Human Dominance

[shilsen]

Because D&D was not written by otherkin.

Yup. If Keith Baker was a gnome, the setting would be Ebbergnome and Sharn would be built on a twenty feet tall towers.

 

[Turjan]

I think the metagaming reason for human dominance is the most important one in the formula. Many people just like to play humans, because it makes them feel the most comfortable. Sure, a game in the Empire of Flumphs up there in the skys might be interesting, but this is something different from the standard fantasy game.

IMC, I tried to circumvent this problem by making the question of dominance region-specific. The main landmass where the campaign takes place is divided into three roughly equally sized areas, where humans, elves (a mixture of the traditional "demihuman" races) and orcs (a mixture of traditional "monstrous demihumans") are dominant, each with lots of different cultures and with a few mixed areas, where it differs who is in charge. If players like a humanocentric game, they start in one of the human countries (or as serfs somewhere else ), if they go for something different, they start in an elven or orcish country. There are some other races, but I don't want to go into details .

 

[Torm]

It occurs to me that the reason humans may be dominant in most campaign settings is that, in the end, we WERE. In the real world that is. I mean, science tells us those things never existed in the first place, but if we tie science up and gag it and stick it in the corner for a minute, and just look at the legends and then at the world the way it is now, "obviously" all the elves and fae and trolls and so forth died out or went elsewhere. They declined, and we expanded.

It would be interesting (although admittedly not likely) if the reason popular fiction (including gaming) is coming back around to the idea of equality and/or co-dominance for those other races is because our computer and genetic sciences are on the verge of allowing those other races to be REAL (again? ). The near future may include entire virtual worlds with inhabitants deserving of the same rights as you and I, because their complexity and behavior is indistinguishable aside from their virtual nature. Since these people would be less limited by biology, we may see Klingon and Drow communities spring up, and more. And it may not be long before genetics allows people to choose their children's eventual height, eye, skin, and hair color - maybe even to the extent of custom features not previously seen in nature, but seen in the mythical races.

 

[Tonguez]

It occurs to me that the reason humans may be dominant in most campaign settings is that, in the end, we WERE. In the real world that is. I mean, science tells us those things never existed in the first place,.

Well actually Science tells us that at one point WE shared the earth with Neanderthal Orcs (and now Flores Dwarfs) so your theory may well be right - WE (homo sapiens sapiens) did become dominant and those other races did fade into extinction (to live on only in the stories grandparents told to children for 100 generations. The big question is why?

I know some theory's suggest that the whole 'adaptibility' issue is what cinced it for us. Flores were an isolated population who probably never had a big impact on the world. Neanderthals were too specifically 'Ice Age' and thus unable to adapt with climate change. Humans on the other hand were creative and adaptible with a definite survival tendency - we really did have an extra Feat which made us more versatile than other races

 

[RFisher]

The most important reason to me is the out-of-game reason. There is a limit on how different the game world can be from the real world for me to still enjoy it. There's a limit on how much time I want to spend orienting a new player to the game world.

So, e.g., I tend to make the game world calendar very close to the real world one--or at least provide a "mapping" so that I can use real world terms until the players become for familiar with the world.

In most games I play, non-human characters are one of the many bits that is kept the same (or mostly the same) in order to build interest with changing other bits.

Although, I've known at least one gamer for whom playing a non-human character was on of the most important things. He was very unhappy if I ever tried to run a no-demihumans/no-aliens game. As much as I tend to prefer humanocentric games, I think a no-humans game could be fun too.

Playing a game in which the game world is very alien would be a lot of fun. But (1) Gaming is just a hobby for me & (2) A whole group would have to commit to it & find consensus on the world to choose. Even running a Lord of the Rings game has left at least one person in the group feeling a bit left out because they didn't know the milieu as well as eveyone else.

In game, I don't give much thought to the rationalization. Perhaps humans aren't dominant, it's just that the PCs are human. (I've got some notes on such a world.) Perhaps it's some stock elder-races-dying-out or humans-infinitely-adaptable rationale. Perhaps it's just up to each character who cares to ponder such issues to develop his own theory through observation of the game world.

