General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
For example, the elves were a nomadic race that studied the stars to foretell the future of where they would be needed next, and would migrate to the next location a few, mere centuries before they were needed. Elven adventurers are encouraged in elven society, because the elves want contact with other beings that can help. But such adventurers don't tend to get very far into the heart of elven culture. So the elves are very powerful in their niche--knowing where you need to be with the full force of your culture is useful--but don't tend to have long lasting empires.
The players enjoyed this, because it mapped more or less to how the typical fantasy world goes, but had some twists underneath that were fun to discover. When they found out that the faen (from AE) were time travelling fey, however, it got a little strange.
I find that an interesting take on the subject too.
My friend's campaign world has a long and rich history. Dwarves, Halflings, and Giants were the original races of his world. Humans were brought into the campaign world by demons as a slave race through magical Gates. Elves are a space-faring race that are, literally, the stars in the sky. Gnomes are simply the off-shoot of Dwarf-Halfling couples. Orcs are "Romans" who organize in great legions for world conquest. Gnolls are still savage, but their God walks on the world attempting to unite the Gnolls into one great nation.
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In my campaign most Humans turned themselves into elves to increase their lifespan. Humans, Half Elves, Elves, Eladrins, Gnomes, Halflings, and Dwarves were all levels of the same race. Most people saves and saves to upgrade to races with longer lives. But the rituals used broke holes into the Warped Realm where aberrations come from. Most people went back to half elf level. Few people decide to go back to humanity to close some holes and avoid the madness that the older races suffer. Elves are generally discrimanated against and Eladrin are hated because of the destruction caused by them being being around. Most fey are hunted and herded into the Wild Lands.
Also, there's the um...Bahzell Bahnakson books by David Weber, where humanity was the original race. Dwarves, hradani, halflings even elves were all descended from humans, and oddly the Elves were one of the newer if I recall correctly, and were created from folks who used magic as implements, which was decided by the great high magic folks as too dangerous and so they were stripped of those powers and given immortality in exchange.
I think the dwarves had something to do with mining, but I can't recall what happened with the halflings or hradani.
And to the OP:
I want to talk about worlds where Humans aren't the default
Well, you may want to try again with a different title, but I've done underground worlds with gnomes, halflings and dwarves as the primary races, a forest world where elves and gnomes were dominant, but a great Dwarven Navy sailed upon the seas, and an all-goblinoid continent came up once.
Last edited by Bumbles; 15th May 2009 at 03:55 AM..
Reason: and to the OP part
Never even heard of that, so no, and like I said, may. You might get other responses with a subject such as "Worlds where humanity isn't dominant" or even "Non-human worlds" to more clearly point thoughts in that direction. Not that the thread so far hasn't been quite good, but perhaps a lot of people aren't even reading it because of the subject? It could be the case.
Myself, I was thinking you were asking about the "role of humanity" as the default race, and was initially inclined to mention some of the human-only worlds I've done. But I decided to go by what you said you wanted in the last paragraph.
Last edited by Bumbles; 15th May 2009 at 04:35 AM..
In Tumithak of the Corridors by Charles R. Tanner, humans are the "dungeon" residents, as aliens from another planet rule the surface world.
On Jack Vance's Tschai (in the "Planet of Adventure" series), humans are the subjects and/or prey of several alien species they have come to resemble in both habits and appearance.
On Andre Norton's Witch World, the humans drove the Kolder back to their world. Later, an ancient charm was broken and people were able to turn to the east ... where the inhabitants were all non-human.
C.S. Lewis's Narnia gives humans a special position, but, except in the darkest periods, mythological beings of all sorts abound.
Then of course there are the earlier eras of Tolkien's Middle Earth in which Elves are most often the chief actors in history.
Last edited by Ariosto; 15th May 2009 at 07:56 AM..
I created a world where Drow are the predominate race. The only star in the system is a blue star casting enough light to make the world seem like it is under moonlight at best. The normal surface races are limited to a city that's controlled by mages and dwarves that have continual lights all over the place serving as mini suns and deterents to the drow.
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Well, the Earthdawn setting isn't human-centric. Dwarves are the 'dominant' race there.
I'm amazed it took 2 pages for someone to mention Earthdawn. Humans are a tertiary race in that world behind both Dwarves and Elves (who are vying for dominence.) The other namegiver (PC) races are T'skrang (Lizardmen), Windlings (flying pixie folk), Orcs, Trolls and Obsidimen (Rock people).
Barsive is making a rocky recovery from a magical apocalypse which covered the world in horrors and forced all the namegiver races into magical bombshelters for centuries.
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My current Classic D&D campaign is set during a time when the Elven and Dwarven Empires are still at their height, vast and organized Hobgoblin Dicatorships are constant menaces, and monsters like Nagas, Sphinxes, and Rakshasas have their own kingdoms on the surface.
Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, and Humans are all relatively recent invaders to the continent. Gnomes appear to be native. Elves and Dwarves arrived 500 years ago, in both cases bringing Halflings with them as a peasant class. Humans arrived about 200 years ago, and most are at an iron-age level of technology, inferior to that of the Demi-Humans. Only Dwarves have plate armor, for instance, while really good chainmail and swords are still the province of Elves. Humans are mostly scattered tribesmen and nomads, with some few city-states. Both Elves and Dwarves use human nations as buffer-states. The Elves and Dwarves regard humans as a cheap and ready source of mercenaries and labor. Elves also magically charm humans into becoming pets, playthings, and ornamental people for their palaces.
The Elves (who are divided into five cultures that squabble constantly) are basically androgynous, hedonistic, and often viciously petty, while the Dwarves tend to be willfully ignorant, chauvinistic, and consumed by greed. Both races are basically dependent on Halflings to grow their food and perform most menial tasks. Human numbers are growing, however.
