D&D General What are the most populous races in your setting?

[Voadam]

Most D&D settings are generally humanocentric with a lot of human filled cities and kingdoms and nations plus a decent number of other PC race populations scattered about generally as minorities in human ones with perhaps a dwarven kingdom here (in the mountains) and an elven kingdom there (in the forest), and a vague undefined number of lots of humanoid monsters in the wilderness or just generally everywhere.

For instance in The World of Greyhawk there are about 40 or so nations, most listed with a specific number of thousands of humans and an entry for demihumans and humanoids often with listings like few, some, or many with a few exceptions such as the elven kingdom of Celene stating how many thousands of elves live there, and the Pomarj listing the (very few) thousands of orcs and goblins in the humanoid dominated area. It is very humanocentric on the surface, but there is huge distances between human population centers with room for humanoids to be canonically most everywhere if you want.

I've done both a standard D&D humanocentric focus with narrative room for lots of D&D cantina scenes to make sense (my mashup homebrew setting and Greyhawk and Ravenloft settings) and a completely other race default one (elves, goblins, and dover dog-men) when I used the Oathbound Wildwood wilderness domain as my setting.

My current setting is my homebrew mashup one which is a lot of Golarion and Ptolus and Midgard plus lots of others and it is fairly humanocentric with probably orcs being number 2 in terms of population size in my head, maybe followed by goblins, and then possibly kobolds.

I picture races with high reproduction rates and quick maturation leading to a high population for orcs and goblins and kobolds so they get the second tier of population sizes in my head for my homebrew. Ratfolk/Slitheren/Nezumi/Skaven would be similar but I don't have a well-defined place for them narratively, I have not consciously adopted them as a big underground hidden massive empire from Warhammer, though it is a thought and there is room for it. Elves and dwarves might be more common in the empire, but I don't picture them as the same tier of population size as the big reproducers. I do have dwarven and elven provinces and kingdoms so there are significant defined population areas though so they are probably a tier 3 category for populations.

In your setting what would you say are the big races as far as population sizes?

 

[el-remmen]

My current setting is a little weird in that it is a small part of the world purposefully set against the distant "Known World" (not to be confused with Mystara) which is always off-stage by design. It is purposefully vague and players are free to imagine it as any kind of dark fantasy setting they want. But it is mostly humans and a smattering of the other "Free Peoples" (elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings) and all the monstrous races have been systematically wiped out there. Essentially an orc to them is like a neanderthal to us. They know they existed, but no one has seen one for 10000 years. "Half-orcs" are just people who identify as descended from an orcish lineage they are trying to reconstruct. Similarly, "half-elves" are "fey-touched" people (but same rules).

The PCs are from there, able to make up whatever they want basically for their backgrounds (for example someone wanted to be a tiefling, which in the past I would have needed to come up with an explanation for - but with this set up I was like "sure there is a tiefling nation there"). The entire campaign, however, takes place on the other side of the world, in a little human-centered republic of exiles and cast-offs - a "frontier." Like I said, the "main" setting is off-stage. Here humans are still the most populous but scattered, and then dwarves, and then lizardfolk, and then halflings, gnomes, and then any elfin or orcish descended people (and then elves themselves). There are also still pockets of peoples wiped out in the Known World, like Hobgoblins and bugbears and xvarts (still no orcs though). There is also, however, a kind of Hollow World where hobgoblin civilization is thriving unknown in the "Known World" and recently discovered by the PCs.

I never worry about actual numbers as much as I try to imagine what I want the PCs to experience and then retrofit an idea about relative populations from that.

 

[Bitbrain]

In my (hopefully upcoming) homebrew Dark Sun campaign, in descending order from largest population to smallest:

1) humans
2) halflings
3) muls
4) thri-kreen
5) elves
6) gith

 

[BookTenTiger]

I always build my campaign worlds around the characters, so the current campaign world has, in order of highest to lowest population:

Humans
Tortles
Tieflings
Halflings
Gnomes
Kenku
Goliaths
Dwarves

In general, tortles are native to the valley, humans and Halflings came later, tieflings moved in when vampires took over, gnomes are imported experts, and goliaths and dwarves are travelers from afar.

 

[Oofta]

I only allow a handful of races but population density just depends on region. Some areas are almost all human, other areas will be dominated by specific races. Overall? Probably 75% human followed by 10% or so elf and dwarf. Remainder gnomes, halflings and half-orcs.

Of course if I went by adventurer demographics, it would probably be reversed.

 

[Minigiant]

Depends on which of my settings.

In Six Kindgoms, each of the kingdoms are dominated by one race: humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, dragonborn, and human again. But goblins outreproduce everyone by a mile. And technically there are as many kobolds and ratmen as goblins. but their nations are in chaotic and uncounted.

In Klassico, the world is in the Age of Men so humans outnumber every other "PC race". However elves and dwarves are not far behind as they haven't when into decline yet. The Age of Dragons is predicted next so a lot of dragonborn are being born.

And in Beastworld, technically every other race is also a human.

 

[Voadam]

In my (hopefully upcoming) homebrew Dark Sun campaign, in descending order from largest population to smallest:

1) humans
2) halflings
3) muls
4) thri-kreen
5) elves
6) gith

My understanding of Muls from 2e is that they are sterile dwarf-human hybrids so I am guessing you are either conflating muls and dwarves in there or you have used different lore on the races.

I find Dark Sun interesting as I mostly know things from the original boxed set and series of novels and bits from other things so I know thri-kreen are a PC race and that there is a thing with a big Thri-Kreen empire outside of the main map that could be a big population center, but I don't have a real basis to say how big one way or another compared to other races. Elves have multiple tribes which can be a decent population center as well. Gith are a big monster race, but I don't really remember much about their population centers, just seeing them a bunch in some materials.

 

[Voadam]

My current setting is a little weird in that it is a small part of the world purposefully set against the distant "Known World" (not to be confused with Mystara) which is always off-stage by design. It is purposefully vague and players are free to imagine it as any kind of dark fantasy setting they want.

It is completely valid to keep it vague and not sweat such details and to not nail them down so you can work however you or your players want later.

Here humans are still the most populous but scattered, and then dwarves, and then lizardfolk, and then halflings, gnomes, and then any elfin or orcish descended people (and then elves themselves). There are also still pockets of peoples wiped out in the Known World, like Hobgoblins and bugbears and xvarts (still no orcs though). There is also, however, a kind of Hollow World where hobgoblin civilization is thriving unknown in the "Known World" and recently discovered by the PCs.

That seems pretty well thought out and defined though, even though the proportions for the main setting aren't set you have some defined ones for your setting area and even some for the main area in the no orcs.

 

[Voadam]

I always build my campaign worlds around the characters, so the current campaign world has, in order of highest to lowest population:

Humans
Tortles
Tieflings
Halflings
Gnomes
Kenku
Goliaths
Dwarves

In general, tortles are native to the valley, humans and Halflings came later, tieflings moved in when vampires took over, gnomes are imported experts, and goliaths and dwarves are travelers from afar.

So was this built off the PC races your characters chose and you built up a world they would be connected to, or did they come up with backgrounds that you took and ran with, such as the tiefling-vampire connection?

 

[Voadam]

I only allow a handful of races but population density just depends on region. Some areas are almost all human, other areas will be dominated by specific races. Overall? Probably 75% human followed by 10% or so elf and dwarf. Remainder gnomes, halflings and half-orcs.

Of course if I went by adventurer demographics, it would probably be reversed.

Looks like the 1e PC race palette. Does your world have just those races or would the numbers change significantly if you count up monster humanoids in your world?