Why aren’t human only settings more common? It seems to me like you could flesh the cultures out more without having to rely on pre established stereotypes as a crutch
Why aren’t human only settings more common...
Hudson Nguyen
Jason Davis
Because players like more choices, and getting to chose a race is more choices than not getting to chose a race.
Robert King
Even in human only settings people will still fall back on tired cliches and stereotypes.
>Guys my low fantasy world is totally original. You'll be starting off in not!germany fighting the not!french, maybe eventually you can go to the far off lands of not!russia or not!england
Blake Adams
see
combined with rampant special-snowflake syndrome.
Jaxon Thompson
People want and will play as ducks user. Cause ducks are rad,
Nathaniel Davis
I don't know how or why you think restricting character options leads to greater diversity than not. Equally puzzling is the idea that uncreative people will suddenly be more creative once you've forced them to play only a single race in a fantasy setting. It's just such fallacious thinking that it legitimately borders on retardation in some respects.
Jayden Jackson
>Pseudo-Catholic Euro culture
>Generic proud warrior culture
>Obligatory asian culture
How fleshed out a culture is and how clever people get with it comes down to the person writing and the people playing. Whether or not there're more or less races in a particular fantasy doesn't really set anything about it except sometimes the tone.
Brayden Cook
>I don't know how or why you think restricting character options leads to greater diversity than not.
Because cutting away all the low-hanging snowflake options means a character has to actually be interesting for WHO they are, not WHAT they are.
Equally puzzling is the idea that uncreative people will suddenly be more creative once you've forced them to play only a single race...
>Nope, the goal isn't to make the uncreative more creative, it's to spot them as quickly as possible and cut their snowflake cancer out of your games entirely.
Gavin Flores
Jimmy Rome, the SoS lead dev, explained it really well once. Fantasy settings tend to deal in exaggerations so that the messages are more clear and don't have to be politically correct. In extreme cases making the "enemy" just be a bunch of orcs is expedient because it removes all complexity from the situation. You don't need a good reason to kill a bunch of freakish mutant pig-men who are invading your country, the fact that they're invading is enough.
So when you use this narrative power to separate people into multiple species, you're basically taking the easy route, and there's a good way to do this and a bad way. The bad way is to make "good" and "evil" species, and the good way is to make species which have texture, and are neither good nor evil.
Lucas Robinson
This is irrelevant because diversity has no value. If you believe that all people have equal value, then diversity literally cannot contribute anything to any organization.
Therefore encouraging diversity should be treated (and is treated) much the same as attempting to institute apartheid. Get back in the closet where you belong and do not speak again. Cringelords.
Landon Rogers
I've tried it once, and it did actually lead to better characters.Taking a group from 5e to Barbarians of Lemuria did a really nice job of it, because otherwise the two lads who wanted to play fightan man would have ended up with the same character mechanics-wise. So, in an attempt to get snowflakey again, they started tacking actual personailties and quirks onto the characters to differentiate themselves from the other guy.
This NEVER happened when they were playing 5e, because they just changed the race or class to differentiate themselves instead.
Jeremiah Phillips
Because you've never read a book in your worthless life
Jose Flores
I'm an elf and catfolk poster but I like the idea of playable human only settings, not for the reason being pointed out on this thread tho, that's bullshit. I like it because it makes the fey, spirits, yokai, djinn or whatever the fuck much more mythical and elusive
Charles Bell
Because there's an overabundance of them in fiction, and creative people like Gms tend to be want to do something other than what's inundated the market.
Jason Gray
The fact that you think that what you posted there is an argument in any way is a bit absurd, to say the least. But even ignoring that, did you perhaps ever consider that both D&D and/or your players themselves were at fault for this?
Ryder Cook
user, this is literally people wanting to play as other species in a tabletop rpg. Take a step back and really think about what you're talking about.
A smaller universe to play with isnt as attractive, and all a subjextive matter of personal preference. I think the wild prevalence of games that let you be anything but human shows you where the majority of that sentiment is.
Leo Perry
>The fact that you think that what you posted there is an argument in any way is a bit absurd, to say the least.
The whole debate is anecdotal so far, so throwing my 3 cents into the mix sounded find to me.
>But even ignoring that, did you perhaps ever consider that both D&D and/or your players themselves were at fault for this?
Well, yes, I said so in the post, but the setting certainly helped (although with this being a ttrpg there is a bit of system-setting overlap, so I suppose you can blame it all on the system if you're completely fixed in your views.).
Connor Scott
>Why aren’t human only settings more common?
So i guess you've never heard of
Game of Thrones
Dogs in the Vineyard
Call of Cthulhu
Dark Heresy
Paranoia
Fallout
Diablo
Mutants and Masterminds
Deadlands
But yeah, if the only fantasy setting you've ever heard of was dungeons and dragons sure, There's not many human only settings. It's not like you can just homebrew that shit into dnd, what a fucking oversight
Asher Johnson
Forgot pic
Cooper Brooks
Because everyone is playing a bastardised version of LotR. Even the "original" stuff is only the way it is as a conscious move away from Tolkien's great work.
Lincoln Allen
>Because cutting away all the low-hanging snowflake options means a character has to actually be interesting for WHO they are, not WHAT they are.
No it doesn't. No matter what you do, there will always be a way to make a lazy stereotype with zero depth if you're looking for it.
Ryder Phillips
You don't need to use pre-existing stereotypes for a setting with multiple races. Also, even if you do just have humans, that doesn't mean you aren't relying on pre-existing stereotypes. The real world only has humans, but if we're playing a modern day game, that won't stop the lazy player from playing, say, an effete Frenchman, or a West Virginian who wears overalls and plays the banjo.
Funny story about that. I, for various reasons, ended up having to run a D&D game on very short notice, and I didn't want to use any established campaign settings because Reasons. Anyway, when I showed up with my setting document that I had written in like, half a week, one of my players asked me, and I quote, "GM Name, is this just Crusader Kings with the serial numbers filed off?" I really wish the game didn't end up falling apart, cuz I was looking forward to the players getting to fight time traveling mind flayers who are controlling the course of history to make sure that Squid Napoleon will be able to take over the world 800 years later.
Jose Parker
This
/thread