D&D General Greyhawk Humanocentricism?

[Micah Sweet]

So what is the standard of "humanocentric" that is being applied here? Because some seem to think Faerûn counts, and to me that seems pretty laughable. It is a total Mos Eisley kitchen sink setting, with crazy amount of species and them being very prominent.

Apparently it has to do strongly with how important and forward-facing dragonborn and tieflings are.

 

[MGibster]

So what is the standard of "humanocentric" that is being applied here? Because some seem to think Faerûn counts, and to me that seems pretty laughable. It is a total Mos Eisley kitchen sink setting, with crazy amount of species and them being very prominent.

My standard for humanocentric is most of the campaign centers around areas where humans are the majority. i.e. Most population centers have majority human populations even if you can walk into a local pub and get the Mos Eisley experience. You party might be only 20% humans, but the rest of the setting is mostly humans. But I'm an outlier here in that I believe all the races are pretty much human. Plug a dwarf, tiefling, or elf into the PC slot and they'll all play the same as if the character were a human.

Edited for misuse of you're instead of your.

 

[kigmatzomat]

So what is the standard of "humanocentric" that is being applied here? Because some seem to think Faerûn counts, and to me that seems pretty laughable. It is a total Mos Eisley kitchen sink setting, with crazy amount of species and them being very prominent.

The bechdel test equivalent is that only non-human races are specified.

e.g. The party is shipwrecked on an uncharted island and the DM says "six warriors carrying spears and tall shields approach in a hostile fashion".

If most of the players assume the locals are humans, it is a humanocentric game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The bechdel test equivalent is that only non-human races are specified.

e.g. The party is shipwrecked on an uncharted island and the DM says "six warriors carrying spears and tall shields approach in a hostile fashion".

If most of the players assume the locals are humans, it is a humanocentric game.

Even if the players are wrong?

 

[kigmatzomat]

Even if the players are wrong?

If the players are wrong it is because the DM has not succeeded at making a non-humanocentric setting. If they had, the assumption would be the dominant non-human species.

If no one knows the funny head prosthetics are there, then the funny head prosthetics aren't really there.

 

[Pauln6]

Nope. Dragonborn are a widespread minority in the main area my game is set. They're much more common in Yuxia, far to the west, where dragons live. Whether this is a direct connection or not hsa never been examined (and I see no reason to have a firm answer regardless.)


Nothing to do with any game I would like to see run. It is a criticism of the dull uniformity and inflexibility of FAR too many D&D settings. ENWorld's Zeitgeist and Baker's Eberron are beautiful examples of what you can do when you reject merely doing things for staid conformity and instead actively pursue creative stuff. Other options that have not been taken, to the best of my knowledge, but which could be extremely interesting:

1. Greco-Roman sword-and-sandal setting. Tieflings could be re-interpreted as resurrected people marked by Hades, the dimanes (a play on the actual dii manes, the immortal dead). Dragonborn have several plausible mythic counterparts, such as the Spartoi ("sown ones", nothing to do with Sparta) that a couple different Greek heroes produced by sowing dragons' teeth, or as children of drakaina, the she-drakes who mythically sired lineages of kings or entire peoples through unions with heroes (e.g. the Scythians were held, in some myths, to be the offspring of Herakles and a drakaina), or as descendants of an Athens-like city because of figures like Erichthonios, who is often depicted as having a reptilian lower half.
2. Science-fantasy. This one's got a bazillion precedents. If we go far-future, just a reptilian race is extremely common in science fiction. If we go modern-fantasy, the "reptilian conspiracy" provides one angle, but for a kinder one, they could be the result of genetic manipulation. Tieflings fit naturally as the descendants of spirit-altered individuals or as a race that had contact with humanity in the distant past, leading to the myths about devils and demons. Etc.
3. Wuxia. TONS of stuff you can do here, there's so many East Asian or Southeast Asian myths and tropes you can draw on I couldn't even begin. Just off the top of my head, oni cover tieflings pretty much perfectly, and Journey to the West has a near-unending stream of animal-people, dragons that have or can assume human form (most benevolent, but some are antagonists!)

Instead, what do we get? The same damn tropes regurgitated over and over, flattened and flanderized from Tolkien without any real thought into what they actually do or are like. Hence why I take stuff about elves and dwarves to task. Elves and dwarves should be really weird. They aren't. In most cases, they're in exactly the same sorts of positions as humans, in exactly the same proportions, with no meaningful difference other than the occasional offhand comment about remembering a friend who's been dead for two centuries or meeting someone's great-granddaughter and commenting that they have their great-grandfather's eyes.

I think the beauty of the base game is that you can build all those things as your campaign world. I don't think Greyhawk should be smooshed to accommodate all new races equally though. They should all be location specific and rarer than gnomes.

