What makes up human? As opposed to...

[Cluedrew]

In settings where there are multiple different 'races', whether they be elves or klingons, most of the other races have something they are known for. But humans usually occupy this grey area of being right in the middle. And are usually very numerous for no reason other than we're humans and tell the story from the human perspective.

But what from the outside looking in what would humans be known for?

In fantasy it might be architecture, the only other race that builds big things (classically) are the dwarfs and they mine out their spaces instead of building them up.

In sci-fi it could be... I have no idea, maybe we are the only ones who can see purple naturally?

This really applies to any media where there are different 'races', but in RPGs especially, because humans get the sparest stat bonuses and virtually no special abilities, ever. In fact in point-buy systems being not human is a right you have to pay for. I suppose it is easy to make other races "humans but with..." but having seen it so many times I have to wonder if we did have some special trait that the other races didn't have (or at least was rare) what would it be?

[Ralanr]

Now that's the question I love.

Usually humans are described as faster than other races in development and advancement due to their shorter life spans. Or humans are more creative, or more prone to individualism than other races.

But in all honesty I don't think humanity can be described with a particular "hat" (unless you count war. But fantasy and sci-fi rarely portray humans as a war focused race...well science fiction does it more). And to describe other races by what, "hat" it wears isn't a good way to bring out a race, though it's not easy to build races in the first place.

Humanity does not have a current real world equal. Aliens might laugh at me, but there is no other race that has a civilization and can communicate with us. So we don't know how to describe ourselves in comparison to another race.

[Fri]

In Mass Effect human are either the aggresive expansionist race or the annoyingly inquisitive race.

The other usual human hats are taken by other races. The Turian are the "organized warlike" race (as opposed to berserking warlike which are usually taken by orcs), the Salarian are the short-lived smart race, the Volus/Batarian are the trader/untrusted race. But human race basically pop out in the galactic politic really late but expand really fast and want to take as many planetary colony as possible.

The "annoyingly inquisitive" race is kinda a joke my friend told me I guess, but I wonder if it's actually true in universe. Basically we keep asking everyone "what do you eat?" "how do you have sex?" etc.

[Oberon Kenobi]

I think that being very numerous is what humans are known for. I mean, just looking at the stereotypes of (important qualifier) classic fantasy races, elves are too snooty and obsessed with history or art or whatever else to have a lot of children; dwarves are mostly dudes; orcs spend too much time killing each other and everybody else.

Humans don't have any of that baggage–as Ralanr says, we don't have much of a "hat"–so they spread like the plague. Only it's a plague that has sex with every other less prolific plague, because pretty much every half-race has human as one of its halves. And in sci-fi, well, there's Kirk. :smalltongue:

[NRSASD]

Humans almost never have a racial specialization that they're known for because the setting is a work of fiction made by humans. We hold ourselves as the baseline to which everything else is compared. As Ralanr said, we have no opposition from another species' civilization. So far as we know, we are unique in this universe. Therefore, any aliens we create we will inherently compare to ourselves, making them better fighters than us, smarter than us, more prolific than us, etc. Since we like the idea of having multiple species, each one tends to get a specialization to distinguish itself from the others, while humans are the only group spared being characterized by the "one size fits all" description.

Since this is the GiTP forum, I have to make the obligatory reference to Babylon 5, where the humans do have their own specialty: the willingness to collaborate with other species for the benefit of all. Humans "build communities" and are willing to overlook differences in race, ideology, and more so long as everyone comes together and plays nicely with each other. That is why the Babylon Project was established as the interstellar UN.

[Sith_Happens]

There is a certain merit to being "good, but not great" at everything. Going by that, I imagine one of the ways other races/species would commonly see humans is "Come on, is there anything these people can't do?"

[Wraith]

Some of the best Sci-Fi short stories I've read are amateur fan-fiction which assumes that humans are NOT the base line for a normal Milky Way creature, and are in fact utterly terrifying to behold.

This link is a list of ways in which we're clearly too insane to exist among other civilised species. (http://imgur.com/gallery/hINj1xf)

And this one is a bunch of anecdotes that a friend of friend once heard some human did, frankly I'm not sure it's even real. (http://imgur.com/gallery/7p7JI) (Please note that the title of the page is NSFW for bad language)

These are easily some of my very favourite so far. (http://imgur.com/gallery/Lufhj)

And quite a lot of these are of varied length and quality, with assorted NSFW language and themes, but are almost all glorious. (http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=humans)

:smallbiggrin:

[Havelocke]

Diversity stands out. If you look upon the fantasy races as a whole, humans can be any color of skin, hair, or eyes. Their body shapes vary greatly as well as level of fitness, intelligence, education, and so on. Humans are an adaptive race, and constantly seek to expand into places where they are not such as space, bottom of the sea, life after death, and so on. Anywhere humans are NOT is where they want to go. That drive to explore and find a way to get there is very "human", whereas other races are prone to staying in their comfort bubble. Think of other animals in nature. What lives on top of Mount Everest or the bottom of the Mariana Trench? I agree with the "naive but inquisitive" trait. Being relatively short lived in comparison to the elder races, that drive to expand and stand out (make a name for themselves) pushes them to reckless behavior as well, while self preservation kicks in most of the time there is an exhaustive list on the interwebs of videos that start with "Hey hold my beer" and then the person does something incredibly risky and self destructive just because they imagined they could actually do it.

[TheCountAlucard]

In the Exalted setting, humans have human souls. Dragon Kings and elementals, gods and ghosts and demons, behemoths and Fair Folk and Jadeborn, none have human souls save humans (though that isn't to say that others don't have souls in some fashion; ghosts are half of a human soul, Primordials have multiple souls that themselves have multiple souls, Dragon Kings have souls that carry the memories of lives past when they reincarnate, and so on).

[Ralanr]

In the Exalted setting, humans have human souls. Dragon Kings and elementals, gods and ghosts and demons, behemoths and Fair Folk and Jadeborn, none have human souls save humans (though that isn't to say that others don't have souls in some fashion; ghosts are half of a human soul, Primordials have multiple souls that themselves have multiple souls, Dragon Kings have souls that carry the memories of lives past when they reincarnate, and so on).

Specifically human souls or just souls?

Also, in fantasy and science fiction stories (from my experience) the question of, "What is human?" Rarely pops up if there is more than two races.

I think the question is also still a philosophical question today.

[TheCountAlucard]

Specifically human souls or just souls?As I noted, other kinds of beings have or even are souls, just not human ones. Dragon Kings have souls that reincarnate and carry their memories from life to life; gods are their own souls, and make for themselves material bodies to wear. When a human dies, and his soul does not deign to reincarnate, it splits in twain, and the hun soul descends into the Underworld as a ghost (the po soul also becomes a ghost, of sorts, but it remains behind with the body).

Of course, the Fair Folk don't have souls. They're lie given form, hungry vortices of the inchoate Wyld assuming personhood for themselves to prey on our ordered world.

[Ralanr]

As I noted, other kinds of beings have or even are souls, just not human ones. Dragon Kings have souls that reincarnate and carry their memories from life to life; gods are their own souls, and make for themselves material bodies to wear. When a human dies, and his soul does not deign to reincarnate, it splits in twain, and the hun soul descends into the Underworld as a ghost (the po soul also becomes a ghost, of sorts, but it remains behind with the body).

Of course, the Fair Folk don't have souls. They're lie given form, hungry vortices of the inchoate Wyld assuming personhood for themselves to prey on our ordered world.

Ahh ok. I know nothing of the exalted setting background, so this is interesting.

[Kriton]

From a dwarf's perspective humans are +2 Cha, -2 Con, not very good with their hands, stumbly in the dark, learn fast, speed +10 but slower in medium or heavy armors.

[Pex]

Humans are more artistic than dwarves, more industrial than elves, more cautious than halflings, more competent than gnomes, more relaxed than half-elves, more attractive than half-orcs, more civilized than orcs, and more organized than goblins.

[Steampunkette]

Personally I like to answer this question from the viewpoint of alien species:

Don't go near humans! They're giant monstrous brutes with bones sticking out of their skulls that they use to shred and tear flesh! They're also able to stay awake, and grow more and more unpredictable, for up to seventy two hours straight! They tear apart living beings, shred their bodies, and don the resulting mass of fibrous and protein-rich tissue as ornaments for their bodies rather than using it for nourishment! And they're completely effective in the night rather than having any form of forced dormancy, they don't even need light to kill you!

(From the viewpoint of a 20 inch tall plant-based species that relies on photosynthesis)

[SethoMarkus]

From what I remember, in the realm of Sci-Fi, specifically Star Trek, although there were other alien races that displayed similar traits, I can't think of any race other than Humans that put so much trust in their own hope and optimism, never giving up and always looking to the future (as a general rule for the species).

[Steampunkette]

The main problem with races and species is that they're all built with the idea that humans are default, and everything else is "Human, but X" and it is almlst invariably something they're better at than humans. This is one thing I liked about Farscape that frustrates me about Trek and Wars. The aliens were occasionally completely inhuman.

Moya, the living starship. Rigel, the small amphibian king. Pilot, the six armed giant slugopede plugged into the ship. Muppet aliens all over, and there was only 1 human and one clear human analog in a world of heavily made up actors.

Humans weren't default. There just happened to be one in the area.

[LibraryOgre]

In AD&D, I get rid of level limits and most class restrictions, instead giving humans a +1 to Charisma and +1 to all saves. This is roughly in line with what other races get, and focuses on some human traits... namely, that in AD&D, humans get along with everyone (we trade with elves, dwarves, and even orcs and other monsters in some cases), and a +1 to all saves makes us resilient without being specialized (like demihumans tend to be). I think it's a good concept to carry forward... compared to other races, humans are not only prettier, but more able to adapt to other races ways of doing things and thereby blend in with them.

In other games, I tend to give humans traits that emphasize flexibility; in my Mass Effect Savage Worlds (http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/p/savage-worlds-mass-effect.html) conversion, humans are all effectively Lucky, letting us advance quickly in a lot of different fields, but we're also Outsiders, because the galaxy as a whole doesn't trust us.

[erikun]

Humans are the standard because we are humans, and so everything we read or every game we play will be off the assumption that things are similar to what we experience unless otherwise stated. Just a quick example: humans can eat lactose into adulthood. That is a strange mutation which happens to humans specifically. If I were to make a setting where other creatures could not eat lactose as adults, I would probably need to label them as lactose intolerant as opposed to labeling humans as lactose tolerant. Although the later (lactose tolerance) is probably a more accurate term, especially when applying to just one species, people reading it would assume lactose tolerance by default and so would assume your elves/orcs/space-termites could eat cheese and yogart without some mention otherwise.