While the Elves spend their time fighting each other over questions of aesthetics and the Dwarves ignore everything that isn't standing in the way of acquiring more gold, Humans are learning the technology of the Demi-Humans, and are beginning to surpass the Elves in the Art of magic. One day the Demi-human and Humanoid Empires will fall before the Human hordes, but that day is still centuries away.
The reminds me a bit of the homebrew world I started many moons ago that was based on Earth geography-wise. There were a few changes (like a landbridge connecting Russia to Alaska and also one from Canada to Greenland to Iceland to Europe, and a few others), but it was mainly earth.
The two biggest empires were a dwarven empire that stretched all the way from the southern Andes at the bottom of South America all the way up through central America and through the northernmost reaches of the Canadian Rockies and a massive hobgoblin empire that dominated Russia, eastern Europe, Mongolia and even into northern India.
Humans had some numbers, but were hard pressed in every location (western Europe; the middle east/egypt; eastern China; New England/New York; California/Baja Calif; southern Africa and southern India) and were by no means dominant. The Western Europe location had repelled a major hobgoblin onslaught a century earlier, but only after losing locations in eastern Europe where Poland and Hungary are. The humans have spent the last century building a "Great Wall" to protect what is left of their eastern border.
If the hobgoblins focused, they could likely wipe out the humans in the middle east, western europe and southern india, but they have their own internal rivalries that prevent a conquest of one at a time.
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The human-centric worlds thing is really old for me - not to mention the cop-out "humans are the variety race" theme where they wind up with no real identity at all.
As for origin stories, I've never used it, but I always liked the idea that humans are descended from the pairings of elves and ancient, civilized orcs. Orc and elf blood mixed and gave humans the grace of the orcs and the strength of the elves.
I ran a campaign a number of years ago that was loosely inspired by "The Time Machine". Humans were not only not dominant, they were a slave race kept for food. There were no human gods. The psionic Morlock overlords controlled everything. (They had actually consumed their own gods a while back.)
The campaign started with the discovery by some humans that there was in fact a single human god remaining, basically in hiding. He had been working to help the humans of a single village, trying to find himself some champions. In the PCs, he got them.
There were three types of races available for the players, though they all took what is core human from the PHB. The other two were a bred for work human that had bonuses to physical and penalties to mental, and a type of half-elf that was kept around for the delicate taste. (The Morlocks had found that pure blood elves didn't make good slaves or breed fast enough, but the mixed blood ones worked decently well.)
The players loved the setting and really embraced it. The long term focus of the campaign was overthrowing the Morlock overlords and their many servants. (Who were members of the Morlock race so bred for a specific role that they were basically a different race.)
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Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series of books presents a world where humans aren't in charge. Elves are, and most humans are relatively primitive technologically and magically. Although they're recognised as an intelligent species, humans fill an ecological niche that in more "normal" worlds is taken by Orcs or something similar.
I can't imagine what I have is horribly original but humans are the "newcomers" in my current homebrew. Just a head's up, I do utilize a number of the elements from 4e's default setting.
The first humans arrived in a crashed spacecraft about 2,000 years before the common date. For those who play WoW, the spacecraft was a great deal like the Exodar of the Draenei. Magical more than techonological. As refugees from a tyrannical society, they came to the conclusion they had no desire to leave the world so they made efforts to remain. The race settled near the crash site, on the island of Nerath, which had been unclaimed for various reasons. After about 300 years of meeting new races, breeding with them (humans can interbreed with any race, the inverse is not true), and setting up strong ties their king decided to take a more direct role in the world stage.
Humans were the impetus for the development of the Imperial Republic of Nerath, which at first blush seems like a contradiction, I know. It was an alliance (partially inspired by Republic Era Star Wars and partially by the Roman Republic) designed to unify nations and promote growth and prosperity. Members agreed to give up some of their governmental control (mostly in the area of public works), to recognize the Nerathian king as a first among equals, and to adhere to a certain law code in exchange for representation in a vast senate. This senate would regulate trade, open trade networks on this world and others, broker deals, establish extraplanar colonies, etc. on the behalf of member nations. All allies would reap the rewards of this ever expanding alliance.
In time, the Imperial Republic would extend over most of the continent and nearly every nation had representatives in the senate. Despite all this, humanity never constituted more than 15% of the total population of the alliance. And after its fall, that total dropped significantly. The Imperial Republic of Nerath fell apart at its height through circumstances they could not control. So many nations depended on the alliance to maintain their roads, trade relations, and other luxuries they couldn't cope. As the Imperial Republic faded to dust, so did a number of nations that had stood for centuries. In some places, the current state of affairs is directly blamed on humanity, which is actually rather justified.
In the modern era, humanity really only exists in large numbers in two locations. First, in the island chains located around the now sunken island of Nerath. Second, in the Valelands, an area colonized by humans during the Imperial Republic (Nentir Vale sits in the Valelands, by the way). If some people had their way, humans would be wiped out entirely.
Some of this is a total clone of things that have come before. But then, I have always been a fan of "creative borrowing" when I feel it would work for my game.
Last edited by alleynbard; 16th May 2009 at 02:10 AM..
Trollworld the (not very well defined) official setting of Tunnels & Trolls isn't predominantly Human. It was, according to the timeline, first populated only by Trolls (as the name suggests), after which came Elves pursued by Dragons, then Wizards (originally a race of powerful, supernatural, beings) who brought with them slave races (e.g., Humans, Dwarves) or created new races (e.g., Orcs). The timeline of Trollworld gives one a decent overview of the setting. You can find it in Monsters! Monsters! or buy the reprinted History of Trollworld from Outlaw Press.
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