Humans as the "Default" Race

[Alchemistmerlin]

Inspired by a conversation in the "Vote Up a Campaign Setting 2" thread.

Humans are often assumed in a fantasy setting and I've always wondered why. Much was said in the other thread on the matter, so I'd love for people to discuss their feelings here.


For my part I've always felt the notion that "People need a race to relate to" shows a lack of confidence in the intelligence and empathy of the reader. The very nature of the wildly varying human cultures means that just because you share a similar genetic makeup (which, across a fantasy setting, you don't) you don't necessarily relate to them.

In fact, humans in 90% of fantasy settings are either so generic as to be unrelate-able by virtue of not sharing any common threads, or so alien as to not be identifiable as being the same evolved ape as I am. My daily life in no way prepares me to relate to a feudal lord or Talbuk hunting barbarian on a vast frozen plane who, at any moment, may be attacked by a brain-eating yeti/illithid hybrid monster. Fantasy humans are no more like real humans than fantasy elves are like vacuum cleaners (Except they both suck *badumtish*:smalltongue:)


Now the other argument put forward is that humans serve as the "baseline" for stats. This is getting fluff and crunch all mixed up. You do not need a "baseline" race. The baseline is simply "0" which means "You have no special bonus to this stat". If you're an elf you are 2 better than someone who has 0 to dexterity. If you're a dwarf you are "2 worse" than an elf at being charismatic.

The need for a baseline is only necessary if you are comparing things, but it never comes up in a setting that you have to make that sort of comparison. The only time that need would come up would be in the initial creation process...and even then I'm not sure how it is particularly useful.

[Eldan]

Humans serve as the statistical average, though. They are what comes u when you roll your character by 3d6.

[Alchemistmerlin]

Humans serve as the statistical average, though. They are what comes u when you roll your character by 3d6.

Right, so why is there a need to take a mathematical tool and give it a place to live in your world?

[bryn0528]

I agree with you on 'humans as a baseline' thing. I mean, if elves and dwarves can have specialized niches to fill, then why not humans as well? Perhaps it is because in a lot of settings humans are being used to fill the average role, they come off as being bland and boring; as filler material.

Of course, I'm honestly a fan of humans being the only playable race. I feel that trying to remove humans and replace them with another, more 'fun', playable race is rather uncreative; you're trying to be new and different by relying on a fantasy race that's strange and different. That isn't the route to go, in my opinion. I think a much better option is to have different regions of people, who have different cultures.

Which, relating back to the first point, if you have a set culture for a human, you can give them different stats. For instance, a group of desert nomadic humans could get bonuses to Constitution, while suffering penalties to Charisma. And perhaps they happen to be fine rug weavers, and get bonus skill points. But then there's this other group of humans, who live just across the sea, but they're skilled at architecture, not rug weaving. So it's not just about who's using the most inherently 'cool' default race when building up a setting.

[Thinker]

Humans should be the default race in fantasy stories, mythology, and in roleplaying games. We are humans and we relate best to humans. Regardless of how the creators portray people, we have some insight into how they will think and react based on our own personal experiences and biases. I would push the argument further and say that there is no need for anything but humans as a playable race.

As humans, our perspective is very mundane. We can write a setting or story from our own point of view without using any humans at all, but then what was the point? Why should anyone care about the Elves of Ruby Glen except for their relations to humanity? Having a common point of view with the protagonists allows the story to make sense to the readers. Similarly, having humans as an important aspect of the setting allows a point of entry to the campaign setting for those who would wish to play with it.

No matter what an author says about their precious setting, readers will apply their own values to the actions of the characters. With our modern mindset, we know that killing others is generally bad. The same exceptions that ancient cultures made are not the same as our modern exceptions and so, even if the protagonist's culture glorifies ritualistic killing, our modern mindsets won't allow us to accept that as being just. For this reason, modern authors and campaign designers create their settings with a modern perspective. Because of this, whenever you read a modern retelling of an ancient story things will be drastically different; it is hard to make the audience feel sympathetic for someone who they cannot relate to.

