Non-human races and the supposed setting

[ZorroGames]

Evn from OD&D I have been playing with a cocked eyebrow about one aspect of the game. When playing OD&D, 1e, 2e - very briefly - and now 5e it was either explicitly or implicitly stated that humans were overall the largest population.

Yet...

Most of the PCs in my games are half-elf, elf, dwarf, dragonbon, Tiefling, or (recently) drow or tortle. A player bring a V. human rogue to a game last week was a shock. That made two humans in a five player party. Tied for highest percentage humans in a party in 5e. Yet.

I guess my question is, “Why?”

We played a canned Adventure where Elves had banned humans from their forest. Entering was a death sentence. Why were Elvish PCs even let into town?

Why are humans so uncommon? Mechanics?

Why do DMs not place social disadvantages on non-human races at least? Especially “Monster” races?

I have loved Dwarf characters since before LOTR the books. Let us not talk about Dwarf caricatures in the Movies (which I enjoyed despite all its flaws which were abundant.) yet I play Humans (Variant or Standard - Gasp) about 1/3 of the time. I do not think 100% humans is a worthy goal but next to non-existent bothers me.

Thoughts?

[Devils_Advocate]

You seem to think that player characters should be representative of some larger group and that something's wrong if they're not. Any particular reason why? Bear in mind, a random sample of a typical setting's general population would probably get you a bunch of peasants.

Being more common in the setting doesn't necessarily make a race more appealing to a player. On the contrary, I imagine that many players would rather their characters be distinctive than relatively ordinary. But beyond that and beyond mechanics, non-human races are often presented as having more specific cultural and innate tendencies than humans, which can serve as a source of characterization and roleplaying hooks.

Presenting non-human races as having different cultural and innate tendencies from at least the vast majority of humans could discourage players from choosing them by making them strange and hard to relate to, so if you really wanted to drive players away from non-human characters, that's one approach to try. Personally, I'd do it with an aim of making other races seem alien, whether players choose them or not. It could be tempting to then try to police players' roleplaying, but I think that the better approach would be to make clear that most _____s consider the PC _____ to be very weird, if the PC _____ is indeed a very unusual _____. And, hey, if the party elf seems peculiarly human, then maybe that's why he hangs around humans, if the campaign is set in human territory.

Mind you, that's a lot easier to do with a crop of new races for a custom setting, and I think sci-fi lends itself more naturally to that approach than does fantasy. To a certain extent, it's not even about ramping up certain setting elements so much as it is about exploring their implications rather than just using them as window dressing.

Speaking of simulationist world building, I do have a lengthy spiel about why and how a larger human population wouldn't necessarily lead to more human adventurers, if you're interested:

Oh goodie, it's Dungeons & Demographics!

I recall the 3rd Edition DMG describing how to populate a non-human village using its random tables by changing which races appeared at which frequency. All of the classes and levels remained the same, and the difference was just in who had them. With results that don't really match how I, and probably a lot of players, think of the demihuman races: as consisting much more than humans of skilled craftspersons, scholars, warriors, entertainers, spellcasters, etc. and much less so of mainly farmers.

Elves live hidden in the forest and hunt and gather and just conjure food rather than farm, and dwarves live in underground caverns and earn their living by exporting high-quality weapons, armor, art objects, etc. as well as raw mineral wealth. Having a massive underclass of dirty peasants is a human thing, partly because humanity is a young, relatively primitive race, but also partly because its members are and stay relatively young individually, making educating them much less cost-effective, because humans don't get to make use of their education for nearly as long before they die. So there are certain bootstrapping problems, you see.

With rare exceptions -- the occasional Folk Hero, Urchin, or the like -- human adventurers come from a distinct minority of their overall population, and human populations tend to be large in a way that doesn't really increase the pool of potential adventurers all that much. For that matter, longer lives give demihumans more time to become highly skilled, high-level adventurers, such that one would expect elves, gnomes, dwarves, etc. to make up a much more substantial portion of the mightiest Heroes than population alone would suggest. (Sure, a lot may be killed in their first hundred years, but nearly all humans die in their first century, with the result that most everyone with a dozen decades' experience is non-human. And that's not even taking into account powerful non-adventurers with low mortality rates...) Level limits were included as a means of kludging the setting back into being human-dominated even though that doesn't make sense; and thus, at a table that follows the assumption that That Is Dumb -- a popular enough assumption about level limits when they existed -- demihuman prominence may well be implicitly accepted.

To put it another way, most human areas in generic D&D are like the seediest areas of Eberron: The streets aren't lit by everburning torches, in no small part because any put up just get stolen. The elder races get to have nice things like that, but maintaining that quality of life pretty much requires making it difficult to get into the places where they live. Hence why elves would ban humans from their forest: Obviously merely hiding stuff hasn't been working well enough, so they've moved on to more proactive measures. Humans don't respond by banning elves because they don't have the same stuff to protect. Also, lopping off the head of anyone trying to give you trouble, including law enforcement, is much more of an option for an elf going into a human settlement than vice versa, and things proceed based on that assumption. (E.g. an elf probably wouldn't proceed immediately to decapitation if faced with hostile locals, but might laugh at them and tell them to keep their silly games to themselves and let the adults go about their business.) Everyone knows you don't mess with elves. (http://www.errantstory.com/2002-12-09/30)

Anyway, halflings are an exception to the above because they're closer to humans than to gnomes, elves, and dwarves (size aside). Indeed, being even less impressive than humans is kind of their thing, isn't it? 3rd Edition recast them as being typically like Bilbo and Frodo, since serving as a source of characters like that is their role as a playable race... and thereby made halfling adventurers ironically less clones of their LotR counterparts, since they no longer existed in contrast to the norm for their kind. But they've since been reset such that pretty much any halfling PC is a weird sort of halfling, even more so than adventurers are usually weird. And as a DM, you get that weirdness across through your roleplaying of normal halflings, as I described above.

[Finger6842]

You seem to think that player characters should be representative of some larger group and that something's wrong if they're not. Any particular reason why? Bear in mind, a random sample of a typical setting's general population would probably get you a bunch of peasants.

Being more common in the setting doesn't necessarily make a race more appealing to a player. On the contrary, I imagine that many players would rather their characters be distinctive than relatively ordinary. But beyond that and beyond mechanics, non-human races are often presented as having more specific cultural and innate tendencies than humans, which can serve as a source of characterization and roleplaying hooks.

