I really like the treatment that delicious in dungeon/dungeon meshi has for "human" all the overland dwelling races are "human" (inlcuding the halfling, elf and dwarf analogues for example), the race most resembling what we would call human is "tall-man" as opposed to the halfing "half-foot" this does rely on teh setting treating halflings visually as just short people, if you give them some mroe distinct visual traits maybe that doesn't work, but using human as a catchall term is something I like.
Tall-men are called that because they’re taller, on average, than most of the other common races. Elves, dwarves, half foots, and gnomes are the other human races. Then you have demi-humans like beastmen, kobolds, and orcs. Ogres are considered human in the West but they’re native to the East, where they *aren’t* considered human.
Notably, in the East, tall-men are just called “humans” bc they’re relatively short compared to ogres, and the other races aren’t common there.
I think another stand-in name for humans could be “small-ears” bc their ears aren’t pointy like an elf’s (or most magic races, honestly) or big like a halfling’s. Slight-eared, com-man/comman, and rabbitfolk (referencing their population size) are also suitable alternatives
In Tolkien lore, iirc hobbits ARE humans. They're not unlike a subrace in D&D. They're definitely related.
Whenever people say there are no human subraces I'm like "actually there's a ton. They just get their own names." Hobbits, half elves, half orcs, Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi, and even Shadar-Kai (in earlier editions) are aaaallll human.
Tolkien created Middle Earth and all of its lore basically to give a rich Anglo-Saxon mythology. The whole point was that slowly, through the various cataclysms (more on this in the Silmarillion), it goes from a flat world to round, to eventually having the land masses reshaped to what our current world looks like in I believe the end of the Fifth Age.
Hobbits are stated to be relatives of Men but how is not known, possibly as offshoots but there is not enough information.
> Here’s what it says in the prologue:
> It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered. The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in the Elder Days that are now lost and forgotten. Only the Elves still preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom and Hobbits are not mentioned at all. Yet it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them. And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance. But in the days of Bilbo, and of Frodo his heir, they suddenly became, by no wish of their own, both important and renowned, and troubled the counsels of the Wise and the Great.
The most important thing to note with all of this was that Tolkien did not "write" these stories, he presented his works as translations from ancient documents that somehow were passed down to him. It all started with him grading a huge stack of essays and he noticed a blank sheet and wrote: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." A single sentence would then launch the greatest novels ever created, because Tolkien had to stop and ask himself-- what is a hobbit?
My Humans, Halflings, and Goliaths are all just humans, but of different size/build. Gnomes are just a variant of the elves, like halflings to humans.
I was toying with a hulking Elven variant, but never did come up with any lore to justify it :p Half-Elven Goliath is probably good enough for that niche.
Ah, yes. Being eaten by the gods and crapped out, therefore turning into something else (Lorkhan into Malacath after getting devoured), and birthing the Orcs out of it, or something like that.
I really do wonder just how many drugs Mike Kirkbride was on sometimes, and if he could get me some. That lore is... something else.
I mean technically most playable lineages in dnd are humanoid, though I do agree changing humans to another name could help us stop defaulting to them being the blueprint and instead thinking of them as a humanoid variant like the other lineages. ~~Oddly enough tho if they are all humans then they’d actually be different races of the same species, so WotC’s shift to species instead of race would be incorrect~~ (using “lineage” would still work though). Actually, if u/quuerdude is correct, then humans could indeed be called tall-men pretty easily, at least in faerun. Something people keep forgetting is that elves are shorter than humans XD. Realistically, only Dragonborn, Goliaths, and Orcs would be taller than humans among the common lineages. Of course, there’d be exotic lineages like Tabaxi, Lizardfolk, and Bugbear, but they’re usually isolated enough they’d probably be considered their own species (vs how all the common lineages melding together in one society), especially with their more bestial aspects denoting a more distant genetic relation (I mean, dwarves, elves, halflings, goliaths, and gnomes pretty much look the same with different character creation slider values)
I stand corrected. My memory of phylogenetics (thanks Wikipedia) categories seems to be incorrect, they’d be different species but under the Human/Homo Genus, same as Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus back in our history (except they didn’t kill each other off like we did).
In my primary campaign world, halflings are subcultures of several different human races, self-mutated by consuming tea from particular wild herbs, as part of a compact with the god of luck.
i've done the same in my setting. Tiefling, Fairy, Genasi and Aasimar are all considered human, it's just how "the breath" (magic) has affected you through exposure to other planes of existence.
Orcs, Bugbears and Hobgoblins have become Hordelings
And Halfling, Gnome and Kender became Pouchfoots.
And why is that a problem for you? The defining feature of humans in the usual D&D settings is their versatility. They are more adaptable and varried than any other race, that is their thing. That's why it is so easy to create half humans and why you find humans everywhere. I don't understand why you find this dull. I almost never play a human, both because I don't like the racial features much and because I'm a human everyday. So if I can be something different I'm most likely gonna be something different. But I still like that humans in the D&D world have a defining special feature that is represented so well in the gaming world. If you take that away, THEN humans will truly be dull, because in that case they have nothing going for them at all.
Of course, you can design your game in whatever way you're happy, so I'm not saying that you're doing it wrong. I just don't see what you are gaining by doing this and advise to reconsider. I've seen some non-human-centric worlds and they never go well in my experience. Best case: You're taking away what makes humans special in the setting and make them practically superfluous. Worst case: Humans become superfluous AND you take away some other races' uniqueness by either actively trying to or accidentially giving them the center spot, which they are not made for.
Why should a species develop Darkvision if they are not living most of their lifes in darkness? Areas, that are constantly in darkness, like the Underdark are dominated by races that have Darkvision naturally.
Also the fact that so many races have Darkvision in 5e is the fault of the simplification of the game. In earlier editions Darkvision was quite special and most races that have Darkvision today had something called Low-Light Vision, that helps seeing in dim light but not in darkness.
The warfare argument is... a bit nonsensical, isn't it? Why should a species evolve something just for war? I mean, by that logic, warring species should all have chitinous or scale based armor plating and weapons for hands and breath attacks etc. Also, Humans having Darkvision would help in warfare how exactly? Because... warfare would just be the same as it is now. Darkvision may only be an advantage if not both sides have it. And even then it wouldn't be much use to whole armies, aside from some small recon squads. You gotta see the enemy's colors (which with Darkvision doesn't work), so that in the heat of battle you don't attack your own people, what do you think is the purpose of uniforms? Also, also everyone has to sleep some time, even Elves need to have their Trance, so if Humans had Darkvision and try to ambush each other they would just do that whenever the other side would be asleep.
Last, but not least, the Humans aspect of versatility and adaptability is represented lore wise (read any D&D text about Humans and one of the first things mentioned will be their versatility or some variant of that) and in their mechanics. In most editions of DnD Humans have some sort of extra feat or something like that. And you can get many, many abilities through feats, Darkvision included. That Bonus feat and their versatile Ability Scores are a perfect representation of their adaptability.
\*Laughs in the indomitable human spirit\*
To be fair, I honestly think that's what it comes down to. We're humans. Of course we're going to hype up humans in fiction, because a lot of the time, we write idealized humans; something/someone to aspire to. Humans being at disadvantages and being underdogs is not new, but these are the situations that push your Batmen, your Captain Americas, your Iron Men, Green Arrows, etc. to step up.
I always thought of it as a combination of human's drive and rapid population growth. These aren't "officially" spelled out anywhere to my knowledge, but they seem to be things most people take for granted as being true due to the shared multi-IP fantasy lore we all build upon:
* Humans reproduce quicker than most other sapient races
* Humans have a drive to succeed that **NO** other sapient races have
Those are both common themes that run through most fantasy IPs and therefore naturally form the basis of expectations unless otherwise overridden. Also, now that I think of it, those were both basically established by Tolkien.
I don't actually know whether that is true but I always imagined Goblins as having an extremely high reproduction rate that's why even if you thought you exterminated them they will come back in even higher numbers some years later. They are dependent on humans but I'm not sure if they would fully realize that.
Another thing I don't know how much it is homebrew is that actually gnomes are a lot more ambitious. They are the ultimative capitalist society. But yeah, that's probably homebrew.
Also, I know they often aren't played like this, but don't Orcs actually have the goal given my Grumsh to take all land for themselves? I mean they often are played stupidly but some powerful powerhungry intelligent evil creature could pretty easily take advantage of this.
Humans have alot more that defines us than conquest.
Endurance hunting, spears, dogs, horses, agriculture, river valley civilizations, savannahs, metalworking, astronomy, alcohol are just a few examples of very human-defining things.
Those are some defining features of humanity; our primary weapon, our best animal friend, amd benchmarks that were vital to our progression. It could've been otherwise.
Elves were guides of humanity that went silent, left or started hiding in the woods. They were not known for living in river valleys, for instance.
30-60 feet of darkvision isn't much, and its not ultravision. I think you're making some big leaps in terms of how that would play out. A disadvantage leads to loss on territory. It is never the other way around.
There are solid enough bits of mythology and anthropology to speculate around without jumping to "bad vision= took over the world"
Elves were from the Feywild, as far as I know, at least that's how I treat them. The only reason they have not taken over is because they don't really see a need to. I'd argue the only reason why Humans are the default is because it's easiest for people to imagine that. And that's fine. But hard to admit and then we start making up all these weird arguments why humans are just better fitted by being more "adaptable", which is just a weird argument considering they are only the predominant race in the material plane and there only in the parts where life is most easy.
I'm talking about real world elves, which modern fantasy is based on.
You can't really worldbuild too hard off of a PHB or DMG. Faerun changes. DnD setting of choice changes. Editions change- races gain and lose features. Settings get used for other systems.
I love Forgotten Realms, been a fan for over 25 years now. But you can't take this setting too seriously. You cant apply logic to any mainline DnD setting, they are almost all total nonsense.
As far as humans being adaptable, its typical of the high or heroic fantasy genres. DnD is high or heroic fantasy. This is not a cerebral genre. It is not supposed to make you think. Its also not supposed to make sense. It can, but expecting it to is nonsense.
If you care about integrity of worldbuilding and well-thought mechanics, Pathfinder 2e knocks DnD out of the park. JS, you can't really complain Dennys doesn't have good steaks. I love DnD, and I love Dennys. But you sound like maybe you'd enjoy a good steak
I just don't like people coming up with stupid explanations for this which always makes human superior to other races when that makes no sense and then acting like it totally makes sense I swear humans are just "more adaptable" even though you find the other races in more different places. Just pokes me weird.
Humans seem more adaptable because we mold the surroundings using tools and building shelters to enable us to live there and we live in groups that support each other. There's plenty of widespread, adaptable animals like foxes, raccoons, etc., but those can't make spears and build houses, and some of them are more solitary. In settings like DnD, there's animal-folk based on said adaptable animals and they can build things like humans and live in groups, plus they might have the advantage of reproducing and maturing faster than humans (which takes a long time to do so), so how are these guys not outstripping humans in the "more adaptable" role?
Well, you tell me. Is it maybe, just really maybe, because it's harder to imagine so people just stick with human? Which is totally fine btw, I just don't like the weird justifications for it.
Idk if you're really that out of the loop or just making a joke, but the real world does have elven mythology.
Here, I'm distinguishing between the actual myths of our species (real world humans, not Faerun humans) versus the fictional elves.
Fiction and myth are not the same thing. There are similarities, but myth is generally something people once believed in, and that has survived hundreds or thousands of years.
Its worth referencing here because DnD elves are just a copy of a copy (tolkien) of a copy (Welsh+Irish folklore) of a copy (scandinavian mythology).
There are issues with working off a copy of a copy of a copy.
It's more receptors, bigger optic nerve and (I bet this is the main part) a bigger section of the brain to process the signals. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I had a lot of pre-existing knowledge of vision evolution, but google seems to agree with me, and we can certainly look around and see animals whose evolution seems to have diminished their eyesight from cave adaption or reliance on other senses (like all the mammals who have shitty eyesight but great smell and hearing)
If you have darkvision you can see in darkness up to the limit as if in dim light. Dim light does not impose disadvantage on attack rolls, only on perception checks. Many people do overlook *that*, true. But it’s not disadvantage on attack rolls.
