Human only campaigns - good? bad? tips? ideas?

[kenjib]

I have a couple of questions regarding a campaign world with only humans as a player race.

1. Would this bother you as a player to not be able to play <insert favorite race here>?
2. Would it bother you to have very few humanoid enemies as well? I'm thinking possibly a race of intelligent apes or degenerated humans deep in the jungle and the rare and strange sentient magical/exotic creature, but that's about it. I'm going for a more Robert Howard rather than Tolkien motif in the feel of the world, so goblins, orcs, and the like just don't fit in. So yes to things like nagas, rakshasas, cloakers, ghosts, and demons but no to things like trolls, gnolls, giants, and bugbears.
3. What do you think of assigning different racial traits to different cultures? This would still give the player some choice to fill the gap left by not being able to play elves, dwarves, etc. I would tie it to where you were raised, not your genetic background. So, for example, people raised among hardy hunter & gatherers might have a con bonus and wilderness lore as a bonus class skill instead of the standard human bonuses. The standard human bonuses would probably reflect the more cosmopolitan cultures. However, if you were ethnically of the hardy hunter/gatherer genetic stock, but were born and raised among a cosmopolitan culture, you would get the standard human bonuses, not the con/wilderness ones. This is just a rough example - not trying to be mechanically balanced at the moment.

 

[DwarvenBrew]

Ask your players

Only your players can really answer that question. If they don't warm up to it but you really want to do it anyway, I would suggest asking someone else to DM another campaign setting at the same time. Chances are most players would agree to trying yours out then.

 

[Andor]

Cultures

Stupid system ate my reply....

Anyway, The more detail you supply to your human cultures the less your players will miss the various races. Provide lots of details of how the culture work. Religeon, Foods, Modes of Dress, Politics, relations with other cultures, relations between the sexes. It doesn't have to be all crunchy game stuff, though you shouldn't forget that.

And remember that differences between cultures can be more than just a change to racial abilities. For example if one of your cultures is a Venice like city-state where local conditions and heat make armour impractical perhaps the fighter class is rule 0ed to lose the medium and heavy armour proficiency, but instead gains 4 skill points per level and gets sense motive and bluff as class skills. Perhaps a viking-ish culture has no arcane spell casters besides bards.

Also at the risk of being politically incorrect you can differentiate different human ethnic groups. Perhaps a group of pygmies can spend a first level feat to be small sized. Maybe the viking-ish guys can spend one to be Large sized.

-Andor

 

[Romotre]

I like the idea of cultures and i also like the idea of pygmies being small, but no humans should get to be large. its just too much of an advantage and not realistic. In this world favored enemy(human) would be much better too. As a player, i wouldn't personally mind, as humans have the most variety so you can still have infinite room to come up with characters. if there's a good reason to not have other races, i'd be content (i've done it before). i'd be careful before you start messing with the classes and subraces though. you could potentially unbalanced things. dwarves have +2 con but they are extremely different from humans, at the most basic level. the most game stats i'd change with the culture is skills. oh and about changing the fighter class like andor suggested, i don't think that;s a good idea. if i asked a dm for 4 skills/lvl because my character didn't wear armor, he'd throw d4's at me until i bled. if a person grows up in a area without armor for whatever reason, they will make up for it in other ways. they might have high dex or con to help them survive, like the barbarbians (the hordes not the class). picking and choosing the abilities you want from a class isn't what taking a class is about. sorry this is a rant oh well

 

[Vhane]

I would love this campaign. Personally I'm sick unto death with the stupid non human races. If you use a good point buy (32) you have absolutely no need of "cultural races". I dont see the attraction in playing elves and dwarves in the first place, the last time I wanted to play non humans was in Skills and Powers, at least you could alter the flavor of the non human PC races. As far as what you fight or over come as a player, its fine in my book to have little to no opponents not from the real world.

Before I diverge into rant land, great idea, as a player I'd kill for a GM to go this route with his game.

 

[LostSoul]

I've run human only campaigns, and my players seemed fine with it. The tension really increases when a monster is encountered.

One thing you might want to consider instead of "cultural modifiers" is a "personal modifier". You could create a set of modifiers for each character individually instead of giving them a generic set of modifiers. This could lead to more player interest in thier characters, and you can drop some secrets into the game as well. ("Why does my human character only need 4 hours of sleep a night?")

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

I used to run a game of Mealstrom for a while, anyone heard of that?
It was a book published by Penguin, just normal reading book size, adn was played in victorian england, really was quite fun.
Lots of detail but had to be handled right, the players were really quite normal.. laborours etc, nice detailed section on herbs and very "realistic"

 

[Black Omega]

This is really up to your group. But I see no reason why it can't work. I'm running a Rokugan game now where humans are the norm and other races very rare. No changes in stats or skills for different 'races' of human. The majority of players took human and didn't have any problems with this.

 

[kenjib]

Thanks for all of the great and interesting suggestions/feedback so far. I need to digest them all a bit. Keep them coming!

I've run human only campaigns, and my players seemed fine with it. The tension really increases when a monster is encountered.

Hehe, that sounds like just what I want. If they've got some ancient horror unleashed from the bowels of the earth on their tail they'd better start sweating!

One thing you might want to consider instead of "cultural modifiers" is a "personal modifier". You could create a set of modifiers for each character individually instead of giving them a generic set of modifiers. This could lead to more player interest in thier characters, and you can drop some secrets into the game as well. ("Why does my human character only need 4 hours of sleep a night?")

That's an interesting idea and I had thought about something like this earlier. In a thread on the Kalamar board I wrote up this feat for similar purposes:

Past History
Prerequisites: Must be taken during character creation
Benefit: Chose one non-exclusive skill. This skill becomes a class skill for you for all classes. The skill chosen must be justified by your character's personal history and is subject to the approval of your DM. This feat can not be taken more than once.

Do you think that most players would take this or do I need to beef it up a little? It's a little weaker than cosmopolitan, but I think cosmopolitan is a wee bit excessive. I imagine you have something more extensive in mind though. Any suggestions on how I could handle it?

 

[der_kluge]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Indifferent

Basically, I don't have a problem with playing humans (just made a female human bard that I'll be starting on Friday), but I don't like DMs telling me that I *can't* play a Halfling Druid, for example, just because they don't like Halflings. Eh?