If you want to argue that any race can be just as sympathetic as humanity, then it seems that you really don't want other races. What you're looking for are humans dressed up in funny masks. Fantasy races are so drastically different from people that they should really be described more as species. Why should you be able to understand the motivations or mindset of a walking, talking tree? Why should killing a raging ogre be any different from your perspective from killing a rabid bear? If you want humans dressed up in funny masks, that's fine and you can probably get by with completely removing humans from the setting, otherwise there's no real reason to have any playable races besides humans.

[Eerie]

Let me tell you a little secret.

Dwarves are bearded underground short-tempered humans.
Elves are pointy-eared snobby forest humans.
Goblins are green ugly evil humans.
Dragons are scaly winged fire-breathing humans.

And so on, and so forth. Humans, in fact, are incapable of roleplaying anything but humans.

[Alchemistmerlin]

Let me tell you a little secret.

Dwarves are bearded underground short-tempered humans.
Elves are pointy-eared snobby forest humans.
Goblins are green ugly evil humans.
Dragons are scaly winged fire-breathing humans.

And so on, and so forth. Humans, in fact, are incapable of roleplaying anything but humans.

That argument is quite boring, uncreative, and eventually, if taken to it's logical conclusion, leads to all of us only playing ourselves in our own lives.

Also there can be no GM.

I already rolled my level 3 Bank Associate with a Skill Focus (Psychology), that's not what I play fantasy roleplaying games for.

Humans are incapable of roleplaying outside of their own nature but that doesn't mean we can't try.

[DoomHat]

I was at one point considering writing up a setting where in a piece of dramatic irony (known by players, but not by characters), is that the word "Elf" means "Human" in the Elfish language. Each race is a nation of humans that dehumanize their neighbors. Basically fantastical racism taken to the logical extreme.
One of the cool things about L5R is that demihuman racial options are replaced by ancestral lines. Each family has a certain stereotype to live up to and a preferred modus operandi. A Matsu courtier is as dubious a concept as a half-orc bard. The advantage being that there's no default in L5R. There's no Generic family of Clan Middle of the Road to choose.

[Aux-Ash]

I agree with this. Especially as of late I've come to question humans being used as a baseline. For one I think it does us, humans, a huge disservice by neglecting our strengths and using it as some sort of average. There are things we stand out with in the animals kingdom. Most notably our endurance. Should that not be something represented? Should our strengths (and weaknesses) not separate us from the rest?

Another is that it makes everything else "humans plus...". They are exactly like us, except with some things extra (and the odd malus). They have our weaknesses, our strengths and then some more. Making them more a narrow subset of humanity, rather than their own groups.

A third reason is perhaps the most announced. "We need humanity as a sort of average, to relate".
Tell me, just what does a race with two dots of higher strength mean? What is the human average? The real one? Can you think of a single human that fits it? Are we equal in all stats too? Are we on average just as strong as we are smart? Just as wise as dextrous?
What does a race with less charisma on average mean? Are they more prone to follow a leader and less likely to speak up than humans? Or perhaps just more inclined to quarrel between one another. Worse at forming cohesive groups?

The problem with that statement is the lack of a human mean. Yes, there's IQ. But in most systems I've seen the intelligence stat tend to cover a ranger quite a bit wider than IQ. But all in all? We have immense variation amongst ourselves. We have the massively strong and people that cannot move on their own. People who cannot move a muscle without knocking something over and people who can tie knots out of their own bodies. People who're always sick and people who are never sick. Geniouses and people who... are not. People everyone listens to and people noone can stand/pays attention to. People who are immensely wise and people who don't think ahead at all.
Where is the mean? And more importantly... what are the other races who stand out capable of?

[Eerie]

Anyway, you can set any race as a default. It is a purely technical thing. Assume average elf is a 0,0,0,0,0 and calculate human\dwarf\dragon from there...

