D&D General Has anyone tried removing humans from the game?

[Greenstone.Walker]

While reading threads on removing ability score bonuses, or adding penalties, all in the goal of making other species on par with humans, I wondered, could we just remove humans?

What would be the effect of running the PHB as is, leaving in the ability score bonuses for other species, except for deleting the entire human section (and possibly the half-elf and half-orc sections, but that might be another discussion)?

Has anyne tried this?

 

[X13Phantom]

We had a gamemaster ban humans, the result everybody chose different races. Just let everyone know before characters are thought about what are the options and as long as everyone is reasonable it will work. D&D is very resilient.

 

[ccs]

Does inadvertently count?

About a year & a half ago I was in a 5e game where there were no humans being played. The party consisted of:
a High Elf Rogue,
a Shadir-Kai Elf Cleric,
a 1/2elf Sorcerer/Warlock (High elf/dark skinned human with dark skin & white hair - really, he wasn't a Drow. Or so he claimed....) - he got replaced with a 1/2orc Fighter part way through.
a High Elf Ranger
a 1/2elf (High?) Wizard
and my own Halfling Barbarian
very briefly we also had a Dragonborn Fighter 2/3 through.

The DM shrugged and switched all Human NPCs & Human references in the modules to Elf. Any Elf NPCs he swapped to Human.
So it was an Elven party + 1 Halfling adventuring through an Elven version of The Desert of Desolation.

Racial stats were NOT a factor for picking 6/7 of these characters races.
The 1/2 Elf Sorc/Warlock & the 1/2ling Barbarian were previously existing characters of the correct levels.
The Cleric I'm sure was picked for mechanics.
The Dragonborn was rolled randomly for its race.
The 1/2orc was because that's the extra mini the player had on hand when he suddenly needed a replacement PC.
The Ranger? The player 99% always plays Elves. It's not a stat thing, just an Elf fetish I think. The only real question is ever class.
The Wizard? I don't know, but judging the player, I doubt any great understanding of mechanics was involved.....

Game worked just fine.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I like the idea of either removing all other races or removing humans. Personally, I don't think humans mix well with other races. By including humans, other races become humans with silly faces. By removing humans, culture becomes an extended phenotype of a species (dwarves carve our mines the same way beavers make dams), which is a wonderfully provoking proposition.

 

[reelo]

The game "Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea" (which is based on 1E) has it the other way around: you can pretty much only play humans from different cultures (Vikings, Celts, Kimmerians, Picts, Amazons, Esquimaux, etc) and there's no "demi-human" races. (Well, there are the Atlanteans and the native Hyperboreans, but they're supposed to be rare). Makes for a great game.

 

[Shiroiken]

I played in a 3E campaign where the DM's world had humans killed off and replaced by orcs. In addition, the drow won the kinslayer wars, replacing the other elves. It was definitely an interesting setting!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

While reading threads on removing ability score bonuses, or adding penalties, all in the goal of making other species on par with humans, I wondered, could we just remove humans?

What would be the effect of running the PHB as is, leaving in the ability score bonuses for other species, except for deleting the entire human section (and possibly the half-elf and half-orc sections, but that might be another discussion)?

Has anyne tried this?

I mean, nothing in the game relies on humans being there. The setting I’m kicking around for when my Eberron game is over has no humans, and I’ve run campaigns where human wasn’t an option. Doesn’t really change the game at all, IME.

 

[jgsugden]

I ran a campaign in the 80s in a world without humans. It was pretty much a moot point in that game and had little impact on anything. The players hardly noticed the difference.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Occasionally I try to convince my party that, due to human's ability to successfully have offspring with other sentient races, there aren't any "human" humans anymore, but all humans have a little bit of some other race/type of creature in them (usually a lot of little bits, but only one manifests at a time), so tieflings, aasimar, half-elves half-orcs, and genasi make up humans. Sometimes it works for a while....

As for humans and stat boosts, I hope if they make a 5.5 or 6e, that races get advantages of saves and checks instead of stat boosts. So the half-orc really doesn't hit any harder, but he/she is better at carrying stuff.....

 

[DND_Reborn]

In a campaign I ran, all humans disappeared from the world, and the end-game was to defeat the power that banished humans and restore them.

Otherwise, as a general course, I think it would be horrible. Just as bad as removing any other race from the PHB for pretty much any reason IMO.