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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Mormegil" data-source="post: 6239923" data-attributes="member: 6688783">The actual problem is that humans are never really associated with any specific characteristic in fantasy. They are always considered "bland", which is comprehensible since we're human, but it's also rather odd. Why don't humans have something that distinguishes them from other races, the same way elves and dwarves do? Why don't humans have specific cultural references in their stat blocks? Elves are ALL associated with woods and archery dwarves are ALL associated with underground jewelry and crafting (yeah yeah exceptions blah blah blah you know what I mean though)... Why can't men be associated with something?One reason is that the rulebooks are obviously written by a human point of view, which means humans are the implicit standard. One other reason is that humans are actually real and everybody notices there's plenty of difference between various humans. Another reason is that racism is a crime and any sort of "human archetype" can probably be tagged as such. Another reason is that humans are supposed to be the race everybody automatically goes to unless they have a specific reason not to, and this means they need to be familiar. Sometimes humans are associated with versatility and adaptation, which is IMO just an excuse for not detailing their culture due to the above reasons.In any case, the only "distinguishable" human traits that are not tied to the campaign setting are the supposed "versatility" of humans (meh) and their short lifespan (compared to all other core fantasy races except goblinoids), no thanks to Tolkien of course. I don't think the human versatility is a strong starting point for a name. As such I suggest "mortalkind" or some variation thereof.Another idea is to notice that since all other races have a name in Human (or Common), humans should probably have their name in another language (it's most likely to have clear terms indicating them) but that's fantasy gibberish territory and definitely not canon.</blockquote>

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