Presenting non-human races as having different cultural and innate tendencies from at least the vast majority of humans could discourage players from choosing them by making them strange and hard to relate to, so if you really wanted to drive players away from non-human characters, that's one approach to try. Personally, I'd do it with an aim of making other races seem alien, whether players choose them or not. It could be tempting to then try to police players' roleplaying, but I think that the better approach would be to make clear that most _____s consider the PC _____ to be very weird, if the PC _____ is indeed a very unusual _____. And, hey, if the party elf seems peculiarly human, then maybe that's why he hangs around humans, if the campaign is set in human territory.

Mind you, that's a lot easier to do with a crop of new races for a custom setting, and I think sci-fi lends itself more naturally to that approach than does fantasy. To a certain extent, it's not even about ramping up certain setting elements so much as it is about exploring their implications rather than just using them as window dressing.

Speaking of simulationist world building, I do have a lengthy spiel about why and how a larger human population wouldn't necessarily lead to more human adventurers, if you're interested:

Oh goodie, it's Dungeons & Demographics!

I recall the 3rd Edition DMG describing how to populate a non-human village using its random tables by changing which races appeared at which frequency. All of the classes and levels remained the same, and the difference was just in who had them. With results that don't really match how I, and probably a lot of players, think of the demihuman races: as consisting much more than humans of skilled craftspersons, scholars, warriors, entertainers, spellcasters, etc. and much less so of mainly farmers.

Elves live hidden in the forest and hunt and gather and just conjure food rather than farm, and dwarves live in underground caverns and earn their living by exporting high-quality weapons, armor, art objects, etc. as well as raw mineral wealth. Having a massive underclass of dirty peasants is a human thing, partly because humanity is a young, relatively primitive race, but also partly because its members are and stay relatively young individually, making educating them much less cost-effective, because humans don't get to make use of their education for nearly as long before they die. So there are certain bootstrapping problems, you see.

With rare exceptions -- the occasional Folk Hero, Urchin, or the like -- human adventurers come from a distinct minority of their overall population, and human populations tend to be large in a way that doesn't really increase the pool of potential adventurers all that much. For that matter, longer lives give demihumans more time to become highly skilled, high-level adventurers, such that one would expect elves, gnomes, dwarves, etc. to make up a much more substantial portion of the mightiest Heroes than population alone would suggest. (Sure, a lot may be killed in their first hundred years, but nearly all humans die in their first century, with the result that most everyone with a dozen decades' experience is non-human. And that's not even taking into account powerful non-adventurers with low mortality rates...) Level limits were included as a means of kludging the setting back into being human-dominated even though that doesn't make sense; and thus, at a table that follows the assumption that That Is Dumb -- a popular enough assumption about level limits when they existed -- demihuman prominence may well be implicitly accepted.

To put it another way, most human areas in generic D&D are like the seediest areas of Eberron: The streets aren't lit by everburning torches, in no small part because any put up just get stolen. The elder races get to have nice things like that, but maintaining that quality of life pretty much requires making it difficult to get into the places where they live. Hence why elves would ban humans from their forest: Obviously merely hiding stuff hasn't been working well enough, so they've moved on to more proactive measures. Humans don't respond by banning elves because they don't have the same stuff to protect. Also, lopping off the head of anyone trying to give you trouble, including law enforcement, is much more of an option for an elf going into a human settlement than vice versa, and things proceed based on that assumption. (E.g. an elf probably wouldn't proceed immediately to decapitation if faced with hostile locals, but might laugh at them and tell them to keep their silly games to themselves and let the adults go about their business.) Everyone knows you don't mess with elves. (http://www.errantstory.com/2002-12-09/30)

Anyway, halflings are an exception to the above because they're closer to humans than to gnomes, elves, and dwarves (size aside). Indeed, being even less impressive than humans is kind of their thing, isn't it? 3rd Edition recast them as being typically like Bilbo and Frodo, since serving as a source of characters like that is their role as a playable race... and thereby made halfling adventurers ironically less clones of their LotR counterparts, since they no longer existed in contrast to the norm for their kind. But they've since been reset such that pretty much any halfling PC is a weird sort of halfling, even more so than adventurers are usually weird. And as a DM, you get that weirdness across through your roleplaying of normal halflings, as I described above.

I absolutely love the spoiler explanation DA. I would add that racial (and class) bias often comes into play in our games.

When bargaining the DM will definately give you a better starting price based on who you are talking to and let you actually move it with skill checks. Examples include:
CHA skills like deception and intimidation can be used directly for bargaining. Don't fail the check though, that sword cuts both ways.
WIS skills like perception and insight can be used indirectly to point out flaws in a product or prevent cheating at games of chance.
INT skills are all potentially relevant depending on the circumstances. Nature can be used to ensure a good potion material. etc...

All of those things aside, IF you are an Elf bargaining with a Human, the response is usually based on how the Human feels about Elves. After all, maybe he hates elves or maybe he loves them, only the die can tell. The same can be said for Necromancers bargaining with Clergy. Not all clergy are nice. Motivation is key.

Want to learn the Shield skill? Well, find someone who not only is proficient (expert) to teach you but who also likes you enough to agree (more skill checks here). Want to copy the local Warrior Hero for your Simulacrum? Break out your purse because NO ONE (with brains) wants a clone of themselves running around controlled by another person. All of these things should be affected by NPC prejudice.

But really, few people play Human because they can't see crap in the dark. Standard Human is my second favorite race to play but that IS the reason they are second. First is the Uber rare Half-Elf because they are the most interesting race to me and they can see in the dark. Plus, put on a low slung hat and they are Human, take it off and wala...an Elf, I get to play whichever I desire (or usually both and only I know which one I'm pretending to sympathize with).

`EDIT`
Forgot to mention that reputation with the locals also often comes into play, positive rep might get you a 1d4 boost while hero status might get you advantage...

[Temperjoke]

There's also the escapism idea. I have to be a doughy, boring human in real life all the time, why can't I pretend for just a couple hours to be a dragonborn, or a wise dwarf, or a tiefling, etc?

[Naanomi]

It’s one of the reasons I am fine with Variant Human being considered a relatively strong option... encouraging people to play humans when most settings emphasize their dominance is not a bad thing

[MxKit]

You seem to think that player characters should be representative of some larger group and that something's wrong if they're not. Any particular reason why? Bear in mind, a random sample of a typical setting's general population would probably get you a bunch of peasants.

