Who prefers a human-centric campaign?

[I'm A Banana]

I mean a game/campaign/whatever where playing a non-human is going to be seen as odd and very out of place, and where human-filled parties are preferred.

Depends on if there's "human cultures" or something to provide some mechanical diversity. If so, I've got no problems with it, even as an assumption for certain campaigns. For example, it would work well in a horror campaign, where "outsiders" are there to be feared, avoided, and lynched (and insiders are too, the moment they start acting suspiciously). I wouldn't want it as the baseline for D&D in general, though I arguably would like to see solid rules for making races more diverse in general (including humans, but also including subraces and the like).

If there's no mechanical diversity, I've got a mild problem with it, since it's just boring, but boring isn't deal-breaking. In D&D, 95% of your variety comes from your class, anyway. Race is just icing on the cake. In other games, maybe it'd be 100%.

Also, to answer your question, yes I would prefer a setting with no traditional fantasy races. None. What. So. Ever. In fact, a setting with no humans would make me fairly happy.

I'd say go out and make it. Sounds like it might be fun, and it would certainly be a unique selling point for any world. I'd be interested in seeing what it's like. Of course, I'd also be interested in seeing an all-human world that still maintains a lot of diversity.

But why all the nerdrage about humans, elves, dwarves, etc.? Other than being bog-standard and maybe done to death (the other side of that coin is "Strong Archetype" and "Heavy Traction"), what would you say is wrong with 'em? I'm interested, I've never heard your position before, and I like playing with settings.

 

[Scotley]

I voted yes because part of the choice was 'like'. I have been in some great human-centric games. I liked them very much. I'm not going to say that I prefer them. I think what I prefer is a game world that makes sense. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense for the setting that every single race is playable. And it doesn't always makes sense that the party is made up of a very diverse group of races.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Yes, I prefer heavily human-centric settings. That said, I also really enjoy "other-bloodedness" as a way to mix things up a bit.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Nope.

If I want human centric stuff, I'll play modern day games (generally superheroes). For my fantasy and SF I love lots and lots of races.

 

[gamerprinter]

I prefer humano-centric, but...

My OD&D/2e days, I played all sorts of races as a player, from the traditional non-human to the oddball race. Since 3e, however, I've almost always played human only, and not for mechanical reasons, rather personal preference.

I especially like historical fantasy homebrew settings, where non humans exist, but they are aliens/monsters/eldritch beings, people to interact with, yet feels distinctly inhuman to the adventuring party. However, in my gaming group, I'm pretty much alone on these preferences.

Our most recent 3e game, the DM has kind of forced everyone to take monster templates, so I took an undead human, as that is as far from human as I prefer. But the group includes a Deva, a half-dragon Illithidae, a Drow and a half-titan. We play. We have fun, but internally I think its a joke. I'm not the DM in this setting and can't wait until we are all so powerful that retirement is the only option. So we can get back to something more normal.

I'd rather see an adventuring group with bloodline ties to other ancient races (elves, etc.), but where everyone is pretty much human. I've been done with traditional D&D setting of elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, etc for about ten years now. But I won't force my players be to human, if they don't want to.

I'm working on an Iron Age Celt/Pict homebrew, where nonhuman bloodline ties exist, but all members of the party are of the same human clan - as clan feuds are central to the setting. Perhaps a half-elf or half-fey, where one of the characters grandparentss was an elf or fey being (perhaps shape-changed to a human at the time of "conception"), but the PCs are mostly Celt/Pict humans.

GP

 

[Henry]

To be honest, human cultures have run all over the spectrum over the millenia, is there really such a thing as an "nonhuman" race, other than biologically? About the only kind of non-human there could be, is one that had no biological drive to reproduce or survive. That said, all races are pretty much humans in funny suits, exploring one particular facet or aspect of humanity, in my opinion.

 

[Rechan]

But why all the nerdrage about humans, elves, dwarves, etc.? Other than being bog-standard and maybe done to death (the other side of that coin is "Strong Archetype" and "Heavy Traction"), what would you say is wrong with 'em? I'm interested, I've never heard your position before, and I like playing with settings.

I don't want to answer that in this thread, because I don't want to derail it. It's purely about human-centric vs. non, no need to go on about humanoid races and the like at length. Besides, I talked about it in the Cantina thread. My preferences have been made public.

 

[Celebrim]

It's kind of a loaded question, and neither 'yes' or 'no' really captures my feelings.

I've run human centered campaigns, elf centered campaigns, and goblin centered campaigns. For my game, there are seven playable races, plus two half-breeds plus 4 additional racial variants, for a total of 13 racial choices. And additionally, there is a feat that lets you play two additional racial variants, and if you play a sorcerer there are feats that let you essentially 'mutate' over time. Just within the racial variants then that would be considered 'normal' within my game world, that's alot of options.

