D&D 5E My players want Human Centric

[GameOgre]

So I use a lot of premade settings. It's just what I have mostly done. I make adventures ect..but tend to play Greyhawk or The Realms ect..

Of late I had extra time on my hands and so i created a couple of settings. One's I thought were good but a little different.

Not like the other settings but ones that tended to be smaller with more things going on and with other races with there own powerful kingdom.

In one the elves used to have a world spanning empire but now have retreated back to only one known city in the far north. The Elves were bearded and used to have the other races enslaved or just created them for servants etc..

One of my players was actually hostile to this notion! Like he hated it. He expressed that humans should be the best and most dominate race in the world period.

I was kinda shocked at this and asked another player what she thought and she agreed with the troubled player.

I just found this funny and strange and started to delve into WHY this bothered them and it seemed to come from two areas.

1- they don't read so have no knowledge of this concept being around before. To them this goes against all the fantasy history they have been comfortable with.

2- They both seemed strangely unwilling to think of another race being superior to humans. When I pointed out that my strange elves lived for thousands of years and and had in the past at least mastered science and magic to the point where the built city chips that went to other words and other dimensions they pointed out Stereotypical negative traits they had seen in elven lore or tabletalk.


#1 above I can understand. If all you know about fantasy comes from either Tolkien or Howard then i understand not getting concepts outside of those influences.

#2 However touched too close traits and language i have only heard in extremely racist circles. Now I'm not saying these two are racist. I mean Elves and Dwarves don't really exist! But the stubbornly hostile reaction to any other race being equal to or God forbid better than humans sets them off on somewhat uncomfortable rants.

Now this isn't a post about what should I do with these players. I have that well in hand but what I wanted to know is has anyone else experiences moments like these before? If so what was it about?

 

[Sunseeker]

Not really no. My players have been pretty accepting of my settings, though I admit I tend towards more metropolitan settings. I've played with people with very long-standing D&D histories and people with very little fantasy experience at all, I don't think I've even heard a gasp of surprise from one of them that X race has a major civilization nearby or that Y race is dominant and not humans. Even my aversion towards including short races in settings (thanks to several of the world's worst Dwarvish accents and Kender *shudder*), my inclusion of very distinctly arabic-inspired "desert elves" or my compromise to allow dwarves but they are dark-skinned, pygmy islanders. Even my 100% Dragonborn campaign got nothing more than a few grumbles at the start and then everyone got into it.

So, no, I've never had that kind of a reaction, I don't think I've even had a hint of surprise at the idea that some race other than humans may be vastly more advanced than humanity.

 

[Lanliss]

No idea. No players have wanted to go for Human in my new setting, so it hasn't even come up that the only humans left are a small civilization underground. Like you, I can understand the first point. Not too surprised by the second either, by extension. I think they both have a root either in a lack of imagination, or a lack of sources to draw information from. Not reading much can definitely cause that kind of thing, I think. I really wouldn't know, have never been able to go more than a month without picking up a book.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Try to get them to play other fantasy RPG's. If all they "really know" is D&D, well, yeah, they have an extremely limited point of reference. Go play some other fantasy RPG's like Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (I like 1e), Powers & Perils (free, online now), Talislanta (free, online now), etc. Or even non-fantasy 'one-offs' like Star Frontiers (free, online now) or Gamma World (I like 3rd edition).

A broader experience base may open their preconceptions about "non-human" races.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I have experienced players not liking the particulars of some version of [their favorite thing] because it differed too much from how they normally think of [their favorite thing], though usually not to a harsher degree than to say "I dunno, sounds weird but I'll give it a try."

I have not experienced anyone having difficulty with fantasy humans not being king of hill, so to speak, but then I figure that is likely because the majority of the gamers I've personally played with were prone to playing non-human characters because human characters didn't have as many benefits that interested them (i.e. AD&D 2nd edition where a dwarf could multi-class and had features kick in at 1st level, but a human felt like they had no features at all unless the game reached really high levels and that dwarf finally hit his level limit, or 3rd edition where humans got a little extra of what every character already gets, and non-human races had more unique features).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Haven't experienced anything like that myself. Probably because Tolkein had well-in-hand the idea that elves were inherently superior beings in every way before I was even born.

One way to look at it that gets rid of the "superior" language: it sounds like your elves might be like Ancient Rome was to folks in medieval times. That is, it was an impossible place of great luxury and advancement that fell long ago. Only, your Romans are still alive, just withdrawn.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I've experienced... kind of this sentiment. It wasn't so much hostility to non-human races, though, so much as "You know, having biologically different races doesn't really seem necessary to portray our characters, so why don't we just do a human-only world with distinct cultures like Westeros or Earthsea or, y'know, Earth."

So maybe not the same at all, really.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Haven't experienced anything like that myself. Probably because Tolkein had well-in-hand the idea that elves were inherently superior beings in every way before I was even born.

Gift of Men. Elves are bound within the material world; only humans transcend it and can reach the presence of God.

 

[Sunseeker]

I've experienced... kind of this sentiment. It wasn't so much hostility to non-human races, though, so much as "You know, having biologically different races doesn't really seem necessary to portray our characters, so why don't we just do a human-only world with distinct cultures like Westeros or Earthsea or, y'know, Earth."

So maybe not the same at all, really.

When I ran a single race campaign (in this case, Dragonborn), I let people play whatever "race" they wanted, only the character was visually a Dragonborn. It did a good job of allowing the setting to feel a little more diverse than a normal race-centric campaign, without having to dive into muddy issues of "cultures/ethnicities" implying different racial modifiers or inherent skills.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

When I ran a single race campaign (in this case, Dragonborn), I let people play whatever "race" they wanted, only the character was visually a Dragonborn. It did a good job of allowing the setting to feel a little more diverse than a normal race-centric campaign, without having to dive into muddy issues of "cultures/ethnicities" implying different racial modifiers or inherent skills.

Oh, I didn't bother with racial modifiers. Human is human. It's not like this is without precedent -- it's how core d20 Modern did it. Though d20 Modern characters were in every respect 3E D&D humans, a player who picked up a Modern book without being familiar with D&D wouldn't even notice there was a "race" mechanic at all.