D&D 5E Thought exercise: Faerun as Human Only

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not so sure about this. If the game has the same pantheon, the same map and locations, heck, the same cultures (but the inhabitant of Gauntlegrym are Humans living in a super-fortress/forge, loving metal and beer instead of dwarves living in said super-fortress/forge, loving metal and beer), is it not 99% the FRs?

Edit: (Just to be clear, I do not have an answer to that. That's why I ask)

99% is not 100%. So no, it's not the Forgotten Realms. A facsimile of the Realms, sure. But you asked if demihumans were necessary for the Forgotten Realms, not if they were necessary to create a human-centric facsimile of the Realms.

Pedantic nitpicking? Absolutely, guilty as charged! But hey, you asked.

Now that being said... if someone's idea of the Realms is the stories and events that have occurred, but not who did them... then sure you could change everything over to humans-only if it really mattered. Personally, I don't see the point of it myself... why go through all that effort to wash away all the demihuman races just to replace them with exact human replicas? Especially considering most people roleplay demihumans as humanistic anyway. But hey, maybe for someone that matters.

 

[nevin]

If your going to do that why not just play in 2000 BC with magic?

 

[SehanineMoonbow]

Personally, I wouldn't be as interested in the Realms if it didn't have the races (I get tired of it always being humans). But in your own campaign, if it's what you want to do, then do it.

 

[robus]

One of the big things I don’t like about FR is its everything but the kitchen sink nature to races. It turns it into a theme park rather than a believable world.

Less is more, IMHO.

 

[zarionofarabel]

If your going to do that why not just play in 2000 BC with magic?

2000BC(BCE)? The Forgotten Realms is Late Middle Ages, not the Bronze Age.

 

[jgsugden]

Does the complaint here boil down to the stereotyping isn't strong enough to matter, here?

 

[Stormonu]

If you're going to do this, why bother to keep the monstrous races? You could write them out as easily, just replace them with humans. If it walks on two legs, use human instead.

However, I'd be curious on what you'd do about Myth Drannor.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

If you're going to do this, why bother to keep the monstrous races? You could write them out as easily, just replace them with humans. If it walks on two legs, use human instead.

However, I'd be curious on what you'd do about Myth Drannor.

I scrolled down to ask just this question....

Keeping the "monstrous" races defeats the thought experiment. If a goblin or fey exists in the world it's entirely possible one could become an adventurer , thus you open up the possibility of a nonhuman PC.

 

[Reiliegh]

Yeah, let's face it some pretty iconic villains are humans aren't they? Humans are actually capable of evil. Adding a monstrous race just so you can justify murder is kinda extreme. Let's think about how a totally human population would handle things. Like Dragons for example, replace them with humans. Does that mean there's a bunch of humans that had to hide away from the world for fear of going periodically berserk and causing massive death tolls and destruction. Dragons are ppl in the FRs, so they're eligible for the swap right? Although now that I think about that, the Draco rage mythal ended some time ago. Will these ppl move to retake their empires?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For my part, I prefer Faerun with its wondrous variety of peoples. That being said, were I to make Faerun human-only, I would say that the dwarves and elves and whatnot were a thing once, but have disappeared for one reason or another. The setting is already filled with ruins and remnants of their ancient civilizations.