The other races are already humans, just with certain features accentuated, so humans always end up as the most generic race. To circumvent this traits like ambition, ingenuity, diversity, or luck are emphasized, but once you've done that you might as well stop calling them humans and just add them to the pile of human derivatives already populating your setting.
You should either have everyone be human or no one be human. Prove me wrong.
>Why are humans one of the stock fantasy races?
Only a troll or someone with actual, factual autism would ask a question like this.
I agree. Humans are the main race because we're human and it's the closest thing to us that's playable.
I'm making a world where the traditional races are just racial slurs for humans from different regions. There will be slight advantages for each, but they will all be normal humans, just with different cultures.
They're one of the stock races because otherwise there's no basis of comparison. Someone has to be in the middle, with +0 to everything.
Everyone is human is boring as fuck because it's basically real life.
People don't like no humans because there's no point of reference for the other races and because people are humans IRL and want to see humans doing things
There's a setting for Reign, called Ardwin, where there are no humans. You might want to check that one out. It also has a weird twist where all the intelligent races are cross-fertile, and some of the races can be produced either from themselves or from hybridization of two others. Like, an orc could have two orcs for parents, but they could also have a dwarf and a gnome. It's weird.
Why are you bothering to have the fantasy races in the first place? Take off the emphasis on species, and all of a sudden you need to focus on actual worldbuilding--the cultures and how they influence/are influenced by the world around them.
But to honestly answer your question, think of the humanoid not-furry races (elves, dwarves, halflings, etc.) as different breeds of dog. They're all the same family of canine, and they can all interbreed, but they have their obvious physical differences. Humans are the generic wild dog. The basis for it all.
This is a cool idea.
Sounds boring, desu
>think of the humanoid not-furry races (elves, dwarves, halflings, etc.) as different breeds of dog. They're all the same family of canine, and they can all interbreed, but they have their obvious physical differences. Humans are the generic wild dog. The basis for it all.
But in real life there is no generic dog breed. There are wolves, but those usually aren't considered dogs at all. I don't get why you would select one breed of dog and say "this is the real dog, all other breeds shall be known by their breed names, but this one is dog". Or forgetting the dog metaphor it's wierd to me that one would select one of the fantasy races and say "this is you, you should empathise with this race more than the others because it looks like you and is called the same thing as you."
Humans are available because everyone understands what a human is. Unless the system is very setting-specific, most designers want the system to be somewhat open to player interpretation, and so want some flexibility. Obviously, if players are going to discard the setting material and go with their own, then humans are going to be one of the things they have a good idea of how they work.
This is also why a lot of settings - or, at least, a lot of settings mimicing D&D - end up with races which are basically stereotypical humans. People understand what humans are. People understand what snobbish humans farming trees are. People understand what grumpy drunk hairy humans are. There's no barriers to understanding.
That said, there are quite a few RPGs where there are no humans... and nothing similar to a human. Faery's Tale Deluxe, Mouse Guard, The Secret of Cats, Bunnies & Burrows, and Kobolds Ate My Baby all specifically feature no human protagonists, although some will feature humans as NPCs.
Then if you want your players to be in a world where they have no common ground and need to get used to being an entirely different species, go ahead.
Personally, I don't bother. My group seems to have no problem with this. They like the emphasis on actual people and actual cultures instead of shoehorned meme cultures for races that they have to see in every fucking fantasy video game.
But we basically do that. Compare something like a pug, bulldog, or chihuahua to the sort of generic "dog" we see with the golden retriever, Rottweiler, and the like.
Well, there sort of is a generic "dog". Feral breeding populations tend to default to a general set of traits no matter the area. They're called "pariah dogs", and they have short sandy coats, mid-sized bodies, and slightly blunted snouts. They're the genetic average of what it means to be a dog, when selective breeding gets removed.
>Everyone is human is boring as fuck because it's basically real life.
Yeah if you're running a modern game, otherwise it literally isn't basically real life. Different races is only one element of a fantasy setting, and not necessarily the most important.
Are you kidding right now?
Tell me you're kidding right now.
>it's wierd to me that one would select one of the fantasy races and say "this is you, you should empathise with this race more than the others because it looks like you and is called the same thing as you."
But we already do that in real life.
Welcome to the cesspool that is tolken-esque fantasy. enjoy your stay.
In the world I'm making, there are predominately humans. Each country is defined by their magics, thus far. One is all about the divine, they believe their leaders are incarnated gods, and it is the goal of all holy men and women to find the gods and bring them to the capital.
To the north (or whatever) of that country is a country ruled by dragons and their sorceries, all turn towards the dragon kings for governmental matters. Those with capability for sorcery are kidnapped at a young age and raised into a form of secret police. The most elite of Knights are taken into the Dragonblood sect, where they consume magical dragon blood and undergo mutations, but remain mostly human, though larger/stronger etc.
To the south (or whatever) of the first country, across a bay, is a magocracy that I'm only beginning to write about. The most relevant thing they did was create a machine army to walk across the bottom of the ocean and lay siege to the first countries capital directly from the sea. The machines were defeated when they had sentience forced upon them by a miracle cast by the 'god' of the first country. This miracle jammed large numbers of machines together to form a consciousness, so they're all hearing multiple voices and for most of them the joining was incomplete, so most have extra limbs of varying usefulness.
Further to that, I have an island of eagle-men who kidnap children to sacrifice to their only surviving god, a war god named Storm. Without sacrifices, Storm will grow weak and die in the battle between good and evil. Their magicians can teleport the island and all its inhabitants by conjuring a storm locally and at the destination.
So I'm aiming at mostly humans with a few monstrous things.
