Worlds of Design: Only Human

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“There is no such thing as human superiority.” – Dwight Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander WW II Europe, and 34th President)

Humans are generally positioned as the baseline to which other species are compared, no doubt because humans are playing the game. Dungeons & Dragons famously centered humans as the “main” species lest the game turn into less fantasy medieval and more abstract fantasy – all of which seems quaint now given the dizzying variety of fantasy worlds in books and on screen. But there are other reasons why humans might logically be more common in a fantasy world, and which reasons you choose can set the tone for your game.

Magical Proficiency​

My first answer is humans can use magic much more proficiently than any rival. Not every species can learn more, and more complex, spells, and use magical items. Originally in RPGs there were level limits for nonhuman playable species (often wrongly called races) such as elves and dwarves. This helped prevent them from dominating humans. Modern dislike of constraints tends to see those limitations removed in later rulesets, so this doesn’t necessarily apply anymore to later editions of D&D or other fantasy rulesets. But there are likely other reasons for human dominance, such as adaptability, ambition, and organization.

Adaptability​

Humans in general are very adaptable, as we can see from humans being able to live in almost any conditions, very hot, very cold, with water all around, or in deserts. Human inventiveness is something historians appreciate with each passing decade as the pace of technological innovation continues to increase. Even the ability to domesticate animals is a sign of adaptability. To put it another way: humans are jacks of all trades. Whatever needs to be done, humans will figure out how to do it.

In comparison, many species – inherited from the Tolkien tradition – were deeply tied to their origin: dwarves in the mountains, elves in the forests, hobbits in the hills, and orcs underground. There are plenty of exceptions to these broad strokes across fiction, but the general sentiment holds true that many species are uniquely adapted to their homelands, whereas humans can theoretically be found anywhere.

I remember reading a book by science fiction writer Keith Laumer about his famous character Retief, where the intelligent aliens of a system were astonished that humans could drive vehicles without massive collisions everywhere. Whether you call this adaptability or organization, it’s the kind of thing that might make humans stand out from some other species.

Ambition​

A key element of elves and dwarves and hobbits is their longing for their homelands. All three are often represented as either wanting to stay in their original lands or pining to return to them. This isn’t necessarily the case for humans, who by their nature in fantasy settings tend to be expansionist. Another way to put this, from novelist John Steinbeck's The Pearl:

For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.

While on the one hand this makes humans a catalyst for change, their need to explore and conquer can start wars and bring other species into conflict with them. From a fantasy role-playing game standpoint, this urge to pick up roots facilitates adventures too.

Organization​

The more we know about history, the more we know how chaotic and disorganized humans can be. Yet compared with other species we might be quite well-organized, up to and including empires. Imagine how less effective humans would be if they could never come together in a state/polity larger than a few thousand people. How often do we see imperial elves, say, or dwarves conquering human kingdoms? (The answer depends partly on how much dwarves and elves resemble humans, and if you play Spelljammer.)

And within any state, we can have remarkable organization at times. This affects production, agriculture, and well-being just as much as military capability. Other fantasy species, on the other hand, are often more chaotic than humans, and commonly less organized. What we can’t really know is how much intelligence naturally leads to the urge to organize, because we have no other intelligent species to compare with in the real world.

We’re Only Human​

Of course, the real reason why humans dominate fantasy is because the readers/players are humans, and prefer the familiar. Increasingly, that’s becoming less common as role-playing games branch out, and other media portrays the wide variety of species as coexisting with humans. In some cases, humans aren’t the dominant species at all.

In Dungeons & Dragons, making humans the baseline was a design choice. Later editions have made species less rules-specific and thus more defined by their background than their origin, freeing up other species to succeed on their own merits. But for many campaigns, humans are so ubiquitous they fade into the background. If humans are your baseline in your world, it’s worth considering how they got there.

Your Turn: What’s the non-human dominant species in your fantasy world?

 

[Hussar]

Another Level Up reference. In that 5e adjacent RPG, Culture alongside Heritage, Background and Destiny play a part in developing your character's origin. It represents all of the learned traits your character gained while growing up in a particular society.

