DM doesn't allow human characters

>He doesn't HFY

Well given how I always allow human characters, but my players instead go for a mishmash of "very human but not quite" races like elves, dwarves, planetouched, halflings, and whatnot, I think it would work out just fine.

Half-elf is even more vanilla than a human

My players never choose human actually. I always wind up GMing for a freakshow party where a human party member would only turn up being weird. It's pretty funny.

>Playing an RPG set in Lorwyn

Yeah okay I'm in.

>humans are boring
>why make human character in the first place?

everybody make a non-human

>all are played exactly like humans

I mean does it matter?

but seriously my favorite character ever was a hill giant raised by halflings, so he was 10' tall but had all the racial bonuses. god that was fun as shit.

Then the other half can't be human.
OP says "doesn't allow human", not "requires race other than human", which are very different conditions if multi-race characters exist. Even one drop of human is not allowed.

Hmm, then full elf, I guess.

Just make a halfling with gigantism

Depends on the game, setting, and group.

URealms in general is a game that doesn't have humans, and it plays just fine.

I did it in a short game intended to test a system I was designing. It was an entertaining gimmick, but I'm not sure that the novelty would have aged well for a longer campaign.

>he FYs before reaching overman

>because they play mouse guard

A dwarf?

This kinda thing always confused me. Do you seriously know no interesting people IRL?

He meant the kind of GM who has a very distinct and strict idea of how fun should be had, which could be innocent, but most of the time it's about the GM being a control freak nazi.

>Depends on the game, setting, and group.
Yep.
Your standard Golden Sky Stories game won't have human PCs.

This implies that non-human characters are not boring because of their physical species.
This further implies that you are either a shit roleplayer, a furry, or both.
KYS.

>The only defining trait of a character is their race
Anybody who thinks "My character is interesting because I picked [not a human]" is a shitty player

What makes a character interesting is the ways in which it is human. We cannot interpret a story without some degree of personification to relatable experience. We can barely discuss and understand lifeless physical phenomena before projecting on it.
A non-human character is most interesting as a way to highlight specific aspects of the human experience. Anything worth narrative value you can do with a non-human is something you can do with a human, the distinction only serves to cater to less important intrigue criteria like aesthetics or structure.

...

Can I play as a brain-eater parasite that takes control of its victims?

It all depends on why the GM is forbidding human PCs. Not because the decision to ban them is the problem, but because the reasons behind the GM's decision can warn you of other, more problematic, decisions that the GM will make.

Some examples:

- Campaign is in a system/setting with no humans and the GM refuses to allow any houseruled races (eg, Ironclaw, Mouse guard). This will go about as well a GM who refuses to allow houseruled races in a system/setting where humans exist.

- Setting has humans, but the campaign is focused on something where human PCs don't make sense. Shouldn't be a problem, unless the GM is allowing PCs of other races who make as little sense as human PCs for that campaign.

- GM wrote his own setting that doesn't have humans. Ask him why he decided to exclude them.

- "Humans are boring". Two problems here. The first is that I've seen interesting human PCs, as well as having personally played boring PCs of 'interesting' races. The second, and larger, worry is that the GM is trying to make his campaign interesting by cutting out anything boring. The more the GM cuts out, the more he will repeat the remaining bits, making them less interesting. So this is a warning sign.

- Premade characters with none of them human. The lack of human PCs isn't a problem, though everyone having to use premades might be.

I'd sooner ban Elves, Dwarves and all that other generic shit before I ban humans. Unlike those other races, humans have variation and aren't "this is x race, they all do this."

I disagree. Attempting to understand nonhuman points of view is very interesting, and many of those things are not things you can do with a human. For example, a hive mind is something decidedly not human, and exploring the ramifications of identity and the self through it has value and yet also can not be done via a human character.