This, this, this. It's true that in most settings, humans are the dominant race (though I always have to wonder why!), but it doesn't follow that humans would therefore make up the majority of adventurers... And it certainly doesn't follow that therefore any one particular group of adventurers needs to contain majority humans, or even any humans at all!

After all, if, as you say, humans are inclined to not react well to non-human races (ie, social disadvantages), why would a human join an adventuring party made up of nonhumans, and why would an adventuring party made up mostly of humans allow a non-human to adventure with them so easily? It can be really fun to hash out the reasons a party is traveling together in Session 0, and there are a bunch of fun ways to figure out why the party makeup is what it is if that's something that interests you. Maybe it's a party of four with an elf, two dwarves, and a halfling. Maybe the elf and dwarves are somewhat uneasy companions but respect one another's prowess and valor in battle. Maybe the dwarves are dubious that the halfling can measure up as a hero, but the elf has more faith in him and vouches for him, and the dwarves have gained enough respect for the elf by then at least on those matters to go with it? Maybe they haven't really courted any humans as adventuring companions because humans just don't live anywhere near long enough to make that worth it; even the halfling is pushing it. Or, if the party is a bunch of nonhumans and includes monster races, maybe the nonhumans were juuuust that much more likely to accept monstrous companions, even dubiously, than a human party would have been.


Being more common in the setting doesn't necessarily make a race more appealing to a player. On the contrary, I imagine that many players would rather their characters be distinctive than relatively ordinary.


There's also the escapism idea. I have to be a doughy, boring human in real life all the time, why can't I pretend for just a couple hours to be a dragonborn, or a wise dwarf, or a tiefling, etc?

This very much as well. Basically, humans are fine, but I am human. Give me an option to play races other than human and I'm going to pick the ones that are as far from default human as possible. Plus, since non-human races are strange anyway, why shouldn't they have a lifestyle that's also strange, like being an adventurer, and why shouldn't they have an interesting fate, like potentially being a hero?

[2D8HP]

Even from OD&D I have been playing with a cocked eyebrow about one aspect of the game. When playing OD&D, 1e, 2e - very briefly - and now 5e....
No 2e, but I started with the '77 "bluebook" as a DM, then oD&D plus the AD&D Monster Manual as a player, then 1e AD&D, other games including a little B/X, and now mostly 5e.


..it was either explicitly or implicitly stated that humans were overall the largest population.

Yet...

Most of the PCs in my games are half-elf, elf, dwarf, dragonbon, Tiefling, or (recently) drow or tortle. A player bring a V. human rogue to a game last week was a shock. That made two humans in a five player party. Tied for highest percentage humans in a party in 5e. Yet.

I guess my question is, “Why?”

We played a canned Adventure where Elves had banned humans from their forest. Entering was a death sentence. Why were Elvish PCs even let into town?

Why are humans so uncommon? Mechanics?...
Yes I think that's it.


...Why do DMs not place social disadvantages on non-human races at least? Especially “Monster” races?... .
My guess is DM's just don't like to challenge their players as much as they used to.

In playing 5e, I've never encountered an old-style dungeon trap, or witnessed a PC death, so maybe that's why no pitchforks for Dragonborn?


...I have loved Dwarf characters since before LOTR the books. Let us not talk about Dwarf caricatures in the Movies (which I enjoyed despite all its flaws which were abundant.) yet I play Humans (Variant or Standard - Gasp) about 1/3 of the time. I do not think 100% humans is a worthy goal but next to non-existent bothers me.

Thoughts?.
Dwarves were just about the only other race I saw played in ye auld days, but mostly it was a conga-line of humans, which, when I think about it, is odd.

Back then Elves had "mechanical" advantages, just as they do now, and while in theory there were "level-limits" on non-Thief, non-humans, in actually play those really didn't come up.

Why didn't we play more non-humans back then (and why didn't it occur to me that play didn't always have to start at first-level)?

Maybe it has to do with media?

Sure, my circle watched the Hobbit cartoon, but really we only pretended to read Lord of the Rings, it was Savage Sword of Conan, Sword of Sorcery, and Warlord comic books we actually read.

The most prominent non-human protagonists seen were Mr. Spock from Star Trek, and Chewbacca from Star Wars.

Most wanted to be Conan, only a few wanted to be Gandalf, and I don't remember anyone wanting to be Bilbo (yes I've seen posts by other oD&D/AD&D players about how they played Hobbits, but I didn't witness it).

But yeah, now I see lots of Dragonborn and Tiefling PC's, and I even briefly played a game in which every PC played was an Elf or Half-Elf.

I know now when I play a human in 5e it's because I want to role-play one (human peasant "Folk Hero" with a grudge and a sword is just the kind of character I can get into), but mechanically?

Outlander Wood Elf, and Urchin Half Elf have the good stuff, mechanics-wise.

Variant human with a Feat?

Yeah, well Feats confuse me, and most aren't as useful to me as Darkvision.

At least with Half Elf PC's I can play one that's my real age, but is still fit, fast, and strong.

I think it's a cultural shift, and players now have the internet to tell them what races fit what "builds" (there's a new term!).

[BobZan]

I play V. Human 95% of times.

My table is V. Human dominant every new campaign.

[Temperjoke]

.

I think it's a cultural shift, and players now have the internet to tell them what races fit what "builds" (there's a new term!).

This is a good point, especially for tables that are less about roleplay, and more heavily focused on combat. There's nothing wrong with it, but it leads to a heavier focus on mechanical benefits and ignores logical story conflicts.

[Anonymouswizard]

In my experience it's due to players wanting 'perfect' characters, and being more used to the imperfections in humans than in elves. It's almost always elves or half elves with these players, never dwarves (too hairy), gnomes (too short), or half orcs (too ugly).

I've also seen tiefling 'because succubus', and dragonborn 'because dragons' (which saddens me, because tying a race closely with an unusual god or two could make for an interesting culture*, but I only ever see them used to play the same culture, bit with scales and fire breath).

I normally play human these days, or in 5e half elf for the skills, because there's nothing they can't do. Plus if I want a character that stands out visually, in some groups I've been in playing a human that isn't Caucasian is more notable (in another group by the end we tended to have a random mix of ethnicities in our parties, tending towards Indian and middle eastern a bit more than anything else, I once literally wore 'ambiguously brown' for skin colour). Diversity in species, but not in skin colour is a thing I've noticed, and it baffles me even more than the tendency towards nonhumans when designing characters.