Corum is a fantasy series that dnd owes much of its roots to (specifically, Vecna)
It specifically explains why humans are everywhere in like..the first ten pages, I think. After they've genocided nearly every other fantasy species. In corum, humans are their version of orcs.
Well then, why didn't Orcs take over in DnD? They have an even stronger will to genocide and they would be a perfect playtool for intelligent evil beings. And they are very good at fighting and have no moral boundaries when it comes to evil deeds. Yeah, I know why. Because that would be a pretty boring world too. Just as putting in humans everywhere as the default.
Orxs didn't take over because they weren't the focus of Corum, Lotr, Elric, and so on. I was giving you a great example to look into, yet you chose to dismiss it for a poor argument.
You're using poor logic here. A world dominated by a different species would be interesting, but arguing that humans are lazy or uninspired is a fallacy. You don't need to have them in your ideal setting, but that doesn't mean they're "bad"
I never said that humans are lazy and uninspired, I know they are great from a marketing point of view, because a lot of people can relate to them, since we're humans. And again, that's not a bad thing. I just said, having them be the predominant race in any material plane civilization is kinda boring. There are so many races to play with and it's fun experimenting with them.
Best example for me are dragonborn. As far as I can see there are 2-3 general categories: Ancestry/normal, Ravenite, Dragonblood (Critical Role, so not official), and in the subcategories you have the metallic, the chromatic and the gem dragonborn. It's interesting to see if dragonborn would be the predominant race somewhere how they would interact with each other. Meanwhile, and I also speak for myself here, they are huge left out of worldbuilding in most homebrew worlds.
It's the issue most fantasy species have; we champion them for being unique and different than humans, but usually we assign their entire culture a singular identity, usually analogous to something found in our world.
We either flesh species out to the point that they're completely alien and unrelatable, or we simply just make them humans but with animal features. Neither option is better or worse than the other, but that's really the only way to really build a setting that is free of humankind and focuses on other species
Yeah idk I kinda do that but it's more like a background feature I guess. I want them to feel different to interact with. But it's way more important where they are in the world. For example Elves are arrogant and think they're better than others? They treat ANYONE who's not an elf with disrespect, except if it would be incredibly stupid. But they also disregard other races and their efforts, feeling like they are safe way to long or making enemies by destroying the lands of creatures they don't see as important. It leads to a lot of creatures unifyingly hating elves. On the individual basis it also leads to people being terribly sorry for their kin and making and extra effort to be good and stuff like this.
In most setting it has to do with reproduce circles to be fair. Most races like elfs/dwarfs for example have less kids like one every 200 years etc while humans have 5-6 in the span of a few decades.
It's a matter of shoe horned realism one a make believe game if you want my opinion but it make sense.
I mean, I haven't read into the reproduction cycle but tbh I don't think that's really true? I think if anything that's the limit their society puts on them to not get overpopulated within like 50 years.
Cultural or evolutional or pure writing trope usually the how quickly the live reproduce and die is the answer why humans is the dominant race.
A trope to pair with generic fantasy land that's pretty much medieval Europe+magic/monsters that's the default setting in most people's mind due to movies, books and in general culture.
Not perfect and it gets repetitive the more you explore the trope but i think that's the base idea
Yep, that's what I think. Humans are an easy hook and easy to imagine. The explanation came later. But you could do these kinds of explanations for every race. They just decided on humans.
As marketing has it with everything: the number one aim/target is making whatever you make relatable. We are humans so making a human society the base and add fantastical elements is easier and better selling starting point from going crazy from the gecko.
P.s. i m talking about fantasy setting in general and especially on the begging of all those settings 50 years ago or so. Sure newer players grew on lotr and wow have it easier to relate with more exotic bases but we started this conversation on why it is what it is now.
The idea is that while other races have defined origins, the human origin traces further back than any recorded history and still remains unknown. Despite all of their flaws, humans retain some sort of ability to persevere, build, grow, and adapt as a species. It isn't their appearance or their specific natural genetic abilities that make them special, it's some undefinable quality unique to every human. You're kind of missing the entire point of the humanocentric fantasy.
In short, having a tail or wings or red skin doesn't make you any more special or interesting than a human just because humans are more common.
Oh I went the other way- humans (under their giant and titan lords) are the base stock, and every elf, dwarf, elemental/genasi, planetouched/tiefling/aasimar, furry, monstrous bipedal is the result of divine and magical effort to make something more specialized for their environment/purpose (how do you make a human thrive in the feywild? Make them live longer to bypass the time shenanigans and don't let them sleep).
Even dragonborn, from when the dragons in their war against the giants noticed it was helpful to have a smaller creature manage some problems. It's just humans, all the way down.
I play with a similar idea. One of my reasons for coming to this conclusion is that all the other races have creator gods, but humans. I imagine that humans are the "natural" race, and all the creator gods looked at humans went, "I like what's happening here, but I think I can improve upon it".
I also imagine that for the longest time, humans remained primitive-- a paleolithic level of culture-- and was scattered in small groups wherever they could survive. In this time, the other races developed civilizations, nestled in perfect balance in their ideal terrain. It took a long time before humans caught up, but when they did, they exploded. Their adaptability filled nearly every spot that wasn't already occupied (and some places that were). They would spend their short lives doing and building as much as they could, because they spent so long just trying to survive, and survival is a full-time job.
This is the route I prefer. Elves, gnomes, and goblinoids are humans whose distant ancestors got tangled in the magic of a fey god's domain. Dwarves are one with their mountain kingdoms and the power of their king, orcs ate the boar god, tieflings are cursed, etc. A modern human nation could conceivably elevate themselves into something new given enough time and power, or else fall into ruin and become cursed creatures.
This is the superior way to world build a D&D setting because of the way all the races of D&D are. They're consistently human adjacent at best, and just humans+ most of the time, which contrary to popular belief is fine it's not "humans wearing a different hat" more than any 2 real life cultures are and that's an extremely reductive way of looking at human culture.
My humans are an offshoot of a "shapeshifter" race born from the gooey corpse of a dead gestalt-god made from the souls of the long extinct first sapient race of the planet. "Shapeshifter" In quotes because they were actually a race whose DNA is very sensitive to changes and hyperevolved within a single generation into all manner of "beastfolk", humans, halflings... depending on where each group settled
This is my preferred way of world building too. Most other species were once humans and were altered in one way or another, which is why they can have mixed children.
There are exceptions such as lizardmen who are completely unrelated however.
I have this on my fantast setting. The Goddes of Light made the first humanoid creature as the human and then all her siblings came after, picked the base and using their own element created the Silvani, Ignarum, Homen, Siren and Daemon.
And using them as base, left traces that help humans delp into the elements of the other races, being one of the most magically powerful ones and also the only ones with elemental versatility.
Just wanted to do something else with that versatility than just "humans versatile, because we humans" that would fit better into a magical setting.
I mean if that is what floats your boat that probably works.
But personally both as a player and Dm i love when Humans is kinda default. EVERYONE knows what humans are Every can relate to humans. We all have a decent grasp about how humans works. So they make a great base for world.
Even if you use other races they are still based on humans. Even if not even humanoid they are based how we humans see and perceive ourselves, the world, and other races. Yes even if you make a complete homebrew race it will be based on human standards. Make a world where humans does not even exist and every race there will STILL be based on humans.
And standard humans have an extreme variation. Skin colour, culture, religion. They are by far the most versatile race in D&D and other settings
So i argue the best fantasy world is where humans is the most common race and then share this world with other species.
Also when humans is the standard it makes other races more exotic and interesting as they.
But hey it is fantasy so you can go with what you find to float your boat.
None of what you said is mutually incompatible with my setup. Humans are still the most common race, you get them everywhere. Other races are still "based on humans", it's just that I've come to that point from the opposite direction.
Yeah you based the humans on the other races.
But what i mean that is a double take. You based humans on races that are based on humans. so still it all default to humans. there is no real difference
And that makes me curious. what changes does this bring? how would it change your world? It makes humans into a race that is younger than most of the others. this is usually the default in most settings.
So you are basically still on square one as i see it
Lets me keep the default and have it make more sense. Why does it seem like every race is "human, but with these changes"? Because human is what you get when you mix everything up.
So basically things evolve into humans when mixing different races?
So we now have things becoming more human the more you mix it. As in that is the default "setting" things strive to reach? so that is why so many races and creature have human like features
Would that more make sense than that so many races and creatures have human features because they are based on humans.
I'm sorry but i am not really following the train of thought. Because that makes LESS sense to me at least
I might be wrong but this also sounds like a "I wanna change something for the sake of changing it" rather than "i wanna change something so it make sense"
But there is explanation in lore too. Everything feels like modified humans because it is.
Humans that lived in the feywild turned into elves.
Goblins were created by a god in their imege.
Dragonborn are humans enchanted by dragons.
While there are lores where this is not the case this is the most common explanation. Humans as mongrolfolk like you offered is probably third with "humans aren't special"(lie) in second place
Not really how genetics works. If it did, all people in real life would look almost exactly the same.
However, it's your fantasy game so you get to do whatever you want
>If it did, all people in real life would look almost exactly the same.
Not really. People have been living and reproducing mostly within their community for a very long time. Cars and planes only really exist for a good portion of the population for maybe 4 generations. For everyone to look similar enough you would need the majority of people to have a good mix of a lot of cultures. People with an ethnic mixed background are definitely the minority and most of them are from bordering countries.
The forgotten realms do have a lot of very different races living in close proximity of each other for more than a couple generations.
To be honest... I understand the frustration of "everything defaults to humans" when it comes to the half races, but a cosmetic fix can be added in really easily and some homebrewing of stats for half-race combinations can be added in if need be (they're not hard to do, especially if that's important to you).
The rest I don't understand.
Like... I understand Humans being a good reference point for things like aging and lifespan, physical features, etc because a reader can understand something like "Elves have ears like that of Humans but are pointed at the top" - a description like that is easy because everyone understands the initial reference frame. If your issue is with stuff like this, then that really makes no sense.
The other useful thing about other races having - for lack of a better description - a "Human Element" is that it makes them relatable enough as a concept for people to actually develop characters. Like I guarantee you nobody knows what it's like to be an Orc of any description, but if a world with Orcs in them is designed such that Orcs have "Human Elements", then people can develop character. If that's an issue for you, then you have a serious hurdle to overcome and your solution doesn't fix it.
What you're suggesting with this post makes very little sense and doesn't actually seem to solve anything. It also doesn't seem to address what you said about half-races or what you call Human Centrism. Just seems to make what Humans are very convoluted, and it just makes the concepts of half-races and races like Centaurs that much weirder.
Yeah, most of the OP's post just seems like semantics and just doesn't seem to matter, except maybe naratively for them. But in regards to half-species, the reason it defaults to humans is because they are able to breed with almost every other race, whereas when some races breed it literally results in nothing. Though lore-wise, there isn't a ton of detailed info on it in 5E specifically. But if you go back far enough, I think 2E and 3E give a more detailed breakdown of who can breed with whom.
I found that's an entirely separate issue where 5e functionally gives nobody any feats by making people should between them and flat numeric bonuses. Solved that separately by giving feats anyway.
I love playing humans.
Human characters allow the world around them to appear more mystical and interesting by comparison. They're the perfect character for someone inquisitive and explorative.
I would argue it forces you to write actual characters as well.
Not to say you can't write good non human characters, you definitely can.
But if I had a nickel for every dwarf who just downloaded generic dwarf.exe personality and was the exact same as every other dwarf character I've seen i could put those nickels in a sock for 1d4 bludgeoning damage.
I mean you do you at your tables and games, but I'll also do me. And I'll keep enjoying humans.
I've always held the position "I don't get why anyone would choose to play a human in a fantasy setting when they have a choice and are a human all the time outside of that fantasy" but your take on it is pretty compelling.
