D&D General Downplaying Humanity

[Professor Murder]

In most Fantasy setting, humans take center stage. They are usually the most culturally diverse, have the largest number of distinct nations, and are typically depicted as having high populations.

But what about campaigns you have constructed where that is not the case?

I'd love to hear about settings where humans are there, but are not the majority (50%+) of the civilizations in your setting. Or games where there is a human mono culture, with other species, such as Elves, Orc or even say Mind Flayers make up the other major cultures in the setting on equal or even greater footing.

 

[DND_Reborn]

In most Fantasy setting, humans take center stage. They are usually the most culturally diverse, have the largest number of distinct nations, and are typically depicted as having high populations.

But what about campaigns you have constructed where that is not the case?

I'd love to hear about settings where humans are there, but are not the majority (50%+) of the civilizations in your setting. Or games where there is a human mono culture, with other species, such as Elves, Orc or even say Mind Flayers make up the other major cultures in the setting on equal or even greater footing.

I ran a Spears of Darkness campaign in college back in the mid 90's where 90% of the human population vanished overnight as the world was shrouded in dark clouds that nearly blotted out the sun.

The effect was catastrophic of course. Because humans had been the vast majority of the world, evil humanoid races and monsters were suddenly not as outnumbered as before and ran rampant. The goal of the campaign was two-fold, stop the darkness so the world had light again and discover what happened to most of the humans and try to restore them to the world.

It lasted about 18 months, running from levels 1 - 15 in AD&D 1E. Lots of fun (of course, it was college as well LOL). When I moved on to grad school, I tried running it with another group and they eventually gave up (it was, in many ways, a very depressing world under those conditions and I REALLY played up that aspect!).

I've thought of converting it to 5E and maybe publishing it, but with Frostmaiden being released, the "world of no sun" seemed ill-timed and already done.

 

[Zsong]

I ran a game where the dwarves and gnomes started exploring the surface world after a nuclear Holocaust on earth. Humanity was destroyed. There was a nuclear winter. Dwarves and gnomes were resistant to radiation damage (note ad&d where gnomes and dwarves has resistance to poison and magic). Humanity had been gone for decades. We had fun exploring ruins of cities that weren’t directly hit with a nuclear warhead. Washington DC was completely barren. Nothing left on the surface. But they explore the underground complex of the pentagon. There were know human survivors whatsoever. Those that weren’t hit with a nuclear weapon died of starvation. I’m sure some preppers would disagree with me on this. The fairies from otherworld were starting to migrate back to earth also. Lots of fun.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I played a setting where the drow had conquered the surface. There were humans but they were enslaved, along with the other races. Drow were the main race.

I've run a game that was entirely centered around humans. Other races only existed in the feywild. It was kind of an Irish-myth game.

I also ran another game where everyone was human except for Orc horseman that lived in the plains. But orcs were, essentially, cursed humans. Their culture was a human one while their physical features were orcish. There was a way for the PCs to help them remove the curse. In which case, the whole setting would be human.

 

[tetrasodium]

In most Fantasy setting, humans take center stage. They are usually the most culturally diverse, have the largest number of distinct nations, and are typically depicted as having high populations.

But what about campaigns you have constructed where that is not the case?

I'd love to hear about settings where humans are there, but are not the majority (50%+) of the civilizations in your setting. Or games where there is a human mono culture, with other species, such as Elves, Orc or even say Mind Flayers make up the other major cultures in the setting on equal or even greater footing.

I ran a couple campaigns set in droaam, aside from some cyran refugees setup around an orcish village on thewestern border the population is almost entirely montrous races. You can read about droaam in some of the recent eberron books (exoloring eberron, rising from the last war, etc). but here is a map of the major regions of droaam

Pretty much every monstrous race is different in eberron than in FR but thise regions aren't fr style monocultures so much as the dominant race & local feudal/warlord put in charge of that territory by the DoSK who rule droaam itself. Queen of stone is a novel set largely in droaam that is notable because it dives pretty deep into a few areas of how a society of monsters functions and how "people" who happen to be monsters are not human making for some great help.

 

[Voadam]

I ran a Wildwood Oathbound setting Play By Post game here. I had the home base be a village of Dovers (think noble German Shepard dog men), with communities of elves and goblins nearby, and rumors of nomadic gnolls as episodic threats.

The fantastic (originally 3.0, now Pathfinder 1e) setting is like Ravenloft in that it explicitly draws in stuff from other worlds as part of the setup so you have a great thematic in-world appropriate reason to have the D&D multispecies cantina and plethora of monster types encountered. In my game the only humans were PCs, and I allowed a lot of options for PCs to go wild with races.

It was a lot of fun and I was very happy with how the different species elements worked out.

 

[Eltab]

Putting together a Viking-themed campaign where the province of men clings around the shore of a fjord, Yetis dominate the mountain slopes and peaks, and Frost Giants rule the seas. There used to be a dragonborn empire of magical power (Netheril / Atlantis). The PCs' epic task is to destroy the magic artifact that the "mad mage™" frost giant wants to use to cast Fimbulwinter and trigger an ice age.

 

[J-H]

The campaign I'm starting this Saturday has no humans aside from 1-2 in the party, who are coming over from another continent.
If you're in a RL group in Texas that just defeated Dracula, don't read this.

Dominant races on the continent:
Scorpionfolk in nomadic tribes, with necromancy as their preferred form of magic.
Aztec-ish Aaracokra, worshipping a version of the Aztec pantheon. These are the bad guys. They have nearly no metal (would you be a blacksmith if you were covered in feathers?) but have flying ships and military dominance.
Tribal Aaracokra, a remnant of those who didn't accept the new gods.
Yuan-Ti, living in hiding in the jungles as spies and saboteurs. The big cities the Aztec-ish Aa are living in used to be theirs, but their god was overthrown and destroyed. They have a demographic problem, as only 10% of their live births have been male since their deity was killed.
Giants and goliaths, up in the mountains. Strong enough to mostly ignore the bad guys, cautious enough to not go to war.
Fey, including Satyrs (playable).
Tritons, mostly off-map, but some serve as Warlocks and servants for an on-map elder Aboleth who controls some territory.
Tortles, who live along the beach and survive mostly because they can swim away from aerial attacks.
A single tribe of primitive halflings that the party probably won't ever even find.

There are a few drow who made their way up from the underdark, but less than 2 dozen total in a ~8,000 square mile area.
Any new PCs will have to pick from whatever species the party has encountered. Scorpionfolk are Large and not a playable race.

So no humans, nearly no elves, no half-elves, and no dwarves, tieflings, Aasimar, or dragonborn.

 

[SehanineMoonbow]

Not D&D, but my queerplatonic partner and I have been telling stories (it's like the roleplaying part of D&D, in some ways) for years, and while we definitely have humans and some characters, the majority of our characters are not human, or at least not fully. Elves, dragons, and made-up races.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Mouse Guard! So, not D&D. Super fun couple of short campaigns though, and who doesn't like cute little mouse knights? Mean people, that's who! Of course, one of the central aspects of the game is how the mice are acting against their mouse nature because they are acting the way a human would, so, humans in funny hats that are fighting their anthropomorphic circumstances.