*Imagine it, a dualistic religion centering around Bahamut and Tiamat, maybe with political power passing between metallic and chromatic councils every twelve months. We could extend it further of we wanted, I see a version of dragonborn where everybody's scales are the same range of reds (but might have varying breath weapons), but different coloured clothes mark the different 'castes/jobs'. Gold is bureaucrats, Red is priests, white is soldiers, silver is scholars, so on and so forth.

[Sception]

Even in a non-medieval fantasy setting where the majority of the population aren't born into bonded servitude, a similar logic still applies. Wherever humans are the largest population & most active civilization, there humans will mostly fit into normal roles within it. Farmer, merchant, craftsman, soldier, etc. Adventurers come in a lot of shapes and sizes, but whoever they are, they're people who fall outside of normal societal convention. If your campaign is set in human lands, then non humans who live there are outsiders fit for adventuring almost by default, and would have to go out of their way to find a normal social niche to occupy, where as humans would have to go out of their way to escape whatever social niche they would normally occupy.

[JackPhoenix]

There's also the escapism idea. I have to be a doughy, boring human in real life all the time, why can't I pretend for just a couple hours to be a dragonborn, or a wise dwarf, or a tiefling, etc?

Counterargument: I can pretend to be a wizard, or an assassin, or a knight in shining armor fighting his way through hordes of undead/orcs, despite being neither of that. I see no need to pretend I'm also a scaly/furry/feathery/demon-y/whatever-derisive-monicker-to-assign-to-other-races "totally not just a human with a gimmick, honest" on top of that (that said, my favorite race is half-elf, so...yeah. But human is close second).

[DaveOfTheDead]

It's all make believe. I say let them be a demon man. It's all for fun. At the start of my 3rd campaign is when I finally had human characters, and they did it for the extra feat at level 1.

My favorite race is dwarf, so I tend to have lots of dwarven cities/towns, NPCs, and PCs. They're fun for me.

One thing I did in regard to settings is have players pick their character and show them on the map possible places where that race would be. A half-orc is not going to be born and raised in the all dwarf town of Aelheim. Setting-wise it doesn't make sense. But a melting pot of a city with most races? Sure.

[Temperjoke]

Counterargument: I can pretend to be a wizard, or an assassin, or a knight in shining armor fighting his way through hordes of undead/orcs, despite being neither of that. I see no need to pretend I'm also a scaly/furry/feathery/demon-y/whatever-derisive-monicker-to-assign-to-other-races "totally not just a human with a gimmick, honest" on top of that (that said, my favorite race is half-elf, so...yeah. But human is close second).

And that's perfectly fine. Because my point was about escapism, which is different for everyone. Heck, for the same person it can take different forms at different times, like they want to play a tiefling bard this game, and in another game they want to play a human ranger.

[2D8HP]

(that said, my favorite race is half-elf, so...yeah. But human is close second)..
Yeah Half Elf is the way to "Have your cake and eat it to", in that you have Darkvision, some nice stat and skill bonuses, and you may pass as human by covering your ears.

https://media1.fdncms.com/boiseweekly/imager/leonard-nimoy-dies-at-83/u/original/3417486/leonard-nimoy_1622089c.jpg


http://78.media.tumblr.com/ec5780a39f37cc70f7ac0b4387f16010/tumblr_inline_mv76coTc0R1qf7ovh.jpg


https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSC114ivV4YLZmWaY70tj7eyQz_7P65N EnH9qOlE0sC7C9SI03MLw

I can actually imagine covering ones ears as being a slightly ironic thing done by "wannabe-elf" human "posers"

[alchahest]

I think the main thing, is that an adventuring party is not a microcosm of worldwide demographics. Adventurers, almost by definition, are a squad of exceptions. Even if they're all humans, they do things ordinary humans in the setting usually don't get to do, achieve things others see as impossible, go places others see as impenetrable, defeat enemies other see as invincible. Human or not, there is something that sets PCs apart from the masses, and that's the fact that they're protagonists.

[Chaosmancer]

I've noticed a strange dichotomy with myself.

When playing fantasy (like DnD) i tend to pick non-human characters. I just find the idea more interesting even if i don't ever do as much with it as I a should. I want to play the gnome or teifling, a recent character of mine was a half-orc where i really thought about the idea that he came from a happy family situation. His Dad was an adventurer and a bit odd and fell in love with an orc maiden who was impressed by his strength and prowess in battle. It was a really fun backstory.

However, every time I am in a sci-fi game I always play human, and generally straight human without major cybernetics. I even had a good friend who got a little upset because we spent a lot of time together crafting these alien races, and when it came time to game I went straight for human with no hesitation.

The best I can explain it is that the sci-fi, space faring genre is one where I really love to explore the themes of "human exceptionalism" the guy with no special abilities or strange physiology, just the tools and skills to defy the universe. Meanwhile, fantasy draws me into thinking about different cultures and races and exploring the strange mindsets and existences that I can consider in those worlds.

[SkipSandwich]

My most played race is Lizardfolk, because it's fun to play up the whole "alien inteligence" and "blue & orange morality" compared to more human-like races. And that's the thing, in the majority of games I have played, elf players may as well have been "Asian humans", dwarves "German humans", halflings "Italian humans" and so on, since it had about as much bearing on the setting and how they played the character, as opposed to anything truly non-human.

For this reason enjoy coming up with varient racial traits to make thier inhumanity more apparent.

For example, Dwarves reproduce when two or more dwarves in a comitted relationship get together to sculpt a new baby dwarf out of clay, stones, gems and metal, then take it to the church where a cleric invokes the gods to transmute it into a living child.

Dwarves traveling in human lands for the first time are typically horrified the fist time they encounter orphans, as the idea that a child could be unwanted or abandoned is utter anathema to them.

[Chaosmancer]

For example, Dwarves reproduce when two or more dwarves in a comitted relationship get together to sculpt a new baby dwarf out of clay, stones, gems and metal, then take it to the church where a cleric invokes the gods to transmute it into a living child.

Dwarves traveling in human lands for the first time are typically horrified the fist time they encounter orphans, as the idea that a child could be unwanted or abandoned is utter anathema to them.

Dude, that is awesome.

I love ideas like that.

