Humans are the adaptable, ambitious, and innovative race

>humans are the adaptable, ambitious, and innovative race

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theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/30/neanderthals-not-less-intelligent-humans-scientists
phys.org/news/2012-03-evidence-neanderthals-boats-modern-humans.html
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I honestly think that humans should be split into different ethnicities and have bonusses according to these. They can still have some things and stats in common, but the innovative shit gets boring.

>humans are the only adaptable, ambitious, and innovative race

Correct.

>humans need a gimmick

>single line of green text

kys

I agree, it's far more realistic, looking at historical precedent, to have them be the marauding warrior race in the way that orcs are usually presented.

We are though. One of humanity's defining traits is that we can set up shop even in environments that would hardly be considered out niche. Our science is the equivalent of "hold my beer" and the 'average' among us regularly do stupid things just to see what happens.
But we hardly know if other [highly] intelligent species share the same behaviors, or of they may be intrinsic to technological development. So we attribute the familiar to humans, and use our imagination to determine what another race may be like.

bait

Then what else do you want humans to be like, while still letting them be like real ones?

If they aren't, then they won't be the dominant race and they will go extinct before others eventually.

What makes you think that? Genuinly curious.

It's sort of realistic, seeing how the only other hominid that is somewhat comparable to us in intelligence (neanderthals) had much larger brains than us, but completely lacked any kind of technological or cultural drive to improve.

Neanderthals were happy keeping their technology and culture stagnant for thousands of years until humans came along with brand new ideas every week, causing rapid changes in Neanderthal technology and culture.

Perhaps Neanderthals were all barely functional high functioning autists. Huge brain, complete inability to use that brain matter.

I think that one rainbow dudes setting did that and it was actually nice.

adaptable makes sense
>humans are diplomatic
that always gets me

>Humans are the stat baseline
Hate that, basically precludes the possibility of humans being an extreme compared to other races.

Neanderthals were not on the same level as humans.

Why are people talking about realism? These are fictional, and often high-fantasy settings. Why not pick something interesting that fits alongside other races, but is still recognizably human?

I would give humans high endurance, personally.

>I think that one rainbow dudes setting
What?

>One of humanity's defining traits is that we can set up shop even in environments that would hardly be considered out niche
Yes.

>Our science is the equivalent of "hold my beer"
Fucking what? In comparison to who's science? An elf's? A zebra's? We're the only species that we know of in the real world who does science, and it rarely if ever boils down to "hold my beer" when performed in anything approaching an official capacity. And no, famous accidental discoveries like plastic and penicillin are not examples of "hold my beer," they're examples of clumsy and lazy respectively.

>the 'average' among us regularly do stupid things just to see what happens
Define regularly. Define average. Because you're dad's best friend who you never saw less than three beers in while you were growing up is not average.

its called like tillsrami or some weird bullshit like that starting with a T and the cover is normally a picture of a dude from the race that is coated in a ton of different rainbow colors. I know in one he's fighting a raptor that is also colorful. I'll do a quick check in my files for it gimmie a sec.

I just realized what setting you meant, though don't remember the name as well. One of these weird-fantasy worlds.

I prefer the 2e differences: what makes humanity unique is public and democratized institutions, like public libraries, where other races are focused more on private or factional things with familial politics being a barrier much of the time.
So while a single random human isn't that much more likely to be especially ambitious, or adaptable, or innovative than a random elf or dwarf or halfling, humans simply have more social and vocational mobility as a matter of course and have less barriers for sharing knowledge and skills.
Basically the humans who *are* ambitious, etc., have better chances to succeed to a greater extent and in a way that means more humans can benefit over time.

That or:

>humans are the naïve, lucky, arrogant race

That's my favourite trope. Things just fall into place for humans.

We only know that because we've seen their culture and technology.

If you look at a neanderthal skull and a human skull, and say "The small one is smarter", most people including paleontologists would say "You're bullshitting me."

Blame Tolkien. Or, rather, the people who copied him without any clue what they were doing. Elves are in decline, Dwarves are in diaspora, Hobbits are just lazy, so humanity gets to be the ambitious young race standing against the darkness.

Actually, this is a myth, and one that was debunked a LONG time ago.

Neanderthals were much more intelligent than crogmagnons, they were the first to develop:

jewellery, tools, clothing, painting, religion, burial of the dead, etc.

