D&D General Humanoids...and world demographics

[cbwjm]

I can't do an actual demographic breakdown because I don't work with real numbers. Races that are dominant are:
Human (original humanoid race)
Genasi
Dragonborn
Giants and Giant-kin
Elves
Dwarves
Beastmen (orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, gnolls)

Secondary races are
Gnomes
Halflings
Tiefling*

Tertiary races might be anything that's left.

Basically if a race is dominant, they'll have control of a significant amout of space in the world, forming nations or city states or roaming over a large area. Secondary races might have some small locations they control or exist withing a large polity.

*tieflings are in charge of a nation, but they themselves are a minority group and have little influence outside their nation.

 

[Chaltab]

*tieflings are in charge of a nation, but they themselves are a minority group and have little influence outside their nation.

The yuan-ti fill that role for me. They make up 2% of the population but they're the ruling class of one of the Ten Nations.

 

[ezo]

I used to have an Excel spreadsheet for this in AD&D, and I know it was 167 million then. For 5E, I updated it to the PHB races. For the most part:

Humans - 55%
Dwarves - 15%
Halflings - 12%
Elves - 8%
Gnome - 5%
Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Dragonborn, Tiefling - 5% combined

As far as goblinoids, orcs, and other humanoids, there are probably 45-50 million altogether, but the vast majority of them are probably less than 1 million for a race, like firbolg, aarakocra, tabaxi, etc.

Techwise, I play my campaigns in a 1000-1300 AD level.

EDIT: I'll add that most cities and populated regions tend to be very homogeneous. A typical city, the most diversified, will be 80-90% one race, while towns are closer to 90-95% and villages nearly 100%. You will not find a "mixing pot" with dozens of different races living together. Creatures outside of the main group are most often in a place because they are travelling, merchants, refugees, etc. You can have individuals outside the main group, but they are often unique and many people in the area might know of them simply because they are not part of the main race. "Oh, you're looking for a red dragonborn? That must be Arhdak, he works in the general store over on Mill Street. Just ask around, most people know about him."

 

[sevenbastard]

For my homebrew world I don't use all the humanoids. I have Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Humans, Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, Trolls, and Giants as intelligent bipedal species.

With 2014 I would reskin stat blocks to represent diffrent types of orcs. Mountain orcs used the standard orc, the forest orcs used gnoll stat block, the western orcs were hobgoblins, ect.

In order by most population to least population

Goblin
Orc
Human
Dwarf
Halfling
Ogre
Elf
Troll
Giant

 

[the Jester]

Impossible to say.

My setting takes place on the inside surface of an enormous air bubble in an (maybe endless?) ocean. The bubble is about a million miles in diameter. Many continents and islands float on the surface. This leaves me a ton of room to flesh out areas as I decide I need or want to.

Which means that most of the world is unexplored in game and in my notes, and intentionally so; I have lots of room to expand or create areas to explore different themes.

Now, I can speak to the explored core of the campaign area, where most of my games have been set over the years... but that's not an easy one to answer either, due to in game events. Not so long ago- somewhere around two years in game time- there was a massive Chaos apocalypse that came perilously close to wiping out all life. Slaad tadpoles rained from the sky for days, and transformed into full grown slaadi only minutes after hitting the ground. This was worldwide. At the end, when the pcs managed to defeat Ygorl and end the apocalypse, the slaadi transformed into other creatures fairly randomly- so while some became humanoids, others turned into trees, fish, animals, and monsters.

The end result is that the population swelled again, but many of the creatures posed threats to one another or couldn't survive in the environments they found themselves in.

So at a guess, I'd say the current humanoid population of the core area- a roughly 10,560 x 4,080 mile area- numbers in the high hundreds of millions, split between many different types (including a bunch of old edition types that aren't in official 5e sources and homebrewed creatures). But it's just a guess and isn't firmly established.

 

[Krachek]

Actually I prefer to think into concrete facts.

There is 20 inns in this town.
In this harbor a cargo ship arrive and start almost every day.
This kingdom sustain a professional army of 10 thousands soldiers.
We see elven travelers here once or twice a year.

Describing by numbers don’t help me much now.

 

[TiQuinn]

Actually I prefer to think into concrete facts.

There is 20 inns in this town.
In this harbor a cargo ship arrive and start almost every day.
This kingdom sustain a professional army of 10 thousands soldiers.
We see elven travelers here once or twice a year.

Describing by numbers don’t help me much now.

I’m too visual of a person to cast things like this into numbers. Like, I’m going to watch the Super Bowl later, and the stadium will be packed with something like 70,000 people or so and if I look at that I think, okay that’s about how many people I think are enough for a big fantasy city. It’s the visual of that many people that sticks with me. It’s the same thing with quantifying distances. Telling me it’s a 30 foot deep crevasse means little to me. Telling me it’s about the height of a 3 story building, I have the visual reference now.

 

[ezo]

I’m too visual of a person to cast things like this into numbers. Like, I’m going to watch the Super Bowl later, and the stadium will be packed with something like 70,000 people or so and if I look at that I think, okay that’s about how many people I think are enough for a big fantasy city. It’s the visual of that many people that sticks with me. It’s the same thing with quantifying distances. Telling me it’s a 30 foot deep crevasse means little to me. Telling me it’s about the height of a 3 story building, I have the visual reference now.

When I think of things like this I think of the Colusseum in ancient Rome. IIRC it held about 50000 people, but of course the population of Rome was much greater than that... Obviously, most cities in a fantasy game probably aren't that big.

I find it amazing when I think about how "cramped" some medieval cities were or seemed to be. I think "medieval" London was only about 2/3 of a square mile, but had a population that ranged from 15,000-100,000 depending on the time frame you look at. How much of that was "inside" the city proper or in the surrounding area, I don't know off-hand.

 

[Voadam]

I don't specify population numbers or percentages for my homebrew, I generally think of things like Ptolus is a "big city" without specifics on numbers.

My homebrew setting is a mashup with a lot of Golarion in it so a lot of humans and then less prominent but still significant numbers and populations of elves and dwarves and orcs and goblins and ratfolk and such.

What shows up in a game I run depends on the specific material I use for that adventure/region and partially on the players and their racial choices and the themes we develop in the campaign. My Iron Gods 5e campaign had a bunch of PCs with Werewolf the Apocalypse themes in their characters so I had more werewolf and shifter type stuff in the game than was indicated in the adventure path. The second module part of the campaign still had a bunch of ratfolk and orcs and hobgoblins and humans as important races showing up in numbers.

 

[SkidAce]

Humans: 60%
Elves: 20%
Dwarves: 10%
Gnomes: 5%
Lizardmen, Rakasta, Tengu: 5% ish