No humans in a fantasy world? (and some random other stuff)

[Sivá]

The basic question is: "How will a fantasy world do without humans?"

Before i go into detail a btw "question": I'm a bit reluctant to post my oh so brilliant, revolutionary concepts, that came to me in a period of enlightening lunacy, because i don't want ideas to be "stolen". On the one hand there seem to be plenty of people on here posting their very own concepts and each of them probably is busy enough with theirs. On the other hand idk.. you never know. There might be some greedy lackeys of huge gaming corporations lurking in the corners of this forum, only looking for an opportunity to snatch an infant concept out of the hands of a novice designer, using their superior manpower and infrastructure to develop a fully fledged game, before the poor fella, who came up with the plan in the first place even had the change to edit out the typos in his post. Am i too paranoid?


The initial question isn't about my basic ideas anyway however. They are very independent of the actual game setting. Fantasy and Cyberpunk are my favourite genres though. I definitely won't touch cyberpunk so the game will play in a fantasy world. Humans somehow are in about every fantasy world i know. I am not yet sure if i want them to appear in mine. There are some thoughts that speak for it, some against it. Everything we experience, we experience from a human point of view (naturally). Everything we create, we create from a human point of view. The gods we worship, everything we can imagine is based on us - humans. So fantasy races are based on humans. It is actually quite obvious. Just picture, elves, dwarves, gnomes, even orcs or really fancy races. Since there is something human in every race and culture i will ever include in my world, why should there be the inspiration for all these - humans themselves. (At some point i thought of gods in this world being human shaped, but that just would be some random twist.)

Another reason why i thought of leaving them away is because i remember, when we used to play as teenagers (and sadly i hardly played since then) human characters were seen a bit as "the spots that have to be filled". There just had to be some humans in the group, in order to make it plausible. The other thing was that some classes may have been limited to human chars, or that they were played because there where certain rules adavantages. Mostly people wanted to play elves (hm.. at least i always wanted to play elves). In my game it is crucial that everybody feels as free as possible to play whatever he fancies most. (That means of course that all the options i give are as attractive as possible. That's another story though.)

I have doubts though. One aspect certainly is that i wonder if it is wise to leave humans away. After all they are what we are all familiar with. It is an important aspect of a story, if there is a character the audience can identify with. Sure these aspects could be (and probably should be to a certain extend) distributed among the remaining races.

Humans don't necessarily have to be boring. It is certainly very possible to make humans a very attractive race, with interesting aspects and facettes of their culture.

Maybe the idea was that leaving humans out would somewhat blur the immediate demand for a world that works according to human rules, according to the principles our world works. (Pseudo)Realism is very important to me. Humans wouldn't make or break the working of this world, but maybe players (and i, while creating the world) would have an easier time to accept reality to be working in a different way.

Another aspect is that one of the very fundamental ideas of the game is that players should be tricked into being as creative as possible and as unbound from their usual set of mind as possible. They should play what they truely desire to play, instead of limiting themselves to what they are used to (and they are definitely used to be human). On the other hand it maybe would be good to leave players some known ground to wander upon, if they don't feel quite ready to jump into the exotic with their arms that wide open. Removing humans could take away something to cling on though, would players force to be a bit more fancy, wich i think would be a good thing.

Am i just afraid of leaving humans out, because  it isn't commonly done?


Anyway.. i just noticed that this actually leads to a new problem. If i eliminate humans because they are not fancy enough and too familiar, how fancy would i make the other races then? As i stated earlier all races i could ever hope to imagine are somehow based on humans. I even can hardly imagine introducing races (or many races) that aren't humanoid, as player character choices, because i would want to play a humanoid character. It might have four arms, be etheral, or something, but it has to be humanoid. What i definitely don't want is a world a la Star Wars with completely obscure races. Mon Calamaris? No thanks. (Even though they are humanoid, yet they are just so uncool.) With these statements i'm basically directly contradicting some of the reasons why i wanted to exclude humans. Any race will always have something human like. Otherwise i couldn't imagine it.


A side problem that is a bit related is that i have a blue skinned race and i can easily imagine green and red skinned ones. If i'd have all these a flesh color skinned race would look a bit pale, wouldn't it? Hm.. i guess i have to visualize blue colored skin texture better first, before i go any further on this one.