For instance, if you were playing a Dwarf, you would have the Dwarven heritage and all of the traits associated with that heritage (size, speed, age, Darkvision, Creator's Blessing (a free tool proficiency) and Tough. As for Culture, there are three Dwarven Cultures in Level Up- Mountain, Hill and Deep.

Mountain Dwarf Culture
Dwarven Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.
Dwarven Armor Training. You have proficiency with light and medium armor.
Heart of the Forge. You have resistance to f ire damage. In addition, you gain proficiency in Engineering.
Mountain Born. You’re acclimated to high and low altitudes, including elevations above 20,000 feet or depths below 20,000 feet. You’re also naturally adapted to cold climates.
Stonecunning. Whenever you make a History check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and gain an expertise die.
Languages. You can speak, read, write, and sign Common, Dwarvish, and one other language.

Hill Dwarf Culture
Community Magic. You know the friends cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast charm person once per long rest. At 5th level, you can cast suggestion once per long rest. You don’t need material components for these spells, and when casting them your spellcasting ability is Charisma.
Friendly. You are proficient in either Deception or Persuasion.
Wagoner. You are either proficient in either Animal Handling or with land vehicles.
Ways of the Land. You are proficient in Survival and gain an expertise die on checks using it.
Languages. You can speak, read, write, and sign Common, Dwarvish, and two additional languages.

Deep Dwarf Culture
Superior Darkvision. You grew so used to being underground that you can see in the dark farther than other dwarves. The range of your darkvision increases to 120 feet. If you didn’t have darkvision already, you gain darkvision to a range of 60 feet. Deep Magic. You know the resistance cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast jump once per long rest. At 5th level, you can cast enlarge/ reduce once per long rest. You don’t need material components for these spells, but you can’t cast them while you’re in direct sunlight (although sunlight has no effect on them once cast). Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Deep Suspicion. Your lack of trust protects you from some magic. You have advantage on saving throws against illusions and to resist being charmed or paralyzed.
Underground Combat Training. You are proficient with hand crossbows, short swords, and war picks.
Languages. You can speak, read, write, and sign Common, Dwarvish, and Undercommon.

If you want to play a character who was born as a non-dwarf but grew up in a Dwarven culture, all you need to do is pick a non-Dwarf heritage and then select one of the three cultures I just mentioned. In your example above, you could have human heritage/ High Elf culture, human heritage/Wood Elf culture, etc.

Don’t care about level up to be honest. You are focusing on chargen and not world building.

 

[Hussar]

Sure.

But the point that was brought up was that it is very likely that species who have different actual biological aspects would create different cultures within a society that they inhabit with other species .

A darkvision having nocturnal species might have a slightly different culture than a diurnal species that cannot see in the dark.

If halflings and humans live together there might be separate societal cultural aspects due to a human's height at adulthood versus a halfings height and I don't hold creating three different subcultures within their world.

And that goes to my base argument with many of these worlds.

A species that can see in a dark would likely not have a Darkness God or Deity as evil within their main Pantheon because they can see in a dark

Or Dragonborn. If a Dragonborn Elemental affinity is random that randomness would be part of their culture that is not tied to any other species that they live with. And if it's tied to their environment or two draconic ancestor that too would be part of their culture that would not cross interact with any other species.

So if you had a Arctic Nation where you had one species that was resisted to cold one species that was insisted to poison and a one species that didn't have any special resistance it would be very likely that the three species would have three different cultural mechanics because the species would gravitate to certain aspects of their society due to their biological differences.

However many RPG fans and designers are afraid of any hint of biological essentialism within their cultures of their species due to the history of problematic fans and designers of the past.

Whereas to me I would just have an Arctic Culture where the people in that culture would be distinctly from that culture as opposed to that other culture over there. Sure individuals within a culture will be different and have different views but their views will be far more similar to each others than the views of that culture over there.