And yet, I'm probably on the 'anti-cantina' side of the line. Twenty years ago I removed Orcs from my homebrew because I thought two was one too many ugly savage demihuman races for a campaign world. I'm very unopen to allowing lizard folk, gnolls, trikin, minotaurs, tieflings, mongrelmen and so forth as player races to the extent that I've set out a very clear cosmological distinction between PC races and NPC races that makes breaking this rule very difficult.

I generally find that playing a non-human race is difficult for the player. Typically, it hinders rather than helps the players role play. This is in part due to the fact that D&D has never done a good job defining what makes a race different than humanity. In general, I find that most peoples personification of non-human races varies from either sterotypical to Star Trek style 'human except for the bumps on your hear' or 'sterotype of one human culture inflated to become the trope of a whole race'. And actually, so long as you don't unbalance the races so that human is an undesirable choice, I find its the preferred choice for most players. Most races are difficult to self-identify with and mostly they seem to be taken for mechanical reasons.

Further, I find that the more races that you open up, the worse this problem becomes. The more races you have, the more you water down any one races characterization. Inventing an alien race which is as rich in cultural possibilities and range of personalities as human is hard. Finding some trait of the race that is sufficiently robust as to become a significant distinguishing feature from humans is not easy. Very rarerly do I see a race which adds something to the character that simply having the same character as a human wouldn't add and better. Very rarely is the character's race important to the characterization except to the extent that it just brings with it some limiting tropes.

When I move the racial focus from human to one other race, it lets me explore that race in a depth that improves the player characterization and makes exploring the race an interesting thing in itself without swamping the players too much in exposition. We can seriously explore questions like, "What is it like to be a member of a race that lives for centuries, has low constitution, actually is connected to the natural world in a way humans are not, and a stronger than human tendency to prefer individualism (chaos) over collectivism (law)?", if we make that a fairly large part of the game focus. But when you have lots of races at the table, its impossible to explore any one portrayal in much detail. The impact of being a member of that race on the overall presonification and dialogue at the table is small, except when it becomes tedious exposition on the part of the player as they regurgitate setting information, as in the sterotypical Vampire the Masquerade player dialogue: "I'm a Brujah. You are Ventrue. We can't get along."

So, on the whole, I prefer to work with a small set of very broad racial archetypes with clear biological differences with humanity and with a strong focus on one race rather than with a kitchen sink approach. And I say this as someone whose homebrew is often in practice more multi-racial and often multi-ethnic than any pre-4e inspired setting except Planescape.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

For me it's a problem of identity. Specifically that I'm confused by it.

I do not have a good identification of myself in terms of biology and functional role (race and class, to use D&D terms, but it extends into even things like gender). So when I'm asked to think about those features in my character I come up blank, unless I'm free to dive into the oddity that is not identifying one's identity or being confusing about one's identity. Problem is I can't do that if I make a choice I can at least get my head around. Human is the worst offender of that sort for obvious reasons. But even near-humans like elves, dwarves, and halfings to name the standard three are just still too easy to understand. Only when I have the choice of something like a minotaur do I arrive at the proper realm of not having an easy identity.

So my answer is no. I don't necessarily dislike a human-centric setting if it's really interesting, but since I need something odd to play I certainly don't prefer human-centric.

 

[Celebrim]

To be honest, human cultures have run all over the spectrum over the millenia, is there really such a thing as an "nonhuman" race, other than biologically?

Other than biologically? Probably not, or to the extent that there is, it would be cultural differences driven by biology.

About the only kind of non-human there could be, is one that had no biological drive to reproduce or survive.

I don't agree with that at all.

Just a few examples:

1) A race with racial memory that is born 'knowing'.
2) A race with lamarkian evolution.
3) A race where individuals were super-organisms of cooperative individuals.
4) A race with highly distinct physical castes where the individual members are so wildly different that we would not recognize them as members of the same species on the basis of phenotype.
5) A race with a set of emotional states which were alien to our own. You mention one kind, in a rather extreme case, but less extreme possibilities are available. Imagine races where one major human emotion: compassion, desire, anger, fear, etc. is missing, or try to imagine an emotional state existing which has no correspondence with human emotional states. Or try to imagine emotional associations that are very different than humans, for example a race that when wrong makes no assumption that its entitled to retribution or compensation and has no corresponding emotional states.
6) A race of clones.
7) Wildly different sexuality than humans, for example, one gender, natural ratio of males to females very far from 1:1, spawning behavior, mate and die behavior, sexuality is a associated with children and adults grow out of it, etc. That is, no families as we know it and possibly no heirarchies as we know them, and no assumption that life progresses in the stages we assume are natural.
8) A race that experience wildly different life cycles from humanity, such as naturally immortal or coming to physical maturity in two years or two hundred, long periods of hibernation, etc.

That said, all races are pretty much humans in funny suits, exploring one particular facet or aspect of humanity, in my opinion.

I would say all aliens serve the literary purpose of exploring a particular facet of humanity, but that they serve this purpose best when in that facet they are quite alien to our experience as humans.