Never quite undestood why people wont play human

[Tanarii]

I'm completely sick of elves, dwarves, and the rest, and while I can still appreciate Tolkien, pre-Tolkein mythology and works closely based on it, and even the occasional derivative work that at least dramatically changes things (e.g. Shadowrun, to use an RPG example) I certainly don't want to play any of these any time soon.

You could always play warhammer 41k Only War / DH. No elves, dwarves, or halfings at all. No sir. Tau, Ogryn and Ratlings are completely new and different. COMPLETELY I TELL YOU!

[Bohandas]

I'm completely sick of elves, dwarves, and the rest, and while I can still appreciate Tolkien, pre-Tolkein mythology and works closely based on it, and even the occasional derivative work that at least dramatically changes things (e.g. Shadowrun, to use an RPG example) I certainly don't want to play any of these any time soon.

And that's why I like gnomes. They weren't in LoTR and thus aren't completely done to death

[Max_Killjoy]

For gaming, at least for me, I don't care what's been done or not done in terms of "too many" or "not enough" of some race species. I care about playing the character I want to play, and whether the species fits the character and their backstory, and whether I simply like that species or not.

For world-building, both the "fantasy" settings I've put a lot of work into don't have the "standards" but do have some overlap with the standards simply because the standards cover some of the ground they do for good reasons. Neither setting has elves, for example, but one has "moon people" (because they were favored by the moon deity) and the other has "wilder". Neither is going to be confused with Tolkein's or D&D's elves in detail, but for setting and narrative reasons they end up hitting a few of the same notes.

[Knaight]

You could always play warhammer 41k Only War / DH. No elves, dwarves, or halfings at all. No sir. Tau, Ogryn and Ratlings are completely new and different. COMPLETELY I TELL YOU!

I'll give them Ratlings, inasmuch as they're an anthropomorphised animal that are fairly extreme in being human like, which represents a different tradition for pulling in non-human species which is at least a little less tiresome. The other two? Not so much.

[Tanarii]

I'll give them Ratlings, inasmuch as they're an anthropomorphised animal that are fairly extreme in being human like, which represents a different tradition for pulling in non-human species which is at least a little less tiresome. The other two? Not so much.

Ratlings are just hobbit snipers. (Edit: I'm assuming you were thinking of something else.)

Actually Ogryn are the most unusual compared to most D&D-like games. They're effectively half-ogres. But that's still not that alien, ultimately.

I probably should have used blue text.

[Knaight]

Ratlings are just hobbit snipers. (Edit: I'm assuming you were thinking of something else.)

I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Skaven, on further reflection.

I probably should have used blue text.

The sarcasm was practically audible, I'm just willing to give them Skaven, and made the mistake of thinking that in a setting that definitely has rat people the Ratlings were them. But no, that's just the Skaven/Ratmen/Ratkin.

[2D8HP]

....I probably should have used blue text.

Thanks for the earlier advice
*sputter*

Bluetext?



Never use bluetext!

EVER!

It's bad enough to commit VILE ACTS OF SARCASM!

But to proclaim the sin for all to see?

HERESY!!!

[Kaptin Keen]

Thanks for the earlier advice
*sputter*

Bluetext?



Never use bluetext!

EVER!

It's bad enough to commit VILE ACTS OF SARCASM!

But to proclaim the sin for all to see?

HERESY!!!

Um ... why no blue text? Also, you just did! :p

In my games, just to mess with people, I change the races. Elves are non-player, hugely powerful, evil and ... well, my game world has a grand total of three elves.

Dwarves are awful little bastards who delve into the earth, do their stuff, and hate everyone. They only trade with humans out of spite ('Oi, is'at da best ye've got? I can sell ya much better'n dat - but it'll cost ya!'). Also not a player race.

On the other hand, you can play ... goblins, orcs, gnolls, all sorts of weirdness.

I like the fact that if I'm your game master, your game knowledge doesn't get you anything =)

[Cluedrew]

Hence the blue text.

[Samzat]

I like playing as human because the fantasy tropes of the other races dont follow you like a fetid stench unless you put a lot of effort into changing the race's mechanics.

[2D8HP]

...I like the fact that if I'm your game master, your game knowledge doesn't get you anything =)

Ah, you're of the Judge Smalls school of Gamemastering.

Carry on.

[Kaptin Keen]

Ah, you're of the Judge Smalls school of Gamemastering.