That's one big reason why humans occupy the "baseline" or "middle" space. I mean, we could give humans/elves/gnomes a +2 charisma and just give no penalty to dwarves and orcs, but it is much more common to have humans (and elves and gnomes) as the ones with no bonus or penalty, while giving -2 charisma to dwarves and orcs. The two are functionally identical, but the later serves to make humans the default.

[Ralanr]

Humans are the standard because we are humans, and so everything we read or every game we play will be off the assumption that things are similar to what we experience unless otherwise stated. Just a quick example: humans can eat lactose into adulthood. That is a strange mutation which happens to humans specifically. If I were to make a setting where other creatures could not eat lactose as adults, I would probably need to label them as lactose intolerant as opposed to labeling humans as lactose tolerant. Although the later (lactose tolerance) is probably a more accurate term, especially when applying to just one species, people reading it would assume lactose tolerance by default and so would assume your elves/orcs/space-termites could eat cheese and yogart without some mention otherwise.

That's one big reason why humans occupy the "baseline" or "middle" space. I mean, we could give humans/elves/gnomes a +2 charisma and just give no penalty to dwarves and orcs, but it is much more common to have humans (and elves and gnomes) as the ones with no bonus or penalty, while giving -2 charisma to dwarves and orcs. The two are functionally identical, but the later serves to make humans the default.

Wait...seriously?

Does this mean dragonborn would be lactose intolerant? Cause that'd be interesting to see on a racial scale.

[Anxe]

Wait...seriously?

Does this mean dragonborn would be lactose intolerant? Cause that'd be interesting to see on a racial scale.

Yup. The enzyme for digesting lactose, lactase, is present only in infancy for most mammals. Dragonborn aren't even mammals so they'd never be able to digest lactose. There's other stuff in milk they could digest but... Well, you ever been around a lactose intolerant person after they eat?

I've always thought of humans as the biggest and brutishest of the "civilized" races.

[erikun]

Wait...seriously?

Does this mean dragonborn would be lactose intolerant? Cause that'd be interesting to see on a racial scale.
The term is apparently Lactase Persistence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence) because humans continue to produce lactase throughout their lives. Lactase is an enzyme which breaks down lactose. Most mammals produce lactase when they are young, but gradually stop producing lactase as they get older. It is apparently a mutation which occured in Europe, possibly some 7000 years ago, and helped with population growth thanks to peoples with the gene being able to eat a wider variety of foods, thus allowing the population to expand more than in other areas. Humans who lack lactase persistence are lactose intolerant.

As Anxe points out, Dragonborn are not even mammals and so have no use for milk as children, so they could be lactose intolerant from birth. Other non-human species, such as elves, dwarves, and orcs, could very well be lactose intolerant as well, assuming that humans only developed the gene and thus couldn't pass down the gene outside half-elves or half-orcs as a result. Of course, that assumes standard rates of mutation and genetics in a D&D world - something which isn't necessary true, especially when gods typically create races out of mud - but it is entirely possible to run humans in a setting as the only ones who can eat dairy. It would certainly explain why they are so prolific and expansive compared to everyone else.

As an additional fun fact, the pen-tailed treeshrew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen-tailed_treeshrew) is capable of drinking alcohol without getting intoxicated. Apparently they don't just have a high tolerance, but have a way of metabolizing the alcohol as food.

I was actually considering a setting where elves were herbivores, orcs were carnivores, humans were lactase persistence, and dwarves were capable of metabolizing alcohol. It would explain why elves are prolific but highly spread out, and why they keep so closely to forests. Orcs tend to be smaller in number and hunter/nomadic, never taking to agriculture for obvious reasons. Dwarves drink exclusively alcohol to avoid stagnant water in caverns, and humans are the most spread out of all the races. Half-races are generally defined by their diet, so a half-elf would be someone with elven capabilities but the human lactase persistence rather than being a herbivore. (Half-elves tend to be ostrasized primarily because of their diet, while half-orcs tend to form trading societies for orc tribes to stop in.)

The idea was to have more of a focus on adventuring, where food supplies are a bigger deal and where a group of humans or dwarves, who can carry and eat high-calorie cheese or alcohol supplies, can more readily have compact supplies that would be more difficult for elves or orcs to eat.

[TheThan]

Lets look at science fiction:

Babylon 5: Humans are community builders. Wherever they go humans build communities. Additionally their strength is in their diversity, their ability to bicker and argue and yet remain a whole.

Star trek: humans are explorers. They don’t come as conquerors to take control of another’s property or possessions. They seek out new life and civilizations. Humans are also great diplomats, becoming friends with bitter enemies; sometimes this takes time, it took a long time for humans to befriend the Klingon Empire, and even longer for them to at least to form a military alliance with the Romulans but humans did do it.

Farscape: humans are alien, bizarre, technologically backwards, chaotic but very, very clever. They’re not the fastest, strongest, most advanced race in the galaxy, barely stretching out beyond the confines of their own planet. But they adapt quickly and come at problems sidewise so that other races can’t anticipate their actions.

StarGate SG-1: humans are the freedom fighters, the resistance. They are the ones standing up to the most powerful and tyrannical races in the galaxy and put an end to their rules. The Go’auld, the Orai, the Wraiths, the replicators. The humans have beaten them all growing in more power throughout their expanse into space.

Warhammer 40,000: humans (not Space marines) are the underdogs. They are afraid technology, their own evolution (Psykers and other mutations and other races. They must constantly fight against all other races in the galaxy or they will be wiped out. They don’t have the Psy-powers of the eldar, the tech of the Tau or the sheer physical power of a daemon. But they have numbers, a seemingly endless supply of them after all and somehow they win.

[MrConsideration]

There are a number of human societies that can't digest non-human milk.

I like how the Elder Scrolls did it - their average, jack-of-all-trades race is the Dunmer, or Dark Elf.
In contrast, there are four human 'races' - Imperials (high charisma, some combat), Nords (suited to the cold, combat), Bretons (good at magic and defending themselves from magic) and Redguards (combat).

I think Human adaptability can be presented by allowing them to choose a nation/culture/class of origin that gives similar boosts to other races, making humans across the board adaptable but not individual humans per se.

Despite what D&D says, short lifespans do not power rapid political change or technological sophistication - there is no correlation there. I much prefer the idea that humans care about other things that serve as a catalyst for change, like finding a sea route to India or wanting to conquer large tracts of land. Dwarves are stiffly conservative, Elves want to live in harmony with the world, Orcs just want to raid and then go home. So the dominant position belongs to Humans.

[Yora]

In any setting where humans are diverse, it's because the writers didn't make the effort to put diversity in their new invented races.

If humans are numerous, it's because the writers didn't make the effort to put in a lot of people of the other races.

If humans are resourceful and optimistic, it's because the writers wrote the other races to be "Oh no, we are so helpless. Who could possibly save us?" Which is basically a glorification of the White Man's Burden.

Nothing of which is an inherent trait of humans. It's all just badly written fictional races.

[EccentricCircle]

This is a problem i've hit repeatedly when doing sci fi world building and game design.

One thing to think about is the features that proved to be evolutionarily advantageous to us. Some such as Tool use are going to be important to any advanced civilisation, But others might be more unique.

We have binocular vision. This gives us really good depth perception, helping us to gauge distances a lot better than another species might, but at the same time we can't see all around us at once, and making it easier for someone to sneak up on us.

We walk on our hind legs, freeing up our hands for tool use. Hands a feet have developed to be very different as they now serve different purposes, but this might not be the same for another alien race.

We have quite good stamina. We are good hunters because we can pursue prey over long distances. I think i've read that neanderthals didn't have as efficient breathing, which hindered them when in competition to modern humans.

We are social. We have communities and family groups, allowing us to support one another. A race that evolves from a solitary creature might have a very different type of society.

[Segev]

I have a sci-fi space opera setting where, prior to the discovery of humans, the races of the galaxy assumed that telepathy was a prerequisite for sapience.

So much so that, because they recognize (as we do when we get pedantic or specific) that "intelligence," "sentience," and even "sapience" exist to some level in animal life forms which do not have what we would term "human-like intelligence and self-awareness," their term for that quality of mental ability that we humans attribute to "sentience" in common parlance is synonymous with "telepathic."

Which leads to strange linguistic constructs involving humans being referred to as a "telepathic species incapable of mental communication." They recognized, eventually, that humans WERE as much self-aware, thinking, intelligent beings as the telepathic races, but the term they used ceased to be a perfect overlap for all its meanings.

[LudicSavant]

Persistence hunting makes humans into nature's Terminators. Oh, you can outrun them. And miles away, you'll stop to rest... only to wake up to see it walking slowly towards you. You run and run until you're ready to die of exhaustion. And then, a country away from where you started... it's still there, still coming.

It's easy to imagine humans having a reputation for willpower or stamina. Or dextrous fingers. Or weird social behavior.

Humans have very distinctive social features. There's no particular reason to think that other races would have things like "laughing" but of course many fantasy authors make actual aliens less culturally alien than Americans from movies made 60 years ago, let alone a separate species.

It's less that humans don't have things that make them unique, so much as that so very many fantasy races are essentially humans in funny suits rather than anything genuinely inhuman.

[Yora]

In my setting, humans have the noteworthy abilities of having a very long endurance and also being able to eat almost anything. Which makes them very desired mercenaries as they can deal with long campaigns much better than warriors of all the other races and also stay on their feet during battles on hot days much better.
Beastmen get exhausted when its warm, lizardmen get tired when its cold, and elves can't keep going for long no matter what conditions. Gnomes can march and work all day, but they move very slowly cross country. When humans run away and have a head start, and you have no horses, you're not going to catch them. If you have humans chasing you, you can only try to shake them, but no outrun them. Even if you have a horse. When you need to move troops quickly, humans will be the fastest and if you get in a siege with a human force, your odds are very slim of outlasting them, regardless of whether you're inside or outside the walls. Most other races are really picky about what they can eat and get sick very quickly when their food isn't in perfect conditions. Fighting against a few humans for some minutes isn't a problem; they are not very dangerous in such situations. Going to war against humans for long campaigns is something nobody wants.

[LibraryOgre]

As Anxe points out, Dragonborn are not even mammals and so have no use for milk as children, so they could be lactose intolerant from birth.

I've long considered dragons and their kin to be mammals... monotremes, to be exact.

[Ralanr]

I've long considered dragons and their kin to be mammals... monotremes, to be exact.

Isn't that the official standing actually? But people said no because dragons must be reptiles?

[TheThan]

Despite what D&D says, short lifespans do not power rapid political change or technological sophistication - there is no correlation there. I much prefer the idea that humans care about other things that serve as a catalyst for change, like finding a sea route to India or wanting to conquer large tracts of land. Dwarves are stiffly conservative, Elves want to live in harmony with the world, Orcs just want to raid and then go home. So the dominant position belongs to Humans.