So sure people with dark vision in X culture might not pay much attention to that God of Darkness but they still accept that god as part of the pantheon of that culture and as they live in the Arctic, they don’t have a God of Green Hills. After all, they live in the arctic. While they see in the dark, they still recognize that it’s dark for six months of the year.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Mountain Dwarf Culture
Dwarven Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.
Dwarven Armor Training. You have proficiency with light and medium armor.
Heart of the Forge. You have resistance to fire damage. In addition, you gain proficiency in Engineering.
Mountain Born. You’re acclimated to high and low altitudes, including elevations above 20,000 feet or depths below 20,000 feet. You’re also naturally adapted to cold climates.
Stonecunning. Whenever you make a History check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and gain an expertise die.
Languages. You can speak, read, write, and sign Common, Dwarvish, and one other language.

Hill Dwarf Culture
Community Magic. You know the friends cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast charm person once per long rest. At 5th level, you can cast suggestion once per long rest. You don’t need material components for these spells, and when casting them your spellcasting ability is Charisma.
Friendly. You are proficient in either Deception or Persuasion.
Wagoner. You are either proficient in either Animal Handling or with land vehicles.
Ways of the Land. You are proficient in Survival and gain an expertise die on checks using it.
Languages. You can speak, read, write, and sign Common, Dwarvish, and two additional languages.

Deep Dwarf Culture
Superior Darkvision. You grew so used to being underground that you can see in the dark farther than other dwarves. The range of your darkvision increases to 120 feet. If you didn’t have darkvision already, you gain darkvision to a range of 60 feet. Deep Magic. You know the resistance cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast jump once per long rest. At 5th level, you can cast enlarge/ reduce once per long rest. You don’t need material components for these spells, but you can’t cast them while you’re in direct sunlight (although sunlight has no effect on them once cast). Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Deep Suspicion. Your lack of trust protects you from some magic. You have advantage on saving throws against illusions and to resist being charmed or paralyzed.
Underground Combat Training. You are proficient with hand crossbows, short swords, and war picks.
Languages. You can speak, read, write, and sign Common, Dwarvish, and Undercommon.

In general I like this newer modular approach to character generation, separating out ancestry, culture, class, background, etc so players can build highly customized characters without having to bend or break the rules. I have begun learning Pathfinder 2E and character generation is a bit like building a car on an assembly line - you start with a bare-bones chassis and then bolt on various components at successive stages. I have not started learning Level Up yet but it sounds broadly similar in some ways.

The Mountain Dwarf culture seems to be a good fit for those who want the basic plug-and-play Tolkien dwarf package, all ready to go cavern-crawling, dungeon-delving, and goblin-slaying. Interesting to see that you get resistance to fire damage and cold climates, but not poisons.

The Deep Dwarf culture seems to be D&D gray dwarves with the “enslaved by mindflayers” backstory and “always evil” trope deleted, and that seems fine to me. IIRC the AD&D 2E dwarves splatbook introduced playable deep dwarves, perhaps to replace or complement the 1E UA gray dwarves, but they do not seem to have become very popular long term. As part of their post-OGL-crisis remaster of PF2E, Paizo has renamed their duergar as “hryngar” and junked the alignment system altogether. In medieval Norse and German sources dwarves often have the power to change size or shape, so the duergar ability to enlarge is one of the few traits of D&D dwarves derived straight from Germanic mythology and not indirectly via Tolkien. The word “duergar” itself is also based on the Old English and Old Norse words for “dwarf”. Incidentally many legendary dwarves cast magic spells and craft magic items, so it is not clear why Gygax thought dwarves should never be magic-users, because that is flatly contradicted by the original lore.

The one thing that seems rather odd to me is the Hill Dwarf culture, which seems to lean very heavily on using enchantment magic to win “friends” and influence people. Even low-level hill dwarves are apparently skilled in manipulating others. Maybe it is just my “Deep Suspicion” talking (see what I did there? ), but the spell abilities seem suited not so much for friendly community-building but for grifting and seducing the unwary. In fact, add in the Wagoner skill and you are well on the way to ugly old stereotypes about Romany or Irish Travelers roving the roads, taking advantage of sedentary “honest folk”, along with the legendary dwarvish lust for gold.