Anyway.. what do you think (haha)? (The most vague question imaginable) Seriously now -  the question really is the one in the first line of this post: "How will a fantasy world do without humans?"

Thank you for reading and any feedback is very much appreciated.

[Phil]

It can be done, it has been done, both well and poorly.  The ones I have seen not work are where the races are so inhuman that people have a rather hard time getting in to the mindset of the race.  For me thats what human is.  Its not amount of legs or flesh tone (seriously how many tones does flesh come in anyway, why is that assumed to be one color), its the attitude and mindset of the race.  In the world I am working on ( hhtp:..www.alatha.com the primary race is lizard looking, proto-warm blooded, with large protruding fins.  But the attitudes are more like that of a bronze aged Mediterranean culture of humans, village centered, mystical, but for the most part human-like in interaction with the world.  The people that play with me have embraced it wonderfully.  They all play the race and its a blast.  It throws in a few weird things now and again, but thats no different from any fantasy world.  There is a race on the world that are descended from humans, but they seem far more alien than the non-humans, entirely due to culture, outlook, interactions, etc.  The lizard people seem "humane" and are thus enjoyably played well and the "humans" seem inhumane and serve as a great foil to the primary race.  In short, they are entirely what you make them, its your world.  Give enough that players can see through the eyes of a race and it wont matter how many eyes they are seeing through.

[Callan S.]

Hi Siva,

Alot of roleplay games talk about what they aren't ("this isn't D&D!") or what they don't have. With the absence of humans, what is added to the game? Or atleast, what is it your goal to have?

I'm asking because I think your questions revolve around whether its a valid goal, the one your pursuing in not having humans. Whatever your goal is, it's valid. The real question is, do you have the mechanics you need to meet your goal? Can we help with that, whatever it is?

[contracycle]

Out of a similar line of thinking, I just stopped using non-humans altogether.  I agree that any such character has to be sufficiently human for it to work at all, and so all of them are really within the range of comprehensibly human behaviour.  In which case there was no point to them, really.  Nevertheless I would be interested in seeing games that are purposefully non-human and take trouble to be so.  There just has to be something worthwhile about the non-human character that makes the dis-association from human assumptions worthwhile.

Take the long elvish lifespan for example.  I always felt this was worthless in AD&D2, because it was effectively outside the scope of the game.  I could not really figure out how long lifespan was supposed to be brought to bear; not a problem Tolkien had.  A game that explored the significance of long lifespans and the way it informs decisions might be interesting, but the game would likely have to be built to do that.  It's not something players can merely "do" by adopting the character.

I don't think there is anything inherently problematic with eliminating specifically human characters, but unless there is some kind of point to that they will mostly be humans with lumps on their heads.

[David Berg]

Out of a similar line of thinking, I just stopped using non-humans altogether.  I agree that any such character has to be sufficiently human for it to work at all, and so all of them are really within the range of comprehensibly human behaviour.  In which case there was no point to them, really.

Amen.  I use non-humans only for roles of morally-black-and-white evil, where it's good to signal to players that this is not something you can empathize with or talk to.  Otherwise, it's all just people.  Even if you want some to fly and some to make webs and whatever else, it's all just people.  Everything else is a matter of aesthetics...

which are of course very important.  Siva, if you're looking to sell a rulebook and have some cool idea for a flying horse-squid that'll make it jump off the shelves, then that's probably reason enough to go for it right there. 

If you want to play a game in which players are expected to derive a lot of enjoyment from portraying/discovering odd mindsets/cultures, and for each culture you come up with a visual that "goes with" the odd mindset nicely, then that'd make sense.  And if the point of play is to portray some weird mindset, then leaving out a normal mindset (and a corresponding normal visual, i.e., humanity) from the player options makes sense too.  In my experience, though, few players want to play truly alien mindsets.  So I would guess that your including/excluding humans decision will come down to pure aesthetics and nothing else, with gameplay itself barely affected either way.

[Sivá]

Thanks so far for the input!

