I remember going to hear someone talk about the impact racism has had on their life. As I listened, I thought about how, in a lot of games, especially Role-Playing games, there are often 'non-human' enemies, who you go out and kill and take their money and belongings. I thought then that having a goblin with green skin as an enemy was a kind of playing out of the underlying beliefs of racism, the idea that people who are different from you are less human.
After listening, I decided I would try to think more about the underlying messages or stories in games I invented. I decided that for enemies I liked robots and undead, for the reason that they weren't living creatures, they were obviously something enchanted, and not just a humanoid with a different skin color.
I applied this decision to the first game on Arcane Journeys, The Well, in the hopes that a little thinking could help influence the world to be more what I see as an ideal, which is the unity of human beings across largely artificial boundaries such as "race".
