Reasons to why humans dominate a fantasy world

sime kind of splinted armor?

No, it doesn't. Not at all. Goddamn humanity fucks always bitching about elves.

Looks like standard plated mail.

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Humans are simply the biggest Chads out there. Other races "specify" in some environment or craft, are stuck in a certain frame of thought, while humans are the perfect balance between a zerg horde and raw unlimited individual potential.

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Mail and Plate armor. Looks like a Behterets or Yushman

Female elves were built for sex, not breeding

Some other races may thrive during a certain age, but in a constatly changing world only the human adaptability, creativity and zerg/individualism balance can allow the continous existance of a large scale racial empire.

Human lives are so short and cycles much faster than the longer-lived races.

In the single lifespan of an elf, entire kingdoms of men have risen and fallen. More knowledge have been reiterated and improved upon by multiple generations when the rest of elder races still remain tradition-bound to the methods their forefathers make.

Not to mention the prodigious rate of reproduction. In 13 years, a human is already ready to mate and produce offsprings. With a hundred pairs and a century, 5 generations of men and women would have lived and died while an elf just entered puberty.

Why did humans dominante our own world?
>Omnivorous, allows for easier sustenance, can sustain larger brain more easily
>Tool users
>Endurance
>Adaptable
>Instinctive drive to explore, expand, and extort

In most generic fantasy settings, elves and dwarves both have little desire to move beyond their ideal habitats. Humans by comparison seem greedy and insane - we settle anywhere, even where we shouldn't, and make a go of it.

Writers fiat, they are the self-insert race. Also other races that would have fucked them up mostly fucked themselves over before they had the time to kill humans off.

Anything else is wishfull thinking and fanfiction of HFY-faggots that never read the history of any of these fantasy worlds.

The meme answer is that humans breed fast enough to overwhelm the long-lived races, but not for the reasons most people list.
Most adventurers in D&D are unusually gifted people. It's built into the system that you're supposed to have a 14-15 in some area where most people have a 10. And power spikes fairly quickly in DnD; at level 3 or 4 you are already more than a match for the average 200-300 year old dwarf or elf commoner or guard. Adventurers get access to a lot of spells, magical items and class skills that generally extend your lifespan whether through resurrection, reincarnation or just long life.
So the baseline is that adventurer-type Heroes are disproportionately more powerful than average individuals of any race.
The advantage in humans is that they live long enough for the gifted to start gaining 'adventurer levels,' and breed fast enough to generate more of them in number, and have the institutions to cultivate and protect these gifted individuals until they can work as heroes. The fact that a lot of skills, spells and items in the fantasy world help them overcome their short lifespan compensates somewhat for the turnover.
Elves or Dwarves also generate probably the same percentage of "heroes" and have the institutions for developing them, but they are fewer in number and are born at a much lower rate due to inherently lower fecundity. Since heroes are disproportionately more powerful than normal individuals of almost any player race, this means that Elven/Dwarven heroes don't have as much pushing power just due to a lower number of them.
Short-lived races like Goblins and Kobolds probably produce boatloads of "adventurer"-type individuals, but due to the high level of mortality in these races, their weak start and the lack of institutions to cultivate these gifted individuals, the vast majority of them die to disease, infighting, cannibalism or other monsters well before they gain the experience to change the world.

You forgot
>No competition

Because Tolkien did it that way.

We fucked our compition until submission.

>DnD
There's your problem.

In my setting, the elder races (dwarves and elves, but also cephalids) had been taught their ways by the gods.
It gave them a huge head start but having your institutions, traditions and everything being literal godspeak leave you a bit inflexible and it end up limiting them.

Humans, who have learn under the elder races were left more free to experiment and develop. After a long, long time catching up they end up dominant.

Though it only last for so long, at the moment elder races, inspired by mankind successes and the mythological era being ages ago, have started to go forward too and are making a comeback. Worse, the so called savage races (goblins, centaurs, etc) are starting to get out of their primitive ways and developing more modern civilisations, even if it's still a longshot.

All in all, mankind dominant position is quite contested.

It's not a problem?

