Setting Without Humans?

[Palanan]

Has anyone run or played in a setting with no humans whatsoever?

I’m assuming only homebrew settings would try this concept. Just wondering if anyone’s developed a setting like this, and what races were used instead.

[Elkad]

Has anyone run or played in a setting with no humans whatsoever?

I’m assuming only homebrew settings would try this concept. Just wondering if anyone’s developed a setting like this, and what races were used instead.

Played in one. No core races at all.

Skarn, Rilkan, Darfallen, and a few others were the only choices.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Can I assume this doesn't include elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and all the other "races" that are "humans but with one or two slightly different features"?

Because what's the difference between a human and an elf, really?

[noob]

Can I assume this doesn't include elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and all the other "races" that are "humans but with one or two slightly different features"?

Because what's the difference between a human and an elf, really?

That dnd elves are babies, children then teens for a longer time than the time a normal human lives.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Elkad
No core races at all.


Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry
Can I assume this doesn't include elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and all the other "races" that are "humans but with one or two slightly different features"?

I'm open to either approach, but more interested in settings that don't use any of the core races.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I played in a game where none of the PCs could be player races, although humans etc still existed -- they were just the bad guys. I'm pretty sure that doesn't count, though.

[Arkhios]

Once, when I was younger and came up with most strange ideas, I was trying to envision a setting where dwarves were the most numerous of races, though I believe humans did exist in it. Just not as a playable race.

[H_H_F_F]

To me, the interesting question here is "why?", and I don't mean it in a facetious way.

What are you positively trying to achieve, except for novelty? Are you attempting to humanize races usually "othered"? Are you trying to bring the players into a completely foreign headspace? Something completely different, perhaps?

IMO, just going "ooh look at that, no humans" will not make for very interesting results - but having a positive idea of what you're trying to achieve, and building the setting accordingly, could be very good.

When I was in my early teens I played in a friend's campaign which was an orc dominated post apocalyptic campaign, set in the future of a world we once played in. The Orcs killed everything else, stripped the earth of resources, then turned against each other. We played in one tribe of orcs trying to make it through the lack of resources.

It wasn't a masterpiece by any means, but it had a reason to exist as orcs-only, and something to say both on the humanity of orcs and the "orcness" of IRL humanity. That made it cool and interesting to play in, and made it feel like a real world and not like the DM felt like being weird.

[Particle_Man]

I was thinking of starting a "pre-mortals" high fantasy campaign where players are angels in one of the early divine wars vs. demons, but didn't actually run it.

[Troacctid]

The Humblewood campaign setting from Hit Point Press is a Redwall-style world where all the characters are anthropomorphic animals.

[Crake]

That dnd elves are babies, children then teens for a longer time than the time a normal human lives.

This was the case up to 2e, but in 3e it was changed so that elves mature at the same rate as humans, but go through a dilettante phase where they kinda try their hand at everything, before finally settling on a choice of what they want to do around 100 years old. (Citation: Races of the wild).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Elkad
Skarn, Rilkan, Darfallen, and a few others were the only choices.


Originally Posted by Particle_Man
I was thinking of starting a "pre-mortals" high fantasy campaign where players are angels in one of the early divine wars vs. demons, but didn't actually run it.


Originally Posted by Troacctid
The Humblewood campaign setting from Hit Point Press is a Redwall-style world where all the characters are anthropomorphic animals.

Just to clarify, these are very much along the lines of what I’d like to hear about.

[Telonius]

Have not played myself, but there are definitely My Little Pony-themed RPGs.

[Fizban]

Played in one. No core races at all.

Skarn, Rilkan, Darfallen, and a few others were the only choices.
Was there a ball-game played in a giant sphere of water in front of huge crowds? 'Cause whenever I read the half dozen versions of human but more underwater I just go straight to FFX. The environment books in particular add some big options- Skarn and Rilkan hardly register, but Aventi, Asherati, Darfellan (natural bite attack), maybe Uldra, and if you dip into Races of the Wild for Raptorans and Killoren, you get a set of races with some Significant natural advantages to compete with/offset their reduced skill and specialization ability compared to Humans.