Carry on.

I have no clue what that is - but in a game based on imagination, I like relying on mine. Not on convention.

[Tanarii]

I like playing as human because the fantasy tropes of the other races dont follow you like a fetid stench unless you put a lot of effort into changing the race's mechanics.

The tropes are useful. They let the player both play an alien race that's not human despite being a human. And help other players at the table with default assumptions about your character to help them picture them in their mind, again despite the player themselves being human.

I mean, if you find a particular trope / stereotype annoying, subvert the specific trope. Or redefine the race. As long as everyone is on board with the new trope /stereotype, that's fine. But that's done on a whole race level by the DM, and often requires specific buy-in from the players to work, since they need to do some reading on the new trope.

For example, both Dragonlance and Dark Sun radically changed Halflings. DS also changes Elves fairly drastically.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Funnily enough in my current Pathfinder campaign (now close to two years running), with a table of at times up to seven players virtually all have been human. I had actually opened things up a bit by allowing some unusual races like catfolk and kenku (in my campaign called crowfolk), but the entire party for most of the campaign has been nothing but 'umies. Since I overwhelmingly play humans I actually wondered if my players thought it was what I was expecting but apparently it was just how things shook out.

Over the last few weeks our regular campaign's been on pause while I run my friends through a dungeon module. In "short campaigns" like this you tend to get more unusual character concepts but the party is still more than 50% human.

As for why this might be... well, humans are never a bad option for just about any character concept in 3.5/Pathfinder. A bonus feat and +2 to any stat you want is pretty nice and if you're playing a high skill class you can trade in your racial bonus skill points for some pretty neat stuff like rerolling vs exhaustion or disease. But I also think, since most of my friends are old hands to D&D by now, once you've played the game for a decade the exotic races sort of lose their allure... from a roleplaying perspective, when you've played two or three dwarves how many more interesting variations on "dwarf" do you have in the mental drawer? Of course this is assuming you look at a character to at least some degree as a (hopefully) interesting persona, not just a collection of mechanics.

[Bohandas]

Actually I think the mix-up of species and race is ironically appropriate. Because really most races feel like racial variation instead of the difference that a different species would bring on. Plus you know interracial children, which would be harder if they were actually different species.

You can crossbreed a zebra and a donkey easy enough

[Cluedrew]

Yes, I know there are cases where that works, but it doesn't always and usually not as cleanly as presented in the mythic stories. Especially since a lot of races are explicitly come from very difference places. But then, maybe it would work out that way, its kind of hard how the genetics of elves would work.

[Kiero]

I only play humans. Regardless of system/setting.

If it doesn't have humans in it, then it's a setting/premise I don't want to play.

[Christopher K.]

To quote my sister, "People don't want to be humans. That want to be.. wings.. and shoot?"

I'm alright with nonhuman party members, but I do find it frustrates me that my players all default to Dragon Tales dragonborn. For a race in decline, there sure a hell of a lot of em.

[2D8HP]

...I'm alright with nonhuman party members, but I do find it frustrates me that my players all default to ...Dragon Tales... .

What's wrong with Dragon Tales?
(Besides being off the air)

It's no Curious George but my older son loved it when it was being broadcast.




"I wish, I wish, with all my heart,
To fly with dragons, in a land apart!"

Do you just not like Emmy and Max?





Maybe you're a My Little Pony partisan?

[lunaticfringe]

As a GM, I've seen two things:

People who roll - say - an elf, then roleplay it like a human, or
People who roll an elf, then just roleplay if very, very poorly.

That's my sole reason why people should play humans. We just have a lot greater familarity with human mannerisms and so on - even bad roleplayers can play humans decently. But I've honest never really seen a well-played un-human

Playing Completely Different, Alien, or Super Weird Religious imx just causes people to post those "OMG this Player is Freaking Other Players Out" Threads. Seriously just Roleplay your characters reaction to the giant praying mantis in your party instead of whining to weirdos on the web. It's called meaningful character interactions mother****er.

[Kaptin Keen]

Playing Completely Different, Alien, or Super Weird Religious imx just causes people to post those "OMG this Player is Freaking Other Players Out" Threads. Seriously just Roleplay your characters reaction to the giant praying mantis in your party instead of whining to weirdos on the web. It's called meaningful character interactions mother****er.

I ..... have no idea how that relates to what I said.

[lunaticfringe]

People play other races like humans because when they don't they get pressured to conform to stereotypical RPG human good guy personality types.