There's genetic evidence for female cromagnon/male non-cromagnon mixing and non of vice-versa, so technically they fucked us into their own extinction. The only logical conclusion to make is that humans greatest advantage is being cucks

Most often than not: numbers
Humans are the dominant race because are like roaches. No matter what catastrophe strikes us, we will endure by climbing over our own dead, things that most other fantasy races cannot allow themselves to do

I'd counter that most of the time, it's only that humans -appear- to be in control, while usually being puppeted or lorded over by something whether they know it or not. For reasons listed, humans are a great race for servitude or as cattle.

The fact that whatever the dominant species it is in the given fantasy world even allowes others to survive is a major rule of cool. In reality it was either assimilate through us fucking your women until your grandchildren are us or die. Witcher's done it kinda okey-ish.

Sounds like Classic World of Darkness.

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In Tolkien universe, humans are not dominant in the history, and most of the history is essentially Elves' History, with exception of Numenorians in 2nd Age and their heirs in 3rd Age. Peoples like Harad are savages-beyond-the-border and we honestly know very little on their history. Only in 3rd Age man becomes more significant overall and 4st Age is Age of man.

>this kills the humanity-fag

But you're using game rules (character levels) to justify the lore (humans dominating). That doesn't add up, why doesn't humans/non-humans just train individuals to unlock character levels?

This isn't true for all settings.

A similar but more sensible answer is that people tend to write traditional fantasy races as personified human archetypes or specializations.

I.E.:
The common mode of thinking when writing fantasy races does not go like this:
1. Make a race.
2. Decide what role they can fill in the world.

It's more like this:
1. Find a role in the world that humans can already fill.
2. Make a race that fills it better.

Humans are the right blend of diplomatic and expansionist to rule large swaths of land. Elves and dwarves tend to be fairly insular. Dwarves tend to stick to their mountains, elves to their forests. Not a whole lot of expansion. Humans, comparatively, tend to like to spread out a lot, probably due to their more swiftly expanding populations.

Now, the question you're probably asking is why do humans then dominate over other expansionist races like orcs, hobgoblins, etc. Simply put, humans are better diplomats. Most other expansionist races are militant, tending to conquer and oppress. This leads to violent, military responses from other races and they end up being put down. Humans, on the other hand, are actually fairly decent at diplomacy. They tend to work out treaties and negotiate with other races they come in contact with, like elves and dwarves. And while there are inevitably conflicts, they're not on a significant enough scale that other races feel the need for a concerted effort to run all the humans out.

>But you're using game rules (character levels) to justify the lore (humans dominating).
Because game rules represent things that are the case in lore. I don't have the picture on me, but humans do dominate Adventurer's league applications in 5e.
>why doesn't humans/non-humans just train individuals to unlock character levels?
Because not everybody can become an adventurer, and training gives very quick diminishing returns. If you've ever played an all 10's character, you'll know how much of a liability you are from a get-go, and how poorly you'll scale.
But yes, those are the institutions I'm talking about. Kobolds and Goblin societies are so often in flux and conflict that it is almost impossible for them to have a kobold who has lived long enough and experienced enough to train a kobold, however gifted, to be an adventurer before he/she is killed by some tunnel raiding party or hobgoblin. Dwarves and Elves also have those institutions, but since most of their heroes are out there fighting for their race and they have much fewer of them, they likely won't have many to spare, and so the amount of people they can raise to those levels is very low.

bump

We're the most religious people of the setting, and thus have the favor of the gods and angels.

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because humans have author favor, humans are the easiest to write and most relateable faction- and therefore have "divine favor" from the author

tolkien at least was fairly honest about this and literally had them be chosen by god

tl dr; author bias

Because stories are written by humans, and there must be humans to relate to. Most stories outright sidestep or ignore the possibility of humans having to actually evolve or advance in the setting, they are just plopped down as fully capable humans with all human traits we know of. They don't have to survive against demons and dragons, or what have you as measly apes, or quadruped mammals. They never take into account how humanity could be outright wiped away before they even properly become humanity.

In a non-human ruled setting,t he non-humans are conveniently never smart enough to limit humanity's technological and intellectual growth. Look at how our world is, how our very dominance fucks over any other animal's attempts at reaching our level as long as we exisy.