[ZorroGames]

My most played race is Lizardfolk, because it's fun to play up the whole "alien inteligence" and "blue & orange morality" compared to more human-like races. And that's the thing, in the majority of games I have played, elf players may as well have been "Asian humans", dwarves "German humans", halflings "Italian humans" and so on, since it had about as much bearing on the setting and how they played the character, as opposed to anything truly non-human.

For this reason enjoy coming up with varient racial traits to make thier inhumanity more apparent.

For example, Dwarves reproduce when two or more dwarves in a comitted relationship get together to sculpt a new baby dwarf out of clay, stones, gems and metal, then take it to the church where a cleric invokes the gods to transmute it into a living child.

Dwarves traveling in human lands for the first time are typically horrified the fist time they encounter orphans, as the idea that a child could be unwanted or abandoned is utter anathema to them.

+1! So great a concept!

[SkipSandwich]

I've got more!

Orcs and Goblins are actually the same race, they just happen to have a rather extreme case of sexual dimorphism, with the bigger, more muscular females being what humans call "Orcs" and the smaller, more numerous males what humans call "goblins" (Goblin secondary sex characteristics being less-than-obvious to a human observer, and few if any anthropologists willing to study the tribes culture). What humans refer to as "half-orcs", rather than the assumed offspring of an orc and human, are actually intersex goblins, male, but with a feminine (orc-like) physique. According to Goblin myth, the first half-orc was created by the gods to rescue Grumnish after he was trapped in the Underworld, as only one with both the might of an orc AND the cunning of a goblin could achieve such a feat. As a result, despite being sterile, half-orcs are regarded as being lucky and afforded a degree of religious reverence across the greenskin nations(other gender non-binary individuals visiting the tribes typically get the same treatment as soon as someone makes the connection to half-orcs).

The greenskin tribes operate under a sort of meritocracy, with the ultimate authority resting jointly, shared between the tribes greatest warrior (usually, but not always an orc) and cleverest mind (usually, but not always a goblin). Every year, the Hobborc and Hobblin's right to rule are tested, with challengers coming up to attempt to replace them. Every 5 years, the tribes send their respective leaders to a special conferences, where they compete for the right to become chief-of-chiefs, or Bugoborc, who must defeat all others by feats of strength and cunning. The current Bugoborc is a female halfling Barbarian by the name of Atalanta, who has held the position for almost 30 years.

:EDIT:
Whoops, the last part of the document failed to copy-paste.

This racial tendancy to follow without question whoever proves themselves the strongest is why, historically, the tribes have been the go-to minions for wannabe warlords and archmages with delusions of grandeur, as all you need to do is waltz on in proving day, make a big enough show of force and BAM! Instant army.

[Devils_Advocate]

But really, few people play Human because they can't see crap in the dark.

Yeah, well Feats confuse me, and most aren't as useful to me as Darkvision.
Of course! The Infravision Law (https://web.archive.org/web/20081217030248/http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/rpgcliches.html)! The reason that I avoid playing humans in Nethack!

It's a bit odd that humans are so perceptually disadvantaged. Aren't they kind of supposed to be passably good at everything, and the norm that the other races exist in contrast to? That doesn't happen when most races get some advantage that humans don't. If you're going to depart from "humans are average" like that, shouldn't there be something that they're particularly good at to balance out the thing that they're so bad at? Giving humans the highest Intelligence seems like it would account for some typical setting elements. (Aren't most of the most powerful wizards in the world usually human? I get the impression that that's more obviously the case than with other classes, but maybe that's just because high-level characters of other classes just generally get less press than archmages.)

"You moved upwind, silly! Sheesh, human senses aren't worth beans. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0838.html)"
--- Calvin and Hobbes


It's true that in most settings, humans are the dominant race (though I always have to wonder why!)
(Probably because of all of the fast-breeding, primitive, violent races locked in a bloody struggle for dominance, humans are the "least bad" and thus backed by the elder races with varying degrees of subtlety. They'd rather these quasi-monsters fight off the goblinoid hordes than do it themselves.)


My guess is DM's just don't like to challenge their players as much as they used to.
That strikes me as a somewhat provocative statement... but not because it's inaccurate. I think that mainstream games -- video games as well as tabletop -- have generally moved away from "Hard not to die in the beginning" and towards "Easy to not die ever" in terms of difficulty. (And moved a bit too far in that direction for the tastes of even some who found old-school difficulty a bit much.) I think that a lot of DMs probably take prevailing sensibilities about difficulty -- and many other things -- into account. And of course their own sensibilities are shaped by what they're familiar with.


In playing 5e, I've never encountered an old-style dungeon trap, or witnessed a PC death, so maybe that's why no pitchforks for Dragonborn?
It depends on what role that human villagers are meant to play, too. If the PCs are meant to protect them from a band of orcs, then a violent mob that tries to kill one of the PCs is kind of at odds with that. Not only does that make it seem more like the village has people who can fight off the orcs themselves, it makes the village seem less worth saving anyway. I think that there may be a cultural shift at work here, where back in the 70s audiences (and players) were more likely/expected to sympathize with racist characters, especially in e.g. historical fiction.


Diversity in species, but not in skin colour is a thing I've noticed, and it baffles me even more than the tendency towards nonhumans when designing characters.
There's also a tendency among fantasy artists to depict characters as relatively pale-skinned even if they're described otherwise. It's... not all that baffling, really. It can be surprisingly easy to straight-up not take the existence of non-white people for granted when... well, when one never sees them depicted. So it's pretty self-perpetuating.

It's part of a more general artistic tendency to disregard details of the supposed subject of one's work, e.g. elves often being blond in art even if the text says that they have black hair.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's also a tendency among fantasy artists to depict characters as relatively pale-skinned even if they're described otherwise. It's... not all that baffling, really. It can be surprisingly easy to straight-up not take the existence of non-white people for granted when... well, when one never sees them depicted. So it's pretty self-perpetuating.

It's part of a more general artistic tendency to disregard details of the supposed subject of one's work, e.g. elves often being blond in art even if the text says that they have black hair.

Oh certainly, although I also had a case of a player getting mad when I laid out my jungle setting and there wasn't a single white person in it. The idea was that humans had never moved out of the Africa equivalent in this world, so everybody was going to be black as a consequence of that. I'm talking more about it from players.

