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

[Evhelm]

Tolkien does go into some detail on this

I just realized that I should specify: my above post talks about what might be the differences amongst Tolkien's mythical creations, and is not necessarily reflective of how D&D handles things.

D&D has made some significant changes to the lore/legacy/mythos, and I can absolutely see how the "balancing" of these races has led to the OP's concern!

 

[Dausuul]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with running a human-centric or humans-only campaign. I plan to do it next time I run a game. If there are any nonhuman races, they will be homebrewed, and most or all of them will be either part-human or human-altered-by-magic.

The omnipresence of the tired old Tolkien Trio in D&D, and in fiction and fantasy games derived from D&D (including a lot of computer RPGs and MMOs), is one of my pet peeves. For God's sake, there's other fantasy out there! Outside of D&D and its descendants, elves and dwarves are quite rare. There aren't any elves in Earthsea, or Westeros, or Aquilonia. In modern fantasy, an "elf" is apt to look like this:



And a "dwarf" looks like this:



Now, I recognize that the D&D community wants its elves'n'dwarves'n'hobbits, so WotC has to include them in all of their published settings. (Though they could at least take a cue from Dark Sun and do something different with them. Psychic cannibal halflings = win.) But that doesn't mean individual DMs have to follow WotC's lead, nor do third-party publishers.

It's your world. You put in the work to build it and run it. You don't have to include any kitchen sinks you don't want to.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Dragon Warriors goes with a human centric world, where Elves are very much English folk tale monsters. It's grittier and much less high fantasy, but as the designers point out, what is the need for demihuman races when you consider the variety of races among the real world human race? Humans are only boring if you play them that way. The most mundane combination, the human Fighter, has so many possible incarnations, without factoring in their path, feats, or background - a knight, a town guard, a pirate 'marine', a pub landlord from a rough area forced to use his fists, a charcoal burner shunned by society who trains in secret, harbouring a wish to live a heroic life. If you took the racial descriptions of the demihumans and assigned them a real world equivalent, there's nothing stopping your human being a, for instance, gnome in all but size and stats...

 

[SirAntoine]

Just make your campaign how you want. There is nothing remotely wrong with banning any races.

 

[aramis erak]

Dragon Warriors goes with a human centric world, where Elves are very much English folk tale monsters. It's grittier and much less high fantasy, but as the designers point out, what is the need for demihuman races when you consider the variety of races among the real world human race? Humans are only boring if you play them that way. The most mundane combination, the human Fighter, has so many possible incarnations, without factoring in their path, feats, or background - a knight, a town guard, a pirate 'marine', a pub landlord from a rough area forced to use his fists, a charcoal burner shunned by society who trains in secret, harbouring a wish to live a heroic life. If you took the racial descriptions of the demihumans and assigned them a real world equivalent, there's nothing stopping your human being a, for instance, gnome in all but size and stats...

And yet, it allows for both Elf and Dwarf PC's... DW1, in their respective monster entries.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

And yet, it allows for both Elf and Dwarf PC's... DW1, in their respective monster entries.

Yes, the original paperbacks did, but more out of a feeling that, in order to be seen as a viable alternative to D&D, they had to include playable Dwarfs, Elves, and Orcs to fight them.
The setting, Legend (which, by the way, is glorious IMO), really never fitted that view, and the current version of the game and the adventure material around it, stresses a human-centric world.
As time has gone on, the vast majority of DW players and GMs would, I think, agree that having PCs of these races would jar horribly in the setting. Elves are very dark, faerie tale Jonathan Strangesque creatures, Dwarfs don't seem to figure much at all, and spellcasters go in fear of the villagers brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches. But, the point is, you can make your campaign world how you and your players like it. DW is an example of a very successful human-centric setting where playable races in D&D would be anathema. Game of Thrones is another. Fill your boots.

 

[Joe Liker]

Running a human-only campaign is no different from running an all-gnome one, or a Spelljammer one, or even an all-druid one.

As long as you explain your idea to the players at the outset and make sure everyone is truly on board, there should be no problems whatsoever. Having players who are genuinely interested in your idea and willing to play along is the important thing.

 

[Sailor Moon]

D&D is a physical gateway into one's imagination. It is a toolbox for DM's that allow them to shape their ideas into a land where the PC's can interact. You can leave out or add as much as you want in order to shape it to your liking. If you want to run a single race game then the tools are there for you to pick up and use to shape your game into what you envision.

A role playing game doesn't need tons of options in order to be complex.

 

[trentonjoe]

Another thing is to use all the different races as subraces of human, they just have special talents, either from where they were born or from the culture they're born.

For example, there would be a city where, from a very young age, kids are in touch with magic and learn a bit of it (high elves), a human family that made a pact with demons (tiefling), rough and hardy people from the mountains (dwarves), agile forest dwellers (wood elves)... Even dragonborn could be a sort of circus performers, their breath weapon reskinned as fire breathing or spitting a cloud of poison. Of course the character must have a bottle of the liquid with him, and things like shooting electricity could be banned.

I did that once in a campaign and it worked fine, everyone human, with all the options available in the manuals.

This is what I do fairly regularly.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If one awards, as is suggested in Cyclopedia, 1/20 of a level for good RP every session, the Elf whose best buds with the dwarves shouldn't get it, and should be told why.

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?