I'm all for conquering large tracks of land. :smallbiggrin:

This has been you're daily recommended dose of Monty Python. Please enjoy.

[LibraryOgre]

Isn't that the official standing actually? But people said no because dragons must be reptiles?

I don't know, man. They change the official so often that I don't try to keep up anymore, so long as those blasted kids stay off of my lawn.

[Knaight]

Part of the issue is that people generally don't want to particularly restrict humans, so specializations that wouldn't apply to human groups rarely show up. For instance, none of the other standard fantasy* species have much connection to ships and shipbuilding in most works, though in LotR the elves absolutely do. That could be an obvious niche for humans, and is in a few examples I can think of (e.g. the videogame Age of Wonders, where everybody else takes serious penalties for shipboard fighting and humans are just fine), but there are plenty of human cultures where that just doesn't make sense. Somehow I doubt steppe people who live thousands of miles from the ocean are going to be great mariners most of the time. A similar thing applies to horse riding, where there often isn't an obvious niche. On the other hand, island cultures which don't even have horses and have vastly more use for boats aren't likely to be great riders. There can be exceptions in both category, but they're rare enough that the cultures still work as examples for not handing out the bonuses.

With that said, an obvious option would be domestication, particularly of animals. The vast majority of real life human cultures domesticated something, and more than a few domesticated several somethings. That's not particularly tied to classic* dwarf/elf/orc culture in any way. It also provides a way for humans to concievably coexist even with the extremely strong other cultures. Sure, elves are categorically faster, have a disproportionate number of sharp shooters, and have magical ability. The last time they invaded human territory though, a bunch of angry elephants were unleashed in their general direction and now there's talk of "wyvern riders". Maybe staying in the forest is the best idea after all.

*By which I mean "Tolkien ripoffs".

[Steampunkette]

Actually, shorter lifespans do increase opportunities for political change!

Rebellion is a trait teenage humans have been recorded as having since Socrates stood in the Acropolis. And every generation since then has had the same rebellious traits. Disrespecting elders, listening to crazy music, and most importantly flaunting or outright exploding societal norms. Sure, they settle down a bit as they get older, but they're generally more accepting, more progressive, and more technologically savvy than the previous generation.

And when they reach the age of governance they bring those traits with them. Kings relax unjust laws of their forebears. Democracies change fundamental inequities between social classes. And societies advance toward a more progressive state.

However, in longer lived species, the power of governance is held by the elders for a longer period of time, people who hold to older values and look down on the youth for being foolish, idealistic, or frivolous. And so they govern a society that grows more and more at odds with them, with each successive generation.

It's part of why American youth, today so strong rejects voting and the two party system. Our leaders are wealthy old men out of touch with where our society is progressing who are living and maintaining their offices much longer than ever before.

[Anxe]

Actually, shorter lifespans do increase opportunities for political change!

Rebellion is a trait teenage humans have been recorded as having since Socrates stood in the Acropolis. And every generation since then has had the same rebellious traits. Disrespecting elders, listening to crazy music, and most importantly flaunting or outright exploding societal norms. Sure, they settle down a bit as they get older, but they're generally more accepting, more progressive, and more technologically savvy than the previous generation.

And when they reach the age of governance they bring those traits with them. Kings relax unjust laws of their forebears. Democracies change fundamental inequities between social classes. And societies advance toward a more progressive state.

However, in longer lived species, the power of governance is held by the elders for a longer period of time, people who hold to older values and look down on the youth for being foolish, idealistic, or frivolous. And so they govern a society that grows more and more at odds with them, with each successive generation.

It's part of why American youth, today so strong rejects voting and the two party system. Our leaders are wealthy old men out of touch with where our society is progressing who are living and maintaining their offices much longer than ever before.

Your post seems to be more about maturity than lifespan. If we wanted a real world example for how lifespan affects political change we'd have to look at the change in countries with short average lifespans vs. those with long average lifespans.

And even that's not very reliable. Countries that have shorter lifespans are more unstable politically but it's actually the unstable political situation that is contributing to the shorter lifespans, not the other way around.

People are living longer in this century and the last one due to medical advances and there's also tons of advances in other places (TV, internet, recorded music, etc.) that have resulted in enormous changes to human culture over the last century. But the living longer and the cultural change are result from the same thing, technological advancement.

Not to say different races lifespans can't affect their outlook on life in the games we play, I just don't think you can draw reliable evidence from the real world to say how lifespan affects a country's culture. The factors that affect lifespan are just too different in the real world compared to games.

[Segev]

Rebellion is a trait teenage humans have been recorded as having since Socrates stood in the Acropolis. And every generation since then has had the same rebellious traits. Disrespecting elders, listening to crazy music, and most importantly flaunting or outright exploding societal norms. Sure, they settle down a bit as they get older, but they're generally more accepting, more progressive, and more technologically savvy than the previous generation. A humorous, from a modern perspective, version on that is the rise of Victorian Values. The generation of Queen Victoria were teenagers during the late High Rennaisance, and their rebellion took the form of rejecting their parents' relatively hedonistic ways as being undecorous. They actually took on the reputedly stuffy, posh demeanor precisely because they were rebellious teens who didn't like the more free-wheeling, emotion-and-passion-driven lifestyle of their parents.


Your post seems to be more about maturity than lifespan. If we wanted a real world example for how lifespan affects political change we'd have to look at the change in countries with short average lifespans vs. those with long average lifespans.

I think her point - and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Steampunkette - is more that shorter lifespans means more generations in shorter time, which means teenagers show up more frequently and fewer older generations are around to stabilize things.

[Ralanr]

That would explain the stagnation among dwarven society at least.

Not so much elves since they're supposed to be mostly in the chaotic range with all that freedom and creativity.

[Segev]

That would explain the stagnation among dwarven society at least.

Not so much elves since they're supposed to be mostly in the chaotic range with all that freedom and creativity.

Maybe elves don't stagnate, but their lack of rigid traditions makes it impossible to point to specific changes. They're all over the place anyway.

[Yora]

Except for being listed as CG in D&Ds alignment system, I don't really recall any portrayal of elves as non-rigid. Even in D&D.

[Steampunkette]

{scrubbed}

Though the Victorian Era was a heck of a lot more debauched than we talk about. We have this idealized version of it through the artistic medium presented and a rewriting of history by later generations, but banging in the streets was way more common than it is, today. Graffiti was just as raunchy, and Shakespeare (LAAAATE Renaissance) was writing plays that were still widely beloved throughout the Victorian Period with dirty jokes about oral sex, telling children they'll shpadoinkle someday, and one of the first recorded "Your Momma!" jokes in history.


Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
H: I mean, my head upon your lap?
O: Ay, my lord.
H: Do you think I meant country matters?
O: I think nothing, my lord.
H: That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
O: What is, my lord?
H: Nothing. (III.iii.112-121)

(Nothing being early Victorian slang for a vagina, accentuate the first syllable of "Country", and to lie head upon maiden's lap focus on the last word.)


The day before, she broke her brow,
And then my husband – God be with his soul!
[He] was a merry man – took up the child.
“Yea,” quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
Wilt thou not, Jule?” (I.iii.38-43)

(Juliet's maid telling the 12 year old "You fell forward and busted your forehead, when you're smarter you'll fall backward and bust something else")


Demetrius: "Villain, what hast thou done?"
Aaron: “That which thou canst not undo."
Chiron: "Thou hast undone our mother."
Aaron: "Villain, I have done thy mother."
Titus Andronicus, Act 4, Scene 2

{scrubbed}

[Ralanr]

Except for being listed as CG in D&Ds alignment system, I don't really recall any portrayal of elves as non-rigid. Even in D&D.

The alignment description in 5e for elves and half-elves paints them as shifting to chaotic (friendly version).

Course alignment is BS anyway.

[Joe the Rat]

Humans are the diplomats. Humans are the warriors. Humans are the industrious. Humans are the frivolous. Humans are the inquisitive. Humans are willfully ignorant. Humans are diverse. Humans are homogenous. Humans have primitive minds. Humans are terrifyingly alien. Humans are puny. Humans are apex predators. Humans are stubborn. Humans can change. Humans are more rational. Humans are batscat insane (http://xkcd.com/556/).

Mix and match to fit your setting and story needs.

Also, average life expectancy is a lousy metric for group longevity, as it can be strongly driven by child and infant mortality rates. Make sure you're comparing groups with comparable standards of living.


I've long considered dragons and their kin to be mammals... monotremes, to be exact.

Official or not, it's as good as the "warm-blooded-reptile-but-not-actually-dinosaurs-or-maybe-they-are-oh-no-they're-cold-blooded-now-but-not-exothermic-maybe" model they keep waffling on. Massive hexapodal echidnae works for me.

Wait. If dragons produce milk... Dragonborn might be able to eat cheese after all!

[Ralanr]

Wait. If dragons produce milk... Dragonborn might be able to eat cheese after all!

*All dragonborn rejoice*

Can't say the same for lizardfolk and yuan-ti.

[TheCountAlucard]

In 3.5, anyway, Dragonborn weren't so much a race as a template Bahamut applied to existing creatures; you had Dragonborn who were human and Dragonborn who were dwarves, and presumably Dragonborn who were halflings. As such, they'd probably be as able or unable to eat cheese as their base race.

[Amaril]

Wait. If dragons produce milk... Dragonborn might be able to eat cheese after all!

Can I sig this? :smallbiggrin:

[goto124]

Gouda Dragons.

[Lord Raziere]

round ears, tallness and an unquenchable desire to think we're somehow superior or special compared to everyone else when we're not for no reason.

[Tvtyrant]

In most fiction humans are smarter or more clever than other races. I have never been that fond of this trope, my preference would be a look at human's crazy endurance and strange resistance to poison. Think about other animals that can actually march 40 miles a day and you get birds, sea life and humans.

[Anxe]

That's a more valid point.

There's still a problem with it being unclear how often different races reproduce. Elves live longer but most portrayals of them also have them giving birth only once every hundred years or so. The teenager to elderly ratio might be skewed in an entirely different way than we'd expect (depending on the DM).

[TheThan]

That's a more valid point.

There's still a problem with it being unclear how often different races reproduce. Elves live longer but most portrayals of them also have them giving birth only once every hundred years or so. The teenager to elderly ratio might be skewed in an entirely different way than we'd expect (depending on the DM).

Blows dust off the book of erotic fantasy and cracks it open.
Now where’s that table… ahh Gestation period.

Human: 9 months
Elf: 24 months
Dwarf: 12 months
Gnome: 13 months
Halflings: 9 months
Orcs: 6 months
Goblin: 4 months
Hobgoblins: 7 months
Kobold: 4 months


So according to this. Elves take TWO YEARS to produce an offspring, that’s a loooong pregnancy. Humans are on the fast side of average (11 months being the average). We can extrapolate data from this and figure out how often different species reproduce. here's a quick and dirty (har har) run down.

