[@Odin]I tend to decide what gender I’ll play as based on the existing characters, as you said you do. But that extends further than gender, if I see there are certain character types/classes already in existence I’ll do my best to make my character markedly different from the other archetypes.

I’ve never been asked to play a specific ethnicity, but when I do play a character ethnically different from me stereotypes weren’t really an issue since the character’s origin is almost always culturally familiar (American Midwest for example). Country and region of origin play a bigger part of defining a character as opposed to their skin color. If I was to play as someone from another cultural background I’d stick with what I’m most familiar with: English-American, Spanish-Mexican, Japanese, and Korean culture. I feel if I wanted to make a character who was, say, a Mexican migrant, I could accurately represent someone like that without risking perpetuating harmful stereotypes. On the flip side, and what I’d more likely go for, would be playing a black/Asian/latinx character who’s cultural origin was simply American, or English, and who didn’t have strong ties to their ethnic heritage as being a major part of their identity. Totally great if you wanna make characters like that, it’s just my preference. Being ethnically different doesn’t have to be a big deal. 

 Fantasy settings make ethnic diversity easier in a way because in a world where racial tension is more like “human vs elf vs orc” ethnic variation in human characters suddenly doesn’t matter at all culturally, for the most part, but fantasy RPs are where I happen to notice the least ethnic diversity in human characters.