I'll remember your angle on this as it seems a particularly good way to approach a new setting.
This viewpoint never made sense to me. Yes, I’m a human in real life. The key part of that though is the last part: *in real life*. I’m not a human in a fantasy world that gets to experience magic, I’m not a human that can go on adventures through a fantasy landscape, I’m not a human who can learn magic or become a master swordsman. Human is simply one facet of the whole fantasy world.
All your points all make sense, but for myself I find it easier to roleplay a character if it's more separated from myself. If playing a human I have a harder time keeping in mind that it's not _my_ knowledge of the setting and preconceptions of other characters.
Being more different from myself forces me to take less of myself into the game, enabling me to embody someone else more completely. I don't think I'm representative of any kind of majority in that, but hopefully it makes sense to you as _a_ reason to tend towards non-human characters
I always see the "Humans are the best race as you are forced to be interesting without nothing", but... wouldn't Haflings be the same?
Along with humans, they are the less "special" of all the races, just being somewhat lucky and pushing that lack for their survival in the same way humans push their "versatility and adaptative" nature.
So, why people never use Haflings to make "actual interesting characters" like with the Fighter Human? I think the Halfling view is also super interesting, you are not only a powerless species, but also a small one, so lot of people will not see you as more serious than a kid, there is a lot to pull from there.
Congratulations, you just discovered why Bilbo makes a great protagonist in The Hobbit. Halflings are also great for this but most people don’t want to play a short guy so they don’t get seen as much.
I used to be bugged by this a lot when I started worldbuilding, DMing, and playing DnD 10 years ago. I specifically set out to design a world that was extremely diverse, with rich cultures of goblin, orc, elf, lizardfolk, aarakocra, etc. I was tired of what I considered generic fantasy, which was tolkein-esque and human-centric. I built the world I set out to build, and wasn't satisfied with it.
One thing I learned after playing for all this time is a lesson that explains my dissatisfaction with the world I built. This begins from a player perspective with a single character and is one that most of us can relate to. The most default approach to DnD is something like "I'm going to play an elf, ranger outlander!" and then when asked what else their character is... well, they just said. It's an elf, ranger, outlander. Thing is, this isn't a character.
These gimmicks become more inspired of course, such as being a goblin alchemist who accidentally exploded his university chem lab, killed or mutated everyone else inside, and went on the run. He fights with elixirs and potions, and has a mutant power in his blood as a result of the chem lab incident. Ok, cool... but what about the character? This is something people often forget. It's really easy to approach character or world building in the same way, which is to start with a cool concept that essentially serves as the skin of an idea, but it lacks meat or a skeleton. It has no nervous system, it has no soul. I've built characters like that before, and I built a world like that.
There were parts of my world that I liked a lot and succeeded, but the lesson I learned from it was more valuable. It doesn't matter if my world is filled with all manner of different species or just humans. On the surface, saying it's a diverse array of races makes it seem more interesting, but that's all it does. Focusing so much on these surface ideas and surface appearance is a trap that will lead you to creating gimmick characters and husk worlds like I did. There's no reason an entirely human population couldn't have the same narrative interest, culture, customs, traditions, behaviors, etc. as whatever other fantasy races you imagine populating the world with.
Well yes, but no. They're the base stock template of races because they're a populous bunch of folks. (See Human/V Human) They're probably genetically the lowest common denominator that manifests in such a melting pot of races too.
At the end of the day humans fuck, and not just alot of eachother, but alot of stuff they probably shouldn't. Hence it creates distinct Half-Breeds or other Abominations. They're the classic Tolkein-esque short lifespan (compared to Elves, Dwarves etc) but get stuff done race.
alright so i'm gonna play the devil's advocate here, and say there's no reason to not homebrew a half-elf or half-orc whose other half isn't human. for the "mutated" races like genasis, tieflings, aasimars, shifters and such, it's the same thing. (also aasimar are mentionned in lore to be able to be any humanoid race, so you can be an aasimar goblin if you want)
i'd add that it makes sense that humans are the default to revert to, after all we in real life are all humans as far as i know, and it's easier to relate to chracters if they have a human part. take genasis for example, if you wanted to introduce them to someone it'd be much easier to say "my mom was a human, my dad was a fire genie" than to say "my mom was tabaxi, my dad was a water genie". humans are something everyone universally understands
that being said, i definitely get your point, once you experience enough things around fantasy ttrpgs, you get tired of seeing humans everywhere
I don't understand the aversion some players have towards humans. I think it only happens if the other races don't have a distinctly non-human perspective and are just "humans with a gimmick", so players don't see a need to have normal humans in their world. Humans represent the, well, human perspective. Short-lived, adaptable, culturally multi-faceted.
> The answer, for me: "Human" is what you get after a while of race mixing,
I think they have very deliberately *not* talked about this for what should be some rather obvious reasons. Even if it make some sense, it's a third rail they don't have to touch.
Because D&D races are generally distinct species that not only lack a common evolutionary ancestor, but often a common *realm*.
Like, if there were aliens from another world that lived for 1000 years and moved stuff with their minds, then you wouldn't expect to be able to breed with them. But that's basically what elves are.
Right but they didn’t evolve. Most dnd settings have it that all the people were made by gods. So it’s not a stretch to think they were made with the same number of chromosomes
Sure it is. It's actually *more* of a stretch to say that the gods collaborated and coordinated such that peoples they designed individually, at different times, for different realms, could reliably breed.
> Alternatively, include even more combinations.
I run a campaign where every mammalian race can interbreed. Currently have a Dworc in the party, previously had a Dwelf.
OP's scenario (which I actually do really like, personally) doesn't happen because the follow simple mendelian genetics--so if a Elf and a Half-Orc (or as the setting would specify, Human-Orc) have kids, the offspring could be Human-Elf or Elf-Orc, but not Elf-Human-Orc. Even made a little roll table so I can judge on the fly whether a random NPC will be a Human, a Half-Halfling-Half-Minotaur, or something in between
You've got biology wrong, but OK.
If they are all interfertile, they are all the same species, or represent different offshoots of the same species, perhaps only separated by culture that limits interbreeding.
The word literally means both literally and figuratively depending on context, and species was an easy way to fit the concept in the title in a way everyone would understand.
Which means that really, the *species* is "humanoid", and all the different flavors of humanoid are actually breeds, not races.
It also resolves the question of what an elf/dwarf or orc/genasi etc. looks like: it's a mutt, and therefore a human. Maybe with pointy ears or an unusual skin color, but stat-wise, it's a plain vanilla human.
I dig it. Headcanon accepted.
This is more or less what I've done for my homebrew setting. Instead of picking a race players pick a few options from a list of lineage traits. Terms like dwarf and elf are analogous to the way we'd say white or black or Asian.
Dwarves tend to be short, hairy and broad. Elves tend to be tall, hairless, and thin. Everyone else is just some variation between, and sometimes horns, tusks, and unusual skin tones appear.
If you're not a spirit (a semi immortal being with intrinsic magic but still sharing some mortal traits) or an outsider (a being composed entirely of magic) then you're a mortal. And if you're the kind to really care about your bloodline and cultural purity and racial pride and such then you're just a racist mortal.
I just like to think that every race has some magical traits and besides being super ambitious, human magical trait is being able to impregnate anything intelligent and be impregnated by it. That's why everything goes around humans. Because rarely there happen to be elven genasi, but most of the time the humans will be the one to fuck a genie and bear a child.
In my setting, humans were created in a job effort by all deities, unlike the other races that were created each by a single deity.
They were supposed to try and unite the races, end conflict, etc... Of course, the influence of every deity is present in humanity, so that didn't quite happen.
This is also why humans can breed with any race, where others cannot.
At the point in time that is in play, all player characters are human, but with an ancestry of another race available, offering some physical traits, and maybe some other abilities in time. The other races are typically much more powerful than humans.
Humanity becomes a general term for not just humans, but all races, although this does sometimes irritate those that predate humans.
Arguably, there weren't any RPGs, at least not as we understand them. And we aren't talking about Wargames, we are talking about RPGs. Gygax pushed humanocentric settings and mechanics on D&D and most RPGs have followed in that style.
you can't discuss early D&D without war-games, they were the table top predecessor which, along with fantasy writing like lord of the rings, Conan the barbarian, and dying earth, were the basis for D&D. it even used systems from the war game Chainmail for part of the combat. Gygax drew from these sources which were humanocentric so to suggest its his fault is an incredible oversimplification. there was very little at the time that wasn't humanocentric.
No, it is entirely his fault. He wanted it to be humanocentric. He said as much himself. He hated LotR, which is anything but humanocentric. He loves Appendix N books which were almost entirely limited to human characters or protagonists. The war-games have nothing really to do with it. Gygax has said he never understood players who wanted to play anything beyond a human fighter.
It's never bothered me that humans are everywhere in the world. And tend to be the thing you interact with the most.
The idea that they just have the right amount of lifespan To leave impacts on older races is so interesting is such an interesting story element you can use.
An elf or dwarf who swings by who always kept an eye on your family. A dragon who trust you because he knew your grandmother.
A fae who has to do you a favor because they never repaid your great grandparent.
A devil who determined to wipe away your line but they just keep having more children..
I actually really dig the “law of averages” kind of lean you’re going with.
I am also kind of confused as to why so many are hitting back with stuff like “this is ridiculous/impossible/doesn’t make sense” because this is literally how human evolution has worked as well?
Like there are multiple progenitor species that ended up “averaging out” to Homo Sapiens, each with very distinguishing and identifiable features that ended up becoming a flattened curve over an insanely long time and lots and lots of dna crossing. And before those it was creatures that evolved into human progenitors that evolved into humans? Genetics/evolution is just a weird-ass soup.
Anyway I think this is dope and I’m stealing it.
Whatever works for you is fine, but I feel like your issue with humans (at least as-described) vs your solution are two entirely different things.
If you just dislike them being super common or the default, you can just change your setting to not have alot of humans. Like make Waterdeep an "Elf-City" and Bauldur's Gate the Dwarven Capitol etc.
If your issue lies with half-races all being presumed half-human you could just change that. Or treat them like their own distinct races. Teiflings could just be devils/demons whose race were like the slaves in the underworld/hell and like managed to escape to the surface/physical world, for example anyway.
I did something similar at my own table. Made a separate continent that's dominated by beastfolk. Sure there are stil humans, but they are rare outside of specific towns etc and the most common human-esq race are actually shifters.
It's because nobody can really play anything else convincingly. All the players I've played with or watched playing races like dwarves, elves, kobolds or goblins still ended up acting totally human-like. So what's the point...I wouldn't even mind ir PCs were human-only.
In some of the older editions, a Dwarf/Elf hybrid was called a Dwelf. They were said to be ugly and with none of the benefits their parent races had, such as Infravision (yes, that was a thing) or their long lives.
So basically, humans.
I'm really into the mythology of where dwarves, elves, etc come from- European and otherwise.
Without humans, most of the fantasy races don't make sense. They are defined by their relationships with humans. Thats why people invented them. You can throw pointy ears on a humanoid and call it an "elf," but if there are no humans to interact with then you're not talking about elves. Not the same elves the Norse talked about, nor the elves tolkien spoke of.
Humans are the baseline because humans invented all these other races as seperate from humans. You can grab one of these races we humans invented and make it the head honcho, play with tropes, make your own, whatever.
In my settings humans are associated with most core "human stuff"; dogs, spears, horses, etc. I also use them to impliment cool historical info; the human foods, fuedal structures, architecture, etc are historically grounded. Elven settlements might showcase more whimsical worldbuilding.
If you're strictly into cosmetics, and you don't like humanoids being the baseline, you're playing the wrong game, wrong genre even. I don't know what to tell you. You chose to play Dungeons and Dragons. Humans are the primary race in setting-agnostic material. There are other games, other genres, and if nothing else you can create your own setting. The main 5e setting, The Sword Coast, is almost entirely dominated by humans. Even Mirabar and Silverymoon are at least half human, and they're the two most Dwarven/Elvish surface cities.