If he (or she) has monster campaign in mind (or place where humans don't even exist) then I see only pros there

>I'd sooner ban Elves, Dwarves and all that other generic shit before I ban humans. Unlike those other races, humans have variation and aren't "this is x race, they all do this."
I'd argue that not using humans could be an effective way to de-stereotype demihumans. Without humans filling all the roles that don't belong to strict stereotypes of elves and dwarves and so forth, those other races will have to fill in the gaps.

That reminds me that I wanted to create a race customization option for a game I was working on. The goal was to allow a wild variety of unusual races while also not forcing someone to accept mechanical effects that would be detrimental to their preferred play style.

The concept was that you had to pick two or three mechanical benefits (or potential drawbacks if you felt inclined) and apply them to the race you were playing to represent different ethnicity. And then they had to name their race's ethnic group for added flavor.

So for example, if one person wanted to play a centaur they could choose something like [Speed Bonus] and [Fire Resistance] and then describe their character as a Nightmare Centaur. Or somebody who wanted to make a harpy could choose [Flight] and [Stealth Bonus] to make a Snowy Owl Harpy.

rito are cool, i want to use them in a campaign some time
pic unrelated but i prefer them as not flying. just avian featured humanoids

Honestly, even if the GM bans human characters, he's still going to end up with a bunch of "human in a weird body and a special ability or two" characters.

Players, by and large, can't really play something entirely non-human or too dissimilar from themselves. Even the best players who make a real attempt to play something non-human will end up filtering everything through their human experience and end up with things that act like a human thinks that entity should act, with the human often filtering through.

It's the same as with trying to play a character that's 1000 years old or someone who is incredibly intelligent. It just doesn't work that well.

After a couple of bad runs, I don't let players pick characters that stray too far from the human condition, it doesn't work out well.

Because the extra feat helps pay the fun-tax on worse classes.

What would be the point of an avian race that can't fucking fly?

I think this is a problem with a lot of races, they don't actually do enough to make them interesting, because people are afraid to give them powerful abilities.

>What would be the point of an avian race that can't fucking fly?

Chicken are delicious?

>What would be the point of an avian race that can't fucking fly?
Being cute.

Penguins are fun

That's not the point. Whatever nonhuman race you're playing, it still acts like a human/person. Why would you not make it look cooler if you can.

I'm working on a setting where all the playable races are anime style animal people (kemonomimi) because I'm building off of CATastrophe.

I'm not sure what all the races will be but a few will basically be the fantasy races but different a bit, so they're not entirely the same thing.

Dogs will be the general jack of all trades adventurer like humans I guess.

Cats will be the more graceful intellectual type but also more lazy and arrogant.

Pigs would be the short stocky and good at practical crafts, like dwarves.

Thinking monkeys might be another agile race, more tricksterlike than the cats. But I'm not sure.

Goats would be the race thats the weird outsiders and practice occultism. Most if not all typical witches would be goats.

Horse, rabbit and cows could be cool but I'm not quite sure what their archetypes would be. By this point I'm already most of the Chinese zodiac in, but I don't know about non-mammals like the chicken, dragon and snake.
Maybe some kind of bird person could be fun like said. But I don't think snake or dragon would fit.

>Being cute.

Today... today I will remind them that

WE ONCE RULED THIS EARTH

I want to fuck the pink thing

To have a baseline standard you can compare yourself to.
When everyone is a special snowflake, no one is.

so you're making a campaign for furries? cool

Kemonomimi is not furry.

Humans are a garbage choice unless you've got something else to go on. Every other race has some cultural tropes associated with it, but humans are a total blank slate. There's a reason any established setting spends dozens of pages detailing all the different nations of humanity in it.

Our party doesn't have any human characters. We had one at the start, but he was a key component of the biggest trainwreck of the campaign, and he ended up dead because of it. Because we kicked him until it stopped being carthartic and gave his corpse to a devil.

Things are better now.

I'm pretty sure that it's just the Japanese word for furry.

No, that's just Kemono, which means literally "beast" and refers to art of anthropomorphized animals doing human things, Kemonomimi specifically means "beast ears" and refers to mostly human characters with limited animal features, such as ears and a tail.

