Not to spend too much time dunking on this YouTube video, since I've already unsubscribed to Templin Institute because of it, but what's really irritating is him implying that Cyrus of Persia would have genocided orcs if he'd encountered them when Cyrus is historically famous for literally not doing shit like that. Cyrus was a conqueror, yes, and that's bad, but he also allowed freedom of religion within his empire and didn't interfere with the cultures of the peoples he conquered as long as they paid their taxes and didn't start shit.
It says a lot that when I described my basic idea of making the most common "enemy" races in D&D core races, as a rough mirror to the 5 stereotypical D&D races, the first response out of my two friends who play Warcraft was "So like Alliance vs Horde, but actually done decently?"
I feel I should point out that that was how Empires operated. The Roman Empire had sort-of freedom of religion and so on. Like, empires are built on the idea of resource extraction which is much harder if you crack down on the locals and need to go march the army in every year to put down a revolt.
Honestly, as much as I want to do that I'm marketing to the 3.5/Pathfinder crowd that didn't jump on the bandwagon to 5e or Pathfinder 2e. I'd be practically crucified if I didn't include the standard fantasy races.
To some degree, I feel settings that use non-human bigotry as a stand-in are also missing the point? Like, yes you can still tell very interesting stories, but I think that those stories are lacking in message (because they either then erase PoC or whatever other minority said non-humans are standing in for or have them as equals) and therefore can't drive the message those sort of stories are (hopefully) pushing. They feel less real, and importantly IMO, don't make real life people uncomfortable about the racism the characters are displaying. It's much easier for someone to disassociate themselves from racism against non-humans than more grounded displays.
Yes, but mostly because I've seen what results from not doing this and it's usually some flavor of "instead of explaining my problem to you I'm gonna be passive-aggressive and punish you without acknowledging what I'm doing and pretend that nothing is going on if I get called out on it".
Then what you want goes directly against the "number one goal".
At a rough estimate I'd say half of morph styles in Eclipse Phase are human or near-human, so there are plenty of options for someone who prefers playing a near human? The others may be better examples, I've never read through their materials, but Eclipse Phase is a poor example for your particular point.
I think that's kind of the point? With high fantasy settings such as D&D or Pathfinder or transhumanist ones like Eclipse Phase, there literally is no visible, mechanical, or cultural difference between a trans person and a cis one. Because be it magic, alchemical gender reassignment treatment, or literal body-swapping being a trans individual in these settings is not the same as in real life; it's the realized dream of many trans individuals worldwide.