All signs point to them being a very deep and spiritual culture that far outpaced humans.

Humans simply outbred them and then raped them to death.

>humanity's hat is socialism
Cue autistic shrieking in 5, 4, 3...

theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/30/neanderthals-not-less-intelligent-humans-scientists

Also Neanderthals were the first to invent boats

phys.org/news/2012-03-evidence-neanderthals-boats-modern-humans.html

If anything, humans are the stupid ones.

They do that for the purpose of game mechanics, not setting. A human player will imagine the average stats of any fictional race in comparison to humans.
It's completely possible to play a game where humans are the stat baseline represented as the number 10 in all stats while other races have 9 or less in the stat you want humans to be best at.

>and then raped them to death
There is no evidence for this, since the few neanderthal dna we have all comes from males.

This is bait, BUT I did have an idea to split humans along more classic fantasy tropes, without getting into the potential shit-storm that is ethnicity.

>Common humans: Everyone you know
>Ape-men: Humans devolved into an ape-like state, or apes that are gradually evolving into humans
>High Men: Atlanteans, Numenoreans, take your pick. Powerful, arrogant, haughty, better than you in every way. Disturbing tendency to sink continents.
>Morlocks: Subterranean degenerate human cannibals.

>This is bait
Again I have no idea why people think this is bait and they refuse to explain this.

I think the way to fix this is to imagine yourself as a non human race when designing your setting.

Humans tend to be the "average" race, with exactly average stats in everything. They tend to celebrate exploration, etc, etc. This is because humanity is all we've ever known.

A system designed by elves would have elves with 10s in everything, who pride themselves on reasoned ambition and innovation, while humans might be the goblin equivalent:

>Disturbing tendency to sink continents.
Kek.

I don't think you understand what I wrote in my post.

It literally doesn't matter if you're more intelligent than homo sapiens, if that intelligence only manifests in being an autistic idiot savant who can't even conceive of altering his way of thinking to improve it, you might as well be a fucking retard.

>jewellery, tools, clothing, painting, religion, burial of the dead, etc.
And they never improved those technologies and cultural ideas after developing them.
>All signs point to them being a very deep and spiritual culture that far outpaced humans.
Because they had a few hundred thousand years headstart. Which humans catched up on really fucking fast. And then humans left Neanderthals in the dust.

>Humans are a fast breeding and violent race who want to see everything and want everything they see

Because it's a thinly veiled racism.

Because "muh racism"

You unironically don't see anything wrong with having a race that is intrinsically less/more intelligent, strong, or innovative than others?

It's simply introducing a needlessly uncomfortable - and revolting - element to any player born after 1900.

As humans are the only fantasy race that exists in the real world, dividing humans into real-world ethnicities and giving different stats to each naturally invites stereotyping, even if you do nothing but give positive modifiers ("African: +2 to Jump checks").

If you create ethnicities, meanwhile, you run into two problems: first, that you will probably pigeon-hole yourself into a particular setting ("Lake-Men", "Bardings", "Men of Gondor", etc.); two, your homebrew ethnicities will naturally invite comparison to real-world ethnicities that they appear similar to, which leads you back to the problem mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Third, dividing humans into subraces based on stereotypes, and using negative stereotypes, has been done enough that people will expect it even if it's not the intention. Even with my fantasy human subraces posted above, I don't doubt that most people would see "high men" and think that I mean "white people from Thule", even though there's no reason why they couldn't represent great men out of Hawaiki (Polynesian), Kunlun Mountain (China), or Zerzua (Arabic myth).

Likewise, the association of "racists think that black people are primitive apes" will probably make people think that I'm trying to insult black folk with my Ape-Men, even though in their source of inspiration (Conan the Barbarian), *every* human race started as apes and evolved up, and *every* extant Hyborean race can devolve to ape for (in Howard's own mythology, the Atlanteans devolved into apes before evolving back up into Cimmerians, then devolved again before becoming Celts; likewise, in Conan's time there are a tribe of snow Ape-Men beyond the arctic circle who will eventually become the Germans)

Pretty much. Add in a reckless shortsightedness due to short lifespan and you're golden.

Please have patience, that child has autism.

>race realist

An actually usable way to integrate ethnicities and cultures into a system, is just to give everyone from a region some free extra stats or skills. Preferably, skills that mostly serve an out-of-combat function with a slight combat advantage like I dunno some Masai clone society that's really good at herding farm animals, and also gets a bonus when using a spear against wild animals.

