Human-only campaign

[Ed_Laprade]

People like humans, and with good reason.

I don't. They're greedy, nasty, back stabbing... Um, wait, I'm one too. Drat!

 

[Reynard]

I *should* have made my current Pathfinder campaign human only, since it is essentially built as a fantasy post-Roman Britain. I fell into the trap of using different races as different cultures, which gets more problematic as I introduce more of them. For example, my hobgoblin Saxon invaders are cool and all, but how do I go from there to an integrated culture a couple hundred years hence?

 

[Festivus]

What I did for Hommlet 4E was I let the players take whatever race they wanted and then I reskinned them to humans. So if you were a goliath, you are big and tall. If you were a bugbear, you were a hairy person. Seemed to work out just fine.

 

[Pseudonym]

Has anyone experimented with this sort of a campaign? Did you/your players feel overly constrained by the lack of choices for the PC races?

I wouldn't say I felt constrained. It was presented as humans only and I had a choice of either playing in that game or not. I guess it comes down to if you view a game as 'D&D' or 'a fantasy game using the D&D rules'.

 

[Wepwawet]

... Bladelings? Thri-keen? Shardminds? Warforged? Even Eladrin with a racial fey step are pushing it.

In my view Eladrin are humans from a mystical culture where they learn how to fey step through other planes. In a human centric campaign warforged and constructs seem pretty reasonable. Bladelings could be like those inhuman humans from firefly... The others one yeah, are pretty weird to descrieb as humans.

Anyway, I love to have all this races available to play, lots of different powers and looks, but I wouldn't mind playing an all-human game.
It would feel a bit like 3.5 again (everyone played a human, remember? )

 

[Nifft]

My ideal setting would probably be "humans and their mistakes".

You'd be able to play:

• Humans - surprise!
• Warforged - created by humans, fueled by a mixture of inbuilt purpose and existential angst. Or perhaps fueled by rum.
• Tieflings - humans who made a pact with Dark Forces (tm), or humans who were cursed through no fault of their own. Assumed guilty until proven harmless (i.e. until dead).
• Changelings - half-elves, half-dryads, half-fey whatever, or a human who was somehow influenced / cursed / preyed upon by fey forces. Specifics vary. Not as obvious as Tieflings, but just as distrusted if anyone finds out.
• Mojh - humans who have attained technical immortality by turning themselves into dragon-like things (stolen directly from Arcana Evolved). They become sterile, but they also stop aging. They can occasionally "bud off" kobolds, who are able to breed with the kobolds produced by another Mojh. Every Mojh is a Mojh by choice, and they're easily recognized by their green scaly skin, so most Mojh don't do the transformation thing until they feel they're powerful enough to defend themselves from massed pitchforks & torches.
• Kobold - weak servitor race created by Mojh. You can play one, but you'll suck.

The big movers & shakers of the world would, of course, be Dragons, Fey, and Fiends (demons & devils). There might be gods, but they'd be the Eberron kind: non-interventionists one and all.

- - -

The new Dresden Files RPG has a really neat take on half-fey Changelings: they start out as funky-looking humans with cool powers, but they eventually have to choose between going full mortal or going full Fey (and if you choose Fey, you become an NPC).

I could totally see adapting that kind of mechanic to Tieflings, too: allowing a path to more fiendish powers, but if you go too far you become a full-on Cambion (and an NPC).

Mojh could have Half-Dragon as the end of their NPC road.

Warforged becoming NPCs ... uh, take the Exalted Alchemical route and turn the PC into an automated municipality? I dunno. That's kind of silly.

Cheers, -- N