Elves: rarely
dwarf: not very often
gnomes: not very often
Humans: fairly often
halfings; fairly often
hobgoblins: often
orcs: often
kobolds: constantly
goblins: constantly

See something useful came from the book of erotic fantasy.

[Ralanr]

That's a more valid point.

There's still a problem with it being unclear how often different races reproduce. Elves live longer but most portrayals of them also have them giving birth only once every hundred years or so. The teenager to elderly ratio might be skewed in an entirely different way than we'd expect (depending on the DM).

I remember seeing some math online about it (a long time ago) which basically boiled down to there only being two elves in each village. Cause natural selection and long lifespans do not mix well.

Maybe elves have a birthing holiday? Everyone attempts to conceive pregnancy in this month every 100 years, then children are born about a year later. Would mean that elves don't celebrate individual birthdays.

Has birthdays ever been touched in D&D cultures?

[5ColouredWalker]

Some of the best Sci-Fi short stories I've read are amateur fan-fiction which assumes that humans are NOT the base line for a normal Milky Way creature, and are in fact utterly terrifying to behold.

This link is a list of ways in which we're clearly too insane to exist among other civilised species. (http://imgur.com/gallery/hINj1xf)

And this one is a bunch of anecdotes that a friend of friend once heard some human did, frankly I'm not sure it's even real. (http://imgur.com/gallery/7p7JI) (Please note that the title of the page is NSFW for bad language)

These are easily some of my very favourite so far. (http://imgur.com/gallery/Lufhj)

And quite a lot of these are of varied length and quality, with assorted NSFW language and themes, but are almost all glorious. (http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=humans)

:smallbiggrin:
It might not be TvTropes, and some of it may be hard to read, but where did the past two hours go?

Anyway, my personal thoughts are to play up unusual thinking, endurance, and chemical tolerence.

[goto124]

I remember seeing some math online about it (a long time ago) which basically boiled down to there only being two elves in each village. Cause natural selection and long lifespans do not mix well.

Maybe elves have a birthing holiday? Everyone attempts to conceive pregnancy in this month every 100 years, then children are born about a year later. Would mean that elves don't celebrate individual birthdays.

Has birthdays ever been touched in D&D cultures?

Elf gods*, duh =P

*Gender-neutral.

Heh, The Day Elves Get Knocked Up.

I imagine every-one-year birthdays are a pain when you live in the centuries :smalltongue:, so maybe it's a every-10-years thing? Or more special days are celebrated in the early years, and become less frequent as the elf ages.

[Ralanr]

Elf gods*, duh =P

*Gender-neutral.

Heh, The Day Elves Get Knocked Up.

I imagine every-one-year birthdays are a pain when you live in the centuries :smalltongue:, so maybe it's a every-10-years thing? Or more special days are celebrated in the early years, and become less frequent as the elf ages.

Or maybe they only celebrate when you reach 50 and again when you reach 100.

Wow...D&D needs some racial holidays. I'm tempted to make some, dragonborn are third on the list behind Dwarves and elves!

[Joe the Rat]

In most fiction humans are smarter or more clever than other races. I have never been that fond of this trope, my preference would be a look at human's crazy endurance and strange resistance to poison. Think about other animals that can actually march 40 miles a day and you get birds, sea life and humans.

It might not be TvTropes, and some of it may be hard to read, but where did the past two hours go?

Anyway, my personal thoughts are to play up unusual thinking, endurance, and chemical tolerence.
TVTropes, you say? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreIndexed)

That's the funny thing. It's very appropriate, and works well for building new settings. But in ISO Standard Fantasy settings, tireless and chemically resistant is describing dwarves. Okay, I know I've had that conversation before.


Can I sig this? :smallbiggrin:
Be my guest.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

As a lot of others have said, it depends on who you're comparing humans to. Compared to neanderthals we're fragile and slender, with slightly smaller brains than them (what this means for intelligence and cultural potential remains to be seen, but I definitely wouldn't rank them too far below us), but we're good at long distance running and throwing and are pretty energy efficient. We have a diverse diet, and a large degree of differences between the sexes, especially social differences, with the male-hunter/female-gatherer specializations they see in many human societies. Compared to "hobbits" we are big and strong and smart and eat lots of meat. In several ways it's the opposite viewpoint from how the Neanderthals might see us. Between the two of them they could still agree we're good at long distance running and walking as well as throwing, but whether we're an energy efficient species or big heavy showoffs would divide them. And compared to a lot of species further down the family tree our most defining characteristic would be our almost complete inability to climb. Imagine that, a primate that can't outclimb a bear!

A lot of fantasy and sci-fi universes have built several species out of ideas like "they're like humans, but stronger and more warlike". When the universe continues long enough, this usually leaves humans as the middle of the road people, unexceptional in every way, yet very numerous and important.

The most kind of useful answer probably comes from comparing humans to other real species we know exist. But that answer will never be fully satisfactory. Humans are smarter than any other creature we know of and at least one of the most social and organized species, but if you'd build a fantasy universe out of our world other species would become smart, social and organized, so they would seize being our defining characteristics. If even those things are out, what do we still have left that we can call our specialization? I guess that depends on what the other intelligent species are, which brings us back to square one...


*All dragonborn rejoice*

Can't say the same for lizardfolk and yuan-ti.

On the other hand, the occurrence of a substance in earth milk that not every creature can digest could be something that simply didn't happen in a fantasy world. I mean, we can digest the eggs of chickens just fine, despite not having been born from eggs for like 100-150 million years or so and not sharing a common ancestor with chickens for around 300 million years. Maybe d&d milk simply isn't bad for d&d reptiles...

Probably funnier if it is though.

[Rogthnor]

Endurance. We can survive anywhere and just keep on going. Humanity is a pursuit predator, killing prey by simply running it to the ground. We are the Terminators and Jasons of the animal kindom, and these traits carry over to our civilizations.

We aren't the most numerous because we are the most adaptable, but because we are tough enough to live in even the most horrific climates and stubborn enough to stay there. Storm hits, we rebuild in the same spot, leg trapped under a rock, cut it off. We can survive debilitation wounds and just keep going. Sickness barely even touches us. The nearby race doesn't like us, we'll keep trying until they do, or keep killing them till they are gone.

[noob]

What makes up humans compared to goblins is their inferiority in every point except musculature, height and lifespan(but goblins learn faster so it balance the last one).
Goblins should actually have higher technology than humans.

[JAL_1138]

Well, humans can be any class, don't have a level cap in any of them, and can dual-class but not multiclass.

[Joe the Rat]

That depends a bit on your flavor of goblin. Some versions don't have the patience for technology. Others are, in fact, higher tech.


I think part of the idea for humans to sit at the average, yet still be awesome, lies in the concept (or if you prefer, fallacy) of a happy medium. Humans are shorter-lived than several species (sometimes by orders of magnitude). So while these longer-lived races are aware of the importance of long-term consequences, they may lack the drive to get things done quickly (there'll be time later). The burn half-as-long, twice-as-bright humans only have a handful of decades to achieve, so they power on.

But we also have races that are even shorter-lived. Shouldn't they be even more driven to achieve? yes, indeed. But that foreshortened timeframe leads to where they do not have an appreciation for the longer term - hyperfocused on now, not 10 years from now. The fantasy "brutes" - orcs and goblins - have notably shorter lifespans. And they share the human's predilection for rapid expansion. But humans are live "just" long enough to still appreciate the long term - and build for a future they won't live to see.


It's not a perfect explanation, but it fits the D&D model reasonably well. Beyond that, you need to come up with justifications. For example, occasionally you'll see super-short-lived-hyper-advanced types, where they have the drive and long game ideals, but are limited in having very little time for the individual to achieve (tech-savvy goblins might fall here). There the lack of success comes down to time. Your best and brightest have a career that only lasts maybe a decade, not a half-dozen decades.

[FabulousFizban]

opposable thumbs.

Little known fact, elves and dwarves don't have them.

Kender do, but they're attached to grabby little racoon hands.

[Segev]

I can't access it from this computer, but a while back I put together a conceptual document trying to make non-human fantasy races that are truly non-human in mindset and/or physiology. Rather than focus on "human but..." in their natures, I tried to analyze the cultures they're typically depicted as having, their stereotypes, and then tried to think of ways to conceive of their minds/bodies/souls such that those cultures would naturally arise and, in some cases, work where they are not the optimum for humans.

For orcs, I focused on their stereotype as bullies and thugs who dominate through strength and take what they want. While a very human behavior, it is actually sub-optimal in human social design because societies which share out the work, let people specialize, and allow the producers to exchange for what they feel is fair historically do better than those where a strongman just takes what he wants and effectively enslaves others to his will. (Forced labor, and labor without recompense, typically diminishes drive to work compared to rewards-for-labor.) In addition, past a certain point, plenty becomes excess and, if the strongman is the one with excess and does not share it back out, a lot is going to waste while there still remains need where it would make society as a whole better.

To make this social model work for orcs, then, I changed their physiologies. There is no point at which plenty becomes excess, and in fact, orcs become larger and more efficient biological machines the more they consume. Thus, the strongman who takes resources for himself is more efficient as a consumer and user of energy and work than the smaller, weaker orcs from whom he takes. The only excess is that which he cannot stuff down his throat before digesting; staying close to him means you might get some of that excess, and get bigger, stronger, and faster, yourself. Thus able to do still more work compared to any two weaker and smaller orcs.

The successful orc society is one where the strongest are fed the most, as they actively can produce more plenty and immediate excess (i.e. what they can't fit in their stomachs right this second) to share around and make each individual orc stronger, too.


For dwarves, I looked to their traditional clannishness, loyalty, and greed, and made them a psychologically incomplete species as individuals. They do not identify as individuals the way many other races do, but as part of their clan. Their loyalty is so extreme because they view their clan as the "being" of which they're a part, rather than viewing themselves as unique individuals. The clan is preserved in its achievements and its relics; its wealth. A dwarf's identity is as much defined by his possessions as by his clan, though without both, he is incomplete. A dwarf who inherits an heirloom identifies more strongly as the descendent/heir to the previous owner, and feels a need to live up to his own inherited past. A dwarf clan's continuity is in its troves of treasures and great works.

Dwarves who are out in the world often retain strong clan mementos to help anchor their identities. They identify with the clan back home, and think of themselves as part of it. They can be individuals, but they are not individualistic. At the same time, a dwarf too bereft of clan will seek a new one; many dwarven outcasts are strongly loyal to their parties, generous to a fault within while being greedy and selfish without, because to them, they ARE the party. Not in the sense of the party owing all to them, but literally in the sense that they do not see the other party members as distinct from them; what's good for a party member is good for the dwarf, and what's bad for a party member is bad for a dwarf. The party is the entity; the dwarf is just its beard.


