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How important are humans in a campaign world?

How important are humans in a campaign world?

  • A Must - I won't use a world with no humans.

    Votes: 60 42.6%
  • Very - I doubt I would use it.

    Votes: 19 13.5%
  • Dunno - Depends entirely on the world.

    Votes: 44 31.2%
  • Some - I would rather have humans as an option.

    Votes: 10 7.1%
  • None - Who needs humans?

    Votes: 2 1.4%
  • Other, please explain below.

    Votes: 6 4.3%

It really depends on the world. As I see it human beings exist in most worlds for two reasons: a) convenience, i.e. to have a baseline everybody can identify with, b) tradition, as many Fantasy worlds are based on real-world mythology.

If you believe that your setting would be better off without humans, go ahead and assume they never existed in the first place.
 

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For starting players I think it's important to have human available as a playable race. But for more experienced players, a little tampering can be a great change of pace. :)

All depends on the campaign/group, IMO. But it can work.
 

I think most campaign settings need humans to give that feeling of verisimilitude (appearance of truth). Yes, it's fantasy and drastic differences can be cool, but if you take humans out of the mix, I think it's distracting.

I've played a lot of Planescape, where it has all sorts of creatures walking and talking just like PC races. Heck, I even imported a few cool ones from other settings, like the Obsidimen and T'Skrang from Earthdawn. Very different. But humans were always numerous to provide a background that players can associate with. IMHO, you can only go so far with breaking norms and conventions before you really start confusing players.

Speaking of Earthdawn, one thing I did appreciate that broke the norm was the kingdom of Throal. Most characters begin in Throal, which is a monarchy led by dwarves. Very cool setting material.
 

Depends on the world. Most are humanocentric for simplicity reason. For example, in Star Wars, humans clearly dominate (they are more frequent, and more spread-out, than all other species); just because it's easier to have human actors playing humans. It's also easier, for players, actors, writers, readers, etc. to empathize with humans, whose reactions and emotions we can guess and understand.

And it's easier to imagine humans -- or at least humanoids -- than totally alien creatures. Look at ET, or Alien, or Predator, or the Grey, or most other hollywood extraterrestrial: they have two legs, one torso, two arms, one head, and the face is usually human-like also, with a similar mouth, nose, eye and ear configuration.

Totally alien aliens are usually considered cheesy and unbelievable.

Even when this kind of simplicity is not needed (for example, in a RPG world), we have a bias of putting humans into a dominant position. Simply because we are humans, and we are proud and vanitous. Uncounsciously, we would not want to put us in a position of inferiority. Or, if we do, the rulers would be tyrannical and one of the objective of the story would be to overthrow the tyrants and free the human race. See Tshai, by Jack Vance, for an example of what I mean.

In my D&D campaign world, there is a dictatorial regime of "melnibonelves" (not really like melniboneans) ruling over humans and halflings. But humans also have two small independant countries; and the player may discover there that free humans are not necessarily any nicer... (Well, one player sumed-up my world by saying "it's the world where good guys are evil and bad guys are evil too -- save that one kobold tribe we found").
 

I echo the sentiment that Humans are needed, at least to some degree. In my homegrown, the campaign focuses on humans and their problems, but the humans are actually a small minority in the grand scheme of things. Of course the PCs don't know that yet. :)
 

In that sense, humans are not needed -- but humanocentric thinking is. After all, it is pretty darned tough for a player to get into the mind of a creature that does not share (at least) some of the emotional basis of humanity.

I have ran games in (for example) worlds where humans were a long-lost dream of a species, often talked about, but never encountered. I have ran games where there were nothing but humans involved. I have ran games where humanity was not even a factor.

It all depends upon what you are going for. In that sense -- they are (as I stated earlier) no more or less important than any other race in a fantasy setting.
 


I voted :"Very..."

By default I run games with the majority of players playing humans. I once ran a one-time session where everyone played either a dwarf or an elf (there were 2 each). It was a tie-in scenerio to the plot of a big 2E homebrew I had going then. My players had a really good time with their "temp" PC's. They raided a troglodyte temple to retrieve a stolen minor artifact--no torches needed they all had 2E's infravision! I had fun too...

Now with 3E, more is possible: like a short scenerio where everyone plays a goblinoid! (Gotta give our monsters a turn to "play", heh, heh, heh...)

-W.
 

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