You could make a setting that has its primary races organized by how powerful and/or suited to the environment they are, based on the trend that if they all started equal, those most suited would quickly push out those not. I selected several in a thread about why X hadn't taken over the world, and essentially said that well all the Aventi and Raptorans and Asherati just refuse to go extinct due to their terrain advantages. Vs the Kobolds who won before the other races even formed tribes due to their ridiculous breeding speed and ability to eat dirt courtesy of Races of the Dragon- or if Kobolds aren't quite that ridiculous, Goblins still wipe Medium humanoids once spears are invented (by breeding faster and eating less with little or no combat penalty). A world that is highly divided based on people perfectly suited to certain map areas should also have very little war, and plenty of food for thought on the few barely surviving nomadic tribes without such advantages.

Related, I was thinking recently that Orcs and all other Int penalty races should have absolute cultural laws forbidding the killing of skilled individuals, since their society has so few and cannot replace them easily (the average human has three times the skill points of the average orc, and the worst human has double). This could be a significant source of friction on top of the language and physical differences, as humans will kill anyone who fights back, constantly violating orc laws about not attacking craftsmen and setting the groups they raid back decades. And really this should extend even more to the elves and dwarves and whatnot, since they also have less skill points and take far longer to grow than humans- if they hadn't been wiped out by goblins before reaching the tech level required to survive anyway.

The creation myths that say the long lived races showed up first aren't just because they have longer lives and thus memories- they have to actually be true for those races to exist, because their slow reproduction coupled with a lack of natural advantages means they don't actually live long enough unless they had a head start. The traditionally evil tribes of orcs and goblins being said to be corrupted versions of other races again is then also kinda required, since if they had actually evolved at the same time, the numbers advantage from reduced food consumption more than makes up for the minor size penalties when it comes to primitive combat given by the rules.

[Drelua]

Was there a ball-game played in a giant sphere of water in front of huge crowds? 'Cause whenever I read the half dozen versions of human but more underwater I just go straight to FFX. The environment books in particular add some big options- Skarn and Rilkan hardly register, but Aventi, Asherati, Darfellan (natural bite attack), maybe Uldra, and if you dip into Races of the Wild for Raptorans and Killoren, you get a set of races with some Significant natural advantages to compete with/offset their reduced skill and specialization ability compared to Humans.


You could make a setting that has its primary races organized by how powerful and/or suited to the environment they are, based on the trend that if they all started equal, those most suited would quickly push out those not. I selected several in a thread about why X hadn't taken over the world, and essentially said that well all the Aventi and Raptorans and Asherati just refuse to go extinct due to their terrain advantages. Vs the Kobolds who won before the other races even formed tribes due to their ridiculous breeding speed and ability to eat dirt courtesy of Races of the Dragon- or if Kobolds aren't quite that ridiculous, Goblins still wipe Medium humanoids once spears are invented (by breeding faster and eating less with little or no combat penalty). A world that is highly divided based on people perfectly suited to certain map areas should also have very little war, and plenty of food for thought on the few barely surviving nomadic tribes without such advantages.

Related, I was thinking recently that Orcs and all other Int penalty races should have absolute cultural laws forbidding the killing of skilled individuals, since their society has so few and cannot replace them easily (the average human has three times the skill points of the average orc, and the worst human has double). This could be a significant source of friction on top of the language and physical differences, as humans will kill anyone who fights back, constantly violating orc laws about not attacking craftsmen and setting the groups they raid back decades. And really this should extend even more to the elves and dwarves and whatnot, since they also have less skill points and take far longer to grow than humans- if they hadn't been wiped out by goblins before reaching the tech level required to survive anyway.

The creation myths that say the long lived races showed up first aren't just because they have longer lives and thus memories- they have to actually be true for those races to exist, because their slow reproduction coupled with a lack of natural advantages means they don't actually live long enough unless they had a head start. The traditionally evil tribes of orcs and goblins being said to be corrupted versions of other races again is then also kinda required, since if they had actually evolved at the same time, the numbers advantage from reduced food consumption more than makes up for the minor size penalties when it comes to primitive combat given by the rules.

