D&D as humanocetric ... or not?

[oreofox]

My D&D is as far from humanocentric as can be. I got tired of humans being 80%+ of any setting, humans being the greatest and most diverse of all the races. So I went the complete opposite. Depending on the timeline of my setting, humans either play the part of the typical D&D orc/goblin/other monster enemy race, or don't exist at all. The present day in the setting, the humans are practically wiped out after their empire of subjugation and slavery of every non-human fell.

I have a total of 18 playable races, which balloons out to about 41 with all the subraces (goblinoid is one race, with bugbear, goblin, and hobgoblin as the subraces). My players seem to enjoy it for some unknown horrific reason (though more people have flaked out than stayed. <3 the 4 who stuck with me the entire time). None seem to miss being unable to play a human. They are also helping me playtest the various homebrew races (though none seem to have touched the dwarves, elves, gnomes, or goblinoids...), which has been good.

I haven't read all 150 or so replies. Also, I chose 8 on the poll, because none were really what I went with. I guess 6 would have worked, but 41 total choices isn't exactly "limited", is it? Oh well, people seem to enjoy it. Why, I don't know, but they seem to. I guess I am doing something right?

 

[Helldritch]

What I found works best is a compromise between restricting choice and an at large campaign. One campaign I'll have an idea of what I want, what I really don't want and what I am ready to allow with a lot of negociations. The next campaign, I'll place it in an other setting (like FR, Eberron or whatever suggestion players will bring up to me) and it will be a real Mos Eisley campaign where adventures will have no link to each other but will be like episodes in a TV show where I will give titles that will stay with the players such as:" The ghost in the attic, Kobolds, kobolds, everywhere and none to escape! or Snow Dwarf and the Hobgoblin Hunter."

When I play an at large game/campaign, I usually go for a funny type of game not unlike Acquisition inc. These games tend not to go past level 11 or 12 but I have a few over the years (pre 5ed) that went up to level 30 (4ed). In 5ed the highest at large campaign went up to level 13. Which is nothing to sniff at.

But focus/restricted campaigns are the ones that goes farther than rest. At least for me. These campaigns usualy (but not always, obviously) go way past level 15 and a few went up to level 20th in 5ed. The reason for that might be that players are more implicated in their characters, they're more serious and work better as a group because not every one is trying to push his/her own agenda/personal story. Cooperation is way better when I have a theme in a campaign. Maybe it's just in my games. But this is what I have seen over the years. 1ed campaign were usually going way beyond level 20. (yes we were playing a lot, quite a lot).

 

[Helldritch]

My D&D is as far from humanocentric as can be. I got tired of humans being 80%+ of any setting, humans being the greatest and most diverse of all the races. So I went the complete opposite. Depending on the timeline of my setting, humans either play the part of the typical D&D orc/goblin/other monster enemy race, or don't exist at all. The present day in the setting, the humans are practically wiped out after their empire of subjugation and slavery of every non-human fell.

I have a total of 18 playable races, which balloons out to about 41 with all the subraces (goblinoid is one race, with bugbear, goblin, and hobgoblin as the subraces). My players seem to enjoy it for some unknown horrific reason (though more people have flaked out than stayed. <3 the 4 who stuck with me the entire time). None seem to miss being unable to play a human. They are also helping me playtest the various homebrew races (though none seem to have touched the dwarves, elves, gnomes, or goblinoids...), which has been good.

I haven't read all 150 or so replies. Also, I chose 8 on the poll, because none were really what I went with. I guess 6 would have worked, but 41 total choices isn't exactly "limited", is it? Oh well, people seem to enjoy it. Why, I don't know, but they seem to. I guess I am doing something right?

Not allowing humans is quite ok with me. I once did an all elf campaign. It spawned over 1100 years (Grey Elves used to live a lot longer than 700 years in 1ed.) where 50 to a 100 years might pass between adventures. Their first adventure was the Gul's Caves; where they had to fight goblins and hobgoblins. Then 50 years later, their second adventure was Return to Gul's Caves as the few goblins and hobgoblins they had left alive were now numerous enough to be a threat to Celenari (a Grey Elven Kingdom in the Hell Furnace in GH). They even had a quest to save a young mage from the Suel Empire named Veccinta (later named Vecna...)

