Meg - I just realized the BG's had been in an episode of Heroic Cthulhu back in May of last year - I was part of that gaming group for about a year.
Listening to the comments about getting Blacks and minorities in role-playing really started my mind going. Here are some things that pop out at me (if I make any awful mistakes, go ahead and correct me and call me names)
Blacks and Hispanics:
How about some non-villainous dark-skinned characters on book covers, and in the art? DRIZZT DOES NOT FUCKING COUNT. There are plenty of Asians, because of the bizarre romanticizing of samurai (like the Spartiates, a vicious warrior caste of a slave-holding military dictatorship), but not many Negroes. While we're at it, where are the dark-skinned dwarves, halflings, eladrin, gnomes? There are plenty of brown orks, oddly enough.
Let's open the Savage World's Explorer's Edition... one vaguely Arabic-looking mad scientist on page 7, one black man in armor on page 57. That's it, in 160 pages of a book where nearly every page has art.
Place ads in places where minorities may see them:
RIFTS in The Amsterdam News
Perros en el Vinedo en El Diario La Prensa
Eberron boxed sets on those street side table selling urban romances
Muslims:
Here's one you didn't think of, I bet. Idolatry is a big deal - raising any device, image, object, or person to a place reserved for the divinity. Absolute monotheism means no deities, or images of deities, maybe even no reference to worship. In most vanilla D&D settings, politics at the level of divinities get a lot of ink, but they don't have to. Magic works fine with no deities at all, and there are all those genres beside fantasy. Games that are about fighting forces of darkness and evil outright, like Hunter: The Vigil and Esoterrorists (and I would argue Dogs In The Vineyard is in that group as well) would require hardly any adaptation at all.
I'm not clear on sex and sexuality, though. Any thoughts?
Indians:
I need some help with figuring this out, too. I know that physical displays of affection are forbidden, but what about talking about kissing?
OK - I'm tossing this out as a chance to learn something, and look at this part of our hobby.