My current character is a foreigner (also a half-orc, but that's due to his parents being part of an arranged marriage because of nobility), which was essentially a compromise with my GM so that my character being on the run from his family wouldn't take over the plot, as well as to let me play a middle eastern character in a very white setting.

Part of this is a massive backlash against the 'only white PCs' that occurs so often here. My character's entirely family looks middle eastern, and he follows a very different religion to the one in the country the campaign takes place in. But their technology and fashion isn't very different (sure, my character tends to wear bright silks, but he's a noble), tech might be a bit more advanced in some areas if the GM okays magitech guns but nothing fundemental.

Unfortuately the thaumaturgical-mechanical basis I had for my character concept might not be allowed by the GM, but all the culture and appearance work can be saved.

[Tiadoppler]

My opinions:

The class/party system of D&D rewards collecting a diverse group of specialists. Humans make the best generalists, but do not have the special-snowflake powers of a specialist species.

The plots in most D&D campaigns revolve around NPCs with understandable motivations and traits. At least 85% of D&D DMs are human, so most DMs find it easier to design and play human characters, and then vary things for the occasional elf/orc/dwarf NPC. It's simple to slot a human into any general-purpose story element because the DM can improvise their motivations and personality traits more easily.

[GlenSmash!]

I play humans almost exclusively. I just love the being a "normal" guy interacting with these fantastic creatures and circumstances. It's perfect escapism for me.

I have a player that loves High Elves, and one that will play just about anything.

I've found that like me they just want to play what they like, regardless of the setting norms. We can always work together to think of good reasons why this Elf/Dwarf/Halfling/Dragonborn/Tiefling is rare but present in the adventure. Heck it's pretty fun to figure that kind of stuff out.

[Thrudd]

The best way to enforce PCs being representative of population demographics in your setting is to have players roll for their race. Create a table that assigns each race a percentage depending on the population and likelihood of adventurers emerging from the area your game takes place in. Maybe you have 75% human, 10% elf, 10%dwarf, 2% halfling, 2% gnome, 1% other (go to a separate table with rare races on it). Or whatever is right for your setting.

If this generates complaints, try "nobody gets to choose the conditions of their birth. This decides where/to whom you were born. The rest is up to you (background, stats, class, etc)"

[JackPhoenix]

The best way to enforce PCs being representative of population demographics in your setting is to have players roll for their race. Create a table that assigns each race a percentage depending on the population and likelihood of adventurers emerging from the area your game takes place in. Maybe you have 75% human, 10% elf, 10%dwarf, 2% halfling, 2% gnome, 1% other (go to a separate table with rare races on it). Or whatever is right for your setting.

If this generates complaints, try "nobody gets to choose the conditions of their birth. This decides where/to whom you were born. The rest is up to you (background, stats, class, etc)"

But nobody really gets to choose his stats... that's what the "3d6 in order" thing was all about... or (to some extent) background either. And sure, my character didn't get to choose his race, but I still should get to choose my character. If I roll an elf, but have different idea, well, I don't want to play that elf, I want to play that dwarf guy over there, for example.

[Thrudd]

But nobody really gets to choose his stats... that's what the "3d6 in order" thing was all about... or (to some extent) background either. And sure, my character didn't get to choose his race, but I still should get to choose my character. If I roll an elf, but have different idea, well, I don't want to play that elf, I want to play that dwarf guy over there, for example.

Well sure. I would roll for stats, too. But I know that isn't a popular way to play anymore so I didn't bring it up, seeing as the thread was about races.

It's just a suggestion. You tell the players how your game is going to be. If they don't like it, well, you can find some compromise. It's a bad idea to decide what character you want to play before you know your options, which are the purview of the DM.

[KorvinStarmast]

Well sure. I would roll for stats, too. But I know that isn't a popular way to play anymore so I didn't bring it up, seeing as the thread was about races.
You might be surprised at how many people use the rolled stats for chargen.
Almost all of the groups I've played in have.

[Anonymouswizard]

The best way to enforce PCs being representative of population demographics in your setting is to have players roll for their race. Create a table that assigns each race a percentage depending on the population and likelihood of adventurers emerging from the area your game takes place in. Maybe you have 75% human, 10% elf, 10%dwarf, 2% halfling, 2% gnome, 1% other (go to a separate table with rare races on it). Or whatever is right for your setting.

If this generates complaints, try "nobody gets to choose the conditions of their birth. This decides where/to whom you were born. The rest is up to you (background, stats, class, etc)"

I'd be up for that. I'd be willing to then roll my stats in order, randomly decide a background, roll random gender and age, then pick a class that makes sense. Don't get to choose where you come from, but you get to choose where you're going.

[Baptor]

It's true that in most settings, humans are the dominant race (though I always have to wonder why

Two words: Gary Gygax.
From its conception Gygax said and did things with the game and his own setting to push the idea that humans should be the dominant race. His vision of the conceits of all D&D worlds would be that the humans are the new, young race and that the "older" races like elves, dwarves, etc. were on the decline. This is why for 1st and 2nd edition only humans could progress to any level in any class whereas the demi-humans could only take certain classes and then only to certain levels. As with everything else, the Gygaxian influence is so imbedded into the game that it's really difficult for anyone to rebel against it - and some might not even be aware of it. There's lots of things I did in my game and I had no idea they were that way just because Gygax felt it should be. Personally, I embrace a lot (but not all) of Gygax's ideals because that is part of what makes D&D unique and different. My case in point? Vancian magic. I will never do away with that because it is unique to D&D - no one else does magic like that. (My source for this information is Matt Colville's The History of D&D, One Fighter at a Time: 1974.)

[ZorroGames]

You might be surprised at how many people use the rolled stats for chargen.
Almost all of the groups I've played in have.

Once upon a time it was dominant but have not seen one 5e character that was identified as rolled dice for stats, any version, that I knew of. Maybe it is easier to enter the game with point buy or standard array for beginners? Or maybe it is the ability to control what character you play? The latter is what led me away from rolling dice randomly.

[Anonymouswizard]

Once upon a time it was dominant but have not seen one 5e character that was identified as rolled dice for stats, any version, that I knew of. Maybe it is easier to enter the game with point buy or standard array for beginners? Or maybe it is the ability to control what character you play? The latter is what led me away from rolling dice randomly.

I've noticed a trend with 5e, which is a case of rolling dice but making the results be as high as possible.