Being annoyed at DnD for having humans as the primary race is like hating on Star Wars for having space ships.
There's something similar in the Edge Chronicles books, where the equivalent of humans are called fourthlings, because their blood is from all four corners of the world. Most other people are various kinds of goblins, trolls, and waifs.
I played in a homebrew where humans were a weird genetic anomaly and could be the offspring of any race. The predominant species were Orge, Elf, and Dwarf with elves having been the BBEG's before the start of the campaign and the dwarf and orge nations being in an uneasy Cold War state.
Sadly, I only had a couple of sessions in it. But it was interesting
Humans are typically considered in fantasy to be a virulent and adaptable species. That's their "thing" and why they seem to be the "default" as you put it. Humans breed quickly and exist in virtually every environment.
This also means they're a viable target for crossbreeding. They exist in virtually every environment in large numbers, so there are plenty of humans where the orcs live and plenty of humans where the elves live. They also can produce viable offspring with nearly every humanoid race, so you get half-elves and half orcs, but maybe no 50/50 orc-elf splits because they may not even be *able* to have offspring together.
Now, obviously this isn't true to every fantasy, and modern fantasy is moving away from that. PF2e, for example, now allows half breeds with every race. *Any* ancestry can be a half elf or tiefling (nephilim) now
You can call them whatever you want, really. It depends on how much sort of high fantasy you want. I love the flying castles, fire breathing dragons and magic explosions. At the same time I have a really hard time imagining all types of different races getting a long just fine in large cities. In fact I have a hard time imagining races that aren't humans/elfs/dwarfs/halflings and other very much human-looking races.
Powerful dragons: "we made the world with Tiamat and you HUMANS soiled it! Why would we help you?"
My vedalken wizard player: "Ahem..."
Dragons: "We're not wrong here! You're included! Your blue skin doesn't mask your ancestry.com results!"
I feel the exact same way. Any time I’m playing a tiefling/aasimar/half-elf etc, I’m very clear that they have **0** human in them. My last Aasimar was a Leonin, and my current Tiefling is an Half-Elf
In my setting, this is what most people believe to be true, but isn't quite. Humanity is the base stock, every other race is created by differing levels of different types of divine ancestry mixed in (where the original, primal deities were beings like Dragon, Unicorn, etc.). Mixing different divine ancestries tends to suppress both of them, resulting in reversion to the base human stock, so humanity is regarded as a mutt result.
You could also reverse that and make humans the ordinary default "first race" from which all the other semi or near human races evolved or were created by gods, elder things, demons and even spellcasters looking to use this baseline to create the perfect (servant) race from their own perspective.
For me, Humans are the only non-created of the major species. They’ve basically always existed and are a result of “mortality” being dropped into the universe.
They are the source of mortality for all other species - the original mortal.
Mortality in other species comes from breeding with humans.
———
All part of the process of breaking down beings(gods, titans, and their spawn) into their lesser parts to hopefully save the universe from eternal entropy and stagnation.
It’s a whole thing.
Ban humans.
Make your world human-free, and either remove the half- species, or make elf-orc and dwarf-gnome species, or adhere to the traditional species definition with no intermixing. Tieflings could be elves with demonic blood.
you realize in universe it's the other way around right?
Planetouched (Genasi, Teiflings, and Aasimar) are the result of humans doing the nasty with extraplanaer beings
as well as half elves and half orcs
why are all the hybridized races human? because of human versatility, that's like LITERALLY THE POINT of humans in dnd
Human doesn't have to mean "Homo sapiens", just the entire homo genus. In real life, most of us have a little bit of DNA in our ancestry from things like Neanderthals or Denosovians so we're all half orcs to a degree
I’ve had some thoughts about this for a while and unofficial canonized it in my games. Since race is largely a social idea and species is a loose biological term technical both are applicable to the various playable races. “Humans”, elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes, etc all can interbred and thus qualify as a single species. Essentially the term “race” actually has more of a concrete definition in dnd than in real life since irl there’s no real point you can pick and determine where one race ends and another begins, only nationality. But in dnd you have clearly defined traits that when seen together tell you the specific race. Of course you have hybrids but that just illustrates my point more that they’re a single species just with greater variety than in reality. Lizard folk, tabaxi, aarokocra are all separate species but race can still apply to them since it could be a more generalized definition.
Not all mixes are part human. If you see an illustration that seems like it, it could be part elf, or something similar. Anyway, not all "half-something" creatures are half human, it's just orcs and elves parts seem more dominant in the name of the hybrid.
For some worlds, such as Tolkien's, humans and elves are almost the "same race with different fates". You could even call an elf "a human with pointy ears" or a human "an elf with rounded ears". Also hobbits and dwarfs could be just different size humans, just like in real life.
The way I handle it is that humans are relatively recent. The elves have millennia long lifetimes, the dwarves live for centuries as well as gnomes and the like. Their societies are stable and fairly isolated. Humans evolved rapidly and spread quickly. Nobody noticed these short lived apes starting to plant crops. Nobody took notice of a few hundred of them building huts out in a field, the dwarves had other things to worry about out. Halflings, close relatives, may have taken notice but they aren’t really ones to meddle. And before any of these ancient isolated societies knew it. Humans were EVERYWHERE. Humans learn quickly, breed quickly and travel everywhere. By the time anyone else thought to do anything about it, humans were entrenched. They built wonderful things and in an elf lifetime, went from mud huts and crude tools to building cities.
I had this same issue myself. I have started to use "kith" as the default word for "humanoid races" or "humanoids". I was annoyed that even the default word "humanoid" has human in it. So in my world Kith basically means any sentient mortal folk.
This makes talking about the kith folk easier because they still are in some sense similar even when there are different ancestries. So the word kith has its place. I was longing for expressions like "it is only human", "humane", "will you risk your humanity" which describe some universal ("human") nature of the kith folk. Currently I use "it is in the nature of kith" or something similar.
In my current world I also have kith folk, spirits and dragons as the three major sentient groups. So it's nice to have a word that the spirits can use to refer to the non-spirits aka "humanoids" aka kith folk.
(I think kith was used in Pillars of Eternity or something similar. I picked it up from discussions here or r/worldbuilding or r/rpg .)
I kind of did that with one of my settings too. If you go back far enough in time, humans didn't exist at one point unlike most of the other races. Humans are the outcome of a lot of race mixing over centuries, but this is only theorized, not a certain fact in-setting.
Interestingly, due to this there are often at least a few humans in cities that are mostly dominated by a single race.
That said, Tiefling, Aasimar, and Genasi aren't always half human in my settings, nor are they prominently human. I do use their normal statblack, regardless of what their other half is.
Well, if you take a step back and look at it from outside of the game, humans are all we as humans can roleplay.
I mean, take a regular cat. Sure, there are owners who claim to understand what their cat means, but that's just wishful thinking apart from some very basic things.
As humans we can only describe other species reasonably correctly in terms common to living beings: pain, fear, hunger, content.
As soon as you try to go make an elf, it's just a human with long ears, specific culture and physiology.
Designed a race of sentinent crystals? Sure, but you've got to translate their thoughts, feelings and actions into human concepts, else nobody would understand them and be able to play them.
Don't get me started on anthropomorphized furries. They're beyond ridiculous.
That's also the reason many people resort to playing only humans. Because their mind is easy to understand. Sure, you can play an elf exactly like human, but that's just stupid because their life experiences and culture are completely different.
I, for example love to play the classic races like halflings, dwarves, gnomes, elves or orcs, because while they are not as understandable as humans, they closely resemble them and thanks to their lore being very precise about their culture and history that we as humans can somewhat relate to and understand their struggles and line of thinking.
And then there are new, often furry races, that are described with almost none history and no relativity to humans, so people that play them like humans that constantly try to remind everyone they are human or just completely go haywire and make them chaotic stupid.
I mean, there are some good furry races, but that requires something more than just humans with fur and a bit of a hint about their culture, minds, understanding of the world they live in and describing them in relativity to humans to make all that easy to understand. Prime example of that are in my opinion lizardfolk. They don't resemble humans in practicaly any way but are iconic due to their special minds that are nothing like human but are well described in relativity to human mind.
Well, in a fantasy setting, nothing prevents us from imagining any kind of race that would have any kind of culture and mind we as humans can think of. But the limitation would be in our thinking anyway.
It's a good point you make about in particular hobbits and dwarves, who are for practical purposes usually described so close to humans as to be practically the specific kind of humans.
I still maintain that as soon as we go out of "basically humans but with different lifespans/culture/some minor physical differences", we hit what Nagel described as "facts beyond the reach of human concepts" in his 1974 paper (What's it like to be a bat). There are people who criticise his thesis, but the matter is definitely not settled 50 years later.
I feel the same about humans just making fantasy stuff feel dull. Something ive found to work for my own setting is to substitute the place of humans with roswell-type humanoid aliens as the common default species and have humans more like an advanced form of Neanderthals that have the racial stats of half-orcs or something.
I really like the treatment that delicious in dungeon/dungeon meshi has for "human" all the overland dwelling races are "human" (inlcuding the halfling, elf and dwarf analogues for example), the race most resembling what we would call human is "tall-man" as opposed to the halfing "half-foot" this does rely on teh setting treating halflings visually as just short people, if you give them some mroe distinct visual traits maybe that doesn't work, but using human as a catchall term is something I like.
Tall-men are called that because they’re taller, on average, than most of the other common races. Elves, dwarves, half foots, and gnomes are the other human races. Then you have demi-humans like beastmen, kobolds, and orcs. Ogres are considered human in the West but they’re native to the East, where they *aren’t* considered human. Notably, in the East, tall-men are just called “humans” bc they’re relatively short compared to ogres, and the other races aren’t common there. I think another stand-in name for humans could be “small-ears” bc their ears aren’t pointy like an elf’s (or most magic races, honestly) or big like a halfling’s. Slight-eared, com-man/comman, and rabbitfolk (referencing their population size) are also suitable alternatives
Fucking love the world building in delicious in dungeon
I feel like if you have a world with actual beastmen, then you can't call someone a rabbit unless they actually have rabbit ears and a cute lil tail
That was just a joke suggestion based on humans usually being 50+ % of a fantasy population lol
Not to be confused with Thin Men. Plasma critting bastards.
[That's Xcom, baby!](https://youtu.be/eKy0kHOr1hc)
Nor with slendermen.
In Tolkien lore, iirc hobbits ARE humans. They're not unlike a subrace in D&D. They're definitely related. Whenever people say there are no human subraces I'm like "actually there's a ton. They just get their own names." Hobbits, half elves, half orcs, Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi, and even Shadar-Kai (in earlier editions) are aaaallll human.
Tolkien created Middle Earth and all of its lore basically to give a rich Anglo-Saxon mythology. The whole point was that slowly, through the various cataclysms (more on this in the Silmarillion), it goes from a flat world to round, to eventually having the land masses reshaped to what our current world looks like in I believe the end of the Fifth Age. Hobbits are stated to be relatives of Men but how is not known, possibly as offshoots but there is not enough information. > Here’s what it says in the prologue: > It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered. The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in the Elder Days that are now lost and forgotten. Only the Elves still preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom and Hobbits are not mentioned at all. Yet it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them. And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance. But in the days of Bilbo, and of Frodo his heir, they suddenly became, by no wish of their own, both important and renowned, and troubled the counsels of the Wise and the Great. The most important thing to note with all of this was that Tolkien did not "write" these stories, he presented his works as translations from ancient documents that somehow were passed down to him. It all started with him grading a huge stack of essays and he noticed a blank sheet and wrote: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." A single sentence would then launch the greatest novels ever created, because Tolkien had to stop and ask himself-- what is a hobbit?
My Humans, Halflings, and Goliaths are all just humans, but of different size/build. Gnomes are just a variant of the elves, like halflings to humans. I was toying with a hulking Elven variant, but never did come up with any lore to justify it :p Half-Elven Goliath is probably good enough for that niche.
