Worlds without Human Dominance

[Jack7]

For example, the elves were a nomadic race that studied the stars to foretell the future of where they would be needed next, and would migrate to the next location a few, mere centuries before they were needed. Elven adventurers are encouraged in elven society, because the elves want contact with other beings that can help. But such adventurers don't tend to get very far into the heart of elven culture. So the elves are very powerful in their niche--knowing where you need to be with the full force of your culture is useful--but don't tend to have long lasting empires.

The players enjoyed this, because it mapped more or less to how the typical fantasy world goes, but had some twists underneath that were fun to discover. When they found out that the faen (from AE) were time travelling fey, however, it got a little strange.

I find that an interesting take on the subject too.

 

[Herobizkit]

My friend's campaign world has a long and rich history. Dwarves, Halflings, and Giants were the original races of his world. Humans were brought into the campaign world by demons as a slave race through magical Gates. Elves are a space-faring race that are, literally, the stars in the sky. Gnomes are simply the off-shoot of Dwarf-Halfling couples. Orcs are "Romans" who organize in great legions for world conquest. Gnolls are still savage, but their God walks on the world attempting to unite the Gnolls into one great nation.

Flava flava.

 

[Minigiant]

In my campaign most Humans turned themselves into elves to increase their lifespan. Humans, Half Elves, Elves, Eladrins, Gnomes, Halflings, and Dwarves were all levels of the same race. Most people saves and saves to upgrade to races with longer lives. But the rituals used broke holes into the Warped Realm where aberrations come from. Most people went back to half elf level. Few people decide to go back to humanity to close some holes and avoid the madness that the older races suffer. Elves are generally discrimanated against and Eladrin are hated because of the destruction caused by them being being around. Most fey are hunted and herded into the Wild Lands.

 

[Rechan]

Hmm! That's interesting.

 

[Bumbles]

Also, there's the um...Bahzell Bahnakson books by David Weber, where humanity was the original race. Dwarves, hradani, halflings even elves were all descended from humans, and oddly the Elves were one of the newer if I recall correctly, and were created from folks who used magic as implements, which was decided by the great high magic folks as too dangerous and so they were stripped of those powers and given immortality in exchange.

I think the dwarves had something to do with mining, but I can't recall what happened with the halflings or hradani.

And to the OP:

I want to talk about worlds where Humans aren't the default

Well, you may want to try again with a different title, but I've done underground worlds with gnomes, halflings and dwarves as the primary races, a forest world where elves and gnomes were dominant, but a great Dwarven Navy sailed upon the seas, and an all-goblinoid continent came up once.

 

[Rechan]

I've done underground worlds with gnomes, halflings and dwarves as the primary races

Say, were you running that game on Maptools? I recall seeing a notion for such a game floated there.

 

[Rechan]

you may want to try again with a different title

Not necessarily.

What would the role of humanity be, in a setting, besides the predominant?

 

[Bumbles]

Never even heard of that, so no, and like I said, may. You might get other responses with a subject such as "Worlds where humanity isn't dominant" or even "Non-human worlds" to more clearly point thoughts in that direction. Not that the thread so far hasn't been quite good, but perhaps a lot of people aren't even reading it because of the subject? It could be the case.

Myself, I was thinking you were asking about the "role of humanity" as the default race, and was initially inclined to mention some of the human-only worlds I've done. But I decided to go by what you said you wanted in the last paragraph.

 

[Ariosto]

A couple of fictional models:

In Tumithak of the Corridors by Charles R. Tanner, humans are the "dungeon" residents, as aliens from another planet rule the surface world.

On Jack Vance's Tschai (in the "Planet of Adventure" series), humans are the subjects and/or prey of several alien species they have come to resemble in both habits and appearance.

 

[Ariosto]

On Andre Norton's Witch World, the humans drove the Kolder back to their world. Later, an ancient charm was broken and people were able to turn to the east ... where the inhabitants were all non-human.

C.S. Lewis's Narnia gives humans a special position, but, except in the darkest periods, mythological beings of all sorts abound.

Then of course there are the earlier eras of Tolkien's Middle Earth in which Elves are most often the chief actors in history.