No Humans Allowed

[Kami2awa]

Recently, I played in a Pathfinder game where about halfway through the campaign someone raised the question "Are there any humans in this world?"

The whole party were playing as either planetouched or entirely non-human, and up to that point we realised we had hardly met any normal humans at all. As it turned out, there were some in the world (we just hadn't encountered any NPC human yet).

This was actually, IMO, a really good thing - it leant a strong feeling of the fantastic and exotic to the world, and distinguished it from other settings quite significantly.

What do people think of the idea of a completely human-less D&D/Pathfinder world? Would it cause any problems with the game?

[Grinner]

What do people think of the idea of a completely human-less D&D/Pathfinder world? Would it cause any problems with the game?

Seeing as how various races tend to be personifications of various facets of the human psyche, I've always liked the idea of a non-human world. It at least gives room for races without strongly-developed psychologies. The "one-hat race" was cool when Tolkien did it, but his non-human races were also mired in their cultural pasts. They had stagnated, so there was actually a good reason for their behavior. For less-developed settings, it's more difficult to justify that kind of behavior.

I wonder if you could work the one-hat race trope into a setting...?

[Faily]

I personally think it would be cool with campaigns that don't have humans. Then again, I prefer to play non-humans myself in D&D, regardless of the mechanical superiority of Human.

[goto124]

DM: Pick a race.
Newbie: Hmm... human? I guess it's the easiest to play, both in mechanical and RP terms.
DM: Sorry, no humans.
Newbie: Wait what? Okay, elf. Wait, I wanted a warrior... now I have to handle racial stuff... fine, dwarf. Wait, my character's personality is rather un-dwarf-like... must I spend the campaign going on about how I'm different from other dwarves? Come on, just gimme a human.

[Yora]

In my homebrew setting, humans are only one of the minor races, inhabiting some small remote corners of the continent. The major races are lizardmen, beastmen, elves, and goblin-gnomes.

[Segev]

I ran a game where humans were extinct. And viewed by the remaining races as a half-mythological demon-kind that they used to scare their children into behaving with.

Historically, humanity had fought a war against almost all the other races (dwarves had been on their side), and nearly won before the elves managed to pull out a (genocidal) upset victory (thanks in part to a traitor) with the aid of the orcs, goblins, gnomes, dragons, kobolds, and halflings.

The only ... thing ... that was once human that still was around was the lich who dominated the southern half of the forest that once housed the elven empire. (They were reduced to holding the northern half only.) Said lich was the traitor who gave the win to the elves...and when they repaid his treason by bidding him die, he obliged and took most of the living things in their southern empire with him into undeath.

Most don't know the lich ever was human.

[mr_odd]

In my world, humans are the majority (except for in specific racial lands). I feel like this can make other creatures feel more extraordinary.

[Honest Tiefling]

In my homebrew setting, humans are only one of the minor races, inhabiting some small remote corners of the continent. The major races are lizardmen, beastmen, elves, and goblin-gnomes.

I read that as batmen. I am severely disappointed now.

Anywho, humans are great mechanically because they are rarely a bad race for any class, so every class has at least one decent option for it. I think this problem could be alleviated with enough variations with the races, or sub-races. And if a newbie can figure out a culture of a fantasy human just fine, they can probably pick up a culture for a fantasy catman as well. Just have at least one, if not a few options, that act very human-like or have simple deviations. Such as catmen who act as humans but also navigate using scent.

[Yora]

Now you're going into the finer rules of specific RPG systems. I don't consider that a part of setting design.

[HunterOfJello]

In 3.5 I used to allow a free +1 LA on race choices just so people would stop playing humans and actually play something interesting. All human parties in nearly all human worlds got really dull.

[Honest Tiefling]

Now you're going into the finer rules of specific RPG systems. I don't consider that a part of setting design.

Eh, difference of opinion. I think sometimes it is good to consider the mechanics of the game when building the world and vice versa. When the two diverge too much it can also get really weird and immersion breaking in my opinion.

[ComaVision]

In 3.5 I used to allow a free +1 LA on race choices just so people would stop playing humans and actually play something interesting. All human parties in nearly all human worlds got really dull.

Seems to me the fault is with uncreative people if humans are boring in a fantasy world...

[Arbane]

In 3.5 I used to allow a free +1 LA on race choices just so people would stop playing humans and actually play something interesting. All human parties in nearly all human worlds got really dull.

