Can't decide if my setting should feature multiple non-human races along with the humans ones or should be a (mostly)...

Do both.
I think it's the Malazan novel series, but they have several "human" species (or species so visually close to humans as to be nearly indistinguishable) that are actually different evolutionary paths, kinda like how Neanderthal man we're humans but not Homo Sapiens.
The Barghest for example are kinda sorta the setting's half-orcs, but they have a fully human appearance and are almost universally above 6'5" in height and always have very muscular build.

Forgot my pic.

Every human only game I have played in has been shit. Take that with an bias piece of salt but I have been in a lot of campaigns.

When did this sentiment begin being pushed so strongly and aggressively by people on Veeky Forums?

Leftovers from the HFY fad? Contrarians?

Mono-culture races get very stale, even when you switch it out to "Aztec Elves! Babilonian Dwarves! Chinese Orcs!" it is still not very good. So some parts of Veeky Forums started to push around the low fantasy, only human playable (other races are mystical, mysterious or monsters) or with just humans as the only thinking, cultured species of the setting.

In the end its always more a case of HOW you actually tell the story than the idea itself, so its mostly just a case of people in the internet telling other people that they are having bad-wrong fun.

True, but you seem reasonable enough. The reason why I asked is because, primarily, I wanted to be able to play with multiple non-human races mostly for the reasons of gameplay. having many races means I can use a new mechanic I invented in my homebrew game which increases the size and combat value of any unit that is big, where as smaller ones get advantages of being more stealthy and cheaper to armor. The point being that, if everyone is a human, it severely limits the potential for this mechanic to be used.

Secondly, and somewhat more importantly, I wanted the setting to feel really high fantasy and a bit crazy at times, hence the term Gonzo being used. Though I can imagine and really enjoy all humans, I also wonder how it will negatively impact the 'wonder' factor of the setting if most of the people you come into contact with are mostly humans.

> So some parts of Veeky Forums started to push around the low fantasy, only human playable (other races are mystical, mysterious or monsters) or with just humans as the only thinking, cultured species of the setting.
Exactly.

>so its mostly just a case of people in the internet telling other people that they are having bad-wrong fun
But they are!

Seems like you have an argument for different races/species. Personally I always enjoy these settings more provided the new races are actually palatable. I enjoy the additional vector of character building and it just feels more like fantasy. Don't get why people always think that having fantasy races precludes differentiation along culture lines.

>if most of the people you come into contact with are mostly humans
Make less contact with people and more with magical incomprehensible shawarma from beyond your notes.

It's just my personal experience, but by far the best parts of all the campaigns I had with a few different GMs were when we encountered a threat that we did could exactly identify - not for a lack of presence, but for a lack of any understanding and pattern. Such Lem-esque things-that-we-cannot-even-begin-to-understand always provide us with a lot of material for speculation and argument on trying to figure out just what the fuck is this thing, and thus giving the GM things to adopt and implement or purposefully subvert to further fuck with us, also giving him tools from way outta the proper league. As long as the interaction doesn't seem completely futile the incomprehensible sorta-aliens/spirits/ancient abominations/apparitions/sentient anomalies will deliver, even if everyone is fully aware that GM has absolutely 0 of any actual finalized on them.

And once the out-worldly shit is dealt with, players will be more than happy to return to simple human interaction with minimum pointy ears involved.

The problem with making everyone 'oh so strange and crazy' like that is that it doesn't allow the player to play as anything other then a human nor does it open up new opportunities for the world to have interesting contrast between the human and nonhuman cultures.

Personal taste, but I always felt that the point of having non-human sapient races in the setting is to create something that has fundamental differences with humans. Take elves for example, don't just make them 'people with long ears and better at magic', give them slight differences in thought process and priorities, so they seem inhuman but not completely unrelatable. Also, having different cultures within a race is a good idea.

Then why not have multi-culture races? Instead of just Aztec Elves and Scotsdwarves, why not also add Incan Dwarves and Celtic Elves, and Vatican Orcs and Chinese Goblins and Cossack Orcs and Vietcong Goblins?

Oh my....

>This shit is impossible to decide.
It really isn't.

1) Is there anything that humans can't do in your setting?

2) If there is something that humans can't do in your setting, do lose anything interesting/important by making humans able to do that?

What do the non-humans add to the setting? Is there a way to put those societies into place with just humans? Are the non-humans just the token dwarves and elves next to a wide variety of humans, or are they as varied and different as the human races?

And most importantly, are your players looking forward to playing as these non-human races in the game?

I've chosen to go for many-humans for my setting, but the problem ends up being how close to the tropes I want to get. I dont want elves but x, but at the same time I feel like I still want some of the vague elements the races add.

Not to mention, whats the best way to address mixing ethnicity?

>high fantasy
>gonzo
>the idea of an all-human world even comes up
Do these words not mean what I think they mean?

>gonzo
Go crazy.
Four-armed gatormen from the swamps.
Sapient floating crystals.
People with bug heads.
Bug people with human heads.
Golems.
Literally robots.

