Humans as default

[CountPopeula]

Does it bug anyone else that the only description D&D ever seems to give of humans is they're "diverse"? This is not something inherent to 4e (it goes back to 1e, but at least Gary Gygax made it seem like it had a reason).

Now, I know humans are the default race for most players. But i'm sort of dismayed by the idea of human abilities all being along the lines of (pick one extra this, and get a smaller bonus to this, but you can choose it yourself). Now, I realize in 2e humans basically got nothing but the ability to be any class (which was pretty powerful in and of itself in the system) and in 1e the demi-human races WERE classes.

But it seems to me the design choice comes from "well, we're humans, so they can be anything" and not from looking at humans as a general whole the way we look at Warforged or halflings. This is fine, I think, if you wish to have a campaign world where humans are the predominant race. I know this was Gary Gygax's intent with 1e; it's a human world, and there are a few members of other races.

But with 3e and 4e, humans feel much more like one race out of many, and in that case, i don't think it's versatility that sets them apart in the world at large. If I had to pick a defining trait to pin on humans, I'd say it's cunning, but that's unimportant.

I guess what I'm asking is does this bother anyone else? Do you like the humans as the default baseline from which the other races differ, or would you prefer to see humans with the same construction as other races, +2 bonuses to two fixed stats, bonuses to specific skills, and a unique racial power all their own?

 

[xechnao]

I tend to forbid from campaign other non-magical humanoid races. The humanoid like races I use are of fairy origin. If one wants to play such a race it will have to go through a "humanization" process. At the beginning it will suffer some penalties and drawbacks by still trying to see how to adapt to the human way but it will also have some magical bonuses-powers that have to do with its fairy nature. The more experience it gets the less magical it and more human it will be, eventually becoming a human in the process. Think something like Pinocchio.
Then, I normally allow other non-humanoid normal races such as bat-men, dragon-men or whatever. Such a race will always have some abilities such as flying, fire-breathing, non-human senses such as bat radar or whatever .

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There is a list of traits or characteristics for each race, maybe you can build upon that:

Human Characteristics: Adaptable, ambitious, bold, corruptible, creative, driven, hardy, pragmatic, resourceful, territorial, tolerant.

The bolded parts could serve as a good start.

Humans love to build great stuff. The biggest building, the strongest Empire, but they lose sight of their surroundings, and their desires can be used to turn them to the side of evil.

 

[Delta]

...in 1e the demi-human races WERE classes.

Common misconception. In OD&D & 1E, races & classes were separate. Elves in OD&D automatically got to be multiclassed fighter/magic-users. (Only in Basic D&D were races & classes collapsed.)

 

[S'mon]

D&D, like Star Trek, generally takes a "humans are like contemporary Americans" approach. You could always do something different, like Te'Kumel's "humans are like Aztecs crossed with Arabs" or "humans are like Byzantines" or, well, pretty much any other human culture.

 

[Merkuri]

The problem is that the other races represent subsets of real-world human culture. We have nothing else to take inspiration from but real-world humans. (Well, you could argue that we could take inspiration from elsewhere, but the further you get from the human experience the harder it is to roleplay and identify with.) It's easy to say that dwarves are based on Germanic tribes and halflings on the gypsies. But what do you say for humans? How do you narrow them down to a subset of real-world human culture?

In the real world humans can fit any of the behavioral stereotypes given to the fantasy races. It just seems odd to narrow down the fantasy human to a small subset of the real-world human, which is why it's always so hard to do.

I actually like 4e's take on the humans, where they still have a broad range of cultures and personalities, but they share traits like "ambitious" and "corruptible". I think it's a good compromise between trying to be true to real-world humans and trying not to make them a catch-all race.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I've kind of always felt that the assigning of stereotypes to races other than human just wasn't right. I feel that it's a little arrogant on our part to assume that just because they aren't human means they can't be as __________ (insert your human description here, e.g. diverse) as us.

 

[S'mon]

I've kind of always felt that the assigning of stereotypes to races other than human just wasn't right. I feel that it's a little arrogant on our part to assume that just because they aren't human means they can't be as __________ (insert your human description here, e.g. diverse) as us.

You think they're going to take offense?
Or you think that because you can have eg occasional jolly, duplicitous dwarves that it's arrogant to say "Most dwarves are dour and honest"? In that case you're confusing the typical with the possible.

 

[Roger]

Does it bug anyone else that the only description D&D ever seems to give of humans is they're "diverse"?

It hasn't bugged me since Races and Classes.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[Zogmo]

Nah, it's all good the way it is.

I love the choices it allows humans in their stats. Since all of the other races can't choose which stats can be enhanced it's good to have one that can and humans as the default is the best choice. The adaptability of the humans is a good trade off.

Humans in my campaign are by far dominant across the known world and all of the other races are small groups. It helps keep them special and mysterious and then once humans go plane hoping, like to Sigil, they get a shock finding out and dealing with being a minority race compared to the masses of non-human creatures that live in places like that. It helps keep the whole campaign popping with freshness at higher levels.