It would be possible to make the idea work, without having any non human races at all. When i think of a fantasy world, i think about mages, dragons, faeries and such though.. hm.. No. I want to put elves and whatever races in my world and when they are already there, i want them to be playable. I want any race in my world to be "cool". Meaning that if you were a 13 year old (or like me a 13 year old in the body of a grown up), you'd see a picture of the race and just have to play it. How long elves life doesn't really matter. Their lifespan isn't the reason why people play Nightelves in WoW. Neither was it the reason i wanted to play elves. It was all about their style. Style is very important for my game. I spend a great deal of thought on how i can make characters stylish and still maintaining pseudorealism. I like Phils example. It seems nobody feels like missing out, not being able to play a human.

I probably have to make this decision based on my gut feeling, to leave the human race out all together. Everytime i say that though, i feel like the game world becomes more detached. I have a hard time rationalizing these feelings.

As already pointed out the question "humans or not" is just a design decision i feel i have to make early on and will alter my outlook on the world. It isn't the concept (wich is still rather fuzzy).

Just wanted to hit post, when David responded...

It really is very much about aesthetics and about the wow-effect (uh.. i mean like woha.. wow, not like world of..).

Yes that with the alien mindsets/cultures is a problem. Besides the difficulty of portraining them a big question is: "What drives folks of races with completely different mindsets into grouping together?" That is a question i have to answer early on to. There need to be natural, realistic reasons, why the different chars get mixed up together and stay together. Also players that are enticed by the looks of a race have to stay enthusiastic after getting to know the specifics. Besides that every culture of playable races has to have enough diversity so that a player can play a member of the race he chooses the way he chooses. This is especially important, because i don't want to require players to put too much thought into the motives and emotions of their characters. It's more about how they want their chars to look and what they want them to do and about the emotions of the players, rather then of their characters.

btw.. where is the EDIT button?

[Monkeys]

I think any 'fantastic' character type, be it human or non-human, embodies a particular sub-set of the players' psychology. Hobbits are earthy and practical, vampires are vain and brutal...but barbarians are violent and emotional and thieves are cunning and calculating. In fact most non-human archetypes could be played as humans instead, or vice versa; vampires <--> cunning nobles, trolls <---> barbarians etc.

[Phil]

I will have to agree with Monkeys (I feel bad that sentence has never come out of my mouth before this).  Humans work in games because the people that play are humans and all our experiences dealing with complex life issues are primarily with humans.  Thus they are the blankest of canvases.  Any other race's "defining features" are simply exaggerated versions of some human characteristic.  As said before, anything pressing too far beyond the thought pattern of a human becomes way too difficult for anyone to get behind and the role playing is no longer so enjoyable, merely a thought game trying to be kept up of what a specific thing might do in such a situation.  So the mind of the race must be close enough to some type of human thought, which leaves the body.  And this gives you what was said above, a difference of asthetics.  That is not a trifle though.  Thats what makes thing interesting and gives the "wow" effect to games.  The mind mostly like a human is what lets us sympathize with Frodo or laugh at C3PO.  I have a hard enough time in my gaming world remembering not to use too many words from my race's language or it seems too foreign.  Stretch their imagination, wow their minds eye, but remember, its for fun.  So don't make them work too hard.

[Conteur]

I think I must join in this kind of discussion because I have it at last once per year with my players. I know at least two games without humans (Mechanical Dreams and mine). I don't like humans in a RPG because I look for evasion. I can evade myself in Cthulhu too but it's just that I love to play weird creatures in a long campaign.
In my sense, Mechanical Dreams created too many weird creature. I tend to prefer human-like face... When I play Star Wars, I don't like playing an Aqualish or a Mon Calamarian (romance is very difficult to achieve with a ugly (in our human perspective) creature).
As a matter of fact, I thought the words abour Species vs Race were clear (maybe it's just for some people like me).
A Specie is a creature without offshot of another Specie. For example, a Human is a Specie, a Dragon is another.
A Race is like an offshot of the same. An elf is a kind of human race...
By the way, since the creation of Templates (a variant race) in D&D, everyone in our group keep playing it (Half-Fey Elf, Draconic Troll and the like...).
Some people will love, some people will hate. When creating a game like that, you must remember that you will lose at least 75% of your audience...