MAKE HUMANS INTERESTING
My basic idea is humans exist on every plane in the same way roaches exist on earth in every climate. They're basically viewed as the vermin or the universe. And the primaterial aka earth plane is the only plane they're the majority
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I had an idea about making the standard fantasy races interesting by giving each race a fundamental vague directive which drives their existence with the different cultures of this race being their different reactions to this driving force. Humans directive would be to survive until the end of the world. Some cultures view the only way to survive to be to go full humanity fuck yeah and exterminate all other races, some take it to mean they should colonise everywhere they can so even if a disaster happens some people will survive, other cultures try to preserve their lives through necromancy and other means taking the derective to mean that each person who survives to the end of the world will be rewarded.
>humans aren't already interesting
>in my setting, humans are literally worthless roaches, vermin in the eyes of muh speshul snowflake races
Furfag/elf detected
What did you say?
Elf detected
This is ripped from another user's idea, but;
Humans have too much soul. It bleeds from them into other beings and causes mischief and magic in the world. Animals who spend to much time around humans become more human like, domesticated. This eventually might have led to the beastmen. Trees, stones, and other objects that humans interact with over generations might one day become sacred, forming spirits and other kami that interact with the world. A sword of legend, passed through many hands, might one day form it's own identity and magic. Other races are terrified of humans, as they slowly corrupt the lands around them to be more suitable for humans, but alien and strange to those inhuman.
There are four multiversal constants.
Every universe has humans.
Every universe has a Chosen Hero, who is always human
Every universe has Sisyphus, who is a human, sort of.
And every universe is preyed upon by the Terrors, atemporal predators that infest the space between the worlds.
Only the Chosen One can stop a Terror once it's invaded his world, typically by disabling it and imprisoning it. Terrors can't be permanently killed, thus the longest-lived worlds become veritable hives of imprisoned Terrors. Virtually every ancient evil, elder god, titan, immortal god-king in the world is a Terror, wearing a shape that matches the logic of the world it's consuming.
Chosen Ones die and are replaced, millennia pass, eventually a Terror gets lucky and the world is consumed. Mortals have to win every round for eternity, the Terrors only have to win once.
Sisyphus has a different way. Half chosen one, half Terror, he lives in every world and can never die in any. He knows the truth. He's found the way out. Only humans can stop the Terrors because only have The Stuff. "Humanity," "Determination," whatever you want to call it. The Stuff that lets him look at a world-devouring monster from outside reality and say "I'll just hit the fucker with my sword."
Sisyphus believes that he can kill the Terrors forever, but he needs the concentrated Humanity of an entire world, and he needs the Chosen One to join him.
But the Chosen One, being the eternal champion and icon of good, never believes him. He sees a crazed sorcerer trying to kill everybody in the world and eat their souls, and he hits the fucker with his sword.
Maybe he wins and lives a long life. Maybe Sisyphus kills him. There'll be another, and that one doesn't listen either. Eventually the Terrors consume the world.
And Sisyphus tries again. He knows he only has to win once.
The problem isn't that humans are not interesting it's that your players are uninteresting and need to play a kitsune-half-aasimar- half-demon- wolfkin- vampire - pixie in the place of a personality.