Humans have wide empires, nonhumans have tall ones.

Most people dislike us for that reason, because the other races with wide empires tend to be things like orcs and hobgoblins.

All humans

Because generally in fantasy for "human" culture read "anglo" culture. And Anglo culture dominates fiction for the same reasons it does in real life. Anglos have a culture of protestant work ethic, rule of law, well defined hierarchies, social cohesion, meritocracy and egalitarianism. No other society except those well grounded on these principles really prospersa for long. And no other culture really has all of these, all together. Boring as coal I know, but when you compress all these qualities into one people, you get an exceptional culture, like compressing coal into a diamond.

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okay this frog poster can stay.

Because D&D settings try to rip off tolkien without providing the effort.
Other settings either do the same thing or try to rip off D&D.
Alternatively it's Warhammer Fantasy, where the elves are in fact superior and across the ocean have huge territories and all sorts of shit going on, but due to conflicts over there can't be arsed to conquer the human lands, despite the fact just three of them showed enough skill/power to make the humans they were carrying look like a bunch of idiots.

dragons, outsiders, various aberrations (esp illithids), undead (vamps, liches, etc), yuan-ti, rakshasas, giants, krakens, ....

humanoids realistically would be cattle in D&D settings

One of the spelljammer books basically talks about how in any area where the illithids have a major presence humans (and sometimes other humanoids) are basically cattle.

Do you need a reason anyway beyond "that's just how things worked out"
Shit happened, humans came on top and once you're on top it's easier to stay there and grow exponentially

>once you're on top it's easier to stay there and grow exponentially
except for all those previous empires which have miraculously crumbled under whatever pretenses are convenient

You could apply that to your human dominated fantasy world too though, humans are only dominant for now
Who knows what might happen in the future

>considering this dwarf looking motherfucker human
whatever cuck

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humans are the mary sue, plot contrivance race.

Humanity's past nomadic nature have gifted them with the capability to travel long distances, work for long hours, and fight prolonged engagements. While elves are more skilled than humans, they have lower stamina and gets tired quickly. The half-fay nature of the elves also have other downsides. Meanwhile, dwarves while stoky and resilient, have difficulty walking long distances.

Birth rate, and they are a race without any "negative" physical or mental traits.

Orcs are often good challengers and it's why stopping orc armies is a big trope, since all it takes is a leader able to lead smartly and avoid the pitfalls of their shitstain culture.

This.

Note how in any franchise with an ancient world or some long-lasting social structure, as soon as the story starts for the audience, shit changes real fast. Happens every time; writers can't help themselves. Humans are short-sighted and emotional. We ought to be a -2 wisdom race.

Pretty much this, humans dominate the world but only because high-elves, ancient liches, and elder vampires allow it, or serves their own purpose in the cosmic tier plans they have.

Gods also favor humanity and try to keep them alive because humans are intelligent, numerous and good at both war and civilization. Their worship of the Gods is good to them and the Gods reciprocate the favor. Gods can also use the readily available humans to fuck with each other.

Because of several reasons
>Heroic/ Sword & Sorcery has always been about humans
Conan was human, John Carter was human, Jack of Shadows was human enough.
>Post-Tolkien, other races have archetypically been in decline
This true for 'Three Hearts and Three Lions' where stewardship is given to mankind to protect the world of law. This is also true for much of Moorcock's Eternal Champion series. Both Elric and Corum belong to races in decline compared to the vigorous humans, whom they must learn to live among.
>D&D is based on all of these fictional sources and therefore follows suit into today
>Lastly there is the question of race
The other races might be analogous to real world cultures, but the same can't be said about humans. Basing humanity off of a single real world race would bring up accusations of racism ("Oh whites are the only real humans, hmmmmm?"), therefore fantasy humans in d&d have to reflect all of real life humanity to deflect this.
But suspension of disbelief has to be maintained, and therefore a reason must be given in universe for why there are so many varieties of humanity. This usually means falling back on earlier tropes and deciding they are the dominant species.

They can fuck anything.

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all useless fluff since shortly after the actual story begins, humans basically derail all of it.

