Creating a fantasy world...what to do about "Race"

[Fappy]

Since I run a lot of D&D games I deal with this kind of stuff quite often. Usually I'd just make their appearance based off of what people native to the region would look like. Basing races/cultures and their respective geography on real world examples is not in poor taste so long as the white and brown people are just as bad as one another imo.

 

[Orange12345]

first off this "world" that I'm creating now has no fictional races, its all human. I still havn't quite fleshed out the different factions/cultures, but lets say I had a group that were of a more.."tribal/voodoo" influence, would it be in poor taste to have them as "non whites" like black people or native americans or asian ect....



what do you think?

To me, it'll depend on where the 'tribal' people live in your world. If they live in a climate with a lot of heat and sun (desert, tropical or equatorial) then having them as non-whites would make sense. And if they live in a cooler climate with less sun then having them as whites would make sense.

This is what I was going to say, africans as "tribal/voodoo" is a stereotype that only makes sense in our historical context. If you are making your own world it seems like it would be more trouble to try to shoehorn in something like that from our world rather then just making something up that fits in your world better.

An example I can think of are the wildlings from game of thrones, they live a very cold climate where resources and food are scare so they have formed a sort of tribal culture, and they are also white but no one bats an eye because it makes sense in the larger picture