I think these are good questions. I'm curious to see what people think.
Some things probably shouldn't be depicted in the game or on the forums, such as genocide and slavery.
I'm sure someone somewhere could find a tactful way to do it, but it's not something I think would be appropriate, or fun, to do in a game, personally. Obviously the evils of genocide and slavery need to be stated, but playing them in a game probably isn't the way to do that. I think stories can be told in a way that respectfully work around those aspects.
For me personally, I play as if things are based on things that happen in history, but aren't history exactly. I haven't gotten very far in my game, but when it comes to things like race, I play it as if it's an alternate world. No body cares what your skin color is in my game. I'm not going to play racism, even if it is a thing that happened in history, and still happens.
That being said, I can also throw in some magical/fantasy elements if I want to and it's totally okay. :)
I haven't gotten to a war yet, but I don't plan on being very detailed with it. Just mentioning I think would be fine. You have to do what your comfortable doing.
There's so much persecution of many different people groups throughout history, making mentions of these things or telling stories of people who have overcome is great, but being able to depict that would be very difficult. I wouldn't fault anyone for trying though, as long as it was done in an appropriate way. Like, we wouldn't need all the nitty gritty details.
Hope that makes sense.
