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

[billd91]

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...".

That would depend on how different he is. If my office mate were from one of the remote tribes on Papua-New Guinea or the Amazon River Basin, then I think our differences would be significant enough for them to pretty much always be a factor (particularly working in the software industry). The difference in outlook between a hobbit or human whose lifespan encompasses decades and an elf whose lifespan is thousands of years is going to be considerable. You don't need to be a thespian to try to portray a difference in how a character thinks or behaves.

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.

Pretty much only if you take several steps back, squint a bit, and don't focus on the details. Many of the details are bound up in who and what those characters are whether it's the difficulties Legolas and Gimli have when first reaching Lothlorien or Legolas's fairly radical lack of fear of the human ghosts on the Paths of the Dead.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Honestly, I think the traditional D&D racial demographics were significantly more human-centric than it has been reinterpreted. I've always got the impression that humans were dominant and elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes mostly lived in their own lands, with some rare immigrants and travelers. The idea that most people in rural areas may only see an elf or dwarf once or twice in their entire lives is not out of place. Maybe that's just the idea I got into my head (and it is how I like to run my games), but that's how it has always seemed that it used to be to me.

I'm guessing 3e is the point where they increased the assumed presence of non-humans in human lands. The 3.5 DMG assumes the percentage of non-humans in a typical (non-isolated) human settlement to be about 21%.

So I guess my point is to not blame it on the poor elves and dwarves. They were traditionally rare anyway, and it's only when D&D started retconning the racial demographics that settlements started to look like Mos Eisley.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

For those who have expressed a wish for human centric adventures in a world where elves etc are pushed back into the mysterious shadows, check out Legend, the setting for Dragon Warriors. Very dark English faerie tale.

 

[Grainger]

Honestly, I think the traditional D&D racial demographics were significantly more human-centric than it has been reinterpreted. I've always got the impression that humans were dominant and elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes mostly lived in their own lands, with some rare immigrants and travelers. The idea that most people in rural areas may only see an elf or dwarf once or twice in their entire lives is not out of place. Maybe that's just the idea I got into my head (and it is how I like to run my games), but that's how it has always seemed that it used to be to me.

I'm guessing 3e is the point where they increased the assumed presence of non-humans in human lands. The 3.5 DMG assumes the percentage of non-humans in a typical (non-isolated) human settlement to be about 21%.

So I guess my point is to not blame it on the poor elves and dwarves. They were traditionally rare anyway, and it's only when D&D started retconning the racial demographics that settlements started to look like Mos Eisley.

You certainly get that feeling from Tolkein. You get Dwarves sometimes in the Shire, Elves are thought of as amazing by Sam, while most Hobbits seem to scoff at outsiders of any stripe. Thinking about Gondor and Rohan, I don't get the impression that Dwarves or Elves live there, although neither are they shocked or appalled to see Legolas or Gimli. The races feel quite separated in LOTR, even though there's a background to it that the races all worked together at times in the past.

Going back to D&D, there's certainly the nobbling of Demi-human level advancement in early D&D, which IMO gives it a Human-centric feel. BECMI somewhat patched this in later years, allowing advancement in "attack ranks". It seems to be assumed that Humans are just better than Demi-humans, despite the longevity of the latter suggesting it should be the other way around.

 

[Quartz]

Remember the Dungeoncraft articles in Dragon? There was a series on creating a campaign and it emphasised the importance of secrets. IIRC it was a prehistoric campaign and one of the secrets was that elves were part of the god of light. I had the notion that it would not be a good idea to let a player choose to be an elf until this secret was discovered. And by extension, any other race until their secret was known.

 

[Hussar]

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...".

No, but I'm unlikely to forget it or not know it at all though. I'm not saying character race should be the first thing or even the main thing.

But it should be a thing.

Heck, as I'm about the only white dude my students have met in the flesh, you can bet that that fact is pretty prominent in their minds.

 

[Hereticus]

What's wrong with a human-centric fantasy world?

Or you can do the opposite and have a Galactica campaign, where there are no human cities and survivors are hunted by all other races. However some non-human adventurers are willing to risk the death penalty and associate with them.

 

[Umbriere Moonwhisper]

i play more than my fair share of variant humans and reskinned half elves. i occasionally play a planetouched such as a tiefling, an aasimaar or a genasi or another mostly human race such as a dhampir. once in a blue moon, i will play a kenomimi of some kind, an elf, a reskinned halfling, dwarf or gnome designed to be more fantastic, or a talking awakened animal of some kind. i literally enjoyed playing the panther ranger that used to be the animal companion to a deceased dwarven druid. well, mountain dwarf from the circle of Selene. the panther wasn't too different from your typical old greying dwarven war hero who just wanted to die with glory and be reunited with the comerades he lost. the primary differences were that he was a quadraped with no opposable thumbs, which created some unique minor roleplay quirks, like asking somebody else to open a door for him or him picking spells that have verbal components rather than somatic or material ones and spending a feat to bypass somatic and material.

 

[Tallifer]

I used to want to run a campaign in a humanocentric pseudo-Reniassance world where magic and monsters would be exotic and terrifying. Maybe I will some day, but I feel I would need players as interested in pure history as I am.

However, these days, I much prefer the relentlessly and recklessly imaginative atmosphere of Oz, Wonderland, Adventure Time, Kill Six Billion Demons, Michael Moorcock's multiverse, Barsoom, Doctor Who and Eberron.

 

[Bitbrain]

Reply to OP.
I prefer Human-centric settings myself, if for no other reason that I personally believe that the mundane made aberrant is more memorable and repulsive than the fantastic.

A villainous Kenku who decorates his belt with the severed faces of his enemies is one thing, but an ordinary human being doing the exact same thing while wearing a raven mask over his face is something else entirely.