What if humans were not dominant race?

[DinoeL]

I'm starting a new campaign with newbie next weekend, think on starting small dungeon crawl to introduce the rules (Sunless Citadel maybe) and after it release them into a brave new world of my

The main idea of the world is what humans are not dominant intelligent race. Humans actually came to this world from another planet, escaped from cataclysmic threat of some kind.

Now I'm thinking how large should be a human settled territory, if they started with say million people and got a thousand years to develop? Let say they were an ancient culture, like Greek or Egyptian-like and in a thousand years with help of dwarven metalworking tech and elven magic (which they learned here, in new world) developed into a medieval tech level and strange societies.
Is a million initial humans enough to survive in new world filled with magic, dangerous species, elves, dwarves, orcs and... dragons?
Is thousand years enough?
How large is their territory now?

I think in the first years there would be high death rate because of new diseases, new environment, and who knows what. And in first 10 years the population would be halved. After people would settle down, and start living with it. After maybe a 100 years the birthrate would be better than death rate and... say well get a 10% grow per 35 years (if the land humans settle is good and they get help from locals.)
But how much land they would settle?
How much territory they need to survive and grow in numbers and advance culturally?

I have a vision of the possible societies, possible conflicts and adventures in my head... but I cant draw the map
Any Ideas?

 

[Thels]

I'd say for a small colony, birth rate is quite high. Of course there'll be lots of casualties as well, with all the hostility. They can be picked upon by about anyone.

But they either get extinct quite fast or they start to grow. Once they are able to defend themselves, expect a big population boom in the early years, which'll decline over the ages.

How much they conquer is of course depending on the size of the world and how much outer forces want to stop them.

Also, what IS the mayor race, and how much is it being suppressed?

 

[hellbender]

My campaign world is not human dominated, not because humans escaped from another planet, but rather wiser (or more prolific) races realized that humans are too inept, cunning and irrational, and therefore are too dangerous to have actually dominate a planet. Many groups of elves and dwarves head certain conclaves that routinely erradicate the human menace from outlying areas, stopping their mindless expantionist ways, raising the fear level among humans, and pinning the blame on monstrous creatures.

Humans do rule certain areas of the campaign world, but generally are too dumb to realize that some of the races they embrace and ally with are culling their numbers. This has lead a number of archmagi to gain overall control of the planet, whether human (and allied to nonhumans or not concerned with the plight in general) or not to lead and protect several nations, where they are almost revered as demigods. Circles within circles.

Basically, the humans live in a world where they know they are not behind the reigns and superstition is rampant, monsters are more savage and very few people are in on the gag. My current group of PCs has no humans, and some of them are catching on, as they travel about, and notice that humans are just stumbling along with everyone else. What I have created is a very grim and supernatural Dark Age. Humans may catch on and rise above in ages to come, but the knowledge of what is going on is simply not out there. Maybe the lack of confidence, knowing that the world is perilous, is a theme to expand upon.


hellbender

 

[DinoeL]

I don't want any race to be much ahead of others. Maybe in this part of the world more peaceful races live but some there out there, there are lands of more dangerous guys.
I want humans to have more than one little kingdom in the heart of their settled land, where the more fertile lands are, and frontier lands, more dangerous and not very fertile, for non-united freeholds. Say elves live in forests, dwarves in mountains and they cleared surrounding non forested territory from not good guys. Humans appeared and got a land to settle. Land was fertile, maybe near a sea. For a 1000 years it was all right, humans were covered from the outer world by elven and dwarven kingdoms (but still had to fight against attacks from sea of underworld and maybe on land some there (hey! I have worked out general shape of the world! well... still need a size ) but humans felt that land they have were not enough, some started settling more dangerous lands and some turned to inner fighting and someone took an axe and started chopping ancient trees in an elven forest...
gonna be an interesting campaign I think

p.s. Takes me too long to answer. I havent practiced my english for a year! Spellcheck is great!