Elves, I looked to the dichotomous representations as free-wheeling spirits that seem flighty and almost innocent, and the race of ancient, serious beings who are steeped in traditions and look down their noses at the transient youths that call themselves "civilized" around them. I combined that with their trance state and what real world humans use sleep to do (in part).

The supposed elven boon of sleeplessness is actually a tremendous disadvantage. Sleep is when long-term memory and learning is committed, filed, and sorted. We say, "Let me sleep on it," because literally, when we sleep, we categorize, pattern, and associate what we've learned and can come at the problem not just with a clearer head, but with better understanding of the situation.

Without that, elven children do not learn very much or very well for a very long portion of their very long childhoods. Meditation is amongst the first things that elven parents strive to teach their kids. It takes a very long time, because learning is a slow and shallow process for those who do not sleep. Step by patient step, elven parents teach just enough meditation to help cement it for the next time. Eventually, elven children can spend all night and more than half of a day struggling to meditate and deliberately categorize what they've seen and heard; with practice, they will trim this time down to the well-known 4 hours per night.

This, too, is why they take so long to learn things as kids, but learn at a human-like rate as adults. By the time they're grown-up, they use meditation the way other races use sleep in terms of learning and growing as a person.

They still don't actually feel tired, however. Instead, as their minds clutter (much as our own as we go longer through a day), they have more and more trouble focusing on long-term goals, on old memories, or on structured logic. Instead, they are more and more easily distracted, and their very long memories produce thoughts and remembered experiences seemingly more at random, with more spurious connection and less memory. They start to seem forgetful and flighty.

Until they meditate and forcibly organize their thoughts and memories from the day, categorizing them and storing them in patterns and connecitons to make sense of things and efficiently recall important details and long-term plans. After meditating, an elf is a highly logical being with his emotions regulated (though not suppressed) and his drives prioritized. This doesn't mean they shift from chaotic to lawful and back; it merely means they seem to be the stentorian, serious, almost arrogantly sure of themselves beings for which they sometimes have a reputation after meditating, while they slowly drift more and more towards being the carefree, flighty beings for which they also have a reputation as they proceed through a period of wakeful activity.

[Talyn]

Lots of good stuff.

Segev, this is brilliant stuff. I particularly like your take on Elves - I might use some of this for my next campaign world!

[Segev]

Segev, this is brilliant stuff. I particularly like your take on Elves - I might use some of this for my next campaign world!

Thanks! Glad you like it!

[GungHo]

In settings where there are multiple different 'races', whether they be elves or klingons, most of the other races have something they are known for. But humans usually occupy this grey area of being right in the middle. And are usually very numerous for no reason other than we're humans and tell the story from the human perspective.

But what from the outside looking in what would humans be known for?
I like Galactic Civilization's approach on explaining humanity as though they are not necessarily the default (and therefore unremarkable) choice, and am paraphrasing/adding and trying to make less "sci fi"-oriented.


---
Humans are omnivorous, adaptable (though are by no means extremophiles), and inventive. Trade and economic activities are considered social goods. Breeding rates are reflected as a reducing function of environmental and economic stability. However, humans also possess a frightening (and near-unrelenting) talent for violence once driven to anger. They confusingly vacillate between xenophobia and off-putting drive for expansion (politely termed "manifest destiny" but for all intents and purposes forcible assimilation) depending entirely on political moods. Respect them as allies. Fear them as enemies. Observe internal political machinations closely. Move when expansionist drums are beating. Appeals to superstition and grandeur be used as a tool for influence, but deception may be met with retribution once discovered.
---

The above would be harder to "stat up" in some games. Generally, it's just flavor. However, I could see giving humans a racial charisma boost to reflect a broad boost to intimidation, diplomacy, bartering. If the boosts are zero-sum and you wanted to reflect the ability to be influenced by silver tongues and woo, you might take away some wisdom.

[Sith_Happens]

[Snip]

This is a thing I've seen from time to time. Basically, you take the tendency for fantasy races/sci-fi species to be weirdly culturally homogenous and embrace it by deliberately emphasizing human heterogeneity as one of our defining traits.

[noob]

Well we could also imagine a fantasy world where there is races with more variability and who would see humans as all bland and doing always the same things(like eating, walking and doing their work and doing few mad things even the most crazy humans doing the highest number of weird things will most of his life either sleep or eat or work also there is tons of things no human ever did even if there is plenty of crazy persons it is just that it is impossible for humans to do a list of everything and to do everything).

[Ralanr]

Well we could also imagine a fantasy world where there is races with more variability and who would see humans as all bland and doing always the same things(like eating, walking and doing their work and doing few mad things even the most crazy humans doing the highest number of weird things will most of his life either sleep or eat or work also there is tons of things no human ever did even if there is plenty of crazy persons it is just that it is impossible for humans to do a list of everything and to do everything).

Except humans already do everything and anything.

[goto124]

I find that most fantasy races are 'take one aspect that exists, or has existed before, in human culture, and make it the entire theme of the new race'.

To be fair, we humans have tried a lot of things.

[Lord Torath]

Except humans already do everything and anything.Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean, know what I mean?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Except humans already do everything and anything.

Except magic, flying, burrowing and time traveling, spontaneous combustion, hopping around for no other reason than having gotten bored of walking or spontaneously spending their day tunneling out of their office instead of sitting down on that same old chair yet again. There's always more a creature could do.

I could also imagine species that are more or less specialized than us on an individual basis, while possessing about the same total overall skillset as a species/culture. A species of renaissance men, maybe they don't even trust any equipment or any scientific discovery that they couldn't replicate personally. Or a species that learns hard to become experts in one area and one area only, with only a very small amount of common knowledge and skills. Imagine a professor in quantum mechanics coming onto a game show and not knowing the answer to a single question. Or a star athlete with no experience in riding any kind of vehicle, person-powered or otherwise.

[Lord Raziere]

Except magic, flying, burrowing and time traveling, spontaneous combustion,


Humans can be Wizards so.....your wrong.

[Ralanr]

I find that most fantasy races are 'take one aspect that exists, or has existed before, in human culture, and make it the entire theme of the new race'.

To be fair, we humans have tried a lot of things.

Otherwise known as giving them a hat.

[Yora]

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean, know what I mean?

Say no more! Say no more!

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last months while working on my setting and have come to the conclusion to embrace the humans with pointy ears. And look at all the nonhuman races and species from fiction. 99% of them are humans with pointy ears, and the few that are not generally have very few appearances and by far the biggest hats. Other races don't have to be completely alien. Just giving them a distinct culture is good enough. I rather have humans with points ears than squids with hats.

[Ralanr]

Say no more! Say no more!

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last months while working on my setting and have come to the conclusion to embrace the humans with pointy ears. And look at all the nonhuman races and species from fiction. 99% of them are humans with pointy ears, and the few that are not generally have very few appearances and by far the biggest hats. Other races don't have to be completely alien. Just giving them a distinct culture is good enough. I rather have humans with points ears than squids with hats.

All I could think of when reading this was science fiction settings.

Possibly off topic, but I think the science fiction demographic approaches the "what are humans?" Question when dealing similar species than fantasy. Which seems hilarious since fantasy rarely askes the question despite having a bunch of non human races.

This is probably because in fantasy it's the status quo. In scifi it's usually recent.

[Segev]

I think the science fiction demographic approaches the "what are humans?" Question when dealing similar species than fantasy. Which seems hilarious since fantasy rarely askes the question despite having a bunch of non human races.

Often - but not always - fantasy races and human real-world races are in a sense interchangeable. While the orcs are stronger and dumber, the elves are more fragile but more graceful, and the dwarves are hardier and better with stonework, they all are fundamentally, as written, human. Just more fantastic humans than real ones, and exaggerating traits into functional super powers or weaknesses that are normally merely attributed to "other races" by less-modern real-world humans.

I won't go into specific racial stereotypes from the real world, as it's unnecessary to bring them to mind. Think how often somebody says "X race as depicted in Y fantasy setting is a racist slur against Z real-world human race!" and you'll see the point in action, however.

Obviously, as fantasy races get less and less physically human, more physiological differencese arise, but by and large, the races are just variants of the same species. They're just more varied than the human species in the real world.


This realization is partially why I performed my exercise in writing more "alien" versions of the non-human races.

[5ColouredWalker]

I could also imagine species that are more or less specialized than us on an individual basis, while possessing about the same total overall skillset as a species/culture. A species of renaissance men, maybe they don't even trust any equipment or any scientific discovery that they couldn't replicate personally.

You mean Amish?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Humans can be Wizards so.....your wrong.

Okay, I'm sorry, I was trying to talk about real world humans without any system-specific fantasy deviations from that norm. Imagine I had given shape shifting as an example there. Obviously humans in fiction can be werewolves, I've just never met a real one. (EDIT: not one that could alter more than a few minor aspects without the help of say hormones or surgery anyway. But you know what I meant, no full scale spur of the moment Hulk transformations...)


You mean Amish?

I was thinking a little more "wants to learn everything, eventually". Maybe like a very long lived race of which the individuals keep picking up new knowledge in all directions. Or a little less extreme maybe ones that do pick up specializations, but keep learning new ones as time passes, so at some point one could be a trained construction worker, salesperson, farmer, "human" resource worker, field medic, doctor and to close the circle architect. They could even be very slow learners to start with, being generally considered almost animal-like stupid by anyone who comes into contact with a group of youth and young adults. They just keep going from there.

[5ColouredWalker]

I thought as much, but it was good for a laugh

Also, in other news, RotW Elves are portrayed like that.

[Honest Tiefling]

...This is nitpicky, but I would like to point out that lactose intolerance is indeed, the norm for our species. We're not a lactose tolerant race, that's some kooky subrace that got introduced later and that some other people started copying and pretending to be all original about it.

Anyway, as for the point, I do wonder if I am the only one who tries to sidestep the issue by only having human and human-with-hat races. I don't give humans anything special, they just are the norm and other races tend to be...Well, subraces of human. Human with a few quirks, shall we say. It sorta makes the whole issue raised by this thread make a lot more sense, personally, if baked into the setting.

[Ralanr]

...This is nitpicky, but I would like to point out that lactose intolerance is indeed, the norm for our species. We're not a lactose tolerant race, that's some kooky subrace that got introduced later and that some other people started copying and pretending to be all original about it.

Anyway, as for the point, I do wonder if I am the only one who tries to sidestep the issue by only having human and human-with-hat races. I don't give humans anything special, they just are the norm and other races tend to be...Well, subraces of human. Human with a few quirks, shall we say. It sorta makes the whole issue raised by this thread make a lot more sense, personally, if baked into the setting.