Yeah, humans are soooo dull. We've only managed to wring 6000 years of literature, song, art, and statuary out of them in the real world.

[Honest Tiefling]

Yeah, humans are soooo dull. We've only managed to wring 6000 years of literature, song, art, and statuary out of them in the real world.

To be fair, a great deal of that is centered around boobies, ding-dongs, or bumping uglies.

Through I think I side on the idea that occasionally, a non-human world is interesting and viable for exploration. The challenge of it can be fun (how would a race that acts fairly human but lives for a long time differ in how they act?) as well as adding visually different entities. Or heck, people sometimes just want to do something different.

[Forrestfire]

If I'm playing something nonhuman, I don't want to just be a human-with-a-funny-hat, I need to write up and play with a mindset that is actually different. Otherwise, what's the point?

Naturally, this means that I rarely play nonhumans. Write what you know, after all... I've been branching out lately, but making up a good system to play a character off of is hard, so it hasn't been much. It doesn't help that most of the time in D&D, humans are just the best race for a concept.

In any case, I feel like it wouldn't have much effect on the world, overall. The default fluff for the nonhuman races is just "humans but short" or "humans but arrogant and pointy-eared" most of the time, so it's just a cosmetic change unless a large amount of work is put into it to make it different.

[DrDeth]

To be fair, a great deal of that is centered around boobies, ding-dongs, or bumping uglies.

To be fair, that describes quite a few D&D games....

In one SF game (Gamma Word or Metamorphosis Alpha) I picked a Pure Strain Human as everyone else had picked a odd mutant race- each one of which was far more powerful than my poor little PSH. However, the game we were in had a large base which only let PSH into various doors and often had traps and robots attack any who were not PSH. I had to laugh. A lot.

[Kiero]

I only play humans, and have no interest whatsoever in any game in which they are not available.

Furthermore, that "no humans in the party" phenomenon is precisely why I find so few Actual Play threads and other reports of other people's games interesting.

[mephnick]

I find that non-human characters seem to be more boring than the human ones, purely because players that pick those races, pick them to make that kind of character.

Like every dwarf being a gruff Scotsman. Every drow being emo Drizz't. Every tiefling being a special snowflake outcast.

Give me a group of 5 humans with different personalities any day.

[Grim Portent]

Like every dwarf being a gruff Scotsman. Every drow being emo Drizz't. Every tiefling being a special snowflake outcast.

People actually do this?

I make my dwarfs necromancers seeking deification, my drow LE tyrants seeking to reform their kind into an iron fisted regime and my tieflings dedicated assassins of the lower planes.

[mephnick]

I suppose I could just live in a boring gaming community.

[JaminDM]

It would certainly be interesting; but I doubt that it would make a huge difference.

[Segev]

To be fair, a great deal of that is centered around boobies, ding-dongs, or bumping uglies.

Considering the actual purpose, beyond the questionably cultural, of such fixations, it could be interesting to examine other races with alien reproductive strategies for their taboos surrounding it.

For instance, just as humans find the idea of public exposure of their primary and secondary sexual characteristics to be simultaneously titilating and taboo, what if warforged felt similarly about tools of crafting, and particularly about constructing other warforged?

If the treated it as the kind of private act that humans treat procreation...

[DireSickFish]

I think it would be cool to do a game with Kingdoms where the kingdoms are separated out by races, with no Humans to homogenize everything. That way if you are a Dragonborn everyone assumes you're from the Dragonborn empire. Even if you really grew up in the Elf empire so it's easy to point you out and you don't really "belong" in either as you have so many elf tendencies but with the short lifespan of a Dragonborn.

Makes it a lot easier to catagorize NPC's into sides too. "Halflings in the Teifling lands, there must be an invasion!"

[Segev]

I think it would be cool to do a game with Kingdoms where the kingdoms are separated out by races, with no Humans to homogenize everything. That way if you are a Dragonborn everyone assumes you're from the Dragonborn empire. Even if you really grew up in the Elf empire so it's easy to point you out and you don't really "belong" in either as you have so many elf tendencies but with the short lifespan of a Dragonborn.

Makes it a lot easier to catagorize NPC's into sides too. "Halflings in the Teifling lands, there must be an invasion!"

This actually is how the races in the campaign I ran where humans were extinct more or less worked. Elves stayed to the elven empire, dwarves to their clan caverns, gnomes to their universities-on-the-mountains, orcs to their cities on the plains, etc. Sure, travel happened between them, but there weren't really immigrants from one race who settled in the lands of others. Not in any sort of enclaves, and certainly not with intent to mingle bloodlines.