What's the point of anything? The world doesn't exist for YOUR sandbox, you fucking millenial snowflake faggot fuck

I'm actually GM'ing a Zelda game right now. No human races and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.

What races are you using, and I mean technically aren't the Hylians just the humans of the setting?

>What races are you using
Hylians, Gerudo, Kokiri, Deku, Gorons, Zoras, Blins, Lizalfos, and Darknuts are the PC races.

>and I mean technically aren't the Hylians just the humans of the setting?
They're the baseline race, but I wouldn't consider them to be not!humans in the RPG sense. An interesting thing I read about Hylians was that they have innate magic from being the Goddess' chosen people, so I decided to reflect that with the mechanics. Instead of their racial bonus being a generic free feat, they get to pick a starting spell from any spell list that they know and can cast, regardless of their class. System I'm using is 13th Age also.

Interesting, I wasn't expecting that many races to be available. What do you do with each of them?

Also how are your Darknuts under the armor? I'm pretty sure the only game we get to see them entirely unarmored is in Wind Waker where they are Doberman-men

Once upon a time Dwarves, Elves, Humans, and Orcs united to form a mighty empire. They conquered the whole world together, but once they had defeated every mortal challenge, they grew arrogant. The gods smote each race, giving each its own curse that divided it within and without. The empire collapsed, and what few members of the First Races remain today are tribal, violent, and insane from their curses.

In this fantasy post-apocalyptic setting, you can play a goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, gnome, lamia, aasimar, or drow. Note that if you play an aasimar, some people will be suspicious of you because of your mixed human ancestry, and if you play a drow different people will be suspicious of you because you look like an elf.

...that sounds awesome.

HFY is cancer

Triggered HFY fag detected

Humanity is what makes a character a valid player choice in the first place. Anything other would be plot devices. It isn't a problem to show the humanity of the orc, he is a fellow sophont with comparable needs.

Depends on players, some may be just cancer who can't play without HFY so it can cause problems, some furries can cause problems too, DM being furry also is problem. Also depend what races are allowed, if there are still elves, dwarves, halfings or catgirl style anime folk why really bother with no human rule?

How about instead "humans are boring" they are excluded because humans can't exist in setting like normal race instead will always warp setting around itself in one way or another and you have to deal with HFY or its polar (but almost if not just as shitty) opposite.

Bonus feat

Don't read /pol/ before coming to Veeky Forums. It makes you write funnily

The whole thing was uncalled for.
I apologize for it.

That's way more cool way to have the same elves, dwarves and whatnot without actually having them in your setting. In that world it makes a lot of sense to ban humans.

Good job user

Depends? If humans don't exist period, then the next closest thing will become the human analogue, defeating the whole point of removing them. Otherwise, it could just be something where a human PC wouldn't fit, like a monster campaign or a campaign that takes place in a part of the world where humans are either absurdly scarce or outright nonexistent.

>Think humans are the best race ever by virtue of being boring as fuck; essentially hipsters
>Humans are the most mechanically powerful and/or versatile
>Just felt like playing a human
Any of these could apply really.

>not furry
>posts furries

This is an underrated idea.
I mean sure due to certain body types and strengths there'd still be a bit of sterotyping, but not anymore so than actually exist irl between races. Elves being Kenyan level runners would be pretty great.

My group is going to do a Fantasy Craft campaign where we play as misunderstood monsters. So we're not allowed to be humans, dwarves, elves, or pechs unless we take species feats to make them more monster-y.

I don't think Millenials are the ones arguing that Aarockra should be allowed to be playable in every game.

Furfag detected

I like to use pseudo-humans instead of humans in my settings. Stuff that's "close enough", like Hylians or something, with just enough distinguishing features that if somebody spergs out, I just point to the fact that they aren't human anyway.

>Humans would have frozen to death by now!
>Well, they aren't human, so fuck off
>Humans couldn't possibly be that strong!
>Well, they aren't human, so fuck off

No, because players always have to be contrary for some insane reason.

