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

[Hussar]

Again, novels, books, movies, other media. Totally different concept.



I don't ask many of the PC's last names in our group much either, but I bet quite a few people know the name "Do'Urden" or at least know it starts with a D and it's weird.

I have never seen a PC's race "never, EVER" referenced. I have seen it not brought up in a single game. Why? Because we all know it. Unless we are interacting with a lot of NPCs and the DM has one that has a special interaction with a given race that is in our group, it's not something that comes up a lot.


Course, I read a post here on the boards about a month back where the player thought that he no longer enjoyed the acting part of roleplaying. He'd just as soon have the DM tell him what he needs to know without all of the flowery roleplaying. Personally, I would be ok with that. In my old age, I like to cut to the chase. I've had my fair share of pedestrian roleplaying over the years (i.e. spent a few hours talking with some NPCs and it led to something that we could have gotten in about 5 minutes of our time) to start to like not just combat to speed up, but roleplaying as well. In such a situation, reiterating for the 120th time in the campaign that Bob's PC is an Elf is just a waste of time. I'd rather be exploring, or telling jokes, or fighting. Something a bit more fun than such repetition.

There's a vast gulf of middle ground here that you're ignoring.

For me, I will literally rewrite my entire campaign world to accommodate someone's character concept. In return for that, I expect the players to actually play the character that's in front of them. It's the expectation at our table. It's no different than a player who chooses to be Lawful Good and then cheats and steals and is totally unreliable. Or a player who dump stats Int and Wis but suddenly becomes a Seal specialist whenever danger happens. Or a player who brings a cleric to the table but cannot be bothered to actually give any thought to things like rituals and beliefs for his religion.

Play the character that's in front of you. That's all that I ask. A player whose portrayal of his character is so lacking that you cannot tell what species the character is needs to up his game a bit at my table. That's all I ask. If it's "reiterating for the 120th time" then it's not much of a portrayal. You should never have to say, "I'm an elf". It should be obvious from what you do at the table. If it's not, then, why are you bothering to play an elf? Is it simply for the stat bonuses? I'm not really interested in playing with that kind of player anymore.

If I'm willing to completely rewrite my campaign world to accommodate a concept, I figure it's a fair trade that I expect a minimum degree of engagement from the player and make his choices actually matter in the game.

 

[Grainger]

What does "an elf" mean, though? They're different in everyone's minds - sometimes hugely so (I can think of one person I've played with in the past who hates Elves, and portrays them as untrustworthy in his campaign; other players have almost the opposite picture of them). You can set some ground rules for your campaign ("Elves are like this"), and that's fine, but IMO you should be doing that with other stuff too, not just PC species. In some campaign designs, PC species behaviour might not be too high on the list.

My approach as DM is to be pretty hands off. I let players imagine their non-Human PCs how they like; I'm more concerned that players behave within a (fairly) convincing medieval framework. For example, I wouldn't have players arranging to meet an NPC at 2:45 in the afternoon - they just wouldn't think of time in those terms. When it comes to fantasy races, however, that's so low on my list of concerns that it's barely there. Everyone has such a divergent view of the classic fantasy races (and I would think Elves would be one of the most divergent), that - within a very, very wide latitude - I don't mind how they portray their character.

I also recognise that some players are planners/tacticians, others are stat crunchers, and as long as we all mesh as a group, I'm not going to intervene (e.g. force tacticians players to start getting all Method Acty). It even helps the role-players in the party - they benefit from having a tactically-focused player who has a barely-drawn character (I don't think he has even decided what his character looks like, and was loathe to come up with a name!). But, he's kept the party alive in some tricky situations, so everyone wins. It all works because the players mesh with each other, and with the campaign world.

 

[Li Shenron]

I did a campaign once that were all humans landing in a world that had other races. It was a fun campaign that actually led to humans and kobolds being allies, but the players quickly got tired of it and wanted to add more races such as playing ogres.

When this failed because of the lack of diversity, my players wanted to try again with an all one race campaign, but wanted elven. This setting, which has been the main setting from 3.5+, started as an all elven group, which, oddly enough, turned into one of the elves turned lycan (werescorpion). This setting has been built entirely in game through players actions and back stories. What started as an all elven campaign, turned into a world where elves have an area, that is adjacent and allied with a very mixed area (mostly equal parts human and shifter (lycan, one in the same if they are civilized), with a splash of the other core races. These two areas also border a civilized goblin (civilized ones are call joblins) area. Within a few days travel is also a dwarven area, beyond that a halfling area, a dragonborn area (ruled by a bronze dragon), a savanna controlled by wemics, and even a learning, university area of githezerai. It became very diverse because the players wanted it.

My point is, what do your players want, and what are you willing to work with? My campaign that I wanted human centric, failed because the players didn't want to be human. They live every day in REAL life as humans. They didn't want to play make believe as a human. They were much happier playing fantasy races. The campaign setting we have created together has been far more satisfying that any setting in my 20 years of RPGs. Forgotten Realms? Yawn. Greyhawk? What? Dragonlance? Great books, boring setting. Playing in a world where your blacksmith isn't human or a drunk dwarf? Much better. You can go to a city and not be a minority as a minotaur? Now that's fantasy. Do what works for you, but I wouldn't have a successful campaign if we were playing Game of Thrones with D&D rules.