 

[Hejdun]

Well, I can give you the purely mathematical solution to how many people you'd have.

You have 500,000 people after 10 years, with 990 years left, right? You have a population grown of 10% every 35 years, which is .2857% a year.

The formula I used is 500,000(1+.002857)^990 (which may or may not be correct, I'm going off my Trigonometry notes)

The end result is roughly 8,500,000 people.

You really could allow for a higher birth rate if you wanted to. It's not unusual to have African countries have birth rates of 2-3% annually.

 

[Sixchan]

Death rate from diseases might actually be extremely low.

In our world, there are human diseases, pig diseases, cat diseases, etc., and normally animal diseases cannot infect humans (although SARS seems to be just this).

In this new world, since there were originally no humans, there should be no human diseases.


The big problems should come in a few hundred or few thousand years, when a disease evolves to infect humans severely (kinda like SARS has). However, if the humans were to keep reasonable levels of hygene in their settlements, such as seperation of sewage from drinking water, washing their hands before meals (their religion could require this, for example), boiling food and water, and so on, you could keep the humans going full strength for thousands of years.

 

[Xeriar]

Because of certain evolutionary traits (such as the blood brain barrier) humans are immune to whole classes of potential diseases.

Not all of them, but if this is a truly alien world, diseases will not easily spread between humans and other races, though what counts for poison and what doesn't may change.

However, diseases adapt and through magic, accidents (children between human and elf) can have very drastic unforeseen consequences. On both sides.

Area that humans will cover (agriculturally) depends largely on the quality of the land and food. If they've settled on glacial till and are growing good crops of rice or corn, they aren't going to be bugging anyone for food for a very, very long time. If ever. This is the kind of advantage the United States has, and its reproduction rate reflects the shift in resource allocation.

On the other hand, give them a desert the size of the Sahara, and they will be stuck at a population of half to one and a half million until they decide to leave.

The population problem that we have today is a cultural one, and was not necessarily inevitable. Birth control is not a new concept and even the ancient Greeks practiced infanticide.

The main limiter to human populations, however, is fuel. Fuel for light, fuel for steel, fuel for building... Humans have a problem with rampant deforestation and only now are we beginning to learn just how bad that can be.

Trees die. These are typically also the easiest to cut down, and the already mostly-dry wood is ready to go. If a civilization (such as elves) grows its homes, uses magical lighting and steel-making, it can even spare some wood for yoo-mans. But, should a human warlord desire to build a fleet, or something...

 

[Desdichado]

I once tinkered around with a setting that was superficially similar to that -- in that one, the elves, dwarves, etc. came to the humans' world, but the humans were Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers without a large worldwide (or even regional anywhere) population, and they shared the world still with other human species (notably Neanderthals.) Because of their advanced technology (steel, for instance, and stone construction!) the other races got quite a foothold, and the humans had to race to catch up, and had no chance of surpasing them as the dominant intelligent life forms on the planet.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Death rate from diseases might actually be extremely low.

In our world, there are human diseases, pig diseases, cat diseases, etc., and normally animal diseases cannot infect humans (although SARS seems to be just this).

In this new world, since there were originally no humans, there should be no human diseases.

This is exactly why invader species do so well in North America. The other big factor is a lack of parasites generally.

A big problem with human colonists is that humans tend to be really deterministic. We have a hard time adapting our culture to take advantage of new food stuffs and environments unless someone forces already adapted knowledge and culture onto ours. Even then we will revert if possible.

Look at the problem Plymouth had until they actually started listening to Squanto.

My part of North America is very likely going to be ruined utterly by the local settlers insistence on instituting familiar systems of farming and property rights as soon as technology made it even vaguely possible, no matter how unsustainable it actually was.

The growth rate and success is going to depend a lot on the human culture as well.

In any scenario you are likely to have some nasty gaps in the generational demographics from die offs followed by periods of baby boom.

 

[DinoeL]

Thanks everyone!

Now my world will be much more belivable and interresting, I hope .

Special thanks to Xeriar.