I'm probably going to be the only one playing point buy in my game starting soon, as the GM won't be Anne to view my rolls. I'd be more than willing to roll 4d6b3 straight down and pick a class based on that.

But the group has an aversion to 4d6b3. The last game we played we generated stats with 8d20, reroll any below 8, take best six for stats. The barbarian had nothing above a +2 modifier, I started the game with four twenties.

My character in the game keeps changing class and build but not story. I'm considering either a cleric or a barbarian, considering my character it's a foreigner who follows a very different religion.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Once upon a time it was dominant but have not seen one 5e character that was identified as rolled dice for stats, any version, that I knew of. Maybe it is easier to enter the game with point buy or standard array for beginners? Or maybe it is the ability to control what character you play? The latter is what led me away from rolling dice randomly.

I've played the vast majority of my games with rolled stats (even with lots of beginners--they seem to prefer that, actually). Not 3d6 straight down, but 4d6b3 arranged however.

On a side note, I've never gotten any pushback despite restricting my races to the following:

* Humans (who are magically-mutated hobgoblins)
* Elves (wood and high are separate races in the fiction, no drow, even high elves only live ~200 years)
* Half-elves (which are really elf-human hybrids who show significant elven ancestry, ie >50%)
* Haflings (which are a matriarchal race of mutated goblins)
* Dwarves
* Tieflings/Aasimar (all of whom had distant ancestors who were fiends/angels)
* Dragonborn (who are different colors and are human/dragon hybrids created as super-soldiers)
* Half-orcs/orcs (use half-orc stats; these were an earlier super-soldier attempt)
* Yuan-ti purebloods (minus all the fluff, they're a servant race of an ancient empire that decided they really liked snakes, then disappeared)
* Hobgoblins (who are a sterile life-stage of the goblin race, not a separate race)
* Soul-forged (a war-forged variant, this one's new).

And choosing a race means also constraining your area of origin--several societies don't have any humans, only one has halflings; a different one has the yuan-ti, etc.

[Honest Tiefling]

It’s one of the reasons I am fine with Variant Human being considered a relatively strong option... encouraging people to play humans when most settings emphasize their dominance is not a bad thing

I think if you want humans, allow this. Variant human is strong thematically and mechanically. Getting what amounts to +1/+1 in your major stats and a +1 to everything you are ignoring doesn't quite make the race seem exciting, even if there are edge cases where it is useful. I mean, most of your racial attributes do barely anything!

As for non-humans, I assume that many non-humans stuck in humans lands are going to bond together and get stuck doing the dirty work. They won't always have the opportunity to pursue a nice safe career when they face discrimination nearly everywhere. They are outcasts who form a rag-tag group based on mutal trust and understanding of each other's differences. It gives the PCs a really good reason to stick together, even if the plot hook isn't up their alley or the plot is dangerous.

As for dragonborn...They're dragonborn. Normally I think every race should have plenty of commoners, but maybe this doesn't apply to the race of people who have literal draconic ancestry. Of course they are going to be adventurers!


On a side note, I've never gotten any pushback despite restricting my races to the following...

I'm surprised your players actually obey the rules of their origin, but the list you provided does have a lot of options. I think if you have at least 5 races that cover the Face/Nerd/Brute/Rogue/Druid or Cleric roles, you're not going to get many complaints unless someone really had their heart set on a race. By the way, I approve of the choice to retain Tieflings. You might want to reconsider Aasimar, however.

[PhoenixPhyre]

By the way, I approve of the choice to retain Tieflings. You might want to reconsider Aasimar, however.

You would say that. No bias there, nope.

Joking aside, my goal is to fit just about everything I can into the setting, as long as I can do it well. In doing so I'm discarding most of the more specific fluff, keeping only those parts that are quite general. Gnomes exist, but most people think they're extinct. Goliaths used to exist, but no one knows where they are now. Oh and I forgot to mention genasi. They're around as well. Kobolds exist, but they're not playable, yet. I have one player who keeps saying he wants to play a kenku, but that's mainly just to push my buttons.

[ZorroGames]

Just to reiterate, I do not want to enorce any demographic rules or nerf any races (though Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, as common to semi-common with anything else as niche filler individuals makes me happy enough) but I think the mantra of humans are the big cheese is not supported in game play that I see.

That said, if I ever resurrect a campaign I would probably run the setting from OD&D I had where all the cosmopolitan cities where based on Dwarfs and early industry with Humans dominant in most (and numerous) agricultural towns and semi-nomadic Elf villages scattered across the map. Gnomes in the cities in specific “quarters” and everyone else significant individually as adventurers from distant/hidden/almost inaccessible population centers and relatively insignificant in percentages of known population.

[Honest Tiefling]

You would say that. No bias there, nope.

Of course not! Tieflings are fashionable, charming and intelligent. Aasimar are pushy and down right tacky. Please turn your halo off, you stuck-up angel-wannabe, this isn't a dance club.


Joking aside, my goal is to fit just about everything I can into the setting, as long as I can do it well.

A good practice. I'd far prefer a non-tiefling race with good backstory, than well, tieflings. Perhaps the OP accidentally made the non-humans too interesting or the humans too dull?


I have one player who keeps saying he wants to play a kenku, but that's mainly just to push my buttons.

Oh, but your setting implies mutations and experiments. I'd put them in but give them drawbacks and make them so utterly different from the Kenku in the books. I mean, as long as it's there, right?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Of course not! Tieflings are fashionable, charming and intelligent. Aasimar are pushy and down right tacky. Please turn your halo off, you stuck-up angel-wannabe, this isn't a dance club.



A good practice. I'd far prefer a non-tiefling race with good backstory, than well, tieflings. Perhaps the OP accidentally made the non-humans too interesting or the humans too dull?



Oh, but your setting implies mutations and experiments. I'd put them in but give them drawbacks and make them so utterly different from the Kenku in the books. I mean, as long as it's there, right?

As a note--tieflings tend to be raised as temple inquisitiors (multi denominational) and are feared. Both them and Aasimar are very rare (throwbacks, basically).

Kenku probably exist somewhere, but not in the areas anyone's gone yet. Probably on the southern continent--the elves that rule down there have a thing for goblin animal hybrids. Basically all the humanoids but elves and dwarves are goblin-derived--goblins are a fluid race that's easy to mutate. They originated as servants of the primal entity embodying change itself.

[DeadMech]

Supposedly according to some surveys human fighter is the most common race and class played. Not my cup of tea but whatever.