I'm sure others have tried. It's just very difficult since all we have to base off of for a sentient, civilization building, and communicating based on language is us.

And hive minds like ants and bees.

[Ashtagon]

I started a thread about this a while back, and decided to go with the determinator/survivor hat, along with nerfing human spellcaster potential slightly. My humans in their current iteration get the following:


Human Stamina: Humans get all of the following, reflecting their greater ability to survive hardship and thrive in varied environments.

+2 on saves to resist environmental heat/cold (i.e., the rules presented in Sandstorm and Frostburn).
+2 to saves to resist the effects of food/water deprivation.
+2 on saves to resist altitude sickness, suffocation, drowning, holding breath, and similar issues to do with oxygen starvation.
+2 on endurance checks to resist becoming fatigued or exhausted, such as long-distance marching, distance swimming, running.

Human Destiny: Choose one of the following:

Choose one of the "+2 on a saving throw" feats
+1 extra action point gained each time you gain a level
re-roll any one saving throw once per day.

Choose any one skill as a permanent class skill (Exception: not UMD, K/arcana, or Spellcraft). You may re-roll a skill check involving this skill once per day.
Favoured Class: At 1st level, choose any one class as your favoured class. Exception: Humans may not pick a caster class with access to spells of level 6 or higher as their favoured class. (e.g., not bard, wizard, cleric, or sorcerer).




Older threads on this topic:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?190157-Redesign-the-human
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?194496-Humans-Aren-t-Generic-3-5-%28PEACH%29

[noob]

joke/Well and right after that all the wizard players play dwarf because they still get a con boost and that since they can not be the favored class of human they do not care on which race they choose(but they do not want constitution penality)./joke
Well it is just that some players have a tendency of getting the race who gives him the best boosts for its class and that if you reduce their number of choices it is sightly wrong(for example I belive it would be better if there were more races with favored class any in fact I do not see a problem with an dwarf wizard or a goblin wizard).

[Ashtagon]

joke/Well and right after that all the wizard players play dwarf because they still get a con boost and that since they can not be the favored class of human they do not care on which race they choose(but they do not want con maluses)./joke

Well it is just that some players have a tendency of getting the race who gives him the best boosts for its class and that if you reduce their number of choices it is sightly wrong(for example I belive it would be better if there were more races with favored class any in fact I do not see a problem with an dwarf wizard or a goblin wizard).

My variant human is part of a wider set of house rules that changes most races. My dwarves are naturally magic-resistant (magic has a tendency to flow around them, essentially), whilst my goblins lack attention spans (not that this stops them trying; but they are very much a "comic relief" race).

If you don't like my modified human because wizards get nerfed, you'll hate what I've done to the wizard class itself.

[Segev]

I a setting in which I ran a long game, and to which I might at some point return, I had the game be gestalt, with the caveat that one side must be your race's favored class (with allowance made for PrCing in theme). Humans were required to have a psionic class as their favored one, because psionics were the human "hat" in that setting.

[noob]

Well I am pretty sure you did the standard fixes: the wizard can cast spells from only one school of magic and an not learn spell of level higher than 6 and can not learn additional spells he also need 100 times more full round actions to cast spells(so a fireball needs 100 full round action and a control weather needs some months) (trust me nothing short of that can make the wizard not better than everyone else)

[Segev]

Well I am pretty sure you did the standard fixes: the wizard can cast spells from only one school of magic and an not learn spell of level higher than 6 and can not learn additional spells he also need 100 times more full round actions to cast spells(so a fireball needs 100 full round action and a control weather needs some months) (trust me nothing short of that can make the wizard not better than everyone else)

Such "fixes" would actualy go exactly the wrong direction.

The problems with the wizard are rarely due to spells he casts in a time crunch. They're almost always due to things he does with spell slots in his downtime, and thus have long-lasting effects which actually don't reduce his at-the-moment power in the slightest. And Lesser Planar Binding is only level 4.

A lot of the "fire during downtime" spells would be fixed by introducing a new duration: committed.

A spell with a duration of "committed" lasts as long as the caster wishes it to, but no spell may be prepared in nor cast from the spell slot used to cast it until the spell ends. So a planar binding with a duratin of "committed" would give you an extraplanar minion, but you'd always have that spell slot consumed.

(A little more finessing would be needed with the rules to prevent spell-recovery shenanigans, like using a pearl of power to "recover" a committed spell, but the base idea is there.)

[noob]

Well it is obvious that conjuration is already forbidden because of the excessive access to power of the other schools thanks to summoning(notably planar bind which basically makes you able to access to all the SLA of the exteriors) and also that things like poly-morph are changed to the PF version and other fixes of individual spells(like no simulacrum).

[Necroticplague]

I was once working on a setting where I went with 'tenacious SOBs', since that's the trait I find humans most have in real life once you take away sapience as unique. In it, each of the initial sapient races were made by one god, and were associated with the element of that god. Humans were made by a nameless god that doesn't exist, and associated with the Void element (In normal dnd, essentially Negative Energy). As a result, because their bodies were made from nothing, they easily heal back. Creation through destruction was also a running theme with them (humans had more advanced surgery because their bodies could heal back from treatments in months what might take a dwarf a decade).

To differentiate their toughness from that of dwarves (associated with stone), dwarves have increased ability to not get hurt, while humans had a greater ability to deal with being hurt and heal back. To use an analogy, a dwarf's ossified leg would resist being broken, but when they snap, the dwarf is lame for life. A human's leg would be easier to shatter, but their tenacity would render it not as crippling as the dwarf would find it, and it would heal back after a year.

And of course, the elemental association extends to magical affinity. As a result, humans were accomplished necromancers, and had the largest population of sapient undead among them.

[Jay R]

The Lensman series by E. E. Smith has the best description of humans having a particular trait I’ve ever seen.

The Lensmen must be stalwart heroes, willing to risk themselves for others, honest and incorruptible, etc. to be able to use the Lens, which (among other things) allows mind reading.

The first Lensman can only find one other human who is completely honest, and eventually starts looking at other races. The first Rigellian he meets scans as completely honest and incorruptible, so he offers him a chance to try to earn a Lens. The Rigellian replies, “No, I’m not at all the sort of person you want.”

“I’ve scanned you. You are completely honest.”

After a little miscommunication, the Rigellian says, "Oh, I see. You think honesty is a rare trait. All Rigellians are completely honest. That’s perfectly normal here. But almost none of us have the drive and willingness to risk ourselves.”

The First Lensman then starts scanning Rigellians for drive and courage, as he must scan humans for honesty.

[Eventually, they meet a completely cold-blooded and greedy race, and the first Lensman from that race is the one far-sighted enough to see that helping others is, in the long term, more personally advantageous than short-sighted selfishness.]

[Segev]

[Eventually, they meet a completely cold-blooded and greedy race, and the first Lensman from that race is the one far-sighted enough to see that helping others is, in the long term, more personally advantageous than short-sighted selfishness.]

Huzzah for enlightened self-interest!

[SkipSandwich]

...[snip]

For orcs, I focused on their stereotype as bullies and thugs who dominate through strength and take what they want. While a very human behavior, it is actually sub-optimal in human social design because societies which share out the work, let people specialize, and allow the producers to exchange for what they feel is fair historically do better than those where a strongman just takes what he wants and effectively enslaves others to his will. (Forced labor, and labor without recompense, typically diminishes drive to work compared to rewards-for-labor.) In addition, past a certain point, plenty becomes excess and, if the strongman is the one with excess and does not share it back out, a lot is going to waste while there still remains need where it would make society as a whole better.

To make this social model work for orcs, then, I changed their physiologies. There is no point at which plenty becomes excess, and in fact, orcs become larger and more efficient biological machines the more they consume. Thus, the strongman who takes resources for himself is more efficient as a consumer and user of energy and work than the smaller, weaker orcs from whom he takes. The only excess is that which he cannot stuff down his throat before digesting; staying close to him means you might get some of that excess, and get bigger, stronger, and faster, yourself. Thus able to do still more work compared to any two weaker and smaller orcs.

The successful orc society is one where the strongest are fed the most, as they actively can produce more plenty and immediate excess (i.e. what they can't fit in their stomachs right this second) to share around and make each individual orc stronger, too.
...

This really makes me want to rewrite goblins, orcs and ogres as all being orcs just at different places in the scale you've described here. Goblins would be the underfed orcs making do with scraps, 'standard' orcs would be the 'betas' closest to one of few Mega-orc "Ogres" that have managed to greed their way up to the top.

Hrmm...Perhaps a system where if they consume at least twice as much food as they need for their current size for a long enough period, they gain additional Monstrous Humanoid hit dice, once they hit certain racial HD thresholds, they increase in size category.

Gluttony(Ex): An orc is defined by his hunger, the more he consumes, the larger and more ferocious he becomes, but that strength will fade just a quickly if they fail to keep consuming. An Orc requires twice as much food as a normal creature of their size (water requirements are unchanged) and can go only a single day without food before they begin to starve. An orc who gorges themselves with twice as much food as they require (4x as much as a normal creature of their size) for 3 weeks without interruption gains an additional Racial Hit Die. An orc who gains enough racial hit dice also increases in size category 0-1 rhd is small (goblin), 2-3 is medium (orc), 4-7 is large (ogre), 8-15 is huge, 16-31 is gargantuan, and 32+ is colossal. Conversely, an orc who cannot eat enough and begins to starve will lose 1 racial hit die for every 5 points of starvation damage they suffer, which can cause them to shrink if they lose enough hit die to go below their current size category.

thoughts?

[5ColouredWalker]

I think they starve to fast, and you shouldn't let players near it.

I also only means anything to PCs, so it doesn't need to exist as a rule.
Of note, it also means that as long as the character can keep acumulating food, they likely wont level.


Also, How would you like to buy Everful Rations/Everful Mugs?

[Deified Data]

You'd expect the answer to be vague but I've noticed several traits repeated ad nauseam across most of fantasy: humans are short-lived, curious, and ambitious.

[SkipSandwich]

I think they starve to fast, and you shouldn't let players near it.

I also only means anything to PCs, so it doesn't need to exist as a rule.
Of note, it also means that as long as the character can keep acumulating food, they likely wont level.


Also, How would you like to buy Everful Rations/Everful Mugs?

I included the increased rate of starvation since I wanted to emphasize that these orcs have a biological imperative to gorge and gorge as much and as often as they can, because they lose that power a lot faster then they gain it (which is also the reason that the rest of the world isn't overrun with colossal orc kaiju eating entire countries in a day). Few players would want to gorge themselves up to huge+ sizes since they would lose out on so many class levels, but realistically, you are right that these "glutton orcs" would have an LA of --

If I were to include this in a game, I would rule that magically conjured food as a general rule provides only the barest minimum level of nutrition, just enough to keep you from starving but not enough to actually nourish no matter how much you eat, making such items only useful to orcs as a way of preventing starvation, and worthless as a way of bulking up. Think of the Enertron from Chrono Trigger (Your HP are restored! But you still feel hungry...)