 

[Nisarg]

I think the metagaming reason for human dominance is the most important one in the formula. Many people just like to play humans, because it makes them feel the most comfortable. Sure, a game in the Empire of Flumphs up there in the skys might be interesting, but this is something different from the standard fantasy game.

On a side note to this, any RPG that has tried to focus on this kind of deeply alien perspective, ie. Jorune, has ended up being a relative failure (though some of these games, again like Jorune, end up getting a tiny but truly fanatically loyal fanbase of people who love the fundamental otherness of it).

Nisarg

 

[fusangite]

I think fusangite's right; it's a latent Tolkienism, which in turn is an old idea expressed as "the Celtic Twilight." A sad, melancholic fatalism. Personally, I have little use for the idea in my campaigns as a prevalent theme. In fact, my current campaign has no "demihuman" races at all. And I've been tempted to run a campaign that has no humans for a change of pace from that.

This has been very much my solution too. I don't get much out of demihumans again due to the Tolkien connection. Tolkien was very much a man of his times and married the Celtic Twilight with modernist (1840-1940) ideas of race in quite a problematic way. I find that when demihumans are included, culture becomes essentialist and that's a big ugly problem.

While there is some prehistoric past in which there were human-like non-humans walking around, I'm not sure what we can do with that piece of information when it comes to dealing with race relations in D&D. As natural selection is likely not operative in D&D, it seems like a bit of a dead end.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, yeah, Tolkien adapted Yeats' "Celtic Twilight" ideas into a kind of "Anglo-Saxon Twilight" as well, making it a bit of a unique beast. Either way, it's a bit overdone in fantasy literature, I think. Tolkien was simultaneously the first and last word on Twilight and fantasy combining, in my opinion. Nobody else has done it convincingly without coming across as a simply ripping off Tolkien's themes.

Since D&D rather unabashedly rips off Tolkien, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but as I said, I have no interest in exploring it personally.

While there is some prehistoric past in which there were human-like non-humans walking around, I'm not sure what we can do with that piece of information when it comes to dealing with race relations in D&D. As natural selection is likely not operative in D&D, it seems like a bit of a dead end.

I've also thought it'd be fun to replace the fantasy races with more historical-like races -- Neanderthals, for instance, or some other late varieties of Homo erectus populations. But as you say, while the idea intriques me, where do you really go with that? I haven't the foggiest idea. So the idea languishes unused and unusable.

 

[Gez]

IMC, they aren't really dominant. They have two average-sized countries they control, but the two superpowers are the Dwarven Confederation (economy) and the Elven Empire (military). Humans , along with halflings are even treated like slaves in the Empire, and crossbow-fodder (cannons are not something you should expect to see) in its armies.

And in the shadows, outside of the notice of the other races, there is a third superpower, but one that play no parts in political games. The Gnomes, masters of all cosmological secrets, are a metaphysical superpower in their own right.

Humans are, in fact, barely above the Kazten orcs and the Freeports Goblinkins in the hierarchy of racial power. They can find solace in the fact that Halflings and Kobolds are still lower than them.

 

[Afrodyte]

I love this thread.

I am deeply enamored with "alien" peoples, but I can do without the "we're fading away" nonsense. In fact, I like the idea of magic and its associated creatures making a comeback, with humans being the ones who have to demonstrate what that human spirit thing is all about or face the very real possibility of enslavement and/or extinction.

I think too many settings strive for a bland kind of balance when imbalance may be more interesting. I am rather tbored with [insert non-human race here] being relegated to the margins because they don't breed fast enough, lack the drive, don't have a talent for large-scale organization, or any combination of the three. That might be why I like The Silmarillion more than LotR. An interesting scenario I would consider playing with is having the Noldor somehow win the war with Morgoth. I doubt that they would be content with staying in Beleriand, especially considering that they left a place which was, for all intents and purposes, paradise.