Restricting a choice is not always about demi-humans. You can do what you want in your campaign.

 

[Hussar]

This is very much one of those group dependent things.

IME, if I didn’t actually worry about that stuff, my players would start suggesting things other than dnd when we hang out, or someone else would start a new campaign and I’d become merely a backup DM.

my players ask me to run my campaigns when we meet up in large part because their characters and deeply invested in the world, and who they are and where they come from genuinely matters in the course of play.

My groups, over the years, just have never, ever given the slightest rat's petoot about the setting. They simply do not care. Getting a player to read more than a paragraph or two about the setting has proven to be a fools errand, regardless of who I've played with. They simply DO NOT CARE.

So, while I could continue to beat my head against this wall, I choose to try to care a lot less and get on with running the game. It seems to make them a lot happier even if it is somewhat frustrating to me.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I can't really interact with the poll because it wouldn't represent how I run it.

I have the Multiverse, where stuff works certain ways. On most worlds (Faerun, Oerth, Krynn, Athas, etc) humans are the most populous and dominant species. The reason there are such things as racial pantheons (elven, dwarven, etc) on many worlds is because the setting pantheons (in Faerun or the Flanaess) are really the human pantheons of their respective settings.

I think the racial distribution figures given in 1e Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms products indicate what I consider to be humano-centric (which isn't the same extreme version of it that Gygax was talking about it) settings. Non-humans have their own limited lands where they are dominant, and are found in varying numbers amongst human lands, but if you're a human who lives out in the country away from the trade roads, you might go your whole life without ever seeing an elf or dwarf.

Each world tends to add some of its own unique non-human races--usually having the same relationship to the dominance of humans as the standard non-human races commonly found on many worlds have.

There are other worlds out there in arcane space (Spelljammer), where humans might not even be present, let alone be dominant, but there isn't any extensive information on such worlds.

Out in cosmopolitan planar places (enter Planescape with its Sigil) you have every D&D race new and old mingling together. Interestingly though, even in Sigil and its cultural satellite settlements, humans are the most common race--they just change up which non-human races are common.

That's what you had by the end of 2e--which I think was the high point of D&D's multiverse-building, so it's my baseline to which I add later stuff that works with that pattern rather than changing it.

So when I'm running a campaign, the valid PC options will depend entirely on where the campaign is set, and what its goals are.

If you're on a typical world (including Faerun, because I don't run these re-envisionings of it), humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves, halflings, and gnomes are your baseline for PCs. People know who those races are (even if they've never met one) and they don't elicit fear. Playing a half-orc means accepting people might be afraid of you. Playing a drow is going to be really difficult, because drow are generally feared as "the enemy" to just about about anyone else. Dragonborn aren't native to any worlds except the 4e one, and therefore aren't present unless we're playing one of those worlds. Tieflings are a thing, but they are rare in a typical campaign world, and you had better hide your heritage or you'll be worse off than a half-orc. Also, most of them don't look anything like the ones in the PHB--I go with the older lore. Aasimar and other planetouched races are at least as rare as tieflings on the Material Plane. When it comes to thinks like goblins, orcs, kobolds, etc--people are going to react to you as a monster. So the question is, what sort of campaign are we running? If its going to be a fairly typical campaign, then I'm probably not going to allow more than one race outside of the (2e) standard human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, and half-elf. And that one race is going to have to be workable. So if you're a drow or a tiefling, you're going to need to constantly disguise it. If you're a half-orc, you're probably okay to go, just remember people are going to react to you. If you want to play a dragonborn, that won't work unless you want to say your spelljamming ship crashed on this world, and that makes sense for the theme of the campaign.

If its a Dark Sun campaign, you'll be choosing amongst those races, so thri-kreen is perfectly acceptable despite its alienness--its a standard part of the world.

