D&D 5E Humans Only

[CleverNickName]

38 years and multiple all human campaigns later and I've never once seen this. This comment is pretty off base I think.

Same here. Whenever I hear that a campaign is going to be "humans only," the first thing that comes to mind is that it will be a mostly historical campaign setting. More like ancient Rome or ancient Egypt, and not high fantasy like "Lord of the Rings" or "Forgotten Realms."

 

[Maxperson]

If I did decide to give one a try, there are still some things that would make me decide not to. Like if the DM said humans only because all the other intelligent races are evil andare trying to destroy the humans. Or if the DM said human only and everyone has to be from the same place and be the same race/ethnicity. At that point, I would be wondering if my DM were hiding some secrets about how he really feels about some people in real life, and that would make me very uncomfortable to continue being his friend.

Ditto. 38 years and never seen this in any of the multiple all human campaigns I've seen over the years. Why would this even come up given the OP is just about human PCs and nothing more?

 

[Maxperson]

Same here. Whenever I hear that a campaign is going to be "humans only," the first thing that comes to mind is that it will be a mostly historical campaign setting. More like ancient Rome or ancient Egypt, and not high fantasy like "Lord of the Rings" or "Forgotten Realms."

Mostly in my experience the All X race campaigns are just thematic. "Hey, let's all make elves and blah blah blah" or "Let's all be humans from from X place." The group does it to provide some commonality to the PCs. It can be race or class. I've seen as many all fighter, cleric, rogue or wizard groups as I have all X race groups.

 

[Maxperson]

Or maybe they hit you a little too close to home. This is not the ignorant 70's any more and knowingly playing with racists should not ever happen.

Dude. Racism hasn't been implied in anything in this thread(other than by you two). I think it's a given that 1) we should not play with racists, and 2) an all human group has nothing inherently to do with racism.

How about we just discuss the OP and leave racism out of this?

 

[Magister Ludorum]

I run a modern humans only game with four warlock PCs and one ranger. Everyone is having fun.

I have played and would play in a "humans only" or "elves only" game before I would play in a game where all the races from the 2e PHB are allowed but not dragonborn or tieflings. Theme is important. Give me a reason and I'll play.

 

[Cadence]

Oh and another strike against "all human" campaigns, they have an unfortunately strong tendency to mean "all white hicks from some dodgy inbred little village". I know the OP said "no other restrictions" which would imply otherwise, but unless that's spelled out, I'm suspicious as HELL about any "all humans" campaign.

Or if the DM said human only and everyone has to be from the same place and be the same race/ethnicity. At that point, I would be wondering if my DM were hiding some secrets about how he really feels about some people in real life, and that would make me very uncomfortable to continue being his friend.

I would have first guessed they were trying to play something historical that would have been roughly that way and didn't want the focus to be on the fact one PC didn't fit the setting. (Something set in Japan without Tom Cruise, or set in Scandinavia without Arak, or pre-Viking Americas without who knows what, or....). I guess I should feel lucky that I haven't played with folks who would have made me guess something unpleasant.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm doing a mostly all-human Ravenloft game... except that I allow fey-touched (half-elves) and homebrew caliban. I recently decided to allow shifters and changeling from Eberron, with the idea that they're types of caliban. And it hasn't come up yet, but the three lineages from VGR, which are also mostly human.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I prefer human only as I don't think having other races really adds anything to the game. Elves and Dwarves and such are just humans in rubber masks anyway, may as well just stick with just humans. I find players characterize more when they don't have "but I'm an Elf!" to fall back on.

 

[Reynard]

I am honestly flabbergasted at being accused of racism in this thread. I took a little break from ENWorld because I felt like discussions were getting heated easily, but I figured it might be me and maybe I should step away.

Now I am sure it is an inherent change in this community, and I don't think I want to be part of that anymore.

 

[Maxperson]

I am honestly flabbergasted at being accused of racism in this thread. I took a little break from ENWorld because I felt like discussions were getting heated easily, but I figured it might be me and maybe I should step away.

Now I am sure it is an inherent change in this community, and I don't think I want to be part of that anymore.

The vast majority here don't recklessly and rudely throw out accusations or implications of racism like that. I'm actually pretty surprised it went way off into left field like that in this thread.