This post and it's comments over on Neel Krishnaswami's excellent blog has had me thinking for the last week. It was particulary prominent in my mind when we played Shackled City last Wednesday. It's 'boxed text' description of the Deep Gnomes was somewhat distasteful (I doubt it was deliberate and I won't repeat it here). You can definitely tone down some of the more overt racial metaphors in a game and I believe most gamers already do this. The problem is the more subtle ones: typically descriptions of monsters which have a basis in historical racism (the Deep Gnome description was a classic example). I believe Tolkien has a lot to blame for this -but we as gamers must take responsibility for the thematic nature of our games.