D&D General Greyhawk Humanocentricism?

[Parmandur]

Not if you zoom out. The non-human groups are small and isolationist or in downright opposition. The classic D&D group only kicks in at Rivendell and doesn't really last long but it's clearly and exception to see elves, dwarves, and men travelling together. It does highlight the storytelling problems with justifying a multiracial group getting together and staying together.

1e leaned heavily into the inter-species relationships, with a bit more leeway given to half-orcs and half-elves. Characters are the exceptions that prove the rules.

Right. But a great deal of fantasy literature doesn't even have multiple races, and when they do it I'd usually less multi-racial than Tolkien.

I am all for fun wild options, that's hiw my group plays. But the genre as a while tends towards humanicentrism, probably due to the preponderance of human authors and readers. Doesnmake sense to me to blame Tolkien, when Tolkien is more responsible for opening up the possible multiple races coexisting than discouraging the idea.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[kigmatzomat]

Give a page number where you are getting these numbers. page 15 has 27 buildings with encounters. And about 50 other buildings. The numbers of buildings vs population don't add up.

Not OP but according to Geyhawk Online

....In 576 CY the population was approximately 2,000.[1] By 591 CY it was estimated to have grown to 3,000,[8] and by 595 CY to 3,850.[4].....

1. U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, p3.
.....
4.↑ Dungeon Master's Guide II, p.119-152
....
8. Living Greyhawk Journal #1, p17

Saltmarsh - Great Library of Greyhawk

greyhawkonline.com

Unless explicitly contradicted by the texts, I assume every structure in a town has a second floor where the family of the proprietor lives, along with any servants/apprentices/etc.

I also assume the population of any d&d town includes everything within a 1 mile radius/20m walk. Since few game maps show 3-4 square miles, a non-trivial percentage of any populace is by definition off-map.

Think of the nearby wood cutters that cut and age timber for ships, the sheep/pig farmers, the horse breeders, and the random bits of viable farmland. Each is a few dozen people who live in proximity to their vocation that in isolation would be a hamlet but here is a satellite of Saltmarsh.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The only setting where I tend to favor humans is Ravenloft, which for me has more of a Victorian era vibe which doesn’t gel as well with Dragonborn or Tieflings, for instance. Greyhawk has never been humanocentric when I’ve used it and I never felt it needed to be, since that was more of a predilection for Gygax than it was something that really felt baked into the setting. My approach to D&D is that it has more in common with the Star Wars Universe than it does sword and sorcery books or LotR; it features a variety of species.

Lot of humans in Star Wars. Most of the main characters.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think you're right, and it's astonishing, given how popular human-centric high fantasy (Game of Thrones) and low fantasy (Harry Potter) both have been in recent decades.

Maybe not for the books, but in movies, I think that’s as much about makeup and cost of CGI than anything.

 

[Remathilis]

I think you're right, and it's astonishing, given how popular human-centric high fantasy (Game of Thrones) and low fantasy (Harry Potter) both have been in recent decades.

I don't think that's endemic of a trend, given how Rings of Power (and the LotR/Hobbit saga prior) have also had a lot of success. Rowling wanted the "magical world next door" so having a variety of nonhuman progatonists wouldn't have worked, and Martin deliberately set out to avoid or subvert as much Tolkienisms as he could in his work. Further, a lot of fantasy is being geared towards TV and movies now, and nonhuman species are hard to do convincingly for extended periods without CGI (which is expensive and runs the risk of looking fake/Jar Jar) or heavy prosthetics (difficult to work with). I mean, a D&D movie set in the Forgotten Realms still had a main cast of five humans and the most human-looking tiefling in the history of the game!

That said, in more traditional fantasy literature and in animation and video games (where it is much easier to have fantastical creatures) there are much richer varieties of species.

 

[Remathilis]

Lot of humans in Star Wars. Most of the main characters.

And the aliens that do have prominent roles tend to be literal humans in funny hats (Togruta, Twi-lek) but that's because face paint and fake head-tentacles are more convincing than trying to make complex masks emote or using CGI characters like Jar Jar.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Saltmarsh is decently important in terms of trade, Iuz has a trade post there where they send food back up north.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Saltmarsh is decently important in terms of trade, Iuz has a trade post there where they send food back up north.

It’s a minor trading post that serves as a cover for smuggling and other criminal enterprises. It’s not important.

 

[Pauln6]

It’s a minor trading post that serves as a cover for smuggling and other criminal enterprises. It’s not important.

Seaton is the more important port but even that is small fry compared to Gradsul. Saltmarsh is important only to criminals, naturalists, and lizard lovers.