But you cannot do that.
If it's one race is should have exactly one culture.
That's how the things are and should be.

>Then why not have multi-culture races? Instead of just Aztec Elves and Scotsdwarves, why not also add Incan Dwarves and Celtic Elves, and Vatican Orcs and Chinese Goblins and Cossack Orcs and Vietcong Goblins?

Eberron does this. Alot of races have multiple culture things going on.

But you still end up with 90% of the cultures being human and the remaining demi-humans being some pastiche of human cultures.

So cut out the middle-man and just play a human. What awesome twist does being an Incan-ish Dwarf offer to a player that simply being an Incan-ish Human doesn't?

It even works in the reverse.

Just say there's a society of humans who have lived apart from the world for thousands of years, mastered magic, become closer to nature, and have communities in the trees? They eat a special fruit that makes them live longer. They shun outsiders and are haughty.

BAM! Elves are now superfluous in your setting and you have an actually kind of exotic human race that you can actually explore from a human perspective.

>World of the Cimmerian adventurer, Conan
>all-human

The world during Hyborian age had nignogs though

I'm in the same camp, but there's a problem where you end up needing polymorphic traits to define people without seeming racist or bland.

I feel like you need to be willing to describe a whole spectrum of persons within an ethnicity without giving the same description.

But once you get to weird skin colors or whatever you manage to go back to fantasy races without any recognizable elements,

>whats the best way to address mixing ethnicity?
Have the racial differences being regional. Someone who grew up in the region learned to X, like everyone else there. It doesn't matter what ethnicity they are.

>But once you get to weird skin colors or whatever you manage to go back to fantasy races without any recognizable elements,

Meh, I just make my people various shades of brown. People from the north are paler, people from the south are darker, and people from the middle are in the middle. Eye and hair color are all over the place.

The polymorphic traits really are just window dressing though- even in the real world. There are pale skinned warrior cultures, straight hair and curly haired monotheist cultures, and blue eyed and brown eyed pastoral nomad cultures.

It's easier to determine a person's cultural background from how they speak, dress, and behave than by the color and make up of their skin/hair/eyes.

I have the opposite problem everyone else does. I want races, not because I want different ways to portray humans but because I actually want to explore how different hominids adapting to a shared world over time.

We did genetically reabsorb neanderthals, but its interesting to me if we hadn't and there was a plethora of other cultures with in that racial divide.

I want to do IRL hominid variation justice when I do my races, but its difficult to nail down the looks and relative traits.

Isn't Song of Ice and Fire all human?

Has a fantasy setting with races of hats standing in for well-written and fleshed-out cultures ever been good?

It has giants, undead men, and Children of the Wood. And Hodor.

But they're pretty much plot devices as opposed to actual characters with independent cultures, so yeah.

Also, pretty much all the exalted in Exalted are human. They just have god-like powers. Like most RPGS after a certain point.

Having a world focusing on people as people without having their "racial bonuses," and whatnot stand in for good cultural and thematic writing is going to be higher quality unless you're specifically looking for a shameless dungeon-crawling romp of all the tired old tropes.

Granted, people pushing the idea that you need to play Johnny Average the Human Fighter are just as bad in terms of writing quality as those who think that elves being elves and dwarves being dwarves and everyone hating on orcs just because is mentally engaging.

If the GM and the players have a game where they're just people, suddenly their actions and motivations need to have real people justification instead of being "well, I'm an elf, right? That's what I'd do."

Because then the only reason someone would do that is if the setting is PRIMO written and being an Incan dwarf would ACTUALLY be different from an Incan human outside of the stats.

But if the setting is NOT primo written, and let's face it, most aren't, then the only justification would be playing a different race for stat bonuses. And frankly speaking, picking your race for stats is the sign of a rollplayer, not a roleplayer. If stat bonuses are the only reason, just go balls deep and play only humans. Force your players to work their stat differences into their backstory and motivations instead of relying on the crutch that the trope of fantasy races gives them.

If you want the former at your table, that's on you.

All human, but races ARE classes.

But racial differences go deeper than just color of the skin and shape of ears.

>If the GM and the players have a game where they're just people, suddenly their actions and motivations need to have real people justification instead of being "well, I'm an elf, right? That's what I'd do."
I honestly never had this. Like, in all settings i DMed/played characters of different races were characters, instead of cardboard caricatures.

Tbqh it sounds like you're the unimaginative faggot here, famalama.

2 different continents, one with multiple non-human races and another one with mostly humans.

He did specify good

>But racial differences go deeper than just color of the skin and shape of ears.

Apparently they don't. Not when your elves and dwarves, despite being totally non-human, still end up acting in perfectly human terms and living in cultures that are modeled after actual human cultures and don't take into account their more alien biological differences.

different continents, one with multiple non-human races and another one with mostly humans.

I'm running a campaign like this. All the humans live on one continent. Sure, elves and orcs and dwarves and shit exist, but they live on another continent way across the ocean.

If players want, they can go over there and be among the first humans to make contact with these ancient races, but for right now, they have important shit to do at home killing mutated snakemen, apemen, demonmen, half-giants, and genasi.

