Humans are a must?

[Turjan]

Blame the Americano, Jeff Grubb, who was the co-author of the commercially published setting created in the basement of a Canadian library clerk (Ed Greenwood) ... eh.

Hehe, touché ! Make that American . The core of the setting is, in addition to its modern undertones, pretty much a Wild West adaptation in its feel. In this specific regard, it doesn't matter that much if it's a mountie instead of cowboy who's roaming the wilds.

 

[painandgreed]

Bah. No matter what nonhuman race you take, you always play that race as if it is human, anyway, because you're hardwired to be human.

For example, you play a long-lived elf, but you're more concerned about reaching level 20 before puberty.

BS or not, you're stuck being human.

Don't know about that. I think the hitting level 20 by puberty is more a function of the rules than anything else. In the all elf game I ran, they were working for the Elven queen and she would give them elven time frames to do missions. After giving them one mission she informed them they needed to leave the city in no more than a year. THis was 1E and I had house rules for skills as well as spell research. They sat around and trained in skills and researched spells such as was in Unearthed Arcana for that year. In the end, their research had to be cut short and guards escorted them to the front gate on that one year mark. From there they began adventuring again and settled down at the next large city they found to complete their research, only to continue once done. It probably took them 5 years game time to do D1-3.

With the RAW, there's really no way to advance the character except through adventuring. Therefore, that's what they do. If there were other outlets in the game, then players would take them, and if these outlets took time, then hitting 20 by puberty would not be as much of an issue. As experience it currently gained through fighting monsters and enough monsters to raise a level could be fought in a single day, advancement tends to be quick in game time.

 

[Mallus]

I don't think humans are a must in an RPG setting.

I think elves/aliens/robots/rabbits/clouds of interstellar hydrogen/intelligent triangles that get played as if they were humans are a must.

If you can't anthropomorphize a character, you can't play it. That's my motto.

 

[Ranger REG]

Hehe, touché ! Make that American .

That's what I said. Americano.

 

[Elfdart]

One problem with this discussion is the fact that many things we consider uniquely "human" aren't. Other animals experience love, hate, fear, awe, greed and even empathy. So the notion that made-up creatures that are closer to humans than to say, cockroaches should be that much different from us is silly.

In (A)D&D elves, orcs and ogres are close enough to humans that they can interbreed and produce live young. So why should their mentality be much different? Even for creatures that aren't hominids, like troglodytes, lizard men, kuo-toa, et al, we should keep in mind that they live in one form of civilization or another. They build homes, forge weapons, worship gods and so on. In other words, they live like humans so trying to empathize with such creatures shouldn't be a stretch. Even normal animals aren't such a great stretch. Anyone who watches wildlife documentaries or movies like the one with the two bears has no problem figuring out the creatures' motives. In Raptor Red the author puts you inside the head of a dinosaur.

All it takes is a little imagination, which adhering to "archetypes" (a euphemism for cliches) has a way of smothering.

 

[RFisher]

Would you run or play in a setting with no humans?

Happily.

Although, if humans are an option, I'm more likely to choose it than anything else.

 

[SpiralBound]

There have been a lot of really interesting points brought up in this thtread and I'm grateful to everyone how has been posting - on both sides of the discussion. It's given me lots to think on.

I especially like the ideas surrounding just what traits are and aren't unique to "human" versus what are common to all sentient beings. Another interesing idea is just how "human-like" must one's "aliens" be in order to be playable by humans. I'm intrigued by the statements surrounding the idea that biology influences mentality, and that some traits are possibly shared by all thinking beings who exist in the same universe as us.

The ideas regarding having "gateway" races which, while not human, do share enough commonalities to allow us to share their perspective so that they may allow us, through them to become familar with the other, presumably more alien races are interesting as well. Just how "'human" would they need to be? Are there any "alien" traits that they couldn't possess and still be capable of serving as a gateway race?

I would be rather disappointed if we were limited to only playing non-humans that were no more different from humans than a Dwarf or a Klingon. As has been pointed out, this style of "alien" is really only a re-shaped human with a different culture, and sometimes not even that. However, I also agree that an alien with no similarities to humans or humanistic thinking or traits would be equally disappointing.

These are two ends of a rather long spectrum though. Surely there is room within for a human-playable alien which isn't just a human with "bumpy forehead" disease, yet is still different enough that there are aspects of their mindset which don't match our own. Surely it isn't inconceivable to play a character who has some different mental hardwiring than humans - not EVERYTHING need be different, just enough that you can "feel" that you're not playing a human. Again, I'm not avocating that we all play crystalline trees from Pluto, but are we as humans so rigid and inflexible in our thinking that we're literally incapable of portaying a mindset that doesn't merely mirror or distort our own? Surely we aren't that limited in scope.