Since it's regional, it's race agnostic. So you can have an orc, human and elf all be super sailors from some Swedish clone society.

I kinda give humans the endurance. Because when you get into what separates us from animals, its intelligence, endurance, and resilience.

Incase is such a shitty artist and pretentious writer

Caucasian - +2 CON
Asian - +2 INT
African - +2 STR
Latino - +2 CHA
Arab - +2 DEX
any changes?

It makes absolutely no sense for a baseline to be a min or a max. The notion inherently precludes humanity from being the weakest species for example.

no.

humans are terrible. just awful. we don't deserve to live let alone have any merit in rpgs.

Many other humanoid races would have that as well.
I mean, bipedal could be a trait as well when you compare us to animals.

Care to elaborate on that?

The system I'm working on uses a lot of the different human stereotypes as human-variants which arise semi-randomly. Right now I have variants for Adaptable and Focused, with planned ones for Lucky/Naive, Conqueror and Mediator.

Acknowledging the difference between etchnicities and cultures is now racism? We are already doing this with fantasy races and even within their subraces. Also not all differences are purely nature, there is also some nurture in it. Do you think the dwarf starts profcient with axes because he's born this way? No, because it's part of his culture. Do you think every fantasy nation composed of humans has the same culture.
We are already facing stereotyping with fantasy races. While you brought some good points up, even fantasy humans are stereotypes already. Does the Hyperboreans average stats stop people from glorifying them as vikings? Does presenting a black fantasy human with 18 INT stop anyone from making racist jokes? I wouldn't even do something like because putting in every real life ethnicity and then giving stats bonusses is just lame and uncreative.

You could instead separate humans by culture and assign bonuses based on that. You would need to ensure that each or most of our ethnicities are represented in each fantasy culture though.

This is also probably closer to the truth in reality as well: studies show that that children of African immigrants perform on par with neighborhood children in both academics and athletics, and are statistically as likely to be criminals. I.e. when raised in a rich neighborhoods the 1st gen is as statistically likely to be rich as any other kid on the street; but when raised in the 'hood or a trailer park the 1st gen is as likely to face jail time as any other kid in the 'hood or park.

Great minds think alike.

>can only draw one (man)face
>only recently learned how to do (slightly) varied body types
>story for the shitty shortstack meme comic consists of "BAWWW, EVERYONE HAYES ME BCUZ I'M DEGENERATE" on fucking loop because Incase has a persecution complex
But he draws dickgirls so plebes eat his swill up.

>humans
>not weak to fire
BULLSHIT

Fucking racist scum.

>etchnicities and cultures
Ethnicities, yes racists as fuck. If you don't understand that you're a stupid racist.
Cultures, less so. Potentially problematic but not inherently.

>nazis all think alike
Color me surprised.

>it's okay to be racist against fantasy races
/pol/ please go.

Why do Caucasians get +2 Con? The world's strongest man right now is Eddie Hall of Britain, with Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson of Iceland the second-strongest and Brian Shaw of the US third-strongest. All three are white. This is from the World's Strongest Man competition, which was held in Botswana, Africa, so it's not like there weren't any Africans around to try.

Stereotypically, I'd actually say Africans have the better endurance, what with the running, pursuit hunting, those intense dances, surviving the diseases and environment of Africa, and of course enduring centuries of cotton-picking slavery, which is all based around Constitution.

Consider as well that in any given Marathon (long-distance running is also Con-based) the winner for both men and women tends to be an African, particularly the Boston Marathon, which I'm given to understand is THE Marathon.

Of course, you also run into the issue that "African" is basically a wholly invented "race". Africans aren't racially homogenous, any more than Caucasians. Someone from Ethiopia probably has more in common with folk from Egypt or the Levant than folk from Nigeria or South Africa.

>You unironically don't see anything wrong with having a race that is intrinsically less/more intelligent, strong, or innovative than others?
What, you want Orks, Elves and Dwarves to be abolished?

There's nothing wrong with niggers from Nubia who are good sprinters and heat-resistance and have a culture based on long-distance travel and extroversion, Slit-eyed warriors that are resistant to cold and have powerful bodies and a culture that is very introverted and rigid, or red-haired magicians with an affinity for complex spells. And a mongrel race created in the one city where the races intermingle, which has subdued characteristics compared to pure-raced individuals but profits from being able to employ each individual according to which of the racial talents they express the most. You have strong niggerblood? You become a scout or messenger. Affinity for cold? You join the melee corps. Red hair? Go to the backline and do magical support.