As an aside, I've also played Eastern Oerik as sexist too in that the default inheritance is through the eldest male. Women can be martial but would be viewed as oddities in many human nations. Since most of the other classes are viewed as oddities with varying levels of status, I have not really applied much prejudice based in gender beyond fighters, and demi-humans I have treated as more egalitarian, except drow. Exceptions exists such as Hardby and the Yeomanry as well.

I don't mistreat female fighter PCs but I might make it tougher for them to lead, persuade, or inspire fighting men that don't know them. It mostly impacts how I portray the common folk.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am not sure that definition of humanocentrism that lumps both Faerûn and Westeros together is super helpful. Hell, by standards espoused here, the world of Elfquest is humanocentric as the elves actually are a minority!

 

[Baron Opal II]

See I guess my problem is that it’s not just Greyhawk. It’s every single location is predominantly human unless specified otherwise. So you have elf town and orc town and dwarf town but town baselines to human town and the idea of multicultural town seems to never really be a thing.

Now that you mention it, the only explicitly racially multicultural cities I can think of are Sigil and ... the Eberron city with the floating towers.

 

[Epic Meepo]

Nope, the Forgotten Realms are still pretty humanocentric. While it does have a very varied population by sentient species types, the vast majority of states, nations, and other political entities are human led, with above majority human populations.

Here are the human percentages in each region, straight out of the 3e FRCS (which, admittedly, was a century or so back, but there's been no indication that the proportions have changed - the same regions run by humans are still run by humans in the present with few exceptions):

Anuaroch: 77% human

Chultan Peninsula:
Chult: 60% human
Samarach: not listed, but human dominated
Thindol: not listed, mix of humans and yuan-ti
Tashalar 94% human

Cold Lands:
Damara: 87% human
Narfell: 99% human
Vaasa 60% human

Cormyr: 85% human

Dalelands: 80% human

Dragon Coast: 92% human

Hordelands: 85% human

Island Kingdoms:
Evermeet: 0% human
Lantan: not listed - mix of humans and gnomes
Moonshae Isles: 89% human
Nelanther: 20% human
Nimbral: not listed, but human dominated.

Lake of Steam: 90% human

Lands of Intrigue:
Amn: 83% human
Calimshan: 94% human
Tethyr: 76% human

Moonsea: 69% human

The North:
High Forest: 3% human
Savage Frontier: 55% human
Silver Marches: 40% human
Sword Coast North: 65% human
Waterdeep: 64% human

Old Empires:
Chessenta: 82% human
Mulhorand: 99% human
Murghom: not listed, but human dominated
Semphar: not listed, but human dominated
Unther: 94% human

Sembia: 96% human

Shining South:
Dambrath: not listed, human majority with a small half-drow ruling class
Durpar: not listed, human dominated
Estagund: not listed, human dominated
Great Rift: 0% human
Halruaa: 90% human
Luiren: 4% human
Shaar: 60% human
Var the Golden: not listed, human dominated.
Veldorn: not listed, but as the self-proclaimed "Land of Monsters", probably low human population

Unapproachable East:
Aglarond: 64% human
Great Dale: 99% human
Impiltur: 90% human
Rashemen: 99% human
Thay: 62% human
Thesk: 85% human

Underdark: Unknown (admittedly, probably low human population)

The Vast: 78% human

Vilhon Reach:
Chondath: 96% human
Sespech: 96% human
Turmish: 78% human

Western Heartlands: 78% human


So... yes, the Forgotten Reams are humanocentric. There are very, very few places that they aren't the dominant population, and those exceptions are mostly like Evermeet, the Great Rift, and Luiren which are designated homelands to other species (elf, dwarf, and halfling respectively).

The Forgotten Realms only appear humanocentric in the 3e FRCS because that book focuses on the human-majority lands of Faerun. Supplemental campaign setting material includes plenty of lands with non-human majorities. For example:

• Dwarf-majority lands like the Dwarfholds of the North, the Glittering Spires, and Siremun
• Elf-majority lands like Cormanthor, Evereska, and the Greycloak Hills
• Gnome-majority lands like Forharn and Songfarla
• Goblinoid-majority lands like the Earthfast Mountains and the Goblin Marches
• Halfling-majority lands like the southern Chondalwood and the historical kingdom of Meirtin
• Lizardfolk-majority lands like Rethild and Surkh
• Orc-majority lands like Many-Arrows and Thar (which previously had an ogre majority)
• Yuan-ti-majority lands like Najara and Serpentes

And that's not counting the dragonborn and genasi lands added in 4e.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The Forgotten Realms only appear humanocentric in the 3e FRCS because that book focuses on the human-majority lands of Faerun.

I suspect that there is some bias going on here. Probably because we have far too many human writers.

thinking....

Yeah, that's going to be a difficult one to address.

Seriously, though, there have always been attempts to move away from the Tolkien-esque fantasy roots .... Talislanta ("NO ELVES") first appeared in 1987, and there were certainly precursors (I could mention one, but the author ... eh....) but none have really taken off.

Look at D&D- although there have always been options, since the beginning, the core races have remained relatively stable, with additions coming slowly and grudgingly.