Humans turn up as viable options for most classes with their extra feat and that extends even to 3.5. I've played several human characters. A 3.5 druid, a cleric, a paladin. Though I preferred Fire Elf for rogues and wizards.

In 5e it's a similar ratio. A human vengeance Paladin. A High elf wizard and a half elf Sorcadin. I would have considered human for that last one but it was a dex build.

I think there is something notable now that I think of it. I don't remember the human characters in my games when I wasn't playing them. Maybe it's that the players of the human characters were trying to be generally more easy going. Maybe it's that the mannerisms of the non-human characters drown them out. It doesn't help that for some reason we don't really look at each others character sheets so I don't actually remember what race people were playing half the time.

Like the first campaign as a Human Paladin I was trying to take a leadership role in the party. Raised in the militant arm of a theocracy and witnessing first hands the horrors of the world he was trying to lead the party out of the unexpected place we had found themselves. Mostly it just came out as argumentative because 3 out of the 5 players came to the first session trying to lead. And try as I might there is nothing I can do when the Half-orc barbarian declares he's going to start walking a random direction through the cave whether we follow him or not because he was bored of the casters wanting rest breaks. And the half-orcs attempts to eat literally anything we came across sticks in my mind. Everyone else not so much because that campaign didn't last very long.

In the second my High Elf wizard is considered the "normal one" by everyone else. The lizard folk paladin puts on a Russian accent and constantly makes accidental double entendre. I'd describe him as kind, brave, compassionate and a complete idiot. Trying to talk zombies out of fighting as example. The Tabaxi swashbuckler meows and hisses allot and the Aasimar Planeswalker dangles bells in his face often and he likes fish. Also we have to keep an eye on him or he hordes the treasure. Speaking of the Aasimar she's not terribly alien or weird other than being exceedingly tall and the strongest person in the party despite being a bow wielder. I suppose she's also notable for being the most morally grey of the group in juxtaposition to expectation. Also she occasionally grows wing and blacks out when angels warn her of evil they want us to prevent which I guess is the bit everyone else focuses on. Other than that she's basically human in day to day activity and since my character is also female in that game the two of us interact more in the downtime and non-combat roleplay.

In the third campaign the Dragonborn barbarian is sort of occupying the same role as the half orc barbarian in the first despite being a different player. He don't care what anyone else thinks he's doing what he's doing even if he ends up stomping off by himself. Which I'm starting to get tempted to allow him to do just once. It's just a sorta of attitude that rubs me the wrong way in a cooperative game. Only been one session of that one so far so I can't recall the races of the other two players. We're all a very front line group.

I actually kinda like the idea of human's being statistically inferior in a setting. The typical fantasy settings I'm familiar with are chalk full of races and creatures with special abilities or just brute strength far in excess of a typical human. I like the idea of humans being an underdog that has to make compromises and pursue sacrificial or desperate strategies to survive as a species. Probably mirrors the typical view of humans as compared to the animal kingdom even if humans are in actuality far more exceptional than most people give us credit for. As well as the general terror most superstitions instill in the people who believe in it.

But yeah I cant think of a reason that elves or dragons or even some kind of beastkin race haven't taken over the world. Well lack of organization and reproduction typically.

[Naanomi]

The general explanation for why humans dominate most worlds (besides luck and divine fiat)
- they reproduce faster than other empire-building races
- they have a racial compulsion and innate drive to ‘accomplish stuff’ that other races largely lack
- their cultures are flexible and reinvent themselves easily, which is especially important when rebuilding after some catastrophe
- they are good at working cooperatively with other races

[Tiadoppler]

The general explanation for why humans dominate most worlds (besides luck and divine fiat)
- they reproduce faster than other empire-building races
- they have a racial compulsion and innate drive to ‘accomplish stuff’ that other races largely lack
- their cultures are flexible and reinvent themselves easily, which is especially important when rebuilding after some catastrophe
- they are good at working cooperatively with other races

Absolutely, and in addition I'd add:

- they're willing to adapt to whatever culture they're living/raised in on an individual level. A human, or family of humans wouldn't be out of place in a dwarf city, or among half-elves, halflings, tieflings, orcs, or gnomes. They might not be among the leaders of those societies, but they'd likely be accepted as close-enough to be a member of that society.

[Dankus Memakus]

Evn from OD&D I have been playing with a cocked eyebrow about one aspect of the game. When playing OD&D, 1e, 2e - very briefly - and now 5e it was either explicitly or implicitly stated that humans were overall the largest population.

Yet...

Most of the PCs in my games are half-elf, elf, dwarf, dragonbon, Tiefling, or (recently) drow or tortle. A player bring a V. human rogue to a game last week was a shock. That made two humans in a five player party. Tied for highest percentage humans in a party in 5e. Yet.

I guess my question is, “Why?”

We played a canned Adventure where Elves had banned humans from their forest. Entering was a death sentence. Why were Elvish PCs even let into town?

Why are humans so uncommon? Mechanics?

Why do DMs not place social disadvantages on non-human races at least? Especially “Monster” races?

I have loved Dwarf characters since before LOTR the books. Let us not talk about Dwarf caricatures in the Movies (which I enjoyed despite all its flaws which were abundant.) yet I play Humans (Variant or Standard - Gasp) about 1/3 of the time. I do not think 100% humans is a worthy goal but next to non-existent bothers me.

Thoughts?

Well my table tends to lean to more exotic races because they fail to see humans as powerful. If you are hellbent on fixing this I suggest playing an all human campaign. I did that once and I have seen a rise in human PCs due to the fact that my players have realised the greatness of a feat.

[Thrudd]

Just to reiterate, I do not want to enorce any demographic rules or nerf any races (though Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, as common to semi-common with anything else as niche filler individuals makes me happy enough) but I think the mantra of humans are the big cheese is not supported in game play that I see.


I guess I'm not sure of the point you're trying to make, then, unless it's just to say people tend to pick races other than human (no kidding). If you don't want to restrict anything nor enforce demographics, then are you saying you want to redesign your setting to better represent the demographics that reflect the party composition of PCs you normally see? (Equal populations of all races, or even a minority human instead of majority). If you aren't willing to restrict anything or have players roll for characters, then it makes no difference how you describe your setting. They'll pick what they want regardless, and have a snowflake party as per usual.

Or you want to redesign the races so humans are more appealing and the other races less so?