Settings where humans are rare/extinct

[Tokidoki]

Have you ever run a game/was a player in a game where humans either went extinct or are a rare sight? For clarification, I don't mean settings where humans never existed, but more that they were once much more common but are now considerably less so. Sci-fi, fantasy, doesn't matter what setting.

I ask because I'm brainstorming on ideas for races for a science fiction setting where humans fill the role of the "ancient precursor race" trope that a lot of sci-fi settings seem to have. The playable races were all either created by humans or descended from them as offshoots.

[Khedrac]

Most of the obvious ones are post-apocalypse:

Gamma World - pure humans are rare-ish, most are mutants.

Palladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness - I think the other mutant animals campaign is again a post human apocalypse setting.

You could look at Charles Stross's books, notably Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood - both books feature the continuation of earth's society after humans die out (the AIs continued without us).

[Earthwalker]

My current pathfinder campaign has no humans.

In session 0 one of the rules put forward was no humans. So we ran with it.

As a group the fluff explanation was they bred themselves out of existence. So all the half human races exist as well as the Ifritti, Oreads, undines and Slyphs and what have you.

It has become a plot point, the world suffered some event generations ago, something not even divination magic can find out about. Clues seem to be pointing to the non-existent pure humans could have caused the end of the old world.

[Fri]

Here's a weird and obscure one, The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delarny. It's a novella about aliens who are living on earth after human had long extinct and they basically use human's long lost culture as the basis of theirs.

[Joe the Rat]

Where does Eclipse Phase sit on this? I'm not entierly sure the humans count as human half the time.

TMNT - After the Bomb is close, but for most of the settings humans are rare on the "good guy" side, but tend to be the "villain" nations (Empire of Humanity, Jakarta, SAECSN, etc.)

I've been toying with the idea of a "no humans" fantasy setting, where the humans might be the missing "ancient" race responsible for all of the dungeons and crazy magic artifacts. Or it might have been something else entirely.

[Tokidoki]

Where does Eclipse Phase sit on this? I'm not entierly sure the humans count as human half the time.

Since the majority of transhumanity in that setting occupies splicers, which are basically just humans with minor genetic enhancements and tweaks, I'd say they count as human enough. Of course, I can't resist toying with the notion that the Jovian Republic is terrifyingly right in that they're the only true humans left in the entire universe, surrounded by machines that are programmed to think they're people...

I've been toying with the idea of a "no humans" fantasy setting, where the humans might be the missing "ancient" race responsible for all of the dungeons and crazy magic artifacts. Or it might have been something else entirely.

While my primary focus is on my sci-fi setting, I've been doing the same with a fantasy setting too, although it would be more inspired by Shannara/Adventure Time, where the fantasy setting is post-post apocalyptic Earth with hidden bits of advanced human technology hidden here and there. Kinda like post-apoc Shadowrun, except when magic returned to the world it merely caused mass extinction.

The problem is, what do you replace humans with as the "common" race without making it seem too weird to players new to the setting? Hard mode: the "common" race are not elves, dwarves, halflings, or any other "core" D&D race.

[Segev]

I ran a game once where humans were not only extinct, but were spoken of in tones similar to those Rowling's characters tend to use for "Voldemort." There was a massive war thousands of years ago (which isn't as long as it sounds when the victors were a coalition of races led by the elves), in which humans and dwarves fought to conquer the other races. Humans were defeated and destroyed to a man after the dwarves surrendered and agreed to help finish the job, once the war was clearly turning against them. Massive citidels still dot the landscape, and the human reputation for psionics gives that power a terrible reputation (though three of a dozen or so dwarven clans still practice it).

The sole survivor of the human race is a powerful lich who dominates the southern half of the forest where the elven empire sat; the empire still exists in the northern part, but the southern region is overrun with the lich's minions. The elves tolerate him because he provided the key turning point in the war. But they still hate him. His once half-elven children were actually the first vampires, too. So...well, there are reasons the elves haven't gone to war with him to try to wipe him out.

[Necroticplague]

Engine Hearts is a game where humans are long-dead. The remnants of their civilization, however, are still around. You actually play as said remnants, with all the PCs being robots once made by humans, their masters now long gone.

[Joe the Rat]

The problem is, what do you replace humans with as the "common" race without making it seem too weird to players new to the setting? Hard mode: the "common" race are not elves, dwarves, halflings, or any other "core" D&D race.

What I would try to do is not have a "Core" (World POV/Driver) or "Mario" (Average Joe) race. You'd need to sell the setting from each species' view - it may be easier to do if you follow the familiar race tropes. Then the weirdness is in the world itself. Part of that is because it would be easy to turn your new core - especially something original - into a human stand-in. As human, only orange and can see in the dark.

I suppose the closest you'd have to core would be "who's back yard do you start in?". In which case, goblins. They're freaking everywhere.

Hard mode gets you away from the familiar, making for a more unusual experience, but then you need to get your players into the mindset. Lizardfolk, Myconids, Goblinoids, Gnolls, Satyrs, Grippli... Warforged...

Coming back to Scifi, I'd look at species we'd be likely to create, or would make a good "natural" inheritor of the Opposable Digits. I suppose a question would be how "almost human" you'd want to go. human with tweaks/mutations, animals with humanlike traits, pure original creations, alien intelligences... lots of options. And machines - We do love our robots.

[Tokidoki]

What I would try to do is not have a "Core" (World POV/Driver) or "Mario" (Average Joe) race. You'd need to sell the setting from each species' view - it may be easier to do if you follow the familiar race tropes. Then the weirdness is in the world itself. Part of that is because it would be easy to turn your new core - especially something original - into a human stand-in. As human, only orange and can see in the dark.

I suppose the closest you'd have to core would be "who's back yard do you start in?". In which case, goblins. They're freaking everywhere.

Hard mode gets you away from the familiar, making for a more unusual experience, but then you need to get your players into the mindset. Lizardfolk, Myconids, Goblinoids, Gnolls, Satyrs, Grippli... Warforged...

Coming back to Scifi, I'd look at species we'd be likely to create, or would make a good "natural" inheritor of the Opposable Digits. I suppose a question would be how "almost human" you'd want to go. human with tweaks/mutations, animals with humanlike traits, pure original creations, alien intelligences... lots of options. And machines - We do love our robots.

For sci-fi, I wouldn't want to make the races too "alien" in mindset and culture/appearance. Humans being the dominant race in fantasy and sci-fi exist for a reason (as do most cliches): because they're familiar, because they give the reader/player/etc. a grounded familiarity in a setting that they initially know nothing about.

Fragged Empire is a published setting that has this premise too (humanity vanished, their inheritors created a whole bunch of different races), and the races for FE are all reasonably human-looking, with a few notable exceptions.