Why would the rubber forehead humans have to be some Yakub tier abominations with a single member of their race being stronger than a thousand of gods an shieet.
Different races are more or less equal in their power level, with different civilizations and exceptional individuals excelling at different things. Plenty of godwizards are human, master smiths elves and so on.
Human nations being widespread has more to do with not being stuck with "all the dorfs live in the mountains/elves in the forest etc.", also there's a lot of non humans in human cities in most of the settings anyway.
Liches are nerds busy masturbating in their evil lairs, powerful abomination tend to be trapped in their theme park dungeons and again, alpha bull species who are the bestiest at everything and build pyramid spaceships and shit are a rarity, rather than the norm.

Exactly the reason.

Why is this thread still going on?

So in a Post-Human Dominated world, players would see Kobold/Goblin Villages all over the place and Delve into old forgotten Human Ruins....Hmm

Because that doesn't answer op's question, dummy

At least they didn't post here.

>Does Veeky Forums know of any good reasons to why humans would dominate a fantasy setting even tho elves have better magic and live longer, dwarfs are better smiths and vampires have hypnotic powers and live longer? Do humans have something in the background that always helps them come out on top that rarely is mentioned?

Obviously the Gods of Chaos favor humans. Their unpredictable and warlike nature creates lots of wonderful strife to feed the emotional excess that the Chaos Gods feed on. Dwarves, elves, halflings - they're all happy and content being left to their own devices, thriving in the stale condition of their high culture. Humans on the other hand are never satisfied. They seem to tear down the old and usher in the new for the sheer sake of doing it.

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>The other races might be analogous to real world cultures, but the same can't be said about humans.
They're almost always a generic mishmash of medieval Europeans. If others do exist they're from exotic Faraway places where their neighboring nonhumans also have nonstandard cultures.

Huh. Never thought about it like that before.

Dwarves, elves and humans outcompete eachohter in different terrains. In the open fields the dwarves are too slow and the elves are too weak, and those terrain types offer greater.networks for civilizations.
The mountain and forest homes of the dwarves and elves end up existing as islands within human dominated realms.

Elves used to be at the top, but growing civilizations led to more deforestation which let humans push further.

except there are many human barbarians and tribes who don't cut down forests
kys

For every tree you don't cut down, I cut down two
eat shit and die

stay mad dumbfuck who doesn't know anything about culture or fantasy.pussy

>grog doesn't use axe on tree, therefore no one use axe on tree durr

>The mountain and forest homes of the dwarves and elves end up existing as islands within human dominated realms.
I don't know, I like elves having trading posts all along the coasts, and dwarves dominating trade routes as they can alternate between under and above ground depending on circumstances.
I also like the idea of dedicated districts in big human cities.

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We aren't picky about where we live

>most

w-what do you mean?

>I don't know, I like elves having trading posts all along the coasts, and dwarves dominating trade routes as they can alternate between under and above ground depending on circumstances.
I can see dwarven underground trade routes being safer in war times, or even opening up trade through a mountain chain.
There are other threats underground though depending on the setting, creatures revealed by digging to deep, skaven, orcs, goblins, trolls, gnolls.
Even in peace time these dwarven tunnels should be slower and more costly though, they're limited by their size, by air, by lighting and possibly worse beast of burden.
Dwarven civilization would see a big boom come the industrialization and railroad tech I imagine.

Kobolds are actually a really good candidate for the next race that has a chance to take over after. They're lawful and collectivist, are reasonably clever and have very long biological lifespans even if they rarely ever reach it. If they weren't so weak and painfully petty, they would probably be able to amount to something.

Favorable geographic conditions.
Elves live in forests with limited opportunities for livestock or mining.
Dwarves live in arid mountainous areas where agriculture is barely possible.
Orcs live in plains and steppes without the wood or native animals to maintain a competitive army.
Humans, meanwhile, live in veritable breadbaskets filled with woods, ore-rich hills, fertile plains, and invaluable warm-water coasts.

Anyone who tries to go for some genetic horseshit about how humans taking 18 years to dwarves' 40 or so is deluded. What makes an empire is what resources the empire has to make.