I personally find that playing the standard non-human races in most rpgs really doesn't feel any different than playing a human. You're just a different shape, or larger, smaller, faster, stronger, whatever. Humans with a couple of stat levels set differently. I like Nellisir's literary example of the Atevi aliens with the emotion(?) of manchi instead of love. Yes, this is strange and would take time to get used to accurately protraying. However, I don't think that such a creature would be innately unplayable by humans simply because in RL we have love not manchi. No one says it's impossible to play a centaur even though humans only have two legs instead of four, but start suggesting an innately different mindset and some people start saying that it's impossible...

I also find it interesting that many of the posters who were the most against "aliens and no humans" settings were also those who held the "all or nothing" view on what an "alien" must be like in comparison to humans. The viewpoint that a "real" alien must of course be completely different from us so as to be innately inconceivable to our human minds is amusing to me. Of course as a species we have yet to encounter a non-human sentience, so we can not truly know for sure what parts of our own minds are innately "human" and which are merely because we are sentient. I personally suspect that not everything we hold near and dear as human traits are ours alone. I also find it somewhat of a tautology to state that we can not conceive of a truely alien creature because anything a human can conceive must therefore not be alien by virtue of having been understood by a human... It's a bit of a cop-out if you ask me. It's also not very charitable of our own abilities to imagine, and is somewhat insulting to any potential aliens which may exist. "They're alien, so by default they will share no commonalities with us, they are truly beyond our ken"... I can see some alien who, while mentally quite different from us in a lot of ways, is still capable of personal pride and feelings of protection and affection towards a significant other being rather insulted by such a humanocentric view. "What to do you mean I'm incapable of love simply because I'm not human?"

 

[Merkuri]

I think a big part of this discussion is the question of whether a human mind can create something truly not human. I think one can argue that the motivations of a non-human creature must be either based on human motivations or be completely nonsensical (in which case it becomes impossible to relate to the character).

I think you can get very strange human motivations and mindsets, but they're still human. To do otherwise is impossible without resorting to nonsense.

 

[Nellisir]

I like Nellisir's literary example of the Atevi aliens with the emotion(?) of manchi instead of love. Yes, this is strange and would take time to get used to accurately protraying. However, I don't think that such a creature would be innately unplayable by humans simply because in RL we have love not manchi.

I think that you wrote "emotion (?)" is telling. Manchi, for example, is portrayed as much as a biological drive as an emotion; indeed, it's likely manchi is a sort of developed herd/pack instinct, since the domesticated riding creatures on the planet also exhibit a sort of manchi, in their compulsion to follow their herd leader.

Love could be considered a biological dive. Not to be too clinical or real-life, but it's increasingly clear that our emotions and drives are, if not the product of, then controlled by, biological processes. Chemicals make us happy, sad, or insane; physical brain damage can make us violent, sedate, or creative. An alien creature may exhibit similar characteristics, but the means and reasoning by which it reaches them are guaranteed to be different.

I don't think for a moment it's impossible to roleplay an alien, though - if it were impossible to imagine, it'd be impossible to write about. But it's not necessarily simple, either - you have to subordinate your own instincts and habits in favor of something inherently not natural to you.

As an example of really-out there aliens, CJ Cherryh has methane(?)-breathers. They are essentially incomprehensible to humans, and communication is solely via computer. As a writer's trick, Cherryh puts all their communication in a grid, that can be read left-right, up-down, and diagonal. And possibly the reverse of all those. Different meanings emerge with different readings. And the oxygen-breathers have to figure out what the "actual" meaning is.

Just something else to think about
Nell.

 

[Afrodyte]

One problem with this discussion is the fact that many things we consider uniquely "human" aren't. Other animals experience love, hate, fear, awe, greed and even empathy. So the notion that made-up creatures that are closer to humans than to say, cockroaches should be that much different from us is silly.

(snip)

All it takes is a little imagination, which adhering to "archetypes" (a euphemism for cliches) has a way of smothering.

I agree, and here is a bit of elaboration from my POV. Something I like to do is take humans as most people understand it and put a twist on it. Perhaps I add something, or take something away, that at first seems part of the fundamental human experience. Adapting something as simple as the way we process information opens new possibilities that we hadn't considered before. Consider the impact it would have on culture if we had a dog's capacity for smell or hearing.