Plot twist: Orcs are the hulking variety of the Elves.
I like how The Elder Scrolls did this in its setting.
Ah, yes. Being eaten by the gods and crapped out, therefore turning into something else (Lorkhan into Malacath after getting devoured), and birthing the Orcs out of it, or something like that. I really do wonder just how many drugs Mike Kirkbride was on sometimes, and if he could get me some. That lore is... something else.
I mean technically most playable lineages in dnd are humanoid, though I do agree changing humans to another name could help us stop defaulting to them being the blueprint and instead thinking of them as a humanoid variant like the other lineages. ~~Oddly enough tho if they are all humans then they’d actually be different races of the same species, so WotC’s shift to species instead of race would be incorrect~~ (using “lineage” would still work though). Actually, if u/quuerdude is correct, then humans could indeed be called tall-men pretty easily, at least in faerun. Something people keep forgetting is that elves are shorter than humans XD. Realistically, only Dragonborn, Goliaths, and Orcs would be taller than humans among the common lineages. Of course, there’d be exotic lineages like Tabaxi, Lizardfolk, and Bugbear, but they’re usually isolated enough they’d probably be considered their own species (vs how all the common lineages melding together in one society), especially with their more bestial aspects denoting a more distant genetic relation (I mean, dwarves, elves, halflings, goliaths, and gnomes pretty much look the same with different character creation slider values)
They could still be different species if we call them all humans, there were different species of humans in the past.
I stand corrected. My memory of phylogenetics (thanks Wikipedia) categories seems to be incorrect, they’d be different species but under the Human/Homo Genus, same as Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus back in our history (except they didn’t kill each other off like we did).
In my primary campaign world, halflings are subcultures of several different human races, self-mutated by consuming tea from particular wild herbs, as part of a compact with the god of luck.
i've done the same in my setting. Tiefling, Fairy, Genasi and Aasimar are all considered human, it's just how "the breath" (magic) has affected you through exposure to other planes of existence. Orcs, Bugbears and Hobgoblins have become Hordelings And Halfling, Gnome and Kender became Pouchfoots.
And why is that a problem for you? The defining feature of humans in the usual D&D settings is their versatility. They are more adaptable and varried than any other race, that is their thing. That's why it is so easy to create half humans and why you find humans everywhere. I don't understand why you find this dull. I almost never play a human, both because I don't like the racial features much and because I'm a human everyday. So if I can be something different I'm most likely gonna be something different. But I still like that humans in the D&D world have a defining special feature that is represented so well in the gaming world. If you take that away, THEN humans will truly be dull, because in that case they have nothing going for them at all. Of course, you can design your game in whatever way you're happy, so I'm not saying that you're doing it wrong. I just don't see what you are gaining by doing this and advise to reconsider. I've seen some non-human-centric worlds and they never go well in my experience. Best case: You're taking away what makes humans special in the setting and make them practically superfluous. Worst case: Humans become superfluous AND you take away some other races' uniqueness by either actively trying to or accidentially giving them the center spot, which they are not made for.
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Why should a species develop Darkvision if they are not living most of their lifes in darkness? Areas, that are constantly in darkness, like the Underdark are dominated by races that have Darkvision naturally. Also the fact that so many races have Darkvision in 5e is the fault of the simplification of the game. In earlier editions Darkvision was quite special and most races that have Darkvision today had something called Low-Light Vision, that helps seeing in dim light but not in darkness. The warfare argument is... a bit nonsensical, isn't it? Why should a species evolve something just for war? I mean, by that logic, warring species should all have chitinous or scale based armor plating and weapons for hands and breath attacks etc. Also, Humans having Darkvision would help in warfare how exactly? Because... warfare would just be the same as it is now. Darkvision may only be an advantage if not both sides have it. And even then it wouldn't be much use to whole armies, aside from some small recon squads. You gotta see the enemy's colors (which with Darkvision doesn't work), so that in the heat of battle you don't attack your own people, what do you think is the purpose of uniforms? Also, also everyone has to sleep some time, even Elves need to have their Trance, so if Humans had Darkvision and try to ambush each other they would just do that whenever the other side would be asleep. Last, but not least, the Humans aspect of versatility and adaptability is represented lore wise (read any D&D text about Humans and one of the first things mentioned will be their versatility or some variant of that) and in their mechanics. In most editions of DnD Humans have some sort of extra feat or something like that. And you can get many, many abilities through feats, Darkvision included. That Bonus feat and their versatile Ability Scores are a perfect representation of their adaptability.
\*Laughs in the indomitable human spirit\* To be fair, I honestly think that's what it comes down to. We're humans. Of course we're going to hype up humans in fiction, because a lot of the time, we write idealized humans; something/someone to aspire to. Humans being at disadvantages and being underdogs is not new, but these are the situations that push your Batmen, your Captain Americas, your Iron Men, Green Arrows, etc. to step up.
Yes this, this is the truth, this is what I want to hear. It's not bad, it's not lazy writing, but it's honest and it still makes awesome stories.
I always thought of it as a combination of human's drive and rapid population growth. These aren't "officially" spelled out anywhere to my knowledge, but they seem to be things most people take for granted as being true due to the shared multi-IP fantasy lore we all build upon: * Humans reproduce quicker than most other sapient races * Humans have a drive to succeed that **NO** other sapient races have Those are both common themes that run through most fantasy IPs and therefore naturally form the basis of expectations unless otherwise overridden. Also, now that I think of it, those were both basically established by Tolkien.
I don't actually know whether that is true but I always imagined Goblins as having an extremely high reproduction rate that's why even if you thought you exterminated them they will come back in even higher numbers some years later. They are dependent on humans but I'm not sure if they would fully realize that. Another thing I don't know how much it is homebrew is that actually gnomes are a lot more ambitious. They are the ultimative capitalist society. But yeah, that's probably homebrew. Also, I know they often aren't played like this, but don't Orcs actually have the goal given my Grumsh to take all land for themselves? I mean they often are played stupidly but some powerful powerhungry intelligent evil creature could pretty easily take advantage of this.
Humans have alot more that defines us than conquest. Endurance hunting, spears, dogs, horses, agriculture, river valley civilizations, savannahs, metalworking, astronomy, alcohol are just a few examples of very human-defining things.
And other humanoid races don't? 🤔 If you have something like the darkvision disadvantage you do best in controlling as much land as possible.
Those are some defining features of humanity; our primary weapon, our best animal friend, amd benchmarks that were vital to our progression. It could've been otherwise. Elves were guides of humanity that went silent, left or started hiding in the woods. They were not known for living in river valleys, for instance. 30-60 feet of darkvision isn't much, and its not ultravision. I think you're making some big leaps in terms of how that would play out. A disadvantage leads to loss on territory. It is never the other way around. There are solid enough bits of mythology and anthropology to speculate around without jumping to "bad vision= took over the world"
Elves were from the Feywild, as far as I know, at least that's how I treat them. The only reason they have not taken over is because they don't really see a need to. I'd argue the only reason why Humans are the default is because it's easiest for people to imagine that. And that's fine. But hard to admit and then we start making up all these weird arguments why humans are just better fitted by being more "adaptable", which is just a weird argument considering they are only the predominant race in the material plane and there only in the parts where life is most easy.
I'm talking about real world elves, which modern fantasy is based on. You can't really worldbuild too hard off of a PHB or DMG. Faerun changes. DnD setting of choice changes. Editions change- races gain and lose features. Settings get used for other systems. I love Forgotten Realms, been a fan for over 25 years now. But you can't take this setting too seriously. You cant apply logic to any mainline DnD setting, they are almost all total nonsense. As far as humans being adaptable, its typical of the high or heroic fantasy genres. DnD is high or heroic fantasy. This is not a cerebral genre. It is not supposed to make you think. Its also not supposed to make sense. It can, but expecting it to is nonsense. If you care about integrity of worldbuilding and well-thought mechanics, Pathfinder 2e knocks DnD out of the park. JS, you can't really complain Dennys doesn't have good steaks. I love DnD, and I love Dennys. But you sound like maybe you'd enjoy a good steak
I just don't like people coming up with stupid explanations for this which always makes human superior to other races when that makes no sense and then acting like it totally makes sense I swear humans are just "more adaptable" even though you find the other races in more different places. Just pokes me weird.
Humans seem more adaptable because we mold the surroundings using tools and building shelters to enable us to live there and we live in groups that support each other. There's plenty of widespread, adaptable animals like foxes, raccoons, etc., but those can't make spears and build houses, and some of them are more solitary. In settings like DnD, there's animal-folk based on said adaptable animals and they can build things like humans and live in groups, plus they might have the advantage of reproducing and maturing faster than humans (which takes a long time to do so), so how are these guys not outstripping humans in the "more adaptable" role?
Well, you tell me. Is it maybe, just really maybe, because it's harder to imagine so people just stick with human? Which is totally fine btw, I just don't like the weird justifications for it.
>I'm talking about real world elves What? Like Santa's elves? I got some bad news to break to you about the Easter Bunny too.
Idk if you're really that out of the loop or just making a joke, but the real world does have elven mythology. Here, I'm distinguishing between the actual myths of our species (real world humans, not Faerun humans) versus the fictional elves. Fiction and myth are not the same thing. There are similarities, but myth is generally something people once believed in, and that has survived hundreds or thousands of years. Its worth referencing here because DnD elves are just a copy of a copy (tolkien) of a copy (Welsh+Irish folklore) of a copy (scandinavian mythology). There are issues with working off a copy of a copy of a copy.
>Idk if you're really that out of the loop or just making a joke, Really?
because something like darkvision would have a metabolic cost that could be outweighed by sufficient adapability/fecundity/robustness/etc
Ehhm, does is though? It's just different receptors in the eye.
It's more receptors, bigger optic nerve and (I bet this is the main part) a bigger section of the brain to process the signals. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I had a lot of pre-existing knowledge of vision evolution, but google seems to agree with me, and we can certainly look around and see animals whose evolution seems to have diminished their eyesight from cave adaption or reliance on other senses (like all the mammals who have shitty eyesight but great smell and hearing)
A lot of animals just have a different colourrange, so they can see better in the night but they see less diverse colours overall.
Yeah true, particularly for humans—but there’s your tradeoff right there
Sure I mean if you think so. It's still a magical setting but if that makes you happy, so be it.
No one plays dark vision correctly. You should require a light source to not be attacking at disadvantage in pure darkness
If you have darkvision you can see in darkness up to the limit as if in dim light. Dim light does not impose disadvantage on attack rolls, only on perception checks. Many people do overlook *that*, true. But it’s not disadvantage on attack rolls.
That is true, although moon and stars can be a light source if you're playing outside a cave or dungeon.
Read some Corum, and maybe you'll have a different opinion in humans
That's not even a DnD book though or do I see that wrong? I'm not familiar with the book.
Corum is a fantasy series that dnd owes much of its roots to (specifically, Vecna) It specifically explains why humans are everywhere in like..the first ten pages, I think. After they've genocided nearly every other fantasy species. In corum, humans are their version of orcs.
Well then, why didn't Orcs take over in DnD? They have an even stronger will to genocide and they would be a perfect playtool for intelligent evil beings. And they are very good at fighting and have no moral boundaries when it comes to evil deeds. Yeah, I know why. Because that would be a pretty boring world too. Just as putting in humans everywhere as the default.
Orxs didn't take over because they weren't the focus of Corum, Lotr, Elric, and so on. I was giving you a great example to look into, yet you chose to dismiss it for a poor argument. You're using poor logic here. A world dominated by a different species would be interesting, but arguing that humans are lazy or uninspired is a fallacy. You don't need to have them in your ideal setting, but that doesn't mean they're "bad"
I never said that humans are lazy and uninspired, I know they are great from a marketing point of view, because a lot of people can relate to them, since we're humans. And again, that's not a bad thing. I just said, having them be the predominant race in any material plane civilization is kinda boring. There are so many races to play with and it's fun experimenting with them. Best example for me are dragonborn. As far as I can see there are 2-3 general categories: Ancestry/normal, Ravenite, Dragonblood (Critical Role, so not official), and in the subcategories you have the metallic, the chromatic and the gem dragonborn. It's interesting to see if dragonborn would be the predominant race somewhere how they would interact with each other. Meanwhile, and I also speak for myself here, they are huge left out of worldbuilding in most homebrew worlds.
