Humans are a must?

[dave_o]

The traditional D&D demihumans have always felt just like humans with a different skin. They all have basic exaggerations of pretty fundamental aspects of humanity. Elves tend to take arrogance to an extreme, gnomes are exceptionally curious, etc. I think to truly portray an "alien" race you'd need to have their core values be wildly different than those of humans.

Like, this race could, for instance, actively attempt to kill its young -- Sparta aside, that's pretty antithetical to what we, as humans, tend to do. So I don't think that humans are a must, but I also don't think that many "non-human" games actually qualify.

I mean it's pretty tough to totally go outside your head (unless, y'know, aided by LSD).

 

[Merkuri]

To create a truly inhuman being, one has to use concepts that no human being would truly understand. Once you start understanding this being then it's no longer truly alien. It becomes an exaggerated portrayal of humanity, or a human being dressed up in a funy costume. Basically, you can't portray a truly alien character and yet allow your readers/viewers/players to identify with it. By definition, it's impossible.

The alien in Enemy Mine looked funny, had a strange culture and method of reproduction, but it was still capable of basic human emotions. It found a lot of the same things funny, it got offended, it worshipped higher beings, and it was capable of love. Part of the whole plot in the movie is that slowly the two beings who thought they were impossibly different started to find things they had in common and started to realize they weren't really that different after all. I think part of the whole idea of the movie is that "aliens are really just people who gargle when they talk and asexually reproduce." I mean, you could substitute a Nazi for the alien and an American WWII fighter pilot for the human and have the pretty much the same exact movie.

Imagine a movie where the only characters were Cthulu and a living glob of axle grease. Neither of these characters act as you'd expect a human to act in similar circumstances. It's utterly impossible to understand their motives because they are so truly alien. Would that be a good movie? No, because there's no creature that you can identify with. It would be like watching abstract art, where during the whole two hours you see colors swirling around the screen in random patterns. It might be fascinating, but you probably wouldn't want to see it more than once and sitting through it for more than a half-hour would probably drive you a little closer to Insanityville. Now, if we take the living glob of axle grease and give him a human voice over and play him like a very angry person who has a fetish for toenails then it becomes a little easier to watch. Perhaps not much, but still easier.

Humans, or at least a human-like figure, are essential for a good setting. They don't have to truly be humans, but they have to be there. The Lord of the Rings is a good example. We're actually supposed to identify with the hobbits. Though there are humans in the setting, they play the role of "strong, war-like beings who know what they're doing", while the hobbits are the powerless beings that end up finding that there's no limit to their own potential.

You have to have something in the story to identify with otherwise you'll get bored and/or confused.

 

[Quickleaf]

From what I've read of Glorantha (Hero Quest) and Artesia: Adventures in the Known World, there are fascinating diverse human cultures that are difficult enough to portray well. I think trying to portray another species/race as a complete being (not an archetype) is even more challenging. That said, sticking with archetypes can be great fun too.

I think some of the appeal of playing such archetypal species/races is the way they interact with humanity, often as foils of some sort. I'd go so far as to say what makes these archetypal species/races unique in game play is their unusual relationship to humans.

 

[Thanee]

Talislanta doesn't really have humans, though they do have similar races.

Bye
Thanee

 

[MonkeyDragon]

I think that your friend has ALMOST hit the nail on the head...but the thing he's missing is a big one.

One of the big things about creating a protagonist in a book/movie/play/whathaveyou is that the protagonist isn't just a "good guy." The protagonist is the person who the audiance sympathises with and identifies with. You want the protagonist to succeed. You can put yourself in his shoes and experience the world through him. You root for him.

Some things that impede a character from being a good protagonist are the inability to root for the person and the inability to identify with the person. The evil raping murdering baby eating guy can't be the protagonist. You can't root for that guy. You also can't identify with him, because no one wants to find a mirror of themselves in such a person.

If the protagonist is too alien, you're not going to be able to connect to him. So it's true that if there's not a human element, you're stuck without a way into the story.

I think your buddy's mistake is that he assumes that the human element has to BE human. It doesn't. As long as the characters are PEOPLE, we have our window into the story. The best example I can think of right now is LOTR (I'm talking about the movie in this instance). Sure, there are humans. But if you look at it, the humans are as exotic and unusual as the elves. The protagonist is a hobbit, and so we look at the world from a hobbit's point of view. Or, as far as The Dark Crystal goes, it's not that the gelflings are human or human-equivalent, its that they're people. Care bears are people. Even the meerkats in Meerkat are turned into people with the narration.

So yes, I would play in a non-human setting and it'd be perfectly fine.

And man, this turned out to be much longer than I thought it'd be. Must be all my repressed posting from when my computer died.

Edit: In the time it took me to write this, several other people also made the points I wanted to make AND used the hobbit example. Thus: I agree!

 

[Turanil]

What do others think? Would you run or play in a setting with no humans? Would you find a setting that didn't include a human or human-equivalent mental perspective difficult to relate to? If so, why? Why would one require the human baseline to begin their understanding from?

I think it's entirely possible to play in a setting without humans. We are so used to dwarves, elves, and halflings, that we could very well adapt to a setting that has them but doesn't have humans. By the way, elves, dwarves, etc., are rarely played so much different than humans, so I don't see the problem. What would be difficult would be to play truly alien races with truly alien motives and goals, and this would quickly become boring.

 

[Turjan]

Talislanta doesn't really have humans, though they do have similar races.

Talislanta is a good example to test SpiralBound's friend's statement. Yes, it doesn't have humans. But the main race (according to the amount of space their description takes) looks like humans and acts like humans. In principle, this is a race everyone can easily identify with. As an aside, Talislanta also makes a big fuzz about not having elves, although they have races that look like (D&D) elves and others that behave according to elven stereotypes. Anyway, the typical identification factors for people who look for "humans" are present in Talislanta. So the setting should work for everyone, right?

Well, it doesn't. The problem is that the label "human" is missing. You actually have to read the book in order to recognize your humans. I know that this is a wanted feature of the setting, but it is one that makes it a bit harder for newcomers. Which changes the original notion to something like "Settings without humans are not as accessible as those with humans, and they are hardly ever successful".

Exceptions may be settings with anthropomorphic animals that are used to exaggerate human stereotypes. Donald Duck may have a bill, but he is obviously a typical American suburb dweller, which is not hard to relate to for most people.

 

[AMG]

What do others think? Would you run or play in a setting with no humans?

Sure. Though I've never ran any game without humans present in some fashion, I don't see them as a must.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I'm in the camp that agrees the statement. The problem is, as has been said, we're humans, and so we tend to act and play like humans. Probably a good thing, because I don't particularly think being inhuman is good thing. It also means we aim to project that onto every aspect of storytelling. I mean, anthropomorphism is such a big part of literature that it has its own fancy word.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

You can do settings without humans, or without recognizable cultures. There is no better example than Tekumel which been around for decades, about as long as D&D, and has been expertly developed. It has humans but the cultures are just too alien for the average person.