Restricting yourself to real life values when you create fictional humans is silly. You can gain so much from taking racial stereotypes to their logical extreme and making ethnic monostates.

In a tabletop system I was making, humans had the best stamina and tenacity in the game, including regenerating HP if they took a serious injury.

This, 2bqhwyf's

Any intelligent, space-faring race of aliens is obviously going to be:
1. Adaptable as fuck
2. Ambitious as fuck

and

3. Innovative as fuck

The idea that humans would also be "the only ones to injoi waaar!" is ridiculous. Lots of intelligent creatures on this planet alone are gifted with the trait of violence. It's highly logical to assume any other sentient life for we encounter made it to the top of the food chain by NOT being a bunch of cucks.

GreenFrogMemeLookingTired.jaypeg

>Does the Hyperboreans average stats stop people from glorifying them as vikings?

No one has ever said that Robert E. Howard wasn't racist.

>You could instead separate humans by culture and assign bonuses based on that

That gets tedious, especially if you're trying to make a somewhat generic system (Star Wars, D&D, etc). Also when dividing along cultural lines you can run into the same basic problem as racial lines: "Jewish: +2 to Appraise checks".

If you were doing realistic races, you'd make Africans resistant to malaria and Asians lactose intolerant.
Which could actually be very important if there's a god that requires you to imbibe milk or to survive malaria.

Tangentially related:

I'm not a fan of flat modifiers on races to begin with, from a design perspective. Given most D&D/Pathfinder classes have one or two core stats that they focus on, stat modifiers on races essentially are determining what the viable set of races for given classes are, and often have only one notable gimmick outside of that. This means that some potentially interesting concepts are effectively disallowed, unless the player really wants to play a weakened character. One such example of this would be a Dwarf Bard. I'm sure you can imagine this being an interesting character, singing war-songs as they wade into battle. The -2 Cha however means they'd suck at this job.

I'd much rather see races not directly impact the core features of a class, but rather have interesting side-abilities that could be potentially useful anywhere but particularly useful if you build around them. The most boring example of this is of course the Human, with its free bonus feat that all classes benefit from.

>Given most D&D/Pathfinder
>classes
Have you tried not playing D&D?

>I'd much rather see races not directly impact the core features of a class, but rather have interesting side-abilities that could be potentially useful anywhere but particularly useful if you build around them.
This is a good idea, though. Like TES games.

To be honest I was thinking of the amount of big ass american football players who are 300lb+ for the +2 STR, the +2 CON for caucasian was mainly due to the fact they tend to populate cold and miserable enviroments and have a penchant of climbing mountains with very little oxygen on top 'because its there'

But could do to swap around either way.

But yeah, there is variance in differant countries and regions on average, such as iceland having a large number of massive and strong men for some reason but alot of the time the average means so little who honestly cares apart from a shitpost on a message board?

Ehhh well there was some ''gene flow'' between us and the Neanderthals. We have integrated them into us user.

>No one has ever said that Robert E. Howard wasn't racist
You can have a look into any fantasy setting and will find that humans are the most divided races with different cultures and stereotypes build around their culture. Not acknowledging them is deriving the setting o flavor.
>That gets tedious
There is no need for 30+ cultures.

>Have you tried not playing D&D
Of course. This comment was specifically in response to the previous chain of conversation regarding stat modifiers for real-life ethnicities, using D&D/Pathfinder's stat-system, hence my answer being framed in the terms of that system.

>Like TES games
Exactly what I mean. Certain races lend themselves more towards certain archetypes, but none of them really lock you out of options, meaning that there's plenty of room to grow and make unique characters of any race.

>There's nothing wrong with niggers from Nubia who are good sprinters and heat-resistance and have a culture based on long-distance travel and extroversion

Christ I don't know where to begin.