I can see it now: a hill dwarf caravan rolls into a humble halfling hamlet, and everybody gets excited about the exotic wares for sale, scrumptious food stalls, games and amusements, and of course barrels of flowing ale. A few hours later the dwarves are long gone and everybody is left with dizzy heads and empty purses: “Where’s all me coppers?!” they ask. And the bitter old hobbit propping up the bar goes off on a rant: “By Brandobaris’ belt! Just like it happened thirty year ago! Did anybody listen to me? Noooo... Never trust a hill dwarf!!!”

Maybe I’m just paranoid.

 

[Corinnguard]

Don’t care about level up to be honest. You are focusing on chargen and not world building.

It's cool. I do like to focus on creating characters. World building doesn't really excite me as much as coming up with a character concept and then fleshing it out via 5e or Level Up.

 

[Corinnguard]

In general I like this newer modular approach to character generation, separating out ancestry, culture, class, background, etc so players can build highly customized characters without having to bend or break the rules. I have begun learning Pathfinder 2E and character generation is a bit like building a car on an assembly line - you start with a bare-bones chassis and then bolt on various components at successive stages. I have not started learning Level Up yet but it sounds broadly similar in some ways.

That is a surprisingly good analogy for character generation in RPGs such as PF2 and Level Up.

Level Up's Heritage is sort of like PF2's Ancestry in that it gives you all of the traits your character is going to be born with (size, speed, ag, senses, and a unique signature trait). It also gives you a heritage gift at 1st level and a paragon gift at 10th level, which isn't too different from gaining a 1st level ancestry feat and a higher-level ancestry feat. The only place the Heritage and Ancestry differ from one another is that the former doesn't come with ASIs. Instead ASIs in Level Up are part of your character's Background and only your Background (unlike PF2 where you can get ASIs from your Ancestry, your Background, and your Class)
Creating a character such as a Half-Elf in Level Up differs from PF2 in that you pick a Heritage and then a Heritage gift from another Heritage. Level Up doesn't have PF2's Versatile heritages, which are very template-like. So, for a Level Up Half-Elf, you can start with a Human heritage and pick up an Elven heritage gift, or you can start with an Elven heritage and pick up a Human heritage gift.

I like to think Culture in Level Up addresses one thing that D&D didn't take into account during character generation, characters who were born to parents of a particular heritage but raised in a society that belongs to a different heritage. If you wanted to create a dwarf who grew up among elves, you could do that, but this element would have no mechanical heft. Just fluff. The dwarf would have all of the stuff they would have normally gained had they been raised in a dwarven society, but nothing from the elven society they had actually been raised in. I seriously doubt that elven society would train them in the ways of a dwarf. They would have trained them to be an elf (High Elf, Wood Elf, Shadow Elf, Eladrin). So, Level Up not only allows to mix-and-match heritage and heritage gift, but it also allows you to mix-and-match heritage and culture too!

Background in Level Up is where your character will get their initial ASIs. Like PF2, one of your starting ASIs is going to be fixed. However, unlike PF2, your other starting ASI can come from one of the remaining five ability scores. Then there are the Connections and the Mementos, stuff that the Narrator could use to make your character a part of the setting by tying your character to an important NPC or an item of personal nostalgic worth.

Destiny answers one important question regarding your character, what made them into an adventurer in the first place. What made your character give up their previous life. What inspired them to be an adventurer.

And that's my bit of Bardic Inspiration for today.

 

[Minigiant]

But there’s the point in your cetacean cultures. They have languages. Their techniques might vary somewhat but they are all pretty similar.

And there is a hell of a lot bigger difference between a bottle nose dolphin and a blue whale than there is between an elf and a dwarf.

Differing capabilities? Sure, to some degree. After all elves have a innate spell. Sure. But differing temperaments? Not so convinced. There is far more overlap than difference.

