How important are humans in a campaign world?

[Dragongirl]

Please vote.

 

[Crothian]

Good Question!!

I think they are needed at least in some degree because they are the easiest race for us (being Human) to relate to. However, I would be very curious to see what a none human world looks like, since humans are usually the dominate race and the race that has the most to do with all the others.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

depends...


hope things are well for you, DG

 

[Nifft]

I like humans. They're a decent baseline of "acceptable behaviour", and they're an opponent whose ability is never known in advance.

-- Nifft

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

For d20, I guess humans are convenient as a "base" race, having no modifiers, and thus the basis for comparisons.

IMC, 3 of the four major continents are not dominated by humans, although their presence is increasing in each. On one of the continents, a goblinoid race ( big suprise huh? ) is the culturally dominant humanoid race. Detailing the societal structure has been challenging, radically altering stereo typical goblinoid roles.

Obviously, it's much more difficult to use store bought material for detailing/adventuring in the non-human lands. That's no big deal, but because of my different approach, it has often caused me to reflect on why most fantasy worlds are so human centric. In fact -Most published campaigns/sourcebooks/adventures are really NO different from each other - by design. It's easier to integrate, and share between settings.

I really enjoy the diversity that D&D ( and especially now with d20 ) allows. I first became fan of the Planescape setting, because it allowed me to get out of the Human/Elf/Half-Elf/Dwarf/Halfling/Gnome ( & usually in that order ) box.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

For Urbis, I have decided that humans are the dominant species - Urbis is all about really big cities, after all, and it's the humans that have the biggest tendency to build them.

That doesn't mean that the other PC races get the shaft - there are several dwarven and elven kingdoms each, the hobgoblins have a thriving realm. And the halflings have a peaceful mountain realm that might remind some observers of Switzerland...

 

[jdavis]

humans are the norms. If I was to do a world without humans I would have to set up anoter race as the norm, and adjust the other races from there. Humans are just easy to work with. A elven dominated world for instance would be very different in the way time was viewed. Elves don't breed as fast as humans do and they live a heck of a lot longer. The cities would be compleatly different, the general pace of the population would be different, and the way life in general was treated would be compleatly different. And that's just a start, it would be interesting.

 

[Tonguez]

It could be said that Barsoom (of John Caroenter of Mars fame -not Barsoomcore fame) is NOT a human-dominated world.

So it could be done but I think we as humans tend to think of ourselves as the standard and that is much easier for our fragile minds to contend with

 

[AlphaOmega]

Well according to the voting results, I'm in the minority...

In the two campaign worlds I've fleshed out over time, neither of them uses humans in a dominate role. One in fact, has zero humans although the "base creature" is very ape-like. So make what you will of that.

For me -- after awhile I, too, got tired of the traditional standard fantasy races and decided to mix it up. I don't see how a campaign world MUST have humans. It's a fantasy game -- why not change expectations. Limitations like MUST and ALWAYS seem out of place.

 

[LrdApoc]

I guess a counter subject would be...

What about a world with no demi-humans (to use an archaic term). How many people would run a game world where there are no Elves, Dwarves or other races in power??

Yes this could be taken to an extreme, but I think you could adapt 'race' to mean different human types, much as we do in society..

so 'Human' would not be a norm, since different 'races' of man have different adaptions for their environments.

Just a thought..