If it's Planescape, you can basically play anything in the multiverse that has playable stats appropriate to the party level.

So the important parts for me are:

1) The Multiverse is D&D for me. It's more important than any PC or campaign. It always wins.
2) Campaign theme is more important than any PC. If your PC doesn't fit the campaign, then you play a different PC or we play a different campaign.

 

[Helldritch]

We have different experience you and I. My players cares a lot about the setting. Maybe it comes from me. I don't know. But my players know GH almost better than me. And in some cases, a lot more than me. But we do like a break from GH from time to time and we go for a different setting. Both of my groups loved the CoS adventure as it was quite a break from GH. We are now doing PoTA and both groups are eager to get to GoSM. (both groups are about to finish PoTA in about 10 to 12 sessions, maybe less...).

 

[Zardnaar]

My groups, over the years, just have never, ever given the slightest rat's petoot about the setting. They simply do not care. Getting a player to read more than a paragraph or two about the setting has proven to be a fools errand, regardless of who I've played with. They simply DO NOT CARE.

So, while I could continue to beat my head against this wall, I choose to try to care a lot less and get on with running the game. It seems to make them a lot happier even if it is somewhat frustrating to me.

I remember one if my old players back in the 90 used to rant about this. She said something like "you put in all this effort and they don't give a bleep".

Back then I would do a hand drawn map of the world with 9 A4 paper sheets of paper. Hand designed specialty priests etc.

I'm running a few themed games now because I never got around to running a Viking or Egypt or whatever game.

I'm not suck of Drow PCs either because they're usually not allowed. Ran a Drow campaign once. Got 100% Drow that time.

 

[Helldritch]

I remember one if my old players back in the 90 used to rant about this. She said something like "you put in all this effort and they don't give a bleep".

Back then I would do a hand drawn map of the world with 9 A4 paper. Hand designed specialty priests etc.

I'm running a few themed games now because I never got around to running a viking or Egypt or whatever game.

I'm not suck of Drow PCs either because they're usually not allowed. Ran a Drow campaign once. Got 100% Drow that time.

Yeah... did that too about two decades ago. Drows all over the place. Evil was everywhere especially in the party. It was fun while it lasted but evil has a strong tendency to turn upon itself...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My groups, over the years, just have never, ever given the slightest rat's petoot about the setting. They simply do not care. Getting a player to read more than a paragraph or two about the setting has proven to be a fools errand, regardless of who I've played with. They simply DO NOT CARE.

So, while I could continue to beat my head against this wall, I choose to try to care a lot less and get on with running the game. It seems to make them a lot happier even if it is somewhat frustrating to me.

That’s really a bummer, man. I hope the game is still fun for you in that situation.

I can say for sure, for me, I’d just suggest a different activity if my players were that far from me on the spectrum of caring about the world in which we play.

like, I don’t ask for much reading, I just go over relevant cultures when they are making a character, and ask questions like “what place in society does this character have?” and “what do they care about?”

for us...exploring the world as a part of said world is...the point of playing the game.

have your players ever DMed?

 

[Hussar]

That’s really a bummer, man. I hope the game is still fun for you in that situation.

I can say for sure, for me, I’d just suggest a different activity if my players were that far from me on the spectrum of caring about the world in which we play.

like, I don’t ask for much reading, I just go over relevant cultures when they are making a character, and ask questions like “what place in society does this character have?” and “what do they care about?”

for us...exploring the world as a part of said world is...the point of playing the game.

have your players ever DMed?

Oh yes. Most of them have DM'd rather a lot.

It's not that they don't care about the campaign. They do. They get right into the plot and actions of the game. Just that the background, world building stuff is pretty much so much hot air. Which is fair. I tend to focus more on plot and character than setting anyway, so, it all works out in the end. It can be a bit frustrating sometimes, but, OTOH, it does free me up a lot as well. I don't have to ponce about figuring out all sorts of background details. No one else cares, so, why bother? All that matters is right now.