Lizardfolk are a PC race in 5e. The lore is they are Alien-Minded Reptiles and have no qualms about nibbling on Sentient Corpse meat or fashioning a Club out of the BBEGs femur. It's their Culture, they are not Evil just Different.

Try pulling that stuff at a table. Someone's going to flip out and then it's going to be a thing. The Lizardfolk stops acting like a 6ft tall carnivorous Reptile and behaves like a Human to appease the group. The player hesitates to get weird in the future.

At least from what I have noticed. Interesting takes on Not Being Human get shut down more often than not.

[Leon]

Because why play the thing you are all day everyday in a Roleplaying game. I'm a 6ft male Human, i have a tendency to play Female Dwarves and Halflings. Have played a number of Humans over time but usually due to there being a lack of humans in a party* or it being a human orientated setting.



to my PCs detriment in one case as in the multiracial group fighting a Giant with a Human Bane greatclub it hurt a lot more to be one

[Bohandas]

To quote my sister, "People don't want to be humans. That want to be.. wings.. and shoot?"

I'm alright with nonhuman party members, but I do find it frustrates me that my players all default to dragonborn.

That seems strange. Are Dragonborn less lame in later editions? And even if so, how is the problem of the derivative name not offputting?

[Lazymancer]

I never quite understood why someone will say well I am human in rl so I wont play a human in game or humans are boring.
If they find humans boring is it the fault of the race or lack of imagination on the the player ?

This is trolling. Almost all RPGs either don't pretend that you can play as anything but human, or allow to play non-humans only as humans in rubber-suits (at best!).

The D&D itself (as an Ur-Example of everything) offers humans that are short (dwarves/gnomes/hobbits), strong (half-orcs), with pointy ears (elves), or with horns (tieflings). Oh, yes. You also get regular humans. Such variety, much vow.

A special prize goes to tits on female lizards (I refuse to discuss insects - I practically hear Sanity checks being rolled somewhere).

Whatever class you want to play, there is a non-human race with the best abilities bonus for it.

Welcome to anthropocentrism.

If you have only "better/worse than humans" yardstick, humans will end up in the middle of every scale - once you fill-in empty spaces of "better/worse than humans". You have to make a conscious decision beforehand to give humans some special unique quality (which stereotypically ends up being either flexibility, diplomacy, or xenophobia).

There are 7 billion variations of human characters in the real world. Each one with a rich backstory and inner life.

Did you check personally?

[Tanarii]

Try pulling that stuff at a table. Someone's going to flip out and then it's going to be a thing.

Given that most in-game characters are likely to flip out, that's not necessarily the 'fault' of the players. If their characters are going to flip out, why would they be adventuring with the non-human that's they can't handle in the first place?

If you're going to bring a potentially in-game problem character to the table, it's on you to make sure your character can work with the party in the first place. That doesn't mean don't do it. It just means you shouldn't have an expectation that you can automatically do it without causing in-game issues.

[Jay R]

There are 7 billion variations of human characters in the real world. Each one with a rich backstory and inner life.

It therefore follows that there are 7 billion different approaches and motivations, so there is no reason why all gamers would make the same choices. There's not even any reason why all the people who don't want to play humans all have the same reason for it.

No one is saying there are no valid reasons not to play human. Its only when someone says I wont play a human in D&D or any other game cause I am a human in RL or humans are boring do I question their reasons

Why question their reasons in the specific cases in which they have already given you their reason? They want to play a specific way, and that's their choice. Ultimately, it's because they prefer playing that way, and they might not even know all of their underlying reasons.

I had a good friend who only wanted to play Fighters. I don't share that desire, and don't really understand it, but I have neither the authority nor the wisdom to question it. He made a great fighter ally for me in many games.

Never quite understood why people would play human (well, that's not exactly true, I know it's for the feat).

Here's one reason to choose: pure mechanical optimization. While this is one legitimate reason to take a human for the extra feat, or to take a non-human for the ideal enhanced stat or special ability, not all players are pure optimizers, and those that are, aren't all optimizing the same aspect. So this can't be a reason why all people making a given choice do so.

Here's a related, but distinct question--is it truly possible to role play an actually alien character? After all, we're all human. We've never met, not have any information about real aliens. Thus, when we role play, I feel we're always playing humans with funny ears.