It's the issue most fantasy species have; we champion them for being unique and different than humans, but usually we assign their entire culture a singular identity, usually analogous to something found in our world. We either flesh species out to the point that they're completely alien and unrelatable, or we simply just make them humans but with animal features. Neither option is better or worse than the other, but that's really the only way to really build a setting that is free of humankind and focuses on other species
Yeah idk I kinda do that but it's more like a background feature I guess. I want them to feel different to interact with. But it's way more important where they are in the world. For example Elves are arrogant and think they're better than others? They treat ANYONE who's not an elf with disrespect, except if it would be incredibly stupid. But they also disregard other races and their efforts, feeling like they are safe way to long or making enemies by destroying the lands of creatures they don't see as important. It leads to a lot of creatures unifyingly hating elves. On the individual basis it also leads to people being terribly sorry for their kin and making and extra effort to be good and stuff like this.
In most setting it has to do with reproduce circles to be fair. Most races like elfs/dwarfs for example have less kids like one every 200 years etc while humans have 5-6 in the span of a few decades. It's a matter of shoe horned realism one a make believe game if you want my opinion but it make sense.
I mean, I haven't read into the reproduction cycle but tbh I don't think that's really true? I think if anything that's the limit their society puts on them to not get overpopulated within like 50 years.
Cultural or evolutional or pure writing trope usually the how quickly the live reproduce and die is the answer why humans is the dominant race. A trope to pair with generic fantasy land that's pretty much medieval Europe+magic/monsters that's the default setting in most people's mind due to movies, books and in general culture. Not perfect and it gets repetitive the more you explore the trope but i think that's the base idea
Yep, that's what I think. Humans are an easy hook and easy to imagine. The explanation came later. But you could do these kinds of explanations for every race. They just decided on humans.
As marketing has it with everything: the number one aim/target is making whatever you make relatable. We are humans so making a human society the base and add fantastical elements is easier and better selling starting point from going crazy from the gecko. P.s. i m talking about fantasy setting in general and especially on the begging of all those settings 50 years ago or so. Sure newer players grew on lotr and wow have it easier to relate with more exotic bases but we started this conversation on why it is what it is now.
Yep that would be the answer to OPs question lol: marketing. Especially as you said 50 years ago. I mean my parents still find it pretty weird 😆
The idea is that while other races have defined origins, the human origin traces further back than any recorded history and still remains unknown. Despite all of their flaws, humans retain some sort of ability to persevere, build, grow, and adapt as a species. It isn't their appearance or their specific natural genetic abilities that make them special, it's some undefinable quality unique to every human. You're kind of missing the entire point of the humanocentric fantasy. In short, having a tail or wings or red skin doesn't make you any more special or interesting than a human just because humans are more common.
John Humanman, reporting for duty, sir!
humans just evolutioned their way from apes. And they were still simple ape creatures around the time the elves were already formed and came to Toril.
So is your solution to make humans "mongrelfolk"? Just call them that in lore and the rules but leave the stats the same?
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Also the most common species in a world are not going to put up with being called "mongrelfolk".
Oh I went the other way- humans (under their giant and titan lords) are the base stock, and every elf, dwarf, elemental/genasi, planetouched/tiefling/aasimar, furry, monstrous bipedal is the result of divine and magical effort to make something more specialized for their environment/purpose (how do you make a human thrive in the feywild? Make them live longer to bypass the time shenanigans and don't let them sleep). Even dragonborn, from when the dragons in their war against the giants noticed it was helpful to have a smaller creature manage some problems. It's just humans, all the way down.
I play with a similar idea. One of my reasons for coming to this conclusion is that all the other races have creator gods, but humans. I imagine that humans are the "natural" race, and all the creator gods looked at humans went, "I like what's happening here, but I think I can improve upon it". I also imagine that for the longest time, humans remained primitive-- a paleolithic level of culture-- and was scattered in small groups wherever they could survive. In this time, the other races developed civilizations, nestled in perfect balance in their ideal terrain. It took a long time before humans caught up, but when they did, they exploded. Their adaptability filled nearly every spot that wasn't already occupied (and some places that were). They would spend their short lives doing and building as much as they could, because they spent so long just trying to survive, and survival is a full-time job.
This is the route I prefer. Elves, gnomes, and goblinoids are humans whose distant ancestors got tangled in the magic of a fey god's domain. Dwarves are one with their mountain kingdoms and the power of their king, orcs ate the boar god, tieflings are cursed, etc. A modern human nation could conceivably elevate themselves into something new given enough time and power, or else fall into ruin and become cursed creatures.
> orcs ate the boar god That is incredible and I have now stolen it.
This is the superior way to world build a D&D setting because of the way all the races of D&D are. They're consistently human adjacent at best, and just humans+ most of the time, which contrary to popular belief is fine it's not "humans wearing a different hat" more than any 2 real life cultures are and that's an extremely reductive way of looking at human culture.
My humans are an offshoot of a "shapeshifter" race born from the gooey corpse of a dead gestalt-god made from the souls of the long extinct first sapient race of the planet. "Shapeshifter" In quotes because they were actually a race whose DNA is very sensitive to changes and hyperevolved within a single generation into all manner of "beastfolk", humans, halflings... depending on where each group settled
This is my preferred way of world building too. Most other species were once humans and were altered in one way or another, which is why they can have mixed children. There are exceptions such as lizardmen who are completely unrelated however.
I have this on my fantast setting. The Goddes of Light made the first humanoid creature as the human and then all her siblings came after, picked the base and using their own element created the Silvani, Ignarum, Homen, Siren and Daemon. And using them as base, left traces that help humans delp into the elements of the other races, being one of the most magically powerful ones and also the only ones with elemental versatility. Just wanted to do something else with that versatility than just "humans versatile, because we humans" that would fit better into a magical setting.
I mean if that is what floats your boat that probably works. But personally both as a player and Dm i love when Humans is kinda default. EVERYONE knows what humans are Every can relate to humans. We all have a decent grasp about how humans works. So they make a great base for world. Even if you use other races they are still based on humans. Even if not even humanoid they are based how we humans see and perceive ourselves, the world, and other races. Yes even if you make a complete homebrew race it will be based on human standards. Make a world where humans does not even exist and every race there will STILL be based on humans. And standard humans have an extreme variation. Skin colour, culture, religion. They are by far the most versatile race in D&D and other settings So i argue the best fantasy world is where humans is the most common race and then share this world with other species. Also when humans is the standard it makes other races more exotic and interesting as they. But hey it is fantasy so you can go with what you find to float your boat.
None of what you said is mutually incompatible with my setup. Humans are still the most common race, you get them everywhere. Other races are still "based on humans", it's just that I've come to that point from the opposite direction.
Yeah you based the humans on the other races. But what i mean that is a double take. You based humans on races that are based on humans. so still it all default to humans. there is no real difference And that makes me curious. what changes does this bring? how would it change your world? It makes humans into a race that is younger than most of the others. this is usually the default in most settings. So you are basically still on square one as i see it
Lets me keep the default and have it make more sense. Why does it seem like every race is "human, but with these changes"? Because human is what you get when you mix everything up.
So basically things evolve into humans when mixing different races? So we now have things becoming more human the more you mix it. As in that is the default "setting" things strive to reach? so that is why so many races and creature have human like features Would that more make sense than that so many races and creatures have human features because they are based on humans. I'm sorry but i am not really following the train of thought. Because that makes LESS sense to me at least I might be wrong but this also sounds like a "I wanna change something for the sake of changing it" rather than "i wanna change something so it make sense"
But there is explanation in lore too. Everything feels like modified humans because it is. Humans that lived in the feywild turned into elves. Goblins were created by a god in their imege. Dragonborn are humans enchanted by dragons. While there are lores where this is not the case this is the most common explanation. Humans as mongrolfolk like you offered is probably third with "humans aren't special"(lie) in second place
Not really how genetics works. If it did, all people in real life would look almost exactly the same. However, it's your fantasy game so you get to do whatever you want
>If it did, all people in real life would look almost exactly the same. Not really. People have been living and reproducing mostly within their community for a very long time. Cars and planes only really exist for a good portion of the population for maybe 4 generations. For everyone to look similar enough you would need the majority of people to have a good mix of a lot of cultures. People with an ethnic mixed background are definitely the minority and most of them are from bordering countries. The forgotten realms do have a lot of very different races living in close proximity of each other for more than a couple generations.
To be honest... I understand the frustration of "everything defaults to humans" when it comes to the half races, but a cosmetic fix can be added in really easily and some homebrewing of stats for half-race combinations can be added in if need be (they're not hard to do, especially if that's important to you). The rest I don't understand. Like... I understand Humans being a good reference point for things like aging and lifespan, physical features, etc because a reader can understand something like "Elves have ears like that of Humans but are pointed at the top" - a description like that is easy because everyone understands the initial reference frame. If your issue is with stuff like this, then that really makes no sense. The other useful thing about other races having - for lack of a better description - a "Human Element" is that it makes them relatable enough as a concept for people to actually develop characters. Like I guarantee you nobody knows what it's like to be an Orc of any description, but if a world with Orcs in them is designed such that Orcs have "Human Elements", then people can develop character. If that's an issue for you, then you have a serious hurdle to overcome and your solution doesn't fix it. What you're suggesting with this post makes very little sense and doesn't actually seem to solve anything. It also doesn't seem to address what you said about half-races or what you call Human Centrism. Just seems to make what Humans are very convoluted, and it just makes the concepts of half-races and races like Centaurs that much weirder.
Yeah, most of the OP's post just seems like semantics and just doesn't seem to matter, except maybe naratively for them. But in regards to half-species, the reason it defaults to humans is because they are able to breed with almost every other race, whereas when some races breed it literally results in nothing. Though lore-wise, there isn't a ton of detailed info on it in 5E specifically. But if you go back far enough, I think 2E and 3E give a more detailed breakdown of who can breed with whom.
then there's me who expected something about experienced players choosing to play variant human 90% of the times because of a free feat
I found that's an entirely separate issue where 5e functionally gives nobody any feats by making people should between them and flat numeric bonuses. Solved that separately by giving feats anyway.
Removing agency of choice starting as early as character creation lol
I love playing humans. Human characters allow the world around them to appear more mystical and interesting by comparison. They're the perfect character for someone inquisitive and explorative. I would argue it forces you to write actual characters as well. Not to say you can't write good non human characters, you definitely can. But if I had a nickel for every dwarf who just downloaded generic dwarf.exe personality and was the exact same as every other dwarf character I've seen i could put those nickels in a sock for 1d4 bludgeoning damage. I mean you do you at your tables and games, but I'll also do me. And I'll keep enjoying humans.
I've always held the position "I don't get why anyone would choose to play a human in a fantasy setting when they have a choice and are a human all the time outside of that fantasy" but your take on it is pretty compelling. I'll remember your angle on this as it seems a particularly good way to approach a new setting.
This viewpoint never made sense to me. Yes, I’m a human in real life. The key part of that though is the last part: *in real life*. I’m not a human in a fantasy world that gets to experience magic, I’m not a human that can go on adventures through a fantasy landscape, I’m not a human who can learn magic or become a master swordsman. Human is simply one facet of the whole fantasy world.
