conformity. What about differences in courtship, marriage and achieving "honor" within the culture? Are the sexes segregated? What's up with relations with elders?
If you have non-human races, zero in on the differences from humans and spin culture from it, and again, make notes for your players so they know how to run with the differences. How does the long life of elves impact the culture of the elves in your campaign? Maybe elf hair keeps growing even after it is cut, so there is a ritual associated with burning cut hair.
A little more on cheat-sheets - I'd make this a simple bullet list, divided into sections that start with "What You Know About..." or "What Your People Think About..." or "What Your People Say About..."
For example, consider a Shogun-era Japanese game:
"What Your People Think about Foreigners"
Real foreigners are knuckle-dragging barbarians, but since they do not know the proper way, give them some mercy.
Chinese, Koreans, Ainu are also barbarians who may make mistakes, but they should know the proper way of doing things.