[joyofdiscord]

Armageddon is a great MUD for enforced nastiness and racism between humanoid species, although there are no prejudices taken from the real world (skin-color, sexism, homophobia). There are some dimwits now and then that try to take some kind of "harsh world reproductive imperative" as a logical axiom and derive sexism and homophobia from it and claim that it must be part of the world. Unfortunately, the RPI type of gameworld lends itself to people thinking that "realistic" or "logical" by itself is reason to argue to include a feature in a game. Adding homophobia to the violent and unforgiving world of Armageddon would make gay-bashing a game theme. I don't care what half-baked evo-psych argument someone wants to come up with, I'm not interested in playing a game where gay-bashing is a theme.

The relevant factor is as always "What makes the game better?" Do tired sexist cliches imported directly from real life make a roleplay game better? Who would want to play that game? Would you want to play with the kind of players that would want to play that game? Bogre is right on the money. Yeah, I'm sure there are some creepy Gor MUDs out there or something, but at that point we're basically talking interactive text porn. Personally I just don't see how real-life bigotry adds anything to a fantasy game. If you want tiresome real-life prejudices, go outside or turn on your TV or something. There is no shortage. You can get all the same compelling "struggle against adversity" storylines and roleplay with prejudices that are native to the fantasy world.