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Lizard people
They're everywhere, even inside your walls
Stay vigilant, friend

>Favorable geographic conditions.
>Elves live in forests with limited opportunities for livestock or mining.
>Dwarves live in arid mountainous areas where agriculture is barely possible.
>Orcs live in plains and steppes without the wood or native animals to maintain a competitive army.
>Humans, meanwhile, live in veritable breadbaskets filled with woods, ore-rich hills, fertile plains, and invaluable warm-water coasts.
I like this, this is a very good reason. Maybe even have orcs be carnivores and thus their farming will be mostly herding animals.

It's not like dwarves, elves or orcs would avoid verdant grassland by a river.
They can all use it for pastures or farmland for a great amount of resources, but they are just outcompeted in that area by others, or they lack the head start for it.

I think that paradoxically humans tend to rule so long because humans can accept being ruled by others.
An Orc won't accept being ruled by a Dwarf for long; Elves would viciously resist any rule by orcs, and Dwarves would balk at being ruled by elves. They have their own way of doing things and they won't accept playing to someone else's fiddle for long.
Humans? There'll always be humans that'll be fine with any of these races in charge. Humans fear death more than the other races, and that gives them a flexibility that the other races don't have.
What this means is that human communities will thrive no matter who is in charge. Whether they're in an Orc Khaganate, an Elven theocracy or a Dwarven Hold they'll continue doing their thing and growing. This means two things: that they are growing no matter who is in charge, and that those people that are taking over aren't really motivated to displace human societies as long as they accept rule by others. An Elf will hide in the forests and snipe you until you kill the last one; the Dwarves will forever hold a grudge unless you destroy every fortress and every child capable of remembering a grudge. Humans don't care if they're tributing to orc leaders instead of elven leaders as long as the taxes are not too heavy. So their new overlords don't bother with the usual genocide and mass depopulation other races experience. They just give the mid-low level bureacrats their orders, and society continues.
While they get disturbed when empires rise and fall, human communities experience much less population upheaval than other races. Maybe the guys at the very top die, maybe the duke is replaced with a minotaur for a while, but below midlevel human society isn't affected They just slowly grow and slowly grow until there are enough of them for them to take a stab at their own empire.

It’s “Humans, fuck yeah!” bias.

Nice that's a pretty good argument

Let's be real, humans are pretty cool
I've been one for 26 years now and I don't regret it for a second, best decision of my life

>I don't regret it for a second

A combination of fast reproduction and patience

>actually being suicidal
kek

Its a cool setting. It was max comfy in WH:TW, conquering Elves as Dark Elves with the full knowledge that both sides are on a completely higher level than humans, like seraphs

>not being suicidal
why even bother living at that point

Because everyone wants to fuck them. Think about it, how many half-human races are in the common fantasy setting? The humans are fantasy's sluts. So, not only are enemies more likely to take them as slaves than kill them, but the gods themselves are horny for humans, and help them when able.

That's a pretty typical anthropocentric fantasy staple though. Speaking logically, there is no frame of reference for attraction. Outside of maybe the typical elf, dwarf, gnome/other human-like "different" race, there is no reason for something like a dragon, or other beings to find humans appealing.

And there's no reason a human should want to fellate a horse, but /mlp/ still exists.

He’s an automaton, really. A thinking being questions everything

Something people forget about the original Lord of the Rings books is that humans were the dominant species because they were better fighters than anyone else. It's the reason the elves were scared of them, more than "hurr upstart race doesn't respect muh ancient traditions". The average orc was a runt who was only dangerous in large numbers. The urak hai were dangerous because they were orcs mixed with humans, who were the saddest motherfuckers around.

They are a tiny niche that are hated by near everyone and would not be allowed to openly exist in a typical fantasy setting where people are often put to death for being wrong. The sheer rate of cross-species nonsense in fantasy media exists for little reason other than to sell more templates and rule books.

Because I'm not suicidal. And why should I?

I have
>a loving gf
>a steady job
>a boss that's totally chill
>my mom and my dad are proud of me
>I have no loans I have to pay back
>I still hang out with my friends from middle school
>already saving up for my retirement
>have had a threesome

And I'm just 25. Life is great if you put in the work.

Humans are God's chosen race.