I'm insulted by how humans are depicted in D&D.

[Fetfreak]

Well my take on humans in my game is pretty different. They all come from different lands and they vary in looks and stats. Garthans (from a barren rock land) are tougher, bigger and their skin color goes from pale grey to dark brown. Their language is rather rough and hard to master. Every land in my world has it's own language and unique people. Basically you have to find a common language so you could communicate. The common language doesn't exist but two of the countries are well spread around the world so their languages are most popular and many know how to speak it.

As for the other things mentioned by OP, I don't find myself insulted. Reality is that a human in fantasy is actually a white man and we all know how white colonization went down in history. Also the humans weren't altered physically so they would be the norm and everyone else modeled against them. If halflings were the dominant factor in the game and the norm, humans would get a penalty on dexterity on their character creation.

 

[Thanee]

Even an Otyugh speaks my language!

Yeah, yer gonna say, "Well in [some random setting] the humans speak a dialect of common and it has its own name. Let me guess, those Humans are not "common" humans though, right? They are special in some way.

In Forgotten Realms, every human ethnology has their own language (some share the same). Common is not the human language there, but actually a common trade language between the races, and not as sophisticated as other languages.

In Greyhawk, too, actually, now that I think about it. Not entirely sure about what Common is meant to represent there.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Tanstaafl_au]

I thought for sure my last sentence would be a giveaway on the seriousness of the rant, "almost 100% humans"? Come on, that was a great line! This topic would be an insane thing to really be upset over.

No, I'm not serious.

I just thought you were being inclusive of the Otherkin.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

One thing that has always bothered me is how utterly irrelevant languages are in D&D if (almost) everyone speaks Common. I mean, why even have them?

Language barriers add to the game for me. And they really aren't that hard to overcome, especially after the first few levels.

I handle it thusly:

*1. Nobody gets Common as a free racial language by default. Those races who are listed as only speaking Common get a regional tongue instead. Those with more than one (such as goblins) simply lose Common.

2. "Elite" members of a race get Common in addition to their other spoken languages. I'm including PCs, political leaders, and even innkeepers and traveling merchants.

3. Anyone else has to spend the appropriate in-game resource to pick up the language.

When the PCs walk into a town in some distant land, I don't want them to automatically be able to communicate with everyone on the street. They should be able to talk with the innkeeper, merchants that cater to foreigners, and a good deal of other people who happen to be educated. But not everyone they see.

Same thing when the visit a goblin village. They ought to have to talk to the chief or one of his advisers if they don't speak goblin.

For me, that really makes the languages the PCs speak matter. You can overcome the issue with spells at relatively low level, and handwave it when you aren't doing detailed role-playing (for instance, you shouldn't have any problem restocking and getting a room for the night), but when you are doing more detailed role-playing it actually matters who speaks what.

* Alternatively Common as a free racial language can be replaced with a regional language for anyone who is listed as having Common, but that means that every goblin, orc, and kobold is more linguistically educated than the average human.