This is an interesting way of looking at it, certainly a viable explanation that I can tell you've put a lot of thought into, but it's not the only possible explanation for various races coexisting. Maybe the older races were less violent and more cooperative with other races, possibly because they have experience with these sorts of conflicts. Maybe they developed on different continents and only recently, from a historical perspective, did some of them gained the ability to travel the world so they met. Maybe when they were forming their gods were more active in protecting the people they were creating. Some of them could even be from different planes or planets, I think in Golarion elves came from the setting equivalent to pluto. It's a weird setting.

[Fizban]

The base conceit that all the races sprang up with X stats simultaneously is itself quite arbitrary. Geological separation not involving particular advantages certainly works, but it suggests to me a larger setting than one should really be trying to model at that level of detail.

For the goal of a setting without humans, unless they are out-competed by something else, never existed in the first place, or are otherwise forcibly removed from the equation- well the writers kinda did manage to give them a massive societal advantage with the skill points and unspecified bonus feat. They actually are the most adaptable race, and so it actually does make sense for them to be encroaching and doing well everywhere, constantly drawing in new blood from somewhere else even when there are setbacks and failure, while other races always seem to be one lost war away from collapse.

Other nifty races, pulling from the same previous thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611523-What-Races-Subraces-would-be-there-in-quot-The-Beginning-quot&p=24488297&viewfull=1#post24488297)- Hengeyokai, Illumians, and Xephs. Illumians have a whole Shadow plane city thing going on, so they can be your sourced from other plane race. Meanwhile the Dragon Mag 3.5 update for Hengeyokai removed their LA, which I find agreeable considering the limits of their abilities, and those abilities do grant significant survival advantages that can let them lurk in almost any humanoid settlement even if they're not welcome. And Xephs are just out of the ordinary, with darkvision, a dex bonus to str penalty, and daily speed boost, which I don't think anyone ever seriously considers: if you want dex you can be an Elf or Halfling in a dozen flavors for a pile of bonuses and your choice of penalty, so why bother with Xeph? (Of course the other reason is they're so bland).

Of course there is a major problem with removing Humans, since by removing the race that can do whatever and locking the game down to a set of distinct non-human PC races, any character build that doesn't mesh with one of those races is punished. And with nearly a dozen core classes, plus splats, and infinite multiclass combinations, that kinda sucks. But then again, that list of Aventi, Asherati, Raptoran, Neanderthals, Xeph, Hengeyokai, and Illumian, is nearly all of the generalists. Neanderthal with str and con over dex and int, Xeph with dex over str, Hengoyokai dump wis, and the rest are all stat-neutral.

I think the most interesting thing to do with a short list of very non-human races with no humans, is to really make use of those non-human features (particularly with a mixed party). The safe and powerful societies of this world are biologically isolated:


If you can't breathe underwater, you can't operate in Aventi territory in any significant manner.
You need an Ahserati or burrowing magic to enter their undersand cities, unless they build a stable tunnel.
If you can't glide, you can't even walk all the way down the street of a Raptoran cliff city, though since the vast majority of them aren't strong enough to power their own flight, you can at least use the ground entryways.
Neanderthals are so naturally resistant to cold weather that they can walk around naked in what others need bundles of fur to survive: living in their un-insulated houses is probably less than pleasant, and trying to blend in without magic is lethal.
The dark underground caverns of the Xeph are the same as traditional Dwarf stuff- and still make anyone who needs actual light stick out like a sore thumb when they go anywhere that isn't normally lit up.

Adventurers usually get their quests from people, and the territory you're adventuring in should massively impact things. An old Raptoran fortress full of bandits is completely different from any other, as it uses gaps that require glide speeds: put flying and non-flying PCs and foes in there and see what happens. Obviously once again, you can't get paid to deal with Aventi problems unless you can breathe underwater: any land-lubbers in the party will probably need to bring a boat and won't meet anyone important face to face without magic. The frostfell will kill you if you don't bundle up, particularly if you get wet because you think "hey I have a swim speed!" And of course the Illumian city is on the Shadow Plane.