But that's my whole point, when you play as a dwarf or an elf or whatever you aren't really playing an entirely different species, you're playin as a human with some stats, culture, and powers tacked on. I think we should be treating them as what they are; types of human. Or, barring that, just make everyone humans but with different cultures and genetic predispositions.
The latter is what I do. And I honestly feel like it's the most sensical way to do it in regards to making a setting that your players can more easily integrate into. Now instead of focusing on how the meme races in this particular world differ from their LotR or D&D or whatever representations, they're focusing on the world in a context that feels quite comfortable to them: the context of a human fucking being.
>But that's my whole point, when you play as a dwarf or an elf or whatever you aren't really playing an entirely different species, you're playin as a human with some stats, culture, and powers tacked on.
Well, how different would race have to be to stop flaring your autism? Furries? Robot cowboys? Sentient shades of color purple?
Screw that. Standard races are fun. I usually go for humans, elves, dwarves, etc. being completely different species without ability to interbreed.
>b-but humans with ears
Convergent evolution, motherfucker. Also,
>stats, culture, and powers
are not that tiny of a difference to be so easily dismissed. Hell, humans IRL killed each other for less. And giving your fantasy species different cultures is not harder than giving humans different cultures.
We had this topic thousands of times already, each time with the same argument. Yes, this is good that you started asking questions about generic D&D fantasy. No, the solution is not to make a complete 180 and be an elitist little shit.
I agree entirely. I want more fantasy settings with either totally out there races or just humans.
The way I "solve" this "issue" is by giving humans racial traits not seen in the other races. None of the other playable races have adrenaline rushes, sweat, nor do they blush. I have high hopes for this way of doing things!
Though, this is something that has been done before.
What about different species of human?
I don't mean 'elves and dwarves are secret humans!' I mean something along the line of Neanderthals or the Denisovians -- hell, even those pygmy peoples scattered about all those islands. There's plenty of radiation within our own history to populate entire settings.
a lot of my settings tend to have Neanderthal Man as a race roaming around, they tend to have very powerful connections to Nature Magic, also while most other Demi-Human and Monstrous Humanoid races tend to be fictional species of Homo that branched off of existing ones, Halflings tend to be the modern evolved equivalent to Homo Florensis(similar to the relation between Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Idaltu)
basically it goes as such;
Halflings: descended from Homo Florensis
Dwarves & Gnomes: branched off at same point as Homo Rhodesiensis
Elves: branched off at same point as Homo Antcessor
All Mammalian Monstrous Humanoids, Giants, and Merfolk: branched off at same point as Homo Erectus
of course for most of these races there's quite a bit of magic and/or Outsider influence on their evolution to their current forms(Humans, Neanderthals, and Halflings are exceptions to this, Humans tend towards Hybridization instead of direct alteration for some reason, Neanderthals have actually had their physical evolution halted by the Nature Magics they commune with, and Halflings were mostly ignored by such forces for most of their existence)
Because humans are petty little shits that don't like to think about anything but themselves.
I dunno.
Why don't we make it so everyone's human, but there are various different types of humans, like Elfhuman, Jewhuman, Chinkhuman, Dwarfhuman, Slavhuman, Arabhuman, Goblinhuman, and Nigger?
It's a good idea. But don't atually use the traditional race names as slurs. That's a great way of saying "I made this setting but it can't really stand on its own so I rebuilt it around a dumb genre referential gimmick"
Tell more about your other races and how they evolved please.
>You should either have everyone be human or no one be human. Prove me wrong.
Statements like this lead me to believe that while there are many people who talk about RPGs on Veeky Forums, not all of them actually play them. They do spend a grotesque amount of time agonizing over shit people who play RPGs on the regular don't really worry about.
Sometimes it is fun to play generic fantasyland.
Sometimes it is fun to play non-generic fantasyland.
Sometimes it is fun to play hard science fiction.
Sometimes it is fun to play karate police.
Either way you're not doing anything special. There is nothing that needs to be proven.
because humans are the average
>because humans are the average
Not on d&d 3.5, the average would be:
Medium: As Medium creatures, humans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Base land speed is 30 feet.
Automatic Language: Common.
Favored Class: Any.
Humans exist in these settings because there are people who just start fantasy games with imaginations that haven't bloomed yet. They absolutely cannot relate to something they can't put their own face on. Often they make a character who talks and acts like them in the process.
Humans exist because training wheels.
trying to imagine playing d&d with those rules:
Every being lose one feat
Every race lose 4 skill points on first level and 4 skills points after 4 levels
Every race lose one language
Mechanics.
Does there really?
Sounds like the old mage knight lore.
My playgroup plays a raceless homebrew, and although we could chose whateer race we want without it particularly affect the gameplay we always stay human. It's actually really fun, OP has a point.
>look at me I'm being an edgy racist
>am I cool yet?
no
I made a game (vaguelly inspired by old DnD mechanically) set in the late stone age, where Neanderthals are a playable character type.
Have a PDF, it may interest you.
Not many people really WANT to be that far out there. Most people want to RP something relatable and familiar, and the reliable stereotypes are comforting in a different world.
You're wrong, because you always use feet or meters. Why not their own measurements? They should have them. It would confuse you too much. You, too, want comfortable points of reference. Why is D&D always feudal?
We understand feudalism better in western culture than other forms. This is changing now, but it used to be very important when people were less educated about eastern or middle eastern or Indian hierarchies.
It's what makes you not have to ask as many questions as a player. It's a question you can only ask as an experienced player. Any new player needs that reference point.
So a lot of reasons.
That's basically what I want, just without the racism.
How about I do what I want and you deal with it?
will do, just need to type it up
yeah I've seen it in the OSR threads, it's pretty good
Because without a reatable point of reference all fantasy would be shit. Just look at Lorwyn
so essentially without anything interesting
...I like this user, I like this a lot.