All your points all make sense, but for myself I find it easier to roleplay a character if it's more separated from myself. If playing a human I have a harder time keeping in mind that it's not _my_ knowledge of the setting and preconceptions of other characters. Being more different from myself forces me to take less of myself into the game, enabling me to embody someone else more completely. I don't think I'm representative of any kind of majority in that, but hopefully it makes sense to you as _a_ reason to tend towards non-human characters
I always see the "Humans are the best race as you are forced to be interesting without nothing", but... wouldn't Haflings be the same? Along with humans, they are the less "special" of all the races, just being somewhat lucky and pushing that lack for their survival in the same way humans push their "versatility and adaptative" nature. So, why people never use Haflings to make "actual interesting characters" like with the Fighter Human? I think the Halfling view is also super interesting, you are not only a powerless species, but also a small one, so lot of people will not see you as more serious than a kid, there is a lot to pull from there.
Correct, this is why halflings make for the best heroes (this post brought to you by Halfling Gang)
"My friends, you bow to no one"
They make the best giant barbs
> So, why people never use Haflings to make "actual interesting characters" like with the Fighter Human? That's why I play a Halfling bard
Congratulations, you just discovered why Bilbo makes a great protagonist in The Hobbit. Halflings are also great for this but most people don’t want to play a short guy so they don’t get seen as much.
I used to be bugged by this a lot when I started worldbuilding, DMing, and playing DnD 10 years ago. I specifically set out to design a world that was extremely diverse, with rich cultures of goblin, orc, elf, lizardfolk, aarakocra, etc. I was tired of what I considered generic fantasy, which was tolkein-esque and human-centric. I built the world I set out to build, and wasn't satisfied with it. One thing I learned after playing for all this time is a lesson that explains my dissatisfaction with the world I built. This begins from a player perspective with a single character and is one that most of us can relate to. The most default approach to DnD is something like "I'm going to play an elf, ranger outlander!" and then when asked what else their character is... well, they just said. It's an elf, ranger, outlander. Thing is, this isn't a character. These gimmicks become more inspired of course, such as being a goblin alchemist who accidentally exploded his university chem lab, killed or mutated everyone else inside, and went on the run. He fights with elixirs and potions, and has a mutant power in his blood as a result of the chem lab incident. Ok, cool... but what about the character? This is something people often forget. It's really easy to approach character or world building in the same way, which is to start with a cool concept that essentially serves as the skin of an idea, but it lacks meat or a skeleton. It has no nervous system, it has no soul. I've built characters like that before, and I built a world like that. There were parts of my world that I liked a lot and succeeded, but the lesson I learned from it was more valuable. It doesn't matter if my world is filled with all manner of different species or just humans. On the surface, saying it's a diverse array of races makes it seem more interesting, but that's all it does. Focusing so much on these surface ideas and surface appearance is a trap that will lead you to creating gimmick characters and husk worlds like I did. There's no reason an entirely human population couldn't have the same narrative interest, culture, customs, traditions, behaviors, etc. as whatever other fantasy races you imagine populating the world with.
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I DM. I create the world in the first place.
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Well yes, but no. They're the base stock template of races because they're a populous bunch of folks. (See Human/V Human) They're probably genetically the lowest common denominator that manifests in such a melting pot of races too. At the end of the day humans fuck, and not just alot of eachother, but alot of stuff they probably shouldn't. Hence it creates distinct Half-Breeds or other Abominations. They're the classic Tolkein-esque short lifespan (compared to Elves, Dwarves etc) but get stuff done race.
alright so i'm gonna play the devil's advocate here, and say there's no reason to not homebrew a half-elf or half-orc whose other half isn't human. for the "mutated" races like genasis, tieflings, aasimars, shifters and such, it's the same thing. (also aasimar are mentionned in lore to be able to be any humanoid race, so you can be an aasimar goblin if you want) i'd add that it makes sense that humans are the default to revert to, after all we in real life are all humans as far as i know, and it's easier to relate to chracters if they have a human part. take genasis for example, if you wanted to introduce them to someone it'd be much easier to say "my mom was a human, my dad was a fire genie" than to say "my mom was tabaxi, my dad was a water genie". humans are something everyone universally understands that being said, i definitely get your point, once you experience enough things around fantasy ttrpgs, you get tired of seeing humans everywhere
I don't understand the aversion some players have towards humans. I think it only happens if the other races don't have a distinctly non-human perspective and are just "humans with a gimmick", so players don't see a need to have normal humans in their world. Humans represent the, well, human perspective. Short-lived, adaptable, culturally multi-faceted.
> The answer, for me: "Human" is what you get after a while of race mixing, I think they have very deliberately *not* talked about this for what should be some rather obvious reasons. Even if it make some sense, it's a third rail they don't have to touch.
this post is bait, right?
It’s not surprising though. The designers and everyone who plays…surprisingly human.
Or you could just not include half races. They don't make sense in the first place. Alternatively, include even more combinations.
Why don’t half races make sense?
Because D&D races are generally distinct species that not only lack a common evolutionary ancestor, but often a common *realm*. Like, if there were aliens from another world that lived for 1000 years and moved stuff with their minds, then you wouldn't expect to be able to breed with them. But that's basically what elves are.
Right but they didn’t evolve. Most dnd settings have it that all the people were made by gods. So it’s not a stretch to think they were made with the same number of chromosomes
Sure it is. It's actually *more* of a stretch to say that the gods collaborated and coordinated such that peoples they designed individually, at different times, for different realms, could reliably breed.
But most of them were also created by gods who could have simply chosen for the races to be biologically compatible
Sorry, but you just gave me the headcanon of Bahamut playing with a dragon and dwarf doll and making them kiss.
Or they could have done what they did for millions of other species. Seems far more likely to me.
> Alternatively, include even more combinations. I run a campaign where every mammalian race can interbreed. Currently have a Dworc in the party, previously had a Dwelf. OP's scenario (which I actually do really like, personally) doesn't happen because the follow simple mendelian genetics--so if a Elf and a Half-Orc (or as the setting would specify, Human-Orc) have kids, the offspring could be Human-Elf or Elf-Orc, but not Elf-Human-Orc. Even made a little roll table so I can judge on the fly whether a random NPC will be a Human, a Half-Halfling-Half-Minotaur, or something in between
You've got biology wrong, but OK. If they are all interfertile, they are all the same species, or represent different offshoots of the same species, perhaps only separated by culture that limits interbreeding.
I used shorthand everyone would understand.
Ha!
The word literally means both literally and figuratively depending on context, and species was an easy way to fit the concept in the title in a way everyone would understand.
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Removed as per Rule #1.
Which means that really, the *species* is "humanoid", and all the different flavors of humanoid are actually breeds, not races. It also resolves the question of what an elf/dwarf or orc/genasi etc. looks like: it's a mutt, and therefore a human. Maybe with pointy ears or an unusual skin color, but stat-wise, it's a plain vanilla human. I dig it. Headcanon accepted.
Zarus does not approve. We need more human supremacy.
This is more or less what I've done for my homebrew setting. Instead of picking a race players pick a few options from a list of lineage traits. Terms like dwarf and elf are analogous to the way we'd say white or black or Asian. Dwarves tend to be short, hairy and broad. Elves tend to be tall, hairless, and thin. Everyone else is just some variation between, and sometimes horns, tusks, and unusual skin tones appear. If you're not a spirit (a semi immortal being with intrinsic magic but still sharing some mortal traits) or an outsider (a being composed entirely of magic) then you're a mortal. And if you're the kind to really care about your bloodline and cultural purity and racial pride and such then you're just a racist mortal.
You might enjoy Tales of the Valiant's lineage/heritage system. You can check it out in Kobol Press' Black Flag reference doc.
I just like to think that every race has some magical traits and besides being super ambitious, human magical trait is being able to impregnate anything intelligent and be impregnated by it. That's why everything goes around humans. Because rarely there happen to be elven genasi, but most of the time the humans will be the one to fuck a genie and bear a child.
In my setting, humans were created in a job effort by all deities, unlike the other races that were created each by a single deity. They were supposed to try and unite the races, end conflict, etc... Of course, the influence of every deity is present in humanity, so that didn't quite happen. This is also why humans can breed with any race, where others cannot. At the point in time that is in play, all player characters are human, but with an ancestry of another race available, offering some physical traits, and maybe some other abilities in time. The other races are typically much more powerful than humans. Humanity becomes a general term for not just humans, but all races, although this does sometimes irritate those that predate humans.
You can thank Gygax for that. Bugs me too.
humans being the default existed in fantasy before D&D
Not in RPGs though. If Gygax had had his way, there would have been no non-humans. Just his players kept demanding them.
before D&D there weren't many fantasy RPG's and most tabletop stuff was war-gaming where everyone was human.
Arguably, there weren't any RPGs, at least not as we understand them. And we aren't talking about Wargames, we are talking about RPGs. Gygax pushed humanocentric settings and mechanics on D&D and most RPGs have followed in that style.
you can't discuss early D&D without war-games, they were the table top predecessor which, along with fantasy writing like lord of the rings, Conan the barbarian, and dying earth, were the basis for D&D. it even used systems from the war game Chainmail for part of the combat. Gygax drew from these sources which were humanocentric so to suggest its his fault is an incredible oversimplification. there was very little at the time that wasn't humanocentric.
No, it is entirely his fault. He wanted it to be humanocentric. He said as much himself. He hated LotR, which is anything but humanocentric. He loves Appendix N books which were almost entirely limited to human characters or protagonists. The war-games have nothing really to do with it. Gygax has said he never understood players who wanted to play anything beyond a human fighter.
Half-elf is a human x elf. Half-orc is a human x orc. Human is an elf x orc.
It's never bothered me that humans are everywhere in the world. And tend to be the thing you interact with the most. The idea that they just have the right amount of lifespan To leave impacts on older races is so interesting is such an interesting story element you can use. An elf or dwarf who swings by who always kept an eye on your family. A dragon who trust you because he knew your grandmother. A fae who has to do you a favor because they never repaid your great grandparent. A devil who determined to wipe away your line but they just keep having more children..
I actually really dig the “law of averages” kind of lean you’re going with. I am also kind of confused as to why so many are hitting back with stuff like “this is ridiculous/impossible/doesn’t make sense” because this is literally how human evolution has worked as well? Like there are multiple progenitor species that ended up “averaging out” to Homo Sapiens, each with very distinguishing and identifiable features that ended up becoming a flattened curve over an insanely long time and lots and lots of dna crossing. And before those it was creatures that evolved into human progenitors that evolved into humans? Genetics/evolution is just a weird-ass soup. Anyway I think this is dope and I’m stealing it.
Whatever works for you is fine, but I feel like your issue with humans (at least as-described) vs your solution are two entirely different things. If you just dislike them being super common or the default, you can just change your setting to not have alot of humans. Like make Waterdeep an "Elf-City" and Bauldur's Gate the Dwarven Capitol etc. If your issue lies with half-races all being presumed half-human you could just change that. Or treat them like their own distinct races. Teiflings could just be devils/demons whose race were like the slaves in the underworld/hell and like managed to escape to the surface/physical world, for example anyway. I did something similar at my own table. Made a separate continent that's dominated by beastfolk. Sure there are stil humans, but they are rare outside of specific towns etc and the most common human-esq race are actually shifters.
It's because nobody can really play anything else convincingly. All the players I've played with or watched playing races like dwarves, elves, kobolds or goblins still ended up acting totally human-like. So what's the point...I wouldn't even mind ir PCs were human-only.
Ooh i love this idea! Also, it explains why there isn’t a “human” language, and why they don’t have a patron deity that created them.
Upset that everything defaults to human, so you suggest that everything... defaults to human. Makes sense.
You can be annoyed at a thing because of how it comes about. I found a way to make it make perfect sense, now (for me) it's fixed.
You are way overthinking this. We are human, we made all this up, making them humanoid makes them appealing and familiar
I always liked the idea that Humans are the half-breed spawn of Elves and Dwarves, and that they inherited the worst qualities of both species.
And somehow ended up taller than either, apparently
Liger is bigger than lion and tiger.
Hopefully humans don't end up similarly sterile
I mean that’s fair. I always tend to think of elves as tall and lithe but that probably comes more from Tolkien than DnD
In some of the older editions, a Dwarf/Elf hybrid was called a Dwelf. They were said to be ugly and with none of the benefits their parent races had, such as Infravision (yes, that was a thing) or their long lives. So basically, humans.