If a player really wanted to play a glutton orc, I would use the following rule.

Glutton Orcs as Characters

Glutton Orcs's ability to bulk up by eating is a very powerful ability that DM's are recommended not to leave in the hands of players, but just in case, PC Glutton Orcs have the following adjustments;

Gluttony: as normal, plus the following; The maximum number of bonus HD that can be acquired through this ability is equal to 1 + 1 per 3 HD they possess through normal advancement. A glutton orc with class levels counts their class levels to determine how many HD they can gain through gluttony, but only their racial HD + bonus gluttony HD count to determine size. A glutton orc may choose to gain additional racial HD upon gaining a new level through experience, but both normal racial HD AND bonus HD gained through gluttony are subject to being lost through starvation (but not class levels).

[Milo v3]

When I make races for a setting, I do one of two things. I either make all the races alien except for a human-equivalent race or make all races humanish.

For example in one PF setting a sentient giant spider race that evolved in a subjective gravity plane so it has two sets of legs, one set pointing "down" and one set pointing "up", and giving them the ability to completely rotate their head on the z axis (I think it's z). Plus I had them all be females sorta, but with the ability to expend psionic power to spawn tiny "males" that are under their psychic control. Another race in the setting were giant birds with two tails that end in masses of tentacles that allow them to manipulate objects. Another were giant "blind" mermonsters who see colour through touch by radiating a small amount of light from their scales, and then having photo-receptive scales detect the reflected colour.

But, in my current PF setting, most are treated as if they were just people from another nation + more bigotry (since there are actual major differences in the different species rather than just cosmetic). But I still try to give different "races" multiple ethnicities, cultures, make sure nearly all cultures are mixed, try to figure out how their physiology would affect their culture, etc. For example if you travel to a dwarven city in the south pole of mars for a holiday, some travel guides suggest bringing a food purification tool even if the place your going is "first-world", since dwarven cultures often have lower standards when it comes to food hygenie as a result of their stronger constitution and resistance to toxins. One of the things I'm trying to figure the impacts of right now is that dwarves would have less mental associations with colours than humans, since darkvision is limited to black and white. It'd probably affect art, entertainment and fashion primarily...

[goto124]

About the colors: Shouldn't that apply to many underground races? Do drow wear lots of black?

[Milo v3]

About the colors: Shouldn't that apply to many underground races? Do drow wear lots of black?

Probably, I just don't have any underground races in my setting, so I only have a small number of races to think about.

[Segev]

If you want to model "orc gluttony" in mechanical terms, I would avoid handing out RHD, and instead just give them increased size categories with specified adjustments to their physical stats. You can keep the food consumption requirements, and base physical stat boosts on the gluttony stages.

Maybe they gain +1 to Constitution after a week of eating twice the normal amount needed for a creature of their size, then have to maintain that consumption level to maintain the stat boost. If they fall below it, they lose the stat boost after a week; they don't suffer starvation damage if they eat enough for "normal" creatures of their size, though starvation damage comes off of their bonus Constitution before it hits their hp. They can add another creature's worth of consumption to their gorging for each +1 to Con they have, and for each week they maintain at least +1 creature's worth of consumption, they gain another +1 Con (with a new minimum consumption level to maintain it).

When they have +4 Con from this, they gain a size category. They keep the bonus Con as a new racial modifier, gain Strength commensurate with a size category change, and have a new baseline of consumption required as a creature of their new size. They cannot "shrink" again; they just start to starve to death if they don't maintain sufficient consumption. The process of gorging by eating +1 cumulative creature-worth of food each week to gain bonus Constitution continues apace from there.

So every four weeks, if they steadily increase their food intake, they grow another size category.

[Psykenthrope]

(snip)...though starvation damage comes off of their bonus Constitution before it hits their hp. (snip)

Just as a note, assuming we're talking 3.5 or PF here, the damage to their constitution will impact their HP. And depending on how many hit dice they have the damage could be considerable.

[Psykenthrope]

I can't access it from this computer, but a while back I put together a conceptual document trying to make non-human fantasy races that are truly non-human in mindset and/or physiology. Rather than focus on "human but..." in their natures, I tried to analyze the cultures they're typically depicted as having, their stereotypes, and then tried to think of ways to conceive of their minds/bodies/souls such that those cultures would naturally arise and, in some cases, work where they are not the optimum for humans.

For orcs, I focused on their stereotype as bullies and thugs who dominate through strength and take what they want. While a very human behavior, it is actually sub-optimal in human social design because societies which share out the work, let people specialize, and allow the producers to exchange for what they feel is fair historically do better than those where a strongman just takes what he wants and effectively enslaves others to his will. (Forced labor, and labor without recompense, typically diminishes drive to work compared to rewards-for-labor.) In addition, past a certain point, plenty becomes excess and, if the strongman is the one with excess and does not share it back out, a lot is going to waste while there still remains need where it would make society as a whole better.

To make this social model work for orcs, then, I changed their physiologies. There is no point at which plenty becomes excess, and in fact, orcs become larger and more efficient biological machines the more they consume. Thus, the strongman who takes resources for himself is more efficient as a consumer and user of energy and work than the smaller, weaker orcs from whom he takes. The only excess is that which he cannot stuff down his throat before digesting; staying close to him means you might get some of that excess, and get bigger, stronger, and faster, yourself. Thus able to do still more work compared to any two weaker and smaller orcs.

The successful orc society is one where the strongest are fed the most, as they actively can produce more plenty and immediate excess (i.e. what they can't fit in their stomachs right this second) to share around and make each individual orc stronger, too.


For dwarves, I looked to their traditional clannishness, loyalty, and greed, and made them a psychologically incomplete species as individuals. They do not identify as individuals the way many other races do, but as part of their clan. Their loyalty is so extreme because they view their clan as the "being" of which they're a part, rather than viewing themselves as unique individuals. The clan is preserved in its achievements and its relics; its wealth. A dwarf's identity is as much defined by his possessions as by his clan, though without both, he is incomplete. A dwarf who inherits an heirloom identifies more strongly as the descendent/heir to the previous owner, and feels a need to live up to his own inherited past. A dwarf clan's continuity is in its troves of treasures and great works.

Dwarves who are out in the world often retain strong clan mementos to help anchor their identities. They identify with the clan back home, and think of themselves as part of it. They can be individuals, but they are not individualistic. At the same time, a dwarf too bereft of clan will seek a new one; many dwarven outcasts are strongly loyal to their parties, generous to a fault within while being greedy and selfish without, because to them, they ARE the party. Not in the sense of the party owing all to them, but literally in the sense that they do not see the other party members as distinct from them; what's good for a party member is good for the dwarf, and what's bad for a party member is bad for a dwarf. The party is the entity; the dwarf is just its beard.


Elves, I looked to the dichotomous representations as free-wheeling spirits that seem flighty and almost innocent, and the race of ancient, serious beings who are steeped in traditions and look down their noses at the transient youths that call themselves "civilized" around them. I combined that with their trance state and what real world humans use sleep to do (in part).

The supposed elven boon of sleeplessness is actually a tremendous disadvantage. Sleep is when long-term memory and learning is committed, filed, and sorted. We say, "Let me sleep on it," because literally, when we sleep, we categorize, pattern, and associate what we've learned and can come at the problem not just with a clearer head, but with better understanding of the situation.

Without that, elven children do not learn very much or very well for a very long portion of their very long childhoods. Meditation is amongst the first things that elven parents strive to teach their kids. It takes a very long time, because learning is a slow and shallow process for those who do not sleep. Step by patient step, elven parents teach just enough meditation to help cement it for the next time. Eventually, elven children can spend all night and more than half of a day struggling to meditate and deliberately categorize what they've seen and heard; with practice, they will trim this time down to the well-known 4 hours per night.

This, too, is why they take so long to learn things as kids, but learn at a human-like rate as adults. By the time they're grown-up, they use meditation the way other races use sleep in terms of learning and growing as a person.

They still don't actually feel tired, however. Instead, as their minds clutter (much as our own as we go longer through a day), they have more and more trouble focusing on long-term goals, on old memories, or on structured logic. Instead, they are more and more easily distracted, and their very long memories produce thoughts and remembered experiences seemingly more at random, with more spurious connection and less memory. They start to seem forgetful and flighty.

Until they meditate and forcibly organize their thoughts and memories from the day, categorizing them and storing them in patterns and connecitons to make sense of things and efficiently recall important details and long-term plans. After meditating, an elf is a highly logical being with his emotions regulated (though not suppressed) and his drives prioritized. This doesn't mean they shift from chaotic to lawful and back; it merely means they seem to be the stentorian, serious, almost arrogantly sure of themselves beings for which they sometimes have a reputation after meditating, while they slowly drift more and more towards being the carefree, flighty beings for which they also have a reputation as they proceed through a period of wakeful activity.

I really like the ideas at play here, do you mind if I use some of them for a game?

[hamishspence]

I remember 4e making a point of "Humans are corruptible" as one of their signature traits.

[goto124]

What about other races though? Do they only improve and get Gooder (whatever Good means here), or are already Absolute Total Evulz and cannot be corrupted simply because they've hit rock bottom the very lowest layer of the Abyss?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I remember 4e making a point of "Humans are corruptible" as one of their signature traits.

Very Lord of the Rings. Dwarven and elven society were much more stable (from what I gathered from it, if failure to reproduce can count as stable for a society), with less individuals looking to gain power, and less of them being susceptible to easy corruption by shiny rings.

[Segev]

I really like the ideas at play here, do you mind if I use some of them for a game?

I do not mind at all! I hope they work out well, and to hear about it someday after you've made use of it. ^_^

[Raimun]

In D&D, humans are known to be culturally more dynamic and individualistic.

It's quite telling that there's no god of humanity in D&D. In terms of crunch, humans generally get their extra skill points and the extra Feat. That means humans are very diverse as a people. It's not like with dwarfs or orcs, where most people are best suited as fighters or barbarians or like with elves, where most people have an aptitude to be wizards. Instead, different humans have different apptitudes. Some might be more frail but give elven wizards a run for their money. Some might be strong but still more adaptable fighters or barbarians than the dwarves or the orcs.

Humanity is all about the nuance. If all the other races have their own "hat", humanity has more than one "hat".

Besides, I've always prefered to play as a human, instead of some other race. I like the idea of an extremely extraordinarily talented or a downright supernatural human.