A half-orc/half-elf was the villain of the campaign; so much feeling like an out-cast that he glamorized in his own mind the fallen human "demons" of the past, believing them to be actually misunderstood. He sought to bring them back.

[Milo v3]

I've made a few settings without humans, most of which was simply because I couldn't figure out what to do with the generic humanoids that are generic and good at everything aside from ruling over the other overspecialized species (though in one, it was because there was only one humanoid race that wasn't human, with the rest being quadrepedal, organic machines, avian or octopodes).

[mr_odd]

People actually do this?

I make my dwarfs necromancers seeking deification, my drow LE tyrants seeking to reform their kind into an iron fisted regime and my tieflings dedicated assassins of the lower planes.

One of our players literally just made a Scottish dwarf.

[Mastikator]

I tend to think that the fewer races, the better. 3 or 4 is the sweetspot for my liking. Whether or not humans is on that list doesn't really matter to me though. As long as the remaining races have real heritages and the players are actually adhering to them, instead of just picking a race/class combo.

But for the most part I do agree that players tend to stereotype nonhuman races more than humans, and treat humans like blank slates. I don't know which is worse to be honest. :/

[Yora]

I am more for 5 or 6, but otherwise agree that less is more. Lots of setting quickly reach 50 and more when you start to consider all the humanoid monsters.

Even with just 6 humanoid races, you generally still get a lot of very humanoid fey and highly intelligent monsters.

[Joe the Rat]

The last game I was in could have gone this way easily. Most of the time, we not only had no humans in the party, we didn't have anyone over 4 1/2 feet tall until that damn elf showed up. It made it hard for us to engage with the plot, because we were in a human empire, and really didn't care about the "local politics."

No Humans is Easy, because it makes playing other races as "human with funny ears and a Hat" less arbitrary. It would look a lot like The Hobbit, right up until Laketown (Beorn could have simply been a giant talking bear with anger management issues). But if you replace lakemen with something not human (something with equal parts honor and greed, besides dwarves), and you've pretty much got it. You could give each race a real-world cultural analog, to give a unifying theme and a touchstone for characters.

No Humans is Hard, because you lack the social glue. Humans go everywhere and do everything. Elves are aloof, Dwarves stick to their mines and mountains, Halflings want to be left alone, Lizardfolk like their swamps. Beyond marauding orcs, most races don't particularly seem to like to reach out their influence, or need to interact without some sort of Strange Attractor. You don't have a "default race" for when race isn't a relevant concept for a character (player or otherwise)... or for deciding at what scale things are built.

For instance, just as humans find the idea of public exposure of their primary and secondary sexual characteristics to be simultaneously titilating and taboo, what if warforged felt similarly about tools of crafting, and particularly about constructing other warforged?

If the treated it as the kind of private act that humans treat procreation...

Warforged Type Fellow: "By [insert deity]'s [insert deity's famous feature], What is he doing?"
Lovable Organic Local: "Umm... making a horseshoe?"
WTF: "He's blacksmithing! In the middle of the market! In broad daylight!"
LOL: "Yeah... it's hot work, and probably helps to attract customers."
WTF: "'Hot work?!' 'Customers?!' What manner of den of depravity is thi- Oh dear [insert deity], there are children watching!"
<t-ting><t-ting><t-ting>

[Hazrond]

Warforged Type Fellow: "By [insert deity]'s [insert deity's famous feature], What is he doing?"
Lovable Organic Local: "Umm... making a horseshoe?"
WTF: "He's blacksmithing! In the middle of the market! In broad daylight!"
LOL: "Yeah... it's hot work, and probably helps to attract customers."
WTF: "'Hot work?!' 'Customers?!' What manner of den of depravity is thi- Oh dear [insert deity], there are children watching!"
<t-ting><t-ting><t-ting>

i loled. On the main topic, i almost never play a human character, with the closest i usuallyy get being some sort of planetouched (but not even those usually), myy characters are fun and as far as i can tell, are just fine even though i avoid most of the racial stereotypes (Orc warpriest? hes an outcast from his tribe who has slowly adapted to normal society over the last 3 years while also joining the local guard as both a medic and a blacksmith, hes nice, friendly, and willing to beat your face in if you try to cause trouble)