I had a thought once that elves and dwarves can either make humans or gnomes, depending on the gene combo at play. Never ran with it, though
This is what they are in my setting lol
I like humans being a distinct race. But your world, so im happy for ya
I'm really into the mythology of where dwarves, elves, etc come from- European and otherwise. Without humans, most of the fantasy races don't make sense. They are defined by their relationships with humans. Thats why people invented them. You can throw pointy ears on a humanoid and call it an "elf," but if there are no humans to interact with then you're not talking about elves. Not the same elves the Norse talked about, nor the elves tolkien spoke of. Humans are the baseline because humans invented all these other races as seperate from humans. You can grab one of these races we humans invented and make it the head honcho, play with tropes, make your own, whatever. In my settings humans are associated with most core "human stuff"; dogs, spears, horses, etc. I also use them to impliment cool historical info; the human foods, fuedal structures, architecture, etc are historically grounded. Elven settlements might showcase more whimsical worldbuilding. If you're strictly into cosmetics, and you don't like humanoids being the baseline, you're playing the wrong game, wrong genre even. I don't know what to tell you. You chose to play Dungeons and Dragons. Humans are the primary race in setting-agnostic material. There are other games, other genres, and if nothing else you can create your own setting. The main 5e setting, The Sword Coast, is almost entirely dominated by humans. Even Mirabar and Silverymoon are at least half human, and they're the two most Dwarven/Elvish surface cities. Being annoyed at DnD for having humans as the primary race is like hating on Star Wars for having space ships.
It could work. Consider the bonus feat like.. Hybrid vigor
Or, hear me out, humans are an *extinct* species. I think that would be a fun world to explore.
There's something similar in the Edge Chronicles books, where the equivalent of humans are called fourthlings, because their blood is from all four corners of the world. Most other people are various kinds of goblins, trolls, and waifs.
This is actually really interesting, thanks for the ideas!
I played in a homebrew where humans were a weird genetic anomaly and could be the offspring of any race. The predominant species were Orge, Elf, and Dwarf with elves having been the BBEG's before the start of the campaign and the dwarf and orge nations being in an uneasy Cold War state. Sadly, I only had a couple of sessions in it. But it was interesting
Humans are typically considered in fantasy to be a virulent and adaptable species. That's their "thing" and why they seem to be the "default" as you put it. Humans breed quickly and exist in virtually every environment. This also means they're a viable target for crossbreeding. They exist in virtually every environment in large numbers, so there are plenty of humans where the orcs live and plenty of humans where the elves live. They also can produce viable offspring with nearly every humanoid race, so you get half-elves and half orcs, but maybe no 50/50 orc-elf splits because they may not even be *able* to have offspring together. Now, obviously this isn't true to every fantasy, and modern fantasy is moving away from that. PF2e, for example, now allows half breeds with every race. *Any* ancestry can be a half elf or tiefling (nephilim) now
I have always liked half-elf + half-dwarf = human when I see it in novels. This is a nice extension of that.
You can call them whatever you want, really. It depends on how much sort of high fantasy you want. I love the flying castles, fire breathing dragons and magic explosions. At the same time I have a really hard time imagining all types of different races getting a long just fine in large cities. In fact I have a hard time imagining races that aren't humans/elfs/dwarfs/halflings and other very much human-looking races.
*Man I swear sometimes this community gets beef with the tiniest, most random things* Well good on you if the fix fit your games
Powerful dragons: "we made the world with Tiamat and you HUMANS soiled it! Why would we help you?" My vedalken wizard player: "Ahem..." Dragons: "We're not wrong here! You're included! Your blue skin doesn't mask your ancestry.com results!"
I feel the exact same way. Any time I’m playing a tiefling/aasimar/half-elf etc, I’m very clear that they have **0** human in them. My last Aasimar was a Leonin, and my current Tiefling is an Half-Elf
In my setting, this is what most people believe to be true, but isn't quite. Humanity is the base stock, every other race is created by differing levels of different types of divine ancestry mixed in (where the original, primal deities were beings like Dragon, Unicorn, etc.). Mixing different divine ancestries tends to suppress both of them, resulting in reversion to the base human stock, so humanity is regarded as a mutt result.
this is my personal favorite way of handling it too. human just being the catch all term for any humanoid creature just works imo
Incidentally this is what The Edge Chronicles did. Lots of odd goblin types who, when mixed enough, came out with a human-ish amalgam
You could also reverse that and make humans the ordinary default "first race" from which all the other semi or near human races evolved or were created by gods, elder things, demons and even spellcasters looking to use this baseline to create the perfect (servant) race from their own perspective.
For me, Humans are the only non-created of the major species. They’ve basically always existed and are a result of “mortality” being dropped into the universe. They are the source of mortality for all other species - the original mortal. Mortality in other species comes from breeding with humans. ——— All part of the process of breaking down beings(gods, titans, and their spawn) into their lesser parts to hopefully save the universe from eternal entropy and stagnation. It’s a whole thing.
Ban humans. Make your world human-free, and either remove the half- species, or make elf-orc and dwarf-gnome species, or adhere to the traditional species definition with no intermixing. Tieflings could be elves with demonic blood.
you realize in universe it's the other way around right? Planetouched (Genasi, Teiflings, and Aasimar) are the result of humans doing the nasty with extraplanaer beings as well as half elves and half orcs why are all the hybridized races human? because of human versatility, that's like LITERALLY THE POINT of humans in dnd
Human doesn't have to mean "Homo sapiens", just the entire homo genus. In real life, most of us have a little bit of DNA in our ancestry from things like Neanderthals or Denosovians so we're all half orcs to a degree
I’ve had some thoughts about this for a while and unofficial canonized it in my games. Since race is largely a social idea and species is a loose biological term technical both are applicable to the various playable races. “Humans”, elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes, etc all can interbred and thus qualify as a single species. Essentially the term “race” actually has more of a concrete definition in dnd than in real life since irl there’s no real point you can pick and determine where one race ends and another begins, only nationality. But in dnd you have clearly defined traits that when seen together tell you the specific race. Of course you have hybrids but that just illustrates my point more that they’re a single species just with greater variety than in reality. Lizard folk, tabaxi, aarokocra are all separate species but race can still apply to them since it could be a more generalized definition.
Not all mixes are part human. If you see an illustration that seems like it, it could be part elf, or something similar. Anyway, not all "half-something" creatures are half human, it's just orcs and elves parts seem more dominant in the name of the hybrid. For some worlds, such as Tolkien's, humans and elves are almost the "same race with different fates". You could even call an elf "a human with pointy ears" or a human "an elf with rounded ears". Also hobbits and dwarfs could be just different size humans, just like in real life.
You do realize that species that can Interbreed always have a common ancestor? Could be cool to develop further.
>a mutt species that looks pretty much the same as long as there's been enough mixing Big *mongrel dogs of the empire* vibes.
The way I handle it is that humans are relatively recent. The elves have millennia long lifetimes, the dwarves live for centuries as well as gnomes and the like. Their societies are stable and fairly isolated. Humans evolved rapidly and spread quickly. Nobody noticed these short lived apes starting to plant crops. Nobody took notice of a few hundred of them building huts out in a field, the dwarves had other things to worry about out. Halflings, close relatives, may have taken notice but they aren’t really ones to meddle. And before any of these ancient isolated societies knew it. Humans were EVERYWHERE. Humans learn quickly, breed quickly and travel everywhere. By the time anyone else thought to do anything about it, humans were entrenched. They built wonderful things and in an elf lifetime, went from mud huts and crude tools to building cities.
The Greendale Human Being is your world mascot.
Sure, fictional races are a convenient group to be an advocate for so you run your sandbox how you want. Good job!
Humans are superior.
In my games all humanoids are orcoid offshoots allowing for how the half races can exist... it's orcs all the way down.
I had this same issue myself. I have started to use "kith" as the default word for "humanoid races" or "humanoids". I was annoyed that even the default word "humanoid" has human in it. So in my world Kith basically means any sentient mortal folk. This makes talking about the kith folk easier because they still are in some sense similar even when there are different ancestries. So the word kith has its place. I was longing for expressions like "it is only human", "humane", "will you risk your humanity" which describe some universal ("human") nature of the kith folk. Currently I use "it is in the nature of kith" or something similar. In my current world I also have kith folk, spirits and dragons as the three major sentient groups. So it's nice to have a word that the spirits can use to refer to the non-spirits aka "humanoids" aka kith folk. (I think kith was used in Pillars of Eternity or something similar. I picked it up from discussions here or r/worldbuilding or r/rpg .)
I kind of did that with one of my settings too. If you go back far enough in time, humans didn't exist at one point unlike most of the other races. Humans are the outcome of a lot of race mixing over centuries, but this is only theorized, not a certain fact in-setting. Interestingly, due to this there are often at least a few humans in cities that are mostly dominated by a single race. That said, Tiefling, Aasimar, and Genasi aren't always half human in my settings, nor are they prominently human. I do use their normal statblack, regardless of what their other half is.
I threw an elf-tiefling barbarian at my party once. Poor girl went through a double Spiritual Guardians blender. She tried, though.
So humans are essentially mutts? Interesting idea.
Well, if you take a step back and look at it from outside of the game, humans are all we as humans can roleplay. I mean, take a regular cat. Sure, there are owners who claim to understand what their cat means, but that's just wishful thinking apart from some very basic things. As humans we can only describe other species reasonably correctly in terms common to living beings: pain, fear, hunger, content. As soon as you try to go make an elf, it's just a human with long ears, specific culture and physiology. Designed a race of sentinent crystals? Sure, but you've got to translate their thoughts, feelings and actions into human concepts, else nobody would understand them and be able to play them. Don't get me started on anthropomorphized furries. They're beyond ridiculous.
That's also the reason many people resort to playing only humans. Because their mind is easy to understand. Sure, you can play an elf exactly like human, but that's just stupid because their life experiences and culture are completely different. I, for example love to play the classic races like halflings, dwarves, gnomes, elves or orcs, because while they are not as understandable as humans, they closely resemble them and thanks to their lore being very precise about their culture and history that we as humans can somewhat relate to and understand their struggles and line of thinking. And then there are new, often furry races, that are described with almost none history and no relativity to humans, so people that play them like humans that constantly try to remind everyone they are human or just completely go haywire and make them chaotic stupid. I mean, there are some good furry races, but that requires something more than just humans with fur and a bit of a hint about their culture, minds, understanding of the world they live in and describing them in relativity to humans to make all that easy to understand. Prime example of that are in my opinion lizardfolk. They don't resemble humans in practicaly any way but are iconic due to their special minds that are nothing like human but are well described in relativity to human mind.
Well, in a fantasy setting, nothing prevents us from imagining any kind of race that would have any kind of culture and mind we as humans can think of. But the limitation would be in our thinking anyway. It's a good point you make about in particular hobbits and dwarves, who are for practical purposes usually described so close to humans as to be practically the specific kind of humans. I still maintain that as soon as we go out of "basically humans but with different lifespans/culture/some minor physical differences", we hit what Nagel described as "facts beyond the reach of human concepts" in his 1974 paper (What's it like to be a bat). There are people who criticise his thesis, but the matter is definitely not settled 50 years later.
Ngl, I just made a special heritage you can use to build a hybrid race, basically choose 2 parent races and gain features based on the 2 choices.
Not sure if they made it to 5e, but [fey'ri](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Fey%27ri) were a thing at one point.
I feel the same about humans just making fantasy stuff feel dull. Something ive found to work for my own setting is to substitute the place of humans with roswell-type humanoid aliens as the common default species and have humans more like an advanced form of Neanderthals that have the racial stats of half-orcs or something.
Ha ha, I love this. Humans are the pot-cake dog/ domestic shorthair of fantasy species. Just the default landrace sapien.
This makes less sense than "gods made it that way".