1) There is no longer such as nation as Nubia.
2) Back when it existed several thousand years ago, Nubia was not noted for sprinters, nor for any kind of "heat resistance".
3) Nubia was instead noted by the Egyptians (who called it "Medja" and its people "Medjay") for its military prowess. The Medjay became an elite paramilitary force of Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty, and the term "Medjay" eventually came to refer to elite local police forces in Egypt. Think SWAT.
4) While the Medjay were somewhat nomadic, they were no more so than anyone else on Egypt's borders
5) Various Nubians even became Egyptian Pharaohs, especially during the Twelfth Dynasty.
6) By the time of the New Kingdom, the Nubians and Egyptians become archaeologically indistinguishable. The Nubians seem to have become wholly integrated into Egyptian society and culture.

Caucasian - +2 CON + 2 WIS
Asian - +2 INT + 2 WIS
African - +2 STR -4 INT -2 WIS
Latino - +2 CHA +2 DEX
Arab - +2 DEX -2 WIS

You're not great at balancing races.

>And they never improved those technologies and cultural ideas after developing them.
This is the stone age, you dunce. What do you expect them to do? start building castles? There's no evidence to suggest that they just developed tools and culture then suddenly stopped for no reason.

>Because they had a few hundred thousand years headstart. Which humans catched up on really fucking fast. And then humans left Neanderthals in the dust.
No, the Neanderthals died off some time before the last ice age.

>and have a penchant of climbing mountains with very little oxygen on top 'because its there'

That's a human trait. Humans have been climbing mountains "because its there" all the time. Sherpas had been up and around Everest for centuries before the first white man ever saw it. It's just that it's physiologically impossible for a human to survive a trip to the top of Everest without relatively modern equipment, and only white people had modern equipment.

Life isn't balanced.

Feel like African is a bit underpowered
How a +2 SPD

>Not +2 Dindu nuffin

We're talking about proposed racial traits for humans in tabletop games. Imbalanced races is shitty design.

So, you agree with my post?

I mean, you are too autistic to understand that I'm talking about exaggerated fantasy humans based on real stereotypes. But you clearly seem to take the concept of basing fictional races on notable traits of real races in stride.

>Like TES games.
But the good TES games did have race impact stats. And racism, for that matter.

But realistic.

If you're going to choose African for some reason just go Barbarian.

This is how Earthdawn handles it. Sky pirates for example are mostly Trolls but there are plenty of non-trolls too because anyone that can pass the trials is accepted into the clan

>So, you agree with my post?

No. You completely, totally, irrevocably misused the term "Nubian".

>But you clearly seem to take the concept of basing fictional races on notable traits of real races

You know, I'll bite, because I know the answer to this but I know you'll get it wrong: what real-world culture are the drow elves of the Forgotten Realms based on? These would be the most well-known iteration of drow, with spider worship and Lolth and the matriarchy and so on.

>Not playing Barbarian Asian and being a superior mongolian

>nazis
>me
I didn't know nazis came in African colours these days, you falseflagging /pol/ cunt.

Watch out though, he could post a large infograph with no actual proof and big scary quotes about 'the jews'

Fucking read up on fucking neolithic cultural development and technological changes.

WE HUMANS HAVE BEEN INVENTING SHIT RIGHT FROM THE MOMENT WE SPLIT OFF FROM OUR ANCESTORS!

How's that -4 INT treating you?

>+6 BET

>Restricting yourself to real life values when you create fictional humans is silly.

The reason why it isn't, is because unlike orcs, elves, and dwarves, there are actually humans in the real world who can get offended - and rightly so if you're pigeonholing them into stereotypes that don't even necessarily make sense for them. Nigerians are "African", but they're not noted for any particular prowess at running.

>You know, I'll bite, because I know the answer to this but I know you'll get it wrong: what real-world culture are the drow elves of the Forgotten Realms based on? These would be the most well-known iteration of drow, with spider worship and Lolth and the matriarchy and so on.
Ok, you are literally too autistic to understand.
I'm not even joking.

>what real-world culture are the drow elves of the Forgotten Realms based on?

None. No Matriarchy has ever produced a culture.

Yes, but that's just half of it.
The other half is minor spells that you get in Morrowind, for example.

>long-lived races are stagnant and unambitious so human domination can seem (a little) less retarded

>Nigerians are well educated and immigrate to America where they succeed due to their culture of hard work and having stable nuclear families.

Only america seems to have a cancerous thug culture that isn't seen as cringey elsewhere.

Real people could also get offended at fantasy races by interpreting them as analogues of real world races.

It's much more interesting if everyone is in on the joke and the entire thing is blatant as shit. That's how you prevent people from being offended, not by making orcs who are totally not Liberians.