In my option there are a lot more difference between elf, dwarf, and human than dolphins.

I think the idea that nonhuman humaniods are just humans in hats is boring and risks people using rl cultures.

 

[Hussar]

In my option there are a lot more difference between elf, dwarf, and human than dolphins.

I think the idea that nonhuman humaniods are just humans in hats is boring and risks people using rl cultures.

I get that but again, they are going to share a lot, just as your cetaceans do. They live in houses of some sort. They are all omnivores. They are basically the same physiologically- two arms, two legs, etc. they all have similar senses. Humanoids all communicate in the same way.

In other words, while there are obvious differences, life span being a big one, the various humanoids are far more similar than different.

To me they want cultures to be far more important than biology. Orcs are violent and warlike. Elves are snooty tree huggers. Why? Because biology. To me that’s just boring.

Every group of orc should vary just as much as every group of human. You should have agrarian, nomadic, fisherfolk, etc orcs. And those groups mix with other species to form cultures in given regions.

But very few DnD settings seem interested in that amount of legwork. So humans get a dozen different cultures and halflings get one. Orcs get one. Elves might get two or three if they’re lucky.

 

[Minigiant]

I get that but again, they are going to share a lot, just as your cetaceans do. They live in houses of some sort. They are all omnivores. They are basically the same physiologically- two arms, two legs, etc. they all have similar senses. Humanoids all communicate in the same way.

In other words, while there are obvious differences, life span being a big one, the various humanoids are far more similar than different.

But there are differences.

Like Dwarves are poison resistant.

For a nation where dwarves are the majority they would not be as much care about making sure that your food and the air is not poisonous. Which would be harder and difficult if you live mostly underground in caves or in mountains.

So unlike my setting the mountain dwarfs who have a noticeable population of stout halflings and rock gnomes in their lands would ensure that their culture has adequate sensibility about the smaller size of these pieces and the health of their food and clarity of the air. This also results in their gods being more favorable and their creation of the Stout Halfling as the halflings deer slowly become more resistant to the poisonous dwarven food and start to intermix and interbreed with the dwarfs that live there under the blessing of there Patriot deities.

Whereas the deep mountain dwarves in the same setting are 99% dwarfing and does can lean to more traditionally dwarf focused lifestyle in their culture and does if you travel there there's a very good chance that the air sickens you after a couple days in the food not only taste terrible but are limited amount of choices that a non dwarf could even eat.

This leads to the majority of items that are traded out of the dwarven kingdoms to be mountain dwarf or hill dwarf because those two dwarfing types of more likely to me accommodated and interactive with other species whereas the deep mountain divorce create better items they're very unlikely to trade them with any nondwarf due to their traditionalism created out of there lack of being integrated or interacting with other species.

But instead of simply having some halflings live with the doors and gaining some dwarfiness in their halfling culture to make a dwarfing seasoned halfling culture and a halfling seasoned dwarven culture, we just copy the three halfling subspecies from Tolkien and kludge it into our settings.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly @Minigiant, I don't think we're all that far apart. I mean, in your example of a dwarf/halflign/gnome community, if we rejigger the demographics a bit, the culture would change. IOW, culture is created by the mixture of the people in that culture. If instead of gnomes, we had dragonborn, for example, but the dwarves were still the majority demographic, the architecture might change a bit, there'd probably be some variety in the food and whatnot, but, overall, it's still going to look pretty similar to the dwarf/halfling/gnome culture.

I guess my point is, the driving element behind cultures shouldn't be biological. Sure, biology is going to have some impact on culture. Of course it is. A culture of half-giants is going to have a somewhat different architecture from halflings. Of course. And, yes, that's part of culture, but, only a part. The larger stuff - religion, holidays, social structures, familial bonds, all that other stuff isn't really based on biology. Your dwarf/halfling/gnome culture could be extremely xenophobic or it could be broadly open minded. It could be deeply religious, religiously intolerant, or again, very open minded. None of that stuff is really dictated by biology.