Representing Human Variety in Campaign Settings

[Cadence]

To one extent or the other, the Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Golarion, Hyboria, Middle Earth, the Black Company setting, etc... all have parts of the setting that are stereotypical mash-ups of geo-political parts of the real world (somewhere that's Asian, somewhere Northern European, somewhere African, etc...).

Say you're creating an entirely new setting that doesn't have anything quite as blatant culturally. Should you still try to include "groups of people that look like the variety of people on earth" so that every potential player is able to play a character that looks like them (even if there is nothing deeper about it than the physical appearance)? Or is it ok that some skin colors, hair colors, hair textures, eye colors, etc... just don't occur? For the ones that occur, should there actually be something behind it (so they originated through selective forces - either natural/geographic or magical - in different parts of the world at some point in the past and just haven't interbred sufficiently yet) or would you just ignore that and not worry about what the people look like except on an individual family basis?

Should it feel odd to worry so much about representing the physical appearances of people and not necessarily anything about their religions or cultures?

Should it feel strange to have similar questions about choosing a single real world language to generate names in different parts of the campaign world (just Chinese vs. just Japanese, just Norwegian vs. just Swedish, etc...)

 

[Jhaelen]

I feel it makes sense to include a variety of cultural and ethnical groups of races in a fantasy setting. And it doesn't only make sense for humans, either. It makes sense for every available fantasy race, unless they only occur in a very limited region of the world with little or no outside interaction.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

A monocultural world seems very odd to me. A fantasy world with Earth cultures transplanted seems even weirder. Coming up with a fully fleshed out fantasy culture from scratch is a ton of work and difficult to do well. I also don't feel like I can do a real-world culture justice without a lot of research, and I just don't have time for that.

This all leads my approach to cultures in D&D. I usually have a standard pseudo-medieval D&D culture as home base, as this is comfortable for the players. After that, for each foreign culture I tend to mash together several real (current or historical) or fictional cultures. This provides some familiarity for the players while still keeping it fresh. It's also a lot less work than creating a fictional culture from whole cloth.

As examples, from the campaign world I've used the most, the Mishihari are a blend of Viking, Sul (from Andre Norton's Witch World), Samoan, and Maori. The Mnempen are a mix of Aztec and Nyissan (from David Eddings Belgariad). The Pariten are a mix of historical/mythical Arab (think Arabian Nights) and Fremen (from Dune, of course). There's also a Filipino/African mix and a Mongol/classical Greek mix.

With respect to the OP, I don't really try to include anything in particular from the real world. I just go and what happens, happens. And culture, history, and religion is far more important to me than physical appearance. The latter I'll decide in a few minutes, while I might put in many hours to the former.

 

[Quartz]

I think you should design your starting area first, which should be homogeneous and worry about the rest later. If a player insists on playing something different then you can use that as a hook. For instance, in an oriental campaign, a white person might be a foundling, the only survivor of a shipwreck, or the offspring of a slave brought from the far West by Mongol slavers. The actual details of the origin country can be safely left until later.