[LudicSavant]

It's quite telling that there's no god of humanity in D&D.

Uhm, hello? Zarus?

[Tvtyrant]

Uhm, hello? Zarus?

I always figured if there was a true god of humans, it was Dantalion.

[Princess]

I personally like to consider "the other perspective" - What each of the species/races in the game think of all the rest (especially whichever 3 are most central to the Party and/or the Plot).

Elves think humans are opportunistic, Dwarves think humans are lazy, and both think of humans as versatile and impulsive. That creates a mix of good and bad traits to contrast with Elves as graceful but arrogant, and Dwarves as tough but grumpy/stubborn.

Also, one of the major homebrew species that came up in plots more than once in my home games thought humans were astoundingly creative - in their view it was the only redeeming trait humans possessed, as they considered less creative humans to be worthless. To humans, they seemed brutal and ruthless, but they'd explain themselves as efficient and rational. Perspective is everything.

[LudicSavant]

There's some wonderful discussion of this topic here:

http://fulminata2.tumblr.com/post/128522215503/silentstep-therobotmonster-moniquill

[Mr. Mask]

I think the fact humans are immensely stupid yet somehow survive should be included. Of course, if there was competition... the survival part might be put into question.

Really though, what makes humans unique depends on what other creatures you have. If you have a race that's just like humans, then humans are not unique, period. Having a balance of traits can be a unique trait, if the orcs have developed to be overly agressive, and the elves overly passive, then a middle-point can make you more successful as a species.

[Cluedrew]

Well there has been so much awesome in this thread that I have had a bit of trouble trying to figure out what I could actually add to the conversation. Now I've got one thing to add which is parts of humanity which are often extended out to the other races almost unconsciously. These are: emotions and life-cycle.

Now I'm pretty sure all creatures will have some emotions, they serve as "modes of operation" for living creatures (particularly for ones like fear) and probably a lot of other very important social interaction roles that I can't really explain. But who says that all creatures will experience the same emotions in the same way. The best known example I can think of are the Kender, no I'm not talking about there lack of respect for property but their lack of fear. Now this tends to get them into trouble but also they don't freeze in fear which occasionally gets them out of it... I guess.

The other one is our life-cycle. We are babies, then children, then adolescents and then adults. I can remember flipping through a D&D book and seeing a chart that showed when each of the races entered various stages of there life. It was all basically the same thing just sped up or slowed down. In fact this one is so wide spread I can't think of a good widely known examples of races that have a very different life cycle.

Funny, out of this conversation has come out a lot of points about how to make humans interesting and how to make non-humans interesting. Well, they are two sides of the same coin I guess, but I feel these points are more closely tied to non-humans.

[TheCountAlucard]

The other one is our life-cycle. We are babies, then children, then adolescents and then adults. I can remember flipping through a D&D book and seeing a chart that showed when each of the races entered various stages of there life. It was all basically the same thing just sped up or slowed down. In fact this one is so wide spread I can't think of a good widely known examples of races that have a very different life cycle.Dragon Kings, from the Exalted setting. They're capable of human or even genius intellect, but remain at "animal intelligence" until they awaken their latent ability to perceive flows of Essence. With this awakening comes a wash of memories from the innumerable past lives they've lived.

This could occur at infancy under ideal conditions, but in the Age of Sorrows (the time the game is typically set), most will never awaken their true potential.

May not be what you consider a different "life cycle," but considering mental development is very much part of it for us, I'd say it is.

[Sith_Happens]

Uhm, hello? Zarus?

Zarus isn't the god of humans per se (though he certainly thinks himself such) so much as the god of human supremacy.

[Necroticplague]

The other one is our life-cycle. We are babies, then children, then adolescents and then adults. I can remember flipping through a D&D book and seeing a chart that showed when each of the races entered various stages of there life. It was all basically the same thing just sped up or slowed down. In fact this one is so wide spread I can't think of a good widely known examples of races that have a very different life cycle.

Do not sapient organisms count? A several reptiles are pretty much identical throughout their life, only getting bigger with age and food consumption. Beetles and many other arthropods have an egg-larva-pupa-life cycle, (which isn't quiet comparable to the human cycle because during two of those phases, the organism is inactive, and is merely sitting around, changing/growing.)

[ThinkMinty]

Due to how...long this post ended up being, I threw the whole thing into a spoiler to make my post a reasonable size, archive-wise.


round ears, tallness and an unquenchable desire to think we're somehow superior or special compared to everyone else when we're not for no reason.

Why does this sound so goddamn familiar? It's almost like it's an allegory for something.


Elf gods*, duh =P

*Gender-neutral.

Heh, The Day Elves Get Knocked Up.

I imagine every-one-year birthdays are a pain when you live in the centuries :smalltongue:, so maybe it's a every-10-years thing? Or more special days are celebrated in the early years, and become less frequent as the elf ages.

I think the Vulcans from Star Trek do something like this, or at least they do according to that one episode of The Simpsons.

This day should be called



Now that's the question I love.

Usually humans are described as faster than other races in development and advancement due to their shorter life spans. Or humans are more creative, or more prone to individualism than other races.

But in all honesty I don't think humanity can be described with a particular "hat" (unless you count war. But fantasy and sci-fi rarely portray humans as a war focused race...well science fiction does it more). And to describe other races by what, "hat" it wears isn't a good way to bring out a race, though it's not easy to build races in the first place.

Humanity does not have a current real world equal. Aliens might laugh at me, but there is no other race that has a civilization and can communicate with us. So we don't know how to describe ourselves in comparison to another race.

Humanity is all about the nuance. If all the other races have their own "hat", humanity has more than one "hat".

Besides, I've always prefered to play as a human, instead of some other race. I like the idea of an extremely extraordinarily talented or a downright supernatural human.

Humanity's hat is generally the lack of a hat.


Except humans already do everything and anything.

This is why half-dragons, half-elves, half-orcs, et al all exist.


Humans don't have any of that baggage–as Ralanr says, we don't have much of a "hat"–so they spread like the plague. Only it's a plague that has sex with every other less prolific plague, because pretty much every half-race has human as one of its halves. And in sci-fi, well, there's Kirk. :smalltongue:

Yup. We're the ones who will bang anything. On the sci-fi note, there's also Star Lord/Peter Quill, another (half) human xenophile.

...and Finn the Human, who's this out of necessity. And Fionna, on the obverse, for the same reasons.


There is a certain merit to being "good, but not great" at everything. Going by that, I imagine one of the ways other races/species would commonly see humans is "Come on, is there anything these people can't do?"

Hmm. "Not attempt to fornicate with attractive members of other races", maybe. Or live more than a few decades. Or by dwarven standards, grow a decent beard.


In any setting where humans are diverse, it's because the writers didn't make the effort to put diversity in their new invented races.

If humans are numerous, it's because the writers didn't make the effort to put in a lot of people of the other races.

If humans are resourceful and optimistic, it's because the writers wrote the other races to be "Oh no, we are so helpless. Who could possibly save us?" Which is basically a glorification of the White Man's Burden.

Nothing of which is an inherent trait of humans. It's all just badly written fictional races.

That's some valuable perspective right there. A lot of this stuff comes from dead guys being hacky about stuff.


Persistence hunting makes humans into nature's Terminators. Oh, you can outrun them. And miles away, you'll stop to rest... only to wake up to see it walking slowly towards you. You run and run until you're ready to die of exhaustion. And then, a country away from where you started... it's still there, still coming.

It's easy to imagine humans having a reputation for willpower or stamina. Or dextrous fingers. Or weird social behavior.

Humans have very distinctive social features. There's no particular reason to think that other races would have things like "laughing" but of course many fantasy authors make actual aliens less culturally alien than Americans from movies made 60 years ago, let alone a separate species.

It's less that humans don't have things that make them unique, so much as that so very many fantasy races are essentially humans in funny suits rather than anything genuinely inhuman.

A fair amount of that is unconscious use of the concept of convergent evolution, or that someone in prop ears is less expensive to shoot or draw than a Thri-Kreen would be.


I've long considered dragons and their kin to be mammals... monotremes, to be exact.

Huh. I figured they were promiscuous magical theropods.


I'm all for conquering large tracks of land. :smallbiggrin:

Large tracts of land, with a two Ts. I can't believe I'm being this pedantic about sketch comedy, but still.


Say no more! Say no more!

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last months while working on my setting and have come to the conclusion to embrace the humans with pointy ears. And look at all the nonhuman races and species from fiction. 99% of them are humans with pointy ears, and the few that are not generally have very few appearances and by far the biggest hats. Other races don't have to be completely alien. Just giving them a distinct culture is good enough. I rather have humans with points ears than squids with hats.

Squids with hats made me think of this thing where squid-face dudes live in Victorian London. I forget what it's called, but I remember the art being hilarious.


The Lensman series by E. E. Smith has the best description of humans having a particular trait I’ve ever seen.

The Lensmen must be stalwart heroes, willing to risk themselves for others, honest and incorruptible, etc. to be able to use the Lens, which (among other things) allows mind reading.

The first Lensman can only find one other human who is completely honest, and eventually starts looking at other races. The first Rigellian he meets scans as completely honest and incorruptible, so he offers him a chance to try to earn a Lens. The Rigellian replies, “No, I’m not at all the sort of person you want.”

“I’ve scanned you. You are completely honest.”

After a little miscommunication, the Rigellian says, "Oh, I see. You think honesty is a rare trait. All Rigellians are completely honest. That’s perfectly normal here. But almost none of us have the drive and willingness to risk ourselves.”

The First Lensman then starts scanning Rigellians for drive and courage, as he must scan humans for honesty.

[Eventually, they meet a completely cold-blooded and greedy race, and the first Lensman from that race is the one far-sighted enough to see that helping others is, in the long term, more personally advantageous than short-sighted selfishness.]

That's hilarious and deep. Meeting the prerequisites for being a Lensman is always tricky, but for people from different cultures, the trait that needs to be searched long and hard for varies.


About the colors: Shouldn't that apply to many underground races? Do drow wear lots of black?

Yep. The Drow are kinda like Hot Topic elves, as far as D&D is concerned.

[goto124]

The hat(s) of the human race. (http://www.halolz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/hats.jpg)

Note: tall image.

[Sith_Happens]

The hat(s) of the human race. (http://www.halolz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/hats.jpg)

Note: tall image.

That's cute. (http://pre06.deviantart.net/89be/th/pre/f/2013/263/7/9/every_hat_in_tf2_by_ashleylange-d6n3p45.jpg):smalltongue:

[Raimun]

Uhm, hello? Zarus?

He only claims to be humanity's god. Not many actual humans pay much heed to him.

[Tvtyrant]

We also can only mate during the mature part of our lives, unlike some jellyfish that reproduce basically at any point.