D&D 5E What's wrong with a human-centric fantasy world?

[Astrosicebear]

Would you dock Drizzt for poor RP, because he's not evil?

Yes. Drizzt is a bad drow and should feel bad.

 

[SirAntoine]

Doesn't that mandate a PC to go along with social norms? Adventurers are already atypical, because they're willing to throw their lives away for their beliefs (or the chance of hitting it rich). Adventurers are already outcasts within their respective societies.

Would you dock Drizzt for poor RP, because he's not evil?

You just need to establish who the character is. If you want a PC who goes against his culture, that is possible, but those who want to stay true to those cultures have different role playing obligations. Until you establish a specific change, and how or why, the norm is assumed.

 

[transtemporal]

Depends on the campaign. If you want something different stop playing FR, play Darksun. Boom. Done.

 

[BigVanVader]

I'm just gonna put this here:

In one of the games I'm playing in, my character is a Wood Elf Barbarian. He's a mixture between Native American and Norse/Viking/etc, because I really liked the movie 'Pathfinder'(no relation to the game.). He hunts game, he comes into town to trade pelts and meat for petty coin, and he enjoys a good drink at the tavern once and a while. His best friend in the party is a Dwarven Wizard, who's a lot like Benjamin Franklin. He's also the only one who can speak to my character, since the Dwarf speaks Elven and my Elf doesn't know Common.

It is the most fun I've ever had. Mainly because our DM doesn't dock EXP based on how much fun with our characters we're having.

 

[Skyscraper]

In my upcoming campaign, races are all human derivatives. They work similarly to the PHB races, give or take 1-2 abilities in each case (most don't have darkvision). They look like the different human races you might expect: viking, native american, persian, oriental, black african, etc... Each corresponds to a PHB race. About 5 PHB subraces have no correspondance (dragonborn, drow, stout halfling, etc...)

For example, wood elves are native american-like; halflings are gispsies with an oriental look; and half-orcs are viking-like that live in the mountains.

One idea, is that I didn't want to take away too much player choice. So by maintaining mechanical differences between races, but making them all much different story-wise and in appearance from the usual D&D races, I hope to achieve my goal.

I've prepared a player's campaign book that includes a description of each race, and several pictures taken from the internet. I'm having a lot of fun making this book. I also include class/race limitations. For example, druids of the circle of the moon are the shamans of the native americans. While monks of the way of the shadow are the representatives of the goddess of death (there are no clerics of the goddess of death). Paladins can only be one of the classes and follow one of the three aspects of the gods of good. And so on.

 

[transtemporal]

I want to try and push these non-human races out of the common and restore a tiny little bit of wonder about them, not jeopardize a player's desires. What would be wrong with this?

It would be fine. My old FR campaign was something along these lines. Predominantly human, dwarves were common, halflings and gnomes were uncommon but wouldn't draw much more than a second glance. There were no hordes of orcs, no trolls, no giants (or at least not in sheltered civilized human lands).

Everything else that would normally exist in DnD existed, but was near-mythical. Elves were really things of rumor and due to some subtle elf-bias, legends about the drow and the elves were conflated so that they common people regarded drow and elves as the same thing.

 

[SirAntoine]

Giving level limits to other races is also a big part of making a campaign human-centric.

 

[aramis erak]

Doesn't that mandate a PC to go along with social norms? Adventurers are already atypical, because they're willing to throw their lives away for their beliefs (or the chance of hitting it rich). Adventurers are already outcasts within their respective societies.

Would you dock Drizzt for poor RP, because he's not evil?

No, because part of the approved character was that he was alignment X.

The social contract aspect flows both ways. If I agree to you playing a non-standard member, and it's part of the defined character (IE, been on the sheet since before I approved it), docking for playing what you essentially contracted to play is a jackass move.

On the other hand, if you are playing a character and don't define how they differ from the norm but play them as not obeying the basic tropes for that race... you're not playing the game as agreed to. Now, on the gripping hand, if you've gone through a whole "slowly whittling away my ethnic bigotry" arc, that's another matter still...

But in the absence of in play development or character initial concept writeup, in other words, as a general principle, if you don't play the race as written or as agreed to, you don't get the XP for good RP.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I’ve read a few comments about how playing humans is ‘boring’ and that it’s more hard to make a society interesting. People need to get out more and read more. We have the entire history of the human race to play with! Humans come in all shapes and sizes, and boast cultures that encompass everything interesting that we’ve ever known.

Moreover, Tolkien made some interesting developments with his (now iconic) Races, but people have become fixated on them to the level that their own imaginations seem to be fixed on them. These days, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are just stereotypes - based on human characteristics, and allegorical to something or other. Simply playing a stereotype does not make your character more interesting.

I actually had an idea once, that I never followed through, for making all the non-human races just different tribes of humans. They carried all the traits within reason, but the background of each was redone so that they were just cultural representations of the diversity of humanity.

 

[Derren]

Humans Are Boring.

Humans are not boring. The problem is that most fantasy gaming worlds are inhabited by the same 2-3 culture of humans, and those cultures are rather generic and shallow.
Just look how many different cultures existed even in a small place like Europe.

But in most fantasy RPGs, D&D included, the only humans are some generic mix of "romantic" European knights, some Arabian inspired culture and fantasy Nazis (often wizards). Maybe, if there are a lot of countries in the game world you also get Conan barbarians and Patricians.