Of course, that doesn't mean there's nothing in-between, since with such obvious bars there is even more reason for trade and border settlements will grow in the middle points of those trade routes. You could swing either way, having the PCs start in border towns and then move to the higher paying fish in the capitals under various specialized environments, or have them start somewhere specific and then find that despite claims that the safe center is the best, those trade towns are making huge bank and working for the merchant lords is where they end up. The relative inability of such specialized racial nations to make war on each other would lend itself much more readily to an intrigue focused campaign about controlling the border cities: proxy diplomatic wars that are the first and last line deciding whether your home gets the imported goods they need. And so on.

Or the setting could be much more advanced past the original conceit of territory advantage isolation, the leaders moving their capitals ever-inward in an attempt to hold those middle territories and trade routes, bringing themselves closer to the luxuries of elsewhere (bought cheaper here), while their homelands grow more discontent with the leadership. An Aventi king sits on a throne miles from the ocean, the prince or princess having never swum in more than a river, ignoring reports of raids on "outlying" kelp farms. Functioning for all the world as a Human would in other settings. Until the king is assassinated by an unseen airborne assailant who really could have been working for anyone, the PC heir escapes into the river, and then has to choose between bitter cold, scorching heat, or lightness depths when seeking asylum.

[ShurikVch]

How about the Council of Wyrms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Wyrms)? Humans are there only as enemies...
Farscape (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape_(role-playing_game)) have only one human - as NPC
Cerulean Seas (https://rpggeek.com/rpgsetting/17082/cerulean-seas)?
Pugmire (https://geekandsundry.com/pugmire-a-post-apocalyptic-fantasy-rpg-with-dogs/)?
Squawk (https://www.boardgamegeek.com/rpgitem/89870/squawk-role-playing-game)?
Talislanta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talislanta)?

[Palanan]

Cerulean Seas did occur to me, but sadly I’ve never gotten a look at it, so I don’t have a feel for the races involved. I hear nothing but good things about it, but not easy to get a hold of through my usual methods.

As for Talislanta, what races are in that setting? Apparently it has no orcs or goblins, but the Wikipedia page is long on publication history and short on actual setting details.

[ShurikVch]

As for Talislanta, what races are in that setting? Apparently it has no orcs or goblins, but the Wikipedia page is long on publication history and short on actual setting details.
Check there:
A-G (https://web.archive.org/web/20200208195124/https://13thage.org/index.php/racess/392-talislanta-races)
H-R (https://web.archive.org/web/20200117015057/http://13thage.org/index.php/racess/405-talislanta-races-part-2)
S-Z (https://web.archive.org/web/20200117022659/http://13thage.org/index.php/racess/413-talislanta-races-s-z)
Talislanta Archetypes Illustrated (https://futurolog.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/talislanta-archetypes-illustrated/)

[Palanan]

Very interesting, thanks.

Some of those in the last link seem very human, or at least elven/half-elven. But then there are also...snail people? Worth looking into, at least, so thank you.

[Saintheart]

Can I assume this doesn't include elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and all the other "races" that are "humans but with one or two slightly different features"?

Because what's the difference between a human and an elf, really?

A feat and an extra skill point? :smallbiggrin:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Dark Sun doesn't have regular humans. Athasian humans, yeah, but not regular ones.

[Elkad]

Just to clarify, these are very much along the lines of what I’d like to hear about.

It was RHoD with all the races changed. Game I played on roll20.

We also had xeph, raptoran, and a few others.
The elf village was changed to killoren (sp?) I think, but that wasn't a race choice for us.

Skarn replaced human as the dominant race.

He also changed the enemy races as well. No hobgoblins.

[Particle_Man]

Another option: Take out all the medium sized biped races (so they are not even in the setting as NPCs). Let players play only the small or smaller sized races.

It can change one's perspective when the big bad guys are BIG bad guys, relatively speaking.

[rel]

I ran a short lived game where everyone played monsters in a dungeon. Custom char gen and advancement mechanics as well as a system for how you spend your time in your lair waiting for adventurers to kick down your door.

It didn't quite work but it had potential.

I did some planning for an everyone plays dwarves game based on dwarf fortress.

If I didn't like playing humans so much, the last few parties I was a part of would achieve that by accident.

[Bohandas]

I haven't done this, but then again I haven't played in many campaigns. I don;t see any reason why this wouldn;t work.