Also to note, none of the races are dying races, all races are building the realms. Humans aren't overtaking. Dwarves aren't secluding themselves. Elves aren't blocking their borders. Halflings aren't wanderers or hidden away into a shire. Minotaurs don't hide in caves. Centaurs don't live alone in the woods. Satyr have villages. Dragonborn have kingdoms. Dragons talk and can rule. Beholders are a real threat, not just some high level dungeon monster. At level one my players did encounter an ancient red dragon, rescued a goblin and worked for an adult bronze dragon while setting up the death of an old green dragon.

I want to play a game of D&D that feels less 'kitchen sink' or 'cosmopolitan' than the mainstream.

As I said in the first post, it doesn't even have to go as far as forcing human PCs. That would be one way to do a "hard-reset", but at the same (to preserve player's roleplay desires and ideas), it would be also ok to just treat the PCs as rare individuals.

It could follow a traditional pattern, e.g. Tolkienenque like secluded Dwarves and Elves, and wanderer Halflings (pretty much what you didn't want in your campaign). Or it could just let creativity go and make up something new and very different from tradition. This is not actually my problem...

My problem has got to do with always converging to the same bland flavor. Ok you have satyr villages, minotaur cities and dragonborn kingdoms. These are cool creative ideas, but afterwards how do you manage to make them feel different from human villages, dwarven cities and elven kingdoms, besides the cosmetics?

The cosmopolitan problem for me can be summarized: "every race has so much diversity, that there is no diversity between races".

In a sense I guess I am plotting to push fantasy races away from the center of the fantasy world into its shady borders, where a lot of stuff doesn't need to be defined. Something hard to do perhaps in D&D when most of us gamers have OCD about explaining, defining and categorizing everything... But when you leave stuff undefined, there's a small hope to restore a tiny spark of wonder, for those who haven't already completely lost it. Note that in fact this also applies to monsters, magic items and groups/organizations. I am trying to see if "less is more" can actually lead players to leave a few habits behind, including metagaming assumptions on creatures and magic items, and the "been there, done that" feeling...

 

[KarinsDad]

It should be obvious from what you do at the table. If it's not, then, why are you bothering to play an elf? Is it simply for the stat bonuses? I'm not really interested in playing with that kind of player anymore.

It's pretty simple. People play an elf to have fun. Maybe not your type of fun, but their type of fun.

Not everyone is a Thespian. Some people are quiet, some are tacticians, some like to bust down doors. Personally, I've found that trying to force someone to play in character differently than they like is a waste of everyone's time. You seem to only like certain types of players. That's fine for your table. I play with family and friends. People I like. So, whatever personality and quirks they bring to the game, it's all good. Neither you or I will convince the other that our way is right, so have fun with your game.

 

[KarinsDad]

But when you leave stuff undefined, there's a small hope to restore a tiny spark of wonder, for those who haven't already completely lost it.

You could also create an extremely magical setting where weird stuff happens (e.g. walking on walls, walking through walls, etc.). That too will eventually get pedestrian for you, but it's a way to make things a bit wondrous for a while.

 

[BigVanVader]

Ok you have satyr villages, minotaur cities and dragonborn kingdoms. These are cool creative ideas, but afterwards how do you manage to make them feel different from human villages, dwarven cities and elven kingdoms, besides the cosmetics?

I think it's better to not even worry about that, and just worry about making them seem interesting to the players. You don't have to reinvent the wheel for every species, just point out little things, little quirks. Maybe Dragonborns(I prefer Draconians, but hey.) look around wildly a lot, and eat without using their hands a lot. Maybe the Dwarves stroke their beards, maybe Elves reach up and fiddle with their ears if they're not well trained liars. Little verbal and visual tics and habits, little quirks and details. That's really all you need.

Beyond that, it's reasonable that most cultures would value fire if it's cold, and value walls and guards if they live in a dangerous area. Most cultures probably have a lot of the same problems and a lot of the same advantages, they just look different on the outside.

 

[Hussar]

It's pretty simple. People play an elf to have fun. Maybe not your type of fun, but their type of fun.

Not everyone is a Thespian. Some people are quiet, some are tacticians, some like to bust down doors. Personally, I've found that trying to force someone to play in character differently than they like is a waste of everyone's time. You seem to only like certain types of players. That's fine for your table. I play with family and friends. People I like. So, whatever personality and quirks they bring to the game, it's all good. Neither you or I will convince the other that our way is right, so have fun with your game.

Fair enough. I'm just tired of playing with Father Generic the Cleric, Fytor the Fighter, and Samusdaudderguy the Elf. I find that putting a bit of expectations on the players that they actually play the character they claim to want to play makes for a better experience at the table.