I like you user and I like your style. Could you give an example about what would motivate the other races besides survival, say pic related
Too be honest I haven't come up for something for orcs yet I've got dwarves done though so I'll talk about them. The dwarves were given the directive to ascend to the promised land. The dwarves have travelled up from the center of the earth and once they got to the surface most decided they had reached this promised land. Some cultures settled down to a pastoral life learning farming from the humans, others want to preserve the nature of the surface caring for the wild places. A few dwarves however are convinced that the surface is just a very large cavern they must ascend through to the promised land, some cultures have set up what is essentially a medical space program whereas other push forever outward hoping to find the walls of this cavern, there are even sects of dwarvwn monks who view the promised land being somewhere beyond the physical realm using psycotropic substance to ascend their mind in pursuit of the promised land
*medieval instead of medical
>humans are travelers from the realm of eternity
>they came here to absorb the residual soul of the multiverse and end its temporal turmoil
>they eat and reproduce and then suck the soul out from the material and stimuli that they have been exposed to, uploading it to the realm of eternity where it can create more human souls, but is also eternally safe/catalogued
>they have to forget their mission because it would taint the soul that they absorb and render it untrue to itself
>the DNA that they used to embody themselves splintered off and, subject to the chaos of the multiverse, created simulacra of life that follow a hollow version of the human imperative (consume and reproduce, but not for the sake of eternity), because they only have the residual temporal soul and not the eternal soul of humanity
>now opposed by other lifeforms of their own inadvertent creation, the humans become disoriented because they see these lifeforms as reflections of themselves, and as a result they become more like them
>humanity devolves into a state where it roleplays itself as a part of the temporal multiverse, and even upon death their memories are not restored as usual, so they reincarnate and some of their energy diffuses into the land instead of being uploaded
>they become trapped, and the direction of absorption shifts from temporal to eternity to eternity to temporal, as more humans from the realm of eternity attempt to rescue those caught in temporality and end up ensnared themselves
>eventually all intelligent life becomes indistinguishable from humanity minus a few telltale quirks, like elves and their pointy ears and such
>but they are philosophical zombies running on the primitive multiverse soul
>the despair of those humans who regain their memories but still cannot find their way home spawns the void, a desire to end eternity, because they believe that what they experience is eternity
>this void finds its way into the intelligent life and creates evil
>ascend to the promised land
>the underground city of dwarves, made by dwarves, for dwarves, not the promised land.
Use yer nex' werds wit' 'ceptional care, boyo.
I like it. Consider this, and the previous portion, Stolen for headcanon.
That's exactly one cultures view it. That those who dwell on the surface have gone too far and are blind to their true place in the world. I won't say whose right that's for the dwarves themselves to decide.
We live on a planet populated by a race of beings that can be both benevolent and maliscious, sometimes displaying these traits in the same individual. A race that can be surprisingly fragile yet extremely hardy and tenascious. With different ways of forming social structures, different languages, different religions, different ways of adapting technology to adapt the local conditions into supporting them. A species capable of producing the most beautiful of art, which beauty stands more poignant considering the ugly so many chose to display over the ugly.
Lets take the U.S. at current, not an Amerifag so no bone in a political fight.
>Last two presidents were fucking duds, first one got involved in two protracted wars and made decisions which led to the great financial crash. The second came in promising a change only to oversee, intentionally the biggest transfer of wealth from the working and middle class to the 1% in U.S. recorded history.
>Then occupy movement happens, citizenry are pissed off. The rich, including Mr Change himself, start encouraging division in the working and middle class by funding the biggest dickheads (BLM, SJWs, Alt-Right) meaning people are too busy fighting with each other to formulate a co-ordinated pushback against the greed and avarice of the super rich.
>Yet despite all their planning the super rich, having stacked their decks heavier then they ever have, lost an election to the Billionaire they never let into their "little club" because the man never cared for sensibilities. A man who definitely represents a change that was promised by the dickhead before him, but is also unpredictable with his ego being his big achilles heel. In the meantime the divisions are now becoming wider and the people in those groups becoming more desperate and willing to act out in violence.
(cont)
This is U.S. 2017, and if you step back and look at it without a "political lens" as one would an historian, these are fucking fascinating times. You sit there and tell us humans aren't interesting and they need to be made interesting in a setting with the fantastic element added the issue is not humans it's you. Races aren't tropes, the thing you get in a players handbook or race guide is a general sweping statement. People (no matter which race) aren't stereotypes or tropes, so if you want to make anything interesting, make your own observations, do your own work as a GM and actually bother to think of reasons beyond "humanz are vermin trope".
OK so for elves their directive is to strive for perfection. This results in most elves being uninterested in the wider world seeking only self improvement. Different cultures place importance on which attributes are most important to their ideal of perfection. Some view perfection in artistic endeavours perfecting their art over hundreds of years with each citizen essentially being conscripted into the labour force for a number of years so that society can continue to function while everyone else devotes their lives to art. The martial cultures of elves split into two traditions those who have turned combat into essentially another art form practicing in mock battles that look more like mass dances and those who strive for perfection in brutal efficiency focusing on killing their opponent as quickly as possible with no unnecessary movements. What makes elven martial arts so strange to humans is that their highest techniques often accept the death of the practitioner as a neccesary sacrife in order to achieve the perfect attack.