[DoomHat]

Another problem is that the defining trait of humanity is our infinite adaptability. Ethnic stereotypes are born out of what any particular tribe has had to specialize in to survive their given environment.
Hell, highschool clicks treat each other as alien species. Everybody knows that Preppy Kids are good at this and that, always do X and wouldn't be caught dead doing Y.

[Eerie]

Another problem is that the defining trait of humanity is our infinite adaptability.

Our, compared to who? You can't define humanity as compared to imaginary races that were invented by humanity.

[DoomHat]

I'm trying to say that invented imaginary peoples are founded on the age old capacity for humans to believe the that those other humans, on the other side of the mountain, can't be real humans, because they don't act like any humans they know. A person from a medieval culture visits a land across some great divide, comes back with stories, and after a decade long game of telephone you end up with a firm belief that on the other side of the great divide lives human like creature that eat trees, inhabit houses made from clouds, and will bust into flame if you expose them to milk.

[erictheredd]

I think one of the great reason that humans are considered default is almost every fantasy book has them playing a major role. I would guess that those that don't have them in universe and are part of a series or set that mentions them (I think I've run across a dragon lance book that doesn't have a human character, but I'm not sure. It might have been a short story).

The default in fantasy is its in some remote past. Its a legacy of Tolkien, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. Humans will, in one way or the other, survive. They are the race you are supposed to cheer for, unless they are intentionally made to be the villains as commentary on society.

Role players may be able to shake out of this mindset, but the readers of fantasy will not, and I could be wrong, but I believe most people read fantasy books before playing RPG.

and yes, sometimes humans are not the most relatable species. Hobbits in LOTR are much easier to empathize with than the horsemen of rohirim or the soldier of Gonder. Yet humans were still there, and in the end the book was about humans.

I include humans in every setting I build mostly out of tradition and knowing that if they aren't done, a race will stretch to become them

[Falin]

Well, to begin with, the same reason fantasy settings usually have one moon and a sun that rises in the east and sets in the west. Despite what anyone might have to say about it, humans are familiar and that helps make a story more immersive.

[Kenneth]

for me at least Humans in my MAIn campaign setting were created as an accident by the Overgod.

what made them become the dominate race on the world is the fact that the dwarves are anti social and so when the poo hit the fan with them they only asked for any help when it was too late to matter but early enough to prevent the full out extinction of their race.

elves were just super arrogant and in their civil war (not drow lloth story from D&D) they weaned themselves enough that the up coming humans managed to take their lands for themselves (this lead to the current elven-human amniosity the elves feel teh humans 'stole' their ancestrals lands the humans say ' hey you left it we moved in and NOW yu show up wanting it back.. just like that?"

I do keep with the humans as the base/standard the rest of the races are based off of though. not only in terms of skills as in while there might be a legendary human blacksmith, the typical dwarven blacksmith expert is just as good, down to class like capabilities, while there might be an great and powerful human archer, the truh is.. most elves are probably just as good.


what INO sets the Humans appart from the rest of the races is their amazing ingenuity and adapability. they just can come up with an idea to counter whatever the obtsacle is, often times by doing it 'outside the box' and they have a much easier time rolling with the flow so to speak.

THe lack of 'sweet benefits and pluses' as one of my players put it, ig uess is a turn off for playing the human race, another being you are a human yourself so why not RP as something wayy cool, like a gnoll

[Lvl45DM!]

I like having a baseline to play. Thats what i like about humans. Sometimes i dont WANT a -2 to Con even if i get the +2 to dex. Its not just mechanics. Plus the idea of humans being more mallebale is useful. Elves are supposed to fit folklore of elves so they can't be everything, and if you ever see a tree hating elf who loves ale and dwarvish women its more interesting cos its an elf. A human who does the same things is actually a different character since he would be treated differently and probably fluffed differently
Also in the majority of games humans do get advantages. AD&D had humans getting all class options and level progression. 3.5 has the extra feat and skill points. So ya