Pathfinder 1E What race would you choose to dominate a setting.

[Celebrim]

Except these aren't alien races.

I disagree. They share a world, may possibly share overlapping ecosystems, and may face the same threats or worship the same gods, but they are aliens living together (or frequently, not living together).

Sure there are distinguishing features (longevity, native habitats, maybe relationship to magic) but there's no reason to assume that what we think of as "recognizable human behaviors" aren't the same as "recognizable behaviors of intelligent life."

How many sentient species other than humanity are you familiar with? So on what grounds do you think that "recognizable human behavior" is any way the same as "recognizable behaviors of intelligent life"? What are the recognizable behaviors of intelligent life that all intelligent life has in common? Is there any way to give a definitive answer on that?

I think there is every reason to assume sentient species have radically different outlooks.

I would expect overlap in as much as there is overlap in the 'biology' of the two species, but where that biology differs there will be very large divergence in outlook and behavior. How much the biology differs is something of a matter of opinion, because to a large extent the ecology of an elf is an additional construction. If the biology doesn't differ in any great degree, which is a fairly common assumption, then you aren't doing it wrong if they don't differ more than 'humans with bumps on their forehead'. If the biology however differs a good deal, then yes, you are doing it wrong. There is nothing wrong with claiming that elves and humans are basically the same and therefore the expectation is that they ought to act the same.

My problem comes from trying to do both - radically different biology but no corespondingly large difference in perspective or behavior.

This comes up quite a bit in my games just approving the concepts for non-human characters players come up with. Elves is particular cause all sorts of problems with failures of the player to really come to grips with 'elves are different and I mean it'. As I've drawn them, they don't have the same emotional contexts (they barely understand sexual lust, for example), they don't have the same metabolic needs (beauty and freedom are physical needs like oxygen and water and depriving an elf of one kills it), they don't have the same understanding of time (childhood lasts a century, most anything they could possess materially is going to decay before they do), they don't have the same relationship to the natural world (you have to be ok with basically being able to talk to everything you eat), they wouldn't consider it abandonment or bad parenting for a parent to kick their '8 year old' out of the house to fend for themselves for a year or two (in fact, that's normal), and so forth. I get well-intentioned players that write backgrounds that are literally impossible for an elf but make perfect sense of the character was human. I've had to write a 6 page handout for, "So you want to play an elf?", and still have to point out that its not possible for an elf to have been a slave.

As a personal preference, I feel that if you are going to have elves be humans with bumps on their forehead, you add nothing to your setting and would get a richer setting if humans were the only race. That is, the central reason I can think of for having a nonhuman race is if it provides a nonhuman perspective. I suppose that there can be some sort of trivial mechanical reason, 'this race has +2 dex', but all that could be just as easily folded into more diverse human character creation options.

 

[benkyo]

I voted for post-apocalyptic, mainly for an even split among the various races. To me, this allows a char with a different race, i.e. Gnome, to shine a bit more in the Gnome cities/countries/whathaveyou. However, I do not believe that that would necessarily mean it is a post-apoc world. For homebrew that might work a bit better as many of the other races are considered to be older than Humans, and perhaps more established in their respective areas. Just my 2 copper.

 

[gamerprinter]

Except these aren't alien races. They share a world, exist in the same ecosystem, face the same threats, frequently worship the same gods, etc. Sure there are distinguishing features (longevity, native habitats, maybe relationship to magic) but there's no reason to assume that what we think of as "recognizable human behaviors" aren't the same as "recognizable behaviors of intelligent life." By all means, play your own characters and run your own games however you want, but the idea that other people are doing it wrong is just arguing from bad premises.

I was implying that my personal feelings were that the other players at my table were running non-human characters as too human, IMO. I never would suggest that other people from other tables were portraying non-humans wrong. I have no experience with anyone other than those at my table (at least not since 1986), so I have no idea how anyone else runs their characters to make any kind of judgements. I would never say other people are doing it wrong in any aspect of the game, and I don't know why you're suggesting that I am.

None of my elves worship human gods, nor do they share whom they worship with any non-elves (in fact my elves don't worship gods at all, rather they worship magic as a force of nature). Aside from sharing the same continent, there is little commonality between humans and non-humans in all of my worlds. Again, those are my worlds, I don't know yours or anyone else's, thus I can't/won't judge others' games. My elves of my current worlds were heavily influenced by the 'sidhelien' elves of the Birthright campaign setting.

And I agree with Celebrim, non-humans are equivalent to aliens. Only not being from another world is the only instance that doesn't apply, in every other way, they are their own and do not reflect/share with humans in values, beliefs, concepts in any way whatsoever (and the same is true for most other non-human races.)

 

[Madnick]

Hey guys


I would like to thank you all for your participation in this poll. It seems obvious to me why most famous campaign settings are Human dominant.
Even though it has been used a lot in the past it gives many different choices to the players (political intrigues, diversity, manipulative in nature) hence it is preferred.


I will make sure to keep this input into archive and use it in time! Our main concern is to use the community as much as possible.

I am curious to know if you guys find this kind of active participation constructive and interesting. If you had the opportunity to play in a setting where you have a say on things that matter.

The feedback from the community would be drawn through a complex voting system and not just a simple poll like this one (some rules might include weighted votes, or consecutive rounds of voting if there is no majority depending on the poll ie etc), to ensure most people are happy with the final implementation of the result.

 

[Angrydad]

I too have contemplated what worlds would be like if the dominant race was not humans. To me, dwarves seem like a good choice for a race that would possibly become the dominant power if humans are not there to claim it. They're lawful, militant, excellent craftsmen, and long-lived. In my own games, I've decided that dwarves are rather fertile compared to many of the other long-lived races, which means that many dwarf families have 10 children or more, depending on their station in society, and this also means that dwarven cities are usually far bigger and better manned than most surface dwellers suspect. They're not currently the dominant race in an overt way in my setting, but most nations in the world use the dwarven banking system, and many dwarven mercenary groups are employed on the surface. This is why I voted for a common demihuman race in the poll. Elves are long-lived and mystical, but the general fluff about their personalities, and their low fertility rates, tends to suggest that elves are unlikely to make any kind of grabs for power.