My entire party wanted to be drangonborns and it pissed me off. Would you have gotten pissed?
Another culture of elves view intelligence as the the most important attribute as soon as children can speak they are given increasingly difficult puzzles to solve. Adults devote their time to creating puzzles for one another to solve. The elf who can create a puzzle that no other can solve and who can solve all puzzles given to them becomes the leader of the settlement
True, but I would accept this as a setting if only for the logical extreme that roaches will survive far beyond the rest. Eventually
Will stop being a problem, once the world ends a couple times.
Humans are arguably the most interesting race since you can do the most with them.
>The whole point of a snowflake race is to play a very specific archetype that wouldn't make much sense as a standard race
>Said race is inevitably used as exotically flavored, default blank slate PC
Certain things should stay in splatbooks
Same race parties are the way to go though, user.
Humans were made by the former BBEG who was killed by traditional races (elves/dwarves and such). When BBEG fell, humans were given free will, and now have to decide as a species whether to earn the trust of the good guys who, currently, fear them or take the easier path and become another race of marauding slavers.
Include orcs/goblins/bugbears/other evil races who knew the players from before they were released from their mind control and treat them as old friends, and elves/dwarves/gnomes/other good races who stick up for the players against others of their kind.
Nothing is interesting when the game itself has lost its magic. That's what the kinds of lives most players lead do - they suck the wonder out of everything.
We can't even Pretend anymore. Escapism is dead.
>all are half-siblings
>same father different mother (or vice versa)
>Dorf Space Program
>Humans as roaches
Why would you add t*rks into your games?
This is a surprisingly good premise for a multiverse with heroism and fantasy: consider this stolen.
Here's the thing. Humans DO have a unique quirk. Yes we're ok or good in most fields but we're not jacks of all trades. We have insane endurance.
Coupled with the most efficient walk on the face of the planet we can out-last most species on the planet at continual physical work. There's a reason why many groups of humans throughout history have been known to kill prey by literally chasing them to death. I feel like THAT would be great to work into a setting. Humans don't suck at any major thing but have holy fuck endurance.
It isn't something that makes us special snowflakes but it DOES give us our own specialty and you can play with it in many ways. Vehicle breaks down/horse dies ten miles from town, human suggests walking the rest of the way cause that's not bad for us, but it's a force march for the other species to travel that far fast enough to beat sundown.
You can extend it to other forms of work as well, humans either just have more stamina or lose it a little more slowly and on travel in particular we get to be the best at it.
This is a really good point. "Endurance predator" is more than enough to make a fantasy race unique. It's even easy to implement in systems, and it's visually intuitive - rugged, long-legged humans look built for grueling tasks when compared to short, elf-ish or cold-blooded races.
I'm ripping off an idea from a similar thread long ago but:
>Humans are the beastmaster race.
>Everyone else considers owning pets or domesticating animals for work or food to be weird at best, batshit insane at worst.
Humans can't cast magic and have antimagic abilities. Only humans with nonhuman ancestry can use magic or humans blessed by the gods. As such, other races don't feel a need for religion or making warlock pacts.
rfreitas.com
Ever hear of the Xeelee books?
Not really
MAKE YOUR CHARACTER INTERESTING INSTEAD OF RELYING ON AN 'INTERESTING' RACE.
There are no 'interesting' characters. Everything's been done a million times, and your GM has SEEN it a million times.
Professional authors bore him. What chance do YOU have?
Humans already are interesting:
>heavy worlders
>rapid breeding rates
>amazing creativity and problem-solving abilities
>can survive on very little sleep
>built for endurance
>enjoy food that causes burning pain
>can last a long time with serious wounds
>is basically a microbial flesh-suit on a calcium lattice framework, driven by an electrical meat-ball
>has managed to create works of art with stumpy hand protrusions