If you say "no humans" the first thing players want to make is a human. If you say "this is an aquatic campaign" will you get mermaids and sea elf characters? No, you'll get a gelatinous cube, fire elementals, and a human with rabies.

You need a group of close, mature players to get them to cooperate for something like this. This idea would not go over well for the vast majority of groups.

I don't see any furries in that picture

Bad

>No humanOID races
Good

As long as it is just a single campaign, not every game he or she hosts.

Forcing the players out of their optimal comfortzone can lead to interesting things since the players can't roleplay their mostly identical favorite thing every time but are forced to trying something different. You might enjoy it.

Having campaigns or oneshots with different themes or limitation leads to variety and can help the players discover something interesting they wouldn't have otherwise. Sounds more interesting than constantly playing generic campaings that don't make the players change their ways of roleplaying.

You do not know what a furry is.

People need their boring safety blankets, is the reason.
Anything that differs from human fighter gets them worried about snowflakes because they're enormous hipsters who cannot bear to play something without worrying about their nerd cred.

Yeah, I gotta say, humans are always the huge attention whore protagonists of any and every setting regardless of if the setting is trying to do that.
Best just cut them out so they don't hog all the narrative power for no reason other than our own favoritism.

50yo please leave

Depends on if the players can be trusted to not play their characters as humans with weird hats.

nice b8

They usually go well and allow for greater variance in players.
Like, it's fine to play the psionic explosion monster right next to the cheshire cat right next to the face, who I am not sure what race it should be in my ideal setup.

See, while this is a good premise for a one off, it doesn't have the sustainability of following the wookie rule.

Having ONE human in a group of non humans, or one non human in a group of humans, creates classic enjoyable times.
The most recent example I have backing me up on this is guardians of the galaxy, but you find it again and again and again in cult classics and popular media.

Question. What do they call furries then?

>that's just Kemono, which means literally "beast" and refers to art of anthropomorphized animals doing human things

Blins, Lizalfos, and Darknuts as PC races
Trash. In canon monsters like those are dark magic made animate, not races to be played.

>What do you do with each of them?
Gerudo get a small chance to take an extra action each turn, based on rolling against the escalation die.
Kokiri have a fairy companion that can help them notice extra things or analyze enemy weaknesses.
Deku get a natural ranged weapon in the form of deku nut projectiles.
Gorons have a rolling attack.
Zoras have water-breathing and a natural fin boomerang weapon.
Blins gets a reroll chance when making melee attacks.
Lizalfos have a breath weapon.
Darknuts get armor proficiency if their class doesn't have it, and get an AC bonus if their class does.

One thing I also really like in 13th Age is that you can spend feats to upgrade racial powers and most other stunts. So a Goron could improve their rollout attack to add spikes to it, or a Hylian could improve their innate spell to make it even better.

>Also how are your Darknuts under the armor? I'm pretty sure the only game we get to see them entirely unarmored is in Wind Waker where they are Doberman-men
They've got the Wind Waker jackal aesthetic. My PCs affectionately call them doggos because of it.

>In canon monsters like those are dark magic made animate, not races to be played.
Refer yourself to webm related.

Have you had a Minish adventure yet?
Teeny tiny dungeon raiding!

>Elves being Kenyan level runners would be pretty great.
They are in Dark Sun.

races to choose are:
>sentient colours
>concept of linear time
>the ones from beyond
>the veil

Free feat and a movable ability skill

This is also good aproach.

>DM says no human characters for next campaign
>ask him what's the setting, so I know what to make.
>are we playing a group of elves on orders from the queen? Or maybe dwarves that are exploring newfound caverns underneath the fortress? Maybe an goblinoid one? Come on don't leave me hanging.
>"n-nothing like that, I just don't want people in the next campaign"
>so, like no reason for that?
>"yeah"
>just get up, and tell him to message me when either he stops being retarded, or finds a good reason to have people play non-humans only
>he scraps the ban on the very nexy day
>show up to the game as tiefling bard

>t. the only race who gets a free feat