It is neither more nor less difficult to play an alien than to write about one. Since many of us have favorite characters who are elves, dwarves, hobbits, Vulcans, droids, etc., I assume that people can write an interesting alien character, and therefore I assume that people can play one.

Besides, the same argument can be used for playing a wizard, superhero, or any other character type we've never seen in real life.

[In fact, I expect that this is true. We can't "truly" play a perfect elf, dwarf, wizard, or superhero. But I also think that we can't "truly" play a perfect human, either. So what? There is no logical path from "I can't 'truly' play an elf" to PhoenixPhyre's satisfaction to "I shouldn't enjoy myself trying to play an elf as well as I can."]

Because why play the thing you are all day everyday in a Roleplaying game. I'm a 6ft male Human, i have a tendency to play Female Dwarves and Halflings. Have played a number of Humans over time but usually due to there being a lack of humans in a party* or it being a human orientated setting.

I don't. I have never played a sedentary mathematician role-player who spends too much time on the computer.

By definition, if you are spending your his free time playing role-playing games, and playing a character who sends all his or her time fighting, taking on quests, travelling through wilderness, exploring ruins, saving lives, and/or seeking treasure, then you are not "play[ing] the thing you are all day everyday".

[JBPuffin]

I can understand asking this as an honest (if rather grammatically incorrect) question, but whenever this comes up, people start fighting like schoolchildren as if taste is an argument of superiority and throw around unfair assumptions like bullets (see what I did there? I made a blanket statement which I feel is completely accurate, but probably isn’t. Somewhere, these discussions are civil). There are all sorts of reasons to play anything. I play humans when I want to, and other things when I don’t. Exactly why I do or don’t want to varies on the day I make the character, but usually is mechanical more than story-related. Admittedly, I usually play humans and just build characters of the other races (happy accident), but it’s totally unintentional. Whether it’s comfort, or exoticism, or escapism, or feeling “disingenuous” because you can’t pretend to be a different species as well as you’d like - they’re all valid reasons to do one or another. Why try to make other people play different fake people in a fake world you participate in to enjoy?!

#rant #letpeoplebepeople #thisisntwhatevermediaplatformuseshashtagswhyamido ingthis

[Honest Tiefling]

Actually I think the mix-up of species and race is ironically appropriate. Because really most races feel like racial variation instead of the difference that a different species would bring on. Plus you know interracial children, which would be harder if they were actually different species.

When you realize that few people on this thread are going to have 100% human ancestors because one of them decided to bang a non-Homo sapiens...I just assume that fantasy humans are also going to bang anything vaguely human-like.

Through to answer the complaint that players aren't usually able to roleplay non-humans...If the players aren't capable of RPing non-humans, how is the DM able to?
It would seem likely that if you believe in the former argument, the latter is likely true.

To quote my sister, "People don't want to be humans. That want to be.. wings.. and shoot?"

I have no idea what a jib is, but I like the cut of your sister's jib. At the very least, being able to see in the dark and having wings are awesome racial traits.#tieflingsareawesome #suckitdragonborn

[2D8HP]

...I have never played a sedentary mathematician role-player who spends too much time on the computer....

Clearly @Jay R, you're a Wizard researching a tome of eldrich lore!

...By definition, if you are spending your his free time playing role-playing games, and playing a character who spends all his or her time..
...taking on quests,
....exploring ruins.....
...seeking treasure, then you are not "play[ing] the thing you are all day everyday".

Ah good.

"A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground"

For my employer (The City and County of San Francisco, A.K.A. Lankhmar),

I have:

Gone on quests (searched for any remaining intact plumbing under the piers),

Explored ruins (the former Naval base, shipyards, and let's face it most of the rest of the buildings are "well used")

Seeking treasure (look for plumbing fixtures to steal/salvage from the abandoned 6th floor Jail, for use on the 7th floor Jail).

Also, I've encountered monsters (had Sea Lions surface next to me under the piers, one seemed to be the size of a VW Microbus!, plus... well the inmates), crawled through underground tunnels, entered crypts (I had a job in the autopsy room today!), looted dark passageways (the Jail cell plumbing chases looking for parts to use for the occupied cells), and I'm a Guild member (Plumbers and Steamfitters, Local 38!).

Seems that I'm a dungeon delving Guild Thief (I hope Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don't slay me )!

---

...being able to see in the dark and having wings are awesome racial traits.#tieflingsareawesome #suckitdragonborn

Man I like this Tiefling!