 

[innerdude]

I have a constant desire to decrease the degree of "kitchen sink" look and feel of D&D. It seems that every published setting or homebrew I play in is based on the assumption that "more is better", and that:

- there has to be many playable races
- playable races should include traditional PHB races
- all races should more or less have similar societies and therefore opportunities

This is fine, but it's certainly not novel or original anymore. In particular, the third concept above means that every race should have access to every class, background, spell, equipment etc. with only few minor exceptions.

For me a few downsides have manifested clearly in play, among which:

- all campaigns are more similar to each other
- everybody roleplays their PC identically, whatever the chosen race (speaking like a drunkard doesn't make your Dwarf PC really different)
- there is nothing "fantastical" left about fantasy races

I almost would like to toss it all away and just have the players play human characters, and focus on the individuals in order to decide how to roleplay them, instead of looking at "race".

In the past while we were playtesting 5e, in order to simplify the game setup (almost all players had never played D&D), I didn't even mention other races, in fact we didn't use races features at all (not even the human bonuses). It was only a short campaign of but a few evenings, but nothing felt missing.

Perhaps it doesn't have to use such an extreme solution. What if the options of playing other PHB races is still there (also in combination with any class), but all non-human characters are treated are rarely seen in the world? So you can play an Elf or Dwarf (or even an Elf Barbarian or a Dwarf Monk) but you'll very unlikely ever see an Elf/Dwarf NPC?

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?

In my last fantasy campaign, it was all human PCs, with only a few faint hints of the "magical" in the periphery of the world.

It was hands down one of the best campaigns I've ever been involved with. And NOBODY complained of boredom, or not having anything "interesting" to do by not having access to elves, dwarves, tieflings, etc.

In my experience it had the EXACT effect you described, where instead of just playing to racial stereotype, the characters took on more realistic elements of personality and distinction. When you can't just say, "I'm a dwarf!" anymore, it forces you to think a little bit more about just what it is that motivates your character to do and be what (s)he does and is.

 

[innerdude]

KD, I get what you're saying, and I largely agree, but, (and you knew the but was coming) it's certainly not unheard of for players to play races just for the bonuses. For a long time, I LOATHED elves for exactly this reason. Every single elf character I saw was basically just a human who could wear armour while casting spells.

The worst thing, for me, is when another player at the table turns to the player and says, "You're an elf? Really? Oh, yeah, I forgot that." To me, that's a complete fail by the elf player to portray a character. The fact that the character isn't human should be the first or second thing someone thinks when they think about your character, not the fifteenth. I mean, look at genre fiction where you have non-human characters. The fact that Leggylass and Gimli aren't human is a BIG DEAL. Stepping a bit sideways to Star Trek, you have characters like Spock, and Worf. No one would think of those characters and not immediately think about their race (as in species ). On and on and on.

Playing a non-human should be a big deal. It should be something that comes out in how you play that character. If I were to observe an entire gaming session at your table, and I couldn't guess that your character was non-human, then I do believe that you're doing it wrong.

**Slow clap**

Very well stated.

Example---in a GURPS campaign a couple of years ago, I played something totally against my usual character type. I'm normally the human or half-elf sneaky / rogue-y / bard-y skill monkey and social encounter guy. But for this campaign I played a monstrously strong and tough orc fighter (my basic character template was Thrall or Grom Hellscream from Warcraft 3 . . . and I don't even play or like Warcraft 3).

At first I was nervous . . . until I started playing, and suddenly it clicked. I was an orc . . . not just random Rogue Guy #37, a friggin' orc. And suddenly, character choices and decisions became totally colored and tinted by looking at the game world through that window. By the end of the second session I freaking LOVED that character, and would have continued playing that campaign for quite a long time, even though I'm not a fan of GURPS by any stretch.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The worst thing, for me, is when another player at the table turns to the player and says, "You're an elf? Really? Oh, yeah, I forgot that." To me, that's a complete fail by the elf player to portray a character. The fact that the character isn't human should be the first or second thing someone thinks when they think about your character, not the fifteenth.

Is "race" really the first thing that comes to mind when you imagine your friends and coworkers? What they look and sound like, sure, but I doubt the first thing into your head is "that's John, and his cultural background is...".

I mean, look at genre fiction where you have non-human characters. The fact that Leggylass and Gimli aren't human is a BIG DEAL. Stepping a bit sideways to Star Trek, you have characters like Spock, and Worf. No one would think of those characters and not immediately think about their race (as in species ). On and on and on.

My money would be on people totally forgetting each and every one of those without visual cues, constant use of unusual speech patterns or explicit text like: 'There is even a chance that Dwarves are there, and that in some deep hall of his fathers, Balin son of Fundin may be found. However it may prove, one must tread the path that need chooses!' .

The fact that Legolas and Gimli aren't human is completely secondary to the fact that they aren't from where the Hobbits are from, or the fact that they're members of the fellowship, or the fact that Gimli has a cousin who lives in the mines of Moria. You could easily swap out the entire cast of lord of the rings for humans and have it play out identically without anything seeming untoward.