Why not both?

A magical catastrophe has caused humans to diverge into many distinct biological groups

>Bug people with human heads.

I find this one strangely intriguing.

> Apparently they don't. Not when your elves and dwarves, despite being totally non-human, still end up acting in perfectly human terms and living in cultures that are modeled after actual human cultures and don't take into account their more alien biological differences.

This is mostly because Tolkien didn't intend for the races to be alien while writing the legendarium, otherwise you'd see all settings on a alieness arms race to see who can make their races more nonsensical. Elves are supposed to mirror certain mythological races, Hobbits are an offshoot of Men, Men themselves are human, Orcs are barely people to begin with and they were originally made off elves. Elves and Men don't have any biological differences, it's all spiritual. The only race that isn't somehow related to all others are Dwarves and that's because they weren't even supposed to exist.

Flip a coin.

How am I supposed to autistically create a fictional world that's blind up in my ideas of realism while the setting is filled with weirdo races?

...

>Realism

This is honestly why Dark Souls is one of my favourite fantasy settings: it's almost impossible to argue about realism because neither the physics nor the metaphysics of the world match up to our own in any way.

What is humanity, in Dark Souls? Not all the humanoids walking around, but little black sprites with an actual, physical presence in the world, apparently. What is darkness in Dark Souls? Not the absence of light, but some strange form of matter called Dark, apparently. What is Estus? Some kind of liquid fire that heals Undead, apparently. And on and on and on.

So, that's my advice OP: if you want to make a genuinely fantastical world, start from different metaphysical roots.

But that shit is hard!

Here, can you give any advice on how to make a mythological world with living, mortal Gods? What mechanics could make them work a little differently?

>Apparently they don't. Not when your elves and dwarves, despite being totally non-human, still end up acting in perfectly human terms and living in cultures that are modeled after actual human cultures and don't take into account their more alien biological differences.

You are still complaining about shit D&D copycat settings, rather than races' "inherent boringness".

Seriously, user, if you are a shit GM with a creativity of a lobotomized sea cucumber it's not elves' fault.

>lobotomized sea cucumber

Ironically, a lobotomized sea cucumber would be perfect for a fantasy race.

I made a setting where there are just humans and monsters (but some of those monsters are sapient, like the fey), so I could explore racism by having one of the human races treated like livestock.

Go to bed Howard(s)

I get a bit annoyed that all non-human player races end up being played exactly like the player would play a human. I think it's only because a friend I played with once based his character around his own in-character racial theory that humans were the Ur-race and all other sentient beings were derivative in origin. While I really liked the idea and still think it is some solid metagaming, the idea stuck with me that if elves and dwarfs are different enough from humans to not just be human-with pointy ears and stat boost- then they should be presented as utterly foreign and nearly alien.

But that's just why I prefer to have only humans pc's who encounter strange fae beings (emphasis on strange)

Any other wacky race ideas ITT?

>You are still complaining about shit D&D copycat settings, rather than races' "inherent boringness".

When you force a race into the PC mold, you kind of have to make it more human. It has to be relatable and have the same basic understanding/feelings as humans, not fuck up party dynamics too much, understand/speak the same language, etc.

Now if OP is just talking about non-humans as NPCs, then I'm all for it too. Otherwise, it is- at the end of the day- just humans with funny origins, which most "normal human" characters are anyway.

Bet you can't do a setting with no humans at all.

I have the Lepa in my setting, who are basically halfling druid people with rabbit features. They and the water-breathing race are descended from the same lines as the setting's humans, meaning they can interbreed (even though they usually don't).
In ancient history, they are known as the Wind Men. Giants, who were basically the realm's precursor humans (though basically nobody knows this) were Earth Men, Dragonborn (yeah, fucking sue me) were the Fire Men, and the water-breathers, who are a lot like amphibious merfolk, are the Water Men.

...

Nice. I'm making this into a race, thanks man.

A Veeky Forums classic

In my personal opinion the best races are ones that are biologically different enough from humans but are still "human" enough to cold a conversation with are the way to go.

Gills, wings, cold resistant skin, breeding in litters, a lack of eyes, etc make a good starting point, and then start to expand outward from there. Maybe a race that spawns like fish wouldn't have standard parent/child relationships or concepts of lineage. How would a city made by people who see with echolocation look like to outsiders with functioning eyes?

Does anybody know what the Basphiark is from? Looks interesting.

looks like stand alone art

But what if classes were races?

I enjoy this if done with really strange or alien races.

Depend what you mean by "good" I suppose. If you mean well-written, well executed, consistent and thoroughly researched, yes, yes of course. If you mean "that I like", then obviously not, or you wouldn't ask that bait question.

>tfw my setting has elves raid-slavering other elves to fight encroaching humans who are driven away by a wave of other humans who are themselves pushed back by a rag-tag horde of orcs, other other elves and gnolls while dwarves don't give a fuck and war profiteer everywhere

I hate low fantasy more than anything else.

You only get an acute case of bad taste, that's all.

>hey guys I don't like a popular thing, I'm really smart!