Is it not it unlikely that humans in a fantasy setting are identical to us? Even in a low fantasy setting...

But what you're describing is a bunch of causes outside of evolution that fucks with the whole process.

Overarching large-scale effects that cause mass extinctions, or change the environment faster than evolution can keep up with, are certainly random. The effects of those events on evolutionary history can definitely be called random (the white-nosed example you gave).

But you can't say that evolution itself is random by pointing to how it's affected by events beyond its "control."

By Darwins theory evolution should be random. Think chaos mutations. No, srsly.

OFC EVOLUTION NOT REAL!!!

user, the theory is a description of events, not a stringent process. Rabdom mutations, founder effects and plain chance are all part of evolution.

It has random features but descent with modification is not especially random.

>fantasy setting
>evolution
>laughinggods.silentimg

In a fair amount of fantasy settings sentient races, including humans, are explicitly created rather than evolving. So that's one factor.

Assuming humans did evolve however, that opens up an entire can of worms in terms of world building that most GMs shouldn't be bothered to deal with.

In a world where organisms still evolved the way they do on Earth, how the hell does something like a deer coexist with something like a chimera or catalpas? The odds of something like a dwarf which pretty much looks like a short broad human coexisting with humans but being completely different species are astronomically slim. There used to be a number of species that were closely related to humans, and now they're gone.

And if this is a setting where magic exists, then that throws off Darwinian evolution even more. If a species is capable of manipulating a force that defies the laws of physics, how does that influence their evolution?

The situation you end up with if you want to acknowledge evolution in your setting whilst including fantasy elements like magic and dragons is that you have to cherry pick what laws from real life apply to your setting to facilitate that. And if you're doing that then whatever kind of immersion or verisimilitude you were going for is pretty much moot, because having to make all of these choices means that your setting's rules are just as arbitrary as a setting where Hooman God of Law made humans out of reeds or something.

>Fargnir, why do you keep making weird lanky apes with hair in all the wrong places?
>Do I? Oh snap, I do. Huh. Tell you what, I'll make some short ones and green ones this time, for a bit of variety.

Well, then we wouldn't call them humans. You'd just say 'Actually, the most common species in my campaign setting are called X, and they're slightly different than humans in Y ways.', and your players would think 'Okay, so Elves are the most common species.'

I had a friend come up with a NotEurope setting one time where the population was mostly half-elves, or more precisely a varying mixture of elf and human. The NotCatholicChurch had been founded and spread by elves, and they'd spread around the place becoming the educated, wealthy elite in human societies until the inevitable admixture happened. The only pureblooded humans left were the deep woods, Old Gods tribes living at the edge of civilization. The Drow control NotEngland which is NotProtestant; the NotChurch put a curse on all heretics that would cause them to change color and become easily identifiable/ostracisable, but eventually they just buggered off to found their own kingdom, and have embraced it wholeheartedly. The Orcs were all Sea People who worshiped sharks or something, and I'm now sad I never got to play in this setting.

Most fantasy humans are absolutely not identical to us, because men and women have the same stats, so sexual dimorphism doesnt really exist beyond sexual characteristics and genitalia.

Obviously there is a reason for this, what with political correctness, but the setting implication is that even your average peasant woman is physically as capable as her husband.

Also of course how the upper realm of stats means fantasy humans can well exceed the capabilities of normal humans. With training and experience, a man or woman can do something like pick up a house, an obvious difference from us normal humans.

That assumes our world exists and so does theirs, and therefore it's a huge coincidence that we're essentially identical. But our world doesn't exist side-by-side with their world. In the fantasy setting, only their world exists, so there is comparison to make.

settings are generally crafted and not randomly generated, so I don't see what randomness and evolution have to do with anything.

You have a misconception of what the term evolution encompasses. Evolution is the umbrella term for all forces that guide changes in organisms across time. Evolution is not a synonym for natural selection. Natural selection is just one small part of evolution. In other words, natural selection and evolution are not interchangeable terms. You appear to be using the more general term evolution when you really mean the more precise process of natural selection.

You're right that natural selection alone is not really random, and convergent evolution shows this. But the other user you're talking with is talking about evolution as a whole which is a lot more complex than just natural selection.